Discussion > Zombie blog - what's the point?
PC, you have achieved an armor plate defense against thinking that is breath taking in its ineffective effect. You reliance on motivated rationalization to pretend there are no significant issues of the pattern of failed climate consensus predictions is not making your case stronger. Your work on erasing the pause requires you to ignore the scientists you claim to support. More, it raises questions about your capacity.
Exposing as a charlatan as a charlatan neccesarily requires providing evidence of chicanary.
Do you seriously find Salby's thesis remotely credible?
Yes, remotely. A warming ocean outgasses. Is the ocean warming or not?
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Calm to the point of serenity. Unpersuasive? Who cares?
On persuasion I even exposed an open goal:
Now, if that (We can green the earth with miraculous consequences, now feeding an extra billion people.) is true, then I will have to rethink my position. Extraordinary claims, however, require extraordinary evidence.
If it was the case that CO2 greening had fed one seventh of the population, then that would indeed be a serious benefit. The follow-through, in terms of hard evidence however was oddly detumescent. In fact the dog seems to have been at the homework, no evidence, just 'stands to reason dunnit?'
Followed by
When the Earth has greened 20-30 percent from AnthroCO2, there is certainly a response in crop yield, perhaps now feeding a billion extra people.
Ah, 'perhaps'. And more 'stands to reason'
Followed by
The greening? Hmm, one wonders why the contribution of rising CO2 to yield is so difficult to find.
So the claimant didn't even know if the claim was true. An open goal and the ball goes nowhere.
Some might say this fiction calls other claims from the same source into question, a cranky person might even say their credibility is holed below the waterline. But not me, I am serene.
http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/160/4/1686.full
Yup, this meme is highly disturbing to you, but don't go wild. Figure out the answer.
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Your work on erasing the pause requires you to ignore the scientists you claim to support.
Puzzled. What work would that be?
A warming ocean outgasses. is hardly original to Salby.
Its fine, you don't have to answer the question if you don't want to.
I won't answer because I don't know the answer.
For all we know the warming from the LIA might be the oceans outprocessing heat. It's kind of either that or the sun, so take your pick.
The alarmists charged off on their hobby horse without having even the slightest understanding of millennial scale natural changes. As a consequence, they have very little idea of attribution, as you've understood earlier.
We are slowly getting a handle on things and every day, well year, brings more evidence that catastrophe was never in the cards and that unnecessary alarm leading to harmful policy is damaging us now and well into the future. Lost opportunity costs compound, and we've already damaged our grandchildren with this climate delusion.
I can hear them; they say, 'Hold, Enough'.
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Poor Phil. The oceans are not rising as predicted, the oceans are not warming as predicted, "OA" isn't measurable, coral reefs are fine, Arctic ice turns out to be very dynamic, and unimportant, and yet here is PC, still flailing around.
But what is more entertaining in this conversation is seeing PC deny (ahem) the well documented science of photosynthesis in order to defend his apocalyptic claptrap of a theory.
What I question is that the undeniable CO2-greening can be extrapolated to an increase in crop yields sufficient to feed a billion people. This is a truly remarkable claim; my brief scan of the literature indicates that the future net increase is around 1.8% / decade, offset by climate - induced decreases of around -1.5% / decade. A net gain of 0.3% / decade.
All welcome, obviously, but nowhere near enough to render the billion bellies claim anything less than extragavently wrong.
We'll not see any admission of benefit from ACO2 in feeding the poor and hungry, because the benefit is a lot larger than he had any conception of, previously. It would also be an admission against interest for the alarmist narrative.
He's apparently forgotten how much an admission against interest can improve credibility, and the corollary, that refusal to admit against interest can be evidence of bad faith.
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Come on kim, Phil maks a point when he refuses to accept that evidence for greening does not necessarily equate to evedence of crop yield increases sufficient to feed an additional billion mouths. He quotes somebody (?) that the net increase in yields is only 0.3% per decade. I seriously doubt the decreases, put at -1.5% per decade, believing these are projections of models forecasting more drought. This would ignore the fact that even if true (no real evidence) increasing CO2 makes crops more drought resistant.
Attack his arguments and data; there have been too many personal attacks. As I commented earlier we actually owe Phil a debt in keeping this site alive.
Thank you Ratty and Minty for your kind words. I do my incompetent best.
As for my friend in the steel industry, Phil, ACK is right not to question my statement and good faith, for precisely the reason he gives - I have nothing to gain by lying. I have no other connection to the steel industry, no investments in "big oil" or otherwise; I am merely reporting, honestly and in good faith, the conversation I had. My friend has worked in the steel industry all his working life - almost 30 years - since leaving University (I believe with a metallurgy degree). I have never had reason to question his integrity, and I don't doubt the honesty and accuracy of his statement to me. I know who I'd believe given a straight choice between your "experts" and someone who has spent all his working life in the industry. But since I don't feel it right to name him or his company without his prior approval, I won't push the point further. You don't know me, other than vaguely via internet comment threads, so I can't insist on you taking my word for it. And as a sceptic, I can't expect you to, either. But I do know that you and your rent--a-quote experts are wrong.
Your response reminds me a bit of the behaviour of the Catholic Church when confronted by the reformation. It wasn't enough to believe - like them, in God (or like you, as I do, to believe the planet is warming). You had to go the whole hog, and sign up to corrupt popes, sale of indulgences, interference in and and micro-management of people's lives. Anything less and the Inquisition would burn you at the stake. And don't dare be an apostate, whatever you do, that is the greatest sin. Criticism of the saints and prophets really is asking for trouble. I can see why so many people liken climate change alarmism to religion.
By the way, you dodged my best points, with the perfectly reasonable "I may respond in detail later, but real life is calling." at 9.53 am. Perfectly reasonable, save for the fact that you posted again at 10.03am, 10.14am, 10.28am, 10.46am, 11.30am, 11.38am, 11.49am, 11.50am, 12.07pm, 12.08pm, 12.43pm, 1.37pm, 1.53pm, 2pm, 2.01pm, and 3.21pm.
I repeat my personal respect for you. You are knowledgeable; you have a great range of sources; I sometimes learn from your links (I'm now much better-informed about global temperature recording and the adjustments to them, thanks to you); your persistence is admirable in the face of often hostile responses; and I particularly respect the fact that you do your utmost to keep it civil, unlike some who shall be nameless who seem to revel in being rude at every opportunity. But for all that, my respect for you would increase immeasurably if you would just admit that a very small number of the issues we here raise with you have some merit, and that not all is perfect in the world of climate science and the business built around it. In my view it's a bit like the boy who cried wolf - he did it so often that when the wolf came, he wasn't believed. It's a bit like that, I feel, with you. When you raise a good point, I'd be much more likely to accept it uncritically if you hadn't persisted with so many bad points, and so often refused to acknowledge any of our good ones.
But, I accept that the same can often be said of our side in reverse. And, for all that, thanks for keeping it civil. May it long continue.
Thanks for the apt criticism, ACK. I've been looking for where I read the billionbellies bit and can't find it. Nonetheless, it beggars belief that the figure is as low as his phonied up studies suggest.
Y'all remember now, good ol' billionbellies kim when accurate figures become available.
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Right, Mark, it is nice to see that Phil is about the best the alarmists can do.
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kim. Might I suggest a correction? "It's nice to see that Phil is about the best of the alarmists".
Even if we agree that the claim of attributing 100% of the increase in crop yields and biomass to CO2 is a stretch- even hyperbole- that bit of theatre would seem insignificant in comparison to the claims you unquestioningly repeat here nearly daily. And the case for increased crop yields being linked to CO2 is extremely well established, unlike nearly every claim regarding your climate apocalypse.
Maximum respect, Mark. Wot - you mean BH is not real life?
But for all that, my respect for you would increase immeasurably if you would just admit that a very small number of the issues we here raise with you have some merit, and that not all is perfect in the world of climate science and the business built around it.
No discipline or business has or will achieve perfection, however I've seen no evidence that climate science is any worse than other branch of science, despite having to work in an increasingly politicised and polarised context ( an FOI request every 30 minutes to a department of 3, accusations of fraud in the media, internal mails stolen and publsihed ). I'm no academic however I spent 5 years working at a University and I can tell you stories about the faculty that would make your jaw drop -( there was a School of Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering, the Heads of which had had some esoteric academic disagreement to the point that they refused to even talk to each other and the entire School had to be split effectively into two right up to two separate UCAS admission processes. An expert in some branch of the mathematics of motorway design would sometimes get requests to solve problems which apparently nobody else on the planet could solve and he would disappear into his study and not come out for days. Which would be fine except he was the Schools designated Computer Officer and was meant to be responsible for keeping the office network up. )This behaviour would be not be tolerated outside of academia, but they tend to be a breed and a law unto themselves, fiercley defensive of their independence. If you haven't spent some time in that world some of the internal communications could well seem um, a bit 'colourful.' Not forgetting Cardinal Richlieu:
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
Not to say that the mails did not reveal some shameful behaviour, evading material to avoid FOI, not sharing data openly and so forth that I certainly cannot condone, but there was no evidence of fraud or scientific malpractice. The way in which phrases and sentences were twisted out of context to make a bogus point in certain quarters was disgusting, in my view.
To believe that all the panels, including the USA EPA, subject to judicial review, indulged in 'greenwash' when investigating the CRU is taking conspiracy too far in my view.
Several economists, including some Nobel prize winners endorsed Stern and the Garnaud report in Australia and several others came to similar conclusions.
Where there is, perhaps, some harmony:-
Climate Change is not the most urgent problem facing us, it is a classic slow-acting, we need to plan decades ahead problem, not well suited to solution by a political class whose time horizon is the next electoral cycle. It is however, unique in that there is a group of vocal people, including one of the main US political parties, who refuse to even acknowledge that we have a problem.
We have indeed exported our emissions to China, it is unlikely that we would meet our targets otherwise, it’s a fudge but I think things are perhaps better than it was when this journalist pointed it out.
The effects of GW are not all negative, in temperate zones crop yields are forecast to increase under mild warming (Hi Kim!), but as we go to >2C the impacts become increasingly negative, with a small risk of very, very severe consequences. Prevention, even if imperfectly realised, is better and cheaper than cure.
PC,
If, as you seem to say in your last post, that "climate change" is not an existential threat (as so many in political, academic and media leadership claim), then why are you not stating your conclusion much more emphatically?
Rather than focusing on those who agree it is not an existential threat, why not put some focus on those who have squandered, at this point, many billions in public money falsely claiming "climate change" is an existential threat?
Hunter
I don't disagree, but one step at a time. I personally am hugely gratified by Phil's magnanimous response. There is so much unpleasantness around this topic on the internet, yet we are all humans who would probably all get on quite well if we met. I wrote what I did to try to explain where I'm coming from and why. Phil has responded in kind, and I'm grateful. If we can actually like each other as individuals, and understand each other better, then maybe we'll get somewhere and achieve something between us, rather than metaphorically just shouting at each other.
As ATTP would say - kudos, Phil. Mutual respect levels heightened, I hope and believe.
Phil Clarke, you seem to like woodfortrees site as a way of pointing out trends etc.
Here are the two main satellite trends for 1998 to 2015 - massively negative!
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:1998/to:2015/trend/plot/rss/from:1998/to:2015/trend
what does this tell us?
If trends are so sensitive to changes in start and stop dates, causing wild swings in the trend, then we really should not be using this measurement for this purpose.
If you can alter a result by changing a measurement end stop, then that measurement is not fit for purpose.
Steve Richards
The trick is to resist the temptation to cherrypick.It is easy to produce a temperature drop if you start with a big El Nino and end with La Nada.
Try balancing the sequence with an El Ninos end. I updated your graph to an endpoint of July 2016. It shows an increase of 0.5C in 18 years, 0.27C/decade.
Better still, use the full record from 1979 to the present and you get an increase of ,0.45C in 37 years, 0.12C/decade. That is the rate which best matches other datasets.
The trick is to use the data to induce what actually happened , rather than look for ways of distorting it to suit your agenda. This is where the "no warming since 1998" propoganda started.
So now EM becomes a denialist.
I'll note that Engelbeen attacks the science and not the man. More bad faith from you.
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