in the world at the moment is ‘No sun link’ to climate change – a journalistic cut and paste job by a Richard Black of a new study by Mike Lockwood and Claus Froehlich published in the Royal Society’s journal ‘Proceedings A’.
Black’s article is even more partial and one-sided than is admitted in the Jeremy Paxman quote here in our sidebar. He writes, for instance:
“This should settle the debate,” said Mike Lockwood from the UK’s Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, who carried out the new analysis together with Claus Froehlich from the World Radiation Center in Switzerland.
It would have been more honest to put Lockwood’s quote after the bit about who he is – given that he’s one of the authors of the new study he’s really rather likely to feel that “this should settle the debate” isn’t he!
Black continues with:
Dr Lockwood initiated the study partially in response to the TV documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, broadcast on Britain’s Channel Four earlier this year, which featured the cosmic ray hypothesis.
Ah yes, another one of those Channel 4 documentaries that it is beyond the capability of the tellytax-funded BBC to produce.
“All the graphs they showed stopped in about 1980, and I knew why, because things diverged after that,” he told the BBC News website.
“You can’t just ignore bits of data that you don’t like,” he said.
Followed some way down with:
Mike Lockwood’s analysis appears to have put a large, probably fatal nail in this intriguing and elegant hypothesis.
– which looks to me like it’s Black’s own opinion on this debate. I wonder what his qualifications are.
Having let Lockwood make his accusations about the scientists behind the cosmic ray hypothesis, you might expect Black to let them respond to this slur on their work before rushing to publish his article, but wait, what do we find tucked away at the bottom:
Drs Svensmark and Friis-Christensen could not be reached for comment.
And how hard did you try Mr. Black? Couldn’t you have waited a little longer until one or other of them were available? If they are unavailable for a longer period, why don’t you tell us that? If Svensmark and Friis-Christensen do review Lockwood’s study and come up with counter arguments in response, will you write them up so eagerly and have them published so prominently on BBC Views Online? Call me cynical, but I doubt it.
P.S. It was refreshing to see Nigel Calder (former editor of New Scientist and father of travel writer Simon Calder), co-author of a book with Henrik Svensmark, The Chilling Stars, on BBC News 24 at the weekend, expressing scepticism, albeit briefly, about the Live Earth concerts that were otherwise filling the BBC News schedules. More please.
Thanks to commenter Will for the link.
I don’t want more, thank you very much. All I want from the BBC is end of its ludicrous method of funding. Even a BBC that everyone thought was perfectly fair and impartial all the time would still not justify the licence fee. I need a TV to watch Sky football and I have no idea why I need to pay the government to run the BBC before I am allowed to.
What is fundamentally dishonest about this whole issue is that the even larger divergence, that of tree rings to local temperature is so utterly ignored by the same Climate Fundamentalists. Papers so approvingly cited by the IPCC truncate their dxata in 1960 to avoid the issue, and the response from the fundies is…
Dishonesty, thy name is climate science.
Yes, and there it was on the Today headlines at 8 o’clock.
Strangely, I have never heard any acknowledgement on BBC news programmes that there are any global warming sceptics, until someone produces a paper which purports to rebut them.
Temperature reconstructions are frequently truncated to 1998 or 2000 in the media by “believers” to hide the fact that global warming stopped in 1998 and that the temperature has gone ever so slightly DOWN from the 1998 peak.
Glasshouses and thrown stones spring to mind…
This was on Radio 2 as well.
But I thought “the debate was over”?
More on Black’s writing here:
http://rottypup.com/?p=803
And here:
http://houseofdumb.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html#7802274738179468268
This is how he started out:
http://greenspin.blogspot.com/2005_09_18_greenspin_archive.html
The extreme about face in reporting style raises the question, was he forced to walk in line?
“Dr Lockwood initiated the study partially in response to the TV documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, broadcast on Britain’s Channel Four earlier this year, which featured the cosmic ray hypothesis.”
Sounds like he’d already decided on his conclusions.
Just a couple of points. Firstly it is widely accepted that 1998 was the warmest year on record – so why then does the line on the graph entitled “Global mean surface air temperature” continue to rise after this date?
And secondly, notice how the term “global warming” is slowly but surely being dropped by the BBC, to be replaced by the much appropriate catch-all “climate change”
oops – typo(above). 1989 should of course read 1998.
(I fixed the typo that glj drew attention to in his own comment above.)
Well the line up to 1998 goes bang down the centre of the error bars on that graph, but after 1998 it suddenly statrs moving well over the centre of those same bars. That’s why it keeps going up. Of course if you examine the northern and suothern hemisphere graphs uyou see that the southern hemisphere, which is far less populated, has had a profound downward trend since 1998, yet the combined graph purporting to show the effects of both has a profound upward trend. The graphs are biased toward the nothern hemisphere, which is the most populous, and also has much more of a problem with the heat island effect, as many of these temperature and weather monitoring stations are well within urban areas and often biased by local sources. Moving a weather station just a hundred yards can drop or raise the average rcorded temperature by a degree or more.
Check this out. Surface stations that are next to aid conditioning radiators, heaters and other local heat sources. What use is that data?
Check also doubts about the unlying data concerning temperature records here
If there is no sun effect – why have scientists reported that Mars is showing signs of global warming?
And possible Jupiter (increased storm activity resulting in the new red spot), one of Neptune’s moons and maybe, just maybe Pluto as well.
The cosmic ray theory and the solar radiation charts are obviously quite disturbing to the purveyors of 21st century communism, else they would not feel so pressed to come up with something, anything, that could debunk them.
But it isn’t so easy. Solar radiation is, after all, THE heat source. And nothing about the data offered by Lockwood runs counter to the painfully obvious point of the GGWS programme, that CO2 increases are lagging indicators of increases in global temps, not the other way round.
Given how this paper is supposedly “in response to TGGWS” which was only published a few months ago (leading to suggestions of a preordained conclusion, rushed work, and a rushed peer review if indeed one was carried out), and the fact that it contradicts previously uncontroversial observational data (à la hockey stick, later proven to be fraudulent), and also the fact that it is VERY politically convenient for the “believers”, means that this study should be taken with an extremely large pinch of salt.
This is the NASA data, which clearly shows an increasing trend (+0.05%/decade) over the last 25 years, and was not controversial AT ALL until last night:
http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/solar_radiation_030320_02.jpg
I suspect this “smoking gun” paper will go the same way as Michael Mann’s hockey stick: the press and the IPCC will be all over it, shouting it from the rooftops, until someone points out that it is flawed, at which point it will never be mentioned again
How can he seriously say he has disproved any effect on global temperature due variations in solar output using a 20-40 year time frame? That’s the equivalent of MORI conducting an opinion poll and only asking 5 people and only reading half the question.
The really interesting thing about the cosmic ray theory is that, unlike a lot of the dominant Global Warming theories, it’s not purely statistical: the team actually did an actual experiment. I find it a little odd that Dr Lockwood feels that the mere analysis of statistical records can be used to overturn observed and replicatable experimental discoveries. And the BBC have badly misreported that aspect:
the cosmic ray hypothesis, developed by, among others, Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen of the Danish National Space Center … holds that cosmic rays help clouds to form by providing tiny particles around which water vapour can condense.
That makes it sound like it’s purely a worked-out-on-paper sort of a theory. It’s not. It should say something more like this:
the cosmic ray hypothesis is based on experiments which show that cosmic rays provide tiny particles around which water vapour condenses. In the atmosphere, this may help clouds to form.
There is always a real question about whether lab results are duplicated in the real world — and, to be fair, it looks like that’s what Lockwood is trying to address. But for him to claim that the debate should now be settled, because of just one purely statistical criticism of a brand-new finding, is absurd. On that basis, he’ll be telling us next that the contradictions between Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have been settled.
4:18 should read HALF the question
Fixed now, Ricky.
A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun’s output cannot be causing modern-day climate change
Well, if a scientist says it is true, it must be true…
Scientists clone 30 human embryos
By Jonathan Amos
BBC News Online science staff, in Seattle
South Korean scientists have cloned 30 human embryos to obtain cells they hope could one day be used to treat disease.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3480921.stm
Well, almost always…
S Korea cloning research was fake
Dr Hwang has been hailed as a hero in South Korea
Research by South Korea’s top human cloning scientist – hailed as a breakthrough earlier this year – was fabricated, colleagues have concluded.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4554422.stm
Weren’t we taught in science class an experiment must be repeated by another set of scientists before it is even considered to be true?
But you see this whole MMGW scam is not “science” in the strict sense because you cannot have a “control” experiment to repeat and succeed or fail to disprove the conjecture. MMGW is an assertion which may or may not be true (like marxism or islam) but since it cannot be refuted in the classical way it’s interesting but it’s not science.
It’s particularly unscientific because its “scientific” proponents (particularly the IPCC) refuse to put into the public domain ALL the data and ALL the reviews (positive and negative) of the work done (or worse release contentious and partial data into the public domain). That the MMGW’s proponents refuse to engage seriously – if at all – with the sceptics (and I’ll wager Lockwood will not engage directly with any of his critics) is proof (if not scientific proof!) that MMGW is a confidence trick which is slowly unravelling.
A recent article by a mathematician from University of Western Ontario in Canada’s National Post newspaper pointed out that the very idea of a “mean global temperature” is about as useful as talking about “the average telephone number” in Calgary. Never the less, the AGW crowd are fixated on it, or will be until this statistical miscarriage no longer serves their purpose at which point it will be dropped like a rabid skunk.
Similar to Roland Deschain, I had never heard any mention on the good ole BBC of the solar radiation theories until we hear that someone has “debunked” them.
Umbongo,
> But you see this whole MMGW scam is not “science” in the strict sense because you cannot have a “control” experiment to repeat and succeed or fail to disprove the conjecture. MMGW is an assertion which may or may not be true
This is not true. It’s pretty much the same criticism that Creationists make of Darwinism, and it’s flawed. You’ll be telling us next that scientists can’t tell us anything about supernovas until they actually build one.
‘You’ll be telling us next that scientists can’t tell us anything about supernovas until they actually build one.’
Humans have studied many supernova but no greenhouse effects caused by anything other than natural processes. We also don’t have reliable climate data going back more than a few hundred years and much of that at sites whose local conditions have changed during that period.
If some are going to demand the spending of billions, altering the development of Third World countries, and threatening the employment of millions one would hope that they could prove their case.
This is not true. It’s pretty much the same criticism that Creationists make of Darwinism, and it’s flawed.
Could you say what the flaw is exactly? Sorry for being thick…
Interesting reading over at AMERICAN THINKER
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/07/solar_deniers_attempt_to_eclip.htm
July 11, 2007
Solar Deniers Attempt to Eclipse Global Warming Documentary
Marc Sheppard
On the very day before the British documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle is to hit Aussie TV screens, the Royal Society has published the work of 2 scientists who claim to have disproved its core position – that the actions of the sun, not humans, cause global warming. And, unlike the countless studies which support solar forcing theories, this one you most definitely WILL be hearing about from the mainstream media.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/07/solar_deniers_attempt_to_eclip.htm
What’s going on?
“Professor Mike Lockwood of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory has established that about half of the claimed rise in average surface temperature this century can be attributed to changes in the Sun (Astronomy & Geophysics, Vol 40, 4.11 to 4.16, 1999)”
the source is the Association of British Drivers
http://www.abd.org.uk/pr/204.htm
“I had never heard any mention on the good ole BBC of the solar radiation theories until we hear that someone has “debunked” them.”
Here:
“The scientists do not pretend they can explain everything, nor do they say that attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should be abandoned. But they do feel that understanding of our nearest star must be increased if the climate is to be understood” (1998 ).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/56456.stm
“What makes the data so useful is that the site of the observatory has not changed all that much in 200 years,” said Dr Butler. “Other weather stations have been engulfed by towns and cities that make the long-term reliability of their data questionable.”(2000)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1045327.stm
It seems then that I am mistaken.
The BBC does mention theories contradicting man-made global warming and did so as recently as 2000!
Ralph,
You’re not making any points I disagree with. You are arguing against the position that Global Warming is caused by humans, which isn’t what I said; I was answering a very specific point made by Umbongo about what science is. Your arguments against Anthropogenic Global Warming are valid; his wasn’t.
IQ,
When discussing evolution, the flaw lies in saying that the theory isn’t falsifiable because you can’t have a control experiment in which advanced life evolves from sludge while being observed by scientists, and that, without the possibility of a control experiment, it’s not proper science.
Firstly, you don’t actually need a control experiment for a theory to be falsifiable: as biologists are forever pointing out, it would just take one rabbit fossil from the Jurassic to disprove Darwinism. Secondly, of course, evolution is what one might call a macro-theory, the conglomeration of a large number of smaller scientific theories and findings, and you can build control experiments for all or most of them.
It is similarly wrong to say that you can’t build a control experiment for Anthropogenic Global Warming. You can build all sorts of interesting experiments regarding the behaviour of gases in the atmosphere — as Dr Svensmark did, in fact. From these experiments, you can make discoveries that may be applied to the entire planet. Hence my supernova example: no scientist has even been anywhere near one, so most of what we know about them is based on scientific discoveries made by studying light and gases in labs here on Earth. And that’s fine.
Sorry to go off topic, but I was asked. I’ll say no more.
Sorry to go off topic, but I was asked. I’ll say no more.
I didn’t think that was off-topic – thanks for the explanation.
Squander Two: “Sorry to go off topic, but I was asked. I’ll say no more.”
Worry not at all Squander Two – thoughtful and informative comments relevant to the discussion are always welcome. Thank you for your contribution.
It’s ranty, off-putting, off-topic (off discussion) chit-chat that we’re taking a long needed stand against – the sort of thing that used to happen between some ‘regulars’ who came to treat this forum as their own personal chat space, to the exclusion of others, and for which there are many other more suitable forums elsewhere on the web.
I have had corrospondance with the BBC over the way that they report and present the Global Warming debate and to be fair to them whatever they write will upset someone because the debate has taken on almost a religious type of argument so the two sides can never see eye to eye.
However if you look on their Global Warming website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/portal/climate_change/default.stm many of their links and statements go further than even the IPCC are saying in the their 4th Report such as: (climate change in the UK WILL affect us in a variety of ways.) Even the IPCC say MAY affect us. There are many more like that.
So it would appear that the BBC has already judged that the debate is over.
There is not one link to anyone who disagrees with that hypothesis for example the Danish Space Centre even though they don’t say that man has no effect on warming.
Thee BBC said to me that they do try to keep a balance and quoted articles that do put the other point of view, but the average person that visits their website would be hard pressed to find them.
It all looks suspiciously like propaganda for one side of the argument. Since I put that to them they have as yet to reply.