Andrew Bolt cites NASA data from the troposphere and stratosphere to show that global warming isn’t happening. He starts with the troposphere and makes what’s now a standard denialist talking point, that global temperatures “peaked in 1998” (a year of an exceptionally strong El Nino). Of course, until the last few years, denialists were (correctly for once) making the point that you couldn’t attribute all of the exceptional temperatures of 1998 to long-term climate change.
But Bolt’s new ace is the stratosphere, which is actually cooling. The graph here looks pretty convincing. Has Bolt discovered something that all the scientists have missed? Should he be publishing his findings in Nature. Well, no.
As NASA explains here, stratospheric cooling is also the result of human activity. The most important effect is from the destruction of the ozone layer, but CO2 emissions also play a role. Remember that the effect of greenhouse gases is to trap heat. This warms up the atmosphere below (in the troposphere), but reduces it above (in the stratosphere). There’s disagreement over the magnitude of this effect, but the direction is clear.
It would have taken Bolt five minutes with Google to find this out. Does he not know, or not care? Either way, he ought not to have a job with any responsible media organisation.
Note on comments: If you want to disagree with NASA, complain about the hockey stick, or otherwise dispute mainstream climate science, please follow the course I’ve suggested for Bolt and write to Nature. Or, if you really must attack science here, ask me nicely and I’ll put up an open thread. But for the purposes of this post, I’m going to take the assessment of the scientific evidence as presented by NASA and the IPCC as definitive. Comments disputing the science will be deleted.
John Quiggin 
You’re right. He ought not to have a job with a responsible media outlet.
Fortunately, he doesn’t.
Quoting from the NASA link:
However, scientists hold varying degrees of conviction about the nature of the link between tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling. “The warming of the troposphere and its potential influence upon the stratospheric circulation is an important consideration,” points out Ramaswamy, “though the quantitative linkages are uncertain. It is possible that they may be interdependent only in a tenuous manner.”
“The problem is that we haven’t had adequate data,” Ramaswamy continues. “Observations have been primarily limited to only a very few locations in the stratosphere. We have only 20 years of full global coverage from satellites. Of course radiosonde goes back 40 years but that is not global coverage.”
So NASA aren’t as confident as you suggest. I would thought the comment about inadequate data is very serious, and calls for more empirical work, and not just calibrating models.
Deleted in line with stated policy
Sinclair, I mentioned the varying views on the quantitative magnitudes in the post. None of this helps Bolt, who has the sign wrong.
“But Bolt’s new ace is the stratosphere, which is actually cooling.”
Isn’t Bolt saying both the troposphere and stratosphere have cooled since ’98?
JQ – However did you see the hammering he got? At least he does not censor the comments like he used to.
Prof. Quiggin, what is the point? Do Bolt’s writings do more than
prove that any powerful faction with money in its pocket can hire
hacks? That has been known forever. Is there anything more to be
gained from Bolt than could be gained from a discussion of, say, the
persistence of astrology, or continuing belief in Say’s Law?
What is happening in discussions of climate change is that there
are some organisations which are very, very concerned to head off
Govt. planning of energy consumption and generation, and very, very
concerned to ensure that “market-based” responses are the only ones
considered. I am convinced, for example, that a major factor behind the
Stern report’s emphasis on carbon trading is a desire to ensure that
the City of London can expand into, and perhaps dominate, carbon markets.
In this context, people like Bolt are useful to de-emphasise the
urgency of the problem, because Govt. involvement is likely to be
tolerated only if the problem is seen to be urgent. I’m sure that
readership surveys show that enough people read his stuff to make it
worthwhile to keep him on the payroll. He fulfils one
function, Stern another, but both are playing on the same team.
The objective is to manipulate discourse for the benefit of those to
whom climate change is a business opportunity and nothing more.
There doesn’t seem to be much point in repeatedly attacking the monkey. For
an economist I would have thought it would be more important to
discuss the pros and cons of various responses, like eg. should
carbon entitlements (including future entitlements) be auctioned or
grandfathered? Should offsets be a part of a market arrangement or not?
Who should set emission cielings and how? Etc.
I don’t know that the two graphs shown helps anyones argument. We really need to see that data over a much longer time period. As NASA argue that data are inadequate – I’m inclined to believe them.
You are kidding, right? I quoted a well-known mainstream climate scientist on Nature’s acceptance criteria. How is that a comment disputing the science?
Here’s my original post:
Anyone who does wish to submit to Nature, please be sure not to address any systematic failing on the part of climate scientists, lest you receive a response like this:
Those are James Annan’s own words.
So apparently, your censorship of comments disputing the science extends to comments by mainstream climate scientists questioning the editorial policies of Nature.
I’ve moved the body of this OT comment to the general War on/over Science. Followups should go there
Perhaps you could tell us where your censorship policies end, JQ?
Sukrit, I looked at the two graphs Bolt included. It seems fairly clear at a glance that the troposphere has warmed over the period and the stratosphere has been cooling since the mid-90s.
There may be an insufficiency of data, but there is certainly no support for Bolt’s position.
At least Andrew Bolt doesn’t introduce a climate science topic and then ban any discussion on aforesaid climate science.
Que?
Andrew Bolt like all good Men of Northern European Appearance just likes a good debate.
This is terrible journalisim. Politicans place dobut into peoples minds, journalists shouldn’t. We rely on the media to report about the world so that people can be informed and make good choices in our democracy. The last time I could say this for Bolt was……. well I cannot remember.
I really don’t understand. Does Bolt and his trolls believe that this data shows that the climate is not changing? It certainly seems like a change to me (up or down). If it is a ‘natural’ change, what process is involved? Most natural processes are cyclic, when does he expect things to change back?
I shouldn’t be so confused. A good journalist would spell out everything about this, not just leave me hanging having to find out from other sources.
“Politicans place doubt into peoples minds, journalists shouldn’t.”
Yes Austin, scepticism in any area of human endeavour in to be thoroughly discouraged. We all must accept the conventional wisdoms without question and without qualification. Just like we were told at my Catholic school some decades ago. Those old nuns and brothers certainly knew a thing or two. As for that heretic scoundrel Galileo, well…
You tell ’em JQ.
I’ve now created the promised thread on science wars. Those who want to attack climate science in general can go there. This thread will be confined to discussion of Bolt and his specific claims. I’m moving comments that aren’t related to Bolt to the new thread
Does anyone know if Bolter has been informed on Newscorp’s new position on global warming? My understanding is that Rupert (Sun God) had been reading a few back issues of Nature and checking a bookmarked favourite, johnquiggin.com and decided that his media will adopt a more conciliatory approach to Global Warming. However changes to editorial policy do take a while to reach the outer limits of the empire. No doubt that in due course the sub-editor at the Herald Sun will be have a quick chat to Bolter by the office water-cooler and explain to him what will be required in future opinion pieces.
Maybe Rupert will take a leaf out of JQ’s book and eliminate non-conforming pieces from Bolta’s blog, David. Then we can presumably bask in our comfortble warming state without being forced to read these dastardly heresies until it gets just too hot for us all!
To Austin the naive
Don’t place too much of your trust in journalists
Go and look up Opinion Writer
And note how somebody has linked climate science denial to passive smoking and intelligent design
Very subtle
I like the way Bolter implies Bob Carr’s views expressed on Lateline last night might be due to ‘personal factors’ hereWhatever he’s wink-winking and nudging at, he is an inspiration to up and coming journalists everywhere.
Chrisl, if you mean Bolt, I haven’t been able to find anything from him on smoking, but he does attack supporters of evolution. If you don’t mean Bolt, please take this to the general war on science thread.
FWIW AB is an avowed atheist so I don’t think he would support Intelligent design
(Can you see what is happening here Austin. Seeds of doubt planted…..)
It’s a common tactic
Bolt lost in stratosphere…
John Quiggin catches Andrew Bolt pointing to stratospheric cooling as evidence against global warming. Stratospheric cooling is one of the pieces of evidence that suggest that the warming at the Earth’s surface (where people other than Andrew Bolt liv…
“FWIW AB is an avowed atheist so I don’t think he would support Intelligent design”
And yet, here he is relying on a young-earth creationist.
If you read his blog you’ll find him purporting to maintain neutrality on the issue, but obviously favoring the creationists.
Wow A link twice removed and you’ve pinged him.
How many of these links do you have?
I’m not sure it would stand up in a court of law.
“Maintaining neutrality but obviously favoring the creationistS”
I think it’s called letting everyone have their say!
You must be an avid reader of his blog to pick up the nuances
Yes, chrisl, a particularly shady tactic by JQ. Why not just link direct John? Afraid we might miss out on your propaganda hits, eh? Thanks for the observation chrisl.
His archives are getting harder to search, so I’d better save a copy of this little exchange while I can
http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:BKSo3JpDspcJ:www.heraldsun.news.com.au/printpage/0,5481,16989560,00.html+site:heraldsun.news.com.au+andrew+bolt+%22intelligent+design%22&hl=en&gl=au&ct=clnk&cd=7&client=firefox-a
“From: Tony Windsor
Comment: As one who supports fact’s when arguing any issue, do you support the newspaper advertisements today from leading scientists arguing that Intelligent Design is not science. If you do consider it to be science, could you provide details of reputable scientific institutions who support it being called a science.
Andrew replies: Why your beliigerent tone, Tony? Intelligent Design doesn’t seem to me to be based on science, but on an absence of knowledge in the face of an apparent mystery. I should hope we can discuss such things without seeming quite so ready to explode into anger and abuse. ”
I await (without much expectation) retractions from chrisl and whyisitso.
If you follow JQ’s link (#22 above) you will eventually end up — as observed by chrisl, via a Dulltard internal link — with this from Bolt (this is the entire post):
Is this incorrect? What the hell does it have to do with creationism?
Regardless, Bolt’s comments on temperature changes in the troposphere and stratosphere are — his sarcasm aside — correct.
Andrew replies”Intelligent Design doesn’t seem to be based on science”
That seems pretty clear.
“I should hope we can discuss such things”
That’s what he allows people to do.
Not one of your best links (But I Just know you have more)
I’ve got nothing to retract John. As you very well know I was referring to your link in #22 which directed the reader to two Tim Lambert posts before a link to Bolt. I took that to be what chrisl was referring to when he mentioned “a link twice removed”.
Okey, what will the cooling of Stratophere bring to us?
Or we can be selfishless enough to sacrifice our species: Human Being
for the cooling of the Stratophere and for the “Nature”.
“Regardless, Bolt’s comments on temperature changes in the troposphere and stratosphere are — his sarcasm aside — correct.”
Read the post and links again JFB. Bolt is engaged in dishonest cherrypicking as regards the troposphere and he’s got the argumnt back to front on the the stratosphere.
JQ,
Bolt says: The troposphere was hotter in 1998. The temperature has “flatlined for the past five years.” The stratosphere has cooled.
Where is he wrong?
” A good journalist would spell out everything about this”
Newspaper journalists in general do three things:
1. They report the news
2. They write analysis
3. They write opinions
In general their ego increases the lower down in this list they usually write.
“Bolt says: The troposphere was hotter in 1998. The temperature has “flatlined for the past five years.â€?
Conveniently forgetting that what once took one of the the strongest El Nino’s in 150 years (1998) now just takes normal conditions (2005).
“Where is he wrong?”
This is sometimes called misinformation by omission.
Chris,
While I think you are correct about the size of one’s ego being proportional to how opinionated one’s articles are, I would not categorize those who write opinion as journalists.
They are “columnyists”.
Incidentally, the size of a writer’s ego also seemsto beproprotional to how idiotic one’s writing is.
“Where is he wrong?”
A. He cherrypicks 1998.
and
2. The information he provides does not disprove the consensus, in fact, it may support the consensus.
But, hey, if you’re convinced by pretty colored graphs, what can I say?
The link has a relatively simple explanation about how the stratosphere cools when greenhouse gases increase as well as estimates of the relative contribution of greenhouse gases and ozone depletion. The greenhouse gases are more important in most parts of the stratosphere
Like other GW skeptics it is really rather easy to gauge their credibility by finding out what their views on the global environment are.
Generally you will find that those that are still AGW recalcitrants are also in extreme denial about other global environmental issues and like the Penn & Teller Libertarian types.
If they can do that against a multitude of different disciplines and loads of evidence, is it really surprising that they go against the science in GW and cherry pick to their hearts content?
If it wasn’t GW they would be looking to pick apart that fisheries study that was recently released.
Bolt’s view on the environment is pretty well know is it really surprising that he continues to feed his pet bias this way?
BTW a good debate is only as good as the intellectual honesty of those who participate something the PM and Bolt are seriously lacking, the only science they are interested in is the science of spin.
#31, apart from the point made in #33, the ‘flatlining’ has occurred at above average temperatures. The short period over which data exists means that the warmer temperatures of the last decade have raised the average as well. It could be a cyclical effect, but it certainly doesn’t lend support to Bolt’s position.
“For an economist I would have thought it would be more important to
discuss the pros and cons of various responses, like eg. should
carbon entitlements (including future entitlements) be auctioned or
grandfathered? Should offsets be a part of a market arrangement or not?
Who should set emission cielings and how? Etc.”
Spot on, but of course the sky is falling mob, want us to believe on the one hand like SA Premier Rann that we should aim for a reduction in GG of 60% (albeit in his case with nuclear power over his dead body, but not uranium mining)and all this will only cost we poor slobs about 1% of GDP GROWTH in future. That is of course something we can all accommodate with one less hot latte per week apparently. After all we’ve moved on so much and become so much more productive since the invention of the steam engine and the reciprocating piston engine nowadays.
Climate Change is part of an evolutionary cycle.
Surely it is in the planet’s best interests to simply allow the fittest to survive.
I really don’t understand the fuss.
Everything on the planet will either adapt or die. So does it really matter?
In the interests or reclaiming some useful verbs and adjectives I hitherto have decided to refer to the sceptics and denialists and ‘Canutians’ in honour of the Danish King Canute, who demonstrated to his fawning courtiers that even the power of kings and men has limits.
“He cherrypicks 1998.”
As well as this, he cherrypicks Spencer and Christy’s derivation of the troposheric temperature which anyone who is familiar with will know gives the lowest long-term temperature trend of any satellite derivation. His link even points to a page that gives out-of-date and wrong information. e.g. it says “The overall trend in the tropospheric data is now +0.08 deg. C/decade (through 2004).” Spencer and Christy’s derivation now gives a long-term trend of +0.128 deg. C/decade. This contrasts with the RSS group‘s derivation that gives a long term trend of +0.19 deg. C/decade and with the surface temperature record 1979-2005 trend of +0.17 deg. C/decade.
Andrew Bolt, cherry-picker extraordinaire.
The next thing Bolt will be telling us is that the Aboriginal stolen generation weren’t stolen..hang on a minute.. he already did an article on that a few years back. It is downright harmful journalism that continues to perpetuate the “head in the sand” mentality among the general public that global warming is not a problem.
I’m still waiting for the majority of the world’s economists to realise that without a livable planet it doesn’t matter 2 hoots how healthy the economy is. The world economy was never sustainable, since it assumes a never ending profit scale in a finite world.. by continuing to raise arguments about how this will hurt the average business we are losing site of the bigger picture. There won’t be any global economy in the future unless we combat global warming seriously with short term economic sacrifices.
Mike (#40) –
It is tempting (“the sea level is not rising, I tell you, it’s not risi …gurgle gurgle”) to give these people such a relevant name, but unfair to Canute. Unlike GWB and the climate denialists, he knew an inconvenient truth when he saw it. He commanded the tide to stay back to humiliate his fawning courtiers, who had told him he was all-powerful, not because he believed them.
“Everything on the planet will either adapt or die. So does it really matter?”
Do you take this relaxed view with respect to your own survival, Gillian? Personally, I’d rather adapt than die, and I’d rather address risks now rather than waiting for them to happen.
“Everything on the planet will either adapt or die. So does it really matter?�
It’s also worthy of note that those most likely to die – the inhabitants of the Ganges delta, for example – have had little or nothing to do with creating the problem. Such complacency about the predictable and likely avoidable suffering of others carries the whiff of the moral abyss, methinks.
It is not unusual to have rapidly changing temperatures during the last several glacial/interglacial cycles of the present Ice Age. We are either moving towards a rapid rise and fall in temperature or away from it.
Big deal, the weather changes from time to time.
So will the hot air surrounding climate change.
When someone asks me which way I would choose to die, I can never give her or him any very surprising or satisfactory answer, because personally I always hope to live as long as possible. Especially when I was very young, the lunch tommorrow will make me wanna live.
However, the bravest answer among my relatives came from my grandma. She wishes for a sudden death. She told me: It would be fair that everyone die together when the earth explodes, so that noboday would die first or later. At that time, I did not understand. I thought my grandma is selfish, old-fashioned……
However, nowadays i always was asked whether I would like to die before my husband or after my husband. The norm within my circle of friends always choose to die after the loved one, coz they do not hope to leave them alone.
When i am writing, I am rethinking why I want live. I would say: perhaps I have hope. What kind of hope? Secret to myself. 😛
So John and Hal9000, I take it that you both believe that we have to fight what is likely to be the next evolutionary step facing the planet but you’ve not explained why we should.
It’s as inevitable as the ice age which killed the majority of life on earth millennia ago. Loss of life is sad, of course, however as part of the next epoch, surely doesn’t matter since according to a number of noted cliamte change experts we’ve left the run too late anyway. Not everything on the lanet will die, the various evolutionary ages have proven that and so what is the majority of homosapiens die – we’ll just be replaced with whatever comes after us. We are but neo-Neanderthals for future generations to study.
No. no GIllian, you’ve got it wrong. The climate change is caused by increased CO2 from human sources, so the “evolutionary” argument doesn’t fly–even above and beyond the misuse of the term to apply to geological and not biological systems.
An analogy: You have some flowers in a garden and you overwater them daily. You would claim that “hey, it’s evolution. They’ll adapt or die!” There is another course of action. Stop overwatering!
Oh, and humans survived the ice age, and will survive the warming. How will society suffer is the question.