Bill Nye is the anti-science guy when it comes to global warming and hurricanes

If all “the science guy” has is “look at the models”, then he’s completely beclowning himself. As complex and as intricate as they are, they’re hopelessly simplistic compared to the multitude of variables that go into day to day weather patterns, much less the larger-scale, long term, global climate. Many of them are simply torturing the data to make it line up with what data we’ve already recorded, and then saying “this predicts the future”. Except it doesn’t, and many of the attempts to show catastrophic AGW effects have been demonstrated to have next to no predictive power. If the models aren’t trustworthy enough to predict the next year, the next hundred seems to be nothing short of hubris.

I’ve heard Nye before (on YouTube clips) and he never sounds remotely plausible. One wonders how stupid he must be to keep putting himself in these situations that only serve to reveal how brainless he is. The bigger wonder is: what utter moron actually thought it would be a good idea to make this witless plonker the face of science reporting? It beggars belief.

Payne did not have to work too hard for Nye to shoot himself in both feet!

Ryan, I agree…
It’s no coincidence he was booked right after Gore………
I say we need to see much more of them both.

Unfortunately , I saw the segment with Bill Nye . The man is clueless . Even worse than the Nye thing was Christian Parenti spouting off about climate driven warfare on Book TV Sunday afternoon . I was watching Fox anyway , but the Book TV show was self -inflicted torture ( I watched despite my knowing better) . BTW , Ryan , Charles Payne is one of my favorite commentators – he seems like the real deal .
[RyanM: charles will make you a lot of money]

I am not renewing my 25 year subscription to The Planetary Society/The Planetary Report, that is for sure.

Bill Nye helps pushing TV into oblivion.
Thanks, Bill.

Nye has abused the public good-will he built up with his pop-science program.
Science itself is politically neutral, unless you consider political science.
When not muzzled by leftism, however, true political science is very un-PC.
It reveals the total failure of every liberal policy of the past,
and every prospective one, including ‘greenhouse’ controls.

How does one separate CAGW from politics? As I understand it, billions of dollars a year flow into the pockets of the alarmists from various governments; and it is hard to believe that those billions don’t buy a lot of bad-science.
My fox tailed palm trees in my central Florida yard are telling me that the winters are getting colder and not warmer. The lack of hurricane activity over the last 2 – 3 tells me something is colder rather than warmer.

Nye should have stuck to elementary level science education. Going beyond that it AGW advocacy leaves him way out of his depth, even by warmer standards. The old “Science Guy” show was entertaining for kids and taught them some basic science. Now evidently Nye wants to educate adults about more complex science, about which he has barely cursory knowledge at that. Not surprisingly, he makes a fool of himself.

LOL, I posted this like yesterday under the Quote of the Week when I saw it on Fox.
Its actually Bill Nye the Global Warming Guy on Fox.
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/1134689231001/bill-nye-the-global-warming-guy/

I wish I could find a clip of Joe Bastardi on O’Reilly last night. He spoke about Irene and Climate Change just after Bill Nye spoke on Fox Business News.
This is all I can find:
http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShow&showID=2941#2

Bill Nye points at other people’s work and takes it all as fact. He has taken a big fat swallow of the AGW Kool-Aide. His whole arguement is based in his faith in AGW. He doesn’t even have a grasp of the magnitude of things. This is typical, if your estimates are off by several orders of magnitude ala the earths core being hundresd of thousands of degrees, tens of thousands of miles between the pacific and atlantic, etc…, you haven’t done your homework.

Earth’s Circumference at the Equator: 24901.55 miles
the 2 most distant points are separated by half the circumference.
therefore, there is no place on earth that is tens of thousands of miles away.

Newflash to skeptics: Hurricane Irene, and every other hurricane that comes along between now and the end of time will be caused by greenhouse gas induced global warming. Guess what: no greenhouse warming, no hurricanes…oceans freeze solid…party over.
Now, to the issue: Since having zero level of greenhouse gases on earth would result in zero level of hurricanes, and some level of greenhouse gases give us the climate that allow some level of hurricane activity, is it possible that increased greenhouse gases beyond what we’ve seen in 800,000 years might cause some change in hurricane behavior? Hmmm…seems plausible, especially with the increases in ocean heat content and water vapor levels we’ve seen over the past few decades.

John from CA says:
August 30, 2011 at 4:15 pm
I wish I could find a clip of Joe Bastardi on O’Reilly last night. He spoke about Irene and Climate Change just after Bill Nye spoke on Fox Business News
____
Did good old Joe happen to mention how horribly wrong he was on his predictions for Arctic sea ice extent this year? Or how about how the floor is dropping out on global sea ice as well? Hope, along with his other prognostications, he’s mentioning, “oh, by the way, I’ve been horribly wrong about my predictions for Arctic and Global sea ice extent…I’ve been predicting it will go up, but it’s been going down down down.”

Referencing the video of Nye versus Lindzen (or should I say Lindzen versus et al.), pretty soon we will run out of people like Lindzen. Then, we enter another Dark Age.

“I’m convinced that Fox News booked Nye knowing that he would butcher the science, and force me to write this post.”
Great comments Ryan, I loved this one:
“But, it’s not “tens-of-thousands nautical miles away” — that’s more like the distance to the moon.”

Bill Nye talking about tornadoes not occurring in Norway, interspersed with footage of a Norwegian tornado:

He kept saying the world IS warming.
Actually, that is wrong because it WAS warming but it isn’t now.
It warmed from 1976 to 1998, and from 1917 to 1944, from 1816 to 1878, from 900 AD to 1150 AD, from 200 BC to 200 AD, from 18,000 to 13,700 years ago, from 11,500 to 8,000 years ago and so on. Otherwise it WAS/IS cooling.
The climate models are built on an assumption about warming due to CO2/GHGs.
If you believe the assumption, you consider the climate model results to be “science”. If you would like the assumption checked out a little more thoroughly first, like using actual empirical evidence to test it first, you are a “racist”.

Let’s go easy on Billy . . he doesn’t advertise himself as a knowledgeable science guy so we can be comfortable knowing he’s really “Bill Nye The Kindergarten Level Science Guy” . . . because at that age, you can just make stuff up as required to answers questions and people think it is cute to have a vivid imagination.

Scott Covert ,
Bill Nye is a TV “scientist” . AFAIK , he relies on the work of other scientists and regurgitates it . Kind of like teachers who depend on the teacher’s version of their textbooks for the answers to test questions . I would be surprised if he has looked into climate science at all . Mr. Wizard he ain’t .

R. Gates says:
August 30, 2011 at 4:26 pm
Newflash to skeptics: Hurricane Irene, and every other hurricane that comes along between now and the end of time will be caused by greenhouse gas induced global warming. Guess what: no greenhouse warming, no hurricanes…oceans freeze solid…party over.
Now, to the issue: Since having zero level of greenhouse gases on earth would result in zero level of hurricanes, and some level of greenhouse gases give us the climate that allow some level of hurricane activity, is it possible that increased greenhouse gases beyond what we’ve seen in 800,000 years might cause some change in hurricane behavior? Hmmm…seems plausible, especially with the increases in ocean heat content and water vapor levels we’ve seen over the past few decades.

Newsflash: No sun, party over; no oxygen, party over; no CO2, party over; still not revelant to CAGW being a failed hypothesis.
“Hmmm…seems plausible” and yet not backed up by actual scientific analysis, how odd.
Source:
Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1029/2011GL047711, 2011
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2011GL047711
Title: Recent historically low global tropical cyclone activity
Author: Ryan N. Maue: Center for Ocean and Atmosphere Studies, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA;

Katabasis says:
August 30, 2011 at 4:26 pm
What a thoroughly embarrassing car crash that was!
Which – Nye, or the R. Gates post just above yours?

Bill Nye speaks not to make science but to make a lot of money. He follows the winds of graft.

YouTube of it:

Charles Payne, who I appear with most Thursdays on FBN ( this week Friday) is a great guy and I feed him alot of behind the scenes info. But I would love round 2 with Bill “bring up Venus” Nye and test the guy on his knowledge of how bad hurricanes were in the last warm cycle of the AMO. Would love to hear the explanation of 130 G 156 at Cape Henry in 1944, or 121 for 5 minutes gust to 186 at Blue HIll in 1938. He obviously has no clue as to what went on with the hurricanes of the 30s, 40s and 50s, and by the way, bring up 38,44, or the sisters of 54 and you can really get a deer in the headlight look. I notice his media page never put my debate with him on O’Reilly up. I wonder why? I also wonder why he is doing this,, he must be so overboard leftist he simply lets ideology take over. What else could it be? Lining himself up with a guy that wants to play the race card in the climate debate, which boggles the mind that the son of a Senator that voted against the civil rights act multiple time could actually say that ( Al Gore) The whole thing is surreal to me
BTW, Ryan, we gotta get you out there.. First thing is defend the honor of U of M, and take on
Dr. Jeff Masters. I will sit in the front row, chugging protein shakes, watching that one.
JB
[ryanm: Masters’ is from a different generation. The choice for his website name was not as tongue in cheek as it should have been.]

But he must know what he’s talking about! He wears a bow tie!

R. Gates says:
August 30, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Did good old Joe happen to mention how horribly wrong he was on his predictions for Arctic sea ice extent this year? Or how about how the floor is dropping out on global sea ice as well? Hope, along with his other prognostications, he’s mentioning, “oh, by the way, I’ve been horribly wrong about my predictions for Arctic and Global sea ice extent…I’ve been predicting it will go up, but it’s been going down down down.”
———-
Sea ice looks fine R. Gates, what’s the problem?

By the way, to R Gates.. I admitted many times the ice was not as high this year as I thought. I do a video almost every Monday on this and like all good catholic boys confess my sins, But guess what, your side with their ice free nonsense, or this is the lowest ever, is much more out of touch as objective satellite data shows, data that started at the end of the last cold PDO and with the amo cold at the same time. Lets see where it goes over the next 30 years with those things turning around
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
You made your point, but horribly wrong? Let me get this straight.. your ilk says no ice, I say it will be back where it was before 2007. Who is horribly wrong? We are in no death spiral, but like all the people that twist what I say, you fail to bring up my multiple admissions of being in error when I am. . But that is how you guys survive, for in your world, NO ANSWER IS WRONG AND ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS VERIFIES YOUR IDEA. Too much snow, you are right. Too little snow, you are right. Coldest ever in some place.. See right again. So knock it off, I have admitted many times I am wrong, you just choose not to admit it or see it.. in the end, the cold pdo and the cooling amo in the coming years will prove my point. The hurricane frenzy will fade and you will have to move on and find some other metric that your sides longer term forecasts are horribly busting on ( temps leveling off while co2 continues to rise for instance) to use.
You are correct sir, there is more ice melt this summer than I forecasted. But anyone that follows me knows I have admitted that. But there is a heck of alot more than your death spiral allies said there would be . I admitted my mistake ( multiple times) but we never hear anything like that from the close minded sheep that march lock stock and barrel to the drumbeat of bologna this issue really is.
As far as the hurricane issue with Irene. East coast hurricanes are notorious for bands of strong winds, well away from the center and high variability of the wind on the eastern side of the of the storm, heavy rains on the western side. The turbulent mixing needed to bring the wind down to the surface becomes very erratic, The 38 hurricane had wind gusts to only 86 mph at Providence, yet Blue Hill had a gust to 186 with a 5 minute wind speed of 121. But the damage was of a 120 mph hurricane across Rhode Island, though no weather station caught that. . I would suggest you look at what the real storm surge was the pics of houses taken out on the beaches, , the amount of major tree damage that occurred and understand that 40-60 mph tropical storms do not produce that, nor do nor easters ( even with the wet ground). Instead bands of strong winds came through, as they have in the other hurricanes when transitioning and are not like what you see in the pure tropical cyclone. But east of the center, in southern New England, this was as bad as Gloria ( another storm accused of being hyped) and apparently as bad as Isabel on the NC outer banks and tide water.
As for the flooding.. the west side of recurving east coast hurricanes all do that. Diane 1955 and Agnes 1972 are disasters for their flooding yet without the heat and energy from the hurricane, there is no flood. The list is endless with that.. rain the to west winds to the east. Its why I have that power scale, that incorporates pressure, that
is meant to inform people how the total package of the storm looks.

I almost posted it Joe but figured it had been posted a lot on previous threads. By the way, you were great on O’Reily last night!
Fox News:
Global Warming – Bill Nye Versus Joe Bastardi

Questions on TV shows like this are designed to generate controversy, not help elucidate understanding. It’s just fine for infotainment, but a useless format to increase understanding on issues.
The problem with that interview is the same as any other pop media TV interview. The science is complicated and you need time to explain it. Bill kept trying to put the questions into the larger context, but there just wasn’t time, so his comments wind up coming off half-cocked. The problem isn’t with the show, the presenter or Bill Nye, it’s just that the form precludes any decent content.
The author of this article states:

The left actually thinks Bill Nye is a brilliant ambassador for their brand of global warming alarmism — a legitimate guy that understands the science and can articulate an explanation. However, Nye has no credentials or expertise with respect to global warming and hurricanes, at all. Not one iota.

But that is Fox’s M.O. right there. Why, indeed, did they choose Bill Nye? Because of his face value, not because of his credentials. This is infotainment, folks, and you’re going to get dumbed-down questions, two-dimensional journalism, and the reportage on it will reflect the circus, not the science. Interviewees who *succeed* in this format have their talking points all nicely lined up, stay on message, and practise their skills so they look and sound good. People lap them up because they exude confidence, even when what they say is rubbish.

I’ve known several people who habitually wear bow ties, and I don’t trust any of them.

This is great!! Please, we NEED MORE BILL NYE ON TV. PLAYING A SCIENTIST! There is no better person (aside from Al Gore) to be the face of the modern day climate science cult. Maybe someone in congress will get a clue and invite him to testify on global warming (complete with Jim Hansen-approved sweaty bow tie) – what a great show that would be!! [LOL]

R. Gates-
“Newflash to skeptics: Hurricane Irene, and every other hurricane that comes along between now and the end of time will be caused by greenhouse gas induced global warming. Guess what: no greenhouse warming, no hurricanes…oceans freeze solid…party over.”
Actually, by this same logic, all Hurricanes-indeed, all weather, in this case- is due completely to SOLAR induced Global Warming. An equally meaningless hypothetical: Shut off the sun. The Oceans and ATMOSPHERE eventually freeze over and there is no weather whatsoever. So maybe you should stop making stupid comparisons that tell us nothing about the “real issue” that you “address” next?
“Since having zero level of greenhouse gases on earth would result in zero level of hurricanes, and some level of greenhouse gases give us the climate that allow some level of hurricane activity, is it possible that increased greenhouse gases beyond what we’ve seen in 800,000 years might cause some change in hurricane behavior? Hmmm…seems plausible, especially with the increases in ocean heat content and water vapor levels we’ve seen over the past few decades.”
One needs to deal with actual numbers and not naive comparisons that involve assuming a relationship between variables that is the same for raising temperatures by dozens of degrees to the point of having a phase transition thrown in there, will be the same as raising the temperatures a degree or so further. Consider the case where we boil the oceans: Also no hurricanes then! So you are naively assuming a very simple, linear relationship between the overall global climate and hurricanes, which is ridiculous.
What do scientists that actually advocate there being some connection between AGW and hurricanes say? Well they say that when they feed climate model projections of sea surface temperature fields into their hurricane simulation models, the modeled hurricanes get slightly stronger. And guess what? You can translate the slight change they project, in a sort of hypothetical “all else equal” scenario, and look at what this relationship implies for how much change would have been predicted for recent hurricanes. For a warming of a few degrees they predict a small change. For a warming of a half a degree or less (say, the last few decades) their models would predict such a small change in intensity that it wouldn’t even be measurable. So no, AGW can’t have had any significant impact on Irene. When the climate is already sufficiently capable of producing hurricanes, the marginal sensitivity of hurricanes to the climate is, even according to the modelers who believe such an effect will be important, vanishingly small. Which means that the hypothesis that AGW has any effect cannot be shown to be correct: the expected signal is just too small, it isn’t expected to emerge for several more decades if it exists at all. So we have a scenario where no effect can be reasonably claimed to be demonstrated, and the effect that was predicted is sufficiently small that we cannot even tell if the prediction has been falsified, and we won’t know for decades if the predictions are at all reasonable. My guess is they will turn out to have been overestimating the effect of AGW on hurricanes: it won’t ever be large enough to be measurable. Prove me wrong.

Richard says:
August 30, 2011 at 4:44 pm
“American actress Daryl Hannah has been arrested in front of the White House along with other environmental protesters who oppose a planned oil pipeline from Canada to the US Gulf Coast.”
Was she wearing the mermaid costume?

That is not Daryl Hannah but her twin sister Derrick Hannah. /humor

Joe B.,
You have admitted you were wrong about sea ice, and I admire that tremendously, and I sir, couldn’t begin to match your knowledge of weather. You are successful at what you do because you are good at it. I also admire the fact that you have stated quite plainly what the conditions are for you to change your perceptions about anthropogenic climate change. And for me, if 2010 to 2019 is not warmer as a decade than 2000-2009, I shall begin to question my perceptions, and if 2020-2029 is not warmer still, then even more so will I doubt that humans are significantly altering the climate. But, I would suggest you check your rationale for why you think Arctic sea would be increasing in year-to-year extent over the next few decades, and then, if it fails to do so, consider that there might be something to the notion that a 40% increase in CO2, and large increases in methane and nitrous oxide over the highest levels they’ve been at in at least 800,000 years might indeed be having an impact on the global climate, as every single global climate model tells us they will.

Bill Nye joins the ranks of a new job description: Used Climate Salesman.

Theo Goodwin says:
August 30, 2011 at 7:28 pm
R. Gates says:
August 30, 2011 at 4:26 pm
“Newflash to skeptics: Hurricane Irene, and every other hurricane that comes along between now and the end of time will be caused by greenhouse gas induced global warming. Guess what: no greenhouse warming, no hurricanes…oceans freeze solid…party over.”
You do not understand the concept of causality. Greenhouse gases might contribute to global warming but greenhouse gases do not cause hurricanes.
————
And you do not understand complexity or chaos or the basic “three body problem”. Hurricanes are part of the climate system, meaning multiple interrelated causes and effects, and you could no more separate greenhouse gases from the existence of hurricanes on earth then you could, separate the whales from the existence of oceans…they all infer each other. Again, no greenhouse gases on earth, no hurricanes.

Isn’t time to set up a separate website – WUWG – What’s Up With Gates

When someone like Bill Nye says the earth is getting warmer, “it’s measurable and irrefutable”, what exactly does that mean? Relative to what temperature (MWP)? What time period constitutes a trend? (For Bill Nye six years is too few to show lack of hurricane activity, but one storm is enough to prove AGW)
That’s a serious question, what does it mean to say that the earth is warming?
Thanks in advance for any serious answers or links to explanations.
Matt

Funny. Another ideal AGW spokesman.
I particularly liked the part about tribalism ‘millions, or at least tens of thousands of years ago.’

R. Gates says:
August 30, 2011 at 8:16 pm
It is entirely possible to melt out the Arctic with a massive pipeline of water direct from the Tropics.
And Sea Ice would temporarily suffer, as it has.
But then the bottom would fall out, same as your AGW.
The Tropics would not be building up oceanic heat, because it is sent North/South in this particular example. The heat sent North/South would not build up the Arctic/Antarctic heat either, as it will escape to space as soon as Polar Winter arrives.
The bottom falling out is the loss of Tropical Heat to space, for the now lowered oceanic heat would result in continental cooling to put the finishing touches on the canvas.
Worrying about a trace gas won’t bring back the missing heat, it’s gone with the Solar wind.
The recent Arctic melt is not a sign nor proof of AGW, it’s the sign of a leak.

R.Gates,
I wonder if this article shows an analogous situation with respect to a proposal that having no GHG’s equals having no hurricanes, thusly making the relationship clear .
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2007/08/genetic-vs-heritable-trait/
It seems the same type of logical problem; that is, one could say that no matter that height is , say 80 % heritable in USA, that if there is no environmental ( food) input, there is no bone growth at all. thus the relationship is made clear It’s food.
I think what we have to remember is that we’d have to nail down the variables to see about DIFFERENCES..,e.g. what differences in height occur when “getting enough food” is not the issue – rather than to say “if the genes did not exist” , or “if food, water, did not exist”.

Rational Debate says:
August 30, 2011 at 9:40 pm
He’s a paid actor, not an expert. He’s paid to sell a viewpoint, which is why I refer to “Used Climate Salesman”. It doesn’t matter if he believes the stuff he’s selling or not, he has only to act the role.
Now, the quality of the acting is key.

R. gates says:
August 30, 2011 at 10:00 pm
You read it right Professor R.gates: A leak.
Try this at home:
This winter, run your heat with upstairs windows closed, setting the Thermostat so that the heat runs 50% of the time. Take your temp. readings throughout the house.
Next, open 2 upstairs windows and repeat, leaving the Thermostat alone.
The resulting phenomena of heat drafting up and out, along with cold air sinking in should come as no surprise to you.
Neither should the Polar Night shedding heat energy out the Atmosphere.
If the Atmosphere was truly leakproof enough for trace gas AGW, the Earth would now be in an Intervolcanic Pizza Oven instead of an Interglacial.
Kinda like Venus, ya know?

“…and run a climate model and show that Irene was a result of the world having more energy in the Earth’s atmosphere.”
“Furthermore there is a lot of debate about this cool thing or remarkable thing is that the Sea-surface in the Pacific gets warmer, in the Pacific Ocean! Okay, tens of thousands of nautical miles away. As that gets warmer, it will strangely serve to decapitate certain hurricane or cyclonic storms off the coast of Africa – and actually get a few fewer hurricanes.”
————-
So did Bill in these two statements say that heating the Earth causes more hurricanes, but heating the Earth causes fewer hurricanes? I am fairly certain every philosophy professor in the country would fail him from a logic course for making that statement.
Now I am having deep regrets of watching his show when I was a little paleo-nut, though e did do some things that pushed me towards chemistry.

Joe Bastardi says: He obviously has no clue as to what went on with the hurricanes of the 30s, 40s and 50s, and by the way, bring up 38,44, or the sisters of 54 and you can really get a deer in the headlight look. I notice his media page never put my debate with him on O’Reilly up. I wonder why? I also wonder why he is doing this,, he must be so overboard leftist he simply lets ideology take over. What else could it be?
That he needs the job. I’m not saying he’d be a skeptic if he didn’t need it; he very likely has a warmist bias aside from any question of a job, but he needs the job, and it’s a lot easier to get a job, or keep a job, on the warmist side. I know almost nothing about him, except that several times I’ve seen him demonstrating his ignorance about global warming, but my Italian-American intuition 🙂 tells me that he’s a guy who needs the job.
Joe, you strike me as a regular guy who must know very well that jobs don’t grow on trees for someone who wants to be at all picky, and is not young. I’m not talking about your own recent change, and I’m not talking about the depression that we’re having right now. I’m talking about the way life is.

R Gates has really outdone himself on this thread. Even more inane nonsense than usual. I suspect a 14 year old kid behind the keyboard. WUWT’s very own clown and jester.

R. Gates,
You say no green houses gasses on earth no hurricanes.
I say no oceans and 99.9% of green house gases are gone. Water is the refrigerant in control of our moderated temperature. The tropics are our heat imput that has a built in thermostat .
The poles are radiators to release heat. The temperate zones suffer the weather of an un plumbed chaotic heat pump. The temperate zones are another thermostat that varies heat input or output by cloud cover, these mechanisms are slowly being uncovered by real scientific endeavour. CO2 has no influence in the patterns or frequency or indeed strength of weather.
The mechanics of our solar system and the cyclic sun coupled to were we are at any given time in the galaxy give us all the climate change we need. CO2 is is totally irrelevant and a political construct to to tell us how to behave. BS

Neo-AGW Progress Report.
Outbreak of Gorebullimia blasts Britain.
…-
“UK summer the coolest for 18 years”
“Met Office says average temperature was 13.6C, the lowest since 1993, with forecasts for a wetter and colder September than usual”
“Hopes of a sunny summer to offset the UK’s economic misery have been dashed by confirmation that the holiday season has been the country’s coolest for 18 years.
Chill and damp on a scale not seen since 1993 may also break further doleful records if Met Office forecasts are right in predicting a wetter and colder September than usual.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/31/uk-summer-coolest-18-years

Robert in Calgary says:
August 30, 2011 at 8:46 pm
“Isn’t time to set up a separate website – WUWG – What’s Up With Gates?”
Yes, he has earned it. There might be need of a Bot to post criticisms of CAGW. Might not.

R. Gates says:
August 30, 2011 at 8:16 pm
” Again, no greenhouse gases on earth, no hurricanes.”
R. Gates, we can agree on that. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas, so no greenhouse gases on Earth implies an Earth devoid of water and oceans; as a hurricane is powered by the hydrological cycle, a hurricane would then be impossible.
But that’s not what you wanted to imply; you wanted to somehow connect CO2 and hurricanes. And that is of course unnecessary, as 95% of the greenhouse effect is caused by water vapor, this completely suffices; CO2 is, as usual, a bit player.

cotwome says:
August 30, 2011 at 6:19 pm
“Hurricane Irene was a catastrophe of enormous severity and magnitude, Christie said, adding: “Torrential rains have caused significant flooding in areas across the state, impacting residences, major and local roads, and necessitating highway closures and a suspension of rail services.”…
… Actually it was an unfortunate double whammy. Trenton, New Jersey’s highest single day rainfall total for the month of August occurred two weeks before Irene. August 14, saw 4.67 inches of rain. The second highest daily rainfall total occurred on August 27, with 3.91 inches. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania had their wettest August on record, ‘before’ Irene even made landfall in North Carolina.
Thanks! I wasn’t aware of these other heavy rains. Now I see why flooding happened.

Dreadnought says:
August 30, 2011 at 6:44 pm

I saw this Fox News item in it’s entirety and I was utterly dumb-struck that they would get this colossal idiot to comment on these things.

True, but they obviously couldn’t get Gore (besides, he’d have used a bunch of expletives on air and called them all racists), and Mann and Jones aren’t willing to stick their necks out anymore than they have to. I can’t think of a viable CAGW rep, really I can’t.
Looks like Bill Nye the ________ Guy (you fill in the blank) is all they could come up with.
Does that say a lot about their CAGW schtick or what?
(Maybe R. Gates would be willing to go before the Friendly Folks at Fox?–then we wouldn’t need a WUWG–he’d be given his day in the limelight and we’d have just another outstanding thread to discuss.)

Scottish Skeptic,

Let me see if I can explain? First we got the real final nail in the coffin of global warming in the CERN/CLOUD & final confirmation of Svensmark. Then the single biggest story in science in the last decade…

Reporting on sea ice was only ever about disproving AGW, and as long as there is other ammo, you’re just not interested? Sorry, but that is hardly news to me. There may be a few people left around here who have a whiff of actual curiosity left, or are careful to construct their worldview with adherence to intellectual integrity, but for the most part, people come here to cheer the dragons being slain on a daily basis. Enjoy the circus!

“Ken Hall says:
August 31, 2011 at 3:02 am
I would be very saddened to see Johnny Ball come out on the side of the alarmists.
Can’t see that happening.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/feb/18/johnny-ball-climate-change-attack”
Thanks for that Tallbloke 😉

James – thank you for the reply, enjoyed reading. I’ve heard pundits from both sides acknowledge that the earth is warming, but have never understood the generally accepted point of reference. The 30 year standard used for much trend analysis is clearly too short, but just how far back should we go.

James Sexton says:
August 30, 2011 at 10:26 pm
Matt says:
August 30, 2011 at 9:11 pm
When someone like Bill Nye says the earth is getting warmer, “it’s measurable and irrefutable”, what exactly does that mean? Relative to what temperature (MWP)? What time period constitutes a trend? (For Bill Nye six years is too few to show lack of hurricane activity, but one storm is enough to prove AGW)
That’s a serious question, what does it mean to say that the earth is warming?
Thanks in advance for any serious answers or links to explanations.
Matt
=======================================================
Matt, there is no serious answer. All time to temp considerations are arbitrary. There is no valid argument of an appropriate time period to determining warming vs cooling. Yes, we saw some warming a while back. It hasn’t warmed in over a decade, but if you include this decade with the last two you see warming if you want to see warming. Yes, its likely we’re cooling from the MWP but we’re warming from the LIA. Then some even want to go back 800,000 years or so, but draw the line at a few 100 million……’cause things were different then….. truly funny, but there are some that truly believe that. The warmistas usually say 30 years, but that’s only because if fits their agenda with the current events. If it had cooled for about 30 years they’d sing a different tune…….oh wait….never mind that it was the same tune, just a different verse. All the while demonstrating their cherry picked time period is meaningless.
So, pick your poison.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1981/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1981/trend
But what really makes the discussion absurd, is that no one has determined what the optimal temp of the earth should be. Oh sure, we have geological periods known as this optimum or that optimum, but we don’t know that they were optimal. Me, I definitely vote against something in the temp range of the LIA, which seems to be the target temp of the warmistas, and I think it would be optimal if Greenland actually had some farm land and maybe some other places in Canada, but that’s just me thinking about feeding people. Oh sure, the Russians pretty much have the shipping lanes in the arctic tied up, now, but we can float boats there too, so I think we’d benefit also from an ice free arctic. But then, people would start flapping their arms wildly trying to convince people that we’d drown…….ignoring the fact that the overwhelming majority of land ice is in the Antarctic and it isn’t going anywhere. And the fact that Greenland is shaped like a bowl…….the rock underneath all that ice is 900 ft below sea level, so most of the water from melt wouldn’t go anywhere there either.
And all of that is pretending we could do something about it at any rate. Its nonsensical to believe we could. But, what the hell? It isn’t as if our generations were doing anything anyway. If we weren’t arguing over the weather, we’d be doing something really important like developing better I-phones and crap like that. Kind of a wild ride…….. going from watching man first step on the moon to having NASA charged with some bizarre outreach program, but we vote for those moonbats. And people lend credence to demonstrably mentally deficient psuedo-intellects such as Bill Nye and Al Gore. If we don’t kill future generations from sheer stupidity, we’ll certainly kill them with laughter and shame of their heritage. They will spend lifetimes looking for that ever elusive missing-link’s DNA just so they can reintroduce it in hopes to reverse the process.
Sorry….. that was about as serious of a response I could muster.

Robertvdl says:
August 30, 2011 at 3:41 pm
It was a joke.

R. Gates;
Hurricanes are part of the climate system, meaning multiple interrelated causes and effects, and you could no more separate greenhouse gases from the existence of hurricanes on earth then you could, separate the whales from the existence of oceans…they all infer each other. Again, no greenhouse gases on earth, no hurricanes.>>>
So…you’re saying that whales cause the oceans? Or that the oceans cause whales? Or that it would be impossible to take all the whales out of the oceans to see what happens as a result? You babble on about chaos theory and three body problems and then introduce an example so ridiculously inapropriate to either those concepts or the topic at hand that it ony shows how little you understand any of what you pretend to.
The real question is this: Do you know how silly you look and just don’t care, or are you so drunk on AGW nonsense that you don’t even know that you look silly?

davidmhoffer says:
August 31, 2011 at 9:57 am
R. Gates;
Hurricanes are part of the climate system, meaning multiple interrelated causes and effects, and you could no more separate greenhouse gases from the existence of hurricanes on earth then you could, separate the whales from the existence of oceans…they all infer each other. Again, no greenhouse gases on earth, no hurricanes.>>>
So…you’re saying that whales cause the oceans? Or that the oceans cause whales? Or that it would be impossible to take all the whales out of the oceans to see what happens as a result? You babble on about chaos theory and three body problems and then introduce an example so ridiculously inapropriate to either those concepts or the topic at hand that it ony shows how little you understand any of what you pretend to.
The real question is this: Do you know how silly you look and just don’t care, or are you so drunk on AGW nonsense that you don’t even know that you look silly.
_____
If you can’t understand how whales are related to oceans, and that in fact, even if you’d never seen a whale, you could infer the existence of whales by studying the oceans in detail, then its not surprising to me that other issues related to chaos and complexity are beyond you as well.
So too, the existence of hurricanes can be inferred from the totality of the climate system, such that, even if you’d never seen a hurricane, you’d understand that there would need to be some mechanism that removes heat from the equator to the poles and from the oceans to the atmosphere, and all the other dynamics that hurricanes are involved in, and so, you could infer the existence of hurricanes by studying the climate system. Obviously, (but perhaps not obvious to you), if there were no greenhouse gases, there’d be not much heat to move from the oceans, as they’d be frozen pretty solidly.

R. Gates says:
August 30, 2011 at 4:26 pm
Newflash to skeptics: Hurricane Irene, and every other hurricane that comes along between now and the end of time will be caused by greenhouse gas induced global warming. Guess what: no greenhouse warming, no hurricanes…oceans freeze solid…party over.

What is the primary greenhouse gas on Earth? This gas also covers 2/3rds of the earth as a liquid. The oceans are the very greenhouse “gas” you are talking about. They don’t warm themselves, the sun beats down on them and water evaporates to form the only greenhouse gas that matters, water vapor. Your example is meaningless because humans contribute virtually nothing to the overall cycle of water vapor into the atmosphere, and water vapor was not made out to be a gigantic political boogeyman. This was a strawman you just threw out there.
But of course, now, you get to “the issue”…

Now, to the issue: Since having zero level of greenhouse gases on earth would result in zero level of hurricanes, and some level of greenhouse gases give us the climate that allow some level of hurricane activity, is it possible that increased greenhouse gases beyond what we’ve seen in 800,000 years might cause some change in hurricane behavior? Hmmm…seems plausible, especially with the increases in ocean heat content and water vapor levels we’ve seen over the past few decades.

You cannot have zero level of greenhouse gasses on earth until the oceans freeze solid or boil away, it is not possible. It’s not possible because water is the primary greenhouse gas. The reason for this is that water has much more energy modes than CO2, and can thus hold more energy in the form of heat than CO2, to say nothing of it’s absorption spectrum difference. Now you’re supposing that increasing a minor greenhouse gas somehow has a primary effect on increasing water vapor creation in the atmosphere which is a primary driver of the creation of hurricanes (when the sun does most of that anyway)… and then supposing that the amount of increase of this minor greenhouse gas from humans (which is itself a subset of the overall increase of this gas concentration in the atmosphere) can be directly responsible for changes in hurricane behavior.
Do you not see how insane that sounds?
You see, everything you said relates fine if you’re talking about water. If humans were dumping hot water vapor into the air at a rate faster than the oceans already do, I might believe you. But you’re relating the effects of a subset of a subset of a minor player in the greenhouse gas spectrum, and then giving credence to the idea that altered behavior of storms the size of continents can be attributed to the human part of that equation. That is insane.

Jeremy says:
August 31, 2011 at 12:56 pm
“The oceans are the very greenhouse “gas” you are talking about.”
____
Take away all those little “bit player” CO2 molecules from the atmosphere, and we get a snow-ball earth, pretty quickly. CO2 is GAS the keeps this from happening. Water Vapor would quickly condense out of the atmosphere, and we’d get colder and colder and then pretty much all life on the surface would cease to exist. There’d probably be some life under the frozen ocean surface or deep underground in caves, etc. But without CO2 as a GAS in the atmosphere, earth turns to a snowball.

Some who doubt how quickly earth would turn to a snowball planet without the “bit player” CO2 in the atmosphere, should also read:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/co2-temperature.html
But of course, we’ve got at least one potential Presidential candidate who wouldn’t want you to listen to this propaganda put out by those disreputable climate scientists. How did Amerika come to this?

R Gates,
“And you do not understand complexity or chaos or the basic “three body problem”. Hurricanes are part of the climate system, meaning multiple interrelated causes and effects, and you could no more separate greenhouse gases from the existence of hurricanes on earth then you could, separate the whales from the existence of oceans…they all infer each other. Again, no greenhouse gases on earth, no hurricanes.”
So, greenhouse gases affect hurricanes because the climate system is ‘complex’ and ‘chaotic’? Well, if ghg’s are part of the complexity, then why must you conclude that they will increase hurricane intensity?
Actually, the opposite should be the case. Hurricanes are not driven by average temperature but by temperature gradients, which is why Mars and Jupiter have strong – super hurricane strength – winds, despite having lower average temperatures. Do you think that hurricanes would stop on a snowball Earth? With no greenhouse gas, heat would rapidly radiate away leading to frigidly cold night time temperatures compared to day time, and a very high temperature gradient. Strong winds would result, although there would be no rainfall, obviously.

R. Gates;
If you can’t understand how whales are related to oceans, and that in fact, even if you’d never seen a whale, you could infer the existence of whales by studying the oceans in detail, then its not surprising to me that other issues related to chaos and complexity are beyond you as well>>>
You just don’t quit, do you? Both feet shoved in your mouth and just open wider! Go for the knees! Go for the knees! I can tell by studying the oceans that whales exist, so I must conclude that by studying the climate that hurricanes exist? CO2 exists? You exist? What?
OK Mr. “I understand chaos and complexity and you don’t”, how about an explanation?
Your original inference was that whales relate to the ocean in the same way that CO2 relates to hurricanes. So…Let’s accept for a moment that changes in CO2 affect hurricane strength. Can you please explain how that is analogous to whales and the ocean? No twisted up references to vague theories of this that or the other thing that you pontificate about your expertise in but never produce a shred of evidence for. No appeals to authority, no links to irrelevant articles, not excuses about what I or anyone else is too stupid to understand.
Just an actual explanation, presented logically, in as many words as you need. Start with explaiing calculus if you have to , or the laws of motion, but stop with the sneering from atop the mountain upon the poor peasants unable to understand the Truth that your Intellect reveals. Put up or shut up.

[snip – over the top against Mr. Nye – Anthony]

Richard S Courtney August 31, 2011 at 4:43 pm Am I missing something?
Probably so. My point is: it’s the correlation of the variables itself that’s important. Nothing else is required. Judea’s book explains the why and how of that. IOW, your On its own correlation says nothing about causation is not true. The current causality algorithms use only correlation when identifying cause. Understanding of the underlying mechanism is nice but not important to the task.

Dave Worley says:
August 31, 2011 at 4:56 pm
Funny how R. Gates’ hypotheticals tend to stir folks up. He’s really good at it.
Hypotheticals are imagined. Why argue over someone’s fantasy? Might as well argue over religion.
————————————————————–
I think that some of the more “animated”, shall we say, threads on here have been about religion actually.
Don’t worry about the R Gates thing though. Several of us are contacted by a Project Manager at the Central Planning Dept. of Big Oil, Inc., as to who responds and when. It doesn’t take long for each individual and we get paid handsomely. Of course, we all suspect that he’s on their payroll too – this time running pretend, lousy straw man cover for Bill “the end is” Nye.
PS I was promised a bonus if I could get those last five words in my post.

R. Gates says:
August 31, 2011 at 5:12 pm
Davidmhoffer,
First, I don’t sneer. Secondly, if you can’t understand how a frozen planet, which earth would be without CO2, would not have hurricanes, then I seriously doubt anything I write would make any difference to your perspective or understanding of how the basic systems of the earth are all interrelated nor the greater truth that in reality no man, or woman, or whale, or even cloud exists without the interactions and existence of the whole.>>>>
1. Your comment that you don’t sneer is followed by a sneer.
2. You side stepped the question. Again.
3. You resorted to an answer that is predicated on me being too stupid to understand the answer.
Sneering as charged. Sidestepped the issue as charged. No answer of any sort predicated upon facts, logic, or reasonable explanation. As charged.

Is R. Gates Amusing?
No he is not. He is the epitomy of everything that is wrong with this debate. Don’t believe me? Engage a 17 year old in a discusssion of global warming and what causes it. You’ll get drivel for the most part, assumptions of fact without any thought toward the underlying facts and logic. And a lot of it will sound just like R. Gates. On this forum he gets exposed regularly for his complete lack of knowledge and repeated bluffing on science. He throws comments around as if he has some basis in fact, science, and authority, but when challenged he’s all smoke and mirrors. Ask him to justify any of his claims, and he retreats immediately into “well you don’t understand chaos theory so there’s no point trying to explain to you” or something similar. He’s got nothing but claims that sound like good stories, and that is all they are: stories.
On this forum he gets debunked. I don’t know if he posts in other forums, but many like him do, and they represent the majority of commenters out there, that’s why the average 17 year old thinks he makes sense.
Debunk his bull every chance you get. Because every so often one of those 17 year olds googles something and just might get the chance to read an honest explanation to his totaly bogus claims.

stevo says:
August 31, 2011 at 7:53 pm
[Snip. Don’t post like an insulting idiot. You are commenting on our host’s site. ~dbs, mod.]
_____________________________________________________
I caught that post, as I was watching Daryl Hannah on the O’Reilly Factor.
She had more credibility than Bill Nye !!!!

James Sexton says:
August 31, 2011 at 7:31 pm
“Sure everything interacts, but, not everything is necessary for the flora and fauna.”
____
Alright, let’s break this down a bit, despite the rather gross generalization, (i.e. “everything” is pretty general, don’t you agree?)I think I can sort of get what you’re trying to insinuate.
First of all, do you agree that we need liquid flowing water? If you answered yes, then of course, behind that statement is a whole host of other things that brought about liquid flowing water in this part of the universe, such as the explosion of a supernova long before our sun existed that created that wonderful oxygen atom that of course, along with hydrogen, makes up water…so those wonderful flora and fauna needed supernova to have existed…and perhaps that’s part of “everything” that you never even thought about, but I digress.
Let’s go back to flowing liquid water on earth. Do you agree that flora and fauna need that? Of course the answer is yes. Now, the odd thing about water as a vapor is that it does make a wonderful greenhouse gas that, along with the other greenhouse gases, helps to keep our planet warm enough to have liquid water on the surface, but, it is a condensing greenhouse gas, and is quickly removed from the atmosphere when temperatures cool. So much so, that, in the absence of the major non-condensing greenhouse gas, CO2, the water would continue to condense and the earth’s surface would continue to cool, and the atmosphere would get more and more dry, (not unlike the center of Antarctica by the way) until the earth was locked into a snowball state. Hence the reason we should all respect that little “trace” gas called CO2.
But back to your flora and fauna statement. The entire biosphere can be considered as a system of interrelated pieces, but some pieces are a bit more important than others, such that we have key species that support entire ecosystems. These species need not be the largest, but they are key in terms of the exchange of energy. One such key species would be plankton, which support entire ocean ecosystems. Take away plankton, and the ocean’s ecosystem would be in peril as the flow of energy (as food) would collapse.
So, is “everything” necessary for flora and fauna? Like any house of cards, you might successfully remove a few here and there, but take away a few of the key cards, or enough other ones, and down it comes. From supernova to water and CO2, these little pieces of “everything” are critical to flora and fauna existing on earth,

Mr. Hoffer,
Your inability to understand even the most basic of physics, such as the difference between condensing and non-condensing greenhouse gases>>>>
And once again.
1. Sneer.
2. Side step the question.
3. Posit yet another new claim with no explanation, no backup material, nothing.
So explain Mr Gates. You can’t seem to step up to your own BS about whales and oceans being somehow an analogy for Co2 and hurricanes, I just destroued your ridiculous claims about CO2 and snowball earth with theh ACTUAL physics, backed it up with the ACTUAL facts from the ACTUAL temperature record and the ACTUAL cyclone energy trends and guess what? MY PHYSICS AND ACTUAL REALWORD MEASUREMENTS MATCH!
And what is your stinging retort? Having neatly and totaly sidestepped the “well whales and oceans are like Co2 and hurricanes” challenge to explain yourself, you posited instead the ridiculous “well, if you don’t even understand thata planet with no CO2 turns into a snowball” which I also tore to shreds with facts and data that you don’t even TRY to refute, now you coming back with…
“well, your inability to understand the most basic of physics, such as the difference between condensing and non-condensing greenhouse gases”
Ohmigod! Sneer! Side step! Posit a new claim equally ridiculous, equally full of it, and pntificate from on high how stupid I am.
SIR
The only stupid person is the one who would read your constant sneers, constant side stepping of the question, and constant introduction of yet another new, off topic, sneeering remark that has nothing at all to do with the previous discussion, and come away believeing that your eyes are blue. Because the only way your eyes are blue is if you are 1 quart bull sh*t low.
You haven’t answered my first point, my second, or my third. When you’ve grown the balls to actually answer any of those directly, with even a modicum of facts and logic, we can then get to your totaly offensive and comepletely without foundation comment about what I do or no not understand about condensing and non condensing gases. And no, you don’t get to suggest I go first, because you’ve had THREE opportunities to substanitate a SINGLE one of your claims and all you’ve done is change the subject, sneer, and claim superior intellect that makes engaging further not worth your time.
Tell me Sir Gates. If it isn’t worth your time, if I am so stupid that it isn’t worth it to you to even try and explain it to me, then why do you keep changing the subject? If I’m that dumb, you’d think you could provide an explanation that makes me look as dumb as you claim I am.
Countdown to yet another change in subject….three…two…

“Like any house of cards, you might successfully remove a few here and there, but take away a few of the key cards, or enough other ones, and down it comes.”
One of the advantages of the human mind is its ability to view (and rotate) objects solely within our imaginations in three dimensions. That advantage may also be used by manipulative individuals to conjure images such as a “house of cards” climate system, with “tipping points” looming on the horizon.
Too bad the house of cards is a poor metaphor for our planet. It assumes that the climate and the ecosystem that adapts with it are inherently unstable. The many peaks and valleys in the climate record (and the fossil record) indicate that it just is not so.
Notice also that Gates’ statement quoted above includes sublime imagery of humans “taking away” things from the planet. The imagery skillfully implies that we are a destructive lot.
One simple example that I like to bring forward when confronted by folks attempting to portray humans in that manner is the wonderful gardens that most folks tend at their homes. They range from simple decorative shrubbery to some of the most extrordinary works of living art. Regardless of their level of complexity, all are an attempt to improve and beautify, not destroy, our world. There are too many similar examples in art, architecture, music, etc to name, and they are real, not imagined. That is our real nature, so don’t let any cynic get away with using hypothetical imagery of a destructive mankind to convince you otherwise. It’s simply not so.

@ Philip N.
Phillip, it is the local land use that effect the glaciers more than anything else. As you know, ice, especially glacial ice, is in constant motion. As such, there will always be sublimation and melt. But, something needs to replace the loss of ice, and that is the cause of the loss. Nothing is replacing the ice. Local land use changes and normal as well as abnormal variations in the weather patterns cause this.
Coincidentally, specific to Kilimanjaro, it seems the weather patterns have oscillated back to replacing the snow and ice.
Here’s a couple of articles you may find interesting.
“Vertical wall retreat that governs the retreat of plateau glaciers is irreversible, and changes in 20th century climate have not altered their continuous demise. Rapid retreat of slope glaciers at the beginning of the 20th century implies a strong departure from steady state conditions during this time. This strong imbalance can only be explained by a sudden shift in climate, which is not observed in the early 20th century. Results suggest glaciers on Kilimanjaro are merely remnants of a past climate rather than sensitive indicators of 20th century climate change.”
http://europa.agu.org/?view=article&uri=/journals/gl/gl0616/2006GL027084/2006GL027084.xml
http://europa.agu.org/?view=article&uri=/journals/jd/jd1103/2010JD014712/2010JD014712.xml

Richard S Courtney says:
September 1, 2011 at 6:07 am
The vicar and the gardener…..
Thanks for that bit of amusing (and artful) imagery!
Grins…..

I almost quit reading when the hypocritical fascist blowhard was mentioned, but I’ve learned to take strides – often immense – in putting aside certain fallacies, paradigms, or conflicts in hopes of finding genius within, so long as the errors aren’t too dizzying, massive, or dishonest. And this time, though certainly not always so, I was pleasantly surprised to find a reasonable rundown.
Though it is like you said, Ryan – Fox knew quite well what they were doing in broadcasting this as bait. Generally I detest their psychomanipulative techniques (and yes, other networks use them also), but I certainly see a glaring positive in this use of that technique in that is exposed those who latched on to this incredibly poor argument of Bill Nye’s as having their rears superglued to their bandwagon, even if John Wayne Gacy hopped in the driver’s seat.

I went to school with bill nye at Cornell. He was an oddball then and nothing about him seems to have changed. Having him advocate for cagw is really good for those who are on the other side of the policy debate. He is way way out of his depth