Steves work, to me, is a great reason why the public has every right, indeed duty, to be skeptical of the way this whole thing is being handled.

His presentation can be found here.

Denial is a defense mechanism’ postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.

The subject may deny the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether (simple denial), admit the fact but deny its seriousness (minimisation) or admit both the fact and seriousness but deny responsibility (transference). The concept of denial is particularly important to the study of addiction. The theory of denial was first researched seriously by Anna Freud. She classified denial as a mechanism of the immature mind, because it conflicts with the ability to learn from and cope with reality.

It is in this sense that I continue to use the terms “denial” and “denialist”.

I think ’sceptic’ (or skeptic) if based on science is fine. But often when looking at the position of anti-AGW people you find very early outrageous distortions and claims that are blatantly wrong. In that case I think one is justified in not wasting any time on them.

It is an attempt to draw a connection between holocaust deniers and people who are not convinced by global warming.

I accept most people do not realise thats how the term started, and now its just a meme, but nevertheless, thats where it came from. The two are not morally equivalent, and it offends me.

I accept the science and beleive AGW is happening, but I am happy to acknowledge not everyone agrees. I suspect it is a clever device to stifle debate, much the way anyone who dares question immigration policy is called a racist, regardless of the argument they are making. Shout them down as a denier, and apperently everything they say thereafter is irrelevent.

observations as evidence, theory and math models as tools

I deliberately did not get into conceptual models because the post was already long. Observations and measurement are interpreted through conceptual models, much as are theory and math models.

Even observations are contestable - it is the rules of “contest” where objections are made outside the realms of what is contestable within a scientific framework that I object to.

I read scientists saying that the sea levels are going to rise 100 metres, and I read scientists saying that we are about to enter another ice age because of sun spot activity? Who should I believe?

The problem here is if we do nothing and the planet heats up, the consequences will be disasterous. But, also, if we doing everything and the climate does something independent of our efforts, the results (people out of work, and so on) will also be disasterous.

And, yes, first world countries have to lead on this issue. That leadership can only be effective in a “well, I’m not doing it if you ain’t” attitude to developing countries. It’s a lot harder to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

We already know how to reduce our gg footprint - we did it in the second world war with paper technology - it was called ‘rationing’.

We did it because we believed there was a real and present danger.

We could do the same now - if we wanted to. GG production down by 25% would be an easily achievable target within a couple of years if the cuts of the second world war are anything to go by.

So why don’t we?

From this forum, and with conversations with others who claim to believe in AGW, all I get is twisting and turning and alibis at every point where I say they can make real reductions in their GG emission if they were serious.

My answer to the ‘So why don’t we.’ question is that this use of alibis demonstrates that people do not really believe in AGW, at least they certainly do not act like they believe in AGW.

I shall repeat the point Zoot - because I did make it before. If you really believe in AGW and you are one of those prepared to make the necessary adjustments to help the planet as you see it, your enemies are not the outright deniers, but those people who appear to support you, but then head off with their kids and SUV etc with all sorts of alibis as to why they have to have that carbon footprint - and the spinning dials at our power stations and petrol pumps say I am right.

I thank you - you have illustrated my point exactly.

We have six billion people on this planet - and having more of em in a country that is characterised by a big per person carbon footprint is hardly acting as if global warming actually exists.

Like I say, the deniers are easy to spot and deal with. I am one. However, for all that, my car odo tells me that I did a whole five hundred km last year - I walk to work and use pt even though it is not that convenient. I have no kids. I tend to fat, so my diet is higher in veg than the average. So my carbon footprint is in fact far less than most. Yet I get more aggro from so called agw believers whose carbon footprint is multiples of mine - and I am highly amused. I am thinking of making myself up a list of all the alibis that agw believers trot out when I challenge their energy profligacy. (Public transport is soooo inconvenient, using the bike is sooo dangerous, I have to go on that trip interstate/overseas because videoconferencing facilities are on the other side of town, we have decided to have children but will bring them up to be responsible users of resources and Aust needs the population, I have to have an SUV to carry all my gear etc etc).

In terms of demonstrating he difference between warming of the climate system and increasing global average temperatures, I think it’s hard to go past this video of monthly satellite maps of Arctic ice extent from 1979 to late 2007 compiled by WWF International.

It very clearly shows a collapse in the Arctic ice over the last decade since global warming apparently stopped. I wonder why that happened, then?

Oh, and wilful, you hit the nail on the head with Ferguson. He is tremendously influential and will do pretty much anything to protect coal. Witness his promotion of liquefied coal for transport fuel and, ludicrously, exporting Victoria’s brown coal.

Lines of evidence applied in science include:
Observation
Theory
Mathematical models

Umm.

Observation is evidence.

Theory is not evidence. It is (consestable) explanation of evidence.

Mathematical models are not evidence. They are constructs of theory and just as contestable, if not more so, as the theory they are built on.

Statistical analysis does not serve as an independent line of evidence.

Quite right. It is a tool used to understand and validate observation and to refine the construction of theory and from that the models that are built on theory.

But it is not invalid for being a tool.

Just as theory and mathematical models which are built on careful observation and sound statistical analysis are not invalid just because they are also tools.

I see Bolta is still at this morning on 6pr he was ridiculing Flannery and now says that 31000 scientists are sceptics,and this rubbish is swallowed by his followers without question.
how much longer can this fool get away with it

As long as it’s useful.
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it’s a mistake to think that Bolt or his ilk are seriously interested in the truth of the matter. He’s fundamentally a propagandist. He understands this well enough I think. News Ltd pay him well to compose propaganda which sounds reasonable to his supporters and inflames the opposition. One thing he’s very good at is making those who disagree with him froth so badly they look like lunatics.
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In aid of this he’s most excellent at cherry picking facts in order to distort data. The deployment of this kind of spin in addition to the decreasing ability of most people to recognize it as such is a big problem for public debate. With Climate Science it’s pretty easy. The phenomena is chaotic, the science is still quite young, there’s a lot of data we don’t have and it’s all hard to understand. Put that into the realm of political discourse and it’s a job for the spin doctors.
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However denialists like Bolt are going to look increasingly ludicrous. When the shit really hits the fan I look forward to confronting him with his nefarious scribblings and inviting him to dine on ‘em.
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Good post Paul.

(although I think that in Australia we have a moral responsibility to take in people from countries in the region which have become untenable - so the place wouldn’t have a declining population per se.)

Be interesting to see how many people will actually ‘believe’ in AGW if they have to make serious inroads into their lifestyles?

You see people could use public transport, people could downsize or eliminate their cars, people could build more energy efficient houses, people could cease and desist having children who will grow up into little energy consumers. All this and more (add no meat eating, no jet travel if you like) is feasible, and necessary if global warming is a real threat. However, listen to the alibis - and alibis they are if there really is global warming. Don’t worry about the denialists - they are obvious. It’s the hangers on who say they believe in global warming, but then jet around burning Avgas, have kids, and a fuel guzzler, who are the real enemies of true AGW believers.

Good gracious, people are now putting gas heaters outside so that they can have al fresco dining in mid winter!!

In regards to so called ‘Clean Coal’, or carbon capture and storage, I don’t see how we can afford NOT to invest in this technology in parallel with cleaner renewable energy. In Australia, our electricity grid is some 80% or more from coal-fired power stations. There is absolutely no way we can effectively reduce our short to medium term CO2 emissions without CCS. It just isn’t going to happen. However, the important point here is parallel investment into renewables…

From a link in the comments thread of the David Karoly Online Opinion post I came upon a pretty pretty neat post. Figure 4 which graphed net forcing (including aerosols) versus global land ocean temperature anomaly, both from NASA GISS was impressive. I was less impressed with Figure 3 where I thought he should have drawn the trend lines to bring out the mid-century plateau and the 1975+ step up as mentioned by Roger above.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but in a recent interview Ken Caldeira said:

We did a calculation that actually the average coal-fired power plant cools the Earth for about the first 7 years because it’s sulphate emissions have a cooling influence more than the CO2. But then after seven years the CO2 accumulates enough to overwhelm that sulfate cooling, and then of course the CO2 levels remain high in the atmosphere for many thousands of years.

great post

I am continually gobsmacked at the shoddy use of statistics the people are able to get away with in order to pursue their normative goals. The Globe Is Not Warming Swindle is a case in point. These misleading views we then find being aired on the National Broadcaster to somehow achieve “balance”.

In this case, by choosing 1998 as a baseline year from which to do a trend analysis of global mean temperature, to argue that the globe is not warming, is cherry-picking. It is dishonest and is an attempt to mislead, at the very least.

Lines of evidence applied in science include:
Observation
Theory
Mathematical models

Statistical analysis does not serve as an independent line of evidence. It is a tool applied to the various lines above. A single line of argument based on a single statistical test that is being used to disprove a large body of science should be distrusted.

Global mean temperature is constructed from stations on land and marine observations from ships of opportunity and bouys. The data is continually being upgraded and checked. The observational errors are well understood, despite objections from denialists. Best practise guidelines from the World Meteorological Organisation are followed.
The theory, observations and models agree that 1998 was anomalously warm because of the intense El Niño that year. Conversely, 1992-4 was cool due to a previous volcanic eruption (and was used to test climate models, which reproduced that short-term cooling pretty well).

I have subjected both the GISS (US) and HadCRU (UK) global temperature time series to a step-change analysis. They suggest there was a step change from previously static trends (1945-1975) in 1976. It is highly statistically signifant. The linear warming trend from 1976 to 2006 is 0.2°C per decade or 2°C per century.

If we were to be honest about analysing shorter term trends within that sequence we would look at the trends within say, all eight- or nine-year periods since 1976, because we know that climate has varied widely within that time. If we do that, we find that climate trends have ranged from slightly negative to wildly positive.

Blogging scientists James Annan and Tamino have just done that.

The recent article in Nature suggesting an upcoming short-term decrease in warming is highly contested, not least by realclimate. What the paper shows is that integrating 20th century processes into climate modelling improves its performance. This a recent scientific endeavour that aims to bridge historical climate with climate projections in a single simulation framework. The “forecast” is already departing from obs on global basis from 2000-5 (Figure 4 of the paper), so which do we believe? Luckily, we already know that short-term departures are not statistically valid when assessing a longer term trend.

The Nature paper is valuable, not for the results but for its advances in modelling. Getting real world variability into models is critical. For example, I have tested historical Australian rainfall fluctuations using a statistical model. The fluctuations that Goyder warned of with great prescience are an inherent part of our climate. This is relevant to the past decade of low rainfall in south-east Australia today - is it variability, change or a combination of both? It would be great if we had the modelling systems with sufficient skill to integrate real-time variability with change. At present these are invesigated separately.

The use of statistics to argue cooling since 1998 in order to discount risk, can potentially lead to great harm if that risk is ignored. When such an act is carried out by a scientific professional, I believe this is misconduct of the sort associated with plagiarism or falsification of data. Any non-professional who does the same should be ignored.