Comments on Guy Fawkes' blog of parliamentary plots, rumours and conspiracy: Gore's Carbon Footprint

Glacial retreat? I've frozen my nuts off waiting f...

2006-11-01T15:38:00.000Z

Glacial retreat? I've frozen my nuts off waiting for this drivel to end...

Like I said, this is an important question, arguab...

2006-11-01T15:21:00.000Z

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.

the IPCC...How many real live scientists (not clim...

2006-11-01T15:02:00.000Z

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.

To summarise the facts and conclude.GLIMS and WGMS...

2006-11-01T13:43:00.000Z

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

I see you still have difficulting distinguishing b...

2006-11-01T13:14:00.000Z

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.)

You will find that the glaciers in far Western Nor...

2006-11-01T12:52:00.000Z

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 was tempted to ignore this, as I suspect I am be...

2006-11-01T12:33:00.000Z

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 ...

...maritime glaciers (such as in Norway) are prima...

2006-11-01T12:04:00.000Z

...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.

Sorry Guido, this is tedious. But bollocks is bol...

2006-11-01T11:25:00.000Z

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?

I agree this thread has gone far enough. I'd just ...

2006-11-01T09:58:00.000Z

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.)

I met East Cheam once he was a spy so unlikely to ...

2006-11-01T09:35:00.000Z

I met East Cheam once he was a spy so unlikely to be particularly funny

Anon,10.01amReactionary f##kwit? Moi? I've never b...

2006-11-01T04:50:00.000Z

Anon,10.01am

Reactionary f##kwit? Moi? I've never been called a f##kwit before. Fuckwit? Yes. F##kwit? No.
Ah well.

Guido,is it just me, or has this thread been invad...

2006-10-31T21:14:00.000Z

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?

PS "... name eight glaciers known to be in retreat...

2006-10-31T20:50:00.000Z

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

I am not proposing science by democracy, I am prop...

2006-10-31T19:52:00.000Z

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.

guido wtf is going on. there is actual climate ch...

2006-10-31T19:51:00.000Z

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

This is McIntyre and McKitrick ... rejected by Na...

2006-10-31T19:26:00.000Z

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.

is it me or is gore just jumpin on a bandwagon, an...

2006-10-31T18:35:00.000Z

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 a McIntyre and McKitrick question, isn't i...

2006-10-31T18:25:00.000Z

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.

Anyone remember Gore's ManBearPig obsession?http:/...

2006-10-31T17:43:00.000Z

Anyone remember Gore's ManBearPig obsession?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manbearpig

Its methane gas that we need to deal with. Kill al...

2006-10-31T17:31:00.000Z

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

Cyberchrome:Pleeeease, yourself.Science is not a d...

2006-10-31T17:21:00.001Z

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.

Anonymous (one of the many): The 1500 freeloaders ...

2006-10-31T17:21:00.000Z

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.

2b0r02bThe point about water vapour is that the am...

2006-10-31T16:56:00.000Z

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.

I'm not worried about global warning, I've bought ...

2006-10-31T16:54:00.000Z

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....