By Dr. Richard McNider and Dr. John Christy
In a Feb. 16 speech in Indonesia, Secretary of State John Kerry assailed climate-change skeptics as members of the “Flat Earth Society” for doubting the reality of catastrophic climate change. He said,
“We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists” and “extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts.”
But who are the Flat Earthers, and who is ignoring the scientific facts?
In ancient times, the notion of a flat Earth was the scientific consensus, and it was only a minority who dared question this belief. We are among today’s scientists who are skeptical about the so-called consensus on climate change. Does that make us modern-day Flat Earthers, as Mr. Kerry suggests, or are we among those who defy the prevailing wisdom to declare that the world is round?
Most of us who are skeptical about the dangers of climate change actually embrace many of the facts that people like Bill Nye, the ubiquitous TV “science guy,” say we ignore. The two fundamental facts are that carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased due to the burning of fossil fuels, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas, trapping heat before it can escape into space.
What is not a known fact is by how much the Earth’s atmosphere will warm in response to this added carbon dioxide. The warming numbers most commonly advanced are created by climate computer models built almost entirely by scientists who believe in catastrophic global warming. The rate of warming forecast by these models depends on many assumptions and engineering to replicate a complex world in tractable terms, such as how water vapor and clouds will react to the direct heat added by carbon dioxide or the rate of heat uptake, or absorption, by the oceans.
We might forgive these modelers if their forecasts had not been so consistently and spectacularly wrong. From the beginning of climate modeling in the 1980s, these forecasts have, on average, always overstated the degree to which the Earth is warming compared with what we see in the real climate.
For instance, in 1994 we published an article in the journal Nature showing that the actual global temperature trend was “one-quarter of the magnitude of climate model results.” As the nearby graph shows, the disparity between the predicted temperature increases and real-world evidence has only grown in the past 20 years.
When the failure of its predictions become clear, the modeling industry always comes back with new models that soften their previous warming forecasts, claiming, for instance, that an unexpected increase in the human use of aerosols had skewed the results. After these changes, the models tended to agree better with the actual numbers that came in—but the forecasts for future temperatures have continued to be too warm.
The modelers insist that they are unlucky because natural temperature variability is masking the real warming. They might be right, but when a batter goes 0 for 10, he’s better off questioning his swing than blaming the umpire.
The models mostly miss warming in the deep atmosphere—from the Earth’s surface to 75,000 feet—which is supposed to be one of the real signals of warming caused by carbon dioxide. Here, the consensus ignores the reality of temperature observations of the deep atmosphere collected by satellites and balloons, which have continually shown less than half of the warming shown in the average model forecasts.
The climate-change-consensus community points to such indirect evidence of warming as glaciers melting, coral being bleached, more droughts and stronger storms. Yet observations show that the warming of the deep atmosphere (the fundamental sign of carbon-dioxide-caused climate change, which is supposedly behind these natural phenomena) is not occurring at an alarming rate: Instruments aboard NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association satellites put the Mid-Tropospheric warming rate since late 1978 at about 0.7 degrees Celsius, or 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, per 100 years. For the same period, the models on average give 2.1 degrees Celsius, or 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit, per 100 years (see graph).
The models also fail to get details of the past climate right. For example, most of the observed warming over land in the past century occurred at night. The same models used to predict future warming models showed day and night warming over the last century at nearly the same rates.
Past models also missed the dramatic recent warming found in observations in the Arctic. With this information as hindsight, the latest, adjusted set of climate models did manage to show more warming in the Arctic. But the tweaking resulted in too-warm predictions—disproved by real-world evidence—for the rest of the planet compared with earlier models.
Shouldn’t modelers be more humble and open to saying that perhaps the Arctic warming is due to something we don’t understand?
While none of these inconsistencies refutes the fundamental concern about greenhouse-gas-enhanced climate change, it is disturbing that “consensus science” will not acknowledge that such discrepancies are major problems. From the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s beginning, that largely self-selected panel of scientists has embraced the notion that consensus on climate change is the necessary path to taking action and reducing man-made carbon emissions around the world. The consensus community uses this to push the view that “the science is settled” and hold up skeptics to ridicule, as John Kerry did on Sunday.
We are reminded of the dangers of consensus science in the past. For example, in the 18th century, more British sailors died of scurvy than died in battle. In this disease, brought on by a lack of vitamin C, the body loses its ability to manufacture collagen, and gums and other tissues bleed and disintegrate. These deaths were especially tragic because many sea captains and some ships’ doctors knew, based on observations early in the century, that fresh vegetables and citrus cured scurvy.
Nonetheless, the British Admiralty’s onshore Sick and Health Board of scientists and physicians (somewhat akin to the current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) dismissed this evidence for more than 50 years because it did not fit their consensus theory that putrefaction (or internal decay) caused scurvy, which they felt could be cured by fresh air, exercise and laxatives.
“Consensus” science that ignores reality can have tragic consequences if cures are ignored or promising research is abandoned. The climate-change consensus is not endangering lives, but the way it imperils economic growth and warps government policy making has made the future considerably bleaker. The recent Obama administration announcement that it would not provide aid for fossil-fuel energy in developing countries, thereby consigning millions of people to energy poverty, is all too reminiscent of the Sick and Health Board denying fresh fruit to dying British sailors.
We should not have a climate-science research program that searches only for ways to confirm prevailing theories, and we should not honor government leaders, such as Secretary Kerry, who attack others for their inconvenient, fact-based views.
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Messrs. McNider and Christy are professors of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and fellows of the American Meteorological Society. Mr. Christy was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. Mr. Christy was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Al Gore.
This essay originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Feb 19th.
Kerry’s speech in Indonesia:
TRANSCRIPT: (long, I know, but recorded here in case it “disappears”).
Remarks of: John Kerry US Secretary of State, Jakarta, Indonesia, February 16, 2014
SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you, Robert. Thank you very, very much. I don’t know. I think some of you were cheering twice for the same university. I don’t know. (Laughter.) It seemed to come from the same place anyway.
What a pleasure to be here at America, where we are looking at all of the air conditioning pipes running right through here. I love it. The spirit and feel of this place is very special and it’s wonderful to see our friends up here from Kalimantan and also everybody from Sumatra. Thank you very much for being with us. Can you hear me? Yeah! Wave! (Laughter.) Do a few selfies, everybody will – (laughter.) Anyway, it’s really a pleasure to be here. I see a lot of iPads up in the air sort of flashing away.
This is special. Ambassador Blake, thank you for doing this. Thank you all for coming here today. I want to welcome all of those of you who are tuning in elsewhere, some of you who are watching on a home webcast, and we’re delighted to have you here. It’s really a pleasure for me to be able to be back in Jakarta, back in Indonesia, where you have one of the richest ecosystems on Earth. And you live in a country that is at the top of the global rankings for both marine and terrestrial biodiversity, and you have a human ecosystem that includes some 300 ethnic groups, speaking at least 700 languages – extraordinary place.
But because of climate change, it is no secret that today, Indonesia is also one of the most vulnerable countries on Earth.
This year, as Secretary of State, I will engage in a series of discussions on the urgency of addressing climate change – particularly on the national security implications and the economic opportunities. And I want you to think about those. But I wanted to start right here, in Jakarta, because this city – this country – this region – is really on the front lines of climate change. It’s not an exaggeration to say to you that the entire way of life that you live and love is at risk. So let’s have a frank conversation about this threat and about what we, as citizens of the world, need to be able to do to address it.
Some time ago I travelled to another vibrant city – a city also rich with its own rich history – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. And I was there, sitting in a big room, surrounded by representatives from about 170 countries. We listened as expert after expert after expert described the growing threat of climate change and what it would mean for the world if we failed to act. The Secretary General of the conference was – he was an early leader on climate change, a man by the name of Maurice Strong, and he told us – I quote him: “Every bit of evidence I’ve seen persuades me that we are on a course leading to tragedy.”
Well, my friends, that conference was in 1992. And it is stunning how little the conversation has really changed since then.
When I think about the array of global climate – of global threats – think about this: terrorism, epidemics, poverty, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction – all challenges that know no borders – the reality is that climate change ranks right up there with every single one of them. And it is a challenge that I address in nearly every single country that I visit as Secretary of State, because President Obama and I believe it is urgent that we do so.
And the reason is simple: The science of climate change is leaping out at us like a scene from a 3D movie. It’s warning us; it’s compelling us to act. And let there be no doubt in anybody’s mind that the science is absolutely certain. It’s something that we understand with absolute assurance of the veracity of that science. No one disputes some of the facts about it. Let me give you an example. When an apple separates from a tree, it falls to the ground. We know that because of the basic laws of physics. No one disputes that today. It’s a fact. It’s a scientific fact. Science also tells us that when water hits a low enough temperature, it’s going to turn into ice; when it reaches a high enough temperature, it’s going to boil. No one disputes that. Science and common sense tell us if you reach out and put your hand on a hot cook stove, you’re going to get burned. I can’t imagine anybody who would dispute that either.
So when thousands of the world’s leading scientists and five reports over a long period of time with thousands of scientists contributing to those reports – when they tell us over and over again that our climate is changing, that it is happening faster than they ever predicted, ever in recorded history, and when they tell us that we humans are the significant cause, let me tell you something: We need to listen.
When 97 percent of scientists agree on anything, we need to listen, and we need to respond.
Well, 97 percent of climate scientists have confirmed that climate change is happening and that human activity is responsible. These scientists agree on the causes of these changes and they agree on the potential effects. They agree that the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide contributes heavily to climate change. They agree that the energy sources that we’ve relied on for decades to fuel our cars and to heat our homes or to air condition our homes, to – all the things that provide us electricity like oil and coal – that these are largely responsible for sending those greenhouse gases up into the atmosphere. And the scientists agree that emissions coming from deforestation and from agriculture can also send enormous quantities of carbon pollution into our atmosphere.
And they agree that, if we continue to go down the same path that we are going down today, the world as we know it will change – and it will change dramatically for the worse.
So we know this is happening, and we know it with virtually the same certainty that we understand that if we reach out and touch that hot stove, we’re going to get burned. In fact, this is not really a complicated equation. I know sometimes I can remember from when I was in high school and college, some aspects of science or physics can be tough – chemistry. But this is not tough. This is simple. Kids at the earliest age can understand this.
Try and picture a very thin layer of gases – a quarter-inch, half an inch, somewhere in that vicinity – that’s how thick it is. It’s in our atmosphere. It’s way up there at the edge of the atmosphere. And for millions of years – literally millions of years – we know that layer has acted like a thermal blanket for the planet – trapping the sun’s heat and warming the surface of the Earth to the ideal, life-sustaining temperature. Average temperature of the Earth has been about 57 degrees Fahrenheit, which keeps life going. Life itself on Earth exists because of the so-called greenhouse effect. But in modern times, as human beings have emitted gases into the air that come from all the things we do, that blanket has grown thicker and it traps more and more heat beneath it, raising the temperature of the planet. It’s called the greenhouse effect because it works exactly like a greenhouse in which you grow a lot of the fruit that you eat here.
This is what’s causing climate change. It’s a huge irony that the very same layer of gases that has made life possible on Earth from the beginning now makes possible the greatest threat that the planet has ever seen.
And the results of our human activity are clear. If you ranked all the years in recorded history by average temperature, you’d see that 8 of the 10 hottest years have all happened within the last 10 years. Think about it this way: all 10 of the hottest years on record have actually happened since Google went online in 1998.
Now, that’s how fast this change is happening. And because the earth is getting hotter at such an alarming speed, glaciers in places like the Arctic are melting into the sea faster than we expected. And the sea is rising – slowly, but rising – and will rise to dangerous levels. Scientists now predict that by the end of the century, the sea could rise by a full meter. Now, I know that to some people a meter may not sound like a lot, but I’ll tell you this: it’s enough to put half of Jakarta underwater. Just one meter would displace hundreds of millions of people worldwide and threaten billions of dollars in economic activity. It would put countries into jeopardy. It would put countless – I mean, come to the local level – it would put countless homes and schools and parks, entire cities at risk.
Now, climate change also tragically means the end of some species. The changing sea temperature and the increasing amount of acidity – the acidity comes from coal-fired power plants and from the pollution, and when the rain falls the rain spills the acidity into the ocean. And it means that certain species of fish like cod or sardines can no longer live where they once lived. This is devastating for the world’s fisheries. And scientists predict that fisheries will be among the hardest hit. Just think about the fishermen who sell their fish catches at Pasar Ikan. Think about it. There are some studies that say that Indonesia’s fisheries could actually lose up to 40 percent of what they currently bring in – so a fisherman who usually has about a hundred fish to sell one day would suddenly only have 60 or so for sale. The impact is obvious.
Climate change also means water shortages. And if you have these enormous water shortages, then you have a change in the weather – because of the weather patterns, you’re going to wind up with droughts, the lack of water. And the droughts can become longer and more intense. In fact, this isn’t something around the corner – this is happening now.
We are seeing record droughts right now, and they’re already putting a strain on water resources around the world. We’ve already seen in various parts of the world – in Africa, for instance – people fighting each other over water, and we’ve seen more conflicts shaping up now over the limits of water. Back in the United States, President Obama just the other day visited California, where millions of people are now experiencing the 13th month of the worst drought the state has seen in 500 years. And no relief is in sight. What used to be a 100-year or a 500-year event is now repeating itself within 10 years.
Furthermore, climate change means fundamental transformations in agriculture worldwide. Scientists predict that, in some places, heat waves and water shortages will make it much more difficult for farmers to be able to grow the regular things we grow, like wheat or corn or rice. And obviously, it’s not only farmers who will suffer here – it’s the millions of people who depend on those crops that the farmers grow. For example, the British government research showed that climate change may have contributed to the famine that killed as many as 100,000 people in Somalia just back in 2010 and 2011.
And scientists further predict that climate change also means longer, more unpredictable monsoon seasons and more extreme weather events. Now, I’ll tell you, I can’t tell you – no weatherman on TV or anybody is going to be able to look at you and tell you – that one particular storm was absolutely the result of climate change. But scientists do predict that many more of these disastrous storms will occur if we continue down the current path. Ladies and gentlemen, I saw with my own eyes what the Philippines experienced in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan and I will tell you it would be absolutely devastating if that kind of storm were to become the normal thing that happens every single year in many places.
On top of the unspeakable humanitarian toll, the economic cost that follows a storm like that is absolutely massive. I don’t mean just the billions that it costs to rebuild. We’ve seen here in Asia how extreme weather events can disrupt world trade. For example, after serious flooding in 2011, global prices for external computer hard drives rose by more than 10 percent. Why? Because electronic manufacturing zones around Bangkok were out of commission, wiped out by the weather. So it’s not just about agriculture – it’s also about technology. It’s about our global economy. It’s about potentially catastrophic effects on the global supply chain.
Now, despite all of these realities – despite these facts – much of the world still doesn’t see or want to see the need to pursue a significant response to this threat. As recently as 2011, a survey of city officials here in Asia found that more than 80 percent of the population said they did not anticipate climate change hurting their cities’ economies.
And despite more than 25 years of scientific warning after scientific warning after scientific warning – despite all that, the call to arms that we heard back in Rio back in 1992 – despite that, we still haven’t globally summoned the urgency necessary to get the job done. And as a result of this complacency, last year the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere reached the highest point in human history – despite all the warnings.
Now, I know that these are some dramatic scientific facts – statistics. But think of it this way: If the worst-case scenario about climate change, all the worst predictions, if they never materialize, what will be the harm that is done from having made the decision to respond to it? We would actually leave our air cleaner. We would leave our water cleaner. We would actually make our food supply more secure. Our populations would be healthier because of fewer particulates of pollution in the air – less cost to health care. Those are the things that would happen if we happen to be wrong and we responded. But imagine if the 97 percent of those scientists are correct and the people who say no are wrong. Then the people who say no will have presented us with one of the most catastrophic, grave threats in the history of human life. That’s the choice here.
Notwithstanding the stark choices that we face, here’s the good thing: there is still time. The window of time is still open for us to be able to manage this threat. But the window is closing. And so I wanted to come to Jakarta to talk to you because we need people all over the world to raise their voices and to be heard. There is still time for us to significantly cut greenhouse emissions and prevent the very worst consequences of climate change from ever happening at all. But we need to move on this, and we need to move together now. We just don’t have time to let a few loud interests groups hijack the climate conversation. And when I say that, you know what I’m talking about? I’m talking about big companies that like it the way it is that don’t want to change, and spend a lot of money to keep you and me and everybody from doing what we know we need to do.
First and foremost, we should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists and science and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific fact. Nor should we allow any room for those who think that the costs associated with doing the right thing outweigh the benefits. There are people who say, “Oh, it’s too expensive, we can’t do this.” No. No, folks. We certainly should not allow more time to be wasted by those who want to sit around debating whose responsibility it is to deal with this threat, while we come closer and closer to the point of no return.
I have to tell you, this is really not a normal kind of difference of opinion between people. Sometimes you can have a reasonable argument and a reasonable disagreement over an opinion you may have. This is not opinion. This is about facts. This is about science. The science is unequivocal. And those who refuse to believe it are simply burying their heads in the sand.
Now, President and I – Obama and I believe very deeply that we do not have time for a meeting anywhere of the Flat Earth Society. One of the arguments that we do hear is that it’s going to be too expensive to be able to address climate change. I have to tell you, that assertion could not be less grounded in fact. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite. Serious analysts understand that the costs of doing nothing far outweigh the costs of investing in solutions now. You do not need a degree in economics or a graduate degree in business in order to understand that the cost of flooding, the cost of drought, the cost of famine, the cost of health care, the cost of addressing this challenge is simply far less – the costs of addressing this challenge are far less than the costs of doing nothing. Just look at the most recent analysis done by the World Bank, which estimates that by 2050, losses – excuse me one second – losses from flood damage in Asian ports – fishing ports, shipping ports – the losses in those ports alone could exceed $1 trillion annually unless we make big changes to the infrastructure of those ports.
Finally, if we truly want to prevent the worst consequences of climate change from happening, we do not have time to have a debate about whose responsibility this is. The answer is pretty simple: It’s everyone’s responsibility. Now certainly some countries – and I will say this very clearly, some countries, including the United States, contribute more to the problem and therefore we have an obligation to contribute more to the solution. I agree with that. But, ultimately, every nation on Earth has a responsibility to do its part if we have any hope of leaving our future generations the safe and healthy planet that they deserve.
You have a saying, I think, here in Indonesia, “Luka di kaki, sakit seluruh badan”. (Laughter.) I – for those that don’t speak as well as I do – (laughter) – it means “when there’s a pain in the foot, the whole body feels it.” Well, today in this interconnected world that we all live in, the fact is that hardship anywhere is actually felt by people everywhere. We all see it; we share it. And when a massive storm destroys a village and yet another and then another in Southeast Asia; when crops that used to grow abundantly no longer turn a profit for farmers in South America; when entire communities are forced to relocate because of rising tides – that’s happening – it’s not just one country or even one region that feels the pain. In today’s globalized economy, everyone feels it.
And when you think about it, that connection to climate change is really no different than how we confront other global threats.
Think about terrorism. We don’t decide to have just one country beef up the airport security and the others relax their standards and let bags on board without inspection. No, that clearly wouldn’t make us any safer.
Or think about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It doesn’t keep us safe if the United States secures its nuclear arsenal, while other countries fail to prevent theirs from falling into the hands of terrorists. We all have to approach this challenge together, which is why all together we are focused on Iran and its nuclear program or focused on North Korea and its threat.
The bottom line is this: it is the same thing with climate change. And in a sense, climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction, perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.
Now I mentioned earlier, a few minutes ago, that last December I went to Tacloban in the Philippines, not long after Typhoon Haiyan. I have to tell you: I’ve seen a lot of places in war and out of war and places that have been destroyed, but in all the time of my life, I don’t think I’ve ever seen devastation like. We saw cars and homes and lives turned upside-down, trees scattered like toothpicks all across a mountainside. And most devastating of all, so quickly, that storm stole the lives of more than 5,000 people – women, and children who never saw it coming.
The fact is that climate change, if left unchecked, will wipe out many more communities from the face of the earth. And that is unacceptable under any circumstances – but is even more unacceptable because we know what we can do and need to do in order to deal with this challenge.
It is time for the world to approach this problem with the cooperation, the urgency, and the commitment that a challenge of this scale warrants. It’s absolutely true that industrialized countries – yes, industrialized countries that produce most of the emissions – have a huge responsibility to be able to reduce emissions, but I’m telling you that doesn’t mean that other nations have a free pass. They don’t have a right to go out and repeat the mistakes of the past. It’s not enough for one country or even a few countries to reduce their emissions when other countries continue to fill the atmosphere with carbon pollution as they see fit. At the end of the day, emissions coming from anywhere in the world threaten the future for people everywhere in the world, because those emissions go up and then they move with the wind and they drop with the rain and the weather, and they keep going around and around and they threaten all of us.
Now, as I’ve already acknowledged, I am the first one to recognize the responsibility that the United States has, because we have contributed to this problem. We’re one of the number – we’re the number two emitter of greenhouse gas emissions. The number one is now China. The fact is that I recognize the responsibility that we have to erase the bad habits that we have, which we adopted, frankly, before we understood the consequences. Nobody set out to make this happen. This is the consequence of the industrial revolution and the transformation of the world, and many of the advances that we made that have changed the world for the better came from these steps. But now we do know the attendant consequences that are linked to these actions.
President Obama has taken the moral challenge head on. Over the past five years, the United States has done more to reduce the threat of climate change – domestically and with the help of our international partners – than in the 20 years before President Obama came to office.
Thanks to President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, the United States is well on our way to meeting the international commitments to seriously cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, and that’s because we’re going straight to the largest sources of pollution. We’re targeting emissions from transportation – cars trucks, rail, et cetera – and from power sources, which account together for more than 60 percent of the dangerous greenhouse gases that we release.
The President has put in place standards to double the fuel-efficiency of cars on American roads. And we’ve also proposed curbing carbon pollution from new power plants, and similar regulations are in the works to limit the carbon pollution coming from power plants that are already up and already running.
At the same time, Americans have actually doubled the amount of energy we are creating from wind, solar, and geothermal sources, and we’ve become smarter about the way we use energy in our homes and in our businesses. A huge amount of carbon pollution comes out of buildings, and it’s important in terms of the lighting, in terms of the emissions from those buildings, the air conditioning – all these kinds of things thought through properly can contribute to the solution. As a result, today in the United States, we are emitting less than we have in two decades.
We’re also providing assistance to international partners, like Indonesia. This year the Millennium Challenge Corporation launched the $332 million Green Prosperity program to help address deforestation and support innovation and clean energy throughout the country. We also implemented what we called “debt for nature” swaps, where we forgive some of the debt – and we have forgiven some of Indonesia’s debt – in return for investments in the conservation of forests in Sumatra and Kalimantan.
But the United States – simple reality: just as I talked about the scientific facts in the beginning, this is a fact – the United States cannot solve this problem or foot the bill alone. Even if every single American got on a bicycle tomorrow and carpooled – instead of – or carpooled to school instead of buses or riding in individual cars or driving, or rode their bike to work, or used only solar powers – panels in order to power their homes; if we each, every American, planted a dozen trees; if we eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions – guess what? That still wouldn’t be enough to counter the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world. Because today, if even one or two economies neglects to respond to this threat, it can counter, erase all of the good work that the rest of the world has done. When I say we need a global solution, I mean we need a global solution.
That is why the United States is prepared to take the lead in bringing other nations to the table. And this is something that President Obama is deeply committed to. And as Secretary of State, I am personally committed to making sure that this work is front and center in all of our diplomatic efforts. This week I will be instructing all of the chiefs of our missions at American embassies all over the world to make climate change a top priority and to use all the tools of diplomacy that they have at their disposal in order to help address this threat.
Now I have just come here today, I arrived last night from China, where I met with government leaders and we discussed our cooperation, our collaboration on this climate change front at length. The Chinese see firsthand every single day how dangerous pollution can be. I recently read that an 8-year-old girl was diagnosed with lung cancer because of all the air pollution that she was inhaling. Eight years old. And the devastating human toll pollution, it takes comes with a very hefty price tag: Air pollution already costs China as much as 8 percent of its GDP because two things happen as a result of the pollution: healthcare spending goes up and agricultural output goes down.
Now I am pleased to tell you that the leaders of China agree that it is time to pursue a cleaner path forward. And China is taking steps, and we have already taken significant steps together through the U.S.-China Climate Change Working Group that we launched in Beijing last year.
Just yesterday, we announced a new agreement on an enhanced policy of dialogue that includes the sharing of information and policies so that we can help develop plans to deal with the UN climate change negotiation that takes place in Paris next year, in planning for the post-2020 limit to greenhouse gas emissions. These plans are a key input into UN negotiations to develop a new global climate agreement, and we have hopes that this unique partnership between China and the United States can help set an example for global leadership and global seriousness.
Now make no mistake: this is real progress. The U.S. and China are the world’s two largest economies. We are two of the largest consumers of energy, and we are two of the largest emitters of global greenhouse gases – together we account for roughly 40 percent of the world’s emissions.
But this is not just about china and the United States. It’s about every country on Earth doing whatever it can to pursue cleaner and healthier energy sources. And it’s about the all of us literally treating the pain in the foot, so the whole body hurts a little less.
Now this is going to require us to continue the UN negotiations and ultimately finalize an ambitious global agreement in Paris next year. And nations need to also be pursuing smaller bilateral agreements, public-private partnerships, independent domestic initiatives – you name it. There’s nothing to stop any of you from helping to push here, to pick things that you can do in Indonesia. It’s time for us to recognize that the choices the world makes in the coming months and years will directly and substantially affect our quality of life for generations to come.
Now I tell you, I’m looking out at a young audience here. All of you are the leaders of the future. And what we’re talking about is what kind of world are we going to leave you. I know that some of what I’m talking about here today, it seems awful big, and some of it may even like it’s out of reach to you. But I have to tell you it’s not. One person in one place can make a difference – by talking about how they manage a building, how they heat a school, what kind of things you do for recycling, transportation you use. What you don’t – I think what you don’t hear enough about today, unfortunately, and I’ve saved it for the end, because I want you to leave here feeling, wow, we can get something done. There’s a big set of opportunities in front of us. And that’s because the most important news of all: that climate change isn’t only a challenge. It’s not only a burden. It also presents one of the greatest economic opportunities of all time.
The global energy market is the future. The solution to climate change is energy policy. And this market is poised to be the largest market the world has ever known. Between now and 2035, investment in the energy sector is expected to reach nearly $17 trillion. That’s more than the entire GDP of China and India combined.
The great technology – many of you have your smart phones or your iPads, et cetera, here today – all of this technology that we use so much today was a $1 trillion market in the 1990s with 1 billion users. The energy market is a $6 trillion market with, today, 6 billion users, and it’s going to grow to maybe 9 billion users over the course of the next 20, 30, 40 years. The solution to climate change is as clear as the problem. The solution is making the right choices on energy policy. It’s as simple as that. And with a few smart choices, we can ensure that clean energy is the most attractive investment in the global energy sector.
To do this, governments and international financial institutions need to stop providing incentives for the use of energy sources like coal and oil. Instead, we have to make the most of the innovative energy technology that entrepreneurs are developing all over the world – including here in Indonesia, where innovative companies like Sky Energy are building solar and battery storage and projects that can help power entire villages.
And we have to invest in new technology that will help us bring renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and hydro power not only to the communities where those resources are abundant –but to every community and to every country on every continent.
I am very well aware that these are not easy choices for any country to make – I know that. I’ve been in politics for a while. I know the pull and different powerful political forces. Coal and oil are currently cheap ways to power a society, at least in the near term. But I urge governments to measure the full cost to that coal and that oil, measure the impacts of what will happen as we go down the road. You cannot simply factor in the immediate costs of energy needs. You have to factor in the long-term cost of carbon pollution. And they have to factor in the cost of survival. And if they do, then governments will find that the cost of pursuing clean energy now is far cheaper than paying for the consequences of climate change later.
Make no mistake: the technology is out there. None of this is beyond our capacity.
I am absolutely confident that if we choose to, we will meet this challenge. Remember: we’re the ones – we, all of us, the world – helped to discover things like penicillin and we eradicated smallpox. We found a way to light up the night all around the world with a flip of the switch and spread that technology to more than three quarters of the world’s population. We came up with a way for people to fly and move from one place to another in the air between cities and across oceans, and into outer space. And we put the full wealth of human knowledge into a device we can hold in our hand that does all of the thinking that used to take up a whole room almost this size.
Human ingenuity has long proven its ability to solve seemingly insurmountable challenges. It is not a lack of ability that is a problem. It is a lack of political resolve that is standing in our way. And I will tell you as somebody who ran for elected office, when you hear from the people, when the people make it clear what they want and what they think they need, then people in politics respond.
Today I call on all of you in Indonesia and concerned citizens around the world to demand the resolve that is necessary from your leaders. Speak out. Make climate change an issue that no public official can ignore for another day. Make a transition towards clean energy the only plan that you are willing to accept.
And if we come together now, we can not only meet the challenge, we can create jobs and economic growth in every corner of the globe. We can clean up the air, we can improve the health of people, we can have greater security; we can make our neighborhoods healthier places to live; we can help ensure that farmers and fishers can still make a sustainable living and feed our communities; and we can avoid disputes and even entire wars over oil, water, and other limited resources. We can make good on the moral responsibility we all have to leave future generations with a planet that is clean and healthy and sustainable for the future.
The United States is ready to work with you in this endeavor. With Indonesia and the rest of the world pulling in the same direction, we can meet this challenge, the greatest challenge of our generation, and we can create the future that everybody dreams of.
Thank you all very much for letting me be with you. Thank you. (Applause.)
John Kerry is NOT a pain in the foot.
Well Mr. Kerry, your consensus of “scientists” got this winter’s forecast prediction 100% wrong, but the Farmer’s Almanac got this winter’s prediction correct. Now what?
http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/20/report-farmers-almanac-more-accurate-than-govt-climate-scientists/
How about a fund to get that graph pasted onto billboards in the US and the UK (at least)?
WHO THINKS THAT KERRY BELIEVES THAT WE ARE WARMING THE PLANET.
while knoble the efforts here to show the error in the warmist/alarmists debate the real war is about freedom and (probably death for many) tyranny.
the elites don’t care if the world warms a degree or 2 or even 10 …this is the club they use to beat us with. WUWT needs to get a wider audience. How many read the conservative or truly scientific blogs. Percentage wise of the western population the number is small.
These guys (Kerry and the obama administration) are full blown communists and until people start calling them that and that the climate change alarmists are in fact communists or useful idiots of communists then they will not be stopped.
When I studied physics in college they told me that when the data disagrees with the hypothesis, the hypothesis is wrong.
In an other time Kerry would have been the guy who had Galileo arrested. “These heliocentrists are out of control. Ha Ha Ha! Put another Witch on the fire!”
….”yes, industrialized countries that produce most of the emissions – have a huge responsibility to be able to reduce emissions,…” I couldn’t find any mention of Indonesia being one of the biggest miners of evil coal in Kerry’s rant. Did I miss his unequivocal condemnation of such practices that he has made in his own USA?
The authors say: ” CO2 in the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas, trapping heat before it can escape into space.” There has always been CO2 in the atmosphere, and in ancient times there was a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere than there is now and if this “trapped” the heat of the Earth,( which comes from the Sun,) and had done since the Earth was formed 4-5 billion years ago, the technical name for Planet Earth would be “cinder.” Instead, molecules of greenhouse gases, ( of which the dominant one is water vapor,) absorb photons of infrared energy from the surface of the Earth, being raised from a “ground state” to an “excited state.” They fall back to their “ground state” by emitting a photon of energy in a random direction. It follows that 50% of these photons will be emitted in a generally upward direction, towards space, and 50% in a generally downward direction, back towards the Earth’s surface. So greenhouse gases do not “trap” the Earth’s heat like a dam. They act more like a weir where the rate of flow of the river is the same downstream of the weir as upstream. The difference is that there is a weir pool which is deeper than the river was before the weir was built. The Earth radiates exactly the same amount of energy to space as infrared radiation as it receives from the sun as short wave radiation. The “weir effect” means that the temperature of the surface of the Earth and the lower atmosphere is about 33C warmer than it would be in the absence of greenhouse gases.
“The climate-change consensus is not endangering lives, but the way it imperils economic growth and warps government policy making has made the future considerably bleaker.”
Can’t agree with this, the act of stifling the economy in order to combat climate change will force millions into poverty and result in possibly hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. It will also leave us ill prepared to cope with extreme weather events as funding is directed elsewhere resulting in more unnecessary deaths, just as the Admiralty they have become blind to the facts with their own self importance.
What happened to all those university libraries devoted to scientific marxism, the professors who thought it, and international convocations where it was discussed.
It was a mighty edifice. An undeniable force on the world we had to accept. This same John Kerry lectured many times to stop wishing it away. He called us similar extremists and idiots in those days. John Kerry proves the maxim that you can’t fix stupid. What does a guy with a lower grade point average than George Bush at Yale know anyway.
Hmmm … Botox on the brain; notice there are no deep, furrowed wrinkles on Lurch anymore …
This topic was covered at hotair, where I replayed my previous hotair comment:
Now you see so many warmists saying things like: “Well, what if we are wrong? Will we have done such a terrible thing by building a better world anyway?”
A better world?
Like the – 83% – CO2 cuts by 2050 mandated by the Cap & Trade bill that passed the US House in 2009 (and missed passing in the senate by just a couple of votes!). 83%, with large cuts coming quickly and immediately (there would have been about a 30% cut by 2024). This would have taken a wrecking ball to the economy, and created virtually apocalyptic havoc. “A better world,” I’m afraid not.
Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren had said as early as 1973 that we must embark on a large scale program to “de-develop” the United States and create a “low-consumption economy.” Holdren said this way before the gwarming scare. Nevertheless, de-development was what he wanted then, and now.
The leftist Senator Tim Wirth said in 1993: “We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing.”
It’s amazing how deception is openly, explicitly, and repeatedly called for to achieve their idea of “the right thing.” Their own words:
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” -Paul Watson, Greenpeace
“We have to offer up scary scenarios… each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest.” -Stephen Schneider, lead ipcc author, 1989
“I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of .. how dangerous it is.” -Al Gore
“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.” -Sir John Houghton, first chairman of the IPCC
“Only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’ — and readers’ — attention.” -Monika Kopacz, Atmospheric Scientist
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.” -Daniel Botkin, ex Chair of Environmental Studies, UCSB
Hence, the fear mongering Chicken Littles, the broken record prognostications of doom that are starting to sound a lot like constant crying wolf.
P.S. Check out and spread the word about this pivotal 3 minute video which exposes Al Gore’s deceptions on CO2 (there is NO evidence of a causal correlation between temperatures and CO2): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg&info=GGWarmingSwindle_CO2Lag
A wannabe Al Gore.
The plot of observations is misleading. It’s been smoothed, which artificially extends the warming trend in the 1980s and 1990s forward. In the unsmoothed data, there is no warming after 1997. If there is a trend since then, it is weak cooling – opposite to the models.
I really don’t know why such eminent scientists such as Christy and McNyder who are obviously intimately involved with temperature measurements (AMSU) even bother to reply to such a obvious ignorant unread unsophisticated person such as Mr Kerry. By replying here they are giving him attention he does not deserve
General P. Malaise
These guys (Kerry and the obama administration) are full blown communists and until people start calling them that and that the climate change alarmists are in fact communists or useful idiots of communists then they will not be stopped.
===================
Come on – the communists aren’t that ridiculous – they’re not so silly as to make idiotic claims like this administration. In fact they’re going full out on every kind of energy system they can get their hands on.
Sorry Dr.’s but you misunderstood Kerry’s quote, because as a politician he left out the obvious non-stated line.
“We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists” and “extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts.” Missing ( They must instead use propaganda, lies and computer scare stories like we do. )
Ah, its that 97% again, obviously nobody has told him how it came to be.
Most of the AGW meme consists of repeated media assertions derived from the official IPCC summary for policy makers.
Even basic “facts” that fossil fuel burning is the cause of the increase of atmospheric CO2 from 290 ppm to 390 ppm is refuted by examining the data in the science sections. The accounting of fossil fuel burning by mass is known. The global geochemical carbon cycle fluxes of “natural” CO2 exchanges for the atmosphere to oceans and biology are approximately 30 to 40 times larger. This is the same as saying that fossil CO2 annual flux rate has reached 3 percent of the global CO2 flux rate. Since the atmosphere is a “flow through” part of a much larger system, the fossil CO2 exchanges just as quickly as “natural” CO2.
That is, fossil CO2 does not accumulate in the atmosphere, it does reach 3 percent of the total flow rate. So 3 percent of the global carbon cycle means that 3 percent of atmospheric CO2 is of fossil fuel origin. Using 400 ppm as the total atmospheric total CO2, then fossil fuel accounts for 0.03 of that, or about 12 ppm. The remaining 88 ppm increase from 300 to 400 ppm must be due to changes in the natural global biogeochemical carbon cycle. For example, melting of boreal permafrost.
Thank you Swift Boat Vets and POWs for Truth for exposing the truly fraudulent CV of this treasonous, lying scum. It is only fitting that someone of his (cough) credibility should be issuing clarion calls for the warm-mongers and their ilk.
“We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists” and “extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts.”
Well behold the usual name calling and demonizing. No facts to discuss or debate.
From the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08kerry.html?_r=0
So, not only does he not know history, his knowledge of geology (about as close to climatology as he will ever get) is dismal. Marrying well above your pay grade (twice!), while useful in maintaining the lifestyle you think you deserve, is his only skill, but not sufficient for influencing science or legislation.
As an Australian, no offence, how did you guys vote Obama back in?
Quote from above: “The climate-change consensus is not endangering lives, but the way it imperils economic growth and warps government policy making has made the future considerably bleaker.”
The human hating Climate Change Consensus is busy carrying out it’s environmental pogrom.
Poor coloured people are being murdered in the name of man made Global Warming:
“Tens of millions of pounds of UK aid money have been spent on a programme that has forcibly sterilised Indian women and men, the Observer has learned. Many have died as a result of botched operations, while others have been left bleeding and in agony. A number of pregnant women selected for sterilisation suffered miscarriages and lost their babies.
With officials and doctors paid a bonus for every operation, poor and little-educated men and women in rural areas are routinely rounded up and sterilised without having a chance to object. Activists say some are told they are going to health camps for operations that will improve their general wellbeing and only discover the truth after going under the knife.
(A) working paper published by the UK’s Department for International Development in 2010 cited the need to fight climate change as one of the key reasons for pressing ahead with such programmes. The document argued that reducing population numbers would cut greenhouse gases, … ”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/15/uk-aid-forced-sterilisation-india
The Global Warming Nazis, as Dr Roy Spencer has correctly identified them, are in control & active.
Where to start …… .
I think that until the “97% of scientists” mantra is totally discredited in MSM we are fighting an uphill battle, and how you get that number universally rejected I have no idea.
It is interesting that “thousands of scientists” who support the hypotheses is a “good” quote. A quote that says “over 31,000 US scientists refute CO2 influence” would be dismissed as more flat-earth-ism.
Does he have a wig? That would explain the overheating of what is underneath.
albertalad says:
February 20, 2014 at 11:48 am
General P. Malaise
These guys (Kerry and the obama administration) are full blown communists and until people start calling them that and that the climate change alarmists are in fact communists or useful idiots of communists then they will not be stopped.
===================
Come on – the communists aren’t that ridiculous – they’re not so silly as to make idiotic claims like this administration. In fact they’re going full out on every kind of energy system they can get their hands on.
zee communists are doing all that to destroy the middle class. …those “energy systems” you refer to only accelerate our demise by making energy too expensive.
….but I guess you don’t appreciate how the communists operate.
if you start calling them communists watch how they react. their idiotic claims only work if you think they are NOT communists. would have people voted for obama if it told them he was a communist?
Just last week on TCM I watched the 1936 Paul Muni movie “The Story of Louis Pasteur” where the consensus of French scientists told Pasteur that he was crazy for insisting that germs caused disease and he had to recant and tear up his research. I had to chuckle at the irony of “consensus science”….
bw says:
February 20, 2014 at 11:50 am
I don’t think that I would choose you as my accountant (not that I need one, I have no troubles to spent near all my pension each month).
The point is that you don’t differentiate between turnover of CO2 and the gain or loss of CO2. The turnover is huge, but the ins/outs are a little more natural outs than natural ins. That means that the gain is completely from the small addition of human CO2, not from the huge natural circulation…
Anyone who would lie as he did to congress and the American people about servicemen abroad committing war crimes will easily lie about climate change. He is scum and deserves no respect at all from anyone.
The Obama administration is a Flat Earth WMD if ever there was one.
Kerry & Gore, when 1+1 = zero.
“Make no mistake: the technology is out there.”
“The Truth Is Out There,” too. But John Kerry and the Obama administration don’t have a clue where to find it.
Tim says:
February 20, 2014 at 11:43 am
“Can’t agree with this, the act of stifling the economy in order to combat climate change will force millions into poverty and result in possibly hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. It will also leave us ill prepared to cope with extreme weather events as funding is directed elsewhere resulting in more unnecessary deaths, just as the Admiralty they have become blind to the facts with their own self importance.
Couldn’t agree more.
Effective piece, but they seem to be accepting the 97 percent consensus as valid. Conceding that weakens their position a priori, for the average reader with warmist tendencies. Sorry, but it does.
roe says: February 20, 2014 at 11:44 am “What happened to all those university libraries devoted to scientific marxism, the professors who thought it, and international convocations where it was discussed. ”
Only the name has changed to progressivism but still the political bowel movement to make-things-better. It is traced from its foundations in Plato, through Hegel and Marx’s dialectic to its practitioners during WW-II when Karl Popper wrote The Open society and Its Enemies that inspired his The Poverty of Historicism. The thesis is, in a word, historicism is the fallacy that the dialectic provides a logic-like syllogism to prophesy the future, that Event C is an inevitable consequence of premises Event A and B.
The theme was taken up by N. N. Taleb, author of The Black Swan: The Impact of The Highly Improbable with his caution against blind inductive inference.
“when they tell us over and over again that our climate is changing, that it is happening faster than they ever predicted” Kerry
That statement proves he’s living in a fantasy world. Even the IPCC admits the pause; that the warming is in fact not progressing as fast as predicted.
“Consensus science” also told us 97% of “experts” had proven: Butter was killing us (switch to “safe” margarine – how’d that work out?); eggs were killing us (Oops, never mind – eggs good food); All cholesterol was poison (Wait, there’s “good” cholesterol?); Salt was killing us (Uh, not so fast …); “antioxidants” would prevent cancer (Oops, new studies say they can actually protect cancer cells); Low-fat diet the only way to lose weight (Oops, studies show high-fat low-carb diet effective – it’s all up in the air) etc etc.
The USA has a serious problem when climate and energy policy is made by people like Kerry, Obama and the Democratic leadership who seem to exist in a bubble of impenetrable ignorance with regards to the last 15 years of the real world climate data. Far from the globe warming the earth entered a cooling trend in about 2003 which will last for 20 years more and perhaps for hundreds of years beyond that. The IPCC climate models are simply not fit for forecasting purposes. For forecasts of the timing and amount of the coming cooling based on the 60 and 1000 year quasi-periodicities in the temperature data see several posts at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
I am at a loss to know how realists can penetrate the wall of ignorance and get Obama, Kerry and co to look at the data for themselves and perhaps acknowledge that the IPCC forecasts are at least a bit uncertain.
Any suggestions anyone?
… Whole milk made us fat (Wait, new study suggests drinking fat-free milk linked to more weight gain. What the @*$&^?)
But what if the shoddy scientists and extreme ideologues are the ones that Kerry endorses? And what if competent scientists are being smeared as Flat Earth Society members and holocaust deniers by government officials who know little about science? This should serve as a reminder of some very bad chapters in 20th century history.
What utter and total rubbish. He sounds like al gorem.I cannt believ such a clevr man can talk such nonsense if he had cared to take a look at the facts rather than the 97 scientists who think they know
In the late 19th century, the consensus in physics was that all major issues were understood, that only “fill in the details” research, lay at hand. Brilliant young students were advised to find another field, if they wanted to do ground-breaking research. Then came relativity, discovery of and characterization of subatomic particles, conversion of elements into others (eventually creation of entirely new elements), quantum mechanics… The “settled science” was not just tweaked, it was absolutely up-ended.
In the last third of the 20th century, it was discovered that galaxial structures did not follow the known rules of mass/gravity, as conventional theory would have caused them to fly apart, nor did the trajectories of ancient ultra-distant bodies, the furthest of which seemed to be not on gravity-induced decelerations, as theory would predict, but anti-gravity-induced accelerations. Dark matter, dark energy. These concepts are not necessarily “real”, but they are “place-holders” until they can be proven, or new explanations can be developed.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/play-it-again-january-continues-globes-warm-trend-17097
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
February 20, 2014 at 12:12 pm
bw says:
February 20, 2014 at 11:50 am
I don’t think that I would choose you as my accountant (not that I need one, I have no troubles to spent near all my pension each month).
The point is that you don’t differentiate between turnover of CO2 and the gain or loss of CO2. The turnover is huge, but the ins/outs are a little more natural outs than natural ins. That means that the gain is completely from the small addition of human CO2, not from the huge natural circulation…
And you Ferdinand are repeating the false assumption that the system has a fixed ‘natural ins’ as you see blooms of photosynthetic diatoms in the oceans, deserts greening and plants growing more rapidly in rain forest.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08kerry.html?_r=0
Mr. Kerry had a cumulative average of 76, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday. Kerry had four D’s his freshman year – a 61 in geology, a 63 and a 68 in two history courses, and a 69 in political science. He also received one D in his sophomore year, The Globe reported. He graduated in 1966.
*****
And he was a Naval Officer?
Imagine if he would have called Mann “shoddy”! He’d be facing a libel suit right now.
The Skerry Speech in a nutshell: Climate change is real, it’s our fault, it’s worse than we thought, and we’re doomed unless you
burn the witchesbuy carbon credits.I’m not a scientist, but I think the introduction of the words “consensus” and “settled” into the lexicon of public debate over scientific issues is indeed dangerous because they misinform the taxpayers as to the nature of what science really is. Those terms may have their place in the boardroom where courses of action have to be decided with incomplete information. But they were useless to a bunch of kids who settled the issue the sex of my cat the other day, by voting on it.
> Try and picture a very thin layer of gases – a quarter-inch, half an inch, somewhere in that vicinity – that’s how thick it is. It’s in our atmosphere. It’s way up there at the edge of the atmosphere. And for millions of years – literally millions of years – we know that layer has acted like a thermal blanket for the planet – trapping the sun’s heat and warming the surface of the Earth to the ideal, life-sustaining temperature.
Is Kerry speaking metaphorically, or does he honestly believe this layer exists??
REPLY: Sorry but not a layer, mixed in the atmosphere vertically. Your analogy is incorrect – Anthony
Eliza says:
February 20, 2014 at 11:47 am
I really don’t know why such eminent scientists such as Christy and McNyder who are obviously intimately involved with temperature measurements (AMSU) even bother to reply to such a obvious ignorant unread unsophisticated person such as Mr Kerry. By replying here they are giving him attention he does not deserve
_______
You’re right to say that Kerry doesn’t deserve attention for his views, but he has the ability to generate attention on his own. By speaking up Christy and McNyder, distinguished scientists, chip away at the misleading assertion of a 97% consensus.
From the post: “The two fundamental facts are that some of the carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased due to the burning of fossil fuels, and some carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is acting as a greenhouse gas, trapping heat before it can escape into space.” Is that what you meant to say?
Did he miss anything? I think he managed to cram all of the Warmists’ lies and flawed logic they’ve ever used over the years. Impressive.
Yes, the idea of man-caused climate change is simple enough for simpletons like Kerry. Except that it fails the reality test miserably.
”Scientists now predict that by the end of the century, the sea could rise by a full meter. Now, I know that to some people a meter may not sound like a lot, but I’ll tell you this: it’s enough to put half of Jakarta underwater.” — John SKerry
According to Wikipedia:
“Jakarta lies in a low, flat basin, ranged from −2 metres (−7 ft) to 50 metres (164 ft) with average elevation 8 metres (26 ft) above sea level;[citation needed] 40% of Jakarta, particularly the northern areas, is below sea level,[46] while the southern parts are comparatively hilly.”
Current sea level is enough to put 40% of Jakarta under water.
Truth and John F. Kerry separated prior to his birth.
Now senile he does not remember he never told the truth in his life.
As the man clearly said
“Well, my friends, that conference was in 1992. And it is stunning how little the conversation has really changed since then.”
Perhaps an intelligent consideration would be that in the 22 years since that day the changes seen around the world have been measured and found to be very small and not `significant` so it should NOT be stunning but perhaps `expected` that the conversation is rather one sided and akin to `shouting in the dark`.
Or put the other way round,
The fact that the conversation has not changed would indicate that the message has not got through, it hasnt got through perhaps because people dont believe the conversation which may be because they dont believe the assumptions made at the start of the converstaion perhaps because it does not fit with reality.
In just the same way that the `earth is round theory` gained such wide acceptance, because people could sense that it fitted with the `facts` as seen by their own eyes.
AGW does not do that for people as the corrupted message got in the way.
Try and imagine how the `earth is round theory` would have permeated society if it was driven by `we have to tax ships and trading` or you are all guilty of causing the earth to be round`
If that scenario is understood then perhaps they should remove the veil of the carbon tax and remove the burden of guilt and then we would all see the light, and join the glorious revolution to fight nature.
We can gnash our teeth at our climate stupidity for the 5000 dead from a storm but would it not ring hollow, `false`, when we close our eyesto and fail to attribute the far, far greater Tsunami dead or the Haiti earthquake dead,
we could shed tears (as we should) for the 5 year old girl with lung cancer, from the city of 22 million ; but would this be seen to be opportunistic when 5 year old children unfortunately do suffer from many forms of cancer and we fail to mention all those vastly greater ratios of 5 year olds dying everywhere else from all those other forms of cancer.
The message has to be right, so far it isnt.
Judging by the chart, science as a public policy input and discipline ended in the U.S. in about 2005. Why bother with the science fairs and other appearances at this point?
REAL climate deniers believe in the model predictions and refute the real-world observational data.
@ sebzear
It looks to me like he’s way confused on this “simple” matter. I think he’s mixing up where someone related the thickness of the atmosphere if the earth were the size of a basketball with other memories people talking about ozone layers and who knows what else. It’s complete nonesense. BTW: He mixed up acid rain with ocean acidification too. The whole speech is one error after another, it’d take someone days full time just to identify most of them.
Kerry, the secret Hegelian termite in the Obama administration.:]
Ian W says:
February 20, 2014 at 12:58 pm
And you Ferdinand are repeating the false assumption that the system has a fixed ‘natural ins’ as you see blooms of photosynthetic diatoms in the oceans, deserts greening and plants growing more rapidly in rain forest.
The residual of the seasonal uptake/release (which is the largest throughput) is what shows up in the year-by-year uptake/release, which is maximum 2 ppmv peak to trough, which is very modest for the sum of many natural processes.
Humans are currently emitting about 4.5 ppmv/year and the increase in the atmosphere is about 2.5 ppmv/year:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
Thus in the past 50+ years, nature always was more CO2 sink than source, whatever the partitioning between oceans, vegetation or other sinks. Seems quite difficult to attribute any contribution from nature to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere…
In June 1971 I was invited to a meeting of the Club of Rome held in Rio de Janeiro. It showed the results of a study of the predicament of mankind done by a team of MIT engineers. The team used the computer modelling techniques developed by Prof. Jay Forrester, whose work I knew from published books (Industrial Dynamics, Urban Dynamics). I had a professional interest in the subject because I was then engaged in location studies for large industries.
A dire future was predicted in the study. World population was growing at unprecedented rates and demanding ever increasing quantities of what they labelled “non-renewable resources”. This was not “sustainable”. A limited planet cannot support infinite economic growth, was their message. The book they published in 1972 is called Limits to Growth, of which I got a copy, one of the 12 million distributed by the Club of Rome.
The organiser of the Club of Rome, and sponsor of the study was Aurelio Peccei, an economist and president of FIAT, known for his marketing talent. He knew the value of brands and how they are built up. MIT is a good one. The lavishness of the Rio de Janeiro meeting reminded me of the launching of a new model car.
I was unimpressed by the reams of computer printouts. I am an engineer and was then a computer user and a Fortran programmer. I was dismayed at the shallowness of the Malthusian reasoning, about a human population doubling at each generation and outstripping the means to support it. Matching forecast against reality, four decades later, shows a dismal gap. The study only showed that the Club of Rome got what it paid for.
I see Peccei as deluded by a fixed idea. I met him at my office. He had the grave bearing many would associate with a senator of ancient Rome but struck me as a slick salesman. The question that kept recurring in my mind was “would you by a used car from this man?”.
Dr, Page and others,
They do not care about the facts. They care about power. Power to tax and spend as they please, aka lust to do. The msm will lie for them, they only have to gain 1% more in elections than the Republicans and thus they rule over U.S. all and given a bit more time, total power of rule.
You can flood them in 6 foot of facts up to their cult’s chin, still they would not care.
Knowing the facts is only 10% of the fight.
90% of the fight is the fraud going on with the current tax money buying more voters who will vote for more of this crime cult’s power.
Bring back the Mafia and protection rackets rather than this international climate protection racket scam Kerry is trying to peddle around the world. Read Antony Sutton to find out what Kerry’s up to, with his penchant for wealthy women and his Patriarchate.
No offense taken, 71% of those who voted for him wish they could have their vote back according to a recent poll.
The problem in the American psyche is that we have become very self-conscious about the past racism and the activities of some of our countrymen with regards to holding down blacks. Some people would not look the policies in the face and vote against a socialist/fascist when all they could see is the black face.
The other problem is our Republican party keeps running people designed to alienate the conservative base of the party, assuring that turnout will be down and they will lose.
Another problem we have is that a large number of people who have confused their religious obligations to take care of the poor with a government mandate to do so. Then they can go off in the world confident that the government is taking care of their responsibility and not have to worry about it or seriously think about it. Electing conservatives to them is a sacrilegious thought, after all who would take care of their soul’s responsibility to the poor if the government got out of that business.
alan neil ditchfield,
Wasn’t that shortly before the icicle-laced Time Magazine cover depicting the start of the new Ice Age?
I am a little disturbed about a climate scientist’s educational trajectory. He didn’t go to the Ivy League as an undergrad. He went to a public university in a distant state. This university was world-renowned. But there, he didn’t graduate in four years, it took him five years.
He chose physics, to pursue a PhD, but did not go to physics-powerhouse, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech or Princeton, where all his undergraduate university’s top students went. (They were told, “Pick where you want to go, we’ll get you in.”) He didn’t even go to Chicago or Columbia, Nobel-Physicist studded institutions, somewhat fading from past glories, or new kid on the block UCSB, which was nearing winning two Nobel Physics awards.
He went to Yale, which despite being recognized as top-notch in history, English, and Law, had never sponsored a single Nobel Physics-winning endeavor, and had only 4 NAS-Physics Section members (now down to 2). Josiah Willard Gibbs should have won a Nobel. Everyone who has studied P Chem knows who he was. But he worked in the 1800s.
Anyway the young scientist took NINE years to earn a Yale PhD. Compared to his better-student undergraduate university contemporaries who earned their bachelors in 3-4 years, and PhDs in 4-5 years, who by age 33 were not getting first-stage hired as assistant profs, but were receiving associate prof tenure, with the very best even getting full prof appointments.
There is nothing wrong with being a second-tier mind in science. So long as you are humble.
If you decide to perform statistical analyses of other people’s hands-on research, you need to have a statistics degree. The undergrad university of this scientist had a world-renowned statistics department, a department that would have taught him the power–and limitations–of statistical inference. But he didn’t choose this major. Why his world-famous paper’s coauthors didn’t recruit a statistician to evaluate their data and be a co- or lead author is an enigma.
In summary, an undergrad student who was not deemed to be one of the brightest minds of his class, lead-authored a paper that has been promoted by politicians to be so powerful that it must guide worldwide economic policy. The paper “grafted” two entirely different kinds of data sets to present what the climate was like in the past, versus the present.
It is somewhat reminiscent of cancer researchers in the 70s and 80s being given billions of dollars, and using “historical controls” to prove new drug regimens were better than old drug regimens, based on marginally longer survivals with new drug regimens. That they ignored advances in intensive care and its life-length-extending inputs to their patients, which actually explained the oncologists’ new “improved” results entirely, was not of interest to them.
Put it this way. If facts and the truth had any thing to do with this climate change lie and Kerry’s
lies being heard still,,, then the facts on Kerry would have had him end up in the dock and tried for treason and or also lying under oath before congress.l
Kerry may have had a lower GPA than George Bush but it was those two Bonesman out of the 300 million or so Americans who faced off not so long ago for the prize. Funny isn’t it?
Science and politics make terrible bedfellows.
rgb
It seems John Kerry got his tactics right out of Germany in the 1930’s. He just changed “dirty Jew boys” and “vermin” to “shoddy scientists”. I never thought I would see that happen in this country.
alan neil ditchfield says February 20, 2014 at 1:37 pm
I read the LtG in 1971 – I still have a copy (to remind me how academia tried to do politics). I also remember learning Fortran on an (Octal) ICL 1901. Prof Forrester must have had a lot of time on his hands to get any kind of computer model to work (punch card/paper tape input, print output, sheesh!). I wonder if those same (Fortran-coded) models are the basis of the climate models used today. Oh boy…
Dr Norman Page says:
February 20, 2014 at 12:37 pm
“I am at a loss to know how realists can penetrate the wall of ignorance and get Obama, Kerry and co to look at the data for themselves and perhaps acknowledge that the IPCC forecasts are at least a bit uncertain.
Any suggestions anyone?”
You can never penetrate the wall of “we don’t care if it is right or wrong, it fits our political agenda” with truth or facts. It is never about truth, it is always about power and the ends justify the means. What needs to be done is for everyone to take Sales 101 again. The Democrats win elections and policy debates because they understand that most people make buying decisions based on emotion and a “what’s in it for me” attitude. That’s why the majority buy into the Democratic pitch. They game plan of promise them anything then blame the other guy when it doesn’t work, is effective because most people will not admit even to themselves that they voted for the wrong guy. Nope, they weren’t wrong, so it has to be the fault of somebody else.
We also need to apply a doctrine where if you receive monetary public assistance you must recuse yourself from voting while receiving that assistance due to a conflict of interest.
Readers of WUWT may be interested to hear that on March 3rd there will be a “discussion” between John Christy and Kerry Emmanuel (a debate?) moderated by Russ Roberts (an economist who blogs at Cafe Hayek and host of the economics podcast EconTalk) at the University of Alabama at Huntsville’s College of Business Administration:
http://www.uah.edu/cba/121-main/business-administration/events/7331-college-of-business-administration-distinguished-speaker-series
Could be quite good.
John West says:
February 20, 2014 at 1:32 pm
“…like he’s way confused ….It’s complete nonsense…The whole speech is one error after another…”
I agree, it’s a bunch of bull….
Problem is, he is in a position of power, along with the other kooks in power.
The thing is we have to win. We have to somehow get the truth seers in the position of power. And it’s not going to happen overnight. We just have to keep chipping away.
“The science of climate change is leaping out at us like a scene from a 3D movie.”
Cartoon:
http://itsnotclimatescience.com/0030.html
I think people miss the point. The point is that John Kerry is Secretary of State. He may or may not believe what he says about climate, he may not have a clue. He is communicating policy and advocating for the protection of US interests following the mandate he has been given by his President. Science has nothing to do with it. It is statesmanship and a policy statement reflective of the current administrations goals, whatever they may be. A multi-layer cake.
“Well, 97 percent of climate scientists have confirmed that climate change is happening and that human activity is responsible.”
He lucky that Alfred was not in the Audience or He would have been called out quick smart.
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2014/02/20/question-climate-change-in-school-or-how-to-get-expelled/comment-page-1/#comments
“Then yesterday Deadman reported that his 17 year old had gotten himself into a spot of bother:
My 17 y.o. son, at a packed electoral meeting in the Town Hall for young people today, could not help himself when Nick McKim brought out the ol’ 97% lie—of the supposed consensus of scientists who support the pseudo-scientific conjecture of AGW—and, when he had the microphone in hand, said “Please stop lying; the 97% statistic if f*cking bullshit, and you f*cking know it, you c*nt.”
This was, he concedes, a tad rude but The Greens of all people should appreciate the triumph of feelings over rational argument.”
I think Obama and his government should read about a Soviet scientist who also established a 100% consensus. And he was terribly wrong. His name was Lysenko.
3 MM voters failed to turn up the poles compared to years previous; and absolutely nothing to do with ‘voter suppression’ practiced by IRS (e.g. Lois Lerner) personnel (the Internal Revenue Service, these are the “income tax” people who do audits, oversee income tax compliance and do so with ‘ARMED authority’ at their disposal) who outwardly thwarted, challenged and intimidated organizing and educational activities by various ‘get out the vote’ groups NOT in sympathy with the democrat party.
So, nothing at all. Move along now, nothing to see here … and remember to VOTE DEMOCRAT … or else …
.
(do I really need the ‘/sarc’ tag?)
rgbatduke says:
February 20, 2014 at 1:52 pm
Science and politics make terrible bedfellows.
rgb
————————————————————————————————————————
When I read that I immediately thought of the impact Eugenics had when politicians started to implement that concept into reality. With that in mind, looking back at Kerry’s statement, and the statements of the fringe lunatics on the AGW side gives me a very disturbing vision of the potential impact their policies will have.
sebzear says:
February 20, 2014 at 1:10 pm
> Try and picture a very thin layer of gases – a quarter-inch, half an inch, somewhere in that vicinity – that’s how thick it is. It’s in our atmosphere. It’s way up there at the edge of the atmosphere. And for millions of years – literally millions of years – we know that layer has acted like a thermal blanket for the planet – trapping the sun’s heat and warming the surface of the Earth to the ideal, life-sustaining temperature.
Is Kerry speaking metaphorically, or does he honestly believe this layer exists??
REPLY: Sorry but not a layer, mixed in the atmosphere vertically. Your analogy is incorrect – Anthony
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anthony, sebzear was not making an incorrect analogy, he was quoting (sans punctuation) and questioning Kerry’s incorrect analogy; a cut and paste from the transcript.
When was the last time Kerry was right about anything? Didn’t Kerry’s off-the-cuff remarks undermine Obama’s Syria policy and pave the way for a fake WMD disarmament in Syria and put Putin’s Russia into a leading role in the region?
Oops … sub ‘polls’ for ‘poles’ above … mea culpa (my bad)
craig says:
February 20, 2014 at 12:02 pm
As an Australian, no offence, how did you guys vote Obama back in?
=====
because he promised to pay my mortgage, do away with my student load debt, create more jobs with higher pay and less work, give me free health care, have the most open and transparent government, lower gas and fuel prices…..
…heal the sick, and give me a pathway to heaven
I was furious when I read the statement that there is no risk to human life from the climate change balderdash. I spend a lot of time here precisely because there is a serious threat to the well-being and the very lives of both human beings and the rest of the biosphere. CO2 is the basis of all terrestrial life and has been higher than present over most of the evolution of our bodies and cells. Up to 300 times higher, in fact, according to geologists. Granted, geologists have to use proxies, and proxies are what the hockey stick and hide the decline were all about.
Human well-being increases as [CO2] does. Yes, too much can kill you, and there is a CO2 abatement industry in connection with breweries, but the climate debate is about variations that are all in the far-below optimum range. And yes, CO2 is planet food. All terrestrial organisms depend on it.
Tens of thousands of human beings DIED in the “Arab Spring,” which was not a desire for freedom or democracy but food riots. Food prices have rocketed due to American and other insistence on corn ethanol added to gasoline. There was enough acreage shifted from food to fuel to cause havoc.People have also died when denied heating and air conditioning. At the very least tens of thousand of people have already died from the Global Warming lie. My estimate is around a million all told. That is a guess. It could be fewer or many millions.
The global warming lie harms the environment because strong economies have the funds to handle ecological matters, while struggling economies pollute like mad. It is the second most devastating lie holding back the human race.
The worst lie is the overpopulation lie. This lie dates back thousands of years. It is always associated with the very wealthy. Maldistribution of food has meant famines for thousands of years and that phenomenon is still going on today. We grow enough food to feed everyone, but some countries waste a lot while others die. This problem may well be solved in our lifetime.
The notion that the world can’t feed everybody is a major source of the global warming lie. KILLING PEOPLE is what is “the right thing” even if they are wrong about AGW. The leaders of the environmental movement are individuals who believe strongly that humans threaten the well-being of the rest of the planet, and their real aim is to torture, and preferably kill, as many people as possible. They are willing to do almost anything to the natural world to achieve that aim. Most of the rank-and-file enviros really want to enhance the biosphere, but they are so easily led, so easily lied to, that they generally do more harm than good–even to “the environment.”
The overpopulation lie was the primary source of The Holocaust, also the Irish potato famine (Ireland grew enough food–it was stolen by the British specifically to starve Irish to death) and other genocides. The USA deliberately killed people in india by starvation almost identical to Auschwitz, on the same theory that there wasn’t enough to go around, and it was this overpopulation stuff that prevented the USA from saving millions of lives in WWII. We admitted thousands of Jews but fear prevented us from rescuing all of them–Germany would have let us.
It would seem off-topic for this site, but the agricultural reality is that Organic technologies were developed in the 20th century that could feed 20 billion people or more forever with enhancements of the wilderness and the rest of the biosphere. It would seem off-topic, but in fact, our food and health are the real and central concerns of the whole AGW debate. That is why I keep pointing you to http://www.originalsonicbloom.com and permaculture. You can be the best REAL environmentalists out there as well as the most scientific on the subject of climate.
The two fundamental facts are that carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased due to the burning of fossil fuels, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas, trapping heat before it can escape into space.
————————————————————————————————
Sorry Dick and John, but that is nonsense, CO2 doesn’t trap heat, much of the heat can escape into space. Its a fallacy used by the alarmists and I am surprised you are not aware of that fact.
Don’t you get to sue if someone calls your work “shoddy”? I’m sure the little Mann think so if you called him that. Maybe it’s time to sue the State Department and John Kerry. If Mann’s case is successful, skeptical scientists can sue and give some of them money they win to Mark Steyn. Both Kerry and the U. S. State Department are rich and bloated with money to burn.
I must admit I haven’t read Mein Kampf, but I’m sure overpopulation wasn’t a big theme in Hitler’s manifesto.
Perhaps you are referring to the Eugenics movement and the fear of undesirable individuals and non-Aryan races outbreeding the Aryans. Can you clarify?
You say:
While none of these inconsistencies refutes the fundamental concern about greenhouse-gas-enhanced climate change
Which comes after you said:
Yet observations show that the warming of the deep atmosphere (the fundamental sign of carbon-dioxide-caused climate change, which is supposedly behind these natural phenomena) is not occurring at an alarming rate
So, if this, “the fundamental sign of carbon-dioxide-caused climate change”, without which it simply is not happening, “is not occurring at an alarming rate”, then what, exactly, is “the fundamental concern”? With that level of warming, we are only talking mild, and therefore generally benficial warming, no concern at all. This is doubly so when we are schedual for an ice age right about, well, today.
These two statements directly contradict each other, so one of them must be false. Only one of the above statements is supported by actual data.
Pick one.
“Anyone who would lie…about (American) servicemen abroad committing war crimes…”
Be careful here not to overstate the case. There is great danger to credibility in doing so.
It is an unfortunate fact of war that you can probably anticipate “war crimes” being committed by any nation-state so engaged. While America was no exception, being a leftist and to Kerry’s eternal damnation, he willfully denigrated the service of an entire generation of patriots with the “war criminal” broadbrush as a means to advance his agenda. In fact, he admitted doing so as an attempt to tidy up his CV for his presidential run. His current posturing inre AGW is right out of the same play book.
Anthony, I know that I’m going to mod hell for using the name that must not be spoken, but..this sounds below like astrology to me and there seems to be something to it. Equating astrology with crackpot or bunkum is an error on your part. If there was nothing to it, it would not be the one branch of human knowledge that has manifested in just about important every culture there is. And it might be added that the ancient astronomers believed in ‘as above so below’, the astrological maxim, which many physicists credit as well.
“.The Farmers’ Almanac makes predictions based on planetary positions, sunspots and lunar cycles — a prediction system that has remained largely unchanged since its first publication in 1818. While modern scientists don’t put much stock in the almanac’s way of doing things, the book says it’s accurate about 80 percent of the time.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/20/report-farmers-almanac-more-accurate-than-govt-climate-scientists/#ixzz2tuJUr7EJ
Objection your honour!
• Food to fuel >>> rising food prices
• High energy bills >>> hypothermia deaths among some retired poor in UK
• October 2013 two engineers died due to wind turbine fire in Netherlands
Climate change linked to increase in Australia’s suicide rates
• Baby girl survives after being shot in the chest in parents’ ‘global warming suicide pact’
And so on……………..
I meant in every important culture of course.
Thanks, Richard and John (Christy, not Kerry). That was an enjoyable read.
Brian try raw milk, if you can in this land of the chemically oppressed and lose weight. Pasteurization ruins a perfect food.
To my way of thinking, Fred Singer has a more effective piece in the American Thinker. Quite rightly, he goes after the supposed consensus. You guys can argue all you want that science isn’t a democratic process with truth being established by some sort of vote, and that of course is quite right, but the average guy isn’t going to buy it if he believes a scant 3 percent disagree with the CAGW consensus.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/02/climate_consensus_con_game.html
Craig from Australia wanted to know how we could possibly re-elect Obama, an astonishing idiot with the lowest approval rating in history. Few know the real answer, so I will tell you. The Republicans snatched defeat again from the jaws of victory by alienating their young people. At 61, I am jealous and awed by the energy of the young. The fact is, campaigns need that kind of indefatigable energy so that voters get signed up to vote, educated, and urged to the polls.
Most of the Republican youngsters supported Ron Paul. I know them well because I also supported Ron Paul and have been a Republican precinct leader and delegate to state conventions since 2008. In 2012, we watched with dismay as Republican leaders cheated Ron Paul in state after state. In Maine, for example, they cancelled the voting in Ron Paul’s strongest area, using a snowstorm as an excuse, and those people never got the promised second chance. In other states, conventions were closed when it became obvious that Ron Paul would win. Paul supporters held valid “rump conventions,” but at the national convention, illegal appointees were accepted and the show went on. Romney himself was complicit in this, at least to the extent of denying Paul a chance to speak at the national convention. Since Romneycare in Massachusetts was a very expensive failure similar to Obamacare, many Paul supporters did not see enough difference between Romney and Obama to matter. They did not go out and sign up new Republicans, they did not call voters to educate them, they did not work to get Republicans to the polls. Some did not even show up to vote themselves.
The above is all politics, something we don’t normally tolerate here. But many of those who read this site regularly share Craig’s puzzlement, and most have political views sharply at odds with the Obama administration, especially on climate matters. And I observed an astonishing sophistication in those young people. People like that are the skeptics’ hope for the future–people who can reason and think their way through truth and lies (well, ok, some of the Paul supports are nuts and believe ridiculous conspiracy theories), and people with a love of learning.
The way we create a whole generation of bright people in both political parties who can find their way to truth is found at http://www.constitution.org/col/one_room_schoolhouse.htm and follow that up with researching Lancastrian education and getting it implemented in your area.
John Kerry (lawyer and politician) says that people like Dr. Richard Lindzen (former MIT atmospheric physicist & professor) are members of the “Flat Earth Society” and is among the “tiny minority of shoddy scientists”.
Ripper
“when he had the microphone in hand, said “Please stop lying; the 97% statistic if f*cking bullshit, and you f*cking know it, you c*nt. This was, he concedes, a tad rude ”
.
HHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAH……Funniest thing I’ve read today….
You must be a Brit with the understatement of the line….”This was, he concedes, a tad rude”
Please pass on my best wishes to the young man. I hope he goes very far.
Very gratifying to see they’re not all brainwashed..by any means.
Andy
Oops…misread your comment. Apologies.
Well good luck to him wherever he is….
Why would anyone think that Kerry cares a whit about the radiative properties of CO2? The only thing he or any scientist-for-purchase cares about is the taxable property of CO2.
The roots of John Kerry’s hair have sucked out most of the intelligence that ever existed in his brain.
craig says:
February 20, 2014 at 12:02 pm
“As an Australian, no offence, how did you guys vote Obama back in?”
Simple… the TAKERS outnumber the MAKERS.
rgbatduke says:
February 20, 2014 at 1:52 pm
Science and politics make terrible bedfellows.
rgb
——————————————————————
Easy to fix … stop using taxes to fund any scientific research – including universities. If you keep that funding link you will keep putting politics in the same bed with science.
.”..observations show that the warming of the deep atmosphere (the fundamental sign of carbon-dioxide-caused climate change, which is supposedly behind these natural phenomena) is not occurring at an alarming rate: Instruments aboard NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association satellites put the Mid-Tropospheric warming rate since late 1978 at about 0.7 degrees Celsius, or 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, per 100 years. For the same period, the models on average give 2.1 degrees Celsius, or 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit, per 100 years (see graph).”
That greenhouse theory requires that Mid-Tropospheric air would would rise due increases in CO2, I don’t think warming Mid-Tropospheric air has causal relationship, rather I believe the Mid-Tropospheric air is warmed as result surface temperatures increasing.
Or when air temperature on average increase as measure in white painted box at 5 feet above ground, air temperature at Mid-Troposphere rises.
Or measuring air temperature at Mid-Troposphere is simply another way measure global temperature, and warmer surface temperature doesn’t mean surface temperature are the cause of warming any more the Mid-Troposphere warming is cause warming.
Now since you have theory the Mid-Troposphere warming cause global warming, it’s a good idea to focus on measuring Mid-Troposphere- in order to confirm or disprove this theory. And accordingly Greenhouse theory has been disprove.
Now, in altered reality, where greenhouse theory was proven theory and say warming of Mid-Troposphere does cause warmer temperatures [rather than indicate temperatures] and so
instead of warming by 0.7 C it had warmed by 7 C, this doesn’t mean surface temperature would
rise more than 7 C, instead it mean surface temperature would probably rise less than 7 C.
Had Mid-Troposphere warmed by 7 C it would be *alarming* because then perhaps the wildest ideas of believers in global warming *could* be true. But I just mean the actual result caused by such 7 C increase, rather the future fears as consequent the validation of a theory and evidence that most people had underestimate the effect of the greenhouse theory.
Now, it seems possible that Mid-Troposphere could rise by 7 C, because in the past history of Earth it has been this warm. Or if surface temperatures increase by 7 C, then Mid-Troposphere
temperatures might rise by 7 C [or possibility less].
But say if one were to use a massive energy source [Nuclear energy would plausible source of such massive amounts of energy] and heat the Mid-Troposphere by 7 C, then the result would not be increase of surface temperature by 7 C.
What warmer Mid-Troposphere would do is increase night time temperature- because it’s the energy of the atmosphere which causes the nights to be warmer. Whereas in terms daylight hours it’s the sun which warms.
So with biggest affect of nigh time temperature the 7 C warmer Mid-Troposphere would not add 7 C to the temperature to night time but rather perhaps a significant fraction of 7 C. Say, 4 C or more.
In past when there has warmer temperatures, one also had warmer ocean temperature- average ocean temperatures. Our current average ocean temperature is around 3 C and within mere 1000 years the ocean will not, and can not warm to more than 4 C.
If we had ocean 10 C warmer [which would cause massive sea level increases] then the Mid-Troposphere and surface temperature could rise by about 7 C.
But ocean temperature, like surface and Mid-Troposphere, are also not cause, rather they simply another way to measure average global temperature.
But similar to heating Mid-Troposphere, one heat the ocean with massive amount of nuclear energy if warmed by 7 C would as effect [or more] of warming earth as using nuclear power to
warm Mid-Troposphere. Warming the oceans would require a lot more energy than what needed to warm Mid-Troposphere. But if turned off the energy source the warmed ocean would warm the world for thousands of years, whereas the warmed Mid-Troposphere would last weeks or months.
I think we should remember how many times Obama talked about climate change, global warming, not approving pipelines, subsidizing green projects to the tune of billions of dollars and closing coal plants in the last election.
Maybe once he mentioned climate change and he never talked about the rest of it in the campaign. We pretended he was not in favor of it anymore, because that seemed reasonable. As President, he learned a lesson about what it takes to govern. But that was obviously a mistake, assuming the war was already won. It was not.
The Democrats are beholden to the green groups and people should not forget that during elections, despite not talking about it during campaigns.
Perhaps John Kerry should stick to policy-making, in which he should have some expertise.
He might find out that there is no available policy that can deliver reductions in carbon levels for less money than the harm that they will cause. For instance, the Stern Review calculated the “social cost of carbon” at $85 t/CO2, one of the highest ever figures. Here in the UK, an offshore wind turbine gets a subsidy of around $325 t/CO2. Policy is doomed to failure.
http://manicbeancounter.com/2014/02/19/10gw-of-extra-offshore-wind-turbines-by-2020-the-real-costs/
But in terms of constraining carbon levels to a couple of degrees of warming, there is an even bigger problem, much closer to John Kerry’s expertise. Suppose the USA, EU, Canada, Australia and Japan all managed to reduce their emissions by 80% by 2050, global emissions would still have more than doubled from today’s levels. The maths is not difficult. These rich countries have a population of 1 billion, yet in 2010 produced 33% of global emissions, down from 48% in 1990. Fast-growing India and China have 2.5 billion people, and other emerging nations a couple of billion more. It is only by the poor countries remaining in energy poverty that the world will be “saved”.
So if, John Kerry has the truth on global warming, the policies he is advocating will stick this generation with the huge policy costs, and do practically nothing to save future generations from the future climate catastrophes.
Thank, Dr. Richard McNider and Dr. John Christy.
Your clarity is appreciated. It is for the people to grasp the implications.
This CAGW cult is very dangerous, it is fascist in its roots and implementations; a power grab of incredible scale. These are very interesting times, indeed.
“Try and picture a very thin layer of gases – a quarter-inch, half an inch, somewhere in that vicinity – that’s how thick it is. It’s in our atmosphere. It’s way up there at the edge of the atmosphere. And for millions of years – literally millions of years – we know that layer has acted like a thermal blanket for the planet – trapping the sun’s heat and warming the surface of the Earth to the ideal, life-sustaining temperature.”
Wow, all the CO2 in the atmosphere is in a layer only 1/2 inch thick! How can plants on the surface get any of it? And how does the CO2 we breath out instantly get way up there?
And it’s at the very edge of the atmosphere, which I never knew had an abrupt edge, I was always taught it gradually thinned out.
Who knew?
Can I hear (see) the same kind of ‘run down’ on Einstein?
No ‘dog’ here either.
.
– Walter Allensworth says:
February 20, 2014 at 4:01 pm
craig says:
February 20, 2014 at 12:02 pm
“As an Australian, no offence, how did you guys vote Obama back in?”
Simple… the TAKERS outnumber the MAKERS.-
No think reason is most people thought we could afford Obama,
so far they have been proven incorrect- and it’s likely to become
more obvious the longer Obama- and let’s not forget democrats
enablers stay in power. Fortunately they probably will not have enough
time to transform the US into Detroit. And they will be relieved
of their responsibility and possible the the damage can repaired
and the world can continue it’s end long trend of reducing global
poverty and general improvement.
I think we might have able to afford Obama if we didn’t both houses
controlled democrats and continued control of the Senate.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts anyone- and Obama
has been easily corrupted by not a lot of encouragement.
It’s fortunate for Obama that he was US president rather than say being the
leader of Cuba- for his sake- as would got more blood on his hands.
re: Interested observer (no dog in the hunt) says February 20, 2014 at 1:46 pm
Oh … ” Micheal Mann ” … never mind …
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
When John Kerry (who opposed Kyoto) kicks-off his speech with a quote from the creator, fabricator and proponent of global warming, UNEP’s Maurice Strong, you know propaganda and green myths will surely follow …
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/why_did_john_kerrys_global_warming_guru_hide_himself_in_china/
DavidG says:
February 20, 2014 at 3:42 pm
“Brian try raw milk, if you can in this land of the chemically oppressed and lose weight. Pasteurization ruins a perfect food.”
Perfect if you are a calf. Can you name one other animal that continues to drink a mother’s milk after they are fully grown? And we humans aren’t even related to cows
sebzear says:
February 20, 2014 at 1:10 pm
Like you I read the printed transcript.
I have listened to the speech, the section you quote starts at 08:53. The transcript is accurate, that is what he said.
So what does he mean?
I think that the “very thin layer of gases – a quarter-inch, half an inch” refers to the thickness of a layer of glass, the greenhouse glass, the glass that keeps the warmth inside the greenhouse.
Hmmm..the pause in warming continues..
.
http://news.yahoo.com/world-had-4th-warmest-january-eastern-us-froze-160149864.html
Legatus says:
February 20, 2014 at 3:24 pm
You say:
While none of these inconsistencies refutes the fundamental concern about greenhouse-gas-enhanced climate change
Which comes after you said:
Yet observations show that the warming of the deep atmosphere (the fundamental sign of carbon-dioxide-caused climate change, which is supposedly behind these natural phenomena) is not occurring at an alarming rate
So, if this, “the fundamental sign of carbon-dioxide-caused climate change”, without which it simply is not happening, “is not occurring at an alarming rate”, then what, exactly, is “the fundamental concern”? With that level of warming, we are only talking mild, and therefore generally benficial warming, no concern at all. This is doubly so when we are schedual for an ice age right about, well, today.
These two statements directly contradict each other, so one of them must be false. Only one of the above statements is supported by actual data.
Pick one.
I was about to ask that exact question, Legatus, but you beat me to it.
It is the alleged concern about “global warming” that is the supposed issue. We should stop using “climate change” when the fundamental belief is that anthropogenic CO2 emissions adding to the total greenhouse gas effect which will cause atmospheric warming – sure it is a change in the climate, but the concept states that it will be an atmospheric warming change.
No discernable, appreciable, measureable change in the atmospheric temperature that can be directly related to the additional CO2 equals no problem.
“As an Australian, no offence, how did you guys vote Obama back in?”
Blaming the voters is hardly fair. A braindead ape could have beaten Obama in the last election–‘finally, a politician you can trust…to just lie there and drool’–but the Republicans couldn’t find one, so they nominated Romney instead.
There seems to be a common and insane belief among ‘right wing’ parties in the West–largely driven by our old friend computer modelling, this time of voters, not climate–that if they just act like socialists, they’ll get the socialist votes and win. But, like computer models of climate, the reality doesn’t match the model; socialist voters already have real socialists to vote for, and right wing voters won’t vote for a Republican candidate who acts like a Democrat.
What is it with American presidential administrations? That’s two in a row now that have been obsessed with doing something about WMD’s that don’t seem to exist.
Just want to say to all those who replied today, thank you for your analysis of Obama, made me miserable reading how devisive he has become. We, Australians have just gone thru six years of a toxic government hell bent on class warfare and rubbish AGW policies and voted them out late last year. The end result is a country deep in debt, business confidence is down, unemployment on the rise largely due to the previous government policies now coming home to roost. The current government has now got a hell of a mess to clean up and is the previous government taking responsibilty, no chance! Sounds like the Obama adminstration will leave your country deep in the **** too and walk away laughing in your face. Makes you angry……..
Inside every green is a little dictator, just dying to get out.
So, UN Resolution 1441 flew right past you too ?
And technically speaking, when you fire missiles at another country’s patrol aircraft repeatedly and continually (although perhaps sporadically), how does one really call that ‘peace’ and not a continued, though low-level, a state of conflict IF not outright ‘war’?
Seems HuffPo wins in the end after all, huh?, given the ‘fading memory effect’ of fallible humans …
.
I got to… “In ancient times, the notion of a flat Earth was the scientific consensus, and it was only a minority who dared question this belief.” then looked at the length of the article and went on to make this comment. I don’t have much time for someone who makes this sort of ridiculous statement. It’s just so wrong it beggars belief that the person is going to know much about anything else. He/she *might* but that’s such a bad start I have to decide where my time is best spent and today it isn’t here.
I hope you all realize how important this type of response is.
Remember, once conveyed in the MSM world wide, it is quite difficult to undo the lies in bulk.
Just sayin,,,,,,,,,, like a snowball down hill.
Thank you Dr’s!
Your opinion is appreciated,,,, and absolutely essential to our future./!
………..vs The Real World.
I couldn’t read all of or watch the whole Kerry video.
I did look at the graph and ponder the Real World.
About a year before last summer I Iook my aging mother to her 60th HS reunion about 3 1/2 hrs away. The weather was perfect and we went for a tour of the places my family lived and played when I was very young.
http://www.oregonstateparks.org/index.cfm?do=parkPage.dsp_parkPage&parkId=70
As I stood where I played in the late 50s and 60s I tried to detect changes to anything.
I have old family pictures taken back then.
Nothing. The Real World shows not a thing has changed at all. No loss of beach, no sea rise, no death by acid, no altering plant of animal species. Nothing. It’s just a marvelous place where families with young children play.
Of course that is all anecdotal and of no scientific value but shouldn’t there be something, anything to see?
One thing has changed since. My mother passed away last fall.
I’m so glad I took her on that trip. When I get her age perhaps my daughter will take me back there
to see it one more time.
Another 25 years from now it will still be exactly the same.
Well, I am sure Marie Antoinette was much prettier, otherwise Kerry is doing a magnificent job of duplicating the disconnect, arrogance and incompetence of;Let them eat cake.
I am amused by the spectacle of Obama, Kerry and their useful idiots pointing at the sky and insisting;”But this time we are not lying”
“In ancient times, the notion of a flat Earth was the scientific consensus,”
When was this?
I’m 97% shure that what Kerry really belives in are more the political solutions and Agendas, a more leftist tomorrow international world. And to achieve those he also has to belive in the environmentalists catastrophic antroproghenic claims in climate and environment?
When looking at half a picture you could make an error at what the whole would look like.
As long as thay keep looking at co2 and not c o2 this will go on.
Could it be that Goldman Sachs are pulling
Kerry’s strings?http://quidsapio.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/how-goldman-sachs-invented-cap-and-trade/
John Kerry – ‘And in a sense, climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction’
Wrong terminology. Weapon of Math Deconstruction. Means whatever he wants it to mean.
The article makes some good points but it makes no sense to take the average of model runs. Models output predictions, not data. Each model has to be assessed on its own ability (or lack of it) to make accurate predictions.
Skeptics are hardly the minority – consider the Oregon Petition, a document signed by more than 31,000 degreed practicing scientists, more than 9,000 of them Ph.D.s, which states that neither man’s activities nor carbon dioxide have any discernible effect on climate.
Just think how this compares with the real “97 percent,” which was 75 out of 77 ,cherry-picked individuals – not even all of them scientists. That tots up to better than a 450 to 1 majority for skeptics!
ronvanwegen says:
February 20, 2014 at 6:15 pm
‘ I got to… “In ancient times, the notion of a flat Earth was the scientific consensus, and it was only a minority who dared question this belief.” then looked at the length of the article and went on to make this comment. I don’t have much time for someone who makes this sort of ridiculous statement. It’s just so wrong it beggars belief that the person is going to know much about anything else. He/she *might* but that’s such a bad start I have to decide where my time is best spent and today it isn’t here.’
—-l
If you gotta go, you gotta go. But wouldn’t it be better for everyone if you did not run away, but enlightened those in need of your guidance?
Do you take the position that there was no period in human history when a majority held the belief that the earth was flat?
I have a different view of the climate model results. In my view, with so much time and money spent on the models over so many years, one would expect that the model projections would converge so that the range of projections would narrow year by year.
Models do not demonstrate that a consensus exists concerning the future state of the Earth’s climate.
Why should models have converged or not converged in their projections? The models assume the core theory that CO2 drives the warming and the effect is amplified by positive feedback from water vapour. The models deliver results inherent in their assumptions about what is forcing climate change about which there is much agreement among the modeling groups. To that extent the models are tautological. Also, the modeling groups communicate with and support each other. For all of these reasons, the modeling groups should gradually converge.in their projection of the future state of the Earth’s climate.
[This issue is separate from the validity of what modelers do and how models work.]
Why do the models not converge? Is it because of different assumptions about the quantum of future CO2 emissions? Or have the models not converged because they use different values for the feedback parameters? Or different values for parameterization of a many of the model variables, such as cloud effects? Is there any way to determine why the models have not much converged during the last ten years?
I conclude that the models are based not merely on one theory about CO2 but many lesser-known climate-related theories. The big CO2 theory has to be modeled using a lot of little theories to allow parameterization. Perhaps It is the parameterization of so many variables that causes the wide spread in scenarios. The amount of feedback is one parameter that may vary among the models, but there are many other parameters, such as the effect of clouds on albedo, possibly with different parameter values in different models.. Divergence in the value of parameters may explain why the models do not converge.
A reasonable way to run the models might be to constrain the projection result for each model run by an external estimate for climate sensitivity to CO2.
Modelers in other fields constrain their simulations using independent external estimates of the phenomena simulated. For example, modelers can simulate passengers per route for an airport. They estimate the probabilities of each destination and then run their model. They allow for the fact that their estimates of the probabilities have errors of parameterization. When they initialize the models they know the row and column, Thus, they can correct their initial simulation to allow for errors in the estimate of the probability that a passenger will select a particular destination. They can adjust the parameters to fit the observations.
What climate modelers need is some way of constraining errors of parameterization of the many non-greenhouse-gas variables..
Robust independent estimates of climate sensitivity would serve the purpose of keeping climate models on track. What I am suggesting is that more effort needs to be done on climate sensitivity to CO2 and other greenhouse gases as a means of constraining model results. Also something needs to be done to find a way to project separately secular climate change and natural variability and to overlay secular change on natural variability that manifests as cycles or pseudo-cycles.
Unless and until this can be achieved climate modeling should stay in the labs and not be used for public policy. [More on this subject below.]
There are several recent papers that estimate climate sensitivity using data that are reasonably independent of the climate models. The one I am most familiar was prepared in 2007 by Stephen Schwartz of the Brookhaven National Laboratory based on his estimate of ocean heat content.
Paper: Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of Earth’s climate system. Schwartz S. E. J.
Geophys. Res., 112, D24S05 (2007). URL: http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs.html#preprints
Dr. Schwartz estimated climate sensitivity to doubling of CO2 as 1.1 ± 0.5 K. His result was criticized by a group of climate modelers. I believe Dr Schwarz revised his estimate upwards but not by much. I read the criticisms and the revised article and came to the conclusion that the revised higher estimate was not more robust than the original estimate, but merely closer to the higher conventional estimate preferred by the critics.
There are more recent papers by other authors that have used different approaches to climate sensitivity that also seem to be more robust than earlier estimates.
Constraining the climate models by external estimates of climate sensitivity would could lead to a convergence of model projections. This would help identify which parameter values have caused the divergence in models results. This in turm would show the community and funding agencies where significant uncertainties exist and where funding should be directed..
I realize that some readers are contemptuous of climate modeling per se. In my opinion, however imperfect the models, the climate system is so complex there does not seem to be any other way to study the system.
What is worthy of contempt is the failure of the modeling community to admit their collective failure to inform policy-makers that models are not for policy-making but for exploring the properties of a system. Until this happens, I fear that little progress will be made. For this to happen, climate modelers need less commitment to desired and preconceived public policies and more commitment to the scientific method.
The motto of modelers and their managers should be: Back to science and stay out of politics.
Some readers may argue that because the climate system is chaotic it cannot be modeled in this way. If that were true, modelers would never build wind tunnels for testing aircraft and road vehicles. (For non-physicists: turbulent flow is by definition chaotic.)
“Try and picture a very thin layer of gases – a quarter-inch, half an inch, somewhere in that vicinity – that’s how thick it is. It’s in our atmosphere. It’s way up there at the edge of the atmosphere.”
“At the end of the day, emissions coming from anywhere in the world threaten the future for people everywhere in the world, because those emissions go up and then they move with the wind and they drop with the rain and the weather, and they keep going around and around and they threaten all of us.”
Who but a shill for Big Oil could argue with scientific facts like these?
I suppose I’d better say “/sarc”…
Typo in my previous post.”totals” omitted. The sentence should read: “When they initialize the models they know the row and column totals”
“The climate-change consensus is not endangering lives,”
Er, please tell that to all of those old people who die in Britain every winter because they are afraid to turn the heating on due to the huge energy bills! Please tell it to people in the third world who are denied refrigerators to keep their food and medicine safe because the “west” has decided that they should be more “green”. Please tell it to anybody on the planet who cannot afford to eat because food prices are so high due to biofuels and the cost of transportation!
No. Here you are completely wrong! The Climate Change Consensus is killing people. Just as the “Bolsheviks” (cough, cough, anybody who knows about history will know why I put that in quotes!) created their policies in Ukraine to cause harm, these climate policies are also DESIGNED to cause harm, because they are designed to increase the price of food and energy. It is nothing short of genocide. I mean that very seriously. To purposefully cause the price of food and energy to rise beyond the level at which people can survive is genocide. There is NO OTHER WORD TO DESCRIBE IT. If you have one, then let’s hear it! Democide? Perhaps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
It is very interesting to note that the “Bolsheviks” are creating unrest in Ukraine today, again causing harm to the Ukrainians.
FrankK says:
February 20, 2014 at 3:13 pm
Dick and John say:
The two fundamental facts are that carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased due to the burning of fossil fuels, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas, trapping heat before it can escape into space.
————————————————————————————————
FrankK says:
Sorry Dick and John, but that is nonsense, CO2 doesn’t trap heat, much of the heat can escape into space. Its a fallacy used by the alarmists and I am surprised you are not aware of that fact.
Update:
Dick and John. May I suggest you get a credible textbook:
Salby M. 2012 Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate. Cambridge University Press
ISBN 978-0-521-76718-7
Go to page 49 and 50 Section 1.4 ‘Global Energy Budget’ you will see the following:
SW Absorption + LW Absorption – LW Emission – LW Emission = Net Radiative
From Surface to Surface to space Forcing Atmosp.
68 W/m2 + 368 W/m2 – 327 W/m2 – 215 W/m2 = -106 W/m2
i.e. radiative cooling of the atmosphere which is balanced by mechanical heating: transfers of sensible and latent heat from the Earth’s surface. = 106 W/m2
The wording got scrambled in my last post.. Should read:
SW Absorption + LW Absorption from Surface – LW Emission to Surface -LW Emission to Space
= Net Radiation Forcing of Atmosphere.
DavidG says:
February 20, 2014 at 3:35 pm
” …Equating astrology with crackpot or bunkum is an error on your part. If there was nothing to it, it would not be the one branch of human knowledge that has manifested in just about important every culture there is. …”
—-l
You feel that when enough people believe in something, it gives it scientific validity?
The full court press is on!
Anybody think that it is a coincidence that Kerry, all the MSM and the President are simultaneously pushing the Climate change mantra.
Now we see that the NAS and PBS are joining the chorus to convince people that climate change should not rank 19 out of 20 as concerns the public are worried about.
Don’t underestimate the power of the progressives to sell a piece of garbage to the public given all the money and media attention that can be brought to the party.
“On Thursday, February 27th from 10:00-11:30 EST, you’re invited to join the US National Academy of Sciences and the UK’s Royal Society for the release of Climate Change: Evidence & Causes . Written by a UK-US team of leading climate scientists and reviewed by climate scientists and others, the publication is intended as a brief, readable reference document that addresses some of the questions that continue to be asked. Miles O’Brien of the PBS Newshour will moderate a discussion between some of the authors and the audience.”
“Participants can join in person at the NAS building on Constitution Avenue & 21st Street, NW, or by webcast. Coffee service begins at 9:00 a.m. ”
“Register today to attend in person or view the webcast.”
http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/events/a-discussion-on-climate-change-evidence-and-causes/?utm_medium=etmail&utm_source=The%20National%20Academies%20Press&utm_campaign=2014.02.20+-+Climate+Change+Evidence+Event&utm_content=&utm_term=
Yes, so called “scientists” have been bought out by the administration?
Your tax dollars at work to bring you carbon control and tax while the elites and government officials cast a huge carbon footprint.
Kerry reminds me of that classic quote from As Good As It Gets:
“Sell crazy someplace else, we are all stocked up.”
Philip Mulholland says:
February 20, 2014 at 4:47 pm
I think that the “very thin layer of gases – a quarter-inch, half an inch” refers to the thickness of a layer of glass, the greenhouse glass, the glass that keeps the warmth inside the greenhouse.
I think he mixed up CO2 with O3. As it turns out, O3 is 0.6 ppm in the atmosphere and if all of this ozone were to be compressed to 1 atmosphere, it would form a layer 0.4 inches thick.
At the end of the day, politics is about being a mouth piece for the latest scams to make your backers rich.
Global warming is no different to ‘reds in the bed’ warmongering (which made the Military Industrial Complex and their shareholders rich), Y2K scams (which made IT companies rich), bird flu scams (which earned GSK hundreds of millions in fees for a false alarm), banning British beef due to BSE (which protected French farmers for a decade) etc etc etc.
The real question to ask is whether people want the world run by scammers or whether they believe seniority should only be earned through intolerance of scammers and modelling of honesty, decent and respect.
Trust me, you won’t get rid of scams by re-electing Republicans!!
No different to solving a crime. You can assess the evidence and let that lead you to the culprit, or you can choose a culprit and look only at the evidence that incriminates him.
Anyone who thinks Humans are responsible for increasing CO2 in the atmosphere should learn Henrys law. There is 50 times as much CO2 dissolved in the oceans and with approximately 10% of the atmosphere exchanged every year, any CO2 produced by humans is rapidly absorbed by the oceans as the system moves back into equilibrium. The atmospheric concentration is instead controlled by the temp of the oceans which alters the partial pressure ratios. The divide between the deep oceans with 1000 years overturning cycle also explains the 1000 year lag between temp and CO2 concentration. The current increase in CO2 is possibly due to the medieval warm period. We are probably only responsible for about 10% of the overall increase which would reduce to sweet FA after a couple of decades.
Don’t get me started on splicing a modern CO2 measurement from a subtropical region onto a uncalibrated antarctic Ice core proxy with C14 dating anomalies, while ignoring much more reliable stomatal proxies that Show higher CO2 levels than today in the last few hundred years.
Wow has Trenberth joined the doubters? haha
http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2014/02/u-lecturer-argues-global-warming-doesnt-cause-polar-vortex/
It seems more and more mainstream media is turning
Every one who depends on models to predict climate is flat wrong because the models are wrong and that is because …
YOU CANNOT USE S-B TO CALCULATE EARTH’S SURFACE TEMPERATURE
A blackbody, by definition absorbs all incident radiation and does not reflect or transmit any radiation.
Now, about 70% of Earth’s surface is water and the temperature of the air just above is closely linked with that of the first millimeter of water, because there are a lot of molecules colliding at the interface and most come from that first millimeter.
But plenty of solar radiation penetrates a long way below the first millimeter of the surface. That means the ocean surface is transparent and thus nothing like a blackbody. The solid surface also absorbs solar energy that conducts well below its first millimeter of soil or rock etc. So even the solid surface acts in the same way as the transparent water surfaces, in that far more energy is needed to warm the lower depths than the top millimeter.
Hence the Earth’s surface does not reach anywhere near the temperature that the S-B calculations indicate because most of the energy in the incident solar radiation is leaking out the back door and going down into the depths of the ocean or solid surfaces .
Climate is measured using the maximum and minimum daily temperatures, and so the maximum temperature would be far less than S-B calculations indicate if it were only radiated solar radiation heating the Earth’s surface.
It isn’t. And nor is it only radiated solar energy heating the Venus surface.
As is so obvious on Venus, so too on Earth it is totally incorrect to assume direct solar radiation determines our surface temperatures. This is even more obvious when you understand that the back radiation which the models add to the solar radiation (in order to calculate 288K) is not raising the temperature at all, contrary to the incorrect assumptions made by climatologists. All it can do is slow radiative cooling.
And I thought all the stupid politicians were in the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Greens plus a couple of Conservatives. Between Obama and Kerry you win hands down. Bit like the America’s Cup; you keep winning.
Robert JM says:
February 21, 2014 at 12:35 am
Anyone who thinks Humans are responsible for increasing CO2 in the atmosphere should learn Henrys law. There is 50 times as much CO2 dissolved in the oceans and with approximately 10% of the atmosphere exchanged every year, any CO2 produced by humans is rapidly absorbed by the oceans as the system moves back into equilibrium.
Robert, you are misinterpreting Henry’s law: that is about pressure differences, not quantities. It doesn’t make any difference of there is 1x or 50x to 200x more CO2 in the oceans: if there is no CO2 (partial) pressure difference between the atmosphere and the ocean surface, nothing happens with the quantities of CO2 in the atmosphere or oceans: the release and uptake fluxes are equal…
An increase of 1°C of the global ocean surface gives 17 ppmv more CO2 in the atmosphere, that is all:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
The equilibrium between the deep oceans and the atmosphere is much slower than you think: the half life time for some extra CO2 is about 40 years, that is fast enough for CO2 to follow most natural changes, but slow enough to allow for the increase caused by human additions. The 20%/year exchange rate doesn’t change CO2 levels, only the difference between ins and outs does…
Don’t get me started on splicing a modern CO2 measurement from a subtropical region onto a uncalibrated antarctic Ice core proxy with C14 dating anomalies, while ignoring much more reliable stomatal proxies
Stomata data have far more problems than ice core data: stomata is measured in plant leaves which grow by definition on land, where there are huge local/regional biases compared to background CO2. The bias is corrected for by calibrating the stomate index data to direct measurements and… ice core data over the past century. But there is no possibility to know changes in the bias due to land use changes over the previous century in the main wind direction(s)…
There is an overlap of ~20 years between the high resolution Law Dome ice cores CO2 measurements and the measurements at the South Pole and there is no “arbitrary” shift between the ice core data and the direct measurements:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_overlap.jpg
Kerry has the most wooden, uninspiring style of any US politician I have seen since…err…ummm…Al Gore.
Has anyone seen this? It just came out in The New York Times. I’m curious about what the real facts are or where they get their information. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/science/earth/more-bite-left-to-winter-but-it-hasnt-been-as-bad-as-you-think.html?hp&_r=0
“…RoHa says:
February 20, 2014 at 7:10 pm
“In ancient times, the notion of a flat Earth was the scientific consensus,”
When was this?…”
—————————————————-
Right, even the Classic Greeks and later the Christians believed in a spherical; earth, it was just the size that was in dispute.
This myth was created out of thin air (ie a lie) in the 18th century like so many myths to do with science to try and discredit people who believed in God. In truth without Christianity there’d be no science, at all.
Yes, but in this case by winning, we all lose. There are enough loony politicians throughout the world to establish that humans are just too gullible.
Alex Hamilton says:
February 21, 2014 at 1:29 am
////////////
i have often made similar observations.
I consider it incorrect to assess the average global temperature without taking account of the average temperatume of the entire volume of the oceans. The fact that the temperature of the bulk ocean is so low (notwithstanding about 4.5 billion years off Solar and DWLWIR) comes back to haunt in glacial periods (and the Earth temds to favour glacial periods over intergalcial periods).
If, in a glacial period, we were to make an assessment as to how much warming ‘GHGs’ increase the temperature of the Earth, we would make a very different assessment, and not one that suggests that they add 33deg C. This demonstartes the flaw in the SB approach and in our understanding as to how much ‘GHGs’ add to the temperature of the Earth.
I do not know whether the plot of 5 year smoothed data is correct, but if it is then it suggests:
1. That at around 1981, the balloon and satellite data sets were suggesting a temperature anomaly of about 0.1degC and the models were running a little higher at about 0.15degC
2. By about 2013, the balloon and satellite data sets were suggesting a temperature anomaly of about 0.2degC thereby suggesting that there had over the past 30 years been a warming of about 0.1degC (may be a little more).
3. in contrast By about 2013, the average of model projections were suggesting that the temperature anomaly should have risen to about 0.8degC, which would have been a warming of some 0.65deg over the 1981 figure.
4. Thus in a comparison of approximately 30 years of real data (albeit smoothed data), the observational data suggests a warming of about 0.1degC whereas the model projections suggests that a warming of about 0.65degC was expected 9projected0 to have occurred. The ratio between actual observations and projections is staggering.
If that plot does not cause modelers to conclude that their models have no reasonable projective capacity and that there is something very amiss with the models, it is difficult to comprehend what it would take for the modelers to consider that there may be something wrong with there models, and a reevaluation/retuning is necessary.
Of course, my observation is a little simplistic, but I would be both shocked and embarrassed if I was a modeler and the model projections were running so out of kilter with observational data.
Based on that speech alone, one can only conclude that it is Kerry himself who is the extreme ideologue. His views in fact are a threat to democracy itself.
If I read another person writing “Flat Earth”, I swear I will…
My emphasis. Brians356 (and a couple of others above) are quoting directly from John Faux Kerry’s speech. Not enough attention has been paid to this nonsensical proclamation, on a par with Algore’s infamous claim that the interior of the Earth is “millions of degrees” hot.
Of course, the rest of the speech is equally egregious, but this is truly ludicrous. I suppose it is likely that the pompous lamebrain Kerry did not write it, but then one has to wonder who did. John Holdren? Or some earnest intern in the bowels of the State Department?
/Mr Lynn
Yes, it is quite odd that with all the turmoil in the world today (think Ukraine, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan. . .), not to mention chaos at home (think Obamacare, IRS politicization, Benghazi coverup. . .) that not only the President but his Secretary of State (and President wannabe in 2004) are churning the “climate change” waters. It is unlikely that even with a “full court press” that the Administration will be able to get a new Cap-and-Trade bill or Carbon Tax through the House of Representatives, nor even a new “post-Kyoto” treaty through the Senate (which requires a two-thirds majority). The most this Administration can do is to continue to use Executive power to punish “fossil-fuel” companies and reward the host of cronies sucking on the “green” teat of government grants, subsidies, and regulatory breaks.
Ah yes, I suppose that’s it: perhaps the aim is to reward the Climate Parasites as richly as possible during the next two years, before the electorate (we fervently hope), tosses this miscreant Marxist administration out on its keister.
/Mr Lynn
Mr Lynn says:
“before the electorate (we fervently hope), tosses this miscreant Marxist administration out on its keister”
No way that will happen. The American electorate still have to vote FOR an alternative, and if voting Republican means you get even more crazies, such as the Tea Party, that would make the rich richer and bring the USA into a depression.. that’s a terrible choice!
First there was the pattern of demonization of political opposition candidates and elected opposition leaders by certain union and enviro party factions with coordination by media groups and the party leadership itself and now we have targeting and demonization of the general population as flat earthers etc. that do not tow the party line on climate change. This all stems from failure to enthusiastically support party line on the cap and trade bill. Now you will be punished for that unauthorized uprising against party will.
Somebody should have pasted him with some Heinz ketchup filled balloons.
Re: Flat Earth…
From wikipedia: “In 1615 Galileo questioned geocentrism, which was the established consensus at that time! Of course he was met with very strong opposition from “astronomers”, who doubted his heliocentrism. His theory and observations were investigated by the Roman Inquisition, and they concluded that it -heliocentrism- could be supported as only a possibility, not an established fact. Galileo later defended his views in his book “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems”, which appeared to attack the current Pope. He was therefore tried by the Holy Office, found “vehemently suspect of heresy”, was forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. We now all know Galileo was right and heliocentrism is the adopted and established view of our solar system based on sound observations.”
One can easily re-write this story substituting a few names, terms and phrases so it will go like this:
“In 2015 Anthony Watts questioned AGW, which was the established consensus at that time! Of course he was met with very strong opposition from “climate scientists”, who doubted his natural variability theory. His theory and observations were investigated by NOAA, and they concluded that it -natural variability- could be supported as only a possibility, not an established fact. Anthony Watts later defended his views in his book “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Climate Systems”, which appeared to attack Al Gore. He was therefore tried by the IPCC, found “vehemently suspect of heresy”, was forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. 100 yrs later we will all know Watts was right and that natural variation will be the adopted and established view of our climate based on sound observations.”
Sounds all too familiar!?!?!? Well, history has a tendency to repeat itself…
Many here may wonder who the real author of that spiel really was?
Science + politics = spin.
People that believed the world was flat at the time were in the huge majority, but ignorant government officials with an agenda to spin, change this around to claim skeptics supported it. (another major spin is big oil) Wrong as usual, almost like everything that comes out of an alarmist. All great scientists usually had majority of others against them, until they were found undeniably correct.
” Alex Hamilton says:
February 21, 2014 at 1:29 am
Every one who depends on models to predict climate is flat wrong because the models are wrong and that is because …
YOU CANNOT USE S-B TO CALCULATE EARTH’S SURFACE TEMPERATURE
A blackbody, by definition absorbs all incident radiation and does not reflect or transmit any radiation.
Now, about 70% of Earth’s surface is water and the temperature of the air just above is closely linked with that of the first millimeter of water, because there are a lot of molecules colliding at the interface and most come from that first millimeter.
But plenty of solar radiation penetrates a long way below the first millimeter of the surface. That means the ocean surface is transparent and thus nothing like a blackbody. The solid surface also absorbs solar energy that conducts well below its first millimeter of soil or rock etc. So even the solid surface acts in the same way as the transparent water surfaces, in that far more energy is needed to warm the lower depths than the top millimeter. ”
Yes.
One could say the problem with greenhouse theory is it ignores 70% of the earth surface.
S-B is useful in terms indicating the maximum amount heat which can be trapped.
So at Earth distance this is about 5 C. Or if one had uniform absorption and radiation of energy
a sphere would have uniform temperature of 5 C. And useful in terms of indicating maximum temperature of a surface.
Or one say it this way, S-B is a calculation of how hot the sun is at some distance. So at Earth distance the highest temperature the sun is about 120 C, or that is the temperature of the sun
at the distance and so sun can warm something to higher temperature than it is.
So this fairly precise and one view it useful rule of thumb or approximation one could start with.
So without magnifying [or some other “similar means”] a surface should not able warm more than 120 C at Earth distance. Or surface facing sunlight in vacuum which only radiate 1 square meter of 1 square meter which absorbing sunlight will reach about 120 C. Roughly 1360 watts per square radiating 1360 watts of heat would be 120 C. And if radiated 4 square meter instead of 1 square meter, it would be 1360 watts of heat radiated divided by 4 is 340 watts per square meter
And a surface which 5 C radiates around 340 watts square meter.
So a sphere surface area is 4 times it’s disk area. So roughly speaking a sphere at Earth distance should radiate “on average” 340 watts per square meter. So if smear the energy of sunlight energy uniformly over entire sphere this equal or uniform temperature would be around 5 C.
So if had planet covered in deep water at Earth distance and eliminate variables so atmosphere with pressure similar to Earth [water boils at 100 C, etc] than “on average”
the ocean should be about 5 C.
And thoroughly mixed Earth’s oceans the temperature should be 3 C. So thoroughly mixing earth ocean would pretty good way to look at ocean temperature “on average” .
So in real world the ocean surface is about 24 C in tropics and about 0 C near poles and far more of the energy sunlight goes to the tropics. But this is only the surface temperature- if mixed tropical ocean the majority of tropical ocean water is about 3 C. So warmed water is first 100 meter of ocean thousands of meter deep.
So if had planet covered in deep water at Earth distance, the average ocean temperature would be about 5 C, but this is not the same as the average surface temperature- it would a world without ice caps, temperature of surface water in tropics would about 24 C and near the poles it would be near zero C. And it’s average surface temperature would be more than 15 C.
So if starting with such approximation, one then don’t need greenhouse gas which somehow add 33 C to global average temperature. The greenhouse gases might add some amount to average temperature but aren’t required perform the impossible task increasing average global temperature bu 33 C.
Gbaikie makes the same mistake that Joe Postma and Pierre Latour (and other Slayers) make in that they all assume you can use Stefan-Boltzmann calculations to work out Earth’s surface temperatures. Well, you sure can’t do so with only about 10% as much sunlight reaching the Venus surface.
We are talking about climate. Climate has to do with measured temperatures about 1.5 to 2 meters above the physical surface. We are not talking about temperatures deep in the ocean (or much hotter ones deep in the outer crust) – we are talking about the surface which may be considered to be a layer only 1mm thick. In the oceans that layer is transparent. Hence the “body” which is that 1mm thick layer is nothing remotely like a black or gray body, and so S-B calculations are completely irrelevant and, if applied, totally incorrect.
Direct solar radiation and back radiation are not the primary determinants of surface temperatures on any planet or moon with a significant atmosphere. Gravity forms a temperature gradient autonomously and that can be used to explain all such temperatures.
I saw this article in the Wall Street Journal and left a comment. It occurred to me that it would be worth while to attach it to the current version of the article. The authors are experts in their field and have accurately characterized the fallacies that the so-called “climate” scientists spread about a non-existent global warming. I say non-existent because right now there is none of that greenhouse warming they talk about. And there has been none for the last 17 years despite the fact that there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than ever before. This lack of warming makes our century greenhouse free. In science, it is understood that if a scientific theory makes a prediction that is wrong it should be discarded. But these pseudo-scientists who babble about greenhouse warming won’t give up and are still looking for an imaginary “lost heat” in weird places like the ocean bottom. But we are dealing with the laws of nature and they cannot be turned on and off at will. If the greenhouse warming theory is wrong now it did not become wrong 17 years ago, it was always wrong. But here we are, bombarded with claims of anthropogenic global warming that supposedly started with the industrial age. While the twenty-first century is greenhouse free the twentieth century is still being claimed for greenhouse warming by global warming advocates. Checking the record we find that twentieth century warming came in spurts, not as a uniform increase in parallel to increasing carbon dioxide in the air. Specifically, there were two spurts of warming that increased global temperature, plus smaller increases to make up for the 1940 cold spell that inaugurated World War II. The first of these two started in 1910 and increased global temperature by half a degree Celsius. The second one started in 1999 and raised global temperature by a third of a degree in just three years. Together they raised global temperature by 0.8 degrees, just what Hansen is using now. Are they natural or man-made warmings? We can find out by using radiation laws of physics. These laws require that in order to start a greenhouse warming you must simultaneously add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. That is because the absorbency of a gas for infrared radiation is a fixed property of its molecules and cannot be changed. Fortunately we do know what carbon dioxide has been doing. Since 1958 the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii has been accurately recording the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And for earlier periods we can use ice core data from Law Dome in Antarctica. Checking these two sources we find that there was no increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide either in 1910 or in 1999. Hence, all twentieth century warming is natural, not greenhouse warming. This makes both twentieth and twenty-first centuries greenhouse free. Hence, talk of anthropogenic global warming is nothing more than a fairy tale told by pseudo-scientists, the same ones who also believe that the earth is flat.
I wonder what his definition of “shoddy science” is? Hockey sticks perhaps.
I am not a climate expert but a pretty good ‘gutfeel’ exponent. When you see a picture of the earth suspended in space you see blue – that is because it is predominantly ‘ocean’. That much ocean must have an enormous effect on the earth system.. I suspect that this ocean is the great leveller of many things including global temperature.
See CNN’s video clip of an interview today with Sen. Ted Cruz in which Cruz says that John Kerry thinks the SUV in your driveway is a bigger threat to the world than the Iranian nuclear program. Touche!!
One could say the difference between Earth and Venus, is Earth has ocean of water and Venus has ocean of air. And liquids and gases are different.
With Venus the density of it’s ocean varies considerable with elevation- it’s density varies by more than 100 times. Whereas with Earth oceans the density varies by couple of percent .
With ocean of gas the denser gas is at lowest elevation and with ocean of liquid the denser
water also at lowest elevation.
Water doesn’t compress much, whereas gases do compress.and temperature of gases
are largely about there pressure.
So with water on earth if the water is 50 C warmer, it’s lower density and rises, with ocean of
gas lower elevation gas is hotter due pressure. Or if liquid water was compressible it warmer
at lower elevation.
So when have oceans of gas the more pressure there is the higher the temperature.
So with planet Neptune beneath it’s massive ocean of gas the lower atmosphere near the mantle of water ammonia and methane. [liquids] is very hot.
So Neptune have 1.2 times more rock than earth and 10 to 15 earth masses of liquid ocean, and enormous gaseous ocean: and this fits a sphere which is about 4 times larger than Earth.
But go down the large atmosphere to a point of about 50 earth atmospheres the air temperature is around 0 C, and if go down to 92 atm or surface pressure Venus it would much warmer than freezing. Or according to this:
http://atmos.nmsu.edu/jsdap/encyclopediawork.html
Neptune at 283.atm [3 times Venus atmospheric pressure] is supposed to be 360 K [86 C].
And 283 atm is a lot pressure, it’s same as 2830 meter under Earth ocean.
And deepest ever gone on under oceans is 11,000 meters.
So Neptune will distance from Sun making our look like very large star or it’s not have sun warming anything, has under it’s vast atmosphere has ocean liquid near temperature boiling of water in Earth’s atmospheric pressure. Or hot enough to slowly cook an egg. Or pretty warm sauna temperature.
Why Venus is hot is more related to why Neptune is warm rather why earth is warm- Venus ocean of atmosphere is only 1/3rd pressure of Neptune, but it’s over 90 times larger than Earth’s atmosphere
” Alex Hamilton says:
February 21, 2014 at 4:55 pm
Gbaikie makes the same mistake that Joe Postma and Pierre Latour (and other Slayers) make in that they all assume you can use Stefan-Boltzmann calculations to work out Earth’s surface temperatures. Well, you sure can’t do so with only about 10% as much sunlight reaching the Venus surface.”
It is not the surface of Venus which heated- and there would much less than 10% of sunlight reaching the rocky surface of Venus.
Less than 10% of sunlight which reaches earth surface or we get more than 10 times the amount sunlight reaching earth surface as compare with sunlight reaching Venus surface and at venus distance [top of atmosphere] there is about 2700 watt per square meter.
Or you can see the sun from Venus surface but always like looking at our sun which behind clouds on Earth.
What’s getting heated on Venus is the clouds of Venus and there is much less atmosphere between the clouds and the sun.
So clouds are going to get at least 10 times more sunlight than average earth surface.
The clouds on Venus are massive and they block the sunlight from surface, but it’s mainly the huge atmosphere which blocks most of sunlight from reaching Venus surface.
On Venus you are not going to get much clear weather, but if you got a cloudless period, the sunlight will greatly weaken by the large atmosphere- and in terms cloudiness it’s worst than Seattle. Or about same as Seattle in December and not as sunlight if there happens to be some clear weather.
Clouds on Earth are white and can burn off in sunlight- Clouds on venus are yellow and don’t burn off in sunlight at the low temperature as water clouds do on Earth.
Sulfuric acid boils at 337 °C.
So Venus clouds start at about 30,000 meters and go high as 75,000 meter. And 1 atm of pressure is about 49500 meters elevation on Venus
If were not for the clouds blocking the sunlight at 50 km up, it is going to be around twice as much sunlight as ever reaches surface on Earth.
And if go 20 km down from there you get less sunlight and if go up from 50 km you get more sunlight..
I do have questions regarding the chart at the article top.
I have downloaded the BAMS pdf low res file, it’s dated August, 2013, but as far as I can tell this is the state of 2012.
I wish the ( all ) authors could be specific, when they produce such a graph. This is not the first time that a graph is presented in a WUWT article, and is lacking specifics about how the plots were generated. In the pdf file I have, I am thinking the two temp trends come from the presentation on pages s12 thru s15 – ( pdf pages 30 – 33 ? ) OR the data sets these pages represent. I hope ( think ) that with further investigation I will find a data set reference that was used to generate the red line plot for ‘model’ output.
The composit graph does make a cursory ref to how it was generated, however, my point is, please reference the page number, plot title referenced or data set used. Please reference if data is plotted by a custom software tool or on line plotting software. In this case, what BAMS page do these three lines come from ? How extracted ? Specify the exact and full name of any referenced data set(s). In trying to reference this article, I cannot feel ‘warm and fuzzy’ about my understanding unless UNTIL I can actually reproduce the graph, as it is shown. Where, very specifically, do all the parts come from ? I hope the authors can respond.
I hope, in the future, any time a graph or chart is shown in a WUWT article, the FULL resource list and methods used, can accompany any/all charts or graphs illustrated. Can you pls pass this to the authors and I certainly allow you to enclose my email to them , if they wish to respond thus.
“The climate-change consensus is not endangering lives….”
Oh, really? What about the thousands of people who die from cold-related illnesses because they can’t afford to adequately heat their homes? What about starvation caused by America’s policy of switching around half of its grain production to biofuels?
Apart from that nonsensical statement, this is an excellent piece.
Chris
” The climate-change consensus is not endangering lives,”
I suspect that others have said the same but this could not possibly be more wrong.
Actually, I really enjoyed the article but when I hit that point it stopped me cold. The article even discusses starvation of the poor caused by the consensus. We cannot underestimate the goal of the consensus is to enact strict government control over abundant energy resources. While we live in an easier world where higher prices limit our access to other luxury items, some people cannot buy fuel for warmth or cooking and they absolutely will be/and are being endangered by the extremist agenda.
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
February 20, 2014 at 11:35 am
How about a fund to get that graph pasted onto billboards in the US and the UK (at least)?
——
The graph would have to be ‘translated’ into different terms. Most of the public would have no clue as to what “model runs’ are, etc.
It would have to be worded clearly, something like UN IPCC guesses vs. reality.
Ed_B says:
February 21, 2014 at 7:30 am
Mr Lynn says:
“before the electorate (we fervently hope), tosses this miscreant Marxist administration out on its keister”
“No way that will happen. The American electorate still have to vote FOR an alternative, and if voting Republican means you get even more crazies, such as the Tea Party, that would make the rich richer and bring the USA into a depression.. that’s a terrible choice!”
ED,
I think you have overlooked the poor performance of the progressives currently running the USA into bankruptcy (Increasing debt from $9 Trillion to over $17 Trillion) ; lowest % of workers in workforce for decades; ruining the best health care system in the world, meanwhile taking insurance away from more citizens than Obamacare added; pushing to apply the same inept “talents” to our energy supply with carbon tax while wasting $100 billion on non existent alternative fuels , lying about NAS; and claiming the Benghazi attack was caused by a video.
The tea party is so threatening to their agenda that they employ the smear machine including the President calling them ugly names like Tea Baggers. Without the Republican controlled house Pelosi would have pushed through more damaging legislation like the stimulus and Obamacare.
The only crazy sheeple are the few left that worship and believe every “story” they are told.
Now the administration is calling for an end to austerity (17 trillion debt is not enough?) in a desperate attempt to buy the 2014 midterm elections (No Senator has voted yea for any of his budget proposals to date):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/with-2015-budget-request-obama-will-call-for-an-end-to-era-of-austerity/2014/02/20/332808c2-9a6e-11e3-b931-0204122c514b_story.html?hpid=z1
“President Obama’s forthcoming budget request will seek tens of billions of dollars in fresh spending for domestic priorities while abandoning a compromise proposal to tame the national debt in part by trimming Social Security benefits.”
“With the 2015 budget request, Obama will call for an end to the era of austerity that has dogged much of his presidency and to his efforts to find common ground with Republicans. Instead, the president will focus on pumping new cash into job training, early-childhood education and other programs aimed at bolstering the middle class, providing Democrats with a policy blueprint heading into the midterm elections.”
Has anyone seen a rebuttal to this hack job piece at think progress?
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/21/3314301/scurvy-wrong-john-christy-climate/#
So what is the better alternative here? Try to change our ways that the author actually does confirm is hurting us more than helping us? Or just go ahead with the mantra of “business as usual” and then when it starts to affect your pocket, then maybe people will care? I agree that people like Al Gore and maybe even John Kerry are not the best people to pick to listen to in this debate but the numbers don’t lie and they are visible for everyone to see.
I will give ONE example, just one that should be important enough for people to give a crap about this and stop and think that maybe, just maybe that the worst case scenario isn’t something we should argue about but instead should focus on what is actually already happening to us right now:
The West Coast – You have heard of the massive drought by now and if not then frankly you have no say in this at all. California had it’s driest year on record and much of the West is experiencing the driest decade on record. Could it have been drier in the past? Sure but That Isn’t Important right now. What is important is that the water supply for tens of millions of people is drying up as we speak. Meanwhile, California continues to dry which means livestock as well as crops will die too and guess what that does to your food prices and quality of food.
This isn’t only a national problem and I hate when Americans think things like it was a cold winter here in the East, cold is the opposite of hot, therefore, Climate Change is not true. Broaden your perspective on things and look at the temperatures elsewhere and you will see the number of record high temperatures FAR exceeds the number of record low temperatures.
Lastly, claiming that it will hurt the economy is dead wrong. Which do you think is going to be more expensive in the long run? Avoiding a disaster or trying to fix it once it happens. It’s like buying flood insurance. You may never have your house flooded but if it happens and you are caught without it, you’re screwed. And that brings me back to the West and how expensive it is going to be to try and solve the growing water concerns there.
But hey, don’t take my word for it, Im sure you are right. It’s not like this country is one of the worst in the world when it comes to knowledge of science and math. It is easier to deny scientific claims than it is to get up and do something about it. Or better yet, it is more likely that the government is controlling the weather through HAARP or chemtrails than it is that climate change is a man-made problem.
– A Meteorology Bachelor of Science Degree earner.
We, the sceptics have stuck to the scientific facts, figures and reasoning to refute IPCC’s claims but science was never the central point in IPCC agenda. Science is only a facade to camouflage politics. The IPCC mitigation measures are not based on the science of Working Group I report, but on a Special Report on Scenarios and story lines prepared by WG III, which is headed by an assistant secretary of the US Department of State, Secretary Kerry’s department, and have five deputies, none a professional. By comparison, WG I & WG II are headed by one professional and two deputies each. So, since TAR (2001), they began attacking not the science of the sceptics but their motives, ad hominem attacks on them and their sponsors, questioned their sanity, and invoked morality to fill in for the absence of science. Now, since COP 17 at Durban 2011, the IPCC is totally ignoring the sceptics as if they don’t exist. The sceptics need to change their tactics to confront this new situation. I think they should begin at questioning the justification of IPCC’s continued existence despite a train of scandals that would have devastated any credible institution. Climate change is not about climate (science), it is the Piltdown Man of our time and it should be put to rest once for all, sooner the better. Sceptics can go on shouting their scientific arguments, IPCC would simply ignore them and carry on with their political agenda, for how long, forever? …..
– author of New Emperors’ Novel Clothes: Climate Change Analysed.
Don says:
February 20, 2014 at 2:55 pm
sebzear says:
February 20, 2014 at 1:10 pm
> Try and picture a very thin layer of gases – a quarter-inch, half an inch, somewhere in that vicinity – that’s how thick it is. It’s in our atmosphere. It’s way up there at the edge of the atmosphere. And for millions of years – literally millions of years – we know that layer has acted like a thermal blanket for the planet – trapping the sun’s heat and warming the surface of the Earth to the ideal, life-sustaining temperature.
Is Kerry speaking metaphorically, or does he honestly believe this layer exists??
REPLY: Sorry but not a layer, mixed in the atmosphere vertically. Your analogy is incorrect – Anthony
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anthony, sebzear was not making an incorrect analogy, he was quoting (sans punctuation) and questioning Kerry’s incorrect analogy; a cut and paste from the transcript.
—–
Thank you, Don. Although I wasn’t aware that “>” wasn’t widely known as a symbol of quotation. It’s common in email clients and Reddit, among other sources, and often automates a blockquote.
Anthony, if you read this, you might want to edit your REPLY, because it makes you look uninformed (and invites the suspicion that you didn’t even read the transcript of Kerry’s speech), and it confuses anyone who might read my comment.
Feel free to delete this comment if you choose to make those changes.