"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

BUT to say that immediately gets one painted as a 'denier'..that is NOT
good...the very use of the word implies the person saying it is in some
sense a 'Believer' and that is even worse. This is not science, this is
rhetoric.

Its worse than that, believers can't think it through.

If they are wrong we are wasting resources on green projects that bring no
benefits.

If they are right they need to get the entire world to cooperate to fix it.
They wont be able to do this. So it will happen and we are wasting resources
on green projects that will bring no benefits.

We need to spend the resources on stuff that will be of benefit whichever
way it goes.
Nuclear plants will work either way. Wind and solar assume the climate won't
change and may be useless if it does.

On 3/12/2011 2:58 a.m., The Natural Philosopher wrote:
....
Despite Martins personal insinuations, I am very much balanced on the
fence. Although playing devils advocate is a good technique to expose
warmist trolls.


In short the only thing I am sure of is that there is very little
certainty in the predictions of ANYONE.

Failure to admit this, makes me suspicious at a human level, of those
who want to close all controversy and announce that the science is settled.


That is deeply disturbing,: Irrespective of whether AGW is wrong,
slightly right or a complete and accurate picture, the way its being
handled is an utter disgrace and has put science back years in terms of
public opinion.

I have always preserved what I regard as a healthy level of scepticism
about global warming, especially on the issue of our ability to do
anything constructive about it. The stories in the press are often
extremely superficial and scare-mongering - about what I've come to
expect where scientific matters are concerned. But when I see the
amount of misinformation and pro-business propaganda being pumped out by
right-wingers in the US, much of it through Murdoch's channels, I
develop sympathy for the climate scientists who are being attacked for
reasons that have much more to do with politics than with science.

How is it that denial of human-influenced climate-change, of the need to
regulate industry to limit pollution (unrelated to greenhouse effect),
and of the reality of evolution have all become articles of faith for
the right wing? My take is that in the first two cases there is an
obvious financial benefit to some very powerful corporations (important
sources of campaign funds), while the third is a way of mobilising the
know-nothing segment of society. In other words, intellectual
dishonesty rules.

You blame the climate scientists for the way the issue is being handled.
I see the completely cynical politicisation of the issue by so-called
conservatives as more responsible.

On 3/12/2011 2:41 a.m., The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Can't take a joke, at the ad hominems again.

I am trying to illustrate something rather different..but that whooshed
past you.

The first thing is the way facts can be twisted to meet agendas, on BOTH
sides.

Not very convincing.

On 3/12/2011 3:54 a.m., Brian Gaff wrote:
Well, the think is about climate change, formerly known as global warming,
is that we don't exactly know what will happen. The way its looking from
trends is that the weather and climate will be more radical, no they will
not all join some NGO and swear to get rid of corruption, I mean that as the
warmer climes heat, the temperature differentials will drive the weather to
extremes and may well result in deserts in one place, and frozen wastes in
others.
It may not after all flood the world by melting all the ice, but may limit
the areas of temperate zones where we can live.
Brian


One thing that has always annoyed me about the way people talk about
climate change is that the focus is completely on the negative aspects.
You express concern about change limiting the areas of temperate zone,
but it's quite obvious that the temperate zone expands in some places
(e.g. on its northern fringe), and it's not at all obvious that the net
effect is a reduction.

When I hear someone expressing concern about the idea of a warmer globe,
I sometimes ask if they would prefer it if the the globe were cooler.
Why should the temperature we have become used to over a few centuries
be regarded as the ideal temperature? (I am not oblivious to the costs
of adjustment to a changing temperature, but that's a separate issue.)

On Fri, 02 Dec 2011 20:51:07 +0000, dennis@home wrote:

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

BUT to say that immediately gets one painted as a 'denier'..that is NOT
good...the very use of the word implies the person saying it is in some
sense a 'Believer' and that is even worse. This is not science, this is
rhetoric.

Its worse than that, believers can't think it through.

If they are wrong we are wasting resources on green projects that bring
no benefits.

If they are right they need to get the entire world to cooperate to fix
it. They wont be able to do this. So it will happen and we are wasting
resources on green projects that will bring no benefits.

We need to spend the resources on stuff that will be of benefit
whichever way it goes.
Nuclear plants will work either way. Wind and solar assume the climate
won't change and may be useless if it does.

Pretty much why I am cynical about the whole affair - world reaction
isn't following basic logic. A sure sign something smells in the
garden ...

Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Roger Chapman wrote:

I trained as an engineer, not a scientist, so I am much more open to
practical propositions than to either abstract theory or belief
systems unconnected with reality.

Theory is not abstract. A theory is based on a hypothesis that explains
current observation and that can make *testable* predictions. Relativity
is a good example of this.

But AGW is not testable.

We don't have a spare planet to run as a control. That in a philsophy se
sense makes it less scientific and more metaphysical.


So whilst there's no denying that it got warmer between 1960 and 2000,
and the CO2 in the atmosphere increased dur8ing that timem, thats really
the limit of the testable FACTS and we cant say that it was due to any
given thing with certainty.

At best we can say that having elminated a lot of things it almost
certainly wasn't (largely) due to, there is a large signal and the only
explanation so far put forward is CO2.

IF it is down to that and ONLY down to that - and those are in real
terms pretty sizeable IFS. THEN even so, the numbers dont add up
without a multiplier. Which is held to relate to some noumenous
mechanism that has never been pinned down.

That's where I get bothered. We have tow big IFS followed by an AND ALSO
before the thing matches the reality of the past 50 years. Ok, we can
run with that, BUT if we then extend the multiplier back in time, we get
nonsense figures for - say - the last ice age.

That is while IPCC are spectacularly successful at fitting a curve to
the last 50 years, they are average to completely crap in the greater
historical picture, depending on what data sets you take.

And really that's all AGW is - a curve fitting exercise on the best
guesses as to what drives climate. Or that's what it WAS till it become
political, and there common sense caution and good science flew out of
the window, and hundreds of BILLIONS of our money have been spent on the
assumption that it was in fact broadly correct.

Can you imagine what it would do to the green economy, and the careers
of politicians and people who have supported it to the hilt and beyond,
if it became fashionable to believe that something else was in fact
happening?

Do you REALLY believe they are going to say 'gosh, sorry, all those
solar panels and windmills, and all these climate change awareness focus
groups are a complete waste of time and money, so basically we will all
resign and go and do something more socially useful' ?



What gives you the idea that science has anything to do with belief
systems unconnected with reality?


What gives you the idea that AGW is a scientific theory?

In Popper's terms its borderline pseudo science because it is almost
irrefutable as its predictions are so broad, and there is no possibility
of running a control.


Its probably nearer creationism in that respect, than physics.

As such you take it on trust, or you don't. That's faith and belief, not
fact based irrefutability.

And in reference to your own question "What gives you the idea that
science has anything to do with belief systems unconnected with
reality?" the answer is 'a pretty intensive study of metaphysics and the
philosophy of science will enable the understanding that all ontologies
are based at some level or other on untestable assumptions: In fact that
may be said to be their defining feature, and there are sound logical
reasons to to with recursion and reflexivity why this is necessary, and
this can be seen in the particular case of mathematics and formal
ontologies through Godel's incompleteness theorem, and in the case of
algorithmic analysis Turings completion problem, and I strongly suspect
on qauntum physics in the observation problem.

In each case the problem arises when an ontological system is used to
analyse itself for correctness or for some other quality. It gives rise
to infinite feedback..science is such a system It cannot in the end know
whether the ontology of which it is a study - and a careful meticulous
study - is in fact anything like a 1:1 mapping with reality - the
'whatever is the case' of Wittgenstein.

However that has no bearing on the actual AGW theory: we must take the
premises of the physical world as out starting point, in order to do
science at all.

The question of just how scientific a theory AGW is, is in the end
extremely open to question.

You must apply Popper's test, and ask yourself 'what conditions would
amount to its refutation, and how may we proceed to demonstrate that
whatever we do, it is never refuted?

Well its stopped getting warmer since 2000, whilst C02 has increased,
but that, apparently, is not enough.

Last winter was the coldest for 49 years. That, apparently, is not enough.

Let's say we crash build loads of nuclear power stations and it doesn't
get any warmer? would that 'prove' AGW?

Let's say we don't. renewable energy fails utterly as it must to make a
dent in CO2 and it goes up another 50% and in the next ten years, it
doesn't get any warmer..would that 'disprove' AGW?

I don't think it would, to its promoters.

That is the point when I would say it passes completely from science to
metaphysics and becomes what is known as 'pseudo science'. It is no
longer an analytic of an ontology, it is the basis of a new ontology.

A pure act of faith.

dennis@home wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

BUT to say that immediately gets one painted as a 'denier'..that is
NOT good...the very use of the word implies the person saying it is in
some sense a 'Believer' and that is even worse. This is not science,
this is rhetoric.

Its worse than that, believers can't think it through.

If they are wrong we are wasting resources on green projects that bring
no benefits.

If they are right they need to get the entire world to cooperate to fix it.
They wont be able to do this. So it will happen and we are wasting
resources on green projects that will bring no benefits.


FFS dennis whatever meds nurse gave you tonight, keep taking them.

That almost sounds like intelligence there.

We need to spend the resources on stuff that will be of benefit
whichever way it goes.
Nuclear plants will work either way. Wind and solar assume the climate
won't change and may be useless if it does.

No, that's not actually fair to wind and solar. Wind and solar will
change almost nothing CO2 wise at a huge expense we simply cannot
afford. They don't depend on the climate not changing to not be any more
useless than they already are.


More peole will die from reliance on renewables than will die from
climate change..there's a lot of that sort of thing going on - people
will be worse off with a centralised top down fiscally centralised rule
by diktat EU than they would be if the thing was left to fall to pieces.
Etc.


Its better to take to the lifeboats when the Titanic sinks, than all
work together to keep it afloat, especially as no one on board has the
faintest clue how to do that thing.

Jethro wrote:
On Fri, 02 Dec 2011 20:51:07 +0000, dennis@home wrote:

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

BUT to say that immediately gets one painted as a 'denier'..that is NOT
good...the very use of the word implies the person saying it is in some
sense a 'Believer' and that is even worse. This is not science, this is
rhetoric.
Its worse than that, believers can't think it through.

If they are wrong we are wasting resources on green projects that bring
no benefits.

If they are right they need to get the entire world to cooperate to fix
it. They wont be able to do this. So it will happen and we are wasting
resources on green projects that will bring no benefits.

We need to spend the resources on stuff that will be of benefit
whichever way it goes.
Nuclear plants will work either way. Wind and solar assume the climate
won't change and may be useless if it does.

Pretty much why I am cynical about the whole affair - world reaction
isn't following basic logic.

It is, but its not the logic that you are led to believe it is.


A sure sign something smells in the
garden ...

That's true.

Gib Bogle wrote:
On 3/12/2011 2:58 a.m., The Natural Philosopher wrote:
...
Despite Martins personal insinuations, I am very much balanced on the
fence. Although playing devils advocate is a good technique to expose
warmist trolls.


In short the only thing I am sure of is that there is very little
certainty in the predictions of ANYONE.

Failure to admit this, makes me suspicious at a human level, of those
who want to close all controversy and announce that the science is
settled.


That is deeply disturbing,: Irrespective of whether AGW is wrong,
slightly right or a complete and accurate picture, the way its being
handled is an utter disgrace and has put science back years in terms of
public opinion.

I have always preserved what I regard as a healthy level of scepticism
about global warming, especially on the issue of our ability to do
anything constructive about it. The stories in the press are often
extremely superficial and scare-mongering - about what I've come to
expect where scientific matters are concerned. But when I see the
amount of misinformation and pro-business propaganda being pumped out by
right-wingers in the US, much of it through Murdoch's channels, I
develop sympathy for the climate scientists who are being attacked for
reasons that have much more to do with politics than with science.

How is it that denial of human-influenced climate-change, of the need to
regulate industry to limit pollution (unrelated to greenhouse effect),
and of the reality of evolution have all become articles of faith for
the right wing?

I don't think that is, in fact true. You will find no denial from me
about those things, although I am not sure whether I am somewhere to the
left of Karl Marx or the right of Ghengis Khan. I find those laboles
'unhelpful'



My take is that in the first two cases there is an
obvious financial benefit to some very powerful corporations (important
sources of campaign funds), while the third is a way of mobilising the
know-nothing segment of society. In other words, intellectual
dishonesty rules.


Welcome to marketing especially the marketing of political ideas.

You blame the climate scientists for the way the issue is being handled.
I see the completely cynical politicisation of the issue by so-called
conservatives as more responsible.

huh? I don't like EITHER of them. This ought to be a Phd's at dawn pure
academic spat where ideas compete in a narrow arena well sheltered from
the realities of the sordid commercial world, but its been used to form
policies and direct enormous sums of money towards various recipients:
They wont ALLOW it to be that.

In 1935 we had German Rearmament and Our Empire Under Threat.

IN 1955 We had The Red Menace, The Cold War and The Iron Curtain, and
Global Communism.

By 1965, we were fighting a ghastly muddled war of attrition based on
the premise that if we didnt knock the N vietnamese and the chinese back
to Beijing, Chairman Mao would be sending us all on a long march of
starvation.

By 1975, we got bored with that, and it was time to out spend the
Russkies on Star Wars technology.

By 1985, Russia was on the brink of collapse, and we ran out of enemies
apart from Arthur Scargill, and martin McGuiness and singluarly, we
didn't spend a whole amount of money on A Global Threat.

By 1995, this was duly noted and like the answer to a maidens prayer we
had The Waron UnFair Stuff, as a fresh excuse to spend a lot of
taxpayers money on useless causes..but taht want veru comnvomncing, and
most people just ignored iot

By 2005 we had a War on Terror, and when that turned into a damp squib
in Iraq, we needed another global threat to justify more tax dollars
being spent on things no one in their right minds would ever vote form
and there was a ready made Cause in Global Warming, the ultimate threat,
not to democracy, or the West, or the the Freedom to Get Drunk And Have
Fun, but to the Whole ****ing Planet!

A marketing man's wet dream. The scare to end all scares. You could sell
ANY utter ****e if you gave it a coat of greenwash. The ultimate
pinnacle of marketing, to extract the last ounce of wealth from the
citizens by scaring them so that if indeed the worsest financial
crisis didn't scare them into parting with trillions, in case their
credit cards stopped working, tens of trillions of their money could be
poured into wind follies and Shiny New Things that Made It all Better*

It has long ceased to be important whether AGW is real, or not. What
matters is that people BELIEVE its real, because Siemens is cleaning up
on it.

It wont make a blind bit of difference anyway, because China and India
are both nuclear powers as well as becoming the biggest planetary
polluters, and we no longer CAN nuke the back to the stone age with
impunity, and if they do nothing we are ****ed anyway if you believe AGW.


A rational person would build nuclear power stations get ready for
climate change and forget green politics. IF they believed in AGW.

If on the other had they didn't really believe in it beyond it being a
marvellous way for poor people to have even more money ripped off them
by centralised and globalised institutions, then they might very well
decide on a renewable energy policy. And a huge 'war on Climate change'
with an accompanying deeply emotional narrative of the sort not seen
since Hitler's crusade against Jewdom.

And look at what we got folks.



* one defers to the Daily Mash for that particular concept..

Gib Bogle wrote:
On 3/12/2011 3:54 a.m., Brian Gaff wrote:
Well, the think is about climate change, formerly known as global
warming,
is that we don't exactly know what will happen. The way its looking from
trends is that the weather and climate will be more radical, no they will
not all join some NGO and swear to get rid of corruption, I mean that
as the
warmer climes heat, the temperature differentials will drive the
weather to
extremes and may well result in deserts in one place, and frozen
wastes in
others.
It may not after all flood the world by melting all the ice, but
may limit
the areas of temperate zones where we can live.
Brian


One thing that has always annoyed me about the way people talk about
climate change is that the focus is completely on the negative aspects.
You express concern about change limiting the areas of temperate zone,
but it's quite obvious that the temperate zone expands in some places
(e.g. on its northern fringe), and it's not at all obvious that the net
effect is a reduction.

When I hear someone expressing concern about the idea of a warmer globe,
I sometimes ask if they would prefer it if the the globe were cooler.
Why should the temperature we have become used to over a few centuries
be regarded as the ideal temperature? (I am not oblivious to the costs
of adjustment to a changing temperature, but that's a separate issue.)

That I can answer very simply.

Change costs money.


The new Monte Carlo may well be Novosibirsk, but we will have to build
it. And we lose the investment in the old one if the sea floods it and
most of France becomes the northern fringe of the Sahara.


Change is expensive, pure and simple.

On 3/12/2011 4:54 p.m., The Natural Philosopher wrote:

When I hear someone expressing concern about the idea of a warmer
globe, I sometimes ask if they would prefer it if the the globe were
cooler. Why should the temperature we have become used to over a few
centuries be regarded as the ideal temperature? (I am not oblivious to
the costs of adjustment to a changing temperature, but that's a
separate issue.)

That I can answer very simply.

Change costs money.


The new Monte Carlo may well be Novosibirsk, but we will have to build
it. And we lose the investment in the old one if the sea floods it and
most of France becomes the northern fringe of the Sahara.


Change is expensive, pure and simple.


Did you not read my last sentence? The cost of change (i.e. how you get
there) is a separate issue from the question of whether a warmer planet
would be better or worse. Almost everyone assumes that it would be
worse, but it might be better for plant growth and food production.

On 03/12/2011 00:41, Gib Bogle wrote:

One thing that has always annoyed me about the way people talk about
climate change is that the focus is completely on the negative aspects.
You express concern about change limiting the areas of temperate zone,
but it's quite obvious that the temperate zone expands in some places
(e.g. on its northern fringe), and it's not at all obvious that the net
effect is a reduction.

The scientisst tell us that we can cope with a rise of 2C or thereabouts
but it seems to me that anything much above that will cause an abrupt
change to another band of relatively stable temperatures with average
temperature a good deal higher leading to the end of permanent ice just
about everywhere.

So the first thing to worry about is the reduction in land area caused
by the major rise in sea level.

The second is what land would become habitable in a much warmer world.
In the south the temperate zone could be largely pushed into the sea
with Antarctica (almost wholly within the Antarctic circle) still too
cold to colonise. In the north some of the northern plains of Europe and
Asia would be lost to flooding and Greenland is the only large land mass
within the Arctic circle that might be suitable for the large scale
settlement that would be necessary as the desert belt expands northwards.

Thirdly there is at least a possibility that the Tropics become just too
hot to sustain settlement on a large scale basis without necessarily the
tropical rain forest spreading into the desert belts either side of the
tropics.

And finally I am by no means sure that that is the worst case scenario.

When I hear someone expressing concern about the idea of a warmer globe,
I sometimes ask if they would prefer it if the the globe were cooler.
Why should the temperature we have become used to over a few centuries
be regarded as the ideal temperature? (I am not oblivious to the costs
of adjustment to a changing temperature, but that's a separate issue.)

Homo sapiens evolved in a world that was sometimes considerably colder
than the present and the Eskimos continue to subsist in cold climes so
some would survive just as some would survive if the world got
considerably hotter. I think we must conclude that the human race can
adapt more easily to cold than it can to heat.

Long term climate theory suggests we are overdue for another Ice Age so
to that extent at least AGW is a distraction provided we do not
aggravate the climate enough to push it over the tipping point into the
next temperature band. On the plus side if CO2 is the greenhouse gas
that most sensible people think it is we have a sure-fire way of
combating global cooling. Just pump CO2 into the atmosphere (and hope
that the temperature stabilises before the CO2 concentration reaches a
lethal level or the glaciers the Mediterranean).


--
Roger Chapman

Gib Bogle wrote:
On 3/12/2011 4:54 p.m., The Natural Philosopher wrote:

When I hear someone expressing concern about the idea of a warmer
globe, I sometimes ask if they would prefer it if the the globe were
cooler. Why should the temperature we have become used to over a few
centuries be regarded as the ideal temperature? (I am not oblivious to
the costs of adjustment to a changing temperature, but that's a
separate issue.)

That I can answer very simply.

Change costs money.


The new Monte Carlo may well be Novosibirsk, but we will have to build
it. And we lose the investment in the old one if the sea floods it and
most of France becomes the northern fringe of the Sahara.


Change is expensive, pure and simple.


Did you not read my last sentence? The cost of change (i.e. how you get
there) is a separate issue from the question of whether a warmer planet
would be better or worse. Almost everyone assumes that it would be
worse, but it might be better for plant growth and food production.

Gib: See my tag. Says 'philosopher' right.

Tell me how to decide in *absolute* terms what is better than something
worse.

Is existence better than no existence? for example.

Should we weep for children who will never be born?


I don't do absolute moral judgements: I don't know how. In the end I
don't know what better and worse without a qualifying context really mean.

Roger Chapman wrote:
On 03/12/2011 00:41, Gib Bogle wrote:

One thing that has always annoyed me about the way people talk about
climate change is that the focus is completely on the negative aspects.
You express concern about change limiting the areas of temperate zone,
but it's quite obvious that the temperate zone expands in some places
(e.g. on its northern fringe), and it's not at all obvious that the net
effect is a reduction.

The scientisst tell us that we can cope with a rise of 2C or thereabouts
but it seems to me that anything much above that will cause an abrupt
change to another band of relatively stable temperatures with average
temperature a good deal higher leading to the end of permanent ice just
about everywhere.

So the first thing to worry about is the reduction in land area caused
by the major rise in sea level.

The second is what land would become habitable in a much warmer world.
In the south the temperate zone could be largely pushed into the sea
with Antarctica (almost wholly within the Antarctic circle) still too
cold to colonise. In the north some of the northern plains of Europe and
Asia would be lost to flooding and Greenland is the only large land mass
within the Arctic circle that might be suitable for the large scale
settlement that would be necessary as the desert belt expands northwards.

Thirdly there is at least a possibility that the Tropics become just too
hot to sustain settlement on a large scale basis without necessarily the
tropical rain forest spreading into the desert belts either side of the
tropics.

And finally I am by no means sure that that is the worst case scenario.

When I hear someone expressing concern about the idea of a warmer globe,
I sometimes ask if they would prefer it if the the globe were cooler.
Why should the temperature we have become used to over a few centuries
be regarded as the ideal temperature? (I am not oblivious to the costs
of adjustment to a changing temperature, but that's a separate issue.)

Homo sapiens evolved in a world that was sometimes considerably colder
than the present and the Eskimos continue to subsist in cold climes so
some would survive just as some would survive if the world got
considerably hotter. I think we must conclude that the human race can
adapt more easily to cold than it can to heat.

Long term climate theory

Which theory is that?

Why isn't it incorporated in the One True Model of the IPCC?

suggests we are overdue for another Ice Age so
to that extent at least AGW is a distraction provided we do not
aggravate the climate enough to push it over the tipping point into the
next temperature band. On the plus side if CO2 is the greenhouse gas
that most sensible people think it is we have a sure-fire way of
combating global cooling. Just pump CO2 into the atmosphere (and hope
that the temperature stabilises before the CO2 concentration reaches a
lethal level or the glaciers the Mediterranean).

On 03/12/2011 03:18, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Roger Chapman wrote:

I trained as an engineer, not a scientist, so I am much more open to
practical propositions than to either abstract theory or belief
systems unconnected with reality.

Theory is not abstract. A theory is based on a hypothesis that
explains current observation and that can make *testable* predictions.
Relativity is a good example of this.

But AGW is not testable.

We don't have a spare planet to run as a control. That in a philsophy se
sense makes it less scientific and more metaphysical.

On that basis neither theory of relativity is really a theory either.

So whilst there's no denying that it got warmer between 1960 and 2000,
and the CO2 in the atmosphere increased dur8ing that timem, thats really
the limit of the testable FACTS and we cant say that it was due to any
given thing with certainty.

At best we can say that having elminated a lot of things it almost
certainly wasn't (largely) due to, there is a large signal and the only
explanation so far put forward is CO2.

That CO2 is a greenhouse gas is certainly testable.

IF it is down to that and ONLY down to that - and those are in real
terms pretty sizeable IFS. THEN even so, the numbers dont add up without
a multiplier. Which is held to relate to some noumenous mechanism that
has never been pinned down.

Given your denial above why should your other conjectures be taken
seriously?

That's where I get bothered. We have tow big IFS followed by an AND ALSO
before the thing matches the reality of the past 50 years. Ok, we can
run with that, BUT if we then extend the multiplier back in time, we get
nonsense figures for - say - the last ice age.

That is while IPCC are spectacularly successful at fitting a curve to
the last 50 years, they are average to completely crap in the greater
historical picture, depending on what data sets you take.

So you say but even if that were true everything prior to the keeping of
accurate records is based on secondary derived data where the margins of
error are much wider.

And really that's all AGW is - a curve fitting exercise on the best
guesses as to what drives climate. Or that's what it WAS till it become
political, and there common sense caution and good science flew out of
the window, and hundreds of BILLIONS of our money have been spent on the
assumption that it was in fact broadly correct.

Well that is the committed deniers position.

Something for you to get your teeth into TNP but don't get all excited
by the title of the link:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-...man-caused.htm


Can you imagine what it would do to the green economy, and the careers
of politicians and people who have supported it to the hilt and beyond,
if it became fashionable to believe that something else was in fact
happening?

Can you even imagine what you have done to the remains of your
reputation by espousing the deniers cause so strongly?

Do you REALLY believe they are going to say 'gosh, sorry, all those
solar panels and windmills, and all these climate change awareness focus
groups are a complete waste of time and money, so basically we will all
resign and go and do something more socially useful' ?

Politicians almost without exception are in permanent denial about
anything that doesn't fit their current message. The only problem they
have with a U-turn is accepting that it is a U-turn rather than a
continuation of their policy by other means. (With apologies to
Clausewitz for taking him out of context).

What gives you the idea that science has anything to do with belief
systems unconnected with reality?


What gives you the idea that AGW is a scientific theory?

In Popper's terms its borderline pseudo science because it is almost
irrefutable as its predictions are so broad, and there is no possibility
of running a control.

I wonder what Popper would have had to say about your very curious brand
of logic.

Its probably nearer creationism in that respect, than physics.

Keep on wallowing in the gutter. You have plenty of company there with
other closed mind deniers.

As such you take it on trust, or you don't. That's faith and belief, not
fact based irrefutability.

And in reference to your own question "What gives you the idea that
science has anything to do with belief systems unconnected with
reality?" the answer is 'a pretty intensive study of metaphysics and the
philosophy of science will enable the understanding that all ontologies
are based at some level or other on untestable assumptions: In fact that
may be said to be their defining feature, and there are sound logical
reasons to to with recursion and reflexivity why this is necessary, and
this can be seen in the particular case of mathematics and formal
ontologies through Godel's incompleteness theorem, and in the case of
algorithmic analysis Turings completion problem, and I strongly suspect
on qauntum physics in the observation problem.

In each case the problem arises when an ontological system is used to
analyse itself for correctness or for some other quality. It gives rise
to infinite feedback..science is such a system It cannot in the end know
whether the ontology of which it is a study - and a careful meticulous
study - is in fact anything like a 1:1 mapping with reality - the
'whatever is the case' of Wittgenstein.

However that has no bearing on the actual AGW theory: we must take the
premises of the physical world as out starting point, in order to do
science at all.

The why mention it at all other than to attempt to baffle the opposition.

The question of just how scientific a theory AGW is, is in the end
extremely open to question.

You must apply Popper's test, and ask yourself 'what conditions would
amount to its refutation, and how may we proceed to demonstrate that
whatever we do, it is never refuted?

It is easy enough to set laboratory experiments to test various aspects
on the theory.

Well its stopped getting warmer since 2000, whilst C02 has increased,
but that, apparently, is not enough.

No it hasn't stopped getting warmer since 2000. Even ignoring the effect
of ENSO you would need to take 2005 as your high point but climate year
on year is so variable that it will be a decade or more before we can
look back with any certainty to see where 2001 - 2010 fits on the
temperature graph.

Last winter was the coldest for 49 years. That, apparently, is not enough.

Now you are just being incredibly stupid. The autumn just gone has been
either the warmest or second warmest on record for one or other of the
countries that make up the UK but that, like your coldest winter, was a
minor local event which contributed comparatively little to the global
average temperature. 2010 itself was one of the warmest years since
records began.

Let's say we crash build loads of nuclear power stations and it doesn't
get any warmer? would that 'prove' AGW?

You would need to suggest what effect that would have on the increasing
concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere before anyone could make a
prediction. Incidentally there is at least a suggestion that if the CO2
levels had not been climbing the global temperatures would actually be
falling year on year.

Let's say we don't. renewable energy fails utterly as it must to make a
dent in CO2 and it goes up another 50% and in the next ten years, it
doesn't get any warmer..would that 'disprove' AGW?

Well for a start it has only gone up by a little over 20% in the last 40
years so 50% seems outside the realms of possibility given normal
progression. Since that seems as unlikely as the rest of your argument
it doesn't seem worthy of an answer. Should anything unexpected happen
over the next 10 years then of course the events would lead to a
modification to the theory but that is a very different animal to
completely disproving it. Einstein didn't totally disprove Newtonian
concepts with his theories of relativity.

I don't think it would, to its promoters.

It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that your 50% increase in
CO2/no increase in global average temperature could occur but it would
take a very noticeable event such as the overdue eruption of the
Yellowstone's super volcano to produce such an effect in the short term.
In the long term we are overdue for another Ice Age if AGW doesn't
trigger a meltdown first.

That is the point when I would say it passes completely from science to
metaphysics and becomes what is known as 'pseudo science'. It is no
longer an analytic of an ontology, it is the basis of a new ontology.

First put up your strawman. Then knock it down again. How clever is that?

A pure act of faith.

You could say that about your entire rant.

--
Roger Chapman

On 02/12/2011 17:41, Roger Chapman wrote:
On 02/12/2011 16:48, Nightjar wrote:
On 02/12/2011 12:25, Roger Chapman wrote:
On 02/12/2011 11:56, Nightjar wrote:
On 02/12/2011 11:33, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12...carbon_levels/





I mean it must have caused it. Nothing else changes climate like CO2,
does it? Stands to reason dunnit?

Interesting linked stories there too:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03...lankton_boost/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06...pig_melt_clue/

The Register does seen to have an agenda.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11...lobal_warming/



Apparently that being to publish facts that you find unpalatable.

If you don't see any bias in the slant The Register gives to its stories
disparaging AGW then there is no hope for you.

I see a lot more bias in the IPCC report, such as asking contributors
whether they think that human activity has had an influence on climate
change, without any mechanism for ranking how serious they think that
influence has been, failing to give actual figures for the responses
but, instead, grouping them into categories labelled with leading terms,
such as 'likely' (which covers anything from 66% to 95% - a huge gap
with a great potential for being used in a misleading manner) and a
large number of breaches of the protocols that exist to ensure that
reports are unbiased. That is far more serious than any bias in an
online article, as the IPCC report is what governments use to justify
their policies and it should be both unbiased and be seen to be unbiased.

Colin Bignell

On 03/12/2011 11:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Long term climate theory

Which theory is that?

Milankovitch et al.

Why isn't it incorporated in the One True Model of the IPCC?

how do you know it isn't?

And do the IPCC really have their own model?

--
Roger Chapman

On 03/12/2011 11:22, Nightjar wrote:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12...carbon_levels/

I mean it must have caused it. Nothing else changes climate like CO2,
does it? Stands to reason dunnit?

Interesting linked stories there too:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03...lankton_boost/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06...pig_melt_clue/

The Register does seen to have an agenda.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11...lobal_warming/

Apparently that being to publish facts that you find unpalatable.

If you don't see any bias in the slant The Register gives to its stories
disparaging AGW then there is no hope for you.

I see a lot more bias in the IPCC report, such as asking contributors
whether they think that human activity has had an influence on climate
change, without any mechanism for ranking how serious they think that
influence has been, failing to give actual figures for the responses
but, instead, grouping them into categories labelled with leading terms,
such as 'likely' (which covers anything from 66% to 95% - a huge gap
with a great potential for being used in a misleading manner) and a
large number of breaches of the protocols that exist to ensure that
reports are unbiased. That is far more serious than any bias in an
online article, as the IPCC report is what governments use to justify
their policies and it should be both unbiased and be seen to be unbiased.

Are you really being serious?

How else do you express the results of an opinion poll but by grouping
answers into bands. Try and find faults in the theory if you will but
citing the results of an opinion poll as evidence of malpractice really
does take the biscuit.


--
Roger Chapman

On 03/12/2011 11:57, Tim Streater wrote:

How else do you express the results of an opinion poll but by grouping
answers into bands. Try and find faults in the theory if you will but
citing the results of an opinion poll as evidence of malpractice
really does take the biscuit.

Why does something like an IPCC Report contain a ****ing opinion poll in
the first place? Or are they looking forward to "Strictly Climate
Change" on BBC1 next year?

Why indeed?

I am probably as guilty as most people in not have actually read more
than a few snippets from the mass of bumf that is the IPPC 2007 report.
A quick look shows that it is split into 4 parts, the most relevant one
from our point of view is "Working Group I Report "The Physical Science
Basis"". I can't see any reference to an opinion poll in there (could
have missed it of course) and lack the diligence to trawl through the
other three parts - "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability", "Mitigation
of Climate Change" and "The AR4 Synthesis Report".


--
Roger Chapman

Roger Chapman wrote:
On 03/12/2011 03:18, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Roger Chapman wrote:

I trained as an engineer, not a scientist, so I am much more open to
practical propositions than to either abstract theory or belief
systems unconnected with reality.

Theory is not abstract. A theory is based on a hypothesis that
explains current observation and that can make *testable* predictions.
Relativity is a good example of this.

But AGW is not testable.

We don't have a spare planet to run as a control. That in a philsophy se
sense makes it less scientific and more metaphysical.

On that basis neither theory of relativity is really a theory either.


Oh, but that is testable in a laboratory.

You dont need a whole planet.

So whilst there's no denying that it got warmer between 1960 and 2000,
and the CO2 in the atmosphere increased dur8ing that timem, thats really
the limit of the testable FACTS and we cant say that it was due to any
given thing with certainty.

At best we can say that having elminated a lot of things it almost
certainly wasn't (largely) due to, there is a large signal and the only
explanation so far put forward is CO2.

That CO2 is a greenhouse gas is certainly testable.

That is more sleight of hand.
AGW is not solely dependent on CO2 being a greenhouse gas.
In fact AGW doesn't fit the facts if you JUST assume CO2 is a greenhouse
gas.



IF it is down to that and ONLY down to that - and those are in real
terms pretty sizeable IFS. THEN even so, the numbers dont add up without
a multiplier. Which is held to relate to some noumenous mechanism that
has never been pinned down.

Given your denial above why should your other conjectures be taken
seriously?

Oh dear. You don't know the difference between a conjecture (inductive
logic) and deductive logic.

Ask someone who KNOWS about AGW what is core assumptions a You will
find its more than 'CO2 is a greenhouse gas'.

That is not a conjecture, that's an agreed fact.





That's where I get bothered. We have tow big IFS followed by an AND ALSO
before the thing matches the reality of the past 50 years. Ok, we can
run with that, BUT if we then extend the multiplier back in time, we get
nonsense figures for - say - the last ice age.

That is while IPCC are spectacularly successful at fitting a curve to
the last 50 years, they are average to completely crap in the greater
historical picture, depending on what data sets you take.

So you say but even if that were true everything prior to the keeping of
accurate records is based on secondary derived data where the margins of
error are much wider.

I think you can reasoanbly be certain that if ice came down as far as
Paris ore whatever, it was in fact a lot colder overall.

Of course tree rings are a lot more dodgy. Sunlight and water make trees
grow, not just temperature. AFAICR the IPCC prefers tree rings.

CO2 concentrations are, al other things being equal, reasonably easy to
work out from disallowed CO2 concentrations in things that are still there.

However, you make a curiouspoint. You say you cant refute AGW because no
one knows what the data was 10,000 years ago. Doesn't that make it a
very dodgy theory?





And really that's all AGW is - a curve fitting exercise on the best
guesses as to what drives climate. Or that's what it WAS till it become
political, and there common sense caution and good science flew out of
the window, and hundreds of BILLIONS of our money have been spent on the
assumption that it was in fact broadly correct.

Well that is the committed deniers position.

I am sorry it is a FACT that industries riding on the coat tails of
climate change are worth around a trillion dollars in taxcp[ayers money.


Something for you to get your teeth into TNP but don't get all excited
by the title of the link:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-...man-caused.htm


Can you imagine what it would do to the green economy, and the careers
of politicians and people who have supported it to the hilt and beyond,
if it became fashionable to believe that something else was in fact
happening?

Can you even imagine what you have done to the remains of your
reputation by espousing the deniers cause so strongly?

I am not denying it does something: Your argument is so very much teh ad
hominem - you insist I am a denier. I am not allowed in your book in
your closed mind, to raise any points at all, if I do, I am it seems a
denier.

You remind me of the man who said to the German at the dinner party 'You
murdered 6 million Jews"
"No we did not" replied the german.
"You are a holocaust denier"
"No, I was merely pointing out that in fact we murdered six and a half
million jews, and a lot of romanies, russians p[oles ..."


Do you REALLY believe they are going to say 'gosh, sorry, all those
solar panels and windmills, and all these climate change awareness focus
groups are a complete waste of time and money, so basically we will all
resign and go and do something more socially useful' ?

Politicians almost without exception are in permanent denial about
anything that doesn't fit their current message.

So, it seems, are third rate scientists.

The only problem they
have with a U-turn is accepting that it is a U-turn rather than a
continuation of their policy by other means. (With apologies to
Clausewitz for taking him out of context).

What gives you the idea that science has anything to do with belief
systems unconnected with reality?


What gives you the idea that AGW is a scientific theory?

In Popper's terms its borderline pseudo science because it is almost
irrefutable as its predictions are so broad, and there is no possibility
of running a control.

I wonder what Popper would have had to say about your very curious brand
of logic.


Ask him. IIRC he is still alive, and still concerned.


Its probably nearer creationism in that respect, than physics.

Keep on wallowing in the gutter. You have plenty of company there with
other closed mind deniers.


I am afraid there is only one closed mind here, and its not mine.

I didnt expect to find a full blown warmist apologist here, but thanks
for showing how the IPCC and its little friends play the game.


As such you take it on trust, or you don't. That's faith and belief, not
fact based irrefutability.

And in reference to your own question "What gives you the idea that
science has anything to do with belief systems unconnected with
reality?" the answer is 'a pretty intensive study of metaphysics and the
philosophy of science will enable the understanding that all ontologies
are based at some level or other on untestable assumptions: In fact that
may be said to be their defining feature, and there are sound logical
reasons to to with recursion and reflexivity why this is necessary, and
this can be seen in the particular case of mathematics and formal
ontologies through Godel's incompleteness theorem, and in the case of
algorithmic analysis Turings completion problem, and I strongly suspect
on qauntum physics in the observation problem.

In each case the problem arises when an ontological system is used to
analyse itself for correctness or for some other quality. It gives rise
to infinite feedback..science is such a system It cannot in the end know
whether the ontology of which it is a study - and a careful meticulous
study - is in fact anything like a 1:1 mapping with reality - the
'whatever is the case' of Wittgenstein.

However that has no bearing on the actual AGW theory: we must take the
premises of the physical world as out starting point, in order to do
science at all.

The why mention it at all other than to attempt to baffle the opposition.


To make the basic point that you talk the talk, but you really dont
understand much about science.


I guess its all parrot fashion received wisdom in your case.

You cant think critically, you dint know the difference between
induction and deduction, you are not even aware of the ontology and
metaphysics on which science is based.


You just dribble on about this and that that you read somewhere, without
ever really understanding what it says, or means, and call me a denier
when you are in danger of looking like an idiot, and that makes you look
even more foolish.


The question of just how scientific a theory AGW is, is in the end
extremely open to question.

You must apply Popper's test, and ask yourself 'what conditions would
amount to its refutation, and how may we proceed to demonstrate that
whatever we do, it is never refuted?

It is easy enough to set laboratory experiments to test various aspects
on the theory.


Yes. But that is not relevant is it?

yu can test the nuts and bolts on your car, but that wont help if the
tyre burst..


Well its stopped getting warmer since 2000, whilst C02 has increased,
but that, apparently, is not enough.

No it hasn't stopped getting warmer since 2000. Even ignoring the effect
of ENSO you would need to take 2005 as your high point but climate year
on year is so variable that it will be a decade or more before we can
look back with any certainty to see where 2001 - 2010 fits on the
temperature graph.


Sorry. I dont know how ou work that out,. Anyoine can look at te graphs

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/rel...al-temperature

of temperatures since 2000 and see that the upward trend has, at least
for that decade totally ceased.


Last winter was the coldest for 49 years. That, apparently, is not
enough.

Now you are just being incredibly stupid. The autumn just gone has been
either the warmest or second warmest on record for one or other of the
countries that make up the UK but that, like your coldest winter, was a
minor local event which contributed comparatively little to the global
average temperature. 2010 itself was one of the warmest years since
records began.


Ther you go. is temperature global or local then? 10 years of almost no
real change in global temperatures is just 'weather'. Lets say the next
100 years are colder due to 'weather'.. But of course AGW 'is still
happeniong'

Do we then actually CARE?

All we want is the sea stays where it is, and our towns dont become
uninhabitable,. and te crops still grow.



Let's say we crash build loads of nuclear power stations and it doesn't
get any warmer? would that 'prove' AGW?

You would need to suggest what effect that would have on the increasing
concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere before anyone could make a
prediction. Incidentally there is at least a suggestion that if the CO2
levels had not been climbing the global temperatures would actually be
falling year on year.


Why? Its not anywhere in the IPCC model that I can see,


Let's say we don't. renewable energy fails utterly as it must to make a
dent in CO2 and it goes up another 50% and in the next ten years, it
doesn't get any warmer..would that 'disprove' AGW?

Well for a start it has only gone up by a little over 20% in the last 40
years so 50% seems outside the realms of possibility given normal
progression. Since that seems as unlikely as the rest of your argument
it doesn't seem worthy of an answer. Should anything unexpected happen
over the next 10 years then of course the events would lead to a
modification to the theory but that is a very different animal to
completely disproving it. Einstein didn't totally disprove Newtonian
concepts with his theories of relativity.

I don't think it would, to its promoters.

It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that your 50% increase in
CO2/no increase in global average temperature could occur but it would
take a very noticeable event such as the overdue eruption of the
Yellowstone's super volcano to produce such an effect in the short term.
In the long term we are overdue for another Ice Age

How can we be? Wharts dtives ice agdes? AGW and rthe IPCC dont seem to
have any explanationm for them.

They just as you said earlier say 'we cant really rtell; waht was going
on that long ago'

Presumably during the ice age when CO2 was at say 1300AD levels, the
world was also just as warm?


if AGW doesn't
trigger a meltdown first.


What justification have you for suggesting that it even might?

I am sorry, it looks this way to me

'we are extremely uncertain about AGW'
'That's all right we turn that around to say 'really bad **** COULD
happen: That's basic marketing. play to your strengths and play your
weakest point as if it was a killer blow'

But I expect you haven't been exposed to marketing on the inside..

You believe what lots of people say if it comes in a nicely printed
brochure with pretty pictures on it.

I must dig out the Seroxat brochure my wife worked on...It's broadly
similar to any 'green' brochure. But examined critically, it is
virtually a criminal exercises in misdirection and misrepresentation.
But it fooled thousands of doctors into prescribing a very expensive
drug that no one needed and did many of them an awful lot of harm,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paroxetine


That is the point when I would say it passes completely from science to
metaphysics and becomes what is known as 'pseudo science'. It is no
longer an analytic of an ontology, it is the basis of a new ontology.

First put up your strawman. Then knock it down again. How clever is that?


I must have learnt it from you, then. If it were true, but I see that
its gone straight over your head again.


A pure act of faith.

You could say that about your entire rant.


ou could, you wouldn't be right, but I cant stop you.

Its a shame you haven't really done anything expcept parrot the third
rate trash straight out of et ''big green handbook of Climate Change,
made easy for Politicians and other simple peopel'

I had hoped you actually knew something about it.

Roger Chapman wrote:
On 03/12/2011 11:22, Nightjar wrote:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12...carbon_levels/


I mean it must have caused it. Nothing else changes climate like
CO2,
does it? Stands to reason dunnit?

Interesting linked stories there too:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03...lankton_boost/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06...pig_melt_clue/

The Register does seen to have an agenda.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11...lobal_warming/


Apparently that being to publish facts that you find unpalatable.

If you don't see any bias in the slant The Register gives to its stories
disparaging AGW then there is no hope for you.

I see a lot more bias in the IPCC report, such as asking contributors
whether they think that human activity has had an influence on climate
change, without any mechanism for ranking how serious they think that
influence has been, failing to give actual figures for the responses
but, instead, grouping them into categories labelled with leading terms,
such as 'likely' (which covers anything from 66% to 95% - a huge gap
with a great potential for being used in a misleading manner) and a
large number of breaches of the protocols that exist to ensure that
reports are unbiased. That is far more serious than any bias in an
online article, as the IPCC report is what governments use to justify
their policies and it should be both unbiased and be seen to be unbiased.

Are you really being serious?

How else do you express the results of an opinion poll but by grouping
answers into bands. Try and find faults in the theory if you will but
citing the results of an opinion poll as evidence of malpractice really
does take the biscuit.


Well exactly. That's why opinion polls are nearer the 'damned lies' part
of statistics.

Poll: when did you stop beating your wife?
enter any number from 0-60 years.

And when did the opinion of people on a given proposition, make it more,
or less true? Does what people THINK is happening make it what IS happening?

(post modern relativism is the culprit here of course: It in general and
falsely says the answer to this is in fact 'yes', but that's because of
a basic misunderstanding and lack of critical thinking when moving from
a general proposition to a particular one. The modern equivalent of
Xeno's paradox.)

Multiple choice already sets the agenda for teh limits of possible
answers. Do I think human activity affects climate? Of course I do. Even
a single butterfly in Brazil affects climate.
Do I think human activity is the dominant driver of climate change?

Even there, there is an assumption that climate change is happening - I
personally accept that it has changed a bit in the last 50 years. My
experience says so. But saying it was all down to human activity or even
mostly down to it, merely indicates that that was all I could think of
that might have caused it.

Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Roger Chapman wrote:

On 03/12/2011 11:22, Nightjar wrote:


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12...et_carbon_leve
ls/

I mean it must have caused it. Nothing else changes climate
like CO2,
does it? Stands to reason dunnit?

Interesting linked stories there too:


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03...lankton_boost/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06...pig_melt_clue/

The Register does seen to have an agenda.


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11...blem_in_global
_warming/

Apparently that being to publish facts that you find unpalatable.

If you don't see any bias in the slant The Register gives to its
stories
disparaging AGW then there is no hope for you.

I see a lot more bias in the IPCC report, such as asking contributors
whether they think that human activity has had an influence on climate
change, without any mechanism for ranking how serious they think that
influence has been, failing to give actual figures for the responses
but, instead, grouping them into categories labelled with leading
terms,
such as 'likely' (which covers anything from 66% to 95% - a huge gap
with a great potential for being used in a misleading manner) and a
large number of breaches of the protocols that exist to ensure that
reports are unbiased. That is far more serious than any bias in an
online article, as the IPCC report is what governments use to justify
their policies and it should be both unbiased and be seen to be
unbiased.

Are you really being serious?

How else do you express the results of an opinion poll but by grouping
answers into bands. Try and find faults in the theory if you will but
citing the results of an opinion poll as evidence of malpractice
really does take the biscuit.

Why does something like an IPCC Report contain a ****ing opinion poll in
the first place? Or are they looking forward to "Strictly Climate
Change" on BBC1 next year?

That was this year: I think its called Frozen Planet or something.

Roger Chapman wrote:
On 03/12/2011 11:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Long term climate theory

Which theory is that?

Milankovitch et al.

well read up on that. It doesn't fit the data either..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

It raises more problems than it solves..



Why isn't it incorporated in the One True Model of the IPCC?

how do you know it isn't?

And do the IPCC really have their own model?

Its hard to say what they have ... apart from one of the most massively
funded PR campaigns of all time.

On 03/12/2011 12:58, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Long term climate theory

Which theory is that?

Milankovitch et al.

well read up on that. It doesn't fit the data either..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

Which data? Last million years or last 100?

It raises more problems than it solves..

All that theorising on such questionable data must have given you
heartburn. ;-)

But to quote one little bit:

"Currently the Earth is tilted at 23.44 degrees from its orbital plane,
roughly halfway between its extreme values. The tilt is in the
decreasing phase of its cycle, and will reach its minimum value around
the year 10,000 CE. This trend, by itself, tends to make winters warmer
and summers colder with an overall cooling trend leading to an ice age,
but the 20th century instrumental temperature record shows a sudden rise
in global temperatures and a concurring glacial melt has led some to
attribute recent changes to greenhouse gas emissions."

Now what was it I said elsewhere about there being a hint that without
AGW there would be a slight downward trend. Still looks as though the
next Ice Age is some way off though.

Why isn't it incorporated in the One True Model of the IPCC?

how do you know it isn't?

And do the IPCC really have their own model?

Its hard to say what they have ... apart from one of the most massively
funded PR campaigns of all time.

So you haven't read any of the report then.

--
Roger Chapman

On 03/12/2011 11:41, Roger Chapman wrote:
On 03/12/2011 11:22, Nightjar wrote:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12...carbon_levels/


I mean it must have caused it. Nothing else changes climate like
CO2,
does it? Stands to reason dunnit?

Interesting linked stories there too:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03...lankton_boost/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06...pig_melt_clue/

The Register does seen to have an agenda.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11...lobal_warming/


Apparently that being to publish facts that you find unpalatable.

If you don't see any bias in the slant The Register gives to its stories
disparaging AGW then there is no hope for you.

I see a lot more bias in the IPCC report, such as asking contributors
whether they think that human activity has had an influence on climate
change, without any mechanism for ranking how serious they think that
influence has been, failing to give actual figures for the responses
but, instead, grouping them into categories labelled with leading terms,
such as 'likely' (which covers anything from 66% to 95% - a huge gap
with a great potential for being used in a misleading manner) and a
large number of breaches of the protocols that exist to ensure that
reports are unbiased. That is far more serious than any bias in an
online article, as the IPCC report is what governments use to justify
their policies and it should be both unbiased and be seen to be unbiased.

Are you really being serious?

How else do you express the results of an opinion poll but by grouping
answers into bands.

The simplest way is to give a percentage, just as Mori and other public
opinion polls do. Speaking as someone who has had to write official
reports, you only put data into very wide bands if you don't want people
to know the actual figures. If the figures show what you want, you use
them. Saying you have, for example, 92% support is a lot more impressive
than saying that the majority support you.

Try and find faults in the theory if you will but
citing the results of an opinion poll as evidence of malpractice really
does take the biscuit.

That is merely the easiest failure to illustrate. It is also, perhaps,
the most important as the main conclusions given in the summary for
policy makers are drawn from those opinions, despite the fact that, in
very small print, the report does say that there are no quantitative
studies to back them up.

As I said, the report contains many breaches of the protocols that
statisticians apply to ensure that any report is unbiased. IIRC, over
120 protocols would be applicable to the IPCC report, of which only
about one third are properly observed. The rest are breached in whole or
in part, or the report does not contain enough information to determine
their status. Any report of this importance should comply with all of
the protocols and, if it fails to do so to this extent, there has to be
a very serious question over to whether the data has been manipulated to
suit the desired outcome.

Colin Bignell

On 03/12/2011 12:45, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I trained as an engineer, not a scientist, so I am much more open to
practical propositions than to either abstract theory or belief
systems unconnected with reality.

Theory is not abstract. A theory is based on a hypothesis that
explains current observation and that can make *testable* predictions.
Relativity is a good example of this.

But AGW is not testable.

We don't have a spare planet to run as a control. That in a philsophy se
sense makes it less scientific and more metaphysical.

On that basis neither theory of relativity is really a theory either.


Oh, but that is testable in a laboratory.

You dont need a whole planet.

You can prove that the speed of light is a universal constant in a
laboratory? How?

So whilst there's no denying that it got warmer between 1960 and 2000,
and the CO2 in the atmosphere increased dur8ing that timem, thats really
the limit of the testable FACTS and we cant say that it was due to any
given thing with certainty.

At best we can say that having elminated a lot of things it almost
certainly wasn't (largely) due to, there is a large signal and the only
explanation so far put forward is CO2.

That CO2 is a greenhouse gas is certainly testable.

That is more sleight of hand.
AGW is not solely dependent on CO2 being a greenhouse gas.
In fact AGW doesn't fit the facts if you JUST assume CO2 is a greenhouse
gas.

That's your take on the situation and your take also includes denying
that there is any positive feedback to be taken account of.

IF it is down to that and ONLY down to that - and those are in real
terms pretty sizeable IFS. THEN even so, the numbers dont add up without
a multiplier. Which is held to relate to some noumenous mechanism that
has never been pinned down.

Given your denial above why should your other conjectures be taken
seriously?

Oh dear. You don't know the difference between a conjecture (inductive
logic) and deductive logic.

Ask someone who KNOWS about AGW what is core assumptions a You will
find its more than 'CO2 is a greenhouse gas'.

And there was you somewhere in the recent past complaining that the
models used were '****e'.

You shouldn't be relying on such unreliable people you know. They might
in the end convince you that the way mankind has messed with the planet
since the start of the industrial revolution has indeed had a marked
effect on the climate.

That is not a conjecture, that's an agreed fact.

I am not sure what you claim to be an agreed fact or indeed who it is
agreed by.


That's where I get bothered. We have tow big IFS followed by an AND ALSO
before the thing matches the reality of the past 50 years. Ok, we can
run with that, BUT if we then extend the multiplier back in time, we get
nonsense figures for - say - the last ice age.

That is while IPCC are spectacularly successful at fitting a curve to
the last 50 years, they are average to completely crap in the greater
historical picture, depending on what data sets you take.

So you say but even if that were true everything prior to the keeping
of accurate records is based on secondary derived data where the
margins of error are much wider.

I think you can reasoanbly be certain that if ice came down as far as
Paris ore whatever, it was in fact a lot colder overall.

I certainly would but it is really no more convincing than CO2 being a
major player in AGW.

Of course tree rings are a lot more dodgy. Sunlight and water make trees
grow, not just temperature. AFAICR the IPCC prefers tree rings.

CO2 concentrations are, al other things being equal, reasonably easy to
work out from disallowed CO2 concentrations in things that are still there.

Do you remember the huge row engineered by the deniers last year based
on a leaked e-mail about a trick used to conclude a temperature
sequence. The deniers take of course was that this was prima facie
evidence that the climate scientists were falsifying the data to delude
the public when the reality was that the secondary data that that
particular sequence related to (which was I think tree ring data but
could have been something else) didn't match the actual temperatures
known to have been correct. So which to believe - direct temperature
measurement or derived temperatures? No contest really although they
would have been wiser to admit earlier that there was a particular
problem with the tree ring data.

However, you make a curiouspoint. You say you cant refute AGW because no
one knows what the data was 10,000 years ago. Doesn't that make it a
very dodgy theory?

Not at all. It is just you have to make due allowance for the fact that
you have no direct evidence of either temperature or date in the
geological record so you can't just say that any variations that don't
absolutely fit the theory are proof that the theory is wrong. On the
Milankovich page you referred me to one of the problems is the apparent
reversal of cause and effect. Something that could be explained by a
dating error.

And really that's all AGW is - a curve fitting exercise on the best
guesses as to what drives climate. Or that's what it WAS till it become
political, and there common sense caution and good science flew out of
the window, and hundreds of BILLIONS of our money have been spent on the
assumption that it was in fact broadly correct.

Well that is the committed deniers position.

I am sorry it is a FACT that industries riding on the coat tails of
climate change are worth around a trillion dollars in taxcp[ayers money.

As has already been pointed out to you there is a lot more pressure
coming from those who business is most at risk from the acceptance of AGW.

Something for you to get your teeth into TNP but don't get all excited
by the title of the link:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-...man-caused.htm

Not what you expected so no comment.

Can you imagine what it would do to the green economy, and the careers
of politicians and people who have supported it to the hilt and beyond,
if it became fashionable to believe that something else was in fact
happening?

Can you even imagine what you have done to the remains of your
reputation by espousing the deniers cause so strongly?

I am not denying it does something: Your argument is so very much teh ad
hominem - you insist I am a denier. I am not allowed in your book in
your closed mind, to raise any points at all, if I do, I am it seems a
denier.

If the cap fits wear it. You state as fact many of the key points in the
deniers armoury and deny any validity to the central plank of AGW - that
CO2 is the main driver behind global warming.

You remind me of the man who said to the German at the dinner party 'You
murdered 6 million Jews"
"No we did not" replied the german.
"You are a holocaust denier"
"No, I was merely pointing out that in fact we murdered six and a half
million jews, and a lot of romanies, russians p[oles ..."

The flaw in that particular argument is that you can't get your number
of murdered Jews up to 6.5M without passing 6M on the way.

Do you REALLY believe they are going to say 'gosh, sorry, all those
solar panels and windmills, and all these climate change awareness focus
groups are a complete waste of time and money, so basically we will all
resign and go and do something more socially useful' ?

Politicians almost without exception are in permanent denial about
anything that doesn't fit their current message.

So, it seems, are third rate scientists.

It seems us 'third rate scientists' (not that I am a scientist) are in
good company:

"The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has
not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps
reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so
increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the
Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main
ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in
sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon
dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena
would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming further. We
have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can."

Unlike you with the likes of Lawson and Monckton as associated thinkers.
(I use the term thinkers very loosely in referring to Lawson and Monckton).

The only problem they
have with a U-turn is accepting that it is a U-turn rather than a
continuation of their policy by other means. (With apologies to
Clausewitz for taking him out of context).

What gives you the idea that science has anything to do with belief
systems unconnected with reality?


What gives you the idea that AGW is a scientific theory?

In Popper's terms its borderline pseudo science because it is almost
irrefutable as its predictions are so broad, and there is no possibility
of running a control.

I wonder what Popper would have had to say about your very curious
brand of logic.

Ask him. IIRC he is still alive, and still concerned.

I don't move in the same circles as real philosophers.

Its probably nearer creationism in that respect, than physics.

Keep on wallowing in the gutter. You have plenty of company there with
other closed mind deniers.


I am afraid there is only one closed mind here, and its not mine.

I didnt expect to find a full blown warmist apologist here, but thanks
for showing how the IPCC and its little friends play the game.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall ...

As such you take it on trust, or you don't. That's faith and belief, not
fact based irrefutability.

And in reference to your own question "What gives you the idea that
science has anything to do with belief systems unconnected with
reality?" the answer is 'a pretty intensive study of metaphysics and the
philosophy of science will enable the understanding that all ontologies
are based at some level or other on untestable assumptions: In fact that
may be said to be their defining feature, and there are sound logical
reasons to to with recursion and reflexivity why this is necessary, and
this can be seen in the particular case of mathematics and formal
ontologies through Godel's incompleteness theorem, and in the case of
algorithmic analysis Turings completion problem, and I strongly suspect
on qauntum physics in the observation problem.

In each case the problem arises when an ontological system is used to
analyse itself for correctness or for some other quality. It gives rise
to infinite feedback..science is such a system It cannot in the end know
whether the ontology of which it is a study - and a careful meticulous
study - is in fact anything like a 1:1 mapping with reality - the
'whatever is the case' of Wittgenstein.

However that has no bearing on the actual AGW theory: we must take the
premises of the physical world as out starting point, in order to do
science at all.

The why mention it at all other than to attempt to baffle the opposition.


To make the basic point that you talk the talk, but you really dont
understand much about science.

Seems to me that you are talking about yourself. I am much more
interested in the practical aspects that the dubious rationale that you
use.

I guess its all parrot fashion received wisdom in your case.

You cant think critically, you dint know the difference between
induction and deduction, you are not even aware of the ontology and
metaphysics on which science is based.


You just dribble on about this and that that you read somewhere, without
ever really understanding what it says, or means, and call me a denier
when you are in danger of looking like an idiot, and that makes you look
even more foolish.

You don't accept the basic premise on which the theory is based and put
up all sorts of vague objections to dispute it but what it comes down to
in the end is that you accept none of the scientific work that has been
done as having the slightest relevance to the problem at hand.

The question of just how scientific a theory AGW is, is in the end
extremely open to question.

You must apply Popper's test, and ask yourself 'what conditions would
amount to its refutation, and how may we proceed to demonstrate that
whatever we do, it is never refuted?

It is easy enough to set laboratory experiments to test various
aspects on the theory.


Yes. But that is not relevant is it?

So you say but how do I distinguish that from the ranting of any other
denier?

yu can test the nuts and bolts on your car, but that wont help if the
tyre burst..

But it would stop the wheel coming off which is really what has happened
with your prolonged attack on the integrity of both mainstream climate
science and the scientists who have been researching climate change for
decades.

Well its stopped getting warmer since 2000, whilst C02 has increased,
but that, apparently, is not enough.

No it hasn't stopped getting warmer since 2000. Even ignoring the
effect of ENSO you would need to take 2005 as your high point but
climate year on year is so variable that it will be a decade or more
before we can look back with any certainty to see where 2001 - 2010
fits on the temperature graph.


Sorry. I dont know how ou work that out,. Anyoine can look at te graphs


That's because you don't want to see what I mean. Just transport
yourself back to say the 1950s. There has been a steep drop in average
temperatures towards the end of the preceding decade, the short lived
bounce back soon falters, as does the next and the next. Short term you
would be forgiven for thinking that the temperature had peaked in 1944
and global warming wasn't the threat it was going to become. Looking
back now we seen that the major anomaly was actually in the period 1935
to 1945 rather than in the decades that followed WW2. What will the
first decade look like from the perspective of the fifth or even the
forth in this century.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/rel...al-temperature

of temperatures since 2000 and see that the upward trend has, at least
for that decade totally ceased.

You see what you want to see. The two warmest years on record are 2010
and 2005. In another posting I pointed out that the first half of the
decade is marginally warmer than the second half before taking ENSO into
account but that is not particularly obvious just looking at the figures.

Last winter was the coldest for 49 years. That, apparently, is not
enough.

Now you are just being incredibly stupid. The autumn just gone has
been either the warmest or second warmest on record for one or other
of the countries that make up the UK but that, like your coldest
winter, was a minor local event which contributed comparatively little
to the global average temperature. 2010 itself was one of the warmest
years since records began.


Ther you go. is temperature global or local then? 10 years of almost no
real change in global temperatures is just 'weather'. Lets say the next
100 years are colder due to 'weather'.. But of course AGW 'is still
happeniong'

What are you on? The smoothed average might show up as reasonably
straight in say another ten years time but considerable year on year
variability is still there this decade as it has been for every decade
since 1850. Carry on by all means with your non sequiturs designed to
cover up appalling gaffs but ignoring the distinction between weather
and climate just makes you look like an uneducated prat.

Do we then actually CARE?

Well you certainly don't appear to care.

All we want is the sea stays where it is, and our towns dont become
uninhabitable,. and te crops still grow.

The seas will only stay where they are in the long term if global
temperatures don't rise. In the short term there may be a bit of relief
as warming the Antarctic will lead for a period to increased
precipitation on Antarctica to compensate for the increased melt. As to
whether the crops will continue to grow that will depend on whatever
weather climate change brings in its wake.

Let's say we crash build loads of nuclear power stations and it doesn't
get any warmer? would that 'prove' AGW?

You would need to suggest what effect that would have on the
increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere before anyone could
make a prediction. Incidentally there is at least a suggestion that if
the CO2 levels had not been climbing the global temperatures would
actually be falling year on year.


Why? Its not anywhere in the IPCC model that I can see,

But as you haven't read the IPPC report how would you know.

Let's say we don't. renewable energy fails utterly as it must to make a
dent in CO2 and it goes up another 50% and in the next ten years, it
doesn't get any warmer..would that 'disprove' AGW?

Well for a start it has only gone up by a little over 20% in the last
40 years so 50% seems outside the realms of possibility given normal
progression. Since that seems as unlikely as the rest of your argument
it doesn't seem worthy of an answer. Should anything unexpected happen
over the next 10 years then of course the events would lead to a
modification to the theory but that is a very different animal to
completely disproving it. Einstein didn't totally disprove Newtonian
concepts with his theories of relativity.

I don't think it would, to its promoters.

It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that your 50% increase in
CO2/no increase in global average temperature could occur but it would
take a very noticeable event such as the overdue eruption of the
Yellowstone's super volcano to produce such an effect in the short
term. In the long term we are overdue for another Ice Age

How can we be? Wharts dtives ice agdes? AGW and rthe IPCC dont seem to
have any explanationm for them.

See that page you referred me too.

They just as you said earlier say 'we cant really rtell; waht was going
on that long ago'

We know roughly what went on and roughly when (always assuming there
isn't some lacuna in the science just like that which you continue to
allege is in the climate change theory).

Presumably during the ice age when CO2 was at say 1300AD levels, the
world was also just as warm?

What about hysteresis?

if AGW doesn't
trigger a meltdown first.

What justification have you for suggesting that it even might?

Our climate is only stable between certain limits. Breach those limits
and it will quickly (relatively speaking) find a new level be it down in
an Ice Age or up there in an ice free world. Once there it will take a
major perturbation to make it move again.

I am sorry, it looks this way to me

'we are extremely uncertain about AGW'

You are. The scientific community by and large are as certain about it
as they can be and only uncertain about the degree to which some
elements interact with others.

'That's all right we turn that around to say 'really bad **** COULD
happen: That's basic marketing. play to your strengths and play your
weakest point as if it was a killer blow'

Don't forget that by criticising me you are implicitly rubbishing the
work of the vast majority of climate scientists some of whom will be a
good deal cleverer that you or indeed me when I was in my prime and I
would be the first to admit I can't think as clearly now as I could when
I was young.

But I expect you haven't been exposed to marketing on the inside..

You believe what lots of people say if it comes in a nicely printed
brochure with pretty pictures on it.

If I did I would no doubt be a slave to consumerism like most people
these days.

I must dig out the Seroxat brochure my wife worked on...It's broadly
similar to any 'green' brochure. But examined critically, it is
virtually a criminal exercises in misdirection and misrepresentation.
But it fooled thousands of doctors into prescribing a very expensive
drug that no one needed and did many of them an awful lot of harm,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paroxetine

That's commerce for you.

That is the point when I would say it passes completely from science to
metaphysics and becomes what is known as 'pseudo science'. It is no
longer an analytic of an ontology, it is the basis of a new ontology.

First put up your strawman. Then knock it down again. How clever is that?


I must have learnt it from you, then. If it were true, but I see that
its gone straight over your head again.


A pure act of faith.

You could say that about your entire rant.


ou could, you wouldn't be right, but I cant stop you.

Its a shame you haven't really done anything expcept parrot the third
rate trash straight out of et ''big green handbook of Climate Change,
made easy for Politicians and other simple peopel'

I had hoped you actually knew something about it.

I could say the same about you.

--
Roger Chapman

On 03/12/2011 16:16, Nightjar wrote:

snip

I see a lot more bias in the IPCC report, such as asking contributors
whether they think that human activity has had an influence on climate
change, without any mechanism for ranking how serious they think that
influence has been, failing to give actual figures for the responses
but, instead, grouping them into categories labelled with leading terms,
such as 'likely' (which covers anything from 66% to 95% - a huge gap
with a great potential for being used in a misleading manner) and a
large number of breaches of the protocols that exist to ensure that
reports are unbiased. That is far more serious than any bias in an
online article, as the IPCC report is what governments use to justify
their policies and it should be both unbiased and be seen to be
unbiased.

Are you really being serious?

How else do you express the results of an opinion poll but by grouping
answers into bands.

The simplest way is to give a percentage, just as Mori and other public
opinion polls do. Speaking as someone who has had to write official
reports, you only put data into very wide bands if you don't want people
to know the actual figures. If the figures show what you want, you use
them. Saying you have, for example, 92% support is a lot more impressive
than saying that the majority support you.

But you lose the discrimination between those who would nail their
colours firmly to the mast and those who are merely in a category that
say little more than balance of probabilities. Swings and roundabouts.

Try and find faults in the theory if you will but
citing the results of an opinion poll as evidence of malpractice really
does take the biscuit.

That is merely the easiest failure to illustrate. It is also, perhaps,
the most important as the main conclusions given in the summary for
policy makers are drawn from those opinions, despite the fact that, in
very small print, the report does say that there are no quantitative
studies to back them up.

As I said, the report contains many breaches of the protocols that
statisticians apply to ensure that any report is unbiased. IIRC, over
120 protocols would be applicable to the IPCC report, of which only
about one third are properly observed. The rest are breached in whole or
in part, or the report does not contain enough information to determine
their status. Any report of this importance should comply with all of
the protocols and, if it fails to do so to this extent, there has to be
a very serious question over to whether the data has been manipulated to
suit the desired outcome.

So what do you find particularly objectionable in the Working Group 1
Report?
--
Roger Chapman

Roger Chapman wrote:
On 03/12/2011 12:45, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I trained as an engineer, not a scientist, so I am much more open to
practical propositions than to either abstract theory or belief
systems unconnected with reality.

Theory is not abstract. A theory is based on a hypothesis that
explains current observation and that can make *testable* predictions.
Relativity is a good example of this.

But AGW is not testable.

We don't have a spare planet to run as a control. That in a
philsophy se
sense makes it less scientific and more metaphysical.

On that basis neither theory of relativity is really a theory either.


Oh, but that is testable in a laboratory.

You dont need a whole planet.

You can prove that the speed of light is a universal constant in a
laboratory? How?

Google Michelson Morley

Really if you dont know that....

On 03/12/2011 17:48, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

snip

On that basis neither theory of relativity is really a theory either.


Oh, but that is testable in a laboratory.

You dont need a whole planet.

You can prove that the speed of light is a universal constant in a
laboratory? How?

Google Michelson Morley

Really if you dont know that....

I am well aware of that experiment just as I am well aware it wasn't
conducted in deep space away from any strong gravitational influence.
--
Roger Chapman

"Roger Chapman" wrote in message
...

That CO2 is a greenhouse gas is certainly testable.

So what, that isn't the argument.
water vapour is a green house gas too but I don't see much reference to it
causing GW.

On 03/12/2011 18:31, dennis@home wrote:

That CO2 is a greenhouse gas is certainly testable.

So what, that isn't the argument.
water vapour is a green house gas too but I don't see much reference to
it causing GW.

It plays its part.

--
Roger Chapman

Roger Chapman wrote:
On 03/12/2011 18:31, dennis@home wrote:

That CO2 is a greenhouse gas is certainly testable.

So what, that isn't the argument.
water vapour is a green house gas too but I don't see much reference to
it causing GW.

It plays its part.

So does gorlla fart. The question is how big the parts are,, and what
has been left out.. and what has been exaggerated.

On 03/12/2011 23:31, Terry Fields wrote:

Roger Chapman wrote:

Do you remember the huge row engineered by the deniers last year based
on a leaked e-mail about a trick used to conclude a temperature
sequence. The deniers take of course was that this was prima facie
evidence that the climate scientists were falsifying the data to delude
the public when the reality was that the secondary data that that
particular sequence related to (which was I think tree ring data but
could have been something else) didn't match the actual temperatures
known to have been correct. So which to believe - direct temperature
measurement or derived temperatures? No contest really although they
would have been wiser to admit earlier that there was a particular
problem with the tree ring data.

I can't let that comment stand with making a few observations.

IIRC, the item concerned contained information in the form of a graph,
showing several sources of information relating to temperature
changes. All but one showed a rise. That one caused a flurry of
emails, of which spoke about hiding the decline, and someone's Nature
trick.

The Nature trick was to terminate that graphical line early, so it
could be followed to peak, but the subsequent fall was missed off,
neatly hiding the decline.

That is not science, that is theatre.

In science one gathers data. Not some of the data, but all the data
that can be gathered. And that's what has to be dealt with. That the
tree-ring data didn't fit with the rest, is an occurrence that has to
be accounted for, not merely missed off because it didn't 'fit'. It
was a disgraceful episode.

wikipedia

"Most of the emails concerned technical and mundane aspects of climate
research, such as data analysis and details of scientific
conferences.[30] The Guardian's analysis of the emails suggests that the
hacker had filtered them. Four scientists were targeted and a
concordance plot shows that the words "data", "climate", "paper",
"research", "temperature" and "model" were predominant.[21] The
controversy has thus focused on a small number of emails.[30] Skeptic
websites picked out particular phrases, including one in which Kevin
Trenberth stated, "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of
warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t".[20] This was
actually part of a discussion on the need for better monitoring of
energy flows involved in short-term climate variability,[31] but was
grossly mischaracterised by critics.[32][33]

Many commentators quoted one email referring to "Mike's Nature trick"
which Jones used in a 1999 graph for the World Meteorological
Organization, to deal with the well-discussed tree ring divergence
problem "to hide the decline" that a particular proxy showed for modern
temperatures after 1950, when measured temperatures were rising. These
two phrases from the emails were also taken out of context by climate
change sceptics including US Senator Jim Inhofe and former Governor of
Alaska Sarah Palin as though they referred to a decline in measured
global temperatures, even though they were written when temperatures
were at a record high.[33] John Tierney, writing in the New York Times
in November 2009, said that the claims by sceptics of "hoax" or "fraud"
were incorrect, but the graph on the cover of a report for policy makers
and journalists did not show these non-experts where proxy measurements
changed to measured temperatures.[34] The final analyses from various
subsequent inquiries concluded that in this context 'trick' was normal
scientific or mathematical jargon for a neat way of handling data, in
this case a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds
of data sets together in a legitimate fashion.[35][36] The EPA notes
that in fact, the evidence shows that the research community was fully
aware of these issues and was not hiding or concealing them."

--
Roger Chapman

On 04/12/2011 09:17, Terry Fields wrote:

If what the Wikipedia article you quoted was correct, the scientific
work in the intervening years the data should by now have been
incorporated in the main set. Has it?

No idea what you mean by that.

And likewise no idea whether the "tree ring divergence
problem" has been solved but that doesn't seem to match your question.


--
Roger Chapman

On 04/12/2011 10:13, Terry Fields wrote:

If what the Wikipedia article you quoted was correct, the scientific
work in the intervening years the data should by now have been
incorporated in the main set. Has it?

No idea what you mean by that.

If the Wikipedia article you quoted was correct, the scientific
work undertaken in the intervening years should by now have been
incorporated in the main data set. Has it? Or are the researchers
still only 'aware of the issues'?

But which issues are you referring to? It would appear to be the tree
ring data but that has no real relevance to models of the current
climate as the measured temperatures make derived data redundant. As to
whether the cause for the recent divergence has since been established
and given the scientists a better understanding of data previously
derived from eras in which no primary record is available I have no idea
but if such information is available in the public record you have as
much chance of tracking it down as I have.

And likewise no idea whether the "tree ring divergence
problem" has been solved but that doesn't seem to match your question.

--
Roger Chapman

On 03/12/2011 16:41, Roger Chapman wrote:
On 03/12/2011 16:16, Nightjar wrote:

snip

I see a lot more bias in the IPCC report, such as asking contributors
whether they think that human activity has had an influence on climate
change, without any mechanism for ranking how serious they think that
influence has been, failing to give actual figures for the responses
but, instead, grouping them into categories labelled with leading
terms,
such as 'likely' (which covers anything from 66% to 95% - a huge gap
with a great potential for being used in a misleading manner) and a
large number of breaches of the protocols that exist to ensure that
reports are unbiased. That is far more serious than any bias in an
online article, as the IPCC report is what governments use to justify
their policies and it should be both unbiased and be seen to be
unbiased.

Are you really being serious?

How else do you express the results of an opinion poll but by grouping
answers into bands.

The simplest way is to give a percentage, just as Mori and other public
opinion polls do. Speaking as someone who has had to write official
reports, you only put data into very wide bands if you don't want people
to know the actual figures. If the figures show what you want, you use
them. Saying you have, for example, 92% support is a lot more impressive
than saying that the majority support you.

But you lose the discrimination between those who would nail their
colours firmly to the mast and those who are merely in a category that
say little more than balance of probabilities. Swings and roundabouts.

That is dependent upon the questions asked, not upon how the results are
presented. That is another of my criticisms of the IPCC report.
Contributors appear only to have been given the option of answering yes
or no to the question of whether they thought that human activity had
contributed to climate change - a black and white answer with no shades
of grey. It should either have given them the option of ranking the
importance of the contribution in the original question or have asked
those who answered yes a supplementary question to determine how
important they thought it had been.

Try and find faults in the theory if you will but
citing the results of an opinion poll as evidence of malpractice really
does take the biscuit.

That is merely the easiest failure to illustrate. It is also, perhaps,
the most important as the main conclusions given in the summary for
policy makers are drawn from those opinions, despite the fact that, in
very small print, the report does say that there are no quantitative
studies to back them up.

As I said, the report contains many breaches of the protocols that
statisticians apply to ensure that any report is unbiased. IIRC, over
120 protocols would be applicable to the IPCC report, of which only
about one third are properly observed. The rest are breached in whole or
in part, or the report does not contain enough information to determine
their status. Any report of this importance should comply with all of
the protocols and, if it fails to do so to this extent, there has to be
a very serious question over to whether the data has been manipulated to
suit the desired outcome.

So what do you find particularly objectionable in the Working Group 1
Report?

It is riddled with errors and bad practices. A full discussion would end
up even longer than the original report. However, essentially, having
had to create official reports myself in the past, it has, to me, all
the hallmarks of a report that has been carefully structured to appear
to say what the authors want it to appear to say without necessarily
having the data to support their views.

Colin Bignell

On 04/12/2011 11:22, Nightjar wrote:

So what do you find particularly objectionable in the Working Group 1
Report?

It is riddled with errors and bad practices. A full discussion would end
up even longer than the original report. However, essentially, having
had to create official reports myself in the past, it has, to me, all
the hallmarks of a report that has been carefully structured to appear
to say what the authors want it to appear to say without necessarily
having the data to support their views.

The Working Group I Report (The Physical Science Basis) runs to eleven
chapters and several annexes, etc. That should give more than enough
room to go into some detail even in such a diverse subject.

So how about highlighting a few of those aspects that you find most
objectionable.
--
Roger Chapman

On 04/12/2011 11:51, Terry Fields wrote:

If what the Wikipedia article you quoted was correct, the scientific
work in the intervening years the data should by now have been
incorporated in the main set. Has it?

No idea what you mean by that.

If the Wikipedia article you quoted was correct, the scientific
work undertaken in the intervening years should by now have been
incorporated in the main data set. Has it? Or are the researchers
still only 'aware of the issues'?

But which issues are you referring to?

I never referred to 'issues', but the Wikipedia article you quoted
did. Pop back and have a look at it.

Yes you did. Your reference to issues is still included above and I am
still not sure what you meant by your use, coupled as it is with
incorporating some work into some main data set. The modern divergent
tree ring data has no place in a model of the modern climate which
models climate, not tree rings.

It would appear to be the tree
ring data but that has no real relevance to models of the current
climate as the measured temperatures make derived data redundant.

As the trees are affected by the climate they live in, and the ring
formation reflects that, then if the tree-ring data doesn't fit that
of the models, I suggest that the models are inadequate. And, if they
inadequate in this respect, it begs the question of what other
inadequacies they contain that are not so amenable to such testing.

How on earth do you come to such a conclusion? The models will use the
best data available and quite clearly the best temperature data
available are the direct measurements, not derived data that doesn't
match the recorded temperatures even in the limited area in which the
trees ring data was sourced.

As to
whether the cause for the recent divergence has since been established
and given the scientists a better understanding of data previously
derived from eras in which no primary record is available I have no idea
but if such information is available in the public record you have as
much chance of tracking it down as I have.


Terry Fields


--
Roger Chapman
Attempting to master a new computer
and failing to master a new gps

On 04/12/2011 13:33, Terry Fields wrote:

I am answering Terry's post in two parts, the easy part first, so don't
think I have just ignored part of the message because I haven't.

How on earth do you come to such a conclusion? The models will use the
best data available and quite clearly the best temperature data
available are the direct measurements, not derived data that doesn't
match the recorded temperatures even in the limited area in which the
trees ring data was sourced.

You can not discard data, or sideline it with a reference to 'issues'
(the Wikipedia article you quoted from). You cannot just use 'the best
data'. Data has to be incorporated into the main data set, that's how
science works, and if the model can't cope with that, the model is
inadequate.

So if you had two rulers and one measured 12 inches to the foot and the
other only 11 inches you would average the two and come up with 11.5
inches? Of course not but that is what you appear to be saying. In the
subject under discussion we have a temperature series derived from tree
ring data and we have the actual temperatures as directly measured. That
the tree ring data are anomalous is interesting in itself but it has
absolutely no relevance to the temperatures to be used in a model for
the period since those temperatures have been directly measured. It is
not a matter of an inadequate model. This divergent tree ring data is of
no more relevant to a model of the climate than the colour of your eyes.
Neither play any part in it.

What the divergence has done is cast a certain amount of doubt on the
principles underlining tree ring data and/or the methodology used which
isn't good news for periods where direct temperature measurements are
not available.

--
Roger Chapman

On 04/12/2011 13:33, Terry Fields wrote:

If what the Wikipedia article you quoted was correct, the scientific
work in the intervening years the data should by now have been
incorporated in the main set. Has it?

This is really a bit of cart before the horse as I return to the
beginning of this particular discussion further down and expand on what
the issues were. Call me thick if you must but I have no real idea what
this "main data set" could be and no idea either whether the data you
refer to above are data relating to the first issue or the tree ring
data which which seemingly would have no place in any data set that was
used for modelling the modern climate.

No idea what you mean by that.

If the Wikipedia article you quoted was correct, the scientific
work undertaken in the intervening years should by now have been
incorporated in the main data set. Has it? Or are the researchers
still only 'aware of the issues'?

But which issues are you referring to?

I never referred to 'issues', but the Wikipedia article you quoted
did. Pop back and have a look at it.

Yes you did. Your reference to issues is still included above and I am
still not sure what you meant by your use, coupled as it is with
incorporating some work into some main data set. The modern divergent
tree ring data has no place in a model of the modern climate which
models climate, not tree rings.

With respect, the first mention of 'issues' was in your quote from the
Wikipedia article. As that raised the matter of 'issues', I then
quoted the exact phrase used in that article so that you would know
what I was referring to. I am therefore at a loss to understand why
you try to pin the use of the word onto me. Did you understand what
the Wikipedia article said? Do you always discuss matters in this
fashion?

If you don't like the Wikipedia article, why did you quote from it
extensively, including the term 'aware of these issues'?

It is not a matter of like or dislike. I was just quoting someone else's
viewpoint. So let me start from the beginning again. I stated my
recollection of one of the main points of the so called climategate
scandal. You responded with a very different take which concentrated on
an article in Nature which I hadn't recalled, remembering only the way
in which the wording in the actual e-mail had been taken out of context.
So to avoid muddying the waters further I posted two paragraphs from
Wikipedia on the subject without any comment. Ironically as it has
turned out I only posted the first of those paragraphs because of the
reference at the end of the second paragraph to issues. The first issue
was the current lack of understanding about short term energy flows and
the second was the anomalous tree ring data.

It would appear to be the tree
ring data but that has no real relevance to models of the current
climate as the measured temperatures make derived data redundant.

As the trees are affected by the climate they live in, and the ring
formation reflects that, then if the tree-ring data doesn't fit that
of the models, I suggest that the models are inadequate. And, if they
inadequate in this respect, it begs the question of what other
inadequacies they contain that are not so amenable to such testing.

The climate models model climate not tree rings. End of story.

--
Roger Chapman