I've always been sceptical of AGW. 

In Roman times grapes were grown as far north as NE England, which would suggest a warmer climate than today. Now if I'm not mistaken there were no cars, coal burning factories back then. Then temps went down from around Anglo Saxon/Viking times.

<< The medieval warm period was a local phenomenon. Sure globally it was also fairly mild, but it was only really Europe that saw the significant anomalies. Anyway no one is denying natural variability. Like I keep saying you need to understand that the climate response is a function of both human activity h, and natural variability v. There is nothing to stop v from occasionally overriding h. 

Now if the impact of people in our country & the rest of the world is having such a great influential effect on warming our climate then why did we have the coldest December in 100 years in 2010? and the coldest March for 50 years in 2013?

<< Cmon you know better than this, global warming. The clue is in the name. There is nothing to stop local cold snaps in a warming world, and I can name just as many 'warm' snaps as if it matters.

I doubt those were flukes, pretty monumental flukes if they were and quite close to each other. 

<< Not really, if you understand statistics, a cold winter that is a few standard deviations from the mean will happen eventually, what is more unusual is getting temperatures consistently above average for a long time period. I.e why has every decade been warmer than its previous? 

Overall I don't think the UK climate has changed massively for the worse in all my life. Certainly not enough to cause concern. Our climate has always been very erratic and that's purely due to where we are located.

<< Well, not yet. But I would disagree, we have seen invasive tropical species and a marked decline in native species in the last few decades. This could be partly attributed to a warming climate. 

Nowadays we have the internet, social media and 24 hour rolling news so a flood or an extreme event gets almost instant attention and coverage. 15-20 years ago that wasn't the case - People really weren't "in the know" about what happened 50 miles away or around the world.

And I think that is one of the main factors in all this climate change/AGW thing. Also there is more people on the planet than ever - which means more eyes and more reports. And obviously this means more of an impact when bad weather hits as more people are effected so this gives the impression that an event is worse.

<< We also have good consistent quantatative methods. Scientists don't use twitter to gauge a changing climate. 

So I think there is a few factors that come into play here. I think man made fuels may add a bit to AGW but I think in the grand scheme of things it's small. I think climate change is 90-95% a natural phenomenon.

<< Why? What do you base this musing on, and why do you think this is a superior position to the position adopted by the scientific community; full of people that actually understand this stuff. Or to put it another way, would you be willing to give an equally confident opinion on quantum chronodynamics after perhaps reading a pop science article about it? 

Originally Posted by: Medlock Vale Weather 

Nice to have a thread thats not been trashed yet!

I'm a luke-warmer - pretty sure of the basic physics, happy that man has increased the level of CO2 in the atmosphere and that this may have or is increasing global temperatures, but dismayed by what I see as alarmism and exageration of impacts. I believe that natural processes have been downplayed and CO2 'framed' to some extent in a Poirot type exposition - 'we've eliminated all the other possibles, it MUST be CO2.

<< Why are you happy?

Happy is an idiom. Perhaps I should have said 'I accept that', or 'I believe that'. I wasn't meaning to imply happiness because the planet is warming!

<<< Ok kwl, lets move on>>>

The earth is a self regulating system much like homeostasis, why would you want to throw a question to that? Why do you think natural processes are downplayed. I don't get this, scientists are not as naive as people seem to point out, they do understand natural cycles, you can find dozens of papers that explore them in quantatative exorbarant detail. 

I think natural processes can/have been be downplayed. More recent papers are tending to reduce the levels of feedback expected for a given CO2 rise - often because of new evidence. Please don't ask for papers - you can spend a life-time trawling for references to prove almost anything.

<<<No they arn't, look at a meta analysis (I can provide links if you like). The distribution is skewed heavily (it is nothing like a nice gausian). Which means that the probability of an ECS below 1.5C is much much lower than the probability of an ECS of above 3.5C given a mean of 2.5C. In fact the distribtution is so skewed that a ECS of 10C is more likely than an ECS of 1C - now if I went on about that sort of ECS I would be called a catastrophist, yet deniers mention a 1C figure all the time which is actually less likely>>>

I have huge issues with much of what has gone on with all sides of 'climate debate'. Some of the science has been shoddy and I think some of the behaviour has been very poor. I work in a UK science department and I am well aware of the requirements for archiving data and making it available when it is used to support published articles. I will not publish work that I am not happy to send to someone else to scrutinise. For whatever reason climate science has been reluctant to allow this data to be looked at and this must change in the future.

<< What science has been shoddy? Citation please.

I won't cite papers, but I will point to the use of upside down data from Tiljander (I believe that is the spelling) in constructing Hockey sticks. The 97% concsensus nonsense. There are massive issues about releasing data to others. I would not like my emails to bne pored over by people looking for evidence of malfeasence but the Climategate emails did contain some pretty shocking stuff with regard to data, freedom of information etc. Many people have found it very hard to get data from researchers. Sometimes I suspect the data is no longer in existence - when it was used the policies were much more lenient. But it should be an absolute requirement to make data available where publications depend on it. No ifs or buts.

<<<What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence; if you don't cite on request I will dismiss. What hockey sticks? We know there are people like Al Gore that mislead in the other direction, but this is not representive of what is going on in the scientific community so how is it relevant?. The climate gate thing is overblown by the bloggers, its just a load of half quotes taken out of context - ask yourself why you only see sentences and words rather than paragraphs and pages. Anyway we know corruption exists, give me any field and I will give you corruption. Do you deny evolution because of shoddy biology research, of course not. So this point is vacuous. And allegations of mass data deletion must be evidenced otherwise this is just tin hat land. >>> 

What behavior has been very poor? I agree the peer review system is not perfect, but it is actually far less biased than, for instance, industry. Compare for instance the ethics of the pharmaceutical industry (big pharma) and the medicine journals, and the later come out better in terms of reduced corruption. What has climate science been reluctant in? Can you be more specific. 

See above for this.

<<<So climategate is the best example? Like I say, so what. No one is denying corruption exists. I can show you much worse in Big pharma and no one denies medicine (well some hippies do). On the whole the quality of research is good, and that is the point that needs to be emphasized.>>>

I'm not sure that climate scientists interact enough with statisticians, yet so much of what is published is heavily statistical in nature.

<< Don't they? I have read quite a lot of climate papers, they use statistics heavily, but then so do all experimental sciences.

There are many examples of criticisms for climate papers use of statistics.  The original Hockey stick is in my opinion poor science, based on very few actual data sets. I would also ask if tree rings are so good as thermometers why is there a need to 'hide the decline' by splicing modern temp records to proxy series?#

<<<Why don't you publish your own paper critisising them then? Why do I never see anyone even attempting to publish there own paper, they just say this stuff on the blogs. I'm not going to be convinced by that, cite me a paper that shows how bad all these records are>>>

Those outside science (on all sides) have no concept of what peer-review actually means.

<<I agree with this, and I think it is being demonized, particularly by politicians. 

Too often extreme weather (and any extreme weather) gets linked to AGW (usually but not exclusively by the media)

<<Agree with this too, the media doesn't help in this regard. 

Too many times genuine concerns about the science have been dismissed by use of the awful phrase 'deniers' - a phrase so politically charged and resonant with the holocaust that those who use it should be ashamed.

<<I'm not going to tread on egg shells here. I refuse to use the term skeptic because science is about skeptism not psedoscience, I do not want to tar skeptism which is fundamentally a very good thing. The idea it is related to the hollocaust is as absurd as people being offended by men with mustaches. If someone denies AGW I am going to call them a denier, its not an insult, its not a slur, its just an accurate description (which skeptic isn't).  

The problem here is that denier is used against people like me, like Anthony Watts, like Andrew Montford and so many others who accept the basics of AGW but do not buy into the catastrophism associated with it. Only at the weekend Radio 5 had a section on the IPCC report and its conclusion was that deniers/skeptics were coming into line with the IPCC over the expected temp rise range for  a doubling of CO2 (which is settling seemingly into around 1-2 deg C as the most likely scenerio). Yet most skeptics had been touting the lower end of the scale for years, its just that the media has constantly assumed that skepticism has meant denialism.

Too many sceptics are too ready to assume conspiracy, and poor motivation amongst climate scientists.

<<<What catastrophism? You know cAGW (catastropic antropomorpic global warming) was actually invented by climate change deniers. Why should scientists have to spend their time refuting straw-men created by bloggers? Al gore is not a climate scientist. I honestly don't care if deniers were coming into line, no more that I care that the catholic church eventually accepted the Copernican universe model. And by denier I am of course referring to bloggers and 'activists' and people that have no actual knowledge of the subject. I am not referring to high quality scientific papers that are on the lower end of the distribution. Obviously the deniers tout the lower end of the spectrum because that is their confirmation bias. Like I say, if I advocated a 10C ECS people on here would go baserk even Gandalf. Yet a 10C ECS is more realistic than a 1C ECS. If you call me a catastropist for plumping for the mean value, then what the hell is someone that goes for a 1C ECS!>>>

<<Agreed. 

I don't think that the web has helped - its far too easy to be unspeakably rude on the internet - people would be nicer in face to face meetings (as evinced by the recent Bristol dinner...)

<<The web has hindered this in so many ways, I do agree with this aswell. Poor meta data in the journals is a big issue. 

To sum up - AGW is probably happening, and has raised temps by a little, with more to come. It probably won't be a disaster though.

<<It depends on the timescales, eventually it could become a disaster. The thing that bugs me is that it isn't too late atm. If we focus on renewable energy and get viable solar panels then we have a bridge until we get nuclear fusion, and once we have that greenhouse emissions will be reduced significantly. A denialist attitude is hindering this progress that may eventually make it too late, and in the meantime climate change will cause billions of pounds of damage to the global economy. 

All involed should try to be nicer to each other...

Originally Posted by: turbotubbs 

Originally Posted by: Medlock Vale Weather 

Your 1st point: I was not talking about the Medieval period, the Roman period was a long time before Medieval, I would advise you to read history. 

Your 2nd point: If the clue is in the name then that's a bit daft, it's not just our recent bitter cold spells look how cold North America was last Winter - the 34th coldest since records began in 1895. In fact the US has had a number of colder than normal Winters in the past 10 years. 

Your 3rd point: Warming has happened in the past before fossil fuels/ human activity, the UK climate in Roman times was wetter and warmer than the current climate. And there is evidence of warming/cooling elsewhere again before fossil fuels.

Your 4th point: People introduce different species of plants and animals when they arrive in the UK or you can buy them, for example people thought Japanese knotweed was a good idea to introduce to the UK but it hasn't been as it's invasive and difficult to control. They don't just suddenly appear because the CET has gone up by point 1 of a degree. Because of our relatively temperate & varied climate a lot of different plants will grow here that naturally grow in colder and warmer places.

Your 5th point: I know scientists don't just use Twitter. There is other ways to communicate you know. But like I say there is far more people now on the planet than even 50 years ago so there will no doubt be more people effected by a weather event. And that will magnify how "bad" it is.

Your 6th point: Go to my 3rd response.

Originally Posted by: Medlock Vale Weather 

1) It doesn't matter the Roman warm period was still local. All of this is beside the point anyway as no one is denying that natural forcings arn't real. 

2) Yes the clue is in the name. So what if part of the North american continent was cold last year if the globe as a whole was warm. You do realize you have to sum over the whole earth to get a GLOBAL figure. The cold in america last year and in Europe in 2010 was not enough to stop those two years being among the warmest winters. 2010 was actually the warmest year ever (before this year of course).

3) And no one is disputing that. I've kept a count of how many times I've had to explain that to people in the climate forum, and it is literally over 150 times, and that is conservative. Do you understand that if you have two variables A and B and you have a function of the two variables f(A,B) that you cannot know anything about f without knowing everything about BOTH A and B. 

4) And I wasn't talking about that, I was talking about exotic subtropical species in the UK that were the result of migration. And I didn't say they suddenly appear, its all about long term trends. We know climate change is having an impact on the wildlife; look for instance at the polar bear studies of which there are many.

5) No it won't because... Scientists don't use twitter! They use quantitative reliable methodology including satellite measurements, buoys and fly throughs data. In fact the opposite is true because our methodology is improving and becoming more reliable over time. So no, nothing is being magnified. 

6) Yes and all you are doing is taking f(A,B) and then saying "Any increase in f MUST be due to A" without even considering B. You know the global climate can actually cool down and global warming can still be real if the natural factor is a large enough opposing force. In reality this doesn't happen though because the human effects are so large. 

Originally Posted by: Medlock Vale Weather 

1: Of course it matters, in any case you mentioned a completely different era to what I said.

2: These so called figures are a lie by the global elite to brainwash gullible people.

3: Variables are a pointless notion, some people think they know about A & B when they evidently know little at all.

4: Some places have grown subtropical plants for donkeys years - like Cornwall. Cornwall has always had the mildest climate in the UK. The polar bear studies are a fabricated lie by the elite. 

5: How do you know they don't use twitter? have you spoken to each and every climatologist? things are being magnified because there are more people, common sense and mathematics would tell you that. And also the lies by the controlled media.

6: The large "human effects" are a fabricated lie, human effects are minimal at best.

Originally Posted by: Medlock Vale Weather 

Because apparently I have to take this post seriously; I will respond, but I honestly thought you were joking here just to irritate me. 

1) No it doesn't matter because like I explicitly pointed out, everything I said about the MWP apply to that too, in fact you would have been better off using that example.

2) Conspiracy nonsense. Nothing more to say here. 

3) I really hope you arn't being serious. This is the part that made me think you were being sarcastic. If I had a list of the top 5 most useful things that humans ever came up with, variables would be on that list. Every single technology for the last 500 years uses variables as does every science. Are you actually being serious here, because I am finding it difficult to believe you are. 

4) More conspiracy nonsense.

5) Urgh. Completely missed the point. Scientists don't use twitter to write papers. 

6) I don't even....

Honestly this is the most ridiculous post I have come across since I joined TWO, and that includes every single post ever made on the climate forum. In fact this is orders of magnitude more ridiculous than anything I have ever come across there. 

Originally Posted by: Medlock Vale Weather