--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "do.rflex" <do.rf...@...> wrote:
> the Daily Mail, has taken another body blow with the > paper publishing a false story claiming that Phil > Jones had admitted that there had been no global > warming since 1995. The original interview with Jones is here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8511670.stm I really do believe it is an extraordinary interview. It's not just some of things that Jones says, it's also the fact that it is a story carried by the BBC and by Roger Harrabin of all people. "The times they are a changin'". This is one of the questions: "Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming" His answer? Yes, he DOES agree. So, quite simply, this is NOT (in this respect) a "false story". He adds to this by stating that any warming signal in this period is not statistically significant, just as any cooling from 2002 is not statistically significant. It might not be too far off the mark then to say that temperatures from 1995 have been pretty "flat" (according to Jones). As I recall, when I mentioned something to this effect a year or so ago, Do-reflex appeared to think I was so batty I must have just dropped in from Mars... This was enormously significant too: "Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?" Although he huffs and puffs a bit, the answer is again yes, he does agree. Why is that so significant? Well it brings to the surface something that is not widely acknowledged in the media: In all the glib talk of consensus, one fact that IS generally accepted by climate scientists is that a warming period began after the end of the "mini ice age" (ie 1860 or so) and BEFORE industrial and post-industrial societies had had a chance to puff out too much CO2. So here he is confirming this. If warming was occurring in 1860, then this suggests that any CO2 component of warming in recent times is likely to be a "forcing" superimposed on an underlying warming trend (which we don't really understand). This means that attempting to evaluate empirically ("scientifically") the CO2 component in the data we have (which is turning out to be very limited and of dubious quality anyway) becomes a fiendishly tricky and complex task. Possibly impossible. And certainly not possible to the degree that warmists are fond of claiming. Of course you may think "CO2 induced climate change" is true *a priori*". But if you do so, it's hardly reasonable of you to claim the rational and scientific high ground, is it? To bandy about phrases such as "flat earthers" and "deniers" for those who have less faith in your *a priori* methodology? Or again you may think that facts about glaciers and polar bears etc are the experimental proof for the CO2 conjecture. But all such talk looks suspiciously like "modus morons"! Viz: "If P is True, Q will be the case" "Q is true" "Therefore P is true" The error is in the first statement, which for global warmers needs to be modified to: "Only if P is True, Q will be the case" And that's where the events of 1860 (or the medieval warm period) assume their significance.
