“The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review, since that is not normal procedure for American Physical Society newsletters. The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007: “Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate.”

So the debate is open. The APS has not changed their position. They are not hypocrites, they are debating the issue. I’ll read Monckton’s article.

You can continue to make Al Gore your GW/AGW pinata. Of course, he’s the wrong target. You should target the science behind GW/AGW, something I’ve not seen anyone here do. Maybe I’m in the wrong thread.

MesaEconoguy, More personal attacks. Can’t you do any better? Come on. Attack the science, not Al Gore or me. Bet you can’t do it! LOL, at your expense!

“BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin said the ruling would be “embarrassing for Mr Gore” but would not affect the government, which said it was happy that the judge did not dismiss the film’s mainstream argument.”

Irrelevant. Dismissing the film was not the goal of the hearing, as it was not shown on public airwaves (it was distributed to schoolchildren). Incidentally, the BBC apparently is not to be believed in its reportage of AGW issues, as reflected in this very recent Ofcom (Britain’s FCC/public airwaves regulator) ruling about public airing of The Great Global Warming Swindle in Britain, and complaints brought against it by numerous (AGW supporter) scientists. The film was cleared, though that’s not how the BBC incorrectly reported it.

What may happen here is tit-for-tat: you came after our broadcast, so we’re coming after yours (if you try to air it on BBC 2 or ITV or something). If that happens, that may give rise to a hearing where these points may be argued in court, in which case Mr. Gore’s presentation and claims would likely be dismissed as errant.

You are still enormously confused.

Inquirer,

Whether Gore actually knows better and is purposely deceiving others or whether he is deluding himself with visions of a grand mission or whether something else is going on — that question will probably yield little fruit. Perhaps we can leave “intent” to courtroom discussions.

Thank you. Unfortunately, we may be headed that way. Yours is the scientific response, and I leave to you to hash out the nuts-and-bolts of the actual science; there is, however, another aspect to this issue.

Economic damages incurred by firms/private parties may indeed be litigated in future, depending on how far this goes and how much contrary scientific evidence piles up.

Gore has taken positions in alt-energy companies, a stake in management of an alt-energy fund, and consults with numerous lobbying groups who push for more restrictions on economic activity and entities, based on flimsy or false science. His investment firm stands to gain significantly from advancement of these restrictions, and Gore himself does gain notoriety and quantifiable influence.

Gore is a liar, is talking from a position from which he stands to gain significantly, and is possibly in violation of multiple SEC regulations, such as selling unregistered securities without a license.

Naïve people like helpme enable this fraud to continue.

You might well be… But you present as an abusive inadequate with massive reading comprehension problems, so further “discussion” would be a fruitless exercise.

Good day to you Sir.

I’ve never posted as “scientist” or “GW”. I have no idea who they are. I’ve never posted here under any other ID than helpme, if that helps you. Furthermore, I do not intend to post under any other ID than helpme. Granted, that would be a good tactic since I’m being subjected to the equivalent of a gang-bang. Your “science” doesn’t hold up to any sort of scrutiny, so I understand that you have to resort to these games. You must gather together, defend yourselves, attack any intruder who enters your alternate reality. How sad!

I understand that it’s a bias, but you do need to be much more careful about who you support. It’s all too obvious that you will support anyone, and I do mean anyone, who supports your GW and AGW alarmist positions while you will try to discredit anyone who supports or defends GW and/or AGW. I’d say that this gives me the high ground in the debate since I believe that, if you claim you don’t believe Al Gore because he has no scientific background, then you must apply the same standard to Monckton and others who are similarly deficient. And vice-versa. Of course, few are actually taking the high road on this issue. What’s most puzzling about the attacks on Al Gore is that he has not represented himself as a scientist as Monckton has tried to do. Rather, Gore has simply tried to compile information on GW and AGW for the average person. If you really wanted to debate scientists, you would head on over to http://www.skepticalscience.com/ and debate scientists there. You’d lose the debate, but you get what you _claim_ you want.

It seems hypocritical to call ClimateSkeptics skeptics, since a skeptic “is a person inclined to question or doubt”. I’ve not seen anyone here who is merely “inclined to doubt” GW or AGW…you are GW and AGW non-believers or alarmists, pretending to be mere skeptics who are _open_ to all GW and AGW science. Rather you are all closed-minded. I should have known this before I arrived at this blog, but I hoped for better. Again, I have the high ground: I’ve said I’m open to your GW and AGW reasoning, but not one of you has said you are open to my reasoning or the reasoning of GW and AGW believers.

And you think _I’m_ confused?!?!?! And you suggest that _I’m_ not a scientist?!?!? A scientist must be open to reason, to different viewpoints, and to new information. I see no one here who fits that description.

So pogo, you can keep your head where the sun doesn’t shine if you wish. And let’s exchange insults rather than discuss GW and AGW, if that is what you want. And clearly, that’s all GW and AGW alarmists/non-believers want to do.

“Ad hominem rather than ad rem” criticism? I thought that was what you were doing. You’re good for a laugh, pogo! Quite your day job and try standup comedy.

Agreed, regarding the choice of global mean surface temperature anomaly is the primary metric. Like Pielke, I think ocean heat content would be a better choice. The primary difficulty is that we don’t have much good data from before the last thirty years or so, and temperature is a variable that has been measured for a long time.

You’re right that climate isn’t driven by time. Perhaps this was prompted by my f(t) notation. All this means is that the value is different at different times. What drives it was expressed in the equation f(t+1) = 0.99*f(t) + r(t) which is saying that at every time it is a function of its previous value and a random ‘shock’.

For a physical model of what this sort of model might mean, consider the Antarctic ice cap. Ice can obvious accumulate from year to year. Precipitation adds to it, and wind, glacial flow, tide-induced mechanical cracking and melting takes it away. The total of the precipitation and losses is a variable that you could take as a first approximation as being random and independent from year to year – sometimes it’s plus and sometimes it’s minus. But the amount of ice has a different behaviour, in which it can systematically drift up or down, with the temporary runs of consecutive positive or negatives. And if the mean of the distribution of the random shocks is non-zero, you will get a persistent and systematic drift.

So suppose instead of independent random values, the precipitation is also a process with memory of the past. It depends on weather systems that last for months, on ocean heat which is a similarly accumulative system, on ocean circulations that move on a timescale of thousands of years. So the ice level becomes an accumulation of accumulations, and a very complicated some of randomness indeed.

These sorts of processes can themselves give rise to quasi-periodic oscillations, or they can have separate periodic oscillations imposed upon them. Just because the characteristics of climate can be reproduced without any underlying deterministic trend doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Obviously the day/night cycle and the seasons keep things stirred up, but ocean circulation, the Earth’s orbit and rotational inclination, the sun, and other things are a potential source of longer periodicities.

And you can get step changes and discontinuities too – which again may be externally imposed or internally generated. Just as an interesting sidenote, if you apply a step change to a damped oscillator (a particular sort of physical system in which there is a tendency to return to an equilibrium position) then you often get what is known as the Gibbs phenomenon – often called “ringing” because it is like the ringing of a bell after being struck. When perturbed, the value overshoots, and then overshoots coming back, eventually settling down to a new value. Take a look at some of the many graphs of the Gibbs phenomenon, and then take a look at the graph of temperatures above around the 1998 El Nino peak. Does anything look familiar?

Coincidentally, the Atlantic Meridional Oscillation flipped sign at about this time. (A little before it, actually.) This does not prove anything, of course – correlation does not imply causation – except to say that there are many different ways to look at that graph, and no easy way to pick one over another. The temperature record on its own is insufficient to prove anything, and is certainly not evidence, which is why they have relied so heavily on models. But that’s another story entirely.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7037671.stm

I’ll provide some text from the article. Read it very carefully.

“BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin said the ruling would be “embarrassing for Mr Gore” but would not affect the government, which said it was happy that the judge did not dismiss the film’s mainstream argument.”

Firstly you should treat anything that the BBC says about AGW with a degree of suspicion as it has totally nailed its colours to the mast of “Climate Change”, and secondly Roger Harrabin, despite being somewhat hubristically titled “Environment Analyst” is, in fact, a graduate in English and has no scientific qualifications – a criticism that, as far as I can ascertain, can be levelled at all of the BBC’s “environmental team” (and the vast majority of those in the mainstream media).

I think, to be fair, that if you posit that the “mainstream argument” of Gore’s film is “the planet is warming”, the judge didn’t dismiss it, he merely dismissed virtually all the “scientific” claims made in the film either on the basis of they were factually incorrect or of massively overblown proportion.

“Helpme”: You’re an economist for Christ’s sake!

I know several economists who are exceptionally gifted mathmeticians…

Gore knows more than you about the science of GW and AGW.

Frankly, I doubt that. He’s certainly never shown any competence as a scientist or mathmetician and shies away from any form of debate with anyone who might be.

He probably knows more than me about GW and AGW.

Much as I don’t wish to get drawn into an ad hominem slanging-match, reading some of the things you’ve written I’d guess that my cat could give you a good run for your money too.

And what about this Monckton character, a (non-elected, but rather a hereditary peer) member of the House of Lords? I’ve checked his credentials and he has none!

Just the same as Mr Gore. The difference being that Monckton appears to be a very competent mathmetician – as virtually all the criticism of his papers has been ad hominem rather than ad rem.

As for your use of “robust” language… You’re not “Scientist” in another guise by any chance?

Helpme: At times you seem to be on the verge of discussing Science, but it seems that you focus on personal issues and never get around to science. Good for you that when someone misinformed you, you were able to go to sources and get correct information. I am not very much interested in discussing Gore or his intention. If you would like to discuss the points on which I feel that AIT and other Gore presentations create deceiving impressions, we can have that discussion. However, I would much rather exchange scientific explanations and descriptions about what is happening in the climate.

Steveo: Yes, I follow your discussion and agree with it. Perhaps to kick off the discourse, my “independent reason for thinking the system observed behaves in a certain way” is that climate reacts to certain stimuli that may be cyclical (like the PDO) or that may emerge and then diminish through time (such as Mount Pinatubo). To some extent, I am bothered by the variable on the graph that prompted this discussion. First, the graph suggests that global climate can be captured in a single variable of a temperature anomaly. Second, climate change is not driven by time, by rather by exogenous variables. Nevetheless, the vast majority of AGW discussion and controversy focus on this temperature anomaly, and the exogenous variables do vary wtih time, so let us stick with the graph. It can be pointed out that a polynomial fit to temperature trends can be made via use of something constantly increasing (such as CO2 / GHG) and a shifting variable such as aerosols. I have studied articles on aerosol levels and their use in GCM. It is not hard to see why some experts say that aerosol levels in GCM are arbitrary and serve almost as dummy variables to get a good fit and leave the future driver in climate to CO2. Much more could be said, but this post is long enough.

Mesa Econoguy: It appears we’ll have to disagree on Al Gore’s book and movie. Whether we agree to disagree or not is another question. You really need to read (with an open mind), the article at the following link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7037671.stm

I’ll provide some text from the article. Read it very carefully.

“BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin said the ruling would be “embarrassing for Mr Gore” but would not affect the government, which said it was happy that the judge did not dismiss the film’s mainstream argument.”

The judge “did not dismiss the film’s mainstream argument.” Those 9 “errors” were ruled to be controversial and subject to dispute. There many scientists out there who believe that Gore’s points in the book and the movie, including the 9 errors, are at least scientifically acceptable. You still haven’t proved intent-to-deceive by Al Gore. If you are going to call Al Gore a liar, then you are going to have to call the multitude of GW and AGW alarmist blogs who deny any GW or any AGW? “Liars”, as well. And what does this make you? I’ve seen you accuse me of various and sundry mental states…confusion in you last post for example. I’d say you are the one who is confused. You are not a skeptic; you _are a denyer/liar, and an alarmist. Furthermore, you are a GW/AGW bed-wetter, in a panic rather than _trying_ to see through the fog of controversy. This makes you a liar, because you fail to allow for the other side of the argument. You’re an economist for Christ’s sake! Gore knows more than you about the science of GW and AGW. He probably knows more than me about GW and AGW. And what about this Monckton character, a (non-elected, but rather a hereditary peer) member of the House of Lords? I’ve checked his credentials and he has none! Yep. The gloves are off. I’ve tried to be Mr. Nice guy. No more with you. You don’t really know your ass from your elbow, do you? You’re just following smarter people who happen to (say they) believe as you already did. And you based your position on complete ignorance. BET YOUR NOT CONFUSED ANYMORE! Did you need a reading list to follow the debate? If you have more to say to me, I’ll provide an email address. But here, I’ll discuss things only with those who have the confidence and the competence to make their points. You have neither.