By STEVE GOREHAM
In President Obama’s remarks to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, he stated, “… My plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet — because climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They’re a threat to our children’s future. And in this election you can do something about it.”
The president’s remarks support the ideology of climatism — the belief that manmade greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate.
Today, the world is in the grip of the madness of climatism. Our president and 191 other world leaders of the United Nations continue to pursue futile policies to stop global warming. Universities preach “sustainable development.” Companies tout their “green” programs. Schools teach our children that if we change light bulbs, we can save polar bears. But an increasing body of science shows that the theory of catastrophic manmade warming is nonsense. Climate change is natural, and car emissions are insignificant.
The president did not mention the Keystone Pipeline in his speech. In January 2012, he halted the $7 billion Keystone project on recommendation by the State Department in order to assess potential environmental harm. During the last months of 2011, thousands of protesters gathered in front of the White House to protest the Keystone project. They claimed that the oil the pipeline would transport from Canadian tar sands would cause irreversible global warming. Dr. James Hansen of NASA was one of those arrested at the demonstrations. Media pundits speculated that the president halted the pipeline to strengthen his political support with environmental groups. But could it be that Mr. Obama believes that halting the pipeline was the right policy to save the planet?
Who can blame the president for sticking with the theory of man-made global warming? Most of his leading advisors, including Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, science guru John Holdren and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, warn that mankind is destroying the climate. The EPA campaign to halt CO2 emissions from power plants, new vehicle mileage standards, subsidies for wind turbines and electric cars, the Solyndra solar cell debacle, the banning of incandescent light bulbs, the looming California high-speed rail boondoggle and ethanol vehicle fuel mandates are all policies driven by climatism.
The president’s use of the term “carbon pollution” is disappointing. Environmentalists inaccurately use this phrase to conjure up images of billowing smoke stacks, and the president has picked this up. The theory of manmade global warming claims that carbon dioxide, not carbon, causes climate change. Carbon dioxide is an invisible gas, while carbon is a black solid. Referring to carbon dioxide as “carbon” is as foolish as calling water “hydrogen” or salt “chlorine.” Compounds have totally different properties than their composing elements. Neither is carbon dioxide pollution. It’s an odorless, harmless gas that green plants need for photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide is a foundation for life on Earth along with oxygen and water.
Carbon dioxide is a trace gas. Only four of every 10,000 air molecules are CO2. It’s estimated that the amount of carbon dioxide that mankind added in all of human history is only a fraction of one of these four molecules. The idea that mankind’s tiny contribution to a trace atmospheric gas can cause hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods and wildfires is not a joke, it’s incredible.
Contrary to much of the recent press, a look at history shows that this summer’s drought was not unprecedented in these United States. The droughts of the 1930s and 1950s lasted longer and experienced higher temperatures. According to the State Climate Extremes Database of the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), 37 of the 50 state high-temperature records dated prior to 1960, with 22 of these from the decade of the 1930s. Only one state high-temperature record was recorded during the last 16 years. Additional data on droughts and floods from the NCDC show no increasing trend over the last 100 years. Nature drives droughts and floods, not manmade emissions of carbon dioxide.
The president’s statement is remarkable in another way. He implies that we should vote for him because he can control droughts, floods and wildfires to safeguard “our children’s future.”
During a speech in June 2008, he implied that he could slow the rise of the seas. What’s next, regulation of snowfall? If Mr. Obama is re-elected and with bipartisan support in Congress and approval of the United Nations, look for the Snowfall Abatement Act of 2014.
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Steve Goreham is executive director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book “The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.”
Thank you Steve.
Let’s go ahead and continue this war on the poor of the world.
The rich will just pay their bills and continue on.
The poor will have to decide how many meals they will have to miss in a month so that they can keep what little food they have from spoiling.
Stupid Mules.
In his own words…….
Remember to vote!
If you don’t, you did!
I prefer the solid transparent form of carbon myself.
It is sad to see such a prominent world leader demonstrate such a total inability to judge issues rationally and objectively.
Those almost four CO2 molecules per 10,000 air molecules are in dry air, assuming perfect global mixing (although of course certain regions produce most of it).
By contrast, the concentration of water vapor, the main greenhouse gas, varies by about a factor of 1000 (from .4 to 400 parts per 10,000), but on average it’s around 100 molecules per 10,000 (typically ranging 50 to 200 over most of our wet planet). This approximately 25 times more common greenhouse gas essentially swamps the IR reradiative effect of CO2.
Boggles the mind
cn
I will ask again,,,,,, how much of the 1.4 degree temperature delta over the last 160 years carry’s attribution towards CO2?
Just sayin ,,,,
I think we have a better chance to determine the impact velocity relating to a strap failure associated with this type of thing, no?
Think about it!
Gonna have to do better than that diatribe, to win this one.
Whatever reason President Obama has for declaring war on “carbon”, it’s not because he’s concerned about “our children’s future.” No one concerned about our children’s future would forge their signatures on over $5 trillion of new debt. Our children will be on the hook for huge debts that benefited Obama cronies but were of little or no benefit to them.
An expansion on this theme picked up on Bishop Hill, heightening my fear of fools in high places:
Climate Resistance
Martin457 says:
September 28, 2012 at 8:05 pm
Let’s go ahead and continue this war on the poor of the world.
The rich will just pay their bills and continue on.
The poor will have to decide how many meals they will have to miss in a month so that they can keep what little food they have from spoiling.
Stupid Mules.
——————————–
Not really worth a reply but hey i got some free time right now. The US has a meager 5% of the world population and supplies 25% of all the world foreign aid. I and my wife have worked 6 days a week for the last 8 years running a small business and are just barely surviving in an economy that is total crap. You seem to have a real passion for helping the poor of the world. Instead of you wasting your time here might I suggest you donate your life to one of the volunteer groups.
Hell I am tempted to close the business down. I can qualify easily for disability so I can get free food and an Obamaphone and not have to work at all. I don’t get the security of a steady paycheck like the government employees if sales are crap next week I don’t get paid. Just a guess but betting you have never worked and you sure as hell were not self employed.
So yeah, maybe I am a stupid mule but when I get up in the morning and go to work I will have my self respect. Will you?
We all know the reason President Obama added the comments about “climatism” to his acceptance speech – money.
“…A group of Democratic donors have announced they’ll withhold some of their financial support from President Obama’s re-election campaign for not speaking out more about climate change. The group of roughly 100 political donors say Obama should directly address this comment by Republican rival Mitt Romney made last week during his acceptance speech in Tampa – “…President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family…”
http://www.alternet.org/environment/democratic-donors-withhold-contributions-over-absence-climate-change-obama-campaign?paging=off
So let’s see – a major candidate sees a possibility of losing campaign money, sees the light, and adds comments to his speech.
Maybe he’s right about one thing: “…in this election you can do something about it…”
Re-thinking the words in my comment, above (heightening my fear of fools in high places), I realize they were simplistic.
These are not fools; they are highly sophisticated entrepreneurs in their chosen field, politics.
My fear should be their selfishness, their total lack of morals and human compassion, and their success in pursuing their twisted dreams of personal power.
Dung says:
September 28, 2012 at 8:15 pm
It is sad to see such a prominent world leader demonstrate such a total inability to judge issues rationally and objectively.
====================================================================
He’s a politician with an agenda. That agenda is his center reference. CO2 is just a convenient lever.
@Jeffd
Although I spent most of my life in maintenance and water treatment, when I went into a couple volunteer groups, they were already filled with those that seeked to benifit themselves from belonging to those groups so, I discontinued that effort.
My current household does qualify for ‘gubmint’ benefits but, I don’t accept handouts.
If the current “Chicken Littles” and their prophets of doom that has plagued humanity ever since civilization has existed would have acceptance for others ways, the world would be a better place. But no. Humanity is to blame for all that ails us and all have to pay and it’s the poor that have to pay the most.
I would much rather somebody win the H-Prize that Bush came up with. Pay for results rather than just give out money to somebody and hope they come up with something that works like Oh-Blah-Blah.
People like you are really annoying in your selfness.
I don’t waste time here, I learn about actual science. Not political crap spewed by “PROPHETS OF DOOM”.
You know,it’s getting to the point where Obambam and the US should be declared a threat to humanity,
Jeff D. regarding Martin 457’s comment:
“What all the [ideological crusades of the twentieth-century] have in common is their moral exaltation of the anointed above others, who are to have their very different views nullified and superseded by the views of the anointed, imposed via the power of government….[S]everal key elements have been common to most of them:
1. Assertions of a great danger to the whole of society, a danger to which the masses of people are oblivious.
2. An urgent need for action to avert impending catastrophe.
3. A need for government to drastically curtail the dangerous behavior of the many, in response to the prescient conclusions of the few.
4. A disdainful dismissal of arguments to the contrary as either uninformed, irresponsible, or motivated by unworthy purposes.”
The above is from Thomas Sowell’s book The Vision of the Anointed, page 5.
Don’t mean to be rude but your President is really dumb. He must be surrounded by sycophants.
Mind you we have Cameron who has turned out to be apathetic wimp…..
Jeff D says:
September 28, 2012 at 9:27 pm
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I hate to put it like this, but, “I feel you pain”.
(I know WUWT has a worldwide audience and “liberal” means different things in different countries. I’m using it in the US sense.)
Someone once said, “A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man and is determined to pay that debt using your money.”
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to help someone in need (depending on the motive). There is something very wrong with forcing someone else to do it because you think they should and you think they can afford it because they have one dime more than you do.
I’m a government employee. Every month the Union takes some of the money I earned and uses it to support politicians I wouldn’t vote for if they ran unopposed. Direct your ire at the the unions and the politicians, not all of the government employees. We get shafted too.
Roger Carr:
“Re-thinking the words in my comment, above (heightening my fear of fools in high places), I realize they were simplistic.
These are not fools; they are highly sophisticated entrepreneurs in their chosen field, politics.
My fear should be their selfishness, their total lack of morals and human compassion, and their success in pursuing their twisted dreams of personal power”
You see Roger, all politicos are altruistic dispensers of the “public good” and self-interest is in no way involved. Try this:
“[Peter] Stillman … points out that those who see “a strong central government or a strong ruler” as a solution implicitly assume that “the ruler will be a wise and ecologically aware altruist,” even though these same theorists presume that the users of CPRs [common-pool resources] will be myopic, self-interested, and ecologically unaware hedonists.” – Governing the Commons, Elinor Ostrom, page 218
Now look what he’s, Obama i.e., done. Now our PM Gillard will tells us the Americans are leading the way and we have to follow them, again.
JeffD – Do you have electricity, running water, food and shelter; of course you do. There are people in this world that live in mud huts with none of these things. Do you think your life is really that hard?
It’s not the US or other developed countries that will suffer it is the poor countries that Martin457 was talking about. They need cheap energy to improve their lives and controlling the type of energy that is used controls the country. Are you so blind you cannot see.
If mr. Obama has the ability to control the weather why did he allow the mid-west drought this summer? Just asking.
He said his plan will “continue to reduce the carbon” ?
What does he mean by “continue”?
Has it been reduced at all?
I thought that C02 levels were still going up?
The ways of the “Messiah” are inscrutable. Just saying.
It appears we have two Mr. Fix-Its running for president.
Optimism?
Askwhyisitso? says:
September 28, 2012 at 11:02 pm
Now look what he’s, Obama i.e., done. Now our PM Gillard will tells us the Americans are leading the way and we have to follow them, again.
JeffD – Do you have electricity, running water, food and shelter; of course you do. There are people in this world that live in mud huts with none of these things. Do you think your life is really that hard?
It’s not the US or other developed countries that will suffer it is the poor countries that Martin457 was talking about. They need cheap energy to improve their lives and controlling the type of energy that is used controls the country. Are you so blind you cannot see.
==============================================================
Let me see if I’ve got this straight.
Martin457 was hard to follow. He seemed to be calling JeffD selfish because because JeffD’s (small?) business was suffering because of Obamanonics. He wasn’t thinking of “the poor” because he resented Obamanics trying to make him poor.
Askwhyitisso? says Martin457 wasn’t talking about US government handouts to its own but rather poor countries and JeffD should be happy about being rape… happy about the effect US liberals have had on his business since he can still flush his toilet.
Did I get that right?
Restricting or raising the cost of energy in the US or any other country for artificial reasons (CAGW) won’t do a thing to help the poor in the US or poor countries. CAGW and the UN’s IPCC are what needs to be flushed.
(JeffD is not selfish. He’s just trying to earn an honest living and is frustrated when he sees others leeching off of his efforts.)
PS Did you ever read the story of “The Little Red Hen”?
ftp://sailor.gutenberg.lib.md.us/gutenberg/1/8/7/3/18735/18735-h/18735-h.htm
Gunga Din says:
————————
Sorry to have lumped all government employees into one. You are correct my apologies.
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Askwhyisitso? says:
————————
I understand the dream you express. However I think that many people in the world or as far as that is concerned just the US really don’t understand how hard the last 4 years have been for small business. Sales have plummeted and operating cost keep increasing. When the economy crashed we saw a 40% drop in sales. After 4 years sales are still off 25%. I have spoken with many small businesses that have seen almost the same drop. My single largest expense are taxes. Last year I paid more in tax then I paid for stock. Small business is the heartbeat of the US economy and I am here to tell you that the heart is about to need a defibrillator just to stay alive.
That was too freaking long.. In short there is no money left.
Steve, I believe the correct term is “scientific climatism” to distinguish this robust and mature ideology from early and scientifically deficient “utopian climatism”. There are precedents:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_communism
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch01.htm
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Utopian+Socialism
Ted;
Actually, the US’ output has been falling, unlike the EU and China and India, because of the Great Recession and because Frac Gas has made NG its dominant new and replacement power generator fuel, displacing coal (half its energy comes from burning the H bits in CH4). If mankind’s influence on CO2 weren’t trivial, this would be regrettable. (Sea temps control CO2 emissions). CO2 is a massive net benefit, and should be subsidized, if anything.
Perhaps I tend to always look beyond the boundaries of a single country and I took the comments to be about the world and not just the US. I know you’re doing it hard, a lot harder than we are in Australia. Look on the bright side, Julia Gillard can never be the President of the US.
It’s all about power. Obama marches in step with Agenda 21 and Rio+20. They all do. All our so called leaders do.
Roger Carr says:
September 28, 2012 at 10:02 pm
“Re-thinking the words in my comment, above (heightening my fear of fools in high places), I realize they were simplistic.
These are not fools; they are highly sophisticated entrepreneurs in their chosen field, politics.
My fear should be their selfishness, their total lack of morals and human compassion, and their success in pursuing their twisted dreams of personal power.”
You are correct, sir. Why do candidates spend millions to get elected to jobs that pay $140,000 or so per year?
You got Obama. We got Gillard. *sighs* all round.
‘Because climate change is not a hoax …’
Interesting that he felt the need to say this.
R. Shearer says:
September 28, 2012 at 8:14 pm
“I prefer the solid transparent form of carbon myself.”
Crystallized carbon is a girls best friend.
Isn’t that a song?
Jeff D and everyone else, Jeff referred to the obamaphone. Here it is and be sure to watch the second short clip.
http://dailybail.com/home/obama-has-my-vote-he-gave-me-free-phone.html
The Drought, the lack of hurricanes hitting the shores and the warmer climate are due to sunspot levels with in a sunspot cycle, within the century cycle of sunspot activity and that we have had sunspot activity for the last 300 years. How will this work as the conditions we are in last until 2035? Another 4 years of disaster are on their way if he gets back in.
From The Decline and Fall of the American Republic (2010) ; Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale.
Sound familiar?
******************************************************************************
The evolving system of presidential nominations will lead to the election of an increasing number of charismatic outsider types who gain office by mobilizing activist support for extremist programs of the left or right; (2) all presidents, whether extremist or mainstream, will rely on media consultants to design streams of sound bites aimed at narrowly segmented micropublics, generating a politics of unreason that will often dominate public debate; (3) they will increasingly govern through their White House staff of superloyalists, issuing executive orders that their staffers will impose on the federal bureaucracy even when they conflict with congressional mandates; (4) they will engage with an increasingly politicized military in ways that may greatly expand their effective power to put their executive orders into force throughout the nation; (5) they will legitimate their unilateral actions through an expansive use of emergency powers, and (6) assert “mandates from the People” to evade or ignore congressional statutes when public opinion polls support decisive action; (7) they will rely on elite lawyers in the executive branch to write up learned opinions that vindicate the Constitutionality of their most blatant power grabs. These opinions will publicly rubber-stamp presidential actions months or years before the Supreme Court gets into the act . . . [w]ith . . . the president’s media machine generating a groundswell of support for his power grab, the Supreme Court may find it prudent to stage a strategic retreat, allowing the president to displace Congress and use his bureaucracy and military authority to establish a new regime of law and order. “
It will be interesting to see if Obama blocks the televising of a movie that reveals much about his background and those he surrounds himself with. Obama and Fox have been at odds for some time now. Freedom of speech is something to be taken seriously. It will speak volumes if Fox is not allowed to air Obama2016 on Sunday night. Many say Obama was handed a political bag of crap when he was elected, but 4 years in, it is still not looking good for the average American.
The left in Canada seem to hate Harper, but not one has ever explained why when asked. I got one response on a social network that said he had “beady eyes”. Well, he should be thrown out for that!! (sarc).
Harper has a quiet and decisive strength that impresses me. The old “walk softly and carry a big stick”. Foreign policy, economics, and just the right amount of government. I consider myself fortunate to live in Canada as I look around the world. We are subject to the American economy in Canada, so I am hopeful that the American people think and research their choice for political leadership. It does affect the world and freedom.
Not a time for voter apathy. Not a time for “I don’t like any of the candidates”. Look very closely at your choices and be decisive America. It makes a difference. You make a difference.
My opinion only.
Billy says:
September 28, 2012 at 11:05 pm
If mr. Obama has the ability to control the weather why did he allow the mid-west drought this summer? Just asking.
========================================================
Because he hates people in fly-over country?
People, as much as I despise president Obama, we shouldn’t read to much into this statement. Recall, he was obliged to respond to Romney’s zinger in the RNC.
—- Mitt Romney
It isn’t so much the words, but the delivery was beautiful. But, other than that response, Obama hasn’t said much about it. He can’t. He knows its a losing issue. In this particular issue (CAGW) we’re winning. The danger is allowing Obama 4 more years. While Obama is woefully ignorant of the CAGW/CC issue (as is most politicians) there are tax aspects that are very appealing to him and many others.
And if he had a reasonable chance he would make another run at passing the Cap and Trade bill that he was the last to give up on in the face of massive outrage at the grassroots level. The important thing is that attempt would be based purely on donation potential and support and not the truth.
Did you ever wonder how PG&E, San Diego, and SCE are planning on meeting the 33%RES in CA?
Or how much you should pay for a kwh of energy to charge your Leaf, Volt, or Tesla if you wanted to pay your fair share of the costs to provide you the energy.
To answer the first question we have some data:
In order to provide enough financial incentive for investors to build (and/or buy) RE facilities the long term (20 to 25 year MUST TAKE PPA) contracts have Time of Delivery factors built into them. The Time of Delivery (TOD) factors for each of the three ISO’s (PG&E, SCE, San Diego Gas and Electric) are delineated starting on page 18 in Appendix B of this document- http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/WORD_PDF/FINAL_RESOLUTION/154753.PDF . When Google or NRG invest in RE projects in order to figure out how much they should pay for the facilities they have to determine the cash flow from the project based on the contract details and the expected output from the plant. They do NOT use levelized costs of a theoretical facility they use the specific details of the facility they are buying.
Just for fun lets see how much $ NRG and Google will be getting from the RE projects noted below at super peak times in the summer-
1) the Google funded wind facility up in Oregon that the folks in SCE are going to be using as part of their RE portfolio http://www.environmentalleader.com/2012/09/26/google-funded-845-mw-wind-farm-goes-online/
2) the Agua Caliente PV facility in AZ that will be supporting PG&E’s RE portfolio http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/First-Solars-250-MW-Agua-Caliente-is-the-Worlds-Largest-Solar-Plant
From the resolution the pull out these TOD factors for “Super Peak Times” in the Summer:
PG&E- 2.38
SCE- 3.13
SD- 2.50
They then multiply the TOD factors times the “market price referent (MPR)” which is $.09274 for a kwh of generation for a 25 year contract with a start date in 2012. Which means ISO’s will be paying the following amounts for the output (generation only) to NRG and Google for the two examples noted above at super peak time in the summer months-
PG&E- 22.1 cents per kwh
SCE- 29.0 cents per kwh
SD- 23.2 cents per kwh
On to the “fair share” to charge your EV question:
Lets say you wanted to charge your Volt, Leaf or Tesla with RE coming from one of these new RE projects at your home or office on Monday afternoon AND you wanted to pay your fair share of the costs of getting the RE energy to your charging station. We need a few estimates for how much it costs for your service provider to transmit the energy from the source of the generation on the high voltage grid and their distribution lines. Our two utility scale RE projects are a tad far away distance wise from the locations that the folks in LA or SF are going to be plugging into their chargers. For the sake of simplicity we can just use the published “average line losses” of 9%+/- for our examples. To cover the line losses we have to multiply the costs per kwh noted above by 9% if we want to pay our fair share which leads us to a cost of RE generation of:
PG&E- 24.1 cents per kwh
SCE- 36.1 cents per kwh
SD- 25.3 cents per kwh
For simplicity sake lets use PG&E published cost allocations for the various buckets they allocate costs into (generation, transmission, distribution, public purpose programs, etc. etc.) so we can figure out how much we should pay to charge our EV during the summer at super peak times. PG&E notes the allocated costs for generation at 46% of the total costs to provide a kwh of energy to your charging station. That means that 54% of the costs are for everything else. All the ISO’s average utility costs per kwh are about 19 cents per kwh these days for the residential market so to get a reasonable estimate of all the distribution, transmission, etc. costs lets multiply the 19 cents by the 0.54 factor to get an estimate of the fair share price we would pay for all the other activities needed to change an EV next week at super peak times: = 10.3 cents per kwh for transmission, distribution, public purpose charges, fees, taxes, etc.
So our Fair share price to pay to charge an EV (based on the details/assumptions noted above) with energy from the two recently brought on line RE projects=
PG&E- 34.4 cents per kwh*
SCE- 46.4 cents per kwh*
SD- 35.6 cents per kwh*
Yes, it does cost someone a few dollars to built and install an AC to DC charging station. If we wanted to pay our fair share of all the costs to charge our EV we should include a cost allocation for the charger. Let’s just skip this allocation and put a small asterisk on our fair share costs noting that we assumed the chargers are free to build, install and maintain.
Google and NRG are going to get their contracted PPA price for the RE. Who pays all the costs to get that energy to your charger/house on the other hand is up for discussion.
To Billy–If he can control the weather, and allowed the Midwest drought to happen, it is because we did not vote for him. See any election map. This is a short sighted strategy on his part (but not so short sighted that it will hurt in the upcoming election, at least on this count) because as the Midwest suffers drought, so do food prices go up, hurting his real constituency.
Climate is local. The “local” climate can’t be destroyed. Like energy it can change state. But it’s still the climate. It might be mild during an inter-glacial or savagely cold during an ice age. But it’s still “the climate”.
ericgrimsrud, practice what you preach. ‘Fossil’ fuels are not an addiction. The only anthropogenic warming is local warming; but every living thing alters its local environment to enhance its own survival. Single celled life forms have done most of the ‘terraforming’ to this planet and continue to do most of the alteration to it, even now. The biological world works by survival of the fit enough at the point in time and space where it is. What you and others with your worldview are espousing is simple tyranny and massive death of people. Plus, humans and what they do by their arts, is natural too.
If people do not get off their couches and go to the polls to fire Obama then they deserve to continue to get screwed by his corrupt regime. Obama 2012 = final nail in the coffin.
Thanks Steve!
If the voters don’t stop this agenda, there will be much more hell to pay for the whole world.
Have a look at Europe and the Middle East, different, but both have little freedom.
Both hate the US because we have too much of it.
Cooling in argon produces the slowest heat-transfer rates, followed by nitrogen, then helium and finally hydrogen. All these gas mixtures are popular, but nitrogen is the most attractive from a purely cost standpoint. Theoretically, there is no limit to the improvement in cooling rate that can be obtained by increasing gas velocity and pressure.
Ref: http://www.vacaero.com/Vacuum-Heat-Treating-with-Dan-Herring/Vacuum-Heat-Treating-with-Dan-Herring/technology-trends-in-vacuum-heat-treating-part-1-markets-processes-and-applications.html
I see zero justification for the argument that adding a CO2 molecule to our atmosphere increases the Earth’s surface temperature. At this point in my life, I should not be so surprised by the disconnect between academia and the real world, but I am.
As Henry IV said when forced to renounce Protestantism in order to become king of France:
“Paris is well worth a Mass”! 🙂
David Ball,
“2016 Obama’s America” is now playing in many cinemas; see http://www.2016themovie.com and http://www.dineshdsouza.com
I saw it with my wife a month ago and we enjoyed it a lot; not just a good story, but excellent photography! (Based on Obama’s “Dreams from my father”)
“The reports of the movie appearing on Fox before the election are completely untrue and we strongly suspect that they are the result of dirty tricks by our opponents who spread this rumor in order to confuse the general public and keep them from going to their local theaters,” said the film’s writer/director, Dinesh D’Souza. “We urge all Americans to ignore these efforts and go to their local theater and enjoy the movie on the big screen.”
Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/2016-obamas-america-producers-say-dirty-tricks-used-to-stop-moviegoers-82212/#A0UvmjFeWowG0sDV.99
See http://www.christianpost.com/news/2016-obamas-america-producers-say-dirty-tricks-used-to-stop-moviegoers-82212/
As a research scientist, I have spent the last 40 years studying the Earth’s atmosphere. In the last 6 years in retirement, I have dedicated myself to “bridging the gap” between scientific and public opinion on the subject of climate change and more specifically on the central role our increasing levels of greenhouse gases play in this problem. At the same time, I have also been very disappointed to see how little change in our nation and the world has occurred. The concentration of the greenhouse gases continues to rise at record levels every year.
Therefore I was most pleased to read at the head of this post that the President of our country does possibly understand the problem. Hopefully, if he is reelected in November, he will take much stronger actions on this problem in his second term. This possibility might constitute the world’s only remaining hope for preventing catastrophic global changes during the lives of my grandchildren.
I also realize, of course, that this same possibility scares the hell out of the fossil fuel industries that still have a death grip on public opinion. Can you imagine the financial setback the Big Coal and Big Oil industries would suffer if the public finally came to realize that the use of fossil fuels constitutes an addiction that must be broken. The vast reserves of coal throughout the world, for example, would become essentially worthless and would have to be left in the ground – as they should be.
So I certainly do hope that President Obama has the excellent group of scientific advisors Mr. Gorham says he has already assembled in his administration. Concerning all the unscientific banter which dominates posts such as this one, the President should know that someday this too will pass – just as all other scientifically flawed notions have in the past.
Note, for example, that we now know beyond all levels of doubt that the chlorofluorocarbons do, in fact, diminish our protective shield of ozone in the Earth’s stratosphere – even though the DuPont Corporation and other industrial forces assured us for ten years that the stratospheric ozone / Freon theory was a complete fabrication and hoax – until it was noted that the CFC’s were completely destroying ALL stratospheric ozone over the continent of Antarctica every Springtime. It is this same group of atmospheric scientists who are sounding the alarm today concerning the devastion that lies ahead due to our increasing levels of GHG’s.
Do you Americans know the bad impression you gave to the world when Obama was elected?
We are awaiting to be impressed even more this time…
Andres Valencia says:
September 29, 2012 at 11:08 am
Thank you for that.
@ theButcher says:
September 29, 2012 at 11:22 am
Do you Americans know the bad impression you gave to the world when Obama was elected?
We are awaiting to be impressed even more this time…
*******************************************************************
Some of us do. We’ll try to do better this time.
To kencoffman, Perhaps I can help.
Your are thinking only in terms of heat transfer via convection and diffusion for which the size and velocity of molecules are important. Heat transfer from the Earth to the outer universe (global cooling, that is) on the other hand occurs only by the transport of Infrared Radiation out into the universe. The transport heat into the universe via the motion of [matter] does not occur, of course, due to the retaining effect of gravity.
Thus only IR-active molecules – those with 3 or more atoms – are involved in the transport of IR radiation within our atmosphere and then out into the universe. That is why CO2 has much to do with it.
Hope your opinion of academics improves with time so that you can take better advantage of the insight it can provide on many subject – including means by which the Earth attempts to cool itself. .
ericgrimsrud says:
September 29, 2012 at 11:16 am
As a research scientist, I have spent the last 40 years studying the Earth’s atmosphere. In the last 6 years in retirement, I have dedicated myself to “bridging the gap” between scientific and public opinion on the subject of climate change and more specifically on the central role our increasing levels of greenhouse gases play in this problem. At the same time, I have also been very disappointed to see how little change in our nation and the world has occurred. The concentration of the greenhouse gases continues to rise at record levels every year.
Therefore I was most pleased to read at the head of this post that the President of our country does possibly understand the problem. Hopefully, if he is reelected in November, he will take much stronger actions on this problem in his second term. This possibility might constitute the world’s only remaining hope for preventing catastrophic global changes during the lives of my grandchildren. …
I also realize, of course, that this same possibility scares the hell out of the fossil fuel industries that still have a death grip on public opinion. Can you imagine the financial setback the Big Coal and Big Oil industries would suffer if the public finally came to realize that the use of fossil fuels constitutes an addiction that must be broken. The vast reserves of coal throughout the world, for example, would become essentially worthless and would have to be left in the ground – as they should be.
So I certainly do hope that President Obama has the excellent group of scientific advisors Mr. Gorham says he has already assembled in his administration. Concerning all the unscientific banter which dominates posts such as this one, the President should know that someday this too will pass – just as all other scientifically flawed notions have in the past.
I see you are playing the canard that the fossil fuelmoney drives the CAGW themes. Who is more proved to be biased by money? Pro-CAGW “scientists” who use their power and influence over their government-funded fellows in the review process, the grant process, the textbook process, the promotion process, the schools funding process? There are 1.3 trillion dollars a year at stake, and – as you say, the lives of our grandchildren.
YOU – the CAGW community – have provided us the recession, the energy prices, and the economic problem YOU want to continue.
Except you desire to kill them and condemn hundreds of millions to an early grave. Why do YOU want to kill the world’s children by demanding THEY suffer a future of no clean water, less food, no transportation, increased pollution and sewage, and less fuel, fodder, feed, and health? ?
Please: Tell me the hazards of more CO2? Of cheaper and more reliable energy? We are (were!) growing more, feeding more, living better. CO2 increases plant growth, higher temperatures increase planting seasons and increase crop areas. What are the downsides of global warming?
What exactly are the evidence of man-caused global warming? Aside from the model predictions of government-paid “scientists” who desire government-provided grants and influence?
Your “scientist” consensus believed volcanoes caused lunar craters, believed that continents couldn’t move, believed that light moved across an aether, believed that atoms were a solid mix of solid objects, believed that coelenterate was extinct, and believed that the earth was created 6000 years ago.
It was skeptics who changed “scientific” consensus then. and it is NOT government-paid bureaucrats who will progress science in the future.
Your “scientists” want their power. Their money. Their influence. Their papers and press releases. Their “show trials” and thousands of press interviews. Their trips to New York, Copenhagen, Bonn, Brazil, Japan, Argentina, and other exotic destinations. They want their Nobel Prizes and their movies and their NASA/NOAA/GISS/NSIRDC campuses and computers.
But they don’t like the results of the real world temperatures measurements that prove they are wrong.
So they change the data. Again. Again. Again. Again. And Again.
To RACookPE,
You asked, Please: “Tell me the hazards of more CO2?”
Can do. Just look up the website, ericgrimsrud.com and hit the “short course” button concerning the underlying science of climate change.
Enjoy!, but more importantly, Learn! Its really not that difficult to understand.
Eric
RACookPE1978 says:
September 29, 2012 at 12:09 pm
ericgrimsrud says:
September 29, 2012 at 11:16 am
=====================================================================
RA, Well said.
No-one should ever concede the greenhouse effect – in my humble opinion it is an impossible construct – something heats up internally while radiating less externally – c’mon – this has never been observed !
The sun heats the Earth without ANY help from BS “greenhouse gases” – if it doesn’t how does the Moon’s surface reach over 107 degrees C during the day ? The Moon’s 29 Earth day long night explains the very low temperatures on the dark side not the lack of some BS greenhouse gas.
The atmosphere removes heat from the Earth’s surfaces and water is undoubtedly the principal driver of climate but not as a BS greenhouse gas.
It is total BS and the sooner it is attacked as such the better.
Just the huge disparity in density ought to be a clue – how is it possible that ~1.3kg/cubic metre of air can “heat” 1000 kg/cubic metre of water when water requires ~4 times the amount of energy that air requires to increase 1 degree C ? Never mind that climate scientists say that less than 2% of the atmosphere provides all the radiation that performs this miracle.
And why doesn’t this truly miraculous property show up in well documented physical properties – even water vapour is less thermally conductive than air.
Ordering pizza if Obama serves a 2nd term.
http://www.aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf
This election is about more than just CO2 and hot air.
President Obama said: “… My plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet — because climate change is not a hoax …”.
To this ‘Oldspeaker’ that statement means he has a plan (only he knows that), to reduce carbon particulates in the atmosphere which do tend to increase the temperature (at least locally) and that the climate changes (which is self-evident).
So it makes perfect sense to me — except that’s not what he meant.
I’m always happy to see another summary of the utter vacuity of the CAGW speculation and its political advocates (those behind The Puppet President) on WUWT. But (with the exception of one ‘ericgrimsrud’, who is reciting the Climatist Litany of True Belief) most here know and appreciate Steve Goreham’s arguments, and have heard them many times. His post should be published in blogs and op-ed pages where ordinary folk who are otherwise at the mercy of the Lamestream Media might see it. How about a YouTube video?
/Mr Lynn
Gunga, thanks for the (bitter) laugh. (Re ACLU pizza order process movie)
Gunga Din says:
Perhaps you are unaware but that vision of a “nightmare future” was brought to you by the ACLU, an organization working to defend against such intrusions into our civil liberties and one that Republican candidates for President have previously vilified when trying to make an issue of the fact that a Democratic candidate for President said he was a “card-carrying member of the ACLU”.
What is the carbon footprint of the military? Do the apcs, tanks, and fighter jets have catalytic converters and do they ground them when the ‘check engine light’ comes on?
Obama will win, that is by now close to a foregone conclusion. Romney is simply too inept as a campaigner. Ryan’s Medicare position (alienates seniors) and the 47% video (alienates 47% of the electorate) are the likely final nails in the coffin. Obama’s comments at the convention are likely to be the most overt lip service to climate change you will hear in the next four years. From here it’s jobs, jobs, jobs. BTW, the Romney candidacy could be the death knell for the Republican Party in Presidential politics for a long time to come. The demographics are changing that fast, and there simply aren’t enough “angry white middle-aged guys” (ref: Lindsay Graham) to push the GOP over the top anymore. The Party is not attracting women or minorities, and that is the kiss of death.
And they keep drinking the Koolaid. Reminds me of trying to deprogram a cult member. Take “ericgrimsrud” he seems to have the basic skills to communicate an idea. How is it that at the same time he cannot look at just a few pieces of real data and not see what the rest of us see as absolute that CAGW does not exist? I will list just a few maybe he will see the light.
1. CAGW theory called for “both” poles to have melted by now. Antarctica just doesn’t want to cooperate with record ice levels and the Arctic was only gonna tie 2007 until a freak storm hit. NASA’s words not mine. And lets really qualify the Arctic statement with since the start of the satellite record. Historic shipping logs have the ice extent as small or smaller than this years record.
2. CAGW theory said Sea Level should be rising like crazy. hummm, Nope its not rising. Don’t believe me? Look up the NOAA sea level page. Slight rise over the recorded time but it has slowed down in the last few years. And can anyone name me one place that has been flooded by sea level rise? I have looked and I can find nothing..
3. CAGW theory said that the temp will keep increasing as CO2 increases. Well its a hard cold fact that this increase has not happened for 14 years. I lost the link that has the nice chart showing this. Could someone post it to help our lost cultist?
Any one of the three would be enough in any other branch of real science to invalidate the theory.
My personal hero Einny said it best ” No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong “.
In response to the jousting between ericgrimsrud and RACookPE:
I’d like to say that I am a naturally skeptical person. For some time I believed that climate change really was a truly dangerous thing and that we had to do something to stop it. I have since read more widely on the topic and I don’t feel that there is a looming disaster.
Ericgrimsrud – I respect the fact that you have had a long career as a research scientist and I’m sure that like many other scientists out there, your motives were simply to add to the knowledge of the world. I also believe that there are probably some unscrupulous scientists out there with agendas they are pushing by using the environmental arguments.
This is no different to the skeptic side. I’m sure there are people out there that have their own interests at heart but even some of the large mining industries are now distancing themselves from anything that would make them seem belligerent towards the environment. Rio Tinto recently amended its official position on global warming to say that they felt the bulk of warming was most likely due to human influence.
RACookPE – while I agree with you that science only moves forward by embracing an open debate and skeptical review of hypotheses I really feel that the way you have presented your views above comes pretty close to a personal attack.
Saying that “…you desire to kill them and condemn hundreds of millions to an early grave… YOU want to kill the world’s children by demanding THEY suffer a future of no clean water, less food, no transportation, increased pollution and sewage, and less fuel, fodder, feed, and health” is pretty poor form.
Those of us in the skeptical community are very quick to condemn the pro-AGW crowd for ad hominem attacks and vitriolic comments about our total lack of humanity. We need to hold ourselves to a higher standard of discussion if there is to be any hope of being taken seriously.
There are some very good scientists working on both sides of this debate and the problem isn’t that there is a difference of opinion on the science. The problem is that some people are trying to stifle the debate by demonising the other side. Both camps have been guilty of this at some stage.
RACookPE – its easy to get passionate about what you believe. I have been guilty of doing that very thing. We just need to be measured in any discussions we have.
Cheers
Joel Shore says:
September 29, 2012 at 3:34 pm
Gunga Din says:
Ordering pizza if Obama serves a 2nd term.
http://www.aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf
This election is about more than just CO2 and hot air.
Perhaps you are unaware but that vision of a “nightmare future” was brought to you by the ACLU, an organization working to defend against such intrusions into our civil liberties and one that Republican candidates for President have previously vilified when trying to make an issue of the fact that a Democratic candidate for President said he was a “card-carrying member of the ACLU”.
=======================================================================
I was not unaware that it came from the ACLU. Perhaps they and those who really do want to preserve
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
should be standing against Obama and working to replace him. (and Bloomberg in NYC. Lust for power at the expense of the freedom of others has no party affiliations.)
PS I remember the ads with Dukakis riding around in a tank pretending he’d be tough on the defense of our country. Is a tank ride on Obama’s campaign agenda?
RACookPE says:
“YOU – the CAGW community – have provided us the recession, the energy prices, and the economic problem YOU want to continue.”
Now that is simply not true. The recession was caused by a financial meltdown served up by an irresponsible banking industry, the energy prices are a function of international supply and demand, and the last one, whatever. Impossible to decipher.
Torgeir Hansson says:
September 29, 2012 at 8:09 pm
Now that is simply not true. The recession was caused by a financial meltdown served up by an irresponsible banking industry, the energy prices are a function of international supply and demand, and the last one, whatever. Impossible to decipher.
————————————
I almost agree with you. The financial meltdown was started when Clinton relaxed banking regs and Bush did nothing to change it. This allowed the greedy to gamble with what should have been safe funds. At the same time large corps were cooking their books to artificially inflate their stock prices.
The supply and demand issue is staged. Think of De Beers fixing diamond prices. Both have a supply and demand but to keep the prices high De Beers will short the supply to keep the prices up. Same thing happens with energy commodities. Allowing speculation makes the price swings even worse.
Just a guess for ” and the economic problem YOU want to continue ” I think may be to the legislation and regs being tossed out by the EPA to drive the cost of cheap energy up so the Green stuff would have a chance to compete. This position is a no guesser. Obama and his energy Zar’s have publicly stated this to be a fact. Make all cheap energy so dam high that the Green can compete.
Brian Johnson uk says:
September 28, 2012 at 10:30 pm
“Don’t mean to be rude but your President is really dumb. He must be surrounded by sycophants.”
Brian you have no idea how right you are.
If you review the people in cabinet positions as well as his czars they are all people with no real world experience and come from academia which in the US is largely socialist.
The head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is actually anti-nuke !
The head of the Department of Energy has suggested we paint the roofs of our houses white to solve the energy crisis and stop global warming.
Even the President suggested checking the air pressure in your car tires as a way to stop global warming.
The list goes on and on.
“The recession was caused by a financial meltdown served up by an irresponsible banking industry….”. – RACookPE
That’s not even close. However it makes for a nice bumper sticker talking point.
If one goes on a quest to find the root cause of the recession [The Great Recession followed by the not-so-great-expansion], one will run head long into this proposition: politicos through the mechanism of government. That politicos set the stage for shenanigans through their own self-interest, and when one sets the stage for shenanigans…..shenanigans will occur.
You see RACookPE, your reason is quite notional. To be more succinct, your bumper sticker talking point is actually a political notional point.
Try this exercise in reading: Reckless Endangerment by Gretchen Morgensen, Getting Off Track by John B. Taylor, The Vision of the Anointed, A Conflict of Visions, and Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell. Follow those books up with The Calculus of Consent by James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock. You’ll also need Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia. Once you’ve managed the above, you might want to set the tone with New Deal or Raw Deal by Folsom, FDR’s Folly by Powell and The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes as one needs to understand the grand daddy of all rent-seeking and political constituency building through other people’s money, the main blue-printer for those politicos to come, one FDR.
If markets fail, then governments fail too. You might find market failure is really set up by government failure and more succinctly: failure via the self-interest of politicos through the mechanism of government. Unfortunately RACookPE, politicos are not altruistic keepers of the “public good”. Skip political science and go directly to public choice theory [politics without the romamance].
A final point for RACookPe. You have a zeal for believing the more complex the perceived problem, then logically follows the more complex the rule or regulation. Nay, nay. Welcome to counterintuitive world. Simple rules generally outperform complex rules even when the problem appears to grow more and more complex. One might find insight from Simple Rules for a Complex World by Epstein and the essay The Dog and the Frisbee by Andrew G Haldane.
Returning to your bumper sticker talking point of “The recession was caused by a financial meltdown served up by an irresponsible banking industry….” you might find some wisdom here:
“There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.”
– Fredrick Bastiat, French economist, 1848.
ericgrimsrud said: “until it was noted that the CFC’s were completely destroying ALL stratospheric ozone over the continent of Antarctica every Springtime.”
At first I thought your post was satire. What exactly is CO2 destroying? The perfect weather that we had in the Little Ice Age? The droughts, heat and freezes of the 30’s? Can you explain why the minor and benign warming from CO2 should produce a climate-destroying rise in temperature based on positive feedback that is not modeled (i.e. weather)?
The problem with your website e,g, “… is rising at an alarming rate of 2 ppm per year (the greatest rate of increase observed over the last 800,000 years)…” is that it is full of garbage designed to corrupt the thinking of children and others with very little knowledge. You have no proof whatsoever that the rate of 2ppm per year is the greatest rate of increase over the last 800,000 years. There is no justification for the adjective “alarming”. Soon the momentum from the high solar flux of the late 20th century will be over along with 80% of your arguments. It is sad that it has to be this way.
William Heasley please reread the single post by RACookPE and tell us where he said anything about the economy much less the quote you allege to be from him. Then you can apologize to him.
eric1skeptic,
Concerning the issues of stratospheric ozone loss by the CFC’s and warming by CO2, they are entirely difference problems. Thus your initial comments made no sense to anyone.
Concerning the proof for the rising rate of CO2 emissions, have you ever heard of the “Keeling Curve” and the “Ice Core Record”. Please look them up with a simple Google search and try to learn a bit before sharing non-sense. Both the concentrations of CO2 and the rates of concentration change are now known for the period from 800,000 years ago to the present.
wonder if Obama’s thought was “Al Gore lost an election to an overfunded idiot, I’ll use his campaign ideas!”
ericgrimsrud, your statement: “until it was noted that the CFC’s were completely destroying ALL stratospheric ozone over the continent of Antarctica every Springtime.” is false. Most people reading this blog can sort it out, perhaps you can look carefully at your each word you wrote and see where your claim does not hold up.
As for the ice code record, you are essentially claiming that natural rises in CO2 cannot exceed a certain rate using ice cores. Please show how a single reading every few hundred years or 1000 or more years can “prove” that CO2 never rose (and then fell) naturally at the rate observed today.
In general your absolutist and wild claims are not supported. You apparently never learned in your long career in science how to state facts in ways that are precise and supportable. Now that you are retired you appear pretty much stuck in the same mode.
To eric1skeptic,
OK, to be more precise, high altitude aircraft flying through the Antarctic Stratosphere during its springtime found that the ozone level in large portions of the stratosphere went down to “near zero” as the product of its destruction, chlorine oxide (ClO) jumped up to high levels. That is, almost all of the ozone, O3, in those regions was being converted to ClO by the reaction O3 + Cl -> ClO of O2.
Concerning the ice core record, you say that they provide only one measurement per century. The “time resolution” of the ice core record varies from high to low values than this. However, due to the extremely long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere, if its concentration ever rose to say some very high value, say such as 500 ppm, the high level would have been maintained for at least several centuries during which time it would have been noted in the ice core record even if the time resolution provided was as low as only one measurement per century.
In short, you do not know much about the subjects on which you are attempting to pontificate. None of us know it all, of course, and I always look forward to learning something new. But also try to keep in mind that new insights usually come from discussions of the science and rarely from personal insults and bursts from the gut.
Let me learn something here. Doesn’t Ozone deplete at -150F? The springtime temps in antarctican upper levels should be well below this point. I can find multitudes of studies that say it’s some kind of ‘chemical reaction’ but, temperatures alone can account for most of this loss, can’t it?
Martin457, A British research program in Antartica monitorred the total amount of ozone above that continent starting in the ’50’s. They noted a steady decrease which greatly accellerated in the 70′ and 80’s. That prompted the aircraft measurements in 1985 that clearly showed the loss and where it was occurring in the stratosphere. Note that the temperature of the Antarctic was alway very low so a temperature effect does not explain the enhances ozone loss in recent decades. The reactions I mentioned earlier did example the loss and they were related to Cl atoms coming originally from the CFC’s. Note also that since the use of CFC’s was banned in the 1990’s, the size of the “ozone hole” in the Antarctic stopped growing each year and now is getting smaller each year. Yes, the efforts of the atmospheric science research community save our butts on that one. Note also that it is this same community of scientists that are regularly dismissed as “alarmists” by the deniers of AGW today. Once again we are a scientifically foolish society today and will pay dearly for that deficiency.
ericgrimsrud, your statement about Antarctic ozone is better, although should also mention that the the end of winter marks the end of the lack of sun which creates varying amounts of ozone. It is in fact the ration of solar high frequency ultraviolet to solar low frequency ultraviolet that mainly determines how much ozone is in the stratosphere. Certainly CFCs do no help, but as they turn into free chlorine they will drift lower with gravity.
Now for your latest inexact statement: “However, due to the extremely long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere, if its concentration ever rose to say some very high value, say such as 500 ppm, the high level would have been maintained for at least several centuries during which time it would have been noted in the ice core record even if the time resolution provided was as low as only one measurement per century.”
If mankind stopped producing CO2 today, the concentration of CO2 would drop from whatever value it is at (e.g. 395) half way back to preindustrial in less than 40 years. Our current blip of CO2 would not register in a 100k year old ice core. As for higher res, it is true there are cores with higher resolution in Greenland but most are lower than a century, with one reading every couple of centuries at best.
To make a valid counterargument to a CO2 blip you would have to show that such a blip is not possible physically (other than what mankind is doing). You cannot use inaccurate statements about the lifetime of CO2. You say “I always look forward to learning something new.” Well, here’s something new for you, the current exponential decay time constant of CO2 shows about a 40 year half life (meaning 1/4 remains in 80 years etc). If you want, I will send you the spreadsheet where I demonstrate how the exponential decay works.
ericgrimsrud said: “Note that the temperature of the Antarctic was alway very low so a temperature effect does not explain the enhances ozone loss in recent decades.”
Inaccurate once again. The temperature of the stratosphere varies over the Antarctic and is not always very low (it is independent of the surface temperature). That temperature will drop in response to higher CO2, so that can lead to lower ozone. But the main modulators are weather and solar. I suggest if you want to learn something new, to look at the forecasts and charts of stratospheric temperatures such as this http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/10mb9065.gif
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ericgrimsrud says:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/28/the-president-decides-to-stick-with-climatism/#comment-1094768
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Thanks for the distasteful yet familiar catalog of stereotypical warmist dogma. One would’ve hoped after retiring, one would at least finally see the light.
My condolences….
to eric!skeptic:
Please!!
Gravity pulls molecules out of the air? Then why is SF6 (molecular weight – 146) well mixed throughout the total atmosphere.
It takes only 40 years for the excess biological carbon (such as that in atmospheric CO2, plants and the CO2 dissolved in the oceans) to be converted back to geological carbon (such as coal and limestone)? Conventional science tells us that the processes of weathering and coal production take thousands of years. The world needs to know about the mechanism you envision by which the excess carbon in the biocarbon cycle is removed. Please do send you idea to a journal where it can be peer reviewed.
The temperature of Antarctica is not alway sufficient to freeze water? Thereby allowing the amount of ice on that continent to increase even as GW occurs globally.
And ozone is destroyed spontaineously under temperture conditions the Antarctic stratosphere? Gosh, I sure did not know that!! I wonder if there is a literature reference behind that one – I have never seen one and do know the literature pretty well.
I am afraid that our understandings of climate science are so different that it is difficult to communicate. So please do carry on – while I politely bow out of this conversation.
Brian Johnson uk says:
September 28, 2012 at 10:30 pm
“Don’t mean to be rude but your President is really dumb. He must be surrounded by sycophants.
Mind you we have Cameron who has turned out to be apathetic wimp…..”
Not dumb. Part of the communist plan book. “Cause trouble, blame the opposition for the problems, offer more left wing solutions to those problems”. The lie is a central component to the left wing ideology. Loans to people who could not afford to pay them was a left wing idea then blamed upon the “lack of regulation” by the Republicans.
ericgrimsrud, you are showing an extreme unwillingness to learn new things. The upward flux of CFC’s is offset by the downward flux of HCl. see http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19850019103_1985019103.pdf#page=260 top of page 271/169. There is other motion and mixing as well, and not as simple as I described it since it is HCl not Cl moving downward.
The 40 year exponential decay for CO2 assumes that the ocean is doing most of the absorbing. It can be calculated given the amount of CO2 we create versus the rise in ppm over time. There is no need to consider permanent sequestration for a spike that would not show up in the ice core record. I could hypothesize a spike in CO2 from volcanoes quickly absorbed by the oceans tht would not show up in the record. You could easily point out that’s not what is happening today and that is correct, but still negates your claim above that it would show up in the ice core.
The temperature of Antarctica that I was talking about is the extreme cold in the stratosphere that destroys ozone. I am surprised you have not come across it since it has come up in recent winters when the Arctic showed a hole caused by extreme cold. Here’s an older case “On 1 February 1989, -83.5°C was recorded in 27.8 hPa over Hohenpeißenberg, the lowest temperature in the 22-year series. This was measured together with a very low total ozone amount of 266 DU. This may be compared with nearly twice this amount on 27 February 1989. The situation was very unusual: following an extremely cold winter in the Arctic stratosphere, ”
http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00114775?LI=true
ericgrimsrud, to spare you from looking up cause and effect http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01431161.2011.597792
“The main finding is that the 2010–2011 winter’s record-breaking [Arctic] ozone loss was instigated by the extremely low stratospheric temperatures that are linked to climate change”
To eric1skeptic,
You have missed the point of the article you referred to. The unusally large ozone hole was suggested to have resulted from an inverse temperature effect on the chlorine mechanism for ozone loss. It was not suggested to occur from the lower temperature alone – ozone does not decompose spontaineously at low temperatures.
Concerning the loss of atmospheric CO2 to the oceans, an equilibrium condition relatively quickly is establiished between the Atmosphere and THE SURFACE LAYER OF THE OCEANS, only. That surface layer roughly constitutes the top 200 meters of the ocean. Unfortunately, the surface layers do not mix with the cooler depths of the oceans below. That mixing process requires several to many centuries for completion. Thus it takes a very very long time for the CO2 content in the atmosphere to be transferred to the oceans. Sorry about that but that’s how Ma Nature does her thing.
ericgrimsrud,
Because the alarmist crowd makes the elementary mistake of reversing cause and effect, their conclusions are necessarily wrong.
CO2 may cause a negligible amount of warming, but it is too small to measure. However, it is easy to measure how Temperature changes cause changes in CO2. It is obvious that ΔT causes ΔCO2.
If something is too small to measure, then everything said about it is a conjecture. Not a theory. Not a hypothesis. A conjecture. An opinion. A belief.
The real world shows us which is the cause, and which is the effect. Sorry about your CO2=CAGW conjecture.
to D Böehm,
Please!! Increased atmospheric CO2 does not cause increased temperatures?
Have you ever heard of the Pleocene-Eocene Therma Maximum, an event that occurred about 55 Million years ago on this planet ?
Do you not know why the planet, Venus, has a surface temperature of about 750 degrees F ?
Do you not know that CO2 interferes with the Earth’s (and Venus’s) attempt to cool itself via the emission of IR radiation into outer space?
If the answer to these 3 questions is “no”, perhaps you should try to learn. For starters, I know of a short courses that might help – at ericgrimsrud.com.
ericgrimsrud, how does ozone spontaneously appear at warmer temperatures? In the part of the abstract I quoted above, the ozone doubled in 26 days. Obviously it is catalyzed in both directions and I never doubted chlorine is a powerful catalyst in the negative direction. What you cannot seem to notice is that all your statements about ozone above were incomplete at best. Mainly you left out the natural factors that cause sudden drops (in tandem with chlorine) and equally sudden restorations in ozone.
On the CO2 issue, your statement was that 2 ppm is “alarming” and unprecedented in 800k years. But the ice core does not support that claim, you can only support it by showing that there is no physical possibility of a natural spike like our post-industrial spike. You cannot, or you would have done so by now.
If we stopped producing CO2 tomorrow it would fall by a “reassuring” 1.5 ppm per year (average over 24 years) then 1.2ppm per year for 24 more years, then less, etc. This is not going to happen of course, but the numbers come from the current rates of absorption in the ocean and our current production which includes the deep ocean since that is part of the systematic response. It doesn’t matter how fast or slow your hand waving of the overturning rate is, the decay I quote above results from the real-world overturning rate. Depending on the source (e.g. volcanic), a sudden spike in atmospheric CO2 to today’s levels would be absorbed at the same rate and would show up as a minor blip in the coarse and smoothed ice core record.
Everyone here has something left to learn, some more than others. You are not exempt. You should stop pontificating and read a little more. Read a few papers to challenge yourself. Start by looking at how coarse and smoothed the ice core record actually is.
ericgrimsrud says:
Please!! Increased atmospheric CO2 does not cause increased temperatures?
That is a conjecture. It may be true, but if so it is still too small to measure. There is no testable, measurable scientific evidence proving that ΔCO2 causes ΔT. None. That’s why it is a conjecture. You cannot produce a chart like the one I posted above, showing that changes in CO2 cause temperature changes. Why? Because any such putative effects are too small to measure.
Have you ever heard of the Pleocene-Eocene Therma Maximum, an event that occurred about 55 Million years ago on this planet ?
Have you ever heard that coincidental correlation is no proof of causation? Anyway, let’s stick with the Holocene. The error bars on anything tens of millions of years old are just too large.
Do you not know why the planet, Venus, has a surface temperature of about 750 degrees F ?
Yes, of course. Venus is closer to the sun. At the same STP as Earth, the temperatures are almost identical.
Do you not know that CO2 interferes with the Earth’s (and Venus’s) attempt to cool itself via the emission of IR radiation into outer space?
Any warming due to CO2 is too small to measure. You’re getting all worked up over a non-problem. Quit scaring yourself, it’s juvenile.
CO2 is completely harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. More is better. Try worrying about real problems. The “carbon” scare is a false alarm.
D Böehm, the natural rise in CO2 due to the natural warming from the Little Ice Age would be about 5-10 ppm. That is because the oceans warmed about 1C and that’s roughly how much CO2 they offgas with that temperature rise. The rest of the rise that we see in the atmosphere (actually all of it) is due to manmade CO2. The reason I can safely say “all” (unlike the other Eric who likes to use ALL in caps) is that the oceans are now absorbing some of our CO2 based on the portion in the atmosphere that is above the equilibrium.
There is still some uncertainty even in established science like the above, but the oceanic CO2 measurements are pretty solid. There are piles of papers on it like this one: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v396/n6711/abs/396560a0.html
The simple answer is that if you are correct, the dissolved CO2 in the ocean would be dropping as it diffused into the atmosphere. But it is rising, supported by every paper I have seen.
D Böehm, I suggest you not bother reading about Venus, it is a red herring. A better way to think about it is what happens on cloudy nights. It is warmer, not because of ground level moisture or lapse rate or wind or any other such factor. It is warmer because the clouds absorb outgoing IR then reradiate part of it back to earth. The extra CO2 in the atmosphere does the same. You can argue the amount is small or whatever, but you can’t really argue with the principle.
eric1skeptic,
Agreed. But the basic question is this: will rising CO2 cause global damage or harm? So far, there is zero evidence of global harm traceable to rising CO2. Therefore, more CO2 is harmless, no?
And we know for a fact that more CO2 is beneficial to the biosphere. Therefore, CO2 is harmless, and beneficial. There is no scientific evidence to the contrary.
I have provided ample scientific evidence showing that CO2 is a function of temperature. There is no empirical evidence showing a reversed cause and effect. Any honest scientist would take the facts available and conclude that CO2 has not been a problem and is not likely to be a problem. But there are very few honest scientists in the climate alarmist camp. They have an agenda and a narrative, and they’re sticking with it.
Regarding the Venus issue, I was simply answering a question. Regarding radiative physics, I am in agreement. Note that radiative physics is not the same thing as AGW. There are people who know much more than I do about physics and the climate, such as Dr Ferenc Miskolczi, who flatly states that the sensitivity number for 2xCO2 is 0.0ºC. So the jury is still out.
D Böehm, I could quibble with some of your points, but it is much better to agree that CO2 is beneficial to my dozens of edible plants. The warming that I would attribute to CO2 (hard to pin down) is also beneficial. The alleged consequences of warming are not particularly serious: enhancement of seasonal drought, mostly within natural variation (and droughts always start and end naturally). The increases in rainfall intensity, easily managed. Nothing much else as Nature is now forced to admit.
It’s easy to ask coal owners to give up their coal, then gas owners to give up their property, then anyone to give up any property on some whim of science until the principle of private property is destroyed, then ask everyone to freeze in the dark for their own good. That kind of thing has been done several times in history and millions of people have died as a result. So, unlike the other Eric, I dedicate my spare time to the people living or trying to eek out a living today. Unlike the other Eric, I do not worship a President who said “electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket” (and he was talking about natural gas, not just coal).
to eric1skeptic
When you continue to say silly things, such as
“Yes, of course. Venus is closer to the sun”, a distinctly poor impression is made. Yes, Venus is closer to the sun, 2/3 as far away as Earth. This means that the Solar Flux at Venus is about twice that of Earth. Yes, only 2 times greater. And this accounts for the fact that the temperture on Venus is about 750 degrees F while that of Earth is about 60 degrees F. Simple calculations suggest that that if Earth has T= 60 F, then Venus would be about 30 degrees greater due to the distance factor alone. Yet the T of Venus is about 750 F, hot enough to melt lead.
Could the exceedingly high T of Venus have anything to do with the fact that its atmosphere consists of 96% CO2 along with its 100 times greater total atmospheric pressure? Just a deep thought here for your consideration. Please discuss this point as you wish with D Böehm
Really, ericgrimsrud, get educated. We have been through the Venus discussion several times now. See here to get some understanding:
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html
Then do a WUWT archive search. The Venus issue has been settled. Despite a 96% CO2 atmosphere, Venus is no warmer than the Earth at the same barometric pressure. Distance from the Sun explains all of Venus’ warmth. If the Venusian atmosphere was 96% Nitrogen, the temperature would be the same. CO2 has no effect.
To D Boehm, Yes, the Venus issue has been settled and it shows the dominating importance of CO2’s warning effect. But that is the point still missed by eric1skeptic. So please do help him out.
Ok, for those of you who don,t believe in Global Warming better. Ok. Because we are doing this whether you agree or not. First off everything has a purpose on Earth, and we are taking that away. What I mean by that is that we are cutting way to many trees down, which has a purpose of being 00% of our Oxygen we breathe, they also protect the Earth from flooding, the plants and animals to. Which if you haven’t noticed animals are coming into areas never seen in and they are taking food out of garbage cans to. Let’s see did I fail to mention that birds are reusing other birds nests, or squirrels are stealing the stuffing out of porch chairs for their nest (my chairs) to be exact. Oh best yet how about the fact we just turned the heat of in June (mid) and now it is the end of Sept and it is so cold we had to turn the heat on. Or did anyone notice how Saturn was out of alignment for 2 weeks and was right there by the North Star the whole 2 weeks in the same position. Well I could go on, but I will leave you with this last little piece of information, if and when the Artic and Antartic Icebergs melt, NYC city will be under water , so think about that while you sit and debate whether to believe in Global Warming or not . Oh let,s see if any of you are as green as you think you are, I posted a topic on my blog that has a link to two places you can check to see how much CO2 you are using in your home and let’s see if any of you can rate under the score of green. Thank you ericgrimsrud, I don,t think we will get them to understand, I have been trying for so long, I am running out of air from trying so hard. Bad thing is that our kids, believe more than most adults do and that to me is very sad.
Oh one more thing, I saw 2 auroras in NY, and I did get the shot of the second one, but not the first because I couldn’t get a good spot to get the shot, but the first was a purple, red, blu color and this one was a yellow, orange color, and we don’t see auroras in Ny
ericgrimsrud, I don’t know what you are going on about. All I said was Venus is a red herring. You seen to be obsessed with Venus. Strange, I thought men were from Mars.
shras789, auroras are natural, solar phenomena along with a few of the other things you talked about. As for NYC flooding, that is probably distant since sea level is rising about one inch per decade and pretty much a flat rise (not accelerating).