Michael,

There are interesting lessons which can be learnt from James Lovelock (real or apparent) reversal:

1. Nothing would delight climate scientists (and everyone else) more than if the world is not warming, or at the very least if warming is not anthropogenic.

2. It is not a correct scientific approach to "believe" or "disbelieve" any particular statement by any particular scientist, i.e. whether it is Lovelock, Dyson, Hansen or Schellnhuber.

3. Instead, scientists acquainted with the basic laws of atmospheric physics and chemistry and with paleo-climate science ought to look at the bona-fide data sets reported by monitoring science bodies (NSIDC, NASA, NOAA, HADLEY-MET, POTSDAM, BOM, CSIRO etc.) and draw their own conclusions.

4. In so far as their conclusions vary from those in the bulk of the peer review literature, they ought to formulate their observations for publication. Any scientist who can disprove anthropogenic global warming is bound to receive the highest acolades.

3. Lovelock's statements include contradictions. He states the world continues to warm, albeit at a slower rate, though 2005 and 2010 saw peak temperatures. When you look at the Berkeley T plot (Figure 1) you will find periods during which T went up and periods during which it went down, but the mean has grown by at least 1C and more than 2C when the masking effects of short-lived industrial emitted SO2 aerosols are taken into account.
(it is a bit like when a patient takes aspirin when suffering fever, i.e. the T declines but the cause of the fever has not at that stage been cured).

Andrew cherry picks whatever data set he thinks supports his extremely alarmist position. Arguing about which year of the last 10 is the hottest is ridiculous. The fact remains that the warming that was forecast by the models has not eventuated. It seems this is one of the reasons Lovelock recanted his position. That's why he said the following:

“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.
“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.

Marc - there is no shortage of peer reviewed science pointing out that the world continues to warm.

The paper that Alvin Stone linked to
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/04/scienceshot-no-letup-in-worlds.html?ref=em

The paper by Foster and Rahmsdorf.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022

discussed here
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/the-real-global-warming-signal/

And also discussed here with some additional analysis from John Nielsen-Gammon the Texas State Climatologist and Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2012/04/about-the-lack-of-warming/

If course we have been here before.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=47

What have you got apart from accusing Dr Glikson of "alarmism"?

Gee, nice collection of blog posts there Mike, and is that one peer reviewed paper? That all YOU got?
I can read a graph and it flat lines after 1998. It also diverges wildly from model predictions. It seems that even Lovelock can now see this.

"We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,”Clearly we are not.

Marc, did you even read those blog posts? Because they reference the relevant data sources and scientific papers they used.

But of course it is easier to dismiss something if you haven't bothered to read it, isn't it Marc.

How about the GISS data: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/references.html
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

Good one Marc. There are actually 2.

I laughed when you criticised a poster in the "climate dice" thread for linking to a blog and then 2 comments later linked to Roger Pielke's blog.
https://theconversation.edu.au/if-you-want-to-roll-the-climate-dice-you-should-know-the-odds-6462

But hey - I am not going to argue with you. I agree that peer reviewed science is the gold standard. However with much peer reviewed science behind paywalls, who is going to pass up the opportunity to read what the author says about his/her paper.

So can we do that again
Here is author Grant Foster discussing his peer reviewed paper

http://www.snolab.ca/public/JournalClub/FosterRahmstorf2011.pdf

on why the idea that global warming has stopped or even slowed is "crap".

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/the-real-global-warming-signal/

So Marc - apart from "Look over there it's a wombat" do you have anything?

Authors discussing their own papers in sheltered workshops, in the absence of criticism. Mike's version of the scientific method.

Incorrect.

Plus, the GISS data is annomally data, not a model. The model is only to take into account spatial variability, i.e. combine sites.

Of course we can go to straight temperature data if you want:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/global/trendmaps.cgi?map=global_t&region=global&season=0112&period=1970
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/datasets/datasets.shtml
Annomally but, the raw data is linked:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/global/timeseries.cgi?graph=global_t&region=global&season=0112&ave_yr=15

I take it you didn't read Santer's recent paper that showed the increase in temp over the past decade.....

That criticism is completely hollow when you've cited exactly 0 peer-reviewed papers to support your arguments...

I have to say I am uncomfortable with the prediction of an ice-free world in 300 years, although without reference to papers one way or another, I don't have the tools to make a considered judgement.

That said, the statement that "we were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now," is pure Lovelock. It's another exaggeration used to justify the case for his new position. It is in the same ballpark, as two people living on an ice-cap by 2100, that he used when he was pumping up the threat of global warming.

Both are very nice media sound bites (and, boy, weren't they picked up) but neither are serious engagements with the forecasts of mainstream climate scientists.

I really do feel, that this whole reversal would have been much ado about nothing if Lovelock wasn't such a high profile media tart.

You "few basic points" don't really sum up history, they're statements of what you believe to be fact.

1. "Many decades ago" presumably means "150 years ago". You're not getting off to a good start with such vagueness.

2. "The exact warming factor of CO2 can't really be accurately measured experimentally." Then how would you suggest we do so? "Experiencially [sic]" (sic indeed). What does this mean? That we should go outside and "feel" whether the world has warmed since the beginning of the 20th century and how much of it is due to CO2? How could we accurately "experience" the former and how could we begin to estimate the latter?

We can, of course, determine experimentally the radiative index of CO2 - how much heat it absorbs and re-emits. Easily, without taking the climate into account, in a lab. That is, after all, how we discovered CO2 was a greenhouse gas in the first place.

With that knowledge, we can estimate the forcing of CO2 on the global temperature, through a comprehensive knowledge of the other forcings and their impact, plus feedbacks. This is indeed a tough thing to do, but you would have us shrink from hard work and spend our time "experiencing" things instead. We can't possibly "experience" these things, and even if we could, it would remain a stupid thing to say.

3. What "naive model"? There's only one? What widespread panic? Those food riots that plagued the world in the '80s as people waited for the imminent apocalypse?

4. What is this positive feedback? The matter at hand is about the temperature rise driven by CO2 - not the amount of CO2 released. Unless "positive feedback" means something different to you (in that dictionary alongside "experiencial" rather than "experiential"), wouldn't it mean that scientists UNDERestimated the amount of both CO2 released and the resulting warming? If their "unrealistic" estimates "limited" CO2 release, wouldn't we all be talking about how the models UNDERperformed and we're incredibly screwed? This may make sense to you, but apparently not to the rest of us.

5. The more Sean Lamb's incoherent wafflings about a subject of which he is clearly very ignorant fail to match reality, the shriller his shouts of "help help I'm being oppressed".

6. These young scientists a-rising up the pecking order, overturning all we know about global warming as a lie in their wake, being Ian Plimer and Bob Carter (aged 60+), Richard Lindzen (70+) and Freeman Dyson and James Lovelock (90+). Yep, those young guns, not wedded to the past and with their best work ahead of them, are sure gonna kick out those geriatric ape-men. Beat that with a stick, Darwin and Einstein, with your "research" and "scientific papers" and "peer review" - these bright young things are doing it all via error-riddled op-ed pieces from the comfort of their armchairs!

7. Please let me know when you're ready to publish Sean Lamb's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I'm sure your years of experience in the field of the history and philosophy of science will see your work rise to the top over that wannabe Kuhn's.

My dear Mr Sturgess, I am certainly not claiming to be either more knowledgeable than either you or the article author, I am just claiming to be correct. It is the old dialectic: Wrong but Wromantic versus Right but Repulsive.

"Experientally" means of or pertaining to experience. To put it in terms you might understand better "suck it and see", it other words we will have a better idea of the relationship between CO2 and temperature as we collect more data points on the graph. And collect them we will, since we are still digging up mineral carbon in ever increasing quantities and since ocean and atmospheric CO2 exist in equilibrium, these two reservoirs are going to end up collecting the bulk of this carbon.

I agree it is still to early for the next generation of climate scientists to knock the older ones of the perch, my guestimate these scientists are still in Year 10 and will have to spend time establishing reputations in post docs before making their move. If you are in the field, Mr Sturgess, you would position your research towards the lower end of estimates and then you will be well positioned to ride the wave in around 10 years time.

As to point 7, I am not planning to publish. I know the AAS collects my collected comments on The Conversation and has them inscribed on gold plates and placed in the basement of the National Museum on Acton Peninsula. You have to pay two dollars extra in order to view them, but its well worth it.

In 1996 when the "policy-makers" (economists and politicians, generally non-cogniscent regarding science) decided to limit warming to 2 deg C, this was code for atmospheric CO2 to not exceed 550 ppm; that is, climate sensitivity (the temperature rise due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2) was thought to be around 2 deg C.

By early this decade, further work showed that climate sensitivity is closer to 3 deg C than 2, so the upper limit of atmospheric CO2 was decreased to 450 ppm.

What the economists and politicians haven't yet caught up with is that 2 deg C average temperature increase will also cause substantial ice melting, causing considerable further warming, plus several metres of sea level rise.

It will also cause substantial Arctic Ocean warming (methane clathrate sublimation) and permafrost (tundra) thawing, also causing substantial methane emissions.

In other words, there is no way that 2 deg C warming over the next century or two will not cause substantial further warming.

A prudent approach would be to cease fossil fuel use as quickly as our economies can manage.

Dear Mr Lamb, Esq.

So you acknowledge you don't know any more than either myself or the author of this article (or any of the tens of thousands of scientists with whom you disagree), but you are nevertheless right and we are all wrong. I see.

Thank you for your consideration, but I am aware of what you were getting at with your reference to "experiencial [sic]" research. I was hinting at the possibility that even if we were to abandon the scientific tradition of prediction and simple watch what happens, we would still have to experiment and model and calculate to gather how much warming is due to CO2 as opposed to other sources. I said this because I was at the time unaware that you were not a man as I am, but one who can write as history of events still to come; who can intuit the existence of data as yet unfound; who can divine the future reversals of scientific knowledge; and can even sense these changes approaching, even though it is ten years away and will be led by men and women who at the moment haven't even finished high school and may not even know they are destined to become scientists.

Frankly, I think you're letting yourself down a bit. I gather you aren't in the field of science yourself, or have any great grasp of the science or the scientific method - this is a grave oversight on your part. Think about it: the young scientists who are / will be overturning global warming are still sneaking out to parties and drawing penises on their school desks, and have yet to even discover the data you have already intuited. Why not pre-empt this "wave" which shall undoubtedly be whipped up in ten years by as-yet-not-legal schoolkids over data not yet found, and get in there early? Think of the fame, the recognition! Those hypothetical future scientists with their hypothetical data would look to you as a pathfinder, a mold-breaker. To spend your time educating us here with your intuitive insights - while a noble cause in itself - seems a poor use of your time.

As to your final point, I am as glad as anyone that the AAS preserves your words for all time, but I think two dollars is a little extravagant. I think you should only have to pay a dollar and a half just to see them.

And when you grow up you too will become a ?
Awhhh...

:)

And Bless what?

Your ignorance?

Well it might be a prudent approach, but there is no reasonable likelihood of avoiding 450 ppm - just based on the future projections of mineral carbon extraction.

So we are going to find out if these models are correct or not.

Are you seriously suggesting this article supports your contention that the world will be in your own words "ice free " in a few centuries? It does nothing of the sort.
Here's Hansen's take from his 1981 paper that received so much praise here recently from you and others recently ....“Melting of the world's ice sheets is another possible effect of CO2 warming. If they melted entirely sea level would rise ~70m. However, their natural response time is thousands of years, and it is not certain whether CO2 warming will cause ice sheets to shrink or grow. For example, if the ocean warms but the air above the ice sheets remains below freezing, the effect could be increased snowfall, net ice sheet growth, and thus lowering of sea level.” P. 965 Hansen 1981 Science 213

The difference Mark between the two conclusions - 31 years.

Don't you just love science by press release.
Lets do some simple math. Antarctica has 30 million cubic kilometers of ice. According to NASA GRACE satellite measurements it lost about 100km3 per year for the period 2002 to present. To be "Ice Free" as Andrew suggests given those figures continue at the same rate would take 300,000 years. That's a 3 with 5 zeros after it. Andrew is suggesting there are only 2. That's 3 orders of magnitude difference.Therefore I suggest he is being un-necessarily alarmist. Do you agree?

Rignot et al, "Acceleration of the contribution of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to sea level rise", Geophysical Research Letters, (38), L05503, doi:10.1029/2011GL046583, 2011.

You are familiar with the concept of acceleration?

In news just in, Pritchard et al, "Antarctic ice-sheet loss driven by basal melting of ice shelves" Nature 484, 502–505 (26 April 2012) doi:10.1038/nature10968
"Accurate prediction of global sea-level rise requires that we understand the cause of recent, widespread and intensifying glacier acceleration along Antarctic ice-sheet coastal margins.
Atmospheric and oceanic forcing have the potential to reduce the thickness and extent of floating ice shelves, potentially limiting their ability to buttress the flow of grounded tributary glaciers.
.... Here we use satellite laser altimetry and modelling of the surface firn layer to reveal the circum-Antarctic pattern of ice-shelf thinning through increased basal melt. We deduce that this increased melt is the primary control of Antarctic ice-sheet loss, through a reduction in buttressing of the adjacent ice sheet leading to accelerated glacier flow. The highest thinning rates occur where warm water at depth can access thick ice shelves via submarine troughs crossing the continental shelf.
"Wind forcing could explain ... that climate forcing through changing winds influences Antarctic ice-sheet mass balance, and hence global sea level, on annual to decadal timescales."

"Lets do some simple math"

Sort of gives the game away Marc with "simple" being the operative word.

Are you suggesting that ice sheet melting is going to be linear? Did you say you were a geologist?

Simple math model for a simple audience.
Ok Mike the math whizz. In order to meet Glickson's unrealistic, alarmist 300 year goal line for ice on the planet can you provide the equation for the curve?
How realistic do you think this is?
How much extra warming would be required to achieve this?
Would this accord with basic physics?
Given the implied sea level rise is nigh on 70 m have you purchased suitable property for your descendants?

And the ice free in 300 years bit?

It's quite plausible that there won't be any floating ice other than annual freezes in three centuries' time. There may still be substantial amounts of multi-year terrestrial ice on Greenland and on East Antarctica in particular.

What region do you project to be ice-free in 300 years?

Marc, I've just had a look at Prof Glikson's Conversation piece "As emissions rise, we may be heading for an ice-free planet". He makes it quite clear that there is a good likelihood of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions initiating processes leading to an ice-free planet.

What he does NOT do is suggest that an ice-free planet can occur within three centuries.

My expectation is that unless we cease recycling geosequestered carbon to the atmosphere within the next couple of decades, emissions of greenhouse gases from cryosphere and ocean and ensuing further warming will become self-sustaining, to result in an ice-free Arctic, Greenland and Antarctic Peninsula within a couple of millenia, NOT within a few centuries.

This may well be accompanied with substantial loss of East Antarctic ice sheet, resulting in sea level rise of tens of millenia.

You say
"A guesstimate or a forecast of anything more than a few years into the future is blatantly unscientific

Total nonsense supported only by a lot of hand waving.

Solar physicists make the following prediction about our sun based on their understanding of stellar evolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_evolution
"in about 5 billion years, it will enter a red giant phase. Its outer layers will expand as the hydrogen fuel at the core is consumed and the core will contract and heat up. etc etc

Are you saying that is not scientific? The prediction is based on the laws of physics and observation of the same process in other stars.

Likewise the predictions of climate science are based on the laws of physics and a study of paleoclimatology. While there are uncertainties associated with the projections in the IPCC reports (not least around the rate that fossil fuels that will be burnt), saying we do not know everything is not the same as saying we know nothing.

If you believe as you suggest that climate scientists are wrong, then you must believe that the climate will not warm in response to pumping 34 Gigatonnes per year of CO2 into the atmosphere. Now that would be unscientific.

So you are happy to accept his view when it coincides with yours and then try to personally discredit him when he disagrees with you.

This is why people are losing faith with climate science.

It is pure advocacy akin to the politics of the NSW ALP Right rather than science.

As expected? Ocean heat content in the ARGO era shows a slight rise but no dramatic acceleration and thankfully the rate of change is well below the rate of change predictied by Hansen.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/figure-112.png

Sea level rise also appears to be dipping below long term trend and not accelerating - maybe you expected that but not many did.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2012_rel2/sl_ns_global.png

Why would Andrew Glikson impress you? His expertise is in the geology of planetary impacts. Perhaps this explains why he sees cataclysms where ever he looks.

Marc,

you have made this point, or similar points, before in your postings and blogs. It amounts to a convenient and disrespectful playing of the man, not the ball.

It's also of interest to note that you don't tout this point when pooh poohing the overwhelming consensus from published climate scientists.

Furthermore, it leads to the natural question? What is your principal area of published expertise? Because, according to your own logic, if it's not climate science I shouldn't take what you say seriously!

Fred, perhaps I have not been clear enough. Andrew has as much right to comment as anyone else, and i have long been less concerned about qualifications rather than the veracity of arguments. The point was raised in response to comments made about Lovelock ("his publishing record ..etc") However when Andrew makes outrageous statements like the world will be ice free in a few hundred years he should expect some difficult questions.

Japan has stopped.
Sure you want to meet their problems?

Here is a Russian report giving quite different numbers for Chernobyl relative the western worlds estimates..http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2010/2010-04-26-01.html

Sorry,. something slightly wrong with that link.
Try this one instead.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2010/2010-04-26-01.html