In what way is that 'absolutely spot on'?  You would need to show evidence that it isn't just chance.  Your reply doesn't address Four's point.  We all know the models are capable of improvement.  Four is arguing for a Met Office conspiracy.  I do hope you are not subscribing to that nonsense as well?

I think we had this debate here a year or two ago.

"When does a sequence of weather become climate?"

Discuss.....

Anyway, what is the probability of this run of date record temperatures occurring naturally, I wonder?

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

If everybody believed what the experts were saying then science would become nothing more than a religion - there would only be very limited progress. It's only the questioning and the belief that the experts are wrong that drives science.

I regard Feynman highly, but I don't think what he said was the last word....

Which I why I question you and the rest.

Nothing wrong with questioning if it's relevant.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213244084429540.html?KEYWORDS=climate

 

And on the "98%" consensus:

If those plots are right the warming rate predicted by the 1995,2001 and 2007 reports is pretty much spot on compared to observations for the last 20 years. There is some scatter but no more than the uncertainty in the temperature measurements which you can see through the differences in the series from the sources. In addition the Hadley data us available with error bars. As every scientist knows you should include those. The starting points of the predictions should of course be about 2 years before the report publication date (a small error in the plotting).

Does anyone else find it amusing that Four puts up a graph that shows a clearly warming trend in the actuals, not to mention as you say Tom, a remarkable consistency in trend line across 17 years and four reports?

What is more the warming rate averaged over the period of the graph (which is the only real comparison you can make, the start and end point of the lines are arbitary)shows excellent agreement between the models and obswervations.

There is a detailed piece on Realclimate with respect to this incompetent graph:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/02/bickmore-on-the-wsj-response/

Cheers - John

We have had many discussions about whether there has been any cooling since 1998 and the consensus is that the long term trend is still "up".

I posted elsewhere the research below and have suggested that this could be evidence of a driver other than AGW causes. However, if it isn't, then climate science theory says that average cloud height is directly related to global temperatures - cloud height rises with increased temperature. Therefore this research suggests that global temperatures did fall from March 2000 to Feb. 2010.

Anyone disagree with that?

see -

 http://www.agu.org/pubs/.../2012/2011GL050506.shtml

 Self-consistent stereo measurements by the Multiangle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) on the Terra satellite yield a decrease in global effective cloud height over the decade from March 2000 to February 2010. The linear trend is −44 ± 22 m/decade and the interannual annual difference is −31 ± 11 m between the first and last years of the decade. The annual mean height is measured with a sampling error of 8 m, which is less than the observed interannual fluctuation in global cloud height for most years. A maximum departure from the 10-year mean, of −80 ± 8 m, is observed towards the end of 2007. These height anomalies correlate well with the changes in the Southern Oscillation Index, with the effective height increasing over Indonesia and decreasing over the Central Pacific during the La Niña phase of the oscillation. After examining the net influence of Central Pacific/Indonesia heights on the global mean anomaly, we conclude that the integrated effects from outside these regions dominate the global mean height anomalies, confirming the existence of significant teleconnections.

 and.....

 The average global cloud height is linked to the average global temperature—generally, the higher the average cloud height, the higher the average surface temperature, and vice versa. The tie-in is related to the height in the atmosphere from which clouds radiate long-wave radiation to space. The higher up they are, the cooler they are, and thus the less radiation they lose to space, which means the surface stays warmer. Davies and Molloy calculate that on a decadal basis, the radiative forcing from increasing greenhouse gases is the same as that caused by either a decrease in the total global cloud amount of ~0.3% (which would allow more short wave radiation from the sun to hit the earth’s surface) or an increase in the global average cloud height of ~19 meters (about 62 feet). All to say, that clouds play a major role in the earth’s climate and that small changes in cloud characteristics can add to (via positive feedbacks) or offset (via negative feedbacks) the warming pressure put on the climate from increasing greenhouse gases. A point well-recognized by Davies and Molloy when they write “Changes in cloud properties in response to rising surface temperatures represent some of the strongest, yet least understood, feedback processes in the climate system. “

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/02/ten-years-after-the-warming/

Spencer is wrong.  I refer you to YD's post #9 in the "Are Global Temperatures Now Dropping" thread.  As I commented in that thread it is clear for all to see (except apparently Spencer) that there have been several longer periods of cooling in the last  150 years - 1900-1910 and 1940-1950 both saw far more marked declines.

He cites 5 possible reasons that are cited for the recent pause in the warming trend:

1) cooling from anthropogenic aerosols has been cancelling out warming from more greenhouse gases

2) natural cooling from internal climate fluctuations or the sun is cancelling out the GHG warming

3) increased ocean mixing is causing the extra energy to be distributed into the deep ocean

4) the temperature ’sensitivity’ of the climate system is not as large as the IPCC assumes.

5) there is something fundamentally wrong with the GHG warming theory itself

Of course he - and you - will alight gleefully on number 5. Quelle surprise....

Interestingly he does not include the likes of ENSO and AMO, which others have cited as having an effect on global temperatures.

I prefer the more measured and sane analysis, which centres on natural cooling from solar and ENSO/AMO with the added uncertainty of (3).  Of course (4) could be a factor but that requires acceptance of the principle of AGW, which seems to be too big a hurdle for some people to get over.

So, yet another example of a half-baked objection to AGW built on inaccurate analysis.

I see Stephen Wilde is having an argument with Roy Spencer

You shall be known by the company you keep.....

There's a link on the site now to a nice dissection of Spencer's piece:

http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/roy-spencers-junk-science/

I seem to recall that it is an American expression "There's one born every minute".   Seems to describe some gullible addicts to Spencer's piece....

Advocacy vs. Science!

Cheers - John

I'm right behind the Wellcome Trust on this one and am glad to see the Governments response and look forward to seeing the same approach applied to other areas of research - especially climate research

Wellcome Trust's proposal that results of public- and charity-funding research be made public receives ministerial backing

The government has welcomed calls from academics and one of the world's biggest research charities for results of public and charity-funded scientific research to be made available as widely as possible in the public domain.

The Wellcome Trust, which spends more than £600m on scientific research a year and is the largest non-governmental funder of medical research after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said this week it planned to adopt a more robust approach with the scientists it funds, to ensure scientific results are freely available within six months of first publication.

"We will watch the Wellcome Trust's new initiatives with interest," said the coalition's minister for universities and science, David Willetts. "There are some real potential benefits from improving access to academic research. They include spreading knowledge, encouraging collaboration and facilitating technology transfer."

Sir Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, told the Guardian that the results of public and charity-funded scientific research should be freely available to anyone who wants to read it, for whatever purpose they need it.

and..........

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/apr/10/government-backs-research-results-public 

I agree  and the issue is who pays for the cost of publication. Currently the authors have to pay about £1000 per paper that is behind a paywall but at a amuch reduced rate for university libraries, open access journals are about double that so for government funded research the amount of money per project will have to increase for open access publication ie the journals become free online.

Must be well over 100,000 but the more pertinent point is how much are publications costs as a fraction of the total cost of producing a paper (ie the staff salaries, costs of experiments or field projects etc). Generally the answer is small but it does vary a lot depending on the type of work reported. Then the question of who pays now. Journal subscriptions are paid by libraries mostly , of course, these are the libraries of universities and research institutes where the people who write the papers work. In physical science 99.9% of the readers of journals are those who publish in them or students learning about the subject. The time taken to conduct the peer review is paid for by the host institution we are not paid separately for this, it is regarded as part of the job for most scientists. So to some extent it is just an issue of changing budgets rather than coming up with a lot of new money. An additional issue is that depending on the subject work is supported by non government bodies eg in my department Geologists are paid by oil companies to conduct research into the geology of oil fields etc. The library budget and academic staff salaries come from student fees as well as research funding.

It is a question of sorting out the funding streams that support academic publications now but if the full cost is loaded onto those who carry out the work rather than those who read it then it does change the funding culture, the implications require careful examination. I think it should be done but care is required as the current system works well for most of those who actually read the papers. If they were made freely available it would change a bit but reading scientific papers is hard work so I suspect it won’t actually change a lot. I have told you before that I publish in an open access journal APC and frankly this doesn’t have much impact on who reads the papers.

A journal I have actively supported with mineralogical contributions is the UK Journal of Mines & Minerals, which works by having a healthy advertising income-stream, the advertising being mineralogy-related i.e. mineral dealers, microscope-manufacturers and so on. I think the advertising is fine so long as it's vaguely on-topic and not just more "herbal viagra" and similar BS. Paywalling important science papers may be big business, but IMO it is intrinsically wrong. However, until an alternative is in place, we just have to live with that.....

Cheers - John

Maybe ,as the general public become more interested in science, we will see the same happen to papers as happened to the music and film industry?

Any takers?

That's pefectly normal Tom for sceptics who tend to be independent thinkers and makes a pleasant change from the no one must stray  from the 'party line' almost north Korean style stale stagnant dirgey dross that comes from the the other camp all the bloody time.

Strange thing that - to me it seems that the sceptics behave in a North Korean style, blindly blundering along in support of the latest sceptic or denier inspired nonsense.

Your post reminds me of doublespeak from 1984.