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For P, and anyone else inclined to give too much weight to scientific consensus just now

Data which you’re so sure is rock solid, P. That sounds like religious faith to me. I don’t trust any of it to be set in stone; especially not with the eye-opener we’ve had this past 2+ years about the widespread corruption of scientific integrity.

My cautious stance is: don’t trust alleged primary data too readily, to be absolutely solid; and don’t get too deterministic about inherently unpredictable, probabilistic matters. Ergo, I don’t know, and I don’t believe anyone can know, with dogmatic certainty, just how things are going to go.

Meanwhile, what I’ve observed is: the weather here has changed marginally, getting a little more Mediterranean during my 80+ years; that much I can trust.

Hi @CJ1

Given how you’ve now admitted that no data or evidence can change your mind what exactly are discussing?

You already know your position and it aint changing with actual data, right?

McIntyre has been shown to be wrong many times. I’ve linked to some evidence already, but you dont do evidence so it went over your head.

The congressional hearings proved nothing. The actual data is in the published papers.

But you dont trust the data, so you didnt look into it.

Curry didnt say McIntrye was wrong. The other published papers that examined his claims did. You should read them. But that would be evidence. Which you’re apparently not interested in.

Curry did clearly say that Rancourt is wrong. But a secondary school science student would.have said the same.

Even if we assume that this is correct, my (unanswered) question is what is the significance of an 18 year slow down in the long history of measured temperatures?

What is the significance? Is this significant? Why?

Hahaha! Good one :wink:

Nice to end on a joke.

I think I’ll not engage in a scientific discussion with folks who are not interested in data, evidence and measurement. I honestly dont see the point with arguing against your religion.

Take care

And yet the ship is still sinking my friend.

While you shake your head at the complexity of it all.

We are guaranteed 45 degrees here in the uk in the next few years. And then higher.

And you’ll still be sagely shaking your head at the complexity of it all. And still making snide comments about Greta and other young people who see the future writ large.

But then, thats human nature right?

What hope for such a species?

Any chance that you might be guilty of that, PP? Do you really have that much faith in the IPPC?

ahhh…in nomine patris et filii Gretus sancti…

Bless you my child!

Hi ED

Perhaps I am. I get frustrated by people who blithely ignore mountains of scientific data in favour of their in-built prejudice and then call my position irrational.

Maybe that’s just me.

That’s quite unfair. Its the fact that the points I raise - based on a serious amount of scientific research - don’t get dealt with, and are just ignored.

Moving the goalposts when you can’t argue the point is not a debate, after all.

Who engaged with the rebuttals I linked to regarding moncktons claims?

Where did CJ agree to the points that I made (and linked to) regarding principal components? Or confidence intervals? Or certainty in models? He ignored them and just kept making the same arguments.

Where is the actual data around the subject being discussed rather than dismissed?

The number of times the argument has shifted is impressive.

Volcanoes
Water vapour
Monckton
McIntyre
Rancourt
Corbett
Curry

All making different points, not even consistent among themselves.

And any data or evidence casually dismissed by people who clearly don’t understand the first thing about the data, and who happily admit that if the data doesn’t appear in their favourite journal they wont believe it.

And meanwhile we are facing the hottest temps this country has ever seen…

Honestly

Im done

Thanks for the comments @NewSi .

You engaged with none of my points.

As usual

Keep the faith

Amen!

I apologise @PontiusPrimate if I didn’t make it clear that my PS (for the record, “I’ll be convinced when Rockerfellers, Vanguard, Blackrock and the WEF all say climate change is not happening. Then I’ll believe it is real!”) was ironic.

Let me say the same thing without irony. Find me one person qualified to talk about climate, who has no direct or indirect conflicts of interest, and I’ll be happy to reconsider.

But I will say again, listen to Corbett on ‘global average temperatures’

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“That’s quite unfair. Its the fact that the points I raise - based on a serious amount of scientific research - don’t get dealt with, and are just ignored.”

Might be happening both ways, but only one side is trying to wrap up the discussion by lamenting the alleged failure of the opposition.

“Who engaged with the rebuttals I linked to regarding moncktons claims?”

Well did you engage with the Corbett material.
I think you’re shooting around way too much. It might be useful to agree points of contention, trying to get a bit closer. Just sayin…

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Not that the water needs any more chum…

https://www.globalresearch.ca/climate-money-trail/5690209

You know what, ED, despite the complete absurdity of debating the obvious reality of global warming

  • on a day that the UK had broken all known records for the hottest temperatures ever recorded
  • on a day that bush fires are literally breaking out in London for the first time
  • on a day when many climate scientists are saying that the UK temperatures have (once again) outpaced what their models predict, showing that these models consistently underestimate the effects of climate change
  • after a week where record temperatures have led to more than 1,100 heat related deaths in Spain and Portugal
  • at a time when all the worst heatwaves have occurred within the last 2 decades (despite the apparent “pause” in global warming that posters above are all concerned about), and where each heatwave breaks the record set by the last heatwave, in an undeniable warming trend
  • on a day when France is starting to prepare for regular 50 degree temperatures in summer, and here on the UK met scientists are saying that 40 degrees could become the new normal, and perhaps even 45 degrees

On this day, I will take the bait and go watch the Corbett report, in case global warming turns out to not be really happening.

You do see the total prima facie absurdity of this, right? It’s not just me is it?

Question: What do you call someone standing in a burning building, arguing that the thermometers in the house are not 100% accurate, so there’s no need to worry?

Answer: a 5F poster

(Bit of editing done, apols)

Hi PP
So you reposition the debate…I didn’t really get the past centuries thing. It could have been hotter 600 years ago and caused a disaster that people eventually recovered from. Or not hotter on average, but with extreme variations.
I wouldn’t talk about days. This point for me is the most significant:

“at a time when all the worst heatwaves have occurred within the last 2 decades (despite the apparent “pause” in global warming that posters above are all concerned about), and where each heatwave breaks the record set by the last heatwave, in an undeniable warming trend”

If we’re hitting the point of acceleration now, is it not possible the past time is not so relevant?
People like R**court for example, might agree with these statements about the climate hottening up, but tell us we’re analysing the wrong cause (in CO2). They are either ignored or buried under flak.

Would you agree that those with the firmest convctions on both sides are on the central stage but using it to dismiss each other?
In my view there needs to be a more structured debate, or perhaps a central stopoff to what information is where. Maybe there is!?

If you are right PP then time is precious, but as the stampede hasn’t started yet there is still time to do some listening and thinking.

Cheers

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Hi @Evvy_dense , I’ve had difficulties with replying and editing here hence my silence . I just had to ask whether anyone has noticed the massive solar flare activity recently and whether the connection to our current record temperatures has been made. Since the IPCC only looks at AGW they won’t be headlining solar activity as a major contributor to global warming.

cheers

Keeps rumbling on, this argument doesn’t it. And all concerning a future process about which no-one at all can have any - justifiable - rabid certainties of the kind getting laid out here. Any of us who thinks that they know for sure what’s going to happen, and when, is kidding themselves.

The denialists, like the catastrophists, have many data points to support their opposed guesstimates; data points of variable trustworthiness; none ultimately unquestionable.

Few seem to have the strength of spine to embrace the one sure - but intolerably uncomforatble - stance:

We don’t effing-well know what’s going to happen, sinking-ship and burning-house strawman images notwithstanding! Could be apocalyptic; could be surprisingly mild; or anywhere in between. Kidding ourselves that we can be sure is just that: self-kidding. Jeez, we do love our dogmas, hom-sap, don’t we… :rofl:

PS: The same fog of uncertainty currently enwraps the covid-flill/poison-stabs arguments: none of us really know much for sure; data points being ALL of varying degrees of uncertainty, on both sides.

Give me street-savvy intuition and a bookie’s nose for odds, every time, together with a hardy determination to live with uncertainty. I’ll trust that before all the ‘incontrovertible’ logic-strings, based as they always are on unreliable data foundations…

PPS: Anyone who thinks that we little human farties are going to organise a world-wide, multi-billion consensus agreement to act decisively about the alleged climate emergency is kidding themselves about that too. Whatever’s really going to happen will happen to us purely as fate - which we shall endure.


Hot today, wasn’t it? I’ve been doing what I did in Manhattan in August, 1976: soak my tee-shirt in cold water; partly wring out, but not completely; put on again at once, gasping repeatedly; enjoy an hour of blissful relief; rinse and repeat. It was hot then, too. Possibly not as hot as the Mediaeval Warm Period, though, when the unparalleled Norse mariners, remembered forever in Groenlendinga Saga and Eirik’s Saga Rauda, found vines growing in Labrador/Newfoundland…

Where I can tell you with some asperity that they definitely didn’t grow when I was there in '58 (Oh Jesus, will my arguments ever stop being so unscientific!) :rofl:

One interesting data point that I saw recently was the way in which temperature fluctuations on the Earth’s surface seem to keep close company with variations of sun-spot activity. No idea of the validity or weight of that influence; just tossing it out there; it seems to be so, though.

“great minds” or “fools seldom differ” :grinning:

cheers

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Thanks

Sorry @KarenEliot - you’re quite right. You and Willem and a few others have struck me as very clear thinkers on the climate question.

I guess every board has its small plucky band of rebels, even the more fringe alternative ones :wink:

Cheers
PP

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Hi ED

Sorry for the delay. I watched both Corbett videos, and wasn’t very impressed with his signal to noise ratio. Lots of sly insinuation, a few errors and some fairly mundane observations. I’ll lay out some of my thinking below in a bit more detail. I’ll try to be comprehensive.

As far as I understand his issues, they are:

First set of issues

  • determining a true, exact, average global surface temperature is hard
  • weather station data is not evenly distributed around the globe
  • trying to merge different data from different stations is tricky
  • this merging requires a lot of statistics, and other adjustments

So far, that’s all true, and seems pretty reasonable to me. This is not an easy data problem, and raw data of any kind often requires processing and calibrating before you can use it for anything. All of the people involved would agree that this is an approximation of the global average temperature. That approximation gets better over time as more stations are added, interpolation and other data cleaning and calibration techniques improve, etc. But it’s still only an approximation.

The question really is, does the approximation calculated by the teams in their own ways actually map onto the observed physical world in some testable way?

Interestingly, Corbett never asks that question - by far the most important question to ask. He just ignores it.

Moving on, he further states that:

Second set of issues

  • the satellite measurement of temperature is much more reliable than surface or sea measurements
  • these different records don’t agree and the satellites show less warming
  • in fact the satellites show a pause in warming that lasted 18 years
  • neither surface measurements nor sea measurements show this pause, so (as he deems then less reliable) they must be wrong

As far as I know, its simply not true that satellite measurements are more reliable. Every system has its issues. Combining multiple satellites’ data into a global temperature record is just as tricky as surface measurements. In fact, most scientists that I’ve read believe that the surface sensors are more reliable than the satellite data. Whatever, we have both and are using both. As a general rule, I would argue that if two out of three data sets show one thing, and the third something else, my first inclination is to look at the third data set very closely and wonder what went wrong. Again, an obvious point that seems to have gone over Corbett’s head. As it turns out, when they did look closely at the satellite data, there were things that had not been corrected for, so it was that data record that needed updating.

It’s true that satellite data shows a bit less warming than surface data (even after the corrections) but the overall picture is pretty similar. Corbett gets all hot under the collar about data corrections and adjustments, but I’ll come to that in a moment.

Corbett spends a lot of time on this 18 year supposed pause, but doesn’t explain what the significance of such a pause might be. Neither does anyone here on 5F, incidentally. The pause takes up a good chunk of his videos, and is worth thinking about.

Let’s assume the pause was true (its generally thought to have been an artefact caused by problems in orbital drift and calibration of new satellite sensors launched in 2000 btw, but let’s come back to that later). My question is, so what? The climate is a complex, evolving system. I’m sure that you can find a decade (or even 18 years) here or there which looks to be off-trend. The question is what happens long term. Has global warming now stopped for ever? Has the mechanism driving global warming somehow changed?

So what did happen after the 18 years? The warming trend continued. As it is continuing today. This is true even if you reject the most recent adjustments and corrections to the data record. The warming trend picks up again, and continues as before even in the data record that shows the pause. And remember that it was only one record out of three that indicated a pause in the first place (and from one group out of 4)

What, then, was the special significance of those hallowed 18 years? Absolutely nothing, as far as I can see. It’s just a nice, fat red herring, like arguing about the centering of a PCA analysis years after its been shown to have had no significant effect.

So let’s not waste any more time pondering the pause, or dramatically accusing scientists of trying to hide the pause or whatever. The pause is utterly irrelevant to the main points of climate change.

Moving on. These last set of concerns seem to really get Mr C all upset and suspicious:

Third set of issue

  • All the datasets are continually edited, updated and otherwise changed
  • These updates look sneaky and suspicious
  • The updates all seem to go in one direction - cooler in the past, warmer in the present
  • If you remove the updates from the record then all of global warming disappears
  • ergo there is no proof the planet is warming and the data record is unreliable.

This is where I got really disappointed with Corbett’s analysis, and it became clear that he was more interested in pushing propaganda than getting to the truth. A lot like off-guardian in their approach to science, in fact.

The data are updated very regularly, that’s true. Each time it happens there is a public statement explaining what was done and why. There is also a published article alongside. The data is publicly available (as is the previous version) fir anyone who wants to check it out.

So if someone like Corbett, who is clearly a smart chap, wanted to investigate whether bogus changes were being made to the data sets, its a straightforward (though maybe not easy) matter to look at the changes made, examine the rationale, look into the reasons and the consequences, maybe canvas some opinions from other data scientists and then let your audience know if you think that overall the changes are warranted and make the analysis more accurate, or are part of a nefarious scheme to mislead.

He didn’t do any of that. He just casually insinuates fraud, but is careful not to say that outright. Lots of flipping between pictures saying “isn’t that interesting?”. Come on Corbett, you can do better than that!

He makes a big deal about the fact that as the record gets adjusted, it more clearly shows a warming trend.

So what?

If the world is warming as a result of more CO2 in the atmosphere, then this is what you would expect to see. As you get better data, you see the trend more clearly.

If you want to show data fraud, then you need to present at least some evidence for that. Given all the adjustments are made in full view of the public, he should be able to find some evidence. There are precisely zero pieces of evidence for fraud in his videos…

And then he makes some points that are just plain wrong. In actual fact, over the data record, just as many adjustments have been made that reduce the trend as increase the trend.

In actual fact, if you take the raw global data without all the adjustments that have been made, the global warming trend doesn’t disappear and is just as visible.

And so we come to his final point: you can’t trust the data, its all been manipulated, there is no signal for warming.

What a foolish thing to say. I mean, seriously. If he had thought to ask himself the big question that I asked right at the beginning he would have seen how foolish this conclusion is.

Why is it, do you think, that scientists are making these Herculean efforts to construct robust and accurate temperature datasets?

Because there is evidence of unprecedented global warming happening all across the planet.

  • ice caps are melting
  • sea levels rising
  • extreme weather patterns increasing
  • ocean acidification
  • bird migratory patterns changing
  • massive crop failures due to “heat domes”
  • permafrost melting

Etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc

And all the time CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing.

The creation of the global temperature scale is not the proof of global warming, its an effort to understand the observations all around us.

Corbett is so blinkered by his desire to cast doubt on the statistics that he’s missed the entire point.

So, overall I’m not impressed with Corbett. Nor Monckton. Nor McIntyre. Nor Rancourt.

And yes, I have spent time listening to them, reading them, and thinking about them.

Which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for some who are “discussing” this issue.

Hope you found some of this interesting and maybe useful.

Cheers
PP

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If it’s any help, P, I’m not impressed by Monckton either. For the rest - judgement reserved…

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