There’s been some wild claims out there the past few days since BEST released their results in a media blitzkrieg on October 20th prior to peer review. But this one from Grist writer Jess Zimmerman has to rank up there as the most bizarre – ever.
She writes: (emphasis mine)
This raises the question: What will it take to convince deniers? What if they burned up in their shoes, would that do it? What if God came down and drew a hockey stick graph on the wall? What if Dumbledore explained it using his Pensieve? Look, if science doesn’t work, it’s going to have to be God, magic, or spontaneous combustion; that’s just a fact of nature.
Umm… news flash Jess. The BEST data shows that the world had been warming since 1800, long before we even had Tyndall and Arrhenius looking at CO2, long before the industrial revolution, and long before SUV’s, Exxon, modern living and the many other things attributed to causing warming appeared on the scene.
So far I have not seen any correlation with increased spontaneous human combustion.
Perhaps Jess missed the things that I agree with. I’m sure she’ll take the time to read my Agreements and Disagreements Essay and append her article.
Have a look at some of the other work from Jess by clicking on her Grist image, it’s a real eye opener. So is her “she writes” page.
h/t to Tom Nelson
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UPDATE: Reader Keith points out this blatant lie from Jess Zimmerman in another recent story:
Sorry Jess, I call bullshit on you: From NASA Earth Observatory:
In September 2011, sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean declined to the second-lowest extent on record. Satellite data from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) showed that the summertime ice cover narrowly avoided a new record low.
How do people like this get to be writers?
I’ve emailed Dr. Walt Meier at NSIDC to ask him to ask Grist to make a correction. We’ll see how interested either are in truth.
==============================================================
UPDATE2: Within 15 minutes of emailing him, Dr. Walt Meier of NSIDC posted this on the Grist article:
The statement “The Arctic now has ice-free summers, 90 years in advance of predictions.” is most definitely flat-out wrong. The Arctic has not had less than 4 million square kilometers, in our data and any other source one cares to look at, even at the summer minimum.While extent and thickness are decreasing and ice-free summers are certainly possible, even probable, in much less than 90 years, we are not there yet. Not even close.
Walt Meier
Research Scientist
National Snow and Ice Data Center
University of Colorado
Good for him. Thank you Dr. Meier. Now we just need to alert the Grist editors, WUWT readers let ’em know please! http://www.grist.org/contact/contact-us
March 20th?
REPLY: Typo, fixed, thanks – Anthony
Maybe it’s a trial balloon: “deniers need to be exterminated.”
Is Jess Mike Roddy’s long-lost child?
Good lord – these people really do have soup for brains.
Seems to me Ms. Zimmermans’ head is about to explode – spontaneously. Does that count, and would it prove her thesis? Nah. It would make a mess in the kitchen tho.
Oh dear. Another one.
“What if God came down and drew a hockey stick graph on the wall?”
Yup. That would do it. But until then try claiming the graph referenced in this post proves the globe is warming.
http://climateaudit.org/2011/10/22/first-thoughts-on-best/#comment-307402
To me it says: Some stations are warming, some aren’t and it would be really interesting if we knew why CO2 was so damn selective!
From Jess’ website ( http://www.shewrites.com/profile/JessZimmerman )
Who I am:
I make words into sentences for people who will pay me.
Ideally I would write for Hitchhiker’s Guide Trivia, Songs I Like, Defunct TV Shows, Futile Rage, Hair Color Tips, Weird Comic Books, and Strong Opinions About Adventure Games Monthly.
Failing that I prefer to write about science, nerd things, and ladybusiness.
I wonder what long-time Gristophile Daniel Coffey is thinking about this?
There is a lot invested in AGW, a great deal of need on the part of Warmists to participate in the remaking of the world. Hence a bit of hysteria upon rejection.
What would it take? Well, REAL science would do it, but there’s precious little of that in climate science these days.
I take it some are praying to the great co2 god that deniers are taken first. That co2 must be really rather smart and selective as well as being powerful. Oh oh, I feel a warm spot on the back of my head, whew! It was only the sun shine coming through the hatch. It does get hot down here in the tropics! TG for jets, so one can jet back and forth between the tropics and the land of the delusion up North where it is not so warm.
I wonder if people like Jess ever consider the fact that there are those who know more about things than she does. I wonder if she ever wondered why there are some scientists who say one thing, and others who disagree. I wonder… but does she?
Just because someone is an “expert” doesn’t even remotely make them correct about anything. I wonder how someone can be a “journalist” and never consider the other side of any given story. The whole concept of a “climate scientist” is new, it’s invented, it’s recent, and it would be insane to believe that they are all getting it right, all the time.
I wonder if people like Jess ever consider that practically everyone on one side of an issue have certain political leanings, while those on the other side have opposing political leanings… What would it take to have her consider that AGW believers want to take money from the first world and give it to the third world, while “deniers” think the third world should be encouraged to develop themselves using inexpensive, abundant energy… I wonder what it would take to make people like Jess stop repeating everything they’re told and actually start investigating facts…
And finally, I wonder what it would be like to live in a black and white, wrong and right, “truth” vs. “denier” reality, where you can write stuff like that, completely secure in the knowledge that “deniers” are uneducated dolts, while believers are enlightened, compassionate, intelligent evolved beings.
It may already have started:
” A man who burned to death in his home died as a result of spontaneous combustion, an Irish coroner has ruled. “
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15032614
Grist, which I’m shocked to still find in “print”, is about as serious and reputable as The Onion… only they don’t intend it to be so. Really, this is journalism akin to Creem and Tiger Beat in gravitas. Next Week: Scott Baio reveals his Eco-Turn Offs and the Fonz goes vegan for his next jacket.
Spontaneous human combustion has long since be debunked. Yes, with enough body fat, you can get a human being to burn at low temperatures. A little heat from a per-existing fire liquifies the fat and catches fire which will liquify more fat, etc. There are films of burning human corpses that are not being burned by the use of gasoline or other accelerator from reputable sources like police departments. Good grief, what is next. Ghosts, dakini, or other spirits. I though Keynes said they only effect the stock market, not the weather.
Since every visit by Gore and every international meeting trying to control CO2 is accompanied by unseasonally cold weather, it would seem that the Almighty has already given us some indication as to what’s going on!
Jess Zimmerman doesn’t seem to have any type of science background at all. Her “science” pieces seem purely political.
And she doesn’t seem to have much of a following. She seems to get 0 – 6 comments per post. Her post about Anthony Watts has 4 comments and 3 of them are defending Anthony.
Invoking God, now, are they? Well, it had to happen, sooner or later. Climatology has always been one part Science, two parts Religion, and three parts Ultra-Left Politics. Think Marx in a mitre wearing a lab coat.
/straight line
That’s hard to reconcile with Watts’ past statements. In a document he prepared for a think tank, Watts had written, “Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and unidirectionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant ‘global warming’ in the 20th century.”
i think she’s invented a new logical fallacy- the ad dumbledore.
good to see she has a deep well of worldly experience from which to draw her metaphors.
profound.
“What if God came down and drew a hockey stick graph on the wall?”
As far as I know, the only time God wrote on a wall was to pronounce doom on the Chaldeans on the night that the Persians conquered the city of Babylon. And he didn’t draw, he wrote a message. This is where we get the expression “the writing on the wall”. Maybe Jess sees the writing on the wall and knows that the jig is up. In fact, maybe Jess Zimmerman should read the Bible book of Daniel, the meaning of the writing on the wall can apply to the global warming empire.
thanks Jess, for opening your mouth and removing all doubt….
“Dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It’s just not really widely reported.”
Spoken by David St. Hubbins, in the documentary This Is Spinal Tap.
So there you have it, stated on the record, by someone who has witnessed it happening first-hand. As Zimmerman rightly states: it’s a fact of nature. And that’s a fact.
I’m not worried about spontaneous human combustion. I have Blue Cross.
But I do keep a bucket of water nearby.
I used to find offensive their using of the word “deniers” to label the skeptics, but not anymore. The more they use it, the more hysterical they sound like and that doesn’t help their cause.
If all the CO2 goes into the atmosphere how is limestone formed?
That is going to rank down there with the media people who decided that this change in temps has also caused the alleged shrinkage in animal life that Nature magazine was promoting lately.
The problems with sarcasm as a rhetorical device are that (1) it is misinterpreted so often that the critic’s credibility is challenged (as was that of Jonathan Swift with “A Modest Proposal”), (2) it is often wielded against straw men, who are far more readily recognized as such that one might suspect, and (3) the arguments often degenerate into ad hominem attacks which evade the real issues.
Anthony said:
“The BEST data shows that the world had been warming since 1800, long before we even had Tyndall and Arrhenius looking at CO2, long before the industrial revolution…”
—-
We can all agree that 1800 was long before Tyndall and Arrhenius, but I’m sure you know that the Industrial Revolution is ususally cited as beginning well before that date.
And if you’d believe some of those who would posit that we’ve left the Holocene and have entered the Anthropocene, the more extreme of these views such as those of William Ruddiman would say humans began altering the nature of the Holocene climate thousands of years ago with large-scale agriculture practices.
REPLY:re industrial revolution – Show me how much manufacturing capacity and automobiles and oil use there was between 1800 and 1900 compared to 1900-2000 – Anthony
Ah, the old reference-to-imaginary-fantasy-character-trick, clever, clever, if you’re already in an insane asylum, otherwise doh that’s where you end up if you’re using it in the outside world.
:p
I don’t think you can blame this on ignorance any more…………….
At work, I analyze samples for brominated fire retardants (Polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs)). They’re everywhere in the environment. They’re especially high in house dust and sometimes in fish tissue. Judging from the widespread detections of this environmental contaminant, I’d say no one has to worry about spontaneously combusting in the not-to-distant future. LOL
Slightly off-topic: While researching Ms. Zimmerman, I came across the following which you might find interesting. It discusses the relationship between CO2 and flooding in the US.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02626667.2011.621895
and
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=3006&from=rss_home
That run up from 1813 to 1827 looks mighty steep. The black line looks like about .75 degrees C, with a minimum change of 0 degrees C and a maximum change of about 1.4 degrees c. And it occurred in a smaller window than the .9 degrees C since about 1980. And that run down from 1800 to 1813 looks pretty steep too. Hopefully we won’t get the maximum down from that. Brrr.
We can all agree that 1800 was long before Tyndall and Arrhenius, but I’m sure you know that the Industrial Revolution is ususally cited as beginning well before that date.
And if you’d believe some of those who would posit that we’ve left the Holocene and have entered the Anthropocene, the more extreme of these views such as those of William Ruddiman would say humans began altering the nature of the Holocene climate thousands of years ago with large-scale agriculture practices.
REPLY:re industrial revolution – Show me how much manufacturing capacity and automobiles and oil use there was between 1800 and 1900 compared to 1900-2000 – Anthony
___
Seems you want to change the metric here? Didn’t know you were discussing types or quantities of manufacturing. Of course the revolution continued to accelerate after 1800, but it began well before. You always seem to want to aim for precision, and if there are any youngsters reading this site, we wouldn’t want them go away thinking the Industrial Revolution started after 1800, when in fact is started several decades before that.
REPLY: Still waiting for your to show me that data I requested – Anthony
She does have a point. Perhaps cremation should be banned and in the interests of carbon capture all bodies buried six foot under.
I wonder if she helped draft, the British climate Act 2008, she’s right out there email: space cadets.gov/planet-zog ………………. !
Hey Anthony,
I went to this Zimmerman woman’s blog – the usual spittle. But, what about these solar roof shingles she’s talking about? Is that for real? Says it would cost about $11-12,000 for the average roof and converter box. Is this going to take off? I’m wondering, what’s the catch?
I’ve been wanting to talk to you about fuel cells – we studied them for school, and they seem to be so wonderful. I’ll wait til you feel like blogging it. But here’s my question – is it possible for say, a city, to buy up houses around town, tear them down, put in these fuel cells, and power the surrounding neighborhood? Is that crazy?
gnomish says:
Viewers of South Park will probably recognize this as the Wookie Defense…
I meant, come on! It’s Dumbledore! Who doesn’t love Dumbledore?! Well, besides Death Eaters…
And, for the record, I want to be combusted when I die, and scattered over my compost pile like Lee Hays. Google it.
Dear Jess,
God, magic, spontaneous human combustion, being struck down by angel Gabriel, Dumbledore and the hockey stick graph were all invented by committees of cookie people in government, religion or entertainment industries who thought it would be a good idea to make society stupid, spend money on crap or easier to tax and control. Fact of nature, you know.
“What will it take to convince deniers?”
Evidence.
Which explains why those questioning the AGW story are not the real deniers at all.
In any case, when I see that graph I see, as I always have, the rebound out of the LIA. But then, I am not a LIA denier or a LIAR (LIA Revisionist).
R. Gates, you MUST be joking… Really!
The industrial revolution might have “started” when humanity first discovered fire, or the wheel… but the real issue here is the difference in impact. Prior to 1800 the impact of our industry was negligible, with a few isolated toys scattered around. Post 1800, a boom of manufacturing, energy use, etc. began to make an impact. See?
juanita says:
October 24, 2011 at 12:08 pm
“I went to this Zimmerman woman’s blog – the usual spittle. But, what about these solar roof shingles she’s talking about? Is that for real? Says it would cost about $11-12,000 for the average roof and converter box. Is this going to take off? I’m wondering, what’s the catch? ”
At the moment you pay about 3.60 USD for a Watt-peak of solar performance, and you get 200 Watt-peak per square meter max (assuming an optimistic but possible 20% efficiency). So that’s 720 USD per square meter. 12,000 USD would then buy you 16.6 square meter, or 3.32 kWpeak.
If your average roof in America has that size, then she could be correct. But I thought you had slightly larger homes in the USA. 😉
(And I hope I didn’t botch the numbers but my results sound plausible).
Gates, the industrial revolution started then, but the issue is one of quantity and timing. Are you seriously going to try and claim that the minuscule industrialisation of parts of the west in even the 1890s could emit as much CO2 as the mass-industry of the 1940s?
1850 “ish” is generally accepted to be the start of the second, and modern, industrial revolution. Steam ships, railroads, electricity and the internal combustion engine (a little later) changing, dramatically and for the better, the lot of the common man. Just survey the technology and brutality of the wars in that era from Napoleonic (muskets, marching, sailing ships), the American Civil War (railroads, some repeating rifles, MGs, ironsides and ironclads, steam power), to WWI (heavy artillery, tanks, dreadnoughts, motor vehicles, aircraft).
A lot transpired in the 100 years from Waterloo to Verdun. But not nearly as much as from Verdun to today. For good or ill, the US military has rendered “conventional” warfare an anachronism.
@edbarbar says at 11:53 am:
“ That run up from 1813 to 1827 looks mighty steep. “
Perhaps this was due to an unprecedented spike in spontaneous human combustion that led to 19th century authors such as Frederick Marryat and Charles Dickens using it in their novels.
Or maybe not. 😉
juanita says:
October 24, 2011 at 12:08 pm
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about fuel cells – we studied them for school, and they seem to be so wonderful.”
Fuel cells have been around for 100 to 150 years and they have one problem, they need pure hydrogen or the elcectrodes will deteriorate. Attempts at making fuel cells that can consumer Hydrocarbons have, by now, not resulted in long lasting fuel cells. There are fuel cells like Molten Carbonate Fuel cells that consume hydrocarbons but they break down too quickly. The carbon pollutes the electrodes, rendering the whole system too expensive.
So the problem is producing the H2 cheaply enough, and storing it – it diffuses through steel tanks over time and makes the steel brittle, leading to risk of explosion and tank breakage.
I think the world population was around 1 billion in 1800…
…now it’s around 7 billion
Providing that they were driving SUV’s, coal power plants, solar and windmill factories, and asphalt roads….
…..The effect in 1800 should be around 1/7th………..
Which explains why temperatures have been rising since the Little Ice Age………../snark
RobWansbeck @ October 24, 2011 at 10:10 am
That Doctor should take up Climate Science. His conclusion is akin to “I can’t find any other explanation, so it must be CO2”. I’m guessing he hasn’t seen any documentaries demonstrating the effects of combustion of fat in a torso, which strongly indicate that SHC is a myth; there’s nothing “spontaneous” about it.
Anthony and R. Gates,
I saw an article last year or year before in Pseudo-Scientific American re ice core data going back 8000 – 12,000 years and more, that supposedly showed CO2 increasing about the time people crawled out of their caves during the current inter-glacial warming and began to irrigate and farm. Even showed decrease in CO2 during the two great plagues in cir 450 and 1350 AD. Even if this is so:
1. does not prove warming is due to CO2, maybe people and CO2 are due to warming, there is logic to such an argument,
2. even if it did prove AGW, it would simply prove that to reduce CO2 and global warming we need to get rid of a lot of people, or at least have them stop eating and heating their dwellings.
Those plagues wiped out 40-50% of the world population at those times if I remember the data in the article. How about that for a solution to AGW?
Jess Zimmerman has this pearler too:
“The Arctic now has ice-free summers, 90 years in advance of predictions”
Which Arctic might this be?
if science doesn’t work, it’s going to have to be God, magic, or spontaneous combustion; that’s just a fact of nature.
Did you ever consider that the scientists could be wrong! No then why not? If you accept everything you are told then you are in for a big shock!
Jess Zimmerman’s Friends (2) [ My bold ]
http://www.shewrites.com/friends/JessZimmerman
Could it be a “curse”?
Jim G says:
October 24, 2011 at 12:51 pm
Anthony and R. Gates,
“Those plagues wiped out 40-50% of the world population at those times if I remember the data in the article. How about that for a solution to AGW?”
____
Not being a believer in Catastrophic AGW…I’ll take my chances with higher CO2 rather than killing 3 or 4 billion people. 🙂
Maybe she meant spontaneously combusting pirates?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#Pirates_and_global_warming
juanita,
In addition to Dirk’s comments:
1) There are some issues with “distributed” generation concerning load balance. Since I’m not an electrical engineer, I can’t provide a good explaination, but as I understand the basics, demand (load) has to equal generation. This is a constant balancing act for a utility. Adding additional sources of generation to the system also adds complexity to your systems control. This is one of the issues Smart Grid technology is expected to address. The other big hurdle to “distributed” generation are zoning related. It is going to be very difficult for anyone to get such a facility permitted for. People don’t like having a substation in their neighborhood now. Imagine if someone wanted to place a fuel cell or micro gas turbine in their neighborhood. “Not next to my house!”
2) On fuel cells in general – A few years ago at my niece’s wedding, one of my brothers neighbors, who was an engineer working for DOE, was telling me that it was unlikely we would ever see fuel cell powered cars. This was soon after Pres. Bush had announced $1 billion in funding for them. The reason was what Dirk pointed out – it is very hard to contain H2. In order for fuel cell vehicles to replace gasoline ones, the nation’s entire fuel distribution infrastructure would have to be replaced. Even with that, there were serious questions over the practicality and viability of a H2 fuel infrastructure.
Or, you know, maybe three of four orders of magnitude less. What are a few zeros between friends?
Dave N says @ 12:39 pm
“ That Doctor should take up Climate Science. “
The guy’s unlucky. In the UK coroners are frequently legal professionals. If this had been the case I would have predicted a prosperous future leading climate science inquiries.
To add to the Industrial Revolution discussion, I know this part of England really well and it is generally accepted there, and throughout the UK I think, that Ironbridge in Shropshire is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. Not sure how the rest of the world views this.
It would seem from this article, that it sort of started in 1709, but didn’t get going, in that locale at least, until the latter part of the 18th Century:
http://www.timetravel-britain.com/articles/towns/ironbridge.shtml
I’ll be interested in seeing R. Gates’ response to Anthony on the ramp-up rate.
“REPLY:re industrial revolution – Show me how much manufacturing capacity and automobiles and oil use there was between 1800 and 1900 compared to 1900-2000 – Anthony”
REPLY: Still waiting for your to show me that data I requested – Anthony
UK coal production 1700-1900
1700 : 2.7 million tonnes
1750 : 4.7 million tonnes
1800 : 10 million tonnes
1850 : 50 million tonnes
1900 : 250 million tonnes
Started from a low base, as the modern world and everything in it had to be invented along the way.
First off, at the risk of sounding like an imperialist British patriot to you Colonial types, what we now call “the Industrial Revolution” started in Britain around the year 1750, generally taken to be a very rough date when the various technologies, engineering skills and political, economic and military power came together to make the investment in plant, coalmines, railways, factories worth the effort.
With a growing overseas empire to provide cheap raw materials and a vast captive market for finished goods, the wealthy of this country saw the possibility of limitless wealth, so invested the profits made from the Atlantic slave trade, the sugar and tobacco plantations of the West Indies and the American colonies in the new industries being established in the Midlands and North of England.
(Next time you are in the UK, go visit the cities of the Midlands, Lancashire, Yorkshire the North East and see the giant factory buildings which predate that little colonial skirmish of the late 18th century you Americans drone on and on about) 😉
This was around the time when it became possible to produce large quantities of cast iron (At the Coalbrookdale works of Abraham Darby) Of course, this didnt come about spontaneously but was the result of decades of work going back to 1678 by the Darby family in the Coalbrookdale area and centuries of small scale steel production before that. There is archeological evidence from the 8th century, that Saxon founders were producing carbon steel for weaponry.
By 1750, steam engines, made from cheap mass produced cast iron and steel were taking over from water power and driving newly invented machinery in the aforesaid giant Emglish factories
First dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of factories sprang up all over the UK. All with tall stone bulit chimnies belching smoke from thousands of steam engines. Smoke from the millions of hearths in newly built houses for the workers, and of course coal smoke from the thousands of trains running on the tens of thousands of miles of UK railways laid in a frenzy up to the 1880s.
Up to WW2, UK industry, transport and home heating was coal based, since then coal has given way to oil, same as anywhere else, but we were the first to drag ourselves out of the Middle Ages and into the Modern World. (Of course, we had to invent it first!)
The thing that puzzles me about the Decadal Land Surface Temperature Graph above is how little warming is noted to the coal fired 1800-1940 period compared to post 1940 period when coal as a major industrial and transport fuel has been in rapid decline.
Perhaps it would more accurate to divide the Industrial Revolution into stages, one leading into the next and making the next stage possible:
The UK was well and truely industrialised by 1850 and memorys of an agricultural past was fading fast. Hence why England lost it’s folk tales and songs from the land. Most folk tales, songs etc in England only date as far back as Victorian times.
Apart from tales which had been written down long ago, such as Robin Hood and the King Arthur legends which could hardly be called folktales.
Didn’t South Park did an episode that indirectly “linked” ‘spon-com’ with global warming!!!?
I think I found another “Quote of the Week!” over at SkS. In a discussion on the BEST paper, a mod made the following ‘mod comment’ on one of my posts about the ‘tropical hotspot’:
“With the introduction of this well-known denialist meme Dale stands revealed. The “hot spot” mentioned is known to be a signal of any warming, not AGW-specific warming.”
Since the ‘tropical hotspot’ hasn’t been found to exist through numerous studies via numerous methods, does this mean SkS is now advocating a position that ‘No global warming has occurred by any method, natural or human caused’? Hahaha.
[If the link is not acceptable, it can be removed]
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?p=2&t=90&&n=1071#66059
[SNIP: Tim, I’m not sure where that came from, but you’ll thank me for this. Really. -REP]
Seems you want to change the metric here? Didn’t know you were discussing types or quantities of manufacturing. Of course the revolution continued to accelerate after 1800, but it began well before. You always seem to want to aim for precision, and if there are any youngsters reading this site, we wouldn’t want them go away thinking the Industrial Revolution started after 1800, when in fact is started several decades before that.
REPLY: Still waiting for your to show me that data I requested – Anthony
_____
Anthony,
You asked: Show me how much manufacturing capacity and automobiles and oil use there was between 1800 and 1900 compared to 1900-2000 .
I don’t even know where to find such data, and not sure what it has to do with when the Industrial Revolution started anyway. If the point you want to make is one of relative levels of CO2 emitted by industrial activity (including automobiles), I will easily and readily concede the point that far more (exponentially more) CO2 was emitted in 1800-1900, and then again from 1900-2000, than prior to 1800. But on the basic historical point of WHEN the Industrial Revolution started, it was prior to 1800– which was the only point I was making. Most people have no idea, for example, that the first automobile (steam powered mind you) was made in about 1770, far earlier than our dear Henry Ford began the mass production of automobiles here in the U.S.
Archonix says:
October 24, 2011 at 12:23 pm
Gates, the industrial revolution started then, but the issue is one of quantity and timing. Are you seriously going to try and claim that the minuscule industrialisation of parts of the west in even the 1890s could emit as much CO2 as the mass-industry of the 1940s?
_____
I never made such a claim, nor would I. My only point was one of when the Industrial Revolution began– nothing more. Now some would like to see the years prior to 1800 as a kind of 1st stage of the Industrial Revolution, with the massive industrialization that occurred after as the next stages, when of course CO2 emissions rapidly increased, and then in the mid-20th century, when CO2 emissions abolutely went off the chart compared to the miniscule increases prior to 1800. I readily concede all of this. But if someone asks me about the beginnings of the industrial revolution, I will certainly direct them back prior to 1800, as all good history texts on the subject do.
But back to the 2nd point I made about the Holocene vs. the Anthropocene. People like William Ruddiman will argue that humans started altering the composition of the Holocene atmosphere in significant ways far far prior to the Industrial Revolution with mass agriculture uses.
Sorry, Anthony, but I have to say I’m disappointed to see you even suggest that Dr. Walter Meier might not be interested in the truth. I don’t think he agrees with us, but he’s willing to talk to us and answer our questions, clearly separating him from the rest of “that crowd”. I can state with absolute certainty that at least one reader appreciates his input!
Best,
Frank
REPLY: Yeah you are right, I’m pretty angry with being lied to and abused by Dr. Richard Muller. I shouldn’t let that affect my relationship with others. Dr. Meier has been very upfront and reasonable. – Anthony
To those arguing about the Industrial Revolution:
Did coal smoke cool the earth because of the massive blanket of aerosols? Or did coal warm the earth because of all the soot? Ignoring both to focus on CO2 is incorrect.
A remarkable word, “Anthropocene”. A logical “begs the question” position encapsulated entire in a single pseudo-scientific neologism!
Armagh Observatory says:
October 24, 2011 at 3:43 pm
“UK coal production 1700-1900
1700 : 2.7 million tonnes
1750 : 4.7 million tonnes
1800 : 10 million tonnes
1850 : 50 million tonnes
1900 : 250 million tonnes
Started from a low base, as the modern world and everything in it had to be invented along the way.”
Actually when it comes to coal, like oil, you have to think about what is not calculated, which is the historical use of coal to heat ordinary homes, especially during winter, and during all year round for cooking food.
Around 1750 there’s believed to have been between 6.5-8.5 million people in England, Wales and Scotland. You can check that with google easy enough and with the census place.
During that time there has been established that Britain shipped a lot of coal to the rest of Europe, and the rest of the world.
Now did the millions of people of England, Wales and Scotland use less than one pound of coal per year per person for heating and for cooking food during that time you think?
So what’s of interest is how much they actually used during that time, imported coal included, compared to how much it then lessened during the 20th century since the coal production today is way less then it was in 1905 and even the coal used is less. To quote decc.gov.uk: “UK coal producers believe that they can maintain their contribution to national energy needs at around 18 Million tonnes a year to at least 2020.”
Yet coal and coal production in UK is used to blame for crazy peoples alarmist imagination.
Aaaargh! We’re all going to burst into flames.
We’re doomed.
[snip. Read the site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]
“What if God came down and drew a hockey stick graph on the wall?”
Well, in a way, that’s what actually happened. God created Mann, and Mann created The Hockey Stick.
You know, the same way God created the “Boeing” (hah!) 747. 🙂
R. Gates says;
“Seems you want to change the metric here? Didn’t know you were discussing types or quantities of manufacturing. Of course the revolution continued to accelerate after 1800, but it began well before. You always seem to want to aim for precision, and if there are any youngsters reading this site, we wouldn’t want them go away thinking the Industrial Revolution started after 1800, when in fact is started several decades before that.”
The industrial revolution is generally credited to have started in the U.K., mid 1700’s. Supporting this belief is reported data of Great Britain’s annual birth and death rates that remained, on average, stable at 30-35/1,000 until 1760. After 1760, death rate began to fall, while birth rate remained stable until the 1800’s. By 1820 or so, the annual mortality rate dropped to around 20/1,000. Whatever the real cause for decreased mortality, the industrial revolution likely played some or a major role. Therefore, it can not be said the industrial revolution started before 1760. It didn’t spread to Europe until early 1800’s and not the US until some time after that.
More to the point about when the industrial revolution started taken from Alvaro S. Pereira’s “When Did Modern Economic Growth Really Start? – The Empirics of Malthus to Solow”, Dept. of Economics, University of British Columbia:
“More recently, several studies have cast doubt on some of the premises of this
traditional view. It is now clear that the Industrial Revolution was much less sudden and
less dramatic than previously thought (Harley 1982, Crafts 1985, Crafts and Harley 1992,
Clark 2001). Due to the slow rates of both GDP and per capita GDP growth2, the
Industrial Revolution has been depicted as a mere growth spurt, not very different from
others in the past (Clark 2001, Goldstone 2002).”
From International Arctic Research Center, Syun-Ichi Akasofu’s “Global Temperature Changes During the Last Millennium and Prediction for 2100”:
“It is clear from this particular set of data that the linear warming began in about 1825,
more than 100 years before the use of fossil energy began to increase rapidly, in about 1946, and that the rate of warming can be approximated by the same straight line of gradient of 0.5°C/100 years until 2000. However, it appears that the committee did not pay much attention to the long term nature of the linear warming trend.”
So, Anthony’s point is well taken. He is not changing the metric. He is simply pointing out a significant weakness in the AGW argument, that is, human CO2 emissions could not have substantially changed until mid 1800’s or later, due to the industrial revolution. Pointing out it’s historic start decades before 1800 is nit picking in this context. Yes, it started in England around 1760 or later, but no, it did not start in mass until many decades later. And yes, warming from the LIA started long before the industrial revolution produced significant quantities of CO2.
Speaking of Arctic Ice:
Why have the first two sea ice extent charts on the sea ice reference page stopped getting updated about 3 weeks ago?
Gary Mount says:
October 25, 2011 at 12:03 am
“Speaking of Arctic Ice:
Why have the first two sea ice extent charts on the sea ice reference page stopped getting updated about 3 weeks ago?”
Apparently, the same instrument that gets UAH temperature data gets some (but not all, apparently) of the sea ice data. I should say “got”. A bearing went dry (exceeded its designed lifespan), and it had to be shut down. Dr. Spencer reported on it here… as you say, about 3 weeks ago. Bummer! I guess there’s a new instrument to be launched early next year. Wish it luck!
Best,
Frank
What would it take?
How about a REAL crisis like falling off the Holocene and back into an Ice Age.
I have a real problem getting worked up about tenths of a degree in warming when the temperature is demonstrated to be cyclical.
1970 to 1999 – slightly warming
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_current.gif
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/gw-us-1999-2011-hansen.gif
NOAA adjustment chart) http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_pg.gif
21st century – pretty much flat
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_current.gif
last 6000-8000 years – cooling
http://www.biocab.org/holocene.html
last 0.03 million years – sharply warming
http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/9484/lasticeageglant.png