Both of these terms were coined by an American satirist, Stephen Colbert, more than ten years ago. With respect to ‘truthiness’, he said We’re not talking about truth. ‘We’re talking about something that seems like truth — the truth we want to exist’. He thought that the ‘word police’ would object that ’truthiness’ was not a word, but in fact the next year Merriam-Webster pronounced ‘truthiness’ as its word of the year. I’ll leave ‘factiness’ for a moment.

What did Colbert mean by truthiness? In an interview with The Onion he expanded on its meaning in this way:

It used to be [that] everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that’s not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It’s certainty. People love the President [George W. Bush] because he’s certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don’t seem to exist. It’s the fact that he’s certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?…

 Truthiness is ‘What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.’ It’s not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There’s not only an emotional quality, but there’s a selfish quality.

The term had a great run ten years ago, but it has reappeared, at least to me, in the context of another neologism, ‘post-truth politics’. Apparently this one was coined by a blogger, David Roberts, in 2010, who defined it as a political culture in which politics (public opinion and media narratives) have become almost entirely disconnected from policy (the substance of legislation). Earlier, Colin Crouch had used ‘post-democracy’ to refer to a model of politics where ‘elections certainly exist and can change governments,’ but ‘public electoral debate is a tightly controlled spectacle, managed by rival teams of professionals expert in the techniques of persuasion, and considering a small range of issues selected by those teams’.’ Post-truth’ seems to come from the early 1990s, while it has obvious links to the Orwellian world of 1984.

Wikipedia, from which most of the above text comes, says that post-truth politics is characterised by the way in which people campaigning go on saying the same things even when what they say is alleged to be not the truth, and indeed verges on untruth. Perception is everything, facts are irrelevant. While both sides seem to have engaged in post-truth politics in the recent American election campaign, and allegations of behaving that way seem to be abundant, whatever side of whatever issue is in context, I am not sure that all this is really as new as it sometimes seems. Repetition of the same slogans was rife in the 1950s, and I can’t recall particular election campaigns in which the issues were fought over in the detail of prospective legislation. The dominant theme was usually a scare of some kind.

If ‘truthiness’ is a gut feeling of truth whatever the facts, then ‘factiness’ is using actual facts to paint a misleading truth. That’s close to Judith Curry’s definition. I can’t find Colbert’s exact words. But the Curry/Colbert nuance is important. How often do we see numbers used and a misleading inference drawn from them. My old favourite was the old ‘Nine out of ten dentists recommend [whatever toothpaste brand it was].’ I think it is rife in today’s common discourse. Numbers are important, so if you stick numbers in then some people at least will nod and accept the statement. As an article in The Atlantic put it, ‘Factiness’ is the taste for the feel and aesthetic of “facts,” often at the expense of missing the truth… factiness is obsessing over and covering ourselves in fact after fact while still missing bigger truths. I’ll suggest that factiness doesn’t actually cleave neatly across the left and the right. It’s an outgrowth of our cognitive biases. We often make decisions emotionally, sometimes based on tribal affiliations; then we marshall the facts that prove us right while discarding the ones that prove us wrong.

As so often, what drew my attention to these terms was a reflective essay in Judith Curry’s Climate etc website. I had forgotten that she had written an essay six years ago about climate models in which she said that climate modellers tended to have ‘comfort’ about their models in the sense that the model developers [know about] the history of model development and the individuals that contributed to its development, the reputations of the various modeling groups, and the location of the model simulations in the spectrum of simulations made by competing models. In this context, comfort is a form of “truthiness” that does not translate into user confidence in the model, other than via an appeal to the authority of the modelers.

What is a ‘fact’, anyhow? Cultural relativists would say there aren’t any. What you think is a fact, they will tell you, is only so because of your own frame of reference, your worldview, your conditioning, your patriarchal perspective, and the like. As I have explained a few times, I have the old-fashioned view that there are indeed facts, and in research, and especially in science, a fact is a statement of an objective and verifiable observation. What you make of the fact is something else, and there’s too much ‘factiness’ about today, in which numbers appear to be facts, when they often are not. Factiness is everywhere — in politics, in advertising, in market research, in education, in economics. If I were into New Year wishes, one would be for less factiness and less truthiness, everywhere.

It is a fact that both Colbert and the writer in the article in The Atlantic saw truthiness and factiness as sins of the Right in America. But to me they are sins indulged by all of us, if we are not careful. And on that note I’ll finish with Dr Curry’s summary (with a little editing from me).

What are the facts in the climate science debate?

  • Average global surface temperatures have overall increased for the past 100+ years
  • Carbon dioxide has an infrared emission spectrum
  • Humans have been adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

That is pretty much it, in terms of verifiable, generally agreed upon scientific facts surrounding the major elements of climate change debate.

Human-caused global warming is a theory. The assertion that human-caused global warming is dangerous is an hypothesis.  The assertion that nearly all or most of the warming since 1950 has been caused by humans is disputed by many scientists, in spite of the highly confident consensus statement by the IPCC. The issue of ‘dangerous’ climate change is wrapped up in values, and science has next to nothing to say about this.

Truthiness and factiness abound in the climate science debate, and the greatest proponents of truthiness and factiness are the climate ‘alarmed’ — their opponents are mostly calling b.s. on their truthiness and factiness.  In slinging around terms like denier, anti-science etc, the defense of climate alarmism in terms of ‘science’ and ‘facts’ starts to become more anti-science than what they are accusing their opponents of.

 Amen to that.

This is my last post for the year. I’ll return on or around Monday January 16, and wish all readers a safe and enjoyable Christmas and holiday period. As for 2017, it cannot help being interesting!

Later note: With respect to the sea levels in and around Kiribati, the Bureau of Meteorology has the following graph:

Data from Bureau of Meteorology

Join the discussion 278 Comments

  • JMO says:

    An interesting essay Don, as always. The” truthiness” and “factiness” views expressed in your essay have strong parallelism with the concept of perceived v actual reality. I see this in the global warming and climate change debate. I meet people on both side of the conflict …oops, debate. The ability of some people to wilfully or unknowingly ignore or refute to acknowledge a particular fact which does not fit in with their climate view. I have seen both sides being guilty, but to me the Climate Cassandras are guilty as…From a personal experience as being once an alarmist now a doubter to a sceptic, it was both the underlying facts and the litany of failed predictions which dragged me out of a pessimistic perceived reality to (what our now consider) an aspirant actual reality. If the facts change and predictions become accurate then I will change my view.

    Don, I wish you and your family a very merry Christmas and the all the best for 2017. (For those PC /climate casandras contributors my family and myself, despite being mostly agnostic, live in a happy ‘
    “holidays” free zone),

  • Aert Driessen says:

    Thanks Don, and I’m relieved to hear that you will still be putting pen to paper next year. I have taken food for thought away from every post that you have written, even though I don’t comment all that much. As for this post, I just do not understand what is happening with climate change. I see as facts the following:
    1. CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas; water vapour wields much more influence on climate.
    2. There is no evidence in the geological record that CO2 has ever driven climate change; indeed evidence to the contrary abounds.
    I got a taste of what you are talking about last week when, on the news that reported more money for Antarctic research (1 km of ice core?) an Antarctic scientist said that ice core from previous work showed that temperature changes and CO2 levels “were in lockstep”. What he didn’t say was that all previous work on such ice cores show that temperature moves before CO2. In other words, temperature increases (read global warming) are the cause of CO2 increases and not vice versa. Quite obvious considering that CO2 is more soluble in cold water than warm water. And this guy was a scientist, I reckon. As Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it”. Thanks for all your posts and have a great Christmas.

  • Alan Gould says:

    Don,
    Three things occur to me from your post, two of them solid, one of them subversive.

    1. Bless Dr J.Curry for her lucid, finely discriminating mind, and you can take a handful of that blessing for yourself as it passes through for the same qualities.

    2. Truthiness and factiness. Bishop Berkeley conceived his idea that nothing existed (I gloss most unfairly) and Sam Johnson, on being told of the prelate’s theory, kicked a stone at his feet and said, “I disprove him thus.”

    3. Wallace Stevens, canonical American poet, declared that “Poetry lies for the improvement of truth.”

    And I’m credulous for all of those. Happy Christmas.

  • David says:

    Happy holidays Don

  • Art says:

    There is a concept called reification which is described to some extent here
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)
    To get a deeper understanding of Trump reality and the CAGW movement, I would suggest reading a remarkable book by Walter Truett Anderson: “Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be- Theatrical Politics, Ready to Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World” first published in 1990 ISBN 0-06-250017-1

  • Ross says:

    Colbert was indeed talking about the right, when talking of ‘truthiness’.
    Mr Trump, Ms Curry, Mr Watts. It applies to all of their ilk. Colbert loved tearing the Judith Currys of this world apart, on his brilliant Colbert Report.

    Been following the debate about right-wing blog sites, the American election and ‘lies’, Don?
    Pretty nasty stuff. All right wing. All packed full of truthiness, and just brimming with factiness.
    No silly scientists and their BS to worry about.
    Truthy enough for Nev and Drongo to regurgitate on these very pages! Whacko, eh?
    Great stuff!
    But for a Christmas wish? That God and his son Jesus, come down to Earth and smite all the Marxist, greeny, smuggy, inner westy typey, Bill Leak stereotypes and let Trump and Exxon just get on with it! (And Hilary to go to prison for something)
    Cheers.

    • spangled drongo says:

      At least drongos put their heads out the window to see if the climate is really changing.

      Made any critical observations in this regard yourself, rossie?

      Other than consensualising on your truthiness and factiness above?

      That you have been injected with by the professional botherers.

      Another thing I daily observe is how the spangled drongos work hard to keep the hysterical parasite cuckoos out of their nests and succeed very well whereas many that don’t are raising similar hysterical cuckoos in large numbers.

      It’s the way the world succeeds or fails.

      This site has many of those hysterical cuckoos. Rationality attracts them in flocks.

      • Chris Warren says:

        Wrong. If you stick your head out of the window you view the weather – not climate.

        All your other attention seeking comments are just as ridiculous.

        • spangled drongo says:

          And if you had put your head out the window a while back instead of living in your virtual world, chrissie luv, and continued to do so today, you may have noticed that SLs in isostatically stable areas are not rising.

          Now tell me how ice caps can be net melting if SLs are not net rising?

          And if ice caps are not net melting then, globally, we are not net warming

          And explain without, need I add, using truthiness or/and factiness.

    • margaret says:

      I’m a big fan of Colbert, and Jon Stewart. So …
      Thanks everyone for an interesting year as a trainee troll and I actually do sincerely hope that everyone has a nice (very maligned word) festive season. Peace and love.

  • Nga says:

    Let me fix that:

    “In slinging around terms like alarmist, climate botherer etc, the defense of climate denialism in terms of ‘science’ and ‘facts’ starts to become more anti-science than what they are accusing their opponents of.”

    Much better.

  • Chris Warren says:

    Surely, this discussion assumes that truth and facts can be separated.

    What a strange world we are in when — snip — are in such vogue. I suppose if I had to choose to live in a world full of truths but contrary to facts – my situation would deteriorate soon enough.

    But if I could escape and live in a world in accordance with facts, irrespective of what ever truths people were promulgating, then my situation would be somewhat safer.

    When they differ, it seems that science produces facts while ideology( and hidden agendas) produce truths. This is evidenced in the quote from the Atlantic ie: ” factiness is obsessing over and covering ourselves in fact after fact while still missing bigger truths”.

    So, to make progress it is best if we align our truths to the facts – as determined by science and forget about chasing some “bigger truth” that is not based on obsession with facts..

    It is a waste of time to obsess over truth if this contradicts fact after fact.

  • Neville says:

    All the best to Don and fellow bloggers for Christmas and 2017. But for this last post let’s review some of the most popular icons of their CAGW.

    Here’s a very good 2013 post from David Middleton reviewing some of the best SLR research of the Holocene.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/21/oh-say-can-you-see-modern-sea-level-rise-from-a-geological-perspective/

    And the best news from a PR SLR study for 2016. This Dutch study found that the planet’s coastal land area had increased over the last 30 years. Of course this was highlighted by every MSM source all around the world. SARC.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/08/30/earths-surface-gaining-coastal-land-area-despite-sea-level-rise/

  • Nga says:

    After reading this blog and others like it, I am now convinced that we are headed for the Mother of all Ice Ages. It will undoubtedly arrive quick and fast. You may be out in the park having a picnic when all of the a sudden you’re up to your neck in snow. For your own safety, please watch this video on how to make an emergency igloo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq1DyaKJzfk

  • PeterE says:

    Thanks. Agree.
    A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and yours.

  • Interesting to recall the three baseball umpires.
    1. I call them how I see them.
    2. I call them how they are.
    3. They are how I call them.

    Merry Christmas Don, looking forward to your columns next year.
    Merry Christmas to everyone else as well:)

  • Neville says:

    Polar bears were probably one of the biggest scare stories from Gore’s AIT Sci-fi flick. But you don’t hear much about them anymore, because of people like P Bear specialist Dr Susan Crockford. For those silly fools who’ve been living under a rock for the last few decades she has even provided her informative web site to provide the facts for a change.

    Here’s a good sample of some info from her site. Of course there has been a big increase in PB numbers since the 1950s and some thousands more over the last 15 years. This is Polar Bear Science at its best.

    https://polarbearscience.com/about-2/

    And don’t forget PBs had to survive the much warmer Eemian inter-glacial from 130,000 to 115,000 years ago. Here’s a good report from the biggest Greenland Eemian study to date.

    In the last millions years the Earth’s climate has alternated between ice ages lasting about 100,000 years and interglacial periods of 10,000 to 15,000 years. The new results from the NEEM ice core drilling project in northwest Greenland, led by the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen show that the climate in Greenland was around 8 degrees C warmer than today during the last interglacial period, the Eemian period, 130,000 to 115,000 thousand years ago.

    “Even though the warm Eemian period was a period when the oceans were four to eight meters higher than today, the ice sheet in northwest Greenland was only a few hundred meters lower than the current level, which indicates that the contribution from the Greenland ice sheet was less than half the total sea-level rise during that period,” says Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and leader of the NEEM-project Here’s a link to the study. Temps up to 8 c higher than today, plus SLs up to 6 metres higher.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/24/first-complete-ice-core-record-of-last-interglacial-period-shows-the-climate-of-greenland-to-be-significantly-warmer-than-today/

    • margaret says:

      Whatever. I saw that film with my husband. My son arrived late, stumbling in the dark with a large popcorn and post-mix Coca Cola – none of us were alarmed, but alerted – yes, I guess so, to the extent that it’s no longer in the control of ordinary citizens, it’s co-opted by powerful vested interests.

    • Chris Warren says:

      Neville

      This was a deliberate lie.

      “Polar bears were probably one of the biggest scare stories from Gore’s AIT Sci-fi flick.”

      Or does it mean you have not even watched Gore’s video?

      There was one item (around 20 seconds out of 2hrs) proposing that polar bears could drown if they tried to swim too far between gaps between residual ice sheets or if the ice sheets they reached were too thin to support them. This was based on refereed papers reporting sightings of some 4 drowned polar bears, but it later turned out that these were results of storms.

      There was no other consideration of polar bears at all and many, many, many other statements of serious consequences of global warming.

      • spangled drongo says:

        Chrissie denies warmists’ truthiness and factiness.

        After all the trouble Al and his disciples went to, to flog the dead horse of PB endangerment, chrissie does a denial on them.

        He’s even cutting off our greatest living treasure, Sir David Attenborough,’s legs in his fervent denial.

        Easy there, chrissie.

        Just think of all the trouble Greenpeace, FOE, WWF et al went to to save these poor animals from all this truthiness and factiness, even to the point of appealing to the public to adopt a polar bear at three quid a pop.

        All because of Al’s T&F.

        You aren’t denying all that now, surely, chrissie luv?

        “Al Gore twice famously fell flat on his face in promoting the cause, first when his film An Inconvenient Truth focused on the fate of four bears that were later shown just to have drowned in a storm; then when he made big play with a picture of two bears on a half-melted iceberg, which the photographer later protested she had only taken because it was a striking image, unconnected in any way with climate change.”

        You just don’t realise, chrissie, how much effort you alarmists really put in to this T&Effyness.

        Don’t go denier on them this late in the show.

      • NameGlenM says:

        At least Gore did not assert that the seas will boil as per Hansen.

  • Neville says:

    Here is a very good article by Lomborg that has many links to a number of studies and interesting info. He links to the big Lancet study that checked out how many more people died from cold compared to heat waves over a long period of time. It’s about 14 to 1 and even higher in the UK study. While heat waves do kill people around the world they are not in the same league as cold spells. So a warmer world is a safer world., but the public once again are treated like fungus and fed on BS.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/05/no-one-ever-says-it-but-in-many-ways-global-warming-will-be-a-go/

    And we should link to Lomborg’s PR study that shows that Paris Cop 21 will deliver no measurable temp change by 2100. He used the same software to calculate the difference in temp as is used by the IPCC. If the combined countries were stupid enough to pursue this idiocy until 2100 the cost would be tens of trillions $ for SFA return on the investment? slash waste. Lomborg’s team includes maths and economic experts and at least four Nobel Laureates. The two graphs and data have to be seen to be believed and yet govts still believe their MITIGATION garbage.

    http://www.lomborg.com/press-release-research-reveals-negligible-impact-of-paris-climate-promises

  • spangled drongo says:

    The Minister for Truth [Truthiness and Factiness] has created a lot of climate change in recent years:

    http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Screen-Shot-2016-12-18-at-6.37.34-AM.png

  • Neville says:

    Hey SD, here’s another way of looking at the same GISS data 1880 to 2014. Kinda hard to believe there’s much to get very excited about. And only about 0.6 c per century of warming over the last 136 years anyway. Check out the York UNI data tool. All of their graph games are a bit of a giggle.
    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lPGChYUUeuc/VLhzJqwRhtI/AAAAAAAAAS4/ehDtihKNKIw/s1600/GISTemp%2BKelvin%2B01.png

  • Nga says:

    A cool head on the D word that has Don’s lederhosen in a bunch:

    “As part of my climate and environmental reporting, I come across the term “denier” all the time, as in “climate denier,” “climate change denier,” “global warming denier,” and “industrial climate disruption denier.” And there are a lot of people identified as deniers who claim that the term is an attempt to place them on the same moral level as those individuals who claim that the Holocaust didn’t occur, aka Holocaust deniers. While there are certainly some who intentionally make that implication, the implication has nothing to do with the word “denier” itself. “Denier” means nothing more than a person who refuses to accept the existence, truth, or validity of something.

    The definition of a denier is completely neutral. The definition doesn’t include any guidance about the values, ethics, morals, psychology, beliefs, or experiences of anyone who qualifies as a denier, only that the person is denying something. The definition also doesn’t define whether the thing being denied actually exists, is true, or has validity, only that it’s existence, truth, or validity is being denied. What’s being denied can be literally anything – evolution, that Han shot first, the existence of God, vaccine safety, that Picard was the best Star Trek captain, HIV as the cause of AIDS, that Shakespeare authored his plays, or even 2 + 2 = 4.

    Since the definition of “denier” offers no guidance as to motivations or moral equivalencies, any good or bad properties associated with the term are necessarily a function of the term’s context, not of the term itself. In the context of a Sunday church service at a fundamentalist Christian church, someone being an evolution denier is unimportant. But change the context to a high school biology classroom and suddenly that denial may matter greatly. Similarly, a vaccine safety denier may well be harmless if he or she refuses to get the annual flu vaccine, but put that same denier in the context of child immunizations and public health ramifications of a pertussis outbreak and his or her denial may well be a serious concern.

    But even in the case of vaccine safety deniers, their denial doesn’t mean they are necessarily immoral. They may simply be so afraid of vaccine side effects that their usual rationality is clouded by their own biases. Or they may not have the mathematical skill to realize that they’re actually making their children (and others) less safe by refusing to vaccinate. Their denial doesn’t mean that they’re stupid, either – everyone’s rationality is occasionally clouded by biases, emotions, and/or ignorance. It’s when someone knows that vaccines are safe and yet claims they aren’t for some other reason that vaccine safety denial becomes immoral. Of course, we tend to use different terms for these kinds of people – terms like “liars.”

    It’s true that sometimes cultural context can mean that value-neutral terms can develop values that are partially independent of the term itself. A good example of this is the difference between “ethics” and “morals.” In philosophy they mean the same thing, but in the United State we tend to use “ethics” when we’re talking about professional behavior and “morals” when we’re talking about personal behavior. It’s possible that “denier” did originally have the cultural context of morally repugnant Holocaust denial, but even if that was the case years ago, it’s not the case any more.

    So why do people who deny one thing or another generally dislike being labeled as “deniers?” It’s probably not because of the spurious connection to Holocaust denial. Instead, people who take umbrage at the term do so because no-one likes being labeled negatively. We psychologically prefer to view ourselves in positive terms than in negative ones, and the term “denier” is a strongly negative term.

    Furthermore, in most cases the term “denier” simply and accurately describes what the people so labeled are doing – they’re denying some aspect of objective reality. Vaccine safety deniers deny the reality that vaccines have repeatedly been demonstrated to be safe and that the risks of vaccination are much lower than the risks of going unvaccinated. HIV/AIDS deniers deny the reality that HIV causes AIDS. Evolution deniers deny the reality that species evolve and that God is not a necessary condition for the existence of humanity.

    In my opinion, however, there is another aspect to the complaints about the word “denier,” one that goes to the heart of why so many industrial climate disruption deniers claim that “denier” is meant to imply Holocaust denial. I think that some deniers dislike that such a simple, value-neutral word as “denier” can be used to accurately describe them and would prefer that some other term be used instead (we’ll cover euphemisms and misnomers like “climate realist” and “climate change skeptic” another time).

    There are over a dozen synonyms for the verb “deny.” Converting them from the verb form to a noun that describes the person doing the action generates the following list of alternate terms that could be used in place of “denier:”

    contradictor, disaffirmer, disallower, disavower, disclaimer, disconfirmer, disowner, gainsayer, negator, negativer, refuter, rejecter, or repudiator.

    With the possible exception of “rejecter,” however, each of the terms is more confusing than “denier.” How many people would know what you meant if you wrote “Holocaust gainsayer” or “HIV/AIDS disavower” or “industrial climate disruption disconfirmer?” Most people would become confused by the unknown word, lose track of the point you were trying to make, and then give up and move on.

    The word “denier” is value neutral and it says nothing about the motivations or ethics of a person who is described as such. It’s only through context that “denier” can be given a moral or ethical dimension. While it’s possible that it was once culturally tied to Holocaust denial, that cultural connection is minimal now, and it probably has been ever since “denier” became so firmly attached to climate change/global warming/industrial climate disruption. Nowadays, “denier” merely means someone who rejects the existence, truth, or validity of something. Any other implications are strictly in the minds of the person calling someone a denier, and in the mind of the person being called one.”

    https://scholarsandrogues.com/2013/01/16/words-matter-a-denier-is-someone-who-denies-nothing-more-or-less/

    • margaret says:

      I like the term “industrial climate disruption”. First time I’ve read it.

    • spangled drongo says:

      So, what you’re really saying, enge luv, is that the term denier can never be construed as being insulting enough to be hung around the warmists’ necks as a refection of their ignorance and rudeness but it REALLY IS a most convenient insult to hang around the necks of rational sceptics.

      IOW another great example of the truthiness and factiness employed in the pursuit of warmist science.

      FIFY

      • Chris Warren says:

        Actually the term denailist, is never placed around the necks of rational skeptics. It is best placed around the necks of pretend skeptics.

        So you can wear it with great pride.

    • Bryan Roberts says:

      This is a ridiculously weak argument to defend the use of a term that is unquestionably pejorative. You can ‘deny’ a fact or an event (eg, the Holocaust), but you cannot deny an hypothesis or a theory. You can merely dispute them.

      • Chris Warren says:

        Disputing inconvenient facts is different to disputing theories.

        Also the disputation has to be at the same level and competence as the original theory.

        IN effect you are suggesting that denying the moon landing is really just disputing a hypothesis or theory that man went to the moon.

        By definition, deniers of facts must assume that such facts are just theories open for disputes. This is the first step in denial.

        • Bryan Roberts says:

          Order a brain for Christmas.

          Cheers

        • spangled drongo says:

          Chrissie can imagine, invent and be most irate about being “verballed” but is more than happy to tell lies like calling his opponents “deniers” of the moon landing after claiming the high moral ground on this subject.

          If Invention, assumption and fabricating are essential to the art of T&Effyness, chrissie is home and hosed.

        • Bryan Roberts says:

          “Disputing inconvenient facts is different to disputing theories”

          I thought this is what I said. Denial of facts is different to disputing theories. No-one denies facts (ignoring the moon landing absurdity), but AGW theories in relation to climate change are not facts. They are theories. Disputing theories is not denial.

  • Bryan Roberts says:

    …and, nga, you will be aware that use of the term ‘denier’ implies that what is being ‘denied’ is a fact, whereas it is, in reality, no more than a theory based on dubious observations and contested models.

  • Neville says:

    Chris as usual you are wrong again. Not only did I watch Gore’s fantasy flick but I actually bought it at a garage sale for $1.50. But I’ve since found it online as well. But I will admit that PBs didn’t last long in his silly flick, but the repercussions seemed to go on for a long time. Mainly because Gore made such a mess of his silly tale from start to finish.
    Then there was the UK court case and a number of adverse findings by the judge. It couldn’t have happened to a bigger windbag and fool who had a personal co2 footprint the size of bigfoot. Ditto to his great mate and dummy, DiCaprio. These extremists must be some of the greatest HIPPOS in history. All BS talk and no personal action. Both have a number of palatial mansions and both fly around in their own personal jet liners. DiCaprio even hires a huge vessel to cruise around in just to impress his silly B grade actor friends. Fancy taking any notice of these pair of dummies.

    • Chris Warren says:

      Neville

      Sensible, rational people cannot say:

      ” you are wrong”

      only to state:

      ” I will admit that PBs didn’t last long ” [My point]

      So what are you disputing – your own fervid imagination it would seem..

  • Neville says:

    Here’s Pielke jnr’s post concerning the so called increase in extreme weather events. He just used the IPCC findings from the AR5 IPCC report in 2013 to support his case. Of course Holdren and his ZOMBIE science followers did their level best to hound this decent man, just because he pointed out the obvious facts.

    This is his post that speaks for itself and here is the link. He was correct in declaring victory over the ZOMBIE loons.

    http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/coverage-of-extreme-events-in-ipcc-ar5.html
    Coverage of Extreme Events in the IPCC AR5
    “I had been scheduled to testify before the House Science Committee next week in a hearing on extreme events, but the gong show in Washington has put that off.

    In the process of updating Senate testimony given back in July (here in PDF) I did compile some key statements from the IPCC AR5 WGI Chapter 2 on extremes.

    Here are a few:

    “Overall, the most robust global changes in climate extremes are seen in measures of daily temperature, including to some extent, heat waves. Precipitation extremes also appear to be increasing, but there is large spatial variability”
    “There is limited evidence of changes in extremes associated with other climate variables since the mid-20th century”
    “Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin”
    “In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale”
    “In summary, there is low confidence in observed trends in small-scale severe weather phenomena such as hail and thunderstorms because of historical data inhomogeneities and inadequacies in monitoring systems”
    “In summary, the current assessment concludes that there is not enough evidence at present to suggest more than low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the middle of the 20th century due to lack of direct observations, geographical inconsistencies in the trends, and dependencies of inferred trends on the index choice. Based on updated studies, AR4 conclusions regarding global increasing trends in drought since the 1970s were probably overstated. However, it is likely that the frequency and intensity of drought has increased in the Mediterranean and West Africa and decreased in central North America and north-west Australia since 1950”
    “In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones since 1900 is low”

    There is really not much more to be said here — the data says what it says, and what it says is so unavoidably obvious that the IPCC has recognized it in its consensus.

    Of course, I have no doubts that claims will still be made associating floods, drought, hurricanes and tornadoes with human-caused climate change — Zombie science — but I am declaring victory in this debate. Climate campaigners would do their movement a favor by getting themselves on the right side of the evidence”.

    • spangled drongo says:

      “In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones since 1900 is low”

      Neville, people of the warmist persuasion who never put their heads out the window just don’t understand how true this is but, for example, the east coast of Australia has not had a real cyclone cross the coast south of the TOC since 1976 whereas prior to that we had several per year.

      1976 was the big Pacific shift and it happened almost overnight, not progressively or in any correlation with ACO2.

      When the “climate scientists” can satisfactorily explain that, I’ll give them more credit.

  • Neville says:

    Another study that seems counter intuitive. A high number of deaths are caused by moderately cold temps compared to hot weather. This probably backs up the big Lancet study, but I would like to see a proper scientific explanation. Another JS Miller question, “why is it so” question..

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/20/moderate-cold-kills/

  • Neville says:

    The British Antarctic Survey study this year found that the Ant peninsula has actually been cooling since 1998. Another bummer for Gore’s AIT. Gore seemed to dine out on the Ant pen warming scare over many years.

    http://www.cfact.org/2016/07/22/the-antarctic-peninsula-is-cooling-not-warming/

  • spangled drongo says:

    Even the Royal Society are into it boots ‘n’ all.

    More science-free assumption in the interests of T&Effyness:

    http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/283/1844/20161462

  • Neville says:

    Here is the Co2 Science summary of the Petit et al 420,000 year study of Antarctica. It found that our Holocene IG is the longest, coolest and most stable of the past 5 IGs. On average the previous 4 IGs were about 2 c warmer than the Holocene. The WAIS remained intact over that long period of time and during much warmer temps than today. Here is their summary.

    Nearly Half a Million Years of Climate and CO2 Reference
    Petit, J.R., Jouzel, J., Raynaud, D., Barkov, N.I., Barnola, J.-M., Basile, I., Bender, M., Chappellaz, J., Davis, M., Delaygue, G., Delmotte, M., Kotlyakov, V.M., Legrand, M., Lipenkov, V.Y., Lorius, C., Pepin, L., Ritz, C., Saltzman, E., and Stievenard, M. 1999. Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica. Nature 399: 429-436.

    What was done
    The authors, partners in a long-term collaboration among Russia, the United States and France, retrieved the deepest ice core ever recovered – reaching a depth of 3,623 meters – from the Russian Vostok station in East Antarctica. By careful analysis of this historic ice core, they reconstructed trends of many climatic and environmental parameters, including temperature and CO2 concentration, over a period of 420,000 years.

    What was learned
    Over four glacial-interglacial cycles, the succession of changes through each cycle of glacial growth and termination was similar, with atmospheric and climatic properties oscillating between fairly stable lower and upper bounds. Surface temperature, for example, varied over a range of approximately 12°C, while atmospheric CO2 concentration ranged from a low of 180 ppm to a high of 290 ppm.

    The authors note that “the new data confirm that the warmest temperature at stage 7.5 [238,000 years ago] was slightly warmer than the Holocene [the current interglacial].” They also note that the interglacials preceding and following the one at 238,000 years ago were warmer still. In fact, from the graphs they present, it can be seen that all of the four interglacials that preceded the Holocene were warmer than the current one, and by an average temperature in excess of 2°C.

    The authors additionally found that (1) “the Holocene, which has already lasted 11,000 years, is, by far, the longest stable warm period recorded in Antarctica during the past 420,000 years,” (2) “the climate record makes it unlikely that the West Antarctic ice sheet collapsed during the past 420,000 years,” (3) “during glacial inception … the CO2 decrease lags the temperature decrease by several thousand years,” and (4) “the same sequence of climate forcing operated during each termination: orbital forcing followed by two strong amplifiers, greenhouse gases acting first, then deglaciation and ice-albedo feedback.”

    What it means
    Noting that “there is a close correlation between Antarctic temperature and atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and CH4 [methane],” the authors conclude that “this discovery suggests that greenhouse gases are important as amplifiers of the initial orbital forcing and may have significantly contributed to the glacial-interglacial changes.” They also note that “this correlation, together with the uniquely elevated concentrations of these gases today” — which they correctly claim are “unprecedented during the past 420,000 years” — is thus “of relevance with respect to the continuing debate on the future of earth’s climate,” leaving us with the impression that the rising CO2 content of the air may presage dire climatic consequences for the planet. Their actual findings, however, suggest just the opposite.

    First of all, correlation implies nothing about causation. For purposes of attribution, it must be clearly demonstrated what is cause and what is effect; and in the real world of nature, a criterion that must always be met in this regard is that cause always comes first and effect always follows. And in checking the Vostok ice core record, the authors have rightly noted that “during glacial inception … the CO2 decrease lags the temperature decrease by several thousand years.” Furthermore, they also correctly note that “the same sequence of climate forcing operated during each termination: orbital forcing followed [our italics] by two strong amplifiers, greenhouse gases acting first, then deglaciation and ice-albedo feedback.” Simply put, changes in orbital forcing start the temperature moving either up or down, which then makes the air’s CO2 content either rise or fall. To say that the correlation of temperature and CO2 “suggests that greenhouse gases are important as amplifiers of the initial orbital forcing” is just not correct. In fact, the authors are forced to admit that the real reason for their making this claim is that “results from various climate simulations [our italics again] make it reasonable to assume [our italics yet again] that greenhouse gases have, at a global scale, contributed significantly to the globally averaged glacial-interglacial temperature change.”

    Some other interesting points: First, the preceding four interglacials were all warmer than the current one, even though the atmospheric CO2 concentration at those times was no higher, in the mean, than it was over the bulk of the Holocene. Hence, it is not illogical to expect that any global warming we may yet experience in the near future may be totally unrelated to the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content. Second, even though the planet was considerably warmer during the preceding four interglacials, there is no evidence that the West Antarctic ice sheet ever collapsed during any of these warm periods. Shouldn’t that make us feel secure instead of scared? Third, since the current interglacial is by far the longest stable warm period of the past 420,000 years, we are probably significantly overdue for the next ice age. Ought we not thus welcome the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content, if we truly believe that it enhances global warming?

    This paper will someday be realized by all concerned to be a major step forward in our quest to understand the dynamics of climatic and atmospheric change on earth, and this in spite of the authors’ half-hearted attempts to tow the currently politically correct line with regard to this issue. The truth cannot be hid forever and will ultimately shine forth, as we believe they actually realize is occurring in this signal contribution to our understanding of things climatic.

  • Neville says:

    Well Davy boy if I have to explain it to you I don’t think an explanation is worth the effort. But here is an article from Quadrant by Dr John Happs that shouldn’t require an explanation . But I’m not sure that anyone can assume that this will wake you up either.

    https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2013/07/al-gore-s-enduring-climate-con/

    Here are the nine errors that Chief Justice Burton found after viewing Gore’s AIT pseudo science flick. But the rest of the article is very revealing, especially the praise heaped on Gore by a number of CSIRO scientists. Incredible but true.

    Justice Burton identified nine AIT claims which he readily identified as inaccurate. These were:

    1. Gore claimed that we can expect a sea level rise of up to 6 metres by the melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland ice sheets. He implied that this would be in the near future and would displace large numbers of people from locations such as Manhattan, the Netherlands and Bangladesh.

    TRUTH: Greenland ice cores show that the medieval, Roman, Minoan, Egyptian and other periods were warmer than current temperatures in Greenland. Gore’s assertion is easily refuted. Justice Burton found no evidence to support Gore’s claim.

    2. Gore claimed that low-lying Pacific Islands are being inundated as a result of anthropogenic global warming with island populations being evacuated to New Zealand.

    TRUTH: There is no evidence of sea level rise over the last 50 years and no evidence that Pacific Islands are under any threat. Gore’s assertion is easily refuted. Justice Burton found no evidence to support Gore’s claim.

    3. Gore claimed that anthropogenic global warming could shut down the thermohaline circulation and move Europe into a new ice age.

    TRUTH: There is no evidence of any weakening of the thermohaline circulation. Gore’s assertion is easily refuted. Justice Burton found no evidence to support Gore’s claim.

    4. Gore displayed graphs showing rising levels of carbon dioxide and increases in global temperature, with the implication that carbon dioxide levels drive global temperature.

    TRUTH: Changes in global temperature precede changes in carbon dioxide levels. Gore’s assertion is easily refuted. Justice Burton found no evidence to support Gore’s claim.

    5. Gore claimed that anthropogenic global warming is responsible for snowmelt on Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro.

    TRUTH: In fact melting of the Furtwangler Glacier at the summit of the mountain began more than 125 years ago and temperatures at the summit never rise above freezing point. Gore’s assertion is easily refuted. Justice Burton found no evidence to support Gore’s claim.

    6. Gore claimed that Africa’s lake Chad had dried up as a result of global warming.

    TRUTH: In fact the lake has been dry on numerous occasions in the past (8500 BC, 5500 BC, 1000 BC and 100 BC) due to over-extraction and changing agricultural practices. Gore’s assertion is easily refuted. Justice Burton found no evidence to support Gore’s claim.

    7. Gore claimed that Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans in 2005 resulted from global warming.

    TRUTH: Katrina was downgraded to category 3 when it made a direct hit on the levees, which failed as engineers predicted they would. Gore made no mention of the Category 4 Galveston hurricane that struck the Texas coast in 1900, or the Category 4 Palm Beach, Florida, of 1928. Gore’s assertion is easily refuted. Justice Burton found no evidence to support Gore’s claim.

    8. Gore claimed that polar bears were dying because they had to swim long distances to find ice, which was said to be disappearing due to global warming.

    TRUTH: It is not unusual for Arctic sea ice to disappear over time and, despite continued hunting, polar bear numbers have grown from around 5,000 in the 1950’s to more than 25,000 today – the largest number since records began. Gore’s assertion is easily refuted. Justice Burton found no evidence to support Gore’s claim.

    9. Gore claimed that coral reefs are being bleached because of global warming.

    Strong El Nino events will lead to coral bleaching but there is no evidence to show that global warming would have long-term negative impacts on coral reefs. Gore’s assertion is easily refuted. Justice Burton found no evidence to support Gore’s claim.

    It could be argued that Chief Justice Burton was far too generous in his criticisms of AIT, since many more of Gore’s errors can be identified and just as easily refuted.

    • Nga says:

      Nev, if you were smart you wouldn’t be aping Quadrant and monkeying about with CO2 science and all the nut sites that you visit. Here is Justice Burton’s judgement, in his own words. If you read the whole thing you’ll see that it is much more balanced than Nev’s spin: http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2007/2288.html&query=title+%28+dimmock+%29&method=boolean

      Anyway, Nev, you aren’t bright so go back to the anti-vaxxer flat earth faked moon landing ghetto and fetch another bone. Good boy. Sit.

      • Neville says:

        Nga here AGAIN is the Judge’s finding highlighting the 9 errors and the inclusion of the guidance note. But I’ll leave you and the other kiddies to attend your ongoing religious instruction. But the Marl Lewis condemnation is much more extensive and useful. http://cei.org/sites/default/files/Marlo%20Lewis,%20Jr%20-%20Al%20Gore's%20An%20Inconvenient%20Truth.pdf

        The ‘Errors’

        1. ‘Error’ 11: Sea level rise of up to 20 feet (7 metres) will be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland in the near future.
        In scene 21 (the film is carved up for teaching purposes into 32 scenes), in one of the most graphic parts of the film Mr Gore says as follows:

        “If Greenland broke up and melted, or if half of Greenland and half of West Antarctica broke up and melted, this is what would happen to the sea level in Florida. This is what would happen in the San Francisco Bay. A lot of people live in these areas. The Netherlands, the Low Countries: absolutely devastation. The area around Beijing is home to tens of millions of people. Even worse, in the area around Shanghai, there are 40 million people. Worse still, Calcutta, and to the east Bangladesh, the area covered includes 50 million people. Think of the impact of a couple of hundred thousand refugees when they are displaced by an environmental event and then imagine the impact of a 100 million or more. Here is Manhattan. This is the World Trade Center memorial site. After the horrible events of 9/11 we said never again. This is what would happen to Manhattan. They can measure this precisely, just as scientists could predict precisely how much water would breach the levee in New Orleans.”

        This is distinctly alarmist, and part of Mr Gore’s ‘wake-up call’. It is common ground that if indeed Greenland melted, it would release this amount of water, but only after, and over, millennia, so that the Armageddon scenario he predicts, insofar as it suggests that sea level rises of 7 metres might occur in the immediate future, is not in line with the scientific consensus.

        2. ‘Error’ 12: Low lying inhabited Pacific atolls are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming.
        In scene 20, Mr Gore states “that’s why the citizens of these Pacific nations have all had to evacuate to New Zealand”. There is no evidence of any such evacuation having yet happened.

        3. ‘Error’ 18: Shutting down of the “Ocean Conveyor”.
        In scene 17 he says, “One of the ones they are most worried about where they have spent a lot of time studying the problem is the North Atlantic, where the Gulf Stream comes up and meets the cold wind coming off the Arctic over Greenland and evaporates the heat out of the Gulf Stream and the stream is carried over to western Europe by the prevailing winds and the earth’s rotation … they call it the Ocean Conveyor … At the end of the last ice age … that pump shut off and the heat transfer stopped and Europe went back into an ice age for another 900 or 1000 years. Of course that’s not going to happen again, because glaciers of North America are not there. Is there any big chunk of ice anywhere near there? Oh yeah [pointing at Greenland]”. According to the IPCC, it is very unlikely that the Ocean Conveyor (known technically as the Meridional Overturning Circulation or thermohaline circulation) will shut down in the future, though it is considered likely that thermohaline circulation may slow down.

        4. ‘Error’ 3: Direct coincidence between rise in CO2 in the atmosphere and in temperature, by reference to two graphs.
        In scenes 8 and 9, Mr Gore shows two graphs relating to a period of 650,000 years, one showing rise in CO2 and one showing rise in temperature, and asserts (by ridiculing the opposite view) that they show an exact fit. Although there is general scientific agreement that there is a connection, the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts.

        5. ‘Error’ 14: The snows of Kilimanjaro.
        Mr Gore asserts in scene 7 that the disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro is expressly attributable to global warming. It is noteworthy that this is a point that specifically impressed Mr Milliband (see the press release quoted at paragraph 6 above). However, it is common ground that, the scientific consensus is that it cannot be established that the recession of snows on Mt Kilimanjaro is mainly attributable to human-induced climate change.

        6. ‘Error’ 16: Lake Chad etc
        The drying up of Lake Chad is used as a prime example of a catastrophic result of global warming. However, it is generally accepted that the evidence remains insufficient to establish such an attribution. It is apparently considered to be far more likely to result from other factors, such as population increase and over-grazing, and regional climate variability.

        7. ‘Error’ 8: Hurricane Katrina.
        In scene 12 Hurricane Katrina and the consequent devastation in New Orleans is ascribed to global warming. It is common ground that there is insufficient evidence to show that.

        8. ‘Error’ 15: Death of polar bears.
        In scene 16, by reference to a dramatic graphic of a polar bear desperately swimming through the water looking for ice, Mr Gore says: “A new scientific study shows that for the first time they are finding polar bears that have actually drowned swimming long distances up to 60 miles to find the ice. They did not find that before.” The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm. That is not to say that there may not in the future be drowning-related deaths of polar bears if the trend of regression of pack-ice and/or longer open water continues, but it plainly does not support Mr Gore’s description.

        9. ‘Error’ 13: Coral reefs.
        In scene 19, Mr Gore says: “Coral reefs all over the world because of global warming and other factors are bleaching and they end up like this. All the fish species that depend on the coral reef are also in jeopardy as a result. Overall specie loss is now occurring at a rate 1000 times greater than the natural background rate.” The actual scientific view, as recorded in the IPCC report, is that, if the temperature were to rise by 1-3 degrees Centigrade, there would be increased coral bleaching and widespread coral mortality, unless corals could adopt or acclimatise, but that separating the impacts of climate change-related stresses from other stresses, such as over-fishing and polluting, is difficult.

        The Guidance
        As set out in paragraph 14 above, I am satisfied that, in order to establish and confirm that the purpose of sending the films to schools is not so as to “influence the opinions of children” (paragraph 7 above) but so as to “stimulate children into discussing climate change and global warming in school classes” (paragraph 6 above) a Guidance Note must be incorporated into the pack, and that it is not sufficient simply to have the facility to cross-refer to it on an educational website.

        • spangled drongo says:

          Neville, you must make allowances for enge.

          As a proud and perpetual promoter of the T&effiness themes in AIT she is duty bound to be forever cleaning, polishing and kissing each shattered remnant and putting it back on the altar so she can bob and curtsy to them all.

          What a wonderful asset to the bovver boys she is.

        • Nga says:

          OK so Rover the dog aka Neville fetches another bone. You are talking about a ten year old film made by a politician. The anti-science films like the The Great Global Warming Swindle also contain errors. But so what? The issue is the science and these films are just popcorn fodder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle

          • margaret says:

            With a large Coca Cola to wash it down …

          • spangled drongo says:

            At least, enge luv, Ofcom, with the help of 37 professors didn’t uphold ANY of the complaints brought against GGWS by your bovver boys. Not one.

            How weak is the case for global warming theory than 37 professors between them cannot convince Ofcom of a single uncorrected error in The Great Global Warming Swindle?

            Then compare that with the AIT judgement, enge luv.

            Enjoy your popcorn.

          • spangled drongo says:

            There was one error, fixed before the documentary showed in Australia but not part of the complaint by the bovver boys:

            “Swindle contained an error in the temperature graphic in the first program, which was said to have been inadvertently introduced in the production of the graphic. Unlike (say) Inconvenient Truth, where errors have remained uncorrected even when one of their Scientific Advisers supposedly brought the error to the attention of the Inconvenient Truth producers, in this case, the producers promptly replaced the graphic, with changes being made even before the second showing.”

            How’s the popcorn?

  • spangled drongo says:

    In trying to determine the net cost of CO2, no one is looking at the huge benefits.

    Will Trump point out the bleedin’ obvious that this isn’t just T&Effiness, this is obsolete Climate Science On CO2.

    “The sorry truth is that the EPA and the regulatory process in the Obama administration show no respect for the scientific method they claim to rely on”:

    http://www.hoover.org/research/obsolete-climate-science

    • Chris Warren says:

      Drongo

      In trying to determine the net benefits of human CO2 you need to look at the huge costs.

      http://www.climate.gov.ki/category/effects/coastal-erosion/

      • Don Aitkin says:

        I’ll do an essay onThe Social Costs of Carbon early in the new year. Kiribati and Tuvalu have been trying to describe themselves as threatened by SLR for quite a few years now. But there’s no real evidence to show that anything in particular is happening there. I’ve written about Pacific island states before. Just search with either island state’s name for the relevant essay.

        • Don Aitkin says:

          I’ve posted Kiribati sea levels for the last thirty years at the end of the essay above. There doesn’t seem to be anything mysterious or alarming there.

        • Nga says:

          Sigh. Coral Islands have their own dynamics. The mainstream science already tells us this.

          ” Are island nations like Tuvalu, where most of the land is barely above sea level, destined to sink beneath the waves, like modern-day Atlantises?

          Not necessarily, according to a growing body of evidence amassed by New Zealand coastal geomorphologist Paul Kench, of the University of Auckland’s School of Environment, and colleagues in Australia and Fiji, who have been studying how reef islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans respond to rising sea levels.

          They found that reef islands change shape and move around in response to shifting sediments, and that many of them are growing in size, not shrinking, as sea level inches upward. The implication is that many islands—especially less developed ones with few permanent structures—may cope with rising seas well into the next century.

          But for the areas that have been transformed by human development, such as the capitals of Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Maldives, the future is considerably gloomier. That’s largely because their many structures—seawalls, roads, and water and electricity systems—are locked in place.

          Their analysis, which now extends to more than 600 coral reef islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, indicates that about 80 percent of the islands have remained stable or increased in size (roughly 40 percent in each category). Only 20 percent have shown the net reduction that’s widely assumed to be a typical island’s fate when sea level rises.”

          http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/02/150213-tuvalu-sopoaga-kench-kiribati-maldives-cyclone-marshall-islands/

          • spangled drongo says:

            “Only 20 percent have shown the net reduction that’s widely assumed to be a typical island’s fate when sea level rises.”

            Yes enge, when and IF sea level rises.

            What Nils has been trying to tell you for years.

            Good to see it’s finally getting through. Even though I know it must be tiring [sigh] doing all that C&P.

            So that’s a thumbs-up for CO2 then?

            Here’s the Tuvalu tide gauge and when it gets the latest el Nino data it will be below 1998:

            http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.monthly.plots/1839_high.png

      • spangled drongo says:

        Chrissie, you are really showing your complete lack of understanding of the climate change scenario when you quote Kiribati as an example of evidence.

        You also obviously didn’t read your own link where it spelt out the problem plain and simple in the first paragraph:

        “Kiribati has more than 100,000 citizens and its main island, Tarawa, suffers from severe overcrowding.”

        All those pacific atolls suffer from a deck space, not a freeboard, problem. Sea levels are not rising there at all:

        https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.htm?stnid=750-012

        0.58 +/- 0.87 mm/y!!!

        Their problems have nothing to do with ACO2 which is putting money in their pockets.

        ACO2 combined with you alarmists’ bed wetting over what you see as resulting CAGW has been nothing but an ongoing wonderful resource for them. And they’ve played you like a fiddle.

        Cargo cult at its best.

  • Neville says:

    The NZ Kench study found that most Pacific islands are growing in size and not sinking as Gore claimed. Even their ABC and BBC reported the good news.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-06-03/pacific-islands-growing-not-sinking/851738

  • Neville says:

    Craig and Sherwood Idso have written a book about the benefits of co2 for humanity and the biosphere. All sources used in the book have been drawn from the PR literature.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/11/the-benefits-of-carbon-dioxide/

    And Dr Indur Goklany’s study also highlights the many benefits of extra co2 to the world since the start of the Industrial revolution. Once again human well-being has greatly increased over the last 250+ years. Today we also have proof that the Earth is greening, with all the benefits that will add to the biosphere.

    http://www.thegwpf.com/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf

  • beththeserf says:

    Some of that Coral Island dreaming’s right our of Shakespeare’s Tempest, sea-
    change …mysterious transmutations … Came in to wish you a Joyful Christmas,
    Don and a moment of musing.

    Pudding’s made for the assortment of guests, recollections of Mrs Beeton and
    Christmas Dinner with the Crotchets … here I am glass of wine beneath the bough,
    reading serious stuff ( in Quadrant apropos me latest serf edition, ‘Trust but Verify,’
    and come across this to delight! It’s carnival of animals and Ben Jonson masques.
    Herewith a Christmas gift from Alan Gould.

    Stanzas for Nearby Insects.

    ‘Our dapper moths in capes of velveteen
    dig nervy profits fro our almond meal,
    and for their gross the daddy longlegs trawl.
    Long patience is a daddy long legs’ scene.

    *

    What do the ants consume,
    fervent along their cables?
    And if ants sleep, then do they sleep a-swarm,
    like text in bibles?

    *

    Black admiral spread your spinnaker
    and broad-reach through my quarter acre.
    Windward whisky, leeward rum,
    Regattas of black admirals come
    To set their gorgeous sails a – quiver
    Whenever citrus seeps them something clever.’

    *

    … There’s more concerning silverfish and Freud …better not post it all
    but hope the denizens here have access to it.

    Those black admirals, they’re in my cumquat tree, setting out on the next
    ‘Master and Commander’ episode. beth the serf.

  • Chris Warren says:

    So you must consider the Government of Kiribati is part of your conspiracy of fraud.

    • Don Aitkin says:

      Chris,

      I’m not sure to whom you intended this comment. But (i) I’m not a conspiracy-monger, (ii) the Government of Kiribati has a clear interest in our believing that SLR is rising catastrophically for its people, and (iii) the data show nothing of the kind. Given the choice, do you prefer BoM or Kiribati as the right source of truth?

      • Chris Warren says:

        Don

        I do not think you have used the word “fraud”. I have previously identified those who fraud monger.

        Officals in-country probably have a better idea of on-the-ground reality than some remote expert – unless they have done a site visit.

        You seem to be imputing bad faith into the government of Kiribati.

        • spangled drongo says:

          “You seem to be imputing bad faith into the government of Kiribati.”

          After Christmas, chrissie, give the real world a try.

        • Don Aitkin says:

          Not bad faith – just self interest.

          • spangled drongo says:

            When foreign aid probably exceeds the Kiribati govt’s budget and they are probably getting $20million per mm plus all the tea and sympathy why wouldn’t anyone fudge a mm or two.

            After all, they didn’t invent this racket, they’re just doing what they’re told.

            And the chrissies of this world are just dying to be led up the garden path.

      • NH says:

        BOM has the rate of SLR at Kiribati as 3.8 mm/yr since 1992.

  • spangled drongo says:

    Merry Christmas, Don and all!!!!

  • Neville says:

    Everyone have a safe and enjoyable Xmas and all the best for 2017. Ken Stewart has used his maths and science background to look at temps in different ways. Here he looks at running trends for the globe and all the regions. He uses UAH V 6 and his summary at the end helps to explain things. The early years of the graphs are chaotic but they do settle down as more years are added.
    https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2016/12/22/dig-and-delve-part-1-running-trends/#comments

  • spangled drongo says:

    Now here’s a beaut book chrissie should treat himself to for Christmas awa a copy for his mate Al [age 7 and up] :

    “This beautiful, full color summary explains in simple terms why polar bears are thriving despite the recent loss of Arctic sea ice. It’s written in a question and answer format, in language that readers of all ages can understand (age 7 and up). The book takes a sensible, big-picture approach that many readers will appreciate and is based on the most up-to-date information available.”

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/1541123336/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&tag=wattsupwithth-20&qid=1482585013&sr=1-1&keywords=Polar+Bear+Facts+%26+Myths

  • Neville says:

    I think the recent Matt Ridley talk at the Royal Society easily refuted most of the lies and exaggerations of their CAGW scare. When adding all the benefits of extra co2 in the atmosphere it can be shown that the positive side of the ledger more than compensates for any small negative problems that may emerge.

    Here is the video and PDF of the lecture.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5M1qtN62yk&t=62s

    http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2016/10/Ridley-GWPFlecture.pdf

  • Neville says:

    Could another mechanism for warming be a reduction in wind speed over a period of time? I remember reading years ago that winds over OZ had been stronger back in the earlier 20th century. This theory says that weaker winds would cause a reduction in cold deep ocean water reaching the surface and over time causing the surface water to warm and the atmosphere as well.
    Here is the article from WUWT.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/26/warming-by-less-upwelling-of-cold-ocean-water/

    Here is one graph for global wind speed from 1885 to 2015. Certainly a big reduction in surface wind speed over the last 135 years. And certainly a big reduction since the late 1970s.

    http://www.bluehill.org/climate/annwind.gif

    And here is a quote from Vautard et al.

    “Vautard, Robert, et al. “Northern Hemisphere atmospheric stilling partly attributed to an increase in surface roughness.” Nature Geoscience 3.11 (2010): 756-761.

    “Surface winds have declined in China, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, the United States and Australia over the past few decades1–4. The precise cause of the stilling is uncertain. Here, we analyse the extent and potential cause of changes in surface wind speeds over the northern mid-latitudes between 1979 and 2008, using data from 822 surface weather stations. We show that surface wind speeds have declined by 5–15% over almost all continental areas in the northern mid-latitudes, and that strong winds have slowed faster than weak winds. In contrast, upper-air winds calculated from sea- level pressure gradients, and winds from weather reanalyses, exhibited no such trend.”

    • spangled drongo says:

      Neville, back in the ’70s I used to do a fair bit of offshore racing in boats built to the International Offshore Rule and in that era big yachts with small sail areas were often the winners on handicap because a small sail area gave them all the horsepower they needed in the strong winds that prevailed then and the greater waterline length gave them a higher max speed, so they minimised their handicap while maximising their speed.

      In the late ’70s I noticed a marked drop in ocean wind speed and at an international series around that time I reversed the favoured procedure and went for max sail area and min waterline length anticipating light airs in what was normally a strong trade wind area.

      As a result we were fortunate enough to win handicap and line honours in every race and didn’t drop a single point, and won that int’l series.

      That really brought home to me the truth of what you say about change in wind speeds. Also, just look at the big sail areas carried by offshore racing yachts today.

      That’s also when “global warming” started, when the great Pacific Shift started and when we stopped getting cyclones in SEQ and NENSW.

      It happened almost overnight.

      Nothing to do with progressive human emissions.

  • Neville says:

    SD I’m sure that we’ve had zip trend in extreme weather events since 1900. Bolt quotes the 2013 IPCC AR5 report in this article and finds that they had to reassess many of their scary stories since 1990.

    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/no-steel-roof-required-ipcc-dials-back-the-fear-of-extreme-weather/news-story/b58f3bf129e2bbd6acf490bd273bb0cd

    BTW here is the latest BOM update on severe and non severe cyclones for OZ. See lower trends for both from the graph. None of this matches Gore’s AIT nonsense at all. But don’t worry if they vote for Labor/Greens next election they’ll definitely waste many more billions $ to MITIGATE??? this NON PROBLEM. What a con and fra-d.

    http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/climatology/trends.shtml

    • spangled drongo says:

      Yes, Neville, more technology to find extremes but still less located.

      Unprecedented!!

      • margaret says:

        “Most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.” ~Leo Tolstoy

        • spangled drongo says:

          If you choose to pay attention, marg, you may have noticed that Perpetual Loyal just wiped ~ 5 hours of the race record due to the pleasantly mild weather conditions in the Sydney-Hobart instead of getting the usual Southerly Buster.

          Not evidence of anything, simply an indication, but an all-time record none the less.

        • spangled drongo says:

          But Tolstoy is right. There are many professors who spout AGW with great conviction, not because they understand it but because it is the basis of their philosophy.

          A corollary is Upton Sinclair’s “‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'”

          Can’t quite put my finger on who that reminds me of.

  • Neville says:

    Thanks for that Margaret, I couldn’t agree more. Gore, Flannery etc and all of the other silly urgers should read that statement and wake up. The mitigation of their so called CAGW is an impossibility, even if all countries followed Paris COP 21 to the letter.
    Simple maths and science shows no measurable difference in temp by 2100. And that’s using a much higher sensitivity ( ECS) than the latest studies are showing.

  • beththeserf says:

    From paper by Professor William M Gray available @
    http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu

    ‘ GCMs assume that an increase in atmospheric CO2
    will cause weak global warming and an increase in
    global precipitationthat will lead to a large increase
    in upper-level water vapor and cloudiness. They
    simulate that this increase in water vapor and
    cloudiness will block large amounts of infrared
    radiation emitted to space. New observations by
    satellite and reanalysis data, however, do not
    support these GCM assumptions. The global
    warming that has occurred since the mid-1970s
    has been associated with a modest decrease of
    global upper tropospheric water vapor and an
    increase of Outgoing LongwaveRadiation (OLR).
    These measurements contradict model predictions.’

  • Mitch67 says:

    I don’t know much about the details, but what — snip — causes our record hot El Nino????

    If not greenhouse effect? what options apply???????????

    Is the impossibility of mitigation good news or bad news???????????

  • Don Aitkin says:

    Mitch, you are a new commenter, so you need to know that the first word I snipped is banned from this website, if it is addressed to readers, as I inferred was the case. As for el Nino, just look it up. The el Nino/la Nina sequence is part of the Southern Oscillation Index (look that up too). Neither seems to have anything to do with greenhouse gas emissions. It is simply a recurring aspect of weather that tends to give those in eastern Australia hot dry periods and cool wet periods. It seems to have been happening for hundreds of years.

  • Neville says:

    In his talk at the Royal Society Matt Ridley had this to say about the RCP 8.5 ( a forcing of 8.5 watts /sq metre) scenario. I would guess that under 1% of the population understands what this means and how ridiculous are their future assumptions. Here is the Ridley quote.

    “What’s more, all the high estimates of warming are based on an economic and demographic scenario called RCP 8.5, which is a very, very unrealistic one.

    It assumes that population growth stops decelerating and speeds up again.

    It assumes that trade and innovation largely cease.

    It assumes that the ability of the oceans to absorb CO2 fails.

    It assumes that despite all this the income of the average person trebles.

    And most absurd of all, it assumes that we go back to using coal for almost everything, including to make motor fuel, so that by 2100 we are using ten times as much coal as we are today.

    In short, it is a barking mad scenario, yet whenever you hear a scientist or a politician say something like we are committed to warming of “up to” four degrees, that – and implausibly high sensitivity – is what they are assuming, often without knowing it”. End of Ridley quote.

    The obvious points he makes against this “barking mad scenario” doesn’t stop much of the MSM and numerous con merchants peddling these fantasies to a gullible percentage of the population.

    The point about coal use increasing by a factor of ten is straight out of a fairy tale and shows up nowhere in any of the genuine future projections for fossil fuels. How have we been so easily conned by these lies? And who would have the nerve to challenge their absurdities in other major MSM outlets? This fra-dulent garbage has had a free rein for decades and yet everyone in the MSM continues to look the other way.

    Here is a post by David Middleton talking about these different Representative Concentration Pathways ( RCPs) He correctly calls his 2016 post ” RCP 8.5 part 2 The Stuff Nightmares are made from.”.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/04/06/rcp-8-5-part-deux-the-stuff-nightmares-are-made-from/

  • Chris Warren says:

    Mitch67

    I think the record El Nino is caused by GHGs in that they increase the baseline on which the fluctuations Don referred to, over-lay. GHGs cause a ratcheting effect over time.

    I do not think that the recent peak has ever occurred in the last hundreds of years. Something new is afoot.

    On this basis it is possible that the next similar fluctuation (whatever cause) may reach even higher levels.

    • Don Aitkin says:

      Chris and Mitch: You need to do some homework. Those of the orthodox persuasion suggest that there is a link, but even Kevin Trenberth says ‘maybe’. Chris
      thinks’ that there has never been a hotter el Nino since the last one, but in fact we have no evidence of any consequence for anything earlier than the 20th century. Just search for ‘el Nino and global warming’. You won’t get anything convincing either way.

      • Nga says:

        Don says: “You need to do some homework. Those of the orthodox persuasion suggest that there is a link, but even Kevin Trenberth says ‘maybe’.”

        Kevin Trenberth writing earlier this year:

        “In the United States over the next several months, El Niño is expected to cause heavy rains across the South, with the potential for coastal flooding in California, along with relatively mild and dry weather in the northern states. Global climate change, which, along with the El Niño, is making 2015 the warmest year on record, is likely to amplify these impacts.”

        https://theconversation.com/what-north-america-can-expect-from-el-nino-51959

        More Don words of wisdom: ” Chris thinks’ that there has never been a hotter el Nino since the last one, but in fact we have no evidence of any consequence for anything earlier than the 20th century. ”

        There may be “no evidence of any consequence” to suggest Fred’s house will be flooded, blown over, burned to the ground or burgled next year but if Fred doesn’t fork out a significant amount of his annual income on an insurance policy we will all rightly think Fred is a reckless and silly man. Normally, leading opinionators on both the Left and Right have understood the importance of prudence and planning for unexpected events, but the Anglosphere Right now sees reckless Fred having fun in his white shoes and shiny new polyester suit and want to join him at the Casino.

        • spangled drongo says:

          Enge luv, what would really make Fred a reckless and silly man is if he spent ten times the value of his house each year on insurance premiums as you silly alarmists want us all to do.

          For something that is more likely a bonus than a risk.

        • Bryan Roberts says:

          ‘Fred’ can insure his house against damage because these are known risks. David can explain why insurance companies employ statisticians. ‘Fred’ can insure against climate change all he likes. If it eventuates, he will never collect, if it doesn’t, he has wasted his money.

          • spangled drongo says:

            But Bryan, you’ll note that it is only the “Anglosphere Right” who are the wicked people here.

            Surely you really meant Right Wing WASMs, enge?

            “Fred” is a wee bit vague for true feminist, racist, sexist and victimist purposes.

      • Chris Warren says:

        Anyone can do homework.

        Here it is: ftp://ftp.bom.gov.au/anon/home/ncc/www/sco/soi/soiplaintext.html [19th, 20th and 21 st centuries]

        This just shows that the fluctuations of SOI do not explain or cause the recent record temperature compared to raised temperatures during similar SOI periods. The current SOI trend is not a record SOI trend and when the SOI trend was greater than now, the peak temperature was lower.

        The only difference appears to be greenhouse gases.

        • spangled drongo says:

          “The current SOI trend is not a record SOI trend and when the SOI trend was greater than now, the peak temperature was lower.

          The only difference appears to be greenhouse gases.”

          Wow! What deduction chrissie!! What science!!

          Whaddabout even more alarmists trying to squeeze more dancing angels onto that pinhead?

      • David says:

        What wafel! We have broken global temperature records three years running during the current el Nino. Ipso facto global warming.

        • spangled drongo says:

          Davey when are you going to get back to me on your opinion of centennial Nat Var for the last 80 centuries?

          That would be helpful in assessing your “broken global temperature records” but you seem to be avoiding the issue.

          This may help:

          http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/histo3.png

          Surely you agree that climate has changed in the past?

          So what’re your thoughts on how much natural variability per century occurred during the moderate times of the Holocene?

          It’s not as if I’m asking you to quantify the nasty times like the end of the Younger Dryas when climate warmed 10c in a few decades.

          Also, any other of you climate concerned, chrissie, enge, rossie, jimb et al.

          This is your chance to falsify the sceptics claims big time.

  • Neville says:

    ENSO change is related to the warm and cool phases of the PDO. Here is a reconstruction of the PDO from 993 to 1996. This uses NOAA data and you’ll note that the cool and warm phases are much longer and more extreme than the recent 1900 to 2014 period. And don’t forget that the strong la nina during the recent Brisbane and east coastal flooding was the strongest la nina since 1917.
    It seems that co2 is a magic pixie dust that can deliver stronger la ninas as well as stronger el ninos? That strong la nina actually put a gully in the satellite SLR graph that can still be seen today. At the time they even stated that much of that water ended up in inland OZ It’s amazing what 1 part co2 increase in 10,000 parts of the air we breathe can achieve over the last 200 + years.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_decadal_oscillation#/media/File:PDO1000yr.svg

    Here is the 1900 to 2014 PDO graph.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_decadal_oscillation#/media/File:PDO.svg

  • Neville says:

    Here is the QLD govt’s Long Paddock rainfall chart 1890 to 2016. At the bottom you’ll see the IPO and SOI graphs. The IPO are the smooth longer periods and the SOI are the shorter spikes. While the IPO is different than the PDO it is similar and the two graphs look fairly close to me. I can’t see any co2 influence within the two graphs since 1950.

    Note that the chart of rainfall is not JAN to DEC but is APRIL to MAR to suit the ENSO cycle. This is taken from BOM data.

    https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/products/pdf/australiasvariablerainfall.pdf

  • Chris Warren says:

    Yes, Neville’s data shows that SOI was much, much greater in the past, so cannot be associated with record temperatures.

    So what is the explanation of record El Nino temperatures now?

    What has changed?

  • Neville says:

    Chris, I don’t see much change. According to the York UNI tool RSS 3 TLT satellite data shows just 0.45 c/ century warming since 1998. (IPCC cherry pick, not mine) And no stat sig warming for over 22 years RSS and over 23 years UAH V6. But if you want to desperately base your calculations on one big year’s NATURAL el nino temp spike that’s your choice, but you won’t be taken seriously.

    Also I’ve given you a thousand years of NOAA data that seems to lock in PDO trends that sometimes lasted for centuries. So what caused those much longer, extreme trends when co2 levels were about 280ppm?

    • Chris Warren says:

      Neville

      I do not think that the current big years natural spike caused the record temperatures. Presumably the current record temperatures are another aspect of whatever is causing the 0.45c increase from one El Nino peak to the next. This is a ratcheting effect that corroborates GHG theory.

      What else could be causing this: http://www.bom.gov.au/tmp/cc/global_t.global.0112.5513.png ?

      If this trend continues what are the consequences?

      How can this trend be reversed?

  • spangled drongo says:

    Chrissie, do you really think that total 0.8c of warming over the last 176 years following the coldest period in civilisation which represents that same rate of warming [~ 0.45c / century] is something to panic about?

    I would suggest that if we had put all the thermometers in rural areas you would now be alarmed at how cool the earth was becoming.

    Relax, chrissie luv, the weather is beautiful.

    http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:2016/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:2016/trend

    • Ross says:

      Yes Drongo. And if you put your thermomètres in your fridge….really, really cold.
      Perhaps a new ice age?
      I think that’s why real scientists call it ‘global’ warming.
      Happy new year. Let’s hope it’s cooler than the last (globally).

      • spangled drongo says:

        You can’t possibly conceive, rossie, that all the human land change that has occurred since the IR could influence thermometers [that are almost all kept in those locations] in excess of 0.45c per century?

        And if that were the case, would that excess then prove that ACO2 was causing cooling?

        • Ross says:

          Truly, Drongo? Gosh!
          Time to present your paper, Drongo. The world awaits.

          • spangled drongo says:

            Hand-on-heart, rossie, can you honestly state that all the incredible construction of tar and cement that has taken place on earth since the industrial revolution, where most of the thermometers are placed and from which the rest of the [cooler] world is homogenised and infilled, hasn’t increased global temps by way in excess of the measured 0.45c per century?

            Just dying to get your rationalising on this.

      • spangled drongo says:

        Rossie, AGW has four possible causes. 1/ Nat Var 2/ ACO2e 3/ Land change [UHI] and 4/ Fakery at the Bakery:

        http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Screen-Shot-2016-12-28-at-5.45.44-AM-1.gif

        With Nat Var at twice what we’re seeing, Land change/UHI at up to ten times and FatB at twice, the only one we cannot quantify being ACO2e, it must therefore be producing huge amounts of cooling.

  • Chris Warren says:

    Drongo

    You are not making much sense. It is all a jumble of jibberish.

    What do you meant that AGW is caused by “Nat Var”?

    • spangled drongo says:

      My mistake, chrissie, sorry.

      Should have been GW, not AGW.

      You alarmists have brain-washed me into being guilty.

    • spangled drongo says:

      But don’t let that stop you from giving me your considered opinion on how much cooling ACO2e may be causing. will you, chrissie.

      • David says:

        Spang, humour me. What is your “half natural variarion argument”? Is it something you invented yourself or is someone else to blame?

        • spangled drongo says:

          Davey, I thought all you erudite climate worriers were spending a fair part of your day trying to undermine that peer reviewed paper that claimed Nat Var for the last 80 centuries worked out at 0.98c per century.

          It has been quoted here but I don’t have it however I’m sure enge et al can supply it seeing as they all obsess over how, in spite of all those huge and frequent bumps in the ice cores, it just couldn’t be.

          It’s what you might call a hockey stick with feeling.

          Happy New Year, Don and everyone !!!

        • spangled drongo says:

          Davey, Dr Philip Lloyd, physicist and climate scientist.

          Abstract:

          “There has been widespread investigation of the drivers of changes in global temperatures. However, there has been remarkably little consideration of the magnitude of the changes to be expected over a period of a few decades or even a century. To address this question, the Holocene records from several ice cores up to 8000 years before present were examined. The differences in temperatures between all records which are approximately a century apart were determined, after any trends in the data had been removed. The differences were close to normally distributed. The average standard deviation of temperature over a century was 0.98 ± 0.27 oC.
          This suggests that while some portion of the temperature change observed in the 20th century was probably caused by greenhouse gases, there is a strong likelihood that the major portion was due to natural variations. “

          • David says:

            Ok so Philip Lloyd is to blame.

          • spangled drongo says:

            Well, Davey, at least he had the honesty and gumption to attempt to quantify this:

            http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/histo3.png

            Now tell me, with your statistical knowledge, what you think might be a fair interpretation of these highs and lows of ~ 3c climate variation for this period?

            I would suggest that 0.98c is a very conservative estimate.

            And seeing that we are currently only ~ half that, you can change the sheets and go back to bed.

          • spangled drongo says:

            Still no idea on that one, Davey?

            Stats letting you down?

            Why not try a bit of Schrödinger’s?

          • spangled drongo says:

            Still waiting for davey’s answer. As the late, great John Daly used to say, “Still waiting for greenhouse”.

            50 hours+ and still no idea, hey davey?

            Hellloooo !!! dave….anyone…. just a simple estimate maybe?

  • Neville says:

    Chris your BOM link didn’t work. But use a low point on the RSS V 3 TLT data from March 1997 (1997.25) and there is still just 0.56 c century warming. So definitely no high point CPick used by me.

    And you can go back to 1994.99 0.84 c / century and 1993.99 0.098 c/ century if you like. But I think SD is correct, if you allow for nat variation and land use and the UHIE you can account for a lot of the warming since 1850 and 1950.

    And the LIA was a low point for the Holocene and any slight temp increase since 1850 ( HAD 4 shows 0.5 c/ century) is definitely a good thing. Of course coastal land has increased over the last 30 years and glacier retreat has slowed since 1950. Also the warming trend on Greenland was faster in the earlier 20th century than the recent warming. No help from co2 in that faster Greenland trend 80 to 90 years ago and increased co2 levels since 1950 don’t help your case with all of the above.

    But Chris I’ve been asking you the same question over and over if you’re really concerned by this non problem. What can you do about it? And please remember the developing countries and all the info I’ve given you from the EIA, IEA and Lomborg’s PR study covering Paris COP 21. And please no wishful thinking, just simple maths and science will do.

  • Chris Warren says:

    Neville

    I think you are wasting time. There is absolutely no reason to pick 1997.25 or any other of your sought out selections.

    It must have taken you a lot of trial and error to get such unrepresentative cherry-picks.

    If you use the full data set you will find the satellite trends are:

    RSSv3.3 TLT – 1.35 century
    RSSv3.3 TTT – 1.28 century
    RSSv4.0 TTT – 1.79 century
    UAHv5.6 TLT – 1.54 century

    These results double and even triple your claims.

    If you want to play cherry-picking games why not try 2011??? Then RSSv3.3 TLT gives you over 8 degrees per century.

    This is the recent trend over 5 years. And it is the relatively recent trend that seems to pose the problem.

    What is the explanation of this global pattern?

    http://archive.is/yDGP3/7946d3ab024be303bc8008f63cb0b49d1f8a12bd.png

    What has changed since 1900 to cause this warming?

  • Neville says:

    Chris I’ve explained why I consider it to be a non problem. But please tell us how to mitigate your so called CAGW? I’m sure we’ll all be interested to have your answer.

  • Chris Warren says:

    Neville

    So far I see no possibility for mitigating CAGW because our society is addicted to fossil fuels and fossil fuel companies are behaving like tobacco companies. This destroys any sense of social consensus necessary for democratic action.

    In any case, you can only mitigate what you understand. So if greenhouse gases are not the cause of recent global warming – what is?

    Why was 2015 the hottest year on record, and why was the period to November 2016 even hotter?

    Why have global temperatures been rising as shown here?

    http://archive.is/yDGP3/7946d3ab024be303bc8008f63cb0b49d1f8a12bd.png

    If you tell me what the alternative cause is – then maybe some options for mitigation will emerge.

    You are putting the cart before the horse.

    • Don Aitkin says:

      Chris,

      One response to your somewhat rhetorical questions is ‘We don’t know’. It seems that you think there is an answer, and if it’s not A it must be B. My take on it is that the data are insufficient, too small in time, and too imprecise to allow good answers leading to sensible political strategies having a positive outcome. We don’t even know what a positive outcome would be. It is not even clear that ‘mitigation’ is necessary. What has happened so far with a small amount of warming is more food and a greener planet.

      • Chris Warren says:

        Don

        The data are sufficient.

        The precision is adequate.

        There is only one positive answer – reduce greenhouse atmospheric concentrations.

        The rate of warming is not small although you can manufacture a small rate if you pick your period carefully enough.

        And the rate of CO2 flow into the atmosphere is increasing when it needs to be negative.

        It is a short-run fools paradise to seek to increase food by pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.

        This is climate terrorism.

        • Don Aitkin says:

          Chris, as I have said before, you are a believer, and you seem to me to hang on to your beliefs whatever anyone says or whatever evidence they put forward.

          ‘The data are sufficient’ This is simply an assertion, despite the clear evidence that earlier than 1950 we have little data about temperatures in the oceans, 70 per cent of the world’s surface. You yourself have said you only want to look at satellite temperatures — that’s only from 1979. There is a world of historical documentation about rises and falls in temperatures in the last 2000 years. Don’t they mean anything to you?

          ‘The precision is adequate’ Another assertion. Adequate for your belief, maybe, but not for carbon taxes or their like.

          Your second-last sentence is the wrong way around. All that is suggested is that an increase in CO2 has been accompanied by a greener planet and more food. You turn it into a silly inference that fools did this, deliberately.

          ‘climate terrorism’ Goodness me! Relax, and calm down.

          • David says:

            Don, even if we were to only look at data from 1979, we could ask ourselves what is the probability that 2014, 2015 and 2016 would result in the third highest, second highest and highest temperatures, respectively if there was no global warming. You would recall from when you “taught the stuff” that the answer is 1/38 x 1/37 x 1/36. = 1/50,616.

          • spangled drongo says:

            Meanwhile, davey, back in the real world, no statistically significant warming for the last 18 years:

            http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/

            Scusa, la pausa continua.

      • David says:

        “…the data are insufficient…”

        But Don, one of your limitations is that you do not know how to interpret a confidence interval.

        • JimboR says:

          Indeed. From a very large field, the winner of my silliest comment for 2016 award goes to this gem:

          “‘0.60 C ± 0.20C’ …. one must assume that a group of chaps sat around arguing about how uncertain that 0.6C figure was and plumped collectively for 0.20C. ”

        • Bryan Roberts says:

          David, Wikipedia knows how to interpret a confidence interval. I suggest you refer to it, as you have clearly demonstrated your lack of understanding. It is pointless blaming other people for your own inadequacies.

          • JimboR says:

            “as you (David) have clearly demonstrated your lack of understanding (of confidence intervals)”

            Bryan, I think I missed where David did that, do you have a pointer please?

            We’re blessed with two highly qualified people in this field: Don “I used to teach this stuff” Aitkin and Bryan “I graduated with honours in this stuff” Roberts, yet neither of you seem willing to use your expertise to show where the error occurred in the calculation of the confidence interval in question. Rather than using your maths skills to blow the result out of the water, one of you prefers to rely on his “hackles” and the other on childish insults.

          • Bryan Roberts says:

            Jimbo, David has yet to demonstrate any understanding of statistics that he cannot have obtained by five minutes googling. Frankly, I resent being told I do not understand First Year probability theory.

            David simply asserts that I (and Don) don’t understand confidence intervals. I won’t speak for Don, but I do. So there you have it. I have given you my credentials, David can volunteer his, and you can take your pick.

          • JimboR says:

            Bryan, I’m more interested in David’s contributions here than his qualifications. I may have missed some, but most of his arguments seems sound to me, so I was surprised to read “you (David) have clearly demonstrated your lack of understanding”. I think that claim warrants a pointer to at least an example or two.

            No doubt I’ve missed many of your contributions as well, but the most “mathsy” I could find from you in recent history is this gem:

            “However, I invite you to consider the situation in which the data used to calculate the confidence intervals are themselves subject to uncertainty? ”

            Really?

  • Neville says:

    Hey Chris I see you’ve partly joined the real world. There is zip we can do to change the temp by 2100 that could be measured. And consumers/voters will never allow stupid pollies to belt them with useless renewables if the price becomes too painful. Unfortunately we’ll have to experience this scenario after the next federal election if the polls are accurate.

    BTW I’ve told you plenty of times why I think you’re wrong about your CAGW. If you consider this slight warming after the recovery from the LIA is unusual then you’ve got the problem, not me. Check out the last 5 interglacials and earlier warmer periods during the Holocene,like the Holocene climate optimum.

    And here is another way of looking at temp change from 1880 to 2014, using the GISS temp record Not so scary is it?

    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lPGChYUUeuc/VLhzJqwRhtI/AAAAAAAAAS4/ehDtihKNKIw/s1600/GISTemp%2BKelvin%2B01.png

    • Chris Warren says:

      Neville

      You have fell victim to a fraud.

      Here is the LOTI source.

      http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/

      Just set the systems “Mean Period” to Annual (Dec-Nov).

      All the facts and truth will be revealed.

    • spangled drongo says:

      Yes, Neville, a little scepticism detected however, chris prefers those lumpy graphs so he can use the bits he likes.

      So here’s another lumpy one, chris, where the “hottest year on record” takes on a slightly different significance:

      https://i2.wp.com/www.climate4you.com/images/VostokTemp0-420000%20BP.gif

      Are you sceptical enough yet to possibly consider that when we know the causes for all the historic warmings, we might be better placed to know what’s happening now?

      One thing we do know is that even though those historic trends were much greater for much longer they ALL eventually terminated.

      • Ross says:

        Drongo ignores Chris’s last request and moves on. “Try this one, then, Chris….”
        And so it goes…

        • spangled drongo says:

          Not at all, rossie, I was replying to Neville prior to Chris’s reply, got distracted for a while, then finished and posted without checking home. Shouldn’t have done it but when you’re busy that’s what happens.

          It deserved to be ignored anyway but it seems you are very impressed with GISS infilling….

          And when alarmists refer to evidence as “gish gallop”, say no more.

          Maybe you really mean GISS gallop?

          And rossie, I’ll let you into a little secret. When, with strict benchmark observations, you have seen no indication of SLR in your lifetime then there is no net land ice melt and when there is no net land ice melt there is no GW other than Nat Var.

          You don’t need to be a brain-washed “climate scientist”, just pay attention.

          Try it !!

  • Neville says:

    Here are some of the extra co2 benefits for the world that Matt Ridley lists in his talk at the RS.

    6 Vested interests
    Let me turn to the topic of fossil fuels. To paraphrase Monty Python, What have fossil
    fuels done for us? Apart from a new continent’s worth of green vegetation. And
    removing the need to cook over a wood fire, the smoke from which is one of the
    biggest killers in the world, dispatching over three million people a year according to
    the World Health Organisation. And removing the need to fetch wood from the forest
    and dismantle an ecosystem in doing so.
    Apart from that what have fossil fuels done for us? Well, I suppose they supply
    the power to pump water so that it does not have to be fetched. They allow electric
    light and hence help literacy and education. They bring the refrigeration of food and
    vaccines. They enable the child to catch a lift to school. They make the fertilizer that
    raises farm yields, ending most hunger and sparing land for wildlife.
    Yes, but apart from ending starvation, enabling kids to get to school, refrigerating
    vaccines, boosting literacy, pumping water, reducing the pressure on forests, reducing
    indoor air pollution, and creating 14% more green vegetation – apart fromall this,
    what have fossil fuels done for us?
    ‘Fossil fuels don’t take a safe climate and make it dangerous, they take a dangerous
    climate and make it safe’, says Alex Epstein.

    And Dr Indur Goklany’s study also highlights the many benefits of extra co2 to the world since the start of the Industrial revolution. Once again human well-being has greatly increased over the last 250+ years. Today we also have proof that the Earth is greening, with all the benefits that will add to the biosphere.

    http://www.thegwpf.com/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf

  • Neville says:

    Here is quick read from the 2015 Dr Goklany study concerning the huge reduction in deaths from extreme weather events and malaria since 1900. Just for Nga.

    Extreme weather
    “Although there has been an increase in warm days, accompanied by a decline in cold
    days, there have been no general increases in the intensity or frequency of other
    weather extremes, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, or droughts. Other
    recent studies confirm this for droughts and floods. Tropical cyclones, a category
    that includes hurricanes and typhoons, are neither more frequent nor more powerful.
    Data from 1970 onward indicate that global and Northern Hemisphere accumulated
    cyclone energy is currently below its long-term average. There has not been a major
    hurricane landfall in the US since 2005 (as of this writing). Moreover, the average
    number of strong-to-violent tornadoes over the past few years is lower today than it
    was in the 1950s, 1960s or early-to-mid-1970s.
    More importantly, despite a four-fold rise in population and much more complete
    reporting of such events, since the 1920s deaths from all extreme weather events,
    including those caused by extreme heat, have declined by 93%, while death rates
    have declined by 98%.
    There has been no increase in economic losses from extreme weather once one
    accounts for the growth in aggregate wealth, a factor which automatically increases
    the economic assets at risk.
    Disease
    Claims that vector-borne diseases such as malaria will increase are also not borne out
    by the facts. The global mortality rate for malaria has declined: from 194 per 100,000
    in 1900 to 9 per 100,000 in 2012, a reduction of 95.4%. Equally important, it is
    less prevalent and substantially less endemic in its reduced range”.

  • Neville says:

    Does anyone remember this being reported on their ABC or Fairfax in Dec 2016. I praised Dr Hansen for telling the world that “Paris COP 21 was BS and fra-ud,” but he certainly seems to be very confused over the last few months. In 2006 he told the world that we only had 10 years to act and in Oct 2016 he said we need to go negative on co2 emissions. See quote below. Amazing how that Dec revision happened less than a month after Trump won the Presidency of the USA. Suddenly everything now seems very flexible. And Hansen is the father of CAGW and was Gore’s chief adviser on AIT. Here’s the link.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/03/shock-the-father-of-global-warming-james-hansen-dials-back-alarm/

    New View (December 2016):

    “Stopping human-made climate change is inherently difficult, because of the nature of the climate system: it is massive, so it responds only slowly to forcings; and, unfortunately, the feedbacks in the climate system are predominately amplifying on time scales of decades-centuries.

    The upshot is that there is already much more climate change “in the pipeline” without any further increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs). That does not mean the problem is unsolvable, but it does mean that we will need to decrease the amount of GHGs in the relatively near future.

    The ponderous response of the climate system also means that we don’t need to instantaneously reduce GHG amounts. However, despite uncertainties about some climate processes, we know enough to say that the time scale on which we must begin to reduce atmospheric GHG amounts is measured in decades, not centuries. Given the fact that the fastest time scale to replace energy systems is decades, that means that we must get the political processes moving now. And that won’t happen until the public has understanding of what is actually needed and demands it.

    Previous posts on the climate science and climate policy views of James Hansen can be found here.

    Anthony Watts commentary:
    I think Dr. Hansen has come to the conclusion that climate sensitivity is not as sensitive to carbon dioxide as it was once thought to be in his original a, b, and c scenarios from 1988. We’ve noted previously, that it is 150% wrong.

    Revised View–Need to Go Emissions Negative (October 2016)

    “Contrary to the impression favored by governments, the corner has not been turned toward declining emissions and GHG amounts. The world is not effectively addressing the climate matter, nor does it have any plans to do so, regardless of how much government bureaucrats clap each other on the back.…. Negative CO2 emissions, i.e., extraction of CO2 from the air, is now required.”

  • David says:

    “Jimbo, David has yet to demonstrate any understanding of statistics that he cannot have obtained by five minutes googling. Frankly, I resent being told I do not understand First Year probability theory. David simply asserts that I (and Don) don’t understand confidence intervals. I won’t speak for Don, but I do. So there you have it. I have given you my credentials, David can volunteer his, and you can take your pick.”

    Bryan you write, that my understanding of statistics can be verified by five minutes googling, like its a bad thing. You and Don on the other hand propose a novel interpretation of a confidence interval, that can not be verified in ANY statistical text. Readers can take their pick.

    • Bryan Roberts says:

      David, your main aim in your contributions to this blog seems to be to ‘prove’ Don is wrong. As I intimated previously, I simply don’t care about that issue, and I refuse to debate further elementary probability theory with you.

      To claim that you understand statistical inference because you have read a few blog posts, but I don’t because I have ‘merely’ studied the subject is beyond ludicrous. Please don’t bother referring to this again. It will be a waste of your time, but not of mine.

  • Neville says:

    Amazing the change in Hansen’s alarmism in just a couple of months, yet we forget the delusional garbage that has been fed to weak minded lemmings and group-thinkers over the last few decades. Here’s one of the most delusional stories from a so called secret US Pentagon report in Feb 2004, served up to try and rattle the Bush administration. Of course flogged with gusto by idiot rags like the Guardian.

    Here’s how the Guardian introduces their yarn.

    “Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

    A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

    The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents”.

    Here’s the link to the Guardian insanity and remember next month marks 13 years since this was written. And just 3 years to go before “major EU cities will be sunk beneath rising seas and Britain is plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020”. And yet they wonder why so many people become sceptics. Certainly the AMO may start to change by early 2020s and some cooling could come about, but that is just natural variability of the NH climate. But major EU cities sunk beneath the seas in just 3 years? These Guardian loons are barking mad and they can now join their ABC’s Robyn Williams and his 100 metres SLR by 2100.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver

    By contrast Paul Homewood has a more sane assessment of some of the natural changes during 2016.

    https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/01/01/hottest-year-evah-update/

  • Chris Warren says:

    Neville

    Once again you have just upload rubbish science from climate terrorists who have committed serious fraud and fakery.

    I assume you do not read the stuff you send. Your ” Dr Indur Goklany’s study…” is fraudulent. It asserts that CO2 is

    beneficial because it has increased crop yields by:

    Cotton 51%,
    Soybeans 15%,
    Wheat 17%,
    Corn 9%,
    Sorghum 1%.

    See table 1 (page 7) in Neville’s dodgy “http://www.thegwpf.com/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf”.

    This paper seems to be a self-refereed tract published by GWPF authored by Goklany, a member of GWPF. GWPF also claims

    Plimer and Carter as members – this should be a warning.

    The only evidence Goklany for his statement “observed yield increases could be attributed to carbon dioxide rather
    than technological change” is footnote 33.

    This refers to a proper scientific paper: Attavanich W, McCarl BA (2014), “How is carbon dioxide affecting yields and

    technological progress? A statistical analysis” Climatic Change DOI 10.1007/s10584–014–1128-x

    But these authors only stated:

    ” Ignoring atmospheric CO2 in an econometric model of crop yield likely leads to overestimates of the pure effects of

    technological progress on crop yields of about 51, 15, 17, 9, and 1 % of observed yield gain for cotton, soybeans, wheat,

    corn and sorghum, respectively;”

    In the case of cotton – the 51% figure relates to estimates of technological progress on yields. This is NOT 51% change

    in yields themselves.

    It is absolutely fraudulent to claim this is a yield benefit for increased CO2.

    There has been no change in yields due to CO2 since 1960s.

    IN the case of wheat, Australian yields have been steady at around 1-2 MT per ha. See
    http://archive.is/wzliB.

    In cotton – a relatively new crop – growth in yields show no association with growth in CO2.

    See: http://archive.is/kiBir

    And the same applies to each of the other crops cited by Goklany.

    What utter, utter fraudsters.

    • spangled drongo says:

      Chrissie luv, put down your AK47, give the messengers a break and put your head out the window:

      “For virtually every crop that’s grown in the United States and globally, we see record crop production on just about a yearly basis,”

      IOW, STOP BLITHERING !!!

      • Chris Warren says:

        Cry-baby

        • spangled drongo says:

          Chrissie not only has a big head but he must also have little windows.

          Better try the door, chrissie luv:

          “Studies have shown that higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide affect crops in two important ways: they boost crop yields by increasing the rate of photosynthesis, which spurs growth, and they reduce the amount of water crops lose through transpiration. Plants transpire through their leaves, which contain tiny pores called stomata that open and collect carbon dioxide molecules for photosynthesis. During that process they release water vapor. As carbon dioxide concentrations increase, the pores don’t open as wide, resulting in lower levels of transpiration by plants and thus increased water-use efficiency.”

        • spangled drongo says:

          “What utter, utter fraudsters.”

          Yes, chrissie, the devastation of all that CO2 is everywhere.

          Read it and cry, baby:

          http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/rural-prosperity-farming-golden-era-has-dawned/news-story/65250028f4cb059a91198b9e13c469ad

  • Neville says:

    Chris, I have no doubt that Dr Goklany’s claims about increased crop yields are accurate. But here are a couple of new studies looking at increased crop yields for wheat and maize plus addition of increased co2 levels.
    I hope you understand that even the CSIRO agrees that the planet is greening and as Ridley says, all this has happened in one generation. A remarkable finding. And at least 70% of that greening is due to higher co2 levels.

    First Fitzgerald et al 2016

    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13263/full

    Abebe et al 2016.

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167880915301493

    • Chris Warren says:

      Neville

      If you are going to dogmatically assert:

      ” I have no doubt that Dr Goklany’s claims about increased crop yields are accurate.”

      Then, as the data is easily available at: http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=us&commodity=cotton&graph=yield you are deliberately spreading falsity and untruthfulness, just to suit your preconceived ideology.

      You have also tried to divert attention to whether the planet has greened – but this is not the point. This is taken into account by IPCC. You are just creating smoke and mirrors.

      You only switched to CO2 and effect on crops to divert attention from the fact you could not explain what the latest El Nino temperature peak was mush higher than previous El Nino peak?

  • Neville says:

    Here is Dr Patrick Moore talking about co2. He is an expert about life on earth and explains how co2 is so important for all life on earth. Certainly worth 4.5 minutes of your time.

  • Neville says:

    In Feb 2016 Andrew Bolt wrote a good article about a world boom in the major crops and falling prices because of a glut in so many commodities. OZ has just produced another big grain crop for 2016. You can read Bolt’s list of donkey predictions about failing crops because of climate change. Unbelievable garbage.

    There is also a follow up to his story from the USA quoting the UN’s FAO food index.

    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/another-dud-warming-prediction-crops-boom-and-food-prices-fall/news-story/50d0e1e1f5e5bd733166bf93dc2dfe28

    http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/04/world-food-prices-tumble-near-7-year-low.html

  • Neville says:

    Incredible but it looks like even the NY Times is now playing catch up to the sceptic blogs sites. They’ve just discovered that mild to extreme cold kills many more people than hot weather and heat waves. WUWT covered this ages ago and Lomborg gave it a big coverage in his book nearly 10 years ago.
    The huge UK Lancet study was quoted by all the better sceptic blogs at the time.
    But better late than never for the NY TimesI suppose, although their journos are so clueless you have to wonder that perhaps they tripped over this story by accident.
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/01/cold-is-deadlier-than-heat-ny-times-warning-about-the-winter/

  • Neville says:

    Even our OZ chief scientist is starting to tell part of the truth about our super expensive, idiotic unreliables.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/02/aussie-chief-scientist-renewable-energy-push-hurts-the-poor/

    Guest essay by Eric Worrall

    Australia’s Chief Scientist Alan Finkel has strongly criticised the impact of renewable energy policies on the poor, working class people and migrants.

    Renewable energy push to hit Labor’s heartland

    The Australian12:00AM December 29, 2016
    MICHAEL OWEN SA Bureau Chief Adelaide @mjowen

    Dr Finkel, who is conducting a review of the electricity market for the federal government following the statewide blackout in South Australia in September, said people who rented properties or lived in apartments were limited in their ability to install new technologies.

    Migrants with limited English, people with poor financial literacy and those struggling to make ends meet were at risk of paying ­increased costs to subsidise households or businesses able to invest in new technologies. Passive or loyal consumers who were not ­engaged in managing their electricity demand and costs were vulnerable too, Dr Finkel added.

    The danger was that, as more consumers took greater steps with the aid of technological ­advance­ments to rely less on the grid, the cost of building and maintaining the network would be spread over a smaller number of “vulnerable” users.

    The Australian Energy Market Commission has warned that electricity prices are set to surge during the next two years, largely driven by the ­close of coal-fired power stations in South Australia and Victoria and ongoing investment in wind generation.

    Australian Stock Exchange data showed yesterday that base future contract prices for March were highest in South Australia, which yesterday had its third major blackout in four months. For companies to buy a megawatt of electricity in March, it would cost South ­Australian buyers almost $152.91, compared with $100 in Queensland, $63.75 in NSW and $54.50 in Victoria.

    South Australia, under Labor Premier Jay Weatherill, has a renewable energy generation mix of more than 40 per cent, the highest of any state. The state’s last coal-fired power station closed in May.

    Climate Institute head of policy Olivia Kember said there was a real risk of large numbers of households leaving the grid, which likely would be the result of ongoing policy failure by federal and state governments. “It’s not just a problem for lower-income households, but also apartment dwellers and large industry that needs grid-based power,” she said. “Currently we are seeing coal stations close with only six months’ notice, and no signals to tell the market what is needed to replace them.”

    Australian Energy Council chief executive Matthew Warren said all consumers ultimately would want to be connected to the grid, even as a form of back-up, ­although there was a risk more would be less reliant on it. “The ­reality is if we are going to have a decarbonised system that is going to be reliable, it will cost more and we’ve seen that in South Australia — it is living proof,” he said. “There are a lot of inequities in the system and they are difficult to answer. The inequities can get worse.”

  • Neville says:

    Two more short but very informative and accurate videos about climate change. First Lomborg looks at climate change and asks why it’s alarming.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PWtaackIJU

    Next Alex Epstein looks at the 97% BS that’s been flogged by con merchants like Obama, Holdren, Kerry. Gore, Di Caprio etc to distort the truth.

  • Chris Warren says:

    Neville

    Neville

    It is clear you do not read or understand the stuff you borrow. You have only produced more fraud and cherry-picking.

    If you read Bolts rant you will see clearly that:

    “With large harvests of wheat, barley and sorghum more than outweighed by a drop in the maize crop, world total grains (wheat and coarse grains) production in 2015/16 is estimated to be down by 2% y/y.”

    Note the words “down by 2%”. They contradict Bolts headline “crops boom”.

    Bolt is a right wing provocateur with the same credibility as Carter, Plimer and Monkton.

    You have only spread all his disinformation because you have failed to give any explanation of the record temperatures now being recorded.

    Crop production is highly volatile, and it is cherry picking to just rant over 1 years data. In Auastralia there has been an increase due to favourable rains and increase in hectares – but not due to increased CO2.

    But the increase follows a previous serious decrease of 13%.

    According to ABARE:

    Australia’s summer crop production is estimated to have fallen by 13 per cent in 2015–16 to 3.7 million tonnes, mainly as a result of a fall in rice production.

    http://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/media-releases/2016/positive-season-opening-winter-crops

    Instead of calling other people donkeys, it turns out, you are the donkey.

    • spangled drongo says:

      Chrissie, instead of using ignorant assertions to shoot messengers, try giving us some evidence that CO2, increased from today’s atmosphere of ~ 400 ppm to ~ 500 ppm is going to negatively affect our main fodder crops.

      IOW, STOP BLITHERING and start making some sense.

  • Neville says:

    Dr Spencer’s UAH V 6 TLT for 2016 is 0.50 c, just 0.02 c above 1998. So no stat sig difference between these two very strong NATURAL el nino years. There was a big drop in DEC .

    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2017/01/global-satellites-2016-not-statistically-warmer-than-1998/#comments
    Chris I’ve tried to tell you a number of times that the only reason we’ve had higher temps this year is because of the NATURAL strong el nino. And even using a low point in 1997.1 the RSS V3 TLT trend is still under half of the full trend from 1978 to 2017. IOW the full trend is 1.35/century and the 1997.1 to 2017 trend is just 0.6 c/ century. The IPCC also talked about a hiatus from 1998 to 2013 in the latest AR 5 report. So don’t repeat your silly cherry pick nonsense.

    I’ve also linked to PR studies that show that biosphere greening has increased by 14% since the 1980s and 70% of that increase ( 9.8%) has been attributed to increased co2 levels. I’ve also linked to other PR studies that show higher wheat cropping due to higher co2 levels. Most plants respond to higher co2 levels in the atmosphere. Tomato growers pump very high levels of co2 into greenhouses to gain the benefits of much higher cropping and thus a bigger profit.

    Calling co2 pollution is more pig ignorant nonsense peddled by scientists who should know better.

  • Neville says:

    Here is perhaps more proof that we don’t have a CAGW problem. This study checked out world precipitation over a long period of time, in fact 1.5 million recordings over 114 countries from the past 200+ years.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/03/wholl-stop-the-rain/
    The Abstract of the paper reads:

    “Precipitation measurements made at nearly 1000 stations located in 114 countries were studied. Each station had at least 100 years of observations resulting in a dataset comprising over 1½ million monthly precipitation amounts. Data for some stations extend back to the 1700s although most of the data exist for the period after 1850. The total annual precipitation was found if all monthly data in a given year were present.

    The percentage annual precipitation change relative to 1961-90 was plotted for 6 continents; as well as for stations at different latitudes and those experiencing low, moderate and high annual precipitation totals. The trends for precipitation change together with their 95% confidence intervals were found for various periods of time. Most trends exhibited no clear precipitation change.

    The global changes in precipitation over the Earth’s land mass excluding Antarctica relative to 1961-90 were estimated to be: -1.2 ± 1.7, 2.6 ± 2.5 and -5.4 ± 8.1% per century for the periods 1850-2000, 1900-2000 and 1950-2000, respectively. A change of 1% per century corresponds to a precipitation change of 0.09 mm/year”.

    Note that there is little change over that long period of time , but the 1950 to 2000 period actually shows a drop of minus -5.4mm/century. This seems strange if we are supposed to be living in a warmer world and yet precipitation levels seem to show a drop at the end of the study. Who knows?

  • Chris Warren says:

    Neville

    the only reason we’ve had higher temps this year is because of the NATURAL strong el nino.

    Unproven.

    The latest El Nino was higher than previous 1998, and started from a higher base.

    Please focus on the original problem and not insert various false Bolt, Plimer, Carter etc distractions.

    • spangled drongo says:

      Chrissie is now going to demonstrate for us how much of that 0.02c of warming of the 2016 el Nino above the 1998 el Nino was down to his heavy breathing.

      On Neville’s factual claim: “the only reason we’ve had higher temps this year is because of the NATURAL strong el nino” came chrissie’s: “Unproven”.

      Are you claiming, chrissie, that even without the strong el Nino, 2016 would have been warmer than 1998?

      IOW, that 2016 el Nino was effectively less than 0.02c?

      But more than zero?

      A statistically insignificant el Nino?

      You’re more than a climate botherer, chrissie, you’re getting to be a real climate blitherer.

  • Neville says:

    Here is John Christy’s comment about the 2016 temp and el nino.

    Notes on data released Jan. 3, 2017:

    Globally, 2016 edged out 1998 by +0.02 C to become the warmest year in the 38-year satellite temperature record, according to Dr. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Because the margin of error is about 0.10 C, this would technically be a statistical tie, with a higher probability that 2016 was warmer than 1998. The main difference was the extra warmth in the Northern Hemisphere in 2016 compared to 1998.

    Year GL NH SH TROP
    2016 +0.505 +0.61 +0.40 +0.61 C
    1998 +0.484 +0.51 +0.46 +0.68 C

    “The question is, does 2016’s record warmth mean anything scientifically?” Christy said. “I suppose the answer is, not really.”

    Both 1998 and 2016 are anomalies, outliers, and in both cases we have an easily identifiable cause for that anomaly: A powerful El Niño Pacific Ocean warming event.

    While El Niños are natural climatic events, they also are transient. In the study of climate, we are more concerned with accurately identifying long-term temperature trends than we are with short-term spikes and dips, especially when those spikes and dips have easily identified natural causes.

    • David says:

      Nev, so the hottest year and the second hottest year are “outliers” which you attribute to a “powerful” El Niño effect. So why have the two most recent El Niño been “powerful” ?

  • Chris Warren says:

    Neville

    You have yet again copied irrelevant stuff.

    In 1998 the peak was in April at 0.74 anomaly
    In 2016 the peak was in Feb at 0.83 anomaly

    Data is here: http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt

    You can only get a lower figure if you hunt around and add-in extra months to muddy the waters.

    0.09 is over 4 times what you have cited.

    For the Northern Hemisphere it was much, much worse. The difference between peaks was 0.25 .

    The only reason the NH difference was radically greater was because there is more CO2 emissions in the NH.

    • Ross Handsaker says:

      “The only reason the NH difference was radically greater was because there is more CO2 emissions in the NH”.
      Chris, you should realise that because of the different geography in the Northern Hemisphere (there is a greater land mass than in the Southern Hemisphere), any impact on temperatures (be it an El Nino or La Nina, CO2 etc) will always be greater in the NH. In any event, is an increase of 0.25C over 18 years of any significance? Average global temperatures rose by around 1.00C between 1850 and 1950 and by around the same amount between 1900 and 2000.
      UAH average temperature for 2016 was only 0.02C warmer than 1998, which, if extrapolated over the next 90 years represents an increase of just 0.10C!

      • Chris Warren says:

        Ross

        0.25 is highly significant, if and only if, the cause is increased heat being trapped in the troposphere.

        0.25 would not be significant if it was caused by orbital phenomena or sunspot cycles.

        In the first case, if it continues, the probability of catastrophe increases. In the second, past experience demonstrates that such increases will be limited and will reverse.

        So the real issue is the cause and a side issue is the sheer amount of fraud and false statements coming from the likes of Bolt and Goklany.

  • Don Aitkin says:

    Neville, I know it’s still the holiday period, and I am having a rest, but you’ve posted three comments already today. Could you save the rest for tomorrow? Chris, likewise.

  • Neville says:

    Chris, I don’t think there’s any way to get through to you, so I’ll just repeat myself again. Co2 is a well mixed gas but there is some evidence that the SH levels lag the NH by a few years. Then again satellite data shows higher levels in some areas of the SH at different times of the year. EG from early Oct to Nov. And these SH areas are not heavily industrialized at all. Like Brazil, Africa and off the NW coast of OZ. Burning of biomass could be one cause. Also the only reason we’ve had higher temps in 1998 and 2016 is because of strong el nino events. Just read what Dr Christy says above about these two OUTLIER years.
    And the difference between them is only 0.02 c over that period of 18 years, or about 0.1 c a century. Big deal. So once again your argument that the NH is warming faster than the SH because of higher co2 levels just doesn’t add up.

    http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nasa-observatory-reveals-high-carbon-concentrations-southern-hemisphere-1480224

  • Chris Warren says:

    Neville

    Your cherry-picking is now reaching disgusting levels.

    Your link only provided the distribution during the southern spring when southern CO2 levels are seasonally high. This is deliberate cherry-picking.

    The real facts are here: http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/

    It should not be difficult for you to scroll down to the section headed: “Time Series: 2002-2014”

  • Don Aitkin says:

    Since there will be a new round of 2017 essays, I thought I would finish the 2016 set with an extensive comment on David’s assertion that I do not know how to interpret a confidence interval, more specifically why I don’t accept an assertion from the orthodox that global temperature increased over the past century by 0.6 ± 0.2 degrees Celsius, 0.2 degrees C being the confidence interval.

    For those who need to know, a confidence interval is an estimate drawn from observation of a sample of the population being observed. What is the population we are considering here? It is the globe of planet earth, with a measuring point wherever temperatures are not the same at any point in time: billions of them. What is at issue? It is SST — sea surface temperatures, the measurement of temperature of a point on the oceans of the world at a particular time. For the purposes of measurement, the surface of the globe is divided into a grid of 1728 rectangles, approximately 70 per cent of which are in the world’s oceans. In fact, the ‘point’ is an estimate for a body of water five degrees square, very roughly, a patch of water 540 km by 540 km — or not quite 300,000 square kilometres.

    On land, in areas like the USA and Europe, there would be many points at which temperatures can be taken. One of these grids, for example, encompasses the whole of southern England. There, an average for each day can be taken from a few score points, and an average for the year could be termed (with the usual caveats) ‘robust’.

    In the oceans, on the other hand, for a measuring ‘point’ to be acceptable it has to have at least one record a month for eight months. If it lacks that minimum, the measurement will be an estimate, derived by extrapolating from nearby squares, or from land, or somehow. As it happens, the measurements prior to the Second World War were obtained from ships’ logs, and the method was to drop a bucket over the side, pull it up, and measure the temperature of the water therein. From about 1950, the method changed to readings from thermometers in the ship’s ocean intake. In the satellite era, from about 1980, SST are inferred via proxies, and since 2000 the Argo buoys provide another in situ reading. Readings from buckets, satellites, intakes and buoys cannot be precisely calibrated.

    A map from January 2000 shows the traffic routes used in the first week of the month, said to be busy. I have placed it at the end of the essay above. One can see at once that there is a lot of untrafficked ocean. Indeed, what we in Australia call the Southern Ocean (anything lower than mainland Australia) has hardly any. Much of the Pacific, and a good deal of the Atlantic and Indian oceans are likewise bare of traffic. It follows that we do not have real observations of much of the world’s oceans, and those who do this work provide estimates for what is not measured. The quality of these data is, in my view, very poor indeed, and gets worse the further back we go. Remember, one grid-cell covers 300,000 square kilometres

    Accordingly, it seems just fatuous to provide a confidence interval for data that are not observations at all, but guesses. The error involved is unknown, but you will read statements that all this has been dealt with. In what way, I cannot find. Without such confident statements we would take little notice of these ‘readings’. I am of the view, and I have studied this area before, that prior to about 1950 the data are close to rubbish, which means that statements about average global temperature prior to 1950 are also close to rubbish.

    Tony Brown, who has studied historic temperature data more closely than just about anyone I have read, is similarly sceptical, and I’ll finish with a section of an essay he wrote on Judith Curry’s website Climate etc. His essay is packed with data, very well referenced, and sober in tone.

    With land temperatures we observed we were often comparing apples and oranges. Similarly it can be seen that with SST’s we are mixing a great variety of incompatible methods of collection, can observe that the number of samplings of the ocean are minute in terms of physical numbers, and recognize that the methodology itself is potentially severely flawed. In addition, the limited understanding we have of ocean temperatures drops exponentially the further back in time and the more remote the area, as the measuring points are so limited. To compound the problems, where the data is sparse it is statistically infilled from areas where it may still be sparse.

    None of this will stop Hadley (and others) parsing global SST’s to a fraction and elaborating on the robustness of the answer, which the IPCC and National Governments will then take as proof positive to enact yet more measures to guard against warming.

    The basic historic temperature data, land or surface, used in good faith by climate scientists, statisticians and analysts, does not appear to meet basic quality control measures and are not fit for purpose — that of consistently determining temperatures to tenths of a degree. Historic Sea Surface Temperatures in particular are highly uncertain and should not be considered as any sort of reliable measure.

    It follows, for me, that the use of a confidence interval is quite inappropriate. We have neither any kind of true sample nor any sense of what the true population is. What we are presented with is a mixture of data of different kinds, gathered in many different ways, plus extrapolations and guesses. That the IPCC and others do not even seem to see what is wrong here is another reason why I regard so much of the orthodox claims about global warming to be close to fantasy. To have stated a global warming of 0.6±0.2 degrees C for the 20th century is to assume that all the data are, as Tony Brown says above, ‘fit for purpose’. They aren’t, and could never be. What we have, in such a statement, is pretence. Alas, so much of climate science seems to have the same flavour.

    I will not respond further to claims about my understanding of data or statistics. I am prepared to entertain a debate about SST and the methodology used to derive them. But that will involve a lot of work on the part of David or anyone else, because there is, as I know, a great deal to read, and such reading will involve considerable difficulty in finding out exactly what those concerned do in publishing the data. I would of course be interested to know how, after such work, David might want to continue in his belief that a confidence interval here is indeed appropriate, let alone meaningful.

    • Bryan Roberts says:

      Don, given that David has consistently avoided mentioning any experience in experimental design or statistical analysis, I think it can reasonably be assumed that he has none. He has made not one sensible comment about statistics. He simply reiterates “you are wrong”, followed by references to amateurish web sites. I recall you said he was pretentious, I think he is just a silly man, way out of his depth, and trying to make an impression..

    • David says:

      “The error involved is unknown, but you will read statements that all this has been dealt with. In what way, I cannot find.”

      Of course the error is unknown. The population parameters (mean and standard deviation) and the error are, as a matter of course unknown. That is a pretty much the standard starting position for any frequentist statistical analysis. Statistics was invented to enable estimates of the population parameters to be estimated from a sample.

      Its no use bemoaning “In what way, I cannot find” Open a text book or ask your brother. In the mean time I have grabbed this reference off my bookshelf.

      Gujarati Basic Econometric 1988 2 Edition Section 13.6 “Errors of Measurement” p. 416-417

      The topic being discussed is as the title suggests measurement error. Half way down page 417. [these text are mine]

      “….: that is the ERRORS OF MEASUREMENT in the dependent variable [e.g. Temperature] Y do not destroy the unbiasedness property of the OLS estimation estimators. However the variances and standard errors of B will be larger… the estimated variances are now larger than in the case where there are no such errors of measurement”

      You claim to have an open mind. Then spend some time reading.

      • Don Aitkin says:

        David, as so often, in your hurry to patronise you miss the point.

        The errors are of many kinds. One is the calibration of temperatures drawn from buckets, engine intakes and the rest. None of these actually measures sea surface temperatures at a standard level. Then there are the errors involved in applying one number for a temperature reading for 300,000 square kilometres, when there are no data at all, there is little knowledge of ocean currents, and an ‘estimate’ is made from somewhere else. Remember that there are small hundreds of such squares for which there never are any data that satisfy the requirement of eight readings per year. Don’t you see that what we have in these numbers is stuff so shonky that it is meaningless to talk about the ‘confidence interval’? Oh yes, of course when you have numbers you can do all sorts of tests on them. But for the result to be meaningful, the numbers have to be reliable and valid.

        They aren’t until we get to the last decade or so, and even then we don’t have enough Argo buoys. But by all means go on with your fantasy. It’s plain you won’t do any real reading.

        • David says:

          “It’s plain you won’t do any real reading.”

          Really. I have provided you with Gujarati (1988) , a text that has been in print for 30 years and now available as a 5th edition, to support my argument. You on the other hand have provided zip, other than a misplaced self-confidence in your knowledge of statistical methods to prosecute your arguments. And it shows.

          Calibration error is a type of measurement error. When analyzing error what matters, is the error random or systematic.

          • spangled drongo says:

            Davey, you’ll note that Don said REAL reading. Meaning, one of the things you should brush up on is how those early SSTs were taken and how they were subsequently bulk “adjusted” to the point where they can no longer be seriously believed no matter how much you statistically rinse them.

          • Don Aitkin says:

            David, I am not here to do the reading you think is necessary. If you object to what I have written you need to show how and where I am wrong. To do that you need to go into the large literature on SST and show where I have made an error. You haven’t done that. or shown any interest in doing so.

            When you have, I’ll answer your objections, if there are any.

        • David says:

          Don I can see that you have now described the seas surface data as shonky”

          “Don’t you see that what we have in these numbers is stuff so shonky that it is meaningless to talk about the ‘confidence interval’?

          Shonky is an adjective which is defined as
          (i) dishonest, unreliable, or illegal, especially in a devious way.
          (ii) shonky political goings-on

          This line of argument is about bias. And if correct, would make statistical sense. But to carry this argument you would need to show that (i) that naval officers have been involved in some 100 year conspiracy to falsify climate data or (ii) that the organisations like the BoM have been falsifying the historical climate record (e.g. Jenifer Marosy).

          This would be a strange claim for someone who says they are not into conspiracy theories or a denialist etc.

          • JimboR says:

            Meanwhile, I see the BOM recently announced….

            The 2016 SST anomaly for the Australian region was the highest on record (since 1900), 0.73 °C above the 1961–1990 average, based on ERSST v4 data.

            http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/annual/aus/#tabs=Sea-surface-temperature

          • Don Aitkin says:

            By ‘shonky’ I mean unreliable. There are no data at all for large parts of the planet’s oceans. What is provided for them is are estimates — one estimate for each grid cell of 300,000 square kilometres. There are small hundreds of these estimates. Playing with the numbers so obtained is simply shonky, and meaningless.

          • spangled drongo says:

            JImbo. are you seriously claiming that an accurate SST record exists going back to 1900?

            The BoM says its record is from NOAA’s Extended RECONSTRUCTED SST.

            The operative word being RECONSTRUCTED.

          • JimboR says:

            Don, what are your views on this recent paper, and their use of ARMA(1,1):

            http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/1/e1601207.full

          • Don Aitkin says:

            Jimbo,

            This paper focuses on the last 19 years. I will need to read it fully, but it does not deal with the central point of my statement above — that there are actually no real measurements at all for large parts of the ocean in the twentieth century, and the 1728 grid-cells have been filled in, where no data exist, by extrapolation. The size of these grid-cells is so large that it appears a nonsense to me to do such estimation. We simply do not have the requisite knowledge.

          • Don Aitkin says:

            For Jimbo:

            If you are interested in SST rather than in new statistical techniques you think I don’t know about, you might find it useful to read the following comprehensive study of models and real SST. Yes I know it’s in WUWT, but it is a detailed and interesting paper:

            https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/18/because-of-the-giss-and-noaa-press-conference-about-2016-global-surface-temperatures/

          • JimboR says:

            “If you are interested in SST rather than in new statistical techniques you think I don’t know about, ”

            New? It’s been around since the 50s. Actually, I’ve decided to take you at face value when you tell us you used to teach this stuff, so I’m genuinely interested in your thoughts on their measurement uncertainty analysis, especially since it seems to be a big issue for you. I assumed it would be right up your alley. Admittedly, I am hoping you’ll respond using the maths you once taught, rather than the English prose you’re more famous for these days.

          • Don Aitkin says:

            More for Jimbo:
            My attitude and process in all this is to learn what I need to, and stop there. This was the advice given to me by my American mentor fifty years ago, and I’ve followed it ever since. I am not a statistician or a mathematician, but if there is a technique I can use for my own work I will explore it, learn it and apply it. What I taught all those years ago was how to use statistics in social science research — this was before SPSS and other packages. I was on the UNESCO Working Party set up with that aim, and benefited greatly from it. I leave seriously difficult stuff to the experts, and I know a few of them, not just my distinguished brother.

            I’ve just recorded a talk for Ockham’s Razor for the ABC called ‘Mathematics, my father and me’. When it comes out I’ll post the talk on this website.

          • JimboR says:

            “but if there is a technique I can use for my own work I will explore it, learn it and apply it”

            Are you referring to your professional career there, or do you include your work in retirement, critiquing current scientists’ work? I sense that there are many readers here who are deeply suspicious of maths they don’t understand, so I think your message is well targeted. Personally, I’m always going to be drawn to a good maths proof over some English prose, but I accept you can’t please all of your readers all of the time. I know in my own field there are so many results that are deeply counter-intuitive. Favouring what your gut tells you over what the maths tells you is full of risk. In my experience “common sense” never beats science and maths.

        • David says:

          Don , you and I have been discussing your understanding, of confidence intervals for a couple of weeks now. No doubt there are some well qualified statisticians, (sympathetic to your AGW skepticism) who have read our respective posts. Not of them has come to your defense re your understanding of confidence intervals. What does that tell you? There is no support from anyone who is remotely qualified for your understanding of statistical analysis. I on the other hand can cite a well respected text to support my argument.

          You need to swallow your pride and spend some time reading.

    • Nga says:

      Tony Brown is a circus act who performs on the science denial circuit, popping up on WUWT, Judith Curry and so on. It doesn’t take much effort to establish that he is a shonk: http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2013/10/tony-browns-cooling-england.html

  • Neville says:

    Don you’ve certainly written an interesting and thought provoking comment above. I’ve read similar posts over the years and therefore I’ve resolved to try and follow their icons to check out the CAGW claims. And none of the icons gives me much cause for concern. As far as I can judge there is just too much of the planet’s surface that has gone missing over the last 200+ years to put too much trust in the temperature data. Certainly the earlier temp data are a worry, but satellites are probably more accurate.
    But so far there seems to be no reason to waste countless billions $ on idiocy like solar and wind energy. We should choose adaptation as our best defence against future weather events and spend more on R&D. In the meantime we would have a reliable and cheaper energy supply.

  • Neville says:

    I just checked the RSS V 3 TLT DEC temp anomaly. It was just 0.23 c and the average for 2016 was 0.57 c and that’s also 0.02 c above 1998 at 0.55 c.
    UAH V6 was 0.48 c for 1998 and 0.50 c for 2016 and a difference of 0.02 c over the last 18 years.

  • whyisitso says:

    Good to see this website has been restored after several days of being down.

    • Don Aitkin says:

      Yes, the website was hacked six days ago, but not, I am told by the Russians… Still don’t know who or why. Normal service about to resume.

  • David says:

    ” Davey, you’ll note that Don said REAL reading. Meaning, one of the things you should brush up on is how those early SSTs were taken and how they were subsequently bulk “adjusted” to the point where they can no longer be seriously believed no matter how much you statistically rinse them.”

    Spang, Prof Muller analysed adjusted data and the results were the same.

  • David says:

    “JImbo. are you seriously claiming that an accurate SST record exists going back to 1900?
    The BoM says its record is from NOAA’s Extended RECONSTRUCTED SST.
    The operative word being RECONSTRUCTED.”

    Spang, and this coming from someone who thinks an increase in violence since WW2 in Australia is due to smoking cessation programs.

    • spangled drongo says:

      “Spang, and this coming from someone who thinks an increase in violence since WW2 in Australia is due to smoking cessation programs.”

      Davie, I am inferring that one mild drug that helped people remain civilised and productive and killed them quickly before they bled the taxpayer white with pension and every other form of welfare demands has been replaced with many other drugs that do the opposite.

      Please make your case to the contrary with at least some of your usual feeble evidence rather than your usual ignorant assertions.

    • THE ROLLS ROYCE OF DRUGS says:

      David, some good news at last. The ABC recently reported that “At least one man’s death is being linked to a bad batch of ecstasy at the weekend.”, which means that there must be “good batches”. So the current wave of drug addicts need not worry they are consuming some adulterated rubbish pushed by some tattooed bogan, who has no idea of quality. The Victorian Government is thinking of introducing pill testing, so drug addicts can be reassured that their gear is the best quality – no rubbish stuff.

      I gain the impression that there will be roving pill testing vans with loud speakers hailing “Bring out your pills” (and playing Mr WHIPPY music), and they will swap the rubbish for the high quality gear, so at least the government can rest easy that they are helping druggies survive a couple of years longer. That’s what I call responsible government. And it keeps a whole army of public servants employed – imagine putting “high quality drug supplier for 4 years” on your resume.

      • David says:

        And you are sharing this with me because,…….

        • spangled drongo says:

          Could it possibly be, davie, that RR is considerately mentioning an aspect or two on drugs in the modern world in case you go off slightly half-cocked again?

          He, like me is probably waiting with bated breath for you to expound your theory on why nicotine is such a villain and trying to moderate any intemperance (so to speak).

  • David says:

    “Meanwhile, I see the BOM recently announced….
    The 2016 SST anomaly for the Australian region was the highest on record (since 1900), 0.73 °C above the 1961–1990 average, based on ERSST v4 data.
    http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/annual/aus/#tabs=Sea-surface-tem perature”

    Interesting JimboR. What is interesting about these data is that as the measurement of sea surface temperature has become more accurate over time, the rate of temperature increase has become more pronounced and the trend more certain (i.e. less variability in the running average). So for all Don’s efforts to argue that past data have over estimated the rate of temperature increase, if anything, they have understated the increase. The empirical evidence you provide illustrates Don’s deeply flawed understanding of statistical analysis.

  • David says:

    JimboR says:
    January 16, 2017 at 6:01 am
    Don, what are your views on this recent paper, and their use of ARMA(1,1):
    http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/1/e1601207.full

    Interesting article. So improved data collection has resulted in an INCREASE in the observed warming trend. This result is completely at odds with the hand wringing contained in the nine paragraph polemic that Don posted on measurement error above.

  • Don Aitkin says:

    Jimbo and others, now that I have read the paper, it offers nothing that bears on the question at issue, since it is concerned with measuring SST this century. Anyone interested in whether it is sensible to extrapolate for great tracts of the ocean temperatures that were recorded elsewhere could start by reading Tony Brown’s long essay mentioned above. Use the links he provides, and you’ll encounter all sorts of straightforward methodological issues and absurdities.

    Why do they exist? Why don’t we just agree that we have sparse and patchy data for SST until very recently? Because the whole warming-is-dangerous notion depends on there being a clear sign that the earth is warming steady and unstoppably (unless we get rid of fossil fuels). Land temperatures alone don’t provide that sign (indeed they show that the long-term increase seems to come in cycles), while the globe is 70 per cent water. Hence the need to spend such labours on trying to show that the oceans have warmed too, despite there being no data of real validity or reliability.

    Now if I’m wrong about this, one of you who believes it’s all kosher needs to do what I did, and explore the SST literature. Start with ICOADs, look at the way ERSST3 and 4 were designed, and read the critiques of the process. Most of the push to show a warming ocean has come from agencies of the US Government, whose President , about to retire, is a believer, and calls those who disagree with him ‘deniers’. There may be a sea-change coming!

    I await a real challenge.

    • JimboR says:

      “Most of the push to show a warming ocean has come from agencies of the US Government”

      That’s starting to sound dangerously close to a conspiracy theory Don.

      So to the extent we do have data, we have the land warming and the ocean warming. In the face of that, to conclude the planet isn’t “warming steady and unstoppably” requires either (or both) of:

      1. the data doesn’t go back long enough, this is temporary glitch, give it another 50 or 100 years and it will start cooling

      2. there are vast patches of ocean where we have no data so they must be getting cooler to compensate for all the places that are getting warmer

      • Don Aitkin says:

        No need for a conspiracy. It’s just straightforward government policy. Thomas Karl, who is responsible for for some of the ‘adjusted’ data that purported to show a more rapidly warming planet, was the head of NOAA’s NCEIs. You expect heads of agencies to do what the government wants, don’t you?

        And your two-sided proposal is a bit silly. To the extent we have land data, it shows warming from the 19th century, but in rises and falls that look as though they might be cyclical. To conclude that the plant isn’t warming steadily, on the basis of a hundred years of reasonable land data, is just being cautious. To conclude that the warming is not endless is equally cautious. We just don’t have enough data. Since we know that the planet has warmed and cooled in the past, it is reasonable to expect that there will be a cooling period ahead.

        We don’t have decent SST data, so they are no help to us in suggesting future trends. Your (1) and (2) are cocktail party stuff. I know that you don’t want to do any work in this area, but your response is tedious.

        • JimboR says:

          “We don’t have decent SST data, so they are no help to us in suggesting future trends.”

          None at all, over any duration, at any given location? As Drongo would say… baby / bathwater… oh no, wait, that was something to do with marriage equality.

          “Your (1) and (2) are cocktail party stuff.”

          Perhaps, but your response here suggests you’re invoking both of them. Certainly #1, and I suspect #2.

          • Don Aitkin says:

            We have 19 years, if you follow Zeke H. Far too small to allow trends. I leave you with your views. We will not agree.

        • Nga says:

          “Thomas Karl, who is responsible for for some of the ‘adjusted’ data that purported to show a more rapidly warming planet, was the head of NOAA’s NCEIs. You expect heads of agencies to do what the government wants, don’t you?”

          That sounds like another big dumb conspiracy theory to me, Don. Do you have any actual evidence that Thomas Karl and co. perpetrated a fraud at the behest of the government?

          Your last big dumb conspiracy theory was your claim that the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) doctored its report on the SA blackout at the behest of Big Wind. It is a good thing you wear that tin foil hat, Don, because it makes you so sensible and incorruptible and able to see conspiracies that are invisible to us common folk.

          • spangled drongo says:

            Check the mirror for the tin foil hat, enge.

            You can’t possibly conceive that when a bunch of overheated homogenisers are aware of the huge rewards being handed out by a president and admin of similar ideology, that it might not be in their interests to stoke the fire?

            Is that your innocence showing through?

            Or something else?

            Don is right of course. It would be almost impossible for it NOT to happen.

          • margaret says:

            Of course Spangled – Don is always right. I’ve yet to see anything less than complete admiration and affirmation for his opinion from you.

          • spangled drongo says:

            At least I supply supporting reason and logic, margie, not just mindless assertion, in denial of evidence.

            And enge still believes that a state-wide outage had nothing to do with blowing up CFP stations.

            The tin foil twins strike again.

          • Don Aitkin says:

            See below, my later response to you.

      • spangled drongo says:

        Jimbo, ever wonder why NOAA didn’t appear before congress after being subpoenaed following Karl’s “reconstructing”?

        “Both comparisons are valid, scientists stressed, and provide answers to different questions. Karl and his colleagues probed whether the global warming trend has stopped in the long run and found that it has not. The Nature scientists, in contrast, probed whether the global warming trend is fluctuating from decade to decade, driven by natural variability in the climate system, and found that it is.”

        But then Tom Karl decides that the best thing to do is retire. Smart move.

        The fact is, Jimb, there is not enough data on record to indicate that we are experiencing anything other than the usual Nat Var.

      • Ross Handsaker says:

        Carbon dioxide in the troposphere is said to absorb outward long-wave radiation from the Earth’s surface and around half of this energy is radiated back to the surface (the other half is lost to space). If carbon dioxide is the cause of any warming, the troposphere temperatures should be increasing around twice as much as the surface.

        If the “missing” heat is now being found in the oceans but there has been little warming in the troposphere this century, the cause is unlikely to be carbon dioxide.

        • Chris Warren says:

          Ross

          There is no reason why half radiation should go to the Earth and half goes to space. I think you just made this up.

          The flow of heat is determined by the difference between sink and source, so the flows in either direction will differ.

          There is no reason the troposphere should be warming around twice as much as the surface. I think you just made this up.

          • Ross Handsaker says:

            Chris

            Objects which have a temperature radiate energy in all directions. It follows that energy absorbed by CO2 in the troposphere will radiate it to the surface, sideways and to space, ie only around half will be available for surface warming.

            Quote from twitter conversation 14 December 2015 with Gavin Schmidt, NOAA, ” Commenter: But according to theory isn’t the troposphere supposed to warm faster?” Gavin Schmidt response “Yes.”

  • JimboR says:

    “No need for a conspiracy. It’s just straightforward government policy. Thomas Karl, who is responsible for for some of the ‘adjusted’ data that purported to show a more rapidly warming planet, was the head of NOAA’s NCEIs. You expect heads of agencies to do what the government wants, don’t you?”

    So why is our BOM participating in this US scientific fraud?

    “We have 19 years, if you follow Zeke H. Far too small to allow trends.”

    Actually on that, I think we probably can agree, in the same way that there’s no reason to get excited about a 10 year “pause” (a pause that turned out not to exist).

    So do you follow Zeke H et al Don? You never mentioned what you thought of their important paper on this topic. Uncertainties in measurements seem to be a recurring theme in your musings on the topic. What did you think of their use of ARMA(1,1) to deal with these?

    • Don Aitkin says:

      Jimbo, as to your first point, I haven’t said that it is a scientific fraud — the words are yours. But BoM is an agency of the Federal Government, and it runs the CAGW line in its annual state of the climate reports and elsewhere. Why does it do that? First, CAGW has been accepted by both Labor and Liberal Government for several years now. Second, if you were the head of BoM you would be publishing what you think your Minister wants to see. If the politics changes, so will what the BoM publishes. Watch to se what happens in the USA in the next few months.

      As to your second point, since the Hausfather paper is not on the central point in this discussion, I haven’t gone into its details. I would do so if, for example, the authors decided to use the methodology back to the 1900s or earlier. No statistical mechanism is worth anything by itself. Its usefulness depends on the reliability and validity of the data being processed. When I was learning factor analysis in the 1960s in the USA, my boss warned me not to get too excited about the new technique: ‘Factor analysis is the process whereby the analyst takes the data by the throat and screams, “Speak to me!!”‘

      And as Briggs and others have pointed out, every time you process data you lose information. You may gain something, too, but always at a cost.

      • David says:

        Don

        The problem with your “the data are not fit for purpose” meme is that the better the data, the more pronounced the trend. Awkward that.

        • JimboR says:

          I think provided someone has used some dubious data somewhere, at least once, then the entire field of research can be ignored with a casual “We don’t have decent SST data”. A detailed mathematical analysis of measurement uncertainty can be ignored because the authors didn’t “use the methodology back to the 1900s or earlier” so it’s not relevant to “this discussion”.

      • JimboR says:

        “Watch to se what happens in the USA in the next few months.”

        Looks like both NASA and the NOAA are getting one last shot in before the regime change:

        https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-noaa-data-show-2016-warmest-year-on-record-globally

        • spangled drongo says:

          That’s right, jimbo. When there’s plenty of wood on the wood heap, it’s silly to let the fire going out at the bakery.

          Especially when the wood has been so neatly trimmed, homogenised and adjusted.

          They may as well depart spectacularly in one great conflagration. It is winter over there, after all.

      • Nga says:

        There are some problems with this Big Dumb Conspiracy Theory, Don. First, the political parties accept CAGW because that is what the scientists are telling them. Second, there are no votes in CAGW. The numbers you have provided on public interest in the issue, which are undoubtedly backed up by political party polling, show action on CAGW will not win votes. Consequently, if the scientists start saying CAGW is not a problem, or the consensus breaks down, the political parties will drop it like a hot potato.

        Now of course you can argue that the scientists will cling on to CAGW because it brings in lots of funding and keeps them in work. I can give you half a gold star for that argument, because it is true that self interest, including financial self interest, can corrupt. the mind. This explains why a wealthy and cloistered white man such as yourself so vigorously defends inequality. But that argument only gets you so far.

        Science, unlike other areas of human endeavour, has demonstrated a great capacity for self correction and getting closer to the truth. This is in part because a bright young scientist have demonstrated time and time again that they will go to extraordinary lengths and take great risks to smash an established paradigm. In science, all they need to do to achieve this is get a paper published in a decent journal that contains powerful evidence and rock solid reasoning. Even the publishing part isn’t especially hard to do, since the big journals love a paradigm changing paper, which is why The Lancet published Andrew Wakefield’s appalling paper that tried to implicate vaccines in autism without a thorough vetting.

        Accordingly, in spite of what the tin foil hat brigade says, science is not composed of an elaborate network of interlocking conspiracies that stop the public accessing the cure for cancer, which is only available to the Illuminati, in order that Big Pharma and the medical profession can bring in big money. Nope, science, while far from perfect, is probably our least broken institution.

        • Don Aitkin says:

          Take it up with Jimbo. I’m not into conspiracies or frauds either way.

          • David says:

            Don you have the word “shonky” to describe sea surface temperature data. Shonky is a slang term for conspiracy or fraud.

          • Don Aitkin says:

            David,

            You’ve already told me what you mean by the term, and I opted for ‘unreliable’. If pressed, I would prefix it with ‘carelessly’. Others might want to go further.

          • David says:

            It’s not only how I use the word “shonky” it is also how it’s is defined in the dictionary. It’s not much of a defense to start attributing new meaning to words.

            But if you are serious go back and edit your post and remove the term “shonky”,

          • Don Aitkin says:

            David, you lack a decent memory, too.

            here you are above:

            ‘David says:
            January 15, 2017 at 12:07 pm (Edit)
            Don I can see that you have now described the seas surface data as shonky”
            “Don’t you see that what we have in these numbers is stuff so shonky that it is meaningless to talk about the ‘confidence interval’?
            Shonky is an adjective which is defined as
            (i) dishonest, unreliable, or illegal, especially in a devious way.
            (ii) shonky political goings-on…’

            As I said, I opted for ‘unreliable’.

            You are a time -waster.

  • Chris Warren says:

    Ross

    Objects in a vacuum radiate in all directions, but this does not apply to the atmosphere. In a vacuum there is no conduction or absorption.

    This does not apply to the atmosphere,

    In any case, the 3D geometry is such that it is impossible for 50% of heat to be radiated in any one direction.

    Also the transfer of heat in a medium follows Fourier’s Law, which notes that ” heat flux is proportional to the magnitude of a temperature gradient.” ie the difference between source and sink.

    There are additional reason why your claim is wrong. The earth is currently in a mixture of air water and ice. This buffers heat impact because no matter how much heat you put into a perfect “water, air, ice” system, the temperature will never rise. The energy goes into phase changes ie “latent heat of fusion” associated with melting ice.

    The different temperature trends above and below the troposphere are a pointer to our future if warming finally melts all global ice.

    This will be a catastrophe.
    .

    • spangled drongo says:

      “if warming finally melts all global ice.

      This will be a catastrophe.”

      Chrissie, rather than wetting the bed worrying about it, did you think to put your head out the window and check the latest king tides?

      If you did you would have found that there is NOTHING HAPPENING wrt to SLR other than Nat Var. and you could have stayed in bed in comfort.

      The highest tide at Fort Dennison was in 1974.

      Why do I get the impression you much prefer to enjoy worrying with a wet sheet and a flowing sea?

  • Chris Warren says:

    I hope JimboR is wrong over fears for what may happen under US fake President Trump.

    We need NASA and NOAA (and CSIRO) because of all the fake skeptics and science botherers we have about the place.

    NASA-NOAA call it as it is – record temps and sea level rise at around 1 foot per century (and likely to increase).

    Note also, that the latest records 2015 and 2016 exceed the 1998 record even though to SOI index in 2015-2016 was weaker than in 1998.

  • Don Aitkin says:

    For Jimbo again.

    My professional career. Thirty years of reading applications for money from researchers gave me an insight into techniques of all kinds, as well. I haven’t practised at the lab bench with any of them.

  • Nga says:

    I’ve been doing such research lately on holcaust denialism and comparing it with AGW denialism. Intriguingly, the same frames and narratives appear with similar frequency in both. Some examples are as follows:

    (1) the bumbling citizen scientist. An AGW denialist example is the temperature mumbler, Tony Brown, who Don lauds on this this thread. A holocaust denialist example is Fred Leuchter, author of the infamous Leuchter report on the use of Zyklon-b at Auschwitz. I accuse neither Brown nor Leuchter of dishonesty, I merely accuse them of stupidity.

    (2) the conspiracy. The AGW denialist claims the data is being cooked, with Jen Marohasy and Jo Nova and so on frequently pushing this feverish line, with crooked greedy scientists being the guilty party. The holocaust denialist blames the Zionists or just directly comes out and blames the Jews for being behind the conspiracy.

    (3) the inflating of the importance of small mistakes. Mistakes happen everywhere and always, such is the nature of humanity. But for the AGW denialist, a mistake in an IPCC report , such as projection that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 in the 2007 Working Group II report , is proof that AGW is a hoax. For the holocaust denialist, the mistaken labeling of a photo of a Zyklon-b delousing room door as the entry to a gas chamber meant for humans, which appeared in multiple printed texts, is proof the holocaust is a hoax.

    Of course, these are just three of many examples. But they are sufficient to get us started.

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