Well, which is it?

Andrew Bolt (via his reader John Coochey) of the Herald Sun notes an astonishing incongruity with expert claims on CO2 warming retention times made about 24 hours apart on radio programs in Australia.

Climate scientist and warmist Andy Pitman on Thursday:

If we could stop emissions tomorrow we would still have 20 to 30 years of warming ahead of us because of inertia of the system.

Climate Commissioner and warmist Tim Flannery on Friday:

If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years

As he titles the post:

Twenty years or 1000? One of these “experts” is hopelessly wrong

Heh, ya think?

0 0 votes
Article Rating

Discover more from Watts Up With That?

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

92 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Latitude
March 26, 2011 2:13 pm

well, at least it’s consistent with the climate computer games………..
Scientists want to give the low ball estimate to keep people in the game…
..and keep the money flowing

etudiant
March 26, 2011 2:13 pm

Re:
Twenty years or 1000? One of these “experts” is hopelessly wrong
Possibly both? Solid evidence that CO2 increases raise global temperatures remains lacking.

Pabce
March 26, 2011 2:14 pm

Actually, I think both experts are “hoplessly wrong”…
What a world…

geo
March 26, 2011 2:25 pm

Well, they both might be full of crap, but I don’t see an inconsistency. The rise could continue for 20-30 years and then level off and not drop for the hundreds or a thousand or whatever. That’s the “in the pipeline” argument that there is a lag between adding new Co2 to the system and temperature response equilibrium to that addition being achieved.

Nick
March 26, 2011 2:26 pm

If the inertial is there, then the temperature would be very stable.
The temperature isn’t stable, so the inertia isn’t there.

March 26, 2011 2:31 pm

It’s neither – Hansen’s Scenario C proves temps begin dropping right away by merely keeping CO2 emissions stable at the year 2000 level.
http://climateaudit.org/2008/07/28/hansen-update/
lol

Perry
March 26, 2011 2:31 pm

I agree with Pabce. Both Pitman & Flannery are wrong and declining warmth bears that out.

Kilted Mushroom
March 26, 2011 2:33 pm

In your post “CO2 causes unchecked wetdry” Cao makes a similiar comment. He is quoted as saying that it would take several decades for cooling to take place after a reduction of CO2.

Bruce Cobb
March 26, 2011 2:37 pm

OMG, Pitman compares C02 to Cadmium. I honestly don’t know which one is worse-Pitman or Flannery. CAGW delusion has addled their brains.

Tenuc
March 26, 2011 2:38 pm

‘Twenty years or 1000? One of these “experts” is hopelessly wrong’
IMO they are both wrong. The extra CO2 we’ve seen over the last 100y will have had little effect on Earth’s energy level, and natural climate oscillation is the dominant driver.

Ray
March 26, 2011 2:39 pm

Considering that the CO2 maximum lags about 800 years in the ice core studies, 12k-14k years before the (next) maximum is reach is more like it.

Bulldust
March 26, 2011 2:46 pm

How could Andy Pitman be wrong? We have paid him so much money to be right:
http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/apitman-funding
And those are Aussie dollars!*
* I can say that now that the Pacific Peso is finally worth something.

March 26, 2011 2:49 pm

The two views are consistent. see inertia.

Al Gored
March 26, 2011 2:51 pm

Hmmm. Let me see. Maybe it was 20 dog years? Under prior optimal climatic conditions that was 140 of our years but now, due to the disruption of warmcold and drywet, that now equals 1000 years?
Or maybe there are now flexible ‘IPCC years’ which cover both this and the rate of Himalayan glacier melt? And also works to calculate the economic pay back of green energy projects.
All we know is that they must both be correct because these guys always are correct.

Tom in Florida
March 26, 2011 2:56 pm

The real travesty is the idea that we could stop all emissions. Now if I could win the lottery tomorrow, I algoreicise myself and not care what happens to the rest of the world.

Al Gored
March 26, 2011 3:04 pm

steven mosher says:
March 26, 2011 at 2:49 pm
“The two views are consistent. see inertia.”
In theory… but if this is supposed to be science, my six year old granddaughter deserves a PhD. Since a baboon can get a PhD in this field from some faculties if they go with the flow, maybe my pet dog should get one too?
Bark twice for 20 years, three times for a 1000 years. Give that dog a job!

TerryS
March 26, 2011 3:06 pm

I’ve seen some talk on the half life of CO2 being 5 years, 10 years or even 100 years so I’ve decided to calculate it myself.
h = half life of CO2 (in years)
y = CO2 added to atmosphere annually
r = CO2 resident in atmosphere
x = hy (Amount of CO2 added to atmosphere every half life period)
After n half-lifes of adding x CO2 to the atmosphere we have this amount resident:
r = x/(2^0) + x/(2^1) + x/(2^2) + x/(2^3) + .. + x/(2^n) which approaches 2x for large values of n
But this assumes that the CO2 is added as a lump sum every period h. If we
add x/2 twice over the half life period instead we get:
r = x/2*1/(2^0) + x/2*1/(2^0.5) + x/2*1/(2^1) + x/2*1/(2^1.5) + … + x/2*1/(2^n) ~= 1.71x
In fact, as you increase the number of times you add it during the period then r approaches x/ln(2)
So we have:
r = x/ln(2)
Substitute hy for x
r = hy/ln(2)
Rearrange
h = r * ln(2) / y
r = 2337Gt (300ppm which is the pre-industrial level)
y = 771Gt (Annual natural emissions from land and sea)
Therefore
h = 2337*ln(2)/771 = 2.1 years
So the half life of CO2 is 2.1 years which means if we stop emitting CO2 now then the level will drop back to normal pretty quickly.
Of course this all assumes that CO2 absorption by the land and sea follows a half life pattern.

Latitude
March 26, 2011 3:08 pm

steven mosher says:
March 26, 2011 at 2:49 pm
The two views are consistent. see inertia.
====================================
So if we stopped all emissions tomorrow…
There would still be warming for the next 20-30 years…
….then temperatures would stay the same for the next several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years
So it would be at least several hundred, perhaps a thousand, years before anything we did would do any good.
You go first………….

Werner Brozek
March 26, 2011 3:16 pm

See: http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm
“So any CO2 impulse injected into the atmosphere will take about 38 years to reduce itself to half the original value.”
So in other words, if we assume CO2 went up from 280 ppm to 390 ppm today, if we stopped emitting today, the CO2 would be down to 308 ppm in 76 years. However since 390 ppm is doing nothing, as there has been very little change in global temperature over the last 10 years, then 308 ppm cannot do any less.

Robertvdl
March 26, 2011 3:22 pm

Let us pray the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several thousand years .

Carl Chapman
March 26, 2011 3:22 pm

Since the temperature is already falling, they’re both hopelessly wrong.

Leon Brozyna
March 26, 2011 3:23 pm

Experts are, by definition, wrong and obsolete.

cal
March 26, 2011 3:23 pm

What exactly is the intertia they are talking about? Inertia when applied to motion is proportional to mass and inertia when applied to thermal systems is proportional to thermal capacity. Since the oceans have one thousand times the heat capacity of the atmosphere it presumeably has to be the oceans that supply the inertia they are talking about. But thanks to Bob Tisdale’s Argo update we know that there has been virtually no increase in Ocean heat content in the 8 years that the buoys have been in full operation. Therefore I can see no evidence to support what either of them is saying.
So do they just make this up? It’s not those models again is it?

Mike
March 26, 2011 3:25 pm

Steve is correct, the two views are not contradictory. The first says we will continue to warm for 20-30 years. It says nothing about how long it will take to cool down. The second says nothing about the near term, but that it will take many hundreds of years to cool down. They are discussing different time frames. (I am not saying whether either view is correct – that’s a different question.)

kbray in California
March 26, 2011 3:29 pm

The Catlin Arctic Survey team is not helping to reduce CO2 emissions on their expedition are they?
“…One skidoo snowmobile, 1,000 eggs, 15 sleeping bags, outerbags and fleece liners and 3,200 liters of cooking and heating fuel are just a fraction of the cargo that must be transported to Ice Base. There’s also 800 kilograms (1,760 pounds) of scientific equipment in around 50 boxes…”
…by using 3,200 liters of cooking and heating fuel, (CO2 producers and likely fossil based) they are more intelligently focused on staying alive from carbon based energy sources than freezing to death from windmill, solar panel, and battery based power sources that they could have brought with them. Is the skidoo electric?
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/03/11/arctic.expedition/index.html?hpt=Sbin
Carbon… don’t leave home without it !!

1 2 3 4
Verified by MonsterInsights