A guest post by John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel, and Chief Meteorologist of KUSI-TV in San Diego. See his previous challenge published here called “An Open Letter to Environmentalists“
Note from Anthony: I know John from way back. He’s a true pioneer in meteorology. I shared a table with him and Joe D’Aleo at the ICCC in New York in March, and I was there when you made his now famous challenge to Al Gore. Here he makes another. One of the biggest issue in my mind (that John touches on indirectly) is the logarithmic effect of CO2. Yes is causes warming, but beyond a point it’s effect diminishes.
Even Gavin Schmidt (NASA GISS) admits the amount of forcing in the 20th century due to CO2 is uncertain:
“One such question is the percentage of 20th Century warming that can be attributed to CO2 increases. This appears straightforward, but it might be rather surprising to readers that this has neither an obvious definition, nor a precise answer. I will therefore try to explain why.”
[he goes on to cite modeling, forcings etc. here]
“In summary, I hope I’ve shown that there is too much ambiguity in any exact percentage attribution for it to be particularly relevant, though I don’t suppose that will stop it being discussed.”
In my mind, if you can’t quantify it, either by first order principles, by measurement, or by modeling, then saying “there’s too much ambiguity for it to be relevant” certainly does not help the argument. To imply then that we understand the atmosphere well enough to model the outcome and to publish scenarios that predict the future of global temperature based on CO2 level in our atmosphere, certainly then would be, “derived ambiguity”.
Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gas
by John Coleman
You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas.
It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline. All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth. What an amazing fraud; what a scam.
The future of our civilization lies in the balance.
That’s the battle cry of the High Priest of Global Warming Al Gore and his fellow, agenda driven disciples as they predict a calamitous outcome from anthropogenic global warming. According to Mr. Gore the polar ice caps will collapse and melt and sea levels will rise 20 feet inundating the coastal cities making 100 million of us refugees. Vice President Gore tells us numerous Pacific islands will be totally submerged and uninhabitable. He tells us global warming will disrupt the circulation of the ocean waters, dramatically changing climates, throwing the world food supply into chaos. He tells us global warming will turn hurricanes into super storms, produce droughts, wipe out the polar bears and result in bleaching of coral reefs. He tells us tropical diseases will spread to mid latitudes and heat waves will kill tens of thousands. He preaches to us that we must change our lives and eliminate fossil fuels or face the dire consequences.
The future of our civilization is in the balance.
With a preacher’s zeal, Mr. Gore sets out to strike terror into us and our children and make us feel we are all complicit in the potential demise of the planet.
Here is my rebuttal.
There is no significant man made global warming. There has not been any in the past, there is none now and there is no reason to fear any in the future. The climate of Earth is changing. It has always changed. But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.
Through all history, Earth has shifted between two basic climate regimes: ice ages and what paleoclimatologists call “Interglacial periods”. For the past 10 thousand years the Earth has been in an interglacial period. That might well be called nature’s global warming because what happens during an interglacial period is the Earth warms up, the glaciers melt and life flourishes. Clearly from our point of view, an interglacial period is greatly preferred to the deadly rigors of an ice age. Mr. Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed nature during this interglacial period and are producing an unprecedented, out of control warming.
Well, it is simply not happening. Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares. That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming?
The cooling trend is so strong that recently the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to acknowledge it. He speculated that nature has temporarily overwhelmed mankind’s warming and it may be ten years or so before the warming returns. Oh, really. We are supposed to be in a panic about man-made global warming and the whole thing takes a ten year break because of the lack of Sun spots. If this weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.
Now allow me to talk a little about the science behind the global warming frenzy. I have dug through thousands of pages of research papers, including the voluminous documents published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I have worked my way through complicated math and complex theories. Here’s the bottom line: the entire global warming scientific case is based on the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels. They don’t have any other issue. Carbon Dioxide, that’s it.
Hello Al Gore; Hello UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Your science is flawed; your hypothesis is wrong; your data is manipulated. And, may I add, your scare tactics are deplorable. The Earth does not have a fever. Carbon dioxide does not cause significant global warming.
The focus on atmospheric carbon dioxide grew out a study by Roger Revelle who was an esteemed scientist at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. He took his research with him when he moved to Harvard and allowed his students to help him process the data for his paper. One of those students was Al Gore. That is where Gore got caught up in this global warming frenzy. Revelle’s paper linked the increases in carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere with warming. It labeled CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
Charles Keeling, another researcher at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, set up a system to make continuous CO2 measurements. His graph of these increases has now become known as the Keeling Curve. When Charles Keeling died in 2005, his son David, also at Scripps, took over the measurements. Here is what the Keeling curve shows: an increase in CO2 from 315 parts per million in 1958 to 385 parts per million today, an increase of 70 parts per million or about 20 percent.
All the computer models, all of the other findings, all of the other angles of study, all come back to and are based on CO2 as a significant greenhouse gas. It is not.
Here is the deal about CO2, carbon dioxide. It is a natural component of our atmosphere. It has been there since time began. It is absorbed and emitted by the oceans. It is used by every living plant to trigger photosynthesis. Nothing would be green without it. And we humans; we create it. Every time we breathe out, we emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is not a pollutant. It is not smog. It is a naturally occurring invisible gas.
Let me illustrate. I estimate that this square in front of my face contains 100,000 molecules of atmosphere. Of those 100,000 only 38 are CO2; 38 out of a hundred thousand. That makes it a trace component. Let me ask a key question: how can this tiny trace upset the entire balance of the climate of Earth? It can’t. That’s all there is to it; it can’t.
The UN IPCC has attracted billions of dollars for the research to try to make the case that CO2 is the culprit of run-away, man-made global warming The scientists have come up with very complex creative theories and done elaborate calculations and run computer models they say prove those theories. They present us with a concept they call radiative forcing. The research organizations and scientists who are making a career out of this theory, keep cranking out the research papers. Then the IPCC puts on big conferences at exotic places, such as the recent conference in Bali. The scientists endorse each other’s papers, they are summarized and voted on, and viola, we are told global warming is going to kill us all unless we stop burning fossil fuels.
May I stop here for a few historical notes? First, the internal combustion engine and gasoline were awful polluters when they were first invented. And, both gasoline and automobile engines continued to leave a layer of smog behind right up through the 1960’s. Then science and engineering came to the environmental rescue. Better exhaust and ignition systems, catalytic converters, fuel injectors, better engineering throughout the engine and reformulated gasoline have all contributed to a huge reduction in the exhaust emissions from today’s cars. Their goal then was to only exhaust carbon dioxide and water vapor, two gases widely accepted as natural and totally harmless. Anyone old enough to remember the pall of smog that used to hang over all our cities knows how much improvement there has been. So the environmentalists, in their battle against fossil fuels and automobiles had a very good point forty years ago, but now they have to focus almost entirely on the once harmless carbon dioxide. And, that is the rub. Carbon dioxide is not an environmental problem; they just want you now to think it is.
Numerous independent research projects have been done about the greenhouse impact from increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. These studies have proven to my total satisfaction that CO2 is not creating a major greenhouse effect and is not causing an increase in temperatures. By the way, before his death, Roger Revelle coauthored a paper cautioning that CO2 and its greenhouse effect did not warrant extreme countermeasures.
So now it has come down to an intense campaign, orchestrated by environmentalists claiming that the burning of fossil fuels dooms the planet to run-away global warming. Ladies and Gentlemen, that is a myth.
So how has the entire global warming frenzy with all its predictions of dire consequences, become so widely believed, accepted and regarded as a real threat to planet Earth? That is the most amazing part of the story.
To start with global warming has the backing of the United Nations, a major world force. Second, it has the backing of a former Vice President and very popular political figure. Third it has the endorsement of Hollywood, and that’s enough for millions. And, fourth, the environmentalists love global warming. It is their tool to combat fossil fuels. So with the environmentalists, the UN, Gore and Hollywood touting Global Warming and predictions of doom and gloom, the media has scrambled with excitement to climb aboard. After all the media loves a crisis. From YK2 to killer bees the media just loves to tell us our lives are threatened. And the media is biased toward liberal, so it’s pre-programmed to support Al Gore and UN. CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press and here in San Diego The Union Tribune are all constantly promoting the global warming crisis.
So who is going to go against all of that power? Not the politicians. So now the President of the United States, just about every Governor, most Senators and most Congress people, both of the major current candidates for President, most other elected officials on all levels of government are all riding the Al Gore Global Warming express. That is one crowded bus.
I suspect you haven’t heard it because the mass media did not report it, but I am not alone on the no man-made warming side of this issue. On May 20th, a list of the names of over thirty-one thousand scientists who refute global warming was released. Thirty-one thousand of which 9,000 are Ph.ds. Think about that. Thirty-one thousand. That dwarfs the supposed 2,500 scientists on the UN panel. In the past year, five hundred of scientists have issued public statements challenging global warming. A few more join the chorus every week. There are about 100 defectors from the UN IPCC. There was an International Conference of Climate Change Skeptics in New York in March of this year. One hundred of us gave presentations. Attendance was limited to six hundred people. Every seat was taken. There are a half dozen excellent internet sites that debunk global warming. And, thank goodness for KUSI and Michael McKinnon, its owner. He allows me to post my comments on global warming on the website KUSI.com. Following the publicity of my position form Fox News, Glen Beck on CNN, Rush Limbaugh and a host of other interviews, thousands of people come to the website and read my comments. I get hundreds of supportive emails from them. No I am not alone and the debate is not over.
In my remarks in New York I speculated that perhaps we should sue Al Gore for fraud because of his carbon credits trading scheme. That remark has caused a stir in the fringe media and on the internet. The concept is that if the media won’t give us a hearing and the other side will not debate us, perhaps we could use a Court of law to present our papers and our research and if the Judge is unbiased and understands science, we win. The media couldn’t ignore that. That idea has become the basis for legal research by notable attorneys and discussion among global warming debunkers, but it’s a long way from the Court room.
I am very serious about this issue. I think stamping out the global warming scam is vital to saving our wonderful way of life.
The battle against fossil fuels has controlled policy in this country for decades. It was the environmentalist’s prime force in blocking any drilling for oil in this country and the blocking the building of any new refineries, as well. So now the shortage they created has sent gasoline prices soaring. And, it has lead to the folly of ethanol, which is also partly behind the fuel price increases; that and our restricted oil policy. The ethanol folly is also creating a food crisis throughput the world – it is behind the food price rises for all the grains, for cereals, bread, everything that relies on corn or soy or wheat, including animals that are fed corn, most processed foods that use corn oil or soybean oil or corn syrup. Food shortages or high costs have led to food riots in some third world countries and made the cost of eating out or at home budget busting for many.
So now the global warming myth actually has lead to the chaos we are now enduring with energy and food prices. We pay for it every time we fill our gas tanks. Not only is it running up gasoline prices, it has changed government policy impacting our taxes, our utility bills and the entire focus of government funding. And, now the Congress is considering a cap and trade carbon credits policy. We the citizens will pay for that, too. It all ends up in our taxes and the price of goods and services.
So the Global warming frenzy is, indeed, threatening our civilization. Not because global warming is real; it is not. But because of the all the horrible side effects of the global warming scam.
I love this civilization. I want to do my part to protect it.
If Al Gore and his global warming scare dictates the future policy of our governments, the current economic downturn could indeed become a recession, drift into a depression and our modern civilization could fall into an abyss. And it would largely be a direct result of the global warming frenzy.
My mission, in what is left of a long and exciting lifetime, is to stamp out this Global Warming silliness and let all of us get on with enjoying our lives and loving our planet, Earth.
If Mr. Coleman reads responses to this blog, I CHALLENGE him to comment in detail on the following three published research papers:
Reducing uncertainty about carbon dioxide as a climate driver
http://courses.eas.ualberta.ca/eas457/Kump-climateCO2.pdf
CO2 and climate change
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/292/5518/870
Climate sensitivity constrained by CO2 concentrations over the past 420 million years
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7135/abs/nature05699.html
Also, I would like him to explain the cause(s) of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum if atmospheric greenhouse gases are not implicated.
Eocene Hyperthermal Event Offers Insight Into Greenhouse Warming
http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~jzachos/pubs/Bowen_etal_06.pdf
I am looking forward with considerable anticipation to Mr. Coleman’s astute, informed, and scientifically accurate reply.
REPLY: Just a note, this is a republication here, you’d be best to put those questions to him directly on his own blog.
While I truly love the sensible nature of this man, there are some things he says about oil that have many more facets than the GW side. The stock market dictates how much investors are wanting as a return on their dollar. The bubble rise under Clinton’s administration served to spoil stock holders. They now demand huge immediate returns, not the steady but small returns stock holders were used to before the bubble. This is true for oil stocks. Investors want large returns. Problem is, drilling for oil and then refining what you get (which is mostly in the form of rock outside of the middle East and Norway) is not returning the higher dough amounts that stock holders now insist on. Therefore, no company is willing to drill, dredge, mine, blast, grind, or refine. There tain’t no money in it. At least not now. When speculation prices get high enough, drilling and new refineries will commence. But it won’t lower the price at the pump. In fact, it will keep the price high because otherwise…There tain’t no money in it.
Thank you!
If he can’t get the gasoline prices/ethanol thing right (a subject I know something about) how can I believe any of the rest of it?
Yeah. Because a politically-motivated screed against environmentalism is equivalent to good scientific work falsifying AGW Theory. Yup. Thank you, John Coleman; I hereby officially retract my support for AGW and will immediately begin sending checks to Big Oil such that they may reduce the price of gas at the pumps for me.
reply to Reply: Coleman doesn’t take comments, so he’s not really running a blog. He can be emailed but doesn’t respond. So he simply pontificates on his site as if he knows all and tells all. The references provided in my first response indicate that he doesn’t do either, and his supposed analysis of climate science has no apparent merit.
If you’re chummy with him, give him a call or email him and invite him to respond to my challenge. Because the bottom line is, regarding CO2 and climate: He’s wrong. Totally and completely wrong. If he wants to demonstrate otherwise, he needs to contend with Kump, Crowley, and Berner (as a start).
And by the way, if you’re concerned about the logarithmic effect of CO2 “diminishing”, you may wish to investigate the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Max yourself, because it would appear to me that effect really didn’t influence the roughly 6 degrees C rise that happened during that event.
Give my regards to John.
REPLY: I’ll let him know that there’s a challenge. What proof do you have that CO2 caused the 6 degree rise Paleocene-Eocene ?
The ethics on this is slowly turning. When the public realizes that demonizing and encumbering carbon will do nothing at all to save the earth but will surely freeze and starve millions if the earth is cooling then we may see a turning point. In the meantime, who we do sue to recover the damages already inflicted?
Well, Gore has a bunch of anonymous investors promoting this fraud. It is time to make them accountable.
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Anthony, just a small note:
You can’t blame jack for thinking that Coleman actually posted that commentary here. You said it was a guest post implying originality and didn’t (as far as I can tell) link to the original. It appears it was an address to the San Diego Chamber of Commerce which took some doing to find. If you’re republishing, a link to the original would be nice.
A very nice read… I don’t understand why any of this is considered so illogical by people that believe in AGW. The fact that CO2 is a natural gas and essential to life ought to make people sit up in their seats a bit straighter and pay attention to the debate. I imagine we could do a Penn and Teller-esque survey and ask environmentalists if they would sign a protest form to try to reduce worldwide carbon to 0ppm *laughs*
BTW, I’m interested in reading the Gavin Schmidt article you refer to, but your link is broken… could you fix that?
Thanks for posting this. It’s an excellent summation for the defense in the case of environmentalists vs. mankind. AGW is today’s orthodoxy, resistant to change, which needs to be overturned, much as early 20th Century geology resisted the revolutionary ideas of Alfred Wegener. A lawsuit against Al Gore? Fascinating idea. Maybe that’d inspire the FTC to take a look as well.
[content removed: this poster is banned because the email address used is bogus, and includes an insult using the f-word.]
In the northern tier portion of the US, where I live, for about a thousand years after the glaciers retreated, and Glacial Lake Agassiz began to retreat, the climate was very cold, a boreal climate one would recognize today in northern Canada. And then the earth warmed. For nearly three thousand years this northern tier was prairie, north of what is today Winnipeg. The earth and sun are fickle, refusing to adjust themselves to the windows of our lifetimes. Great catastrophes occurs–floods, droughts, years without summers, years of remarkable bounties. But none, to quote Jeffers, is but a speck on the great scale pan. The earth and geologic time exist without regard for us.
Jack:
Kump-circular climate models.
Crowley and Berner- paywalled. What do they say?
Nature-Was the proxy record Thompson’s irreproducible science?
The Eocene Hyperthermal Event is not what is happening today.
What is happening is that the earth is cooling. Can you point specifically to where Coleman is ‘wrong’, instead of just declaring him so?
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Leon Brozyna, Monckton claims that Gore can’t talk about his global warming schemes in Great Britain because AIT constitues a ‘false prospectus’.
There will be Hell to pay about this.
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Pamela, in addition, the attitude of the current Congress and the prospect of the Democrats retaining control of Congress after this election along with the possibility of a Democrat as President has complely shut down any interest in spending/investing billions of dollars on new oil resources. In my opinion, the oil companies will sit back and let the price of gas top $5. I believe they have calculated what it will take for the American people to get pissed off enough to cause our government to do something real. $3 a gallon = slight grumbling, $4 per gallon = angry rhetoric, $5 a gallon = mob action, $6 per gallon = armed revolution.
Question for Jack-
You are obviously interested in paleoclimatology. So what caused the Little Ice Age? Did atmospheric CO2 drop suddenly?
Those should be much easier questions than trying to explain hypothetical events from tens of millions of years ago, when the continents were in different positions.
TIA
OK, about the Nature question, that was a dumb question because there aren’t a lot of 420 million year old glaciers around.
However, I doubt that your proxies have the sensitivity to determine which came first the chicken or the egg, so your models were spinning in a vacuum of data.
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B.Q. Wackamole III
“Sometimes a purpose of one’s life is to serve as a warning to others.”
You live, we learn.
“…this square in front of my face contains 100,000 molecules of atmosphere. Of those 100,000 only 38 are CO2.”
Let’s add in the other gases for comparison. In this 100,000 molecule example, approx 70,000 molecules would be nitrogen, approx 21,000 molecules would be oxygen, approx 8,962 molecules would be argon and other trace gases excluding CO2 which is 38 molecules.
[…] Perhaps the tune will change and we will be asked to produce MORE CO2 to warm up the earth – as if THAT would work. […]
Coleman is right for sure.
Look at the recent global temps. I don’t see much warming. In fact we’ve seen a whole lotta cooling over the last few months.
You’d think if the alarmists truly believed in their scenarios, they’d be relieved by this cooling. But no, instead their reaction is disappointment and anger. What does that tell you about the psychology of these doom-wanters?
Jack states “He’s wrong. Totally and completely wrong. If he wants to demonstrate otherwise, he needs to contend with Kump, Crowley, and Berner (as a start).”
Kump states in his summary on the link between temperature and CO2 “there is no lead–lag relationship from which one might hope to assign cause and effect.”
There is nothing in Kump that refutes Mr. Coleman.
And when I look at what’s going on in Europe, the people are beginning to get fed up with this scam. Truckers are blocking ports and highways in Portugal, Spain, France, Britain and now in Germany to protest the unecessarilly high petrol and energy prices.
Let’s stand up tell these greedy lying thieving taxing political bast—– where they can put their pinko plans!
Coleman writes;
“The New York Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press and here in San Diego The Union Tribune are all constantly promoting the global warming crisis.”
I say:
STOP BUYING NEWSPAPERS – SAVE THE PLANET!
Visit these websites tell bloggers there to stop buying their newspapers. That’s effective way to save the planet. By not buying their rags, you can save a lot trees, energy to harvest them, and energy to make paper, transport the paper, print the newspapers, all all the energy needed to distribute and recycle them.
The newspaper industry is one of the most environmentally damaging industries on the face of this planet.
STOP NEWSPAPERS! SAVE TREES!
Let’s make a bumper sticker with the above or similar slogan.
If newspaper sales slumped, maybe they’d start playing a different song.
re: $6 per gallon
Again, no matter who is preventing oil exploration, the process of finding it, extracting it, processing it, and delivering it will keep the price at levels we are seeing now, and higher as time goes by. Tax breaks to oil companies will simply lead to higher investment returns for stock holders, not new refineries. Profits will continue to rise which will cause stock holders to insist on higher and higher returns. Profits go to stock investors, not back into the company.
Maybe the best measure, though extreme and very draconian, is to put on hold stock holder returns at a lower percentage rate with the demand that if you want to sell your product here or ship it elsewhere, profits must go to exploration, extraction, and increased refineries.
From what I have been able to find, Shell Oil is one of the few, if not the only company, that is using profits to build new refineries that use lower grades, like shale oil. Please correct me if I am wrong about record oil company profits, record stock holder returns on oil stocks, and few companies using profits to build the type of refineries we must have to process our abundant stores of, but difficult to extract, shale oil.
I asked Coleman (and you can investigate yourself) what could have caused this OTHER than greenhouse gases.
The data is based on shifts in stable carbon isotopes. Read the references. It was very likely initially a massive methane release (probably from clathrates). The amount of methane was oxidized to CO2; the CO2 implication is obvious due to alteration of oceanic pH, also seen in seafloor sediment cores. The temperature increase is also seen in isotopic data, likely oxygen isotopes.
There isn’t anything called “proof” in science. There are the most plausible, plausible, and less-plausible hypotheses/theories. Feel free to come up with a more plausible (it’d also be nice if it were testable) that would have caused the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Max temperature increase that doesn’t require greenhouse gas radiative forcing — the thing that Coleman belittles.
If there is no plausible non-greenhouse gas hypothesis, then Coleman is clearly wrong on the basic thesis of his article.
REPLY: Would not the same sea floor sediment cores show a pH change if temperature led CO2? How sure is the dating resolution for those cores at that age?
kim, good point about Gore’s status in the UK. While I’m aware of it, I doubt most average citizens know this. A U.S. based lawsuit would be hard to ignore, even for the biased media {though they’d probably minimize such a suit as a publicity stunt}. But if the suit also inspires FTC action, things could get very interesting indeed for Mr. Gore and his cohorts. In the long run, though, the issue will be resolved by good science — that, and a long quiet sun.
As noted in my reply to the second Reply from AW, the most plausible cause of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Max is a big increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases and its associated radiative forcing. This indicates the operation of the radiative forcing mechanism of global temperatures by atmospheric greenhouse gases. Coleman’s piece directly attacked that mechanism. The paragraph I’m responding to is the one that begins “The UN IPCC…” (As an aside, that’s wrong too; the IPCC doesn’t fund research.)
So… the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum is a natural demonstration of the temperature effect of the increased radiative forcing caused by increasing greenhouse gases. And unless I’m mistaken, that IS the same thing that is happening today. Either CO2 is a radiative forcing factor, or it is not. If it is not, I’m wrong. If it is, Coleman is wrong.
Leon, it is absolutely devastating to me that this paradigm might not have been broken except for the quiescent sun. Why couldn’t we figure this out for ourselves? Science, whew.
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Maybe the FCC could get involved. It is fraudulent advertising.
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“Maybe the best measure, though extreme and very draconian, is to put on hold stock holder returns at a lower percentage rate with the demand that if you want to sell your product here or ship it elsewhere, profits must go to exploration, extraction, and increased refineries.” Pam Gray
You really have no intuitive grasp of the power of freedom, do you? You are well intentioned, but you know what they say.
Newspaper sales have slumped, and then some. Here is the stock chart for my local paper’s owners. http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=LEE#symbol=LEE;range=my
Temperature-leading-CO2 is an irrelevant question for this event. The temperature increase is very large and obvious in the isotopic data. Radiative forcing by atmospheric greenhouse gases is the most plausible cause of that temperature increase. So the basic question is: could anything else in the geophysical realm have done it?
REPLY: Well I’ll look into it, I’m not up on Paleoclimatology for that period, also check your email (the one used on this blog during submission).
The cause of the Little Ice Age was a slight decline in solar activity. That’s well-known and is related to the issue raised in Coleman’s piece. The issue on which I challenge Coleman is radiative forcing of climate by atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
For Joe: here’s the whole paragraph from Kump’s paper:
“We have made the natural world our laboratory, but the experiment is
inadvertent and thus not designed to yield easily decipherable results.
Consequently, we will have difficulty isolating the effects of our
manipulations from natural variations in climate until the signal has
risen well above the noise (and the climate perhaps has been
detrimentally altered). In looking into the past history of the planet
for clues to the future, we find general support for the notion that an
increase in atmospheric pCO2 will cause global warming. However,
in detail the relationship is neither linear nor in phase on all
timescales. Proxy indicators of global warmth do not always coincide
with proxy indications of elevated pCO2, and when they do, as in the
Late Pleistocene, there is no lead–lag relationship from which one
might hope to assign cause and effect. Fortunately, improved models
evaluated against expanded high-fidelity palaeoclimate databases are
on the horizon, and should be adequate to support policy decisions
concerning the reduction of fossil-fuel CO2 emissions. In the
meantime, there are unsettling indications that these models are
underestimating rather than overestimating the climatic consequences
of greenhouse gas build-up.”
Mike Kelley, did they derive that curve through PCA analysis?
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Jack, is there another era other than today and Eocene Hyperthermal Event with a fingerprint of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Moreover, are there any estimates of atmospheric concentrations?
CoRev, editor
http://globalwarmingclearinghouse.blogspot.com
Hi Jack,
You said: The cause of the Little Ice Age was a slight decline in solar activity.
If you believe that small changes in solar activity can cause significant changes in the climate – your viewpoint would appear to disagree with the conclusions of the IPCC, Hansen and Lovelock. How do you reconcile those differences? Is somebody wrong?
The power of freedom has very little to do with the price of making a product. Diamonds are a case in point. Difficult to find, difficult to extract, difficult to refine. High price. Are you saying that if companies were allowed to mine diamonds at will that the price would go down? Only if diamonds are in every mound of dirt laying on top of the ground. Which is not the case. It getting harder and harder to find these little gems. All that expensive exploration, extraction, and cutting would actually increase the cost of diamond production, leading to lower profits unless final price goes up to make up for the increase in production cost. Of course I don’t need a diamond to get to Albany, Oregon today for my son’s graduation from Western Oregon University. I need petrol.
Freedom does not dictate prices, profits do. The middle East has no freedom yet they rake in profits, so the idea that markets work better when freedom is king is a simplistic statement that reveals little about the current price of fuel. When a product is cheap to develop, and folks have income, and everybody wants it, profits are gleaned from sheer volume. When a product becomes expensive to develop, and everybody still wants it, profits come from higher prices. If profits were to be sunk into expensive fuel production here in the land of freedom, even given free reign to do that, it would lead to lower margins, leading to pressure to increase prices so that profits can be maintained. Eventually the cost of production outstrips the price that the general market will tolerate, leading to backyard crisco fuels as the general market stops buying diamond fuel. Once again, investors will spend their money on stocks elsewhere, leaving expensive shale oil fuel to the rich to purchase, much like diamonds. There is no incentive for flooding the market with fuel to lower fuel prices cuz “There taint no money in it”.
Please show me where the freedom incentive is for digging up shale oil and building new refineries.
Jack –
I’ll take up the challenge for John Coleman.
In Bowen’s paper he states, “What triggered the PETM carbon release or releases remains a critical question. In considering the PETM as a potential analogue to modern global change, it is important to understand whether the PETM was initiated as a feedback (i.e., as climate crossed a warming threshold) or as an externally forced event. If the PETM carbon release was a feedback, it implies that human-induced warming may also trigger a cascade of amplifying carbon cycle feedbacks. If the PETM carbon release was forced externally, it might be better considered analogous to anthropogenic carbon
release itself. Although no clear consensus exists in this matter, the suggestion that multiple PETM-like events may have occurred in phase with orbital cycles potentially falsifies hypotheses linking the PETM to singular
forcing factors such as bolide impacts or volcanic events.”
This paper is full of conjecture and proves nothing – as noted above when they say “may”. Further, many other variables are not accounted for like the obvious one – the Sun. I find it surprising that this was a publishable scientific paper.
Jack if you are so sure of this, then please go collect the $500K that Steven Milloy is offering on junkscience.com. Or – please come debate the topic in a public town hall with one of us skeptics.
Jack, 11:02
“Temperature-leading-CO2 is an irrelevant question for this event. The temperature increase is very large and obvious in the isotopic data. Radiative forcing by atmospheric greenhouse gases is the most plausible cause of that temperature increase. So the basic question is: could anything else in the geophysical realm have done it?”
Good old little H2O, the main greenhouse gas that is used in the IPCC models to bootstrap the tiny anthropogenic contribution to scarry heights?
Methane itself is much more efficient( absorption/emission spectra) as a greenhouse gas than CO2, and sudden appearance of methane would do it with no call for CO2 which is much less efficient.
That a “greenhouse” effect keeps the earth away from moonlike temperatures is not something that people are disputing.
It is the anthropogenic part of CO2, and the contribution of CO2 to the greenhouse effect that is questioned successfully in my opinion. Sure it will take part, as a minor player.
“And by the way, if you’re concerned about the logarithmic effect of CO2 “diminishing”, you may wish to investigate the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Max yourself, because it would appear to me that effect really didn’t influence the roughly 6 degrees C rise that happened during that event.”
If you place two jars outside, one filled with air and the other filled with CO2, which one will get warmer? And by how much? And why should that be, considering your assertion?
Pamela,
I have often enjoyed reading your posts, and I am sure we would agree on many things. But your understanding of macro-economics is very mixed-up. In a free market, prices are set by supply and demand. The greater the supply the lower the price. At lower prices, suppliers will produce less, creating an equilibrium with the current demand level. Also as the price increases, demand will decrease, creating an imbalence, which is corrected by lower prices. Share-holder returns are based on three things: Equity in the company, current profits and expectations of future profits. While high prices are good for shareholders, shareholders do not have the ability to manipulate prices in a free market.
Now much of the oil market is outside the control of our government, so it is not strictly a free market. But there are enough suppliers to soak up, un-met demand, and maintain a modestly free market. Otherwise we would have seen these high prices long ago.
There are three main issues that have all conspired to create the problem we now find ourselves in.
1) Increased demand for oil, mainly from China and India.
2) Lack of new supplies. These come mainly from development of new oil reserves. Most of the best sites are off-limits to drilling. Thanks to the anti-fossil fuel-enviro movement, every new development, spends several years fighting legal battles to drill anywhere. So many of the new supplies are coming from unstable places in the world, where the enviros have not been able to fight oil development successfully. Most of the world oil reserves are owned by foreign governments, and they are going to do what is best for them. But they are usually full of corruption and non-producing elements, that prevent them from increasing supplies when the price goes up.
3) Commodities market speculation – when there is an underlaying issue, there is a tendency to bid-the-bubble until it pops. This is the area where high-returns are demanded, but with it, comes high risks.
Oil is a boom-bust business and right now it is in a boom cycle. There is nothing new or unusual about this one, other than the restrictions on getting additional supplies to market in a timely fashion. If there were less obstructions to producing more oil, we would have less lawyers fees on every gallon you buy (non-producing overhead), and more rough-necks out there, finding the oil you need, to go to your son’s graduation
( congratulations! ).
Well said – Russ
Another problem is that many countries like China and Venezuela subsidize their fuel prices. In that case, demand is artificially high. If the Chinese and others were paying the equivalent of $4, then we wouldn’t see as much pressure on the prices as they would have to make sacrifices in their own driving habits.
I also forgot one of the big issues, that has caused oil prices to go up. That is a weak dollar. Oil is priced in dollars, and when it goes down in value compared to other currencies, it requires more dollars to purchase the same item ( in this case a barrel of oil ).
So if we SWAG the real price of oil (exploration, drilling, transportation) at $60, we add $20 for a weak dollar, $20 for restrictions on supplies, $10 for additional demand caused by government subsidies to users, and $30 from market speculators driving up the futures market. That puts us at about $140 oil.
Pam
“Please show me where the freedom incentive is for digging up shale oil and building new refineries.”
The oil companies have NO freedom to do so. It is currently illegal to dig for the shale. Ask Congress. As for refineries, all the hoops the companies must go through to build one including regulations, environmental impact studies, and overcoming NIMBY answers itself.
re PETM
I think of it as some kind of tragic event that happened in our planet’s history. No planet is safe from them. When Yellowstone blows again it will be another in a different direction.
The PPM had to be extremely high for that supposed temp rise. Today there is no absolute consensus as to how much rise there has already been, letalone how much there will be, with our still modest amount of CO2.
Pamela,
Your theory is way off. At current prices there would be huge profits in offshore drilling and shale recovery. Shale recovery is profitable at $35-$40 per barrel, offshore drilling at much less. Oil companies would LOVE to develop our very large domestic oil supplies. The problem is we have a long standing moratorium against those oil sources in this country. Democrats made sure the moratorium stayed in place on March 13th of this year.
For the record: offshore oil under the moratorium is estimated to be 60-120 billion barrels. Shale? 800 billion – 1.5 trillion barrels. We could actually be energy independent in the U.S. if we wanted, but for the green war against fossil fuels.
BTW, diamonds are not expensive because they’re hard to find. They’re actually not that rare. Diamonds are expensive because the diamond industry is under the influence of one of the only truly successful cartels in economic history. OPEC has nothing on the diamond cartel. OPEC is a miserable failure by comparison.
You said: “Freedom does not dictate prices, profits do.”
Wrong. The intersection of supply and demand dictate prices. Profits are not even guaranteed at that intersection point.
Jack:
I’ve read a particular paleoclimate review of the Vostok ice data but can’t find the paper, so I’ll reconstruct the argument for you here.
Take a look at this Vostok ice core:
http://www.ourworldfoundation.org.uk/IceCores1.gif
The CO2 levels associated with past interglacials is 180 to 300 ppm, well below where we are now.
325 kya when CO2 went from 200 to 310 ppm, what did the temperature trend show? It shot up 3 or more degrees, didn’t it? The problem is that contemporary CO2 levels were already at 280 ppm during the Little Ice Age and have risen to 385 ppm; however, we’ve yet to see any hint of an equivalent temperature trend, not even latent heat in the seas (oh sure, there’s some, but it’s not piling up at the rate predicted).
OTOH look at this chart:
Light oxygen, isotopic Oxygen-16 is used to reconstruct paleoclimate b/c glaciers lock up light oxygen and reaches a minimum as ice ages reach an arid maximum.
http://www.geo.utexas.edu/courses/302e/Labs/2006/Lab7/Lab07_files/image006.jpg
If you superimpose the light oxygen data (flip & stretch) over the past 200ky, (that’s easy to do even with MS Paint) you’ll see that the light oxygen trend line matches more closely to the paleo temperature trend than does the paleo CO2 trend where CO2 & temperatures periodically slip out of tight correlation (between 80 – 110kya and 160 – 180 kya).
http://i29.tinypic.com/28iyro8.jpg
( superimposition of the light oxygen chart over the vostok chart).
Eyeball analysis time: There are two discontinuities between CO2 & temperature that aren’t discontinuities between Light Oxygen and temperature.
Can you see the point? B/c of its evaporative and water-forming nature, light oxygen availability is a direct reflection of water vapor concentration in the atmosphere. So what’s the dominant driving agent? Is it CO2? Is it water vapor?
This is why climate agnostics aren’t won over by the pro-AGW paleoclimate studies, they seem anecdotal. If CO2’s effect were consistently strong (and it’s causes steeper temperature changes at lower concentrations) then temperatures would follow more closely to the CO2 line, but they don’t, temperatures follow the water vapor line (and vice versa). What CO2 effect there is is inconclusive.
CO2 may play a role, but it isn’t dominant throughout the paleo record. Just b/c it correlates doesn’t mean it causates.
Our current 380 ppm CO2 level isn’t reflected by the paleo data, contemporary CO2 levels have surpassed the level of spectral absorption that has been claimed to have caused that much warming in the paleo record. And the more CO2 is added to the air, the less additional effect it has in a trend of progressively diminishing returns.
Something’s inconsistent with the theory that CO2 drives temperatures.
The embargo on domestic energy sources predates the “green war on fossil fuels” but is certainly intensified by it.
Historical reasons.
1. Fears of offshore oil spills–icky.
2. Concern about mining effects on land–mining is icky.
No real point here, just a historical reminder.
To Tom in Florida.
Here’s a hint’ most of the oil companies must buy thier oil via commodity brokers in the form of oil futures. That is, they do not own the oil underground in places like Iran, Saudi Arbaia, Venezuela, Mexico, Nigeria, and Bahrain.
The price of refined gasoline is at the mercy of forces the energy companies cannot control. Congress and the Fed Chiarman have more power to influence the price of both oil and refined gas than does BP, Citgo, or Exxon.
Pamela Gray,
Supply and demand dictate price.
Jack wrote:
Jack, I’ve heard this kind of nonsense before – the idea that if you don’t have a better theory then my theory must be right. Please. You can have all the theories you want about something that happened in the past. But the fact is that you weren’t there and can never prove anything. That’s not science, it’s speculation. All you end up with is people making their case on this or that side of an argument with no possibility whatsoever of determining what really happened. That’s the business of historians, not scientists.
Fundamental to science is accurate data, predictability and controlled experimentation. Anthony has demonstrated that our currently collected data is largely crap. Historical temperature “data” gathered from tree rings, ice cores, what have you, is not data, it is in fact the result of applied theory – it is not data. With regards to predictability, the global warming crowd has been constantly wrong – evidenced most clearly by the fact that they now refer to their theory as climate change – meaning they know they’re wrong about global warming. Can anyone takes seriously a theory that in essence predicts nothing more than that the climate will change and that every bad thing that happens related to the climate is man’s fault? It’s like we never had floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes before. That isn’t science, it’s religion. And with regards to controlled experimentation, I’d love to see some.
This idea of “most plausible, plausible, and less-plausible hypotheses/theories” is smoke and mirrors. I don’t care what you’re theory is of how gravity works. Anyone can take a ball, ruler and stopwatch and verify Newton’s equations. That’s science. Consensus and plausibility are opinion and irrelevant in science.
Pamela,
You obviously need an education in how the worldwide commodity markets work. You also need to understand a bit of how international monatary policies can influence the price of commodities -which are bought and sold in dollars.
Try to understand that institutional investors are always looking for the best and most efficent ways to turn profits. Try to undestand how the Fed Chairman can influence varous markets. There have been 3 market bubbles since 1997. In each of the three market bubbles (Equities 1997-2000; Real Estate 2003-2007; Commodities 2006- present) the price of risk (known as interest rates and controlled by the Fed Chairman) easy money was the root cause. Since early last year, billions have flowed into the commodites markets (oil is one of many commodities that have enjoyed huge price increases). The fall of the dollar has expasterated oil prices, and despite falling demand both oil and refined oil continues to see large price increases.
Investors and speculators have caused most of the increases in oil prices since last year. When interest rates go up you will see the price of oil plunge. Currently falling demand in Europe and NAmerica is increasing supplies beyond what the price should support. At some time this year the Fed Chiarman will raise interest rates, and the combination of increased inventories and a stronger dollar will pull the bottom right out from under the price of oil. I would not want to be an oil speculator who has bought most of his oil futures on margin.
Most people fail to realize there is no supply problem. OPEC refuses to increase production because demand remains sluggish. The weak dollar and speculation has driven about 50% of oil price increases since January. Ditto for the price of steel, grains, and gold
Pam,
You don’t mind my teasing, do you?
Anthony has given me the guilts.
Steven Stanley Stipulkoski
Richard Wright:
I’ve tried to make sense of the paleo CO2 correlation in the past & I can’t. I don’t see how it’s defensible when so many discontinuities crop up in the paleo correlation.
The AGWers that cite the paleo record don’t ever extend the courtesy of answer some rather obvious concerns about their paleo analysis. All I ask is just one of their very smart and talented writers decompose their process (ala James Burke’s “Connections”) and explicate how their analysis is more conclusive than any counterveiling theory. Until they can show, step by step, how their theories can withstand simple questions, their paleo interpretation is anecdotal at best.
To argue that the oil companies aren’t developing new sources is false. Exxon’s domestic production declined by 30% in the last few years. They had to replace it by developing or at least purchasing outside the U.S. That’s where a bunch of the $40 bil profit went. Supply, demand, and a myriad of restrictions run the market.
That aside, the days of cheap energy are over. Wind, solar, geothermal, etc. all may play a role, they cost. A bunch. I think John is wrong about one thing: even without the interference of the Greens and AGW’s, the price of gas isn’t going down much.
Shale oil, apart from being blocked by law, takes a lot of water, something the shale regions don’t have in abundance. Ethanol has a similar problem.
We need new technology. Fusion, whatever. That may take a while.
JP: I understand this clearly, in fact I have mentioned it on this blog. My point was simply that the oil futures market would certainly change if there was real action by Congress to open up drilling in Alaska and the Gulf. But I still think that oil companies fear that the Democrats would change their minds after a substantial investment was made and that investment would then be lost. They simply do not trust in our elected officials enough to make a long term investment.
Pamela: No one, government or otherwise, has the right to require anyone to reinvest profits. Businesses operate to make a profit, not to provide us with anything. If making a bigger profit requires reinvesting profits to fit the market then it is done. The only reason businesses provide us with what we want is because they cannot stay in business any other way. Notice any buggy whip stores around lately? But I’ll bet ya you sure notice wireless stores and dentists.
The Same Scam Happened 500 years ago
Dear McKinnon, John Coleman et al:
My advance apologies to my friends in the Catholic Church for what I am about to write. I mean
them no ill will, but I will discuss an abuse in their Church’s history.
Back in the 1500’s when Martin Luther was getting started and the Protestant reformation was
gaining traction, the “same tune was playing” that we see Al Gore and his bunch dancing to right
now.
In Luther’s day it was a sin for one commit adultery or falsely accuse ones’ neighbor. But back
then, one could purchase “indulgences” and bail himself out of purgatory long before the coffin
lid was shut. The sale of these indulgences was shamelessly promoted by the Catholic Church
which wielded staggering political power.
Today, is a “sin” to have a lifestyle that emits Carbon Dioxide. We are now destined to be
sucked into the Carbon Offsets scam – as if we are to be purchasing ”forgiveness”. The money
will all be used to elevate the prestige of Al’s empire in the eyes of all mankind.
So here we are 500 years later. Instead of a Pope, we get Al Gore as the high priest. Instead
of sinning by Adultery we sin by our lifestyle through Carbon Emissions. Instead of buying
Indulgences we are going to get to purchase “Carbon Offsets”.
SAME SONG – JUST A DIFFERENT DANCE. WHAT HAPPENED TO SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE? I’M NOT
WORSHIPPING AL GORE’S GOD !!!
(I don’t know why Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh or Fox News haven’t realized this argument!? Please
someone! I am a man of little consequence. So – PLEASE — take it and RUN with it.)
Jack (08:31:22) :
“Coleman doesn’t take comments, so he’s not really running a blog. He can be emailed but doesn’t respond.”
He replied to me. It took a couple weeks, and his reply was fairly content-free so I imagine he’s rather busy.
One thing that Coleman says in various writings is:
The first 100 ppm had far more impact than the last 100 ppm.
A sheet of metalized mylar could make a very good mirror and a planet sized piece would weigh far less than 380/1,000,000 ths of the atmosphere. Instead of Snowball Earth, it would be Disco-ball Earth.
Lousy argument. The saturated bandpass absorption window is much better but harder to describe in a sound bite.
The Gray Champion:
You’re not alone. See this speech by Michael Crichton that I first heard about from Rush Limbaugh:
Envrironmentaism as Religion
Coleman: “Well, it is simply not happening. Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares. That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming? ”
Coleman is wrong when he says that sunspot activity was higher in the 80s and 90s. Sunspot activity was much higher in the 50s when global warming was starting one of its regular dips in a long warming trend.
http://www.spaceweather.com/sunspots/history.html
So why didn’t global warming peak in the 50’s? No doubt someone will claim a lagging effect (a usual excuse) but Coleman does not claim any of this. He states that temperature change happens immediately.
This kind of shoddy reporting only panders to ignorance.
Richard: All science starts off with theory, accumulation of data and calculation. Einstein is a good example.
Evolution was also ignored and pillaried by the religious people of the day but the scientists have won out. Nowadays there are now only a few people who stubbornly deny evolution.
Climate change science is no different to any other science, apart from the fact that it is at present far more important than most others. But if you had your way with all science as you wish with climatology, no progress would ever have been made in medicine or any other scientific issue.
So what theory do you have that temperatures were so much warmer 200 million years ago when the sun’s output much less than it is today?
And if your children were going to board an airplane and the chief engineer said there was a 90% chance of the plane crashing would you still let your kids get on it? After all it is only an unproven theory that the plane will crash.
Jack…..
You do realize that for the last Ten thousand years, the temperature trend has been cooling…. In the Last two thousand years it has been cooling faster…. If you put a trend line in for the last 600 years, it’s static. A trend line for the last 120 years… Warming fast… but no faster than other periods in the past… and a trend line for the last decade…. static or perhaps a small cooling.
If you take the last Five thousand years and see what the rate of warming per century is…. You will find that it is 2.5 degrees C per century.
If you put a trend line in from 1979 to 2005…. You will find a trend of 1.8 degrees C….
1.8 degrees C is well within the Rate of 2.5 for the last Five thousand years. It is normal.
Where is the signature for AGW Jack?…
It’s certainly not in the Tropical Troposphere 10km above the equator measuring at the 200hPa boundary….
This is the area that all the Climate Computer models described and have theorized that there would be a rise of 1.5 degrees C of temperature congruent with a 100ppm rise in CO2….. The real observed measurement is actually 0.2 degrees according to satellite data and 0.0 according to Radiosonde data.
…… No signiture there Jack.
We also now have ten years of zero temperature increase as recorded in the surface record, despite a four percent increase in CO2.
….. No signiture there either.
Then the Ice core records show that CO2 rise lags Temperature rise…
…..There’s not much going for AGW as a Climate Hypothesis… is there?
Pamela Grey…… Re $6.00 oil.
I agree Pam….. Oil is now 136 dollars a barrel….. Brown ligneous coal sells for 30 bucks a ton…. Now with Coal to liquids technology you can turn Coal into diesel, petrol(gasoline) and LPG…
It was calculated that it’s break even is at about 45 to 55 dollars a barrel of oil… Seeing that oil is selling at 136 dollars… It is more than viable. Now an added factor would be the coal price going up….so just double the low end figure… say 90 bucks a barrel….
Jeez I sure could live with going back to those prices again….
Plus as more countries liquefied coal to oil… The price would become even lower…. America, India, Australia and South Africa, own over fifty percent of the Worlds Coal reserves…. I chose those countries because they are all Democracies… We don’t need to rely on Despotic Arab Oil….
Coal to Liquids Technology……… Now that’s the way to go.
dennis ward
“And if your children were going to board an airplane and the chief engineer said there was a 90% chance of the plane crashing would you still let your kids get on it? After all it is only an unproven theory that the plane will crash.”
Oh please. The engineer BUILT the darned thing. He oughta know.
[…] Weather Channel Founder Makes Another Challenge to Gore « Watts Up With That? #climate […]
Denis Ward- “And if your children were going to board an airplane and the chief engineer said there was a 90% chance of the plane crashing would you still let your kids get on it? After all it is only an unproven theory that the plane will crash.”
You have to define “the chief engineer”. IF he is the chief engineer of a competeing mass transportation company with a computer model that says all airplanes have a 90% of crashing, but the observed data doesn’t match his computer model, I would have to question his motives.
The hypothesis that CO2 contibutes to or is the cause of the recent “global warming” has already been been disproved. In “Climate Change and Global Warming”, Andrew Materman analyzed the CET record on a month-by-month sample interval and found there was no significant change in annual mean tempearures for over 300 years. His method of analysis should be used for all temp-time records. There is lots of useful info in his article. GO:
http://www.usefulinfo.co.uk/climate_change_global_warming.php
In “Still Waiting for Global Warming”, the late John Daly analyzed the temperature records of many really “squeaky clean” remote weather stations. The vast majority of these plots are flat lines and show no trend for any global warming, such as Alice Springs until the ABM moved the base ref station to the airport.
The plot for Death Valley for the four seasons are all flat lines and rock-solid, bullet-proof empirical evidence that CO2 does not cause any warming of the air. A desert has low humidity and few clouds. After sunset, there is no water vapor to absorb out-going, long wave IR and few clouds to trap warm air that is heated by conduction with the surface and carried aloft by convection. This is the reason temperature plummets after sunset. Clouds and water vapor account for about 70% of the natural greenhouse effect. Go to RealClimate and read Gavin’s article: “Water Vapor: Forcing or Feedback”.
If CO2 causes any significant warming of the air, then we would expect a slow but descernible increase in the annual mean temperature especially for winter, that should correlate with the increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air. No such increase is observed. Thus the hypothesis is falsified.
The annual mean temperature plot for the Parowan Power Plant is also a flat line. Unfortunately the record stops in 2000. Also check the plots for Dodge City, Yuma, and Tombstone.
If we want to put an end to all this global warming gobblygook and climate change claptrap, the procedure is quite simple and straight-forward: analyze more “squeaky clean” station temprature records by Andrew M.’s method for the Tmax and Tmin metrics. Least squares analyses of these plots could then be used for assesment of trends.
If
J. Hansford,
Coal to liquids. Brilliant idea. It will take hydrogen to do this, right? No problem. Just build nukes that don’t pollute, make some electricity and set some hydrogen free? In other words, free it from its polygamous relationship with oxygen? Perhaps the Texas CPS could help.
dennis ward: “if your children were going to board an airplane and the chief engineer said there was a 90% chance of the plane crashing would you still let your kids get on it?”
The problem is that the IPCC gang of 2500 weren’t all “chief engineers”. If ten MD’s said there was a 90% chance of the plane crashing you would ask them what they mix with their vodka.
Tom Bruno:
Esp. if the airframe were built on error bars that a plane could fly through.
or something like that…
If he can’t get the gasoline prices/ethanol thing right (a subject I know something about) how can I believe any of the rest of it?
I take it you are referencing the flawed CARD study?
Some of these modellers act like error bars are an energy snack.
=======================================
So, what’s the REAL DEAL here people?! I am very, very off-kilter after reading this.
I would, however, like to point out that Al Gore made “An Inconvenient Truth” on 35mm film. 35mm film is more bad for the environment than harvesting crude oil. The toxins that go into developing are insanely hazardous towards the environment, and to make a feature length documentary on it is worth billions of dollars of waste. That, my friends, is the inconvenient truth.
Steve Stip (07:25:44) :
“Coal to liquids. Brilliant idea. It will take hydrogen to do this, right? No problem. Just build nukes that don’t pollute, make some electricity and set some hydrogen free? In other words, free it from its polygamous relationship with oxygen? Perhaps the Texas CPS could help.”
Texas Child Protective Services has a long history of lying, secrecy, deception, and flexing governmental muscle for their own intentions. Not as bad as Massachusetts, Oregon, or Florida, but well up there. Hmm. Gore, Hansen, etc seem to have a long history of ….
No wonder I’m attracted to the debate. At least they abuse science and scientists instead of children and parents.
http://wermenh.com/dcyf.html
http://wermenh.com/dcyf_tricks.html
An AGW “Tricks of the Trade” page would make a nice parallel. I’ll keep it in mind for some night when I’m in a dark mood.
This guy appears as clueless in writing as he does on my TV in SD. Perhaps running his rambling diatribe past an editor is in order. Or would that qualify as “peer review” and set his skin on fire or something?
REPLY: Writing opinion pieces do not require peer review, as you’ve very effectively demonstrated here with your comment.
Anyone old enough to remember the pall of smog that used to hang over all our cities knows how much improvement there has been.
I remember the spectacular sunsets over the Hudson river in NYC. Every color of the rainbow, and extraordinarily vivid. Pinks Aquas, Indigos. Strikingly beautiful. Put Arizona to shame. If you never saw it you cannot conceive of it. A Fire show every night.
Ten years after the Clean Air Act and they were gone, all gone . . .
(Of course, that was when the gray pigeons became much healthier and more robust and took on all the multicolor shades of the hitherto ubiquitously gray buildings. But that’s another Darwinian story.)
Jack said:
“reply to [Anthony’s] Reply: Coleman doesn’t take comments, so he’s not really running a blog. He can be emailed but doesn’t respond. So he simply pontificates on his site as if he knows all and tells all… I asked Coleman (and you can investigate yourself) what could have caused this OTHER than greenhouse gases… If there is no plausible non-greenhouse gas hypothesis, then Coleman is clearly wrong… The cause of the Little Ice Age was a slight decline in solar activity. [my emphasis]. That’s well-known and is related to the issue raised in Coleman’s piece. The issue on which I challenge Coleman is radiative forcing of climate by atmospheric CO2 concentrations…”
Seems that if Jack is acknowledging Solar forcing, then the question is, how much forcing is attributable to Solar inluence, and how much is attributable to CO2?
There are scads of charts like this that provide a major clue.
dt said a mouthful re. oil.
Peak oil: Peek and ye shall find.
old construction worker (04:02:02) :
Denis Ward- “And if your children were going to board an airplane and the chief engineer said there was a 90% chance of the plane crashing would you still let your kids get on it? After all it is only an unproven theory that the plane will crash.”
Old construction worker.
You have to define “the chief engineer”. IF he is the chief engineer of a competeing mass transportation company with a computer model that says all airplanes have a 90% of crashing, but the observed data doesn’t match his computer model, I would have to question his motives.
No I do not have to define anything. This engineer may be off his rocker for all I know and talking nonsense. But I have to assume he has more knowledge than I have on the subject, and so I would prefer to take his opinion rather than someone whose livelihood depends on selling me air tickets or the fuel for the plane.
So would you let your kids fly on the plane or not?
Harold Pierce Jr
:
“The hypothesis that CO2 contibutes to or is the cause of the recent “global warming” has already been been disproved. In “Climate Change and Global Warming”, Andrew Materman analyzed the CET record on a month-by-month sample interval and found there was no significant change in annual mean tempearures for over 300 years. His method of analysis should be used for all temp-time records. There is lots of useful info in his article. GO:
http://www.usefulinfo.co.uk/climate_change_global_warming.php”
I found the colour of this site made it very difficult to read, so can you point to where in the link this ‘proof’ exists? Excuse my scepticism.
If there has been no annual mean rise in temperatures of 300 years then how come even most AGW sceptics believe that it has?
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/daleo-co2-ushnc2.png&imgrefurl=http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/warming-trend-pdo-and-solar-correlate-better-than-co2/&h=344&w=520&sz=92&hl=en&start=17&um=1&tbnid=q8jSkmcOm_uErM:&tbnh=87&tbnw=131&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%2522annual%2Bmean%2Btemperatures%2522%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN
As so often with many AGW sceptics (but not all) they change their tune to fit the song.
poetSam, and perhaps Mr. jeeves move over to make room for Evan Jones
dennis ward: your use of the precautionary principle (kids on a plane) is a tired, lame AGWer tactic which proves absolutely nothing except that their “science” has failed and they therefore have to resort to emotionalism to try to sway people to their AGW ideology. Nice try.
Harold Pierce Jr:
“Andrew Materman analyzed the CET record on a month-by-month sample interval and found there was no significant change in annual mean tempearures for over 300 years.”
That’s not the way I read it. His paper explicitly states, “The 300 year long Central England Temperature record shows seasonal warming which suggests that the magnitude of global warming is not large”
Dennis Ward:
“As so often with many AGW sceptics (but not all) they change their tune to fit the song.”
Three words: Pot, Kettle, Black
European leftists are continually threatening to have people from the Bush administration ,including the President himself, arrested and tried for war crimes any time they venture to the continent. Perhaps, if the next time Algore swoops in on his private jet some brave soul could perform a citizens arrest, on charges of criminal fraud and crimes against humanity. The resulting trial would provide a compelling forum for the debate of this bovine excrement that Al has so studiously avoided, and which the MSM would have a hard time spinning, although I am sure their efforts to do so would be herculean.
Anyone here read the latest geologic survey of all that oil in Alaska? I have. Anyone want to elucidate us dump cluck chicks on what that oil is made of? Where it’s at? Layered? Spread out? Sweet? Sour? Proven? Right next to another field that is already in production? Mostly natural gas or Texas gold? Is most of it under the refuge or outside the refuge? I know!!!! Teacher!!!! Pick me!!!! Pick me!!!!
Pamela:
Be sure to use the right historical formula:
Take proven reserves and multiply by 10. That’s the real number.
Then take that number and multiply it by ten. That’s “potential” reserve.
Then multiply that number by two or three (or four or five) to get the amount they’ll eventually extract.
European leftists are continually threatening to have people from the Bush administration ,including the President himself, arrested and tried for war crimes any time they venture to the continent.
True, but that doesn’t keep me up at night. Before they can cook him they have to catch him.
“So would you let your kids fly on the plane or not?”
Yes, the engineer sounds like an idiot.
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Evan
I hope they catch him and cook him. But who would eat em?
“Sometimes the only purpose of a life is to serve as a warning to others.”
Also, it is lucky Greenspan is not an honorable Japanese central banker.
That would smart!
“Writing opinion pieces do not require peer review, as you’ve very effectively demonstrated here with your comment.”
Something tells me you missed my joke. Should I blame that on me or you? You did manage to punctuate my point that an editor is in order though, so thanks for that.
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I hope they catch him and cook him. But who would eat em?
I deeply admire the man for all sorts of quiet liberal reasons.
He saved the economy with the tax cuts. Flat out. Plain and simple. Anyone who has taken the trouble to look at the year-by-year comparison of tax cuts vs. revenues KNOWS the tax cuts had NOTHING to do with the drop in revenues. Revenues today are at huge record levels. (Unfortunately, so is spending, but that’s another story. Even though the deficit is diddly-squat in percentage terms, even including the war.)
He had the courage to liberate the people of Iraq in spite of craven world opposition. And he stayed the course. No one seems to account for the 50 to 100,000 per year being starved by Saddam, not to mention 100-200/day murdered by death squads. PLUS the hundreds of thousands in mass graves. The only war crime about Iraq is that we didn’t invade ten years earlier. (Don’t even mention the ridiculous Lancet report, it makes Jim Hansen look like a lowballer!)
Now Saddam is gone and a very successful democracy is in place with far greater voter participation than in any western country. Freedom has a new symbol: the purple finger. He also had the courage to do the surge thing which has been a wild success, and has turned around the war every bit as thoroughly as the fall of Atlanta.
And all those allies that are supposed to have “abandoned” us have been having cat-fights among themselves over who is the best ally of America. Nearly all of Europe is now under pro-US governments and is moving closer to the American economic model. Only Spain and Russia are actively anti-US these days. (Hint: winning COUNTS.)
Dubya also staunchly resisted the temptation to “steal the oil”, as any of the US critics would have done, and though you don’t read it in the papers, Europe is impressed by that.
Don’t forget that Truman’s popularity ratings were a lot lower than dubya’s when he left office. I disagree with dubya on a lot of issues, but in the big things he was magnificent. Unless we find a way to throw away our victory in Iraq, history will view him far more kindly than we do now. Mark my words.
Jacques! Jacques! Jacques Chirac!
How many kids did you starve in Iraq?
“… history will view him far more kindly than we do now.” Evan
Only if neo-cons write it.
Evan, we’ve lost all sorts of civil liberties in an ENDLESS war with Muslims.
We must choose: Quit intervening in other countries OR become a police state.
fear is the fee
I used to be annoyed,
in fact, paranoid
but then i found it best
if enemies i made less.
This lesson do I give
to the country where I live:
the US.
Neo-con has two meanings, one historical, one present.
The present meaning is those who are “conservative” on foreign policy (i.e., non-isolationist) and the economy (a common sense not a value issue) but who tend to be more “liberal” on value judgments.
And yes, those are the sort who will write the history. As always.
Evan, we’ve lost all sorts of civil liberties in an ENDLESS war with Muslims.
I keep hearing that. Yet I can’t name a single person who has lost a single liberty. I look back at civil liberty restrictions during other US wars and the current version is pretty darn milksop by comparison.
We must choose: Quit intervening in other countries OR become a police state.
The way i see it that makes us like Spider-Man allowing the criminalwho would later kill Uncle Ben to escape.
Not :”interfering in other countries” is what allowed the rise of the monstrous regimes of Hitler and imperial Japan.
I have two answers:
With Great power comes great responsibility.–The Spider-Man
Doing nothing IS doing something.–Tony Blair (specifically referring to Iraq)
It’s not on Sweden to do these things. They can’t. It’s on US. Why? Because we CAN.
I think both wars against Saddam did great good in the world, and that they will engender lasting and enduring good. It was moral. Just. Responsible. Yes, I know this is not the majority view.
You forgot experimentation and verification. Without those, theory, data, and calculation don’t mean much of anything.
Funny you should mention Einstein. When Einstein wrote the theory of Special Relativity, the scientific consensus was that light propagated through the “ether” because no one had a better theory. No one had ever observed the ether but they couldn’t imagine how light could propagate without it – so it must be there. When Michelson and Morley did their experiments that proved there was no ether, they kept repeating them because they figured they must be missing something. Einstein came along, accepted that these repeated and verified experiments proved there was no ether, and theorized that the speed of light was a constant regardless of the frame of reference of the observer – the result being that time and distance dilate and speeds approaching the speed of light. His theory has been verified experimentally in many ways, the most dramatic of course is the atom bomb.
With global warming, the predictions are not verified, they are falsified. But instead of rejecting the “theory” the computer modelers tweak the fudge factors in their parametric equations (because they don’t know how to solve the real equations) and boldly proclaim new disasters. Nothing could be further from real science (except maybe evolution). It used to be the psychics like Jean Dixon that went around proclaiming disasters every year. Today’s psychics are the Global Warming prophets of doom.
I’ve made my case as to how Climate Change hysteria is not science. Please give me some examples of how my definition of the scientific method is faulty and has prevented all progress in science. And some examples of how your method that excludes experimentation and verification has yielded “scientific” progress.
I don’t have one and frankly I don’t care what happened 200 million years ago because no one is ever going to know.
What does this have to do with science? You can go around listening to Chicken Little if you want to, but I choose not to. And who made you, or Al Gore, or the IPCC the chief engineer of the planet? It’s God who created the heavens and the earth.
Evan,
Until recently and perhaps still, Bush had the power to detain even native born Americans indefinitely without even appearing before a civilian judge. How is that for a lost civil liberty?
I used to believe as you do Evan, so i sympathize. Don’t worry, there is another world view that is completely coherent, peaceful, and strong.
Learn about Ron Paul’s views. Perhaps in 2012, we can choose a man who will lead us out of the wilderness. Otherwise, I see an earlier end to the world.
We have nuclear weapons. As long as we can deliver those we will always be safe from an attack by a foreign country. As for terrorists, the only solution is to quit making enemies around the world.
some questions for neocons
So, they hate us cause we’re free?
(Free? If this would only be!)
No, they hate us cause we’re there.
Just how is this unfair?
And what if some come here
with troops in battle gear?
Would you greet them all as friends
or your native soil defend?
Does the Golden Rule apply?
If not, please tell me why.
Wow, now THERE’S some science for ya! Which experiments and verifications show that there is a god to have created the “heavens” (whatever that is) and the Earth?
You can go around listening to fairy tales if you want, I’ll stick with reality.
This is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.
The US has been chastised for waiting so long to enter WWs 1 and 2. To us these were foreign wars (until certain events occurred to change that). So, now that we’ve become the world’s policeman, we get chastised as well. No matter what we do, there will be those vocal people who will blame us for any outcome, whether good or bad. The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are perfect cases in point.
Jeff
The case can be made that both WWI AND WWII were unnecessary. I’ll not try to justify non-involvement in WWII. But certainly WWI was unnecessary. Plus, the US involvement in WWI led to WWII.
I am no hippy, but for purely practical reasons, we need to give peace a chance. It is war (and the fear it causes) that gives power to the wicked.
I am not saying we should isolate ourselves from the world but to quit interfering in their affairs. By all means, let’s have a strong DEFENSE.
I suggest reading Ron Paul and http://www.lewrockwell.com for more info.
Jeff, I’m not claiming that my belief in God is science. It’s faith, pure and simple. But Dennis put forth this silly argument about the “chief engineer” of a plane telling us we’re all going to die. I happen to believe the chief engineer of the planet is God. I know for a fact that it’s not Al Gore or the IPCC. So Dennis’ analogy is meaningless. If you don’t believe in God and would rather believe that the universe is the result of mindless chance, that’s your business. But if you happen to buy into the consensus argument on global warming, then you might also consider that it is the overwhelming consensus of all people on the planet that there is a God.
Back to science – The point of my posts is that global warming computer models based on parametric equations loaded with fudge factors do not follow the scientific method and are therefore not science. If you would like to engage on that, feel free.
Back to Global non-warming:- I am old enough to remember the 70s when the mdia inspired “science” claimed that we were entering a little ice age. I did not believe it then and I don’t believe warming now. My Member of Partiament knows my views and tells me they are “dangerous”. Bring on the thought police ! Unfortunately all the major political parties in the UK seem to believe all the nonsense. The only one that does not subscribe is UKIP (United kingdom Independance Party).. They also want to get us out of the European Union so they are obviosly intellingent. But what can the average citizen DO ? Any amount of writing to MPs or the media is just wasted paper. WHAT TO DO ?