Via The Corner;
19 July 2008
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Carie, Rannoch, PH17 2QJ, UK
monckton@mail.com
Arthur Bienenstock, Esq., Ph.D.,
President, American Physical Society,
Wallenberg Hall, 450 Serra Mall, Bldg 160,
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 94305.
By email to artieb@slac.stanford.edu
Dear Dr. Bienenstock,
Physics and Society
The editors of Physics and Society, a newsletter of the American Physical Society, invited me to submit a paper for their July 2008 edition explaining why I considered that the warming that might be expected from anthropogenic enrichment of the atmosphere with carbon dioxide might be significantly less than the IPCC imagines.
I very much appreciated this courteous offer, and submitted a paper. The commissioning editor referred it to his colleague, who subjected it to a thorough and competent scientific review. I was delighted to accede to all of the reviewer’s requests for revision (see the attached reconciliation sheet). Most revisions were intended to clarify for physicists who were not climatologists the method by which the IPCC evaluates climate sensitivity – a method which the IPCC does not itself clearly or fully explain. The paper was duly published, immediately after a paper by other authors setting out the IPCC’s viewpoint. Some days later, however, without my knowledge or consent, the following appeared, in red, above the text of my paper as published on the website of Physics and Society:
“The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Itsconclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Societydisagrees with this article’s conclusions.”
This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than
the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.
Please either remove the offending red-flag text at once or let me have the name and qualifications of the member of the Council or advisor to it who considered my paper before the Council ordered the offending text to be posted above my paper; a copy of this rapporteur’s findings and ratio decidendi; the date of the Council meeting at which the findings were presented; a copy of the minutes of the discussion; and a copy of the text of the Council’s decision, together with the names of those present at the meeting. If the Council has not scientifically evaluated or formally considered my paper, may I ask with what credible scientific justification, and on whose authority, the offending text asserts primo, that the paper had not been scientifically reviewed when it had; secundo, that its conclusions disagree with what is said (on no evidence) to be the “overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community”; and, tertio, that “The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions”? Which of my conclusions does the Council disagree with, and on what scientific
grounds (if any)?
Having regard to the circumstances, surely the Council owes me an apology?
Yours truly,
THE VISCOUNT MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY
? Tipping point finally….
I know you don’t want long quotes from other links, but practically no one will read this paper, and so they will miss the brilliantly stated conclusion. With apologies, I paste it here. Kill this post if it is inappropriate.
QUOTE FROM HIS PAPER, first paragraph of concluion
QUOTE BEGINS:
Even if temperature had risen above natural variability, the recent solar Grand Maximum may have been chiefly responsible. Even if the sun were not chiefly to blame for the past half-century’s warming, the IPCC has not demonstrated that, since CO2 occupies only one-ten-thousandth part more of the atmosphere that it did in 1750, it has contributed more than a small fraction of the warming. Even if carbon dioxide were chiefly responsible for the warming that ceased in 1998 and may not resume until 2015, the distinctive, projected fingerprint of anthropogenic “greenhouse-gas” warming is entirely absent from the observed record. Even if the fingerprint were present, computer models are long proven to be inherently incapable of providing projections of the future state of the climate that are sound enough for policymaking. Even if per impossibilethe models could ever become reliable, the present paper demonstrates that it is not at all likely that the world will warm as much as the IPCC imagines. Even if the world were to warm that much, the overwhelming majority of the scientific, peer-reviewed literature does not predict that catastrophe would ensue. Even if catastrophe might ensue, even the most drastic proposals to mitigate future climate change by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide would make very little difference to the climate. Even if mitigation were likely to be effective, it would do more harm than good: already millions face starvation as the dash for biofuels takes agricultural land out of essential food production: a warning that taking precautions, “just in case”, can do untold harm unless there is a sound, scientific basis for them. Finally, even if mitigation might do more good than harm, adaptation as (and if) necessary would be far more cost-effective and less likely to be harmful.
QUOTE END.
This should be an editorial in every major newspaper, and an email to every major political leader.
The liklihood of Monkton getting answers to his questions are at or approach zero….
I salute you, Monckton!
Lori-
The APS is telling, him with their preface, that your peer reviewed article wasn’t reviewed by “our” peers. I hope he gets an answer, but I doubt it. The silencers of science prefer to work by fiat. Especially since he’s poking holes in their business model, as if they were Bear Stearns or something…
No tipping point.
Yet.
As to the tipping point being reached … only if teh MSM take it up. They may now as it is becioming a major academic scandal within the APS. However, the hysterics still have the media wrapped, so I don’t know.
Eventually, some young go-getter reporter will see an opportunity to make his or her name in busting the global warming scam open.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1034590/The-baby-Antarctic-penguins-frozen-death-freak-rain-storms.html
“It is all very well talking theoretically about how the ice cap could disappear – but watching penguins walking among the skeletons of their young is the most powerful evidence of climate change I have seen.”
and still you people deny, deny, deny, deny.
The Monkton quote is brilliant. Oh my — what a mess — however do we got out of this one?
I don’t agree with the Viscount’s views regarding global warming, but as someone who both writes and reviews scientific papers, I think he has a point.
The APS notice was kinda rude for an invited paper. The APS could have simply said that they don’t endorse the conclusions of either invited paper.
If you’re going to run two papers arguing opposite viewpoints, do it straight up. As it is, they come off sounding desperate to be seen as politically correct.
Have folks waded into Monkton’s paper?
It’s bloody startling.
Apparantly the forcing loop (whatever the hell that means, but apparantly is central to the model),
was predicated on a single paper.
A single one.
And now it appears to be completely wrong. In fact it may be opposite (the “forcing” is inverse).
Un freaken believable.
THIS is the money quote (sorry its long Kate but too good to parse):
Not one of the key variables necessary to any reliable evaluation of climate sensitivity can be measured empirically. The IPCC’s presentation of its principal conclusions as though they were near-certain is accordingly unjustifiable. We cannot even measure mean global surface temperature anomalies to within a factor of 2; and the IPCC’s reliance upon mean global temperatures, even if they could be correctly evaluated, itself introduces substantial errors in its evaluation of climate sensitivity.
The IPCC overstates the radiative forcing caused by increased CO2 concentration at least threefold because the models upon which it relies have been programmed fundamentally to misunderstand the difference between tropical and extra-tropical climates, and to apply global averages that lead to error.
The IPCC overstates the value of the base climate sensitivity parameter for a similar reason. Indeed, its methodology would in effect repeal the fundamental equation of radiative transfer (Eqn. 18), yielding the impossible result that at every level of the atmosphere ever-smaller forcings would induce ever-greater temperature increases, even in the absence of any temperature feedbacks.
The IPCC overstates temperature feedbacks to such an extent that the sum of the high-end values that it has now, for the first time, quantified would cross the instability threshold in the Bode feedback equation and induce a runaway greenhouse effect that has not occurred even in geological times despite CO2 concentrations almost 20 times today’s, and temperatures up to 7 ºC higher than today’s.
The Bode equation, furthermore, is of questionable utility because it was not designed to model feedbacks in non-linear objects such as the climate. The IPCC’s quantification of temperature feedbacks is, accordingly, inherently unreliable. It may even be that, as Lindzen (2001) and Spencer (2007) have argued, feedbacks are net-negative, though a more cautious assumption has been made in this paper.
It is of no little significance that the IPCC’s value for the coefficient in the CO2 forcing equation depends on only one paper in the literature; that its values for the feedbacks that it believes account for two-thirds of humankind’s effect on global temperatures are likewise taken from only one paper; and that its implicit value of the crucial parameter κ depends upon only two papers, one of which had been written by a lead author of the chapter in question, and neither of which provides any theoretical or empirical justification for a value as high as that which the IPCC adopted.
The IPCC has not drawn on thousands of published, peer-reviewed papers to support its central estimates for the variables from which climate sensitivity is calculated, but on a handful.
Lawsuit
In that trading carbon offsets to save humanity and or the planet is a fraud perpetrated for the sole purpose of illicitly obtaining money.
The science is not settled, yet the financial penalty is being meted out.
Get this into a court of law somewhere in the world.
Let scientists and “expert” wittinesses testify to the facts as they reported them to the IPCC. The IPCC came to the conclusion that the world was doomed.Was this done innocently or with prejudice to developed economies for the sake of fraudulently laundering money using the Kyoto protocol to lever entire governments to pay up.
Let the rules of evidence apply with proven cross examination procedures in place. Let it be on the public record for all to reference.
As I said before, for this financial scam to get this massive, there has to be body’s buried somewhere, (figuratively) and someone, somewhere knows where.
Think uncle AL would appear under subpoena ?
Lawsuit
In that trading carbon offsets to save humanity and or the planet is a fraud perpetrated for the sole purpose of illicitly obtaining money.
Get this into a court of law somewhere in the world.
Let scientists and “expert” wittinesses testify to the facts as they reported them to the IPCC. The IPCC came to the conclusion that the world was doomed.Was this done innocently or with prejudice to developed economies for the sake of fraudulently laundering money using the Kyoto protocol to lever entire governments to pay up.
Let the rules of evidence apply with proven cross examination procedures in place. Let it be on the public record for all to reference.
The science is not settled, yet the financial penalty is being meted out.
As I said before, for this financial scam to get this massive, there has to be body’s buried somewhere, (figuratively) and someone, somewhere knows where.
Think uncle AL would appear under subpoena ?
I don’t know why the double post.Sorry to all
Tim Lambert has a look at The Viscount’s paper over here
Good night,
John
Its audacity is the attribute that enables this scam to survive day to day. My prediction for how history will record this episode is that it will draw attention to the phenomenon of manipulation of public opinion through a mass media in an alliance with political vectors.
I point out again, that if solar output increases, and thus increases ocean temperatures, CO2 will come out of solution in the ocean, and has nowhere to go but into the atmosphere. A glass of mineral water illustrates the phenomenon wonderfully. Very little of the AGW thesis is logical. None of the taxation/credit/cap/trade “solutions” have any logic to them at all.
It is a scam, on the most audacious scale ever perpetrated in the entire history of mankind. I am calling it the MSM’s last hurrah. The MSM is betting its future on this issue, and I predict nature will not co-operate.
The Viscount and Aussie Davis Evans would be solid witnesses in a Gore Fraud Suit;
[I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.]
[…]
[But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” ] David Evans
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24036736-7583,00.html
If, and I say if with my breath held, climate change is not caused by man, then the lawsuit that could result would be stupendous.
Interesting stuff, especially the responses over here (Thanks John)
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07/moncktons_triple_counting.php#more
Pat
Tim Lambert is a computer “scientist”.
Cheers
It is quite telling that the rebuttals to Monckton’s paper mostly consist of “politics” and the same rhetoric we’ve been hearing for who knows how long, and very little science.
Monkton has put them into a position where they either have to “put up” or “shut up”. I give ten to one odds that the warmists (enviro-socialists), being true to the leftist culture, begin to throw ad-homs towards our intrepid hero in an attempt to discredit him rather than address his argument.
In five… four… three…
As someone who peer reviews scientific papers on a regular basis, I would argue that Lord Monckton has deserves not only a prompt, courteous and complete reply from the APS, but also an abject apology.
The fundamental purpose of peer review is to detect errors of commission (things you have done wrong) and omission (things you forgot to take into consideration). This process appears to have been followed in both letter and spirit in the initial review of Monckton’s article, and his detailed response thereto. For the APS to subsequently attempt to weasel out of the “peer review” criteria is shamefully contrary to the principles of scientific inquiry.
Of course, from the point of view of the proponents of the anthropogenic climate change thesis, this debate has never been about maintaining the integrity of the scientific method; rather, it’s about ignoring the vast (and growing) mass of contrarian evidence, and cherry-picking the few nuggets of science that support their argument where possible. And manufacturing “evidence” (e.g., the Mann hockey stick graph) wherever necessary.
One doesn’t expect anything better of politicians, especially when they are as woefully ignorant of science as the current crop north and south of the 49th parallel (a note to Liberals excited about people with Ph.D.s in political science – social “scientists” aren’t. I should know, because I are one). But we have a right to expect better from actual physical scientists. Unlike social scientists, physical scientists CAN – they MUST – follow the methodological chain (“observe, hypothesize, experiment, repeat”) that powers real science and, therefore, modern civilization.
Physical scientists are the practitioners and custodians of the scientific method and therefore, like Caesar’s wife, must not only be pure, but be SEEN to be pure. A scientist who circumvents the scientific method, for whatever reason, belongs in the same category as a priest who molests parishioners, or a doctor who murders patients. It is a betrayal of professional standards, of principle, and of trust.
By dissociating themselves from an author’s work, which they themselves had requested and reviewed, after he had met all of the requirements of the method and the review process, the APS has done a serious disservice not only to Lord Monckton, but to their professional standards as well. Even if his work were wrong (and having read his paper with the eye of a one-time physics major, I think he’s made a pretty solid argument), he would deserve an immediate apology.
Interestingly perhaps, Heinrichs, one of my degrees happens to say “Masters of Science in Computing Science” on it (1979). Also, perhaps interestingly, I design and develop computer models of complex thermodynamic systems for a living. So I’m going to have to say that if people want to make some sort of state policy decisions based on computer models of so-called climate change, then you better danm well have some computing scientists in the science review loop.
You don’t want to leave all the decisions on the quality of your computer models up to people like physicists and politicians and other sorts of folks who are not really experts about what, from a computing perspective, makes for goodness and badness in computer models. It’s not actually trivial, and the more complex the system (and arguably the earth’s climate is the most complicated thing we’ve ever tried to model, much harder than simple things like nuclear explosions), the less trivial is the matter of getting good quality out of the computing science part of the computer models.
So for the same sorts of reasons that we have, say, mathematicians checking the math that is done by the atmosphere scientists, and we have, say, physicists checking the physics that is done by the atmosphere scientists, and we have, say, engineers and economists checking the technological and financial feasibility of mitigation proposals from the atmosphere scientists, we need computing scientists checking the computer models of the atmosphere scientists.
And this brings us to a critical juncture. Honest computer modelers will tell you that you can’t trust anything out of a computer model until it has been debugged, and you can only debug it by comparing it’s predictions to reality. With nuclear explosions that’s easy, run the models, light off a few explosions, check the model results. But we do not know how to do that for climate models. We can’t try modifying the climate in different ways through controlled experiments to see how well the models do. At least not yet at this point in the history of time.
As a result of which, at this time, in my opinion as a computing scientist, current computer climate models are completely untrustworthy (simply because you can’t actually tell whether or not they have significant bugs, even against design spec, even if the design spec is correct, which is not at all clear), and therefore said computer climate models are completely useless.
Get back to me in a hundred years. We might be good at it by then.
(PS: Please note that there may be errors in this comment, I have only proven it correct, but I have not debugged it ~ which computing scientists will recognize as a famous aphorism from the great computing scientist Donald Knuth 😉
Someone doesn’t seem to know the difference between editorial and actual peer-review, though I can’t say I am surprised.
Monkton shoots himself in the foot when in the first paragraph of his conclusion (as quoted by lori above) when he throws in the biofuels angle and millions starving – this is conjecture and is irrelevant to his discussion.
Biofuels are being developed as a renewable energy source to create energy self-sufficiency (read any of Bush’s speeches on this at whitehouse.gov).
Someone like Bush is actually an excellent risk manager. Real risk managers are realists (they are not alarmist at all) and they monitor the probability and impact of AGW happening and have trigger points for decision making. Bush sees AGW as a risk and rightly so but he sees it as a low risk. If some real scientific facts causes the probability and impact to increase he might see it as a big risk and then really move on it. Right now his focus is on energy security and if the AGW angle helps him achieve this then good.
Turtle Bay Trotskyites within the scientific communications function treat the truth with the same contempt they do in the political arena.
Hegemonic agenda politics and science are as bad a mix as narrow agenda politics and civil harmony are in the governing realms. In both endeavors the truth becomes a product manufactured for convenience.
Related.
…-
“Channel 4 to be censured for controversial global warming film
The makers of a Channel 4 documentary which claimed that global warming is a swindle misrepresented the views of some of the world’s leading climate scientists, the media watchdog is expected to rule next week.
In a judgment at the end of a 15-month enquiry, Ofcom is expected to censure the channel over The Great Global Warming Swindle, broadcast in March last year.
The film sparked outcry from environmentalists and led to a complaint from a group of senior scientists about apparent errors, distortions and misrepresentations.
It is thought that complaints about privacy and fairness from the Government’s former chief scientist, Sir David King, and the Nobel peace prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be upheld on almost all counts.
But the Guardian reported that a separate complaint about accuracy will find that Channel 4 did not breach the regulator’s broadcasting code and did not materially mislead viewers.”
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5mgwrc
“Biofuels are being developed as a renewable energy source to create energy self-sufficiency (read any of Bush’s speeches on this at whitehouse.gov).”
While true, this statement is somewhat naive. “Biofuels” are more about commodity market exploration than about fossil fuel replacement. Fossil fuel replacement is a meta-political phenomenon, and biofuel development is but part of it.
“Someone doesn’t seem to know the difference between editorial and actual peer-review, though I can’t say I am surprised.”
Ignoring the off-handed slur, it is entirely possible now that valid peer reviews cannot be obtained. The obvious bias of the APS Council and the polarization of the scientific community on the topic of AGW means that peer review may no longer hold any credibility. This is a sad state for the scientific community at large.
So much angst and hyperbole have come from the scientific community itself on this topic, that it is extremely easy to farm out papers to reviewers that have a vested interest (or cultivated bias) in supporting one side or the other. Some will see the paper through their particular polarization, others through theirs. It may not be possible to rely on the personal ethic of scientists (if it ever was) to set their biases and polarizations aside when reviewing papers with a contrary scientific view. Especially so, if the paper leans heavily on highly speculative probabilities.
A failure of peer review?
I took a looky at John Cross’s link. I lack the background to pass judgment on the argument regarding Monckton’s sums being wrong.
However. Peer review these days has become quite… shall we say elastic in what can pass and what cannot. If it supports the consensus view, or even just the views of the editorial board, the most amazing rubbish will get printed in peer reviewed journals.
So, I’d say that one of two things have happened here.
One, Monckton got his sums wrong and the APS rightly noted it, however astoundingly rude and obnoxious their method of noting an error may be. (They couldn’t e-mail the guy and tell him he fracked up? Phones not working? Snail mail not being delivered? WTF?!)
Two, Monckton got his numbers -right-, and the APS is having a politically motivated freak fit.
Personally my knee-jerk reaction to the situation is number two, because it fits with my pre-existing assessment of the glow ball warming “debate”. Which is that its a friggin’ scam. However I’m more than willing to wait for some more evidence in this particular case.
Perhaps one of our esteemed SDA propeller heads could have a look at the offending calculations and see if Monckton is wrong or if the APS is lying.
We’ve already established the APS editors have the manners of a rabid dog.
The main outcome of this little incident may be not to discredit AGW, but to discrdiet the scientific community – which seems to be behaving in a singularly childish and venal manner.
These were supposed to be our brightest people. They certainly are not our best.
John Cross
surely this paper could not be considered serious until checked by both your computer scientist and a genetics journalist who likes to appear naked in the MSM and live in comfort in a 7 million dollar house on kitsalano?
Further to the biofuels angle (sorry, slightly off-topic), this bit of news from China:
//technology.newscientist.com/article/dn14360-chemical-breakthrough-turns-sawdust-into-biofuel.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news7_head_dn14360
As a peer-reviewer and editor of a scientific journal (maths) I am flabbergasted.
The paper clearly has been peer-reviewed and the APS now denies that fact.
Monckton is no doubt too busy, but if he were to go to law I would have thought his case against the APS would be incontrovertible.
Vitruvius is, as usual, exactly right. A model is only as good as the accuracy of its representation of reality.
The accuracy of a predictive model is only as good as the reliability of its predictions. Since we can’t test the AGW models, then..the models are pure speculation.
I agree with skip as well; peer reviews of the ‘global warming’ debate are now almost impossible because the issue has been taken out of science and into politics. The rhetoric is now all about ‘deniers’ and ‘AGW cultists’. That’s no longer science.
This then moves the models to the realm of internal validation of their methods. With regard to Monkton’s math – if the math was incorrect, the APS review (and it DID go through a review) ought to have caught that. After all, if the paper contained mathematics, then, your reviewers have to have the capacity to review that.
The APS has moved itself out of the realm of science. You do NOT, as a scientist, move a theory out of falsifiability or openness to debate and close the debate. That’s precisely what the APS did- it closed the debate about this issue. That’s not scientific; that’s pure dogma.
So, the APS owes Monkton and all genuine scientists a profound apology; they should remove the header, and have more genuine debate on the issue.
And I agree with Phantom; the AGW ‘theorem’ is a massive money scam and is not science.
Is the APS afraid of losing their funding? Is that the situation? In many cases of government funding, the bureaucracy is dominated by the left, and the left are almost always dogmatists and reject dissent and debate. Is it a matter of APS funding?
I smell lawyers and a lawsuit. Some people will finally get their most fervent wishes granted. Sue. Them. All.
Time and reality will soon overcome all this GW crap but what will not disappear any time soon is the damage done to the scientific community and their credibility. I don’t know what others are like but I tend to now treat articles that start of with, scientists say, with a ho hum, what now yeah sure attitude. To read their “findings” in the already discredited news media only lessens the creditably.
If Conrad Black can be charged under the RICO act what the hell should Gore be charged with? Being an eternal optimist I see a day of reckoning not far off. Maybe, just maybe, the whole left wing spectrum will have the misfortune of being accidentally locked in a supermarket and starve to death.
I think the reason for the odd behaviour of the APS might be – the funding of research in the APS world. The APS is extremely worried about any lessening or loss of govt funding in science.
I suspect that many labs have moved into various research projects that are only nominally working within ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ themes. Please note – from my experience with the titles of themes and the actual research being done – the two can be miles apart.
What happens is that the govt pointy-heads come up with key thematic issues for areas of funding research. You, the applicant, write up your research application to fit into these themes, even though your own interests and the themes are miles apart. But, if you can ‘write the rhetoric’ (and many labs/professors hire their application writers)…then, you’ll get the award. Then, you spend the money as you please – and I’ve seen some wild variations.
This money will keep a graduate dept’s pet labs going – it will hire the grad students, keep a theme going…even long after the theme has lost its usefulness. It will even prevent the emergence of NEW science, because the old guard’s need for maintaining their labs is dominant in the political hierarchies of the university.
Now, since the themes of AGW etc are the buzz words for current funding, then, I suspect that the APS is worried that IF this theme is removed from funding concerns, their membership’s labs will be scrambling to come up with new themes to make Congress come up with all those extra funds. If there are no new ‘crisis’ themes to latch on to..then, Congress will reduce their overall research budget. And those labs will be hard-pressed to find new themes.
Remember, in many cases, it’s all about money. Not the science. I suspect that the fear of losing the money that Congress gave for the AGW themes – got them some calls from various universities and doyens of various grad research centres who want the money from that theme. Even if their research has nothing to do with it..
My opinion is that AGW will really start to crumble after the US election. Democrats have positioned themselves as the saviours to help us slay the co2 boogyman ,once they are in power(lord help us)the whole thing will just wither away.
a prediction.
In about 2 years at this price of oil , demand in the US and Canada will drop by about 5%, it will be called a victory for carbon taxes in BC and Quebec. the fact that demand in China and India will be up by 20% and that more industry has opened up there whilst industry has been closed here will not be noticed by the Greens or the Libs. a few hundred thousand will be easily absorbed into the “social safety net”
Sorry DaVinci, try again. The Daily Mail piece is the typical puff piece we expect from the MSM. It’s argument by loaded terms. What exactly is a “freak” rain storm? What are “epic” rains? What are the qualifications which get one labelled as an “antarctic explorer”?
“Athena Dinar, a spokeswoman for the British Antarctic Survey, said that 50 years ago two days of snow were recorded for every one day of rain at the region’s Faraday meteorological station. ‘Now, in the past few years, the trend is two days of rain to every one day of snow.’”
That’s interesting. Since earlier in the article it’s stated that the baby penguins die overnight if the temperature drops after a day of rain, it would indicate that this threat to the penguin population has existed for at least 50 years. They survived it then and I’ll bet they’ll survive it now. I suspect baby penguins have been dying and the adults walking among their skeletons for millions of years. Nature is a tough old b*#@%.
Take a look at some funding sites for information about how many projects are focused around ‘global warming’ (and that use that term as an accepted fact).
There’s NSF, National Science Fdtn
http://www.nsf.gov/dir/index.jsp?org=ERE
And there’s DOE, Dept of Energy
http://www.science.doe.gov/ober/CCRD_top.html
My point is, there’s a lot of govt funding in the US that is geared to the theme of ‘global warming’. Research centres in various universities have funded themselves under these themes – and even if the research money they receive also goes to other projects – they get their money by their application focus on ‘global warming’.
If this theme is debunked and discredited by more and more scientists – then, this funding will simply disappear. These university research centres live by these grants; they can’t operate just on regular university funding. And they can’t come up with a new environmenal crisis fast enough..to get funding..if Congress decides that the AGW is junk and cuts funding.
The APS has to protect the funding base of its members. I suggest that’s why they are trying to discredit Monkton. You can also see at the APS site, their concern over the funding cuts.
Re: testing the model
I believe it was Kate who suggested the test for the model: run it backwards and it should predict past observations. Equally valid would be running it forward from some point in the past and have it predict the conditions at a later past date. If the model is valid, the same parameters would be able to predict the climate at any point in history. Colour me skeptical.
Why don’t we have perfect weather forecasts for even just 24 hour periods if we have computer models that reliably forecast weather as far into the future as you like?
Given the compelling scientific evidence that is steadily piling up questioning the veracity of AGW gospel, I find it amazing how these various societies, etc still rigidly cling to it. A great number of their membership are obviously aware that the leadership is actively propagating a falsehood. The scary part is how they actively attempt to suppress, discredit and distort that same evidence. It’s a bit like a scientific version of Orwell’s 1984. Lots of great comments here today, keep up the good work everyone!
Alas, DF, you can’t run computer models backwards. Indeed, y’all may have noticed this yourself: there is no reverse gear on your computer. Yes that’s being a bit flippant, but seriously, you can’t run these models “backwards”, the concept makes no sense from a computing science perspective, tempting as it may sound to a layman.
To streatch an anology, even when you add a reverse gear to a drive train, the engine still runs forward, not backward. So even if your tests show that your reverse gear works fine, they don’t tell you whether or not your forward gears have been debugged, because they are not being tested when testing your reverse gear, you are not running the whole shebang backwards.
Likewise, if you rejig your computer model to “run backwards”, and debug that, you still don’t know if your un-rejigged forward model is debugged, because it is simply not the same model as the rejigged backwards model.
Vitruvius, do the models not have to begin at some initial state? Is the initial state correct? How do we know?
With respect to running backwards, what could be done is to construct a hypothetical initial state of some point in history, and run the model forwards from there. For instance, over the last 2000 years or so. One would presume that there was variation in climate in the first 1500 years. Let’s call that “noise”. Does the model predict, or account for “noise” during a period where there was negligible human industrial activity? How well is the “noise” modelled?
Tim Lambert is lost in the forest. Perhaps his equations are correct. But as the Viscount stated (thanks lori):
“Even if per impossibile the models could ever become reliable, the present paper demonstrates that it is not at all likely that the world will warm as much as the IPCC imagines.”
..and there are 8 more ‘Even ifs…’ each of which puts the onus on the IPCC and AGW proponents to either acknowledge, or disprove in a credible way, in a credible public forum.
To engage in major public policy initiatives without satisfactorily addressing these essential challenges to the AGW theory, could lead to serious economic consequences, especially in a country in which the majority of us operate in below freezing weather for a large part of the year.
When will the intricately crafted PCCGORESUZUKO suit that the emperor is wearing be recognized for the vaporous transparent fraud that it is ?
Let’s pray that it’s not too late:
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hfOqpGoBoZ1khJvmgSGJQ6g6Eq9g
US Senate report on recent developments showing AGW theory is rapidly falling apart.
It’s meaty, read it all (I’m surprised this link isn’t everywhere – got it from Tim Blair):
http://tinyurl.com/6ph9eb
biff, yours is a very, Very, VERY informative link !!
It should be sent to all, All, ALL Journalists. It may help jolt them out of their stupor and cause them to understand just how liable they may be in this whole AGW, Kyoto, Carbon Trading & Green Taxes thing.
The Media’s Dumbing-Down of the news should become a huge fraud lawsuit, IMO – there is enough evidence in AGW alone. Exhibit A, B, C, ….. Z and more.