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Geoff Benn BSc (Hons) CEng MIET, Twitter: @GeoffBenn
Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains taken to bring it to light. George Washington.
skepticalscience.com: "getting skeptical about global warming skepticism"

" ... especially by Geoff !!!"

Geoff, you have a fan

I would like to point out on the passion front that I do all this off the top of my head. I do not need a large resource of pastable quotes to provide the answers.



Clive, the "how much" part is really the $64,000 question.

Mostly, there is just hand waving. Note how few posts here have attempted to suggest an amount.

This is also why questions such as the one posed in this forum are of little use. They have yes or no answers and you know if you want to answer yes but only a fraction of a per cent your answer will be taken by some as a yes and 100%. Alternatively, if I were to answer no then I would not be telling the truth as I see it.



You need to remember that this is not a scientific debate; it is a political one. The point about the "scientific establishments" shows that. Yes, it scores highly on the political points scale and if you do not think any more about it you could be swayed. But:

Firstly, as Aristotle pointed out, this is "argument from authority" and is not a valid way to rebut an argument. This is the grown up version of "my dad is bigger than your dad".

Secondly, do you know if any of the learned societies polled or otherwise canvassed the views of their members? I have tried to investigate that from time to time but have drawn a blank. So my supposition is that these policy pronouncements were made by a political sub-committee with perhaps only one or two activist members - possibly with an eye to funding and keeping in with their respective governments.

Thirdly, science is not done by voting. As Einstein is reputed to have said:


Quote borrowed from Wikipedia.



Beware, alarmists will switch seamlessly between greenhouse gasses, all CO2 and man-made CO2. This is to make it seem that man-made CO2 has all the effects of the greenhouse gasses. In reality, there is a ratio of about 25:1 between each. The few hundred ppm you mention is for all CO2.

So perhaps a more accurate analogy would be that the poison comprised 1 part of man-made arsenic, 25 parts of natural arsenic and over 600 parts of ricin. Some people will insist that the 1 part of arsenic made all the difference. (NB ricin would be analagous to the other greenhouse gasses - mainly H2O.)



The feedbacks are critical in my view but are not well understood and many do not figure in the climate models - cloud feedbacks, for instance. Using an analogy, we have the experts looking at the boiler saying that if we keep putting fuel in it will keep getting hotter and hotter but they have not underestood the role of the thermostat yet.

Should we really be looking to spend trillions on a speculative climate problem when we have so many real ones? Many people in the world have a short and brutal life and they die of preventable causes e.g. diahorrea, malaria, smoke inhalation etc. A few billion correctly focussed would make a massive difference.



The "Precautionary Principle" is a flawed idea. It makes various assumptions that are, in this case, not justified.

First, is this the only problem we should be concerned about? What about the possibility of a meteor strike, for instance? You might ask how likely that is but I would say that meteor strikes have happened many times in the past so shouldn't that be higher priority?

Second, it sounds like an insurance policy. You insure your expensive house for a small premium. In this case, the best schemes I have seen will save only a fraction of a degree increase but will cost the farm. The possible benefit is worth only a tiny fraction of the premium. Lord Stern did an early report on the benefits but there are others now. He fiddled the assumed borrowing rates and still could not make a good case.



Sorry, only got to page three of that. It just reinforced how little we actually know about the climate.



Some years ago, I saw a picture of the earth with two much smaller spheres near it. One was all the earth's water and the other was all the earth's atmosphere. It put things in perspective. Allow me to do something similar.

Have you seen that picure of the Eiffel Tower with all the flat space around it? Well, try to imagine it occupied by a cube of side 3 Eiffel Towers. I think all of humanity would fit in that cube.

Another view, it is believed that here are more ants than humans. Not just in numbers but also in terms of bio-mass. The same can be said of termites and krill etc.



Well, it sounds like a good idea, but like so many good ideas it struggles when put into practice. I would like to see electrical engineers being honest about the number of wind turbines or solar panels we would need to power the UK and also, what would we do when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining (e.g. dark, cold winter evenings.)

I would like them to point out that using low energy light bulbs that contain mercury is not an ideal soution, that neodymium magnets in wind turbines cause devastation to the area from which the ore is extracted, that pump storage will not solve all our energy storage problems.

Please see my sig for further details.

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Richard Winstone MIET

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke
Irish orator, philosopher, & politician (1729 - 1797)

Rich, an excellent explanation of the issues.
I would just like to add that good engineering should be driven by efficiency for many reasons for example thermal management. The efficiency of direct combustion versus lossy electricity networks need to be discussed.

Regards

Dave

The alarmists always present just one side of any argument. It is as if man-made CO2 is on trial but there is only a prosecution barrister. (For instance, did you know that the IPCC charter specifies "human-induced climate change" and not all climate change?)

You are trying to perpetuate that stance by always showing man`made CO2 in a bad light but in this case it is clearly all CO2 that has the warming effect. So I am arguing that the man-made sort should not be unreasonably demonised - particularly as there is so much more of it.

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Richard Winstone MIET

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke
Irish orator, philosopher, & politician (1729 - 1797)

Why do you want to know about the UK? Not another pointless question, I hope?

The man has admitted comitting a crime in his own country. You seem to be supporting someone who thinks himself a criminal and has admitted as much.

The forgery is a separate issue but given his criminal tendencies (and the similarity of writing styles, and the fact that the allegedly forged document had a different provenance to the rest and that Heartland denied it was one of theirs) I would not be surprised if he had forged it.

Supporting such a person in an open forum does not show you in a good light whether he was the forger or not.

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Richard Winstone MIET

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke
Irish orator, philosopher, & politician (1729 - 1797)

There is dishonesty in all walks of life. If you do not know that then you are the one with the problem.

I am sure that many thousands of climate scientists are honest and doing a good job but, people being people, I would be surprised if all of them are all of the time. Have you seen tthe amount of fiddled resuls in the pharmaceutial papers?

Can you think of a reason for changing raw data recorded in the 1930's? Again, isn't it strange that the old temperatures are lowered and the later ones raised? It is as if they want to make the temperature look as if it is increasing for some reason.

Look what New Zealand did to their temperatures. NZ never denied what they did but they got off on a technicality. The sceptics did not have the authority to ask the question.



You don't have to read it all. I don't.

At least I say what I think and try to find reputable sources. You just reply with sourcewatch and SkS and do not seem to apply any reasoning or add any thoughts of your own - apart from the snide comments, of course.

In days gone by the media would be investigating. Now they just seem to be another arm of the propaganda effort.

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Richard Winstone MIET

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke
Irish orator, philosopher, & politician (1729 - 1797)

Geoff Benn,

Regarding Peter Gleick you still seem confused between the issues taken into consideration and the conclusions reached after considering those issues. Not to worry, at the end of the day the argument is only about how dishonest he was and not the fact that he was dishonest. A bit like CO2 really.

I have to sympathize with Gleick. Should he admit to have been foolish enough to forge the document or should he have been foolish enough to believe it was genuine? Tough choice.

Yet again Geoff,

Regarding the Hockey-stick, your 'own words' began with 'THEY concluded' followed by a rant about 'sites which present mis-information and dodgy busted myths'.

I didn't refer to any sites. I presented a table of verification statistics from a peer-reviewed paper and asked for your opinion. You have failed to give one.

My own understanding is that an average R2 value of less than 0.01 for the period prior to 1750 indicates that the model output ( i.e. the hockey-stick shaft) is not explained by the input data.

To me this strongly suggests that the 'shaft' is an artefact of the method.

Does this make me an anti-science denier?

Perhaps you could explain, preferably in your own words, where I have gone wrong?

richwin,

I have to agree with your sentiments regarding support for Peter Gleick.

I thought it was absolutely disgraceful that this self-confessed fraudster was invited to speak at the recent AGU conference.

Hi Richard,

So that explains it. You've made you mind up and now just work from what you remember. When you do cite a source it is very often WUWT which I wouldn't touch except to show how poor it is. So we can guess where you're coming from.

You've just made a whole load of points based on your memory. Some may be true but miss the point of this debate. Some merely serve to sow seeds of doubt, for the unwary? Some focus on relatively insignificant side issues, making them out to be show stoppers. Some are simply ridiculous as you try to twist what I'm saying.

I cite a variety of sources. I always like to make sure I understand correctly, and like to help others to see how I came to my conclusions. SkeptialScience.com is one of those sources which happens to be very appropriate in this context, it links to lots of main-stream peer-reviewed scientific papers.

Rather than focusing on relatively insignificant side issues, I prefer the big picture when deciding on whether the evidence is conclusive.

Remember that the IPCC has to go with the most conservative view, which just happens to come from fossil fuel producing countries...

Regards

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Geoff Benn BSc (Hons) CEng MIET, Twitter: @GeoffBenn
Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains taken to bring it to light. George Washington.
skepticalscience.com: "getting skeptical about global warming skepticism"

So, it is my memory against the world is it? It should be easy to prove every point wrong then shouldn't it? We are on page 24 and you and SkS seem to be lagging behind a bit! Show me a good argument and I will change my mind.

Interestingly, it does show that I have internalised the arguments and have made some sort of sense of them. I have even added my name to the posts at your request. So it really is my reputation on the line.

You, on the other hand, just match some words in the post with ones at SkS and paste them here. It is not at all clear if you have put any thought into the subect at all and the only reputation at risk is that of SkS. This is why you get requests to reply "in your own words".

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Richard Winstone MIET

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke
Irish orator, philosopher, & politician (1729 - 1797)

Thanks, I do try

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Richard Winstone MIET

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke
Irish orator, philosopher, & politician (1729 - 1797)

Thanks for your comments Richard - I'll just come back on 2 or 3 of them.



Climate Change is recognized as a real global problem by many development NGO's eg Oxfam, Christian Aid etc Many such NGO's have come together in http://www.stopclimatechaos.org



Some disastrous problems are 'natural' (eg volcanic eruptions, lightening strikes and meteors) which are beyond our control; others are created by mankind (eg climate change, nuclear war, or indeed all wars) and, if we could get our act together, they could be removed from the threat list.



Skip to pages 14-16 for consequencies and uncertainty.



Agree with that! But given climate change, wind and solar are two of the best energy sources; plus great scope for energy efficiency. Compact, portable and cheap storage is the holy grail of the energy business!

Regards......Clive

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clivebrown

Thank you for reading them.


I know nothing about Christian Aid so I cannot comment. Oxfam, on the other hand I have heard stories about. For instance, a local charity shop worker won a prize for her Oxfam work. The prize was to visit the new Oxfam headquarters. She duly arrived and was taken on a tour. Unfortunately, the prize did not have the desired effect. She was amazed and appauled by the amout of money they had spent on themselves. Shortly afterwards she gave up her part time voluntary job in the local Oxfam shop.

Agencies like Oxfam have many genuinely caring people in them who want to make a difference. These people tend to be near the bottom of the organisation. Nearer the top, it is more about funding, pay rises, networking, etc.

A case in point is Greenpeace. One of the founder members, Patrick Moore, left when he discovered that his colleagues became more political and less scientific in their endeavours. Here is a link. I did not post a link directly to the Wall Street Journal site because most of the article is paywalled.

Moore and Greenpeace now seem to be having an open war of words. (Needless to say, SkS - Skeptical Science i.e. often neither - have joined on the side of Greenpeace. SkS claim that Moore says that the causes of global warming are not exactly known. SkS rebut that by providing a list. Unfortunately, it does not seem to include black carbon which is now thought to be the second biggest problem behind CO2. So maybe SkS are not as bright as they like to think.)


Patrick Moore was against war and particularly nuclear war, too. It is hard not to agree with that sentiment.

About climate change being man-made - I would beg to differ. It must be partially man-made, I agree, but we must remember that climate change has always happened. So it has not just started happening now. Weather has been much worse than now in the past. Any media article about the weather that claims "unprecedented" is almost invariably exaggerating.

In fact, "unprecedented" means that something has not happened before. So, thinking about it, it is not just exaggerating but telling porkies.

Here is a thought-provoking article from Der Spiegel in German. An Englist translation can be found here.

It is about the current hiatus in warming for 15 years that the models did not predict. Interestingly, there seem to be many theories about how this could have happened. The number of theories would seem to support the view that the science is still young and the answers are not known.

-------------------------
Richard Winstone MIET

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke
Irish orator, philosopher, & politician (1729 - 1797)

I'm only going to comment briefly on this, because it is off topic. Basically if you don't run a charity as a professional business it will fail. If you pay peanuts you get monkeys. If you provide a poor work environment good people will leave. And if as a charity you don't concentrate on fundraising and networking you don't have any income and you can't help anyone anyway. Sorry for rant, but I have nothing but admiration for those who've taken the tough decision to cut their pay and work longer hours to work in charities; why should those of us earning more money for doing less useful jobs feel superior?


However Greenpeace's Chief Scientist and Policy Director http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/a...g-parr-chief-scientist quite probably knows considerably more about the science of climate change than anyone posting here. I knew Doug well when he was studying for his D.Phil in Atmospheric Chemistry at Oxford - a very nice and scarily bright guy (I'm also slightly to blame for him getting involved in environmental campaigning in the first place).

Anyway, I don't see that any of this has anything to do with the science.

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Andy Millar CEng MIET MCMI

http://www.linkedin.com/in/millarandy

I suggest that people read the above very carefully.

In the section "Possible causes of the stagnation temperature" I note that there is no mention of the effect of the solar cycles.
People might also want to read the following:
Met Office in the Media: 14 October 2012



- "unusual", not impossible.


- "unlikely", not impossible.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/envi...-warming-stopped-wrong





This is fun: The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator

I appreciate that the original is in Der Spiegel, but the English is on a very 'interesting' site... Always important to know the sources, especially when it shows what kind of people we are dealing with:
WikiPedia: Global Warming Policy Foundation




SourceWatch: Global Warming Policy Foundation




Regards

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Geoff Benn BSc (Hons) CEng MIET, Twitter: @GeoffBenn
Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains taken to bring it to light. George Washington.
skepticalscience.com: "getting skeptical about global warming skepticism"

Geoff,

I see that once more you resort to cut & paste and rants about deniers and fossil-fuel funding.

You quote from SourceWatch, 'The choice of Montford was ironic given the serious inaccuracies in his book, The Hockey Stick Illusion' and even take the time to bold 'serious inaccuracies' yet fail to give a single example.

Had you read their reference you would have seen the editors comment:

" This article was amended on 20 August 2010 following a complaint from Andrew Montford to make it clear that we did not mean to imply that Andrew Montford deliberately published false information in order to support the arguments made in his book. We apologise if such a false impression was given. "

August 2010, you really are well behind the times.

Perhaps you can now list these 'serious inaccuracies' in your own words so that we don't get the impression that you are hiding behind other people's opinions?