The Great Beyond

Let’s get a few facts straight if you are going to label us on the fringes as Neanderthals or some such. Nobody denies climate, Ok I’ll say it again just so you are clear, nobody is denying climate change, never have and never will. If the climate didn’t change we’d all be dead, or more correctly we’d never have existed in the first place. So have you all got that, the climate changes, always has always will, it’s the law. Now please never again accuse we trolls of denying that the climate changes.
Second point, totally separate, distinct different and not the same as point one, we deny Anthropogenic Global Warming, got that, we don’t believe that CO2 emissions have the slightest effect on the climate change mentioned at point one. Why don’t we believe this, well the latest evidence is clear, there has been no global warming since 1998, ten years or so despite the evidence (and green peace agree) CO2 levels have increased. You see the connection is just not there. In fact there is no single piece of demonstrable evidence, despite the enormous bundles of cash thrown at the problem that link man made CO2 levels and planetary temperature changes, none whatsoever. If there were you would be plastering it all over the net, TV radio Papers et al.
So just to say it again we do not deny climate change, climate change is good, we deny man made global warming from increased CO2 emissions. If that makes me a heretic then show me the fire. I’ll change my opinion when you show me the evidence.

Count me as being with the "fringe" (realists). 1000 years ago the planet was MUCH (3-8F) warmer than it is today and not only was it not a disaster, it allowed for expanded agriculture and a boom in crop productions.There were no "mass migrations" due to coastal flooding, but it did allow for mankind to expand his land holdings. Next we witnessed the Little Ice Age in which temperatures were slightly lower than today. The LIA ended in the mid 19th century, interestingly this is when the alarmists claim man made global warming started. Pay no attention to the "Medieval Warm Period" and its significantly higher temperatures (certainly Michael Mann and Keith Briffa wish you wouldn't, see "Broken Hockey Stick"). The Earth has warmed and cooled drastically dozens of times without any help from man, so why do we see our handywork now? Much like our ancient ancestors who blamed their own bad behaviour for storms, floods, eclipses, etc... we have a segment of our society that "believes" this sort of nonsense. This is one reason why realists consider anthropogenic global warming to be a pseudo-religion. It takes faith to beleive CO2 drives climate because there is no proof. Einstein sd,"
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong." AGW has been proven wrong many times over. CO2 levels continue to increase yet temperatures are falling, this goes completely against every shred of the AGW theory. Not one of the models put forward as "proof" of man made global warming predicted the cooling we are seeing, not one. Anyone who does not believe that solar influences are the main driver of climate needs to go back to remedial science class. CO2 has never and will never drive our planet's climate. All this hysteria has been misplaced, the real threat to mankind is the next ice age. We are overdue for our next ice cycle and IF we could easily warm the planet with CO2, that would be a good thing. During the Little Ice Age, Europe lost one third of its population to starvation and disease. Wake up and smell the science.

You refer to Real Climate. May I suggest that your readers Google "Real Climate Fenton Environmental Media Services" to understand where Real Climate is coming from.

Kind regards

MR

So what you are saying is that you refuse to take their findings seriously... for no other reason than they can't be right?

What kind of scientist are you, sir?

For purposes of review here is Nature Mags standard for publication of principle data.
An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors' published claims. Therefore, a condition of publication in a Nature journal is that authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols promptly available to readers without preconditions.

My understanding of the BBC's article (which I didn't read) is that it is the culmination of many events, such as the recent release of archived data from the tree ring studies of Keith Briffa, which your publication was supposed to confirm the release of ten years or so back.
Considering that as we find out the underpinnings of global warming are based mostly on tree rings of a single tree in the Yamal region of Russia, information that would have rendered AGW dead in the cradle as a political issue if only Nature would have followed it's own standards on availability of data, the author of this entry has some nerve talking about credibility, or lack there of.

Dear Mr Cressey
I sincerely do not understand why a nicely balanced article is provoking this hysterical reaction. (nme calling, ad hominem attacks...)
If, as you think, global warming resumes in the next few months then you will be vindicated and the small delay in warming is welcome in allowing the people to sane the world.
No ?

When discussing scientific credibility it might be best to avoid phrases such as 'those who deny climate change'.

And it seems further odd to go along with those one disagrees with in reporting one report by one employee (albeit a refreshingly better qualified one than the current crop) as 'the BBC'.

Tackle the science to be sure, but once you get down to the people and not the arguments it seldom ends well.

What goes away quicker.. a smart response, or a defensive one?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/100013336/an-inconvenient-journalist/

SCIENCE HAS BEEN HIJACKED.

mean global temperature anomaly

If you give the mean global temperature anomaly data above for analysis to any scientist, engineer or mathematician, he can separate it into a linear anomaly with a warming slope of +0.44 deg C/100 years, and an oscillating anomaly with a range of +/-0.4 deg C as shown below.

oscillating anomaly

He can also observe that the oscillating anomaly was at its maximum at the end of the last century. As a result, the global warming in the last century was the sum of +0.44 deg C from the linear warming to +0.4 deg C from the maximum of the oscillating anomaly, giving us +0.84 deg C. This warming has caused NATURAL climate change.

The fact that the maximum of the oscillating anomaly occurred at the end of the last century is just a coincidence. If, at the end of the last century, the oscillating anomaly were at its minimum of -0.4 deg C, the global warming in the last century would have been the sum of +0.44 deg C from the linear warming to -0.4 deg C from the minimum of the oscillating anomaly, giving us +0.04 deg C. That is, depending on whether the maximum or the minimum oscillation anomaly occur at the end of the last century, we have a global warming of 0.84 deg C or no global warming!

There is no scientist who fail to see this.

However, the 0.84 deg C warming is blamed on human emission of CO2.

SCIENCE HAS BEEN HIJACKED.

I sincerely do not understand why a nicely balanced article... (nme calling, ad hominem attacks...)

Posted by: Herve Deveaux | October 13, 2009 06:59 AM

I could not agree more that any nicely balanced article should be spared such things.

Frankly, I think the whole blogosphere would be a better place without such things.

Thing is, preceding your comment I can see no more than, at worst, robust counter views.

Where are the pejoratives to which you refer?

The way I see it is that the cherry pickers can fool themselves but they can't fool the vast amounts of scientific data, the decreasing sea ice in the Arctic, the receding glaciers, the changing habits of flora and fauna or global temperatures. Not only do climate change deniers have few scientific principles, they have no statistical ones either. When trends of two years of Arctic ice are preferred over 30 years and 11 years for global temperatures over 100 years what other proof do you need?

And the sceptics come in many guises. Some believe the climate is not warming, while others believe it is nut not because of CO2. While others believe it is warming and because of CO2 but not man-made CO2.

And some go from one to the other as the current argument suits them.

It's like arguing with slippery eels.

I think this article may be an over-reaction, although the BBC report suffers from shortcomings.

It is quite clear that global average temperature has not been rising at the same rate over the last decade as the longer term warming rate. There is no clear indication of why this has happened. Some journal papers have attempted to explain it through the impact of natural variability on an overall warming trend. I've only seen one published paper that suggests that the recent trend indicates that there is no underlying anthropogenic warming trend.

The BBC's reporters should be free to report the comments of whoever they want, but they do have a responsibility to their audiences to help distinguish between conflicting claims.

What marks out the views of Piers Corbyn and Don Easterbrook in this BBC online news article is that they are based on theories and evidence that have not been published in a scientific journal and subjected to scrutiny by the rest of scientific community. This should have been flagged up in the article. In that respect, their views should be treated with greater scepticism as those of scientists who have been through the process of having their work scrutinised by others.

It is hard to know whether Paul Hudson (who must be a very new 'climate correspondent' as I have never seen his by-line before) is familiar with the published literature on climate change and therefore able to identify views that are supported by published work.

Nevertheless, I think it is counter-productive to argue that news reporters should refuse on principle to report the comments of scientists just because they differ from the mainstream. But reporters must be equipped to tell the difference between views that are supported by solid peer-reviewed evidence and those that are not.

My common sense still says that if the greenhouse effect is real then all that CO2 we pumped into the atmosphere over the last 200 years or so has to be doing something. My common sense also tells me that climate is very complex, still poorly understood, and that it is no big surprise that other factors may serve to offset the warming effect of the CO2.

So this story is really a bit of old news, but it will still have an impact. Those who would rather preserve the status quo or who would like to have the funds needed to deal with climate change spent on other more immediate needs use stories like the one in the BBC to justify delay and half-measures.

Given how things are going in Copenhagen, it looks like they will have their way.

I think Nature is the one who is being disingenuous.

In 2008, they published an article by Keenlyside et al. (Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector. Nature, Vol. 453 pp. 84-88) which also argued that global temperatures would stagnate and even cool during the next one or two decades, due to the North Atlantic Oscillation.

Neither of the authors of that article are anti-AGW 'fringe' activists to my knowledge.