I also still don’t see what prompted your claim that “There are layers of misunderstanding (or worse: intentional distortion) ” in what I said, if all you objected to was what you considered too strong a statement of the case.

I will briefly address your concern:
The relevant passage from the discussion:

RW (14:22:25)
“[...] The longer period giving the slightly better correlation shows that the PDO has nothing to do with the correlation.”

Clarification:

If you would have substituted “suggests to me” for “shows”, I probably would have kept skiing (skimming & skipping) since my participation in this thread was related to solar science (as you will see from the posts I made).

-
RW (04:28:56) “I appreciate you saying so.”

Thank you.

Sandy:

“200 million years of fossil record show that a) CO2 is good for the biosphere b) CO2 cannot ‘run away’ to B movie scenarios.”

Neither of these are shown by the fossil records. Five minutes in a room filled with pure CO2 will show you that CO2 is not always good. And your point b simply doesn’t make sense. Are you saying that CO2 concentrations can’t rise beyond a certain level?

Fran Manns: so, your qualifications are not really relevant. By ostentatiously
listing them every time you post, you are attempting to argue from authority.

You’re 200 years out of date with your CO2 claims. CO2 rose and fell in a way strongly related to temperatures, for 650,000 years. CO2 went up and down by ~100ppm. Temperatures went up and down by ~12°C. So, for each degree rise in temperature, CO2 went up by ~8ppm. Now then, suddenly in the last 200 years reached a level 110ppm higher than it had at any point in the last 650,000 years. So, given the 8ppm/°C figure, it must therefore be 14°C hotter now than it was at any point over the last 650,000 years. That is transparently absurd. Rising temperatures have not caused the post-industrial rise in CO2

I explained this already, a couple of times. Are you another one who simply cannot bring themselves to understand the basics?

As for solar – you’re wrong. There is very little correlation between sunspot numbers and temperatures. Since 1980 or before, all indexes of solar activity have been on a downward trend, and yet temperatures have carried on rising.

And Pinatubo? I have no idea what data you’re looking at. After Pinatubo erupted, global temperatures were still 0.4°C higher than they had been at the beginning of the century. And now, 18 years later, temperatures are 0.4°C higher than they were then.

I’m sure if you’re right about fluid inclusion data, then you could publish your results to great acclaim. Have you done so? If not, why not?

RW –

I am a registered geoscientist. I earned my degrees by studying the sciences – mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology, statistics and geostatistics, and created my own original work in carbonate stratigraphy, largely around paleogeography and paleoclimatology.

I have read many scientific papers on ‘climate change’ since the late 1980s and have read them objectively. I do not need to reply to ‘ad hominem’ remarks but on the other hand, thought I should point out that since ‘ad hominem’ is taught in first year philosophy courses as one of the most common logical errors, I should make a comment. This we see all the time from Hansen, Suzuki, Gore and the like because they have no response to current data or relevant hypothises. Why do they refuse debate? I suggest they refuse debate because they are not competant to do so. I have had Suzuki’s daughter pull out of a debate I participated because of…who knows what – orders from the Orwellian leader.

RW I’ll debate you. Name the stage…

Because of the miracle of inverse solubility of gasses, CO2 has nothing but a trailing correlation with both warming and cooling. There is however solid 95% corelation with sunspot peak frequency with warming and cooling for the 20th century – chopped off abruptly by the eruption of Pinatubo in 1991. Pinatubo nearly compensated for the natural solar warming of the 20th century with one eruption.

Moreover, the fluid inclusion data used to support AGW is worthless because ice is an open system. A geoscientist would never be permitted to use such corrupt data for a term paper, much less publish it in a journal. The light isotopes leave and heavies stay behind during the lengthy and reversible transition from snow to firn to ice. Then the glaciologist celebrities calibrates the top layer to modern temperature. Voila, yet another hockey stick sans Medieval warm period and the Little Ice Age. Who are the referees of this half baked sort of work? They wiould not survive a Masters degree at a decent Geological institute.

Fran Manns: I presume you believe your qualifications are relevant. However, despite searching I cannot find any evidence that you have published anything in any discipline related to climate science. Is that correct?

This, from someone whose qualifications are Cut ‘n’ Paste 101.

Give us your qualifications, RW. That specific request has been made often enough. Make ‘em falsifiable.

Fran Manns:

“The third ranking gas is CO2 (0.0383%)”

Incorrect. CO2 is second only to water vapour in its effectiveness as a greenhouse gas. See Ramanathan and Coakley 1978 or any number of papers since then.

“and it does not correlate well with global warming or cooling either;”

Incorrect. It correlates very well.

I presume you believe your qualifications are relevant. However, despite searching I cannot find any evidence that you have published anything in any discipline related to climate science. Is that correct?

It is proven that the rise in CO2 is not due to any previous warming. As I said before, you would need a warming of 15°C to explain the rise. Do you believe it’s got that much warmer? It seems from your comments that you don’t, so you are contradicting yourself. Doing that, and being unaware of it, by the way, can be a sign of mental disorder.

Isotopic studies prove that the extra CO2 has come from fossil fuel. I’ve told you this repeatedly, and rather than offer any counterevidence, you just state your beliefs yet again.

And still you can’t get that climate is not measured over ten years! This is the fundamental fact that renders all of your graphs and comments relating to temperatures since 2002 completely irrelevant! But you keep on referring to them, and you seem to think that the more you can dig up, the better. It’s easy to find wrong things on the internet, and no matter how many you find, they are still wrong.

You are simply ignoring any evidence that contradicts your belief. For you, it seems, this is something of a religion, or perhaps a cult.

“Fact 1: CO2 absorbs strongly in the infrared. Strong infrared absorbers give rise to the greenhouse effect. Fact 2: the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising. Fact 3: over the period of instrumental temperature measurements, the global average temperature has risen by about 1°C.”

You still don’t understand that you can’t measure climate over a decade. It’s a simple point, and one that you clearly fail to understand not because you can’t but because you don’t want to. This shows the whole GISS record, and the whole Mauna Loa CO2 record. Only a fool would deny the clear appearance of a correlation during the common period of the two records. But if you look at any 10 year period within that (for example 1968-1978, or 1985-1995>, you don’t see a correlation. This is because internal variability dominates over short timescales. You cannot say anything meaningful about climate based on only 10 years of data.

You still don’t understand that this graph does not show what you are claiming it does. It shows that the annual increase in CO2 is not in fact smooth and steady; it shows the exact opposite of what you have twice claimed that it shows. Read the caption!

The fundamental facts are:

- that CO2 is a strong infrared absorber; strong infrared absorbers play a fundamental role in the climate, giving rise to the greenhouse effect;

- the concentration of CO2 is rising, at an ever-increasing rate, and is 40% above pre-industrial levels

- the rise is due to the burning of fossil fuels.

These things are known beyond any doubt. By continually questioning them, and particularly by taking approaches like posting 10 graphs, every single one of which shows data over too short a period to be meaningful, you destroy any credibility you ever had. Like I’ve said, there are interesting questions to ask about the climate. You’re wasting your time trying to attack undeniable fundamentals in the style of Monty Python’s knights attacking castles with swords.

I provide numerous links and citations to back up what I say, while RW just issues his opinions.

RW opines that I do not understand. As I’ve pointed out many times, my 30+ year career was spent working in one of the country’s largest metrology labs, designing, calibrating, testing and repairing weather related equipment; primarily humidity, dew/frost point, temperature and thermocouple instruments.

Calibrations were directly traceable to the National Bureau of Standards [now N.I.S.T.]. We received all the current scientific literature, sent to the lab gratis by the equipment manufacturers. I personally subscribed to the AAAS journal Science for more than twenty years.

In our lab, with over 140 engineers and technicians, no one — not a single one — bought into the CO2 = AGW scam. Whenever the subject came up, people would just roll their eyes or crack jokes about it. These are professionals who, unlike the general public, are well grounded in the physical sciences. Not a single engineer or tech saw the “carbon” scare as legitimate science. It was a fad motivated and perpetuated by money, not by real science. But RW probably thinks all those professionals are wrong, and that the science is settled.

So now I am curious about RW’s CV. Is RW a climatologist? Is RW a meteorologist? Has RW spent his career working in a weather or climate related field? Has RW ever convinced even one skeptic to change his mind here, and accept that an increase in CO2 will cause runaway global warming? Or did RW see An Inconvenient Truth, and become a true believer as a result?

RW claims that “…of course there is empirical evidence that [CO2] affects temperatures.” That is a baseless opinion. RW should provide empirical [real world, verifiable] evidence that purports to measure the exact portion of global temperature increase caused by the very small fraction of anthropogenic CO2 that is added to the atmosphere. Explain why the slow, steady rise in Mauna Loa CO2 measurements fail to correlate at all with the rise and fall of human CO2 emissions. Explain why as CO2 rises, global temperatures have been falling for many years. Leaving the always inaccurate computer models out of any putative explanation results in the failure of the CO2 = AGW conjecture. GCMs are very flimsy “evidence.”

Finally, RW’s false claim that there is a “very strong correlation” between rising CO2 and global temperatures has been repeatedly falsified by the planet itself.

Notice the almost complete lack of any R^2 correlation under the graph. The fact is that there is no causal connection between rising CO2 and the subsequent rise on global temperature — as there clearly is between rising temperature and the subsequent rise of CO2: as CO2 rises, temperature falls. The ridiculous Elmer Gantry-style answer by the alarmist contingent is that global warming causes global cooling. Could they be any less credible?

“Comment: I appreciate the contribution you have made to this discussion.”

I appreciate you saying so. But I still don’t understand what you’re objecting to regarding the CO2/temperature correlation. It was argued that the strong correlation since 1975 was spurious, caused or at least enhanced by the pacific decadal oscillation. In fact, when extended to a period where the PDO was negative, the correlation does not weaken; it becomes stronger. Therefore, the 1975-present correlation between CO2 and temperature was not spurious.

Smokey:

It’s amusing to see you claiming that all the fossil fuel CO2 somehow disappears into the biosphere, and not into the atmosphere, and yet in the very same post, you show us a graph showing the ongoing rise in atmospheric CO2.

“there is no empirical evidence that this minor addition to a minor trace gas has any effect at all on temperature”

So your next tactic is to concede that fossil fuel CO2 goes into the atmosphere, but to claim that the extra quantity is insignificant. In fact, its concentration has increased by 40%.

And of course there is empirical evidence that it affects temperatures. It’s bizarre to deny it. You might disagree with the conclusions drawn from the evidence, but it’s obvious that there is evidence. Fact 1: CO2 absorbs strongly in the infrared. Strong infrared absorbers give rise to the greenhouse effect. Fact 2: the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising. Fact 3: over the period of instrumental temperature measurements, the global average temperature has risen by about 1°C. How exactly is that not evidence?

“carbon dioxide starved environment”

You ever hear of a guy called Darwin? A concept called ‘evolution’? I’d love to know how life on earth has somehow evolved to fit an ecological niche that hasn’t existed for at least a million years.

Your problem, Smokey, is that you are refusing to understand some basic things. Like I say, there are valid and interesting questions that can be asked, but you’re not asking them; instead, you’re denying basic science that was done 150 years ago and has been endlessly verified since then.

Clarification:
My interest in participating in this particular thread:
Solar science and the reasons for its slow progress.

I apologize if I upset you. I was responding specifically to another poster’s comments, and I provided several links to support my position. I answered his questions and told him to relax, and don’t worry. Is that what bothered you? Or is it something else? Really, I want to know the specifics.

Based on your comment, I have re-read this entire thread from the beginning. I think you should, too. Comments like…

“Who cares what Charles Osgood thinks? He has no expertise in climatology. He is a human interest, soft news reporter. He is well past his sell by date. This blog is nothing but cheer leading.”

…are not uncommon on this site.

I’m standing my ground on my skeptical position, and if I come across as being impatient with the escapees from echo chambers like RealClimate and similar sites, who come here solely to argue and disrupt, and tell you and everyone else they’re wrong, I think a few of them need to hear it. I always provide a stream of citations and links to support my views, while posters like the one quoted above just hit ‘n’ run. Don’t you think they are more worthy of criticism than my comments?

Notice that I’ve posted well over twenty charts and graphs supporting my position — and every last one of them was simply dismissed out of hand, with a pf-f-ft attitude. Do you think that every chart and graph mis-states reality, and should be disregarded? If even one chart or graph I posted represents reality, then the alarmists’ position takes a major hit.

My advice is don’t worry about the feelings of the very few closed-minded posters who come here from the other side to tell everyone else they’re wrong, or to run interference. I’m only concerned if I’ve hurt your feelings, or those of the 95% of reasonable folks who comment and answer questions if asked.

I’ve stated several times on this site that I will change my mind if someone provides reasonably convincing evidence that the current situation is not explained by natural climate variability. No one has ever risen to that challenge. I’m not the only one who gets irked at the absolute refusal of the warmists to ever admit that any of us has made a convincing argument. You will routinely read a comment from someone who believed in the CO2 = AGW hypothesis, and then became a skeptic because of what they read here and elsewhere. But show me one poster who used to be skeptical that CO2 would cause runaway global warming, but now believes it’s true.

It is the utter closed-mindedness of the other side that causes frustration, and I’m not the only one who hits back. That being the case, there must be something I said that bothered you, and for that I apologize.