Cherry Picking Climate Catastrophes: Response to Conor Clarke, Part II
WUWT Guest Post by Indur Goklany
Conor Clarke at The Atlantic blog, raised several issues with my study, “What to Do About Climate Change,” that Cato published last year.
One of Conor Clarke’s comments was that my analysis did not extend beyond the 21st century. He found this problematic because, as Conor put it, climate change would extend beyond 2100, and even if GDP is higher in 2100 with unfettered global warming than without, it’s not obvious that this GDP would continue to be higher “in the year 2200 or 2300 or 3758”. I addressed this portion of his argument in Part I of my response. Here I will address the second part of this argument, that “the possibility of ‘catastrophic’ climate change events — those with low probability but extremely high cost — becomes real after 2100.”
RESPONSE:
The examples of potentially catastrophic events that could be caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas induced global warming (AGW) that have been offered to date (e.g., melting of the Greenland or West Antarctic Ice Sheets, or the shutdown of the thermohaline circulation) contain a few drops of plausibility submerged in oceans of speculation. There are no scientifically justified estimates of the probability of their occurrence by any given date. Nor are there scientifically justified estimates of the magnitude of damages such events might cause, not just in biophysical terms but also in socioeconomic terms. Therefore, to call these events “low probability” — as Mr. Clarke does — is a misnomer. They are more appropriately termed as plausible but highly speculative events.
Consider, for example, the potential collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS). According to the IPCC’s WG I Summary for Policy Makers (p. 17), “If a negative surface mass balance were sustained for millennia, that would lead to virtually complete elimination of the Greenland Ice Sheet and a resulting contribution to sea level rise of about 7 m” (emphasis added). Presumably the same applies to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
But what is the probability that a negative surface mass balance can, in fact, be sustained for millennia, particularly after considering the amount of fossil fuels that can be economically extracted and the likelihood that other energy sources will not displace fossil fuels in the interim? [Remember we are told that peak oil is nigh, that renewables are almost competitive with fossil fuels, and that wind, solar and biofuels will soon pay for themselves.]
Second, for an event to be classified as a catastrophe, it should occur relatively quickly precluding efforts by man or nature to adapt or otherwise deal with it. But if it occurs over millennia, as the IPCC says, or even centuries, that gives humanity ample time to adjust, albeit at a socioeconomic cost. But it need not be prohibitively dangerous to life, limb or property if: (1) the total amount of sea level rise (SLR) and, perhaps more importantly, the rate of SLR can be predicted with some confidence, as seems likely in the next few decades considering the resources being expended on such research; (2) the rate of SLR is slow relative to how fast populations can strengthen coastal defenses and/or relocate; and (3) there are no insurmountable barriers to migration.
This would be true even had the so-called “tipping point” already been passed and ultimate disintegration of the ice sheet was inevitable, so long as it takes millennia for the disintegration to be realized. In other words, the issue isn’t just whether the tipping point is reached, rather it is how long does it actually take to tip over. Take, for example, if a hand grenade is tossed into a crowded room. Whether this results in tragedy — and the magnitude of that tragedy — depends upon how much time it takes for the grenade to go off, the reaction time of the occupants, and their ability to respond.
Lowe, et al. (2006, p. 32-33), based on a “pessimistic, but plausible, scenario in which atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were stabilised at four times pre-industrial levels,” estimated that a collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet would over the next 1,000 years raise sea level by 2.3 meters (with a peak rate of 0.5 cm/yr). If one were to arbitrarily double that to account for potential melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, that means a SLR of ~5 meters in 1,000 years with a peak rate (assuming the peaks coincide) of 1 meter per century.
Such a rise would not be unprecedented. Sea level has risen 120 meters in the past 18,000 years — an average of 0.67 meters/century — and as much as 4 meters/century during meltwater pulse 1A episode 14,600 years ago (Weaver et al. 2003; subscription required). Neither humanity nor, from the perspective of millennial time scales (per the above quote from the IPCC), the rest of nature seem the worse for it. Coral reefs for example, evolved and their compositions changed over millennia as new reefs grew while older ones were submerged in deeper water (e.g., Cabioch et al. 2008). So while there have been ecological changes, it is unknown whether the changes were for better or worse. For a melting of the GIS (or WAIS) to qualify as a catastrophe, one has to show, rather than assume, that the ecological consequences would, in fact, be for the worse.
Human beings can certainly cope with sea level rise of such magnitudes if they have centuries or millennia to do so. In fact, if necessary they could probably get out of the way in a matter of decades, if not years.
Can a relocation of such a magnitude be accomplished?
Consider that the global population increased from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 6.8 billion this year. Among other things, this meant creating the infrastructure for an extra 4.3 billion people in the intervening 59 years (as well as improving the infrastructure for the 2.5 billion counted in the baseline, many of whom barely had any infrastructure whatsoever in 1950). These improvements occurred at a time when everyone was significantly poorer. (Global per capita income today is more than 3.5 times greater today than it was in 1950). Therefore, while relocation will be costly, in theory, tomorrow’s much wealthier world ought to be able to relocate billions of people to higher ground over the next few centuries, if need be. In fact, once a decision is made to relocate, the cost differential of relocating, say, 10 meters higher rather than a meter higher is probably marginal. It should also be noted that over millennia the world’s infrastructure will have to be renewed or replaced dozens of times – and the world will be better for it. [For example, the ancient city of Troy, once on the coast but now a few kilometers inland, was built and rebuilt at least 9 times in 3 millennia.]
Also, so long as we are concerned about potential geological catastrophes whose probability of occurrence and impacts have yet to be scientifically estimated, we should also consider equally low or higher probability events that might negate their impacts. Specifically, it is quite possible — in fact probable — that somewhere between now and 2100 or 2200, technologies will become available that will deal with climate change much more economically than currently available technologies for reducing GHG emissions. Such technologies may include ocean fertilization, carbon sequestration, geo-engineering options (e.g., deploying mirrors in space) or more efficient solar or photovoltaic technologies. Similarly, there is a finite, non-zero probability that new and improved adaptation technologies will become available that will substantially reduce the net adverse impacts of climate change.
The historical record shows that this has occurred over the past century for virtually every climate-sensitive sector that has been studied. For example, from 1900-1970, U.S. death rates due to various climate-sensitive water-related diseases — dysentery, typhoid, paratyphoid, other gastrointestinal disease, and malaria —declined by 99.6 to 100.0 percent. Similarly, poor agricultural productivity exacerbated by drought contributed to famines in India and China off and on through the 19th and 20th centuries killing millions of people, but such famines haven’t recurred since the 1970s despite any climate change and the fact that populations are several-fold higher today. And by the early 2000s, deaths and death rates due to extreme weather events had dropped worldwide by over 95% of their earlier 20th century peaks (Goklany 2006).
With respect to another global warming bogeyman — the shutdown of the thermohaline circulation (AKA the meridional overturning circulation), the basis for the deep freeze depicted in the movie, The Day After Tomorrow — the IPCC WG I SPM notes (p. 16), “Based on current model simulations, it is very likely that the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) of the Atlantic Ocean will slow down during the 21st century. The multi-model average reduction by 2100 is 25% (range from zero to about 50%) for SRES emission scenario A1B. Temperatures in the Atlantic region are projected to increase despite such changes due to the much larger warming associated with projected increases in greenhouse gases. It is very unlikely that the MOC will undergo a large abrupt transition during the 21st century. Longer-term changes in the MOC cannot be assessed with confidence.”
Not much has changed since then. A shut down of the MOC doesn’t look any more likely now than it did then. See here, here, and here (pp. 316-317).
If one wants to develop rational policies to address speculative catastrophic events that could conceivably occur over the next few centuries or millennia, as a start one should consider the universe of potential catastrophes and then develop criteria as to which should be addressed and which not. Rational analysis must necessarily be based on systematic analysis, and not on cherry picking one’s favorite catastrophes.
Just as one may speculate on global warming induced catastrophes, one may just as plausibly also speculate on catastrophes that may result absent global warming. Consider, for example, the possibility that absent global warming, the Little Ice Age might return. The consequences of another ice age, Little or not, could range from the severely negative to the positive (if that would buffer the negative consequences of warming). That such a recurrence is not unlikely is evident from the fact that the earth entered and, only a century and a half ago, retreated from a Little Ice Age, and that history may indeed repeat itself over centuries or millennia.
Yet another catastrophe that greenhouse gas controls may cause is that CO2 not only contributes to warming, it is also the key building block of life as we know it. All vegetation is created by the photosynthesis of CO2 in the atmosphere. In fact, according to the IPCC WG I report (2007, p. 106), net primary productivity of the global biosphere has increased in recent decades, partly due to greater warming, higher CO2 concentrations and nitrogen deposition. Thus , there is a finite probability that reducing CO2 emissions would, therefore, reduce the net primary productivity of the terrestrial biosphere with potentially severe negative consequences for the amount and diversity of wildlife that it could support, as well as agricultural and forest productivity with adverse knock on effects on hunger and health.
There is also a finite probability that costs of GHG reductions could reduce economic growth worldwide. Even if only industrialized countries sign up for emission reductions, the negative consequences could show up in developing countries because they derive a substantial share of their income from aid, trade, tourism, and remittances from the rest of the world. See, for example, Tol (2005), which examines this possibility, although the extent to which that study fully considered these factors (i.e., aid, trade, tourism, and remittances) is unclear.
Finally, one of the problems with the argument that society should address low probability high impact events (assuming a probability could be estimated rather than assumed or guessed) is that it necessarily means there is a high probability that resources expended on addressing such catastrophic events will have been squandered. This wouldn’t be a problem but for the fact that there are opportunity costs associated with this.
According to the 2007 IPCC Science Assessment’s Summary for Policy Makers (p. 10), “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” In plain language, this means that the IPCC believes there is at least a 90% likelihood that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (AGHG) are responsible for 50-100% of the global warming since 1950. In other words, there is an up to 10% chance that anthropogenic GHGs are not responsible for most of that warming.
This means there is an up to 10% chance that resources expended in limiting climate change would have been squandered. Since any effort to significantly reduce climate change will cost trillions of dollars (see Nordhaus 2008, p. 82), that would be an unqualified disaster, particularly since those very resources could be devoted to reducing urgent problems humanity faces here and now (e.g., hunger, malaria, safer water and sanitation) — problems we know exist for sure unlike the bogeymen that we can’t be certain about.
Spending money on speculative, even if plausible, catastrophes instead of problems we know exist for sure is like a starving man giving up a fat juicy bird in hand while hoping that we’ll catch several other birds sometime in the next few centuries even though we know those birds don’t exist today and may never exist in the future.
Cherry Picking Climate Catastrophes: Response to Conor Clarke, Part II
Posted by Indur Goklany
Conor Clarke at The Atlantic blog, raised several issues with my study, “What to Do About Climate Change,” that Cato published last year.
One of Conor Clarke’s comments was that my analysis did not extend beyond the 21st century. He found this problematic because, as Conor put it, climate change would extend beyond 2100, and even if GDP is higher in 2100 with unfettered global warming than without, it’s not obvious that this GDP would continue to be higher “in the year 2200 or 2300 or 3758”. I addressed this portion of his argument in Part I of my response. Here I will address the second part of this argument, that “the possibility of ‘catastrophic’ climate change events — those with low probability but extremely high cost — becomes real after 2100.”
RESPONSE:
The examples of potentially catastrophic events that could be caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas induced global warming (AGW) that have been offered to date (e.g., melting of the Greenland or West Antarctic Ice Sheets, or the shutdown of the thermohaline circulation) contain a few drops of plausibility submerged in oceans of speculation. There are no scientifically justified estimates of the probability of their occurrence by any given date. Nor are there scientifically justified estimates of the magnitude of damages such events might cause, not just in biophysical terms but also in socioeconomic terms. Therefore, to call these events “low probability” — as Mr. Clarke does — is a misnomer. They are more appropriately termed as plausible but highly speculative events.
Consider, for example, the potential collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS). According to the IPCC’s WG I Summary for Policy Makers (p. 17), “If a negative surface mass balance were sustained for millennia, that would lead to virtually complete elimination of the Greenland Ice Sheet and a resulting contribution to sea level rise of about 7 m” (emphasis added). Presumably the same applies to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
But what is the probability that a negative surface mass balance can, in fact, be sustained for millennia, particularly after considering the amount of fossil fuels that can be economically extracted and the likelihood that other energy sources will not displace fossil fuels in the interim? [Remember we are told that peak oil is nigh, that renewables are almost competitive with fossil fuels, and that wind, solar and biofuels will soon pay for themselves.]
Second, for an event to be classified as a catastrophe, it should occur relatively quickly precluding efforts by man or nature to adapt or otherwise deal with it. But if it occurs over millennia, as the IPCC says, or even centuries, that gives humanity ample time to adjust, albeit at a socioeconomic cost. But it need not be prohibitively dangerous to life, limb or property if: (1) the total amount of sea level rise (SLR) and, perhaps more importantly, the rate of SLR can be predicted with some confidence, as seems likely in the next few decades considering the resources being expended on such research; (2) the rate of SLR is slow relative to how fast populations can strengthen coastal defenses and/or relocate; and (3) there are no insurmountable barriers to migration.
This would be true even had the so-called “tipping point” already been passed and ultimate disintegration of the ice sheet was inevitable, so long as it takes millennia for the disintegration to be realized. In other words, the issue isn’t just whether the tipping point is reached, rather it is how long does it actually take to tip over. Take, for example, if a hand grenade is tossed into a crowded room. Whether this results in tragedy — and the magnitude of that tragedy — depends upon how much time it takes for the grenade to go off, the reaction time of the occupants, and their ability to respond.
Lowe, et al. (2006, p. 32-33), based on a “pessimistic, but plausible, scenario in which atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were stabilised at four times pre-industrial levels,” estimated that a collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet would over the next 1,000 years raise sea level by 2.3 meters (with a peak rate of 0.5 cm/yr). If one were to arbitrarily double that to account for potential melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, that means a SLR of ~5 meters in 1,000 years with a peak rate (assuming the peaks coincide) of 1 meter per century.
Such a rise would not be unprecedented. Sea level has risen 120 meters in the past 18,000 years — an average of 0.67 meters/century — and as much as 4 meters/century during meltwater pulse 1A episode 14,600 years ago (Weaver et al. 2003; subscription required). Neither humanity nor, from the perspective of millennial time scales (per the above quote from the IPCC), the rest of nature seem the worse for it. Coral reefs for example, evolved and their compositions changed over millennia as new reefs grew while older ones were submerged in deeper water (e.g., Cabioch et al. 2008). So while there have been ecological changes, it is unknown whether the changes were for better or worse. For a melting of the GIS (or WAIS) to qualify as a catastrophe, one has to show, rather than assume, that the ecological consequences would, in fact, be for the worse.
Human beings can certainly cope with sea level rise of such magnitudes if they have centuries or millennia to do so. In fact, if necessary they could probably get out of the way in a matter of decades, if not years.
Can a relocation of such a magnitude be accomplished?
Consider that the global population increased from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 6.8 billion this year. Among other things, this meant creating the infrastructure for an extra 4.3 billion people in the intervening 59 years (as well as improving the infrastructure for the 2.5 billion counted in the baseline, many of whom barely had any infrastructure whatsoever in 1950). These improvements occurred at a time when everyone was significantly poorer. (Global per capita income today is more than 3.5 times greater today than it was in 1950). Therefore, while relocation will be costly, in theory, tomorrow’s much wealthier world ought to be able to relocate billions of people to higher ground over the next few centuries, if need be. In fact, once a decision is made to relocate, the cost differential of relocating, say, 10 meters higher rather than a meter higher is probably marginal. It should also be noted that over millennia the world’s infrastructure will have to be renewed or replaced dozens of times – and the world will be better for it. [For example, the ancient city of Troy, once on the coast but now a few kilometers inland, was built and rebuilt at least 9 times in 3 millennia.]
Also, so long as we are concerned about potential geological catastrophes whose probability of occurrence and impacts have yet to be scientifically estimated, we should also consider equally low or higher probability events that might negate their impacts. Specifically, it is quite possible — in fact probable — that somewhere between now and 2100 or 2200, technologies will become available that will deal with climate change much more economically than currently available technologies for reducing GHG emissions. Such technologies may include ocean fertilization, carbon sequestration, geo-engineering options (e.g., deploying mirrors in space) or more efficient solar or photovoltaic technologies. Similarly, there is a finite, non-zero probability that new and improved adaptation technologies will become available that will substantially reduce the net adverse impacts of climate change.
The historical record shows that this has occurred over the past century for virtually every climate-sensitive sector that has been studied. For example, from 1900-1970, U.S. death rates due to various climate-sensitive water-related diseases — dysentery, typhoid, paratyphoid, other gastrointestinal disease, and malaria —declined by 99.6 to 100.0 percent. Similarly, poor agricultural productivity exacerbated by drought contributed to famines in India and China off and on through the 19th and 20th centuries killing millions of people, but such famines haven’t recurred since the 1970s despite any climate change and the fact that populations are several-fold higher today. And by the early 2000s, deaths and death rates due to extreme weather events had dropped worldwide by over 95% of their earlier 20th century peaks (Goklany 2006).
With respect to another global warming bogeyman — the shutdown of the thermohaline circulation (AKA the meridional overturning circulation), the basis for the deep freeze depicted in the movie, The Day After Tomorrow — the IPCC WG I SPM notes (p. 16), “Based on current model simulations, it is very likely that the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) of the Atlantic Ocean will slow down during the 21st century. The multi-model average reduction by 2100 is 25% (range from zero to about 50%) for SRES emission scenario A1B. Temperatures in the Atlantic region are projected to increase despite such changes due to the much larger warming associated with projected increases in greenhouse gases. It is very unlikely that the MOC will undergo a large abrupt transition during the 21st century. Longer-term changes in the MOC cannot be assessed with confidence.”
Not much has changed since then. A shut down of the MOC doesn’t look any more likely now than it did then. See here, here, and here (pp. 316-317).
If one wants to develop rational policies to address speculative catastrophic events that could conceivably occur over the next few centuries or millennia, as a start one should consider the universe of potential catastrophes and then develop criteria as to which should be addressed and which not. Rational analysis must necessarily be based on systematic analysis, and not on cherry picking one’s favorite catastrophes.
Just as one may speculate on global warming induced catastrophes, one may just as plausibly also speculate on catastrophes that may result absent global warming. Consider, for example, the possibility that absent global warming, the Little Ice Age might return. The consequences of another ice age, Little or not, could range from the severely negative to the positive (if that would buffer the negative consequences of warming). That such a recurrence is not unlikely is evident from the fact that the earth entered and, only a century and a half ago, retreated from a Little Ice Age, and that history may indeed repeat itself over centuries or millennia.
Yet another catastrophe that greenhouse gas controls may cause is that CO2 not only contributes to warming, it is also the key building block of life as we know it. All vegetation is created by the photosynthesis of CO2 in the atmosphere. In fact, according to the IPCC WG I report (2007, p. 106), net primary productivity of the global biosphere has increased in recent decades, partly due to greater warming, higher CO2 concentrations and nitrogen deposition. Thus , there is a finite probability that reducing CO2 emissions would, therefore, reduce the net primary productivity of the terrestrial biosphere with potentially severe negative consequences for the amount and diversity of wildlife that it could support, as well as agricultural and forest productivity with adverse knock on effects on hunger and health.
There is also a finite probability that costs of GHG reductions could reduce economic growth worldwide. Even if only industrialized countries sign up for emission reductions, the negative consequences could show up in developing countries because they derive a substantial share of their income from aid, trade, tourism, and remittances from the rest of the world. See, for example, Tol (2005), which examines this possibility, although the extent to which that study fully considered these factors (i.e., aid, trade, tourism, and remittances) is unclear.
Finally, one of the problems with the argument that society should address low probability high impact events (assuming a probability could be estimated rather than assumed or guessed) is that it necessarily means there is a high probability that resources expended on addressing such catastrophic events will have been squandered. This wouldn’t be a problem but for the fact that there are opportunity costs associated with this.
According to the 2007 IPCC Science Assessment’s Summary for Policy Makers (p. 10), “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” In plain language, this means that the IPCC believes there is at least a 90% likelihood that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (AGHG) are responsible for 50-100% of the global warming since 1950. In other words, there is an up to 10% chance that anthropogenic GHGs are not responsible for most of that warming.
This means there is an up to 10% chance that resources expended in limiting climate change would have been squandered. Since any effort to significantly reduce climate change will cost trillions of dollars (see Nordhaus 2008, p. 82), that would be an unqualified disaster, particularly since those very resources could be devoted to reducing urgent problems humanity faces here and now (e.g., hunger, malaria, safer water and sanitation) — problems we know exist for sure unlike the bogeymen that we can’t be certain about.
Spending money on speculative, even if plausible, catastrophes instead of problems we know exist for sure is like a starving man giving up a fat juicy bird in hand while hoping that we’ll catch several other birds sometime in the next few centuries even though we know those birds don’t exist today and may never exist in the future.
“Spending money on speculative, even if plausible, catastrophes instead of problems we know exist for sure is like a starving man giving up a fat juicy bird in hand while hoping that we’ll catch several other birds sometime in the next few centuries even though we know those birds don’t exist today and may never exist in the future.”
Perfect. Really couldn’t have said it better.
Climate Change is billions of years old.
Never has the Earth not undergone Climate Change.
“Probabilities do not exist.” Bruno De Finetti .
A probability may become a reality at some point of course, but I really wish people would stop acting as if a probability was a certainty, instead of merely a statement of the state of our knowledge. I suppose that’s too much to ask for, tho.
If we burn all our fossil fuels, we might reach 550 – max 700 ppm atmospheric CO2, probably in the 550 – 600 ppm range, assuming that emitted CO2 is absorbed in current proportions (about 50% absorbed, 50% to the atmosphere.)
Well put together argument Indur. This link http://www.vr.se/webdav/files/Webbtv/VET0010/Player/default.htm?http://www.vr.se/webdav/files/Webbtv/VET0010/Ondemand/090511/cue_0004.asx&http://www.vr.se/webdav/files/Webbtv/VET0010/Ondemand/090511/
Demonstrates to my thinking just how unsure the scientific community are of their facts and more inportantly how they should conduct themselves.
There are two aspects of this catastrophism, one is in reality the projection of a part of the american society. We acknowledge that there has always been several churches or rather sects which have proclaimed and forecasted, several times, fortunately unsuccesfully, all kinds of armageddons, and which have reached so far as to commit mass suicide.
One different case is that of the IPCC, produced by a section of the United Nations, being its nature to obey and follow evidently political purposes of a well paid international bureaucracy that, being unconciously aware of its incapacity to survive in a free and competitive world, voluptuosly desire nothing less than to govern and rule over the free world, as an insane psychological compensation, and in order to attain that objective they have invented a wide array of organizations which are meddling in the internal affairs not only of countries but of individuals.
LOL, AWG is a total hoax, end of story……
In a year or so the headlines might read, not enough food to go around, global cooling limiting food production. Let’s hope and pray this is NOT the case.
Typo above, it’s AGW
“Spending money on speculative, even if plausible, catastrophes instead of problems we know exist for sure”
If you’d investigate the cause of those problems we know exist for sure (I’d like to hear more about them by the way) you’d come to the conclusion that it’s the same thing causing Global Warming, if it were to exist. The whole world runs on the concept of infinite exponential economic growth, but the system isn’t infinite. That’s what’s driving the increase of global problems such as water scarcity, top soil erosion, financial bubbles, ocean de-alkalinisation, and in some cases even the hunger Mr Goklany mentions.
I thought the problem with Global Warming is that by the time you know it exists for sure you are much too late to do anything about it and as a consequence you will suffer great economic and societal damage. It’s all about risk assessment, isn’t it?
If Conor Clarke is wrong, some damage will be done for sure, but it will be peanuts compared to the damage the war in Iraq and Afghanistan has done, for instance.
If Indur Goklany is wrong, GDP will be the last thing people worry about.
It is in fact highly plausible that the ice sheet mass balance will remain negative for millenia.
* the raditative forcing from e.g. CO2 will remain for a long time after emmisions are stopped.
* The surface of the greenland ice sheet is as cold as it is because it is ~3 km above sea level. Once it thins the surface will get warmer and the mass balance more negative. This positive feedback will be hard to stop once it gets started. Ice sheet models show that the ice sheet will not grow back under current climate if you remove it.
I will also note that there is evidence that during a climatically stable period of the Last Interglacial, sea level suddenly rose by 2-3 m withing a few centuries (Blanchon et al, Nature 2009). It shows that we must consider the possibility of a catastrophic ice sheet collapse to be plausible.
It’s the tragic record of alarmism.
They scare the hell out of people and untill today non of the predicted catastrophic events ever happened.
So, don’t worry be happy one should say!
No directly. The alarmists have a political agenda which is Global Governance and population control. In fact they have planned to reduce world population at a “sustainable” level of 2 billion.
Their method of choice (see Holdren file, the current Science Secretary of the Obama Administration) is GENOCIDE:
From Lord Christopher Monckton:
Genocide Is Real Aim of Global Warming Swindle
June 7, 2009—British influential Lord Christopher Monckton said in a June 2 interview with 21st Century Science & Technology that the cabal’s intentions in promoting the global warming fraud, was never about the climate but was always about setting up world government.
Lord Monckton also reiterated his view that the motive for promotion of the triple frauds of global warming, biofuels, and the DDT scare, is the genocidal
reduction of the world population, especially in Third World nations.
Lord Monckton has special authority in stating this. His grandfather played a key
role in arranging the 1936 abdication of that chief symbol of Britain’s Nazi-loving aristocracy, King Edward VIII, as part of the effort by anti-fascists to crush the Hitler project in Britain.
Monckton said that the global warming cabal will use the Copenhagen Climate Summit, scheduled for December 2009, to turn the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change into an enforcement body for world government.
“They are not frankly particularly worried about whether they get a deal on who should cut global emissions by how much,” Monckton said. “It is not, and never was, about that.”
Monckton also restated his view that the global warming scare is the third
genocide being committed against the world’s population.
He said people are already dying, all over the world, of starvation caused by the biofuels scam, which came out the global warming scare. The other two genocides that Monckton speaks about are:
(1) The banning of DDT which has so far caused the deaths of 40 million, and has left millions more, mostly children, still infected with malaria.
(2) The failure to properly respond to the AIDS pandemic, by use of well-established public health measures, including universal testing, and isolation and treatment of the carriers. This intentional genocidal policy has led to 25 million deaths worldwide, and at least 40 million inflected.
Monckton’s horrifying estimate of the number of persons infected with the HIV virus is only a published estimate by the World Health Organization. The extent of the HIV
infection in the world population is not known since there is still to this day resistance to a policy of universal testing for the HIV virus in the general population.
In a presentation to the Third International Conference on Climate Change, hosted in Washington, D.C. by the Heartland Institute June 2, Monckton pointed out that the key to the victory over the cabal pushing world governance lies in the United States. Monckton said: “In the end, it will be here, in the United States, that the truth will first emerge. … Not in Europe, for we are no longer free. …
It is here, in this great nation founded upon liberty, that the battle for the world’s freedom will be won.”
Excellent, Mr. Goklany.
Regarding real threats with dire consequences, upon which mankind (or the appropriate segments thereof) should devote time, intelligence, and effort, this from my energy blog dated March 27, 2009:
“Is it true that many environmentalists consider the impact of humans on the environment to be the single most important issue the world currently faces? No doubt, there are many in that camp who would agree. But that leaves off the more important questions, doesn’t it? Questions like attacks from terrorist groups, threats from new diseases, threats from impacts of asteroids, threats from major solar eruptions, threats from super volcano eruptions, and the cataclysmic threat from the sudden breaking away of a portion of the Hawaiian island that will result in a titanic tsunami of more than 1000 feet height. The relative impacts of each of the threats listed above would show that impact [of humans] on the environment is not nearly as important as the others. “
see http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/03/intro-environmental-science-versus.html
Neven (08:28:51) :
You must know a few things to understand the facts:
-Global Warming theorist argue that the CO2 causes green house warming.
But:
-CO2 it is not black in color.
-CO2 is the gas YOU exhale (about 900 grams a day)
-CO2 is the gas plant BREATH and without it vegetation would disappear.
-CO2 is HEAVIER than air, so it can not go up there, where your imagination puts it to provoke any “green house effect”.
-The air, the atmosphere, can not hold heat as you probably suppose. It holds only 3227 times less than water, so, again, there is no such a “heat piggy bank” you imagine, anywhere in the atmosphere.
-CO2 is only a TRACE gas in the atmosphere: The 3.8 PER TEN THOUSAND of it.
-Our planet it is not covered with glass, so heat irradiates to the open space.
-Last but not least: They have cheated you. Why?. Try your best to determine why….but your pocket and your family will realize it soon.
Worrying about what may happen 200+ years in the future is absurd. “If present trends continue” is a sign of total ignorance. Apart from death and taxes, trends never last long. Far more likely the Flying Spaghetti Monster will take a dump on D.C. (alas, probably wishful thinking)
Spending money on problems that do not exist takes resources away from very real problems. We need reliable and economical energy. Wind and solar cannot deliver that now and may never be able to. Fresh water. We have it, but poorly managed in many countries. Many of the problems stem from bureaucratic governments trying to solve problems that don’t exist.
Fixing that may not be possible.
Spending money on speculative, even if plausible, catastrophes instead of problems we know exist for sure is like a starving man giving up a fat juicy bird in hand while hoping that we’ll catch several other birds sometime in the next few centuries even though we know those birds don’t exist today and may never exist in the future.
That’s a keeper if there ever was one.
I suppose when climate scientists get university tenure or a government job-for-life, they are issued a gold standard measuring device for determining earth’s absolute sea level that works backward and forward for millions of years. Those of us not so anointed are only able to determine sea levels with respect to some point of land which often tricks us by either rising from or subsiding into the sea.
In terms of its life cycle, the sun will eventually expand to engulf the Earth before it collapses in death. What are we doing about that?
Neven,
the abatement of CO2 emissions to the level that IPCC mandate is required to prevent their modelled run away global warming scenarios is far from trivial. The brute fact, unsurprisingly not mentioned by those advocating such draconian abatement, is that, with todays technology, it means putting GDP growth into negative.
The UK economy has reduced its CO2 emissions per 1000 dollar of GDP since 1990 from 0.65 tons to 0.42 tons but at the cost of a steep decline in manufacturing and a shift into services. This was not part of some grand strategy, you understand, it just happened. However this cannot go on any more as everyone acknowledges manufacturing is too low. The next step is to replace cheap and reliable coal/gas generated power to expensive and unreliable wind power, with all that portends for energy costs for the remaining manufacturing base. Going still further, energy use will have to be decoupled from the economy, returning to a pre industrial era.
The starving man could easily be the gambler. Only, the Global Climate Catastrophists are gambling with yours and my own existence. They’ve nothing better to do with their own lives, so they risk others.
A good, thought-provoking contribution. As I see it, possible problems posed by any changes in climate over the next 100 years or so will be small compared with the ecological consequences resulting from the rapidly growing human population itself. Competition for water, mineral and biological resources and for living space are already significant in some regions. Increasing rates of habitat degradation and resource loss on a continental scale (e.g. rain forests, African Sahel, marine zone) will surely bring greater adverse impacts than climate ‘problems’ well before 2100. Removal of forests and other land cover is now considered to reduce rainfall and increase surface temperature over wide areas. Consequential risks of regional conflict have been foreseen. All this is well known, yet world states seem loathe to tackle these looming and predictable threats in a co-ordinated global manner. Instead, they are allowing themselves to be distracted, instead, by the far-off ‘catastrophes’ predicted by AGW theorists . The demographic problems are already happening.
Here’s an interesting video. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/03/cherry-picking-climate-catastrophes-response-to-conor-clarke/#comments
Town hall meeting. Congressman TIM BISHOP (D, NY ) PROTEST, SETAUKET, NY, getting raked over the coals on Cap & Trade, and Health care.
Conner, If I were you, I wouldn’t worry about it.
As a bit of perspective, the geographic center of North America is in North Dakota, very close to the Canadian border. The geographic center of Eurasia is probably quite similar. I suspect that all species will be able to migrate and adapt quite well should significant AGW occur 100, 200 or 1,000 years from today.
I also note that your study did not extend to 9,000,000,000 AD when the sun is expected to be a burned out hulk.
There are some serious solar effects left out of your analysis.
I will bet serious money that I am the first one on this thread to even raise the question.
I will also note that there is evidence that during a climatically stable period of the Last Interglacial, sea level suddenly rose by 2-3 m withing a few centuries (Blanchon et al, Nature 2009). It shows that we must consider the possibility of a catastrophic ice sheet collapse to be plausible.
And the Yellowstone Caldera could go at any time.
Or the New Madrid fault could slip.
The whole world runs on the concept of infinite exponential economic growth, but the system isn’t infinite.
Growth can go on for a very long time if we keep making things smaller.
If we burn all our fossil fuels, we might reach 550 – max 700 ppm atmospheric CO2, probably in the 550 – 600 ppm range, assuming that emitted CO2 is absorbed in current proportions (about 50% absorbed, 50% to the atmosphere.)
If your 50/50 number is correct it indicates a natural source of CO2. Because the ratio of atmospheric CO2 to ocean CO2 is 1 to 50.
Fusion? Here is one possibility:
We Will Know In Two Years
1. Temperatures were much higher about 7K years ago than they are now. Greenland’s ice didn’t “collapse”.
2. Sea levels were higher (about 2m higher) 7K to 5K years ago than they are now. It doesn’t appear that there was a great catastrophe.
3. The previous interglacial was warmer than this one. Study of sediment samples from the Arctic Ocean floor suggest that during the last interglacial the ocean was “ice free” in the summer. Greenland’s ice sheet didn’t “collapse”.
It seems that most of the “problems” with this study are based on assumptions rather than facts.
I read to about this point: “climate change would extend beyond 2100, and even if GDP is higher in 2100 with unfettered global warming than without, it’s not obvious that this GDP would continue to be higher ‘in the year 2200 or 2300 or 3758’.” and thought … gee, this guy should be able to tell me what the stock market will be on this date next year.
This climate catastrophe prophecy stuff is beyond cherry picking.
This is announcing the flavor of your one cherry after you’ve prepared the business plan for your cherry orchard and while starting to plant the orchard.
One could try to imagine some young diplomat tasked in 1909 to write up a policy paper concerning the relations of the US and the European powers for the 20th Century. I can just imagine how it would begin….”Concerning the relations with the House of Hapsburgs and its role as a broker of 20th Century peace…”
One big assumption about the 21st Century is global population growth. Yes, in the developed and undeveloped world people are generally living longer. But in Europe, North American, and much of Asia fertility rates have plummeted since 1970. In Russia, Japan, Greece, Spain, Italy, and China, fertility rates are the lowest of the lows (around 1.1 to 1.2 children per female). In the US, where the fertility rate hovers around 1.9 to 2.1, large numbers of immigrants are counted. In Africa, AIDS and civil war have decimated the populations. Even in Thailand, where in 1965 fertility rates were 4.6 children per female, the fertility rate in 2009 is around 1.7 per female. The IPCC perdicts the population at large will peak in 2050-2070 at around 9 billion. Thier predictions concerning industrial output is based on past economic growth rates and ever increasing populations. I don’t see either happening.
If things don’t change soon, in 2100 Europe’s population will be half of what it is now; ditto for Japan, Russia, and China. India still has decent fertility rates, but within its more educated technical class, it is no better than the US.
Most of the world’s wealth is contained in nations with anemic fertility rates, growing elderly populations, and large social insurance states. I cannot see how the rate of CO2 concentrations will rise to the even the lowest of the IPCC’s SPM predictions. You need people in order grow any economy -and a sizeable portion of that population better have young people.
If the Alarmists want to chase catastrophe’s they should be focus on the demographic time bomb set to go off, and leave thier Science Fiction to the Sci Fi Chane.
Chris Mooney, author of “Unscientific America, How scientific illiteracy threatens the future.”, was on the Ronn Owens show with Brian Copeland (KGO Radio AM810) in the second hour this morning. He mentioned global warming more that any other issue, so much so that he came off as a shill for the IPCC’s take on the matter. During the interview, the news on the half hour reported that the state of California issued a warning that its citizens need to prepare for rising sea levels and “hotter” temperatures.
It is ironic that a published writer drawing attention to scientific illiteracy is himself scientifically illiterate when it comes to climate change—an issue he was clearly promoting.
He will be at the Common Wealth Club in Santa Clara this evening at 7p.
The entire interview can be heard in the KGO audio archives (free at http://members.kgoradio.com/kgo_archives/archives.php) later today.
Don’t you just love the use of the word unfettered by those who favour regulation of just about everything?
Assy (08:36:27) :
I will also note that there is evidence that during a climatically stable period of the Last Interglacial, sea level suddenly rose by 2-3 m withing a few centuries (Blanchon et al, Nature 2009). It shows that we must consider the possibility of a catastrophic ice sheet collapse to be plausible.
Perhaps you might explain what caused this sudden rise of 2-3 meters, was it CO2.
There have been a few economic studies but this reponse by Indur Goklany is a gem. We have managed to “relocate” 4.3 billion people since 1950 and about 80 to 90% of our infrastructure has had to be built and rebuilt since then when income was less than 30% of what it is now. How’s that for planning!! This is the kind of stuff that needs to get air and print to a wide audience. “Don’t worry, we can relocate 10 billion of you and renew infrastructure a couple of times before 2100 and will be 5 times as wealthy while were at it! Hey, and the CO2 and warmer climate will ensure you all can eat.
Another great article. And on the issue noted by Steven Kopits of how much C02 can we even contribute to the atmosphere if we burned all available fossil fuels (First of all, I agree) but if man’s contribution is roughly 3% of the total, and the yearly increase runs roughly 50% of this, how does ANYONE prove our contribution made the difference? To do so, one must assume the concentration would be static without our contribution, or declining by 1/2 our contribution every year. If greater C02 feeds and therefore augments the biomass, the yearly uptake by the biomass increases as well. Freeman Dyson noted this very issue. I don’t think it’s even POSSIBLE to determine if man’s contribution is causing the rise in concentration. It is just being assumed.
Peter J. Dare (10:12:14) : Wrong!. It has been calculated that if properly managed, all the existing population would fit and prospere in an area equal to Texas. Whoever thinks so, must be consequent with his/her conviction and to do what is needed for their own disapperance from this world of the living, so making a contribution to humanity, an humanity, if they are right, will thankr them for ever.
Peter J. Dare (10:12:14) : …do not forget, if you apply those most corrected measures regarding climate, etc.,etc. chances are that we south americans will miss you ,believe me, after your charming self fulfilled prophesies.
“In a year or so the headlines might read, not enough food to go around, global cooling limiting food production.”
They’ll blame global warming
Brilliant –
The BBC are even as I type running a popular science programme which is pointing out that cows are producing more greenhouse gas than all the cars and trucks in the world.
Even more brilliantly they are saying we could solve the problem by eating bugs and scorpions etc.
Well it is a popular science programme. And they have admitted that hammering cars is far from the solution. Will this leech pout into the serious BBC media?
I take issue with the use of “plausible” here. In my experience plausible means “not unlikely” or “not extremely unlikely”-I think the word you are looking for is the situations described are “possible” meaning that they could hypothetically happen, but are exceedingly unlikely…
It is important to know that until today, NON of the alarmist predictions, that started in the sixties, have materialized.
Funny enough they first started to predict a new ice age and today runaway Anthropogenic Global Warming and dozens of related disasters that are suppose to scare the hell out of people.
The only objective alarmists have is to obtain some form of Global Governance and population control in order to reduce the number of inhabitants on our planet to a “sustainable” of 2 billion.
This is what Lord Christopher Monckton had to say about the subject:
Genocide Is Real Aim of Global Warming Swindle
June 7, 2009—British influential Lord Christopher Monckton said in a June 2 interview with 21st Century Science & Technology that the cabal’s intentions in promoting the global warming fraud, was never about the climate but was always about setting up world government.
Lord Monckton also reiterated his view that the motive for promotion of the triple frauds of global warming, biofuels, and the DDT scare, is the genocidal reduction of the world population, especially in Third World nations.
Lord Monckton has special authority in stating this. His grandfather played a key
role in arranging the 1936 abdication of that chief symbol of Britain’s Nazi-loving aristocracy, King Edward VIII, as part of the effort by anti-fascists to crush the Hitler project in Britain.
Monckton said that the global warming cabal will use the Copenhagen Climate Summit, scheduled for December 2009, to turn the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change into an enforcement body for world government. “They are not frankly particularly worried about whether they get a deal on who should cut
global emissions by how much,” Monckton said. “It is not, and never was, about that.” Monckton also restated his view that the global warming scare is the third
genocide being committed against the world’s population. He said people are already dying, all over the world, of starvation caused by the biofuels scam, which
came out the global warming scare. The other two genocides that Monckton speaks about are: (1) The banning of DDT which has so far caused the deaths of 40 million, and has left millions more, mostly children, still infected with malaria. (2) The failure to properly respond to the AIDS pandemic, by use of well-established public health measures, including universal testing, and isolation and treatment of the carriers. This intentional genocidal policy has led to 25 million deaths worldwide, and at least 40 million inflected. Monckton’s horrifying estimate of the number of persons infected with the HIV virus is only a published estimate by the World Health Organization. The extent of the HIV infection in the world population is not known since there is still to this day resistance to a policy of universal testing for the HIV virus in the general population.
In a presentation to the Third International Conference on Climate Change, hosted in Washington, D.C. by the Heartland Institute June 2, Monckton pointed out that the key to the victory over the cabal pushing world governance lies in the United States. Monckton said: “In the end, it will be here, in the United States, that the truth will first emerge. … Not in Europe, for we are no longer free. …
It is here, in this great nation founded upon liberty, that the battle for the world’s freedom will be won.”
End of article.
So what we are fighting against is nothing more but Green Fascism.
“One of Conor Clarke’s comments was that my analysis did not extend beyond the 21st century. He found this problematic because, as Conor put it, climate change would extend beyond 2100, and even if GDP is higher in 2100 with unfettered global warming than without, it’s not obvious that this GDP would continue to be higher “in the year 2200 or 2300 or 3758”.”
We are seriously into Mickey Mouse Land if THIS is what is called an ‘issue.’
We can’t even predict next month reliably. What is “problematic” is the total lack of any apprehension of reality.
Nogw: “If properly managed” has nothing to do with it. The existing world’s population can fit in Texas. How they live there comfortably is a little more complex, but from calculating the square footage per person it’s not hard to come up with a multilevel design for home, work, and transportation spaces.
But the point of the exercise is not a megalopolis design, it’s that we have resource distribution problems and not a population problem. Anyone can buy beans, wheat, or rice for worldwide delivery, if they can afford it and if they eat beans, wheat, or rice… and if the local authorities allow the delivery. And if the oceans rise, the delivery can be made to where the recipient moved to without needing the UN to figure out new delivery routes 200 years in advance.
OT. Pielke, Sr. has a guest post by Scafetta on mistakes in B&S09 that makes good reading.
http://climatesci.org/2009/08/03/nicola-scafetta-comments-on-solar-trends-and-global-warming-by-benestad-and-schmidt/
Another Congressman under fire from the public when he states Global Warming is real: http://thechillingeffect.org/2009/08/03/unhappy-voters-and-tim-bishops-global-warming-position/
M. Simon (10:26:57) wrote:
“I also note that your study did not extend to 9,000,000,000 AD when the sun is expected to be a burned out hulk.
There are some serious solar effects left out of your analysis.
I will bet serious money that I am the first one on this thread to even raise the question.”
How much do you want to bet? (Before you answer, see noaaprogrammer post at 9:30:53 – almost an hour previous to your post.)
Nogw(11:21:14), can you imagine the infrastructure problems and challenges, especially sewage? There would have to be quite a bit of vertical stacking in order to preserve some open space.
Assy (08:36:27) : “. . . there is evidence that during a climatically stable period of the Last Interglacial, sea level suddenly rose by 2-3 m withing a few centuries (Blanchon et al, Nature 2009). It shows that we must consider the possibility of a catastrophic ice sheet collapse to be plausible.”
1) I wouldn’t consider “a few centuries” that includes a 2-3 rise in sea level to be “climatically stable.” What does climatically stable mean, anyway?
2) When you say the last interglacial, do you mean the Eemian Interglacial (the previous one) or the Late Holocene Interglacial which, geologically speaking, is really the last?
3) 2-3 meter changes in sea level really are not “catastrophic” nor unusual when viewed in the greater history of climate.
4) The Eemian is somewhat irrelevant to the discussion. It had much higher sea levels and warmer temps that the present interglacial. Better to look closely at the present period and consider what has happened historically. The Fairbridge Curve appears to be the best reference for this (Fairbridge, R.W. Science 191 (4225) 353-359 1976). From roughly 2350 BC to 1900 BC the sea level apparently rose over 4.5 m. There you go—a “few centuries” in what many consider a relatively stable period with a greater pop than you mention. The most stable period of the present interglacial was between around 3500 BC to 2650 BC — nearly eight centuries with only around 0.65 meter in sea level flux (between 1.95 and 2.6 m higher than now). Interestingly, that “stable period” flux is about the same as the worst case scenario postulated by the IPCC which would still not get us to the average sea level during the period of human civilization!
5) Let’s go back “a few centuries” from the present, to depths of the Little Ice Age. The sea level has already risen about a meter since then. Hansen and cohorts believe it will rise another meter from here. SO WHAT! That’s all within the “normal” flux of climate as measured by sea level changes during an interglacial, including this one.
Perhaps we should understand the more recent phenomenon without looking all the way back to the Eemian. And, one could hope, we will all realize what normal or natural really means.
Retired Engineer – “…the Flying Spaghetti Monster will take a dump on D.C.”
LMAO!!!
If we fit the FSM with GPS can we guide it to Westminster to repeat the exercise?
IF THE SUN EXPLODES, New York City will be reduced to cinders, billions will die, the ice caps melt, and the oceans boil away! Since scientists all agree that the sun will explode, we must immediately enact a multi-trillion-dollar sunlight tax so the high priests of government can … er… make the sun… um, like, y’know…. NOT explode.
And so it came to pass, that the people of Twitland did revel in their virtuousness.
Rob (11:11:52) said : “Perhaps you might explain what caused this sudden rise of 2-3 meters, was it CO2.”
It obviously happened without anthropogenic forcing. The Blanchon 2009 study shows that these kinds of events can happen spontaneously in a climate not too far from the present state. Warming obviously increases the chances of it happening. It tells us that there might be an ice sheet instability uncomfortably close to our present climate state. It would be good to try to understand just how close that instability is.
There are precedents for ice sheet collapse. It is not an unsupported theoretical hypothesis.
I know its off topic but Scafetta has posted a guest webblog at Pielke Sr blog criticising Schmitts recent paper on the solar signature.
The principal reason that governments in the ‘democratic’ west keep playing the AGW card is that it enables them to spend OUR money now to ward off catastrophes which are postulated to occur a hundred years or more hence. They can shout “Look what we are doing to save the planet” when the results of their spendthrift actions cannot be measured right now.
They garner the valuable (to them) ‘green vote’ without having to demonstrate any tangible results whatsoever. Unassailable dominance in some form of global governance is but a corollary of this fevered vote chasing by the present regimes in the UK and the USA.
Logic, reason and the scientific method have no part to play in this process; the ultimate aim of this catastrophe game-playing is dominance and power.
Allan M (11:53:30) : You are right. It seems that show business is running climate science (miss conducts & scandal included).
OT
Did you see Svensmarks newest publication? It seems to be a very important paper:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL038429.shtml
That’s because there was no Miami 😉
The only “catastrophe” would be the slow incursion of the coastal areas, which is something that planners should have accounted for. If sea levels were to recede, you can bet dollars to donuts that people would start building out where there used to be water. The real catastrophe is human stupidity.
Interesting post. I do think we have other issues in the here and now to be greatly concerned about, of course, and no, none of the GCM’s can give a definitive prediction 50, 100, 200 years into the future regarding climate, climate change and consequences. Still they are inputted with ranges, low, median and high end estimates and interestingly enough the 1988 median predictions input by Jim Hansen were remarkably accurate, (NOT that I agree with his more recent high end predictions, becuase, frankly I do not) and the combination of satellite data, tree ring & ice core proxy data have been shown to be remarkably accurate and useful. The charts created based upon a pooling of data, multi ensemble models, and direct observations have shown remarkablely high degrees agreement and correlation {95%} (2 standard deviations) between greenhouse gases and the real, current warming trend. Now, I too share concerns with some of my peers regarding a reduction in warming after 1998 from El Nino and a gobal warming pause from around 2001/2002; it appears that the “noise” of weather can become a signal, since we can measure climate in less than 30 year increments and we must look at various microclimates as we consider the bigger picture as well. Recent papers have suggested an 8-20 year abatement in global warming which even by the Meteological Society’s standards (and of course Gavin Schmiudt’s) would be a “climate trend.” This, on my part of course is sepculation as to whether this will actually occur or not, and only briefly enterained by the aforementioned authors of these papers (references upon request of course) and as it stands now the climate trend is still quite in tact. We are still warmer on a global mean scale than we were in 1850, 1880, 1940, 1975, 1985, etc… Of course there is not universal agreement among the various groups measuring Global mean temperature. as to the exact deviation on temp or total global mean, however, most are in very close agreement.
I do see that changes in weather patterns can at times contribute to climate trends, but at other times, are infinitesimal in contribution to overall climate; more data is needed, and as GCM’s are being improved we need to continue to analyze results against as much real world data as we can.
Yet the fact remains that sea ice is melting, (just watch Discovery channel footage, PBS footage, BBC footage, Economist pictures, Scientific American 3.0, Nature, and reports from many different news networks) ice sheets are becoming thinner, (the Artic is tahwing and releasing more CH4; Methane) black clouds from regions in Asia are increasing prevalence and incidence of respiratory diseases, and more harmful UV rays are getting through the atmosphere in a trend. I am not suggesting we do not find ways to adpat to the global issues, however, part of adapting is utlizing alternative energy sources, sequestering CO2 and reducing GHG emissions in general. New technologies afford us these abilities more than ever before in history. It is foolhardy to continue in a business as usual, “staus quo,” fashion.
I am not worried about the year 2200, but I am concerned about now, and 2050, 2070, etc… The high degrees of correlation and confidence in AGW currently and median predictions for the next 50 years is enough cause for concern for me as a US citizen and member of the human race on Earth.
@ Nogw (11:21:29) : Well you and whoever can live in some kind of anthill society if you wish, but personally I like my 200 acres, and have no intention of giving it up. There’s more to life than just existence.
It’s all based upon the precautionary principle, but you need to remember the precautionary principle only applies when it’s man, not nature, to blame for the potential disaster.
Even that’s a simplication. The precautionary principle is primarily invoked when Western civilization, capitalism and ‘big business’ are the villians. It does not apply to terrorism, rogue nations, the third world or left-wing dictatorships.
I am reasonably sure that icesheet elevation rather than atmospheric temperatures is the primary determinant of ice mass gain and loss for the Antarctic icesheet over centuries to millenia, and probably Greenland as well.
This is because almost constant adabatic winds make Antarctica one of the driest places on earth.
A warmer (and hence wetter) atmosphere would result in ice mass gain for Antarctica until increased elevation and consequently stronger adabatic winds resulted in equilibrium through reduced precipitation.
Jacob Mack (13:20:51) …so you are in the carbon share business!, congratulations!. You will pay some third world people US$3.- per jungle hectare and sell it at US$30000. Congratulations, again!
Don’t need to tell you that CO2 it’s a scam, you know it and that’s good for your clients.
The precautionary principle also does not envision throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Fer crissake, we are on an upward swoop. That may (will) be a somewhat dirty process. It leads to an ultimately cleaner process. But we cannot get there if we never go there. We must not turn our backs on the starving. Or on history.
Wealth is the solution. We must not destroy the wealth. I may be a liberal swine, but it has not escaped me that liberalism, whatever else it isn’t, is EXPENSIVE. If the liberals want it, by gum, we have to generate it, not wipe it flat. Most of my fellow liberals seem to have a supreme lack of perspective coupled with an extremely short point of view.
evanmjones (13:40:06) : Who the ** cares about a baby!, it’s about business!
Even more brilliantly they are saying we could solve the problem by eating bugs and scorpions etc.
There are religious proscriptions against this sort of thing depending on the religion. Will they be having religious exemptions? I might become a more devout Jew just for the meat.
Throwing out the business with the wastewater?
And they never could conceive of those billion-dollar babies.
Nogw….what? C02 is most definitely a real danger. Alos there is enormous investment in domestic infrastructure to develop these technologies here in the US and to create whole new job/market sectors. Read Forbes, Economist, Fortune, and Scientific American.
Who knows, after all, perhaps the 666 is behind all this! 🙂
noaaprogrammer,
The 09:30 post you referenced was only talking millions of years and said nothing about the sun. I think the sun is very important to the discussion. Billions are a lot bigger than millions.
Are you really a programmer? I hope you do not routinely drop 3 orders of magnitude. It could be inconvenient. 😉
And noaa,
May I add that the moderators today seem slow. They probably have real jobs. I’m semi-retired and can devote myself to whatever…..
[REPLY – Slow, the man says! I have moderated over 100 today. There’s been a bunchload of traffic. ~ Evan]
@Nogw
The color of CO2 in the visible part of the spectrum is irrelevant for it’s IR absorption.
Irrelevant, nobody is advocating removing all CO2, besides during the ice ages we had atmospheric levels of CO2 down to about 200ppm.
Not true, mid-troposphere concentrations are about 375ppm and the drop to the stratosphere is of the order of 5-10ppm.
Irrelevant for the greenhouse effect
Here’s an experiment in the visible, KMnO4 solutions of 600, 380 and 200ppm. The effect of CO2 is similar, it’s just happening in the infrared (and yes, water vapor is absorbing in the infrared, too)
Nonsense, read up on greenhouse effect. Wikipedia is a good starter, IPCC TAR has an explanation, too.
NO comment.
C02 is most definitely a real danger.
And the side effects of capping it are a humongous, deathly danger. Not to mention that if we do, we may never generate the wealth to get past it.
Safety, you want? There isn’t any. (Never was, either.)
**************
Jacob Mack (13:20:51) :
and the combination of satellite data, tree ring & ice core proxy data have been
shown to be remarkably accurate and useful.
**************
You’ve been watching too much TV and listening to NPR haven’t you?
Ron de Haan (08:48:54) :
Sooo, DDT was banned? Interesting. Google for “WHO DDT”, first hit:
Frequently asked questions on DDT use for disease vector control
Oh, and keep in mind there may be a reason for not using DDT everywhere. Ever heard of pesticide resistance?
Bluegrue:
You read on the non existing “green house effect”:
http://www.giurfa.com/gh_experiments.pdf
bluegrue (14:08:23) : So…you are one of those guys who warm your feet with a bottle filled with hot air!!…Remarkable!!
bluegrue (14:08:23) :From your new age science bible (Wiki):
Air volumetric heat capacity=0.001297 j k
Water volumetric heat capacity=4.186; 3227 times than that of the air.
Spending money on speculative, even if plausible, catastrophes instead of problems we know exist for sure is like a starving man giving up a fat juicy bird in hand while hoping that we’ll catch several other birds sometime in the next few centuries even though we know those birds don’t exist today and may never exist in the future.
I dont know if you haven’t noticed by catastrophes due to climate change are happening here and now.
So I guess that means we should be spending.
It’s a good response. Mine would have been simpler though. As any alarmist will tell you coal and oil will run out buy 2050 anyway so there is no point in doing an analysis more than 50 years beyond then.
paulm:
Which catastrophes due to climate change are happening here and now?
Nowg I have a degree in Chemistry among others…you are not looking at the actual realities of CO2 and CH4.
Jim, I am looking at the journal Nature, Scientific American, SA, 3.0, data sets from 10 different sources, and literally thousands of different peer reviewed journals in climatology, physics, atmospheric fluid dynamics, physical chemistry, meteorology, geology–geochemistry/physics, etc… not just NOAA, MET UK, NASA, RC, and Climate Skeptic…oh and check out Economist.com or the magazine, NY Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, PBS, BBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, for your so called “biased news,” lol.
Guy I follow on twitter who posts crop reports. Here referring to the progress of the corn crop:
“3rd slowest crop to silk on record, but correlation with yield is low. Rather, it matters where delays are and when it freezes first. #farm”
http://twitter.com/ArlanFF101/status/3111601546
noaaprogrammer (09:30:53) :
In terms of its life cycle, the sun will eventually expand to engulf the Earth before it collapses in death. What are we doing about that?
===========================
By that time we’d have become the modern extinct dinosaurs.
Paulm:
A little known fact for you: Climate has been changing since there was a climate on this “Rock” we live on. Climate catastrophes have occured since climate has been a factor. The solution is to pick up the pieces and rebuild or move to an area that is not as prone to known historic catastrophes and wait for the next one whereever it may occure. Knowledge and welth overcome ignorance and poverty which makes people less prone to natural hazards.
bluegrue (14:37:09) :
Ron de Haan (08:48:54) :
Sooo, DDT was banned? Interesting. Google for “WHO DDT”, first hit:
Frequently asked questions on DDT use for disease vector control
WHO recommends indoor residual spraying of DDT for malaria vector control.
Oh, and keep in mind there may be a reason for not using DDT everywhere. Ever heard of pesticide resistance?
Information on vector susceptibility and tolerance to DDT should be up-to-date and backed up by an effective pesticide resistance management strategy to ensure continuing pesticide effectiveness. Local vector resistance or increased tolerance to DDT may affect its overall effectiveness. Where there is resistance to pyrethroids, DDT effectiveness may be reduced by cross-resistance. In this event, one method of slowing vector resistance is to widen the choice of insecticides used for indoor residual spraying and rotate the use of those currently effective against mosquitoes (though this will probably increase operational costs).
Bluegrue,
Mockton was in the middle of the DDT Ban. So if you want details, send him an e-mail or google the subject because it is a wel documented fact.
The WHO took it’s use up again after scientific evidence had been presented not so long ago, but only for indoor use and only in a very limited number of countries.
Besides that, the first person to catch Monckton on scientific incorrect or corrupt data still has to be born.
This guy has a heck of a reputation and one of his qualities is his integrity, a property one normaly acquires by telling the truth.
If the present trend continues…. No need for me to comment. Ladies and gents, I give you that master wordsmith, Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens):
“In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
– Life on the Mississippi
Jacob Mack:
With all that learnin it is a shame you did not learn how to think. It may not be to late to file a suit against your teachers as you have a good case. I believe there are some attornies that will take your case on a contingency basis.
Jacob Mack, here’s a little bon mot for you.
It’s the concluding sentences from Nicola Scafetta’s response to Benestad and Schmidt.
“I just wonder why the referees of that paper did not check Benestad and Schmidt’s numerous misleading statements and errors. It would be sad if the reason is because somebody is mistaking a scientific theory such as the “anthropogenic global warming theory” for an ideology that should be defended at all costs.”
Jacob, you’re not the first person I’ve come across who brags about how much they “know” and yet still can’t figure out they’re on the wrong side of critical thinking on this issue.
Bluegrue (14:37:09) :
Read this: http://www.acsh.org/healthissues/newsID.442/healthissue_detail.asp
Nogw:
The atmospheric greenhouse effect is a different one from the effect in an actual greenhouse. The latter inhibits convection, one of the transport mechanisms for heat in the atmosphere.
Regarding heat capacity of water and air, congratulations on stating the obvious. Your point? Heat transport has three mechanisms: convection, radiation, diffusion. In the atmosphere the latter is only important in direct contact with the surface, otherwise convection and radiation dominate and convection stops at the tropopause. The absorption of IR radiation from Earth by CO2 is strong enough such that it can be used to determine the concentration of atmospheric CO2, as shown in the Chahine paper I linked to. A molecule of CO2 that has absorbed a photon does not care into which direction it emits so on average about half of the energy absorbed is emitted back to Earth. There are also inelastic collisions between gas molecules, so the energy of the photon can be transferred into kinetic energy, heat, warming the air in general. The change in absorption due to increasing CO2 levels is also strong enough, that the stratosphere is cooling.
IF you want to learn, look up one dimensional radiative convective models of the atmosphere.
Jacob Mac: “Yet the fact remains that sea ice is melting, (just watch Discovery channel footage, PBS footage, BBC footage, Economist pictures, Scientific American 3.0, Nature, and reports from many different news networks) ”
Just to show you how you have been misled, look at the actual global sea ice area as shown here: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
The Arctic has been increasing in melt, but the Antarctic ice has been increasing by almost the exact amount. Total global ice has remained very constant over the last thirty years.
I don’t have the time or inclination to take apart your other arguments, but you shouldn’t let others (i.e., MSM and popular science mags) interpret the science for you. You’re being played for a sucker. What you and others of your ilk fail to adequately consider is that there are many drivers of climate and some are far stronger than CO2. Even if considering CO2 in isolation, the warming is not significant without some very speculative reinforcing feedback mechanisms. Bottom lines are, the earth hasn’t been warming for the last decade; historically, man has prospered during warm periods and suffered in cold; CO2 up to 1000 ppm enhances plant growth and gives us higher crop yields; photosynthesis stops at CO2 levels less than 200 ppm and we all die. It is the height of arrogance to declare that the climate of the mid-1900s is THE perfect climate for the world – or that man can do a whit about the climate at all.
When discussing catastrophes, it occurs to me that we are for more at risk for a global cooling catastrophe that tips us into a new ice age. It is my understanding that the major one off events (meteor strikes and volcanoes) tend to cool the planet.
M. Simon (13:59:43) wrote:
“noaaprogrammer,
The 09:30 post you referenced was only talking millions of years and said nothing about the sun. I think the sun is very important to the discussion. Billions are a lot bigger than millions.
Are you really a programmer? I hope you do not routinely drop 3 orders of magnitude. It could be inconvenient. ;-)”
The moderator doesn’t need anymore internecine traffic, but since you obviously incorrectly read the 9:30 post, here it is again. (Note that the sun is referenced by the word “sun,” and that the word “million” or its Arabic numeral representation is nowhere to be found. Instead, the tautological phrase, “In terms of its [the sun’s] life cycle,” is by definition more true than 9 billion years.)
noaaprogrammer (09:30:53) wrote:
“In terms of its life cycle, the sun will eventually expand to engulf the Earth before it collapses in death. What are we doing about that?”
…and yes, I used to be a programmer for meteorologists at NOAA and NCAR in Boulder, Colorado back in the 1970’s when I was in graduate school. I now teach computer science (including the prefixes on the powers of ten in multiples of 3 from 10^(-15) to 10(+15) to beginning students.
M. Simon (13:46:50) :
I am not an advocate of forced entomophagy, but, if they insist, you won’t get out of it that easy. From the King James Bible, Leviticus 11:21-22:
“Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth; even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.”
re: Nogw (11:21:29) : Peter J. Dare (10:12:14) : Wrong!. It has been calculated that if properly managed, all the existing population would fit and prosper in an area equal to Texas.
The all of the people could fit in texas myth continues. If all 6.8 billion people were in Texas. Each person would have a space of about 33 feet square (1000 square feet). In this space one must live, work, grow food, dispose of waste, transport oneself hither and yon. I suspect that non of the proponents of this myth would care to try.
“ Steven Hill (08:19:14) :
Typo above, it’s AGW.”
But AWG is pronounceable & sounds much sillier, so let’s use it. That way we can refer to AWGers (augurs), CAWGers (croaking crows), etc.
(AWG can, with a littler arm-twisting, be made an accurate acronym, for “anthropologically warmed globe.”)
I’d like to know that too. More specifically, I’d like to know which catastrophes are occurring due to human industrial CO2 output (besides economic catastrophes due to alarmism).
[snip]
Reply: Nothing here but a personal attack. ~ ctm
Jacob Mack (15:00:02) :
Nowg I have a degree in Chemistry among others…
The real Jacob Mack:
Jacob Mack’s Specialties:
Cognitive and Behavioral Psychology and Analysis along with in depth knowledge of social environmental issues dealing with global climate change, Biochemistry and Microbiology areas of expertise along with Neuropsychology practicum.
Jacob Mack’s Education
Ashford University
BA Psychology , Double Major/Psychology-Social Criminal Justice , 2008— 2009
Taking the summer 09 off and transferring to another college Fall 09 to finish up my BA Degree by Dec 2010, then I’m going to pursue an advanced degree in Psychology in addition to completing my CA Teaching credentials.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jcbmack
also: http://climateoverdrive.wordpress.com/
ctm
True, sorry. I find it very frustrating when a post is full of typos.
Quote: “What you and others of your ilk fail to adequately consider is that there are many drivers of climate and some are far stronger than CO2. Even if considering CO2 in isolation, the warming is not significant without some very speculative reinforcing feedback mechanisms. Bottom lines are, the earth hasn’t been warming for the last decade; historically, man has prospered during warm periods and suffered in cold; CO2 up to 1000 ppm enhances plant growth and gives us higher crop yields.”
jtom,
this is a good opening for more serious scientific disussion. One, water vapor absorbs infrared of certain frequencies, while CO2 absorbs others allowing less radiation to leave to space and, therefore be re-radiated back to the planet Earth. CH4 which is methane absorbs more heat transferring radiation per mole than C02; as permafrost melts more CH4 is being released into the atmosphere. Water vapor is forced upon by increasing C02 levels, so you are almost correct there. Regarding C02 for plantlife, yes of course, the carbon cycle, light and dark reactions requires CO2, so no argument there. What you are neglccting to mention or perhaps are unaware of, are negative and positive feedback loops limitations. Too much water, nitrogen, sunlight, and so forth will eventually kill plantlife; some species are more adaptive than others and can survive, or even thrive in more extreme conditions, but evolutionart adaptations do have upper limits for all species… Regarding hominids, well, it is well documented that many Neandertals did well during their first glacial period and that modern hominids did even better during Neandertal’s second exposure to a glacial period. CO2 at 1000 ppm is not going to be good for humans, and no not all plant life will do well at such high end CO2 levels, though some will, of course… now, ignoring the popular science magazines, and the news, I suppose my actual P.h.D. professors were all lying to us as well? These include: botanists, meteorologists, climatologists, chemists, cell biologists, microbiologists, physical chemists and the like. My degrees are in Biology and Chemistry with specializations in environmental science. So, all the textbooks, the charts and my professors with real world experience are all wrong? What about primary literature and actual photographs of the regions in question?
Moncton’s not doing too well at gaining “my” respect.
He states that “Millions” are starving as a result of biofuels.
Where? Where are the millions that are starving due to a $0.01 Increase in the cost of a pound of, what is, basically, cattle feed?
If he’s That far “out to lunch” on something about which I know a little something, why should I believe anything he says about anything else?
[Reply: If you want to criticize him you should at least be able to spell his name. ~dbstealey, mod.]
bluegrue (15:42:21) :
Why don´t you try going to the nearest desert, in the middle of the summer, in t-shirts and shorts, and sleep there. Of course, if you are right you won´t need any sleeping bag or anything like that to be comfortably warm during the night.
Don´t forget to take with you a thermometer to check how temperature is kept by your CO2 in the atmosphere!
However, if you feel cold during the night, my advice is for you to write 10 thousand times the following sentence:
“I am a fool and I was cheated by those silly global warmers”
Robert (16:13:04) :
You won´t ever, never, be an architect. But, if you believe in what you say…why not beginning with you?…there will be one less and you´ll make a great service to humanity.
Robert (16:13:04) : “If all 6.8 billion people were in Texas. Each person would have a space of about 33 feet square (1000 square feet).”
Texas only has two dimensions? 🙂
As a lad of 20 I heard science fiction writer Isaac Asimov speak at the college I was attending. During the address he mentioned that humanity at the time made up about 1/X of all animal mass on earth (as I recall he put X at about 10,000). Thus to a first approximation human population could grow some 10,000 times, or well into the trillions, without exceeding the carrying capacity of the earth. Humans would live in high rise megastructures to reserve arable land for agriculture, and each would be topped with algae-growing vats fertilized by human waste, including bodies.
I wouldn’t want to file the Environmental Impact Report. 🙂
Jacob Mack (15:00:02):
So we’ll throw in Oklahoma. Happy now? We’ll keep Nevada for a spare. But we won’t need it, because the entire rest of the world will be unpopulated.
More Jacob Mack errors:
Appeal to Authority much, Jacob? You would do much better getting up to speed on WUWT, rather than being led by the nose by the propaganda outlets you named.
[I subscribed to the AAAS journal Science to Forbes, and to the Economist for three decades. I’ve seen Science and theEconomist change from reporting the news, to telling people what they should think.]
And BTW, you’re wrong about everything you mentioned above: global ice is not shrinking, in fact it is growing. Polar ice is becoming thicker. And the rest of your statement is not even debatable, it’s so mixed up and confusing. Anyone who makes the flat statement that “CO2 is most definitely a real danger” already has his mind made up. Contrary facts can be so unsettling to a [snip]. Right, Jacob?
But thanx for playing, and Vanna has some lovely parting gifts for you on your way out.
Reply: Please don’t accuse debate opponents of blind faith. ~ charles the moderator
Yes Gtrip, that is all me, what is your point? I have taken many other courses as well and I have advanced my degrees since those profiles, but I will give you a B for effort.
Well, I KNOW Corn, and Soybeans do “Extemely Well” with double the CO2 levels as are currently present in the atmosphere.
How do I “Know” that? Somebody, Actually, did an “Experiment.” Under “Real Life” Conditions.
http://soyface.illinois.edu/results/AAAS%202004%20poster%20Leakey.pdf
Imagine that; An EXPERIMENT. What’ll they think of next?
Gary,
Ol Isaac missed that one, I’m afraid. You remove the little “critters” from the soil, and we’d all starve within a year.
Smokey recap:
so all the major scientific journals and magazines are all wrong or lying. Never mind NASA, NOAA, Princeton AOS, MET, Nature AAS, PBS, and the BBC. The majority of college professors out there who are experts in such areas are also lying.
Oh and if you read other posts of mine here, Smokey, you will see I am not an alarmist either, but that by acquiring a well rounded education and making my own obersvations and reading of the actual research and experiments, I know CO2 cannot just keep going up w/o negative consequences… re-read some of my other posts first.
Thank you Charles, fair statement.
Question: Is the current inflammatory rhetoric on global warming necessary, given the exponential rise in renewable energy?
“According to a recent report released by the Worldwatch Institute, the renewable energy industry is “stepping up its meteoric rise into the mainstream of the energy sector”. The report, called REN21 Renewables 2007 Global Status Report, notes that capacities are growing rapidly as a result of more countries enacting far-reaching policies. For example, in 2007 global wind generating capacity is estimated to have increased 28 percent, while grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity rose 52 percent.”
“So much has happened in the renewable energy sector during the past five years that the perceptions of some politicians and energy-sector analysts lag far behind the reality of where the renewables industry is today,” says Mohamed El-Ashry, Chair of REN21.”
http://www.energyrefuge.com/blog/the-rise-of-renewable-energy/
An older technology that remains useful is to pump water to a higher level and subsequently use the stored potential energy to generate electricity. Pumped hydro is a low-tech approach that been around since 1890, and works with 70-85% efficiency on all scales of magnitude. It is the most-used storage technique in the world. Information on pumped hydro is easy to find, and has been part of the debate on renewable energy for years, so when I hear the opinion that wind and solar energy are hopelessly intermittent, and will destabilize the power grid, I can’t help but think that selective ignorance is at work. The concept of pumped hydro storage has been given added versatility with new configurations using tunneling and “energy islands” that use seawater as the lower reservoir: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/3/61410/6465
Solar thermal and Stirling engines are other examples of older energy ideas being considered.
At this website the relative merits of energy storage have been organized: http://www.electricitystorage.org/site/technologies/
Electrochemical capacitors, or so-called “supercapacitors” or “ultracapacitors” have been branded a potentially “disruptive technology” for the 21st century.
Maxwell Technologies has driven the acceptance of supercapacitors into mainstream electronics design, with an eye on larger magnitudes of storage in the future. http://www.maxwell.com/
The focus of EEstor Inc. is not technically a battery, and redefines the concept of energy storage with a technology that generated tremendous interest:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:EEStore
The Holy Grail of photovoltaics is to mimic photosynthesis in plants. It has become reality with the Dyesol company: http://www.dyesol.com/index.php?page=HowItWorks
Free market forces will achieve what Cap and Trade will be unable to do. China’s legendary appetite for coal is tempered by the fact it is poised to become a major contender in the production of solar panels, and market analysts predict that in the near future the cost of electricity from solar generation will come close to or even become lower than that of power generation by coal.
The next decade will see cost-effective alternative energy, with the complexity of extracting the remaining petroleum reserves becoming prohibitive. Several groups are already developing plans and programs for recycling toxic materials used in manufacturing solar panels and batteries.
Bottom line, the production of man-made CO2, and therefore the alleged threat of AGW, will be a non-issue if we simply let technical innovation take it’s course in the research and development of renewable energy.
Jacob Mack (15:00:02):
“The all of the people could fit in texas myth continues. If all 6.8 billion people were in Texas. Each person would have a space of about 33 feet square (1000 square feet).”
Smokey, I never said this; you are quoting someone else, not me.
Jacob, you seem to need those consensus arguments to validate what you believe. TIME magazine pushed eugenics prior to WWII, along with many others. Do you agree with that consensus, too?
I wouldn’t have commented at all, except for your statement that “C02 is most definitely a real danger.” Name another molecule that is as harmless and beneficial as CO2 in the concentrations being discussed.
I challenge you to provide actual evidence to back up your claim. Please, no computer model “evidence,” just something falsifiable and reproducible. Provide some real world evidence that CO2 is a “real danger.”
Let us assume that Gavin et al are correct. Even so, the UN forecasts a peak of global population in 2050 (a very late date, compared to my own forecast). One would imagine a similar peak in GHG emissions, maybe sooner than that, maybe later. But there will be peak of emissions. After that, Mother Nature will eventually fix the GHGs. So, even if GHGs are the bogeyman Gavin et al claim, they will peak, then fall.
Now, let’s talk reality:
– Population peak much earlier (and possible rapid fall)
– GHG forcing well impacted by negative feedbacks
– Extra terrestrial forces are huge and presently reminding us we are a molecule on a elephant’s arse.
The permafrost is not melting. Current increases in methane are likely caused by rice paddy type production (these last two centuries have seen an amazing increase in rice production). There are ice core measures of methane that go back many 1000’s of years. It goes up and down. Current levels are nothing new.
bluegrue (14:37:09) :
Sooo, DDT was banned? Interesting. Google for “WHO DDT”, first hit:
Frequently asked questions on DDT use for disease vector control
WHO recommends indoor residual spraying of DDT for malaria vector control.
Oh, and keep in mind there may be a reason for not using DDT everywhere. Ever heard of pesticide resistance?
Bluey, you are either being disingenuous or abysmally ignorant. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring was published in 1962, launching both the environmentalist movement and a political campaign against DDT. The issue wasn’t harm to humans (sheesh, you can even EAT small quantities of DDT with no ill-effect) but rather the purported thinning of eggshells in wetland birds. DDT was effectively banned in the 1970s and malaria, which was damned near eliminated, roared back to life and killed millions in the third world, particularly infants. Hawks, eagles and egrets were more important than the children of Africa and Asia. Bluey, if you can’t sense my contempt…
CodeTech (14:59:55) :
paulm:
Which catastrophes due to climate change are happening here and now?
I remember not too long ago the “consensus” was that the drought in Australia was caused directly by the magic molecule.
I was really interested in this story by the ABC, Australia’s BBC on the result of the flood waters of far N. Queensland as they travel down the tributaries to lake Eyre.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/lake-eyre/
So IMO this bird and wildflower plague that is infesting these inland rivers and lake Eyre is a result of global warming, funny how the ABC isn’t reporting it that way.
Quote:”Jacob, you seem to need those consensus arguments to validate what you believe. TIME magazine pushed eugenics prior to WWII, along with many others. Do you agree with that consensus, too?” end quote–
No, not at all, I look at the climate reports and weather reports for one. I also look at satellite images, ice core data, tree ring data, and I review and reproduce the actual matheamtical analyses used in the papers and reports. The math used in recent papers like the Mclean paper was not used correctly and as such falsifies itself. As far as consensus, well, I do believe in a series of connections between evidence. In science experiments and observations must be repeatable a number of times before they can become validated. Also in most of science like climatology, statistical analysis is indispensable; margins for error, error analysis, degree of correlation, all of these are very important in measuring such a vast and complex system, like global climate. I do want to add, however, that the actual global circulation models do include the laws of physics and the actual explnation of global warming by anthropogenic means is all in line with the actual physics and chemistry. So, while correlation does not equal causation we are dealing in just hand waving and speculation either. Take a visit to the doctor as an example. The doctor finds that you have a high BP of 160/100…there is of course no gurantee that you will ever have a stroke or heart attack or even if you end up having one, it may be many decades before you have one, yet, the “risk factor,” is present. Now add to that high cholesterol and/or triglycerides and you have a trifecta…the same can be said the interactions of water vapor, CO2 and CH4.
There is certainly scientific consensus that high bp and high ester–triglycerol, fatty acid levels in the blood increases likelihood of a cardiac event or cerberal stroke. The same is true of the postive interactions and net impacts of CO2, CH4 and water vapor. The evidence of the characteristics of these compounds can be found in: Chemistry, Matter and Its Changes Brady and Senese, Physical Chemistry and Advanced Inorganic chemistry authored by Peter Atkins, or on such sites like:http://netbnr.net/loc.html?http://search.live.com/results.aspx%3Fgo%3DSearch%26q%3Ddfein%253A%2520liklihood%26form%3DCPNTLB.
Let us not forget that CO2 also reacts with H20 and froms carbonic acid which is not good at the levels we are discussing now.
Here as well:Avoiding dangerous climate change By Hans Joachim Schnellnhuber, Wolfgang P. Cramer, N. Nakicenovic, Ed, Great Britain. Dept. for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, Tom Wigley, G. Yohe, Ed.
One minore correction: “So, while correlation does not equal causation we are ‘NOT’ dealing in just hand waving and speculation either. Damn keyboard did not put in n-o-t.
The issue wasn’t harm to humans (sheesh, you can even EAT small quantities of DDT with no ill-effect)
When we were cleaning out my aunt’s house for sale, we happened on a bag of DDT. So of course I had to eat a spoonful. (When possible, I put my money where my mouth is.) Rather tasteless, actually. I was expecting a salty flavor.
And of course it’s no threat to birds (or any other non-arthrodpods), whatever, especially if modern pesticide usage methods are applied.
I will be patient, but I saw my rebuttal post to Smokey who challenged me to find evidence here, then it disappeared, but I will be patient; I am sure it will reappear.
SteveSadlov (18:41:46) :
Let us assume that Gavin et al are correct. Even so, the UN forecasts a peak of global population in 2050 (a very late date, compared to my own forecast). One would imagine a similar peak in GHG emissions, maybe sooner than that, maybe later. But there will be peak of emissions. After that, Mother Nature will eventually fix the GHGs. So, even if GHGs are the bogeyman Gavin et al claim, they will peak, then fall.
Now, let’s talk reality:
– Population peak much earlier (and possible rapid fall)
– GHG forcing well impacted by negative feedbacks
– Extra terrestrial forces are huge and presently reminding us we are a molecule on a elephant’s arse.
Steve, You are right,
World population will peak short term (within 15 years) and we certainly are a molecule on a elephant’s arse.
No information presented by the current UN is correct.
They are only after money and power to turn our world in a slaughter house (again).
Obama was handpicked for the job to line up the USA to accept their treaties.
“Spreading the wealth”, you get it?
Fact is that our political establishment is in a process which will seriously jeopardize the Free World and betrayal their populations.
The Russians, the Chinese the Indians and a number of crack pot Nations obsessed with nuclear proliferation have there own agenda.
Welcome to the 21st Century.
SteveSadlov (18:41:46) :
Ahhh, Steve, have you got a link to that UN population estimate? I’ve been anticipating world population decline in the mid-21st century, but I’ve not analyzed the data. Pretty sloppy, I know…. but 2050 sounds much too soon… China is not yet stabilized, India is even farther off, and most of Africa has not yet passed through the demographic transition. Just getting clean water to those populations will have a marked effect on infant mortality and their population structure. They’ll pass through the transition much faster than the West did, but 40 years? If you’ve got the link, it will save me time… otherwise, I’ll have to dig. I hate digging.
Jacob Mack (18:22:22) :
“so all the major scientific journals and magazines are all wrong or lying. Never mind NASA, NOAA, Princeton AOS, MET, Nature AAS, PBS, and the BBC. The majority of college professors out there who are experts in such areas are also lying.”
I think you are confusing a few things. Keep in mind there are “official positions” at many of these places. That does not mean that a majority agree with those positions. And, yes they are wrong. They have put too much trust in a science that is just beginning. This is not the first time this has happened.
Do you really believe that climate scientists are so much smarter than scientists in other fields? Take solar scientists for example. Most of them thought cycle 24 was going to be another big one. Looks like they were wrong. How is that possible? How about medical research. Since you are young you probably weren’t around for all the predictions of cures for cancers, diabetes, etc. that came out in the 1970s. Looks like they were wrong too. How is that possible? Not only that but these predictions were carried in all the media and pretty much accepted by the very same institutions you mentioned.
The fact is our technological prowess is not nearly as great as many think. This is particularly true of massively complex, non-linear systems … you know, like weather and climate. The research is just beginning.
Finally, do you really believe that anyone would be predicting the climate 50 years from now if their jobs depended on it? Climate scientists have a free pass to say just about anything they believe with little need for caution. I’m sure most of them believe what they are saying, just like the medical researchers of the 1970s. The fact that CO2 absorbs and radiates energy is just the beginning of the story as you will find out over time.
Once you’ve lived a little longer and get to see all the wrong predictions for yourself you will wonder how you could have been so naive.
What is the likelihood that the IPCC doesn’t have enough information to be making predictions with a 90% likelihood about climate and its effects 100 years from now?
More than 90%, I’d bet.
They’ll pass through the transition much faster than the West did, but 40 years?
In poor countries, children are a vital security. In the developed countries, they are extremely expensive “luxury items”. The instant that occurs in China, India, and Africa, population will stabilize (and even possibly go into serious decline).
The way to kill any tendency is to take the profit out of it.
Jacob Mack (18:15:08) :
Yes Gtrip, that is all me, what is your point?
The point is that you don’t have a degree “in Chemistry among others… ”
As far as: “I have taken many other courses as well and I have advanced my degrees since those profiles”, your profile says your experience is from “January 2009 — Present (8 months)”, which even without a math degree I calculate to be August, 2009.
Just asking for a little honesty from you, that’s all.
CO2 correlation to temps range from .5 to .6. SST correlation to temps range from .7 to .8. CO2 correlation to SST is below .5. Look it up for yourself. I’m going with SST to temps.
Richard M,
I am old enough to have seen all the so called HIV cures turn out to be failures, (AZT is a very rough drug) and Herceptin, Iressa, and radiation therapy not be the great cure alls of cancer as well. In the 1950’s and 1960’s people believed that we would all be driving flying cars and perhaps living on other planets by now.
In addition I am a student of history, so I do not regard science to be infallible and always correct, neither do I think Climatologists to be always correct in all of their assertions, however, it does tend to be the media that amplifies and distorts (both unintentionally and intentionally) scientific findings. In reality there are solar scientists, physicists, chemists, ecologists, and mathematicians who are emplued as climatologists and others who work alongside climatologists.
Not too long ago climatologists were afraid we were headed into another ice age and that we had to prepare for such severe cold climates immediately.
Karl Popper said that science was “the history of corrected mistakes.” Thomas Kuhn spoke of science as a series of “discoveries,” “arguments,” time between a “paradigm shift,” then an actual paradigm shift based upon better arguments and discoveries. The word science literally translates into meaning: “to know.” Science deals in a series of constrained models, ideas–hypotheses, experiments, theories and laws. Laws have neat mathematical explanatiions, as example, thermodynamics, the zeroeth law and the 3 laws. Evolution is a theory that could be falsified one day, if we follow strict Popper and the general understanding of the meaning of a theory in biological science; this of course is not likely, though evolutionary theory has been amended and added to since Darwin and the rediscovery of Mendel’s work. Still once genetics was rediscovered evolutionary biology sprung forward. The same is true of climatology, as various real world phenomena are discovered or re-tested, re-discovered, and various mathematical techniques are utilized, more accurate portrayals of the system are uncovered and our understanding improves.
What seems to be neglected to be mentioned is that even in the absence of AGW, higher CO2 levels are bad for human and animal health and plant life has limits to how much 02 they can produce in the face of higher C02 levels.
Jacob Mack (18:22:22) :
Smokey recap:
so all the major scientific journals and magazines are all wrong or lying. Never mind NASA, NOAA, Princeton AOS, MET, Nature AAS, PBS, and the BBC. The majority of college professors out there who are experts in such areas are also lying.
Oh and if you read other posts of mine here, Smokey, you will see I am not an alarmist either, but that by acquiring a well rounded education and making my own obersvations and reading of the actual research and experiments, I know CO2 cannot just keep going up w/o negative consequences… re-read some of my other posts first.
Jacob Mack (18:22:22) :
1. This planet could cope very well with higher (much) higher CO2 levels.
In the past levels of 7.000 ppm have been reached and gigantic insects and vegetation florished.
2. Many workplaces, offices, mines, combat tank interior, submarines have a relative high CO2 level (up to 1.500 ppm) without negative effects on the people.
3. Tomato growers increase the level of CO2 in their greenhouses to promote growth
( 800 up to 1200 ppm)
4. The natural CO2 flux is dominant (human contribution only 15% of total flux).
So higher CO2 levels are only beneficial and create a greener world.
There is no location where trees are growing greener than a city park or a highway.
In regard to our weather/climate, the effect of 500 or 1000 ppm in regard to temperature is ZERO.
We simply don’t have oil enough to burn to reach 1000 ppm CO2.
And what is more important, the current cooling proves CO2 is NO CLIMATE DRIVER.
The US Government has spend 79 billion dollar to promote the AGW Hoax.
We have the UN, the IPCC, the World Meteorological Organisation which is linked to the National Weather Organizations like NOAA, NASA and Met Office and they are all whistling the same tune….
I call it a conspiracy and that is exactly what it is.
We need to curb Anthropogenic CO2 emissions for which we need obligatory legislation (Cap & Trade) and we have to do it fast because else the world will be confronted with run away Global Warming!
The truth is that there is nothing wrong with our climate but there is a lot wrong with the political establishment. In Europe it is walking on it’s last legs (see latest elections, to make the Global Deal and in the mean time opposition is growing while our climate is cooling.
That is why they are in a hurry.
Pay a visit to http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com from Hans Schreuder (Chemical Analysist) and read his collection of scientific reports and learn the difference between objective and bias information.
Thank you in advance.
And as always noted, I am not a believer in Hansen’s high end estimates or short term gloom estimates, but I do see from real data we do need to curb GHG emissions and utilize more alternative energy sources.
To be more specific, ENSO oscillations show little correlation with CO2. But ENSO oscillations show a GREAT deal of correlation to temps.
evanmjones (19:38:35) :
You are in large measure correct: urbanization and industrialization force smaller families. In the West, family size was a matter of practicality and fad and fashion. I’m not clear about India, and less so about Africa, but let me tell you about China. In China family size is NOT merely a matter of practicality and preference, it has everything to do with ultimate ends and ultimate reality.
The Chinese live in a world where the spiritual and supernatural is part of every day life. Ask a Chinese if he has ever seen a ghost and if he himself hasn’t seen one, he knows someone who has (of course, one smart-arsed Taipei taxi driver solemnly assured me he’d seen a “sui-kuei” (water-ghost) more than once. “Sui Kuei” is a piece of Chinese slang equivalent to our “frog man”. My driver was a navy veteran.) For the Chinese, life after death is just like life before death, with social stratification, a money economy and mansions, cars, servants…. in this life, you can work and earn those things. After you are dead, you depend on your descendants to provide those things. A person with no descendants has no one to burn paper money, paper houses, paper servants… he becomes a “hungry ghost” spreading his misery among the living. Children are not just a choice, they are an obligation.
The one child policy in China has resulted in the practice of selective infanticide…. girls are aborted or suffer infant “accidents” so that a male will be able to carry on the family line. In a normal population, the sex ratio at birth is 105 males born for every hundred females. In China today that ratio is 112 to 100 and in many rural districts it is 150 to 100. There is an excess male, nilitary age population of almost 50,000,000 in China today…. 50 million young men who will never get laid and, more importantly, whose family lineages end with them. The problem may be Chinese, but it is ours, too.
Ron de Haan I will read everything on this topic on the site you provided and then I will get back to you.
Gtrip, you are using faulty logic, I in fact do have a degree in chemistry, but I digress on this moot point, what data do you have, what evidence can you provide to demonstrate that AGW is not a serious issue or that it is not real at all? Let us get into the chemistry and Physics shall we? What is wrong with the current calulations of CO2 levels, current dangers and the higher solar insolation in WM^2? How does the finding contradict the chemistry of GHG? How about the heat capacity of water and hear transfer through advection and convection?
Again Ron, I am on that site now and reading…
Jacob, water absorbs heat to a much greater degree than land does. If this CO2 greenhouse system is to work the way your chemistry and physics background says it will, it will have to affect water to a greater degree than land. The heated beyond normal variation water should then result in a heated beyond normal land. That connections seems not to care much about CO2. Comment?
Joel Shore and “eric” enjoy summer vacation today?
Ron, I am still reading the site’s content, but here is the first obvious mistake I noticed from: http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/Falsification_of_the_Atmospheric_CO2_Greenhouse_Effects.pdf. It states that “such a planetary machine can never exist.” This is in reference to the statement made prior to this which is in short: “by which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system.”
Well, for one the Earth is an open system and if it were not entropy (symbolized by the letter S) would forever increase and the heat content on this planet would have long become unbearable in the first place.
On Letter a, it also takes out of context the greenhouse effect, the effect is more like a blanket holding in radiation and thus more heat.
I will quote a: “there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouses.”
If you refer to a good first year general chemistry book and/or physics book you can get a good introduction to thermodynamics and some properties of CO2, an Organic chemistry book would not hurt either. I also found several problematic errors in this article from the site you gave me as well:
http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/Appeal_to_Authority.pdf… I, for one am not a folower of Al Gore, as I see he uses some high end estimates I want to analyze and reproduce myself first, but besids that, this article fails to mention the synergy of wavelength absorbtion and re-emission between CO2 and water vapor. It also makes several errors on the actual properties of CO2 as well, but I will respond in greater detail later on after, I have kept my promise to you, which was to read all the entries on the site. FYI: I took one year gen chem, 1 year Organic Chem, Biochem, and P-chem. We will get into the topics this site attempts to delve into, within P-chem at a later date.
Actually AGW is the assertion and requires evidence. We don’t need to provide evidence that it isn’t happening. So what evidence can you provide to demonstrate that AGW is a serious issue or that it is real at all?
Jacob Mack (20:29:07) :
” what data do you have, what evidence can you provide to demonstrate that AGW is not a serious issue or that it is not real at all? Let us get into the chemistry and Physics shall we? “
Mr. Mack, I studied quite a bit of chemistry on my way to a chemical engineering degree. I, too, am very skeptical of claims from both sides so everything I read must pass the filters of physics, thermodynamics, chemistry, and process control fundamentals, to name a few. I therefore recommend the following for your consideration, which arises from the point of view of Dr. Pierre Latour, a registered PE and PhD in process control and chemical engineering. Dr. Latour is absolutely correct. CO2 has nothing to do with global temperatures.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/chemical-engineer-takes-on-global.html
Jacob Mack (20:29:07) :
… what data do you have, what evidence can you provide to demonstrate that AGW is not a serious issue or that it is not real at all?
It’s been said often enough before, but I believe it bears repeating, that people who do not subscribe to a theory do not have to provide proof that the theory doesn’t hold good.
AGW (and at least I’m glad you give it its proper name, none of this disingenuous “Climate Change” nonsense) is a theory. The onus is on proponents of a theory to demonstrate its truth.
Some people look on AGW as a religion. If that is the case, of course, it is a belief system and cannot be proved. That doesn’t mean that it must be accepted at face value either.
I find the trust and ocnfidence in models that are used to project far into our future naive, disingeuous at best or loaded with baseless arrogant certainty at worst.
As my statistics training and courses have further opened my eyes to the games going on, I am appalled at how statistics are being used to support this entire shell game – and the underpinning comprehension of the systems involved in our climate is completely lacking.
Or did someone actually invent a practical and accurate crystal ball?
rephelan (20:19:54) :
The one child policy in China has resulted in the practice of selective infanticide…. girls are aborted or suffer infant “accidents” so that a male will be able to carry on the family line. In a normal population, the sex ratio at birth is 105 males born for every hundred females. In China today that ratio is 112 to 100 and in many rural districts it is 150 to 100. There is an excess male, military age population of almost 50,000,000 in China today…. 50 million young men who will never get laid and, more importantly, whose family lineages end with them. The problem may be Chinese, but it is ours, too.
It is even worse. I remember an article, probably in the scientific american, a number of years ago, where excess males in a country were correlated with wars and belligerence. The conclusiong being that excess males build up pressure for wars of conquest. That’s a grand chinese army there.
Off Topic… Do you know who had the “great” idea of banning the transportation of sea sand from the coast to the interior in almost all countries? The permission costs from 160 to 1600 US dollars. It’s only sand!!! Stupid green “politics”! Argh!!! I’m angry; really, really angry!
I’m still waiting to hear what climate catastrophes are currently happening.
I guess I shouldn’t be holding my (CO2 laden) breath…
Here are a few examples of the problems we face in the matter:
Jacob Mack (13:20:51) : “. . . interestingly enough the 1988 median predictions input by Jim Hansen were remarkably accurate,”
Hansen, et al in their Journal of Geo. Res. August 1988 paper on page 9347 laid out their forecasts based on three scenarios. For 2009, scenario A was about 1.15°C of warming; scenario B was 0.88°C; and scenario C was 0.64°C of warming. UAH observed anomaly from the 20th century benchmark for June 2009 was 0.001°C of warming while the RSS data showed 0.075°C. Hansen’s predictions don’t strike me as “remarkably accurate,” not even his low estimate. Further, NCDC’s land anomaly for June 2009 was 0.59°C — BELOW Hansen’s low estimate, even with all the problems in the NCDC’s data set as UHI has pointed out. J.Mack’s statement is little more than wildly inaccurate hyperbole.
Jacob Mack (13:20:51) : “Yet the fact remains that sea ice is melting, (just watch Discovery channel footage, PBS footage, BBC footage, Economist pictures, Scientific American 3.0, Nature, and reports from many different news networks) ice sheets are becoming thinner,”
That’s your source of evidence for “fact”? Discovery Channel — I must point out that Discovery’s Deadliest Catch in this season’s program commented that the Bering Sea ice was heavier and farther south than at any time during the previous five seasons of the program! Further, the Catlin Arctic Survey (stunt) was followed closely by BBC. While they were crossing flat first year ice and announcing to the world the Arctic sea ice was surprisingly thin, the Wegener Institute’s multi-national “Eisdicken” survey discovered that Arctic sea ice was thicker than the researchers had expected. When one considers the manner and quality of data, the reasonable scientist will side with the Wegener study. Scott Pelley over at CBS’s 60 Minutes filming melting Greenland ice at sea level in the summer . . . yup! That ‘ll convince even the most ardent skeptic that Arctic sea ice does in fact melt . . . in summer.
Jacob Mack (18:22:22) : Smokey recap: “so all the major scientific journals and magazines are all wrong or lying. Never mind NASA, NOAA, Princeton AOS, MET, Nature AAS, PBS, and the BBC. The majority of college professors out there who are experts in such areas are also lying.”
Not lying, but ignorant. [It’s sort of a George Bush kind of thing. He and a host of other countries and agencies were misled by erroneous intelligence that happened to support his prejudices regarding WMDs. He didn’t lie really, but was ignorant of the back story of the shell game performed by Hussein.] JM, you are also hyperbolically generalizing. Nature has included papers that seriously questioned the use of dendrochronolgy as a proxy for historical temperature. Science published the Fairbridge Curve of the history of Late Holocene sea levels and put the Hansen, Lebedef, and Mann forecasts into a humbling perspective (for those who bothered to look). Nature also published elemental papers that proved Fairbridge’s work accurate. As recent psots on WUWT revealed, there is some pretty serious dissent at NOAA, MET, and elsewhere. And who has quantified the “majority of college professors out there who are experts”? I hear there are important dissenters at MIT, UCB, UCSD, and elsewhere — thousands of them who have been quantified since the “Oregon Meeting” first questioned the IPCC’s behavior back in 1992.
But important to note are the many scientists who once promoted concern over global warming, but have now recanted. Most significant among these is Dr. Roger Revelle, who got the who thing started in 1957 as the director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He wrote in two cautionary letters to Congress in 1988, “My own personal belief is that we should wait another 10 or 20 years to really be convinced that the greenhouse effect is going to be important for human beings, in both positive and negative ways.” Mr. Mack, you should read Revelle’s article with Chauncey Starr and Fred Singer that appeared in Cosmos in 1991.
I am a skeptic, not a denier. What Bertolt Brecht wrote in “Life of Galileo” makes sense to me: “The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.”
anna v (22:43:53)
It is even worse…
Well, it doesn’t HAVE to be that way, but it probably will. The three diversionary outlets for young males are monasticism, pioneering and “adventurism”, a euphemism for war. The Chinese will never re-open the monastaries on that scale and there are only so many who can be absorbed going where no man has gone before (the first star-ship is more likely to be the Tien Shan rather the Enterprise). The Chinese need resources (coal, iron, gas, oil, diamonds, etc. etc.) land for a still-burgeoning population and a diversion. Just north of the Hei Lung Chiang (Amur) is a sparsely populated region they claim was taken from them illegally…. I think they’ll go for Siberia.
Ron de Haan (15:29:20) :
I have searched on DDT. It was banned for agricultural use. Vector control in disease prevention was never banned in the US nor in any European country to the best of my knowledge. It should be easy for you to prove me wrong, as it is much easier to prove the existence of a law and/or treaty than its non-existence. Don’t forget, that DDT was phased out as vector control by other pesticides, which explains its less frequent use. BTW, bad administration / lack of funding was part of the reason, why malaria eradication in developing countries failed.
rephelan (18:46:06) :
Read the excerpts from the 1981 paper by Chapin and Wassertrom linked above. Once you have done so, come back to me and explain to me just how you are going to eradicate malaria with DDT, when 80% of the Anopheles mosquitoes in the affected area have become resistant to DDT.
Come off your high horse and stop insulting me by insinuating that birds (never mind that they are an important part of our biosphere) were more important to me than mankind.
The cap-and-trade slash-and-burn economics being shoved down our throats couldn’t be better timed to ensure that we will be unable to respond to whatever the Chinese demand. In less than half a century our grand children are going to be looking back at this time and wondering just how we could have been so stupid.
Nogw (17:53:11) :
Putting up the next strawman? Tell me, how many clouds are there in a typical desert night? Nada? Could be about right. You don’t need a desert to appreciate the effect, just compare clear and cloudy nights at your own location. Now ask yourself, why is it so.
Nogw,
you may be interested in this little table-top experiment
I have a tremendous respect for the various formal disciplines, but the complexities of climate change are probably beyond the ken of the most educated person. To be able to speak with any real authority, one would need to have this information at their command:
1) Be able to visualize the exact shape and intensity of the electromagnetic field that surrounds the Earth, and be able to characterize it’s interaction with the charged particles being ejected from the Sun.
2) Be able to intuitively understand how the Sun’s output (at all bands of radiation) affects the atmosphere and the ozone layer.
3) Understand how the above affects cloud formation at all levels of the atmosphere, down to the fractal level.
4) Understand all biological influences of the ocean, including accurate coefficients of reflectivity of various plankton types, whatever they might be at that point in time.
5) Know how the exact shape of the ocean basins affect undersea currents and the dynamic transfer of energy about the globe.
6) Understand how temperature stratification in the ocean modulates absorption/release of all greenhouse gasses, and all other atmospheric gasses, relative to dilution.
7) Be able to quantitatively and qualitatively assess the affects of existing plant life on Earth with different atmospheric compositions, temperatures, and humidities.
8) Know all influences on albedo, above and beyond the polar ice extent.
9) Be aware of any and all anthropogenic influences, via the biosphere or atmosphere, relative to natural influences.
10) Be aware of all feedbacks, negative and positive, not previously mentioned.
And you could probably think of others. Because these involve several unknowns, if we aren’t aware of them, climate models can’t include these factors in a computation, and no one person or committee can accurately make a determination. Therefore to say that CO2 is the decisive factor in climate is mere speculation. The same attitude is reflected in our willingness to tamper with biological equilibrium by bringing in non-native species. Inevitably, it results in a worse problem than what we were trying to solve.
Some zealots have proposed to use eco-engineering to deal with perceived global warming. Bad idea – a horror story in the making, actually. Like putting reflective particles in orbit around the Earth. If you think killer bees are bad, you haven’t seen anything yet.
I will take on Monckton. There have been at least three other genocides greater than the three he describes:
1. The American Holocaust, 1492 to ~1900. Native American populations fell from roughly 50 million to less than 5 million, a decline of over 90%. W. George Lovell called it “probably the greatest demographic disaster ever.” See Denevan, W. M. ed. 1992 [1976]. The Native Population of the Americas in 1492, 2nd ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
2. The 20th Century Hemoclysm. The First and Second World Wars, Communist China and the Soviet Union — which together account for 3/4 of all deaths by atrocity in the 20th Century (~110 million). WWII alone accounted for 55 million deaths. See http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm
3. 20th Century Abortions: ~43 million U.S since 1973, worldwide 1920 to 2008: 858,000,000 reported abortions, estimated 961,000,000 total abortions . See http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/wrjp339.html
Those catastrophes were not climate induced; they were human induced (blame for the American Holocaust may be attributed to diseases but to some extent those diseases were deliberately introduced by invading Europeans). The mass slaughters were genocidal because some ethnicities were victimized to a far greater extent than others.
We do it to ourselves. That’s the take home lesson. Man’s inhumanity to man is the greatest catastrophe. Would that we could learn that lesson and cure our species of the propensity to murder one another, but I fear we cannot and/or will not. The speculative projected ills of climate change pale in comparison to the certain atrocities we will inflict upon each other in the future.
bluegrue (14:08:23) :
“Irrelevant, nobody is advocating removing all CO2, besides during the ice ages we had atmospheric levels of CO2 down to about 200ppm.”
But not the pre-Cambrian ice age, when CO2 levels were >15 times higher than today. How many times to we have to show it – CO2 does not drive temperature. No catastrophe.
rephelan (20:19:54) :
As is usually the case, reality is rather more complex than the generalisation.
In the, admittedly, very small part of mainland China that I am familiar with, the one child family is not the norm (as was also the case in the families of the students at the NZ language schools I know of – a factor of wealth, I think). Rules have changed over the years of the policy and families often braved fines to have more than one child.
Most of our relatives and friends, especially the younger moneyed ones, have 2 children. It’s hard to tell how many children the migrant field and jeans workers have, as they all seem to live and play together.
The provision of paper goods for the dead is more prevalent in Hong Kong, but not so much in the mainland villages, that I am aware of. although paper money is burned. Many of a certain age don’t believe in or take part in these practices. In New Zealand, the family has a very cut down version of the graveside practices – mostly maintained by me, although as I’m a gwai po, I’m not really qualified!
In China, the city and the country, the North, South, East and West are all very different places and it seems to me that to a degree, people are adept are living the lives they want under the radar.
The matter of gender imbalance in a population is not only a Chinese problem, but as for young men never getting laid — hmmm.
[Moderators – feel free to snip at will as I am aware this is well off topic .]
Bluegrue, re the experiment:
Now do the same thing with CO2 concentration levels of .0284% vs .037% and tell us what the results are. Finally, repeat it again with those concentrations, but this time take the lid off.
Yeah, if we were raising the CO2 levels to 100% and earth were in a sealed glass bottle we would be in deep kimchi.
Allan M (02:04:48) :
You conveniently forget that I mentioned this in response to Nogw’s “-CO2 is the gas plant BREATH and without it vegetation would disappear.”.
Anyway, yes CO2 levels were considerably higher, just as the continental lay-out was completely different (a single super-continent is assumed), fauna and flora was “different”, i.e. the end of the Precambrian was marked by the Oxygen Catastrophe caused by the invention of photosynthesis, the solar constant was lower (it was about 75% of today’s about 4.5 billion years ago, I don’t know whether linear interpolation is appropriate. A comment by Dr. Svalgaard would be welcome, if he should read this) and I’m sure the list of major differences is incomplete. So, how relevant is that high CO2 level during the Precambrian to today’s situation, Allen M?
jtom (03:57:42) :
You are welcome to repeat it with a 20 mile high sealed column. Don’t forget that while the CO2 concentration is low you need to integrate its effect over a few miles of atmosphere.
Well, it does not look as if sea level rises in the Pacific will contribute to IPCC promoted sea level rises any time soon if this paper is anything to go by:
http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/paperncgtsealevl.pdf
Abstract: Graphs of sea level for twelve locations in the southwest Pacific show stable sea level for about ten years over
the region. The data are compared with results from elsewhere, all of which suggest that any rise of global sea level is
negligible. The Darwin theory of coral formation, and subsidence ideas for guyots would suggest that we should see
more land subsidence, and apparent sea level rise, than is actually occurring. Sea level studies have not been carried out
for very long, but they can indicate major tectonic components such as isostatic rebound in Scandinavia. Attempts to
manipulate the data by modelling to show alarming rates of sea level rise (associated with alleged global warming) are not
supported by primary regional or global data. Even those places frequently said to be in grave danger of drowning, such
as the Maldives, Tuvalu and Holland, appear to be safe.
Jacob Mack(Jcbmack as over at RC) wants you to “Vote for the stimulus!”
http://climateoverdrive.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/vote-for-the-stimulus/
This is his link,
http://www.cnbc.com/id/21013048
Useless.
Here’s something I did cherry pick out of his links,
http://en.wordpress.com/tag/stimulus-package/
Link- http://friskaliberal.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/obama-stimulus-without-any-earmarks-or-wasteful-pork/#comments
“What would you find if you frisked President Obama at his recent Raleigh, NC town hall meeting?
Answer: A complete lie about the stimulus package.”
You don’t understand Jacob Mack, this is not a political issue for most of us here.
I’ve been schooled rigorously and tested in my field as a Heating technician for over 5 years(21 years) of training to get a TQ. I needed to know the laws thermodynamics and physics for heat transfer for btu distributions and specific gravities/ properties of gases, liquids and solids.
BE IT, calculations for large heating systems figuring distributing of superheated steam in a system or mathematical equation for distribution of heat transfer in a heat exchanger through conduction and a forced air circulation systems.
Older units distribute heat through convection heat rising or hot air being directed through ducting.
I’m also quite schooled and ticketed in instrument reading to adjust oxygen intake and lessen toxic carbon monoxide for safety and carbons building up in a system from inefficient burning in the combustion process.
This now has all been computerized and is self adjusting in modern heating systems, to save energy and get the optimum energy from fuels without making toxic gases. Once you try to go beyond the optimized efficiency in burning fuel/air ratio, toxins are going to be produced. So the catalytic converter was introduced to stop toxic fumes and converting unburnt fuels into clean life giving CO2!
There is and never has been AGW CO2 forming heat in the atmosphere, no heat measured. And there has only been natural CO2 coming into our atmosphere. Nuclei are coming in/or being created in our ionosphere. Cabon14(12/13 or whateva) are used as markers in carbon dating. A constant flow of hydro carbons and gases(CO2) literally “rain”ing down on us from atmospheric chemical reactions and of course carbon.
Calcium carbonate will react with water that is saturated with carbon dioxide to form the water soluble calcium bicarbonate.
Sodium carbonate is soluble in water, but can occur naturally in arid regions, especially in the mineral deposits (evaporites) formed when seasonal lakes evaporate
IMHO,
All these natural formed/existing nuclei are coming down in the rain water. Heavy gas like co2 or nuclei don’t stay up in the atmosphere and come down in the rain and slowly make cave formations or sediment in areas that allow it like limestone and our OCEANS salinity.
Natural oxygen/CO2/calcium/sodium/ carbon14 (to speak of a few) raining or fogging down on earth, the building blocks of life and all this through precipitation. As it does now.
Earths most abundant element is oxygen, making up 46.6% of the earth’s mass. Silicon is the second most abundant element (27.7%), followed by aluminum (8.1%), iron (5.0%), calcium (3.6%), sodium (2.8%), potassium (2.6%). and magnesium (2.1%). These eight elements account for approximately 98.5% of the total mass of the earth’s crust.
Sorry, I got OT.
Jacob Mack, if AGW CO2 contributions are 2% to all CO2 gases measured on earth, where does the 98% natural CO2 gas coming from up there? How does a trace gas twice the weight of air get up there to cause the heating?
Could the CO2 have already been there naturally? Wouldn’t IR radiation from CO2 gas reflect it back out before radiating the heat back to earth? CO2 is not the perpetual motion machine to store energy and create MORE energy then has been input. I WISH!
Oh yeah, one last Question..
If man made CO2 has lead to global catastrophically warmer, what caused the cooling of the world in the last few ice ages?
Jacob Mack (17:42:47) : [snip long post]
Well, the first sentence of your reply was accurate. After that your arguments were speculative or just plain wrong.
[snip]
And while I can believe that you are a descendent of the Homo Sapien subspecies, Neandertal, and would perform better in a colder world, most of us are not. History shows we do better in warmer climes, such as the Holocene Optimum (‘optimum’, look it up).
[snip]
Bluegrue – so you’re little experiment demonstrating the effect of CO2 on temperature and climate doesn’t much match the real world, does it?
And since you are the believer, it is up to YOU to do the experiment to prove it.
Jacob Mack: “What seems to be neglected to be mentioned is that even in the absence of AGW, higher CO2 levels are bad for human and animal health and plant life has limits to how much 02 they can produce in the face of higher C02 levels.”
Well Jacob, it appears you have the background to understand what I’ve said and it also sounds like you agree with propensity for failed predictions by scientists throughout history. Then you tack on the last little sentence. If that is your basis for supporting AGW then I’d suggest a little more research.
If you mean CO2 levels above 10000 ppm then we are in agreement. At levels below that your proposition gets weaker and weaker. Finally, at levels below 1000 ppm your argument becomes silly. As already mentioned, it’s doubtful man has the capacity to raise CO2 levels this high. In addition, if we could even get close to this number we should already have a much better understanding of the true effects of CO2. Then, we can act accordingly.
Until then the intelligent approach is to continue to monitor climate and improve the science. Eventually we will figure it out AND just as importantly, our technology will be more advanced and we will be better able to manage any problems.
Pieter F (23:57:31) :
“bluegrue (04:21:36) :
jtom (03:57:42) :
You are welcome to repeat it with a 20 mile high sealed column. Don’t forget that while the CO2 concentration is low you need to integrate its effect over a few miles of atmosphere.”
Molecular weight of CO2 = 44, Nitrigen is 28. Which is heavier? Is 78% nitrogen too much (Pollution)? (As AGW proponents assume increasing CO2 *is* pollution).
Way to go. You’ve successfully replicated the thinking that led to the current financial crisis. Basically what you’re saying is “of course house prices will never drop simultaneously across the country! The risk is so small, why bother to take it into account?” It sounds rational to talk about prioritizing risks based on their likelihood to occur. Of course, that’s what the Wall St quants did, and as it turns out, their models seriously underestimated the likelihood and impact of supposedly outlying events occuring. Economists’ and global warming deniers’ models assume a normal distribution of probabilities of events occuring, and therefore underestimate the likelihood of extreme events. For example, using a normal distribution to predict how often the Dow would swing by 7% in a single day, you’d expect that to happen once every 300,000 years. In reality, it happened 48 times between 1916 and 2003, and several more times during the current financial crisis. Similarly, nearly all global warming models have UNDER-estimated the likelihood of outlying effects which we already see occuring (rate of sea ice melt, methane release from permafrost, etc). Prudence dictates that we take steps to prevent outlying but catastrophic events from happening.
bluegrue (00:12:15) :
Bluey, I’m a positivist and judge actions by their consequences. I have nothing but contempt for historical revisionists and people who play fast and loose with data and facts. You can get an alternative picture here:
http://cei.org/PDFs/malaria.pdf
Patrick Davis (07:16:21) :
Perhaps it has escaped your attention, but CO2 concentrations in the troposphere and the stratosphere have been _measured_, see e.g. the Chahine paper referenced above, which had also been highlighted by Anthony last year.
Let’s take your factoid, that others here seemed to consider significant too, at face value. Let’s do an idealized calculation, assuming N2, O2 (I think you forgot about that one) and CO2 to be idealized gases and the atmosphere to be isothermal (wrong, but easier formula). We’ll also use dry air. The barometric formula tells us that the partial pressure at altitude h is
P = P_b * exp(-g M (h-h_b) / R * T_b )
where M is the molecular weight, R = 8.31N m / (mol K), g=9.81m/s is the gravitational acceleration T the temperature and the index _b indicates values at the base of the gas column. Let P_b = 1013 hPa (=1atm)
M_N2 = 28 (78.5%) –> P_b_N2 = 795 hPa
M_O2 = 32 (21.5%) –> P_b_O2 = 218 hPa
M_CO2 = 44 (390ppm) –> P_b_CO2 = 0.395 hPa
Volume percentages slightly altered to take account of the 1% trace gases.
At h = 10 km we find
P_N2_10 = 253 hPa
P_O2_10 = 59 hPa
P_CO2_10 = 0.065 hPa = 209ppm
If we drop the assumption that the air column is isothermal and use the standard lapsrate of 6.5 K/km (up to 10 km altitude) we find a mixing ratio of 220ppm.
So even in a non-turbulent atmosphere, CO2 mixing ratio drops with height, but not fast enough to make it negligible. However, the troposphere is far from static and so CO2 is found at much higher mixing ratios of about 370ppm up to 10 km, as verified by measurements.
So much for: “CO2 is heavyyyy, Dude!” It helps to think about one’s factoids before dropping them.
This is a perfect article on the subject from WSJ
Global Warming and the Poor
Why India and China don’t care much about climate change.
A funny thing happened on the way to saving the world’s poor from the ravages of global warming. The poor told the warming alarmists to get lost.
This spring, the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, led by former U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan, issued a report warning that “mass starvation, mass migration, and mass sickness” would ensue if the world did not agree to “the most ambitious international agreement ever negotiated” on global warming at a forthcoming conference in Copenhagen.
According to Mr. Annan’s report, climate change-induced disasters now account for 315,000 deaths each year and $125 billion in damages, numbers set to rise to 500,000 deaths and $340 billion in damages by 2030. The numbers are hotly contested by University of Colorado disaster-trends expert Roger Pielke Jr., who calls them a “poster child for how to lie with statistics.”
But never mind about that. The more interesting kiss-off took place in New Delhi late last month, when Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told visiting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that there was no way India would sign on to any global scheme to cap carbon emissions.
“There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have among the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions,” Mr. Ramesh told Mrs. Clinton. “And as if this pressure was not enough, we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports to countries such as yours.” The Chinese—the world’s largest emitter of CO2—have told the Obama administration essentially the same thing.
Roughly 75% of Indians—some 800 million people—live on $2 a day or less, adjusted for purchasing power parity. In China, it’s about 36%, or about 480 million. That means the two governments alone are responsible for one in every two people living at that income level.
If climate change is the threat Mr. Annan claims it is, India and China ought to be eagerly beating the path to Copenhagen. So why aren’t they?
To listen to the climate alarmists, it’s all America’s fault. “What the Chinese are chiefly guilty of is emulating the American economic model,” wrote environmental writer Jacques Leslie last year in the Christian Science Monitor. “The United States passed up the opportunity it had at the beginning of China’s economic transformation to guide it toward sustainability, and the loss is already incalculable.”
Facts tell a different story. When Deng Xiaoping began introducing elements of a market economy in 1980, Chinese life expectancy at birth was 65.3 years. Today it is about 73 years. The numbers are probably a bit inflated, as most numbers are in the People’s Republic, but the trend line is undeniable. In India, life expectancy rose from 52.5 years in 1980 to about 67 years today. If this is the consequence of following the “American economic model” then poor countries need more of it.
But what about all the pollution in India and particularly China? In Mr. Leslie’s telling, CO2 emissions are part-and-parcel with common pollutants such as particulate matter, toxic waste, and everything else typically associated with a degraded environment. They’re not. The U.S. and China produce equivalent quantities of carbon dioxide. But try naming a U.S. city whose air quality is even remotely as bad as Beijing’s, or an American river as polluted as the Han: You can’t. America, the richer and more industrialized country, is also by far the cleaner one.
People who live in Third-World countries—like Mexico, where I grew up—tend to understand this, even if First-World environmentalists do not. People who live in oppressive Third World countries, like China, also understand that it isn’t just greater wealth that leads to a better environment, but greater freedom, too.
To return to Mr. Leslie, his complaint with China is that it has become too much of a consumer society, again in the American mold. Again he is ridiculous: China has one of the world’s highest personal savings rates—50% versus the U.S.’s 2.7%. The real source of China’s pollution problem is a state-led industrial policy geared toward production, and state-owned enterprises (especially in “dirty” sectors like coal and steel) that strive to meet production quotas, and state-appointed managers who don’t mind cutting corners in matters of safety or environmental responsibility, and typically have the political clout to insulate themselves from any public fallout.
In other words, China’s pollution problems are not a function of laissez-faire policies and rampant consumerism, but of the regime’s excessive lingering control of the economy. A freer China means a cleaner China.
There’s a lesson in this for those who believe that the world’s environmental problems call for a new era of dirigisme. And there ought to be a lesson for those who claim to understand the problems of the poor better than the poor themselves. If global warming really is the catastrophe the alarmists claim, the least they can do for its victims is not to patronize them while impoverishing them in the bargain.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204313604574327992553917308.html
I will make this succinct as I can: Pamela, look up heat capacity which is an extensive property (dependent upon mass) and specific heat which is an intensive property. (differs from subtance to substance) About 75% of the globe is covered by water (that is a lot of mass) and the specfic heat of water is designated as: Jg1^-1 C^-1, and there are 4.184 J per calorie, the common form of representing specific heat is in the form of joules. Water has a very high heat capacity and specific heat, so it takes more absorption of heat/radiation for it to raise in temperature than land.
Now, regarding you question about C02, CO2 is more soluble in water than many other compounds. This solubility is due in part, to the polar bonds and sites of partial charge which attract water molecules, thus forming hydrogen bonds to hold the gas in solution. S02, and NH3 are also very soluble in water, while O2 and N2 are far less so. Here is one example of a reaction of C02 +(aq) +H20 (reversible reaction) H2CO3 (aq) (reversible) H^+ (aq) + HCO3^- (AQ). In a related reaction H30 can also be formed in the presence of certain air pollutants.
In nature or in our own bodies water can act as either an acid or a base; take a look at H30 (hydronium) as in when the ph goes down of rain and becomes acidic. (below 5.6 since rain is slightly acidic to begin with).
Now, more topically: Land and water absorb and store heat very differently from one another. Within a few hours land temperatures can change by many degrees; water temperatures change far more slowly. Ofcourse this means oceans and lakes affect surrounding climates in meaninful ways. Keep in mind too that winds that travel over water typically take on the water’s termperature. Now, let me exoplain what is meant by temperature in chemisry and physics: temperature is the average kinetic energy, meaning that the average of all collisions/oscillations is the total mean energy of motion. Heat is random motion/ entropy, symbolized by the letter S. Let me give you a chemistry textbook, glossary definition of each, as well so it is more clear: Temperature–“A measure of hotness or coldness of something. A property related to the average kinetic energy of the atoms amd molecules in a sample. A property that determines the direction of heat flow from high to low temperature. Heat: A frorm of energy.
Now ofcourse there is the fact that C02 absorbs aother wavelengths of radiation that water vapor does not, presenting with a forcing upon rising water vapor levels in the atmosphere; keep in mind that water vapor does tend towards equilibrium, but this equilbrium represents a new balance, though the ratios remain approximately the same…the added water vapor and C02 adds to the absorption of long wave radiation and re-emission as well. Water vapor, for example traps in heat at night in clouds. Also the levels of water vapor in the atmosphere is a function of temperature f(t). This is a simple function relationship mathematically. Of course there are other aspects to consider: advection, convection, coriolis effect, El Nino, La Nina, thermohaline and changes in ocean salinity. Climaologists, ocean chemists, marine biologists and climate modelers do consider these factors. More on that in a later post. Hope this helps!
jtom says: “Well, the first sentence of your reply was accurate. After that your arguments were speculative or just plain wrong. And how did someone with a degree in BA Psychology , Double Major/Psychology-Social Criminal Justice manage to take all those science courses?”
I bega my college career in a community college. I took many honors, science and mathematics courses. I fulfilled all the requirements for Biology, Chemistry, and Psychology. In addition I took numerous other science and honors courses as well. I then began a sciene/math major (taking Physical Chemistry maong other courses, before getting married, moving across the country, taking a break from school and due to the demographic enrolling in an online institution). In the mean time I have also taken courses at other colleges and I work as a professional tutor in over 31 subjects; in addition I have a library of textbooks, journals and friends who are professionals in various fields to speak with; also never underestimate the power of library cards. (I have several library cards, and full access to the online ebooks from various online libraries) I had a declared major of Biology in early undergrad and I was completing the requirements for pre-med, so the physics and chemistry were all required anyways. Being an honors student it was easy to take whatever courses I wanted to. For an Associates degree you need to take 4 core courses of the declared major: I ended up with 7 Biology courses, 5 chemistry, 9 Psychology, and 4 math courses in Community college. In my early Bachelor’s efforts I fulfilled Immunology, Biochem (again) P-chem 1 and 2, and a few neuroscience related courses. I took meteorology and environmental science courses along the way; college is easy.
Quote: Richard M: “If you mean CO2 levels above 10000 ppm then we are in agreement. At levels below that your proposition gets weaker and weaker. Finally, at levels below 1000 ppm your argument becomes silly. As already mentioned, it’s doubtful man has the capacity to raise CO2 levels this high. In addition, if we could even get close to this number we should already have a much better understanding of the true effects of CO2. Then, we can act accordingly.”
Richard first you need to stop reading half truths and made up literature by people like Barrett/Kalmanovitch, and read real chemistry/physics/climate physical chemical analyses. I pointed some errors already with such papers, and when I have time I will reveal plenty more.
Kum Dollison (18:19:00) : “Ol Isaac missed that one, I’m afraid. You remove the little ‘critters’ from the soil, and we’d all starve within a year.”
I think he was assuming every square inch of the earth (land, oceans, roofs) would be used for growing algae, i.e. making the most of the earth’s photosynthetic potential. Where he missed the boat was in not allowing for 3 dimensional agri/mari/aquaculture, say with multi-level hydroponic facilities using artificial light. Then we could afford to keep some pets around. 🙂
Jacob Mack, in the longer posts more paragraph breaks would be nice. 🙂
Jacob Mack (12:02:55),
You must be new around here. We’ve been through this several times here. Do a search of the archives.
Jacob Mack (12:12:48),
So where did you get your B.S. in Chemistry? specifically, what school and what year?
Jacob Mack (12:02:55): :I pointed some errors already with such papers, and when I have time I will reveal plenty more.”
You’re so smart. How do I know? Because you’ve told us so yourself. Several times over.
But your strawman non-answer to Richard M makes it clear you don’t really know much about the physiological effects of our favorite trace gas. Maybe a quick trip back to the realclimate echo chamber will give you the talking points you need to respond intelligently to Richard M’s comment.
[REPLY – Now, now, be nice, Brother Raccoon. Besides, we have no reason to doubt his credibility. ~ Evan]
Gary Hladik (12:29:02) :
“Jacob Mack, in the longer posts more paragraph breaks would be nice. :-)”
No problem:)
Smokey (12:36:09) :
Jacob Mack (12:02:55),
“You must be new around here. We’ve been through this several times here. Do a search of the archives.” I already have.
Jacob Mack (12:12:48),
“So where did you get your B.S. in Chemistry? specifically, what school and what year?” Let us talk about actual chemistry instead.
Jacob Mack (12:02:55): :I pointed some errors already with such papers, and when I have time I will reveal plenty more.”
“You’re so smart. How do I know? Because you’ve told us so yourself. Several times over.” No, I actually opened my chemistry and physics textbooks, did my own calculations, read all the links my fellow posters have given me in this thread and found the disinformation, and falsified data.
Quote: “But your strawman non-answer to Richard M makes it clear you don’t really know much about the physiological effects of our favorite trace gas. Maybe a quick trip back to the realclimate echo chamber will give you the talking points you need to respond intelligently to Richard M’s comment.”
Strawman and ad hominem fallacies are covered in first year ethics courses; also covered this at AUa too…is this the best you can do? How about the actual science and math? C02 at 1000 ppm is a dangerous threat; the wordings of the IPCC report of likely, very likely, and high confidence are based upon both the best empirical data available and statistical analysis. Not flawless, not 100% certain in all respects. In medicine bayes theorem and clinical experience are used in conjunction often in the face of a history and phsyical to get a more full clinical picture, and the same is true in climate science. Proxy data, weather/climate observations around the world, global circulation models, satellite data, advanced statistical attributions, and predicted outcomes all interplay and work in synergy. Besides this, however, all one has to do if they really want to know how many of the climate systems work is pick up a General Chemistry textbook, Gerneral Physics textbook, a world geography textbook, and atleast look at the IPCC report. The properties of C02, N20, H20, CH4, NH4, S04, and other trace gases are very well understood. Now, I grant you attribution methods are becoming steadily better and prior to the 1970’s before satellite data and more advanced computing technology there were far larger uncertainties in attribution and correlation studies, but to publish a paper “Appeal to Authority,” with so much distortion of the facts like: misinterpreting the second law of thermodynamics, and misrepresenting the principle of E=MC^2 a bit too, in light of Richard M, not giving one shred of evidence to support his claim, well, I am not engaging in a strawman, I am just telling the truth. If Richard M, believes I am misrepresenting his position, then he needs to bring references and plenty reputable sources of information to back the veracity of his claim.
Jacob Mack (12:12:48),
[smokey, I’m deleting some of your personal attack items] ~ ctm
rephelan
From your CEI article by Richard Tren and Roger Bate:
What they utterly fail to tell the reader, from Chapin and Wassertrom linked above
Furthermore, the CEI authors stop in 1995,
Actually, the Decision 18/32: Persistent Organic Pollutants of the UNEP Governing Council set up an assessment process to
Yes, with the intention to restrict and/or ban the use of substances including DDT. The result of this process was the Stockholm Convention of May 22, 2001. DDT is explicitly allowed for vector control, its only permissible use. For example Mauritius is regularly spraying DDT at its ports of entry (p 87).
So where have I “played fast and loose with data and facts”? Where was DDT banned for vector control without having a good alternative to fight malaria? What part of “resistance to DDT” e.g. in India don’t you understand? Your CEI “alternative picture” does not cover any of this.
[I’m putting a stop to this bickering, some subsequent posts on both sides may simply be deleted] ~ ctm
Reminds me of igonikon jack – many words but little sense.
Jacob Mack,
[snip]
Regarding your wanting skeptics to provide you with “valid evidence”, you fit the pattern of climate alarmists who run their CO2=AGW conjecture up the flag pole and expect skeptics to salute it.
The Scientific Method doesn’t work that way. For the umpteenth time: It is not the duty of skeptics to prove anything. It is the duty of those pushing a new hypothesis to defend it.
When you get up to speed on the Scientific Method, you will realize that skeptics have nothing to prove; those flogging the [repeatedly falsified] CO2=AGW hypothesis need to provide real world, falsifiable evidence of its veracity.
So far, the empirical evidence for CO2=AGW is exactly zero. Even planet Earth is telling you that. You’re just not listening.
“Jacob Mack,
[snip]
“So far, the empirical evidence for CO2=AGW is exactly zero. Even planet Earth is telling you that. You’re just not listening.” tell me how this disrupts the trend line? How does this disprove the experimental results of such a large number of chemists regarding C02?
Smokey, I am not an “alarmist,” as you claim. The IPCC report and the recent technical paper on climate and water clearly expositions uncertainties and lack of exacting predictions for say, 50 years from now. What is clearly shown is highly probable future climate channges of great detriment with high levels of confidence based upon current damages and benefits from global climate change and alterations in said climate due to AGW. We are right now seeing ice melts, permathrost thawing, and yes agricultural/animal emissions change conditions in the troposphere. The problem with the graph you showed me is atleast two-fold: for one it is a lower end estimate, and two it does not elimiante the 30 year trend, or the 150 or so year trend either.
The papers and links you have each shown me here on this site regarding chemistry and physics are so fundamentally flawed (first-second year chemistry in a local college would fix this) that I can not even begin to explain where you need to begin, since these topics are so scattered throughout textbooks and college curriculum.
Finally, for now: I am well aware of Karl Popper and falsifiability; the issue here is no one has falsified AGW. Also AGW is NOT a new hypothesis.
bluegrue (14:37:09)
DDT – the doc you reference is dated 2005. Sanity has started to return to the DDT argument as there really is NO defence to the accusations about its side effects that can possibly justify the death of MILLIONS per annum.
FYI the US banned the export of DDT. African countries in the early 70s – who for the FIRST TIME EVER had started to reduce the incidence of malaria – took note and as the (proto) EU also banned the export of DDT they had NO WHERE TO GET STOCK.
Result : areas that had been cleared of mosquitoes & therefore no longer suffered from pandemic malaria became re-infected. Areas where climate change/agriculteral change favoured mosquitos became infected.
The ban resulted from some hysterical bad science. That was pushed for a US political agenda – anti business; anti west; anti American.
Those people who forced the DDT US & EU ban through are directly responsible for the estimated 40Million deaths. Oh sorry it was not a ban; but the end result was exactly the same.
DDT WAS WINNING THE MALARIA WAR. We have lost 40 years in that fight.
The very document you point to; tells the whole story – correctly applied DDT kills mosquito larvae; which breaks the Malaria vector cycle – dead.
Africans could not afford to overspray as they did in the US & EU; a self limiting system.
Go back to the 70s & research the information presented to (and by) WHO and the development agencies/developing countries AT THE TIME – stop re-writing history; DDT WAS banned; the idiots that did so have killed at least 40 million. I was too young & naive at the time to understand the lies told; funny how WHO now supports DDT and NO ONE seems worried by the doublethink required for such a volte face.
Who pushed for the DDT ban ? the early environmental movement; many of whom are still active in the AGW propaganda machine; still making other people pay for their disconnection with the real world.
[snip] ~ ctm
Jacob Mack,
Albert Einstein gave a famous retort to 100 scientists who signed an open letter disputing his Theory of Relativity: ”To defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact.”
All it takes is one verifiable fact to falsify the CO2=AGW conjecture.
There are extensive papers, many peer reviewed, discrediting/falsifying AGW. You won’t see them on realclimate. Here are just a few:
Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
(Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Volume 12, Number 3, 2007)
– Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson, Willie Soon
Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
(Climate Research, Vol. 13, Pg. 149–164, October 26 1999)
– Arthur B. Robinson, Zachary W. Robinson, Willie Soon, Sallie L. Baliunas
Are observed changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere really dangerous?
(Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology,v. 50, no. 2, p. 297-327, June 2002)
– C. R. de Freitas
Can increasing carbon dioxide cause climate change?
(Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 94, pp. 8335-8342, August 1997)
– Richard S. Lindzen
Can we believe in high climate sensitivity?
(arXiv:physics/0612094v1, Dec 11 2006)
– J. D. Annan, J. C. Hargreaves
http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/AGW_hypothesis_disproved.pdf
Climate change: Conflict of observational science, theory, and politics
(AAPG Bulletin, Vol. 88, no9, pp. 1211-1220, 2004)
– Lee C. Gerhard
– Climate change: Conflict of observational science, theory, and politics: Reply
(AAPG Bulletin, v. 90, no. 3, p. 409-412, March 2006)
– Lee C. Gerhard
Climate change in the Arctic and its empirical diagnostics
(Energy & Environment, Volume 10, Number 5, pp. 469-482, September 1999)
– V.V. Adamenko, K.Y. Kondratyev, C.A. Varotsos
Climate Change Re-examined
(Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 723–749, 2007)
– Joel M. Kauffman
CO2-induced global warming: a skeptic’s view of potential climate change
(Climate Research, Vol. 10: 69–82, 1999
– Sherwood B. Idso
Crystal balls, virtual realities and ’storylines’
(Energy & Environment, Volume 12, Number 4, pp. 343-349, July 2001)
– R.S. Courtney
Dangerous global warming remains unproven
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Number 1, pp. 167-169, January 2007)
– R.M. Carter
Does CO2 really drive global warming?
(Energy & Environment, Volume 12, Number 4, pp. 351-355, July 2001)
– R.H. Essenhigh
Does human activity widen the tropics?
(arXiv:0803.1959v1, Mar 13 200
– Katya Georgieva, Boian Kirov
Earth’s rising atmospheric CO2 concentration: Impacts on the biosphere
(Energy & Environment, Volume 12, Number 4, pp. 287-310, July 2001)
– C.D. Idso
Evidence for “publication Bias” Concerning Global Warming in Science and Nature
(Energy & Environment, Volume 19, Number 2, pp. 287-301, March 200
– Patrick J. Michaels
Global Warming
(Progress in Physical Geography, 27, 448-455, 2003)
– W. Soon, S. L. Baliunas
Global Warming: The Social Construction of A Quasi-Reality?
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Number 6, pp. 805-813, November 2007)
– Dennis Ambler
Global warming and the mining of oceanic methane hydrate
(Topics in Catalysis, Volume 32, Numbers 3-4, pp. 95-99, March 2005)
– Chung-Chieng Lai, David Dietrich, Malcolm Bowman
Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists Versus Scientific Forecasts
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 997-1021, December 2007)
– Keston C. Green, J. Scott Armstrong
Global Warming: Myth or Reality? The Actual Evolution of the Weather Dynamics
(Energy & Environment, Volume 14, Numbers 2-3, pp. 297-322, May 2003)
– M. Leroux
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Focus_0808_endersbee.pdf
Global Warming: the Sacrificial Temptation
(arXiv:0803.1239v1, Mar 10 200
– Serge Galam
Global warming: What does the data tell us?
(arXiv:physics/0210095v1, Oct 23 2002)
– E. X. Alban, B. Hoeneisen
Human Contribution to Climate Change Remains Questionable
(Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union, Volume 80, Issue 16, p. 183-183, April 20, 1999)
– S. Fred Singer
Industrial CO2 emissions as a proxy for anthropogenic influence on lower tropospheric temperature trends
(Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 31, L05204, 2004)
– A. T. J. de Laat, A. N. Maurellis
Implications of the Secondary Role of Carbon Dioxide and Methane Forcing in Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
(Physical Geography, Volume 28, Number 2, pp. 97-125(29), March 2007)
– Soon, Willie
http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/22835.pdf
Is a Richer-but-warmer World Better than Poorer-but-cooler Worlds?
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 1023-1048, December 2007)
– Indur M. Goklany
http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/gwreview_oism150.pdf
Methodology and Results of Calculating Central California Surface Temperature Trends: Evidence of Human-Induced Climate Change?
(Journal of Climate, Volume: 19 Issue: 4, February 2006)
– Christy, J.R., W.B. Norris, K. Redmond, K. Gallo
Modeling climatic effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions: unknowns and uncertainties
(Climate Research, Vol. 18: 259–275, 2001)
– Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, Sherwood B. Idso, Kirill Ya. Kondratyev, Eric S. Posmentier
– Modeling climatic effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions: unknowns and uncertainties. Reply to Risbey (2002)
(Climate Research, Vol. 22: 187–188, 2002)
– Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, Sherwood B. Idso, Kirill Ya. Kondratyev, Eric S. Posmentier
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/05/global-warming-on-jupiter.html
– Modeling climatic effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions: unknowns and uncertainties. Reply to Karoly et al.
(Climate Research, Vol. 24: 93–94, 2003)
– Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, Sherwood B. Idso, Kirill Ya. Kondratyev, Eric S. Posmentier
On global forces of nature driving the Earth’s climate. Are humans involved?
(Environmental Geology, Volume 50, Number 6, August 2006)
– L. F. Khilyuk and G. V. Chilingar
http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/864
On a possibility of estimating the feedback sign of the Earth climate system
(Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences: Engineering. Vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 260-268. Sept. 2007)
– Olavi Kamer
Phanerozoic Climatic Zones and Paleogeography with a Consideration of Atmospheric CO2 Levels
(Paleontological Journal, 2: 3-11, 2003)
– A. J. Boucot, Chen Xu, C. R. Scotese
Quantifying the influence of anthropogenic surface processes and inhomogeneities on gridded global climate data
(Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 112, D24S09, 2007)
– Ross R. McKitrick, Patrick J. Michaels
Quantitative implications of the secondary role of carbon dioxide climate forcing in the past glacial-interglacial cycles for the likely future climatic impacts of anthropogenic greenhouse-gas forcings
(arXiv:0707.1276, July 2007)
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/newsandevents/news/6629.aspx
– Soon, Willie
Scientific Consensus on Climate Change?
(Energy & Environment, Volume 19, Number 2, pp. 281-286, March 200
– Klaus-Martin Schulte
Some Coolness Concerning Global Warming
(Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Volume 71, Issue 3, pp. 288–299, March 1990)
– Richard S. Lindzen
Some examples of negative feedback in the Earth climate system
(Central European Journal of Physics, Volume 3, Number 2, June 2005)
– Olavi Kärner
Statistical analysis does not support a human influence on climate
(Energy & Environment, Volume 13, Number 3, pp. 329-331, July 2002)
– S. Fred Singer
Taking GreenHouse Warming Seriously
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 937-950, December 2007)
– Richard S. Lindzen
Temperature trends in the lower atmosphere
(Energy & Environment, Volume 17, Number 5, pp. 707-714, September 2006)
– Vincent Gray
Temporal Variability in Local Air Temperature Series Shows Negative Feedback
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 1059-1072, December 2007)
– Olavi Kärner
The Carbon dioxide thermometer and the cause of global warming
(Energy & Environment, Volume 10, Number 1, pp. 1-18, January 1999)
– N. Calder
The Cause of Global Warming
(Energy & Environment, Volume 11, Number 6, pp. 613-629, November 1, 2000)
– Vincent Gray
The Fraud Allegation Against Some Climatic Research of Wei-Chyung Wang
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 985-995, December 2007)
– Douglas J. Keenan
The continuing search for an anthropogenic climate change signal: Limitations of correlation-based approaches
(Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 24, No. 18, Pages 2319–2322, 1997)
– David R. Legates, Robert E. Davis
The “Greenhouse Effect” as a Function of Atmospheric Mass
(Energy & Environment, Volume 14, Numbers 2-3, pp. 351-356, 1 May 2003)
– H. Jelbring
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Correlation_Last_Decade.pdf
The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle
(Energy & Environment, Volume 16, Number 2, pp. 217-238, March 2005)
– A. Rörsch, R. Courtney, D. Thoenes
The IPCC future projections: are they plausible?
(Climate Research, Vol. 10: 155–162, August 199
– Vincent Gray
The IPCC: Structure, Processes and Politics Climate Change – the Failure of Science
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 1073-1078, December 2007)
– William J.R. Alexander
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/15557/Nature_Admits_Widely_Cited_Global_Warming_Graph_Was_Erroneous.html
The UN IPCC’s Artful Bias: Summary of Findings: Glaring Omissions, False Confidence and Misleading Statistics in the Summary for Policymakers
(Energy & Environment, Volume 13, Number 3, pp. 311-328, July 2002)
– Wojick D. E.
“The Wernerian syndrome”; aspects of global climate change; an analysis of assumptions, data, and conclusions
(Environmental Geosciences, v. 3, no. 4, p. 204-210, December 1996)
– Lee C. Gerhard
Uncertainties in assessing global warming during the 20th century: disagreement between key data sources
(Energy & Environment, Volume 17, Number 5, pp. 685-706, September 2006)
– Maxim Ogurtsov, Markus Lindholm
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HANSENMARSCHALLENGE.pdf
I have more when you’re finished reading these. But perhaps the best refutation of the CO2=AGW hypothesis is the response of the planet itself to increasing CO2: click
Those still clinging to the idea that CO2 causes measurable global warming need to provide empirical evidence [and remember that GCMs are not real world ‘evidence’.]
CO2 may cause very minor warming at lower concentrations. But as CO2 continues to rise, the planet’s temperature has been steadily falling — therefore the climate sensitivity attributable to CO2 is much too high.
The effect of CO2 is so small that it can be completely disregarded for all practical purposes. There is nothing to worry about WRT beneficial carbon dioxide. It’s all good.
The quote you use from Einstein is also used by a recent IPCC paper, but I am now reading each and every link you have listed; I will read carefully, do calculations, use my textbooks alone as side references (not RC) and then I will get back to you. Now, this discussion may commence with further seriousness.
Smokey, first error in this paper: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Focus_0808_endersbee.pdf.
The author states that global pollution is localized and a seperate issue from global climate change. Well, what about the brown cloud from South Aisa which stretches from China to Pakistan? ( 3 km, 2 mi thick) That area of covering is home to about half of the world’s population. I will quote from p. 79 from Chemistry, Matter and Its Changes 4ht Edition: “The cloud blocks sunlight so effectively that crops in the region are beginning to fail and rainfall patterns have been altered.” Also, this and other brown clouds are carried into the atmosphere and transported around the world. The aerosols in the cloud block some global warming effects, while C02 holds in radiation at other locations. Then of course, in more agreement with the author’s statement, the higher ozone levels decrease the air quality as well.
Next the author is semicorrect about CO2 and temperature effects; it is true that C02 is more soluble in colder water, but this does not mean that a slightly warmer ocean just releases the excess C02 in equal proportin; do not forget water’s high heat capacity and specific heat. He rightly asserts that C02 solubility is both a function of pressure and temperature, but keep in mind Le Chatelier’s principle where a system will change to counteract a stress, like when the presssure of the system is increased and thus there is less volume available to the gas. The equilibrium shifts so that the pressure is reduced. This shift will be to the right increasing the solubility of the gas. If the pressure on the solution lower then the equilibrium shifts to the left and some dissolved gases leave the solution. So, yes pressure and temperature do affect solubility, but it is polar bonds that allows
(cut myself off by accident) which allows C02 to be so soluble; I do not doubt that oceans do act in part as C02 sinks, and that when they warm they do emit heat towards the atmosphere. The paper is incomplete and fails to make mention of other supplemental interactions between the ocean, atmosphere, and clouds. The development of H2CO3 is not mentioned either. Professor Lance does make the distinction here that he is not negating “pollution,” as a rational for more sound environmental policy, but just that global warming is not a genuine cincern due to anthropogenic means, but he supplies now hard data or discussion on the evidence on the support for AGW, so therefore he does not falsify AGW. Einstein meant when he stated: ”To defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact,” that something concrete and observable must be presented. There are many papers in existence now attempting to falsify GR and SR with no success. There numerous other publications even in peer review that seeks to amend and reconcile GR/SR with quantum states and string theory, M theory, and loop quantum gravity, but thus far to no avail. The “models,” and “theories” of SR/GR still work well. Now AGW in the modern sense is not the same type of framework as GR/SR, but it is a highly correlated model that shows a visible trend when the noise is removed and the signal made clear. I am busy with grading student’s papers and in between reading these papers you gave me, so allow a little time before I respond again.
“bluegrue (09:04:14) :
Patrick Davis (07:16:21) :
Perhaps it has escaped your attention, but CO2 concentrations in the troposphere and the stratosphere have been _measured_, see e.g. the Chahine paper referenced above, which had also been highlighted by Anthony last year.
Let’s take your factoid, that others here seemed to consider significant too, at face value. Let’s do an idealized calculation, assuming N2, O2 (I think you forgot about that one) and CO2 to be idealized gases and the atmosphere to be isothermal (wrong, but easier formula). We’ll also use dry air. The barometric formula tells us that the partial pressure at altitude h is
P = P_b * exp(-g M (h-h_b) / R * T_b )
where M is the molecular weight, R = 8.31N m / (mol K), g=9.81m/s is the gravitational acceleration T the temperature and the index _b indicates values at the base of the gas column. Let P_b = 1013 hPa (=1atm)
M_N2 = 28 (78.5%) –> P_b_N2 = 795 hPa
M_O2 = 32 (21.5%) –> P_b_O2 = 218 hPa
M_CO2 = 44 (390ppm) –> P_b_CO2 = 0.395 hPa
Volume percentages slightly altered to take account of the 1% trace gases.
At h = 10 km we find
P_N2_10 = 253 hPa
P_O2_10 = 59 hPa
P_CO2_10 = 0.065 hPa = 209ppm
If we drop the assumption that the air column is isothermal and use the standard lapsrate of 6.5 K/km (up to 10 km altitude) we find a mixing ratio of 220ppm.
So even in a non-turbulent atmosphere, CO2 mixing ratio drops with height, but not fast enough to make it negligible. However, the troposphere is far from static and so CO2 is found at much higher mixing ratios of about 370ppm up to 10 km, as verified by measurements.
So much for: “CO2 is heavyyyy, Dude!” It helps to think about one’s factoids before dropping them.”
You are way off the point I was making, but not a surprise. I didn’t forget O2, I mentioned N2 because we are, mostly (~78%), nitrogen breathers and nitrogen is the largest constituent part of “air”. Is air that contains ~78% of a gas (Nitrogen in this case) pollution? It is the AGW followers who are now claiming CO2 *is* pollution (Because as they claim, too much, circa 450-700ppm, is a bad thing leading to catastophic warming, leading to increases in bad weather as a result of “climate change”. Katrina is blamed on “climate change”.) at current and increasing levels.
CO2 atomic weight is 44, O2 is 32 and N2 is 28. There is no way CO2 can magically cloak the earth in a “warming GHG blanket”. One does not need a degree to work that out.
There are believers who suggest CFC’s released in the NH *magically* found their way down over the south pole. Equally as nutty as the idea that CO2 can float in air.
“bluegrue (09:04:14) :
So much for: “CO2 is heavyyyy, Dude!” It helps to think about one’s factoids before dropping them.”
There are some who believe 1kg of feathers is lighter than 1kg of coal. But what would I know, I’m no degree laden scientist.
Jacob Mack
The author is correct and you are wrong. You conflate pollution with climate change! I’d forgotten, this is how they argue over at RC. No wonder I stay away.
Also, you’re going to have to credibly refute every AGW debunking link I’ve provided in order to escape from the fact that all it takes is one falsification of CO2=AGW to destroy that hypothesis. Maybe you’re smarter than every one of those authors, we’ll see.
And yes, I’m a spelling nazi.
[snip]
This isn’t realclimate, where the echo chamber gives you a free pass on arguments like Chinese pollution = “climate change”. Over here you’ll have to prove your case better than that. If the example above is any indication, you haven’t even started.
Stick around, we’ll make an honest skeptic of you yet.
Quote: “CO2 atomic weight is 44, O2 is 32 and N2 is 28. There is no way CO2 can magically cloak the earth in a “warming GHG blanket”. One does not need a degree to work that out.”–end quote. This is why CO2 is a trace gas and not a major constituent of the atmosphere. C02 is responsible for natural global warming in conjunction with water vapor.
The “blanket effect,” does not need large amounts of C02 (by ratio) in comparison to N2 or O2, which are both very stable in the atmosphere in molecular form. There is only 0.033–0.038% or so, C02 in the atmosphere. A gas can still rise due to the higher kinetic energy, so more weight will not hinder CO2 from rising and remaining for a long period of time either.
Interestingly enough, C02 is 20 times more soluble in water than in the air.
Here is a small quote from encyclopedia.com:
“In modern life, carbon dioxide has many practical applications. For example, fire extinguishers use CO2 to control electrical and oil fires that cannot be put out with water. Because carbon dioxide is heavier than air, it spreads into a blanket and smothers the flames. Carbon dioxide is also an effective refrigerant. In its solid form, known as dry ice , it is used to chill perishable food during transport. Many industrial processes are also cooled by carbon dioxide, which allows faster production rates. For these commercial purposes, carbon dioxide can be obtained from either natural gas wells, fermentation of organic material, or combustion of fossil fuels.”
See full entry here:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3437800099.html
Also see here for overview introduction:
http://netbnr.net/loc.html?http://search.live.com/results.aspx%3Fgo%3DSearch%26q%3Dgoogle%26form%3DCPNTLB
“Jacob Mack (18:53:56) :
Quote: “CO2 atomic weight is 44, O2 is 32 and N2 is 28. There is no way CO2 can magically cloak the earth in a “warming GHG blanket”. One does not need a degree to work that out.”–end quote. This is why CO2 is a trace gas and not a major constituent of the atmosphere. C02 is responsible for natural global warming in conjunction with water vapor.
The “blanket effect,” does not need large amounts of C02 (by ratio) in comparison to N2 or O2, which are both very stable in the atmosphere in molecular form. There is only 0.033–0.038% or so, C02 in the atmosphere. A gas can still rise due to the higher kinetic energy, so more weight will not hinder CO2 from rising and remaining for a long period of time either.
Interestingly enough, C02 is 20 times more soluble in water than in the air.”
We all know CO2 is a trace gas, and in concentartions above 386ppm, is it pollution? Is the change from ~220ppm to ~386ppm an indication of pollution over ~150 years of human, industrial, activities? Is the rate of increase an indication of greater poulltion? Would a 1% increase in nitrogen be considered pollution ? Is an increase in any atmospheric gas climate pollution? I ask these questions because almost all AGW followers continually state that “Too much of anything is pollution!”, or words to that effect.
No-one is disputing the effects of CO2 and water vapour however, what is in dispute is the ~120ppm of CO2 from human activities over the last ~150 years is the driving force (Al Gore and the IPCC and now almost all major Governments around the western world. We already know that “carbon trading” in Europe has done nothing to arrest GHG emissions, but it sure has raised huge revenues) behind “catastrophic climate change”, or the “A” in AGW.
You are assuming that all gas molecules are affected by kinetic energy evenly, which is not the case.
“Here is a small quote from encyclopedia.com:
“In modern life, carbon dioxide has many practical applications. For example, fire extinguishers use CO2 to control electrical and oil fires that cannot be put out with water. Because carbon dioxide is heavier than air, it spreads into a blanket and smothers the flames. Carbon dioxide is also an effective refrigerant. In its solid form, known as dry ice , it is used to chill perishable food during transport. Many industrial processes are also cooled by carbon dioxide, which allows faster production rates. For these commercial purposes, carbon dioxide can be obtained from either natural gas wells, fermentation of organic material, or combustion of fossil fuels.”
See full entry here:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3437800099.html
Also see here for overview introduction:
http://netbnr.net/loc.html?http://search.live.com/results.aspx%3Fgo%3DSearch%26q%3Dgoogle%26form%3DCPNTLB”
I did wonder when someone would mention fire extinguishers.
Jacob Mack:
[snip]
jtom,
your ad hominem attacks and sly questions are of no consequence to me.
Patrick Davis,
N2 and 02 are relatively inert in the atmosphere. Now, too much nitrogen in the soi is toxic to plant life, and too much 02 breathed in is toxic to brain cells. I am not going so far as to say pollution at this time, since N2 and O2 are not the concerns at this time, but the ratio of N2 and 02 in the air is conducive to life on Earth, and although slight flucuations should be fine, large changes in amounts of each molecule by volume/% would not be a good thing. C02, however is far higher than pre-industrial levels, but I know you have heard this many times before, so I will spare you there. Also convection and wind mixing can keep CO2 in the atmosphere for a long time.
Also C02 is produced from chemical reactions of CH4 and other compunds, so some can be produced at higher altitudes. Then there are forced convective processes, like factories which also leads to cloud formations with cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) in conjunction with water vapor, and S04’s. Changes in wind magnitude, direction and temperature all influences heat transfer and C02 transport. I have no more time tonight, but I will get some good material from my Environmental Organic Chemistry Manual and other sources not from NASA, NOAA, Heartland or RC.
“Jacob Mack (19:52:35) :
jtom,
your ad hominem attacks and sly questions are of no consequence to me. ”
The moderators passed the post, clearly meeting blog policy.
Reply:I’m fixing all that now ~ ctm
“Patrick Davis,
N2 and 02 are relatively inert in the atmosphere. Now, too much nitrogen in the soi is toxic to plant life, and too much 02 breathed in is toxic to brain cells. I am not going so far as to say pollution at this time, since N2 and O2 are not the concerns at this time, but the ratio of N2 and 02 in the air is conducive to life on Earth, and although slight flucuations should be fine, large changes in amounts of each molecule by volume/% would not be a good thing. C02, however is far higher than pre-industrial levels, but I know you have heard this many times before, so I will spare you there. Also convection and wind mixing can keep CO2 in the atmosphere for a long time.
Also C02 is produced from chemical reactions of CH4 and other compunds, so some can be produced at higher altitudes. Then there are forced convective processes, like factories which also leads to cloud formations with cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) in conjunction with water vapor, and S04’s. Changes in wind magnitude, direction and temperature all influences heat transfer and C02 transport. I have no more time tonight, but I will get some good material from my Environmental Organic Chemistry Manual and other sources not from NASA, NOAA, Heartland or RC.”
So, basically, what you’re saying is there is no provable/demonstrable/testable link between post industrial CO2 emissions (The ~120ppm over ~150 years of which ~30% goes “missing” every year (Recall the rocket to launch a “CO2” measuring satelite which crashed a while back) which the IPCC is claiming), primarilly from transport, agriculture and power generation, and changes in climate.
Patrick Davies:
Stomping your feet does not impress anyone. I’ve shown you why CO2 is a well-mixed gas. Get a grip on the physics of gases. Furthermore the molecular weight is irrelevant to the question of whether or not a molecule can absorb IR. H2O and CO2 are dipolar molecules, whereas N2 and O2 only have higher electromagnetic moments. That’s why IR photons in the absorption bands can readily be absorbed by CO2 and H20 and excite vibrations and rotations, whereas in N2 and O2 they can not (I’m leaving out the fineprint here). The atomic masses of the molecules constituents contribute only to the details of these spectra, not to to the question of “whether or not”. Check out absorption spectra of N2, O2, H2O and CO2 and you’ll see my point. N2 and O2 are transparent in the IR, H2O and CO2 and other GHGs are not.
You obviously don’t trust anything I say, so go ask other skeptics who have a better grip of physics and chemistry than you and ask them about the above.
I think now I understand the source of your misconception. Unmixed CO2 is indeed heavier than air (in addition it will be cold(!) when coming out of the fire extinguisher) and will drop to the floor, displacing the air and the oxygen within. However this is a dynamic effect, air and CO2 simply do not mix within seconds in that situation. Close the room, wait a few hours and you will find that CO2 and air are well mixed inside the room. Furthermore, once mixed they will not segregate again.
Same JM?
http://www.helium.com/users/353745/show_articles
Bluegrue,
well done, you beat me to it; that was to be my next explanation. I fear, however, no one here understands HS chem, math and physics Blue, so we may be doing all this in complete futility. I hope I am wrong and that atleast one person we are discussing this with brings serious science and math skills (perhaps second year college?) We can only hope.
For the most part I don’t care whether Jacob has a degree or not. But, I think it is clouding his view. He appears to put scientists on a pedestal. He’s failed to grasp that scientists are real human beings and make lots and lots of mistakes. I tried to educate him by pointing out the failures of the solar cycle 24 predictions and the failures of medical researchers. I did not even bring up things like plate tectonics, etc. where hundreds of scientists were shown to be wrong in their specialty. I think once Jacob learns (and understands) just how much speculation goes on in science he might start to appreciate skepticism a little more.
I snipped and deleted a bunch of stuff above, which was simply bickering about a person’s qualifications. Please try and raise the bar a bit and avoid personal attacks- please, please, please.
Richard,
I support ongoing research, observations, data collection, papers being published, discussion, and of course reproducability of data sets and numerical representations. I take issue, however, when many of my fellow posters do not even understand that C02 as a gas in an excited state and through natural global processes will mix into the atmosphere, when these same people do not understand heat capacity, specific heat, acid-base chemistry, the physics of GHG transport, aerosol sulfate physics/chemistry, the actual history of climate science, GCM’s, Earth science, Geology, and so forth. I already stated in an earlier post that scientists make errors, that many hypotheses and some theories get ripped apart, or atleast amended as new data and techniques at acquiring data are created.
I am open to seeing real papers, but after reading all the papers Smokey gave me, I see faulty methods, lack of references, twisting of the chemistry and physics, that are available in actual physics & chemistry textbooks, from actual journals with repeatable and validated data, and taught in colleges nationwide. I am not an “alarmist,” I am a concerned citizen with a legitimate science and math background, and it is appalling how every paper my fellow posters have given me are so easy to falsify either immediately or within a few paragraphs, and when I say falsify, I do not need to use RC, NASA, NOAA, MET UK, Princeton AOS, Tamino, Climate Skeptic, or any blog source whatsoever. All I have to do is open a physical Geography textbook, Earth Science textbook, Chemistry textbook, and a Physics Textbook. If I desire more up to date information I look at not only peer reviewed papers, but paers with findings that have the results replicated many times by others around the world.
This is how science works; the findings must be repeatable and validated by other experts many times. I think you guys would benefit from studying actual climate physics and chemistry $ Earth science/Geology, if you have a little patience, you may get to a little stats and calulus too and then you can actually reproduce calculations yourselves and understand how land/ocean surfaces and the atmosphere interacts. Now, there are many uncertanties, but this is true in any scientific discipline. We do not even know exactly how or why the developing fetus is not seen as a foriegn invader (there are MHC and other recognition sites, but doctors do not know precisely how it arises to not attack the developing cells, morula,etc…) or how tylenol works exactly. (yes it is a prostaglanding inhibitor and it reduces prostaglandin signaling of pain, but we do not know the exact mechanism) Yet we accept these uncertainties and how many people take tylenol for a headache with no problem? I suggest a thorough reading of reputable textbooks and then maybe the IPCC report thereafter.
How can people assess sin, cosin, tangent, cotangent, linear regression lines, rate of change of functions, and so forth if they do not have any background using or understanding them?
The first paper I responed to that Smokey linked has no references, and actually argues itself into falsification; as heat leaves the ocean it is partially trapped and re-radiated back to the Earth’s surfacer and oceans, but he makes no mention of this whatsoever.
Jacob Mack
Let me get this straight. You read all of those papers? In 21 hours? All sixty four of them??
Ri-i-i-i-ght.
Smokey (16:09:08) :
Jacob Mack
“…after reading all the papers Smokey gave me…”
Let me get this straight. You read all of those papers? In 21 hours? All sixty four of them??
Ri-i-i-i-ght.
Yes I did. Feel free to email me at jcbmack@yahoo.com for further discussion.
Jacob Mack,
Sure, be glad to email you.
But first, post the name of the school that gave you your B.S. in chemistry, and what year you graduated.
That should only take about 10 – 15 seconds.
I’m sad.
Now that this topic has dropped, I’ll never get to find out what climate catastrophes are occurring “here and now”.
Sigh.
CodeTech (12:48:02) :
“I’m sad.
Now that this topic has dropped, I’ll never get to find out what climate catastrophes are occurring “here and now”.
Sigh.”
More widespread and severe droughts, floods, erosion of coastal areas partly from sea level rise due to thermal expansion, and crop death in the Chinese–Pakistan region due to global dimming from the “browon cloud,” to name a few occurences. The topic is certainly not dropped.
Smokey (11:36:25) :
“Jacob Mack,
Sure, be glad to email you.
But first, post the name of the school that gave you your B.S. in chemistry, and what year you graduated.
That should only take about 10 – 15 seconds.”
Sure would, but seeing as all the papers you gave me links to have already been falsfied and AGW has not, well, I would venture that you have lost this debate, or rather, have nothing more to add to this discussion.
“but seeing as all the papers you gave me links to have already been falsified …”
Rather, the AWGers have posted responses that they aver have refuted them. (For example, they’ve come out with papers defending the hockey stick, the Steig et al. paper, and denying the absence of the tropical hot spot.) In turn, there have been refutations of the refutations by skeptics. There are lots of layers to this onion. You have to do a lot of reading and searching, and not just stop and declare victory when it seems convenient.
I don’t have links to all of these myself–I’m just a dilettante in this debate. I wish there were a list of links on this site in the right-hand pane to 50 or so key documents that AWGers should read. Here are a few that have impressed me:
Monckton, “35 Inconvenient Truths: The Errors in Al Gore’s Movie”:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html
http://climatesci.org/2009/01/29/real-climate-suffers-from-foggy-perception-by-henk-tennekes/
Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu’s paper, “Two Natural Components of Recent Climate Change,” here (as a 50-Mb PDF):
http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/little_ice_age.php
“Curious Anomalies in Climate Science,” by a former warmist:
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Curious.htm
Regarding the hockey stick:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/what_hockey_stick.html
A review of more than 200 climate studies led by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has determined that the 20th century is neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme weather of the past 1000 years:
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/archive/pr0310.html
There is a famous sea level mark in Australia, held up by the Australian authorities as ‘proof’ of considerable rise-nicely debunked by John Daly in this link:
http://www.john-daly.com/ges/appendix.htm
Lengthy deep analysis of artic ice trends:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/how-fast-is-arctic-sea-ice-declining/
Science in the 21st Century: Knowledge: Monopolies and Research Cartels By HENRY H. BAUER
http://henryhbauer.homestead.com/21stCenturyScience.pdf
Roger,
half of those I did in fact read, but I will read them all in theri entirety and I will get back to you tomorrow.
NYTimes, August 9,2009
The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.
Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first timle are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.
@Francis (14:59:39) :
“NYTimes, August 9,2009
The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.
Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first timle are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.”
Maybe so and maybe not. It remains to be seen. It’s nice to see the NY Times starting to leave out the ‘A’ in AGW (aka “Climate Change”).
I trust that the US powers that be are studying climate change in both directions: colder and warmer. Much of the NH has a nasty habit of acquiring a mile-thick coating of ice every 10,000 years or so, and it’s about time for another glaciation.