AGW science falling apart

[Guest]

Proof it

or did you just make up that crap you posted

Ok I'll proof it. lol

You have referenced Monckton a number of times including in this thread, which I highlighted.

And here is proof Monckton is a liar.
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2009...bout-anything/

I have a question for you rcptn.

If AGW science is falling apart and the whole thing is a big conspiracy as you claim, why would Tony Abbott need to spend 3.2 billion dollars to reduce greenhouse gas emmissions?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1225825879922

TONY Abbott will establish a $2.5 billion emissions reduction fund if elected prime minister, forcing taxpayers to pay business and farmers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Liberal leader has briefed the Coalition partyroom on his alternative plan to reducing emissions without Labor's emissions trading scheme.

The total value of Mr Abbott's climate change policy is $3.2 billion, Liberal sources said.
__________________________________________________ ______________

I remember you declaring proudly how you were part of a grass roots movement to reverse this impending calamity, yet now your hero Abbott wants Australian taxpayers to fund his plan to the tune of 3.2 billion.

Can't wait for your answer.

Chook.

[Guest]

Ok I'll proof it. lol

You have referenced Monckton a number of times including in this thread, which I highlighted.

And here is proof Monckton is a liar.
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2009...bout-anything/

I have a question for you rcptn.

If AGW science is falling apart and the whole thing is a big conspiracy as you claim, why would Tony Abbott need to spend 3.2 billion dollars to reduce greenhouse gas emmissions?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1225825879922

TONY Abbott will establish a $2.5 billion emissions reduction fund if elected prime minister, forcing taxpayers to pay business and farmers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Liberal leader has briefed the Coalition partyroom on his alternative plan to reducing emissions without Labor's emissions trading scheme.

The total value of Mr Abbott's climate change policy is $3.2 billion, Liberal sources said.
__________________________________________________ ______________

I remember you declaring proudly how you were part of a grass roots movement to reverse this impending calamity, yet now your hero Abbott wants Australian taxpayers to fund his plan to the tune of 3.2 billion.

Can't wait for your answer.

Chook.

You link a blogger who accuses Monckton of lying with no evidence to back up his claims

The reason the Coalition are spending a small amount of money on climate change is to remain relevant to the masses of gullible people who still believe in AGW

[Guest]

You link a blogger who accuses Monckton of lying with no evidence to back up his claims

The reason the Coalition are spending a small amount of money on climate change is to remain relevant to the masses of gullible people who still believe in AGW

Monckton stated 40 million people died because DDT was banned. That is a lie. What part of that can't you understand?

3.2 billion is a small amount to spend to ensure people are happy about something that's not happening eh? There are times when I think you are being mature about this subject, then you come up with a clanger statement like that.

Chook.

[Guest]

Lol Indian Government does not trust IPCC Science


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/env...ange-body.html

India forms new climate change body
India has established its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it “cannot rely” on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group headed by its own Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr R K Pachauri.

By Dean Nelson in New Delhi
Published: 3:47PM GMT 04 Feb 2010

The Indian government's move is a significant snub to both the IPCC and Dr Pachauri as he battles to defend his reputation following the revelation his most recent climate change report included false claims that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035. Scientists believe it could take more than 300 years for the glaciers to disappear.

The body and its chairman have faced growing criticism ever since as questions have been raised on the credibility of their work and the rigour with which climate change claims are assessed.


Global cooling hits Al Gore's homeIn India the false claims have heightened tensions between Dr Pachauri and the government, which had earlier questioned his glacial melting claims. In Autumn, its environment minister Mr Jairam Ramesh said while glacial melting in the Himalayas was a real concern, there was evidence that some were actually advancing in the face of global warming.

Dr Pachauri had dismissed challenges like these as based on “voodoo science”, but last night Mr Ramesh effectively marginalised the IPC chairman even further.

He announced the Indian government will established a separate National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology to monitor the effects of climate change on the world’s ‘third ice cap’, and an ‘Indian IPCC’ to use ‘climate science’ to assess the impact of global warming throughout the country.

“There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science. I think people misused [the] IPCC report, [the] IPCC doesn’t do the original research which is one of the weaknesses … they just take published literature and then they derive assessments, so we had goof-ups on Amazon forest, glaciers, snow peaks.

“I respect the IPCC but India is a very large country and cannot depend only on [the] IPCC and so we have launched the Indian Network on Comprehensive Climate Change Assessment (INCCA),” he said.

It will bring together 125 research institutions throughout India, work with international bodies and operate as a “sort of Indian IPCC,” he added.

The body, which he said will not be rival the UN’s panel, will publish its own climate assessment in November this year, with reports on the Himalayas, India’s long coastline, the Western Ghat highlands and the north-eastern region close to the borders with Bangladesh, Burma, China and Nepal. “Through these we will demonstrate our commitment to climate science,” he said.

The UN panel’s claims of glacial meltdown by 2035 “was clearly out of place and didn’t have any scientific basis,” he said, while stressing the government remained concerned about their health of the Himalayan ice flows. “Most glaciers are melting, they are retreating, some glaciers, like the Siachen glacier, are advancing. But overall one can say incontrovertibly that the debris on our glaciers is very high the snow balance is very low. We have to be very cautious because of the water security particularly in north India which depends on the health of the Himalayan glaciers,” he added.

The new National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology will be based in Dehradun, in Uttarakhand, and will monitor glacial changes and compare results with those from glaciers in Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan.

[stephenj]

oh my goodness, birdy num num

[Guest]

How embarrassing

http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/se...dutch-minister

Sea level blunder enrages Dutch minister

Published on : 4 February 2010 - 9:24am | By Rob Kievit

A United Nations report wrongly claimed that more than half of the Netherlands is currently below sea level.

In fact, just 20 percent of the country consists of polders that are pumped dry, and which are at risk of flooding if global warming causes rising sea levels. Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer has ordered a thorough investigation into the quality of the climate reports which she uses to base her policies on.


Climate-sceptic MPs were quick to react. Conservative MP Helma Neppérus and Richard de Mos from the right-wing Freedom Party want the minister to explain to parliament how these figures were used to decide on national climate policy. "This may invalidate all claims that the last decades were the hottest ever," Mr De Mos said.


The incorrect figures which date back to 2007 were revealed on Wednesday by the weekly Vrij Nederland. The Dutch Environmental Assessment Agency told reporters that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) added together two figures supplied by the agency: the area of the Netherlands which is below sea-level and the area which is susceptible to flooding. In fact, these areas overlap, so the figures should not have been combined to produce the 55 percent quoted by the IPCC.

The discovery comes just a week after a prediction about glaciers in the Himalayas proved wrong. Rather than disappearing by 2035, as IPCC reports claim, the original research underlying the report predicted the mountain ice would last until 2350.


Urbanisation
Questions are being asked on a broader scale too about climate-change data. US researchers Joseph D'Aleo and Anthony Watts, quoted in Dutch daily De Telegraaf, say the perceived global temperature rise may be an result of changes in the measuring methods.

There used to be 6,000 measuring posts, they say, but now there are just 1,500. A number of weather stations in colder areas like Siberia and the Arctic were dismantled, while the remaining stations were in more moderate zones. As a consequence, data from colder areas was no longer used in the calculations.


D'Aleo and Watts also point to discrepancies between terrestrial and satellite measurements. Satellite weather stations report that the temperature of the earth's atmosphere has remained stable, with a slight fall since 2001.

Earth-based weather stations report an increase in warmth which, according to the two Americans, reflects the process of urbanisation. Measuring posts that used to be in remote rural areas have gradually been surrounded by roads, buildings or industry, all of which produce heat.


Solar activity
Dutch researchers reporting to Minister Cramer on Wednesday said that global warming appears to be slower than had been assumed. In a brochure published by the Dutch Platform for Communication on Climate Change (PCCC) the academics say that sunspot activity was relatively low over the past decade and will continue to be low for the foreseeable future.

The lower the solar activity, the smaller the warming effect. According to the PCCC, the average temperature may even decrease by between 0.2 and 0.4 degrees, but they warn that this is just a slight dent in the much stronger rising trend. "The heat is still on," according to the PCCC report.

[Guest]

Margaret Wente

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1458206/

Published on Friday, Feb. 05, 2010 6:45PM EST

Last updated on Saturday, Feb. 06, 2010 4:15AM EST


In 2007, the most comprehensive report to date on global warming, issued by the respected United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made a shocking claim: The Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035.

These glaciers provide the headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers and lifelines for the more than one billion people who live downstream. Melting ice and snow would create mass flooding, followed by mass drought. The glacier story was reported around the world. Last December, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group, warned, “The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty.” To dramatize their country's plight, Nepal's top politicians strapped on oxygen tanks and held a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest.

But the claim was rubbish, and the world's top glaciologists knew it. It was based not on rigorously peer-reviewed science but on an anecdotal report by the WWF itself. When its background came to light on the eve of Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, shrugged it off. But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.

“The global warming movement as we have known it is dead,” the brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead says in his blog on The American Interest. It was done in by a combination of bad science and bad politics.

The impetus for the Copenhagen conference was that the science makes it imperative for us to act. But even if that were true – and even if we knew what to do – a global deal was never in the cards. As Mr. Mead writes, “The global warming movement proposed a complex set of international agreements involving vast transfers of funds, intrusive regulations in national economies, and substantial changes to the domestic political economies of most countries on the planet.” Copenhagen was never going to produce a breakthrough. It was a dead end.

And now, the science scandals just keep on coming. First there was the vast cache of e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia, home of a crucial research unit responsible for collecting temperature data. Although not fatal to the science, they revealed a snakepit of scheming to keep contradictory research from being published, make imperfect data look better, and withhold information from unfriendly third parties. If science is supposed to be open and transparent, these guys acted as if they had a lot to hide.

Despite widespread efforts to play down the Climategate e-mails, they were very damaging. An investigation by the British newspaper The Guardian – among the most aggressive advocates for action on climate change – has found that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed, and that documents relating to them could not be produced.

Meantime, the IPCC – the body widely regarded, until now, as the ultimate authority on climate science – is looking worse and worse. After it was forced to retract its claim about melting glaciers, Mr. Pachauri dismissed the error as a one-off. But other IPCC claims have turned out to be just as groundless.

For example, it warned that large tracts of the Amazon rain forest might be wiped out by global warming because they are extremely susceptible to even modest decreases in rainfall. The sole source for that claim, reports The Sunday Times of London, was a magazine article written by a pair of climate activists, one of whom worked for the WWF. One scientist contacted by the Times, a specialist in tropical forest ecology, called the article “a mess.”

Worse still, the Times has discovered that Mr. Pachauri's own Energy and Resources Unit, based in New Delhi, has collected millions in grants to study the effects of glacial melting – all on the strength of that bogus glacier claim, which happens to have been endorsed by the same scientist who now runs the unit that got the money. Even so, the IPCC chief is hanging tough. He insists the attacks on him are being orchestrated by companies facing lower profits.

Until now, anyone who questioned the credibility of the IPCC was labelled as a climate skeptic, or worse. But many climate scientists now sense a sinking ship, and they're bailing out. Among them is Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at the University of Victoria who acknowledges that the climate body has crossed the line into advocacy. Even Britain's Greenpeace has called for Mr. Pachauri's resignation. India says it will establish its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it “cannot rely” on the IPCC.

None of this is to say that global warming isn't real, or that human activity doesn't play a role, or that the IPCC is entirely wrong, or that measures to curb greenhouse-gas emissions aren't valid. But the strategy pursued by activists (including scientists who have crossed the line into advocacy) has turned out to be fatally flawed.

By exaggerating the certainties, papering over the gaps, demonizing the skeptics and peddling tales of imminent catastrophe, they've discredited the entire climate-change movement. The political damage will be severe. As Mr. Mead succinctly puts it: “Skeptics up, Obama down, cap-and-trade dead.” That also goes for Canada, whose climate policies are inevitably tied to those of the United States.

“I don't think it's healthy to dismiss proper skepticism,” says John Beddington, the chief scientific adviser to the British government. He is a staunch believer in man-made climate change, but he also points out the complexity of climate science. “Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can't be changed.” In his view, it's time to stop circling the wagons and throw open the doors. How much the public will keep caring is another matter.

[Rocky Rhodes]

Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers

ExxonMobil cash supported concerted campaign to undermine case for man-made warming

By Jonathan Owen and Paul Bignell

Sunday, 7 February 2010

An orchestrated campaign is being waged against climate change science to undermine public acceptance of man-made global warming, environment experts claimed last night.

The attack against scientists supportive of the idea of man-made climate change has grown in ferocity since the leak of thousands of documents on the subject from the University of East Anglia (UEA) on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit last December.

Free-market, anti-climate change think-tanks such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in the US and the International Policy Network in the UK have received grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the multinational energy company ExxonMobil. Both organisations have funded international seminars pulling together climate change deniers from across the globe.
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Many of these critics have broadcast material from the leaked UEA emails to undermine climate change predictions and to highlight errors in claims that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. Professor Phil Jones, who has temporarily stood down as director of UEA's climactic research unit, is reported in today's Sunday Times to have "several times" considered suicide. He also drew parallels between his case and that of Dr David Kelly, found dead in the wake of the row over the alleged "sexing up" of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Professor Jones said he was taking sleeping pills and beta-blockers and had received two death threats in the past week alone.

Climate sceptic bloggers broadcast stories last week casting doubts on scientific data predicting dramatic loss of the Amazon rainforest. All three stories, picked up by mainstream media, questioned the credibility of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the way it does its work. A new attack on climate science, already dubbed "Seagate" by sceptics, relating to claims that more than half the Netherlands is in danger of being submerged under rising sea levels, is likely to be at the centre of the newest skirmish in coming weeks.

The controversies have shaken the IPCC, whose chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was subjected to a series of personal attacks on his reputation and lifestyle last week. A poll this weekend confirmed that public confidence in the climate change consensus has been shaken: one in four Britons – 25 per cent – now say they do not believe in global warming; previously this figure stood at 15 per cent.

Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientific adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and former chairman of the IPCC, said yesterday that the backlash is the result of a campaign: "It does appear that there's a concerted effort by a number of sceptics to undermine the credibility of the evidence behind human-induced climate change." He added: "I am sure there are some sceptics who may well be funded by the private sector to try to cast uncertainty."

A complicated web of relationships revolves around a number of right-wing think-tanks around the world that dispute the threats of climate change. ExxonMobil is a key player behind the scenes, having donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past few years to climate change sceptics. The Atlas Foundation, created by the late Sir Anthony Fisher (founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs), received more than $100,000 in 2008 from ExxonMobil, according to the oil company's reports.

Atlas has supported more than 30 other foreign think-tanks that espouse climate change scepticism, and co-sponsored a meeting of the world's leading climate sceptics in New York last March. Called "Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis?", it was organised by the Heartland Institute – a group that described the event as "the world's largest-ever gathering of global warming sceptics". The organisation is another right-wing think-tank to have benefited from funding given by ExxonMobil in recent years.

A large British contingent was present at the event, with speakers including Dr Benny Peiser, from Lord Lawson's climate sceptic think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF); the botanist David Bellamy; Julian Morris and Kendra Okonski from the London-based International Policy Network; the weather forecaster Piers Corbyn; Christopher Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher; and Professor David Henderson, a member of GWPF's advisory council. Speakers at the event also included two prominent climate bloggers who associate with Paul Dennis, a 54-year-old climate researcher at the University of East Anglia who has been questioned by police investigating the theft of climate data.

In a posting on the blog of the climate sceptic Andrew Montford on Friday, Mr Dennis insisted: "I did not leak any files, data, emails or any other material. I have no idea how the files were released or who was behind it."

But he confirmed that he had been in email contact with Stephen McIntyre, who runs climateaudit.org – a site that was one of the first to receive an anonymous link to the original leaked data from UEA.

Mr Dennis said he emailed Mr McIntyre to alert him to a "departmental email saying that emails and files were hacked" and that "police had copies of my email correspondence with Steve McIntyre and Jeff Id [a pseudonym for the climate sceptic Patrick Condon]. They said it was because I had sent the emails that they were interviewing me."

The UEA researcher also has connections with another prominent sceptic, Anthony Watts, with whom he has posted and who spoke beside Mr McIntyre. Mr Dennis was not available for comment.

Bob Ward, the policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said: "A lot of the climate sceptic arguments are being made by people with demonstrable right-wing ideology which is based on opposition to any environmental regulation of the market, and they are clearly being given money that allows them to disseminate their views more widely than would be the case if they didn't have oil company funding."

But Dr Richard North, a climate change sceptic and blogger, rejected claims of a conspiracy as "laughable" and denied having any links to vested interests. "Anybody who knows me knows I'm a loner. Nobody tells me what to do or dictates my agenda."

ExxonMobil said in a statement: "We have the same concerns as people everywhere – and that is how to provide the world with the energy it needs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

http://www.independent.co.uk/environ...s-1891747.html

So how much are they paying you rcptn?

[Rocky Rhodes]

As they say, a picture tells a thousand words...

[Guest]

Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers



http://www.independent.co.uk/environ...s-1891747.html

So how much are they paying you rcptn?

I wish mate

How about the funding of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/

Acknowledgements
This list is not fully exhaustive, but we would like to acknowledge the support of the following funders (in alphabetical order):
British Council, British Petroleum, Broom's Barn Sugar Beet Research Centre, Central Electricity Generating Board, Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS), Commercial Union, Commission of European Communities (CEC, often referred to now as EU), Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC), Department of Energy, Department of the Environment (DETR, now DEFRA), Department of Health, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Eastern Electricity, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Environment Agency, Forestry Commission, Greenpeace International, International Institute of Environmental Development (IIED), Irish Electricity Supply Board, KFA Germany, Leverhulme Trust, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), National Power, National Rivers Authority, Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), Norwich Union, Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, Overseas Development Administration (ODA), Reinsurance Underwriters and Syndicates, Royal Society, Scientific Consultants, Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), Scottish and Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research, Shell, Stockholm Environment Agency, Sultanate of Oman, Tate and Lyle, UK Met. Office, UK Nirex Ltd., United Nations Environment Plan (UNEP), United States Department of Energy, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Wolfson Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature

Hmm look at all that funding from government and the UN

And what do I see in their funding from Big Oil BP and Shell and I thought they were funding the deniers and sceptics. Looks Big Oil have been funding the fraudulent climate scientists.

[Rocky Rhodes]

I wish mate

How about the funding of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/


Hmm look at all that funding from government and the UN

And what do I see in their funding from Big Oil BP and Shell and I thought they were funding the deniers and sceptics. Looks Big Oil have been funding the fraudulent climate scientists.

So, what does that ultimately prove?

To me that is a nice little "Red herring". That is the Oil C's Giving a few thousands to climate scientist to pretend to support it whilst on the other hand spend hundreds of thousands to try and stop it to protect their billion dollar industries. You gotta use a bit of common sense mate.

So what is your position rcptn? Do you believe in no global warming whatsoever or just no man made global warming (AGW)?

[Guest]

So, what does that ultimately prove?

To me that is a nice little "Red herring". That is the Oil C's Giving a few thousands to climate scientist to pretend to support it whilst on the other hand spend hundreds of thousands to try and stop it to protect their billion dollar industries. You gotta use a bit of common sense mate.

So what is your position rcptn? Do you believe in no global warming whatsoever or just no man made global warming (AGW)?

Big Oil have funded leading climatoligists at UAE Hadley Climate Research Unit.
That is a fact they tell us that themselves. What we don't know is how much?
Yet you say its a few thousand dollars with absolutely no evidence to back up your claim.

My position is that I believe in global warming and that it is not man made although due to recent evidence that has come to light regarding the global temperature datasets being tampered with and manipulated I have doubts about that now.

[Guest]

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/20...still-hold-up/

Does an Old Climate Critique Still Hold up?
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Two years before the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was released in 2007, this comment about an early draft of the report came in from Andrew Lacis, a physicist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the NASA lab led for decades by James Hansen:

There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department. The points being made are made arbitrarily with legal sounding caveats without having established any foundation or basis in fact. The Executive Summary seems to be a political statement that is only designed to annoy greenhouse skeptics. Wasn’t the I.P.C.C. Assessment Report intended to be a scientific document that would merit solid backing from the climate science community – instead of forcing many climate scientists into having to agree with greenhouse skeptic criticisms that this is indeed a report with a clear and obvious political agenda. Attribution can not happen until understanding has been clearly demonstrated. Once the facts of climate change have been established and understood, attribution will become self-evident to all. The Executive Summary as it stands is beyond redemption and should simply be deleted. Read more….

Dr. Lacis, who wrote the comment in November 2005, was referring to the executive summary of the chapter in the Working Group 1 report on the basic science of human-driven global warming entitled Understanding and Attributing Climate Change. The comment was summarily rejected. This made waves today after a Bishop Hill blog post was picked up by WattsUpWithThat.*

I was immediately curious, of course, whether Dr. Lacis still held this dim view of that chapter summary, so I contacted him and we just spoke a short while ago.

“The revised chapter was much improved,” he said. “That’s different than saying everything in there is nailed down, but I think it’s a big improvement.”

Overall, he said, “I commend the authors for doing as good a job as they did. That’s the way the science process ought to work. You get inputs from everybody, find any bugs, crank through and the science moves forward.”

But after reviewing the chapter myself just now, I have to say that at least one passage — as far as I can tell — did not contain a single caveat and did not reflect the underlying body of evidence and analysis at the time (or even now):

Human-induced warming of the climate system is widespread. Anthropogenic warming of the climate system can be detected in temperature observations taken at the surface, in the troposphere and in the oceans.

I have yet to see anyone provide definitive evidence — with no error bars — that the fingerprint of human-generated greenhouse gases (or other emissions or actions) is unequivocal. The only thing described as “unequivocal” in the report was the warming, not the cause, unless I really haven’t been paying attention for the last two decades.

I’ve sent out an email to the lead authors and overall leaders of the report on the basic science and will update this post when they respond.

UPDATE, 4:10 p.m.: Gabriele Hegerl, one of two coordinating lead authors for this chapter, just sent this reply (which was copied to an array of other panel authors) [6:50 p.m.: Dr. Hegerl also sent an addendum which I've appended below]:

Andrew Lacis’ comment at the time seemed to result from not realizing that all the ‘meat’ in the chapter is BEHIND the executive summary (and he seems to have been satisfied as he seems to have commented only on technical issues on a later draft).

[if you want to know more detail on where findings come from: In every subsection, for example, the one on causes of observed surface temperature changes, a large number of studies are assessed that try to attribute observed warming to causes. Some of them are optimal fingerprint detection studies (estimating the magnitude of fingerprints for different external forcing factors in observations, and determining how likely such patterns could have occurred in observations by chance, and how likely they could be confused with climate response to other influences, using a statistically optimal metric), some of them use simpler methods, such as comparisons between data and climate model simulations with and without greenhouse gas increases/anthropogenic forcing, and some are even based only on observations. How well we can distinguish between different external influences on surface temperature (such as natural, including solar, vs. greenhouse gas forcing) is, for example, discussed in section 9.4.1.5). What the last millennium tells us is in Section 9.3. For each section, the results are summarized at the end (e.g., 9.4.5 summarizes 9.4) and the most robust ones carried forward to the executive summary. If you want to know more detail, look at the summary table at the end of the chapter]

We felt Andrew Lacis’ comment reflected that he couldn’t clearly see where statements came from, which is why we strengthened the pointers from the technical sections to the executive summary.

The heading ‘Human Induced warming ..widespread’ is exactly as strong as we felt the finding summarized under it reflects: ‘Anthropogenic warming of the climate system can be detected in temperature observations taken at the surface, in the troposphere and in the oceans.’ We felt that the term ‘widespread’ well reflected the fact that we have detection and attribution results that show that recent warming is inconsistent with internal climate variability and other external influences alone in surface temperature (see Section 9.4.2), tropospheric temperature (see section 9.4.4.), and in ocean temperature data (see section 9.5.1).

So I really cannot see where your conclusions about a stronger statement than in the chapter would come from at all! In fact, the nominal statistical significance levels of all statements are quite a bit stronger than we assess them couched in likelihood language, in order to account for remaining uncertainties. Note also that the chapter has a detailed discussion how well we can estimate variability generated within the system (which is the yardstick we distinguish response to external forcing against). It’s been a long day, so please get back if I am only making limited sense, and coauthors, please chime in likewise!

Gabriele Hegerl,
chair of climate system science
School of GeoSciences
University of Edinburgh

[UPDATE, 6:45 p.m.: Here's Dr. Hegerl's addendum, after another email exchange.

The statement you ask about is the header for a string of likelihood statements that assess studies estimating the human contribution to changes in atmospheric temperatures, surface temperature and ocean temperatures. We felt it was clearest to give likelihood statements for each individual finding summarized right under this header. So the header is, for example, followed by 'Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years'. Posting this will avoid the very erroneous perception that we are not giving likelihood statements/qualifiers, which is absolutely not true....]

In an extended email exchange, I responded that using definitive words like “detected” in a highlighted introductory phrase in a long document — even if there is nuance in subsequent sentences — is hard to read as nuanced.

“To a journalist or policy maker, the word ‘detected’ has no wiggle room,” I wrote. “All of this seems to support the need for [the] I.P.C.C. to look at its output from the standpoint of the outside world. A heading is what we call a ’sound bite.’ It’s part of the language of the document.”

[Guest]

Global warming denier suffers heat stroke - LMFAO.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-d...0210-nsd3.html

Visiting climate change denier Christopher Monckton experienced a very real global warming moment while seeking some relaxation at a remote township in South Australia's Flinders Ranges at the weekend. Australia's very own champion of climate change scepticism, Ian Plimer, had taken Monckton to see the rock formations at Arkaroola. In Plimer's words: ''That's where there are no phones, that's where he can't be pestered and that's where he can have a bit of a rest.'' Well, not quite, as it turned out. The pair happened upon a crew shooting director Jim Loach's feature film Oranges and Sunshine, starring Hugo Weaving and David Wenham, who persuaded Monckton to take part in an impromptu variety show as part of their celebrations at the end of their shoot. Apparently Monckton agreed to recite a Gilbert and Sullivan number - in Latin, no less. But come show time, Monckton - who is not usually shy of an audience - was a no-show. ''We were informed by his wife that he had needed to retire early, with suspected heat stroke,'' the film's stills photographer, Matt Nettheim, told the Diary.

The irony of this will be lost on rcptn I'm sure.

Chook.

[Guest]

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1225830258725

UN climate panel under strain

From: The Australian February 15, 2010 12:00AM

THE UN climate panel faces a new challenge, with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.

In its last assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and there could be 5-6C more warming by 2100.

New research has cast doubt on such claims.

"The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change," said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama, in Huntsville, and a former lead author on the IPCC.

The doubts of Professor Christy and several other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

They believe these stations have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, frequently, being moved from site to site.

Professor Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa and the US states of California and Alabama.

"The story is the same for each one," he said. "The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development."

The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report.

The experience turned him into a critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods: "We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC's climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data-quality problems."

Such warnings are supported by a study of US weather stations co-written by Anthony Watts, a US meteorologist and climate change sceptic. His study, which has not been peer-reviewed, is illustrated with photographs of weather stations in locations where their readings are distorted by heat-generating equipment.

The Sunday Times