94 thoughts on “Monckton Lambert Debate: Our chat.”

1. Thanks for that Lucia. Gives new meaning to “reading between the lines.”

2. nice. so why typed a transcript of the debate? and when will it be posted?

3. Lucia — following the dialog without seeing the debate is like some surrealist poem, you should publish

4. sorry, pretty bad typo:

   so whO typed a transcript of the debate?

5. Sorry I missed this. Who won?

6. It’s awesome, I wasn’t interested in the debate even though Monckton is pretty funny in action (from seeing him interviewed on smh.com.au).

   Now I want to be part of the next debate with Team Blackboard. Side bets on the specifics of the sneaky debating tricks.

7. Monckton claimed CO2 concentrations were 300,000ppm 750 million years ago. I don’t know of any evidence for this. Also, ice a mile thick at the equator is controversial to say the least. I don’t know of any evidence there either.

   The problem with debates like this is its hard to point out these false things without looking douchy. I still would have slammed him on that just for the fun of it.

8. Hmmmmm….I guess the Snowball Earth hypothesis has changed quite a bit since I last read about it. Turns out that CO2 might have been as high as 130,000 ppm. Of course, the theory rests on pretty high positive feedbacks, and of course, the high GHG content is what broke us out of snowball earth. In addition, much of the evidence for SE is from models, so it’s interesting to see that Monckton accepts it unquestioningly.

9. Re: sod (Feb 12 00:39),
   It’s not a transcript! It’s the comments we wrote while we watched it. (No. You can’t tell what was happening in the debate very well.)

   Re: magicjava (Feb 12 01:59),
   I think it was a tie. Neither converted anyone, but both came off as friendly and intelligent. That’s usually the criterion in a debate.

   Re: Boris (Feb 12 06:13),

   The problem with debates like this is its hard to point out these false things without looking douchy. I still would have slammed him on that just for the fun of it.

   It is hard to point out false things. That’s why I thought Lambert having the tape of the author Monckton was citing telling us Monckton was wrong was a great debating move.

   But Monckton really does seem to be very good about specific numbers and dates. I suspect if an author asked Svante Arhennius’s shoe size, I suspect he would have either known or made up a plausible sounding answer. Plus, he would have embellished that with an interesting account about Svante’s difficulty buying shoes, and related that to why global warming is not a catastrophe!

   The guy is entertaining– and smooth.

10. I thought the evidence for snowball earth was cap carbonates. Monckton does read. He also seems to have a very good memory.

11. “lucia: Monckton must have taken acting and elocution lessons.”

    English Public Schoolboy and Hereditary Peer. The system produces people like that and better. It was designed to produce the Rulers of our Empire.

    You should have stuck with us, and you wouldn’t have got incoherent morons like Bush (can’t speak) and Obama (can’t think, and can’t speak without a teleprompter).

12. Lucia,
    All the debates make no difference. If there is a large net positive feedback to CO2, AGW may be a real problem. If the net feedback is small or negative, there is no warming problem. The best real world evidence in modern times (and even in earlier times) does not support large positive feedback.

    Cooling is a potentially much larger problem, as even a modest cooling would lower crop production, and cause mass starvation.

13. MarkR–
    I’ve met other English Public Schoolboys; some sound like they speak with marbles in their mouths!

14. Leonard Weinstein (Comment#33064)

    If there is a large net positive feedback to CO2, AGW may be a real problem. If the net feedback is small or negative, there is no warming problem. The best real world evidence in modern times (and even in earlier times) does not support large positive feedback.

    Lambert told the audience the former and both discussed the magnitude of feedback. The format of the debate caused both presenters to veer off this topic rather quickly. The audience members just ask whatever the heck they wanted to ask.

    Some of the questions were incomprehensible. Most were off topic of the debate question, but at least touched on global warming. It was rather like typical radio call in show!

15. Reading the chat without hearing the debate kind of replicates our experience watching it. The camera stayed on the two debaters and never showed us the slides they were talking about.

    So we were always having to guess what was being shown, just like readers of the chat transcript must imagine what was being said in the debate. 🙂

16. Yes. Camera men need to learn to record these so the watching at home audience can actually know what’s going on. We already know what the heck Monckton and Lambert look like. We want to see the viewgraphs too!

17. Leonard W says “Lucia,
    All the debates make no difference. If there is a large net positive feedback to CO2, AGW may be a real problem.”

    Both Lambert and Monckton both made that point emphatically and for a while it looked like the debate would focus on that key issue, but unfortunately, things drifted away rapidly.

    Monckton used the Pinker paper to support his position. Lambert must have been expecting that because he played an audio recording of Pinker saying that Monckton was misinterpreting her paper — something about confusing changes in radiation with total values. It didn’t quite get it, and I’m sure that most in the audience didn’t understand Pinker’s comments other than “Monckton is wrong”.

18. Lucia:
    Interesting dialogue. However, as I read it – except for the Pinker bit – your contemperaneous account suggests that Monckton actually won! Do others see your record the same way or is it just me? Perhaps it is the missing 15 minutes of chat -LOL?
    Has a video of the debate been posted anywhere?

19. Re: Charlie (Feb 12 08:40),

    I’m sure that most in the audience didn’t understand Pinker’s comments other than “Monckton is wrong”.

    Sure. But the fuller message is: “I am Dr. Pinker is Monckton is misintpreting my paper incorrectly for reason ‘X’. Two or three sentences of elaboration”.

    No, the majority audience didn’t understand reason ‘X’, nor the two or three sentences of elaboration. But the fact that it was Dr. Pinker herself saying this carries weight with people who, after all, know they are just sitting in the audience and aren’t expected to be able to instantly download the paper, read it and interpret it themselves.

20. In the chat I made a comment about a correction to ERBE data. It is in a NOAA response to two US Representatives that asked NOAA to respond to some of Monckton’s testimony to a US Congress committee in March 2009. Found it while poking around the new climate.gov website yesterday.

    See page 4 of
    http://www.noaa.gov/images/climate_cooling_testimony111909.pdf

21. Lucia re #33077

    that message means nothing today. there have been so many lies or deliberate omissions of truths in the presentation to the public that trust no longer exists. just saying such and such is wrong, believe my guy, regardless of qualifications, will mean nothing. how can it when those same people with those ‘qualifications’ play very obvious political games.

    this will not change any time soon. people expect politicians to act as the used car salesmen of their own ideals/policy, but when people invest trust heavily in a process or certain people and that trust is broken, then the backlash is far worse than that of a politician caught out in some scandal.

    with this backlash you can honestly expect people to place more faith in a used car salesman telling them a ‘fact’ about the climate than a ‘climate scientist’. thats where it is at, and it is the fault of the gores and hansens of this world.

22. It’s not a transcript! It’s the comments we wrote while we watched it.

    i got that. i was just asking if a transcript was available…

    final words can still be seen here:

    http://media.smh.com.au/national/national-news/summing-up-climate-change-1116130.html

    But Monckton really does seem to be very good about specific numbers and dates….

    The guy is entertaining– and smooth.

    i tend to disagree. he is neither of these things. “pretty insane” was the term that you were looking for.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8WawButqIc

23. Lambert can’t win a debate cos he’s not used to them. Anyone who criticizes on his blog is censored. That’s why when he thinks he has all the answers, he hasn’t.

24. ‘ MarkR (Comment#33062) February 12th, 2010 at 7:58 am
    “lucia: Monckton must have taken acting and elocution lessons.”
    English Public Schoolboy and Hereditary Peer. The system produces people like that and better. It was designed to produce the Rulers of our Empire.
    You should have stuck with us, and you wouldn’t have got incoherent morons like Bush (can’t speak) and Obama (can’t think, and can’t speak without a teleprompter). ‘

    Then why, oh why, is not Monckton, but Gordon Brown Prime Minister? (The famous OEIFS)

25. Re: Bernie (Feb 12 08:41),

    Perhaps it is the missing 15 minutes of chat -LOL?

    Well… at some point one of the other chatters said “You really don’t like monckton, do you?” So, I was observing some Monckton foibles during the “lost minutes”.

    I have to plan ahead and get more convenient chat software for the next live debate. The chat was fun.

26. Breaking: Lambert uses fake tape in Monckton debate:

    “Then I played a recording of a female colleague with an American accent reading out Pinker’s message to me on how Monckton had misunderstood her work. It was as if she was there.”

    http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/moncktons_mcluhan_moment.php

27. Re: Tony of South Yarra (Feb 12 14:53),
    Ohhhh Nooooo!!!!!! Ohhhh Noooo!!!! This is a blunder. He should have asked Pinker to record her comments. I don’t know Pinker– but I suspect a lot of people would record a comment for a debate.

28. Ohhhh Nooooo!!!!!! Ohhhh Noooo!!!! This is a blunder. He should have asked Pinker to record her comments. I don’t know Pinker– but I suspect a lot of people would record a comment for a debate.

    watch it develop into the main talking point of the denialist blogosphere.

    the name of the lady speaking can be found on slide 11, btw.

29. You must realise that Monckton spent a few days relaxing with geologist Ian Plimer in the Flinder’s ranges which is where he got all his info regarding the equatorial ice and the high Co2 etc.

    BTW – it wasn’t Pinker’s voice, Lambert has admitted he had a friend record it with an American accent.

    MarkR – Deltiod is not censored like RealClimate

    I reckon it was a tie because Monckton came back in his summary and claimed that he had sent the Pinker paper to various mathematicians who clearly understood the paper and agreed with him on the interpretation of it’s content. I suspect Ms Pinker was more influenced to agree with the IPCC than with an outspoken sceptic.

30. Sod–
    We couldn’t see the slides at home. If her name was presented to the audience, and it was clear that was not Pinker speaking, then that’s not so bad. At the time, I thought it was Pinker herself speaking.

31. janama–
    I suspect it’s Dr. Pinker and if she thought the IPCC misrepresented her, she’d say so.

    One difficulty with Monckton saying he sent the paper to mathematicians is they aren’t the right people to send it to. The error– as described by Pinker– is one of phenomenology. It’s the sort of error engineers and scientists applying energy balances notice all the time– and has nothing to do with math.

    There are elements to applying the first law of thermo to a control volume that are sort of like the bean counting aspects of doing your budget. You know that to understand where all your money goes, you might want to categorize expenses into categories like “food”, “housing”, “entertainment” etc. To figure out whether the budget balances you need to summ over all the categories– you can’t leave any out.

    Using this bean counting analog, Monckton’s mistake is to think Pinker’s paper is discussing the over all balance, when she’s just doing the tally for one category.

    You can send that to all the mathematicians you like. All they can check is whether her tally for that category is right. But there is nothing about math that lets you understand that you are looking at only one category out of many. That’s physics.

32. I reckon it was a tie because Monckton came back in his summary and claimed that he had sent the Pinker paper to various mathematicians who clearly understood the paper and agreed with him on the interpretation of it’s content
    .
    this is complete nonsense. the author of the paper told him, that he got it wrong and the IPCC got it right.
    .
    so who did Monckton ask? the fellow mathematicians among his fellow members of the house of lords? or his fellow Nobel price winners?
    .
    the guy is a liar, and you take his word over the word of the author of the original work. pretty bizarre.

33. Sod–
    We couldn’t see the slides at home. If her name was presented to the audience, and it was clear that was not Pinker speaking, then that’s not so bad. At the time, I thought it was Pinker herself speaking.
    .
    it isn t only “not so bad”. it actually isn t bad at all.
    .
    Tim has the slides up on his site.
    .
    there simply is nothing to add to this:

    “Our work was properly interpreted in the
    latest IPCC Report (2007)”

34. Thankyou for the correction Lucia.

35. janama (Comment#33179)
    February 12th, 2010 at 3:13 pm

    “MarkR – Deltiod is not censored like RealClimate”

    ROFLMAO yeah Tim and Tamino NEVER delete comments..

    In fact they will go back DAYS later and delete comments they do not like or agree with.

36. Lambert both deletes entire comments that are not to his liking and devowels others to obscure them to the point of unintelligibility.

    He has done both to me personally.

37. Lucia,

    I was interested by your comments in the chat regarding IC vs. BC problems. It wasn’t clear to me why you thought this was a problem to mention this. Could you elaborate on this point? Maybe you thought it was too complex for this debate?

    From my own personal communications with Monckton it’s clear he’s rather confused about ICs and BCs and unwilling to correct that problem. At least, he won’t take it from me that he’s wrong. He is fond of scientific authority, it just seems that he prefers to talk to folks that prefer to feed him misinformation. As, when pushed on this point, he told some math and physics guys told him this stuff.

38. Alexej Buergin (Comment#33158)
    “Then why, oh why, is not Monckton, but Gordon Brown Prime Minister? (The famous OEIFS)?”

    Accidental. He has never been Elected. Blair was educated at Fettes.

    Labour PM’s aren’t all Public School. Wilson was a Grammar School Boy, like me.

39. may I suggest everyone actually read Dr Pinker’s reply to Dr Lambert. She’s not as critical as Dr Lambert would have you believe.

    http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/upload/2010/02/debate_australia_tim_lambert.pdf

40. Yes, did Lambert misrepresent Pinker?

41. Re: Paul H (Feb 12 19:25),

    I was interested by your comments in the chat regarding IC vs. BC problems. It wasn’t clear to me why you thought this was a problem to mention this. Could you elaborate on this point? Maybe you thought it was too complex for this debate?

    You guessed right. I think audiences who have not taken partial differential equations are unlikely to know it should matter whether the problem is “initial value” vs. “boundary value”.

    Even if for those who do understand, that distinction can end up simplistic. It’s not as though the fact that something is a bc problem means it’s easy to solve, or that we can solve it accurately. So, I get tired of that discussion.

    In the end, it was probably ok as filling up a gap. But, I knew it was coming, and just groaned.

42. Re: Paul H (Feb 12 19:25),
    I should add: from my personal communications with Monckton, he’s confused about the importance of heat capacity and time constants. The guy clearly has never taken any courses in continuum mechanics, heat transfer, mass transfer etc.

43. Lucia,

    How is Monckton confused about heat capacity and time constants? How they are related to each other? How they constrain climate sensitivity?

44. “The guy clearly has never taken any courses in continuum mechanics, heat transfer, mass transfer etc.”

    Has Big Al taken any of these courses as far as we know? 😉

    Andrew

45. OT
    In a BBC interview, Jones has essentially broken the hockey stick and landed Mann in deep doo-doo. The pressure will now build enormously if any significant part of the media pays attention and follows up. The UEA investigation is now blown wide open. What was the trigger for this amazing show? Perhaps Jones knows who released the emails and documents.

46. ‘ Andrew_KY (Comment#33248) February 12th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
    “The guy clearly has never taken any courses in continuum mechanics, heat transfer, mass transfer etc.”
    Has Big Al taken any of these courses as far as we know? ‘

    Has any climatologist taken all the courses in the different sciences that make up climatology? No, because then he would still be a student, not a climatologist. And afterwards he might study history (Eric the Red about MW, Napoleon about LIA), politics, economics. And when he is finally finished, he cannot remember why he did all this.

47. Andrew_KY

    Has Big Al taken any of these courses as far as we know? ‘

    No. I’m observing that Monckton makes certain sorts of mistakes, and they are the mistakes of someone who had not taking any courses in heat transfer, mass transfer, thermodynamics or fluid mechanics.

    One of his mistakes is to keep assuring us that he has mathematicians check his heat transfer calculations. The difficulty is they can’t check for phenomenological errors because most of them also don’t know the physics in the correct area. Not every thing is math.

48. ‘ MarkR (Comment#33235) February 12th, 2010 at 7:43 pm
    Alexej Buergin (Comment#33158)
    “Then why, oh why, is not Monckton, but Gordon Brown Prime Minister? (The famous OEIFS)?”
    Accidental. He has never been Elected. Blair was educated at Fettes.
    Labour PM’s aren’t all Public School. Wilson was a Grammar School Boy, like me. ‘

    So you have an incoherent moron, too, just like the Americans. If it must be a Brown, then Chubby. Now, HE represents England as it is today.

49. “Boris (Comment#33053)
    February 12th, 2010 at 6:27 am

    Hmmmmm….I guess the Snowball Earth hypothesis has changed quite a bit since I last read about it. Turns out that CO2 might have been as high as 130,000 ppm.”

    There is only one estimate of CO2 at the end of last snowball period 635 million years ago and that was 12,000 ppm.

    The 130,000 ppm is an estimate of what it would have taken to bring the Earth out of a -35C snowball. If all the CO2 from volcanoes (including those under the ocean) made it to the atmosphere and was not geologically or biologically sequestered because of all the ice, it would take about 10 million years for 130,000 ppm of CO2 to build up.

    Since CO2 was not that high and it seems impossible that volcanoes could really have added that much CO2 to the greenhouse effect, we have to go back to the most likely explanation for what ended the last snowball period and that is …,

    The supercontinent, Rodinia and Pannotia, composed of almost every continent broke up and moved off of the south pole, which is what the continental drift reconstructions show occured.

    Take all the continents and put them at the south pole, think Antarctica times 20 and how cold does the Earth get. Close to 50%of the solar irradiance would now be reflected back into space versus just 30% today. The simulations indicate the all-ocean equator was still ice-free in the snowball but there would have been a few landmasses near the equator which would have developed glaciers.

50. Lucia,

    It just seems to me that you are using Monkton as your Virtual Voodoo Doll and sticking pins in him to the exclusion of all the other scientific “dummies” that are trotted out, including the Big Al Clone which you seem regard as having a invisible force field around him that makes him inscrutable to you.

    Andrew

51. Lucia-
    “The guy clearly has never taken any courses in continuum mechanics, heat transfer, mass transfer etc.”
    Ok, that applies to a lot of people in the world , I think.

    “he’s confused about the importance of heat capacity and time constants. ”

    I am guessing that heat capacity has something to do with specific heat and perhaps volume and a time constant (if it’s akin to resistive-capacitive time constants) has to do with the product of heat capacity and conductivity? Does this all tie in with the notion of a “heat island”?

52. Lucia,

    This struck my eye, you saying: “lucia: Baa– Some people couldn’t win a debate if the topic was “does 2 2=4,” and they got to argue that it does.”

    That’s pretty much what I was argueing a week or so ago, i.e. that a debate was not a good forum to decide what’s more likely true. I’m a little surprised to see that you agree. Or am I misunderstanding something?

53. Re: Andrew_KY (Feb 13 08:25),
    Monckton just debated Lambert. There was live coverage. Why would this event cause me to write a post about Al Gore?

    When Al Gore faces Mockton, I will discuss both, and that means I will mention the mistakes of both.

    Re: Hank Henry (Feb 13 08:56),
    Yes. Heat capacity will be related to specific heat and mass– so volume indirectly. Non-zero time constants arise in heat transfer because the heat capacity is not zero — and yes heat tranfer rates also matter when estimating any time constant. So, conduction can matter– although in some problems, the issue might be convection/ radiation or which ever heat transfer mechanisms are important.

    I don’t think this is directly related to a heat island. The analogy is more like this:

    Find a big unheated unairconditioned stone castle. Make sure it has very, very heavy stones– the gives you lots of heat capacity. Seal the castle to permit as little air infiltration. Shut all flues, close all windows, doors etc. (I want you to do the latter to reduce infiltration and so slow heat transfer. For this experiment, we don’t want cold air going down the chimney and pushing air out the windows when it gets cold at night with the opposite happening during the day.) Put a thermometer inside one of the walls of an interior room– or better yet, if it has a basement, put the thermometer in the basement.

    Now put another thermometer in the garden about 100 m from he castle.

    Over the course of the day, watch the temperature of the two thermometers. The temperature recorded by the thermometer in the stone castle will vary less — and the variations will happen slowly– thatn the thermometer outdoors.

    Monckton’s charts of what the IPCC “should” have projected (which he calls the IPCC projections) are the equivalent of saying that an engineer “should” predict the temperature inside the castle is always the same as outside the castle.

    But we all know that’s wrong. The temperature inside the castle varies differently than outside because the castle has a large heat capacity, and the time constant for temperature changes is long– due to the combined effects of large heat capacity and slow heat transfer. No one would accuse an engineer of “cheating” if they included the effect of heat capacity and time constants when predicting the temperarture variations inside the castle.

    In fact, the effect of heat capacity is so well known that people have been storing wine in the big cellars for centuries. This avoids exposing the wine to wild temperature swings and extremes. This is not considered “cheating” and no-one would lecture the wine maker that he should “really” expect the cellar to be as hot as the vineyards in summer or as cold in winter!

    But of course, Monckton would tell you he had a mathematician check his math. But … his problem isn’t the math it’s incorrect physics.

54. “When Al Gore faces Mockton, I will discuss both”

    lol Al Gore doesn’t do debates, to your answer translated is:

    “I will never discuss Al Gore”

    Cherry-Picker!

    But, I have an offer for you that will allow you to demonstrate to me that you aren’t completely in the tank for Big Al.

    Dub me The Official Blackboard Al Gore Critic, and I’ll consider the playing field leveled out. 🙂

    Andrew

55. Re: Bart Verheggen (Feb 13 09:09),
    If I recall correctly, you seemed to be arguing that no one should debate skeptics. In contrast, I think that people who are especially pathetic debaters should certainly not do it.

    Based on his performance in the Chrichton/Lindsen/Schmidt, Somerfeld etc. debate, Gavin appears to be someone who might want to avoid being the one to debate. But this hardly means any and all AGW activists should avoid debates. Surely you can find people who do a decent job– as Lambert did!

    You go find your Lamberts, get them some practice, and they can face skeptics in any debate you like. Monckton may well be the toughest act to face– and Lambert got a draw in front of a hostile to him audience and on his first go!

    If Lambert does this 3 times a year, he will be good enough to consistently win debates with Monckton and bust many of his talking points. Plus if you study things Lambert did right and wrong, and improve, you will be able to find someone in every state of the US who can do as well as Lambert.

    There were a few things Lambert did wrong. But you know what? I read his blog post and he knows what some of them are. So, on a second debate, he would do better.

56. Andrew_KY

    lol Al Gore doesn’t do debates, to your answer translated is:

    “I will never discuss Al Gore”

    I have criticized activists for refusing to debate. Al Gore does his side no favors by spearheading the notion that not debating is a winning tactic. It’s not.

    But I didn’t follow Monckton’s tour prior to the debate; equally I don’t follow Gores. The reason is: without give and take, both tours are mostly uninteresting and, as such, worthy of being ignored.

57. Lucia,

    Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do I get my title? 🙂

    Andrew

58. Andrew_KY–
    a) I don’t care if you believe I am not completely in the tank for Al Gore.
    b) You, vg and a few others will have to dress like thralls and battle it out for that title. The rest of us will sit around wagering quatloos on the outcome.

59. Lucia,
    Glad to see we agree. As long as people don’t confuse public debates with science, I’m pragmatic enough to be in favour of a good debater from the scientific side of things (not necessarily a climate scientist themselves) taking on the likes of Monckton.

60. Lucia,

    🙁 Party Pooper 😛

    vg would probably be a worthy adversary though. I just hope he’ll forgive me when I bop him with one of those Triskellion Battle Devices. 😉

    Andrew

61. Re: Bart Verheggen (Feb 13 10:13),
    I don’t think there really is a great danger that people will confuse debates with science itself. Do either AGW activists or skeptics confuse Gore’s tours with the process of science itself? I doubt it. Voters don’t confuse campaign debates with the process of governing — but they still feel debates benefit them. Even if a few people do confuse debates with the process of science, I don’t think that that would really hurts the AGW side so much provided you find someone with adequate debating skills to debate.

    These people exist. So try to find them. Let them develop their chops in some of the smaller venues– and evaluate their performance critically. Obviously, you don’t want to be mean– but you need to identify what they do wrong and what they do right. Sort of like football teams examining their play by play. Even the best performers do some things wrong– and they improve by noticing the mistakes– and those of their competition– and learning from those. It doesn’t hurt to notice the strengths of the competition either.

    Lambert seems to be able to do both these things.

    When these guys get better, move them up the ladder and suggest them for bigger debates In the process, do not let your admiration for peoples writing skills or ability to publish papers cloud your thinking when evaluating who debates well.

    Lambert is good… some other people are not. For US venues, you need to find your US Lambert.

    I know “you” guys don’t trust me and think I’m one of the “others”. But… really, to get your message out, you need to go to the public instead of lecturing the entire great mass of the public to come to you.

62. Bart Verheggen (Comment#33290),
    “taking on the likes of Monckton.”

    I suspect that you would not make a good candidate for debating the AGW side. Compare the personal hostility conveyed by the above phrase to how Lambert and Monckton conducted themselves in Sydney. Dismissing your opponent in this way does not constructively address their arguments, and will only make people not trust you.

63. Lucia, thank you. Understanding is an evolving matter for me. I enjoy your blog. When I was tracking down in my mind the difference between surface temperature and surface *air* temperature I noticed an article at sciencedaily.com stating that on the moon, “At low and mid-latitudes, there are isolated warmer regions with nighttime temperatures of [only] -208 degrees F.” I am guessing this is not just due to differences in albedo but also differing heat capacity of different kinds of rock at the surface…. To my mind the moon is great for comparison purposes since it lacks the confounding issues of an atmosphere and water.

    Btw, I have heard Monckton correct himself and acknowledge he was wrong on a point.

64. Alexej Buergin (Comment#33275) My Dear Fellow. Grammar School Boys are the cream of the crop. Selected by proper test aged 11. Unlike Affirmative Action Obama, and where’s Daddys check book George W Bush. Also Chubby Brown is no more representative of Britain today than Falstaff was in Henry V’s time.

65. You go find your Lamberts, get them some practice, and they can face skeptics in any debate you like. Monckton may well be the toughest act to face– and Lambert got a draw in front of a hostile to him audience and on his first go!

    If Lambert does this 3 times a year, he will be good enough to consistently win debates with Monckton and bust many of his talking points.
    .
    sorry Lucia, but multiple parts of this are simply wrong.
    .
    Monckton got trashed, in all parts of the debate that i saw. having your main point of evidence contradicted by the author himself, is a once in a lifetime thing. if this is the stuff that makes “a draw” in your world, then i must be living in a different one.
    .
    neither is Monckton the toughest act to face. he is pretty absurd. his slides are absurd. and he keeps getting facts wrong. people who know a tiny bit about him, can t take him serious. he simply made too many false claims in the past, some of them as absurd as the claim that he is a member of the house of lords. he is not and was not at that time.
    .
    you also missed the point of the hostile audience. Tim did not only score points in front of a hostile audience. actually a AGW hostile is the only audience, among which Monckton could win any points at all. Tim could have had the same debate in front of a scientific audience. or in front of a pro-AGW one. Monckton would immediately perish in any such setting.

66. Sod–

    1) From the point of “people who, prior to the debate, were not already true believers of AGW like ‘sod'”, Monckton did not get trashed. It’s a draw because both guys got some points in, both lost some and people in the audience do not necessarily all weight those points the way someone like you insists they must weigh them.

    2) You are simply wrong to suggest that people who know a tiny bit about Monckton can’t take him seriously. There is so much empirical evidence against your claim that one can only laugh when you advance it.

    3) If you put on your “I am not a true believer hat”– who do you think is the toughest act for Lambert to face? Morano? Singer? (Hah!)

    4) If you think Monckton was not the toughest act, do you think Lambert would have crumbled like a cookie if faced by the toughest act? That he only looked competent because Monckton is such an insignificant presence that no one would ever listen to him? Do you think we could never see his tour selling out to crowds of Australians because no one could possibly find him compelling?

    5) I don’t know why you think I miss the point of a hostile audience. I’ve noted the composition was hostile to Tim’s view, and Tim did well. That means Tim did well. I interpret that to mean Tim has some great potential for future debates. So, what do you think the “point” about the hostile audience is.

67. MarkR (Comment#33298) February 13th, 2010 at 11:05 am

    Do you mean to say they have not yet abolished all the grammar schools? So there is one instance where Labour has not yet destroyed everything?
    But otherwise I disagree: Monckton and the “fat bastard” are both representatives of modern Britain, as are Moonbat, Phil Jones and John Terry. And over at WUWT they even had the charming Mary Hinge.

68. Lambert won this debate hands down. He eviscerated Monckton’s key assertion, and dynamited Plimer at the same time.

    In fact, he even the won the photo-op war. Look at the photo of Lambert with his ill-fitted suit and downtrodden shoes. He looked the part of the everyday hardworking man who has done his homework versus the stuffed shirt in wing tips (Monckton). What a contrast! The “know-it-all” Monckton versus the guy who has studied and prepared every detail, and the everyman ends up blasting the phony to pieces.

    http://picasaweb.google.com/deltoidblog/DebateWithMonckton?feat=embedwebsite#5437338466269537698

69. Alexej Buergin (Comment#33322) Brings to mind Hinge and Bracket! The English laughing at ourselves.

    http://www.hingeandbracket-official.co.uk/hingeandbracketTUBE.htm

70. No-one answered janama (Comment#33242) or mine following.

    Not having seen the debate I can’t tell if Lambert actually misrepresented Pinker or not, but it seems an important question since janama’s link does suggest deep shades of grey rather than a black and white refutation.

71. Sod–

    1) From the point of “people who, prior to the debate, were not already true believers of AGW like ’sod’”, Monckton did not get trashed. It’s a draw because both guys got some points in, both lost some and people in the audience do not necessarily all weight those points the way someone like you insists they must weigh them.
    .
    i am curious. got points and lost points. what point was scored by Monckton, that was similar to having the author of your main source contradict you?
    .
    2) You are simply wrong to suggest that people who know a tiny bit about Monckton can’t take him seriously. There is so much empirical evidence against your claim that one can only laugh when you advance it.
    .
    the evidence is people, who want to take him serious, because they agree with his point of view.
    .
    3) If you put on your “I am not a true believer hat”– who do you think is the toughest act for Lambert to face? Morano? Singer? (Hah!)
    .
    i would suggest somebody who understands the science. for a start.
    .
    4) If you think Monckton was not the toughest act, do you think Lambert would have crumbled like a cookie if faced by the toughest act? That he only looked competent because Monckton is such an insignificant presence that no one would ever listen to him? Do you think we could never see his tour selling out to crowds of Australians because no one could possibly find him compelling?
    .
    Monckton fills rooms with people who have little understanding of the topic, but a strong and one sided opinion about it.
    .
    as a student, for fun, we went to a reading by Erich von Däniken. just to find out that a huge hall was completely sold out, with 100s of people still trying to get a ticket.
    pretty insane positions can fill big rooms. that is not very special.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken

    5) I don’t know why you think I miss the point of a hostile audience. I’ve noted the composition was hostile to Tim’s view, and Tim did well. That means Tim did well. I interpret that to mean Tim has some great potential for future debates. So, what do you think the “point” about the hostile audience is.
    .
    again: my point is, that Monckton can ONLY debate in front of an anti-AGW audience. he can t talk in front of scientists, who are sceptical to his point of view. he would be ripped apart. neither could he talk in front of a pro-AGW crowd. his whole behaviour would not score points there, but cost him.

72. Sod–

    Well, you are changing your category from people who know a tiny bit about him, to people who are predisposed to accept his views. The latter certainly know at least at tiny bit about him– even if they don’t interpret the information they way you like.

    Whether you like it or not, Monckton naming the date and mentioning Calendar when Lambert was hemming and hawing “scored a point”. There were other similar points. I will agree with you these points should be seen as less important that Lambert getting Pinker to say Monckton misinterpreted– but that doesn’t mean that they are seen so by everyone.

    This is why I say Lambert did not wipe the floor with Monckton. But if he practiced, he probably would. If the AGW guys realize they need to end the silly policy of not debating, Monckton will adopt Gore’s strategy and refuse to debate!

73. Who says the AGW guys don’t debate because of a policy? There are other reasons not to debate. Monckton is a rare bird; he says he was classically educated. I’m not sure what that means exactly but it probably means he’s been schooled in rhetoric. Clearly, he’s also practiced. My big question is how much of his exceptional memory is native and how much he’s been able to improve through development. Frankly, as things stand now I give most of my “authoritative” points to Monckton. At least he’s the authority that’s put together the most cogent package and comes off as most articulate, and he has done homework. This is not to say I don’t believe there isn’t some other more authoritative view out there to be gleaned from the scientific literature, but at things stand now this hockey stick reconstruction that Al Gore relied on for his presentation looks to be in shambles.

    I also suspect most feedbacks are very speculative and unquantified. If methane from thawing permafrost is a feedback your going to have to model that too, and then there’s the clouds, and on and on…..

    I give Monckton some credit for trying to speak in public about calculations and numbers. I’ve heard most publishers and editors of books for popular consumption frown on the practice.

74. Lucia, are you kidding? Any debate judge or debate team coach would tell you that Lambert won this debate in a blowout.

    Both gentlemen agreed that climate sensitivity was the key factor in deciding whether AGW will have a significant impact in changing the Earth’s climate. Monckton put his calculation and source for the input to the formula on the table, and Lambert showed how Monckton erred in the calculation.

    Monckton used Pinker as a source, when Pinker’s data and analysis was about SW (sunlight) radiation hitting the Earth, not LW radiation important to CO2 forcing. (Shockingly, Monckton doesn’t know the difference.) Then Lambert corrected Monckton’s calculation and showed a better estimate of the sensitivity is around 0.75, about six times higher than the sensitivity Monckton got (using SW data!). Thus instead of 0.43 deg C increase in temperature for a doubling of CO2, Monckton’s own calculations would get 2.8 deg C, within the estimated range from the IPCC report of 2 to 4.5 deg C.

    A debate judge might not understand all this, but they would know that both debaters agreed on the key point, but one presented a faulty analysis based on not understanding his sole data source for the key point. The other debater exposed the error, had direct written quote from Pinker pointing out the error, and confirming her work agreed with the IPCC report that Monckton claimed was wrong. Along the way, the pro side debater also showed the con side debater incorrectly referenced the IPCC report by claiming it showed a 3.26 deg C estimate, when the actual range of the estimate was 2 to 4.5 deg C. (BTW, as a statistician, you should be able to recognize a case of false precision in the con side debater’s claim.)

    The Calendar point came during the question period, and there was no conflict between the two debaters on this relatively unimportant footnote, so there isn’t any real debating points on the line there.

    I have never seen a debate this one-sided. Lambert wiped the floor with Monckton, and anyone with debate experience could tell you that.

    Readers; check out Lambert’s slides where he conveniently shows Monckton’s slides, and corrects them:
    http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/upload/2010/02/monckton.pdf

75. Paul K2 – Tim Lambert did his homework. I’d agree that Monckton was fairly and soundly bushwhacked – unless Lambert used the stand in to read Pinker’s response as edited by Lambert. In that case I’d call it less fair but still well done. I am curious about the details of how debates are scored. Do you know? Are there any rules?

    Lambert landed a good blow, but Monckton will shake it off, think up a way to respond, get his response circulated, and be prepared for the next event. The debate isn’t over.

    By the way, lest anyone dare call this debate “unprecedented”….
    check out: Battle At Thunderblow -Windesmear Vs. Boomer
    http://oldtimeradio-in-tx.homedns.org/otr/crepitation%20contest/

76. Lambert’s Lamda value of 0.75C/watt/metre2 change in forcing contains an error (this figure was really calculated by Hansen and has been perpetuated throughout climate science ever since).

    It is primarily based on Hansen’s “forcing” estimates of the last ice age. [And Hansen could always be right but then you would have to drink the kool-aid as well].

    The biggest error is the “solar forcing reduction” from the ice sheets, vegetation and dust which Hansen estimates to be just -5.0 watt/metre2. This would translate into an increase of just 2% in the amount of solar irradiance being reflected by all that ice, snow, sea ice and desert in the ice ages.

    Most estimates of the reduction in solar irradiance as a result of the increased ice are between 5% to 10%.

    All of climate science (including Lambert) continues to rely on the 0.75C/watt/metre2 figure when it is likely only 0.3 or so.

    Consider the IPCC forcing-to-date estimate of +1.6 watts/metre2 (to the year 2000). At 0.75C/watt/metre2, the temperature should have increased by +1.2C in the year 2000. Between fiddling with the temperature record, the inflated aerosols negative forcing and the fact that the oceans are not currently absorbing any increased forcing – the number is only 0.3 or 0.4.

77. I was at the debate and this is my first comment on the Deltoid thread:

    “If LM had his McLuhan moment than Tim has had his Woody Allen one. The Pinker direct testimony was a smart tactical move; I was sitting with John Smeed and Stewart Franks and we all thought this was a good start; but it was just a stunt; Pinker’s own comments indicate that:

    “however, if we give Christopher Monckton the benefit of doubt and assume that he meant “the impact of clouds on the surface shortwave radiation” than it can pass.”

    In fact this is what LM spoke about; the forcing of less cloud in the 1983-current period; this is a period, as Tim noted, which has featured the lowest sunspot activity in over 100 years; but this is irrelevant because less cloud means more insolation and SW forcing. If radiative forcing from extra SW is as high as Pinker found than 2XCO2 CS must be lower than the IPCC figure given the ^Temperature during that period. Pinker has some further insight in response to Tim’s slide 12:

    “The statement: “is not forcing at all” because “it only accounts shortwave radiation” is not the key problem here. As said before, we can talk about shortwave cloud forcing and LW cloud forcing, as long as it is clear what we mean. The problem is that it is not the accepted definition of SW cloud forcing and should have been labeled as “impact of clouds on the surface downwelling SW”.The net values of both SW and LW is: Fnet (cloud) = FSW (cloud) + FLW (cloud)”

    This was LM’s error in saying the extra SW reaching the surface was cloud SW forcing; cloud SW forcing is a negative forcing as Ramanathan found:

    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/243/4887/57

    And cloud SW forcing is much larger than cloud LW forcing. So, while LM has muddled these terms as Pinker says, LM is still right about the CS issue because the 0.16Wm2 PA is sufficient to explain ^T.

    2 other points; Tim fell down in explaining the temperature manipulation issue; the public understand the ramifications of CRU and GISS data ‘adjustment’; motherhood statements about scientists just doing their job don’t wash and the point from the floor that the adjustments are always up cannot be dismissed by an assertion that as many adjustments are down as up.

    Secondly the LM trend slide which presented an alternative to the IPCC chart showing an increasing trend over shorter periods coming to the most recent times; LM’s alternative slide showing the 3 PDO temp increases is valid and Tim’s dismissal on the grounds that you cannot validly assess trends over shorter periods actually lost him a lot of the ground that the initial Pinker revelation established, because the short period trend invalidity applied to the IPCC trend acceleration graph as LM pointed out.

    Still, the debate was pretty good and Tim did better than I expected him”

78. I was at the debate and my comments at the Deltoid thread at 73 and 173 sum up the issue;

    http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/moncktons_mcluhan_moment.php

    I don’t think Lambert misrepresented Pinker and LM did misunderstand what cloud forcing is but nonetheless his query of the IPCC forcing figure is well based, and he recovered from lambert’s effective opening gambit.

79. Re: Paul K2 (Feb 14 16:22),
    There was no formal debate judge. There was only the audience.

80. I watched the debate on the live feed and later on APAC here in Australia. I thought that Lambert handled himself well and his refutation of the Pinker claims made by Monckton was powerful.

    In that presentation by Lambert I was under the impression that it was Pinker who was speaking and that was the impression that Lambert was wanting his audience to believe. If it was not he would have just read out Pinker’s response to his enquiries.

    He knew that this would not have been very effective in that forum so he fabricated Pinker’s presentation. By not telling his audience what he had done I think he was very misleading.

    There has been enough fabrication on this issue without Lambert indulging himself to gain an advantage. He might think that he was clever in his tactic but it just reinforces the view that is now becoming all pervasive that AGW proponents have been pulling the wool over our eyes.

81. amortiser–
    I watched the live feed and also thought that was Pinker herself reading. I would have to go back and listen to figure out if this was because Lambert’s oral presentation did not mention the quote was a voice over.

    It does appear his slides informed the local audience and he mentioned the fact of the voice over at his blog. I don’t think Lambert could have known that the camera men were not going to display the viewgraphs to the audience watching on the live-feed, so I don’t think Lambert was intending any deception. He was being theatrical– but I don’t necessarily have a problem with that.

82. Bill Illis (Comment#33457),

    But Bill, you have ignored the enormous absorption of heat by the deep ocean!
    .
    Actually, I’m kidding, the deep ocean heat increase looks pretty small. 0.3 to 0.4 degree per watt sensitivity is probably a realistic range, although my guess is that there is not a sensitivity value, but that it probably changes depending upon the current state of the climate system. The response to Milankovitch forcing is not clearly visible in the O18 ocean sediment record until ~2.7 million years ago, just about the time when cyclical advances and retreats of glaciation in Greenland appear to have begun. The long and deep ice ages of the last half million years would appear (as you said) to be mainly driven by albedo feed-backs from large glaciers in the norther hemisphere, with the help of feed-backs from CO2 and methane, combined with changes in summer solar intensity in the northern hemisphere.

83. Lucia,
    I have had another look at Lambert’s presentation which showed the slide in question as the voiceover stated the Monckton “misinterpretation”. Lambert made no indication that the voice was not that of Professor Pinker. The slide had a note at the bottom which seemed to have a reference to an email but it was so small it could not be read clearly.

    On his website where he mentions his clever tactic he provides a link to a document that includes the words used in his presentation. This document is not an email however.

    Lambert took a gamble which paid off. If it didn’t and Monckton called him on it he would have been publicly humiliated. Signs of desperation from that side of the debate.

84. amortiser– How could Monckton have called him on it? Said, “That’s a voice over. Pinker is really a MAN!!”?

    Possibly, fact that it was a voiceover was not made as clearly as it might have. But unless Lambert mis-represented Pinker’s views (and I don’t think he did) the strategy worked, and it’s difficult to make a real big deal out of the fact that it’s a voice over.

85. voice over does not matter so much if what was said is qouted in context and without revision. anything else is just the usual crap everyone expects. it defeats any message it was meant to convey, unless of course nobody says anything about it which is probably what will happen. we still are a bit behind the times in australia in terms of sceptical media coverage.

    funny thing is though, the media are becoming more and more irrelavant as time goes by. 20 years ago, they were able to shut down topics with ease. talk to a few people here and there and no more front line news, and the media still believe they have this power! funny that they ignore a story that has 50 million page hits on google (climategate), and believe they still hold some sort of place in the community reporting the news. sure the media may bring something to attention, but people just go around them and onto the net for a story they want to follow up.

    every step down this path of deceit is one closer to no-one in their right mind believing in global warming.

86. “I screwed something up and lost about 15 minutes of comments from the record here.”

    Rose Mary Woodsesque.

87. Listen to Lindzen: http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_03/Lectures/Colloquium/100210Lindzen/index.htm

    He’s king of the debate.

88. Re: Martin (Feb 17 00:16),

    Rose Mary Woodsesque.

    heh!
    Yes. I have to edit the script for the chat. It saves everything in one .html file. As we chat, it start to really load slowly after every comment. So, I was opening the filein, cutting-pasting the old discussion to a new file and then resaving.

    I accidentally forgot to either refressh or close/open the file to get a fresh copy and I lost comments.

89. Lucia,
    I did what Lambert did and went direct to Pinker. She was quite amused by the fact that Monckton didn’t verify her gender and Lambert didn’t verify her accent.

    What was interesting in her email to me was that Lambert asked her to prepare a video of her statements which she declined to do. So Lambert faked it anyway. She also indicates that both Monckton and Lambert both misinterpreted her paper and pointed out the misinterpretations.

    So that everyone can be clear what Pinker emailed me I have cut and pasted below the body of her email. If you want me to forward the email to you I will be happy to do so.

    “Thank you for your communication. Indeed, the topic of the debate between Lord Christopher Monkton and Dr. Tim Lambert is of a very serious nature. Yet, I cannot escape the “light” side of the event.
    Lord Monckton did not try to verify my gender and Dr. Lambert did not try to verify my accent. As a matter of fact, I have a “Kissinger”
    accent!

    Now, about the serious side of the topic. Here is the sequence of
    events:

    Dr. Lambert informed me about his upcoming debate with Lord Monckton and the nature of Lord Monckton’s interpretation of my paper. He also provided his own interpretation. In my response to Dr. Lambert I tried to explain briefly the correct interpretations. Subsequently, Dr. Lambert asked me to prepare a video clip of my statements, which I declined to do. The following day after the debate (I missed the direct broadcast) I saw the comments from the viewers of the debate on Dr. Lambert’s blog and was surprised to realize that some of the viewers may have believed that it was me speaking. The following day (February 14) Dr. Lambert explained in his blog the “McLuhan” Moment ( I guess, American accent was the right one for the “moment”!).

    With best regards,

    Rachel Pinker”

90. amortiser–
    She doesn’t say Lambert misinterpreted her during the debate though. Only that there was some misinterpretation in what he originally sent her… right?

    So, I take it she means a Henri Kissinger accent? Pretty funny.

91. “In my response to Dr. Lambert I tried to explain briefly the correct interpretations.”

    Means Lambert got it wrong and misinterpreted Pinker.

    Go ahead and ask Pinker if Lambert the Censor interpreted her correctly.

92. you are wrong Mark. they had slightly different views, on what was Moncktons main error.
    .
    i hope amortiser did inform Pinker, that Tim had written the name of the lady who was reading the quote on his slide…

93. “tried to explain…” in this context is short for “tried to explain unsuccessfully…”

94. MarkR–
    Ok. You’re interpretation may be right. I suspect Dr. Pinker doesn’t want every blogger in the world asking her. This is going to remain unresolved.

    Sod– Dr. Pinker read Lamberts post, so I suspect she knows the fact of the voice over was indicated on the viewgraphs.

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