One of the regular alarm stories that comes from the global warming machine is that atmospheric methane with soon run amok and cause a tipping point. We are regularly treated to scare stories like this one from The Guardian on November 27th, 2012:
UN: methane released from melting ice could push climate past tipping point
Doha conference is warned that climate models do not yet take account of methane in thawing permafrost
The United Nations sounded a stark warning on the threat to the climate from methane in the thawing permafrost as governments met for the second day of climate change negotiations in Doha, Qatar.
Thawing permafrost releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, but this has not yet been included in models of the future climate. Permafrost covers nearly a quarter of the northern hemisphere at present and is estimated to contain 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon – twice the amount currently in the atmosphere. As it thaws, it could push global warming past one of the key “tipping points” that scientists believe could lead to runaway climate change.
Note the word “could” in the last sentence. That comes from models, not observations. Note also this scary quote:
Doha conference is warned that climate models do not yet take account of methane in thawing permafrost
So how do the IPCC methane models stack up against reality? Not so hot…
Clearly, nature isn’t cooperating with IPCC science as atmospheric methane trends have fallen well below even the lowest range of all the IPCC scenarios. The First Assessment Report (FAR) projection has methane at 5 times the current value, and each subsequent IPCC report lowered the projection by about half each time, and they still missed it. Once again, observations trump models. Add this to the other bombshell graph from the same chapter and you have to wonder how the AGW issue continues to have any traction.
But that won’t stop scare stories like the ones below from appearing, because as we’ve noted, alarmists aren’t good at assimilating new contrary factual data in a way that mutes their zeal in spreading the alarm.
Here’s one from a couple of years ago, where naturally occurring methane from decomposition gets ignited by an activist, and Dan Miller at Berkeley turns that into climate alarm:
And yet, despite these alarming stories, according to the IPCC report showing observations versus the models in figure 1.7, atmospheric methane concentration isn’t accelerating, nor is it currently within the forecast bounds of any of the IPCC climate models.
Oh No: We’re doomed! Quick – set fire to them so they can turn into CO2 fast! Oh wait… not that!
I always laugh when I read alarmist drivel which states things like “…methane, a gas 20 times as harmful as carbon dixoide…”!! At ~1800ppBILLION/v, and flattening out, I won’t be worrying any time soon. If alarmists are now worried about CH4 (And one alarmist I talked to once said CH4 had “…four carbons…”) then they should remove termites and healthy forests.
Hydrogen and Helium do not stay in our atmosphere as gases. They are light and they float up and away into the never-never.
Methane is a light gas, about half way between Helium and Oxygen. For comparison, at Standard Temperature and Pressure, expressed in gram per litre, we have densities of –
Helium 0.18; methane molecular 0.71; Oxygen molecular 1.42.
As a first assumption, methane should float away also, but it is reactive and I do not know its chemical rate of conversion at different temperatures, pressures, light irradiation, catalysis if present and in unspecified surroundings. I guess nobody else is really sure either. Maybe some runs the gauntlet of atmospheric chemistry and floats away. Anyone know?
However, I would think it extremely hard to assign a confident mechanistic significance to the concentrations in the above graph of about 1.8 parts per million, in the context of global change.
I watched the video… I wasn’t alarmed. In fact, I laughed!
These guys are hilarious! Light it! Yeah! WooHoo!
So just out of curiosity, what do they think Natural Gas is? Are they completely unaware that it used to vent, uncontrolled, from various places around the planet in very large quantities until we started locating it, capping it, and distributing it for useful purposes?
That video looks like a great opportunity – NOT for alarm – but for the oil and gas exploration industry.
I forgot to add that an analytical chemist reporting a methane measurement uncertainty of under 1.5 ppb at 1,800 ppb tota in the test tubel, will go blind through repetitive exercise of the hand that holds the tube. (\sarc off).
“20 times as harmful as carbon dioxide” ,,, I have a collection of absorb/emit charts and can’t see any significant methane levels. Anyone got a link for this please. I can post a link to a NASA paper that shows CO2 has nearly 4,000 emission lines centered around 15 microns, never mind all the other CO2 bands THAT ARE ONLY EFFECTIVE WHEN THE SUN SHINES.
Please Dan Miller, Scientists with English as a first language note the spelling “Arctic” and do not pronounce as “Artic”.
Would you please decsribe a plausible scenario in which the oceans become anoxic? If you cannot, please don’t mention it.
Lastly, is Chemistry a subject still taught at University level? Much of what we hear is Elementary, or worse, wrong elementary.
Another one of these methane stories (in the lead up to DOHA) was here:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/where-even-the-earth-is-melting-20121127-2a5tp.html
Rampant scaremongering, with a poll after the article instantly asking the reader if they were scared or not.
I’ve felt that this year with DOHA it was only the most hard left media outlets that tried to once again ramp up the doomsday scenarios.
Where would the alarmists be without their scaremongering? Hysterical predictions of imminent doom that turn out to have no substance and disappear like the morning mist only to be replaced by more scaremongering. Be afraid of the future, the future is a very scary place, change your ways and dont stop to think about it, feel guilty and feel insecure. A very useful political tool for those without the moral integrity that would prevent normal people from using it, its all in a good cause right? The road to hell paved with good intentions and lined with those who tried and failed and yet still people try and try again to walk that road, it must be a very crowded old road.
The ends justify the means right? Lie and cheat your way to a brave new world and when there the architects can shrug off the moral corruption that built it like an unwanted coat or so they have conned themselves into believing. People who use lies and deceptions to serve their own ends often deceive themselves that they can sink to the depths of moral depravity and somehow find their way back out of that sewer with a clean soul not realising that once you lower yourself into that abyss there is no coming out of it at all let alone clean. Perhaps the real socially learned truth of the ‘devil’ and his works comes in the form of a false temptation in all of us that using those methods gets quick and easy results with no negative consequences, a folk warning passed down in the only way our ancestors knew how.
This alarmist scare story is so stupid because:
1. Natural gas (methane) has been escaping from deeply buried gas and coal deposits for tens of millions of years, whatever the Earth’s surface temperature is, this rate of escape will not change.
2. Almost all the methane trapped in permafrost areas was deposited/created there by decomposing vegetation since the end of the last ice age, circa 10,000 years ago.
3. During the last ice age, our planet’s higher latitudes areas were: i) either scoured clean by glaciers, or ii) because of their much higher elevation (compared to the then prevailing sea level) exposed to much higher levels of erosion.
So, almost all this methane was created by decomposing vegetation less than 10,000 years old, which in turn was created from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, also in the last 10,000 years.
Are there any indications of this supposedly huge amount of carbon dioxide taken from the atmosphere overe the past 10,000 years?
Answer: Absolutely none.
Conclusion: Typical alarmist BS.
Surely if methane, or any gas, was bubbling up through the sea-water any ship at that place would sink. The density of the water gas mixture would be too low to support flotation. Would this not be the real hazard, not the approach of some tipping point.
When ever I hear that term I think of a group of COP delegates finishing off their postprandial ports, pretending to be in deep discussion, while ignoring the waiter and the bill in his hand, hoping that some other more generously subsidised associate will cough up for both bill and gratuity
CH4 rate of Thermal dissociation?… Electron dissociation imposed by magnetosphere density created changes adapted with increases in the influx of cosmic rays?
How much of time period dependent CH4 that has escaped into the atmosphere remains as a trace feature of the atmosphere?
I don’t know what it means to pass muster is but these UN flunkies apparently don’t know either.
Why did the Methan survive the Minoan and Roman warming period? (and the polar bears of course too)
A question they can’t answer
i like my climate fiction over easy
but the best i’ve ever gotten
is a scrambled narrative that’s over-ripe
and over-wroughten…
-mr.sugar
So if the permafrost didn’t release methane and decaying organic matter continued to decay and add to the permafrost then, call me simple, but eventually all the free carbon on the planet would become trapped in permafrost and we’d be doomed, and the lack of CO2 would not only stop organic life but would cause massive cooling. Little puppy dogs and pussy cats would all be dead.
It’s too horrid to contemplate. I hope methane continues to vent.
Bill Irvine says:
December 17, 2012 at 11:59 pm
Surely if methane, or any gas, was bubbling up through the sea-water any ship at that place would sink. The density of the water gas mixture would be too low to support flotation. Would this not be the real hazard, not the approach of some tipping point.
Yes in theory
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20031020/methane.html
But no proof just modelling 🙂
Another thought just occurred to me.
Methane obviously oxidises in our atmosphere to carbon dioxide and water, but how long does this process take?
Answer: About 8.5 years. See link below:
Also, CH4 has a mass of 16, while CO2 has a mass 44. So, if all the methane in the atmosphere today was suddenly oxidised, then the CO2 level would increase by: 1.75 x 16/44 = 0.64ppm.
Current CO2 levels are around 394ppm, so this would represent an increase of 0.16% – hmm, that’s scary.
So just for fun, let’s say this alarmist BS was correct and suddenly 10 times the amount of all the CH4 currently in the atmosphere was suddenly released from permafrost areas, this would ultimately increase CO2 levels by around 1.6%.
Here, the point is we are dealing with a gas CH4, which has a miniscule concentration of 1.75ppm in our atmosphere and which completely oxidises away over a period of about eight years.
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=methane%20oxidation%20rate%20atmosphere%20earth&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&sqi=2&ved=0CGAQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffaculty.washington.edu%2Fjaegle%2F558%2Fox_capacity.pdf&ei=WyzQUOr5JseP0AWHkIHgDA&usg=AFQjCNHgZUeintTcP32Sfsd8kGaC_pkHZw
“”Bill Irvine says:
December 17, 2012 at 11:59 pm “”
Hmm… I remember reading about this effect many years ago when I lived in South Africa. It was suggested that methane bubbles sank the SS Waratah.
As someone who is not as confidently skeptical as most of the visitors here, I find that graph to be a big releif!
It’s interesting that the colors in this chart descend in the same order as the four assesment reports with the observations on the bottom — certianly suggests confirmation bias or possibly an agenda.
What you have forgotten is that flatulent termites will breed expontentially when the missing heat is bubbles to the surface (thank goodness for that Nobel Laueate Trenberth!). You will then witness a large increase in methane which will then match the projections.
This chart is obviously not final as AR4 projections would have to match the observation in 2007 as that is the starting point. And for those who wish to pile on, I’m not saying the AR4 projections are accurate, but simply that this chart cannot be representative.
Oops, I got the maths wrong – just like a climate scientist.
But unlike a climate scientist, I admit I was wrong.
If all the methane currently in the atmosphere were to oxidise, the CO2 level would increase by 1.75 x 44/16 = 4.8ppm; that’s a scary 1,2%.
My apologies.
Amazing how models which cannot get within shooting distance of the correct temperature can somehow predict the tipping points of a chaotic non-linear system with several hundred mutually dependent variables.
Just reading the above comments, it appears the increase in observed Methane concentrations is nothing to be worried about. I beg to differ.
I am not so worried about the mismatch between model vs actual, but the effect the increased methane concentration has on the energy balance of the earth.
Well, at least 2006 depending on the cut off date for acceptance of papers. Still no match.
Richard111 says:
“It was suggested that methane bubbles sank the SS Waratah.”
Probably the real story behind the Titanic disaster as well. And the Marie Celeste. (Stop laughing)
Reality is overrated, models are where it’s at!
Yeah right it could. But then again it didn’t in the past. Now let’s take a look at another type of observation and what the IPCC also say.
Now here is what the IPCC says about runaway warming.
I am curious as to how, in the FAR, they managed to have an inflection point in the lower boundary of the projection, and also that this point seems to be mirrored in the observed data! Any ideas?
Methane again? Just so much marsh gas (lol)
jeez says:
December 18, 2012 at 1:33 am
“This chart is obviously not final as AR4 projections would have to match the observation in 2007 as that is the starting point. ”
So what you are saying is that with each IPCC report they reset the models?
I think they don’t do that as it would reek too much of fudging even for the climate scientists of the IPCC.
But maybe you should suggest it. They need some imaginative new ideas to become the driving force of global transformation again. Don’t worry about the scientific implications, science went out the window in 1988 already.
Think of all that lovely heating gas to burn off, let’s hope the Japanese are beaten to it by enterprising Brits to extract the clathrate, yippee!!! Why is it they can never, ever, see the advantages. always only the disadvantages, am I guessing somebody’s glass is always half-empty? Natural gas is 85% methane, 10% ethane, & varying levels of between 2-3% butane & propane! CO2 is regarded by the IPCC as a “trace” gas, despite all the hullaballoo over the end of the world is nigh, so what does that make methane?
Not only has Methane flattened out (it went up a tiny bit in the last few years but looks to have stabilized again) …
… but everyone interested in Methane should watch this video of Methane levels captured by the AIRS satellite covering every day from 2002 to 2008 (cool music to go with it) …
… Just search “Airs Methane” on Google Video – should be the first one that comes up.
It will change your view of Methane and where it is generated (everywhere that is) and how fast it moves around the planet with the prevailing weather systems (you can’t measure it over the Arctic ice and say the measurements came from there – they may have been generated 1,000 kms away two days earlier).
I could watch only the first couple of minutes. I was told to be very scared and that there were big things to worry about. There is just so much to worry about so I schedule time to give them my undivided worry attention. This one is scheduled for 3:00 A.M. -4:00 A.M. December 22, 2018. When does N2O become a big worry?
This guys are really silly. All there big worries and statements said to an audience of like-minded rent seekers and received with great approval. This passes for science?
“We don’t know…” this. “We don’t know…” that.
Argumentum ad ignorantiam, ad nauseum.
His ignorance is exceeded only by his overwhelming compulsion to flaunt it.
Methane + water + cold -> methane hydrate, a crystalline form of a water/methane mixture that melts at 55°F, releasing the methane. The methane will come off at a significantly warmer temperature than that required to melt the surface ice.
‘Note the word “could” in the last sentence. That comes from models, not observations’. WUWT, kindly stop playing semantics, with the word ‘could’! Because there are only two guarantees in life, that is taxes and death. Anything else is a could! There could be WMD in Iraq, Dubya could have been the best president in history, Aliens and UFOs could exist, there could be a God, but we need evidence and in my opinion there is plenty for AGW!
REPLY: The real issue is: is there any evidence for a methane induced tipping point? Show your work – Anthony
That Arctic methane combustion pales into insignificance compared with the giant hole of fire in Derweze, Turkmenistan – It’s a crater made by geologists more than 40 years ago, and the flames within have been burning ever since:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2202202/Karakum-Desert–Giant-hole-known-The-Door-Hell-40-YEARS.html
First rule of climate ‘science’ deals with this, where the models and reality differ in value its reality which is in error.
UNFCCC trump observation and reality?
Carter:
At December 18, 2012 at 4:08 am you say
Hmmmm.
That depends on whether you mean discernible AGW.
For three decades research costing in excess of $5 billion per year has been conducted to find some – any – evidence of discernible AGW. The search has had no success; none, zilch, nada.
If you have any such evidence then please provide it because many – including me and including the IPCC – would like to have it. At this moment we have none.
Which is not to say AGW does not exist: it probably does. But all available evidence indicates AGW trivial and is too small for it to be discernible.
Richard
I posted this on Sunday:
In a recent post UNEP Report – Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost
http://mostlyharmless-room-101.blogspot.com/2012/12/unep-report-policy-implications-of.html
I identified a major contradiction therein, and debunked claimed “increases” in CO2 and methane over permafrost areas. I’ve been digesting parts of the leaked IPCC AR5 draft report, and found this in WG1 chapter 6:
6.3.3.2 Emissions
………………
Over the past decades, however, there is no evidence for significant emission of CH4 from permafrost and hydrates (Dlugokencky et al., 2009).
…. from the horse’s mouth.
And a little further on this section:
6.4.3.4 Permafrost Carbon
Current estimates of permafrost soil carbon stocks are 1670 PgC (Tarnocai et al., 2009), the single largest component of the terrestrial carbon pool and higher than previously thought. Terrestrial carbon models show a land CO2 sink with warming at high northern latitudes, however none of the models participating in C4MIP or CMIP5 included explicit representation of permafrost soil carbon decomposition, which at a minimum requires sufficient vertical resolution in modelled soil carbon distribution and processes to separate surface pools from very old (Pleistocene) permafrost carbon pools. Including permafrost carbon processes into an ESM can change the sign of this C response to warming from a sink to a source in northern high latitudes (Koven et al., 2011). The magnitude of this source of CO2 to the atmosphere from decomposition of permafrost carbon varies widely by 2100 according to different model estimates: process-model estimates include 7–17 Pg (Zhuang et al., 2006), 55–69 Pg (Koven et al., 2011), and 126–254 Pg (Schaefer et al., 2011); estimates of uncertainty ranges suggest the source could range from 33 to 114 Pg C (68% range) under RCP8.5 warming (von Deimling et al., 2012), or 50–270 PgC (5th–95th percentile range; Burke et al., subm.). Combining observed vertical soil C profiles with modelled thaw rates estimate that the total quantity of newly-thawed soil C by 2100 will be 246 Pg for RCP4.5 and 436 Pg for RCP8.5 (Harden et al., 2012 in press). Sources of uncertainty for the permafrost C feedback include the physical thawing rates, the fraction of C that is release after being thawed and the timescales of release, possible mitigating nutrient feedbacks, and the role of fine-scale processes in determining the terrestrial response.
Note the model results for emissions from permafrost to 2100: 7–17 Pg (petagrams), 55–69 Pg, 126–254 Pg, and the consequent estimated uncertainty range of 33 to 114 Pg C or 50–270 Pg C at the 5th–95th percentile range.
What does this all mean?
They don’t know.
Carter says: “but we need evidence and in my opinion there is plenty for AGW!”
It may surprise you to know that most people reading WUWT would agree with the above statement.
However, they would also not confuse CAGW, which does not exist, with AGW. The latter is a mildly interesting, difficult to quantify, phenomenon.
Difficult to quantify? That’s because man is not the only reason for the climate warming over the past century, natural climate cycles almost certainly accounted for 50-90% of the ~0.7 degrees C rise.
Alarmists like to muddle up the subjects of AGW and CAGW, as they know it helps their cause and that only well-informed sceptics can rend the two asunder. Unfortunately, the general public are likely to think the difference between the two is just semantics.
By muddling up the subjects of AGW and CAGW, you allow the huge unaccountable Global Warming Industry to exist and grow, plus support its bloated gravy train.
Perhaps the IPCC should change its name to COULD – Climate Of Utterly Ludicrous Dimensions.
Peter Miller wrote on December 18, 2012 at 1:04 am
A nit… 8.5 is probably a bit short. Page 11 of that source gives the directly-calculated atmospheric lifetime of CH4 as ~8 years, but identifies a feedback mechanism that (they say) effectively increases the atmospheric lifetime of additional CH4 to ~12 years.
Other sources give the half-life of CH4 in the atmosphere as 7 or 8 years, which would make the average lifetime 1.4427 times that (because oxidation is an exponential process, rather than linear), yielding an average lifetime of 10 to 11.5 years. So 10-12 years is probably a better guess than 8.5.
LetsBeReasonable says:
December 18, 2012 at 1:37 am
Just reading the above comments, it appears the increase in observed Methane concentrations is nothing to be worried about. I beg to differ.
I am not so worried about the mismatch between model vs actual, but the effect the increased methane concentration has on the energy balance of the earth.
Interesting. Just what effect do you think it’s having on the “energy balance”? Please show us the basis for your worry. Your C02 bogeyman doesn’t seem to be working out so well.
Canman says:
December 18, 2012 at 1:15 am
As someone who is not as confidently skeptical as most of the visitors here, I find that graph to be a big relief!….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
YOu might want to look at Ric Werme’s guide to WUWT. (Found on right side panel) He has very kindly organized the threads by subject so you can read what is said about a topic of interest.
http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/index.html
This is the Categories button (page down once to find it or use my button to go to it directly)
At the bottom of the home page is a guide to the mark-up language for comments.
Kev-in-Uk says:
December 18, 2012 at 2:26 am
I am curious as to how, in the FAR, they managed to have an inflection point in the lower boundary of the projection, and also that this point seems to be mirrored in the observed data! Any ideas?
________________________________
From what I understand they use historic data to”train” the models.
“I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, ‘with four parameters I can fit an elephant and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.'” ~ Enrico Fermi
Bill Irvine says:
December 17, 2012 at 11:59 pm
That’s been suspected in the sinking of various drilling and fishing vessels, but only in cases of sudden releases of enough methane to reduce the density of the sea water/methane mix so that it can’t support the boat. Your statement implies that any bubbles, e.g. that from a scuba diver, would be enough to sink a boat.
Apropos of nothing, if you take 1,800 ppb of the 3,451 miles geodesic distance between JFK and LHR airports you will have travelled slightly under 11 yards – about 1/7th of the length of a Boeing 747-400.
Way to go!
Admad says:
December 18, 2012 at 2:40 am
Methane again? Just so much marsh gas (lol)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, If they were so worried about methane they would have us draining all the swamps. Instead if you have a bunch of %$#$ beavers move into your stream you get 40 acres of swamp and the EPA telling you you cannot trap, or shoot the Giardia infected beaver or blow the dam.
However payback is a B…h. My stream empties just upstream from the city water intake and Giardiasis (Beaver Fever) is a problem in the city according to a friend in the sanitation deptment. Since Rewilding has become the newest YUPPY fad, Giardiasis never makes the headlines and its presents and cause are subject to the usual spin. (It is human caused… Yeah right)
They also say “Giardia has no longterm health effects.” Try telling that to my friend whose gut was messed up by Giardia forty years ago and is still dealing with the problems or another friend whose little boy almost died.
Another classic case of Skeptical Science Syndrome
Where reality is perceived but never realized because the models don’t show it.
Carter says:
December 18, 2012 at 4:08 am
There could be WMD in Iraq, Dubya could have been the best president in history, Aliens and UFOs could exist, there could be a God, but we need evidence and in my opinion there is plenty for AGW!
AGW may indeed exist however, unfortunately for Alarmists, its effect cannot be distinguished from the noise in naturally-driven climate change. You are welcome to submit your “evidence” though. Who knows, perhaps it is something we’ve overlooked.
The video portion (1:35) of the 2 men igniting the methane from the ice reminded me of those scholarly videos on YouTube where those Oh-So-Smart college age students are igniting “Methane expulsions” from their “Gluteus Maximus” using a Bic Lighter. Probably the same people in both videos. The laughing sounded the same.
Therefore, based on the research from those college students, posting on YouTube for Peer Review, I would summize that the source of the methane is from decomposing matter, but not from frozen peat moss as the lecturer mentions, but from Gaia’s over-consumption of Beans and Beer. (anyone have any Beano?)
Just my observation.
Peter Miller; you still have it wrong. CH4 has one carbon atom. If you oxidize it you gget one CO2 molecule. If the concentration is 1.75 PPM , you increase the concentration of CO2 by 1.75 ppm
Carter says:
“we need evidence and in my opinion there is plenty for AGW!”
I disagree, there’s some evidence for AGW and if that was all I ever considered then I’d probably be a believer too. The problem with AGW especially CAGW is that it is not the most reasonable conclusion one can reach from ALL the available evidence. It’s kinda like phlogiston, a hypothesis that requires ever more twisting and turning of the evidence in order to maintain even the slightest hint of reasonableness.
Luckily “Natural Gas” was discovered, and due to it’s abundance, was named prior to the Eco-freaks branding efforts. But to insist that CH4 is soem form of dino-farts flies in the face of reality. Consider Saturns moon Titan with Methane clouds, liquid Methan oceans and frozen Methane polar caps. Titan has an average temperature of -100F and has NEVER been the home of dinosaurs or ferns. Earth has a continious production of hydrocarbons as described in “Fossil Fuel is Nuclear Waste”. The same variable fission process that regulates the baseline temperature for climate also produces by-product elemental atoms, the feedstock for “natural gas”. If humans were NOT capturing and burning large quantities of CH4 then atmospheric levels would be higher, along with the atmospheric CH4 oxidation rate. Why demonize humans for a compound that exists NATURALLY throughout our solar system ? ? ?
Carter says:
December 18, 2012 at 4:08 am
‘Note the word “could” in the last sentence. That comes from models, not observations’. WUWT, kindly stop playing semantics, with the word ‘could’! Because there are only two guarantees in life, that is taxes and death. Anything else is a could! There could be WMD in Iraq, Dubya could have been the best president in history, Aliens and UFOs could exist, there could be a God, but we need evidence and in my opinion there is plenty for AGW!
Well, there could be.
LOL
None observed so far, just as we haven’t found any that would say that there are WMD in Iraq now (but we know at one time there was), Obama could be the best president in history, we (humans) could be the only sentient life form in the universe, or that God doesn’t exist.
They are simply following the Alarmist edict set forth by Stephen Schneider in 1989 when he said:
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.
The “tipping point” scenario is the ultimate in scaremongering. Take the “fiscal cliff”, multiply it by 1,000 and you get the “Climate Cliff”. Of course it isn’t based on reality. It’s about as real as the movie “The Day After Tomorrow”. But it gets the job done. It scares people, and people who are frightened are more compliant. And that’s OK, because Schneider said so.
John West says:
December 18, 2012 at 6:17 am
Carter says:
“we need evidence and in my opinion there is plenty for AGW!”
I disagree, there’s some evidence for AGW and if that was all I ever considered then I’d probably be a believer too.
Hey John (we were posting at essentially the same time as your post wasn’t there when I composed my previous) – isn’t there also some evidence that certain anthropogenic actions would cause atmospheric cooling, too?
In other words, overall, is what we are doing to the planet having a measureable/discernible effect (either cooling or warming) of the global atmosphere?
We think it “could”, but do we observe that it does?
Is that not the crux of the problem as posed by CAGW supporters: showing that a warming atmosphere is outside of natural cause and must be due to anthropogenic action and then showing that the major portion of that is directly related to anthropogenic CO2 emissions?
Not so much evidence of that from what I’ve read.
Carter says:
December 18, 2012 at 4:08 am
…..we need evidence and in my opinion there is plenty for AGW!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>……..
Fine show us.
All I see is a slow slide into the next glaciation with a few bumps along the way. Graph
Even your Warmist Buddies see that.
CO2 is not only a beneficial gas it is absolutely necessary for life and was running in short supply.
Seedling response to CO2 (Amount of CO2 is below each seedling.)
Oh and without CO2 you would died in short order before you starved.
Hyperventilation means you breath too quickly and take in too much oxygen. The doctor had my mother breathe in a paper bag to increase the CO2 levels and decrease the O2 when she started to hyperventilate.
CO2, O2 and H2O are critical to life on this planet and I am getting darn sick and tired of the control freaks singling out CO2 and calling it a pollutant, dangerous and whatever else. Perhaps a day in a CO2 free environment might convince them other wise. Will you be the first to volunteer to live in a CO2 free environment for a day? After all if CO2 is a pollutant then 0.00 ppb is what you want RIGHT?
I suppose it’s a rest from trumping bovines. For the moment…
[snip – try not to write when you are angry. I’m doing you a favor by snipping this. You are welcome to rephrase and resubmit. Judith Curry in comments at her place even refer to the first chart (1.4) as having a bombshell BTW – Anthony]
At around 4:28 in the Fire and Ice video, Dan Miller says that methane absorbed in the ocean makes the ocean more acidic. I’m having difficulty figuring out the chemistry of that reaction.
CodeTech says: December 17, 2012 at 11:26 pm
Are they completely unaware that natural gas used to vent, uncontrolled, from various places around the planet in very large quantities.
_________________________________
Hence there are little or no gas or oil deposits left in folded or faulted mountain ranges. Gone long ago.
[snip – I’ve snipped Mosh to give him an opportunity to rephrase that, hence I have to snip yours too. Sorry – Anthony]
@jeez This is the second order draft, meaning this is the third iteration (zero order, first order, second order). I find it odd that they’d retain an unrepresentative graph so far along in editing. What possible value could there be in having a graph that isn’t close to being what they consider representative during the editing process?
[snip – I’ve snipped Mosh to give him an opportunity to rephrase that, hence I have to snip yours too. Sorry – Anthony]
“jeez says:
December 18, 2012 at 1:33 am
This chart is obviously not final as AR4 projections would have to match the observation in 2007 as that is the starting point. And for those who wish to pile on, I’m not saying the AR4 projections are accurate, but simply that this chart cannot be representative.”
I saw you updated to 2006 as paper cutoff. You are correct, but a paper published in 2006 may have been submitted in 2005 and may only be using data up to 2003. But I agree, this looks like the data from 2000 match AR4 and that seems a few years at least out of date.
Anthony, I think Stephen Mosher is bent out of shape as a result of his schoolboy English and the number of comments he receives on articles on his blog:
October 8: 0
November 10: 1
December 5: 0
REPLY: No I don’t think it is that. There’s other issues, part of which is the influence of being on the BEST team, where he’s been exposed to a lot of groupthink for quite awhile. I think it has put him into an internal conundrum. – Anthony
So they are again stirring up alarm about thawing of Siberian permafrost. But there are scientists in Siberia monitoring the situation. What do they say?
“Indeed above at the surface it has gotten warmer, but that’s just part of a normal cycle. The permafrost is rock hard, And that is how it is going to stay. There’s no talk of thawing.” Michali Grigoryev
http://notrickszone.com/2012/11/19/russian-arctic-scientist-permafrost-changes-due-to-natural-factors-its-going-to-be-colder/
“It seems that the permafrost should be melting if the temperature is rising. However, many areas are witnessing the opposite. The average annual temperature is getting higher, but the permafrost remains and has even started to spread. Why? An important factor is the snow cover. Global warming reduces it, therefore making the heat insulator for the permafrost thinner. Then even weak frosts are enough to freeze the ground deeper below the surface.”
Nikolai Osokin is a glaciologist at the Institute of Geography, the Russian Academy of Sciences.
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20070323/62485608.html
“The Russian Academy of Sciences has found that the annual temperature of soils (with seasonable variations) has been remaining stable despite the increased average annual air temperature caused by climate change. If anything, the depth of seasonal melting has decreased slightly.”
“This is just another scare story . . . This ecological structure is balanced and is not about to harm people with gas discharges.”
Vladimir Melnikov is the director of the world’s only Institute of the Earth’s Cryosphere. The Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute is located in the Siberian city of Tyumen and investigates the ways in which ground water becomes ice and permafrost.
“The boundaries of the Russian permafrost zone remain virtually unchanged. At the same time, the permafrost is several hundred meters deep. For methane, other gases and hydrates to escape to the surface, it would have to melt at tremendous depths, which is impossible.”
Yuri Izrael, director of the Institute of Climatology and Ecology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20050822/41201605-print.html
Whenever I hear about the methane release from frozen climes, due to the concern of AGW, I have to wonder where do these people think the organic matter came from to release to methane? It was in situ, when the earth was much warmer, and the warmth of today pales in contrast.
OMG IT’S WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT!!!!!!!!!
What you skeptic Luddites fail to realize is that the lower than projected methane release trend line simply means that there is more COMMITTED methane release in the pipeline! WE ARE DOOMED, DOOMED I SAY.
Slightly OT but the graph reminded me: last night on the History Channel, there was some ‘climate scientist’ (nobody I recognized) saying that the earth has warmed more than any of the models ever predicted.
I still have yet to see any vast evidence of any sort of general melt down of permafrost. All we get are anecdotes of things seen at road cuts, building sites and other disturbed areas. Where’s the beef?
“Clearly, nature isn’t cooperating with IPCC science as atmospheric methane trends have fallen well below even the lowest range of all the IPCC scenarios.” No, No,No! This is not science it is wishful thinking and based on assumptions, dogma and faith. Science has little or nothing to do with faith simply a different logic system. The IPCC’s propaganda however has much to do with faith and wishful thinking. Anything to get attention and obfuscate the facts.
This Figure 1.7 at top is similar to Figure 1.4 found on http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/14/the-real-ipcc-ar5-draft-bombshell-plus-a-poll/ My first reading was that they were two views of the same parameter, but I see that 1.7’s y axis is CH4 concentration and 1.4’s is Temp anamally.
My base confusion remains, however. Why doesn’t Fig. 1.4 originate the model uncertainty wedges at publication date (as does Fig. 1.7)?
Instead, Figure 1.4 shows TAR and AR4 uncertainty wedges going back to 1990 (10 and 15 years prior to their publication). The reason for that has escaped me. Perhaps the authors of AR5 are so enamored and well practiced at revising history they just couldn’t help themselves?
Gail Combs…sign me up for your anti-beaver crusade. Here in Ottawa you can see lots of examples of environmental damage caused by the growing population of beavers (thanks to reduced trapping and predator populations).
An OT but humorous anecdote: earlier this year a beaver moved into one of the drainage ponds, that are a mandated part of all new housing developments, and started to dam up the drain. The city sent out someone to trap it before it turned the drainage pond into a permanent lake and floods the neighborhood. He is setting the trap when one of the local stay-at-home moms comes by and asks him what is going to happen to it. Unfortunately he tells the truth (they are going to put it down) and explains why (it will just come back) — mom freaks out, her kids love the beaver, threatens to call the papers, prime minister, etc. He stops what he is doing and it takes weeks for the s&*t storm to die down and they can get rid of it.
John Who says:
”isn’t there also some evidence that certain anthropogenic actions would cause atmospheric cooling, too? “
Of course, there’s “some” evidence for almost anything.
”what we are doing to the planet having a measureable/discernible effect (either cooling or warming) of the global atmosphere?”
I don’t know, but IMO based on all the evidence I’ve seen it’s very likely we’ve had very little actual effect on the climate. I would characterize it as barely discernable.
”We think it “could”, but do we observe that it does?”
I agree with you that there’s a prominent lack of observable evidence beyond the noise of climate variation of most metrics. I try to be as gentile as I can with people who’ve probably only been exposed to the information from the alarmist perspective. For example, they know CO2 has increased and temperature has increased and have been told this correlation is solid (cough, cough) evidence of AGW. It is evidence but hardly solid and de-correlating every year we go without continued warming; de-correlation being solid evidence against AGW even though correlation is weak evidence for AGW.
”Is that not the crux of the problem as posed by CAGW supporters: showing that a warming atmosphere is outside of natural cause and must be due to anthropogenic action and then showing that the major portion of that is directly related to anthropogenic CO2 emissions?
Not so much evidence of that from what I’ve read.”
Yea, not so much evidence from what I’ve read either, but it’s only the “crux of the problem” to us skeptics that require more than circumstantial evidence before making up our minds.
Perhaps we should “frack” the permafrost. Certainly easier than drilling all the way to the Marcellus shale. 🙂
I like to put things in a context I can understand. Methane at 1800 ppb is the same concentration as 9 people in the city of Dallas/Ft. Worth TX — population of around 5 million. Lets say there is a swarm of locusts (heat) passing through DFW and these 9 folks are killing (absorbing) them as fast at they can with swatters, bug spray, even the dreaded DDT. Any real affect? The same analogy can be applied to CO2 at 380 ppm. That corresponds to 30 of the 80,000 fans in Cowboy Stadium trying to make some kind of impact on the locusts passing through the stadium. To me it is like saying that p…ing in the ocean will raise the sea level. “Merde de toro” as a friend of mine from France once translated a popular expression. If I am wrong, I welcome an explanation.
Mosh:
What made you a bit angry is a result of Skeptical Science Syndrome. This happens when empirical data, once established, continues to be modified to cloud the Scientific Process.
When you know in your heart that physics is still an established science, yet it is being severely distorted by the use of unconfirmed models.
We know that the Stratosphere is not cooling, the tropical hot spot has not appeared, storms have not become more powerful and frequent, droughts have not become more frequent, cereal grain production has not declined……the list is oh so long.
We also know that the current rise in temperature is well within the confines of the Holocene period in total. We know that Arctic Sea Ice has had similar contractions in the past as present, we know that the late 20th century warming is nothing exceptional. We know that no one can explain the early 20th century warming, lots of theory, but no certainty in results.
We know that could is a word used widely. I could hit the lottery tomorrow and be rich. I could stay in bed and do nothing today. I could…….I could.
We know that TSI has been relatively constant for centuries. Can’t explain the early 20th century warming with that metric. We know a lot of things, and we don’t know a lot of things in ref to climate.
What we do know is empirical data. Sir Frederick William Herschel showed there is a connection between climate and cereal production. We know from river flow data that there is a very strong influence from the sun in precipitation patterns. We also know that CH4 did not tip the climate scale during periods of extended warmth greater than today earlier in the Holocene.
We also know that the news is bombarded with stupid in regards to AGW/GAWG. Absolutely no basis in fact, but based once again on the mythical model of could.
This creates anxiety in folks, most who are not involved in production agriculture. Who live in cities, surrounded by steel, concrete, etc. They are not able to actually observe reality in a natural setting.
Folks see the destruction of a storm like Sandy, yet fail to remember that the Long Island Express was a much more severe storm. They hear that it must be caused by CO2, yet the literature shows it isn’t.
There has been a preponderance of such outlandish claims, untruth after untruth, that it becomes hard to ignore from a city. Yet, out in the country, we know temps have not changed much, weather has not changed much, grow lines have not changed much. In a climatic sense, not much has really changed as we observe it every day.
There are gaps wide enough to sail the Titanic through in ref to the AGW theory. When AGW proponents continue to push for fantasy, with a steady drumbeat, it is hard not to get caught up in the anxiety of it all.
Maybe it is time to get out of the city for a couple of weeks, ground your feet back in reality. Understand again just how extremely complex our climate system really is and feel at peace.
Obviously excessive self loathing and fear of the weather causes mental faculties to shut down, the best answer to the great methane fear of 2012, Robyn Williams, Go Brown.
as a 2nd, Monty Python, I fart in your general direction, from the holy grail.
But to all the wailing about the weather folk, Tiny Tim’s, The Ice Caps are Melting, captures the tone best. Produced 1960 and still the song and dance goes on.
I do not care how “good” their intentions are, the results speak clearly, this is eugenics hiding behind save the world.
My evidence, the activists are almost uniformly rich caucasians, the victims poor nonwhite persons. Who are not worthy of affordable electricity, refrigeration, clean water and all the things sheltered western children take for granted.
And when I argue with the “saviours ” as their logic fails (it always does), the retreat is always the same, “well there’s too many people on the planet….” .
Eugenics, To better the race, selective breeding and kill the unfit. Central planning, for the good of the human race. The reason the enviro’s look like 1930 Germans.
Just another wave of unreason, mob hysteria, but sneakily the beast has tried, once again, to pretend to be science and reason.
But there is no way to hide the stench. Of we have to lie to you for your own good.
FAO A Watts
‘REPLY: The real issue is: is there any evidence for a methane induced tipping point? Show your work – Anthony’
Well we know in the past there has been a ‘run away hothouse Earth’, if methane played a part, I know not, but suspect it did. So there has been at least a co2 tipping point, otherwise we would still be in a ‘snowball Earth’!
Tale of two moons.
Titan and Hyperion, locked in harmonically resonate orbits around Saturn, same distance from the sun.
TItan is a planet in it’s own right, with a weather system made up of methane, evaporating, condensing, and raining out into lakes of liquid. Five percent of the atmosphere is made up of methane, the rest is nitrogen. Surface temperature is about 93 degrees Kelvin (-180 C, -292 F).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon)
Hyperion is more like a captured asteroid, with no atmosphere. Just a chunk of rock floating in space with it’s rotation periodically altered by Titan’s gravity field. No air whatsoever.
Surface temperature about 93 degrees Kelvin, (-180 C, -292 F).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_(moon)
Comparison between Titan and Hyperion shows without a room for a doubt that Methane has absolutely no green house effect at all.
Anyone says otherwise is blowing smoke.
Peter Miller says: December 18, 2012 at 5:04 am
Carter says: “but we need evidence and in my opinion there is plenty for AGW!”
It may surprise you to know that most people reading WUWT would agree with the above statement.
===================================================================
But in fact, there is not “plenty” of evidence for AGW. The whole AGW construct is theory supported by argument only, and has been refuted by the last sixteen years. It is more accurate to say that there is NO evidence for AGW. Attribution to CO2 of the warming trend of 1977-97 is simply a bald assertion. Those who disagree need to support their point of view with evidence but they have none to show.
FAO papiertigre
But it goes on to say
‘This atmospheric methane conversely creates a greenhouse effect on Titan’s surface, without which Titan would be far colder’
Yet you say
‘Comparison between Titan and Hyperion shows without a room for a doubt that Methane has absolutely no green house effect at all’
I like to quantify things. Methane, with a concentration of 1.75 ppm, would be 0.00444 of the amount of CO2, but because it is 20 times as powerful, its effect is 0.0888 times as much as CO2. Now according to RSS, the slope for the last 16 years, since December 1996, is flat. See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.9/plot/rss/from:1996.9/trend
That means the effect of CO2 as a greenhouse gas has been 0 according to RSS over the last 16 years. And since the effect of CH4 is 0.0888 times as much as CO2, then according to my calculations, the effect of the CH4 is 0.0888 x 0 = 0.
If anyone would like me to calculate the effect of any other greenhouse gas over the last 16 years according to RSS, I would be happy to do so.
[ Carter says:
December 18, 2012 at 8:43 am
So there has been at least a co2 tipping point, otherwise we would still be in a ‘snowball Earth’! ]
So why aren’t we as hot as Venus. Tipping point means point of no return. You’re living in Logical Fallacy La-La Land.
FAO mpainter
‘But in fact, there is not “plenty” of evidence for AGW. ‘
Well watch this and the link in the description.
Carter says:
December 18, 2012 at 8:43 am
Well we know in the past there has been a ‘run away hothouse Earth’, if methane played a part, I know not, but suspect it did. So there has been at least a co2 tipping point, otherwise we would still be in a ‘snowball Earth’!
1) If such a “C02 tipping point” existed, then why are we not still in a “runaway hothouse earth” climate?
2) Are you seriously comparing today’s Modern climate, which only began about 5 million years ago, with Ice Age cycles only starting about 2 million years ago with that of the Permian period some 250 million years ago?
I thought not.
Carter
you need to get some education. You need to learn the difference between argument and evidence and what constitutes acceptable evidence and what the term “bald assertion” means. You do not seem to understand what constitutes robust science nor how that contrasts with dubious science. Nor do you peceive how propaganda is being palmed off as science, to be swallowed by the gullible.You have swallowed the AGW wholly and uncritically. Please also keep in mind that climate study embraces all of the natural sciences, and a viewpoint based on the theory of radiation physics is a woefully inadequate view. Above all,you need to stop listening to the panic-talk and learn to think for yourself. Thank you for your attention.
The methane crisis is worse than you think: cattle flatulence is going to kill our grandchildren
You don’t believe me? Just dial up cattle/methane on the web and see. Responses 1.7 million and rising.
Oh, Carter, run see if you can fetch us a video on this. There is bound to be one somewhere.
TonyG says:
December 18, 2012 at 7:33 am
Slightly OT but the graph reminded me: last night on the History Channel, there was some ‘climate scientist’ (nobody I recognized) saying that the earth has warmed more than any of the models ever predicted.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
They are talking about the Holocene Optimum
graph 1
graph 2
/sarc
Carter says:
December 18, 2012 at 9:46 am
Well watch this and the link in the description.
———————————-
Sounds like you believed Richard Alley’s presentation. The problem is, he did not use the actual data of CO2 levels versus temperature history. He was talking about some imaginary data. He kept saying “we’re getting really close”. Close as in missing it by a mile.
Mike says:
December 18, 2012 at 8:14 am
….. mom freaks out, her kids love the beaver, threatens to call the papers, prime minister, etc. He stops what he is doing and it takes weeks for the s&*t storm to die down and they can get rid of it.
_______________________________________
They just need to let the beaver stay and then point to the Mom who insisted on it when the neighbors want to sue, saying SUE HER. The city should make her legally libel in writing BEFORE hand in return for the promise to leave the beaver alone. (I am really really sick to death of the The Bambi Syndrome )
I should think it would be obvious to any student of “systems controls” what the pattern painted by the various charts of historic climate model predictions versus reality actually indicates. It indicates that the climate system feedback to “forcing” is “negative” (less than one unit of response to one unit of forcing). Common sense should have told us that it had to be that way. Otherwise the climate system would have long since run completely off the tracks in one direction or the other.
The heart and soul of AGW hysteria rests on “positive feedback” to CO2 temperature forcing. That is what the climate models are programmed to simulate and that is why they have so miserably failed. When all the intricate feedback factors you have programmed into a model indicate “cumulative positive feedback” and that model represents a chaotic system that has existed for eons as it periodically and methodically cycled between upper and lower temperature boundaries even while suffering horrific terrestrial and extraterrestrial forcing events, you just have to know you’ve screwed up.
Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire.
Sorry could not resist.
Anthony, whether they get around to fixing it or not, it is still not representative of projections for AR4. One doesn’t make a projection for future behavior with the starting point wrong to begin with.
Just finished reading Michael Benton’s “When Life Nearly Died” on the P-T mass extinction (or possibly 3 mass extinctions). It is less than 10 years old and after 250 pages of building the case for an end of Permian event he spends 25 pages saying in effect we don’t know what really caused it — but tries to make the case for a “Methane Burp” in addition to the massive tectonic changes, Siberian traps, possible meteor impact(s), oxidizing coal fields, cosmic rays and other events that may have caused global warming (+6C), decreased O2, loss of productivity, etc. The problem with any of the causes is that after analysis they couldn’t have pumped enough of their preferred GHG/particulate (SO2, Chlorine, Iron, CO2, methane, etc.) into the atmosphere to make a difference.
P.S. he does spend (waste) the final chapter building on Goreacle’s 1992 quote on man-made extinctions. I guess you need to support the narrative to get good reviews on Amazon from the AGW crowd.
mpainter says:
December 18, 2012 at 10:15 am
Carter
you need to get some education. You need to learn the difference between argument and evidence and what constitutes acceptable evidence and what the term “bald assertion” means. You do not seem to understand what constitutes robust science nor how that contrasts with dubious science. Nor do you perceive how propaganda is being palmed off as science, to be swallowed by the gullible. …
Him and many other CAGW supporters, I would say.
@ John West says:
December 18, 2012 at 8:15 am
Yep, it appears we John’s are on the same page.
🙂
They can’t control the weather but they can control the models, upon which all the alarmism is based. For them to control the weather, I think their latest estimate was $70 trillion.
FOA Bill Illis
‘He was talking about some imaginary data’
Well watch him telling you everything you wanted to know about co2 and Global Warming, but are too scared to ask about!
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
“Have shocked scientists”. Oh dear.
FAO Bruce Cobb
‘ If such a “C02 tipping point” existed, then why are we not still in a “runaway hothouse earth” climate?’
Because the climate is a dynamic process and it doesn’t, yet, stay still!
‘today’s Modern climate, which only began about 5 million years ago’ well the last ice age was only about 20,000 years ago! And the next one is due in about 16.000 years, but due to AGW it is unlikely to keep to that schedule!
Carter says:
”Well we know in the past there has been a ‘run away hothouse Earth’, if methane played a part, I know not, but suspect it did. So there has been at least a co2 tipping point, otherwise we would still be in a ‘snowball Earth’!”
1) “Snowball Earth” is a hypothesis.
2) If Snowball Earth actually happened it would not only take 350 times more CO2 than is currently in the atmosphere (way more than if we burned all the fossil fuels), but also would require a positive feedback (albedo) to pull the planet completely out of such a condition.
@ John Who
Yep.
FAO Tim Clark
‘So why aren’t we as hot as Venus’
Because it has a runaway co2 atmosphere! With I suspect, no likely hood of changing in the foreseeable future!
Carter,
Thanx for your assertion. But we need more than “what-ifs” here.
To Carter. The term “could” is deliberately used by the warmists/extremists in these scare stories. “Could” provides a loophole through which they can escape, so that when nature comes back and bites them on the behind – and politicians start to frown at all that money thrown that way – they can point at that word and claim truthfully, “We didn’t say it WOULD happen but that it COULD happen.” Anthony is right to point out this word. If you see “could” in any alarmist story, you can dismiss it as an emotive attempt to sway the general public. They can’t do it with science, they have to do it with fear. “Could” makes that scare fiction, not fact.
Carter
Why did the earth go from a warm moist dinosaur haven to Ice ages?
Carter
There have been reports of pieces of the sky falling from the ether and striking persons on the head. One fellow lost a whole bunch of poultry that ran off in a panic. Best stay indoors until this stops. If you just have to go outside, then be sure to wear a helmet or some such protection.
So in 22 years, the methane level has risen from 1.72 parts per million (1720 parts per billion – bigger number looks more impressive) to 1.8 parts per million. Most compounds cannot even be measured to this degree of accuracy in a test tube let alone a measure of the content of the whole atmosphere!! At approximately 0.04 ppm per decade we will be in real trouble in a thousand years.
Permafrost covers nearly a quarter of the northern hemisphere at present and is estimated to contain 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon
I’ll point out the obvious. This carbon is organic matter, which if its trapped in permafrost, must be from a warmer period (or periods) in the past.
Therefore we can safely conclude that were the permafrost to melt we would experience net carbon capture, because this is what happened in the past (at lower atmospheric CO2 concentrations).
We can also conclude that any short term warming from methane release (even though I doubt this will occur) will accelerate carbon capture in the melted permafrost regions.
“”””””…..mpainter says:
December 18, 2012 at 10:15 am
Carter
you need to get some education. You need to learn the difference between argument and evidence and what constitutes acceptable evidence and what the term “bald assertion” means. You do not seem to understand what constitutes robust science nor how that contrasts with dubious science. Nor do you peceive how propaganda is being palmed off as science, to be swallowed by the gullible.You have swallowed the AGW wholly and uncritically. Please also keep in mind that climate study embraces all of the natural sciences, and a viewpoint based on the theory of radiation physics is a woefully inadequate view. Above all,you need to stop listening to the panic-talk and learn to think for yourself. Thank you for your attention……”””””
I would opine that a viewpont not based on the theory of radiation physics is also a woefully inadequate view.
FAO Gail Combs
‘Why did the earth go from a warm moist dinosaur haven to Ice ages?’
Because
‘Nearer our own time, the coming and going of the ice ages that have gripped the planet in the past two million years were probably triggered by fractional changes in solar heating (caused by wobbles in the planet’s orbit, known as Milankovitch cycles’
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11650-climate-myths-global-warming-is-down-to-the-sun-not-humans.html
Carter says:
December 18, 2012 at 9:46 am
Well watch this and the link in the description.
I watched the complete lecture a few years back. I am reminded of the saying that if all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. Well the last 16 years have provided no ‘nails’ so there is no need for a ‘hammer’.
FAO mpainter
‘If you just have to go outside, then be sure to wear a helmet or some such protection’ well that would be better than your tin foil hat!
I keep waiting for someone named “Schwarz” to comment so Carter can say “FAO Schwarz”
george e. smith says: December 18, 2012 at 1:58 pm
I would opine that a viewpont not based on the theory of radiation physics is also a woefully inadequate view.
===================================================================
I should have said that a viewpoint based *solely* on the theory of radiation physics is woefully inadequate. However, the AGW theory can be refuted by the same radiation physics that is used to justify it, i.e., the absorbency spectrum of water. Do you not agree?
LOL, Anthony!
[For those left guessing at Carter’s cryptic acronym, FAO means For the Attention Of.]
FAO Werner Brozek
‘Well the last 16 years have provided no ‘nails’ so there is no need for a ‘hammer’’ well I would reply to that, but the mods haven’t agreed with the answer previously and it’s gone off into cyber space! I wonder if this message is posted?
FAO D Böehm
I thought FAO was universal in the English speaking world!
Doha, Qatar? I believe the correct spelling is, D’oh-Uh! With apologies to Homer Simpson.
FAO Carter
Titan, with it’s thick atmospheric methane green house, is the same temperature as it’s immediate neighbor, the moon Hyperion, which has no atmosphere whatever.
DO you get it now?
FAO papiertigre
From your references:
‘This atmospheric methane conversely creates a GREENHOUSE effect on Titan’s surface, without which Titan would be FAR COLDER’ Therefore greenhouse equals warmer!
Yet you say
‘Comparison between Titan and Hyperion shows without a room for a doubt that Methane has absolutely NO green house effect at all’
But as you can see the two statements can’t be correct! I guess you must be wrong!
Carter says:
December 18, 2012 at 2:09 pm
FAO Gail Combs
‘Why did the earth go from a warm moist dinosaur haven to Ice ages?’
Because
‘Nearer our own time, the coming and going of the ice ages that have gripped the planet in the past two million years were probably triggered by fractional changes in solar heating (caused by wobbles in the planet’s orbit, known as Milankovitch cycles’
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11650-climate-myths-global-warming-is-down-to-the-sun-not-humans.html
LOL
A 2007 article is referenced. It ends with “ So for the period for which we have direct, reliable records, the Earth has warmed dramatically …”
Uh, where is the dramatic warming in the last 15 years or so? If it isn’t the sun, and it doesn’t correlate to the increase in atmospheric CO2, what has been causing the relative flat, non-warming of the beginning of the 21st Century?
[Jon Lovitz] Perhaps alien piloted UFO contrails? Yeah, that’s the ticket! Just ask my wife, uh, Morgan Fairchild [/John Lovitz]
Carter says:
“I thought FAO was universal in the English speaking world!”
That might be the case on your planet. But show me another commentator here who uses “FAO”. Just one will be enough.
Not that I mind, it’s kinda cute in its own way. But your “universal” comment is similar to your other misconceptions.
Carter says:
December 18, 2012 at 11:55 am
FOA Bill Illis
‘He was talking about some imaginary data’
Well watch him telling you everything you wanted to know about co2 and Global Warming, but are too scared to ask about!
————
You are new here Carter obviously.
I have all the data (and when I write that … I mean I have ALL the data) so I am not scared about the CO2/Temperature correlation. There isn’t one. And Richard Alley was runnning a BS routine on everyone at AGU (but of course the audience lapped it up). It was only in his imagination and that is what this science has become. Just tell everyone what they want to hear (as opposed to the reality) and you can get published in Nature.
Now if you want to talk about Richard Alley’s Greenland temperature ice core history, I have more to say about that too. He and a few partners have set-back Greenland ice core science by 20 years and it is onlynow starting to be corrected.
john robertson says:
December 18, 2012 at 8:36 am
“Eugenics, To better the race, selective breeding and kill the unfit. Central planning, for the good of the human race. The reason the enviro’s look like 1930 Germans. Just another wave of unreason, mob hysteria, but sneakily the beast has tried, once again, to pretend to be science and reason.”
From the Wikipedia page for old Svante,
“Racial biology
Svante Arrhenius was one of several leading Swedish scientists actively engaged in the process leading to the creation in 1922 of The State Institute for Racial Biology in Uppsala, Sweden, which had originally been proposed as a Nobel Institute. Arrhenius was a member of the institute’s board, as he had been in The Swedish Society for Racial Hygiene (Eugenics), founded in 1909.[9]”
The apple has not fallen far from the tree.
Another error out side of the error bars….
how inconvenient for the warmists….
From the Guardian report posted above: Permafrost covers nearly a quarter of the northern hemisphere at present and is estimated to contain 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon
“a quarter of the northern hemisphere” ; no way – does not compute. Somebody goofed.The Guardian, or the UN, or somebody is off by a huge factor.
>>> “An OT but humorous anecdote: earlier this year a beaver moved into one of the drainage >>> ponds, that are a mandated part of all new housing developments, and started to dam up >>> the drain. The city sent out someone to trap it before it turned the drainage pond into a
>>> permanent lake and floods the neighborhood. He is setting the trap when one of the local >>> stay-at-home moms comes by and asks him what is going to happen to it. Unfortunately he >>> tells the truth (they are going to put it down) and explains why (it will just come back) —
>>> mom freaks out, her kids love the beaver, threatens to call the papers, prime minister, etc. >>> He stops what he is doing and it takes weeks for the s&*t storm to die down and they can >>> get rid of it.”
Same thing happened in Martinez California a few years ago when two beaver dammed a creek and it backed up into a lake, threatening to send a cascade of water through the downtown if the dam broke. After a long local uproar involving shool children, the beavers, now a family, were allowed to stay (no floods —- yet).
Methane bubbling up out of Arctic ice is more likely to be off-gassing from known source rocks for petroleum and gas (as in North Slope and offshore). Gas regularly is released, along with petroleum, through cracks in the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico. An oil seep at sea level near Santa Barbara California has been leaking oil since it was first discovered by the Spaniards.
Titan without an atmosphere (a greenhouse effect), depending on vagaries in the reflective nature of methane, which if the lakes and rivers are an indication would only go in the wrong direction, the coldest it could get would be as cold as an airless rock floating out there at the same distance from the sun. By golly we have one of those handy. It’s called Hyperion. And it’s temperature is 93 Kelvin.
But wait a minute. Titan’s temperature, blanketed in a thick cosy methane layer 200 kilometers thick, is 93 Kelvin.
Let me do the math real quick. Nuthin from nuthin leaves… carry the zero.
“Carter says:
December 18, 2012 at 12:19 pm
‘So why aren’t we as hot as Venus’
Because it has a runaway co2 atmosphere! With I suspect, no likely hood of changing in the foreseeable future!”
Did Carter really say “Venus has a runaway CO2 atmosphere”? Really, you need to polish up your knowledge of atmospheric mass, pressure and temperature.
Carter says:
“I thought FAO was universal in the English speaking world!”
In Ireland, FAO means the rather impolite ‘Feck Away Off’.
Otherwise, ‘For the Attention Off’, I’d call archaic. Probably dates from pre-WWII when many people had personal secretaries and much of a person’s correspondence would in fact be deal with by their secretary. Never seen it used on the Internet.
Bruce Cobb says:
December 18, 2012 at 5:06 am
Interesting. Just what effect do you think it’s having on the “energy balance”? Please show us the basis for your worry. Your C02 bogeyman doesn’t seem to be working out so well.
Strawman argument. I never mentioned CO2 bogeyman.
I am concerned that because Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that it will alter the energy balance of the earth. Ie the higher the methane concentration, the bigger the greenhouse effect, the more heat the earth will retain.
The more the heat the earth retains, the more methane is liberated and we have a positive feedback loop.
I am interested in any evidence you can bring forward to show that this scenario is wrong, as I don’t like being worried.
Looks like AR5 might get the CH4 trend right, based on the trend from FAR to AR4.
But there will have to be a caveat, such as “its still worse than we might have thought if we had under-predicted it”, or “its worse than we thought because it isnt going down” or some such rubbish.
‘FAO’ Philip Bradley
‘Never seen it used on the Internet’
I’m starting anew trend!
FAO D Böehm
‘But show me another commentator here who uses “FAO”. Just one will be enough.’
‘ papiertigre says:
December 18, 2012 at 3:01 pm
FAO Carter’
As you requested!
LetsBeReasonable:
At December 18, 2012 at 5:06 am you ask (I suspect disingenuously)
The change of methane in the atmosphere shows there is no need to “worry”.
See the plot of atmospheric CO2 over time as shown by the Vostock and Law Dome ice cores and marine boundary layer at this warmunist web site
http://zipcodezoo.com/Trends/Trends%20in%20Atmospheric%20Methane.asp
Please note the gee-whiz scale which is from 800 to 1800 ppb so exaggerates the increase of methane in the air.
The graph shows that methane in the atmosphere has increased by a factor of ~2.5 since about 1850. But that increase slowed dramatically around 1990 and has reduced to almost zero now.
The reduction to the increase was before the cessation in global warming which did not commence until 1996.
Clearly, global temperature and atmospheric methane concentration are NOT directly linked as you say you fear. Indeed, the “worry” you express is another example of an old climate scare that has not kept pace with the growth of climate data.
The methane scare is so twentieth century. Change to ocean pH is the now fashionable false scare.
Richard
IRT – Steve Tabor said
I would guess that there would be chemical fingerprints in the “gaseous expulsions” to be able to determine if the methane was from Peat or Petroleum. I don’t know if they’ve done any chemical analysis or just made an assumption. Of course these are respected scientists and we all know the standards that all scientists adhere to.
BTW.. Since FAO has become popular recently, I’d thought I’d throw in IRT, I feel it’s more fitting because the comments here are generally for public consumption… Generally..
( In Reference To)
FAO Carter (I like Carter’s pretext. It has an element that registers as vaguely profane and dismissive.)
You quote Wikipedia’s Titan page one sentence blurb about the nonexistent global warming,
“This atmospheric methane conversely creates a greenhouse effect on Titan’s surface, without which Titan would be far colder.”, but then leave out the reference they put up to support their pretense.
Link number [38] tracks back to a Space.COM story about the oil and petro -chemicals that abound on Titan; Titan has more Oil than Earth.
In turn, that story only features one unsubstantiated blurb regarding global warming, which doesn’t even jibe with the Wikipedia entry.
It says;
That’s it. That’s all they got to base their insistence that Titan’s temperature conforms to the global warming boogie man.
Never mind that the evidence shows the consensus was conclusively wrong on the origin of oil, (no such thing as dead dinosaurs on Titan, yet the moon is awash in oil). Wiki rides right past that fact.
But they also change the words of their reference, creating unwarranted certainty where it doesn’t exist. Instead of saying “Titan could become much colder” the Wiki says, “Titan would be far colder”
To illustrate how large a difference that one word makes note the last sentence quoted from the Space dot com above;
“If so, the amount of methane, and the temperature on Titan, may have fluctuated dramatically in Titan’s past.”
Why did they say “may have”? Because there is absolutely no way for anyone to talk with authority about climate changes on Titan. This is so profoundly true that it renders Wikipedia’s change of “could” into “would” a deceit, with malice of forethought.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out the word change was executed by William Connolley.
Carter says:
December 18, 2012 at 12:08 pm
FTT Carter,
Because the climate is a dynamic process and it doesn’t, yet, stay still.
Exactly! That is what we keep trying to tell you people. C02 and Methane are bit players, whose effect on climate is logarithmic. Other factors, such as sun and ocean changes are far more important.
(BTW, FTT means For The Troll, but everybody knows that).
That’s not needed, because we already have “wrt”–with regard to.
FAO isn’t needed because we already have “@”.
(Also, Carter, the challenge to you was obviously meant with the unexpressed caveat, “before today.”)
‘FAO isn’t needed because we already have “@”’ but it’s more formal and better English! And ‘“wrt”=with respect to!
“””””…..mpainter says:
December 18, 2012 at 2:23 pm
george e. smith says: December 18, 2012 at 1:58 pm
I would opine that a viewpont not based on the theory of radiation physics is also a woefully inadequate view.
===================================================================
I should have said that a viewpoint based *solely* on the theory of radiation physics is woefully inadequate. However, the AGW theory can be refuted by the same radiation physics that is used to justify it, i.e., the absorbency spectrum of water. Do you not agree?…..”””””
Well m I really didn’t have any quarrel with your original statement; it was simply that your wording just begged for the truth (also) of the converse statement; too good to pass up.
So I should answer no to your new question; since you did not ask ; ‘do you agree’, which I would answer in the affirmative.
There’s an awful lot of actual “heat” energy propagating upward from the surface, via conduction, convection, and evaporation, which seem compelled by the lapse rate temperature gradient to go from hot to cold. Hard to see how much “heat” energy can find a mechanism to return to the warmer surface. Temperature driven vertical ciculation can only bring cold air back to the surface; not hot air.
And ocean water seems to have been designed to absorb solar spectrum radiation; but at a modest rate, so it penetrates deeply; whereas, returning LWIR radiation, is capured in the top few microns, promoting prompt evaporation, rather than energy storage.
So yes, the radiative energy (not “heat”)transport processes also seem highly biassed towards storing solar energy, and losing surface thermal radiation energy (LWIR), aided and abetted by the ocean water absorption spectrum. which covers an absorption range of about 10^6 or more between around 0.5 microns and 3.0 microns. But 3.0 micron radiation from the earth, seems to be rather scarce, and more likely sun sourced.
Yes, exactly. The ocean stores insolation as heat but IR is converted to latent heat at the surface (evaporation) which is transported aloft, released (clouds, rain, increased albedo, convective cooling) and radiated to space via a much thinner atmosphere, the whole process moderating the heat of insolation. The greenhouse effect plays this role:
GHE—>IR—>latent heat—>enhanced cooling.
Thus increased water vapor adds IR to the atmosphere which adds more water vapor (latent heat) until a “tipping point” (ah ha!) triggers a convective column (transport of latent heat aloft) with the result as given above. The assertion of AGW theory that water vapor acts as a net forcing confuses the role of water in determining climate, in which it indeed plays an important role, but not in the manner put forth by the AGW proponents. The fact is that water in all phases behaves variously as a coolant, and this important fact is given scant significance by AGW theory and the modelers. Hence the crash of the models.
Given a figure of 1 cm/day of evaporation from tropical oceans, this works out to about 7 microns evaporated per minute, or 8.5 seconds per micron, diurnally averaged. This illustrates how transitory is the IR induced heat caught on the water’s surface (IR is absorbed within a few microns), and why the greenhouse effect makes no contribution to SST. IR converts immediately to latent heat, a step in water’s role as a coolant. Thus IR has an important role in the cooling cycle as a prime factor in generating latent heat. This notion is blasphemy to the modeling confraternity.
So what effect do greenhouse gases have on SST?. None. Yet the ocean covers 71% of the planet, and SST is a big factor in climate, etc., yet SST is determined solely by insolation, or lack thereof (omitting here considerations of cold current upwelling).
Big question: Since insolation solely determines SST, how is it that SST has increased in this last warming trend? This explained, gives insights into the cause the last warming trend and will add a lot to our understanding of climate. Don’t look to the climate modelers to advance our understanding here. Their ideological constraints forbid it.
Carter can easily be trained to not understand he’s being manipulated. The AGW meme has nothing scientific to back claim. However, they present all kinds of “true things” which do not mean anything substantive. They then use these of evidence of what CO2 is doing.
Specifically, here’s a partial list of what confuses Carter into thinking he knows something valid:
1)True -CO2 has been increasing
2)True -the term green house gas has been applied to CO2, water vapor, methane
3)True -Glaciers can and do melt
4)True -Polar Bears can be seen swimming in water
5)True -Ice cover can recede in North Hemisphere
6)True -Temperature “records” showed an increase from some recent time periods to 1998.
7)True -If temperature increases 5C, there would likely be significantly elevated ocean levels
But here is what’s not said by people like Carter
1)That there is “no” evidence that CO2 is the “cause” of what the climate does.
2)Water Vapor has not shown to have only a positive feedback… evidence shows quite the opposite
3)Glaciers that are growing, propagate by slipping on melted ice under pressure… and advance into warmer areas away from the poles where they can calve in warmer waters.
4)Polar Bears are good swimmers and there is good evidence that they are thriving signifcantly more so than 50 years ago.
5)There is no mention that ice cover has increased in South Hemisphere.
6)Temperature records show no global increase for a longer length of time than was said to have been possible by Carter’s teachers.
7)There is no evidence that temps will increase 5C.
There is no evidence that CO2 is or can impact the climate in a measurable way. However, if temperatures do increase, and we waste our energy and resources doing things that cannot prevent this increase, then we will not be preparing or adapting – but instead spending all of our energy trying not to adapt.
This period in time will be viewed as the greatest dumbing down of societies in the history of the planet. Carter believes that man can or should no longer adapt to climate. In fact, he believes that mankind has achieved the status of the gods. That is, we can and are commanding the climate.
Somewhere in here, I see a high level of arrogance and stupidity. A dangerous combination.