What a great vocabulary you have! I had to look up seven words.

Also, I agree with jeeves, you need not resort to (implied) pro fan i ty.

Leave that to lesser minds.

http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/european_union_cap_and_trade_program_for_carbon_dioxide_working_well_says_mit_analysis

Yes, it seems they’re hoping to come in through a side door that won’t embarrass the patrons.

However according to the behavioral piety of those imbued with Gaia-fear, CO2 is our original sin. Have you seen the CO2 death calculator at the Aussie ABC? Un-f******* berievable.

It’s clearly an ideological strain with some big socialist backing, globo-soc magnates ala Soros, Strong, Gore, the Club of Rome cabal. Some of it is logical to some end – fuel conservation – but the invidious abuse of science is dangerous, as are the appeals to building a nanny state. None of this would be so bad were it truly marginal in terms of taxes or GDP, but its not zero sum in terms of economics or civil liberties. It has invited all manner of excessive taxation and invasive gov’t in Britain – which is now on the cusp of an anti-Green rebellion. People will only tolerate so much.

It further puts the lie to the entire project when we’re being told to subsidize other countries’ emissions of more CO2 than we can abate, to blood-let more wealth in addition to our trade deficits.

And the polar bears and Arctic soot. In a way this is the quintessential duplicity that lifts the veil off the depth of the corruption of activism. Of all the charismatic megafauna I’d think would provoke conservationists into paroxysms of anti-soot mania, it’d be the polar bears. Abate the soot, save the bears! Seems a simple calculus to me.

Given that EDF has lead with blog coverage on Arctic soot, then I must assume they know. So then are they holding a gun to the polar bears’ heads, still believing CO2 is a big threat and want to force the issue? Or is the whole thing just a big game to foist a penultimate dirigist’s dream on the world? I wouldn’t give them the benefit of the doubt on the former but suspect the latter, it’s more consistent with the science.

I’m worried, as are others who are climate moderates. We’re in a quandary between watching our civil liberties get subsumed under the aegis of environmentalism vs. remaining conservation-minded. In Britain I think a lot of people have clued onto this. Here in the USA we’re less exposed to the direct impact of socialism so we’re not as suspicious of the results of encroaching gov’t. We may be in for a hard lesson.

Implied, but not explicit, profanity not recommended, but I understand the sentiment.~jeez

That was the answer I was looking for! Thanks. I will make one last point about Ramanathan and Zender. I think their strategies are very interesting. They say “Oh, yeah. Super capatalistic catastrophe is imbound from CO2. The IPCC says we are doomed so obviously it is true. But hey, don’t forget about the fact that many of the things that emit CO2 also emit SO2, which is nasty pollution that can land on snow and ice and decrease its albedo and cause it to melt faster. Less snow during sunny days means increased warmth, so how about we get rid of this first as it is easier and as it is a double-edged sword: less of it means more snow which means cooler temps, and of course, the most important, better air quality.” Of course the communists want humans to repent and want to eliminate advanced benificial technology instead of crappy polluting technology so everyone can sacrifice for the greater good: Gaia.

I think you’ve got the gist of it. I’m a climate moderate by some standards in that I don’t have a problem with CO2 contributing some margin to atmospheric temperatures. The temperature trend of the past 50 yrs would roughly reflect CO2 baseline logarithmic function, so not much to be concerned about.

If, however, we subtract the 20th C. effects of higher solar intensity, soot, ground-level ozone and Pinatubo’s ozone destruction (which depleted the ozone for 8 years enough to cool the stratosphere significantly which would’ve warmed the upper troposphere by almost the same amt) it’s possible to hierarchically regress back CO2′s contribution to even less. Other solar effects are possible as mentioned by Gary Galrud above.

The big evidence is that Hansen’s ocean heat bucket (smoking gun, pipeline) isn’t as severe, a natural lag & plateau reflecting the already-dimming sun (-0.1 degrC or -0.33 w/m-2 since 1993 or so).

Hence our current temperature plateau. I expect a net -0.3 degrC influence from decreased solar irradiance, or -0.015/yr. effect within 20 years, maybe sooner.

My reasons for continuing to cite Ramanathan & Zender are:

1. They want their data to be accepted by the mainstream field (IPCC) so they avoid heresy. No conjectures, just “mainstream” science.

2. They are tip toeing thru a political mine field & they know it – Ramanathan lost his funding once b/c of politics in his INDOEX work on the Asian Brown Cloud. So they give the consensus view its due. A sentence usually suffices, but they’re not going on like James Hansen about the sky falling either.

3. And yet they press on as though their ballywick is of paramount import. Ramanathan could just as well go back to grinding the usual IPCC axe. Reading between the lines I surmise he knows this changes a lot of things. He’s admitted the popular assumption that the cooling trend of the 1970′s was caused by aerosols could be utterly wrong – false.

It underscores the hypocrisy of the activists… they’re hiding soot behind CO2 b/c they’re afraid of what else it’ll reveal about carbon, polar bears, the Arctic, Asian soot emissions, globalization, UN CDM “Clean Coal” projects, the whole long list. It’s as though global warming was the only problem, even though HALF of the mercury deposition in the Amer. West Coast comes straight from Chinese smokestacks as well as the soot.

Who’s writing their script? Maurice Strong? Al Gore? (same difference…)

They’ve yet to change their tune that CO2 is hiding behind soot despite the preponderance of evidence to the contrary and yet this data’s been out nearly a year.

Y’ know the old saying… You know they’re lying b/c their lips are moving…

I apologize for the confusion, as I rather rushed through my last post. It appears that our underlying disagreement stems from our views on AGW. I say that humans have no effect on climate and a small effect on temperature which no one has been able to find, and may be getting canceled by negative feedback (Roy Spencer). My “side” is with Anthony Watts, Joe D’Aleo, Timothy Ball, S. Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen, Reid Bryson, William Gray, Hans Shreuder, Phil Chapman and many, many others including a vast majority of posters on this site and others. Upon looking at past posts on this site I have come to the conclusion that you seem to be a “lukewarmer” who thinks that Earth and human climate changes are shared, and that your opinions and research (Ramanathan and Zender) on soot are designed to appeal more to the hardcore AGW religionists who say that evil capitalistic CO2 is the cause of all of the universe’s problems, and that they should not be so shortsighted. Am I right or wrong?
As for Ramanathan and Zender, they are good scientists (maybe, I hope), but their complete lack of mention of natural factors is obviously to get their research published in the world of SCRIPPS, IPCC, and NASA world of AGW propaganda which states that the sun, continental drift, cosmic rays, ocean currents, underwater and abovewater volcanoes, plate tectonics, changes in: orbit, rotation, and tilt of the Earth all have no effect in modern times. The effects are from human-only CO2 according to the “consensus”, while Ramanathan and Zender say it is CO2 AND soot. Am I right or wrong?
As for comments and opinions on Ramanathan and Zender, I agree with both of them of the sources of soot in the atmosphere and the Arctic, that it is from multiple sources of industry and also from wildfires, and that the IPCC is underestimating. However, their studies are full of: “can”, “possibly”, “estimate”, “may”, “uncertain”, “about”, a lot of “between x and x”, and the dreaded “simulate” and “model”. As for the study I agree with the most, it is “Industrial Soot And Its Arctic Impact” by Joe McConnell and Ross Edwards. All of these scientists’ research on this, as well as all climate on Earth, requires much more time and study.

Would you have a link for that? Thanks!

/lee

I’m not backtracking. I think you’re misunderstanding the numbers I’ve cited. Zender cites “up to 94%” total bicentennial effect from all soot, mostly human-caused. Industrial soot is worse, showing 8x intensification of the effect in the industrial era.

This isn’t a firm position on numbers, but on opportunity. Zender’s 94% is up to the extent of his confidence interval, so if you want to land in the middle of the error bars the figure’s probably 60%. That’s all. That’s a historical figure that also reflects Arctic decimation rates in the early industrial era before the role of greenhouse gases played a bigger role.

Ramanathan is saying his 60% is the equiv. effect of current CO2, that is a 37:53 heating mix ratio for just those two greenhouse agents. The problem here is that soot was claimed to be masking CO2′s effect by surface shading, thereby leading researchers to implicate CO2 even more. The reality is that soot isn’t masking CO2′s effect, so CO2 is henceforth partially exculpated by the same margin since it isn’t hiding behind a curtain of soot.

You’d do better to go read Ramanathan’s & Zender’s testimony before Rep. Henry Waxman’s subcommittee. They lay it all out, both come with impeccable creds in climatology, very conventional scientists, esp. Ramanathan, he’s an old IPCC warhorse. So when Ramanathan speaks, people should listen.

If you believe CO2 poses a tangible threat, then soot mitigation could buy up to 20 more years window of opportunity. And if you don’t, then soot mitigation explains a great deal, as could surface ozone, stratospheric ozone depletion and solar phenomena that can warm the middle atmosphere.

Thank you for that info … I did indeed grill that eminent heliophysicist on that question & he pooh-pooh’d the idea. If terawatts of incoming energy tend to focus in two very thermally sensitive geographic loci then there’d have to be some kind of effect. Spread out over the entire planet, probably not. Focused at magnet poles, makes me wonder…

I’ll go look that paper up.

After last years melt in the Arctic I would think there would be little soot in the new ice to increase melt rate. Could be why the extent rebounded so quickly, even if temporary.

I do have a question. Does anyone know of a study about the effect of soot over time? That is, the first year the soot is pretty much on the surface and melting in. After the first winter the older soot should be below the ice surface and contributing less absorption as the ice surface reflects most of the energy. I am wondering how much this “melting in” and/or covering with new snow, changes the effect.

Just wondering….