Burma cyclone : How can we tell if climate change created it or made it worse?

free spirit said:

you are incapable of defending any of the statements you've made so far on this thread, as you've been incapable of defending virtually any of your statements ever on this site.

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On the contrary, all of the statements that I have made here are based on hard science and solid data. All of your statements, on the other hand, especially those where you assert that human CO2 emissions drive global warming, are based on nothing more than pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo. I have challenged you, just as Corbyn has challenged Pachauri and the IPCC, to produce for us here the hard scientific evidence to back up the CO2 driver theory. But, as everyone can now see, you have failed miserably to produce anything at all, apart from a rather tedious and feeble straw man diversion.

Those of us who have followed this issue closely will remember until quite recently that the frequent claim made by you and your benighted colleagues in the climate change PR industry was that natural forces including changes in solar output are small compared with CO2 forcing, thus they cannot have been the cause of recent warming. Now the claim seems to be that the lack of warming and cooling in recent years is due to natural variation temporarily masking the AGW signal. However, if natural variation, such as a shift of the PDO to its negative phase, is capable of causing global cooling, how can it be subsequently argued that the PDO contributed little or nothing at all to the preceding period of warming during its positive phase? Why does the warming have to be anthropogenic? Why does it have to be carbon dioxide?

go on, I double dare you, at least make some effort to defend your position, or are you accepting that what you posted up is misleading bollocks... in which case maybe you could do the honourable thing and retract your statements?

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As Dravinian has pointed out already, you have crudely and deliberately misrepresented what I posted in order to create a straw man. Under the circumstances, then, I'm sure you'll forgive me for not joining in.

I think one problem, Free Spirit, is that most people would be happier if it wasn't true.

Right now, looking at the last few posts, I feel myself drawn to bigfish's arguments, not particularly because they are presented any better or contain any more or less information, but because really I would prefer global warming wasn't true and i am a bit of a cynic and I do feel that global warming has become a tool for those that wish to profit more by making us accept less.

The other problem is of course the huge amount of data and information and contrary arguments going on within the scientific community. Their lack of confidence in their own ability to predict anything on a global scale makes it difficult to accept one point of view or the other with absolute certainty.

I think a lot of the public has accepted Climate Change but purely on the basis that soo many people are banging on about it that they figure it must be true. Yet we have all seen loads of things where lots of people bang on about it being true and it turned out to be wrong. Flat earth theory for a start.

So I find it difficult from a layman's point of view. I understand you feel that bigfish has done this on purpose as something I dunno evil, but I am not sure I concur with that opinion, he seems genuine in his concern and I am unsure what these people have to benefit by refuting Climate Change.

I can see the benefits for some for pushing climate change, but I am not sure I see any benefit in denying it at this stage. I could understand it when it was Bush and co at the start because they didn't want to upset their own little apple cart, but we have a whole new apple cart now and the people on this apple cart are making just as much money.

taffboy gwyrdd said:

Obviously thats the most sensible answer we can have, even though it is rather vapid.

What it would mean is that by the time we might conclude CC is killing shedloads of people it will be too late to do anything. At the same time, climate scientists tell us with almost unanimous voice that loads of people are going to die.

I have a dire feeling that as events like these occur, any CC component will be the elephant in the room. And if mentioned the smartarses, pedants and skeptics will say "oooooh, you cant prooooove its CC"

The best analogy is the corporate denialists who said we couldnt prooooove smoking caused cancer for decades.

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What a bizarre opinion. It's almost as if you WANT global warming to be true. Going on what you've set out above it's a question of faith, not empirical evidence, which is nuts if you want anyone to take your argument seriously.

Dravinian said:

I think one problem, Free Spirit, is that most people would be happier if it wasn't true.

Right now, looking at the last few posts, I feel myself drawn to bigfish's arguments, not particularly because they are presented any better or contain any more or less information, but because really I would prefer global warming wasn't true and i am a bit of a cynic and I do feel that global warming has become a tool for those that wish to profit more by making us accept less.

The other problem is of course the huge amount of data and information and contrary arguments going on within the scientific community. Their lack of confidence in their own ability to predict anything on a global scale makes it difficult to accept one point of view or the other with absolute certainty.

I think a lot of the public has accepted Climate Change but purely on the basis that soo many people are banging on about it that they figure it must be true. Yet we have all seen loads of things where lots of people bang on about it being true and it turned out to be wrong. Flat earth theory for a start.

So I find it difficult from a layman's point of view. I understand you feel that bigfish has done this on purpose as something I dunno evil, but I am not sure I concur with that opinion, he seems genuine in his concern and I am unsure what these people have to benefit by refuting Climate Change.

I can see the benefits for some for pushing climate change, but I am not sure I see any benefit in denying it at this stage. I could understand it when it was Bush and co at the start because they didn't want to upset their own little apple cart, but we have a whole new apple cart now and the people on this apple cart are making just as much money.

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each to their own and all that, but perhaps you might want to think about why he'd use graphs that all start at conveniant points for his arguement, rather than showing the full picture if he was being an honest broker in this debate.

the global temperature graph starts in 1998 at a point where a number of factors combined to create an unusually high temperature for that year. Had he started the graph say in 1990, or 1980, in fact any time earlier than 1998 it would have been obvious that the last decade has in fact seen an increase in average global surface temperatures based on 3 year, 5 year, and 10 year averages... ie the underlying trend is upwards, though the warming has slowed somewhat since the 90's...

remember this is about long term trends, not any one particular year when a whole series of factors combined to create an unusually warm year.

If you don't believe me, consider that every year since 2001 has been in the top 8 warmest years on record, with the next 2 highest (other than 1998) being 1995 & 1997...

The top 10 hottest years globally (based on anomalies from average global temperature from 1971 through 2000) include:

• 1998 – 0.94 degrees Fahrenheit (0.52 degrees Celsius) above average
• 2005 – 0.86 degrees Fahrenheit (0.48 degrees Celsius) above average
• 2003 – 0.83 degrees Fahrenheit (0.46 degrees Celsius) above average
• 2002 – 0.83 degrees Fahrenheit (0.46 degrees Celsius) above average
• 2004 – 0.77 degrees Fahrenheit (0.43 degrees Celsius) above average
• 2006 – 0.76 degrees Fahrenheit (0.42 degrees Celsius) above average
• 2007 – 0.74 degrees Fahrenheit (0.41 degrees Celsius) above average
• 2001 – 0.72 degrees Fahrenheit (0.40 degrees Celsius) above average
• 1997 – 0.65 degrees Fahrenheit (0.36 degrees Celsius) above average
• 1995 – 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.28 degrees Celsius) above average

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so yes, if the IPCC were arguing that manmade global warming meant that every single year would be hotter than the next, bigfish & his ilk would have a point, but they're not, and never were. It has always been about the underlying trend, allowing for annual, and other cyclical fluctuations due to a range of other factors.




looking at this over a longer term, taking the starting point as not being a fluke hot year, but the mid 1800's so you can actually see long term trends it should be a little more obvious firstly that the longterm underlying trend (red line) remains upwards, and that the last decade has been significantly hotter than any other decade on the graph... and secondly exactly what I'm talking about in terms of bigfish's graph being deliberately designed to mislead.

eta - also note from the graph the way the temperature fluctuates throughout the series, with large year to year differences in many places, and regular plateaus where the temperature will stay the same / drop slightly for a few years before rising again.

bigfish said:

On the contrary, all of the statements that I have made here are based on hard science and solid data.

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if that's the case you'll have no problem defending them then will you?

bigfish said:

All of your statements, on the other hand, especially those where you assert that human CO2 emissions drive global warming, are based on nothing more than pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo. I have challenged you, just as Corbyn has challenged Pachauri and the IPCC, to produce for us here the hard scientific evidence to back up the CO2 driver theory. But, as everyone can now see, you have failed miserably to produce anything at all, apart from a rather tedious and feeble straw man diversion.

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erm sorry, all my statements are based on nothing more than pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo?

so, once again, you'll have no problem in pointing out where I'm going wrong then will you?

is the fall in tropical sea surface temperatures over the last 18 months due (or largely due) to a prolongued la nina period following on from an el nino period, as demonstrated by the nasa images, or not?

I realise it's not that important in the grand scheme of things, but you brought it up, and it's a bit rich for you to demand I produce evidence of something when you refuse prior requests for you to back up or retract your statements / implications.

how about this one...

You can go to this NOAA archive and check back for earlier weekly SST anomaly maps and there are no relevant warm anomalies.

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I've done that, and demonstrated that there is in fact a directly relevant large area of warm anomaly right next to the area of formation of the hurricane, and along virtually it's entire path immediately prior to the hurricanes formation. fancy retracting that statement that's a proven false statement?

bigfish said:

Those of us who have followed this issue closely will remember until quite recently that the frequent claim made by you and your benighted colleagues in the climate change PR industry was that natural forces including changes in solar output are small compared with CO2 forcing, thus they cannot have been the cause of recent warming. Now the claim seems to be that the lack of warming and cooling in recent years is due to natural variation temporarily masking the AGW signal. However, if natural variation, such as a shift of the PDO to its negative phase, is capable of causing global cooling, how can it be subsequently argued that the PDO contributed little or nothing at all to the preceding period of warming during its positive phase? Why does the warming have to be anthropogenic? Why does it have to be carbon dioxide?

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firstly when I was being taught this stuff at university in 1995 or so, we were being taught that there were many different factors both natural and anthropogenic in origin that affected the climate, so I don't know where you've got the idea that this is a recent thing from... although I think our understanding of many of these other factors is greater now than it was 10 years ago so maybe that's what you're on about.

sod it, I'm off to bed, will respond to the rest later.

You're arguing with someone who believes the surface of the sun is metal.


Why bother

DotCommunist said:

You're arguing with someone who believes the surface of the sun is metal.


Why bother

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because people like dravinian are getting taking in by people like bigfish all over the internet - it's a concerted campaign going on across the web, with a small clique coming up with propaganda tools that the likes of bigfish then pick up and cut and paste all over the web.

I just like to defend this little corner of the web from it.

plus it gives me an opportunity to stay upto date and all that being as I'm not using any of this at the moment for work.

but yeah, I know what you mean, it is a bit fucking pointless given that he never concedes a point, merely ignores it for the rest of the thread, then returns with the same point rehashed on the next thread.

Corbyn challenges Monbiot to produce evidence

From: George Monbiot [mailto:g.monbiot@zetnet. co.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2008 3:02 PM
To: piers@weatheraction.com
Subject: Weatheraction: peer-reviewed papers

Dear Piers,

when I spoke to you on April 17th, you kindly agreed to send me a list of your peer-reviewed publications. I am still waiting for this list and I would be grateful if you could send it by the end of this week, as it may have a bearing on the contents of the article I am writing about The Great Global Warming Swindle.

With best wishes, George

===

The Long Range Forecasters
Delta House, 175-177 Borough High Street. London SE1 1HR
Tel +44(0)20 7939 9946 Fax +44(0)20 7939 9901 E: piers@weatheraction.com
Fromiers Corbyn

May Day 2008

Dear George,

The need for Scientific Integrity - a challenge for you to produce evidence

Further to your phone call and e-mail requesting information on my qualifications, academic activity and peer-reviewed publications I attach my recently updated media-friendly CV which includes most of my peer-reviewed publications in astronomy, astrophysics, meteorology and related fields and also invited presentations to reputable conferences.

It is bizarre that you purport to be interested in peer-reviewed science - or indeed any verifiable scientific theories - since you have made many hysterical unscientific and unjustifiable public claims about supposed man-made CO2 driven 'climate change' for which there is no peer-reviewed, or even other, supporting observational evidence.

It appears of course that your enquiry is largely malevolent and you are acting on or propagating false information and rumour in order to undermine me and others as individuals rather than properly discuss points in the ground-breaking Great Global Warming Swindle film.

I do not know if you are genuinely ill-informed, or acting under pressure, or are guided by a hidden agenda. Nevertheless I appeal to you to examine what you are doing and clarify if you will support and campaign for integrity in science and politics rather than undermining these central values of civilisation, as you have done in vaious ways hitherto.

Specifically,

1. I, along with three other scientists, have written (on 14th April, attached) to the UN climate committee (IPCC) challenging them '...to admit that there is no observational evidence in measured data going back 22,000 years or even millions of years that CO2 levels (whether from man or nature) have driven or are driving world temperatures or climate change' and further challenging: 'If you believe there is evidence of the CO2 driver theory in the available data please present a graph of it'.

We have as yet received no reply. You are a leading protagonist of drastic change in the world political economy in the name of fear of so-called man-made Climate Change so I and my associates, also direct this challenge to you and look forward to your own response.

2. If you are unable to provide or find an adequate scientific response will you please as a matter of extreme urgency renounce the 'Climate Change' policies of the UN and many governments which are leading to weakening of the world economy, and - through biofuel production for example - rising food prices, poverty, starvation and accelerated destruction of forest?

3. Do you agree that the 'prove and predict' principles of science should also apply to Climate Science and that scientific 'theories' should not be propagated which are refuted by observational evidence?

4. Will you comment on a recent claim that Al Gore's movie 'An Inconvenient Truth' used polystyrene models of ice in order to produce images purporting to be reality.

5. Do you agree with the view that Al Gore's movie should only be shown in schools if the counter view 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' is also shown - and pupils urged to discuss the issues? OR do you lean more towards the propaganda-centred modes of public scientific discourse as was practiced in pre-war Germany and the Soviet Union?

6. On a personal matter, after you have looked at my CV, will you ask those who have propagated venomous and libellous falsities against me - such as claims that I have no relevant qualifications or no peer-reviewed publications - to desist.

Thank you

Piers Corbyn

free spirit said:

each to their own and all that, but perhaps you might want to think about why he'd use graphs that all start at conveniant points for his arguement, rather than showing the full picture if he was being an honest broker in this debate.

the global temperature graph starts in 1998 at a point where a number of factors combined to create an unusually high temperature for that year. Had he started the graph say in 1990, or 1980, in fact any time earlier than 1998 it would have been obvious that the last decade has in fact seen an increase in average global surface temperatures based on 3 year, 5 year, and 10 year averages... ie the underlying trend is upwards, though the warming has slowed somewhat since the 90's...

remember this is about long term trends, not any one particular year when a whole series of factors combined to create an unusually warm year.

If you don't believe me, consider that every year since 2001 has been in the top 8 warmest years on record, with the next 2 highest (other than 1998) being 1995 & 1997...

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One can only marvel at the disingenuousness of Dr Spirit's response. The "record" he is referring to is, of course, the instrumental record. There are, however, literally hundreds of peer reviewed research papers from a wide variety of sources based on proxy analysis that confirm the existence of a period much warmer than today about a thousand years ago known as the Medieval Warm Period (MWP). Remember this is about long term trends, so lets take a look at the entire 10,000 year Holocene period.

Global warming every 1500 years




The temperature fluctuations shown in the Graph is represented by the yellow line. The background of the graph is red in the upper two thirds, representing the warm atmosphere, and blue in the lower one third, representing the cold environment. It is possible to observe that the warm environment (wide of the attenuated red horizontal band) prevails over the cooling fluctuations (attenuated blue horizontal band), since the latter is narrower than the warm band.

In general, with fluctuations measuring up to 6 °C (based on the average standard of the last 150 years), the temperature has been warm, punctuated by periods of extreme cooling, such as a glacial period that occurred 8,000 years ago and, most recently, the period known as the Little Ice Age between 1570 and 1830 AD.

And with the change of CO2

http://biocab.org/Holocene.html

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Hmmm, no sign of any "unprecedented" warming there. Of course, the IPCC have known all along that temperatures were warmer during the medieval warm period, otherwise why would IPCC lead author Jonathan Overpeck send an astonishing email to Professor David Deming saying that: “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”

http://www.normantranscript.com/siteSearch/apstorysection/local_story_278005204

Hadley Climate Center.

UK Met Office climate center not some random blogger.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/obsdata/HadCRUGNS.html

david dissadent said:

UK Met Office climate center not some random blogger.

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Dr Nahle is an accredited scientist, which is more than can be said for you. In any event, the charts are based on data from Was The Medieval Warm Period Global, by Wallace S Broecker, pulished in Science 23 February 2001 Vol.291. No. 5508. pp. 1497 - 1499.

It's a relatively simple exercise to chart the data for yourself - so off you go.

bigfish said:

In general, with fluctuations measuring up to 6 °C

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The temperature component is said to be from Broecker (Science, 2002).

In the full report we can see the graph which is said to be temperature record for the Holocene. But that graph says for y-axis: “Percent iron stained grains” and is about a sediment core in the North-Atlantic.
[...]
But the main page gives some better indication of the temperature trend during the Holocene:

One difficulty encountered when trying to reconstruct Holocene temperature fluctuations is that they were probably less than 1°C.

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Thus the whole temperature scale for most of the graph is wrong…

Moreover, this may be an indication of North Atlantic ocean temperature variations, but that is not the same as NH or global…

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source.

Source: UCR Education

bigfish said:

Dr Nahle is an accredited scientist, which is more than can be said for you.

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He linked to the UK Met Office climate center. They are accredited.

bigfish said:

It's a relatively simple exercise to chart the data for yourself - so off you go.

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And now you want his own work? How did you manage to contradict yourself in such a short post?

Recalculation using Mann's methodoly - McIntyre & McKitrick Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series, Energy & Environment, vol.14, number 6, 2003.

A number of spurious criticisms regarding the Mann et al (1998) proxy-based temperature reconstruction have been made by two individuals McIntyre and McKitrick ( McIntyre works in the mining industry, while McKitrick is an economist). These criticisms are contained in two manuscripts (McIntyre and McKitrick 2003 and 2004–the latter manuscript was rejected by Nature; both are collectively henceforth referred to as "MM"). MM claim that the main features of the Mann et al (1998–henceforth MBH98) reconstruction, including the "hockey stick" shape of the reconstruction, are artifacts of a) the centering convention used by MBH98 in their Principal Components Analysis (PCA) of the North American International Tree Ring Data Bank ('ITRDB') data, b) the use of 4 infilled missing annual values (AD 1400-1403) in one tree-ring series (the 'St. Anne' Northern Treeline series), and c) the infilling of missing values in some proxy data between 1972 and 1980. Each of these claims are demonstrated to be false below.

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source.

I don't understand.

Is bigfish suggesting that we can go on using carbon-based fuels and products for as long as we like with no consequences at all?

story said:

Is bigfish suggesting that we can go on using carbon-based fuels and products for as long as we like with no consequences at all?

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Yes. And if you think that's bonkers see this thread from #40 onwards.

bigfish said:

Source: UCR Education

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That's a graph showing the temperature over Greenland. Was there a Medieval Warm Period in say Burma? Was it Global?

Signal 11 said:

Yes. And if you think that's bonkers see this thread from #40 onwards.

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That's ... something.

so, in summary on this thread bigfish has posted up the following...

A graph showing the temperature history of Greenland in a discussion about global temperatures, without making clear that it's a graph of local not global temperatures

A graph of north atlantic ocean temperatiures (probably with the wrong scale) , without making clear that it wasn't a graph of global temperatures.

A graph of annual global temperatures starting at the highest recent temperature anomaly & then making out that this shows average global temperatures were falling when the underlying trend is actually upwards.

A completely discredited graph produced using flawed methodology.

A graph showing that surprise surprise, tropical ocean temperatures drop during a prolongued la nina period, but purporting to show that this means global warming can't be leading to increased tropical water temperatures...

and a blatant lie about water temps in the indian ocean not being above average in the build up to the tropical storm that hit burma... it is after all the water temperature in the build up to the storm that matters, not the temperatures after the storm has passed over the area.


is anyone really still think that bigfish isn't deliberately publishing misleading information?

Signal 11 said:

source.

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Your source, realclimate, can hardly be regarded as impartial bearing in mind the website was founded as a foil to Climate Audit by 2 of the authors of the discredited hockey stick paper with the help of Environmental Media Services, a front group for PR firm Fenton Communications, whose clients include International ANSWER and MoveOn, the latter funded by George Soros with close ties to the Democrats and Al Gore. In any event, realclimate's rebuttal article was written in 2004 and so predates the findings of the Wegman Report commissioned by Congress to study the methods of Mann et al and published in 2006. Contrary to any propaganda realclimate has managed to cobble together since, the Wegman Report destroyed the Hockey Stick. Objective readers of this thread may decide for themselves...


http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/others/07142006_Wegman_ Report.pdf

yield said:

That's a graph showing the temperature over Greenland. Was there a Medieval Warm Period in say Burma? Was it Global?

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Yes, contrary to the incessant propaganda spewed out, for example, by realclimate and George Monbiot, the MWP and the LIA were both global in scale. Please see the graph below, taken from: A 2000-YEAR GLOBAL TEMPERATURE RECONSTRUCTION BASED ON NON-TREE RING PROXIES, a multi-proxy study by Craig Loehle, Ph.D. and J. Huston McCulloch, E&E 2008, which clearly shows both the MWP and the LIA.



The series used were: GRIP borehole temperature (Dahl-Jensen et al., 1998); Conroy Lake pollen (Gajewski, 1988); Chesapeake Bay Mg/Ca (Cronin et 93 94 Energy & Environment · Vol. 19, No. 1, 2008 al., 2003); Sargasso Sea 18O (Keigwin, 1996); Caribbean Sea 18O (Nyberg et al., 2002); Lake Tsuolbmajavri diatoms (Korhola et al., 2000); Shihua Cave layer thickness (Tan et al., 2003); China composite (Yang et al., 2002) which does use tree ring width for two out of the eight series that are averaged to get the composite, or 1.4% of the total data input to the mean computed below; speleothem data from a South African cave (Holmgren et al., 1999); SST variations (warm season) off West Africa (deMenocal et al., 2000); SST from the southeast Atlantic (Farmer et al., 2005); SST reconstruction in the Norwegian Sea (Calvo et al., 2002); SST from two cores in the western tropical Pacific (Stott et al., 2004); mean temperature for North America based on pollen profiles (Viau et al., 2006); a phenology-based reconstruction from China (Ge et al., 2003); annual mean SST for northern Pacific site SSDP-102 (Latitude 34.9530, Longitude 128.8810) from Kim et al. (2004); and Spannagel Cave (Central Alps) stalagmite oxygen isotope data (Mangini et al., 2005). This gave a total of eighteen series (Fig. 1) with quite wide geographic coverage (including tropical) and based on multiple proxies.

The Loehle paper can be downloaded from here: http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025

free spirit said:

so, in summary on this thread bigfish has posted up the following...

A graph showing the temperature history of Greenland in a discussion about global temperatures, without making clear that it's a graph of local not global temperatures

A graph of north atlantic ocean temperatiures (probably with the wrong scale) , without making clear that it wasn't a graph of global temperatures.

A graph of annual global temperatures starting at the highest recent temperature anomaly & then making out that this shows average global temperatures were falling when the underlying trend is actually upwards.

A completely discredited graph produced using flawed methodology.

A graph showing that surprise surprise, tropical ocean temperatures drop during a prolongued la nina period, but purporting to show that this means global warming can't be leading to increased tropical water temperatures...

and a blatant lie about water temps in the indian ocean not being above average in the build up to the tropical storm that hit burma... it is after all the water temperature in the build up to the storm that matters, not the temperatures after the storm has passed over the area.


is anyone really still think that bigfish isn't deliberately publishing misleading information?

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Well some people might think that - if they are stupid enough to take what you say at face value. On the other hand, some people might see that you have built one straw man after another in order to hide the fact, just like the IPCC and George Monbiot, that you are unable to furnish evidence supporting the idea that 'climate change' is driven by man-made CO2.

So, for the umpteenth time, can you provide any credible evidence of man-made CO2 driven 'climate change' - Yes or No?

bigfish said:

In any event, realclimate's rebuttal article was written in 2004 and so predates the findings of the Wegman Report commissioned by Congress to study the methods of Mann et al and published in 2006.

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Wegman merely repeats the claims of McIntyre and McKitrick from 2003 and 2005, all of which are dealt with in the article I linked and the update that is linked from it that was added in 2005.

Signal 11 said:

Wegman merely repeats the claims of McIntyre and McKitrick from 2003 and 2005, all of which are dealt with in the article I linked and the update that is linked from it that was added in 2005.

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So what you seem to be saying is that the IPCC's infamous 'hockey stick' is an accurate representation of the long term climate history of Earth even though the statistical methodology employed by its creator has been comprehensively falsified by a number of independent research teams including a team led by one of the worlds most preeminent statisticians and that all the numerous studies contradicting the 'hockey stick' are wrong.

Tell me, did you and your mates campaign for 'Green' Ken in the recent election?

bigfish said:

So what you seem to be saying is that the IPCC's infamous 'hockey stick' is an accurate representation of the long term climate history of Earth even though the statistical methodology employed by its creator has been comprehensively falsified by a number of independent research teams including a team led by one of the worlds most preeminent statisticians and that all the numerous studies contradicting the 'hockey stick' are wrong.

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Your argument has already been addressed on this thread, and on all the others where you or other people have raised it. Simply repeating the same thing yet again isn't going to make it true. I realise that you are not actually interested in debating the issue, only trying to mislead newbies who may not be aware of what a paranoid loon you are, but it doesn't appear to be working...

free spirit said:

is anyone really still think that bigfish isn't deliberately publishing misleading information?

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Apparantly not. If anyone does still have any doubts, please either post them up or see some of the previous threads, in particular:

Do you believe in global warming -- from January 2005.
Climate change - ignorance of Joe Public -- from January 2007.
The Great Global Warming Swindle -- from March 2007.
The deceit behind global warming -- from November 2007.

sorry for the delay...

bigfish said:

Well some people might think that - if they are stupid enough to take what you say at face value.

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well people will have to take what I say at face value if you're not able, or not willing to defend the stuff that you've posted up that I've offered criticism of won't they?

bigfish said:

On the other hand, some people might see that you have built one straw man after another

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no, sorry, I'll admit that I made one post that could be taken as building a straw man arguement, while misunderstanding what you were actually getting at on the old tropical water temperatures / huricanes arguement, but not one after another, as the rest of my posts are just me tackling posts you've made but won't defend, plus a bit of me getting narked at you for refusing to defend your posts or retract them.

bigfish said:

So, for the umpteenth time, can you provide any credible evidence of man-made CO2 driven 'climate change' - Yes or No?

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OK bigfish, I think I'm prepared to concede that the IPCC really should have laid out in much more detail the precise mechanism for increased CO2 concentrations to drive climate change in their technical assessment.

Having gone back and reread it in the hope that it would cover this and save me having to attempt to search out the research myself, I actually agree with you that they really should have a section where they lay out all the evidence to enable them to really nail this arguement once and for all. It's fairly obvious that this questions going to get asked, and need answering, and they've fucked up by not properly nailing this in the report IMO.

I think this is going to have to be one I get back to you on if I'm going to have to scour google scholar myself.

Hopefully though the IPCC might actually take that letter seriously and produce something laying out the evidence as they see it.


(unless I've missed someting in the ipcc reports in which case could someone kindly point me in the right direction - page number etc pls - ta)

btw bigfish that's not a yes or a no, it's a hopefully but it may take some time, and depends on me having access to the papers in question and actually being able to get my head round them as we're getting a wee bit specialist here.

anyway, getting this thread back on track to whether climate change makes cyclones worse or not...

taking the question of sea surface temperatures in the atlantic and pacific cyclone / hurricane forming areas of ocean, this paper indicates the answer is yes, manmade climate change has almost certainly been responsible for increasing sea surface temperatures in those regions over the last century.

The observed SST increases in these regions range from 0.32°C to 0.67°C over the 20th century.

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On the basis of our F1 results for the period 1906–2005, there is an 84% chance that external forcing explains at least 67% of observed SST increases in the ACR and PCR. In both regions, model simulations with external forcing by combined natural and anthropogenic effects are broadly consistent with observed SST increases. The PCM experiments suggest that forcing by well mixed greenhouse gases has been the dominant influence on century-timescale SST increases. We also find clear evidence of a volcanic influence on observed SST variability in the ACR and PCR.

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This additional quote might help briefly to explain why it's so difficult to extrapolate from this whether, and how much any level of climate change will cause hurricanes / cyclones to increase in either frequency or power.

Hurricanes are complex phenomena. Although changes in ocean surface temperatures may be a key influence on hurricane intensity (6, 8, 9), SSTs are only one of a variety of factors that control hurricane formation and evolution (1, 9, 29). Detailed analyses of changes in other large-scale conditions that affect tropical cyclogenesis (such as wind shear and vertical stability) are required to obtain a more complete understanding of how hurricane activity has changed and may continue to change in a warming world. Our research illustrates that models can be of considerable benefit in understanding the causes of such changes.

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essentially there are still major questions over exactly what effect any given level of climate change will have on hurricane / cyclone levels due mainly to uncertainties in factors other than sea surface temperature, but for bigfish to have been arguing the notion that climate change doesn't = increased sea surface temps in those regions based on a graph showing temperatures for the entire tropical oceanic area (not just the areas where cyclones / hurricanes are known to form), and covering only the last 18 months or so is just plain wrong - as the century long analysis I've linked to shows.