John and I think we should do a Christy Crocks series similar to Monckton Myths, using Christy's recent congressional testimony.  Here are the myths I transcribed from his testimony, feel free to call dibs on doing a blog post on any of them:

1) "[the hockey stick] was the icon of the TAR, the Third Assessment Report, and what the tree ring record did, in showing it did not agree with temperatures, indicated that the icon itself, which was based primarily on tree rings prior to the 16th century, was therefore not very good at explaining what the temperature was." (John's got it).

2) "I think I might like it warmer actually" (too vague)

3) "When you look at the possibility of natural unforced variability, you see that can cause excursions that we've seen recently" (Albatross and Dana)

4) "I think there's been too much jumping to conclusions about seeing something happening in the climate and saying 'well the only way that can happen is human effects'" (grypo)

5) "I think the consistency [between now and 1970s cooling predictions]...there's a large amount of ignorance about the climate system." (I already took this one as Christy Crock #1)

6) "I can say that there certainly hasn't been a warming of temperatures since [1998]." (Robert Way has dibs)

7) "If you go back through the entire history of the world, most of the periods have not been cooler than today, they've been warmer." (Robert Way has dibs)

8) "Greenland ice borehole temperatures...indicated a clear 500 year period of temperatures warmer than the present centered around 900 AD commonly referred to as the Medieval Warm Period." (Rob H perhaps?)

9) "you're looking at most at a tenth of a degree [reduction in global temperature] after 100 years [if USA imposes CO2 limits]" (I'll probably do this one, since I did "CO2 limits will have little effect")

10) "climate model output does not match up to the real world" (James)

11) "this issue has policy implications that may potentially raise the price of energy a lot, and thus essentially the price of everything else." (Dana)

12) "Evidence was presented by Dr. Ross McKitrick and others indicated the popular surface temperature data sets were affected by warming not likely to be caused by greenhouse gases."

13) "The hockey stick's author was the same IPCC lead author who in my opinion worked with a small group of cohorts and misrepresented the temperature record of the past 1,000 years by promoting his own result...allowing amputation of a disagreeable result, and the splicing of unrelated data to 'hide the decline'" (John)

14) "IPCC-selected lead authors are given significant control over the text, including the authority to judge their own work against the work of their critics...this process has led to the propagation of incorrect and misleading information in the assessments, and thus should lead you to question the IPCC's general support for a catastrophic view of climate change."

Like I said, if you want to do a post rebutting any of these claims, say so here.  Feel free to combine multiple quotes into one post if you can.

Potholer and Sinclair could also have a field day with this-- Christy et al are on video saying some of these things, although I realise some of it is probably from his written testimony.  Are there any plans to collaborate?

#11 and #2 cold probably be addresses in the same post, as could #7 and #8, and #3 and #6 (oh the irony of using one of those natural excursions , 1998, to cherry pick a start date).

Good idea on the collaborations, Albatross.  Someone should check with Sinclair/potholer/etc.

#3 is a little tricky because he's talking natural variability, not cycles.  We have "it's natural variability" on the list, but haven't done a rebuttal on that one yet.  So it would be nice to do a really good response to #3 and also make it the rebuttal.  I recall reading that natural variability over periods of just a few decades generally isn't more than 0.2°C.

Hi Dana,

"I recall reading that natural variability over periods of just a few decades generally isn't more than 0.2°C."

Perhaps +/- 0.3 C at most, but yes, typically less than ~ +/- 0.2 C for a decadal time scale.

What's the timeframe on this Dana?. Nos.2 & 7 are so stupid they irritate me!.  

As for #7, the only rational reply would be that millions of years ago it as been as cold as a snowball and as hot as a hot house. Then?

No specific timeframe - we'll just tackle these one at a time, whenever people have a chance.  The sooner the better of course, but I don't think there's any particular rush.  If you want to do one of the rebuttals, just call dibs and work on it when you have time.  There are so many of them that we'll be rolling out new CC posts for a while.

Regarding #7, the key of course is the context - the congressman was effectively trying to argue that because climate has been colder and hotter in the past, there's nothing unusual about the current climate (and Christy played along).  It's one of those vague statements where they leave the audience to draw their own conclusions based on "common sense", i.e. "species survived hotter temperatures in the past, so global warming is nothing to worry about" or "if it was hotter before humans then current warming is probably natural". 

So there's a number of points we can make in response to #7.  Something about CO2 being the main temp control knob would be useful.  Species being adapted to whatever the current climate is at the time, whether it was hotter or colder than now.  Maybe something about extinctions being linked to rapid climate change, so what we're worried about is the rate of change.  And so on.

6) "I can say that there certainly hasn't been a warming of temperatures since [1998]."

7) "If you go back through the entire history of the world, most of the periods have not been cooler than today, they've been warmer."

For me.

Got your dibs recorded, Robert.

For the record, I'm not sure I got the quote for #2 exactly right.  It was somewhat mumbled, and towards the end when I was getting a bit tired of the transcribing :-)  Should probably go back and make sure the quote is right.  I think he said it right after the discussion about how the climate has been hotter at most times in the past.  Probably when Mo Brooks was asking questions.

I'm sure Mike Mann would have been pulling his hair out when Christy said the Mann 99 hockey stick was reliant on tree-rings - that is a particularly frustrating bugbear for him. Hmm, that would explain his bald spot :-)

BTW, the ordering is not important - so we don't have to follow Dana's numbering above. Whoever writes a CC, just take the next number along. Timing isn't important but we'll keep these flowing along similar to the Monckton Myths.

I suggest a similar strategy to MM - keep posting the blog posts and keep our eyes open for a Christy related event - at that point, we'll launch the CC resource, attaching it to the event to get maximum exposure.

Oh and if you see any Christy quotes not yet in our quotes database, please add them to the database. When we launch the CC resource, I'm going to reprogram it to make the Christy quotes the centrepiece.

Yep, same thing. I think Mike Mann is right - at first I was slightly skeptical when he suggested the idea but I now see there is a concerted effort to conflate the hockey stick with the decline in an effort to bring down the hockey stick. I'll handle both in the same post. I'll try to avoid the temptation to take Muller Misinformation #1 and use find and replace to change "Muller" to "Christy" :-)

I think it would be a good idea to go through some of Christy's older stuff too - as you look through Christy's earlier works, be sure to add those articles to the list of Christy articles http://www.skepticalscience.com/skeptic_John_Christy.htm and take any handy quotes and add them to Christy quotes. It's looking like Christy is probably a veritable fount of misinformation and if we document the sheer amount of it, will make for a powerful message.

I'll take no.2. Once you've sorted out exactly what he said.

Sounds good Rob.  I'll load the hearing again and see if I can track down that quote, maybe this weekend.

It'll take #3

Okay grypo, got you locked in for #3

I realize that Christy left open a wide variety of options for me to take with his terminology "excursions that we've seen recently".  Is he talking about temperature?  Precipitation?  Extreme events?  Should i just use the models from Meehl 2004 or should I get into the detailed finger print studies?  What's the context?

He was specifically referring to temperatures in that quote.  He was asked if the warming could be natural, and his response was that it could just be natural variability.

Thanks.  Done.

grypo's post was more applicable to Christy's quote #4, so I've switched him to that.  Internal variability is still open - I've asked if Albatross wants to tackle it.  I could probably do it, but it's not a subject I'm terribly strong on.

What was the context of that quote? Was he talking about global temperatures?

That was just a pretty general statement.  Once he said the EPA overstated agreement "between models and observations".  Later he said

"Bulk atmospheric temperatures, a more direct proxy, show much less warming that models predict."

He later mentioned the 'missing hot spot' and went into the bogus Douglass et al. paper.  So there's a lot you could do with #10.

So far we've done posts on quotes #4 and #5 with #3 on the way.  So whoever does the next one, you'll have Christy Crock #4.

I might have to postpone mine, I have a thesis proposal this week to work on...

No problem Robert, just do it whenever you have time.

The "might like it warmer" quote is a little too vague, so I think we're going to skip that one.

Bets of luck Robert!  

I think that DeepClimate has actually tackled #12.  The McKitrick and Michaels paper from 2004 has been contested elsewhere, most recently in a paper by Gavin Schmidt.  

Anyhow, McKitrick's paper is BS and should not have appeared in AR4, but they did in the end.  Sad that Christy is citing debunked science.

Not sure if this interview with Christy is known:

http://www.2gb.com/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=8563

Same reporter as the Lindzen interview.

Oslo,

Awesome.  Thanks for finding that.  I did dig around a bit after hearing the interviewer refer to speaking with Christy recently, but apparently did not try hard enough.

Dana do you want dibs on airing some of the more, um, intriguing comments on the latest Christy crock thread?  

Crap, 11:15 pm and i am only now starting on the Evans document!

My hand still isn't up to a lot of typing.  If someone can transcribe the quotes like James did for Lindzen, I'll copy them into the Crocks thread.  Again, no big rush.  We've got more than enough to keep us busy!

Don't forget to put any transcribed quotes into the Quotes database - this is going to be a major feature of our Skeptics resource eventually. The beauty of short quotes is it showcases misinformation in short soundbytes while providing links to more info - a nice multi-level way to present the info.

It’s difficult to match every statement to a particular argument but here’s what I’ve got. Again, the unrebutted arguments won’t appear there so I’ll list them here (I created a new argument called “Humanity needs energy”):

• I’m sure there are people who have something to gain by giving you that message [that if we don’t act now we are doomed]. [“People are making money from global warming”]
• Trying to change the climate that’s only warming at 1 degree per century is almost impossible. [“It’s unstoppable”]
• Additional emissions in the atmosphere are only going to add on to what is already there. And so the net effect of trying to change that growth of emission rates is gonna be pretty small. [“CO2 limits won’t cool the planet”]
• I think when you say “we” [can’t stop global warming], certainly not the developed countries of the world, because those countries that are in poverty, like China and India and so on, will not stop at anything to continue to develop and feed their people. And the cheapest form of energy is carbon and so they are gonna use it. [“China pollutes more”]
• It turns out one of the greatest benefits to humankind [has] come from energy, and cheap and affordable energy, accessible energy. I lived in Africa for a few years and I can tell you that without energy life is brutal and short. And so by making energy more expensive, less accessible, that means you’re gonna reduce your standard of living and in so doing you’re really not going to help the planet. [“Humanity needs energy”]
• Australia emits a lot of carbon because Australia makes a lot of things. This is something that perhaps some people don’t understand is that if you don’t make things out of aluminum, or if you don’t mine or extract things that other people in the world want, you don’t have too many emissions. But when you do provide to the world so much of its resources, it takes energy […] The rest of the world should be thanking Australia for providing so many natural resources that we use. [“Humanity needs energy”]
• I happen to think life is precious on the planet, so I look at energy as a real enabler of making human life better and longer. [“Humanity needs energy”]
• Why are folks motivated to make these dramatic statements that aren’t based really on the scientific evidence? And there is kind of a social religious aspect to it, that they think, you know, the planet does need salvation from evil human beings. [“AGW is religion”]

It’s interesting to note that though Christy was speaking as a climate expert he quickly moved on to ranting about economics and energy.

I’ve transcribed the Barnaby Joyce quotes too but haven’t yet got around to adding them to the database.

Thanks James, once again you're the man.  I've added the new quotes to the Denier Disinformation forum.  Call dibs on any there.  Priority to the ones which don't have rebuttals yet.