Gore's Carbon Footprint
Couldn't the government have got a local adviser, someone who doesn't have to fly across the Atlantic to tell us, err, not to fly across the Atlantic? Just a thought.
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82 comments:
Guido - you're complaint about the tranatlantic advice Gore will give Brown (yeah right) is based on thinking the government wants to reduce emissions, or even cares. Follow the money...it's all about tax and political cover for tax rises, as you are a bad person if you complain or mad/eccentric if you question the science (see Nigel Lawson on tonights newsnight). The ultimate stealth tax beacuse the don't even have to bother hiding it. All in time for the big giveaway when PM Brown announces the next election.
Well, Gore's a movie star now. I wonder what job Gordo's got in mind for George Clooney? There's bound to be one, in the 'Please Like Me!' plan. Anyone know if Barbra Streisand and Shirley McLean are still alive?
The earth's been heating up for the last 15,000 years, with the occasional hiccup. Bet you didn't know the Neanderthals had 4x4s. Or maybe it was all those flint arrows being chipped that caused it.
"Wondering Labour Party, so lost, so helpless, yearning for my guidance..."
www.phantomofthelabourparty.blogspot.com
Eh' up - no flies on Guido!
Has anyone checked out Bill (cigar)Clinton's carbon footprint?
So who is paying Gore and how much? Why the fuck does the British tax payer have to pick up the tab for all these purile media gimicks....If Broon is that keen on Gore, let him pay for it out of his own pocket..
Why the f*%k are we still (mis-)governed by these f*%kwits? However bad Howard would have been, at least he would never have had Gore as an advisor on anything.
(Cameron I'm not so sure.)
Being run by these leftie idiots is moving into a new stage of 'frighten the people to death to take even more money from them'
How can anyone have voted for them.
Rember the report came from Brown for one reason only.
Yes, but using the heat-soak analysis method the hot air he produces on this side of the pond is emitted into a dissipating environment, thus rendering his avgas emissions during transatlantic flight carbon neutral. Thus, whatever he says over here has no more power than a stale fart.
I think PJ is on the money - Brown bagged Gore before Cameron was able to. Gore has succeeded in becoming a popular and high-profile figure thanks to his film. He has high levels of public recognition (higher than either the govt or shadow environment people, I'll be bound, and certainly higher than Porritt) and it makes good political sense to buy into that.
Well, I say that - of course, it won't look so good if Brown's policies don't live up to Gore's ideals and Al stands up and says so in the future.
For someone who's raised global awareness of environmental issues to a new level, I think we can forgive him some flights to get around the world and spread the word? He's surely the most carbon neutral person on the planet!
Whether it's for the Labour party or not, this isn't the issue to be divisive on.
This whole thing makes me spit tacks, and then some.
Believe in Global Warming? You really should check out www.junkscience.com, read it slowly because it contains real science and takes a little understanding, and the scales will fall from your eyes. The continual droning about "scientific consensus" is bollocks. Science does not work on consensus - SCientific Method is adversarial and depends on continual fault-finding, not warm touchy-feely committee style consensus.
The BBC is obviously acting as a propaganda arm of the government on this -- I even caught them at it on Newsround last night for instance, brainwashing children for f*cks sake. How low can you go? This is stuff Goebbels would be proud of. And Orwell must be spinning in his grave ...
Finally we now have the shift in emphasis that requires us to be prepared to pay "green" taxes. That should be emphasised as just *****MORE***** taxes, and I don't suppose a penny will be go on anything remotely like "green" spending.
And how about leading by example? Does Blair need to travel in a multi-ton armoured Jag? Has he got a bike, or know how to ride one? How many air miles does he/his family/his government make in a year? They are all f*cking hypocritical c*nts and worse for trying to lecture us on something they know nothing about.
A plague on all of them.
Don't forget that since Broon is about as much use as a chocolate teapot when it comes to public speaking, Gore could well become the new Prum Munuster's offushul spooksman.
From chads to spads, all in the space of one flight...
Of COURSE he needs to travel in a car like that! Just look at the poor man's wife and you realise what might happen to the suspension of a government Vauxhall Astra.
We have eco-friendly cars and motorcycles - so why not have eco-friendly planes. Put an emission quota on all jets, especially BlairForce One (sorry ... 32 Flight) and then lets see MP's of all parties whine.
45 minutes in the Dodgy Dossier.... 45 years in the Ropy Report.... with Gore reprising the John Scarlett role.
Both the Dossier and the Report rely on minimal facts, massive speculation and scaremongering futurology.
No change there then.
There is eco-friendly air transport -- it's called an airship -- and it'll be back in our skies sooner than you think.
So the Chancellor commissions a report that recommends new taxes. Well what a surprise.
Gore flying over to tell us not to fly. Makes sense. Just like Richard Edelman flying around Asia whinging about air pollution: http://www.edelman.com/speak_up/blog/
Full of shit, the pair of them, only interested in promoting themselves. Don't forget, these are the bad guys. Gore is shyster, Edelman is more toxic than a lung full of diesel fumes.
The BBC is obviously acting as a propaganda arm of the government on this -
When is it not acting as a propaganda arm of nulab?
Oh My Gawd! Or as us Welsh would say Iesu Mawr! We are fucked, or should that be buggered, probably both.
Can anyone imagine what Gordo will do when given carte blanche to tax everything in sight as his contribution to the green agenda? All on the back of a shite report written by one of his accolades.
And no opposition from the Cameroons or Lib Dumps. I can see it now: Gordo proposes to double tax on petrol, DC accuses him of being half hearted and calls for a tripling of petrol tax, Ming demands that all cars be banned except for essential workers such as Lib Dump MPs.
Meanwhile, Bliar is cock-a hoop. He can start a frantic round of foreign trips to save the planet, "I've got bored with saving Africa, more important things to do"
Following Bliar's visit, Chirac says that Britain is leading the world on this,unfortunately because of our particular difficulties we cannot follow yet.
As an aside to his mates " They are going to fuck themselves rigid, Ha Ha Ha"
I'm going to open a bottle of my finest malt and get rat-arsed.
DP
I am SO fucking bored with this news story. I'm off to plug-in ten toasters, bang the central heating up to 11, book one of those round the world flights for the next half-term, get all the kids to buy a Nestle bar before the lesson AND throw all my newspapers in the bin with the rest of the disposable nappies and take away cartons that tell such a revealing story about the Street household. The next person to mention carbon fucking footprint will get a george from ASDA fucking footprint on their fucking arse. Fuckers, the fucking lot of them.
Blimey, until reading the comments above I'd never realised what a bunch of reactionary f##kwits frequent this place. Do the drones at the Adam Smith institute have nothing better to do?
Maybe Gore could sail over instead - QM2 anyone?
"hatfield girl said...
The BBC is obviously acting as a propaganda arm of the government on this -
When is it not acting as a propaganda arm of nulab?"
Agreed, but Channel 4 is even worse; the News 'debate' last night was between Miliberk, Snow and two even more 'hot airers' with not an objective view to be heard.
It's just a good excuse for more Lab1984 hypocrisy and to raise more taxes to spend on their clients.
Never mind Gore's air travel. According to the BBC 1500 delegates from around the world have descended on Athens to discuss the future of ... the Internet. What's the point of the Internet if it's still necessary to gather 1500 freeloaders in a room somewhere just to make it work?
Guido, you'd be tugging off and dribbling about
++Exclusive - DC Masterstroke++
if Princess Dave had secured Gore. And you know it.
So Global Warming is all of a sudden a clear and present danger to Blair. It's not going to take place in the next 25 minutes, we hope, and there are no signs of threatening weapons, although mass destruction could be a consequence of delay.
Let's hope Sir Nicholas Stern's report wasn't lifted from a student's thesis.
Here we go again, on a ride into the unknown with Blair, accompanied this time by Gore, not Bush. Hurrah!!!!
"Couldn't the government have got a local adviser, someone who doesn't have to fly across the Atlantic to tell us, err, not to fly across the Atlantic?"
Never heard of conference calls, skype or video phoning then?
Its incredibly dull, untrue, lying mendacious propaganda, dreary repetitive bollocks, nonsense of the first order, a big lie to lecture us and moan. Im off to take all the extra garbage the council won't take away to chuck over a hedge somewhere in my stretch limo...
Who is this loser?.
Why can't he get a life.
What is he doing over here boring us?.
He and Monbiot are the fascists of the 21st Century and need to be extirpated.
George Street, I believe I know of someone who sympathises:
"Know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get myself a 1967 Cadillac El Dorado,
hot-fuckin'-pink, with whaleskin hubcaps and all-leather cow interior and big brown baby seal eyes for headlights... yeah! And I'm gonna drive around in that baby doing 115 miles an hour, getting 1 mile per gallon, suckin' down quarter pound cheeseburgers from McDonald's in the old-fashioned non-biodegradable styrofoam containers... yeah! And when I'm done suckin' down those greaseball burgers I'm gonna toss the styrofoam containers right out the side, and there ain't a goddamn thing anybody can do about it. You know why?
Because we got the bombs, that's why... yeah! Two words--nuclear fuckin' weapons, OK? Russia, Czechoslovakia, Romania, they can have all the democracy they want...they can have a democracy cakewalk right through the middle of Tienamen Square and it won't make a lick of fuckin' difference, because we got
the bombs, OK?..."
Guido, please talk to Paxo, or someone, to PLEASE get them to nail the politicos to either commit to ringfencing/zero gain or at least make them pucker their ring in embarassment by making them squirm around refusing to say so on the record.
I am convinced Gordon knows his economic model is like some Byzantine game of Jen-Ga that is drawing inexorably towards its denouement. HE NEEDS THIS. I bet he said so to Blair. Maybe it was part of the deal - "Ok, I'll shut up until next shummer if you kick off Green Taxes now to cover my arse". Who knows, that might also be why the Reidwieler returned to Kennels in exchange for the prospect of running a Treasury with even wider control over a supine and hapless citizenry. Far more fun than the HO.
PS. Bloody Hell, George Street, heating at 11? I have mine at 21, you skinflint!
Humbug!
I am sick of these devious lying twats that govern us.
This recent 45 minutes to save the world is another load of bollacks
What is the point of this? How can taxing the bollocks off us do anything for the planet when 99% of the world does not give a toss?
How the hell did anyone vote these tossers in?
There was a single piece of good news in the report where the amount of Tax on petrol should be knocked DOWN to 10p - I doubt Brown will follow that recommendation from the report.
I would like to believe that the green brigade will be found out soon - that they are talking nothing but nonsense.
But with all this clever taxing of fresh air, they will be able to claim victory whatever happens.
Its a bit like the millennium bug scam (nice little earner as well!) - its just this one doesn't have a sell by date so it can run and run!
and remember, Gore flys over with all those men with hearing aids as well..never mind the odd aide de camp!...so thats an entire rain forest every time Broon wants to get passionate with the worlds greatest looser..
If Gordo was so green, why does he hit (essentially) carbon neutral fuels such as Veg oil with full fuel duty. When some enterprising boyos in the valleys were running their diesel cars on the stuff a couple of years back, Customs and Exercise were down on them like a shot.
Methinks the Ugly one-eyed Scots tosser is looking for another excuse.
Proportion of greenhouse gasses in atmosphere that is CO2: 2%
Proportion of CO2 put into atmosphere per year that is man-made: 2%
Proportion of man-made CO2 that comes from the UK: 2%
Therefore if the entire human population of the UK ceased to exist, global warming would be reduced by 0.0000008%.
And of couse, if the entire human population of the planet vanished, global warming would be reduced by a whopping 0.0004%...
Meanwhile Chinese man-made CO2 is increasing by more than the entire UK man-made CO2 output every year. And anyone who thinks that China, for one, would pay the least attention to a supposed 'moral example' set by the UK in this matter must be living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
To call the whole man-made global warming business a farrago of nonsense is an insult to the words 'faraggo' and 'nonsense':
'farrago'-- a confused group of immaterial things
'nonsense'-- absurd or meaningless words or ideas
What do you bet, if it was a criminal offence for the government to bring in a so-called 'green' tax without an equal amd opposite 'non-green' tax reduction, the whole attraction of the idea for politicians--any politicians, of any party-- would dissapear overnight.
If Gordo was so green, why does he hit (essentially) carbon neutral fuels such as Veg oil with full fuel duty.
quite. Because the green lobby is just another front for the politics of envy as per. Which is why they're so hair-shirt about everything. Ref the Lib Dems in Richmond trying it on with parked cars. If they gave a shit about pollution they'd be taxing emissions.
judith says:
"Bet you didn't know the Neanderthals had 4x4s"
Still do if Tottenham High Street is anything to go by.
Correction. That should have been:
"Therefore if the entire human population of the UK ceased to exist, global warming would be reduced by 0.0008%.
And of course, if the entire human population of the planet vanished, global warming would be reduced by a whopping 0.04%..."
Woops!
Al Gore is the man - born in Washington DC to a man who was sponsored by armand Hammer of Lenin's Occidental Petroleum and Al is busy with his oil drilling interests in Colombia
Most fascinating is the historical connection between the Gore family and Occidental Petroleum, in which Gore holds about a quarter of a million dollars worth of stock in trust for his mother. The connection goes back to Gore’s father’s close relationship with the late Armand Hammer, Occidental’s founder and the son of Julius Hammer, the man who founded the U.S. Communist Party. For all of his life, Armand Hammer remained close to the murderous Joseph Stalin, his successors and the entire Soviet leadership during the Cold War.
He also remained close to Albert Gore Sr., and later to Al Jr., bestowing his largesse lavishly on both.
Hammer, Silverstein notes, liked to brag that he had Gore Sr. "in my back pocket."
When Gore Sr. retired from the Senate in 1970, he got a $500,000-a-year job at a subsidiary of Occidental as well as a company directorship. When the elder Gore died, his estate included hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of Occidental stock.
In the 1960s, Silverstein reports, the Gores discovered zinc ore near land they owned in Tennessee. "Through a company subsidiary Hammer bought the land for $160,000 - twice the amount offered by the only other bidder. He swiftly sold the land back to Al Gore Sr. and agreed to pay him $20,000 a year for mining rights.”
Gore Sr. then sold the property for $140,000 to Al Jr., who has gotten a $20,000 check just about every year since, although Occidental has never mined an ounce of zinc or anything else on the property.
In 1985, Al Jr. leased the property to Union Zinc, a competitor of Occidental.
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/5/11/124032
Well, it's enlightening to see that the Tories of this neck of the woods are all prime specimens of the genus I'm All Right Jack.
What you twats fail to understand is that action on climate change has to start somewhere. And why not here, where we can best afford it?
Great changes demand great leaders. It's clear there are one here.
Tories used to exhibit a quality known as "noblesse oblige." Today's equivalent is "richesse oblige", and we have to start paying.
Quit your Desperate-Housewives whining you self-obsessed tosspots, before you're crushed under a wave of climate migrants clambering over your semi-submerged 4x4s onto the high ground.
In 1997 Gore, the fanatical opponent of vehicles powered by fossil fuels such as oil, supported the $3.65 billion sale to the company of the government's interest in the Elk Hills oilfield in Bakersfield, Calif., the largest privatization of federal property in U.S. history.
"On the very day the deal was sealed Gore gave a speech lamenting the growing threat of global warming,” Silverstein reports.
***
For a full account of the Gore-Occidental relationship, see "The Buying of the President 2000," by Charles Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity.
The proportion of CO2 in the air is around 400ppm which is actually about 0.04%. 75 years ago, before human CO2 emissions became significant, the percentage was about 0.03%. If the gloomsters are correct, this percentage could climb to 0.06% over the next hundred years or so.
During the Jurassic period, the percentage of CO2 was about five times higher than it is now at 2000ppm or 0.2%. The Jurassic climate was slightly warmer and much more stable than today's.
This whole AGW scare makes no sense. There must be some ulterior political motive.
If only I beleived that
a) Other taxes would come down whilst green taxes went up, so if I actually was changing my habits I might save money.
b) They actually used the money to improve public transport etc, making it viable for me to actually consider doing things like giving up my car.
But you already know what will happen. Greens taxes will come in. No tax will you down, and the buses won't get any better.
Saving the worlds a nice idea. But I'm not trusting a politian to do it.
And I'm certianly not trusting Gordon-fucking-Brown
Taking the reverse Al Gore position works well for me. If Bore's for it, I'm agin it. Global warming? Thirty years ago the same sort of pseudo scientists were issuing dire warnings of a new ice age in the Twenty First Century. Whatever happened to that?
2br02b
Yes, water vapour is often ignored when talking about "greenhouse" gases, so CO2 does indeed comprise about 2.5% of the total "Greenhouse Effect", which amounts to about 33C. We are heading for a doubling of the atmospheric concentration due to our emissions, so you could say, oh another 2.5% is 0.8C at most.
The water vapour that you conveniently include in your calculations (which comprises about 90-95% of the effect), however, does not act in the same way as other gases. Its lifespan in the atmosphere is only about 10 days - its presence is driven by evaporation and is not a driver for the whole process, merely a feedback mechanism.
Hence you cannot just do linear calculations, as you have done. If the earth gets slightly warmer, there would be more water evaporated into the atmosphere from the oceans, which would have a greater effect than the CO2 itself directly. It is these feedback mechanisms that are the cause of the arguments. I can't do feedback calculations (reflectivity of more clouds, water vapour as a greenhouse gas, increased methane from tundra at high temperatures, increased plant growth, dissolving of CO2 in oceans) without attempting to run computer models, and neither can anyone else.
Aside from the scientific arguments, we know that polititians have their own utterly hypocritical games, Gordon wants your money (as usual), China won't do anything different without global pressure. But surely even a climate change sceptic can see that reducing our reliance on oil and gas from bad places would be a good thing? The advantage for the UK in being self-sufficient in energy in 20 years could easily be greater than any cost incurred now. IF we make neutral tax changes then this could provide an incentive for driving this process which could only be a good thing. If they are not neutral then that is a different matter.
Blair can't go round saying that one terrorist could take out our winter heating, but its almost certainly true.
PS France is waaaaay ahead of us already since they have mostly nuclear power...
Great changes demand great leaders. It's clear there are one here.
?
Isn't junkscience.com funded by Exxon? Kinda makes it biased...
(Sorry for the boring posts Guido)
Here is a discussion of the water vapour feedback mechanism...
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142
As for the Jurassic temperatures - yes it was a lot warmer. Oxygen concentration was much higher too (how do you think those dinosaurs managed?). But did everthing change to this situation rapidly over 100 years? Probably not. Therefore the biosphere was adapted to the situation. There was a sharp change at the end of the Jurassic though. 95% of all species went extinct at the time...
I'm not claiming this kind of thing will happen now - its pretty unlikely - but please don't quote half truths bandied about by sceptics. Just like you rightly don't believe half-truths from any polititian (or no-truths in the case of Gordon).
PS Follow the money for junkscience.com.....
The owner Milloy is a Fox news columnist, and he received extensive funding and direction from Phillip Morris, RJR Tobacco, and Exxon Mobil. Hence another of junkscience/Milloy's things is about defending smoking. Google knows these things...
prodicus
Streisand is alive, well upright anyway, here is a recent sighting.
Anonymous 3.04pm:
The water vapour that you conveniently include in your calculations (which comprises about 90-95% of the effect), however, does not act in the same way as other gases. Its lifespan in the atmosphere is only about 10 days - its presence is driven by evaporation and is not a driver for the whole process, merely a feedback mechanism.
So what if an individual molecule of water vapour only remains in the atmosphere for 10 days? There's another one comes along to replace it. That '10 days' may be true, but it utterly beside the point. It is a total red herring.
And how can you say H2O's not the driver? It's 90% + of the cause of greenhouse warming and it's merely a 'feedback mechanism'? Yeh, right.... What you really mean is, we humans can't control it, therefore it can't be the cause. Which is a crap argument.
Anonymous 3.35pm:
Follow the money for junkscience.com.....
Why don't you follow the money for the pseudo-scientist-greeny-tree-huggers who are pushing this crap science. They depend 100% on government hand-outs, so they have to persuade politicians to keep on paying them.
(Then they ascribe the same low motives that drive them to the people who point out they are talking nonsense.)
There is not a scintilla of actual solid evidence that man-made global warming is actually happening.
Oh, there is some signs that it's a tiny bit warmer now than 100 years ago, but still nothing like as warm as it was during the Roman Empire, when there were vineyards in Yorkshire or in the early Middle Ages when the Vikings were farming area of Iceland and Greenland only now starting to come to light as some glaciers retreat (There are 42,000 glaciers in the world. Only seven are known to be retreating, by the way.)
The prize exhibit of the global warming crowd is a computer forecast--made the same way weather forecasts are made, and we all know how reliably they tell us next week's weather--that has been proved beyond reasonable doubt to be utter dross: replace all the meaurements gathered to put into the computer to come up with the forecast, with random numbers, and (guess what?) you get the same forecast. In other words, it assumes the anser. That is not science, it is crap.
I met Armand Hammer once, like having a conversation with a tomb stone...I wonder if Greenhouse Gas Al ever got a smile out of him...
I met Hammer to. He was a spy - so unlikely to be particularly funny
"There is not a scintilla of actual solid evidence that man-made global warming is actually happening. "
Oh, Pleeeease...
The Royal Society et al, 18th May 2001. The Science of Climate Change. Science. Vol. 292, p. 1261.
National Academy of Science. Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions. National Academy Press, Washington, DC. http://fermat.nap.edu/html/climatechange/
American Meteorological Society, April 2003. Climate Change Research: issues for the atmospheric and related sciences. Approved by AMS Council, 9th February 2003. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, pp508-515.
American Geophysical Union Council, December 2003. AGU position statement on human impacts on climate. Eos. Vol 84, p574.
11. American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2000. AAAS Atlas of Population and Environment: Climate Change. http://www.ourplanet.com/aaas/pages/atmos02.html
etc, etc ...
All just trying it on, clearly.
I'm not worried about global warning, I've bought out the complete stock of suntan cream from Boots in Lewisham High Street and thinking of doing the same at East Cheam....
2b0r02b
The point about water vapour is that the amount of it is driven by the current temperature and nothing much else. In 10 days it will respond to whatever the new temperature is. If you increase CO2 and therefore the temperature, you increase the water vapour until a new equilibrium is reached. Which will be a higher temperature than just taking the CO2 into account. Simple feedback. If you can't cope with that then please give up now...
And where you get that nonsense about climate and weather models being the same, I'm not sure. I can tell you (as can any climate model) that it will be colder in January, and that the average monthly temperature in the UK will be around 6C. That is climate. I can't tell you that it will rain on the 11th or snow on the 17th. That is weather.
Have you looked at any climate model software to see how its written? Have you run it with different parameters yourself? I guess not.
I have personally climbed up more than 7 glaciers that are in retreat. Please check your facts. Have you ever been mountaineering in the Alps? If so you'd know that many of the refuges are stuck above the glacier and you have a lot of inconvenient new ladders to climb. You'd know that many routes are now much more dangerous than they used to be even 10 years ago because of glacial shrinkage.
With regard to long term trends, the early 20th century appears to have been a relatively cold period while the mid 20th century was comparable to your Medieval Warm Period and Roman times. It is not the average 20th century warmth (which many sceptic papers compare), but the magnitude of warming during the 20th century, and the level of warmth observed during the past couple of decades which appear to be anomalous in a long-term context.
PS I have been trolled, no doubt.
Anonymous (one of the many): The 1500 freeloaders are gathering in Athens to make the Internet stop working, as far as I can make out. Look who's complaining about the way it's run at the moment: China, Russia, France...
Be afraid.
Cyberchrome:
Pleeeease, yourself.
Science is not a democracy.
The centrepiece of the case for anthropogenic global warming is the so-called 'hockey-stick' graph of a certain Dr. Mann, that would have us believe the twentieth century has experienced an unprecedented rise in global temperature. A large number of similar graphs have been produced subsequently, but in fact they are all--every last one--derived from Mann.
The Mann 'hockey-stick' has been criticised from a number of quarters, not least two Canadian statisticians who have basically driven a coach and horses through the whole thing.
The United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce as well as the Chairman of
the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations (which are emphatically NOT creatures of the Bush administration) decided to get to the bottom of this and invited three highly eminent independent statisticians to look into the matter.
The result is the Ad Hoc Committee Report on the 'Hockey Stick' Global Climate Reconstruction:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf
Here is the summary of their findings:
In general, we found [Mann] to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of [the Canadian statisticians] to be valid and compelling. We also comment that they were attempting to draw attention to the discrepancies in [Mann], and not to do paleoclimatic temperature reconstruction. Normally, one would try to select a calibration dataset that is representative of the entire dataset. The 1902-1995 data is not fully appropriate for calibration and leads to a misuse in principal component analysis. However, the reasons for setting 1902-1995 as the calibration point presented in the narrative of MBH98 sounds reasonable, and the error may be easily overlooked by someone not trained in statistical methodology. We note that there is no evidence that Dr. Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimatology studies have had significant interactions with mainstream statisticians.
In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface. This committee does not believe that web logs are an appropriate forum for the scientific debate on this issue.
It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done. In this case we judge that there was too much reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily independent. Moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that this community can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility. Overall, our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.
It is worth pointing out that a number of other investigators have discovered that if all the supposedly convincing data from tree rings and suchlike use by Mann and friends as the basis of their calculations are replaced with random numbers, one gets exactly the same 'hockey stick' result. In other words, the Mann, etc. basis for demonstrating anthropogenic global warming assumes anthropogenic global warming before it starts. Now I don't know about you, but I was taught that an absolute 'no no' is to assume what you are trying to prove. In other words: 'garbage in, garbage out'.
Which os to say, the so-called "conlusive evidence" for anthropogenic global warming is garbage.
And as for climate models: do you deny they are using the same techniques that computerised weather forecasting uses?
I don't think you can, because they do. The biggest differecnce is that weather forecasts are shown to be true or false within a few days ar weeks, but climate forcasts won't be proved true or false for decades or longer... which is handy if you're the charlatan churning out this rubbish. Yet these models, which are known to be rubbish for periods of more than a few days, are supposed to be correct for decades or centuries. What a crock of sh•t.
Its methane gas that we need to deal with. Kill all the cows and sheep. Humans will have to fitted with flatulence meters and will be taxed on their personal emissions.
This whole fucking greenhouse nonsense is a wheeze to raise taxes. Another more expensive version of Y2k which enriched the so called experts. Fuck off Gore Fuck off Stern
Anyone remember Gore's ManBearPig obsession?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manbearpig
This is a McIntyre and McKitrick question, isn't it. They wrote a paper claiming that the statistical methods used to recreate the climate were incorrect and that the results should be disregarded.
The claims were first made in an article (McIntyre and McKitrick, 2003) published in a non-scientific (social science) journal "Energy and Environment" and later, in a separate "Communications Arising" comment that was rejected by Nature because it was inaccurate.
There were parts of the statistics in the Mann paper that were not right, fair enough. But even the Wegman report does not deny climate change. The "hockey stick" graph is not the main argument at all. More recent (ie less than 10 years old) statistical studies support Mann's results anyway, if not the exact methods. See Wahl and Ammann.
Your ridiculous "7 glaciers in retreat" statistic is certainly a mistake but doesn't need to be a highly technical enquiry as to the statistical methods used there...
Finally, climate models do use similar models to weather forecasting, yes. But they are after a different thing. I could run a standard weather model for a 3 month period with slightly different inputs and get wildly varying results. But the average temperature in January across the runs would be close to the measured average over several years.
But at this point I give up. This is not scepticism. Its denial.
is it me or is gore just jumpin on a bandwagon, any would do to keep his snout in the trough? are owl magnets eco friendly?we need to be told.
This is McIntyre and McKitrick ... rejected by Nature because it was inaccurate.
No, McIntyre and McKitrick was not inaccurate -- as the Wegman Report proves conclusivly.
McIntyre and McKitrick was rejected by Nature because (a) Nature ALWAYS rejects ANYTHING that argues against AGW and (b) all "peer-reviewing" (so-called) on this topic is always done by people in the AGW industry who depend on the nutty idea being believed so can they continue to get their taxpayer's money.
There were parts of the statistics in the Mann paper that were not right, fair enough.
To be accurate, that should read, "The entire shooting match of the Mann paper statistics are crap," really. Do you deny that several independent people have shown that if you use random numbers with the Mann 'formula', you get a hockey stick?
But even the Wegman report does not deny climate change.
Neither do I. Climates have always changed: that's what they do! What I deny is that there is any convincing evidence whatever that the present changes are (a) abnormal or (b) man-made.
The "hockey stick" graph is not the main argument at all. More recent (ie less than 10 years old) statistical studies support Mann's results anyway, if not the exact methods. See Wahl and Ammann.
Every single model since Mann is based on Mann and follows his methodology and copies his errors. The "hockey stick" graph is the beginning and the end of the argument. It's known to be utter rubbish. Therefore the whole idea entirely lacks any persuasive evidence.
Your ridiculous "7 glaciers in retreat" statistic is certainly a mistake but doesn't need to be a highly technical enquiry as to the statistical methods used there...
Really? Then name eight glaciers known to be in retreat.
guido wtf is going on. there is actual climate change debate here. eeeeewwwwww tacky. doesn't that rate as discussion of policy?
gore also crossed the pacific
I am not proposing science by democracy, I am proposing science by evidence.
The centrepiece of the case for anthropogenic global warming is the so-called 'hockey-stick' graph of a certain Dr. Mann
No it is not. That's a classic Straw Man. The Hockey Stick is only one of numerous strands of evidence. The case for anthropogenic global warming is presented in the huge number of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals, the overwhelming majority of which propose that it is a reality.
You said 'There is not a scintilla of actual solid evidence that man-made global warming is actually happening.' when the reality is that all serious scientific organisations, from the IPCC to the Royal Society, that have examined the evidence, and are not funded by the oil industry, have come to the exact opposite conclusion.
Are you seriously proposing that the IPCC, the Royal Society, The American National Academy of Science, The American Meteorological Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science et al are misrepresenting their findings just so George Monbiot can sell more books?
Besides which, as mentioned above, White House subcommittee notwithstanding, the work of the 'eminent statisticians' you cite was rejected by Nature and later discredited in the peer-reviewed American Meteorological Society journal, "Journal of Climate". There is a discussion of the Hockey Stick controversy here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11 but as you have clearly not read any of the other references I cited, I don't suppose you'll bother with this one.
I just hope you don't live on a flood plain.
PS "... name eight glaciers known to be in retreat."
You win. I can't. Just so readers may assess your credibility … where did you get the numbers 7 retreating out of 42000 from? I ask because the World Glacier Monitoring Service latest Fluctuation of Glaciers (FOG) report only monitors 780 glaciers and they say the majority are in retreat. Clearly these UN-funded freeloaders are falling down on the job. Perhaps you could get in touch and inform them of the whereabouts of the other 41220?
Or do you regard David Bellamy as the authority in this area?
http://www.turnuptheheat.org/?page_id=21
http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/fog.html
Guido,
is it just me, or has this thread been invaded by some people in jumpers who normally post on Cement is Free?
In the interests of truth, freedom, justice and my boredom threshold, couldn't you just delete the whole thing?
Anon,10.01am
Reactionary f##kwit? Moi? I've never been called a f##kwit before. Fuckwit? Yes. F##kwit? No.
Ah well.
I met East Cheam once he was a spy so unlikely to be particularly funny
I agree this thread has gone far enough. I'd just like to make a correction, then leave it.
Cyberchrome asks, where did I get "42000 (glaciers) from?"
Well, I'm sorry, I did make a serious error here. I retract that number. I was out by some 38,000 glaciers. The correct number of glaciers, world-wide, accorting to GLIMS: Global Land Ice Measurements from Space--Monitoring the World's Changing Glaciers http://www.glims.org/About/whitepaper.html is 'about 80,000'.
Now if there are 7 glaciers known to be retreating (oh, let's call that 8... just in case they've missed one, even if Cyberchrome can't name it) that would mean a terrifying... let's see... 0.01% (one in 10,000) glaciers are melting.
Cyberchrome goes on to say, "The World Glacier Monitoring Service latest Fluctuation of Glaciers (FOG) report only monitors 780 glaciers and they say the majority are in retreat. Clearly these UN-funded freeloaders are falling down on the job."
You said it, Cyberchrome. It sure looks that way from here.
(In fact, even if every last one of these 780 glaciers were retreating, then the portion of world-wide glaciers in retreat is still less than 1%... but I don't want to overburden Cyberchrome with numbers; he clearly has difficulty with differentiating between fact and fiction as it is.)
Sorry Guido, this is tedious. But bollocks is bollocks.
The FOG report monitors 780 glaciers. The rest have not been continuously monitored. If the sample of 780 shows mostly retreat (which it does) it is reasonable to assume that this is the case elsewhere, since that is a sufficiently large sample from across the globe. Since you are keen to quote GLIMS, you might like to see what their preliminary findings were (the clue is in the URL):
http://nsidc.org/data/glims/glaciermelt/index.html
Glacial retreat is not primary evidence of anthropogenic change anyway - you admit that there is climate change so why would glacial retreat be something to argue about? Its a complex business - maritime glaciers (such as in Norway) are primarily driven by precipitation and temperature has less to do with it. Alpine glaciers are more regulated by summer temperature, and it is these that are showing the most rapid retreat.
PS
The following retreating glaciers I or my close friends have had personal acquaintance with:
Mer de Glace (France)
Tour (France) (A bit too close to this one, crevasses are not good)
Aletch (Switzerland)
Aneto (Spain/France) - The Pyrenees has about half the actual number of glaciers it used to - they haven't just retreated, they've gone)
Nisqually (Washington State)
Furtwängler (Kenya - soon to disappear)
Nigardsbreen (Norway)
Kebnekaise (Sweden)
Lyell Glacier (California)
Now, say again, where did the figure of 7 come from?
...maritime glaciers (such as in Norway) are primarily driven by precipitation and temperature has less to do with it.
Uh, but precipitation does have to do with temperature. The warmer the ocean, the more evaporation, thus the more precipitation... and the converse: the cooler, the less precipitation.
Therefore, if Norwegian glaciers are retreating, BY YOUR OWN EVIDENCE, what's going on is global cooling! :-)
Now, don't go around saying I believe in global cooling. I don't. But what I do think is that there is just no evidence whatever that actually ties glacier behaviour to global warming.
The FOG report monitors 780 glacier
Yup. The ones they think are retreating. So even they think 99% are not retreating.
I was tempted to ignore this, as I suspect I am being trolled here, and I apologise for cluttering up a light hearted political blog with this stuff, but this really is too important to leave anyone in any doubt about the science. So here we go..
2br02b ... you should select your sources more carefully ...anyone who actually visits the GLIMS site would leave in no doubt that they believe that the majority of glaciers are in decline. Glaciers also seem to be multiplying since 1998 when the white paper you cite was published ... this quote is also from the GLIMS site (my emphasis)...
"Glaciers are highly sensitive indicators of past and present climate change. Their current area and volume are a response to both near-term and long-term changes in both temperature and precipitation. In recent decades most glaciers have been steadily shrinking. Because glaciers are important indicators of past and future climatic changes, it is important that a globally complete glacier inventory be maintained that contains the current extent as well as the rates of change of the world's glaciers. The GLIMS project (Global Land Ice Measurements from Space) is currently creating a unique glacier inventory storing critical information about the extent and rates of change of the world's estimated 160,000 glaciers.
http://nsidc.org/glims/
See also 'Global Glacier Recession' - http://nsidc.org/data/glims/glaciermelt/index.html
on the same site.
Fact, not fiction.
So the source used to support the case actually contradicts it and we still don't know where the figure of 7 retreating glaciers came from.
There is some evidence that contradicts AGW and there are some scientists who remain sceptical about climate change, and more who doubt the extent to which it is influenced by human activity. This is healthy - science thrives on dissent, but they are in a tiny and decreasing minority. To quote the Moonbat ...
"It is hard to convey just how selective you have to be to dismiss the evidence for climate change. You must climb over a mountain of evidence to pick up a crumb: a crumb which then dissolves in your palm. You must ignore an entire canon of science, the statements of the world’s most eminent scientific institutions, and thousands of papers published in the foremost scientific journals. You must, if you are David Bellamy, embrace instead the claims of an eccentric former architect, which are based on what appears to be a non-existent data set. And you must do all this while calling yourself a scientist."
Enough, back to weather girls, alcoholic party leaders and dodgy party funding ...
You will find that the glaciers in far Western Norway were often quoted by sceptics because the maritime ones _have_ been advancing to some extent. After the record hot summers in the last couple of years this trend has reversed for now, but the overall effect is not so clear.
http://www.cicero.uio.no/fulltext.asp?id=3561&lang=no
Glacial retreat is just another piece in the jigsaw, again it is not the whole story. But I think relating global increased temperature to global melting of snow is a reasonable guess...
I see you still have difficulting distinguishing between fact and fiction, Cyberchrome.
GLIMS actually reports that it is monitoring 300 glaciers. If (I don't know, but if) these are all they can find that are retreating, and there are actually (they say) 160,000 glaciers, the proportion NOT retreating is now more than 99.5%. And if half of these retreatees are due to less rainfall, which in turn is due to cooling....
You are being duped.
It happens throughtout history. Read how in Mackay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" -- published in, would you believe 1841. But it stands up better that the delusional nonsense of Mann and his government-handout-collecting pseudo-scientist friends.
(And why are you trolling me? I was on this thread first.)
To summarise the facts and conclude.
GLIMS and WGMS both state the majority of glaciers are retreating. You say 0.5%.
You started with a total of 7. You never gave a source for your figure.
The IPCC, the US National Association of Science, and the Scientific Academies of the G8 countries have all concluded that there is highly pursuasive evidence that most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, due to human activity.
All this is easily verifiable. Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
You say there is no such evidence, and we are all being duped.
I am going to stop here and let people to draw their own conclusions as to the credibility of the arguments
the IPCC...
How many real live scientists (not climate pseudo-scientists) are on the IPCC? Go on. Guess. (Hint. It's not a large number. Not large at all. 'Zero' is pretty small...)
Do you believe the economic forecast the IPCC climate predictions are all based upon, which among other impossible things to believe before breakfast, has the GDP/Head of Upper Volta (and all the rest of sub-Saharan Africa too) being greater than the GDP/Head of the US by 2100?
If you do, I've got this bridge across the East River to sell to you for scrap...
And if you don't, the entire GW case collapses.
---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
"Category: Articles with unsourced statements"
You're not the famous William M. Connolley, who goes around editing out every single comment--sometimes within minutes of it appearing--in Wikipedia that thows the least doubt, no matter how mild, sbout man-made global warming, are you?
---
Please stop your trolling. I'm sure you'll get your next government global warming research grant whatever happens here.
Like I said, this is an important question, arguably the most important issue facing us right now.
My reason for engaging with you, or 'trolling', was a fear that someone may read your stuff, and assume it had a basis in reality.
I am a lot less worried now, and so I am disengaging.
Glacial retreat? I've frozen my nuts off waiting for this drivel to end...
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