Monckton’s main argument seems to be represented by the statement that climate sensitivity to CO2 has been overestimated by the IPCC by around 6-7 times, giving exaggerated projections of warming for a business as usual scenario of CO2 emissions. The IPCC range is around 2-6C degrees warming by 2100, and Monckton’s is 0.5C. While he provides some calculations, this view is also supported by a measure of respectable scientific literature.
The view that CO2 sensitivity is being grossly exaggerated is the one that is shared by myself and the likes of Spencer, Shaviv, Lindzen, Douglass and others. The most concise illustration of this is the one produced by Spencer, showing where the various authors lie, relative to the IPCC model projections.
WUWT reports in The IPCC: More Sins of Omission – Telling the Truth but Not the Whole Truth the greatest failing of the IPCC, if not environmental sciences. The article describes how the effects of climate change on climate, hunger and water storage are misrepresented to exaggerate negative effects. Here I show that the same deception is in play with the statements on species extinctions in AR4.
The Brisbane Institute luncheon Panel Debate (Monckton, Plimer, Readfearn, Brook) in the Grand Ballroom, from 12:00 – 2.00pm is sold out. Seats are still available at the Irish Club, across the street from 3pm to 5pm.
Historic. Not to be missed. I will be at the Brisbane events. Come and say hi.
SYDNEY
Wednesday 27 January,
12:15, Luncheon, The Union Club, SOLD OUT
17:30 Public lecture, Sheraton on the Park download PDF
contact: John Smeed, phone or SMS 0417 269 216 johnsmeedATadna.com.au
One quick perusal of that article and I could consign it to neoclassical gibberish. The key giveaway is in the first sentence of the abstract:
“I study a class of models commonly used to motivate monetary exchange, extended to include a physical asset whose expected short-run return is subject to exogenous news events, but whose expected long-run return is independent of this information”
The part of bold is the give: this is a model where the future is subject to randomness, but not change: whatever happens in the short term has no impact on the future.
The UAH Index is approaching new highs, but there is overhead resistance immediately ahead, and primary medium-term indicators are becoming modestly overheated.
Does this spell trouble ahead for the AGW bulls? Eventually. Overheated conditions generally indicate an imminent drop, usually between -0.6-0.8 degrees C.
For an asset economy then, the prescription of “full transparency” is not generally warranted.
After many pages of mathematics, their argument is summarized:
In competitive economies, the disclosure of high-frequency information unrelated to an asset’s “long-run fundamentals” may be detrimental to economic welfare when claims to such assets serve as high-velocity payment instruments. The equilibrium price of a liquid asset is excessively volatile when asset prices capitalize all information.
If we translate this into a more familiar example, such as climate data and code, it would seem to argue that disclosure of all data and code may be detrimental to the value of the research to the author of an article, the university, the journal, coauthors etc.
The Australian reports a major new controversy after Britain’s Met Office denounced research from Stefan Rahmstorf suggesting that sea levels may increase by more than 1.8m by 2100.
As any financial analyst knows, fools and their tools can find confirmation for any pet theory. The only route to certitude is falsification.
Realclimate shows numerous examples of confirmation bias in their recent article. In particular, gavin dicusses an update to Hansen’s famous graph of projections made back in 1984.
They ‘confirm’ that scenario B — increasing CO2 — matches current trends.
The trends are probably most useful to think about, and for the period 1984 to 2009 (the 1984 date chosen because that is when these projections started), scenario B has a trend of 0.26+/-0.05 ºC/dec (95% uncertainties, no correction for auto-correlation).
Scenario C — no increase in CO2 — is more consistent with the temperature increase. A statistical test of the alternate hypothesis Ha, rejecting the view that observed temperature differs from the no increase in CO2 scenario, provides support for the view that CO2 is irrelevant.
Quasi-scientists have one thing in common with scam artists, emphasis on confirmation and ignoring contradictory evidence. Note the RealClimate article fails to mention scenario C at all in their post. See ClimateAudit for details of the scenarios and updates.
Environment minister Peter Garrattclaimed recent figures on Australian temperature prove Opposition leader Tony Abbott was wrong to claim that the world had stopped warming.
Substitute Australia for the World, and the last 100 years for 10 years, and you might get close to the actual claim, similar to that made by respected climate physicist Roy Spencer that “there has been no net warming in the last 11 years or so”.
It’s easy — but confused — to find a limited region with a different climate, over a different time period, then use it for rebuttal.
David Jones of the BoM claims, referring to their Annual Report that the upward trend of temperature since 1920(?) should silence the critics once and for all.
