The other problem is that we tend to give too much value to the events we experience ourselves. This is no doubt happening right now in Australia.

It would be easier for climate scientists in the US if the place was boiling hot at the moment. But it has been unusually cool there last northern winter and right through the summer. Whistler in Canada BC where the next winter Olympics is to be held had record snow falls. My sister who lives in a two level townhouse in Toronto had snow piled a story high around their place for much of the winter.

A further problem is that there are real difficulties in predicting temperatures in the shorter term, by which I mean a decade or so. The data collection isn’t extensive enough and I understand that if it was there would be difficulty in storing it computer-wise. Mostly they work in grids of 300km squared. I heard that the Japanese were trying to bring this down to 1km, so we wish them luck.

I’ve had a couple of goes recently at this temperature prediction thing here and here. Note the muted El Nino effect this century in the first post. Note Latif’s comments about the difficulties of prediction in the second. Note in the first scientists disagreeing with each other rather than in a conspiratorial huddle.

Note also Figure 3 in the second. That blue blob was over North America right through the winter also. It means buggerall.

The latest image on the NASA GISS site shows that the story was quite different in the US in 2005 and 2007.

While we are at that site here is the global land-ocean surface temperature since 1880, with a 5-year average. Looks like it’s going up to me. The little hook developing at the end doesn’t look as though it’s shaping to be much different than at least 9 others on the way. To say AGW is invalid because of the last 10 years temperatures is patently absurd. I’d prefer a 10-year average, which wouldn’t be pausing as yet. Ten years is minuscule in geologic time.

And here’s the last 15 years. What cooling?

May I remind you about ocean heat content. It has bumps also for reasons not known to me.

That’s a long way of saying that a couple of scientists exchanging chat about their frustrations over the limitations of their science, and difficulties in explaining lumps and bumps which are truly minuscule in the broad scheme of things, is neither here nor there.

Would very much doubt that Bolt needs to be paid by Oil companies specifically to peddle anti-AGW progaganda.

Bolt is more of a Monckton, an idelogical warrior. Except Bolt’s motivation is not fear that the left is going to take over the planet, just Bolt’s generalized hatred and contempt for the left and his unshakeable belief that the left is never correct about anything important.

Bolt is a reactionary in the sense that he will automatically gainsay any argument emanating from the left. It’s a religious belief, good vs. evil, the US v. the USSR, the Cold War continued.

If the left is correct then corporate-oligarchical Capitalism (his god) is proven wrong. Heresy. So that’s why Bolt is so visceral. It’s hate. A religious war.

So, for his masters Bolt is the most useful kind of intelligent idiot. He’d write his anti-AGW tripe for free. Being paid for him is a bonus. Like getting paid for surfing or playing World Of Warcraft for others.

[The commenter's question] is revealing of an assumption that people are being paid to research global warming. They just aren’t. People are paid to research clouds, rain, temperature, land surface fluxes, radiation, bogs and ice cores and ocean mud and cave records. Which of those do you think are going to change their field of study if the globe was cooling instead of warming?

It’s comment 747 on “The CRU Hack” thread

Part 1

Part 2

Then she has done an interesting piece on the IPCC, including a detailed account of the IPCC review process by Queensland University’s Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. Definitely worth reading.

I haven’t personally tried to look but it seems that all the review comments are available on the net. The transparency seems exemplary.

The main worry seems that the results are too conservative.

niceclothesemperor @ 244, you should be worried about 0.6C. I’ve already explained that Stefan Rahmstorf reckons that coming out of the ice age every degree of warming was worth about 20 metres in sea level rise. If you turn up the heat from here you get no ice left with 5 degrees, that’s an average of about 15 metres per degree. It’s not rocket science. Look at this image from Rahmstorf and Archer, 2006. (Actually I found the image via Google image in my own post! Scroll down a bit – how exciting!)

Custard thingie @ 249, as Zarquon said, no data was destroyed. At this stage in the debate if this was a fully moderated site I’d be deleting comments like that which have been dealt with. That doesn’t mean that all the scientists concerned were paragons of virtue.

Umm, I dont wanna be rude, but I wouldnt share my primary data with anyone until I’d published the resulting refereed article

Exposed: the Portuguese Colonial Fortification HOAX

However, what will be interesting, after the big wash-up, is where the hack came from. I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of the EACRU IT security chief at present!

”
; Plots 24 yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled or not) MXD reconstructions
; of growing season temperatures. Uses “corrected” MXD – but shouldn’t usually
; plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to
; the real temperatures.
;”

No doubt there is more to come

Can people stop using today’s climate events as proof of global warming when the conditions required (CO2 emissions) to achieve those negative outcomes are many decades into the future?

In other news, sun expected to rise and set.

Umm, I dont wanna be rude, but I wouldnt share my primary data with anyone until I’d published the resulting refereed article.

For that matter, in my field, Im not even *allowed* to (ethical concerns over privacy for researdh involving human subjects). Of course, the latter doesnt apply to climate research (not involving human subjects) but the former (non-sharing of primary data), hell yes.

To answer your original question I had attempted to answer previously, Brian posted this earlier (with links, mine is without):

Most of the issues you raise have been well and truly gone over and you should be able to access sites like this one and this one.

The Monash one is pretty compelling.

For arguments sake, lets say you are going for a medical check up. Your GP humms and arrhs and hands you a referral. So you go and for good measure consulted several medical specialists. The majority say that with large probability you have a malignant tumor, which with appropriate and immediate treatment can be cured. While on the other side you have a few specialists and a bunch of internet sites hosted by eccentric scientists with track records as well as tabloid editors which dispute the credibility of above specialists and they all recon you should carry on as usual, there is nothing to worry about.

What to do?

Would it help your decision making process if you’d have access to all and sundry dirty laundry?

Spend a week in a geophysics faculty and you’ll discover they can be a quarrelsome and boisterous lot, which can be entertaining but does detract the uninitiated from the actual serious questions they are addressing.

You can try and whitewash it all you want, but it stinks.

What stinks is anonymous jerks on the internet leaping to conclusions based on selective and out-of-context stolen emails. It amounts to accusations of thoughtcrime straight out of 1984.

I think Australia has proven (through elections and such) that we’re prepared to act.