The University of Michigan conducted a survey of 1000 in the US found some interesting results:
University of Michigan researchers asked about 1,000 people [PDF] this past fall whether there is solid evidence that the world has been warming during the past four decades, and 67 percent said “yes.” That’s down from the 72 percent that responded affirmatively in the fall of 2008, but up from just 52 percent in the spring of 2010. Of those who agree that the world is warming, just 19 percent attribute the change to natural patterns. The rest say humanity shoulders some or all of the blame.
Even 51 percent of Republicans agree that global warming is happening, according to the U of M poll, up from 33 percent in 2010.
However, it is well understood that “belief” can yo-yo with extremes with weather. What these figures will look like in a year will be interesting. Given that extremes events are happening with greater regularity I anticipate these figures will change, with even more accepting the science.
The deniers – victorious for a time – are now officially in retreat.
36% of the “rich” reject the science
What is fascinating is those groups that reject the scientific consensus – in particular the break down by personal income.
- 34% of those earning between $20-40,000 reject or are not sure of the science
- 33% of those earning more than $80,000 reject or are not sure of the science
- 23% of those earning between $40-80,000 reject or are not sure of the science
Table 2 contains these and many other interesting statistics:
Those over 65 more “sceptical”
It would seem the “angry old white guy” is well and truly captured by this statistic, with those above the age of 65 more sceptical (27%).
The religious reason for rejecting the science is rising: dramatic increase between 2008 and 2012
For some years I’ve made the argument that the climate sceptic movement and evangelical/creationist movements have been merging. The following graph goes some way to proving that.
Those surveyed who rejected the science, were asked to state why:
Between 2008 and late 2012, the religious reasons for rejecting the science has gone from less than 1% to 11%. The climate sceptic movement has been mobilizing the creationist and fundamentalist arms of Protestantism in the US.
This trend has been overlooked, and should be looked at more closely.
Looking out the window is a big driver of climate scepticism
Also note the other reasons for rejecting the science:
- Many sceptics some 19% base their rejection of the science on personal observation: apparently looking at the window is more than enough science for these people
- Some 33% fall back to the old “natural patterns” myth
These have nothing to do with looking at the evidence: it is merely personal opinion trumping science.
Climate change doesn’t discriminate based on your politics: Republican, Democrat, Labor supporter, Green or libertarian, atheist or devour Christian – we’re all on the same planet and equally vulnerable.
[Hat tip reader John Havery Samuel]
Watching the Deniers 
Mike the two that stand out for me in this and they are both positive is the “unsure” in the 18-29 age group. That tells me that at least in the survey areas the education system and/or the greater access to the internet is having an effect. But the other one is the stat you mentioned with looking out the window. It has seen a massive drop over the years which would indicate that people looking out their windows are seeing climate change and so have jumped ship perhaps? self promotion alert! http://uknowispeaksense.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/angry-white-men/
Given some of the people who are entrusted with teaching our children, I’m not surprised a growing number of young people have defective critical thinking skills.
Ah, blame the teachers, of course you would.
Fair point – the politicians must share some of the blame.
I once met a head teacher who really cared, in Britain, at an after dinner talk.
She had to cope with 300 multi page reports which had to be completed every year – each of which was attached to a tranch of earmarked funds. So she did her ridiculous reports, to keep the bureaucrats happy, and somehow found the energy and time to do a really good job running her deprived area school.
It took her years, but she had really, really won the trust of parents, and was beginning to make a difference.
Of course it couldn’t last – a few months after I met her, she was fired for false accounting. Not for herself – she hadn’t taken a penny of the money – but for the kids. She took money from one of the poxy earmarked tranches and spent it on something else the school really needed, and the bureaucrats noticed.
Yup, Thatcher nearly destroyed education in Britain. I remember only too well her inane reforms and targets. And they’ve still not been unwound. There’s too much emphasis on preparing for exams and getting into fee-paying schools – and precious little on thinking and creativity.
Thatcher certainly didn’t do enough to fix the problems.
But there’s only so long you can blame her legacy – the head teacher I spoke of was fired 4 years ago, almost 20 years after Thatcher was toppled by her party.
They do until they finish the class I teach. It’s called Understanding Science. Feel free to enrol idiot.
I’d rather have a teacher who knows their subject, thanks Uki.
Yup, teachers should know their subjects. We should double their pay.
Eric says
“Given some of the people who are entrusted with teaching our children, I’m not surprised a growing number of young people have defective critical thinking skills”
Errm, this would be the same Eric that uncritically accepts any load of old bollocks printed at the web site of an ex TV Met man with barely more than a high school education, and values it more highly than the combined considered opinion of thousands of scientists who are experts in the field.
Go figure…
When I can pick glaring holes in the methodology of such scientists, you have to wonder whether taxpayers are getting their money’s worth.
As Prof. Richard Muller, lead author of the BEST study, said in an interview,
What they did was, I think, shameful. And it was scientific malpractice. If they were licensed scientists, they should have to lose their licence. … The standards held over there at the University of East Anglia are just not up to what we consider standard scientific methods
You’ve picked no holes. Poor Muller, he had to back Mann, 15 years late, and he was humpy.
As for Watts, you do know Scientific American lumps Watts in with 4chan. Why do you use such a silly man’s blog?
Are you suggesting Watts fabricated the Muller interview? If so where is the lawsuit from Muller?
And your suggestion Muller backed Mann doesn’t hold water. Muller is a lukewarm – he thinks Mann and the CRU are exaggerating the problems, and in doing so are undermining the credibility of climate science.
No ones suggesting Watts fabricated the Muller interview,Eric. And JHS suggestion he ‘had to back Mann’ is clearly rhetorical,in the sense that Mann already knows and backs the integrity of the temperature observation system and adjustments,and Muller insisted on finding that out the hard way and late. Clearly there is no love lost between the two on a personal level.
What I suggest is that Muller often talks through his hat. He is a tad disingenuous in the interview when he claims that he did not seek publicity for his project,claiming that “people are coming to us”. He certainly did not shrink from any attention before BEST results were meaningful.
More importantly,it’s pretty obvious Muller is barely familiar with the issues in the stolen emails.
Firstly,allowing the characterisation ‘Climategate’ to pass is lazy and uncollegial. Anyone familiar with the back story and the content of the emails can’t abide by that mindless handle. Unless you are a crank.
Secondly,claiming that ‘they’ withheld discordant data is ambiguous to the point of being of no use. If he’s talking about post 1960 data in the form of a line in one graphic for a non-peer-reviewed presentation,then he’s completely over the top to suggest that’s ‘shameful’ and worthy of a loss of license [if such a thing existed for scientists]. The graphic was referenced. No data has been excluded from peer-reviewed papers,and a paper was written and published on the divergence issue.
Thirdly speculating that the emails were stolen is just something plucked either from his arse,or from a blog like Watts. Does nothing for his credibility.
Muller is actually not a lukewarmer. He is certain the world has warmed and will continue to do so { he says that he “expect[s] the world to get much,much warmer than it’s ever been in the era of homo sapiens} and fully expects records to be broken in the ratios they have been seen to be doing. His point in that interview is that he thinks there are no demonstrated connections between warming and the character of some weather events and wildfires. However he did not actually investigate this issue the way his group actually deconstructed and reconstructed the observational record for temperature. Others who specialise in those areas disagree. Real meteorological giants like Kevin Trenberth have stuck their necks out,saying that there is no way that a change in radiative terms such as delivered by ACO2 can do anything but affect all weather to some degree.
Muller is still catching up,but it’s quite good that he’s trying.
Muller’s a busted flush. He finally came to his senses a decade late and admitted CO2 was the cause. It’ll be another decade before he faces into the consequences. Then he has a rant quoted on a nutty blog. So what? He’d lost his credibility many years ago. Only the denier community held onto him. Why such a big deal? A not very good scientist is quoted by a fruitcake. Your point is…you need more nuts in the cake?
James Powell on Muller, http://www.jamespowell.org/BigThink/bigthink.html. Watts’ trousers still wrapped around his ankles. Muller just pulling his trousers up.
Yet more proof that deniers aren’t living in the real world. I was under the impression that Lord Almighty Monckton was touring Oz (the real one), but it appears he’s touring Oz (the fantasy one): “The carbon tax, at a savage $23 a ton for carbon dioxide and $500 a ton for methane, is closing farms, mines and industries right across Australia.” In the words of the all-wise Andrew Bolt, “name ten”. This probably explains why Monckton’s not appearing in Whyalla. It’s either been wiped off the map, or he’s afraid of being laughed out of town.
Either the carbon tax is ineffective, or it is damaging – take your pick.
If it is damaging, what do you expect investors to do? Pack up and move out straight away, abandoning billions of dollars of investment? Or would you expect things to continue pretty much as before, but with one difference – investors will look elsewhere for future capital projects.
I’ve worked for a company like that, a long time ago, in Melbourne – they were trying to build the company up, so they could flog it to suckers and extract the capital to reinvest in Malaysia. Everything was bright and shiny on the surface, but behind the scenes everything was falling to pieces, and maintenance records were being fabricated to cover the continued use of dangerously worn out components.
I don’t know how the story ended. I got out.
The presses I was operating were supposed to operate at 1200 psi (pounds per square inch). But my press felt funny – the lever was hard to operate, and it was closing with a solid clank, rather than its usual smooth drop. So I checked the pressure gauge next to me – 3200 PSI and rising. The entire plant was about to explode.
So I ran into the engineering room and screamed at the maintenance guy. His face turned grey, and he leapt at the cutoff switch. I always thought that “his face turned grey” was a literary fiction. But I saw it happened that day.
I complained to the Union rep, and was told “it didn’t happen” – he was in on the deal.
The next day, the maintenance guy was up on a ladder, removing the only pressure gauge which was visible from my station (the only one visible in the production room).
I resigned – no job was worth that risk to my life.
Carbon taxes can and do work. Review http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax#Implementation. Have a look at Switzerland.
Under this scheme, emission allowances are given to companies for free, and each year emission allowances equal to the amount of CO2 emitted must be surrendered by the company. Companies are allowed to sell or trade excess permits. However, should a company fail to surrender the correct amount of allowances, they must pay the CO2 tax retroactively for each tonne of CO2 emitted since the exemption was granted.[115] About 400 companies take part in trading CO2 emission credits under this program. In 2009, for the second year in a row, the companies returned enough credits to the Swiss government to cover their CO2 emissions for the year. The 2009 report shows that companies emitted only about 2.6 million tonnes of CO2, falling well below the total permissible quantity of 3.1 million tonnes.[119]
In other words, Switzerland has not yet felt the impact of the carbon tax – an excessive number of credits have been issued, and companies can cover their emissions using their free allocation of permits.
It will get interesting if the Swiss economy hits a strong period of growth – will they invest in Switzerland, and risk exceeding their allowance, or will they invest in Asia, and avoid the risk of having to buy carbon credits from their rivals?
Carbon taxes work. Here’s the summarising quote on Switzerland, “Switzerland is currently on track to meet its Kyoto Protocol commitment of an 8% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. The combination of the CO2 tax and other voluntary measures by businesses and private individuals is enabling Switzerland to achieve these reduction goals”.
Switzerland is heavily exposed to investment in Asia. The reduction in CO2 is probably down to reduced investment in Switzerland, and increased investment elsewhere.
If the money is invested in Switzerland, they have to pay carbon tax. But if the money is used to boost plant capacity elsewhere, they can sell their carbon credits and make extra money from their outside investment.
Eric’s response to demonstrations of carbon taxes working? “Squirrel!”
Swiss carbon taxes are “working” because Swiss businesses who are enrolled in their emission trading scheme haven’t actually had to pay for any emissions credits yet. The Swiss have adopted and improved on the EU practice of issuing an inflated number of carbon credits, to provide a sham of caring.
Any evidence for your assertion – or just something you made up?
While you’re researching evidence for your assertion, return to the Wiki article and look at the other successes. Carbon taxes can work.
I already provided the quote to support my claim, from the wikipedia article:-
The 2009 report [Switzerland] shows that companies emitted only about 2.6 million tonnes of CO2, falling well below the total permissible quantity of 3.1 million tonnes.[119]
And your assertion carbon taxes or ETS work is not supported by the fact Kyoto lost key signatories in Doha, and now only covers 25% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
So countries which hobble their economies with carbon taxes will be severely punished over the coming years by globalised competition from countries which do not.
Sorry, but my wiki quote is obviously stronger than yours.
Now, moving from Switzerland, what about the other successes from the same article?
There are intelligent conservatives. They may not post on this board. But there are. http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/George-Shultz-pushes-for-carbon-tax-4340917.php
I’d like to be able to afford an electric car, as long as I could keep my old Ford Falcon as a backup, for longer journeys.
But electric cars are expensive – paying China to devastate their landscape with gruesomely polluting rare Earth refineries, to produce the supermagnets required by high efficiency electric motors, puts the cost of electric cars beyond ordinary consumers.
Link – Chinese rare Earth mining.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution
As I say, there are intelligent conservatives. They don’t post on this board.
George Shultz drives an electric car, the components for which were mined at great environmental and human cost in totalitarian China.
Yes, the moral high ground indeed.
No Chinese rare earth’s in your computer and communications gear,eh Eric?
One wonders where Eric’s car is made, and where the raw components were mined from.
People over 65 are more likely to have a clear memory of the 1970s global cooling scare, and in the immediate aftermath of WW2, might have had more contact with people who understood the truth about the Eugenics scare, because they had lived through it – the academic demands for action, the denunciation of Eugenics skeptics, and, finally, the horror of Auschwitz.
Fool me once, …
You keep being fooled. Now you try and fool others. You are a fool.
If only some politician would arise in some country who would sweep aside the deniers, and implement a model low carbon economy you could showcase to the world. Someone you could trust, someone who had a long track record of supporting your cause.
I bet you guys would get behind such a politician, would help him or her win their election, would blog on their behalf, and would applaud their commitment to solving the crisis which is so dear to your heart.
You would have Abbott and his eugenics plan.
Only to get rid of Gillard. I don’t really like Abbott, but Gillard seems worse – I’ve yet to meet anyone who admits to liking her policies. Then again I live in Queensland, which recently delivered one of the worse thrashings Labour ever received – perhaps things are different in other states.
Which books would you burn first, Eric?
I’m not a book burner John – I’d rather hold your ideas up for ridicule. Sunlight is a great cleanser.
As for zooty’s claims there wasn’t a global cooling scare, WUWT have compiled a helpful list of global cooling links.
And its undeniable that at least some of the heroes of the global warming scare were involved in the global cooling scare. Hansen notably appeared in a 1970s news release predicting an impending ice age.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/sep/19/inside-the-beltway-69748548/
Eric with his Wash Times allusion is basically saying that just because Hansen was alive in the 1970s he ‘was involved’ in the mainstream media’s global cooling scare.
AFAIK Hansen has never suggested the world is about to enter dramatic cooling phase. Quite the reverse.
Probably too late for Eric, but he should still try to acquire some critical reading skills (not to mention ethics).
Just learning the lessons of history. Bush suppressed science. Harper suppresses science. The Nazis misused science. The lesson from history is you can’t trust right wingers with science.
Watts is a fool with a following of fools. It is undeniable that none of his predictions have come true. Try Arctic ice recovery. Or UHI. He’s also undeniably funded by organisations that deny smoking causes cancer.
I can see it now:
Erric: Hey Dad, what were the sixties like?
Erric’s Dad: Oh they were great. Why, I remember how excited we all were when the Beatles came to Melbourne.
Erric: The Beatles never went to Melbourne, and I’ve got some links here from a snake oil salesman to prove it.
Erric’s Dad: Oh, right son. Reverend Watts would know wouldn’t he. That’s why you’ve chosen him as your guru. Well, to answer your question, the sixties were great. There was a sense that we could actually change the world.
Erric: Not according to my guru, Reverend Watts. He says you were all a bunch of drug crazed layabouts.
Erric’s Dad: Well, I guess he would know. He was 6 years old at the time.
repeat ad nauseum.
The lesson from history is you can’t trust right wingers with science.
What an astoundingly ignorant comment.
Never heard of Soviet Lysenkoism? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Lysenokism ranks along with Eugenics is one of the great examples of 20th century scientific irrationality.
I’m not defending the track record of Bush on science. I think the Republican track record on say HIV prevention, with their refusal to support anything except sexual abstinence programmes, is execrable.
But suggesting only right wing politicians abuse and distort science for their own political ends is complete nonsense.
Eric,you have yet again fallen victim to your motivated denialist tendencies,seeing what you want to see…”Hansen/cooling scare” 1970s….Eric,did you read that article from the fish-wrapper Washington Times? It’s a classic piece of MEDIA SHITTING! They bullshitted you and you swallowed it!
Under the witless provocation “Cold Yet?” the rag writes”Hansen… appears in a 1971 article that warns of an impending Ice Age within 50 years” Does he?
Turns out of course that they are talking about the paper by Rasool and Schneider that explored an enhanced aerosol scenario. It was a perfectly valid thought experiment,a what if, with a basic premise about aerosol mediated cooling that is sound. Hansen got a mention because the young bloke developed a simple climate model that was used as a vehicle for the scenario choices of R and S.
The implication of the article is that “Hansen was promoting the idea of global cooling,and now he ain’t so Hansens’s a hypocrite” Nya,nya,nya
Well,it’s bullshit,undermined even by the column’s own sketchy ‘content’ Hansen was not a co-author of the paper. But he was mentioned in an article written by a moron. Next thing you’ll be blaming the developers of Fortran for ‘enabling’ the ‘writing’ of the global climate models that ‘scare’ you!
You have got to stop fooling yourself.
Lysenko was a scientist who didn’t believe in the consensus supported by an authoritarian state. It’s be like climate deniers passing laws in states to “teach the controversy”. Oh, look, that’s what they’re doing in the US.
I merely cite “you can’t trust right wingers” as it’s just a little less daft than your crazed assertion of because eugenics therefore climate. If you can say stupid things I can say almost as stupid things. Raise your game up or be gamed.
I merely cite “you can’t trust right wingers” as it’s just a little less daft than your crazed assertion of because eugenics therefore climate. If you can say stupid things I can say almost as stupid things. Raise your game up or be gamed.
Whats crazed about demonstrating that large scale hysterical irrationality is possible, even amongst scientists? I’ve repeatedly state thats the only reason I cite Eugenics.
Though I’m glad you’ve admitted your assertion that right wingers can’t be trusted with science is BS.
It’s only partial BS – although Bush and Harper strengthen the case. Unlike you alarmist nonsense – can’t trust right wingers with eugenics.
I think the contention that you can’t trust right wingers with science has a depressing amount of support. Bush,Harper,Klaus,Monckton,Abbott,Plimer. News Ltd’s conga line of distorting journalists…stop struggling Eric. Authoritarians to the man,having a bit in common with the figures they loathe,the Communist personality-culters.., though they have no self-awareness. Though they are fond of mining science and weaponries science.
Hi all, remember the golden rule of the internet: Don’t feed the troll (snip)
As someone over 65, let me assure you Erric that there was no “1970s global cooling scare”. The major ecological concern at that time was the way we were trashing the planet, literally.
And as for the “eugenics scare”, your history is as shite as your economics. You must have had lousy teachers at your school.
Faux sceptics never remember debunkings. That’s how you know they’re faux, like our Mr Worrall. http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-intermediate.htm
you old fart also zoot , mate asked me a week ago “how old are you”…
” I don’t Know, about 66″
“you are 70 next year”
“shit I think you are right”
And your memory serves you well
Well John, from one old fart to another, keep up the good work.
I’m amazed that anyone our age could not notice the change in our climate.
WUWT have provided a helpful compilation of links to help refresh your memory.
There’s nothing wrong with my memory.
So what have you got there Erric? Maybe 70 articles, most of them from such newspapers of record as the Sumpter Daily Item, the Freelance-Star and the Hartford Courant, which you will no doubt be amazed to find were not widely read in Australia.
On the other hand, a quick google for “global warming”+”climate change”+articles returns 42 and a half million hits.
Your attempt to align the “70s global cooling scare” with C21 climate change is puerile, puny & pissweak.
You really should avoid the church of Watts; they’re only out to scam you.
I agree, the global cooling scare was pissweak compared to the global warming scare – but it was a good practice run for scientists who later got involved in the global warming scare.
Of course, the global warming scare is now running out of steam, since for half the period the scare has been running, there hasn’t actually been any warming.
Its a matter of some conjecture in the skeptic community whether scientists like Holdren and Hansen will have the stones to jump back to promoting global cooling scares, or whether they will quietly retire and leave the realignment to the next generation.
Who was one of the scientists behind the 1970’s Ice Age scare?…
You’re going to love this….
Prof. Hubert Lamb, (the then) director of Climate Research at the University of East Anglia.
Watts cites the media. SkS cites the peer-reviewed papers. Good old Tony, confusing being a weatherman off the telly with being a scientist. And neither can his flying monkeys.
No Erric, your attempt to align the “70s global cooling scare” with C21 climate change is puerile, puny & pissweak.
Those lousy teachers you had couldn’t even get basic comprehension through your thick skull.
The so-called global cooling “scare” is still there. It never went away.
What some ignoramuses fail to understand is that it operates on tens of thousands of years, not hundreds. Global warming will have been and gone by the time the next ice age arrives.
The scientists have never said anything different.
Only reporters and denialists get this subject confused.
Dr No:-
The so-called global cooling “scare” is still there. It never went away. …The scientists have never said anything different. Only reporters and denialists get this subject confused.
You’ve obviously never read the work of John Holdren, President Obama’s science advisor, who has spent much of his career flipflopping between “Anthropogenic CO2 will warm the planet” and “Anthropogenic CO2 will cause an ice age”.
This is the basis of Holdren’s “global climate disruption” meme – the theory that any deviation from current norms is our fault and proves Holdren’s theories.
You’re an alarmist, Eric.
Err-ic ,you ass, you are insisting that scientists are responsible for the syndicated media reworkings of journalists own stories.
Read the Peterson,Connolley Fleck paper. Seriously,it is an example of how you review a claim in a responsible and thorough way. The ‘cooling’ thing was a media bubble. And you’ve just confirmed it,unwittingly, by listing newspaper articles that were a result of SYNDICATION–repetition–,not published science. Global cooling papers were in the minority in the 1970s. FACE IT.
“This hypothesis [global cooling] had little support in the scientific community, but gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s and press reports that did not accurately reflect the scientific understanding of ice age cycles.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
Science 1 Watts 0. Again.
Eric –
“You’ve obviously never read the work of John Holdren, President Obama’s science advisor, who has spent much of his career flipflopping between “Anthropogenic CO2 will warm the planet” and “Anthropogenic CO2 will cause an ice age”.
Let me rephrase:
Only reporters and denialists and President Obama’s science advisor get this subject confused.
Happy now?
The “CO2 causes ice ages” theory was still going strong in 2004, when this email was written.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=4141.txt
I think the notion of telling the public to prepare for both global warming and an ice age at the same creates a real public relations problem for us. … in my experience, global warming freezing is already a bit of a public relations problem with the media, which can become public perception. It provides a new story for the old news that is climate change – a story that has been running since 1985/88. … I think this is a real problem, and I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labelling than global warming. But somehow I also feel that one needs to add the dimension of the earth system, and the fact that human beings for the first time ever are able to impact on that system. … we now live in the anthropocene period. … Therefore a central message probably has to be that humans are now interfering with extremely large and heavy global systems, of which we know relatively little: we are in a totally new situation for the human species, and our impact added to all the natural variations that exist risks to unsettle subtle balances and create tensions within the systems which might also lead to “flip-over” effects with short-term consequences that might be very dangerous.
If global temperatures continue to decline, I suspect the “The Day after Tomorrow” scenario will be trundled out again, along with claims that it was “predicted all along”.
Eric,from your email.You left out “this story [global warming freezing] is based on sloppy and sensationalistic writing from..the ..guy on the Atlantic Monthly” That’s Ray Pierrehumbert. Pierrehumbert goes on to detail why he thinks climate change may well produce non-linear responses regionally even while global average temperature increases,hence climate change is a better term than global warming.
And tell me why you have selectively cited two different folks remarks and put them together as though said by one? And how the fuck do you reduce any of that to being consistent with “CO2 cause ice ages still going strong in 2004”??. When the global cooling scenarios were being explored in the late 1960s early 1970s it was excessive SO2 that was being investigated. These guys are talking about what the media ultimately arrived at as ‘global weirding’
Please read before blurting. And no more sneaky cut ups.
Clarification .That was Ray Pierrehumbert decribing the sloppy journo’s offering.
I suggest you find the time to work through some of Pierrehumberts stuff like Principles of Planetary Climate. And stop trawling and editing stolen property.
Eric doesn’t lose gracefully, does he? Hilarious stuff. The scientific consensus of the 70s did not support global cooling. Ah well, what else would you expect from a contributor to Watts nonsensical non-science but adamant zealotry? Almost endearing to see such strong faith in action. Almost.
Eric – you are being disingenuous again.
(1) The global cooling predictions remain valid – they refer to the next 20,000 years or more and reflect orbital variations.
(2) The idea that enhanced greenhouse gases could trip us into a sudden cool period within a few hundred years is only speculation. I, for one, am sceptical.
You cannot conflate the two issues.
Dr N, Eric’s little delusion here is based on his reading of that idiot blog he linked to. The blog article quotes John Holdren’s 1971 musings about aerosol induced cooling outcompeting CO2 induced warming -though the blogger conveniently omits the CO2 discussion,perhaps because he has no idea what he’s doing beyond trying to throw poo at a Democrat science appointee..
That omission led Eric to believe that the ‘cooling scare’ was based on CO2 hence his “The CO2 cause ice ages theory was still going strong in 2004” offering. LOL. The cooling ideas are aerosol and SO2 based, again with a long history of basic physical support. The flip-flopping weather discussed in Eric’s ‘gotcha’ email assembly was about heightened REGIONAL variation under an overall GLOBAL warming. There are a lot of palaeo precedents for strong and perhaps counter-intuitive regional warmings and coolings with the causes being local insolation net change and/or different distributions of continental surfaces.. Eric cannot get his head around this detail.
Eric is not considering the Milankovitch mediated cooling trend,even though he’s blundered over it before.
For the record, there was no ‘CO2 causes cooling’ concept from science. It was CO2 causes warming,conceptually,from Arrhenius’ time and earlier,getting more advanced attention by the 1950s.
The only ‘CO2 causes cooling’ memes I’ve seen have been from utter cranks who’ve dismissed atmospheric and radiative knowledge in the process of advertising their own insanity on the net. Or guys like Eric who can’t read their own links.
Godwin’s Law has come into play already? (Is Eric a COWM?)
Eugenics is an example of an irrational craze which an embarrassing number of academics and learned institutions vocally supported.
As I’ve said before, the history of Eugenics does not prove climate alarmism is a similar irrational craze, but it does demonstrate that irrationality on a large scale is possible, even among trained scientists.
I’m still waiting for Uki or some other learned scientist to describe a reliable methodology for distinguishing between irrational pseudoscience movements like the Eugenics craze, and valid science.
Yup. Eric is also an unintentional Poe. I love winding him up and watch him wingnut around.
Deniers fail this test, http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/skeptics-circle/.
Describe in detail why I fail the “tests”.
Describe, in detail, why you think you wouldn’t.
You’re asserting I’ve failed some sort of test. I’ve just asked for details of why you think that.
I said deniers fail the test. You certainly aren’t a sceptic.
Not just a COWM but a right wing authoritarian (waiting for a ‘learned scientist’/authority figure to tell him what to think).
No, just looking for evidence alarmists who aught to know better have actually thought about what they are preaching.
Ah, that vast conspiracy of liberals and facts showing up libertarians again. That evidence.
So far all the conspiracy fantasies are coming from you John.
I’m suggesting climate alarmism is an episode of hysterical irrationality, not a deliberate global conspiracy. As evidence such outbursts of irrationality are possible, I cited Eugenics, but there are other examples.
The scientific method was devised to help irrational humans avoid irrationality – which is why routine abuse of scientific method by climate alarmist researchers, particularly with regard to reproducibility of their work, should be of concern to you.
As Phil Jones replied, when asked whether reviewers expressed the desire to see his computer code or raw data, “they never asked”.
Sloppy, poorly reviewed, irreproducible – the work of a leading climate alarmist.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18599-climategate-scientist-questioned-in-parliament.html
You’re the one equating eugenics and scientists. And repeating nonsense – nine investigations into Climategate. You LOST. Nine times. You repeat debunked nonsense.
Jones’ work was not at all “irreproducible”… Don’t be a fool Eric!
Much of the data that Jones used in his own papers is available as raw data. Many others over decades have used that same data in part or full,and still do. Other data that Jones used was belongs to other researchers,and is available from them or the institution they worked for.
The reproducibility charge is nonsense. The data is being worked with constantly. All efforts by independent groups to create large scale and global data sets from the same raw data as Jones used have come up with results barely distinguishable from Jones’.
Don’t be a fool,Eric.
UEA CRUs data products are all available on application and have been so for several years. Eric will now point out the work of the FOI crusaders that has picked holes in Jones’ work [sarc],and has overturned [sarc] Jones’ authored and co-authored papers.
Its simply not good enough to suggest scientists should “look up their own data”, or “write their own code”. Scientific reproducibility requires that the experiment is described in such exacting detail, that someone can produce exactly the same results, using exactly the same steps, as the original researcher.
The following is an account of the problems caused by poor reproducibility in medical research.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203764804577059841672541590.html
Without reproducibility, and discrepancy between results becomes a contest of authority, who can shout the loudest. Because you can’t actually tell who got it wrong by examining the details of the experiment.
Eric,stop handwaving. Jones is not doing medical experiments,he was and is aggregating data from multiple owners. The raw data are available from each country and/or institution. The processed data sets,too Others use the raw and processed data. It works. Others have written their own code and REPLICATED Jones and colleagues findings.
Have some data sources, http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/.
Since when?
And why?
Eric says:
“As Phil Jones replied, when asked whether reviewers expressed the desire to see his computer code or raw data, “they never asked”.
Sloppy, poorly reviewed, irreproducible – the work of a leading climate alarmist.”
How do you know Eric? Just making stuff up again?
The reason you have a fetish about code review is because that is all you know. In the commercial world, it is absolutely vital, I agree; because typically, in the development phase, only one programmer will ever develop that same program, whilst many others will have to maintain it. Hence it is vital that it is clearly structured, and also efficient, hence the need for another programmer to critique it.
In the scientific world, the program is written only for one purpose, and typically maintained by the researcher himself, so if it is inefficient, so what? As long as the output is correct. Typically the output would then be checked by another scientist, using the same dataset, or perhaps even a different dataset BUT BY A DIFFERENT SET OF CODE, so as long as the two sets of output agree, then who cares about how the code is structured?
So, as others have pointed out, your contention that it is irreproducible is just plain bollocks. The fact that different researchers using different datasets are coming up with the same results gives a lie to your assertion. (Isn’t this one of the things you complain about? Group Think in the scientific community?).
As I have pointed out previously about your own poorly structured posts, you are the one normally guilty of sloppy thinking.
Tim Flannery predicting our dams would never fill again.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/flannery_denies_what_he_actually_said/
No wonder all that money was wasted on desal plants, if that was the prevailing view.
Eric, how about tracking down the full transcript of the interview that Bolt has quotemined for your benefit? Lazy idiot.
Are you now denying Flannery said our dams would never fill again?
I’ve seen the full interview transcript. You obviously haven’t. You are repeating what Bolt has quote mined. You’re making this assertion that Flannery said the dams will never fill again. You go and find the primary source and provide that as your reference….or are you prepared to accept that Andrew Bolt is telling you the truth? If so, then you have even less credibility than him. I can tell you now though Eric, if you have read the oribginal interview transcript in its entirety and you still make the claim that Flannery predictedour dams would never be full, then you are a liar, plain and simple. This is your opportunity to redeem yourself and show everyone here that you are a big boy and can admit that you are wrong.
Bet you $100 that Flannery never said “our dams will never fill again”
You can up the ante if you wish
Flannery clearly said that IF certain conditions dominated over the coming decades,the dams would never fill again. “IF”. Bolt has been mindlessly repeating that quote-mine for years. Is that sort of shock-jock self-pleasuring the best you can do to inform yourself? Bolt is a self-important dimwit. Just read his columns for a few weeks. He’s a broken-record of self-reverence and credulous useful idiocy.
Flannery made that remark conditionally. News Ltd fake-journalists remove that conditionality. Particularly the context that it was a remark made in a LONG TERM context. We are barely into that term. Bolt has seen some major dams fill post 2010 La Nina and now he thinks he can discount Flannery’s remarks totally,while calling for him to be sacked. This is statistically witless,evidence of poor comprehension and mean spirited in the extreme. I don’t rate that as the response of a reasonable human-being..
Clearly,and you can rely on the witless Bolt to fail to think, dams are constantly being drawn upon,and are being expected to supply a growing population. So dams are up against it to fill any way,so it is harder to fill a dam now than it was in the 1960s even accounting for weather variations. To address this,every city has legislated and campaigned to reduce per capita consumption and improve system performance,in response to REALITY. Typically we are using 30% less per capita than we did two decades ago,because in part of appeals by Flannery and colleagues on the advice of experts.. If we had not,we’d actually have exhausted urban surface supplies in the last drought. FACT.
Eastern Australia is in a drying trend since the 1970s. Despite the RECORD la NIna rains. FACT.
As it is,Perth’s dams have not filled to capacity for decades,and Melbourne
likewise,despite the last few years run-off returning to levels pre 2000s drought.
Nick says:
It’s a little bit hard to take a ‘drying trend’ seriously when South East Queensland dams are spilling. FACT.
This is about your level http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCXC1tOCB0I
It’s a bit hard to take you seriously,Skep when you ignore decadal trends over 1/3 of the continent and elevate single events of a few thousand km2 to ‘trend ending’ status. We have a over a century of records and you look at a couple of years. FACT.
Obviously,it’s true that a single event in the right catchment can bridge the effect of many dry years for that catchments ‘clients’. But what would you be saying if the 2011 event in the Wivenhoe catchment had fallen just south or north of the optimal location? I know,’build more dams’,everywhere,..despite the lack of dam sites,and ignoring a full costing of their effects.
And Flannery was not just musing about specific catchments for urban supply. The context shows he was considering a long term trend in decline leading to reduced yield from all catchments including farm dams. Clearly when combined with increased demand from population growth [despite reduced individual use] trends to lower catchment yield challenge the ability of individual events to fill big dams.
The Wivenhoe catchment event was bigger than 1974,and only matched by 1893. What’s the return time for that sort of event? This is why the Tugun desal was built. It’s big picture long term planning and part of a multi-prong approach to SE Qld’s water realities that has already had success. Just wait until a string of dry years returns and watch how quickly abundance changes to shortage.
Full Interview
http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2006/s1844398.htm
PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: We’re already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the winter rainfall zone across southern Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change, but also a decrease in run-off. Although we’re getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that’s translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That’s because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that’s a real worry for the people in the bush. If that trend continues then I think we’re going to have serious problems, particularly for irrigation.
Perhaps I missed him crossing his fingers behind his back?
You’re such a tool.it’s all about context and the context comed from the interviewer’s question.
“What will it mean for Australian farmers if the predictions of climate change are correct and little is done to stop it? What will that mean for a farmer?”
She was clearly asking about a future context and his answer was based on that. In fact he says we are already seeing the early stages. What follows is the likely scenario if the trend continues which he clearly states. The fact that you take the one quote without the questions framing context and then you highlight the one sentence shows just how myopic and wilfully ignorant you are. Let’s go back to your original assertion which was that Flannery said the dams would never be full again. He didn’t say that at all, and you have actually provided the reference which refutes your own assertion yet still you cling to it. You are dishonest beyond belief, but not to anyone reading your garbage, but to yourself. You put it on show for everyone to see and you do so shamelessly. That is beyond sad.
“If that trend* continues…” There it is in your quote. His comment was conditional,caveated. That inconvenient detail is ignored or excised by tabloid scum. Also forgotten is that he was relaying the IPCC and CSIRO views,yet he is personally attacked by media thugs as though he ‘made it up’ himself.
Bolt and Blair of News Ltd are self-idolising bullies who mistake themselves for journalists. Egoists with no self-awareness,entertaining lazy idiots with their ‘common sense’. Flannery is a very tolerant man. If you disagree with him fine,but the personal slurs are dull,repetitive,self indulgent and shockingly deliberate. It’s a bullying tactic well described by Mike Mann as the Serengeti Strategy.
*The ‘trend’ being to the runoff/absorption ratios observed during the second half of the crunching drought from 1997 to 2010. Which future droughts under warmer conditions will likely exhibit,unfortunately for water storages and farm dams.
Flannery has pretty much described the situation in the south west of Australia. Our dams are currently at around 20% of capacity. The last time I remember a full dam would be more than twenty years ago (Though I’m prepared to be proven wrong on that count. Erric??)
Uki:-
She was clearly asking about a future context and his answer was based on that. In fact he says we are already seeing the early stages. What follows is the likely scenario if the trend continues which he clearly states. The fact that you take the one quote without the questions framing context and then you highlight the one sentence shows just how myopic and wilfully ignorant you are. Let’s go back to your original assertion which was that Flannery said the dams would never be full again. He didn’t say that at all, and you have actually provided the reference which refutes your own assertion yet still you cling to it. You are dishonest beyond belief, but not to anyone reading your garbage, but to yourself. You put it on show for everyone to see and you do so shamelessly. That is beyond sad.
I’m sure thats what Tim Flannery now wishes he said, but it isn’t what he actually said.
Hs said
“We’re already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the winter rainfall zone across southern Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change, but also a decrease in run-off. Although we’re getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that’s translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. [In other words, its happening now] That’s because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that’s a real worry for the people in the bush. If that trend continues then I think we’re going to have serious problems, particularly for irrigation.”
Flannery’s “the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams” rates right up there with “children just aren’t going to know what snow is” – another ridiculous alarmist assertion, blown out of the water by cruel nature.
Eric, you have attributed a statement to me that I didn’t make. Please provide a reference or retract it.
I like you. Anyone who thinks Bolt is worth quoting is patently a fool.
Eric: get a better hobby because you suck at this one.
I’m in. $100 too. http://indifferencegivesyouafright.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/tim-flannery-did-not-say-australias-dams-would-never-fill-again/
Excellent link. The major take home is that Bolt and his audience are too stupid to comprehend detail,nuance and context. Without detail,nuance and context we cannot truly ‘debate’,and we cannot make reasoned policy. Unwittingly,Bolt and his foolish flock are in effect damaging our functionality,and are engaging in self-harm behavior.
ABC transcript of the interview:-
http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2006/s1844398.htm
Quote
PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: We’re already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the winter rainfall zone across southern Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change, but also a decrease in run-off. Although we’re getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that’s translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That’s because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that’s a real worry for the people in the bush. If that trend continues then I think we’re going to have serious problems, particularly for irrigation.
Thanks, Eric. I’ll have your cash, thank you. My reference already cited your link. I can take cheque or bank transfer.
Eric you need some basic comprehension training. And to borrow some cash from your missus.
I’m in. $100 too. http://indifferencegivesyouafright.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/tim-flannery-did-not-say-australias-dams-would-never-fill-again/
Me too… $100
And me … $100
Transcript of the ABC interview:-
http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2006/s1844398.htm
Quote
PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: We’re already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the winter rainfall zone across southern Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change, but also a decrease in run-off. Although we’re getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that’s translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That’s because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that’s a real worry for the people in the bush. If that trend continues then I think we’re going to have serious problems, particularly for irrigation.
Thanks, Eric. I’ll have your cash, thank you. My reference already cited your link. I can take cheque or bank transfer.
It’s not about Climate Change, Carbon tax, good/bad science, methodological correctness etc.
It’s all about Eric. “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! ……”
All bravado and ballyhoo.
What we are witness to here is a sort of USE/MENTION confusion one finds in certain kinds of philosophical discourse. The confusion between ideas or claims about the world, and the discourse and the people participating in it. It’s all Kant’s fault and the solipsistic implications of the doctrine of ideas as Thomas Reid calls it. It’s modern manifestation is the Sociology of Knowledge which maintains all knowledge is socially constructed. This is a confusion too. It confuses truth and truth claims. This is a corrosive idea that claims all truth claims are equally valid. It originated in the post war post colonial enthusiasm for accomodating all views no matter how absurd. A sort of cultural correctness that attempted to compensate for angry old white men deemed to be responsible for all the worlds woes. You see a lot of cherry picking going on there too. All politics of course. But it encouraged twerps to keep demanding they be listened to.
As Aristotle said (more or less), the best way to deal with persistent defenders of the indefensible is to cross to the other side of the street.
Yes,this is very much what is occurring.You give an historical period which has enabled this confusion. I’d add that hyper-urbanisation removing folks from hands-on nature, and the construction of the entitlement culture,which implicitly and explicitly assumes that technology will hammer nature into co-operation,plays a part. The rise of shopping as life…shopping for an argument,a set of factoids. Eric gets his from the $2 shop of life knowledge. He collects a few past-use-by snacks from Watts,the media and the email theft,throws them together,et voila, he has a nutritious diet,or so he thinks.
Discuss
It seems to me, from my logic that the extinction of the Polar bear will not be by way of a slow steady decline but rather by a near single one year catastrophic event of mass starvation.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/08/1692961/fox-and-friends-polar-bears-prove-climate-change-is-not-really-real/
Once they hunted for eight months on the ice then remained on land for four months
this was then reduced to seven months hunting and five months on land,
another two weeks earlier melt and later refreeze will push them to 50/50
If they seek food inland then they will already be weak from hunger.
Not if but when will it happen?
That sounds likely to me too. Ditto with coastal settlements. Storm surges will do the damage and eventually well figure they just arent worth the rebuild. Long before new sea levels are established ( worse case scenarios of course).
I don’t entirely agree. While I think that population decline will not be ‘steady’,but more likely step-like,I’m not sure one event will see the lot collapse. The sub-populations are distributed around the Arctic at various latitudes and a catastrophic ‘pointy’ event would have to be very widespread in its effect.What kind of event are we contemplating? The ongoing warming will wipe them out/dramatically collapse numbers by sub-population from the south,but northern populations may have enough enduring sea-ice around the Canadian Archipelago to hang on at some scale. I don’t know what threshhold numbers exist for the endurance of sub-populations,but I’m sure that’s been looked into,though their are a number of colonies/populated areas without any data whatsoever.
The same questions have to be asked of their preferred foods as well.What happens to seal populations under reduced ice scenarios?
An event in which the bears have to come ashore well before the ripening of the bearberries and have to stay on shore well after the season is finished,
They only survive on the berries due to the stored energy of the winter hunt.
I doubt there would be a single event that woud wipe them out.There are many population centres for bears around the arctic and we are more likely to see a gradual decline. There are a number of possible outcomes for the bears when sea ice effectively disappears. 1. The populations drop gradually to a such a level that male-female encounters become so rare that there is no way back. People seem to forget that polar bears are solitary animals and there are large differences in behaviour between males and females in terms of home ranges and movement patterns. 2. Small pockets of bears quickly adapt their feeding and movement behaviours and manage to hang on allbeit with increased stochasticity. There is evidence that bears close to human settlements have adapted their feeding habits to almost exclusively scrounge at the tip.
I remember last year a paper came out in Science http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6079/344.short that discussed the evolution of polar bears. It mentions that nuclear DNA evidence suggests that polar bears diverged from brown bears around 600000 years ago. In contrast, mtDNA evidence showed that at around 125000 years ago, female brown bear hybridisation occurred and the offspring likely backcrossed into the polar bear population. This occurred in an interglacial when there was a severe population bottleneck due to melting ice causing polar bears to spend more time on land. Of course the deniers jumped onto this suggesting that polar bears will be fine because they’ll just breed with brown bears which of course is moronic beyond all belief. They fail to consider that if a slow melting as happened in the Eamian caused a severe bottleneck, a rapid melting as we seem to be seeing now will give bears less time to adapt. They fail to recognise that the hybridisation that occurred was sporadic and limited to a small population or two and there is no guarantee that could happen again. Also 125000 years is a very long time to allow animals to evolve. It is quite possible that the brown bears and polar bears that did interbreed may not have been as different to each other as they are today not just in appearance but probably more importantly in behaviour. Relying on that is a risky strategy. Anyway, here is the conclusion from that paper.
“In conclusion, our data suggest that polar bears are a genetically distinct lineage that is older than previously recognized. An evolutionary origin several hundred thousand years ago implies that polar bears as a species have experienced multiple glacial cycles and have had considerable time to adapt to arctic conditions. However, the low genetic diversity in polar bears suggests that changes in the environment, such as warm phases, caused population bottlenecks. Although polar bears have persisted through previous warm phases, multiple human-mediated stressors (e.g., habitat conversion, persecution, and accumulation of toxic substances in the food chain) could magnify the impact of current climate change, posing a novel and likely profound threat to polar bear survival.”
Suggestions that polar bears couldn’t adapt to warmer conditions is just nonsense.
Polar bears survived the Eemian, which was at least 1 – 2 c warmer than today, for extended periods.
And polar bears are close relatives of grizzly bears, so close that viable hybrids are occasionally observed. Suggesting that, even if they lost their ice, polar bears couldn’t simply adapt to a more grizzly bear like lifestyle is just silly.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/bear-hybrid-photo.html
How does finding a hybrid help your argument again? 🙂
Not even wrong meme, “Polar bears survived the Eemian. “http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/zstrong/polar_bears_will_just_adapt_to.html.
Eric’s point is an fluorescing red herring. Please update your cut’n’paste library.
First, you’re making a sweeping assumption when you say the Arctic was 1-2 C warmer than today. Van den Berg et al 2013 have an interesting surprise for you: that was SUMMER warmth raising the annual mean. Their paper found that spring and winter were actually cooler than now and summer was warmer,..”an increased amplitude of the seasonal cycle” What does that mean for sea-ice? A regime more suited to polar bear habits than you assume? Patterns of warming at the surface from a regional insolation change are different from AGHG induced change, a forgotten fact in all the crapping on about the MWP etc. As well as the Eemian it seems. ..”altered orbital parameters caused a larger seasonality,but did not cause a significantly warmer climate” ‘Climate’ in the true sense,not whatever you want.
And,what have you learned about the RATE of change being experienced in today’s Arctic,Eric? Anything? I ‘ll tell you. We will hit Eemian temps in the Arctic at least ten times faster than such temps were reached back in the Eemian. We’re not far off,if you remember what polar amplification implies And we have warmer winters.
Now you are completely out of your league and stepping right into mine. I have the seminal Science paper from last year on polar bear genetics in full if you’re interested? We can discuss in great detail the difference between ndna and mtdna and also the rate of evolution, genetic bottlenecks, genetic depression, hybridisation and all sorts of really sciency things and I will tell you why you’re so so wrong, or you can continue to show yourself up to be wilfully ignorant. What’s it going to be? Just say the word and I’ll send you the paper.
This is only the extent data but I was reading on Neven’s blog that sat data sees the Arctic conditions similar to last year but 50 days earlier.than 2012,
Things could change but the melt will certainly will not be the same as watching paint dry this year.
They need a seal every 4/5 days during winter
http://endangeredpolarbear.com/food.htm
Found this
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/will_bold_steps_be_needed_to_save_beleaguered_polar_bears/2618/
““The worst-case scenario is a catastrophically early sea ice break-up with hundreds of starving bears, followed by inappropriate management actions.
“It has always seemed that we’ve been behind the curve on climate change and polar bears,” he said, noting that conservation planning for polar bears has typically extended several decades into the future. “That time frame leads one to think you’ve got time. But the science is clear that this is a fallacy.”
Rate of warming fifty times faster then previous cooling
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/08/1691411/bombshell-recent-warming-is-amazing-and-atypical-and-poised-to-destroy-stable-climate-that-made-civilization-possible/
they could not evolve nor adapt nor survive at this rate of change
The evolutionary rate of change will be outpaced by climatic changes. I think about the only things species to keep pace and adapt may be bacteria/viruses.
That’s pretty good overview. Punctuated decline is realistic. Ultimate extinction is realistic.
I still don’t see a threshhold event that will take them all [90%] out in a season,but this year will go some way to resolving that. Actually,the catastrophic early break-up scenario may be this year with the record extent of thin ice,so bear stress time is upon us. I’ll have to look at all the satellite I can for the Arctic….well,it’s all over this year according to imagery!!
All management actions are reactive to some extent. That’s a truism! Transplanting members of threatened sub-populations requires lead in time for planning and testing strategies. Time that may not be there….no,it’s not there. So the semi-captive feeding program will be rolling out soon…
Yes I am not saying this season, but reading that report from feb, where we thought that we had decades we may only now have years
Doesn’t the season go quickly!. That’s the ‘recovery’ that the idiots attempt to trumpet. And of course it is thinner than ever so winds will tear it apart quickly. It just depends on how much volume the choke points will allow through. With the wrong winds that could be done rapidly.
How about that clueless prideful numpty that’s arguing the toss at Open Mind? No consideration of the three-dimensionality,he thinks he’s seen a recovery! A superficial argument in every sense of the word!
Do not look at the trend I think I have found a cycle .
No it is not a cycle it is a spiral
Colin Barnett’s Liberal-National alliance is celebrating a landslide victory in the Western Australian election.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-10/liberals-claim-victory-as-labor-seeks-to-lay-blame/4563384
Great news! The continued denial of reality has another term in WA. Skep,if you want to learn how to dig holes,go to WA. If you want to learn about the tragedy of the commons you can see it from here.
In Qld and NSW, AGW has gone into retreat because it is being defunded and written out of legislation. That’s the solution! Sea-level rise will stop,like in North Carolina,where it was legislated against.
Interesting. WA has always tended to be more conservative in politics. But this will put pressure on Gillard. Interesting times eh?
WA has historically been conservative, but as with other states… large swings are always possible. Regardless what politicians say, there is always an element of what happens federally influencing state elections. How much of the swing away from labor was federally driven will be a source of much debate… was it really a backlash against the carbon and mining taxes, or was it more about state issues? I’m not in the west so I can’t really say for certain, but a mining tax in a mining state will never be well received. What I can say is that labor does seem to be a damaged brand, both at a federal level and also at the level of the states.
This will have to put more pressure on Gillard. I’m sure there are a lot of federal labor backbenchers worried about their own seats. Angry backbenchers don’t make for a happy prime minister.
“I’m not in the west so I can’t really say for certain…”
About the smartest thing you’ve ever said. Now, apply it to science. “I don’t know anything about science, so I can’t really say for certain…..”
It was more about state issues.
Pressure on Gillard? One day they will accept,though never admit it publicly,that it was their collective lack of ability,charisma and boldness that stuffed them,not Gillard. Voters will reject Labor,because that’s all voters can do: protest once every three or four years. Abbott will get in by default,there is no choice, because affluent social complacency,plus disconnection, leads to the Vidalian state: one party with two right wings. There is every likelihood that it will be a one term government because of ongoing global depression and the simple unlikeability of the A Team. As well their incompetence will be on display 24/7 despite News Ltd efforts.
Both parties just run around trying to patch up systemic weakness with vote buying,deferred costing and short-term subsidy. As long as neither stray to far from the redistributive path [an acknowledgement of systemic economic dysfunction needing patching for the desirable outcome of some social cohesion] we at least won’t drift off to third-worldish semi-anarchy. As long as government everywhere allows itself to be walked on by global capital,then semi-anarchy is always a danger.
I don’t think the atmosphere and biosphere will take much notice.
If you think it’s just an issue for labor, think again…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-10/greens-disappointed-with-result/4563926
People are starting to wake up to what the communist/greens actually stand for… and apparently they don’t like it.
Which is why there was a swing to the Greens in the Kimberley.
Your unskeptical, ideologically driven bias is showing.
Abbott of course promises that electing him will be like a shot of adrenaline to the economy. LOL.
…which brings us back to the theme of the post: “The Rich and the Religious Reject Climate Science”. We are living it here in Oz.
And the President of The no carbon tax climate sceptics party. Leon Ashby a fundamentalist who was knocked back by Mt Gambier council when he wanted to open youth centres to present evidence based religious films,
rpt The President
“People are waking up to what the Communist/Greens actually stand for…” really?
Judging by the results of the survey that is the root of this discussion, 33% of the 1000 folk surveyed thought there was_ NO_ evidence the world had warmed over the PAST 40 YEARS. None. Zip.
33% have had their heads up their arses!.They haven’t read a newspaper,read a journal article,haven’t listened to the radio or watched TV!! They haven’t heard of permafrost or Arctic methane!!They haven’t been to a science lecture,they haven’t had a friend tell them about their holiday to Glacier Bay National Park,or the Alps!! What the fuck have they been doing to successfully avoid ANY contact with news of the natural world?
And your saying these ignorant,unobservant people are politically somewhat aware? How would any of these people be able to ‘wake up’ to ANYTHING ???
Nick, ‘these ignorant,unobservant people’ are politically aware enough to change their vote 😉
None of those polled morons ever voted Green anyway, Skep. They are the kind of folk who hold strong opinions despite evidence, hence they’re Republican voters. Or Coalition luvvies.
Obviously the Greens represent a party of hope and protest for some.They lose hope -understandably- and tire of protest, so they drift away.. There is no widespread political or media opinion culture to encourage political diversity. Business–representing only majority shareholders,many of them not Australian– controls policy to a significant degree. None of these vested interests want open complex policy debate. Your zombie chant “dawning-that-they’re-Communis’-in disguise” mantra is straight out of the Luntzian perception management playbook. You are a useful idiot.
#uck the pollies , lets talk polar bears, A perfect chance for Eric to tell us how wrong we are .
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/as_arctic_sea_ice_declines_polar_bear_patrol_gets_busy/2497/
hehe
Directly tied to the loss of sea ice and projected sea ice loss has been underestimated.
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/for_hudson_bay_polar_bears_the_end_is_already_in_sight/2293/
Brace yourself for an onslaught from the cut’n’paste library of denierdom. What’s most boring with the deniers that post here is they make an assertion, it’s comprehensively rebutted. And, two posts later, they make the same assertion. Maybe the blog owner might consider maintaining a library of busted memes to save time. Polar bears is just the latest example. As if they’d know the Eemian from their elbow. Pull the other one, it’s got a palaeontologist on it.
From your link:-
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/for_hudson_bay_polar_bears_the_end_is_already_in_sight/2293/
That’s exactly the concern that we have. We have, as I mentioned, 19 different populations. Many of them are doing quite well right now, and they will continue to do well for periods to come. Just by the nature of the way the sea ice is in these areas, they’re much less vulnerable to warming. It’s really those populations that are in those most dynamic habitats along the ice edge that we’re most concerned about.
So Hudson Bay polar bears might be in trouble, but the species as a whole is not currently threatened.
Why all the fuss?
Wow! Just…wow. You got to your confident conclusion from just that transcript? Wow. You want the threat to be a little more ‘current’–as in imminent– before you remember that the species is listed as ‘vulnerable’ already,perhaps? I’ll send you a memo closer to time,eh?
Polar bears survived the Eemian, which was at least 1 – 2 c warmer than today, for extended periods – so we have proof they can survive temperatures 1 – 2c above current temperatures for extended periods.
And polar bears are close relatives of grizzly bears, so close that viable hybrids are occasionally observed. Suggesting that, even if they lost their ice, polar bears couldn’t adopt a more grizzly bear like lifestyle, if necessary with genetic input from grizzly bears, is complete nonsense.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/bear-hybrid-photo.html
How does finding a hybrid help your argument again? 🙂
A quick Google of “Polar bears survived the Eemian ” brings up the usual echo chamber of “repeat the meme”. First of all, as deniers forget, the pace of our manmade change is too quick for many species to adapt. We’re doing in decades what nature might do in millennia. Evolution might not cater to deniers’ whims. As for scientists, well, unsurprisingly, the tend to disagree with the likes of Eric. Most scientists do. http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/zstrong/polar_bears_will_just_adapt_to.html
Eric,has Wattsy told you how that Eemian warmth was distributed seasonally in Greenland? Probably not.
I won’t cut and post my earlier comment,that’s Worrall-work.
So Eric. Uknow has produced the genetic evidence of earlier and Eemian bottlenecks. Not what you expected. van den Berg et al 2013 then provides you with some nuance, some idea of the ‘shape’ of Eemian warming. The Eemian,while bottlenecking the bears, may not have been the ice free hurdle your Wattsian dumbing-down service tells you the bears survived. Not what you expected.
Then we have human effects absent in the Eemian. I guess you’ll revert to your why-should-we-save-them-they-kill-people stance
Do you have a point to make eric?
Your whole understanding is complete nonsense
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-climate-cold-arctic-eemian.html
Thats even more fascinating.
If the Eemian warming was different to today, then how can CO2 have been the main driver of the Eemian warming? 100,000 years is not enough time for continental drift to cause significant climate change.
So the Eemian warming is substantial evidence that either the Arctic is highly resilient to climate change, and that the current Arctic warming is transient, or it is evidence of natural forcings which can produce a significant climate shift, of several degrees.
Take your pick.
Are you naturally as thick as two short planks or did you have to work at being able to completely miss the point?
What a magnificent example of defective critical thinking skills.
“If the Eemian warming was different to today, then how can CO2 have been the main driver of the Eemian warming? 100,000 years is not enough time for continental drift to cause significant climate change. ”
CO2 wasn’t. It was Milankovitch cycles. Everything you said after that point is moot.
“Take your pick” Er,thanks,but no thanks. I know where you pulled your choices from.
Actually, your third is entirely reasonable…though of course you think it has some implications which in fact it does not. But yes, natural forcings can produce significant climate shifts…how long has it taken you to realise that?
populations bears 2009 report
anyone got a panadol? my forehead hurts
Yawn – let me know when they’re all dead.
There, Eric. You finally got it off your chest. You don’t care and never did. We knew that. Feel better now?
I’ve already said several times that I don’t understand why people get so excited about the possible demise of a vicious top level predator which poses a threat to any humans it encounters.
I’d kill all the crocs in the Australian North as well, if I could – crocs are one of the most dangerous predators on the planet, and I value the kids they snatch more than their entire species.
But my concern here is disputing the BS about polar bears dying out.
Extinctions due to climate change are not good news. To think otherwise shows a lack of…thinking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
Eric will be distraught. Even the military are in on the conspiracy. I’m sure he’ll have a rationale from a distant galaxy to explain it, http://bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/03/09/admiral-samuel-locklear-commander-pacific-forces-warns-that-climate-change-top-threat/BHdPVCLrWEMxRe9IXJZcHL/story.html.
His fevered imagination will work in eugenics, if we’re really lucky.
Hopefully this embedded video works. From “Earth: The Operators’ Manual”.
Richard Alley’s work is superb. But I’m disappointed not to find any eugenics therein. I’m sure Eric and invent a linkage though.
I’m not impressed – the CIA famously wrote a position paper describing the threat of global cooling, in response to the global cooling scare you guys deny ever happened.
Click to access 1974.pdf
So its not surprising that a few military types are getting excited about the latest fad.
I’m sure the US Military Industrial Complex will stand corrected.
I’m sure they’ll produce a new global cooling position paper when your climate heroes flipflop back to cooling scares. Or maybe they’ll just dig out the old paper, and change a few dates and names.
Always with the bullshit,Eric. Always.
No-one said that ‘global cooling wasn’t a part of research interest,just that it clearly did not dominate scientific concern as Watts would have it. Peterson et al PROVE it with a scientific literature survey. How else would YOU do it?
And we established for you–or at least for a rational ‘you’ should he be allowed to emerge– that the ‘scare’ was media led.
The CIA do position papers on most every little thing that’s flicked at them. Not all of them are ‘fads’. It’s a kind of due diligence for the agency. It’s what they do.
So ‘the global cooling scare you guys deny ever happened’ is your take on all that effort from us? Please let the rational you out,he’s starving in there.
Given that the Northern winter is still going strong, I doubt global warming will be much of a concern in the near future.
Poor Australia – once again she’s trying to get in the door of the party, long after the beer has run out and all the pretty girls have left.
Right on cue. Eric can deny almost anything. 🙂 Remarkable and laughable simultaneously Mind you this latest fad is century old science – but let’s cut the deniers some slack. .
Yes, even in the 70s the consensus, as expressed in the scientific literature, was for warming over cooling. Finding a CIA paper from then based upon a minority scientific opinion would be like some idiot writing a paper about temperatures flat-lining when they obviously aren’t.
If prior error invalidates current science then you must stop reading the Further Adventures of Tony the Weatherboy.
I think Nick was onto something when he compared the denialistas to the Junk Food brigade. Like junk food addicts, who can’t be bothered to source their ingredients from healthy outlets and cook it themselves, they source their “knowledge” (such as it is), from junk science outlets; in handy bite size pieces, pre-prepared and packaged to be easy to digest by those with short attention spans. They find it much too hard to go to the source of the original quote to see the creative editing that has been done to make it say the opposite of what was intended.
They would rather go to WUWT and watch Watts wave his miracle yellow highlighter to make Global Warming go away. It was hilarious to see Eric at the start of this blog lamenting that children are not taught critical thinking skills these days, when he is, in fact, totally devoid of them himself.
Did he notice how Watts cheated with the yellow highlighter on the ocean temperature graph that he linked to? Nope, it had to be pointed out to him. Did he notice that the Wattsonian ice maps did not in fact confirm his absurd contention that ice was at similar extent in the 1930’s? Nope, it had to be pointed out to him. Does he realise that the only reason the polar bears survived the Eemian was that they had several thousand years to adapt, not just a few decades? Nope, it has to be pointed out to him. Does he not realise how stupid and self defeating it would be to toss away our new, high resolution data on world temperatures and smooth it away into low resolution data (to match the temperature reconstruction of the last 11K years), just to make that nasty temperature spike at the end go away? No he doesn’t. If he truly was a skeptic, this stuff should be obvious.
Just like junk food is unhealthy for the body, junk science is bad for the mind, but even after the dangers of their diet have been pointed out to them, just like junk food addicts, the deniers keep going back to their favourite junk science outlets, for more tasty, bite sized chunks of crappy factoids.
I think Eric considers it an accolade to be a Watts contributor – one of those useful fools
HEAD VICE
Watts is a parasite on the body of science journalism.
Awe shucks John, you shouldn’t have – I didn’t think any of you noticed.
You are one of Tony the Weatherboy’s sidekicks. Every superhero needs one.
“Holy flatline, Batman”
eric’s hero
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Freeze
.
This was from back in 2007 when it appeared that the sea ice still had a long way to go, projections had been based purely on the sea ice holding out for decades, that is not now the case
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/070910-polar-bears.html
Sea ice thickness
will the bears have to leave the ice even earlier than last year, prior June?
populations bears 2009 report
Hilarious – “science” straight from a propaganda site.
Here’s a paper prepared the people tasked with taking care of polar bears in Canada.
Click to access foxe_basin_polar_bears_2012.pdf
Their conclusion:-
An evaluation of population trend in FB requires a comprehensive analysis of potential sources of bias in the last population estimate, obtained during the 1990s (Taylor et al. 2006), as well as a review of potential biases with the FB aerial surveys. However, a simple comparison of our abundance estimate (N: ~2,580, SE: 278) with that from the early 1990s (N: ~2,200, SE: 260) suggests that FB may have remained relatively stable. This finding implies that the current harvest management regimen has not resulted in a significant change in abundance. Observed litter sizes were generally comparable to those documented in other subpopulations with robust annual growth rates, including Baffin Bay (Taylor et al. 2005), suggesting that recruitment is currently indicative of a healthy subpopulation. Anecdotally, polar bears observed during the aerial surveys generally appeared to be in good body condition (based on a qualitative fatness index; Stirling et al. 2008), further supporting the notion that FB is a healthy subpopulation. The aerial survey results did not provide evidence to suggest that climate change is negatively influencing FB, though impacts have been documented elsewhere in the region (e.g., Western Hudson Bay; Regehr et al. 2007, Stirling et al. 1999).
In other words, the alarmist BS.
What a fantastic “paper” you just supplied Eric. Well done on quote mining the conclusion too. We’ll just ignore the fact that the people in this non peer-reviewed report are only sampling two consecutive years in a very small sub-population and that their resultscan only be applied to that sub-population for a moment and concentrate on the detail in the methods and also the stats.
I have to wonder about a few of the assumptions the authors decided to break for the model. For example, given the size of the area being surveyed and the time to undertake it, why do you think they chose a closed population model? I would have run with an open model. How do you think they justify such high detection probabilities? I know that aerial surveying of horses in open landscapes at a slower speed (100kmh) and a lower height (100m) in closer transects (1km) yield a much lower detection probability than the author’s claim for polar bears. Maybe the observers have super vision? This resulted in really low variances of around 10 and 11%. That is extremely low. In fact it’s amongst the lowest I’ve seen for aerial surveying of anything, including large easy to spot, slow moving animals like elephants. I then also have to wonder why they assumed independance for some types of observations and then correctly, not, for others? What do you think Eric? Hmmm who am I kidding? You haven’t got a clue.
Hirarious alright, you seem to think that the Foxe basin is the whole artic
what is alarmist about the numbers eric ?
Environment 360
Indeed, after slashing polar bear hunting quotas in 2007 out of concern for the declining number of polar bears in western Hudson Bay, the government of Nunavut has reversed course. It now claims, contrary to recent scientific studies, that western Hudson Bay polar bear populations are actually increasing, and Nunavut recently raised the annual quota of polar bear kills from eight to 21.
“In Nunavut, we have seen remarkable recovery of our polar bear populations since their historic lows in the 1970’s,” Daniel Shewchuk, then Nunavut’s environment minister, said in a news release last year, without releasing any details. The Inuit believe there are more bears than before because larger numbers of them are coming into villages and hunting camps. “The bears are not in trouble,” says Lois Suluk-Locke, a resident of the Nunavut town of Arviat. “There’s been so many it’s been scary.”
Scientists counter that this increase in sightings is tied to the delay in ice formation in Hudson Bay, which leads hungry bears to remain onshore in search of food. The bears have always migrated northward in autumn because sea ice used to form earlier up there. Now, the hungry bears are increasingly wandering into Inuit settlements, where local hunters store caribou, seals, and walruses on roofs and in sheds, scientists contend.
The University of Alberta’s Ian Stirling, arguably the world’s foremost expert on polar bears, says there is overwhelming evidence of the decline of polar bear populations in western Hudson Bay. Between 1980 and 2007, he and his colleagues found that pregnant females had lost, on average, more than 50 kilograms (110 pounds) in body mass. This resulted in smaller litters and a reduction in cub survival, leading to a steady drop in population.
Uki :-
What a fantastic “paper” you just supplied Eric. Well done on quote mining the conclusion too. We’ll just ignore the fact that the people in this non peer-reviewed report are only sampling two consecutive years in a very small sub-population and that their resultscan only be applied to that sub-population for a moment and concentrate on the detail in the methods and also the stats.
I have to wonder about a few of the assumptions the authors decided to break for the model. For example, given the size of the area being surveyed and the time to undertake it, why do you think they chose a closed population model? I would have run with an open model.
Their results are effectively a population density analysis – count vs geographic area.
The alarmist theory is that the arctic is becoming a more hostile environment for polar bears. If this is true, you would expect the population density to decline – unless you are arguing the survey region was the one optimal environment left in the greater region.
How do you think they justify such high detection probabilities? I know that aerial surveying of horses in open landscapes at a slower speed (100kmh) and a lower height (100m) in closer transects (1km) yield a much lower detection probability than the author’s claim for polar bears. Maybe the observers have super vision?
If you bothered reading the paper, they justified the detection probability on the basis that, due to the time of year they conducted the survey, white polar bears tend to show up strongly against a dark background.
But even if you are right, the similarity in methodology between the two surveys should have produced the same biased result, and still produced a reasonable indication of percentage change in population, even if their detecting probability estimate was off. The fact both aerial surveys produced almost the same count is significant.
Of course, its possible the Nunavut government is involved in a conspiracy to cover up the decline in polar bear population – but I’d like to see evidence of this, if this is what you are suggesting.
This resulted in really low variances of around 10 and 11%. That is extremely low. In fact it’s amongst the lowest I’ve seen for aerial surveying of anything, including large easy to spot, slow moving animals like elephants. I then also have to wonder why they assumed independance for some types of observations and then correctly, not, for others?
Bright white dots on a dark background – their assertion is polar bears are easy to spot, and tend to congregate on the coast.
But hey, I’ve never tried counting polar bears from the air. Perhaps you have?
You have no idea. I’ve been on a number of aerial surveys of feral animal species and regularly analyse the data from same. I’ve also performed many many mark and recapture studies, so tell me Eric, why did they choose a closed model over an open one? Do you seriously think a 2 year study of a sub-population tells you anything of value about the population trends of polar bears across the arctic? Of course you do, just as you think controlled glasshouse studies of CO2 enrichment can be applied to entire ecosystems and 17 years of warming = no warming. You are way way out of your depth. You’re just too stupid to realise it.
Eric,it is really silly calling wildlife ecologists who have many collective decades of observational experience ‘alarmist’ simply because they are confident that Polar Bears are in trouble long-term across the Arctic.
And a short paper on one sub-population cannot be extrapolated to the whole Arctic. It’s added to the bigger picture. It’s also worth noting the period of observation,in this case short. Concern for the species is based on what has been observed collectively to date–a lot,but lots to do– and what is reasonably extrapolated into the future. That’s all. It’s not some feverish fretting confused guesswork…that’s what rejectionists do.
Keep that paper. Take on board Uknow’s comments about methodology. Now gather as many as possible of the other studies in the Arctic. Only then can you start to make conclusions.
Even John’s polar bear expert agrees many populations of polar bears are stable. From a link John cited earlier:
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/for_hudson_bay_polar_bears_the_end_is_already_in_sight/2293/
That’s exactly the concern that we have. We have, as I mentioned, 19 different populations. Many of them are doing quite well right now, and they will continue to do well for periods to come. Just by the nature of the way the sea ice is in these areas, they’re much less vulnerable to warming. It’s really those populations that are in those most dynamic habitats along the ice edge that we’re most concerned about.
Alarmism is making out the whole species is endangered about about to die out, when in fact, while it looks like a few populations might be in trouble, many of them are fine.
So any threat to the species is based on alarmist predictions of future global temperature, not on current temperatures and conditions.
No, concern for the species is based on its size,dietary needs,its optimal range size,reproductive rates,threatening factors apart from climate change and the CURRENT climate. You know what is predicted will make things more challenging. As well we apparently know nothing substantial about several sub-pops,but you would it seems assume in this case that that must mean they are fine,no news being good news?
At this stage there is no plan to do sweet FA until several sub-populations collapse. I must apologise for that.
Early intervention in vulnerable species management is,um,useful.
But you don’t care,as you have indicated elsewhere. Why are you here?
Given the world hasn’t warmed for 17 years, and polar bears survived the much warmer Eemian, we might have quite a wait until the species is threatened.
in any case, the Antarctic is doing quite well, in terms of sea ice. Perhaps the species could be transplanted South, if it is ever threatened in the North.
You take moronic to a whole new level.
Uki
Do you seriously think a 2 year study of a sub-population tells you anything of value about the population trends of polar bears across the arctic? Of course you do, just as you think controlled glasshouse studies of CO2 enrichment can be applied to entire ecosystems and 17 years of warming = no warming. You are way way out of your depth. You’re just too stupid to realise it.
Click to access foxe_basin_polar_bears_2012.pdf
From the study:-
...Polar bears concentrate along the coast during late summer, so we delineated survey zones based on proximity to the coastline. …
They used a closed population model, because the two required sets of observations were taken simultaneously (front and rear observers in the helicopter). This satisfied the closed model assumption that no births, deaths or migrations occur between the two sets of observations – I think we can live with the possibility a few bears dropped dead while the helicopter flew overhead.
The Huggins model is a closed population model in Foxe Basin Polar Bear Aerial Survey which the likelihood is conditional on capture and facilitates the inclusion of covariates to explain variability in detection probabilities. Front and rear observers comprised our first and second sampling periods, respectively.
As for your comments on CO2 enhancement, as I said before – from the evidence that the Earth’s vegetation and ecosystem were lush and thriving during the last period of high CO2, and the evidence that CO2 enhancement in greenhouses, particularly commercial greenhouses, is ubiquitous, because it works, you conclude that if CO2 rises a few hundred PPM all the plants will die.
Yes, makes as much sense as anything else you say.
“This satisfied the closed model assumption that no births, deaths or migrations occur between the two sets of observations – I think we can live with the possibility a few bears dropped dead while the helicopter flew overhead.”
bwuuuahahaha. You have made my day. You are basing that on the following paragraph assuming the last sentence is directly related. You are an idiot.
“you conclude that if CO2 rises a few hundred PPM all the plants will die.”
Where have I said that? Reference please? I also notice you aren’t interested in the excellent science paper I offered to you. Why not? Afraid that it will show you up to be the moron that everyone in here knows you to be? Except of course for Skep. Or maybe you realise you are waaaay out of your depth? Whatever, I’ll be waiting for you to provide that reference.
Hey, I’m happy to take the word of the University of Minesota, Alaska Science Centre, and Nanavut Dept. of the Environment, that they satisfied the requirements of a closed population survey.
If you think they got it wrong, why don’t you write a paper?
And you have made several alarmist statements about how you think additional CO2 will harm plants, despite abundant evidence both historical and contemporary that additional CO2 is beneficial. I can’t be stuffed digging out our old conversations on this, but feel free to clarify your position is you care to.
Speaking of getting things wrong Eric, you have attributed a statement to me that I didn’t make. Please provide a reference or retract it.
So we can assume they’re not on the global warming gravy train?
It’s so hard to know who to trust. Perhaps you could write an app to tell us just who the approved climate scientists are.
Oops, hit Post Comment too early.
You see, the Alaska Science Centre is part of the US Geological Survey and I’m pretty sure Erric has told us that the USGS is part of the alarmist problem.
Oh dear, another Labour wipeout in a mining state.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/mark-mcgowan-takes-blame-for-labor-wipeout/story-e6frf7jo-1226594207095
It could just be because people just don’t like Gillard, but the carbon tax and resources tax might have a teensy bit to do with it.
It actually had more to do with the location of railway stations and a football ground.
In Kimberley (Argyle mine, offshore gas) the swing to the greens is very impressive.
I would hazard an informed guess that the carbon price and resources tax had almost nothing to do with it.
The greens look like losing 3 of their 4 senate seats… very impressive.
Do you mean Upper house seats (ie the Legislative Council) or are you talking about the September federal election? WA doesn’t have a senate.
Overall there was a swing against the Greens, but in Kimberley, which depends very much on mineral extraction for its wealth, the Greens have had a significant swing towards them because of local issues. Therefore, Erric’s hypothesis that the ALP lost because of the carbon price and the (non-performing) resources tax does not hold.
Honestly, it’s like talking with a three year old.
I read the major difference between the two parties was that Barnett prefers checks and McGowan stripes,and there was some disagreement over where to build a circus: Subiaco or Burswood?
A very fair summation Nick. These are the issues which consume sandgropers.
And of course for any progressive voters the choice (as it is federally) was akin to whether to die of leprosy or cholera.
So your prediction is the WA and QLD Labour wipeouts were purely due to local issues, and are not likely to be repeated in the federal election, or any other elections this year?
To say that the ALP losses in Qld and WA were due mainly to local factors is not a prediction (where did you go to school?), it’s a reading of history and you are quite welcome to disagree.
For what it’s worth, my local Liberal candidate (who is ahead in the count as I write) campaigned very much on law & order – tougher anti-hoon laws, more police on the street, mandatory sentencing for home invasions etc etc. Not once did she mention the carbon price or resources tax. The Libs’ main slogan was “Getting things done” or some such eyewash. My overwhelming impression was that the vast majority of the public is almost completely disengaged from politics.
The ALP faces a massive loss federally if all the signs and portents are to be believed. Of course with the reality of Can-Do finally sinking in, the rout may be stemmed somewhat in Qld.
The ALP faces a massive loss federally if all the signs and portents are to be believed.
Indeed. Given that the ALP is far more committed to solving the climate “crisis” than the Libs, what is your theory for why they are doing so badly in the polls?
Why do you ask?
No eric most people believe that both the liberals and the nationals are equally committed, it is on both of their web sites (their commitment) while we know that it is not true most think otherwise
Eric,is it so hard to understand that Labor is on the nose in most states because of state-based issues? Corruption and over-long incumbency in Queensland and NSW. A long stay in Victoria. The long shadow of the awful Burke extended through to Allen Carpenter’s term in office: Burke poisoned the well for years.
It’s largely been an awful spectacle for Labor,with some significant achievements always overshadowed by some utter shits crueling it for their party.
Thus there are plenty of reasons to ignore the media beat-ups on the Gillard ‘factor’,but they’re pack animals so it will never cease. And it frightens the Feds into behavior that ‘confirms’ the story. Of course,there are the dismal ones federally,but is the Craig Thomson factor that big in WA?
Labor are gone,and badly damaged just when ,if we have to have duopolies,we need strong parties and oppositions intellectually. You can see what happens when there is no opposition,just look at Queensland and the fool Newman,a failed mayor who will apply his tiny personality cult approach to bugger that place.
The slashing of services across the board is designed to be borne by those who aren’t very good at defending themselves,while he continues the shonky pay for access to a minister model. Accountability is falling.
You would wish upon us the vacuous Abbott and his clowns, Pyne doesn’t even know his shadow portfolio, Bernardi is a crank and frankly stupid,Mirabella a cynical fabricator, Bishop is second-rate and Abbott has trouble telling the truth,. The political talent pool is poorly stocked.
This survey can be compared to the recent Yale survey, which I’ve talked about here – in an article showing that Anthony Watts continues to prove he is a complete nutter (one of the bottom-dwelling 8%.)
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2013/03/fooling-bottom-8-oh-its-just-another.html
Sorry to break it to you Sou, but nothing much is happening to climate. There are several lines of evidence that climate has changed far more rapidly in the past, even during the current interglacial – e.g. the Younger Drias.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas
And if you apply the same smoothing to the instrumental record as was applied to the proxy record, the annoying spike at the end of the graph disappears – so the climate progress chart itself is an exercise in misinformation and fantasy.
The predicted rise in temperature to produce the red portion of the sharp spike at the end of the graph hasn’t happened yet, and doesn’t look likely to – given that 1/3 of all anthropogenic CO2 ever produced, emitted over the last 17 years, has failed to shift global temperatures.
Erric, you’re wasted here. Publish your findings in Nature. A Nobel prize is yours for the taking.
“The climate cannot change rapidly because here is an article about the climate changing rapidly”
huh?
Ignoramus. Idiot. Your “observation” about the last 17 years is actually a question of course. Show me the physics papers,or texts that will tell you and me that that amount of CO2 is BOUND to shift atmospheric temperatures by a set amount in your chosen time frame! Hint: you cannot. If you force a carbon spike of 40ppm into the atmosphere over 17 years it will produce a different transient result every time.
You cannot get your answer,because your demand/expectation is unphysical. It assumes no counter forcing push back or lags. The perturbation caused by CO2 is systemic,not simply focussed on what a thermometer measures in the air. And the system,as we have explained to you time and again,is subject to multiple forcings that vary in direction of forcing and strength in time. And the system has components that respond to these forcings in differing time frames. This all makes the system response non-monotonic,hard to predict at short time scales. It can be no other way. 17 years/ +40ppm proves nothing about when we end up warmer.. It only shows that the journey is interesting.
Temperature “…doesn’t look likely to…” rise? Ignorance is your argument?? Use your brain for once will you? Temperature HAS risen over the last 17 years,and OHC as well. We have all been looking at the charts right here while we rant. Only
you refuse to acknowledge what you can see. Rejectionism,it’s a neurosis.
“Nothing much is happening to climate” LOL. “Nothing much” is more than enough.
You mean like Michael Mann’s Nobel Prize?
Oh… he fibbed about that.
Oh,snap,Eric! Well played!
Perhaps we should call it “Mann’s Nobel Prize Trick”.
I think Mann does this stuff just to tease you Eric.
Its certainly amusing.
Climate hero Al Gore is in trouble for selling out to “terror TV”, climate hero Michael Mann is confused about whether he received a Nobel Prize, climate hero Phil Jones thinks he probably should show people his data and technique, but thats not the way its done in climate science…
What a flimsy basis for a global threat.
Eric, Phil Jones can’t show people his RAW data… he threw it away. :s
Indeed skeptic, we should take Phil’s word for it that he got it right – like his pal reviewers did :-).
Climate seance is a special discipline in which peer review doesn’t actually require getting your hands dirty with numbers or software – reviewers are expected to sniff the paper and wave it through, providing it predicts things are worse than we thought.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18599-climategate-scientist-questioned-in-parliament.html
Skep, the raw data that Jones used is in the possession of the national agencies,and the researchers that gathered it. Jones–actually UEA CRU management–disposed of their COPIES of SOME of the raw data back in the late 1980s or early 1990s when they were rationalising space. It was on tape and/or card. All that information was available at UEA CRUs web site BEFORE the email theft.
The fable you repeat was concocted by UK tabloids–Times Online,I seem to remember– in one of their finest moments of bloody mindedness. And duly swallowed whole and regularly coughed up by you rejectionists. Just another thing you haven’t got a bloody clue about,eh? Mounts up,doesn’t it?
I see – all the climategate emails about avoiding FOIA requests for data and code were concocted by the climate scientists, because they were bored.
Makes sense now.
I think Ben Santer sums this up nicely in the following Climategate email
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=1231257056.txt
PS Please do not copy or forward this email. … In my considered opinion, a very dangerous precedent is set if any derived quantity that we have calculated from primary data is subject to FOIA requests … The intellectual investment in such calculations is substantial … can any competitor simply request such data sets via the U.S. FOIA, before we have completed full scientific analysis on these datasets? … As many of you know, I have decided to publicly release the synthetic MSU temperatures that were the subject of Mr. McIntyre’s FOIA request
Ben Santer doesn’t wan’t to share – he sees other scientists as competitors, who (as another climategate email I can produce shows) might “misuse” the data – i.e. produce different results. Ben Santer wants to keep his data and method private, until he’s worked out how to dispute other interpretations of the data which might undermine his analysis. His decision to release the data to McIntyre was only done after the director of PCMDI Dave Brader pushed him to do so.
But he’s hardly alone in wanting to keep the detail secret – the Climategate archive is riddled with efforts to keep prying eyes away from the details of their work, for example Phil Jones’ infamous email in which he urged others to delete emails to avoid an FOIA request.
Ben Santer gets his own place of pride in my Climategate app – he provided us with some of the more comical emails, such as when he infamously suggested he would be very tempted to beat up Pat Michaels next time he saw him.
9 investigations wasn’t it?
Eric,you’re conflating different data stories.
Fact is that Jones did not destroy data. Fact is that the copies destroyed by UEA CRU were destroyed before Jones headed his unit. Fact is that Times Online concocted the story to make it look like UEA CRU admitted to their journo that they had disposed of this data around the time of climategate,when in reality the data destruction,done over a decade before, was disclosed on the data availability page BEFORE climate gate.
Fact is data availability is now up to scratch and FACT IS THAT YOU CHUMPS HAVE DONE NOTHING WITH IT. All that venting about how data belonged to the taxpayer and show us your work is posturing. Visit Warwick Hughes site..he potters around throwing tiny barbs as ever.
The FOI requests were real,and Jones did the bare minimum to comply and sometimes did not,citing discretionary power. A different matter to Skep’s relayed falsehood.
Santer’s comments there are mundanely reasonable. Sorry to not share your outrage. Santer knows that some folk will do ‘analysis’ of the data, avoid peer-review and blog-post or seek a fake journal outlets to elevate their obfuscation to a prominence it won’t deserve. And send it through their fake grassroots pipelines to in the pocket Republican senators and congressmen.
On the one hand we have real researchers generating intellectual property that they have not fully explored themselves,but are willing to share with bona fide researchers. On the other we have what? McI? Watts? People whose first act is to posture before an audience that has no real interest or awareness of what real science workers are doing. These sort of people still crawl out of the woodwork,posting cod-analysis for blog vanity and complaining about The Team and the Peer-review Pals [while swearing that ain’t conspiratorial ideating!] lurking to snuff out their Galilean brilliance. With their neo-libertarian roots showing.
BEST did work on data. Zeke Hausfather teamed with NOAA people to reanalyse. Result? Watts is wrong,and boy is he humiliated. McI’s take on MBH is faulty and was catapulted to prominence by the hand-picked Wegman at the behest of Smoky Joe Barton,big oil apologist.. FACT. News Ltd shock-jocks are being fed by these liars and the likes of the IPA,giving amazing prominence to frankly stupid positions.
In the last year Mann’s been made a Fellow of the AGU, a Fellow of Ametsoc (Watts’ professional body), won the Hans Hans Oeschger Medal and made distinguished professor at Penn State.
Antony Watts is in the running for a bloggie.
Watts is, understandably, professionally jealous. The Nobel recognition for his nemesis must be particularly galling. “Mann was one of 8 lead authors of the “Observed Climate Variability and Change” chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report published in 2001, and the graph was highlighted in several parts of the report. The IPCC acknowledged that his work, along with that of many others who contributed substantially to the reports including lead authors and review editors, contributed to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC, jointly with Al Gore.”
Antony Watts is in the running for a bloggie.
Eric,I want to see the ‘skeptical’ studies,the dissenting science,the ‘new physics’,the ‘corrected’ observations,the power of the new arguments!!
Where are they? The data is all out there! There is a ton of research money floating around,there are billionaires dropping millions into ‘think’ tanks!! NO LACK OF FINANCE for exploring the nooks and crannies!! Buying time on computers is nothing to the oil industry! Commissioning a team oh PhDs…happens every month,why is industry not ‘settling’ the science?? Why do they prefer to manipulate public policy than do climate research? They know how to finance and direct research programs. What’s going on?
Where is the work??? You have the ear of the world with your tame media! Why are you shooting blanks? Reading stolen emails that you don’t understand is a blind alley. Falling for concocted tabloidism without a quibble is very sad.
Eric says:
“several lines of evidence that climate has changed far more rapidly in the past, even during the current interglacial – e.g. the Younger Drias.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas ”
You’ve been snacking at that Junk Science take-away joint, WUWT again, haven’t you Eric? I’ve told you before, that stuff will rot your brain. And there I was thinking that you had done an honest bit of research on your own, (if Googling Wkipedia can be called research).
However, you fail to mention that these rapid decadal temperature variations in the Younger Dryas were all DOWNward, due to meteor impacts or volcanic outgassings, etc. All fairly uncontroversial stuff, and not what is exercising our minds right now. I challenge you to give one, just one, example of catastrophic temperature variation UPwards over the period of a few decades in the same period. Bet you can’t do it.
Eric also says:
“And if you apply the same smoothing to the instrumental record as was applied to the proxy record, the annoying spike at the end of the graph disappears – so the climate progress chart itself is an exercise in misinformation and fantasy”
So you wish to just chuck away our modern, high resolution satellite observations obtained at great expense, coz you don’t think it’s fair?
Right, so if your child was diagnosed with a suspected brain tumour, you would refuse to have an NMR scan done to confirm it, on the grounds that for the vast majority of human existence such technology wasn’t available, and you wanted to maintain consistency.
Eric, you continue to redefine the boundaries of idiocy every day.
Go on, give us an ice recovery prediction then. You’re so friggin sure, stick your neck out. Let us all have a laugh.
Seriously you lot must have very little to do. How could you have so much time to come on here and “debate” this stuff.
How did you find your way here Matt M ?
Seriously Matt M, you must have very little to do. How could you have so much time to seek out this particular page for your pissweak trolling.
I was on here a while back, can’t remember how I found it but I got an email saying there was a new post so I had a look, and well the page speaks for itself, a lot of people with very little to do. Seriously do some of you even have jobs? No trolling involved, you seem very defensive.
I’m a university lecturer. What about you?
Manager of a family owned hardware store, contract pest shooter and I also sell firewood. Not many hours left in the week after all that.
Yep. Plenty of yakka there. What have you been shooting lately, Matt?
He’s right. I have very little to do,on account of my well-planned life. Thanks for stopping by, Matt.
Well planned life hey? Mine is well planned too, but seriously you guys must have like 5 hours a day of nothing to do.
Yep. I can do anything I like most days,and call it ‘nothing to do’. Helping look after Eric is my gift in retirement.
my wife said “what are you doing?”
“nothing, I said”
” but you did that yesterday”
“I wasn’t finished”
Eric Worrall says:
March 11, 2013 at 9:16 am
“Given the world hasn’t warmed for 17 years, and polar bears survived the much warmer Eemian, we might have quite a wait until the species is threatened.
in any case, the Antarctic is doing quite well, in terms of sea ice. Perhaps the species could be transplanted South, if it is ever threatened in the North.”
Not only the polar bear survived the Eemian,
The Arctic ice also survived it.
Currently the Arctic ice is not surviving the anthropocene
neither will the polar bear
Not if,,,, When
Yes whack them down the Antarctic, who needs penguins?
Check my maths
How much has the earth warmed in the last 17 years?
ans. equivalent to the explosive energy from 2,600,000,000 kilotons of TNT
Hansen says 400 Enola Gay bombs per day. http://www.ted.com/talks/james_hansen_why_i_must_speak_out_about_climate_change.html
Best estimate is about 2.67 Hiroshima bombs per second every second for the last 17 years,
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2012GL051106.shtml
[…] DOCD’s on him here, here and here. I also did a longer piece here. Anyway, in a particularly epic comment thread, Eric had been spouting his usual nonsense, this time talking about shooting all the crocodiles in […]
very optimistic at the time
how many bears left then?
You people are sooooo funny!
Have you worked out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin yet?
Your Sunday school home work for next week?
Good to see the quality of your comments has improved….. oh hang on, no they haven’t. Still as substanceless as always. Do you actually have any worthwhile to say?/