Discussion > Simple Question for Lord Brown of "Science is Settled"
LBrowne is killed in the comments of that FT article
eg. "Is this the same John Browne whose Riverstone is both the world's largest renewable investor and a 41% shareholder in the UK's Cuadrilla Resources? "
..Funny how the BBC failed to mention those conflicts of interest.
stewgreen
I recon that the pause in AGW is now so long that to balance all the missing warming, the cooling forces would have put us well on the way to an ice age (never mind a mini one).
TinyCO2
TinyCO2: and note that no-one seems able to see the dissonance of CO2 be the driver of global temperatures being so easily over-ridden by other, as yet unknown, factors – meaning, of course that CO2 is NOT the driver of global temperatures (but, we are constantly assured, it is, really…). It is more like a panto than science (oh, no it isn’t!) – though nowhere near as witty nor as clever.
Radical Rodent
Too true RR. It wasn't so long ago Hansen and buddies were claiming that even the CO2 emmitted so far would overide the fall into an ice age. Either there's some powerful natural cooling going on or he was wrong. Climate science keeps issuing new theories and walking away from past 'certainties' with the excuse that this is emerging science. Well fine but if it's emerging science then high certainty claims are totally innapropriate. At the same time they're fiddling with the data so much I no longer know what the climate is really doing and this isn't helped by natural signals like the Arctic ice seeming to take a few steps back towards the cold.
Take sea level rise. We're told that the satellite measurements are the bees knees but it jumps every time they change the system. When you look instead at some of the most trustworthy ground based measurements then there are no jumps only a steady rise. Newlyn is one of our longest series. It shows no acceleration but no slowing either. The level is slightly off true because of isostatic rebound but that only serves to increase the rate so in fact sea level has risen slower. Sea level rise is about 1.8mm a year with isostatic rebound between 0.5 and 1mm. Note also that we are in the warming phase of the Atlantic so expansion is probably slightly higher. I don't know about you but I can't help feeling that those measurements are a better reflection of reality than something floating out in space that has been calibrated by a modern climate scientist. Isn't it interesting that sea level rise is at exactly the same rate now as 50-100 years ago?
http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/202.php
TinyCO2
Yes, Tiny. What I do find interesting is that very little is different from what it was 50-100 years ago. The main difference is CO2 levels, which have risen some 30%; however, temperatures have increased just a little; sea levels have risen slightly (in some areas). Meanwhile, the most extreme that the weather seems intent on is being extremely quiet – which, oddly, seems to get people convinced that ANY weather is extreme. The more I see, the less convinced I am that anything serious is happening, and the more incensed I get that my money is being ripped out of my pocket to pay already-wealthy people for something that is of little, if any, benefit to anyone.
Radical Rodent
So eyeball inspection of a noisy plot from a single location is all it takes for you two. What is skepticism coming to...
Raff
Yep, it's much better to measure it from space to the nearest mm.
TinyCO2
Tiny CO2: it would appear that you do, but I have no idea what Raff is talking about! But then, I suspect that neither does Raff.
Radical Rodent
BBC Business news are bigging up Todays comment from Lord Browne "Science is Settled" : Energy groups face 'existential' climate threat, says ex-BP chief
My Question for Lord Browne
- If we had stopped manmade CO2 in year 2000 then in what way would the temperature trend since then be different from the essentially almost flat trnd that has actually happened ?
- Seems to me that alarmists certainty is clairvoyance not science.
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Background
- CO2 is what it is & temperature is what it is.
(Let's accept the measurements of CO2 and satellite measured temperature are what they are.)
(Let's not accept the land based record as there are a number of issues like evidence of gerrymandering the historical record. etc.)
- "The Science is Settled you say". So that meanss that models work and they should accurately predict the temperature trend. And that is why you are worried, you think that with rising CO2 levels they predict a catastrophic temperature trend.
- So you are certain than alarmist claims are science not clairvoyance.
- But since the temperature trend is essentially almost flat since 1998 where is this catastrophe trend ?