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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 52751 to 52800:

  1. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Albatross: "Do they really think that people are so obtuse as to not keep track of such things?" Yes, they do. They depend on it. If people had the time, energy, training, and/or means to fact check, opinion-makers like Rose and Watts would be doing something honest for a living. In general, it's not deliberate stupidity. It's just a lot of work to get to a point where one can be confident about the basis of one's beliefs. I'd argue that in the eyes of most people, Rose appears at least as trustworthy as government-supported scientists -- not very trustworthy. How many people have read Rose and followed up by going to the Met Office blog? How many then went to verify from a third party. And so on . . . ?
  2. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Great article, thanks! I have one question, looking at the figure 2 I see that the heat content of the atmosphere is 2.3%, based on a period of 10 years. Table 2 in Church et al 2011 gives 2.0/207.2 = 1.0% for the atmosphere over a longer period 1972-2008. Would it not be better to use the Church data?
  3. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Thanks for the heads-up Lionel. It's always a pleasant surprise when The Guardian reposts our stuff!
  4. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Good to see you in the UK Guardian . Poor 'ShuffledCarrot'is still confused about what Phil Jones said about temperatures it would seem. I don't think Judith will be much pleased with that picture either.
  5. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Interesting graphic and article JR.
  6. New research from last week 41/2012
    Perhaps I just miss the good old days when climate was all nice. Cursive rather than cursed.
  7. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    @Cornelius Breadbasket at 00:31 AM on 17 October, 2012 This might be useful to you. Infographic: What puts up your energy bill?
  8. Climate sensitivity is low
    @ Falkenherz
    "I ignored Milankovitch cycles (MC) because they are uncontested"
    Perhaps not by you (at this moment) nor by most scientists (some do) but there are those who deny this, daily.
    "nobody really seems to know the physics of the trigger for global temperature changes"
    You project here. Try reading this post (including the comments threads, which should be mandatory).
    "My research here is about climate sensitiviy, and specifically why consenus seems to be that it is high."
    Um, "consensus" is that climate sensitivity is bewteen 1.9 (or so) and 4.2 (or so) with a central estimate of 3.0 being strongest. That you characterize that as "high" speaks volumes.
    " if we don't know the physical trigger process"
    More projection, again. Suggestion: more research & reading (by you), less trying to shoehorn reality into the worldview you have chalked out for it.
  9. Nuccitelli et al. (2012) Show that Global Warming Continues
    JoeRG @55 - MarkR @58 is correct. Fair point that it may be overreaching to say that the rise in global heat content has accelerated, and it's not something we said in the paper itself. P.T. @57 - NCDC and GISS use the same raw data, but each applies their own adjustments to that data in order to estimate the average global temperature. The only thing their datasets have in common is the use of the same raw data from the GHCN. See here.
  10. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    I have zero sympathy for Curry here. Rose is notorious for distorting climate science in every article he writes on the issue, and as others have noted, Curry herself claims to have been misrepresented by Rose in the past. Maybe she should learn from these experiences and stop granting him interviews, because he clearly views her as an easy target to support his climate denial.
  11. Climate sensitivity is low
    Philippe, I ignored Milankovitch cycles (MC) because they are uncontested and I assumed they would have a certain known impact on global temperature, thereby initiating ice ages. Reading through the links you provided, this assumtion is wrong. If I understood correctly, nobody really seems to know the physics of the trigger for global temperature changes, only that MC must be a trigger, and it is assumed that glacial changes on the landmass-rich northern hemisphere play a key role. In other words, there is no initial rise of global temperature as the initial trigger, but rather some severe local imbalances. This just in short, because there is that other article specifically on MC. My research here is about climate sensitiviy, and specifically why consenus seems to be that it is high. So right now I am puzzled why people assume a high climate sensitivity if we don't know the physical trigger process. After all, if I understood correctly, it seems like local insolation can peak at 600 W/m2, which would probably be a very strong trigger with only a low sensitivity required. I am unsure where to continue discussion. Maybe I best move on to the MC article. (I start feeling like a hyperlink nomad and comment-parasite. Do you guys maybe have a forum?) CBDunkerson, thanks for confirming no real strong TSI changes connected to the ice age cycles.
  12. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Talking above of internal inconsistencies with arguments used by fake skeptics. As I alluded to earlier, last year when the BEST project not-surprisingly corroborated the research of climate scientists. Scrambling, fake skeptics then declared: "Global Warming is Real" Delingpole went on to say, "It has been a truth long acknowledged by climate sceptics, deniers and realists of every conceivable hue that since the mid-19th century, the planet has been on a warming trend..." There you have it from the mouth of a prominent fake skeptic. Yet, only 10 days later (!), Delingpole penned a diatribe titled, "Global warming, yeah right". Fast forward to present and now the fake skeptics have reverted to recycling another old favourite myth of "no warming in X years", with suggestions that the UK Met. Office is trying to hide something thrown in for good measure. This is beyond a joke. Do they really think that people are so obtuse as to not keep track of such things? It is insulting and the public should be outraged that some "skeptic" scientists and media outlets are so intent on continually misleading and confusing them on this issue that is of utmost importance. This sad saga yet again demonstrates the inability of fake skeptics to mount a coherent, internally consistent and credible argument against the theory of AGW. What is especially egregious though is that a "skeptic" scientist is enabling them.
  13. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    ScepticalWombat @6, "Curry has consistently argued that a great deal of the increase we have seen (not to mention melting ice in the Arctic) may be attributable to the AMO and the PDO..." Yes it is very convenient, especially if one wishes to obfuscate. A blog post in the next day or two will speak to this myth. The fact of the matter is that researchers estimate that anything from 60-90% of the recent ice decline is attributable to anthropogenic warming. Additionally, other research has shown that the current loss of Arctic ice is unprecedented on a millennial time scale (e.g., Polyak et al. 2010, Kinnard et al. 2012). Both those papers are covered at SkS here. It is also odd that Curry appears to be of the opinion that uncertainty is always skewed in the direction of lower climate sensitivity, yet at the same time she argues that the same models with a climate sensitivity of 1.5 to 4.5 C global warming for doubling of CO2 are deeply flawed because they are underestimating the loss of warming. How can models that are underestimating the loss of Arctic sea ice and sea-level rise at the same time be claimed to be too sensitive to the doubling of 2xCO2? So the internal inconsistency of this argument is obvious, as it is with most of the arguments made by "skeptics".
  14. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    ScepticalWombat @6, ".. fairness to Professor Curry she does claim that she has been misquoted " That would ordinarily be a reasonable assumption. But there is a history here that suggests something else is going. Just under a year ago, BEST released their results and the fake skeptics were up in arms because the BEST results corroborated the warming in the land surface temperature record that climate scientists had been telling us about all along. At that time (October 2011) non other than David Rose interviewed Dr. Curry. She took exception to the fact that some of the statements that Rose had attributed to her and stated that she had been misrepresented. Tamino notes: "Judith Curry protests that she was misrepresented by the article in the Daily Mail, and several readers have mentioned that David Rose, the author of the article, is just the man to do such a thing." One has to wonder then why on earth Curry would elect to give Rose another interview given her recent experience with him? Oddly, Curry is again claiming that she has been misrepresented. So much back-peddling by CUrry, but in the meantime the horse has bolted around media outlets sympathetic to fake skeptics. Why would anyone again speak to a journalist a) who is infamous for misrepresenting people, and b) who has misrepresented you in the past? Now Dr. Curry is not that gullible. No, something else is going on here, and I'm sure that astute readers can figure it out.
  15. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    "Bourgeois Left-wing academics" That one really made me laugh It seems like something Watts would imply, but with a little more finesse I suppose.
  16. It's not us
    adelady: thank you for your comment. CBDunkerson: I agree - clearly we have no common basis for discussion. Ditto KR.
  17. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Many thanks for the article Dana, certainly helps me take the battle to the committed misinformers on the CBC. Mores the pity, similar to the trend Cornelius pointed to, there is growing criticism to turbines in Canada. Mostly, we Canucks seem to be in favour of the

    idea

    of turbines, but it is a "not in my back yard" sense. As more information is presented that warming is still occuring, green energy helps the economy, the non-climate related impacts of fossil fuel energy production are enormous and that the projected impacts of catastrophic climate change are not exaggerations, hopefully the trend of criticism will be reversed
  18. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Neven @ 13 - Wasn't Dr. Curry also "misquoted" during the recent PBS NewsHour dustup? It could all trace back to the same original quote, but if she is honestly having that much trouble getting her point across, you would think she may try a different approach.
  19. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Cornelius I think the increase in prices is due to a number of factors, including low carbon energy and grid investment etc. but not solely. Regarding the UKIP doc. Reading the first few paragraphs... The 15% figure for renewable energy is often a misquoted and mis-used one. It applies to ALL energy use, not just electricity generation. It was (mis)used by Chris-Heaton Smith in his campaign to get MP support to stop/reduce wind farm installations. I think it is estimated that around 30% of UK electricity will have to be produced from renewables to obtain a 15% overall renewable energy portfolio by 2020. Renewables currently (in Q1 of 2012) account for about 11% of electricity generation, that is all electricity generation renewables, not just wind turbines. The spinning reserve thing quoted for gas turbines I would say is incorrect, such a turbine probably only takes about 15 minutes or so to run up. Much of this issue is in designing systems. In any case there are some good energy storage systems being developed now that have a lot of potential, use cheap abundant materials and don't depend on batteries. Such as: http://www.isentropic.co.uk/ The keep the 'wheels of industry' turning bit is amusing considering most of it has been exported to China et al! UKIP twist the purpose of the current renewables plans. Current renewables installation is to offset established fossil fuel electrcity generation, so inevitably you are still going to have fossil fuel generators as well. What they are doing is assuming that the current plan is to shut down fossil fuel plants on a like for like basis. Some of that will happen but the goal is to cut CO2, not to take plants offline. The bigger issue is later when we need to have a higher percentage of low carbon energy. But that's when the new energy storage and smart technology will kick in and we will need fewer fossil fuel fired power stations.
  20. Cornelius Breadbasket at 00:31 AM on 17 October 2012
    Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    I am so grateful for this article. Here in the UK there is a growing backlash against wind turbines and the article was skewed to imply that growing energy prices were the result of green energy, which I don't believe to be accurate. With 'respected' papers like the Mail printing nonsense - no wonder we have UKIP printing policy documents like this one. Please - is there someone at SKS who would be kind enough to help me write an objective scientific response to this policy document?
  21. Arctic sea ice has recovered
    As Neven points out, CT sea ice area has now surpassed the record anomaly against the 1979-2008 daily average. The record from 2007 was 2.635 million km2 below the daily average. The record is now 2.705 million km2 below.
  22. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Bart: My fault. Updated data for all the series, including new versions of HadCRUT4, BEST and UAH on their way to John. Unfortunately we never got round to automating the updates.
  23. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #41
    All the links look fine now. Must just have been the two you fixed.
  24. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    But what is much worse, in my opinion, is when you have a (formerly) respected scientist (i.e., Curry) enabling Rose while full-knowing the long dubious history of said "journalist". In fairness to Professor Curry she does claim that she has been misquoted She claimed she had been misquoted by David Rose last year as well. In fact she said: "At the moment, I’m feeling manipulated by both Rose and BEST." But she talked to him again, and was misquoted again. Well, gee golly, would you believe it? Poor, innocent Dr. Curry...
  25. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Dear all, Very good post, but...I downloaded the HadCrut4 data myself. The yearly average temp from 1997 to 2011 are: 1997 0.39 1998 0.523 1999 0.298 2000 0.291 2001 0.433 2002 0.485 2003 0.496 2004 0.438 2005 0.534 2006 0.491 2007 0.478 2008 0.383 2009 0.489 2010 0.54 2011 0.399 I computed a linear trend with Excell and the outcome is 0.06 per decade (not 0.084). As far as I can see the trend calculator seem to miss some points at the end of the series? Bart Strengers
  26. It's not us
    Carbon500, if you make reality a matter of perception then we have no common basis for discussion. Either the globe consists of more than the surface atmosphere (e.g. oceans, higher layers of the atmosphere, et cetera) or it does not. Either the graph you posted showed a warming trend or it did not. If you truly believe the 'not' position on either of these issues then 'the way you see it' is at odds with perceived reality 'the way I see it'.
  27. Climate sensitivity is low
    Falkenherz, it depends on what you mean by 'significant'. Current TSI (sometimes still called 'the Solar constant' even though we now know it isn't actually constant) is about 1361 W/m^2. The Maunder Minimum ~1700 was less than 1 W/m^2 lower. Thus, the most profound swing in TSI of the past several thousand years was a change of less than 0.1%. The difference from peak to valley of the ~11 year cycles is also about 0.1%, but obviously maintained over a shorter period. Over longer time scales TSI is increasing by about 0.1% per ~140,000 years as the Sun grows older and hotter. Yet, these 'tiny' changes in TSI have noticeable effects on the Earth's climate due to feedback sensitivity. The fact that current greenhouse gas forcings are already larger than any solar variation of the past few hundred thousand years should thus be of some concern.
  28. It's not us
    carbon500, You need to check out the latest SkS post.
  29. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    I was waiting for this debunk to inform my comments on HuffPo. Its climate section has been inundated by Daily Mailites. I love the denier / realist gif. This distortion of the Met Office HadCRUT4 data will I'm afraid be a powerful denialist tool. Complexity is the enemy in the Daily Mail's / WUWT world of automatic gainsay.
  30. It's not us
    KR: It depends on what you mean by an experiment. To me an experiment is something which has been set up so that variables can be controlled by the experimenter, hence my comments regarding an artificial atmosphere. CBDunkerson: the graph I'm talking about is entitled 'Monthly Mean Global Surface Temperature'- you don't agree with the way I see it; so be it. (-snip-)
    Moderator Response: [DB] Off-topic snipped. Please follow the link that Adelady was kind enough to provide for a discussion of that newspaper article.
  31. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Tommi@7, Your critique has been explained in this post. Particularly in comment 2, Dana explains that the "dip" is due to incomplete BEST data from 2011, that "skeptics" like to cherry-pick to support their preconceptions, wheareas in the realist view, BEST series was extended with all available data for 2011 (at that time). Was it a good choice to illustrate this denialist meme? It is a matter of opinion. My opinion is that it was good, as we've seen example of such data cherying/distorting by denialists in the past.
  32. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    It's depressing how an apparently serious newspaper prints such garbage. I don't see any big complication in understanding that a linear trend overlaid on short-term cyclic variation can occasionally result in a "flat" or even "negative" short-term trend. A really simple thing to do is to create a plot of a sine wave added to a linear function (e.g. y = sinx + 0.1x will give periods of about 3 units where the curve goes down) and on a sufficiently small time scale, the trend appears reversed, or do what I did here: take a period when the temperature record is flat, add a positive linear trend, and you will still find periods when there is a negative slope on a trend line. In all cases, you know there's a linear trend because you've imposed one on data that had no trend before.
  33. Nuccitelli et al. (2012) Show that Global Warming Continues
    #55 Hi again JoeRG, I think I understand why they chose to use the global value. It's because they're looking at total radiative forcing, and ultimately they include land/atmosphere/ice heating as well as OHC change in the calculation. So the total value should use a factor of 0.62. In this case it makes sense to calculate the individual components using the 0.62 factor because then they can be simply summed to get the final answer. What each column is calculating is therefore the global RF required to produce each heat content change in 0-700 m, 700-2000 m and LIA. Makes sense, as Table 1 is labelled 'global flux imbalance...'
  34. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    The Daily Mail has been appropriately described as "Britain's answer to Fox News". Enough said.
  35. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    BTW, there's something a little off in the escalator. The last data point shows up with an odd dip before disappearing for the red trend. As it's a good graph against all these "it hasn't warmed since YYYY" and I would've loved to link to that, but in its current state the animation potentially might raise some redundant questions from a certain crowd. Thankfully, Dave Britton handled the denialist comments in the met office response amicably.
  36. Sceptical Wombat at 19:19 PM on 16 October 2012
    Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    In fairness to Professor Curry she does claim that she has been misquoted and never said that the climate models were "deeply flawed". According to her blog she said 'The data confirms the existence of a ‘pause’ in the warming. The impact of this pause within the climate dynamic community has been to focus increased attention on the impact of natural variability, particularly the impact of internal multi-decadal oscillations in the ocean. The new climate model calculations for the AR5 have focused on trying to assess what it would take to accurately simulate these multi-decadal ocean oscillations and how predictable they might be. These new observations and climate modeling results will hopefully impact the the IPCC AR5 deliberations so that we do not see the same overly confident consensus statements that we saw in the AR4. ' Curry has consistently argued that a great deal of the increase we have seen (not to mention melting ice in the Arctic) may be attributable to the AMO and the PDO. These are convenient because the AMO in particular goes for multiple decades so even 30 years of increase can still be attributed to them. I haven't seen any analytic work by either Curry or anyone else to substantiate this hypothesis. Of course her claim for a pause in the warming ignores the fact that when you correct for TSI, ENSO and aerosols there has been a steady increase - and as you say there is the small matter of ocean warming.
  37. Nuccitelli et al. (2012) Show that Global Warming Continues
    I'm struggling to convince a denier that the Daily Mail article is incorrect. One of the tools I'm using is the SkS post (What has global warming done since 1998?) that shows continued global warming in a graph using GISS, NCDC, and HadCRUT data. My denier acquaintance insists that "NCDC is GISS data." I understand NCDC is under NOAA and GISS is under NASA. Clearly from the graph alone NCDC data is different or is processed differently than GISS data. Their respective websites suggest that NCDC and GISS rely on different satellite data. Can some tell me the difference between NCDC and GISS data? Sorry if this is the wrong place to post the question.
  38. Philippe Chantreau at 19:07 PM on 16 October 2012
    Climate sensitivity is low
    Falkenherz, Tamino has a good explanation with the maths, Wobbles part1 and part2, on the WB machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20080501124634/tamino.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/wobbles-part-1/ http://web.archive.org/web/20080419120634/http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/wobbles-part-2/ Wiki has the skinny on Milankovitch, I'm surprised you seem to be not yet familiar with that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles Berger and Loutre have published quite a bit on the subject, check them out. The litterature is out there.
  39. Climate sensitivity is low
    CBDunkerson, thanks for correcting me again. But my question is still open: So, are there really no significant changes in TSI throughout the last 450k years? Philippe, I take it I then have to talk about insolation instead of TSI? So, let me rephrase: What was the difference in insolation or whatever W/m2, in order to trigger the shifts during the last 450k years?
  40. empirical_bayes at 17:22 PM on 16 October 2012
    Nuccitelli et al. (2012) Show that Global Warming Continues
    What would be interesting to know, quite apart from implications for contact melting of ice caps, is what this continued sinking of heat energy in oceans does for their thermal expansion.
  41. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    YubeDube @4, Yes, the usual suspects for sure. The denial propaganda machine is doing whatever it can to try and drown out the inconvenient truths such as the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice and continuation of anthropogenic global warming. "Keep repeating until the noise drowns out reality." Agreed. This duo by Rose and Curry is clearly designed to drown out reality and help fake skeptics deal with their denial and cognitive dissonance. "....but in regards to the state of affairs in the world of journalism." This is a pretty sad time for journalism. Good and ethical journalists should be outing Rose and giving him a piece of their minds. But will they have the fortitude to call out one of their own? It is their loss and another hit on their profession if they don't.
  42. Nuccitelli et al. (2012) Show that Global Warming Continues
    #53 MarkR Thanks for the explanation. It's clear now. #48 dana1981 Thanks as well. Regardless, the main conclusions remain unchanged. Not quite. Speak of an "accelerated rate" is a bit overstated. But nonetheless, the forcing is of course strong. For me it seems that DK12 used this difference of the 2000-2008 and 2002-2008 to generate this "negative" forcing. If so, it would be absurd. I have a last question. Why you use a factor of 0.62 what includes the whole surface? For a forcing that counts to the OHC, only the oceans surface is to consider. For the land values you use the LAI data where the rest, means the remaining 29% of the surface, have to be considered. For your OHC data a factor of 0.88 would be correct, I think. Do you agree?
  43. Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
    When 3-sigma events occur 10x as often, they are no longer 3-sigma events!
  44. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Albatross @3 Google the title and you will quickly see the usual suspects pop up on the radar. This article is an excellent example of the concept of meme in regards to the disinformation of Availability cascade. Keep repeating until the noise drowns out reality. This article is disgusting not only as it is viewed in relationship to climate science and understanding but in regards to the state of affairs in the world of journalism.
  45. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    YubeDube @1, Interesting analysis. You finish by saying, "Regardless of the reasons for this article, the substance is appallingly misleading noise." I agree--nothing but noise from a radical, anti-science minority, it is all they have. It is bad enough that certain "journalists" habitually misrepresent the science and fabricate falsehoods. But what is much worse, in my opinion, is when you have a (formerly) respected scientist (i.e., Curry) enabling Rose while full-knowing the long dubious history of said "journalist". This is wholly unacceptable, and tragic that such repeated unprofessional behaviour goes without consequence. Not surprisingly, the usual fake skeptics out there have been only too happy to uncritically disseminate this propaganda.
  46. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    The daily mail article was linked on NZ's Whaleoil blog. It prompted me to download the HADCRUT4 monthly data and make my own graph. You can see my comment and graph here. The mail online had chosen to start their graph with the September 1997 figure, .475 degrees. The January 1997 figure is about .2 degrees so would have given the impression of an overall .3 degree rise through to May 2012. Of course nowhere does the mail online cop to only including the last 4 months of 1997's data.
  47. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    I started this last night knowing that someone was going to post....thanks Dana. Recently SKS has posted a number of quality articles on the issue of climate change communication-CCC. One aspect of CCC that keeps showing itself over and over is the misdirection of obfuscation as offered by those who, for whatever reason, feel the need to take their skepticism out of the realm of reason and logic and into the dark shadows of rhetorical excess and blatant misrepresentation. An article by David Rose from the Daily Mail Online is an excellent example of this and a focused dissection will give us the opportunity to examine a few of the techniques that are commonly used. The reader will be best served by opening the article in another window and placing it side by side; think of this as SKS-CSI: CCC Squad. Starting with the headline we are introduced to an unnamed report, one that the Met Office has said they did not release or produce, and a sinister suggestion that it was quietly release as thought there is something to hide. This point of a quite release is going to show up a few times in the article. Though the writer never talks about the origin of this report it is repeatedly implied that the Met Office is responsible. Next, we get two bullet points; one that stipulates a time frame statistically irrelevant, and the second that draws a conclusion only the writer knows the significance of but when used as a bullet point it must be important. Moving on to the bulk of the article: The opening sentence is nothing more than a repetition of the primary statistical outlier dressed up as relevant information and to those who don’t know any better it will carry the weigh of fact; that the writer and editor chose to place this as the opening sentence adds to the perception of importance that the information doesn’t merit. The second sentence introduces the concept of “debate” within the climate science community without introducing these other voices; later we will hear one voice who disagrees but the controversy from that voice has nothing to do with the “report”. This is a created controversy that does not actually exist within the science community but serves the writers obfuscation. No scientist who works with the data or understands the nature of statistics is going to accept this time frame as anything more than noise. It is this degree of sophistry and speciosity that can alter the public perception away from the generally accepted message as generated by science toward a false perception of our actual climatic status based on nothing more than manipulative articles like this. Sentence three and the writer is offering a conclusion as to the meaning of this “report” albeit a conclusion that is again irrelevant and based on statistical noise that no scientist would accept as note worthy. Next we get a graph produced by the Mail that has the requisite amount of fire engine red to demand the viewer’s attention with just the right mix of deception in structure to look as thought it supports the articles central premise. Not only does the writer apply his own biased analysis to the “report” but he avoids any of the graphics from the “report” and has his people make their own. Note that the graph title makes a suggestion the graph never shows; “showing tenths of a degree above and below”, there are no points on the graph below, but the seed has been planted in the readers sub-consciousness. At this juncture it is evident that journalistic integrity and objective reporting are not what we are going to find. A line by line autopsy will not tell us much more than we have already discovered so let’s look at just some broad strokes. There is the repeated mentioning of the “report” being quietly released with the implication that in comparison to the “media fanfare” of the previous release of temperature data there must be a reason that implies that the devil is afoot. Reading further we get to meet a few of the popular memes that have been making the rounds such as: catastrophic, bourgeois Left-wing academics (a new one for me but one that I find most entertaining), another repeat of the articles primary focus but this time in the form of a pub trivia game (an appeal to populist working class?), still another repeat of the report being issued “quietly” in comparison to…; and then the monster who eats little babies, “Your energy bill is going to increase”. It should be noted that whenever reason and logic fail suggest someone has their hand in your pocket and is stealing from you to make your point unassailable. This article isn’t about science as it only skims the data, albeit incorrectly, this article is just another salvo in the war for the minds of the masses who are either to busy to notice of lack the sophistication to discern the high degree of sophistry being applied. This is about using a dishonesty of words to manipulate emotions in the reader who lacks the intellect to see the obvious propaganda. Maybe the motivation is pure business, trying to appeal to the readerships demographic. Regardless of the reasons for this article, the substance is appallingly misleading noise.
  48. Philippe Chantreau at 10:03 AM on 16 October 2012
    Climate sensitivity is low
    Falkenherz, if you are referring tp the galcial/interglacial cycles, the evidence points to changes not in TSI but in its distribution over the surface. That itself is an argument for high sensitivity to radiative forcings in general.
  49. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #41
    Some of the links to the SkS articles from 'This Week in Review' are broken.
    Moderator Response: [DB] I found 2 broken links there & fixed them. Were there others? Thanks!
  50. It's not us
    Carbon500 - "Where have I made the claim that the role of CO2 as a greenhouse gas hasn't been experimentally proven?" Let me refresh your memory. In your last post, which I replied to before it was snipped for being a Gish Gallop, you said:
    Does this really mean that the foundation stone of the CO2 story hasn’t been verified experimentally, and that calculated forcings are all the evidence there is?
    You did indeed make that claim - and it is indeed completely unsupportable given direct evidence such as Harries 2001.

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