Fred,

Thank you for that comment. I nearly said so myself, but you can infer it from my post —local government councils would be derelict in their duties if they didn't take seriously what the CSIRO said.

But don't you think there is a great deal of uncertainty about (i) whether or not sea levels are rising, generally or in particular areas, (ii) whether or not sea-level rises are accelerating, and (iii) whether or not there is any danger in the next fifty years to people living on the coast of say, NSW?

Yes, I know there are scary forecasts, but, once again, the devil is in the data.

Michael,

There is no issue (at least with me) that CO2 is a GHG or that the increase in its concentration is likely to have come from human activity in burning fossil fuels. Those two statements do not by themselves show that any warming is due to that activity. Some of it can be, and indeed all of it can be (you used 'can'), but equally none of it need be.

The truth is that we don't know, because no one has yet been able to distinguish the CO2 signal from the noise in the data. We are dealing, with respect to warming, with 'natural variability' and the contribution of carbon dioxide. There is certainly a great prize for someone who can separate them, and we don't even know how many factors cause the natural variability. Until that happens we have uncertainty, and a lot of it. Look at Table 1-11 of the IPCC's AR4 to see why.

I don't get into discussions about conspiracies, or about people lying or about their not being any good at their job. I could be persuaded if you could show me the evidence that persuades you — if it does the job of separating CO2 from natural variability.

Gary,

I pointed out on this thread, or the other, that we have to be careful of our own confirmation biases. Of course, I could be guilty of it nonetheless, but I didn't start with this concept. I started as someone who accepted that what was said to be the science was in fact correct.

What changed my mind was having to write a chapter on the environment for a book I was preparing on the next fifty years. The more I looked at the evidence, the more puzzled I became. There seemed to be far too much confidence and too much hectoring of critics, given what I could find. I read the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC, and then the Fourth when it came out. There didn't seem to be any debate in either document — any consideration of alternative points of view. Why not? It seemed that the decision had already been made: CO2 was guilty. That was in 2007 and 2008. What has occurred since has worried me even more. I keep looking for good evidence, and don't find it. I agree that I have set the bar high, but then we have been told that this is most serious problem facing humanity, so the standards have to be high.

I don't know anything about OSIM — never heard of it. I am a longstanding supporter of public education and have no truck with elixirs of life. I can't see the connection, really.

Michael,

I read it, and tried to consider its implications. One obvious one is that it cuts both ways. Could it be, do you think, that pro-AGW people also consider only the papers and data that support their own position? You will see that above I pointed out that we needed always to be aware of confirmation bias, and I've set out what would cause me to change my mind. Now I do read widely, and I have posted on RealClimate (and survived moderation). I also go to Skeptical Science from time to time, but only to see what the orthodox position is; to consider the alternatives Lubos Motl has a point-by-point rejoinder of SS, which is a good antidote.

On AGW I am neither a denier or a sceptic — rather an agnostic. I am deeply, and I think properly, sceptical that a carbon tax will have any discernible effect at all on greenhouse gas emissions, but will churn money around, provide jobs for public servants and lawyers, and generally waste everyone's time and energy. So, as always, I read the papers and wait for really good argument and data, not the rehashing of old points of view.

I thought the comments in the website you offered were very interesting too. What did you think? I agree with Seth Roberts that there are few papers that actually do look at what happened to predictions, for the good reason that virtually all of the predictions have been wrong. If you know of lots of papers where they have been proved right, please give me a list.

I think that we are running out of things to say here, and The Conversation seems to have moved on.

Your last sentence made me shake my head. I think I know what you were meaning to say, but I don't think that this is successful: 'The carbon tax is a response to the problem of AGW, and not an issue relevant to discussions relating to the reality of AGW.' It might have been better begun : 'The carbon tax is a response to the assumption that AGW is a problem ...' but the rest is still odd. Surely the carbon tax is very much relevant to discussions about the reality of AGW (better, CAGW, or catastrophic AGW), because if there is no problem, then there is no need for a carbon tax. In my view, as I have expressed it earlier, is that we do not know enough about AGW to be able to formulate sensible policies about it, and the carbon tax makes virtually no contribution at all to lowering GHG emissions.

Chaos and fractals. Yes, I was very interested in them indeed when Mandelbrot was a key figure, and read about them then. I was once at dinner with Mandelbrot on my right and Barry Jones on my left, but Barry hogged most of the discussion. Still, I learned!

Models. My understanding, after some reading, is that the nature of the models has not changed much in the past couple of decades, though increasing computing power has enable them to become richer in texture. We still do not know enough even about clouds to make the models really useful. And I am not one who thinks that averaging model runs tells us that the models are doing well!

Oh, and you made no comment on my suggestion that you might consider whether or not those who are convinced of CAGW are not themselves subject to confirmation bias.

Michael,

I have fairly thick skin, but it does seem that you are being patronising when you maintain that I am unable 'to maintain a rational discussion', the reason apparently being that I don't follow your view about 'the possibility that the world is going to be changed for the worse'. As it happens, I am not particularly exercised about the carbon tax, dreadful though it seems to me; I have seen plenty awful legislation in the fifty plus years I have been studying politics. I am most caught by the way in which 'science' has been politicised, again over that time, not just with respect to AGW. I don't think either of us is being 'irrational' in arguing that way we have done, and I am not being irrational simply because you don't agree with me!

I didn't take up your point about Seth's argument, and I didn't because it was a line en passant in my own post. But, OK. This is what I think, after a couple of hours of reading.

First, the original blog was a dreadful piece of work, which I skipped over in my comment. Andrew quotes Seth to say that he has 'only seen careful prediction-vs-reality comparisons' done by sceptics, and points out that Phil (none of these people is known to me) had posted that the day Seth had posted his comment just such a comparison was being discussed at RealClimate.

Then Andrew makes an extraordinary statement: 'it would seem surprising to claim that the majority of leading climate scientists don't do "careful prediction-vs-reality comparisons" and on the very day there is one' He goes on to ask 'How did Seth miss it?'

Well, as Seth points out, when he posted his comment the RealClimate post had not come out. He didn't go on to protest, as he might have done, that he had not made any claim that a majority of climate scientists dod not do such comparisons. What he'd said was quite different. What Andrew did here is so common on the blogs. Someone says something, and then is criticised extensively for something else.

Seth (and others) then go to the RealClimate site and inspect what they can find of the paper. He is not impressed (and nor am I) with what he finds there. He asks for other such comparisons. Only two are offered, both at RealClimate. As it happens, I know both of these earlier examples, and the're not very persuasive either; I can't immediately think of any others. The IPCC reports don't go in very hard on whether their earlier forecasts (especially those in the SPM) have been supported by the data.

I think Seth is right. I would argue that the great majority of such comparisons have been made by sceptics, not be the orthodox, for a good reason. And that is that the data don't support the forecasts very well at all. If they did we wouldn't be arguing about it, and there would be weekly triumphant, confirming posts at RealClimate. I should add that I also don't think much of the critical comparisons, or most of them, because there simply isn't good enough data to be sure, which is why I remain agnostic.

Can I suggest that you spend some time reading at Judith Curry's 'Climate etc' website? You get real arguments there, from excellent people on both side. Yes, there are trolls and hi-jackers there too, but you can scroll past them. I've learned a great deal from these arguments.

Cliff,

I'm a tad older than you, and could say that in my longer experience extreme weather events are no more numerous than they used to be. But that wouldn't prove anything either.

If you're interested in this issue, google up 'extreme weather events' and 'Roger Pielke junior'. He has done a lot of work on the question, and suggests that if anything such events are less frequent than they once were. What is undeniably true is that the mainstream media — and we ourselves — pay a lot more attention to the weather than we used to, partly because of the fuss about 'climate change'.

As for sea-levels, there are papers arguing that they are rising faster than they used to, and others arguing that they're not. Much the same with sea temperature. There has been a lot of discussion on both issues on Judith Curry's 'Climate etc' website.

Thank you for replying, Don, and I will check the extreme weather events and the individual you have named. I would be a little skeptical myself, though, if I discover that the statistics are produced solely by climate change cynics, and I would seek objective confirmation of their data.

However, apart from the extreme weather events I alluded to, are you really sure that since I was born, in 1943, those sorts of events dried up until relatively recently? You say you 'could say' but surely that would have to be based on fact? And do you not agree that if we pay a lot more attention to the weather than we used to - the mainstream media you mention - it is odd that in your memory as a youngster, you recall more extreme weather events than I can? I know England experienced a great flood sometime in the 50s and in London where I came from, there were also one or two heavy winters, but I can't recall much else.

It is not just world extreme weather events, though, that is the issue. Here in Albany, W.A., for example, we have just experienced the following start to 2012:

Jan: Mean rainfull: 23.7, 2012: 1.6
Feb: Mean rainful: 22.6, 2012: 5.2
March: Mean rainfull: 32.6, 2012: 16.6
April: Mean rainfull: 61.3, 2012: 44.0.

By any stretch of the imagination, those are startling figures. One month or two with such variations, yes, but four months?

I also knew with 100% gut certainty that we'd never had such a warm April since we'd began living here in 1996, and the following confirmed this:

we had three consecutive days over thirty degrees, something which had never happened before, and the actual temperatures we received over the month's 30 days were 23.5 and 12.3, compared with the Mean since records began of: 21.8 and 11.6, and all this while the Eastern Seaboard was awash with water.

For us to be nearly 2 degrees above the average for 30 days, has to be seen, in my view, as needing an explanation that goes beyond simple climatic variations.

Cliff,

It's really pointless swapping memories. But I can remember that in Canberra, where I live, the basin of Lake Burley Griffin filled up in a couple of days in 1948, though there was no dam there. In 1955, when I was doing Nasho in the army, there were horrific floods in the hunter, and in 1956 equally horrific floods in the Richmond and the Murray Darling (the latter producing the highest levels of water ever seen in South Australia. We've had three ten-year droughts, at Federation, during WWII and in the late 1990s The Brisbane flood a year or so ago was not as high as the one in 1983, and so on. Wed have decent records in Australia for the last hundred years and a bit ore. They should be your database, I think.

Pielke Jr describes himself as a 'lukewarmer'. He and his father are respected academics, and each has a website. Check them out.

Don, would you mind providing figures, please, in relation to your references, similar to mine in respect of Albany's start to 2012 and how it compares with the mean, for example?

Even the times of those floods in the years you've mentioned need to be included.

With Roger Pielke Junior, is his position as a 'lukewarmer' based on anything other than his being a 'respected' academic? Does he have stats to support his 'lukewarmness', or does he just rely on linguistics?

Like over on the 'God' debate thread, a number of believers keep citing so-called great thinkers from the past who also apparently believed in 'God', as if this gives greater credence to the belief.

Cliff,

None of this is at all difficult. Just Google it up. I can tell you that Canberra had 135 mm in 24 hours over 3/4 May 1948, because I had already looked it up for something I was writing. You'll find the two major floods in the Richmond were in 1954 and 1974, with smaller ones in other years, by just Googling 'Lismore flood levels' and searching.

I'm sorry, you have to do your own work in all of this.

Sorry, Don, but I don't intend to. I do think if you are making the references, especially in relation to the argument that climate change is not the serious issue that many people think it is, it is down to you to provide the statistical evidence pertinent to those references.

You did not comment on the stats I provided regarding Albany. Do you not think they are of some concern?

OK, Cliff. I'm not an evangelist. I do my own work to help me make my own mind up. When I see what I see as errors in argument or what I think are poor data I sometimes say so. Mostly I give a clue as to where one can find other argument or evidence. Also I don't have another theory, other than climate science is young and doesn't know the answer to many things that are of interest. I don't have to have another theory to find deficiencies in the orthodox view of climate.

Your Albany data: yes, you're having an unusually dry beginning to the year. I could produce figures like those throughout the last ten-year drought we had here in Canberra, and you would agree that we were having an unusually dry summer then. So what? What are the patterns you can discern over the last hundred or so years in the Albany conditions? It seems to me that our climates exhibit patterns. At the moment we are having here another La Nina episode — more clouds, more rain. This is the third year in a row where that has been true. But it was true in the 1950s too. Our droughts were in el Nino years.

Good luck in your search!

I'd like to see those Canberra figures where the rainful was much lower for four consecutive months, along with the temperatures I mentioned for April showing such a marked difference, with records set.

I, too, understand that the science is relatively young, and I have no scientific knowledge, qualifications or leanings whatsoever.

However, I think that just plain common sense tells us that we cannot continually pollute the atmosphere and environment, for example, without it having deleterious effects. Does it really matter, therefore, whether that means the temperatures are rising or not, or that there is not certainty in the debate about the melting of the polar regions?

I have a great respect for, and admiration of, Mikhail Gorbachev. He is one of the few real leaders I've ever seen in politics and, like the great Nelson Mandela, one of the very few to have voluntarily relinquished power. In a biography I read of him, soon after he was in power, it describes how late one evening he was in the garden and his wife came out to see him as he'd obviously been thinking deeply about the state of the Soviet Union. Turning to her, he reputedly said: 'We can't go on living like this,' or words to that effect. I juxtaposed that realisation on his part, with footage I'd seen of a huge waste pipe from the far north of Russia that 24 hours a day, was spewing its filth into the Barents Sea.

Thus the issue is not even really climate change so much as us and our stupefying ignorance in polluting and damaging the very environment which gives us life. I don't believe man has ever really cared about the environment - and that includes Australia before the white man arrived - it is just that today, the world's population and the levels of scientific and technological expertise, have also brought home the fact that we just cannot continue to treat the environment as we have been.

Cliff,

Once again, and especially given your remark that you have a lot to learn, you have to do the work yourself. We all do. For temperature records, rainfall patterns and a lot more as well, go to the Bureau of Meteorology website. Or try Googling what you want to find out. As I said before, learn a great deal more about Albany's weather to find out whether or not what has happened in 2012 is really singular. Follow up the titles of research papers that your web search locates. I've been doing this for five years now, and the field is simply vast. My interests and yours are not identical. I have written about global warming, and if you would like some work of mine, send me an email (donaitkin@grapevine.com.au).

Your general remark about the environment causes me to ask whether you think things are worse or better now than they were fifty years ago. In terms of humanity's interest in the environment they seem to me a great deal better. Compare England now with England then, for example. I encountered one of the last pea-soup fogs in 1964. Unbelievable. Look at the number of national parks that have been created in that time. Look at the measures that have been enacted with respect to the pollution of rivers and the seas, and so on. Yes, you may think that things are bad now, but they were worse. We do learn.

And there is no point at all trying to mitigate something if it is not clear that our actions will have a real and beneficial effect. In my view we don't know nearly enough to set about transforming global climate (even if such an outcome were possible)!

Don, I will do the work myself, only when I make the references, though.

In terms of the question you ask regarding the environment generally - which wasn't, really, the main point of my comment in terms of global warming and climate change - I do accept that things are 'a great deal better' now, but not from a position of interest and concern so much as necessity. Your second paragraph draws attention to events that show only too clearly that these things have been forced upon us, like Gorbachev saying: 'We can't go on living like this.'

As a Londoner, I very well remember the smogs you referred to, and which often meant walking home from work as they were so thick you could literally only see around a metre or two in front of you. However, they strongly illustrate the major point about our treatment of the environment, because England knew we couldn't just go on burning coal in they way we were, simply polluting the atmosphere, and this all led to the smoke-less fuels legislatiion that eventually meant the smogs disappeared.

Thus while it is true to say things are better now, we have had to be dragged kicking and screaming into realising it, and I think that is the case with climate change also.

Don, in the reference section of your paper, “A Cool Look at Global Warming,” you supported your conclusions by directing readers to:

“All aspects of this central issue are canvassed in a splendid summary paper by Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson, and Willie Soon, ‘Environmental Effects of Increased Carbon Dioxide.’

http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/climate-change/AitkinApril2008.pdf

Arthur B Robinson was the senior author of the misleading Oregon Petition. The petition’s accompanying “scientific summary” was another instance of deceptive manipulation of recognized symbols of science: it was formatted such that it looked like an article that had appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The PNAS advised they were inundated with calls from outraged lay persons and scientists who claimed they had been misled.

Arthur B Robinson is also the founder and president of the “one room” Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM).

You advised Gary Wragg that: “I don't know anything about OSIM — never heard of it. I am a longstanding supporter of public education and have no truck with elixirs of life. I can't see the connection, really.”

Citing illegitimate scientific experts at the OSIM in your climate-related paper and then denying any knowledge of the existence of OSIM fails the sniff test.

Please explain?

Shirley,

I said that the article in question was an excellent summary. I don't know the authors personally, and found the article well written, clear and accessible. If you think something is wrong with it, please tell me what it is.

I know nothing about the authors, other than where they work, and repeat that I have never heard of OISM — until now. I'm not much interested in petitions or consensus stuff; science doesn't work that way.

I don't use the guilt-by-association argument in assessing written work, and have little respect for those who do. If you think there is something wrong with the paper, once again, please spell out what it is. Otherwise, denouncing people as 'illegitimate scientific experts' cuts no ice with me, and doesn't really add to anyone's knowledge.

Don, thank you for your response where you state” “I know nothing about the authors, other than where they work, and repeat that I have never heard of OISM — until now.”

Of course you would know where Robinson, Robinson and Soon work since the paper you referenced listed the authors’ addresses as:

‘Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, 2251 Dick George Road, Cave Junction, Oregon 97523 [artr@oism.org]’

Yet you obscured this information from Gary Wragg, advising him that you had never heard of OISM?

Robinson et al published their paper in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons which seems a weird place to publish on climate change. The journal is not included in the Web of Science or MEDLINE/PubMed lists of peer-reviewed scientific sources. The executive director of the Journal is Jane Orient (a member of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM)) and the organization, its members, and the journal have all been the subjects of criticism from mainstream medical sources.

And yes Don, gathering from the reviews of reputable scientists I would say that there is something radically wrong with the paper, despite your endeavours to paint the paper as a “splendid summary.” The Robinson duo are not credentialled to write on climate change and scientists like Willie Soon, who obscure an interest by covertly taking >$1 million of fossil fuel money yet pretending to be independent scientists, are pawns for polluters.

May I suggest that the paper appears to be nothing more than a clumsy attempt to distort the evidence for anthropogenic global warming in order to indoctrinate the minds of people not already familiar with the evidence?

A review of Robinson et al paper by Dr. Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programmes at the Climate Institute Washington:

“General Comment: This paper is filled with distortions, errors, and one-sided interpretations of the science and blithely presumes that because we have survived to the present, the future will bring no problems as the population rises, energy use rises, atmospheric composition changes, and the earth’s natural systems are seriously and rapidly altered by human activities":

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/file-uploads/Comment_on_Robinson_et_al-2007R.pdf

http://www.climate.org/topics/climate-change/science-in-six-findings.html

Shirley,

What do you think is wrong with it? You cite an attack by someone else. How do you judge the worth of the attack? And you repeat ad hominem arguments. I'm not interested in that style of debate.

Yes, Robinson worked at OISM, but I knew and know nothing about it. Soon works at MIT. I don't value the paper more highly for that address, either.

Don, I do believe your opponents are quite accustomed to you resorting to accusations of ad hominem after you display an unwillingness to accept the truth of an argument of almost embarrassing simplicity.

The truth is that you appear to have set yourself up as an authority on climate change where you endeavour to substantiate your opinions by referring readers to one “anonymous” and unqualified Arthur B Robinson, a “Jesus plus nothing” Christian fundamentalist who bears false witness. After all, you do not see believers in global warming, bulk mailing specious documents designed to look like legitimate scientific journal articles.

What's detrimental to your credibility (“know them by the company they keep”) but noteworthy about Arthur B. Robinson, is his stated support for dumping oil and nuclear waste at sea which, according to Robinson, is the best place in the world to dispose of hazardous industrial waste. “Ocean Dumping?” “Yes,” says crackpot Robinson. “The oil companies' reckless greed, we are told, has devastated the oceans with their oil spills. Baloney," says he.

Robinson says: “As coal, oil, and natural gas are used to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe, more CO2 will be released into the atmosphere. This will help to maintain and improve the health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all people. This is an unexpected and wonderful gift from the Industrial Revolution.”

Robinson is representative of the Gobs for Cash, dancing the Wango Tango in unison to indoctrinate the masses whilst sucking off the ecocidal corporate teats which have hit the Fortune 500 list again after chewing the **se out of Momma Nature with impunity.

Meanwhile the US EPA, after three years of intensive scientific research and after receiving 380,000 public submissions, reported that the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) in the atmosphere are pollutants that threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.

Consorting with charlatans who confabulate their credentials and fudge scientific facts is detrimental to one’s image. Bad company corrupts good character Don. I think your house of cards is crumbling.

Sure the Chinese visited Australia, as did the Dutch, the Portuguese, French, and of course we cannot forget the original visitors the Aborigines. Yes, the Chinese visited the Americas, as did the Japanese, followed by the Swedes. But did these visits come to any consequence? If so, I would like to hear about it. I have always thought that Plato discovered the world. If not physically, he was the first to make any sort of lasting impression on society thereafter of what the "world" is.

Well said by you, Richard Ure. As an Englishman now living in Australia, and having dual nationality, I strongly believe in compulsory voting. In the U.K., where voting, as you know, is not compulsory, this so-called freedom of choice, has often been exploited by governments whenever it suited them.