November 30, 2015 – Today, on the first day of the United Nations’ twenty-first conference of the parties (COP-21) taking place in Paris, a new book emphatically rejects claims of a “scientific consensus” on the causes and consequences of climate change.
The authors are three prominent climate scientists affiliated with the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). The book is titled Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming: The NIPCC Report on Consensus.
About the Book
“Probably the most widely repeated claim in the debate over global warming is that ‘97% of scientists agree’ that climate change is man-made and dangerous,” the authors write. “This claim is not only false, but its presence in the debate is an insult to science.”
With these words, the authors begin a detailed analysis of one of the most controversial topics of the day. The authors make a compelling case against claims of a scientific consensus. The purported proof of such a consensus consists of sloppy research by nonscientists, college students, and a highly partisan Australian blogger. Surveys of climate scientists, even those heavily biased in favor of climate alarmism, find extensive disagreement on the underlying science and doubts about its reliability.
The authors point to four reasons why scientists disagree about global warming: a conflict among scientists in different and often competing disciplines; fundamental scientific uncertainties concerning how the global climate responds to the human presence; failure of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide objective guidance to the complex science; and bias among researchers.
The authors offer a succinct summary of the real science of climate change based on their previously published comprehensive review of climate science in a volume titled Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science. They recommend policymakers resist pressure from lobby groups to silence scientists who question the authority of IPCC to claim to speak for “climate science.”
CRAIG D. IDSO, Ph.D., a climatologist, is one of the world’s leading experts on the effects of carbon dioxide on plant and animal life and is chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
ROBERT M. CARTER, Ph.D., a paleogeologist, is emeritus fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs in Australia and author of Climate Change: The Counter Consensus (London: Stacey International, 2010).
S. FRED SINGER, Ph.D., a physicist, is president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project and founder of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).
About NIPCC
The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is an international panel of nongovernment scientists and scholars who have come together to present a comprehensive, authoritative, and realistic assessment of the science and economics of global warming. Whereas the reports of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warn of a dangerous human effect on climate, NIPCC concludes the human effect is likely to be small relative to natural variability, and whatever small warming is likely to occur will produce benefits as well as costs.
NIPCC is sponsored by three nonprofit organizations: the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), and The Heartland Institute.
This volume, like past NIPCC reports, is edited and published by the staff of The Heartland Institute, a national nonprofit research and educational organization newly relocated from Chicago to suburban Arlington Heights, Illinois.
For More Information
For more information about the book, or to interview the authors, contact Donald Kendal, new media specialist, The Heartland Institute, at dkendal@heartland.org or 847/877-9100.
The Heartland Institute is a 31-year-old national nonprofit organization headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000.
Thanks for your extraordinary efforts in battling the cancerous CAGW racket that has been so destructive to the world’s truly poor…
Also destructive to the middle class
More so to the poorest in our societies.
“failure of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide objective guidance to the complex science”
This makes me mad and since I’m a “common” man, I may be a good barometer.
Sure, if you want to talk about the increasingly unimportant variables related to the numerous fields that have fed from the trough, you can say the science is complicated.
The science was NEVER complicated.
What was complicated was the slight of hand, the turn of the phrase, the initial (and continued) misrepresentation of the data from the ice cores.
Do scientists understand how much damage this has done to the field’s credibility ?
Do they understand how bad it will continue to be unless they hammer home this point of departure ?
When you are robber barons trying to steal the lives and fortunes of billions of people, treating them like so many cattle, damage to scientific credibility is such a small thing. Actually, they really don’t care.
EB
Yup, I suppose your right.
Robber barons executing a massive shift in energy and wealth.
Utilities playing along.
Perhaps many others are saying … “eh, that CAGW is nonsense but if we get cleaner, cheaper, more reliable energy out the deal, let hem have their little lie party”
As for the cheaper part perhaps the bar is even lower.
Perhaps what rolls thru their mind is … “eh, even if it costs me an extra 10%, I can live with that … besides, maybe we’ll get a whole new industry and JOBS out of it”
May be.
The science of climate is complicated. Science pretty much ran out of “simple” in the 19th century, but your typical operator has been in denial about that ever since. The persistance of the need for simple is endemic in many sciences from medicine to geology, not just climate science. The “simple” assumption in climate science is quite linear. CO2 absorbs heat-initiated radiation from the surface, warming the atmosphere. More CO2 will increase this. That is “mainstream” climate “science” in a nutshell. It can’t get any more simple minded. It also can’t be any more wrong. Politics creeps in when someone then says this will be “bad.”
What complicates the politics is the efforts by the “climate scientists” to make it appear simple. Since science really will not support AGW as a significant effect, the – whoever they are – resort to religious reasoning (that is they have faith in their “science”). If the effect is “bad,” and if some people or some society is “responsible” for it, then some knot-head ethicist will hop in and explain why the people or or society are bad or evil or selfish for “causing” this. Politicians can then point fingers that will allow some constituents to feel really righteous – vegetarians (“we don’t eat meat, it’s bad for the climate”), vegans (“we were truly righteous from the first”), bicyclists (“I’m not driving a foul, CO2-exhaling, pollution center”), and on and on.
Duster,
This may have been how politics got involved in the first place, but it has progressed to another level. By being so wrong for so long the political damage the scientific truth has to those who embrace the broken science for ideological reasons is unprecedented and this is why they keep doubling down. It’s become too big to fail! Once the public realizes how wrong the progressive socialists are about climate change they will start applying critical thinking to some of the other progressive dogma and they don’t want this either. The science will not be fixed until it is decoupled from the politics and I don’t see that happening any time soon. The best we can hope for is if a prominent warmist scientist develops a conscience and takes the brave step of acknowledging the scientific truth despite the political consequences. They could even become a hero to the progressive cause by acknowledging that the scientific method is the ultimate arbiter of what is and what is not science, not the IPCC, thus minimizing the political damage and putting space between them and the IPCC which is the progenitor of this evil.
C02
I read what you write. When I read your stuff, I read it with an eye for how is he attempting to shed light on the hoax. I liked a couple pf things you’ve shown me :
1. Don’t dive right in with the buzzsaw. Ask lots of questions. Let them create the conflicting POV.
2. Be conscious of their desire to create absolutes where the absolute serves their appeal to fear.
The most common mistake I see otherwise well meaning scientists make is an open armed approach to discussing any complexity of a variable. In this case, once the huxster establishes the validity of CO2 influencing climate, they then run with the leap that CO2 is bad and needs to be controlled and blah blah.
At that moment, the most often chosen path I see many scientists make is to throw their hands up in disgust that they are dealing with a neanderthal who pulled a strawman and they quickly detach from the conversation. It’s as if they make a conscious decision that framing risk is not their role.
That’s the moment they should be digging in. Holding fast.
Science allowed themselves to be abused on this issue.
What I see on WUWT is that many have learned to fight back.
Gives me hope for science.
Science will still get a hearty butt spanking as the public awakens to the CAGW ruse, but it will be the better for it.
Wow! Seems like an enormous effort to rebut something so obviously flawed as the 97% consensus claim. It must be really important.
I’m as cautious of this document as I am of any overly wrought refutation of any stand. Examine the source in every instance.
Look at pictures from the streets of Paris. Fanaticism should be rebutted.
In spite of the fact that the 97% concensus claim is obviously seriously flawed, it’s still being used by leaders and scientists around the world to push their political agendas.
And since millions of lives and trillions of dollars are being fiddled with by those leaders and scientists–based partly on that flawed claim–I’d say it’s pretty important that the claim be exposed for what it is, wouldn’t you?
Lewis, the 97% was “obviously flawed” the moment the headline was released and thoroughly refuted within hours of publication. The methods are hopeless, which is obvious to anyone who actually glances at them.
However, it has persisted, despite being a transparent lie, and has been repeated by heads of state and across the planet. You can’t fight this with a simple refutation. That stage has long past.
The only way to fight an idea is with another idea. The idea we are fighting is “unified science”, and the idea we are fighting for is “internal scientific conflict exists and is good”.
World leaders know this is a cool even cold way to raise taxes on us and exploit our labor while promising we will be allowed to exhale safely. This is so like the stories thousands of years ago telling about foxes spooking chickens into the fox holes, etc. Or Chicken Little screaming the sky is falling.
As always, it depends on how you ask the question. It the question is ‘Does CO2 effect the surface temperature’, then 97% is reasonable. If the question was ‘Is the effect of CO2 the predominate driver of the climate to the exclusion of natural variability’, then 97% is unreasonably high. If the question was ‘Is the effect of CO2 emissions large enough to spend trillions on mitigation strategies that will have no meaningful impact’, anything over 0% would be absurd.
The problem is, 100% of scientists have never been ASKED to explain exactly what they believe about CO2. So ANYONE claiming to know what they do or do not agree on, is a liar of the first order.
“Seems like an enormous effort to rebut something so obviously flawed as the 97% consensus claim. It must be really important.”
You’re doggone right it’s important! It’s a piece of blatant propaganda intended to brainwash the gullible and ignorant majority of science-illiterate public into accepting this massive hoax as settled science that is irrefutably endangering their lives. If this propaganda is permitted to continue unchallenged, and repeated often enough, it will become the “truth” that will be the final straw in the destruction of our way of life.
Why did you cherry-pick that report?
A strawman indeed.
Just wondering – do either of those references mention the word “beneficial”?
In May of 2013, Barack Obama put out a tweet that said:
Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.
Where did he go? never to be heard from again, but still claiming to be wise.
Thanks Billy
I’m going to agree with oldnwise4me on this one. He’s right. 97% of scientists dont agree that climate change will be dangerous. Nor do they agree with the “IPCC consensus” that most of the recent warming can be attributed to anthropogenic CO2.
In fact 97% of scientists agree that anthropogenic warming has had some impact on climate and that’s all. If you look closely at Cook et al’s paper, you can see that only about 3% of scientists support the IPCC claims of “most”.
Many papers that imply “dangerous” in whatever they’re studying also have an implicit and unsupported assumption of “if current trends continue”.
Sigh….no on here is saying that 97% of scientists agree. Everyone here, including the authors of the book agree that “that claim is not only false, it’s presence in the debate is an insult to science. ”
Clearly you missed what 1oldnwise4me’s original argument is all about. Do some reading .
Here is oldnwise4me’s original statement.
So what is oldnwise4me’s original argument about?
You only need to agree with him in this case. Its political spin that makes AGW “dangerous” and the book also supports that in the way the argument is put in the quoted statement from it, anyway.
See? The claim from the book isn’t that scientists say AGW is dangerous, the claim is that its a “widely repeated claim”. So scientists dont say it but that doesn’t make it any less true that the claim is “widely repeated”.
In short that statement by the book is accurate and simultaneously 97% of scientists don’t agree that AGW is dangerous.
No timmy….here is his original statement-be factual or be quiet.
“So the premise of this book is “‘97% of scientists agree’ that climate change is man-made and dangerous,”
….
If you examine the ERL report ( http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024;jsessionid=D5454169ECE6711D77523A3D23867CA1.c4.iopscience.cld.iop.org) you will NOT find the word “dangerous.”
..
So it looks like this “book” is nothing more than a strawman.”
I don’t see what your argument is here Aphan.
He is agreeing that 97% of scientists aren’t saying that climate change is dangerous.
So all you need to do is point out he’s right that scientists aren’t saying it but politically motivated people are saying it – and that the book quote he quoted, isn’t making a strawman argument because its factual and applies to the “widely repeated claim”, not the scientific claim.
Comprende?
There’s nothing more to his argument at that point. There’s simply no need to suggest pointless searches like you suggested ie “global warming, dangerous” because that is completely irrelevant.
Tim The Tool Man says:
I don’t see what your argument is here Aphan.
Maybe I can explain it. May I try?
Thank you:
Without the “dangerous” narrative, what are we left with? We are left with a very *minuscule* change in global T over the past century, of only ≈0.7ºC.
That is nothing! There isn’t another comparable time frame in the geologic record in which global temoperatures have been so flat and unchanging. We have truly been enjoying a “Goldilocks” global temperature:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lPGChYUUeuc/VLhzJqwRhtI/AAAAAAAAAS4/ehDtihKNKIw/s1600/GISTemp%2BKelvin%2B01.png
Therefore, the alarmist crowd must… alarm the public! How do they do that?
They do it by claiming that we’re headed for “dangerous” um… “climate change” (which used to be called ‘global warming’ — until global warming stopped.
So the alarmist cult has no choice: they must claim that “dangerous climate change” is in the works. Otherwise, the public will collectively start yawning.
Comprende?
dbstealy writes some stuff.
And? How is that relevant to whether or not 97% of the scientists agree about whether AGW is dangerous or not? We all know that the activists spin it to be dangerous.
TTTT says:
How is that relevant to whether or not 97% of the scientists agree…
First, I gotta ask: have you bought into the ‘97%’ crapola, too? I trust not, because your previous comments seem rational. That 97% number has been so thoroughly debunked that only wackos still believe in it.
I asked:
Without the “dangerous” narrative, what are we left with?
But what I should have asked was: “What are they left with?”
That’s why they are forced to call harmless CO2 “dangerous”. The money being wasted is only justified if it’s actually dangerous. But it’s not; there is not a shred of evidence supporting their ‘dangerous’ alarmism.
Now they’re squirming, because their feet are being held to the fire by reminding them of their own scare word. But since there is nothing dangerous about CO2, they have no credible argument supporting the huge waste of money that props up their ‘man-made climate change’ scare.
DB,
Regrettably, IMO most people who have hear the 97% figure believe the lie, usually in reference to “of all scientists”, not just 77 of 79 “climate science specialists” (actually 75/77 for both questions).
Well that depends. I’m part of the 97% or more who believes anthropogenic CO2 has had some impact on our climate. Aren’t you?
You can read my other posts in this thread just above this one if you are unsure what my position is.
It should be clear to anyone even marginally informed on this topic that no scientific consensus exists, or even can exist in the near future. Scientific consensus is formed by repeated experiments, and there is no evidence of that, even among members of the IPCC as evidenced by the failure of any two models developed under the CPIC5 program to agree with one another. Until such time as consistent, predictive models are developed based on AGW theory, there can be no scientific consensus.
What consensus does exists isn’t scientific, it’s social. Certain subgroups of scientists share an opinion on what factors effect climate and how those factors influence it. They may share opinions on what future effects could be observed, but these are only opinions and don’t represented a scientific consensus even though the opinions may held by multiple scientists.
I was recently involved in a debate over the accuracy and precision of ice core based CO2 measurements and cited a recent paper on the subject. I was then rebutted by an individual who claimed the paper had been superseded by another written by the same authors, who contradicted their earlier work. My observation that the science was obviously not “settled” if the very same group of authors could publish two papers in less than 3 years in direct conflict with themselves; if that was even possible there clearly was no consensus. I was met with banal claims I was just another Denialist oil monkey. It was a convincing argument and caused me to immediately change my religion to devout Alarmism.
🙂 You must remember the rules. Never quote an unalarming study but only for rebuttal. Quote the most alarming study available, even if it very suspicious or controversial. Always leave the door open for even worser alarmism. Don’t even try to find the truth, send a message.
Truly understandable. If the great unwashed would have stopped polluting CO2 every time they exhale we would not have been forced to institute our breathing taxes on the peasants.
When the policymakers themselves (Obama, Kerry, Biden, et al) are throwing out the “D-nier” epithet, the lobbying group has become the policy maker. Of course the D-nier epithet is used not just to silence skeptical scientists.
IMO, the alarmist’s use of the D word has a primary purpose to dissuade neutral non-climate related scientists and un-indoctrinated engineers and academics from examining the evidence for themselves and then speaking out. It is an a priori pernicious attempt at intellectual suppression. That’s thought control at its worst, and pactised by our current US policy makers.
Looks like you need a lesson in punctuation and quote attribution. Awkward!
Hint….what is being quoted in the text? Not the word dangerous. Not even the words man-made. JUST the qualifier “97% of scientists agree”.
And “who” are the authors attributing that appeal to authority to in that paragraph? NO ONE in particular.They say it’s the most widely repeated claim “in the debate”.
Thus, “the debaters” are repeating the claim. And that term can apply to anyone who is debating about climate change, not just scientists or people who publish papers. You see, the premise of this book is not what you claim it is…the premise of this book is “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming”. I can only assume it’s the title of the book because that’s what they actually wrote the entire book about.
Congrats for not even getting past the first paragraph correctly. This book might be beyond your skill level.
Oh sweetie…type google scholar into your browser. Then click on Google Scholar, and enter the following into the search bar:
global warming, dangerous
Refine the search to exclude citations and patents. I also refined the search to “since 2011”.
If you can follow directions correctly, you will see that the estimated number of docs that fit the search is “about 17,500″.
So that particular word…”dangerous” has been used in 17,500 scientific papers that also include the term “global warming”. Which is weird, since you so confidently claim that scientists don’t use the word dangerous.
(42,400 results for the same search but exchanging the search phrase from global warming to climate change…climate change, dangerous)
notOldnwise,
Re-read, focus, concentrate and try to comprehend.
Aphan is right.
Again, there are TWO sets of quotation marks in the article paragraph. One reflects the article author quoting what the BOOK says, and the second reflects the authors of the book quoting the phrase “97% of scientists agree”.Period. Even my 12 year old knows that ALL the authors are quoting is what appears between the internal quote marks!
YOU create a strawman argument by implying/assuming that the authors meant something that they did not actually say, and pretending that in that paragraph they are referencing all “consensus studies” when they clearly ONLY quote a phrase that originated in a consensus study.
So, which is it? You don’t comprehend basic punctuation rules, or are you just logically dishonest?
1oldclueless,
If it’s not dangerous, then why are all those jamokes charging off to Paris?…
…oh, wait. You’re right. It’s a scam. A HOAX! Thanx for pointing that out.
oldclueless1,
You made me larf!
Your first link was by the neo-Nazi cartoonist John Cook. If you tried, I doubt that you could find a less credible person. Are you also a neo-Nazi? Or do you just like to cite them?
Your second link listed Stephen Schneider as an author. You know: the same guy who said it’s A-OK to lie for a cause. Then he had the gall to write in the paper:
The authors declare no conflict of interest. Sure. As if.
The rest of your links were copied from the neo-Nazi’s bogus science blog, and they say the same thing. But calling on a fake “consensus” is being done for only one reason: the alarmist crowd has failed miserably in their ‘dangerous AGW’ hoax.
So let’s just total up the number of ‘scientists’ who wrote those papers in your links, and compare that number with the 31,000+ science profesionals, each named, and each with degrees in one or more of the hard sciences, including more than 9,000 PhD’s who have co-signed the OISM statement that the rise in CO2 is beneficial to the biosphere, and that it’s harmless. That flatly contradicts your mostly un-named ‘scientists’ (including your neo-Nazi) that comprises your bogus “consensus”.
Better yet, I challenge you to produce the names of even 10% of the OISM’s number of co-signers who contradict the OISM statement. If you can’t, then the consensus is with the 31,000 co-signers, not with your pathetic handful of propagandists.
Science is not done by consensus either.
Consensus can be studied, but it should not be presented as science. No one should even begin to pretend it has any scientific meaning. Yet you continue to push the point as if it does. Mostly, though, you failed at reading comprehension so your continued efforts to derail on this non-point reveal much of your motives.
I’m hoping you meant this response for 1oldnwise4me, and not me. 🙂
If they don’t believe that its dangerous the whats the big deal? Not worth spending billions on is it?
” 1oldnwise4me@reagan.com
November 30, 2015 at 2:17 pm
JohnWho, you are 100% correct, but the subject of “consensus” can itself be studied, as it has been in the research papers I linked to.”
Let me phrase this so you’ll find it acceptable: “97% of Climate Science Consensus Studies are bogus”.
1oldy sez:
…science is not done by petition.
Nor is science done by consensus. If it was, then skeptics would easily win the debate because skeptics of the “dangerous AGW” hoax far outnumber alarmist scientists. And as I’ve regularly posted, NASA is not credible any more. Their #1 priority is now “Muslim Outreach”, and they routinely ‘adjust’ the temperature record to falsely show rapid warming, and your link is nothing but government-paid propaganda, which credulous, unthinking people believe.
You are the poster boy for the “don’t confuse me with facts, my mind is made up” scientifically illiterate segment of the population.
Next, your ‘John Cook’ link is not from NASA, so you do in fact copy your links from SkS and similar alarmist blogs. It seems the internet is not your friend; it’s telling us what you wrote isn’t true.
Finally, if you stop posting your misinformation, I’ll stop “following you”. As I’ve explained many times, I do not correct the misinformation posted by credulous people like you; I correct the record so new readers are not misled.
So stop posting your false factoids, and I’ll stop correcting them. The choice is all yours, poster boy.
Mick says:
If they don’t believe that its dangerous then whats the big deal? Not worth spending billions on is it?
That is the central point. If ‘climate change’ isn’t DANGEROUS, then no one is going to waste any time or money on that scare.
And 1oldy tries to re-frame my challenge by requiring that only pal-reviewed papers can be used. heh. As if. Nice try, chump.
Alan Robertson commented below that 1oldy could not be any less disingenuous. That’s true, as shown in 1oldy’s attempt to arbitrarily allow only pal reviewed authors. He’s trying to bypass my absolute, incontrovertible proof that the ‘consensus’ (for whatever that’s worth in science; not much) has always been heavily on the side of skeptics of the “carbon” scare.
Could oldy be any less credible? Probably not. He proves it again here with his impotent attempt to eliminate my central point: he is incapable of producing the names of even 10% of the OISM’s numbers.
I very much doubt if 1oldy could produce the names of even one percent of comparable scientists and engineers who contradict the 31,000+ OISM co-signers. In fact, I don’t think 1oldy can produce one-tenth of one percent of alarmists who contradict the conclusions of the 31,000 OISM co-signers. That’s less than 3 dozen names.
That’s my challenge to 1oldy. But he tucked tail and ran away. Now he’s back, trying to re-frame my challenge, by not referring to those 31,000 professionals.
Could 1oldy be any less credible? He’d have to try real hard!
1oldnwise4me@reagan.com
Funny thing. Today, last week, and for the past years, we have been told by our president, sec of state and the national security adviser that climate change is more dangerous than a tribe of 6th century people who ARE actively trying to kill us and enslave the world.
With blizzards hitting TEXAS I don’t think too many there think we are going to roast to death any time soon! 🙂
@ 1oldnwise4me@reagan.com
Just how long has it been since the last Bartender refused to let you sit down on one of his bar stools and banned you from ever entering his establishment again?
Old1,
Why would there be any need to limit GHG emissions if their increase were not considered dangerous?
I like Dame Margaret Thatcher’s take on ” Consensus “.
Consensus is getting a bunch of people to agree to something that none of them actually believe.
Or words to that effect.
g
1oldnwise4me@reagan.com
True, too true. They are ignorant, over-zealous socialist extremists who desire no less than domination of their will and their “religions” (of socialism, communism, anti-capitalism, anti-christian, pro-world-government, and extreme hatred) over the country. They are doing it through the words and reputation of the “scientists” they proclaim as “the consensus” whom they have bought with 40 years of billions of dollars in directed funding and intimidation and self-selecting promotion.
Like the pope, they are both the result of who they listen to, the policies they demand be implemented, and the goals they seeks – but their culture and their knowledge are the result of what they “are” as people, not their own internal (lack of) knowledge. Likewise, by utterly rejecting ALL economic advise from anyone OTHER than international socialists and Keynesian indoctrinated bigger-government theorists; by deliberately rejecting ANY international intelligence from ANYONE who disagrees with their policies towards the MidEast, Israel, and the Muslim and former and current world communists, they condemn themselves to isolated ignorance and will never be able to solve the problems they have created. They ARE the people they listen to. Economically, politically, religiously, scientifically, and morally.
They are ignorant, over-zealous socialist extremists…
1oldy fits right into that subset, and like any fellow traveler he has no reluctance to be a chameleon; pretending to admire Reagan. If he had used ‘Uncle Joe’ instead, he would at least be honest about something.
Maybe so, but the media keeps using the word dangerous, inferring that the “97%” agree on this, and the many other claims about expected sever weather, droughts, etc that were not addressed in the survey. Those referring to the 97% never define what this means. I doubt if many know or care since it is only a political wedge issue.
The President of the United States used the term “Dangerous.” In fact, I think that the quote above is an exact quote of what the President said.
The POTUS uses the word dangerous as well. https://twitter.com/barackobama/status/335089477296988160
I’m sorry to be a bore, but could someone please take the time to explain to me (a layman) whether we know if there’s an inherent lag in the planet’s climate system that locks in the effect of current co2 emissions for decades. Is this the core of the alarmist argument? Apologies for asking something that may be elementary to you all. Thank you.
Committed warming. Interesting there is no Wikipedia article on that.
The article on sensitivity includes ECS but does not go to details about why warming continues. Different estimates at least show that the science is not that settled and it has not produced much improved estimates in 25 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity
OHC growth measured in Hiroshima bombs is IMO an alarmist argument used to say we have seen nothing yet. I’m not very convinced it is a relevant and factual argument, but OTOH, I haven’t published anything. Cook has.
Some of us say wikipedia is crap since anyone can write there, but on the contrary, it might be biased with its sources because the community is tribal and politicized. Wikipedia is, in any case, a good starting point when you want to learn about central claims covered by peer-reviewed and pal-reviewed (UEA) papers.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I’ve avoided Wikipedia for the reasons you outlined, but I’ll read more.
I’m trying to understand why, when plants and the oceans gobble up so much co2, there can be so much left to cause catastrophic climate change. I’ve read conflicting reports on co2’s ‘lifespan’ and trying to find out what is true.
Thanks again.
. .DVan , CO2 makes up only 0.04 % of the atmosphere !!!
Sure. I understand how minuscule co2 is. I’m just super confused why they claim there is such a long lag? It strikes me that they’re clutching at straws. I’d just like to know how they can claim it.
Alarmists argue about a variety of things, and the only consistent thread that I know of is the belief that CO2 levels are the major determining/driving factor of global average temperatures.
“Inherent lag”…what do you mean by that? “Locks in the effect”? What does that mean?
As far as I know, there are estimates of lag time, predictions, but I don’t think we “know”.
Well quite. I heard someone say on the radio today – and read the same claims – that the human contribution of co2 will be locked into the atmosphere and we won’t feel the results for decades. How can this be possible? Surely, if increased co2 drives positive feedbacks, the effects would be observed in a much shorter timeframe.
DVan,
I also read the same “lag time until we see the real effect” claim, today. I suspect that this is just the latest propaganda memo sent out to all the usual suspects. Remember, they are trying hard to explain why none of their catastrophic predictions have come true.
A molecule of CO2 in the atmosphere is said to “warm” the planet because it intercepts a photon of infrared energy which would have otherwise been radiated into space and then re-radiates that photon after a “lag/delay” of from pico- to- milliseconds… there’s your delayed action.
My understanding is that the argument is two fold. One is that the residency of CO2 in the atmosphere is long 100’s if not thousands of years. The second is that the effect of a doubling of CO2 (~ 1 deg C) is amplified by the increased water vapor that the warming will cause. Both are in dispute based on present measurements. Added to this is the assumption that there will be catastrophic release of methane from the Arctic or the oceans due to the warming.
If CO2 goes from 400ppm to 800ppm then the extra 400ppm is supposed to heat the atmosphere 1degC.
400ppm = 1part in 2500. How does I molecule of CO2 thermalize enough “heat” to heat up the other 2499 molecules of N2 and O2??
DVan:
You ask
It says there
In other words, it was expected that global temperature would rise at an average rate of “0.2°C per decade” over the first two decades of this century with half of this rise being due to atmospheric GHG emissions which were already in the system.
This assertion of “committed warming” should have had large uncertainty because the Report was published in 2007 and there was then no indication of any global temperature rise over the previous 7 years. There has still not been any rise and we are now approaching 75% of the “first two decades of the 21st century”.
So, if this “committed warming” is to occur such as to provide a rise of 0.2°C per decade by 2020 then global temperature would need to rise over the next 5 years by about 0.4°C. And this assumes the “average” rise over the two decades is the difference between the temperatures at 2000 and 2020. If the average rise of each of the two decades is assumed to be the “average” (i.e. linear trend) over those two decades then global temperature now needs to rise in the next 5 years by more than it rose over the entire twentieth century. It only rose ~0.8°C over the entire twentieth century.
Simply, the “committed warming” has disappeared (perhaps it has eloped with Trenberth’s ‘missing heat’?).
This disappearance of the “committed warming” is – of itself – sufficient to falsify the AGW hypothesis as emulated by climate models. If we reach 2020 without any detection of the “committed warming” then it will be 100% certain that all projections of global warming are complete bunkum.
Richard
That 0.4°C over the next 5 years is almost bound to happen as GISS, NCAR, NCEI work the surface temperature record as they have in the recent past to meet the expectations of politicians at COPxx (whatever it will be in 2021).
The satellite record, who knows?
Ah, but the data need adjustment, yet.
My understanding of lag: If production of CO2 was to stop tomorrow, the amount of CO2 (in PPM) in the atmosphere would remain until it is used/removed/absorbed/whatever. That is the ‘lag’ time.
A short lag time would imply that actions to reduce CO2 emissions today would show results sooner than if CO2 had a long lag time.
Similar to the concept of a half-life in radioactivity.
The only number we have is the measured CO2 PPM. The total production and reduction numbers are almost impossible to determine, so ‘lag’ is an attempt to predict future CO2 PPM values…
In the laboratory, increased CO2 partial pressure in a volume of gas instantaneously results in increased absorption of some wavelengths of infrared, with a concomitant transfer of that energy, either per collisions with “non-radiative” gas molecules, or per emission of infrared photons madly off in all directions, some of which would be towards the ground.
All of this would, theoretically, result in a predictable temperature rise in the larger volume of gas.
In the big laboratory that we know as Earth, the predicting part went ahead smoothly but the observing part presented some problems. To some degree (ha,ha!), retroactive adjustment of measurements curbed the recalcitrance of the data, but, soon, it became clear that a more powerful force would have to be invoked.
Funnily enough, the skeptical crowd had just the thing and the consensus luminaries realised, one by one, that “natural variation” could be embraced by all and credited with the magnificent feat of “masking” the warming.
Masking is, of course, a cute way of saying “delaying” and voilà; we have a “lag”.
It proves to be an excellent explanation for instances where events fail to corroborate the theory. Quotidian applications can often be expressed in the form; “I was going to…. but….”
@mebbe –
I wonder if that volume of gas in the laboratory was of a fixed size?
The Earth’s atmosphere is not enclosed and the overall volume can, and does, expand and contract.
That’s the problem isn’t it JohnWho? The idea that results of doing something under controlled circumstance in a lab can ever be extrapolated onto a coupled, non-linear, chaotic system seems idiotic at it’s foundation. They keep telling us that “it’s impossible for us to conduct lab experiments to prove our theory is correct because we only have one Earth” and yet in essence, that’s exactly what they want us to believe they can prove in a lab….
Mebbe,
You said
“In the laboratory, increased CO2 partial pressure in a volume of gas instantaneously results in increased absorption of some wavelengths of infrared, with a concomitant transfer of that energy, either per collisions with “non-radiative” gas molecules, or per emission of infrared photons madly off in all directions, some of which would be towards the ground.”
When an energized GHG molecule collides with an O2 or N2 molecule, none of the vibrational energy of that energized molecule is converted into the translation motion of any molecule. All that happens is that collisions increase the probability that an energized GHG molecule will emit a photon and return to the ground state. If a GHG molecule collides with another GHG molecule, more complex kinds of exchanges are possible, but no direct mechanism converts that kind of state energy directly into translational motion. In the lab, energy is transferred to the container by its absorption of GHG wavelengths and then transferred to other gases.
Of course, molecules in motion and photons hitting a temperature sensor are indistinguishable even though molecules in motion indicates the temperature of the matter around the sensor while photons indicate the temperature of the distant matter emitting those photons. This means that increased temperature measurements of a gas do not necessarily mean increased velocity of N2/O2 molecules
when GHG molecules are involved and only means that the sum of the two has increased.
Obama is going to have lunch together with holland, place des Vosges !!!
Obama is probably starving as Putin has been eating his lunch for about 4 years now.
Nah, he’ll be ok. He’s been eating from Michelle’s school lunch menu.
No, wait…
From the apocryphal Nelson Diaries:
“Thomas Malthus’ claims about mankind’s immanent demise due to catastrophic Global Warming is a scientific fact. Poke out my eye and cut off my arm if I’m wrong,” -Lord Nelson
Oh…me! me! Pick me!!!!
1oldnwise4me@reagan.com
November 30, 2015 at 11:22 am
————————
Hello 1old… (whoever you are)
It’s difficult to see how your post could be any more disingenuous.
Since you now have a history of such truculent and deceitful posts, one might suspect that your artfulness is likely explained as meretricious mendacity.
In any case, it’s easy to see why you wouldn’t want to out yourself by using your real name in connection with such blatant dishonesty.
(Reply: On this site, people like Mr 1oldn… are known as ‘anonymous cowards’. -mod)
“meretricious mendacity”
Is it proper to say that without an ascot and generous sized pipe ?
What, is my webcam on?
(visualize a hillbilly, inheriting a huge, library- sized dictionary, some 40+ yrs ago)
Typically honest, hardworking and proud people.
I realize the following story isn’t CAGW, but perhaps relates to when you don’t know something, the best course of action is to stop and reconsider (a wiser choice for Paris if they just can’t let go of the whole ruse).
My ole dependable diesel truck went ruh ruh when I tried to turn her over on the weekend. Batteries were fine. No shorted wire bundles typically easy to find if you just shake em. My farmer’s son neighbor came over and saw me banging knuckles trying to figure it out.
My ego got the best of me and I dove into trying to figure it out, full knowing that I was in over my head.
My other neighbor popped his head in and let me borrow his new battery operated ratchet kit. Dangerous in the hands of a man hellbent on demonstrating to his ego that he knew what he was doing.
My farmer’s son suggested I let it go and so look at it cause he’s honest and knows what he is doing. Offered his truck if needed. I stopped, thought about it and having only wounded one knuckle decided he was right.
Turns out it was the starter.
Easy fix.
There is a moral to the story there, and I’m sure it will sink in soon.
knutsea,
I used to sit down and read through that old dictionary for long periods and not only found it fascinating, but hoped to increase my vocabulary in the process. Now, I understand that “no one talks like that” and using that enhanced vocabulary will probably just put me in a bad light. Instead of trying to reach that same suave level of erudition as William F. Buckley (one of my heroes,) maybe I should have just been happy knowing that I was better looking than Bill.
Alan
Far worse things to do with your time, like dreaming up ways to influence the world.
I’ve learned alot reading from WUWT. 2 recent biggies.
1. Sciencewise (knuteville unabridged dictionary), the ice core data released my mind from any sort of disillusionment concerning CAGW. I could go on and on about polar bear nonsense, or CO2 and ice sheets but all that is extra and primarily meant to create a false sense of validity to a “theory” that should have never seen anything other than the bottom of my boot, let alone reside in my brain for far too long.
2. The rekindling of my interest in Hoffer’s book The True Believer was number two. It’s a tad spooky how accurate it is to describe the group consciousness concerning CAGW.
I read your stuff and always try to absorb it.
Keep on whipping out those new words and phrases.
I see them as fun, but I also see a sincere person with ta sense of humor behind them.
Re: Anonymous cowards. Hey mod, just want to point out that sometimes nicknames are better identifiers than real ones. Given Bulldust is a real life nickname (with the HHH). I am more readily identifiable with that moniker than my very generic real (mundane) name. I realise this I am an exception that tests the rule.
1oldnwise4me@reagan.com
The papers you cited are surveys of other published papers. If you had read the abstracts you would know that “dangerous” wasn’t one of the search terms in their algorithms. Did the papers they surveyed include the word dangerous? Who knows?
These surveys never searched for that term. In addition to that, they only searched the abstracts and not the actual content of the papers, most of which are pay-walled.
Since AGW Climate Change is a religion, it should not be allowed in publicly funded schools or on public property and buildings.
Because the atmospheric sciences, starting with meteorology, shun empiricism in favor of consensus as their primary methodology. IOW, the low empirical standards of meteorology have infected all of its sub-disciplines, including climatology. In real sciences arguments are ended with experiments. In the atmospheric sciences arguments are the basis for ever-expansive, and potentially profitable, new platforms of endless discussion–like this forum.
I think the problem is that the disciplines have accepted meterorology’s methods and high uncertainties, including gut feelings and half-understood connections, without including meterology’s caveats. Everyone knows not to trust the weather report more than a few days out. The problem is that they try to establish these rough estimations as unchallengeable foundations for their positions, and it just crumbles under the contradiction
I have yet to find any money here …
Bubba
I’m in it for the free ticket to heaven. I hear that in the Middle Ages the Inquisition offered free passes to those that turned in heretics. I realize this a potential slippery slope drama reach, but ya never know what 1B followers may want from their Pope.
knutesea
Would you be interested in buying a slightly used “Indulgence”?
michael
Touche’ Mike
Maybe you keep yours and we open the Carbon Indulgence Exchange.
or at least we get a trading seat and give em hell (sorry la papa).
The Pope sets the rate of exchange.
Some rules :
You can chose.
CAGW skeptics burn in hell. Sorry, no choice there.
If you have coal dust on your hands you get tortured first.
CAGW skeptic but support windmills and those shiny things and you do purgatory time.
CAGW skeptic and molten salt SMR supporter you still do purgatory time but more than winders and shiny thing worshipers.
Recycling provides negotiable tender but not much.
Eligibility for the Inquisition is tenure in CAGW support (>10 years, well published). Consideration for higher level positions if you supported all the above (>10 years, lead author >10 X).
It’s all very doable and orderly.
No special clothing necessary.
They’ll provide that too.
now I’m the one laughing.
thanks I liked that. Sometimes you have to stop being to serious.
michael
Yeah Mike
I see the con and it ain’t pretty.
Ya gotta laugh or it will drive you crazy.
Glad I tickled the funny bone.
Bubba and Knute: Here’s a song about indulgences (sort of)
Is there a link to the song ?
Do I have to pay for my indulgence ahead of time ?
Okay
I pledge to tithe an additional 5% of my annual income to the newly ordained Gaia Ministry under the leadership of the current Pope. I understand that the Gaia’s work for the Jesuits and are sworn to defend the spin of CAGW for the Pope.
In return, I will receive reliable energy from the Papal Power Consortium at the same rate I pay now. Because I’m an early tither, I shall receive an opportunity to join in the IPO that will be building Chinese made Molten salt SMRs.
For an additional 5%, I will be allowed to maintain my CAGW skepticism with free commenting privileges at WUWT, Climate Etc and JoNova.
I will not be allowed to hold public office.
I will not be allowed to express CAGW skepticism to minors.
Knute…you’re killing me! ROFL!
Aphan
You strike me as genuine in an arena that tries to undermine it.
You and your compadres here have taught me wonderful things that awoke me from my haze.
It’s a splendid gift that inspires satire and it makes me happy to make you laugh.
I think someday people will look at back at this period and say to themselves that this charade would have never happened to them. That they know better. Of course we know that a repackaged version of some con will also happen to them and they too will rely upon the tools that are discussed here to protect themselves.
The scientific method coupled with the skill to identify fallacy gives man a shot at managing his bias. It provides a foundation for making his mind safe from things that can fool him.
What you do matters beyond just your area of expertise and thank you for it.
Aww….*she sniffs and wipes away the tear rolling down her cheek* that was so sweet! I’ll put you on my Christmas list and start looking for a cheap indulgence to put in your stocking! 🙂
That’s because the 97% agree it exists is due to CO2 and is dangerous is the message that was conveyed.
This is patently false, as we know the actual survey said that the climate has changed and man influences the climate. As such, the actual study does not claim such. However, that is what has been repeatedly said to us and the public in general.
There is a final thing not mentioned in the above, which is the gap between science and message, which is wide. I could even agree with the majority of what was said in the IPCC reports. However, the message has been conveyed such that it is full of lunatic falsehoods. Including such articles as defining disagreement with the alarmist position as insanity.
I hope nothing comes out of these “climate talks”. If it does you know it won’t affect the wealthy or the poor it’ll be the middle class that carries the burden. It always is.
Britain would absolutely love to increase its temperature by two degrees – both in winter and in summer , it would be much more pleasant than it is now – whats wrong with warmth for goodness sake , if it was a bad thing then why do we have central heating ? In summer an extra two degrees would cut down on near hypothermia when at the beach .
Because the scientists think that warmer is dangerous…. See article above
Lots of wordsmithing but very little content in most of these “responses”. Concentrate on the following:
There is no empirical evidence (none, nada, zilch) showing that co2 has EVER had ANY impact on the planet’s warming, even over geologic periods when co2 level was several TIMES higher than now.
If the alarmist/warmists have any enlightenment related to that claim, that would be the place to start.
The kind of “science” recently exhibited by our top warmist is when he visited Alaska and pointed to two receding glaciers, indicating that was due to “climate change”. (and we all know the meaning of that expression to alarmists- namely that human activity is the PRINCIPLE cause of our current global warming). But alas, one of the two glaciers, “Exit” has been receding since 1750, so 100 years BEFORE co2 level even began increasing, But there’s more…. What about the half dozen other ADVANCING glaciers in Alaska (including “Hubbard” and “Taku) ? ObamaScience is now the norm, even the major news media, unfortunately.
I find that type of comment (however typical on this site) completely baffling. Cursory research will point to an avalanche of references linking CO2 to warming. No one disputes that CO2 has been higher in the past (a fact entirely acknowledged by virtually everyone), but that the full GHG effect is also related to OTHER variables, such as the planet’s albedo and the all important solar output (which was dimmer in the past, and progressively increases as the sun ages). I know that, so why don’t you?
Dan Hue,
The more you post nonsense like…
Cursory research will point to an avalanche of references linking CO2 to warming.
…the more ignorant you sound. “References” mean nothing.
What is meaningful is data. Do you have data showing that CO2 is the cause of global warming? If you believe you do, then post it here. You will be the first.
All the factoids you keep coming up with prove nothing. What we need is a clear example of cause and effect, in which the effect is the result of the cause, which cannot be anything else.
The only examples we have are that ∆CO2 is caused by ∆T. But there are no similar examples showing that temperature changes are caused by changes in CO2.
So you know what you can do with your “cursory research”. Use some vaseline, that will make it easier on you. ☺
Collecting data about global temperatures is a huge undertaking, as you obviously know, so no, I don’t have any more data than you do, certainly no original data. I could point you to NASA’s (or others) web site, but I’m sure you have all those links at your finger tips. Their graphs show warming, and yes, I trust their collection methods and the fact that their adjustments increase quality. (And I’m not willing to entertain the idea that smart and accomplish people like most climate scientists could be wasting their professional lives pointlessly faking data.) The question is: why is the globe warming? It’s just that simple. So I read some about it (e.g., http://scienceofdoom.com/2014/06/26/the-greenhouse-effect-explained-in-simple-terms/), and it makes sense. But I am also open minded, so here I am.
@Dan Hue –
We’ve (you and others here) have been down this road before.
Why did the globe warm between 1850 (roughly end of the LIA) and 1950?
When that is answered, then it is up to the “warmists” to show that that natural cause somehow stopped and human CO2 became the only possible cause of the warming since 1950.
If you are really open minded, that should be one problem that should contribute to your skepticism.
Also, just for the record, the overwhelming majority of folks, from what I’ve gathered, on WUWT accept the concept of the Green House Effect and that CO2 is one of the GH gases. However, when analyzed on this planet, the warming caused by additional CO2 from human sources is very minimal and does not appear to be discernible by our current measuring methodologies and equipment. Not that I speak for the others, but that is a re-phrased summation of what I’ve often read here.
Dan Hue says:
The question is: why is the globe warming? It’s just that simple.
No, Dan, that is not the question. The planet has warmed many times before, prior to any human CO2 emissions. It has been much warmer than now — naturally.
The central question is this: does the current warming trend indicate that human emissions are the cause?
The answer is a decisive No. What we’re observing now has happened in the past, repeatedly:
http://snag.gy/BztF1.jpg
[click in charts to embiggen]
Even arch-Warmist Dr. Phil Jones shows that the current warming trend has repeated exactly before human emissions could have had any effect:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/hadley/Hadley-global-temps-1850-2010-web.jpg
Finally, you’re being a worry-wart over the flattest temperatures in the entiire geologic record:
http://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2015/10/Global-2-copy.jpg
EVERY scary prediction made by the alarmist cult has been 100.0% wrong.
When one side is always wrong, without exception, then only religious True Believers will still put their faith in that side of the debate. Rational folks, OTOH, will reject the alarmists’ aruments simply because they have been flat wrong from the get-go.
An even more amusing thought… What if NO glaciers were receding? Would that not imply that our next ice age, (or at least a little one) was once again underway?
W are currently in an interglacial period within an ice age. An ice age consists of the the entire period of time from the onset of ice forming on the planet, through waxing and waning ice, to all of the ice disappearing planetwide.
We’re in a waning period, but the “current” ice age won’t end until all the ice is gone, just like every other ice age ended. But for some reason, CAGWers seem to think we should, and can, stop the Earth from doing what it always has. It’s unnatural!
The next cycle in the ice ages starts when the ice starts to advance again. The interglacial periods in the last 2million years varied roughly between 10-30,000 years with 20,000 the average. We’re ~19,000 from the ice starting to melt, so another ice cycle is in the offing- maybe this year, maybe next, or maybe not until 12,000 AD.
An IPCC “false postulate” mentioned in the pdf as “Co2 Does Not Lead Temperature” is that increases in CO2 precede and then force parallel increases in temperature evidencing the ice core record: “… in such circumstances, changing levels of CO2 cannot be driving changes in temperature, but must either be themselves stimulated by temperature change, or be co-varying with temperature in response to changes in another (at this stage unknown) variable …”.
That is puzzling, surely increasing CO2 as a GHG can be and undoubtedly is both a temperature forcing factor and an outcome of rising temperatures.
“surely increasing CO2 as a GHG can be and undoubtedly is both a temperature forcing factor and an outcome of rising temperatures.”
Christopher, The main atmospheric GHG is water vapor, by magnitudes.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/vapor_warming.html
Something which is a “forcing factor” and also an “outcome” would have already set into motion a chain reaction event of whatever the forcing might be, in a spiraling effect. In observation, the last decade and three-quarters have shown anything but that. The only evident rising of global temperature is the natural stair-step increase common to previous interglacial epochs.
When this El Nino ends we will (judging from recent trends
—> see http://www.weatherbell.com/saturday-summary-november-28-2015 )
we will see a drop further in SSTs in the Pacific than the previous in ’99 and a cold oscillation emerging in the Atlantic. The future is still better predicted by knowers of the past, than modelers of the future, IMHO.
Sorry about the redundancy of “we will”.
The NASA article is outdated, here’s a better explanation.
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesciencenarratives/its-water-vapor-not-the-co2.html
“The main atmospheric GHG is water vapor, by magnitudes …” I’m aware of that Dawtgtomis, the past 18 years of temperature stasis suggests that whatever effect the rising level of CO2 is having it is being overwhelmed by other factors which falsifies the the CO2 ‘control knob’ hypothesis, but not fact that it is a GHG and must be having some effect albeit subsidiary.
Agreed. The error is in how much additional warming each doubling of CO2 produces. Observation shows it doesn’t match the model predictions, which suggests that it is logarithmic rather than linear in its effect. If that is what nature shows then additional CO2 will not be an issue, particularly if the historical cycles now about to repeat themselves (oceanic and solar) have similar implications on the weather over the next several decades, making them a repeat of cool cycles, not unlike the 1790s-1830s.
Christopher Hanley:
You write
“Some effect”? Yes.
Real effect? No.
Please understand the Null Hypothesis.
The Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed a system has not experienced a change unless there is evidence of a change.
The Null Hypothesis is a fundamental scientific principle and forms the basis of all scientific understanding, investigation and interpretation. Indeed, it is the basic principle of experimental procedure where an input to a system is altered to discern a change: if the system is not observed to respond to the alteration then it has to be assumed the system did not respond to the alteration.
In the case of climate science there is a hypothesis that increased greenhouse gases (GHGs, notably CO2) in the air will increase global temperature. There are good reasons to suppose this hypothesis may be true, but the Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed the GHG changes have no effect unless and until increased GHGs are observed to increase global temperature. That is what the scientific method decrees. It does not matter how certain some people may be that the hypothesis is right because observation of reality (i.e. empiricism) trumps all opinions.
Please note that the Null Hypothesis is a hypothesis which exists to be refuted by empirical observation. It is a rejection of the scientific method to assert that one can “choose” any subjective Null Hypothesis one likes. There is only one Null Hypothesis: i.e. it has to be assumed a system has not changed unless it is observed that the system has changed.
However, deciding a method which would discern a change may require a detailed statistical specification.
In the case of global climate in the Holocene, no recent climate behaviours are observed to be unprecedented so the Null Hypothesis decrees that the climate system has not changed.
Importantly, an effect may be real but not overcome the Null Hypothesis because it is too trivial for the effect to be observable. Human activities have some effect on global temperature for several reasons. An example of an anthropogenic effect on global temperature is the urban heat island (UHI). Cities are warmer than the land around them, so cities cause some warming. But the temperature rise from cities is too small to be detected when averaged over the entire surface of the planet, although this global warming from cities can be estimated by measuring the warming of all cities and their areas.
Clearly, the Null Hypothesis decrees that UHI is not affecting global temperature although there are good reasons to think UHI has some effect. Similarly, it is very probable that AGW from GHG emissions are too trivial to have observable effects.
The feedbacks in the climate system are negative and, therefore, any effect of increased CO2 will be probably too small to discern because natural climate variability is much, much larger. This concurs with the empirically determined values of low climate sensitivity.
Empirical – n.b. not model-derived – determinations indicate climate sensitivity is less than 1.0°C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent. This is indicated by the studies of
Idso from surface measurements
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/Idso_CR_1998.pdf
and Lindzen & Choi from ERBE satellite data
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
and Gregory from balloon radiosonde data
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/OLR&NGF_June2011.pdf
Indeed, because climate sensitivity is less than 1.0°C for a doubling of CO2 equivalent, it is physically impossible for the man-made global warming to be large enough to be detected (just as the global warming from UHI is too small to be detected). If something exists but is too small to be detected then it only has an abstract existence; it does not have a discernible existence that has effects (observation of the effects would be its detection).
To date there are no discernible effects of AGW. Hence, the Null Hypothesis decrees that AGW does not affect global climate to a discernible degree. That is the ONLY scientific conclusion possible at present.
Richard
Excellently understandable summation by Richard Courtney. Consider me a student.
Richard – You sound like somebody who is trying really hard to convince himself that what must be true is true. Problem is, no amount of emphasis added to your demonstration will obfuscate the fact that the world is in fact warming, and if not for CO2, then what? Even if you don’t trust the temperature measurements, there is plenty of physical evidence, such as the awesome plunge in Arctic ice, sea level rise, species migration, worldwide glacier retreat, and some many others. You can try to explain away some of these phenomena, but at some point, with virtually all observations pointing in the direction of warming, you have to start reassessing your thinking.
Oh…you so did NOT just say that to Richard. ROFL. He will eat you for breakfast and spit you out for lunch.
Aphan – I don’t pretend to know the science (beyond a sketchy understanding). However, I can spot BS when I see it. Richard’s explanation is at odds with mainstream science, and to be taken seriously, he should at least acknowledge that, and not say it’s the ONLY (his emphasis) conclusion. Clearly, it’s not.
Dan, the evidence is increasingly pointing to the planet’s rotational eccentricities (Milankovitch cycle) as the cause of the onset of each ice age. In between these have been gradual warming epochs, each one not achieving as high of a peak as the previous one. This means that in the big picture, the planet is gradually cooling off. Warming is only happening in the NH at present and the warming has coincided with warm phases of the PDO and AMO. History suggests that when they are in their cold oscillation phase, the ice will rebound, with the big question being the role of heliospheric conditions during low ebbs of solar activity like we are about to witness. As we have said here before, CO2 is the ant pushing the elephant.
Maybe we should organize “Retilt the Earth Day”
Ya know. Hold hands, lean to the left. Chant, pray, rap, whateveh.
Unite the world.
:::: excuse the perky bad humor …. happens when I see a few things more clearly than before ::::
Dan Hue,
Thank you for admitting that you “don’t pretend to know the science”, because clearly you have no idea what the Null Hypothesis is. You also seem to think that the world’s scientists have figured out our climate system to an understandable degree and that they have eliminated every other possibility except CO2-so that it is the ONLY thing left to blame. That’s not even close to being true.
You also shouldn’t pretend to know what Richard means if Richard doesn’t tell you he means something. For example, Richard didn’t say that the Earth wasn’t warming. Richard also didn’t say that he knows what is. He merely pointed out according to the Null Hypothesis-one of the very foundations of science as we know it, has NOT been satisfied by today’s scientists, and that any theory that doesn’t is a shady theory at best.
In other words, Richard might be at odds with mainstream science, but that is only because mainstream science is at odds with the very foundations of science itself-like the Null Hypothesis.
Dan Hue says:
…the world is in fact warming, and if not for CO2, then what?
Boy, have you got a lot to learn! But you are correct when you admit:
I don’t pretend to know the science (beyond a sketchy understanding)…
You don’t even have a ‘sketchy’ understanding. Based on everything you’ve written, all you are doing is visiting alarmist blogs, and then parroting their nonsense and misinformation here.
Do us a favor, and read the WUWT archives for a few months. Try to get beyond your ‘sketchy’ understanding, which is really misunderstanding.
You can begin by reading about natural climate variability, and the planet’s recovery from the LIA. You have not given one example of anything that cannot be fully explained by natural variability. Nothing observed now exceeds past climate parameters. Everything being observed has happened in the past, repeatedly, and to a much greater degree. And it happened before CO2 began to rise.
Those facts debunk everything you’re trying to sell here. You just don’t know enough to wing it, so do what I recommend: get up to speed. Right now you’re not. You have a long way to go before you’re at the level of understanding of the average WUWT reader.
DB
Hit em with the ice cores first or later ?
What’s most effective in breaking the cognitive dissonance ?
Knute,
I don’t think anyone is going to penetrate Dan Hue’s cognitive dissonance.
Perhaps not. Send him over the Pope.
I looked at the “visits” counter and I see that’s 3M visits in 2 weeks ?
So that’s roughly 200K/day.
Those 200K talk to perhaps 2 to 4 a day.
So conservatively penetration of 500K/day.
Doing that little opera handclap for Mr Watts, associates and bloggers.
You guys did something very special.
It’s far cheaper than going to a CAGW therapist and you can become aware at your own pace.
Too bad it’s not billable to ObamaCare.
I see I wrote “rotational” instead of “orbital” eccentricities, my bad.
dbstealy – You are nailing my strongest objection to everything I am reading here, which is that (and I paraphrase) “as long as observed changes are within past or present natural variability, there is nothing to be concerned about”. That, IMO, is a reckless position. Even when variability is natural, *something* (some physical cause) is at play. Even if you believe that global temperatures are stable (which I don’t), how can you tell that they should not be naturally falling (i.e., that we are not super-imposing some man-made warming)? An understanding of the climate is paramount, and short of 100% knowledge, we have enough of that to determine that not acting is beyond tolerable risk.
Dan
What do you fear will happen if the climate changes ?
Well then, Danny, why don’t you just tell everyone what the ‘physical cause’ of natural climate variability is? It must be “*something*”, according to you.
But of course you’re simply parroting an eco-religious series of talking points. As you admit, you’re ignorant of science. All you’re doing here is essentially saying, “But what if…?”
I doubt that you understand what the climate Null Hypothesis is, or what it means. Most readers here know, and they also know the Null Hypothesis has never been falsiified. Thus, global T is well within normal parameters.
There is nothing either unusual, or unprecedented happening. You’re just trying to manufacture a scare out of something completely normal: natural climate variability. Why? Because you’ve been watching the newsbabes on TV, and you’ve started head-nodding along with them?
There’s a lot you don’t understand, Dan, and it’s not limited to science. You don’t understand that you’re being led by an invisible ring in your nose, by people with a self-serving agenda. Your problem is that you’ve tried to parrot their nonsense here, where readers know better. That’s why your eco-beliefs are getting no traction.
knutesea – My biggest fear, beyond human hardship due to food shortages or water conflicts, is loss of bio-diversity. I want to live in a world that has more to offer than bugs, rats, pigeons and invasive plants. The idea that top predators like great white sharks, tigers or blue whales (the biggest animal species ever) could disappear causes me great distress.
dbstealy – I would throw what you say back at you, and ask you how you know that you are not yourself misled? I often hear “follow the money”, as if that should lead to renewable energy entrepreneurs or climate scientists. But how can the fossil fuel industry be left off the hook? Aren’t you curious about what is lurking in their internal emails? I am no leftist, but I sure am.
“knutesea – My biggest fear, beyond human hardship due to food shortages or water conflicts, is loss of bio-diversity. I want to live in a world that has more to offer than bugs, rats, pigeons and invasive plants. The idea that top predators like great white sharks, tigers or blue whales (the biggest animal species ever) could disappear causes me great distress.”
Are you afraid that man is currently making the planet too warm ?
Dan Hue says:
The idea that top predators like great white sharks, tigers or blue whales (the biggest animal species ever) could disappear causes me great distress.
But apparently Dan is A-OK with raptor-chopping windmills.
And:
I would throw what you say back at you, and ask you how you know that you are not yourself misled?
I am not misled because like most readers here, I was well educated in the hard sciences. Therefore, I can understand what makes sense, and what is just bloviating. On the other hand, Dan frequently admits that he’s not up to speed on basic science. That makes him an easy target for climate scare propaganda. He is a prime example of the “don’t confuse me with facts, my mind is made up” subset of the population.
I often hear “follow the money”, as if that should lead to renewable energy entrepreneurs or climate scientists. But how can the fossil fuel industry be left off the hook?
Dan is nothing if not inconsistent. But maybe he actually believes that skeptics are subsidized by the evil Big Oil cartel. If so, Dan just doesn’t understand where the big money comes from, and whose pockets it goes into. That’s because he gets his misinformation from the thinly-trafficked alarmist blogs he inhabits.
About 97%™ of the money in the climate debate comes from the federal government, and it goes straight to alarmist scientists and universities that parrot the government’s preferred narrative. Government grants do not go to scientists who tell the truth: that there is nothing unusual or unprecedented happening, and that there have never been any measurements quantifying the “dangerous AGW” scare that the gov’t wants the public to believe. The entire CO2=dAGW hoax is based on an unproven conjecture.
Dan ends with:
I am no leftist, but I sure am.
That makes as much sense as the rest of Dan’s pixel emissions.
From an article in the news today: Eight ideas to deal with climate change and save the planet | Newsday has this harridan offering the SO2 solution: Joyce Penner is a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Michigan and a member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
‘As the world struggles to address global warming, some propose geoengineering– intentionally altering the planet’s atmosphere — as a way to lower temperatures. The most studied technique would work by adding sulfate particles to the stratosphere, which is similar to what happens as a result of large volcanic eruptions. Those particles reflect solar radiation, preventing some of the sun’s rays from warming the Earth.
While this type of solution sounds promising, it must never be considered in isolation. Without agreements in place to significantly decrease carbon dioxide emissions, we would have to continue pumping more and more sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, perhaps for millennia. We don’t know the consequences of such large and prolonged tampering.’
My comment: this is insanity! SO2 is extremely toxic!!! Not to mention, this would definitely plunge the planet into colder than the Little Ice Age climate. I have said in the past, these people want us to turn back the clock to the Little if not the Big Ice Ages.
SO2 is not sulfate. Of course, sulfuric acid is a sulfate, but we’re talking minor concentrations, and sulfate aerosols settle out of the stratosphere in a year or two. It won’t plunge us in the a repeat of the LIA, though we may be heading that way on our present roller coaster.
However, don’t worry, it will be a long time before we get around to pumping SO2 into the stratosphere or Winooski VT gets its dome.
Like the story of the apprentice and the brooms…we know that things will be done out of control.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain
Acid rain that melts marble statues, makes people have lung problems and erodes metals, is…SO2. Drum roll, please. Why you imagine SO2 isn’t dangerous baffles me.
emsnews said-“Acid rain that melts marble statues, makes people have lung problems and erodes metals, is…SO2.”
Correction-acid rain CONTAINS SO2, which is sulfur dioxide, but acid rain “is” NOT pure SO2. It also contains nitrogen oxides and of course H2O.
And the “dirty” SO2 is more corrosive than pure SO2, from what I learned operating flue gas desulfurization equipment.
You can now see sulfate extinction current levels at
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/level/overlay=suexttau/orthographic
and surface concentrations of SO2
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/chem/surface/level/overlay=so2smass/orthographic
(It’s fairly new, so I thought maybe I wouldn’t be ‘Captain Obvious’ here, for once.)
Josh, you just keep getting better, man.
+1
Does anyone else notice the resemblance between the person in the cartoon saying, “this pause is unprecedented” and a certain Georgia Tech climate scientist?
Looks a lot like JC to me.
There is another view of climate change, and it emerges not from the IPCC, but from the world of geology. Yes, the sun provides the bulk of our heat. BUT, its effects are modulated by other processes. Plate tectonics drives volcanic activity, which supplies CO2 to the atmosphere, and the rise of mountains, which enhances chemical weathering, which provides a CO2 sink. The imbalance between volcanic sources and chemical weathering sinks greatly modifies climate over long time scales, with CO2 change leading temperature change. It led to the ‘Great Cooling’ from Cretaceous times to the present, at a time when the sun’s output was gradually expanding. Superimposed on these long slow changes are those produced by variations in Earth’s orbit and the tilt of the Earth’s axis, which gave us the fluctuations of the Ice Age of the past 2.6 million years. These orbital changes repeat with frequencies of 100,000, and 40,000, and 20,000 years. In this case temperature change driven by orbital change drives the release or absorption of CO2 from the ocean, which exacerbates climate change by positive feedback onto temperature: i.e. in this case temperature leads, not CO2. These changes are smaller than those caused by plate tectonics. Superimposed on them are yet smaller changes caused by changes in the sun’s output. Those include the 11 year sunspot cycle and its modulators, the 208 year Suess Cycle and 88 year Gleissberg Cycle. Those broad solar cycles account for phenomena like the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ie Age. Over the past 10,000 years, orbital changes have progressively cooled the Earth. They should continue to do so for at least the next 1000 years. Small fluctuations caused by Suess Cycles will slightly modify but not much change that picture. Right now sunspots are in decline. So our current climate should be cool (orbital), and cooling (sunspots). Clearly it is not. The only driver we can see for the current warming is human emissions of greenhouse gases. Is there a geological analog? Yes, 55 Million years ago at the Paleocene – Eocene boundary a massive emission of carbon rich gas (possibly methane, which rapidly converted in the atmosphere to CO2), caused temperature to rise 5-6C, and sea level to rise 10-12m; it also made the ocean acid enough to raise the carbonate compensation depth, clearing the deep sea floor of carbonate organisms and their remains. Equally, we can see that the warming of past major interglacials (e.g. 400,000 years ago) by 2-3C led to sea level rises of 4-9m. So the past is replete with warnings that if we add CO2 to the atmosphere, the temperature and sea level will rise. And we know that when CO2 goes into the atmosphere it has also made the oceans more acid, affecting carbonate sediments. This is described in detail in “Earth’s Climate Evolution” available on line from WILEY. It puzzles me that current discussions more or less completely ignore these warnings from our past. We can see from the past exactly what will happen if we repeat these geological examples. And this has nothing to do with the numerical models of the climate system that attract so much criticism. Are we deaf to science?
You appear to be leaving out the nonlinear thermal capacitor effects of the oceans from our discussion. The climate change that we are experiencing is typical of the Holocene for the past 10,000 years. It is caused by the sun and the oceans and Man does not have the power to change it. We are currently warming up from the Little Ice Age much as we warmed up from the Dark Ages Cooling Period more than a thousand years ago. There is nothing unusual about it.
There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is no such evidence in the paleoclimate record. There is evidence that warmer temperatures cause more CO2 to enter the atmosphere but there is no evidence that this additional CO2 causes any more warming. If additional greenhouse gases caused additional warming then the primary culprit would have to be H2O which depends upon the warming of just the surfaces of bodies of water and not their volume but such is not part of the AGW conjecture.
The AGW theory is that adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes an increase in its radiant thermal insulation properties causing restrictions in heat flow which in turn cause warming at the Earth’s surface and the lower atmosphere. In itself the effect is small because we are talking about small changes in the CO2 content of the atmosphere and CO2 comprises only about .04% of dry atmosphere if it were only dry but that is not the case. Actually H2O, which averages around 2%, is the primary greenhouse gas. The AGW conjecture is that the warming causes more H2O to enter the atmosphere which further increases the radiant thermal insulation properties of the atmosphere and by so doing so amplifies the effect of CO2 on climate. At first this sounds very plausible. This is where the AGW conjecture ends but that is not all what must happen if CO2 actually causes any warming at all.
Besides being a greenhouse gas, H2O is also a primary coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere transferring heat energy from the Earth;s surface. which is mostly H2O, to where clouds form via the heat of vaporization. More heat energy is moved by H2O via phase change then by both convection and LWIR absorption band radiation combined. More H2O means that more heat energy gets moved which provides a negative feedback to any CO2 based warming that might occur. Then there is the issue of clouds. More H2O means more clouds. Clouds not only reflect incoming solar radiation but they radiate to space much more efficiently then the clear atmosphere they replace. Clouds provide another negative feedback. Then there is the issue of the upper atmosphere which cools rather than warms. The cooling reduces the amount of H2O up there which decreases any greenhouse gas effects that CO2 might have up there. In total, H2O provides negative feedback’s which must be the case because negative feedback systems are inherently stable as has been the Earth’s climate for at least the past 500 million years, enough for life to evolve. We are here. The wet lapse rate being smaller then the dry lapse rate is further evidence of H2O’s cooling effects.
A real greenhouse does not stay warm because of the heat trapping effects of greenhouse gases. A real greenhouse stays warm because the glass reduces cooling by convection. This is a convective greenhouse effect. So too on Earth..The surface of the Earth is 33 degrees C warmer than it would be without an atmosphere because gravity limits cooling by convection. This convective greenhouse effect is observed on all planets in the solar system with thick atmospheres and it has nothing to do with the LWIR absorption properties of greenhouse gases. the convective greenhouse effect is calculated from first principals and it accounts for all 33 degrees C. There is no room for an additional radiant greenhouse effect. Our sister planet Venus with an atmosphere that is more than 90 times more massive then Earth’s and which is more than 96% CO2 shows no evidence of an additional radiant greenhouse effect. The high temperatures on the surface of Venus can all be explained by the planet’s proximity to the sun and its very dense atmosphere. The radiant greenhouse effect of the AGW conjecture has never been observed. If CO2 did affect climate then one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused an increase in the natural lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened. Considering how the natural lapse rate has changed as a function of an increase in CO2, the climate sensitivity of CO2 must equal 0.0.
The AGW conjecture talks about CO2 absorbing IR photons and then re radiating them out in all directions. According to this, then CO2 does not retain any of the IR heat energy it absorbs so it cannot be heat trapping. What the AGW conjecture fails to mention is that typically between the time of absorption and radiation that the same CO2 molecule, in the lower troposphere, undergoes roughly a billion physical interactions with other molecules, sharing heat related energy with each interaction. Heat transfer by conduction and convection dominates over heat transfer by LWIR absorption band radiation in the troposphere which further renders CO2’s radiant greenhouse effect as a piece of fiction. Above the troposphere more CO2 enhances the efficiency of LWIR absorption band radiation to space so more CO2 must have a cooling effect.
This is all a matter of science.
Thanks for that. I totally agree. The Alarmists, of course, do not give a damn about the science, It is all political to them. Agenda 21. The travesty is that so many “educated” people do not believe your summary.
willhaas – Correction: This is all a matter of pseudo-science. A word salad that is unsupported by actual research, unless you have some good references.
Dan Hue,
Everything willhaas wrote above is widely accepted as mainstream science. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
willhaas wrote:
There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate.
That is the crux of the debate. No one has ever produced a verifiable, testable measurement quantifying any effect of CO2 on global temperature. No one has ever produced a verifiable, testable, empirical measurement quantifying man-made global warming, which is no more than an assertion.
Dan, there are no measurements quantifying what the alarmist crowd claims. Not a single one. Thus, it is all a conjecture; an opinion.
You have not produced one credible word in rebuttal. All you did was falsely label that explanation as ‘a word salad’ and ‘pseudoscience’. That puts your ignorance on display.
Per the Scientific Method, skeptics of a conjecture like ‘man-made global warming’ have nothing to prove. The onus is completely on those putting forth the conjecture.
You don’t seem to realize it, but those folks have failed miserably. They have NO real world evidence or verifiable measurements to support their ‘dangerous AGW’ scare.
Doesn’t it bother you even a little bit that the thousands of scientists working for decades to find a measurement of AGW have failed to find even one??
There has been no global warming for more than eighteen years now. That fact debunks the ‘runaway global warming’ hoax. So now, that scare has become 100% politics, based on an eco-religion. Science has nothing to do with it, because science has shown that conjecture is nonsense.
Dan Hue,
Then apparently you do not understand what I am talking about. I am sorry about that. I do not provide links but what I am talking about is not too difficult to find on the Internet. I myself think that it is terrible the way Man is trying to burn up our very finite resources of fossil fuels just as quickly as possible. I would like to add the climate argument as an additional reason to conserve, but the science is just not there.
The AGW conjecture is based on only partial science and fails under a more rigorous scrutiny. I keep asking for people to supply some real evidence that CO2 affects climate but no one has come up with any. There is a rationale that CO2 might, but no real evidence that it actually does. Unfortunately there is no proof in climate science because one cannot run definitive experiments with the global climate system.
Dan Hue,
As willhaas says:
…there is no proof in climate science because one cannot run definitive experiments with the global climate system.
But there is the climate Null Hypothesis. Climatologist Roy Spencer points out that the Null Hypothesis has never been falsified. Therefore the Alternate Hypothesis (measurable man-made global warming) is falsified.
The Null Hypothesis states that if no there is no discernable difference between past natural variability and current observations, then for all practical purposes human CO2 emissions have had no effect and thus, should be disregarded.
Science is based on data; measurements are data. But there are no measurements that quantify AGW.
There is not one measurement showing the supposed fraction of global warming that is attributable to human emissions, out of natural global warming from all causes (including the observed recovery of the planet from the LIA).
Thus, the ‘man-made global warming’ scare is a false alarm, based on a failed conjecture. And the Alternative Hypothesis to the Null Hypothesis is falsified; they cannot both be right.
If you wonder why there are no measurements of AGW, I suspect it is because the alarmist crowd began with a wrong premise: that the rise in CO2 would cause runaway global warming. That’s what they claimed, incessantly — until it became clear that global warming stopped many years ago (and then “runaway global warming” morphed into “climate change”).
With the steady rise in CO2 since the 1940’s, their CO2=AGW premise has been falsified; otherwise, we would be experiencing steady warming, no? But global warming stopped in the late 1990’s, and it hasn’t been seen since.
Their problem, IMHO, is that their premise assumed that human-emitted CO2 is the cause of measurable warming. But in reality, the only observations we have show the causation as:
∆T causes ∆CO2.
But the alarmists’ original assumption was that ∆CO2 causes ∆T. (That may happen, to a very minuscule extent. But as real world observations show, that effect is swamped by the outgassing of CO2 from the oceans as the planet warms from the LIA.)
When one begins with a wrong premise, naturally their conclusion will be wrong. That is what happened. But since then, politics has intervened, and now more than $1 billion in federal grants is shoveled into ‘studying climate change’ every year.
With that kind of taxpayer loot available to scientists who blame AGW for ‘climate change’, or related ‘problems’, is it any wonder that some self-serving scientists have boarded the grant gravy train? Worse, there is great pressure from universities pushing scientists to add “climate change” to their papers. Those universities are weel aware of the multi-$millions that Michael Mann brought in with his bogus ‘hockey stick’.
Dan Hue, this is the internet’s “Best Science” site, where ideas are debated, and almost without exception the truth is separated from the chaff. So you need an open mind to prevail here. But simply expressing your emotions:
“My biggest fear… food shortages… loss of bio-diversity… top predators… could disappear… causes me great distress”…
And denigrating well thought out comments with snark:
“…pseudo-science. A word salad…”
Causes your arguments to fail.
You need facts, evidence, and most of all, measurements that quantify what you believe is happening. Since you have no such measurements, all you’re doing is parroting what you read on the climate alarmist blogs, where you get your misinformation. Do you think we don’t know?
So either produce verifiable, testable measurements that support your argument and your beliefs — or you should listen to the well educated readers here who understand ‘climate’ science just as much as Michael Mann, James Hansen, or many other rent-seeking scientists do.
Finally, as Niccolo Machiavelli wrote in The Prince:
Men are bad unless compelled to be good.
Scientists are not special. There are bad scientists, just as there are bad people in every subset of the population. No one, least of all the government, compels them to be honest. Worse, they are paid to be deceptive! So in addition to science, you also need to understand human nature. Right now, that is the most serious problem we face.
Responding to Willhaas (Nov 30, 2:22 pm) “We are currently warming up from the Little Ice Age much as we warmed up from the Dark Ages Cooling Period more than a thousand years ago. There is nothing unusual about it.” Actually, the orbital data from Andre Berger make it clear that in the northern hemisphere insolation has been decreasing steadily over the past 10,000 years of the Holocene. The orbitally induced warming to the beginning of the Holocene from the last glacial maximum led to the melting of the great northern hemisphere ice sheets. The subsequent orbitally induced cooling drove Earth into what palaeoclimatologists call the ‘neoglacial’ of the past 4000 years, which culminated in the Little Ice Age. Those orbital conditions remain low, so we should still be in the Little Ice Age. Moreover those conditions will persist for another 1000 years at least. Against that scientific background the Little Ice Age did not come to a natural end. It came to an unnatural end in about 1850 with the beginning of the current warming trend. As one result we see plants emerging from under the Baffin Island Ice Cap that last saw daylight 4000 years ago. I want you to find me a scientific justification for that warming that does NOT involve the increase in human induced greenhouse gases post 1850.
‘polarscientist’,
You’re not really a scientist, are you? If you were, you would understand that skeptics have nothing to prove. willhass was simply making an observation.
When you say the Little Ice Age did not come to a natural end, you undestand that you’re just making a conjecture, right? But thanx for your opinion, it’s an interesting speculation.
And:
I want you to find me a scientific justification for that warming that does NOT involve the increase in human induced greenhouse gases post 1850.
Occam’s Razor and the climate Null Hypothesis come to mind. All you’ve got is speculation without any real world measurements quantifyiong the warming that you believe human CO2 emissions cause.
Without measurements you’ve got nothin’, except a perty ‘theory’. You know what Prof Feynman said; it doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, if it’s not supported by experiment, it’s wrong.
Post a measurement-based experiment. Then we can discuss your great new idea.
polarscientist-
“I want you to find me a scientific justification for that warming that does NOT involve the increase in human induced greenhouse gases post 1850.”
Correlation is not causation. As a scientist you know that. If you make the claim that CO2 is causing global warming, then YOU are responsible to prove that your claim is true, no one who disagrees with you is responsible to prove that your claim is false. That’s not how logic OR science works.
You just said “There are many drivers for change and all have to be accounted for.” Exactly. And until scientists can prove that they have found and understood absolutely all of them, it is very premature and UNscientific to declare that CO2 has to be causing the warming.
response to Aphan. True, correlation is not (necessarily) causation. But it is not a very useful expression. The world of science was content to call for a ban on smoking based on the correlation between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, and was content to call for a ban on the use of CFCs based on a correlation between the growth in CFC use and the growth of the ozone hole. Time has proved them right. It was the responsibility of others to demonstrate that the supposed causes were in fact not so. The scientists making the propositions worked with multiple working hypotheses and eliminated every other possible cause as being unrealistic. That is exactly how global warming science is progressing. When you have investigated all potential causes and are only left with one, then there is a high probability you have found the missing piece of the puzzle. My examination of the climate system has led me to eliminate all other possible causes of current warming apart from the rise in greenhouse gases caused by human activities. Now, if you can demonstrate that I have missed something, I would be more than happy to consider it. Please don’t duck the issue.
:::: quiet notes to myself since I wasn’t asked to play ::::
Once again, I watch the debate fast forward to CO2. Did it lag, how much is okay, blah blah. Why should I care. I see no acknowledgement that the earth was far warmer in the past. Several fine civilizations flourished. Warmer was fine. It’s as if it continues to be an uncomfortable fact that can’t be bullied away.
Polar bears
CO2
Ice sheets
Tornadoes
Hurricanes
Acidification of Oceans
Species deaths.
All extra points of distraction.
polarscientist
How many billion innocents must sacrified to early deaths, to lives permenently lived in short lives of desperate agony and poverty of no sewage treatment, no clean water, no heat, no fuel, no refrigeration, and how many must die before YOU will be satisfied by condemning them to early death so YOU will feel better by artificially increasing energy prices, food prices, water shortages and restricting energy use?
YOU are the ones killing innocents with your failed, useless carbon control hysteria. That will do NOTHING to change future global average temperatures. Rather, today’s increased CO2 levels – in part caused by man’s release of CO2 as he eats, feeds, and lives better worldwide than ever before the past 250,000 years – is causing all plant life on to grow 12% to 27% faster, greener, hardier, and more productively. Have YOU no shame?
Mr Homewood pumped this out today.
?zoom=2
Top ten list
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/12/02/booker-on-paris-2/#more-18819
Number 3 … The Hammer
“Nothing more troubled the supporters of the “consensus” theory than worldwide evidence that 1,000 years ago the world was even hotter than it is today: what climatologists call “the Medieval Warm Period”.
But in 1999 this led to the producing of a new graph, nicknamed “the Hockey Stick” and heavily promoted by the IPCC, which rewrote climate history. This purported to show that the Medieval Warm Period had never existed, and that temperatures had suddenly shot up in the late 20th century to 1998 as “the hottest year in history”.
The Hockey Stick graph, showing late 20th temperatures suddenly shooting up to the ‘hottest year in history’
Expert computer analysts then demonstrated, however, that the methods used to construct this graph were hopelessly flawed. It became the most discredited artefact in scientific history. The Medieval Warm Period was back, showing that the heating up of the world 1,000 years ago had nothing to do with human CO2 emissions and was entirely natural. “
Probably largely caused by human emissions. Ferdinand Engelbeen can explain it to you.
And here’s a more informative chart.
And it’s a *very* good thing that CO2 is rising. It is harmless, and for the one-third of humanity subsisting on less than $2 a day, the rise in CO2 is keeping food costs down.
1oldnwise4me
You seem confused. Nobody is saying that man is not putting CO2 into the atmosphere, that we have not experienced some warming since the end of the LIA, or even that there is not some fraction of this warming that can be attributed to CO2 emissions.
THE DEBATE IS ABOUT THE SIZE OF THE INCREMENTAL GHG EFFECT AND WHETHER ITS LARGE ENOUGH TO OBSESS OVER.
The physics and the data are pretty clear that the global average sensitivity of the planet to forcing is far closer to 0.25 +/- .05 C per W/m^2 then to the 0.8 +/- 0.4 C per W/m^2 claimed by the self serving consensus fabricated by the IPCC. They can’t acknowledge this because the political consequences of the truth are too dire, moreover; the truth precludes all reasons for the IPCC to exist. This conflict of interest is why the science is so contentious and will remain so until political agendas are decoupled from the science.
CO2
I’ve seen this part in the debate a few times here on WUWT. Troller ignores the ice core data showing numerous previous warming periods that had nothing to do with man and sucks the conversation into a demonstration of the warming effects of CO2. Once there, it becomes a runaway train about CO2 and blah blah.
It’s quite the sticky wicket and artfully executed.
I’m not sure the most effective technique for countering that but I suspect it is rooted in a common acknowledgement of ice core history. My thought is that once they acknowledge that history, it’s impossible to ascribe so much weight to man … be it CO2 or fairies coming out of their orafices.
What are your thoughts on the matter ?
Yes, once you pay attention to the paleoclimate data, the most likely conclusion is that CO2 is a trailing indicator of temperature and most likely of biological origin as biomass slowly expands and contracts following the retreat and advance of ice. In this sense, the current rise in CO2 is also due to biology and is a trailing indicator of the warming at the start of the industrial revolution which allowed man to think about things other than just surviving, for example, industrialization.
1old,
Since you’re incapable of understanding what that chart shows, here’s a very simple one. Maybe it’s more your speed:
[click in chart to embiggen]
as anyone can see, ∆T causes ∆CO2.
1oldnclueless,
Like the polar “scientist”, you seem incapable of understanding that skeptics have nothing to prove.
We do not have to prove why the planet either went into the LIA, or why it is recovering from the LIA. We just observe that it happened.
As a skeptic, I don’t propose conjectures; I destroy them. It’s my job. ☺
I’ve been supremely effective in destroying the CO2=DAGW conjecture. And without that measurement-free globaloney, you’ve got nothin’ but your eco-religious belief. That’s good for amusement, but for science… it’s as worthless as your comments.
1oldy,
Go back to grade school. The discucssion here is too far beyond your limited capability.
1oldnwise4me@reagan.com
???And I took some 38 hours of calculus and post-calculus math back in college.
Please, explain exactly what you think dT/dt and dCO2/dt actually are. Both define, in fact, the rate of change of the variable over time; so I fail to see what your quibble is all about. (Other than a continuation of your distractions.)
1oldnwise4me@reagan.com
December 1, 2015 at 1:58 pm
The recovery from the LIA is caused by the same natural forces as caused recovery from the Dark Ages Cold Period during the Medieval Warm Period (c. 1000 years ago), the Greek Dark Ages Cold Period during the Roman Warm Period (c. 2000 years ago), the Bronze Age Cold Period during the Minoan Warm Period (c. 3000 years ago), the cooling event 8200 years ago during the Holocene Climatic Optimum (ending c. 5000 years ago) and other similar cycles during the Holocene and prior interglacials, often warmer than this one. One reason these natural fluctuations aren’t better understood is because real climatology has been hijacked by so-called “climate science”, ie GIGO computer gaming.
The Modern Warm Period is no different from any that have gone before it. Indeed, so far it has been cooler than the Medieval WP, which was cooler than the Roman WP, which was cooler than the Minoan WP. Earth has been in a long-term cooling trend for at least 3000 years, and still is, despite fluctuations around the downtrend in GASTA. Thus, the null hypothesis that nothing out of the norm is happening cannot be rejected.
reply to gloateus maximus It is true that we have seen ups and downs in global temperature during the cooling of the Holocene (over the past 10,000 years or so). But it has been well illustrated by the work of Stuiver (on 14C) and Steinhilber (on 14C and 10Be isotopes) that those thermal ups and downs relate to the impact of the solar wind on the incidence of cosmic rays impinging on our outer atmosphere. A bigger solar wind means more heat and fewer cosmic ray impacts. Hence the isotope record allows us to map solar output over this period. It tells us that the periods of past cooling and warming that were superimposed on the overall cooling of the Holocene were in fact caused by variable solar output. We know more than you seem to think we know. In the case of today’s warming, solar output rose from 1900 to 1960. Temperature followed for a while, then diverged after 1945 because of the growing input of dirty aerosols from poorly controlled but growing industrial output, which kept the planet cool. When clean air Acts stopped the pollution, the warming signal re-emerged. But by then the solar signal had stagnated, and since 1990 it has been falling. CO2, however, continued to rise, as did temperature. So the current thermal rise is not solar induced. There is no natural explanation for it.
No. It does not show that all.
polarscientist
December 2, 2015 at 12:27 pm
You may imagine that you know a lot, but in fact “we” know little, in part because of real climatology having been hijacked by computer gamers.
Temperature has definitely not risen along with CO2. As I’ve already pointed out, for most of the post-war surge in CO2, the world has cooled. It did so dramatically during the ’40s to ’70s, then mild warming accidentally coincided for perhaps as much as 20 years with warming, but since the ’90s has stayed flat to cooled again. There is no correlation because the causation, if any, is so slight. Nothing has happened out of the ordinary, despite CO2 going from 285 ppm in 1850 to 400 ppm in 2015.
The oceans store the heat from periods of higher solar activity, so there is naturally a lag before it’s all blown off to the air. There is thus zero actual physical evidence in favor of the easily falsified hypothesis of AGW, let alone catastrophic man-made GW. So far more, one more CO2 molecule per 10,000 molecules of dry air has been a blessing for plants, people and the planet.
Colin dear, the sea level has already risen over 130 m in the last 13,000 years (that is, since the end of the last Ice Age). Get your numbers straight.
Yes, sea level fell by -130m at the last glacial maximum. But, in previous large interglacials, which were 2-3C warmer than today’s interglacial, it rose 4 to 9 m above today’s level. That’s the warning for all of us if our temperatures go on rising.
polar ‘scientist’,
Your “warning” is a complete non sequitur. That’s easy to see.
What you’re doing is presuming to know the future. Because if you’re wrong and the planet gets colder, sea levels will fall. That’s just as much of a “warning”, and it’s certainly scarier than some beneficial global warming.
Colin Summerhayes says “Are we deaf to science?” The answer is yes because anti-CO2 emissions political activists have been yelling very loudly for a very long time.
colin summerhayes November 30, 2015 at 1:25 pm
” Are we deaf to science?”
Drawing conclusions on incomplete knowledge (natural variability is poorly understood, feedback is poorly understood, the effect of the sun if poorly understood, etc.) is not science.
“The only driver we can see for the current warming is human emissions of greenhouse gases.”
Since there is no data to support that statement, it sounds more like a pronouncement from an Oracle blind in one eye rather than even a scientific guess.
I have a book called “The Encyclopedia of Things that Never Were.” Perhaps it should be updated with a new chapter on CAGW based on conclusions from incomplete science and “science” without supporting data.
Colin, you paint such a quaint picture of big old docile Earth with a system that only experiences long, slow, lazy changes and fluctuations. That’s NOT what the science says. Maybe you need to talk to the The National Academy of Sciences, and the 59 top researchers who wrote a 244 page report containing over 500 references in 2002 called “Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises.”
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10136/abrupt-climate-change-inevitable-surprises
Description
“The climate record for the past 100,000 years clearly indicates that the climate system has undergone periodic–and often extreme–shifts, sometimes in as little as a decade or less. The causes of abrupt climate changes have not been clearly established, but the triggering of events is likely to be the result of multiple natural processes.”
Jeffrey Masters Ph.D covered this report well and his website and added additional evidence:
“Ocean and lake sediment data from places such as California, Venezuela, and Antarctica have confirmed that these sudden climate changes affected not just Greenland, but the entire world. During the past 110,000 years, there have been at least 20 such abrupt climate changes. Only one period of stable climate has existed during the past 110,000 years–the 11,000 years of modern climate (the “Holocene” era). “Normal” climate for Earth is the climate of sudden extreme jumps–like a light switch flicking on and off. ”
http://www.wunderground.com/resources/climate/abruptclimate.asp
Colin, it is because of the above science that I just chuckled when I read your post. I equate it to having a little baby and having someone come over to visit. While they are there, the baby is just doing what that baby does every day, when it suddenly pukes all over violently or explosively soils it’s diaper. My visitor jumps up in a panic and claims that because they have never witnessed such extreme events, and their visit correlates with the unfortunate behavior, they must have caused it!
Now, if you have evidence that those “at least 20 such abrupt climate changes” occurred due to sudden or massive influxes of CO2, I’d love to see it.
Responding to Aphan (Nov 30, 5.41 pm). Charles Lyell liked to think of the Earth as experiencing slow regular change. Georges Cuvier preferred to think that Earth history was punctuated by catastrophes. Both were right. And we have to understand how both aspects work together to create our climate. A good example of a catastrophic event occurred 55 million years ago at the Palaeocene-Eocene boundary, as I pointed out in my post. That certainly wasn’t a docile event. Equally, during the middle of the last glacial period there were quite short sharp changes, which we call Dansgaard-Oeschger Events. These did not recur during the past 10,000 years of post-glacial Holocene time. But we did see a few sharp changes in the Holocene – like the one 8,200 years ago. That cold event was caused by a massive outbreak of an ice-dammed glacial lake in N America, which cooled the Arctic and is even registered in the Antarctic. Now, the rapid changes of the past 110,000 years that Aphan refers to occured mostly prior to the relatively quiet climate times of the Holocene in which we are living – the last 10,000 years. Hence you cannot say that the normal climate of the Earth “is the climate of sudden extreme jumps–like a light switch flicking on and off”. Your own post in effect says just that. The point of my post is that through modern science we have figured out most of the different variables that force climate change over geological time and into the present. Those paleoclimate studies confirm that CO2 can and does cause the climate to change. Equally they confirm that if something else drives warming, that warming will cause the ocean to emit CO2, which will further warm the climate. This knowledge begs the question – why if the Earth has been cooling due to orbital control over the past 10,000 years, has the climate warmed since 1850? And don’t forget that sunspots are now in decline but our temperature is not. You cannot just dismiss these observations. They have to be scientifically explained, not dismissed by mere opinion.
polar,
You stated that,
“Those paleoclimate studies confirm that CO2 can and does cause the climate to change. ”
This is incorrect. The studies confirm correlation, but not causation. If anything, the studies consistently show that CO2 concentrations are a lagging indicator of temperature and not a leading indicator.
Any second order effects from changes in the CO2 solubility in surface waters are so far down in the noise, why even bother bring it up?
Throughout the Holocene the 50-year average temperature has been bouncing around more than a degree C every few hundred years, often changing at rates (both heating and cooling) far faster than changes in the shorter term averages we measure today. This can’t be dismissed either.
This bouncing around is clearly observed and we have no way to explain it other than as natural variability. Just because we are currently unaware of the specific mechanisms behind this natural variability doesn’t falsify the null hypothesis.
co2isnotevil disagreed with my statement “Those paleoclimate studies confirm that CO2 can and does cause the climate to change.”, by saying “If anything, the studies consistently show that CO2 concentrations are a lagging indicator of temperature and not a leading indicator”. Now, that is not in fact the case. Over long periods of geological time it was the plate tectonically driven change in CO2 that drove changes in temperature. However, in ice cores from the Ice Age it was thought for a long time that CO2 lagged temperature change. It turns out that this perception was due to our inability to accurately match the age of the fossil air in bubbles in the ice to the age of the surrounding ice. In 2013 Frederic Parrenin and a French team showed that it was possible in effect to date the air accurately. Their data showed that in fact ice core CO2 increased and decreased as temperature did, with no delay. That is what any physicist would expect, since when you warm ocean water it releases CO2, and when you cool it, it absorbs CO2. There is no delay. The earlier ice core data on the ages of air bubbles was basically wrong.
The 800 year lag from Vostok was indeed shown to be incorrect, but the DomeC cores, which had a more accurate temporal placement of both CO2 samples and D2O (temp) samples, shows a slightly asymmetric delay between rising and falling levels on the order of a little more than a century. Cores are divided into ‘bags’ and while one bag is sufficient for establishing D2 concentrations for the temperature proxy, many bags are combined to get enough material to establish CO2 concentrations which always represent longer period averages than the temperatures. When you recalculate temperature averages to the same periods corresponding to CO2 averages, the delay becomes even more apparent.
While the temporal relationships of ancient samples can be easily disputed, the timing of more recent samples, for example the DomeC samples of the Holocene, is harder to dispute and still shows the delays. It must be evolutionary biology, as you are right, the ocean responds immediately, but it takes time for enough natural CO2 to accumulate in order to sustain an expanding biosphere. Bear in mind that below 200 ppm, biology is not just CO2 limited, it’s CO2 asphyxiated.
You also need to be able to explain why the last interglacial was so much warmer than the current one, while CO2 levels remained at pre-industrial levels? I know how the orbital influences aligned to cause this, but that also falsifies the idea that CO2 is the driver of the climate.
Even during these ‘hottest years ever’, only 144 W/m^2 is returned to the surface to make up the difference between the 239 W/m^2 received from the Sun and the 385 W/m^2 it emits at its average temperature of about 287K. Of this, about 2/3 comes from clouds trapping surface heat and of the remaining 1/3, only about 1/3 of it can be attributed to CO2, for a total of less than 20 W/m^2 of surface warming attributable to CO2. It’s just not a very important influence. Water, ice and clouds are far more important and these dynamically adapt to the needs of the system.
polarscientist said-
“Now, that is not in fact the case. Over long periods of geological time it was the plate tectonically driven change in CO2 that drove changes in temperature.”
So, plate tectonically driven changes in CO2 no longer count? Or no longer happen? Or are you insinuating that they are so constant and so predictable that we don’t have to even bother to measure the CO2 they emit? Last I heard, we’ve only explored about 10% of the ocean floor, and we’ve found a whole lot of submarine volcanic emissions we didn’t expect to find. Just exactly what do scientists KNOW vs what do scientists estimate/pretend to know?
“However, in ice cores from the Ice Age it was thought for a long time that CO2 lagged temperature change. It turns out that this perception was due to our inability to accurately match the age of the fossil air in bubbles in the ice to the age of the surrounding ice. In 2013 Frederic Parrenin and a French team showed that it was possible in effect to date the air accurately. Their data showed that in fact ice core CO2 increased and decreased as temperature did, with no delay.”
Parrenin’s research suggests that during the last deglaciation, the temperature rose 19 degrees Celsius (34.2 degrees Fahrenheit) while at the same time CO2 levels in the atmosphere rose by about 100 parts per million. Since 1880, CO2 levels have supposedly risen by 120 ppm, but the temperature has only risen by 0.8 C. Nowhere close to 19 degrees C or 34.2 F…and mainstream scientists insist that we’ve locked in a certain number of degrees of increasing temps in the future….a whopping 2-4 C…
So…why the lag now? Why the incredibly SMALL increase in temps relative to increasing CO2 levels by 120 ppm in just 135 years? You can’t have it both ways.
“That is what any physicist would expect, since when you warm ocean water it releases CO2, and when you cool it, it absorbs CO2. There is no delay. The earlier ice core data on the ages of air bubbles was basically wrong.”
GASP! Did you just insist that physics demonstrates that it is the TEMPERATURE of the water that causes a change in it’s CO2 levels, and NOT a change in the CO2 levels in the water that are responsible for it’s change in temperature?…
I’d like to hear more from Dr. Summerhayes. The subject he addresses deserves a post all of its own, and I’m sure Anthony will allow him the space to develop his position. Hope to see it soon.
I’m generally on the sceptical side of the argument, and understood from much of what I had read that it was actually extremely difficult to show a good correlation between CO2 and temperature over the longer geological scales without rolling in some questionable assumptions, but Dr Summerhayes is clearly quite satisfied that it’s a good match. I read his ‘debate’ with Bob Carter and Prof. Courtillot at GWPF and I thought that they didn’t answer him completely, but that might be because both sides were a bit short on specifics, and indeed references. As a group, geologists are a somewhat sceptical lot, so Dr Summerhayes position is most interesting.
But for one so steeped in the long geological timescales I was surprised to hear him add in lessons from ‘the current rapid warming’. Perhaps a conclusion too far.
Reply to mothcatcher, Dec 1, 12:59 am. There is indeed an extensive literature dealing with the geological perspective on climate change. You might want to start with Bob Berner’s 2004 book “The Phanerozoic Carbon Cycle: CO2and O2” published by Oxford University Press. You might also want to dig into “Earth’s Climate Evolution” published in October 2015 by WILEY. Both books cite extensive reference lists for further reading. Courtillot is of course right to point out that Earth’s history was punctuated from time to time by very large igneous eruptions that spewed vast volumes of lava onto the Earth’s surface over large areas (e.g. the Deccan Traps, which covered one third of the surface of India at the end of Cretaceous time). These events clearly altered the atmosphere and ocean temporarily (through a sort of ‘nuclear winter’), which led to the extinction of many species. Equally, we know that Earth was hit from time to time by large asteroids that had much the same effect. Most collisions occurred early in Earth’s history, but the latest big asteroid struck at the end of the Cretaceous, wiping out the ammonites and the dinosaurs.
No. Try reading it again, this time using your brain. Here, I’ll make it easy for ya;
Got it? The claim isn’t made by scientists necessarily – any Tom, Dick or Harry Climatist makes it, in order to help support the “cause”. It’s a total fabrication, of course.
We’re going to have to try drawing pictures or using dolls because he clearly either cannot read and use his brain, or he’s just a trolling liar.
The President of the United States made that quote.
Yes he did.
https://twitter.com/barackobama/status/335089477296988160
The quote refers to “97% of scientists” so you think that a scientist made the quote. No, the President of the United states said that.
If “the consensus” doesn’t think it’s “dangerous”, then why all the fuss in Paris?
(Did any of them ever call it “catastrophic”?)
Please read what the authors have actually written, not what you would like them to have written to in order to support your argument.
A frequent claim in the debate is that a “consensus” or even
“overwhelming consensus” of scientists embrace the more alarming end of
the spectrum of scientific projections of future climate change. Politicians
including President Barack Obama and government agencies including the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (EPA) claim “97 percent
of scientists agree” that climate change is both man-made and dangerous.”
1old and winter,
It seems that your replies were attached to my comment by mistake.
Rather than ask the Mods to figure it out, maybe you can each copy the comment you meant to reply to as a “reply” to mine?
(The simplest way is to right-click on the date and time part of the comment you meant to reply to.
Then click “copy link location”.
Then hit “reply” to my comment.
Then right-click in the comment box and select “paste”.)
1oldnwise4me@reagan.com
Ok If the President of the United States is under the empression that AGW is dangerous who put that thought in his head? The so called “consensus”.
Or are you saying it was unicorns that told him that ?
Oh and why hasn’t the so called “consensus” corrected the President on this matter? Or you yourself; why are you here trying to enlighten us? Scurry scurry quickly Inform the President that the consensus never said AGW was dangerous. We await your oh so noble action.
michael
1oldnwise,
Do you have any clue how ridiculous you sound, or what a complete fool you make of yourself?
Just wondering.
That is the question of the day! I’m torn between ignoring him (since he’s one of those loons that pretends to have the magical ability to read people’s minds and determine that they meant something they didn’t say, or that they have hidden motives etc) or toying with him like a cat at this point.
YAWN…ignoring him it is.
1oldnwise4me@reagan.com November 30, 2015 at 3:25 pm
Mike, the President is a politician.
True, but irreverent.
Someone who the President believed was a knowledgeable and responsible scientist told him AGW was dangerous. The President is under the assumption that there is a consensus, and that the people informing him that AGW is dangerous are part of that consensus. Hence the so called consensus is stating that AGW is dangerous.
Unless you are stating that the people from NOAA, NASA and IPCC that are informing the President on climate change issues are neither part of the so called consensus nor scientists. If that’s what you are implying I would be happy to entertain such a thoughts.
michael
It is clear what is happening here. Obama and others have mis-stated the proven consensus. We can show this easily by looking at the “consensus” papers to see what the consensus is actually about. The actual proven consensus is that global warming is real and substantially man-made. The consensus that has been proved is NOT that it is dangerous.
This of course does not mean that it NOT dangerous, or that the consensus is that it is not dangerous. We do not know for certain what the consensus on dangerousness is because the research has not been done.
OK. So far so good. Obama and others have over-stated the consensus.
Now what does the article say?
““Probably the most widely repeated claim in the debate over global warming is that ‘97% of scientists agree’ that climate change is man-made and dangerous,”
Now we don’t know whether this is widely made or not, let alone the most widely repeated claim. We do know that the scientists that did the studies do not make this claim in their publications. Yet we also know it has been made. I have shown it to be wrong quite simply – because the word dangerous is not in the consensus research. To claim that this is the consensus is therefore a straw man and misleading.
“The authors make a compelling case against claims of a scientific consensus. The purported proof of such a consensus consists of sloppy research by nonscientists, college students, and a highly partisan Australian blogger. Surveys of climate scientists, even those heavily biased in favor of climate alarmism, find extensive disagreement on the underlying science and doubts about its reliability.”
Now the authors are talking about something completely different. They are talking about what the papers actually say, rather than what some other people said the papers said. They have found some possible errors and some disagreements. They have not shown there is no consensus.
There is substantial evidence that the large majority of scientists agree with the consensus. This comes from surveys and reviews of published material. Whether this is actually 97% or 93% is largely immaterial.
There is very little evidence that a majority of scientists disagree with the consensus statement. Every published study shows that a large majority agree. If these are all wrong, then why not do a study that reveals the error? Because it is pretty obvious that there actually is a large majority that agree with the statement.
What do the authors of the book say? “There is no survey or study showing “consensus” on the most important scientific issues, despite frequent claims by advocates to the contrary.” Which are these “most important scientific issues?” This sounds like another straw man. The consensus is on X, but I think Y is more important and there is no consensus on Y. Therefore there is no consensus. Rubbish. Of course scientists disagree about aspects of the science. What they mostly do not disagree about is that global warming is happening and it is substantially man-made.
Really? What’s your opinion of Hanson having the windows closed when he gave his corrupted testimony?
1old,
The ‘dangerous AGW’ scare is, in fact, a HOAX. What don’t you understand about that?
Maybe there were some sincere people who were worried in the late ’90’s, when global T took a very temporary jump. But since then there has been no global warming. At all.
Thus, anyone still promoting the ‘runaway global warming’ scare (now called “climate change”) is engaging in a hoax.
Prior to MLO the atmospheric CO2 concentrations, both paleo ice cores and inconsistent contemporary grab samples, were massive wags. Data at some of NOAA’s tall towers passed through 400 ppm years before MLO reached that level. IPCC AR5 TS.6 claims uncertainty in CO2 concentrations over land. Preliminary data from OCO-2 suggests that CO2 is not as well mixed as assumed. Per IPCC AR5 WG1 chapter 6 mankind’s share of the atmosphere’s CO2 is basically unknown, could be anywhere from 4% to 96%. (IPCC AR5 Ch 6, Figure 6.1, Table 6.1)
The major global C/CO2 reservoirs (not CO2 per se, C is a precursor proxy for CO2), i.e. oceans, atmosphere, vegetation & soil, contain over 45,000 Pg (Gt) of C/CO2. Over 90% of this C/CO2 reserve is in the oceans. Between these reservoirs ebb and flow hundreds of Pg C/CO2 per year, the great fluxes. For instance, vegetation absorbs C/CO2 for photosynthesis producing plants and O2. When the plants die and decay they release C/CO2. A divinely maintained balance of perfection for thousands of years, now unbalanced by mankind’s evil use of fossil fuels.
So just how much net C/CO2 does mankind’s evil fossil fuel consumption add to this perfectly balanced 45,000 Gt cauldron of churning, boiling, fluxing C/CO2? 3 Gt C/CO2. That’s correct, 3. Not 3,000, not 300, 3! How are we supposed to take this seriously? (Anyway 3 is totally assumed/fabricated to make the numbers work.)
IPCC AR5 attributes 2 W/m^2 of unbalancing RF due to the increased CO2 concentration between 1750 and 2011. In the overall global heat balance 2 W (watt is power, not energy) is lost in the magnitude and uncertainty of: ToA, 340 +/- 10, fluctuating albedo of clouds, snow and ice, and the absorption and release of heat from evaporation and condensation of the ocean and water vapor cycle. (IPCC AR5 Ch 8, FAQ 8.1)
IPCC AR5 acknowledges the LTT pause/hiatus/lull/stasis in Text Box 9.2 and laments the failure of the GCMs to model it. IPCC GCMs don’t work because they exaggerate the role, i.e. climate sensitivity, of CO2/GHGs RF in the heat balance and dismiss the role of water vapor because man does not cause nor control it.
The sea ice and sheet ice is expanding not shrinking, polar bear population is the highest in decades, the weather (30 years = climate) is less extreme not more, the sea level rise is not accelerating, the GCM’s are repeat failures, the CAGW hypothesis is coming unraveled, COP21 has all the makings of yet another embarrassing fiasco, IPCC AR6 will mimic SNL’s Roseanne Roseannadanna (Gildna Radner aka Emily Litella), “Well, neeeveeer mind!!”
@ qld wise:
“Probably the most widely repeated claim in the debate over global warming is that ‘97% of scientists agree’ that climate change is man-made and dangerous,” the authors write. “This claim is not only false, but its presence in the debate is an insult to science.”
The authors of the book said this read it and weep ( if you understand what a premise is)
sorry @ oldnwise
Let’s diagram that sentence for oldnbraindead shall we? Actually written, as if you were reading the book, not quoting the book, here’s how the above would appear:
***************
Probably the most widely repeated claim in the debate over global warming is that “97% of scientists agree” that climate change is man-made and dangerous. This claim is not only false, but its presence in the debate is an insult to science.
***************************
I asked my 12 year old daughter if she knew what a direct quote was. She said that she did, so I had her read the above paragraph and then I asked her “Is part of that paragraph a direct quote? ”
“Yes” she answered.
Which part is a direct quote?”
She said “The words between the quotation marks”.
I said “Show me”. She pointed to the words “97% of scientists agree”.
I asked “What about the rest of the sentence after the marks? Aren’t they a direct quote or part of the direct quote?”
“Nope” she said.
1oldnwise4me does not have the grammatical skills that my 12 year old daughter has.
I tried to follow Aphan’s English punctuation lesson below.
I was comprehending reasonably well, until I came to this wording:
…..Which part is a direct quote?”……
Where the ….. at each end is something delimiting which I added.
So I’m trying to understand what the part between the ….. and ….. is.
Can somebody better at English grammar than I am, help me out, please ?
g
When it comes to English grammar and punctuation, I don’t follow any kind of rule book.
What results is a mix of freedom of speech, and copyrighted artistic material.
So it is not intended to be proper English grammar or spelling, or punctuation or anything else.
I wrote it, it is my own copyrighted creative expression.
So if you don’t approve of my art works, you are always free to produce your own.
I think Shakespeare wrote ‘funnily’. But it is his stuff so he can write it any way he likes as far as I am concerned. I even like watching some of his plays. I can’t be bothered to read any of his plays, because of that funny writing. And by “funny”, I don’t mean comedic, but more like strange or weird.
But I say strange or weird, because most normal people don’t talk or write that way. But he did, so live with it.
A lot of serious music composers; sometimes called classical music composers, write so distinctively, that their music can be identified from just a few notes. There are some composers that I can identify just from hearing a single note of one of their works. I may not identify the work for a while, but I often can peg the composer from a single note.
I think in virtually all such cases, it will be orchestral music, so it will be the orchestration of that single note that identifies that composer.
There is at least one French composer and one Czech composer that I often peg from a single note. I believe that the longest single sustained note in all of music, was written by a German composer. (137 bars of a bottom E flat played on string basses) Which is weird, because the bottom string on a string bass, is an E string.
There is a lot of ‘ music ‘ that I can’t identify after hearing the entire work. And after hearing the entire work, I could not hum a few bars from anywhere in the work; there’s basically nothing hummable in there. For some strange reason, most of that sort of music ends in a vowel. (well the writer of it does).
There is more music that ends in a (z) that I like, than there is that ends in a vowel, that I like.
g
george e. smith-
The line that confused you should read “Which part is a direct quote?”
The line is, ironically, a direct quote, but the first set of quotation marks- before the word Which-didn’t make it to the screen after my editing process for some reason. 🙂
Most people do not follow any kind of rule book regarding punctuation and grammar in daily written conversation. But if, for some reason, something they say is unclear to me, or could be taken some other way, I always ask them to clarify what they meant for me.
Your mention of the works of classical music is a great illustration of what my point here is. The only way that a musician can accurately reproduce exactly what the composer wrote, is by accurately following the rules of musical composition. Anyone with even the most basic ability to read music knows that written music doesn’t just tell us which note to strike on a keyboard or play on an instrument, but also how long to hold that note, how loudly to play it, whether or not to connect it to the notes around it or play it independently, how many beats to count per measure, when to stop playing, tempo of the piece etc. If you don’t follow the “rule book” that establishes the proper way to read and play music, you aren’t going to produce the music intended by the composer. You can play whatever you like, but you can’t declare that what you played is what the composer wrote, unless it matches the music exactly.
Published, non-fiction, non-“art” literature in the United States, DOES follow English grammar and punctuation rules unless otherwise noted by the author. Book publishers employ a variety of editors for the very purpose of making sure that what the author(s) meant, is clearly understood by readers. Shakespeare wrote fiction, and made up a great deal of the language used in his plays. No one spoke like Shakespeare’s characters do, even back then.
The paragraph I showed my daughter includes one sentence which is used by a poster to insinuate that the authors’ are guilty of writing a book based on what that poster declared to be a “strawman” premise. He did so based only upon how HE interpreted that sentence, not on how the sentence is actually written. (He can play the music any way he likes, but he cannot claim that his music represents what the composers wrote, because his music is different than what is actually written). Both the punctuation of that sentence, and the context in which it appears, indicate that according to the basic, established rules of English grammar and punctuation-which even my 12 year old knows- the poster is making a false accusation against the authors.
President Obama tweeted that “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real,
man-made and dangerous”
I think this is the basis of what the authors are stating
The reader doesn’t get to assume to know what the basis is. What you THINK they meant is irrelevant. You get to read what they said and understand it based the grammar and punctuation they chose to express themselves. They aren’t QUOTING ANYONE or anything outside of the words “97% of scientists agree” . Those are the only words encased in quotes by the authors. They do NOT include the words man-made and dangerous inside of quotation marks. Nor do they attribute the part they do quote, -“97% of scientists agree”-to anyone or anything. Not to a study on “consensus” or multiple studies on “consensus”. Not to the President. Not to John Cook et al. They merely state it is the most frequently used term in the debate and that not only is it false, but it’s an insult to science to use it.
1oldnwise4me thinks he gets to ASSUME that they meant “consensus studies” when they actually said “the debate” and keeps throwing a hissy fit because there aren’t any consensus studies that use the word dangerous. But the authors NEVER SAID THERE WAS. He’s out of his mind on this one.
SummerHaze says :
Right now sunspots are in decline. So our current climate should be cool (orbital), and cooling (sunspots). Clearly it is not.
WoW – complete slight of hand – 180 degree shift – baffling with “facts ?” – carnival trickery. You must be a long time pro of the big top circuit !
In the mean, take some time to review CURRENT climate science – Satellite Temp data, Ice data from BOTH poles and oh, say, maybe the percent error reported in the yearly ” hottest [year, month, season} EVER ” crap coming out of NOAA and NASA.
People who believe the propaganda really think despite no real warm weather, that this is the ‘hottest year evah’. This storyline has been peddled desperately.
Rural Montana, Hardin/Big Horn county temper tour update. 7 degree temperature differential on Thanksgiving day between two digital thermometers 5 blocks apart. 8 degree differential on Friday by same two digital sensers.
I have google accounts and I go to google news to see what MSM thinks I should be seeing. Today I have found global warming/climate change pitches under every category – top, world, US, business, and science – except the one category where it belongs = politics (and, if they had one, progressive propaganda for taxes)
Whenever I hear a piece on this on NPR state radio, I call local affiliate and ask if the progs paid for that advertising.
Good news movie release = http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/11/29/skeptical-climate-documentary-set-to-rock-un-climate-summit-film-to-have-red-carpet-premiere-in-paris/
Climate Hustle
Socialism: the new name for Cargo Cult Politics.
Scientists strongly disagree about CAGW because there’s absolutely no overlap between the skeptics estimates of effect and the effect required by the IPCC to justify its existence driving the belief in which side is right to become bifurcated along political lines. Whenever politics gets involved in anything, the first casualty is objectivity.
“Scientists strongly disagree about CAGW”
Now that I know that we were quite warmer for multiple civilizations over the course of the past 10,000 years, I am shocked that any scientist (ascriber to the scientific method) would do anything but laugh at the notion.
Have I missed something ?
“Have I missed something ?”
Yes. The many warming periods we have seen in the past were not catastrophic nor anthropogenic nor attributable to CO2. It was just natural GW.
C02
And thus there should be NO scientist (as defined by those that use the scientific method) disagreeing on whether CAGW if foolish. My advice to the science community is that once this little hoax gets realized by a mass of the population, the so called science community better be prepared for a good ass whipping.
Your PNAS paper cited below is just about the supposed consensus, not about climate. So it doesn’t address danger. It does commit to the 97% claim, though, i.e., “This result closely agrees with expert surveys, indicating that ≈97% of self-identified actively publishing climate scientists agree with the tenets of ACC (2).
Their 97% reference (2) is to “P. T. Doran and M. K. Zimmerman (2009) Examining the scientific consensus on climate change, Eos Trans. AGU 90, 22–23. Turns out the 97% was 75 of 77 respondents to an survey of 3146 participants, who identified themselves as climate scientists. Probably climate modelers. And climate modelers aren’t scientists. Oh, well.
If you want 97% plus danger, check out this quelle official NASA website that says, first thing, “Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals1 show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities.” followed by a series of official statements of alarm.
Your IOP source is just the 2013 Cook/Nuccitelli crock survey of consensus, so that wouldn’t be relevant, either.
That survey, IIRC by a grad student and her adviser, was of 10,257 scientists, of whom only 3146 responded. Then the 79 climate science “specialists” were cherry picked to get the desired result, even though the two questions asked could have been answered in the affirmative by many skeptics.
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
The questions were:
1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
“Significant” was not defined. Even I would allow that mean global temperature has probably risen since the coldest part of the 19th century, ie the Dalton Minimum, near the end of the LIA. But so what? There is no reason to think that human activity contributed significantly to whatever rise has occurred since then. The change is well within normal, natural bounds. However, if significant implies 5%, then I might have answered yes. But 50% or greater, no.
Information Request (Please)
Does anyone have a weblink to an example of a fully functional molten salt reactor ?
@ knuteseaNovember 30, 2015 at 3:30 pm It seems that one was built and operated at Oak Ridge National Laboratories in the 1960’s. See the article at the following web site for mor information.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/540991/meltdown-proof-nuclear-reactors-get-a-safety-check-in-europe/
Thanks Ray
That was the best source I’ve found as well.
The MSRE was a 7.4 MWth test reactor simulating the neutronic “kernel” of a type of inherently safer epithermal thorium breeder reactor called the liquid fluoride thorium reactor. It primarily used two fuels: first uranium-235 and later uranium-233. The latter 233UF4 was the result of breeding from thorium in other reactors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment
Thanks CG
I’m looking for more detail.
Perhaps an update on where China is with theirs.
Was hoping someone had a line on a near functional one.
This little man is beginning to see that the ship has sailed on CAGW. It is total BS, but people are moving on. That’s what Paris means to me. The flow of money is headed toward this nuke lovefest and grid rebuilds. Sad little testament to how us little monkeys get to the place we are going.
There is no consensus and the science is not settled, yet it is undeniable that the majority of climate scientists believe that more than 50% of recent global warming is due to the increase in GHGs.
Does this mean that they are right? No
Does this mean that they are part of a conspiracy to hide the truth? Obviously not. They genuinely believe it.
In any case science is not a democratic endeavor. Whoever is right now will be right in the future when the matter is settled.
Javier,
You keep making baseless statements like that, but you can never back them up with measurements.
Thus, they are assertions; nothing more. It is merely their opinion that “50%” of global warming is due to human emissions.
Either post verifiable, testable measurements quantifying AGW — or you are nothing more than their propagandist, parroting the alarmist crowd’s bogus nonsense.
You seem to have a reading problem, dbstealey, as I did not say in my post what was my opinion. I only talked about the opinion of climate scientists and I am not one of them. Neither are you one, clearly. With those reading skills you wouldn’t make it that far.
Well then, Javier, tell us what you believe:
• Is the 20th/21st Century rise in CO2 a problem?
• Has the climate Null Hypothesis been falsified?
• Does ‘consensus’ matter in science? If so, which side has the consensus?
• Do you believe that human CO2 emissions will cause dangerous global warming?
• Should the alarmist crowd stop making predictions that don’t come true?
• Why won’t alarmist scientists admit that all of their frightening predictions have failed?
• What do you think of people who live their lives as if they don’t believe a word they’re saying? This includes Gore, Mann, Obama, Cook, Jones, etc., etc.
• Why do you think all alarmist scientists are hiding out from fair, moderated, public debates with skeptics? Why won’t they answer questions (like Gavin Schmidt getting up and leaving an interview rather than discussing his views)?
• Why do you think the alarmist crowd enjoys weather catastrophes?
• Do you believe the number “97%”? In any context? Or do you think it is propaganda? Does ‘97%’ have any legitimate place in the discussion?
• Is it acceptable to lie for a good cause? (Noble Cause Corruption)
• When have you ever specifically rebuked alarmists by name for egregious statements and claims?
• Is there any verifiable, measurable evidence quantifying man-made global warming?
Maybe I’m wrong about where you’re coming from, Javier. I’m rarely wrong about people, after I’ve seen enough of their comments. But I’m not infallible. If I’m wrong, your answers to those bullet points can clear that up. I’m never afraid to apologize. If it’s warranted.
dbstealy,
I’ll play along because I am basically a nice person.
• Is the 20th/21st Century rise in CO2 a problem?
No
• Has the climate Null Hypothesis been falsified?
Yes. CO2 has caused some warm as we have discussed before.
• Does ‘consensus’ matter in science? If so, which side has the consensus?
No
• Do you believe that human CO2 emissions will cause dangerous global warming?
No
• Should the alarmist crowd stop making predictions that don’t come true?
Yes
• Why won’t alarmist scientists admit that all of their frightening predictions have failed?
I don’t know. My guess is that most people don’t like being wrong.
• What do you think of people who live their lives as if they don’t believe a word they’re saying? This includes Gore, Mann, Obama, Cook, Jones, etc., etc.
Almost everybody fits that category.
• Why do you think all alarmist scientists are hiding out from fair, moderated, public debates with skeptics? Why won’t they answer questions (like Gavin Schmidt getting up and leaving an interview rather than discussing his views)?
I don’t know. My guess is they think they have little to gain.
• Why do you think the alarmist crowd enjoys weather catastrophes?
Basic human nature. People like scary movies.
• Do you believe the number “97%”? In any context? Or do you think it is propaganda? Does ‘97%’ have any legitimate place in the discussion?
That number is bullshit.
• Is it acceptable to lie for a good cause? (Noble Cause Corruption)
For a scientists it is not. For a politician lying goes in the job description.
• When have you ever specifically rebuked alarmists by name for egregious statements and claims?
I do it all the time. I have been call a denier quite often, also an alarmist sometimes.
• Is there any verifiable, measurable evidence quantifying man-made global warming?
I don’t know. There is clear qualitative evidence as we have talked before.
OK Javier, thanks for playing.
I won’t quibble with your personal opinions, although when you say “Almost everybody fits that category”, I have to point out that I don’t, Anthony doesn’t, most readers here don’t, and neither do most people I know. That’s what hypocrites do, and I have a very low opinion of hypocrites.
But when you claim the Null Hypothesis has been falsified, you’re directly contradicted by climatologist Roy Spencer — who I’ll defer to as being far more knowledgeable than you (and he’s not afraid to use his full name). Dr. Spencer stated that the null hypothesis has never been falsified.
Your failed rationale:
“CO2 has caused some warm as we have discussed”
“Caused some warm”, eh? Then QUANTIFY it! With measurements.
Post verifiable, testable, real world that specifically quantify the fraction of AGW out of all global warming from natural sources, such as the recovery of the planet from the LIA, and Milankovich cycles, and icehouse/hothouse cycles, and volcanoes, etc., etc.
What?? You say you don’t have any such measurements? Don’t feel bad, Javier, no one else does, either. I’ve been asking for years, but no one has ever posted any verifiable measurements acceptable to the general scientific community.
For one thing, such measurements would resolve the question of the climate sensitivity number, which currently ranges all over the map, from 6ºC+, to 3ºC, to ≈1ºC, and ≈0.3ºC, 0.47ºC… and even 0.00ºC (Prof. Ferenc Miskolczi).
If we knew the sensitivity number, we could accurately forecast future global warming. But as everyone here knows, no one was able to forecast the most significant, major, global temperature event of the past century: the fact that global warming has stopped. And it hasn’t just stopped for a few years; global warming stopped more than 18 years ago, and it hasn’t been seen since.
That, of course, makes AGW merely a conjecture (one I accept, BTW).
The fact that CO2 has risen a little (from 3 parts in 10,000, to only 4 parts in 10,000 over a century) means nothing; CO2 has risen to 18X – 20X current levels in the past, with no runaway global warming (and really, without causing any global warming at all).
Thus, everything we observe now has happened before, and to a much greater degree. That means the climate Null Hypothesis has never been falsified (if you don’t understand the Null Hypothesis, I can explain it for you; just ask).
Your argument that “CO2 has caused some warm” is no argument at all. Because you don’t know that, you’re just assuming. To know that, you need to produce real world measurements quanifying AGW. If you can, you will be the first to do so. You want that Nobel Prize attached to your one and only name, don’t you… Javier?
OK, dbstealey,
You are a little extremist. Most people say they want to eat healthy and then eat pizza, they say they want to exercise more and then spend most of their free time watching TV series. I wouldn’t call them hypocrites. Human nature is not very strong and is quite inconsistent.
You call the principle of authority on Roy Spencer yet refuse to acknowledge the authority of the many expert climate scientists that far outweigh him. You see, inconsistent. If the principle of authority stands, then you lose, if it doesn’t Roy Spencer’s opinion is just one opinion.
When you demand “that I post verifiable, testable, real world measurements that specifically quantify the fraction of AGW out of all global warming from natural sources”, you place impossible (at present) requirements from science. Science doesn’t work like that and it shows that you are not familiar with science and that you don’t want to believe regardless of the evidence.
There is convincing evidence that CO2 should produce warming and there is convincing evidence that some unnatural warming has been produced recently. That is why so many scientists believe the bogus unproven hypothesis that all or most warming has been produced by CO2. Because it is consistent with a lot of evidence. Why do you think most scientists believe it?
I don’t care if you say that to believe in God He has to appear to you in person or if to believe in evolution you have to see a species evolve with your own eyes. Your impossible demand of measurements that quantify the fraction of AGW says nothing about AGW being right or wrong. But you are unable to understand this because you are not familiar with science. That is why you look for authorities like Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen that agree with you while rejecting all other authorities. The only criteria that makes them an authority in your eyes is their agreement with you. It is pretty pathetic that you don’t realize. If any of them were to change his opinion they would immediately cease being an authority in your eyes. You place impossible demands and you are the sole arbiter of authority. That you believe that you are basing your position in science is an exercise of that hypocrisy that you so criticize.
Before looking at the evidence I believed in dangerous AGW. When I started looking at the evidence I stopped believing and went to believe that CO2 warming has not been proven, like you. Until I found the evidence that proves that some human CO2 warming has taken place. I am driven by evidence, and ready to change my opinion if available evidence so requires.
To me the interesting question is why there is no more anthropogenic warming. After all we have put in the atmosphere a quarter of the stuff, and CO2 is a GHG. The evidence says that it causes little warming so most of the heat must go back to space. This is puzzling.
Javier,
To answer your question, there’s not more anthropogenic warming because consensus climate science has over-estimated the effect by about a factor of 4 and perhaps even more. No legitimate skeptic I know of claims that there is no effect and the debate is all about the size of the effect On top of this, all historic warming has been beneficial to mankind, so even if there was a significant CAGW effect, it could be only beneficial, which is consistently denied by the consensus because it conflicts with the narrative.
If you do a deep dive on the science, the only support for the claimed sensitivity of 0.8C per W/m^2 comes from coincidence for cause and speculation for consequence. The claimed sensitivity is so incredibly wrong and its support so incredibly weak it boggles the mind how ostensibly intelligent scientists have let it stand and this leads to why so many have a hard time accepting how wrong they are. Scientists make mistakes, especially when results are guided by politics.
The only explanation is the conflict of interest at the IPCC has driven the science into darkness in order to support otherwise unsupportable agendas, specifically using climate reparations as an excuse for redistributive economics and supporting the repressive green agenda.
Javier says:
OK, dbstealey, You are a little extremist.
That’s your response to Dr. Spencer’s statement? My challenge to you to post verifiable, testable, real world that specifically quantifies the fraction of AGW out of all global warming from natural sources? Then you admited there isn’t any such evidence, saying:
Science doesn’t work like that and it shows that you are not familiar with science and that you don’t want to believe regardless of the evidence… There is convincing evidence that CO2 should produce warming and there is convincing evidence that some unnatural warming has been produced recently. Once again: WHAT “evidence”?? Quantify that “unnatural warming with verifiable evidence, Javier. Your baseless assertions mean nothing without independent corroboration. And:
Javier, that is exactly how science works: you make a conjecture, and skeptics question it. Now you have the onus of producing convincing evidence to support your conjecture. But you keep tap-dancing around the fact that you have no evidence to support what you claim. Without measurements, AGW is simply a conjecture. Nothing more (one that I accept, but the fact that no measurements have ever been found for AGW means that AGW must be too minuscule to detect).
Re: Dr. Spencer, your response is to claim that many expert climate scientists that far outweigh him. What? No names? No links? No citations? Then you lose.
Next, you again baselessly assert:
…all or most warming has been produced by CO2. Because it is consistent with a lot of evidence. Why do you think most scientists believe it?
Your injection of your personal beliefs is tedious. You cannot produce the evidence requested, but you give your opinion as if there is evidence. There’s not. Name those “most scientists” who believe that “all or most warming” is caused by CO2. That is another challenge that I expect you will tap-dance around, but never answer. It also shows that I was right about you from the get-go. You pretend to be unbiased, but in fact you are right in the middle of the alarmist camp. You certainly have zero scientific skepticism.
Next, you say:
Your impossible demand of measurements that quantify the fraction of AGW says nothing about AGW being right or wrong. But you are unable to understand this because you are not familiar with science.
You wrote that pompous, insufferable statement because you can’t produce the data I requested. There are many other scientists who ask the same question. Since you don’t understand this, I think I need to explain it to you:
In science, data is essential. Measurements are data. Data is evidence. But you can’t produce the required measurements, even though there is no physical law that precludes measuring your claimed effect — if the effect is large enough to measure. In the case of AGW, obviously it’s not.
Finally, you say:
I found the evidence that proves that some human CO2 warming has taken place. I am driven by evidence…
No, you did not ‘find evidence’. You merely asserted that you’ve found evidence. That is what I’ve been asking you to produce, but throughout your lengthy explanations you have never produced a single measurement. Instead, you cry about it:
You place impossible demands and you are the sole arbiter of authority.
That is something I’ve never claimed. The challenges I issued to you are fair and science-based. Your problem is that you can’t meet them. So you say I’m making “impossible demands”.
No, Javier, I am simply asking you to measure the degree of global warming caused by CO2 emissions. You admit that you cannot produce measurements quantifying that claim. Therefore, either AGW doesn’t exist, or AGW is so minuscule it cannot be measured with current technology.
I think the latter is the case. If I am correct, then AGW is a complete non-problem, and no more public money should be wasted on the ‘dangerous AGW’ scare. If AGW cannot be quantified after a century of trying, then more funding of ‘climate studies’ is just wasted effort.
A little OT but I was just watching a show on the History channel about the men who built America. An interesting part was that JP Morgan was the first person in the world to have electric lights in his home. He recognized the future value of electric lighting but his father, also a very smart business man, thought it belonged in carnivals and something else that I forgot.
Mark Twain was one of the first people in the world to have a telephone in his house. He thought of it as a novelty. He was begged to invest money into the new tech. He refused. He did invest heavily in some auto typesetting company. The company went bust and Mark Twain died heavy in debt.
My point is that there have been many brilliant people that have been very wrong. I think that if many people were aware of the many examples where the prevailing notions and smart people were flat wrong that they might be more willing to be more skeptical about dangerous climate change dogma.
“My point is that there have been many brilliant people that have been very wrong. I think that if many people were aware of the many examples where the prevailing notions and smart people were flat wrong that they might be more willing to be more skeptical about dangerous climate change dogma.”
Good point.
Like a safe space (hahahaha, no really) for the cognitive dissonance to let its guard down.
Re the Men who built America, that is one of the best documentaries I have seen on TV. It should be mandatory viewing in our education system so our youth understand how we got to where we are and where we would be without the competition between these men and their achievements. One benefit they enjoyed was very little Government regulation so such growth is impossible today. Without the accomplishments and competition between these men, we would be living in a world and candles and horse drawn carriages. One part of the series that I found most interesting is that when Rockefeller realized that his kerosene sales were ending he went to his Labs to invent gasoline which changed the energy of our transportation system for the entire universe.
http://www.history.com/shows/men-who-built-america
Wrong, lord Armstrong was in 1868. He built his own hydroelectric scheme and power electric light bulbs in his house, also was before Edison. the system is still operational.
Grey. I may have thought that the program said the world when they only said in the US. I am aware that us Yanks think our people invented everything worth a hoot. I am aware that many great technical things were created by British people. Jet engines and radar off the top of my head. Oh and don’t forget the first exploding jet airliner the Comet. Did the UK ever build a car that didn’t spend more time in the shop than on the road? The Hillman minx I had was not reliable but it sure was fun to drive. Only trying to give the British a humorous jab. When I lived in Australia I ask why they always poked fun at the British. The reply was because we can. I love the British sense of humor. We need more of that in the US.
Grey. I found the History Channel episode about JP Morgan’s house on youtube. They did say that he had the first electrically lighted house. My mistake for believing anything that the history channel put on. They also are on the CAGW bandwagon. Thanks for setting me straight.
I know quite a lot of ” scientists ” personally, and have known many more during the last 60 years or so.
Based on those experiences, I would be very surprised if 97% of ALL scientists, were sufficiently schooled in ” climate science; i.e. climate physics, climate chemistry, climate biology, climate geology, climate geography, etc. etc. ” To be able to reach THEIR OWN conclusions about the validity of the claims on which the whole organization of this UN Paris COP 21 festival is based.
Remember we are talking about a purported global problem that is claimed to be the single most important problem that this planet, and its flora and fauna; including all of humanity, are facing today, and for the forseeable future.
As a side issue to this observation of mine (as to competence), I would refer to a study sponsored by I believe the American Institute of Physics (to which I belong) that studied the Science careers of Physics PhD graduates from all USA universities or colleges that grant PhD degrees.
That study showed that 30% of all USA university PhD graduates in Physics, obtained a permanent full time job working in their area of expertise. Another 5% of such Physics PhD graduates, obtained a temporary job in their field of expertise; but then had to undergo a career change, and learn how to do something else for a living.
65% of all USA university PhD graduates in Physics, NEVER obtain a full time permanent job working in their field of expertise.
It would appear that they are perhaps the single world expert in their area of expertise, and can’t find anybody else who is interested enough in that field, to pay money to hire somebody to work on it. No doubt their PhD “mentor” convinced them that they would be writing the pioneering science papers in that field.
Apparently they end up as post Doc. fellows working in some institution or other, and often in some taxpayer funded enterprise. Many of them will become “mentors” for other unsuspecting would be Physics PhD candidates.
If you are planning on seeking a PhD degree in Physics, it might pay to study the want ads years before, to see what profit making enterprises, are willing to pay money to learn more about, before you choose your thesis subject.
I once considered getting a PhD in ice cream making. Luckily, I never completed my MSc thesis write up, nor the final exams; so I had to go and get a paying job as a physicist doing stuff that somebody wanted to pay me for. Luckily, I did have both the high school and University training to do pretty much whatever my first non academia profit making company wanted me to do for them.
So yes; I don’t believe that 97% of all scientists are even competent to independently judge the peer reviewed science in climatology, and reach their own conclusions as to the reality of the purported problem.
As a corollary to that statement; I do not believe that I am personally competent to evaluate at least 97% of all peer reviewed science.
I have seen papers in “Reviews of Modern Physics” wherein, I could not even understand any words longer than four letters.
G << g
I hasten to add, that I DO believe in climate change; specially how it changes from one place to another on this planet; and often by much more than one deg. F, which si how much we have supposedly warmed (catastrophically) in the last 150 years.
I also believe in global warming. I remember it happening in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
And I also believe that CO2 does absorb some part of the roughly 288 Kelvin, roughly black body LWIR radiation that is emitted from the earth surface into the atmosphere; generally in the 13.5 to 16.5 micron wavelength region. (out of about a 5.0 to 80 micron near BB spectrum ) containing some 98% or so of that LWIR radiant energy.
I haven’t seen anything that convinces me, that any of that is a problem; nor do I know of any realistic practical way to affect any of that.
g
Maybe when they say that 97% of scientists agree, they are referring to a group of specific scientists who work for the IPCC.
When people write books, and they directly quote someone, they are REQUIRED to include a footnote or credit the person they are directly quoting in the index of that book, in order to NOT be accused of plagiarism. Scientists as credentialed as the authors are, would do it out of sheer habit from years of research and writing. The publisher of the book sends it through editing multiple times to assure that something like that isn’t missed or misrepresented.
Unless that book has a footnote or credits that reveal they were quoting a specific person or specific group of people, those quotations marks work like air quotes would in spoken speech. The reader who attempts to convince others that the authors of the book were quoting a specific person or group when the writers did not indicate that they were, is a moron. Those who believe that reader deserve the same label.
So you don’t dispute the “97% agree” but claim that the word “dangerous” is not used in reference to the debate.
I can give you “danger”……………http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3338274/Flying-boulders-danger-climate-change-Scientists-warn-giant-rocks-catapulted-air-powerful-superstorms-caused-global-warming.html
James Hansen got hot and sweaty over them.
http://www.hickoryrecord.com/news/another-danger-of-climate-change-giant-flying-boulders/article_061d1d36-965c-11e5-8d48-3b5bc286704c.html
In this instance the so called “flying boulders” are erosional remnants despite exciting claims to the contrary.
http://www.eleuthera-map.com/cow-bull-eleuthera.htm
https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2002AM/finalprogram/abstract_39280.htm
The there’s Dana Nuccitelli….always good for a bit of danger
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/jul/02/new-study-warns-of-dangerous-climate-change-risks-to-the-earths-oceans
1oldwise states, “If you examine the ERL report ( http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024;jsessionid=D5454169ECE6711D77523A3D23867CA1.c4.iopscience.cld.iop.org) you will NOT find the word “dangerous.”
If you carefully examine the report, you will also find that the consensus is 1.6%, not 97%, Cook had to combine 3 categories to come up with his phony 97% figure. What a fraud.
Whoa! If it is not dangerous, why all the hootin’ and hollerin’? And billions of dollars spent on amelioration? And did you get the basis of the 97%? I guess not. It is a religion with you idio…folks.
Not in the least a strawman.
https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/335089477296988160
oldnwise: I agree, words matter.
1. ‘97% of scientists agree’ that the earth is warming and is man-made and dangerous,”
2. ‘97% of scientists agree’ that the earth is warming and is man made.”
3. 97% of scientists agree that the earth is warming and that man is contributing to that warming.”
4. 97% of scientists agree that manmade C02 from fossil fuels is causing dangerous global warming.”
1. The first statement has no support. I agree with you that it is not true. But isn’t it sad that the President promotes it as a true fact when it isnt? FALSE.
2. The second statement you SO rely on is also false. No study says 97 percent of all scientists say its ALL man made. Most scientists know there is non AGW to even some degree. EXAGERRATED.
3. The third statement is what was studied in most studies. But it is meaningless and tells us nothing helpful. So why repeat it? What good is a meaningless statement in the debate. MEANINGLESS.
4. The fourth statement is what the CAGW crowd thinks any one of the first three statements mean. They are irrational or are misleading. IRRATIONAL AND MISLEADING.
To me, the arguments made by the CAGW are either FALSE, EXAGGERATED, MEANINGLESS, IRRATIONAL, OR MISLEADING.
Words matter.
B
“Probably the most widely repeated claim in the debate over global warming is that ‘97% of scientists agree’ that climate change is man-made and dangerous,”
Okay 1oldnwise4me@reagan.com Lets Work on grammar and reading comprehension. The key part of the sentence is the first part ( “Probably the most widely repeated claim in the debate ) now the sentence does not specify who is making the the claim. It could be the scientists, politicians news commentators or bar tenders. The sole question in regards to the sentence is; drum roll please, are people in whatever profession, trade or tirade making the claim; that 97% of scientists agree’ that climate change is man-made and dangerous …
The book abstract is discussing misinformation and the prevalence of the “widely repeated claim” in society.
Uhm, is English a second language for you? You seem to have some trouble with it. Hmm, I doubt you are young enough for common core to have left you in such straits.
anyway have a good night
michael
Oldnwise. The fact you were right on one word when Mike is correct is why you are being pummeled here. The book deals with the widely held claim, a claim I hear everyday, and that is not true. Why make a big case of whether it is a strawman when both you and he agree its not true, unless you think the statement without the word dangerous is meaningful. it is not, so why are you defending either one.
Your making a distinction as if it means something to leave off the word dangerous to arrive at another untrue statement is no better.
“This claim is not only false, but its presence in the debate is an insult to science.”
I’m dying here! Not only does 1oldnwise4me either lack or deny the basic grammatical protocols that rendered his arguments completely false from the beginning, but he is oblivious to the FACT that the authors of the book AGREE that the claim is false just one sentence later!
ROFL he just becomes more and more insane with every post.
Sorry to be pedantic but while words matter so does punctuation…….
2. ‘97% of scientists agree’ that the earth is warming and is man made.”
Not many scientists would agree that the earth is man made, warming or otherwise.
GJK. Agree, poor grammar but I didn’t say grammar mattered.
So the President is lying when he says this is the most important long range problems facing us is climate change? Sounds something like a dangerous problem if ignored.
“….you will NOT find the word “dangerous.” …”
Great. Not dangerous? So what is all the fuss about then?
Quite true, you don’t find dangerous used in that specific report [ by the usual suspects ].
However there are plenty of other examples where it is used…..
I can give you “danger”……………http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3338274/Flying-boulders-danger-climate-change-Scientists-warn-giant-rocks-catapulted-air-powerful-superstorms-caused-global-warming.html
James Hansen got hot and sweaty over the giant rocks.
http://www.hickoryrecord.com/news/another-danger-of-climate-change-giant-flying-boulders/article_061d1d36-965c-11e5-8d48-3b5bc286704c.html
Unfortunately the so called “flying boulders” are erosional remnants despite exciting claims to the contrary.
http://www.eleuthera-map.com/cow-bull-eleuthera.htm
https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2002AM/finalprogram/abstract_39280.htm
Then there’s Dana Nuccitelli….always good for a bit of danger
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/jul/02/new-study-warns-of-dangerous-climate-change-risks-to-the-earths-oceans
Quote
In 1868, a hydraulic engine was installed, with water being used to power labour-saving machines such as laundry equipment, a rotisserie and a hydraulic lift. In 1870, water from one of the estate’s lakes was used to drive a Siemens dynamo in what was the world’s first hydroelectric power station. The resultant electricity was used to power an arc lamp installed in the Gallery in 1878. The arc lamp was replaced in 1880 by Joseph Swan’s incandescent lamps in what Swan considered ‘the first proper installation’ of electric lighting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cragside
Unquote
Correct attributions are important
It’s a shell game, it’s *always* a shell game. They (the dreaded *They*, in this case CAGW-pushing scientists and hangers-on) push CAGW to the press and politicians and then subtract the “C” when you challenge them to make them sound more reasonable and you less.
It’s exactly like saying “weather isn’t climate” when it’s cold and then running around like a chicken with their head cut off on a hot day.
When someone continually lies to me, I stop trusting them. I know, it’s shocking.
Instead of debate over what is the major cause of Global Warming, find the ways to stop it, it looks like now or never.
Eh, stop throwing yourself on the floor to get attention.
Its unbecoming.
Let’s get past this CAGW business and get onto the real business.
I’m not willing to give you my money for energy sources that don’t work as well as the one I currently have.
I’m also not willing to give you money for some grand global save the planet scheme.
So stop already.
I am interested in this. Your men, Gates, Buffet, Soros, Zuckerman others are funding this tech.
How far out is it till I can use it to replace what I have.
Stop the childish arm flailing and send me a plan.
http://terrestrialenergy.com/imsr-technology/
A quick summary of the facts:
The planet experienced rapid warming from between 17500 and 11000 years ago, with low CO2 levels and no human industry whatsoever. Great ice sheets a mile think melted quickly and raised sea levels 130m. Now that was true catastrophic warming.
Then from 11000 years ago to today, the planet has become progressively cooller on aggregate from the Holocene Optimum, even as CO2 levels have continued to rise. Sea level rise has dropped to a few mm a year. The world has been for most a warm, wet, productive land that has allowed us to grow immensely as a species, with a few relatively small-scale catastrophes here and there.
In the short term, the temperatures dropped from the Medieval Warm Period into the cold of the Little Ice Age and then warmed slightly into the Modern Warm Period, coinciding with the beginning of the Oil Age but not caused by it.
In the short-short term, satellite data, the most reliable and globe-covering, not relying on data from ships and buckets and buoys and weather stations that haven’t provided data since the 1920s and “adjustments” like the GHCN and HadCRUT studies, has shown no warming for the past 18 years. The Modern Warming Period has plateau’d…even as CO2 continues to rise.
So, conclusions?
A. Today’s “warming” has stopped in the very short term, is less than the Medieval Warm Period, far less than the Holocene Optimum, far far less than the warming of the first third of the Holocene Interglacial. In fact it has become cooler since the Holocene Optimum.
B. CO2, man-made or otherwise, has shown no cause on the temperatures of any of the last 17500 years. Anyone screaming that the planet is going to die due to CO2 in the atmosphere is a fool. CO2 is a vital building block of life and it’s amazing how many people failed elementary school biology.
C. The IPCC models are complete garbage since they use premises at their core that has been shown to be false. Even the IPCC admitted they had “low confidence” in their first models yet continue to pump out ever more models, each one predicting worse calamity than the one before. Why? We can only surmise that they want the funding gravy train to keep flowing in their direction.
D. Throwing billions upon billions of tax dollars at a problem that doesn’t exist is insane. We could be using that money to clean up real environmental issues, not planning bizarre concepts such as ” carbon sequestration”.
Your facts are, of course, pretty much spot-on, Andy. But it doesn’t really matter. It’s the old “don’t confuse me with facts, my mind is made up” syndrome.
Doesn’t mean we (“we” being rational, open-minded, scientifically literate to various degrees, believers in evidence, and the geological record is about as unambiguous as you could wish for) should stop pointing out the obvious, but we should expect long-term frustration rather then short-term gratification.
There is maybe a hint of progress; I seem to see more unbiased comment in the MSM (at least the print media) than a few years back. Maybe the tide is starting to turn.
Well, after four decades of constant “The End is Near!” pronouncements from the AGW religion and not a single one has come true, I’m not surprised that people are beginning to realize them for the crackpots that they are.
Nope the “Premise: of the book is reflected in the title of the book. Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming: The NIPCC Report on Consensus. the “97%” quote is one of the reasons why “honest” scientists disagree about global warming.
Mr. Hue
Please explain to me how +60 miles of glacier melted prior to the existence of Big Oil or an increase of CO2 levels.
http://www.alaska.org/assets/content/maps/glacier-bay-national-park-detail-map.pdf
Or that 1200 to 1400 years ago the Mendenhall glacier had advanced to its present location. The forest was there thousands of years prior to that glacier advancing over it. If not for the LIA, these glaciers would not exist. The Earth suffered a 550 year cold spell with low temperatures exceeding all previous Holocene lows with the exception of the short lived 8200 event. We are still recovering from that nasty cold snap. And yes, I do live in Alaska.
http://juneauempire.com/outdoors/2013-09-13/ancient-trees-emerge-frozen-forest-tomb
Consensus is a political term with no connection what so ever to Therories of Science
Are you arguing that Climate Change isn’t dangerous, or are you just saying this is a misrepresentation that destroys the books credibility?
Jbird…who are you asking? 1oldnunwise is claiming that the authors are guilty of a misrepresentation that destroys the books credibility.
But to support that claim, he has to-
1. Completely ignore basic grammar, punctuation and launguage principles
2. Engage in all sorts of logical fallacies trying to present his own personal interpretation of what he read as being accurate, when the authors own words (and #1) demonstrate that he’s wrong.
3. Add to and subtract words from the authors’ words whenever he feels the need to.
4. Be oblivious to printing rights and laws in which a direct quote made by a specific person, or group of people, requires the authors to note/cite the source of that quote in the footnotes or bibliography of that book to avoid plagiarism. The authors give no such citation, but then again, they didn’t directly quote anyone so there’s no one, nothing to cite
That 1oldnwise4me continues to argue despite all of those things has only destroyed his own credibility here, if he had any prior to this.
Oh. My. Word! I cannot believe anyone is this stupid or oblivious.
“By adding that single word connected by the word “and” they have created a false statement. The statement is false because the scientific research that studied the “consensus” does not reference the word “dangerous.”
NO…moron. The paragraph in question does NOT reference “the scientific research that studied the consensus? When YOU assume/pretend that they ARE in reference to it, YOU create a FALSE STATEMENT about the paragraph. It is YOUR personal assumption/interpretation that the “debate” or debaters they are talking about is limited to just the “scientific research that studied the consensus”.
I downloaded the book and 1oldnwise4me only becomes MORE wrong as can be seen below. Here are the first THREE paragraphs of the Introduction-
“Probably the most widely repeated claim in the debate over global warming is that “97 percent of scientists agree” that climate change is man-made and dangerous. This claim is not only false, but its presence in the debate is an insult to science.
As the size of recent reports by the alarmist Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its skeptical counterpart, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate (NIPCC) suggest, climate science is a complex and highly technical subject, making simplistic claims about what “all” or “most” scientists believe necessarily misleading. Regrettably, this hasn’t prevented various politicians
and activists from proclaiming a “scientific consensus” or even “overwhelming scientific consensus” that
human activities are responsible for observed climate changes in recent decades and could have “catastrophic” effects in the future.
The claim that “97 percent of scientists agree” appears on the websites of government agencies such as the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, 2015) and even respected scientific organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS,
n.d.), yet such claims are either false or meaningless.”
**********
Anyone can see (except apparently 1oldnwise4me) that the authors aren’t talking ( in this particular section ) about the scientific research that studied the consensus at all! They are talking about the claims made by “politicians”, “activists”, and “the websites of government agencies”. Anyone can see that the authors go on to attribute the word “catastrophic” to politicians and activists. NOT consensus studying scientists. NOT consensus research. Neither is even mentioned.
1oldnwise4me’s entire argument that this book is some kind of “strawman” is nothing but mess of logical fallacies and wackadoodle personal interpretation that is completely demolished by the actual evidence.
Jbird,
Some climate change is a problem; but most isn’t. The climate used to refer to a specific area, such as the Mediterranean climate. But now ‘climate change’ is the Orwellian term for ‘runaway global warming’, which had to be discarded because global warming has stopped.
Ooh, that must really sting! Planet Earth herself is busy debunking the alarmist crowd.
So you need to define “climate change”, before you give your opinion on it.
And then there’s our confused commenter, who feels it’s necessary to write “in the journals, where real science is done” — twice, just in case we didn’t get it the first time.
Well, real science may still be done in other fields, but as the Climategate email dump proved beyond any doubt, ‘climate science’ has been so thoroughly corrupted that the real science is mostly being done outside of the climate journal system.
As Dr. Phil Jones, the Director of the East Anglia climate center, wrote to fellow climate charlatan Michael Mann about scientists who were skeptical of the man-made global warming scare: We “will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
That’s pure corruption, and anyone who thinks it isn’t still going on is a naive and credulous true believer. Pass them the Kool Aid.
So now, that climate pal-review system is nothing more than a clique of self-serving rent seekers. I have to laugh at anyone who still believes that it’s honest. It’s not. And the same corruption has infected government bureaucracies like NASA, NOAA, and others because of the current President’s shameless politicizing of departments that were formerly left to pursue science, without government meddling.
oldndumb,
Wake up. I wrote “mostly” Lindzen is an exception.
Isn’t it past your bedtime?
oldfool says:
“Got it.”
But he gets nothing and never has, as I showed with the Climategate email dump.
It is as simple as this: the honest, skeptical scientists who disputed, or even questioned the ‘man-made global warming’ narrative were systematically kept out of the climate peer review process. That fact is documented repeatedly in the Climategate emails, by the same corrupt gatekeeprs that 1oldy is trying impotently to defend here.
That makes the climate alarmist clique ipso facto guilty of corruption and scientific misconduct. There is no other way to look at it.
It’s a sad state of affairs when someone has no shame, and sinks to defending reprobates like Mann and Jones. As I’ve often pointed out, it’s Gresham’s Law applied to human nature: the dishonest people in the population drive the honest ones out.
Skeptics are the only honest kind of scientists. That is not in dispute. And since the Climategate charlatans knew they were emitting bogus propaganda, they reverted to their ethics-challenged lack of character. They deliberately connived behind the scenes to drive out other scientists who simply had a different scientific point of view!
Their actions could not be more reprehensible, and their defenders here seem to be no different.
it is certainly a time for “useful idiots” – not surprised they were sent here – a compliment
What do you do with them? So far I haven’t found one useful thing about them 🙂
The title of the book is “Why Scientists Disagree About Cimate Change” To be true to its title it must adress the agreement among scientists. However, in its opening paragraph it uses a premise that is not part of the scientist’s claimed consensus.
All the reading comprehension comments have got it wrong. Let me illustrate with an exagerated example.
If I were to say: “It is claimed that “97% of scientists agree” that the moon is made of cheese.”
The bit in inverted commas is obviously supposed to relate to the bit they agree about.
If we can prove the claim was in fact made, we then have two options.
1) We can show the claim is wrong
2) We can show the “97% of scientists agree” is wrong.
We can easily show that the claim is wrong by surveying scientists and finding that in fact 100% disgree with the statement. This says nothing about whatever it is that 97% of scientists agree about.
Since we don’t know what it is they agree about from the given information, it is impossible to show the latter. In fact, what they agree about in my example is that AIDS is caused by HIV – but we cannot possibly know that unless the 97% are said to agree with the second part of the senrtence
Therefore unless the statement about what the scientists agree about is actually what they are claimed to agree about, whatever evidence we produce to show that the statement is wrong only shows the claim to be wrong, not what the agreement is supposed to be about.
Reblogged this on Norah4you's Weblog and commented:
Consensus is a political term and has nothing whatsoever to do with Theories of Science.
Nor does it matter if there had been a majority believing that there was a CO2-threat.
argumentum ab auctoritate
Professor X, Professor of Science A presents an argumentation for a thesis. You need to remember that due to the thesis being presented by a professor. That goes for all cases, whether this professor pronounce him-/herself within his/her own scientific field or in other science fields. A thesis or an argument presented by a professor does not mean that the professor is credible because he is a professor. In other words: It does not necessarily mean that the professor’s statement, even if it is within his own territory, is sound and free from biases as well as independent of the influence of research grants from the interest group. Business, individual interest groups, etc. Authority is no safe criterion of credibility.
Ad hominem
When ever an argument attacks a person instead of presenting valid arguments for the the own view by a speaker or writer behind a thesis being argued against, that’s one of the worst fallacies of all in Theory of Science. In other words if the arguments used to take down an opponent is related to person or person’s opinion instead of being related to the content of the discussed subject, those arguments aren’t valid arguments and can never ever be used for a sound conclusion.
Commonly found in newspaper articles, in political debates and being used to defend a criticized hypothesis. (cf. the climate debate) Fallacies in argumentation
Presenting a strawman argument about a non-existent strawman.
Pathetic
Many comments below expose your vacuous argument so try your links and trivial arguments back at the climate change carnival, where you will find willing marks who are happy to be entertained by drivel.
I’m as much of a skeptic as you are, Anthony, and I very much appreciate your efforts to combat the global warming insanity. But whenever I see material stemming from organizations such as the Heartland Institute or the Cato Institute on your site, my heart sinks. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with these institutions, but they are so strongly identified with right-wing causes that their effectiveness in expressing skepticism is severely weakened. As with anyone supported by them. There is already far too much politically oriented bias in this debate, why add more? Isn’t it possible to find scientists doing meaningful research in this arena who don’t have a political ax to grind? Your blog would be much more effective if you were able to separate the wheat from the chaff in this respect.
I used to “feel” that way as well, but a fact is a fact whether it comes from Heartland or the WH. I know feel that in order to diffuse the power that the alarmists have by pointing to potentially biased sources that I should acknowledge it could be (trust but verify) more prone to bias but give it the due it deserves if it validly points out a fact.
If I can do that well, it forces them to acknowledge facts that they dismiss because they come from a fossil fuel company. It’s harder, but worth it in the long run IMO.
21 conferences? What do we have to show for it? How much carbon emissions did each conference generate? Why can’t some (most) tele-commute? Because…IT’S PARTY TIME! (official business…I go on vacation next month)
Re: Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming, 11/30/2015
Scientists disagree about “Global Warmint” because scientists disagree about what constitutes science.
Two kinds of science occupy the stage today, Modern Science, founded by Francis Bacon in 1620, and Post Modern Science, its deconstruction by Karl Popper circa the 1930s. Both involve models of the real world. Bacon inserted Cause & Effect into models, giving models the power to predict deductively. Popper removed causation.
In Modern Science model quality is determined solely by predictive power. In Post Modern Science, models are graded according to three criteria: peer-review by a certified audience of peers, publication in a certified professional journal, and support from a certified group of practitioners. Popper called those three intersubjectivity. Modern science is exclusively objective within its models.
Modern Science grades each of its models progressively as conjecture, hypothesis, theory, or laws, according to the completeness of the model and of its validation.
Post Modern Science has no requirement that its models actually work. So, they don’t. PMS models are arguable, but not verifiable.
The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) model, once a conjecture by Guy Callendar, has failed its only practicable verification. Its Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) parameter now measures at or below 1ºC per doubling of CO2, which is less than the 5% confidence level, extrapolated from IPCC reports.
The failure runs much deeper. First, AGW is a thermodynamic climate, and nothing in the model is ever in thermodynamic equilibrium. Second, the definition of the ECS requires CO2 to be the Cause of the Effect of warming. Causation in Modern Science requires a Cause to precede all of its Effects. In climate, the concentration of atmospheric CO2 lags, not leads, the Global Average Surface Temperature. The causation vector between CO2 and GAST is backwards in AGW.
The reason it is backwards is that Post Modern climatologists have yet to discover Henry’s Law of solubility. That Law predicts the flux of CO2 between the atmosphere and surface waters, increasing to the atmosphere following surface warming, and decreasing during cooling. Earth’s atmosphere today is dominantly a by-product of the oceans, its two dominant greenhouse gas concentrations being determined by solar effects.
Another fatal shortcoming of the AGW model is that it cannot account for the dominant characteristics of the climate, namely the oscillations between warm and glacial eras. That failure occurs in the long term over geological eras, but also in the immediate, short term. The climate is currently warming as it recovers from the last Ice Age and as it recovers from the Medieval Warm Period. The GCMs don’t account for that natural warming and instead incorrectly attribute that natural warming to the effects of humans since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
The Global Circulation Models (GCMs) by which the climatologists project GAST (instead of predicting it) fail to model the most powerful feedback in climate: the dynamic effects of cloud cover. That feedback is positive (causing warming) with respect to the Sun, and it is negative (mitigating warming from any cause) with respect to surface temperature. This omission doomed the AGW model from the outset.
In Modern Science terms, AGW is less than a conjecture; it is off the scale of scientific models.
+1
But climate science isn’t based on models. The physics are there to see, the greenhouse effect is old news, CO2’s increasing concentration is being measured, isotope measurements and simple chemistry determine the increase is mostly from fossil fuels, and changes in greenhouse warming on the surface of the planet has been measured.
It’s all been measured, so Modern and Post-Modern back each other up. Predictions based on physics and chemistry have been observed.
Measurement of increasing CO2 greenhouse effect http://www.livescience.com/49950-greenhouse-effect-measured-us.html
If the Greenhouse Effect is warming the planet in response to CO2, then why has CO2 NEVER influenced temperature before the Age of Oil? Why are the satellites showing NO tropospheric warming for almost two decades, right where all that warming should be in the Greenhouse Theory? Why did the planet heat up drastically in the first third of the Holocene Interglacial when CO2 levels were low and now has been growing progressively cooler since the Holocene Optimum even as CO2 levels continue to increase?
Answer: AGW is bollocks. Not a single AGW prediction has been proven true. CO2 doesn’t heat the planet.
CAGW is bollocks. AGW is non zero. but far, far closer to zero than the consensus acknowledges. Beware of blanket rejection of consensus claims because more often than not, there’s a kernel of truth buried in the noise and they will always spin your objection as denying the tiny truth buried by their obfuscation.
+1 for identifying the wiggle to the worm, the poop to the scoop, the bait on the hook
b fagan,
Yes, the physics is there to see. However, you’re still relying on coincidence to support that most of the presumed temperature increase is from CO2, rather then the result of the natural variability that’s been going on for billions of years . CO2 is monotonically rising for sure, but the temperature has no such monotonic signature, so jumping to the conclusion that incremental CO2 is driving the climate is not only unsupportable, but falsifiable.
The physics of Stefan-Boltzmann is also there to see and an increase of 0.8C from 1 W/m^2 of forcing dictates an increase in surface emissions of about 4.3 W/m^2. How can anyone with a brain accept that only 1 W/m^2 of forcing can increase surface emissions by 4.3 W/m^2? The answer is simple, political bias acts as powerful blinders to the truth.
B,
The human contribution is the global warming since the end of the LIA cold period about 165 years ago is negligible. A doubling of CO2 would produce about 1.2 degrees C of warming, in the absence of feedback effects. Much of this slight potential man-made warming should have occurred already, as CO2 grew from 285 to 400 ppm since c. AD 1850. But the majority of the warming during this interval has been from natural causes.
The only way alarmists can make their GIGO model results scary is by assuming positive feedback effects not in evidence, such as from water vapor. The models have failed totally. Net feedbacks are probably negative, so that actual effective AGW ought to be in the range of zero to one degree C.
So far more CO2 has been a good thing for plants and the planet. More will be even better, as is slightly warmer weather, should it occur. If it’s not a bad thing, as all the observational evidence indicates, then why worry about rising CO2?
The evidence that water vapor feedback is NET negative is clear when the end to end effect is considered, which includes weather. The NET effect of evaporation, clouds and rain is cooling as evidenced by the trail of cold water left in the wake of a hurricane. If the NET feedback was positive, hurricanes would leave a trail of warm water.
Sorry. For “is” in first sentence, please read “to”.
CO2,
Yes, the failed hypothesis is easily falsified, on all time scales.
CO2 levels have allegedly been rising monotonously since the end of WWII, but for over 30 years the world reacted to this increase by cooling pronouncedly. Then, in 1977, the PDO flipped and for at most 20 years, rising CO2 and climbing temperatures accidentally coincided. For at least 18 years now GASTA appears to have stayed flat or cooled, to the extent it can be measured.
Thus the presently increasing CO2 shows no correlation with rising temperature, rather has been associated predominantly with cooling, ie for over half of its 70 year duration.
Errata:
WAS: Warmint. IS: Warming.
WAS: AGW is a thermodynamic climate. IS: AGW is a thermodynamic problem.
WAS: recovers from the Medieval Warm Period. IS: recovers from the Little Ice Age.
Reply to Gloateus Maximus, Dec 1 at 11.53 am: You should not expect a precise 1:1 correlation between rising CO2 and temperature because for example when there is an El Nino event a mass of heat is released from the ocean driving temperature up regardless of what CO2 is doing. When there is a La Nina cooling event the ocean cools and the world does too – again regardless of what the CO2 is doing. Internal oscillations within the ocean-atmosphere-ice system help to drive temperature change independently of CO2 change. As you point out, there was a cool period between about 1950 and 1970. Conceivably some of that was due to the development of a cool phase in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. But Russian data from Mikhael Budyko also show that aerosols emitted by our massive and dirty post-war industrial processes made the atmosphere hazier then. Those aerosol emissions got cleaned up with Clean Air Acts in the 1970s. In other words one cannot take a simplistic approach to this question. There are many drivers for change and all have to be accounted for.
polaramateur says:
You should not expect a precise 1:1 correlation between rising CO2 and temperature because…
That is just tap-dancing around the fact that the real world is falsifying your belief system.
The only corellation between CO2 and global T is that ∆T causes ∆CO2.
I can provide numerous examples of that corellation that have been empirically observed. But despite constantly asking, no one has ever posted observations consistently showing that ∆CO2 is the cause of ∆T.
The real world has spoken: the main causation is by temperature.
Prove me wrong — if you can.
1oldy,
Your ignorance is getting tedious. Note the “Note” in this chart:
[click in chart to embiggen]
And on a month/year chart, we see that CO2 always follows ∆temperature.
So 1oldy is wrong again, as usual. I post verifiable, empirical observations, while 1oldy posts… his assertions.
1oldy loses: game, set and match.
Past 18 years is covered in this chart.
Anyone can see that ∆CO2 follows ∆T, Mr. Prevaricator.
Here’s another one:
1oldy,
You could not have found a more lame chart. It shows nothing.
Anyway, I’ve buried you with charts and peer reviewed paper, and a few thorough discussions. They all show that you’re flat wrong…
as always…
1oldy sez:
Keep the charts coming there kid.
I will, Old Fart, because they show empirical observations that prove you wrong. The charts I’ve posted knock your lame arguments out of the park.
That’s because all you posts are merely your opinions. I post facts. So I win the debate, hands down. And re: your piddly complaint about ‘dt’, and other alarmist arguments:
• Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt is closely correlated with temperature; thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature in the modern data record. On a longer record, CO2 also lags temperature by ≈800 years in the ice core series. And atmospheric CO2 lags temperature on all measured time scales, from months/years, out to hundreds of millennia.
• CO2 is the feedstock for the biosphere; Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are clearly CO2-deficient. Therefore, CO2 reduction schemes are nonsense. In fact, they are evil.
• Earth’s climate is insensitive to increased atmospheric CO2 – there is zero evidence of any global warming crisis.
• Recent global warming is cyclical and natural – the next climate step change following the current ≈20± year pause will more likely be global cooling rather than warming. But no one knows.
• Adaptation is the best approach to deal with the moderate global warming and cooling.
• There is zero evidence for runaway global warming. It has never happened.
• Cold weather kills many more people than warm weather. There are about 100,000 excess winter deaths every year in the USA, and about 10,000 in Canada. Thus, the alarmist crowd is worried about the wrong thing.
• Global warming is a net benefit to humans and the biosphere.
• ‘Green’ energy has needlessly driven up energy costs, reduced electricity reliability and caused increased winter mortality, which especially targets the elderly and the poor. Not that alarmists care; they don’t.
• When politicians override the market with ‘alternate’ energy systems, real people suffer and die. That is the tragic legacy of false global warming alarmism.
You’re on the wrong side of the argument, bub. You’re allied with people who don’t act as if they believe a word they’re saying, and who could not care less about anyone else.
+1
The unintended consequences of the CAGW hoax are many.
response to dbstealey charts. The chart you use for Greenland is out of date. The Greenland ice core temperatures were updated and corrected by Bo Vinther in 2009 to take into account the changing altitude of the ice sheet with time. Be that as it may, your other chart of the rates of change of temperature and of CO2 is illuminating. It confirms two things: (a) as the sun warms the planet in the northern hemisphere spring it stimulates the biological system and we get, first, a lowering of CO2 as plants eat it, then a rise in CO2 six months later as they die and decompose (the northern hemisphere dominates because it has more land plants); (b) underlying all that annual wiggling about we get a rising trend in CO2 (human emissions),and a rising trend in temperature. You have to disaggregate the processes or you will fail to understand what is going on.
Response to the anonymous ‘polarscientist’:
This chart verifies that ∆CO2 is caused by ∆temperature:
[click in the chart to expand. Read the “Note”.]
On time scales from months to hundreds of millennia, the same relationship holds. But there is no correlation between changing CO2 and a subsequent change in temperature. And the chart above is from Antarctica, not Greenland. So what lame excuse will you invent now, to try and show that CO2 causes anything?
The Real World is busy debunking your alarmist nonsense. Maybe you get away with that carp on mindless political blogs. But this is the internet’s Best Science site, and you’re just an amateur trying to wing it here.
Response to dbstealey’s comment about the change in CO2 related to change in temperature during the Ice Age. Yes, it is true that past data did indeed suggest that the CO2 in the bubbles of fossil air trapped in ice cores rose 500-1000 years after the rise in temperature. That was noted back in 1999 by the French team analyzing the Vostok ice core. But that is now ‘old hat’. It was because we lacked an accurate way of dating the bubbles. The most recent data, by Frédéric Parrenin of the Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Géophysique de l’Environnement, in Grenoble (Science 339, 2013, pp 1060-1063) shows that through more careful analysis than hitherto you can get the correct bubble age. When you do, it turns out that the CO2 changed at exactly the same time as the temperature in the ice cores. Of course, that is not surprising, because when you warm ocean water CO2 comes out immediately, not after a wait of 1000 years. We are getting better at palaeoclimate science every year. But you have to keep up with the advances reported in the literature. Read Earth’s Climate Evolution and you’ll see where we’ve got to. And in these discussions there is no need to throw around tags like “amateur”. We can all debate these key issues in a civilised manner.
‘polarscientist’ says the fact that changes in T cause subsequent changes in CO2…
…is now ‘old hat’.
Wrong. CO2 LAGS temperature changes. Go argue with those (unrefuted) per reviewed publications. At least they give their names, unlike the anonymous ‘polarscientist’.
Ice bubbles are not the only proxies used, and the others agree with ice bubble evidence.
Next, ∆CO2 follows ∆Sea Surface T, too. No ice bubbles there…
And disregarding ‘bubbles’, on a monthly/yearly chart, ∆CO2 follows [is caused by] ∆temperature.
So the attempt to claim that CO2 does not lag temperature fails. It is nothing more than grant-trolling desperation.
This is not to say that CO2 has no effect on temperature. It very likely does, even though there is no measurement based evidence to confirm it, because the effect is so minuscule at current CO2 concentrations.
But the causation is clear: ∆T is the cause of ∆CO2. If the peer reviewed papers and the charts of empirical data provided here are not convincing to someone, that is because anyone unconvinced most likely depends on believing otherwise because theat’s how they are financially compensated.
I understand that motivation. But I also understand real world evidence, which shows conclusively that changes in CO2 are caused by temperature changes. And that real world evidence is corroborated by other proxies, just like global satellite temperatures are corroborated by thousands of radiosonde balloon measurements.
Reply to dbstealey. Annual CO2 follows temperature because of biology. The Earth warms in spring, CO2 is eaten by plants. As temperatures cool, in fall, plants die, their remains decompose, and CO2 is released to the air. That applies to the air as well as to the ocean.
With regard to ice cores, you cannot maintain that the old data showing a lag between CO2 and temperature is still correct, when the new data (Parrenin, Science 2013) shows that the old data were wrong. You have to follow the science as it changes, not stay with the old data merely because (although now proved wrong) it agrees with your particular (and now out-dated) world view.
This is how things worked in the Ice Age – orbital change warmed the ocean, which immediately released CO2, which fed back to temperature and warmed the planet more. So, in that instance thermal change was the driver. BUT – equally, in the geological record we find evidence for times when CO2 events caused temperature to rise, as at the Palaeocene-Eocene boundary 55 million years ago. So geology tells us we can have both (i) times when something changes Earth’s temperature (especially warming the ocean), which causes CO2 to change, and (ii) times when something changes atmospheric CO2, which causes temperature to rise. There’s ample geological evidence for both (i) and (ii) (read Earth’s Climate Evolution, published in October, and see). That means, when we come to the changes of the past 150 years, we have to seriously consider that we may be dealing with (ii) rather than (i).
The way to approach the temperature of the past 150 years is to remove from the temperature curve all those things that cause it to wiggle: sunspots, El Nino and La Nina events, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and large volcanic eruptions. What you are then left with is a fairly smooth increasing trend that does match the fairly smooth rise in CO2 (once annual CO2 changes are filtered out). This is all so obvious it is amazing most people have not done that for themselves. We do not need fancy numerical models to show us this stuff.
Polar,
You have failed to address the DomeC data which also shows a lag and which was processed with far more accurate methods than Vostok. (Monnin et al. 2001; Raynaud et al. 2005, Siegenthaler et al. 2005, Luethi et all) and at a much finer resolution.
Of course, this is a moot point, since the actual sensitivity of the surface temperature to forcing is somewhere between 0.2 and 0.3 C per W/m^2 and no where near the 0.4-1.2 C per W/m^2 claimed by the consensus whose outrageous value is required for the catastrophic consequences you so fear. Keep in mind that the extraordinarily high sensitivity claimed by the consensus not only lacks the extraordinary proof required, it lacks the most basic confirmation from first principles physics.
Why does the consensus deny the Stefan-Boltzmann LAW? The IPCC claims 1 W/m^2 of forcing nominally increases the surface temperature by 0.8C, but denies that the surface emissions increase by 4.3 W/m^2. I understand why this is denied since how can anyone believe that 1 W/m^2 can be amplified into 4.3 W/m^2. You need powered gain to get this much amplification which is not even a possible characteristic of the atmosphere.
Why does the consensus deny COE by claiming 1 W/m^2 results in 4.3 W/m^2 of incremental emissions? Where are the additional 3.3 W/m^2 coming from? The claim that this comes from positive feedback (without actually specifying the magnitude relative to joules, but instead to degrees) is absurd and demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of how gain and feedback work. No amount of positive feedback can create energy out of thin air as the consensus requires.
Finally, why does the consensus deny the second law of thermodynamics which tells us that a heat engine can not warm its source of heat? Certainly feedback from clouds and GHG’s accumulates with incident power to warm the surface, but the observable consequences of the second law precludes net positive feedback from water. Hurricanes are the proof which are localized, maximally efficient versions of the global heat engine driving weather and they leave a trail of cold water in their wake. If the end to end effect of evaporation was net positive feedback, storms would heat the surface. Yet another test of consensus claims that fails.
As far as I understand it, hurricanes leave cold water behind because they feed off the ocean’s surface heat. When a hurricane crosses the cold water trail of a previous hurricane, it slows down because it can’t get the heat from the ocean’s surface that it needs to sustain itself.
Yes. Weather consumes heat because it and all of the Earth’s circulation currents are the consequence of a global scale heat engine and the net effect of incremental evaporation leading to incremental weather is incremental cooling, or net negative feedback, even though water vapor itself does contribute to warming! Can you see how the incremental effect can be cooling while the accumulative effect is still warming? You can try and claim that the GHG effect of water vapor is important, and I don’t disagree, I just also understand that the end to end effect is more relevant to the net incremental effect. Please try and describe an end to end effect from incremental evaporation that leads to incremental excess warming.
NONE of the GCM’s that I know of take ANY of the newest information we have on geothermal activity on the ocean floor into consideration, and the “estimates” of surface volcanic venting are few and far between. In fact, I know of NO recent (in the past 20 years) published data that actually measures the volcanic venting…not eruptions…the daily, continual, 24/7 venting of CO2 and other gases from surface volcanoes, vents, and geothermal hot-spots from around the world. And the absolute LACK of measurements from the ocean floor should be embarrassing to climate scientists everywhere.
But since you seem to think that one “new” scientific study constitutes proof that all past science should be discarded, here’s some new science for you. Make sure all those old-study scientists are briefed on it will you?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL063015/abstract
****************************
“Seafloor spreading is considered a small but steady contributor of CO2 to climate cycles on the 100 kyr time scale; HOWEVER, this ASSUMES a consistent short-term eruption rate. PULSING of seafloor volcanic activity may FEED BACK into climate cycles, possibly contributing to glacial/interglacial cycles, the abrupt end of ice ages, and dominance of the 100 kyr cycle.” (emphasis mine)
From the author of the above study during an interview found here-
http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/geophysics/science-underwater-volcanoes-long-term-climate-02473.html
“People have ignored seafloor volcanoes on the idea that their influence is small – but that’s because they are assumed to be in a steady state, which they’re not,” said Dr Maya Tolstoy of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, who is the author of the study.
“They respond to both very large forces, and to very small ones, and that tells us that we need to look at them much more closely.”
“But were the undersea chains to stir even a little bit more, their carbon dioxide output would shoot up,” Dr Tolstoy said.
************************
Most unreal, stupid comment ever from the link below regarding the study above-
http://earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/3231
Speaking on the study quoted above by Maya Tolstoy-
Edward Baker, a senior ocean scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said, “The most interesting takeaway from this paper is that it provides further evidence that the solid Earth, and the air and water all operate as a single system.”
*Forehead smack* Wow NOAA….way to go! And here I thought the science that the “solid Earth, and the air and the water all operate as a single system” had been settled!
Aphan
I have a question if you don’t mind.
Why aren’t the paleoclimate charts showing LIA, MWP and the like
http://ice-age-ahead-iaa.ca/1/gisp2-ice-core-temperatures.jpg
updated to include Kobashi 2011?
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/kobashi_2011_fig1.png?w=720
No trying to play gotcha.
Trying to understand who lives in the rabbit hole.
Appreciate your time.
Response to query about volcanic contributions from mid-ocean ridges. The Tolstoy article reminds us of the importance of sea level pressure in modulating the venting of CO2 from the volcanic systems on the mid ocean ridge, which have long been known to be one of the main Earth interior sources of atmospheric CO2 (the other being island arc volcanoes e.g. on the Pacific margin). Equally, we know that when large masses of ice pressed down on the underlying crust, eruptive activity was slowed, and it speeded up when the ice masses were removed (see Huybers and Denton 2009 in the reference list to Tolstoy’s paper). So there is a well documented link between CO2 and volcanism. But that link is just one facet in explaining the natural processes that led to a natural envelope for atmospheric CO2 over the past 800,000 years of between 180 and 280 ppm. We do in fact know a fair amount about subsea volcanism because we can measure its signature in deep ocean water – e.g. from the abundance of the Helium-3 isotope. And it is quite well studied around several main volcanic centres on the mid ocean ridge. It is not, as some people might like to think, a vast unknown in the climate equation.
polarscientist
December 1, 2015 at 2:28 pm
You should expect some reaction during over 30 years. The cooling began around 1940, with the war still raging, and lasted until 1977, when the PDO flipped. Pollution might have contributed a little, but if CO2 be the control knob on climate, then that and natural variation should not have so hugely overwhelmed the rapid, steady rise in CO2. The cooling was so pronounced that it convinced Callendar in 1962 that his 1938 AGW hypothesis had been falsified, and many scientists in the ’70s that the big ice age was just around the corner.
Moreover, the over 30 years of cooling followed around 30 years of warming from c. 1910-40 (the slope and duration of which match the late 20th century warming), which followed about 30 years of cooling from c. 1880-1910, which followed the first warming cycle of the Modern Warm Period, c. 1850-80.
These natural fluctuations are proximately driven by ocean oscillations and probably ultimately by solar activity. They operate during cold periods as well, like the Little Ice Age. The warming cycle in the early 18th century, coming out of the depths of the LIA during the Maunder Minimum, lasted longer and was stronger than the late 20th century warm cycle, supposedly man-made.
Reduced pollution may well have contributed to the late 20th century warming. Along with the natural cycles, there is thus little or no room left for CO2, which is hence not anything like the control knob on climate.
reply to gloateus maximus. The revised sunspot history by Clette et al in Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2014 clearly showstle sunspot maxima of the 1780s, the Dalton sunspot minimum of the 1810s-20s, the sunspot maximum of the 1860s, the Gleissberg sunspot minimum of around 1900 and the subsequent rise to 1960, all of the maxima reaching about the same level. But temperature didn’t simply follow that path, as it should have done if the sun were its main control. Instead the underlying temperature trend was gradually upward from about 1850, modulated by those solar signals. In addition the trend experienced some downward coolings due to large volcanic eruptions, plus localised rises and falls due to El Nino and La Nina couples, and the longer duration swings due to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. But the general trend was exponentially up, for which there is no natural explanation. Instead, we are left with the steady rise in greenhouse gases due to human activity, along with a rise in water vapour from the exponential warming. This has nothing do do with climate models – it has to do with straightforward observations. Now given that greenhouse gases cause warming, something we have known since the 1850s, it seems reasonable to suppose that there is a link between the exponential trend of temperature and the exponential trend of CO2, which parallel one another quite well when you take out the wiggles induced by sunspot variation, volcanic variation, and El Nino and PDSO variation. They key variation apart from these was the flat spot from 1945 to 1970. Climatologists suggested this might be due to industrial aerosols – basically dirty air. What they did not realised was that the Russians (Mikhael Budyko) actually had the data to prove that was the case. My point is twofold: (i) we do not need climate models to tell us what is going on; (ii) to extract the trends relating temperature and greenhouse gases, you have first to take out the thermal variability caused by other factors (sunspots, ocean cycles, volcanoes) which simply obscures the picture. Do that and the trends become clear. You might like to THINK that there is no relationship, but that’s because you have not dug deep enough. You have allowed the noise in the temperature record to obscure the underlying signal.
President Obama has used that exact terminology.
Just what are you talking about? The book in the OP addresses the “most widely repeated claim” and that assertion happens to be true. Every drooling idiot worried about AGW asserts that 97% figure as if it were handed down on Mt. Sinai, and then continues with assumption that AGW must also be “dangerous.” The true “dangerous” aspect is the promulgation of a lie (the 97% lie), which is then used to support extreme action. Cook et al. is one of the most pathetic bits of mutual ************ promulgated in the last century. It has been debunked, dismantled, deconstructed and utterly demolished as any kind of scientific analysis let a alone as an objective, quantitative study. Talk about straw men.
Fred Singer is the last thing we need… he is an “anti” that contaminates our message. He shilled for the tobacco industry and so now he has no credibility. He also worked for petrochem. He is a fly in our ointment. We should not be associating with soldout liars, rather we should disassociate from all those who have worked for Big Oil or any other ethics-free industry.
Send them only virgins ?
Why so quick to validate one of the tools of your opponent ?
knutesea-
My comment- Aphan December 3, 2015 at 5:54 pm was directed to polarscientist. I could have SWORN his comment had a reply button that would put my comment directly under his…so I didn’t even indicate that I was talking directly to him. (and HIS personal propensity for using the most recent scientific studies as if they cancel out the “old gospel” and become the “new gospel”….ooooooo I like that analogy!)
Does that address your question to me about the charts? Or do I need to answer that now? 🙂
Aphan
No rush on the answer, but I trust you to point me in the right direction.
Paste and link is fine since I’m sure you folks already ferreted out the goodies on the Kobashi data.
Whenever free to send would be just dandy.
I’m new to the rabbit hole.
Well, honestly, I don’t make paleoclimate charts, and I cannot speak for anyone that does in order to answer the question of why the existing ones haven’t been updated with certain information. There are many possible reasons why a particular scientist does or does not do it: non- agreement with the data, bias, busy, lack of awareness of it, laziness, not on a particular priority list, animosity, apathy, drunken stupors, car accidents, high holy holidays where chart updating must be shunned….:)
Have you googled kobashi et al 2011 and then clicked “images” to verify that none of those charts include the data? You can also go to the publication site of the article and check all the citation links to see if other scientists who mention kobashi et al 2011 have created charts that include it.
Thanks Aphan
I’ll dig around and stub my toe a few times.
Guilt by association fallacy. You have ZERO evidence that Fred Singer did anything even remotely wrong. Stop acting irrationally.
Mea culpa, in part. It seems Singer is indeed not guilty as I claimed re:tobacco. He however “believes in what Rachel White Scheuering calls “free market environmentalism”: that market principles and incentives should be sufficient to lead to the protection of the environment and conservation of resources.”, which would be laughable if it were not outrageous with all the blatant evidence of capitalist environmental atrocity to prove that false. “he has been a paid consultant for many years for ARCO, ExxonMobil, Shell, Sun Oil Company, and Unocal, and that SEPP has received grants from ExxonMobil. Singer has said his financial relationships do not influence his research.” There he really does sound like a corporate shill, making us all look like being shills for Big Oil.
Environmental atrocities are far worse in communist countries. Pollutiion is caused by agricultural, industrial, forestry, mining and other economic activity, not by a particular system. Free enterprise states do a much better job of keeping clean than do statist command economies.
I can’t think of anything that’s not better in an open society, but then again I don’t have kingly possessions to lose.
Daniel S,
That’s all you’ve got, isn’t it? It’s pretty pathetic, not to mention lame, when pointless ad hominem character assassination comprises your entire argument.
You come across as a shill for the eco-wacko contingent, not to mention a blatant hypocrite who badmouths the providers of essential goods while buying their products at the pump, full retail. And I doubt you’re shivering in the cold and dark at night. No, you’re a fat consumer of Big Oil’s carbon-laden molecules just like everyone else. If it wasn’t for such gross hypocrisy you wouldn’t have much if anything to say.
So you lose. This is a science site. You need to MovOn to a lefty politics blog. Here, you’re just being a site pest who’s got nothin’.
I see a lot of claims above that “dangerous” is not part of the consensus or that it’s not a commonly repeated claim that it is. The Wikipedia article about surveys of scientists’ views on climate change includes this: “In 2007, Harris Interactive surveyed 489 randomly selected members of either the American Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union for the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University. The survey found 97% agreed that global temperatures have increased during the past 100 years; 84% say they personally believe human-induced warming is occurring, and 74% agree that “currently available scientific evidence” substantiates its occurrence. Only 5% believe that that human activity does not contribute to greenhouse warming; 41% say they thought the effects of global warming would be near catastrophic over the next 50-100 years; 44% say said effects would be moderately dangerous; 13% saw relatively little danger; 56% say global climate change is a mature science; 39% say it is an emerging science. [10] [11]”
So *in that sample*, 85% think its dangerous. That doesn’t make them right, but it *does* make “dangerous” part of the *reported* consensus.
We had a climate change march here. I was invited to it by a colleague (also with a PhD) who has swallowed the Cook article hook line and sinker. The marchers definitely believe that climate change is dangerous; who would march against climate change if they thought it was a good or neutral thing? I certainly have enough people telling me how
My country’s Environment Strategy, http://canterbury.cyberplace.org.nz/environment/env2010.html, says ” Gases released into the atmosphere are enhancing the natural greenhouse effect at a rate that could extensively damage our biophysical, economic and social systems.” “Extensively damage” sounds pretty dangerous to me, so claims that climate change is dangerous are definitely being produced by official sources. Indeed, in 2005, the following statements were made in Parliament: “the Pentagon has advised President Bush that climate change is a greater threat to humanity than terrorism” (a Green MP, but presumably a true claim) and “the science academies of all the G8 nations now say that the projections about climate change, and the damage it will do to our world, are indeed valid” (the Prime Minister of the day). So back then our PM was relying on an official “science academics” consensus that climate change was real and would do damage to the world, and I don’t see any difference between doing damage to the world and being dangerous.
Ad fontes! Let’s see what the book actually says. (BEGIN QUOTE)Politicians including President Barack Obama and government agencies including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (EPA) claim “97 percent of scientists agree” that climate change is both man-made and dangerous.(END QUOTE)
That is, the authors say that POLITICIANS say that ‘dangerous’ is in the scientific consensus.
LNG Exports “OK’d” … well at least if you lobby correctly or maybe hire an ex Climate Czar
This one got very little press time. I mean Huffpoo picked it up, but it didnt get much further in the MSM.
Sharing in case anyone missed it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-horn/obama-administration-appr_b_8559472.html
Makes me feel like I want to take a shower, but then again, that may not be a bad idea.
It all seems so selective. You get to LNG export here (encourages fracking). You get to ship via rail there.
You can’t have that pipeline over there.
Only some seem worthy of the evil fossils.
Perhaps access to profiting from it will be doled out like a fancy spice.
Re: CO2 lags temperature:
dbstealey, 12/2/15 @ 11:14 am, said,
thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature in the modern data record. On a longer record, CO2 also lags temperature by ≈800 years in the ice core series.
1oldnwise4me@reagan.com, 12/2/15 @ 11:29 pm, disagreed, explaining
Nope [¶] … [¶] Not for the past 18 years.
dbstealey is correct. And that is fortunate, because the record, properly understood, obeys the physics of Henry’s Law, which, as reported above, is yet to be discovered by IPCC-certified climatologists. However, dbstealey might better have said “CO2 lags temperature in the modern era“. The composition of the atmosphere changed radically during the crustaceous period when great amounts of CO2 were somehow removed from the atmosphere and sequestered in CaCO2 or chalk deposits.
In part, the problem is that the certified climatologists don’t have a good handle on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. For their failed AGW model, they need the MLO data to represent global concentrations. To do this, they argue that CO2 is first long-lived in the atmosphere, and therefore well-mixed. This makes the MLO data global by assumption, and so they calibrate the CO2 network into agreement with MLO. Presto! MLO is also global by calibration!
MLO is seen not to be global by the satellite images of atmospheric CO2. The gas is quite lumpy, about as well-mixed as other clouds. And CO2 is not long lived. The recent article here that CO2 residence time is 40 years instead of 1000 years is wrong on both ends. It’s residence time follows an elementary, leaky-bucket formula from high school physics, reported in both the TAR and AR4 glossaries. Residency depends on the size of the reservoirs and the leak rates, estimated throughout the Assessment Reports. Using AR4 numbers, the atmosphere contained 760 GtC lost at the rate of 482.8 GtC/yr [2.8 (Other Ocean uptake) + 120 (Gross Primary Production) + 270 (Leaf water) + 90 (Ocean uptake)], or 66.14% removed per year. The formula then yields a Mean Residence Time (MRT) of 1.51 years. The TAR estimates the same atmosphere concentration, but the uptake only included GPP and Ocean, a total of 210 GtC/yr, and so the formula yields an MRT of 3.48 years. Not 1000 years and not 40 years. Not 35K years, but about 1.5 to 3.5 years.
The certified scientists needed more atmospheric CO2 for their model. So thanks to AR4 Ch. 7 Contributing Author David Archer, PhD, computational oceanographer, he estimated the MRT at 35,000 years (The fate of fossil fuel CO2 in geologic time, 1/7/05, p. 16). His model was that the equilibrium carbonate equations applied to the surface ocean. This meant that the ocean could uptake CO2 only as fast as room could be made by acidification and sequestration, and sequestration, of course, required millennia. IPCC went along with Archer, adopting his model (AR4 Eqs. 7.1 – 7.2, p. 529), but softening 35,000 to “several tens of thousands of years”, p. 531.
The AGW team thus created a novel bottleneck to the uptake of CO2, silently applying the universal assumption of equilibrium. The surface layer (like all other parts of the climate) is never in equilibrium, neither mechanical nor thermal nor chemical, the three components of Thermodynamic Equilibrium. The equations do not apply. Instead, the surface layer is the buffer holding excess CO2, and the atmosphere to ocean flux can proceed to satisfy Henry’s Law, instantaneously on climate scales. Henry’s Law is primarily dependent on the gas concentration and the solvent temperature, secondarily, for the ocean, dependent on salinity, and possibly dependent on the isotopic weight of the carbon. It was not known to be dependent on solvent pH until Archer and the IPCC.
BTW, the team applied its bottleneck model only to anthropogenic CO2, and not to natural CO2. The team did so in spite of the facts that the two differ only in their isotopic mix, and that the two are irreversibly mixed in the atmosphere.
IPCC never applied its residence time formula from its appendices. It just assumed an atmospheric bottleneck, contrary to physics, so that enough CO2 might accumulate in the atmosphere to show that climate was controlled by the CO2 and the greenhouse effect.
So what does the MLO record actually represent? The site sits in the outgassing (Henry’s Law) from the bulk of the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific. The Conveyor Belt, also called the Meridional Overturning Circulation, carries water at 15 times the total volume rate of all Earth’s rivers, on a cycle of about one millennium. Cold water, saturated with CO2, rises from the bottom of the ocean in the Ekman Transport, losing pressure and heated from concentrated radiation of the Equatorial Sun. The warm, humid, and lightweight mixture rises in the atmosphere, up into the Hadley Cells, where a cold, CO2-rich mixture is delivered into the subtropics, and onto Hawaii.
Meanwhile, the warm, and hence CO2-depleted, lightweight outflow water feeds into the oceanic surface layer. It is carried poleward across the surface, radiating heat to space, and absorbing CO2 (Henry’s Law). Near the poles, at its coldest temperature and now saturated with CO2, it descends to the bottom to return to the Equator. It’s the misnamed thermohaline circulation, missing carbon in its name.
Consequently, Hawaii sits in the plume of outgassing from about 60% of the Great Conveyor Belt, where CO2 concentrations are from old water, dependent on the global concentrations of many centuries past. CO2 is likely increasing at Hawaii because Earth was colder, say 500 to 1000 years ago, and warming to the modern era.
This GCB path, and hence the CO2 record (if it were known), requires about 1,000 years, CO2 lagging temperature.
That post employs several questionable assumptions. The bulk of the upwelling of old CO2 rich water within the thermohaline conveyor system in fact happens in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. Besides, Mauna Loa (MLO in that post) is not the sole point for measuring background atmosphere CO2. It is also measured, among other places, at the US South Pole station. At both Mauna Loa and South Pole we see two things in the CO2 data. First there are the annual ups and downs due to biology (plants eat CO2 in spring and it gets released by death and decomposition in the fall, the global signal being dominated by the northern hemisphere). Second, the annual variation is superimposed on a steady rise. That rise correlates directly with the rate of change in the isotopic composition of the carbon in the CO2, which can be shown to relate directly (i) to the known emissions from fossil fuel burning, and (ii) to the rate of decrease of oxygen in the atmosphere, which is a result of the increase in burning fossil fuel. Hence the rise is not due to some imaginary likely increase in the emission of old CO2 from the ocean depths.
What is regularly ignored is the fact that CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. More is better.
Therefore, all the wild-eyed talk about “carbon” is off the mark. We need more CO2, not less.
Yes,increasing CO2 in the air is good for land plants. BUT it also warms the planet. That warming is already displacing plants, insects and animals, changing local ecologies. It is already melting land ice, causing sea level to rise, which will impact coastal populations. It is likely to disrupt hydrological patterns making some areas drier and others wetter than now. And when you put CO2 into the air it also goes into the ocean, making it less alkaline, which is not good for creatures at the base of the food chain.
colin summerhayes,
Are you able to quantify any of the things you mentioned? For example, just how much ‘warming’ has been caused by human CO2 emissions? Be specific, and be prepared to support your answer with real world measurements — if you have them.
The rest of your examples are no different. They are just repeating the alarmist narrative, without any verifiable measurements or other evidence of causation.
Either your comment is based on evidence-free emotion, or it is science-based. If it is the latter, you should have no trouble locating verifiable, empirical, testable measurements quantifying those putative changes. Do you have any such measurements?
Colin-what you say, and how you say matters, in scientific discussions in particular.
“But it (increasing CO2 in the air) also warms the planet.”
No. It does not! CO2 in the air simply slows the rate of cooling, by interfering with the rate that infared energy of certain spectrums returns to space. The Sun warms the planet.
Humans now know that the Earth has always responded to warming periods in the ways you describe. Naturally. For eons of time, ecologies have changed, ice has melted (and grown) sea levels have risen (and fallen) hydrological patterns have changed, and CO2 has gone into the oceans, and come out of it again. Scientific evidence proves that sometimes those things have changed slowly over 100s-1000s of years, and sometimes those things changed in mere decades. And some things, like the temperatures and alkalinity of the water in the oceans fluctuates every day.
Humans are a fairly recent addition to life on Earth, and so one must look at changes on Earth during humanity’s presence in relationship to how Earth has changed in the past without humans. Humans have been building cities on the shores of our oceans for tens of thousands of years, only to have them destroyed by natures forces, some forever lost, and others stubbornly rebuilt. This is human folly, especially now that we know what we know.
Of course, the Sun warms the planet – it our main source of energy. But, its effects are modulated by processes at or near the Earth’s surface, which explains why there was much more warmth in the Cretaceous, and why the planet cooled since then. That warming was caused by an increased volcanic output of CO2 and associated evaporation of H2O from the warm ocean; the subsequent cooling was caused by mountain building and associated chemical weathering that extracted CO2 from the atmosphere. Similarly the fluctuations of warmth in the Pleistocene were due to orbital change modifying the Sun’s effects. The Sun itself also changes, for example on the Suess Cycle. Large volcanoes cool the climate. The point is that none of these operant processes has operated in such a way as to cause the current warming. The only thing we can find is our own outputs of greenhouse gases. Nobody has yet found anything else that could be causing it.
polarsci says:
Nobody has yet found anything else that could be causing it.
Causing what? Global warming stopped many years ago.
So much for your failed conjecture.
You may not have noticed, but while the Pacific has been cooling, the Arctic has gone on warming significantly over the past 20 years. Hence what we see as global temperature has to be seen not simply as a function of rising CO2, but also of other influences like volcanoes and El Ninos and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (currently in a cool phase). The fact that things have gone on warming significantly, despite what the average global temperature says, is demonstrated by the continuing rise in sea level, which shows no flat spot. Rising sea level is a product of warming (i.e. expanding) the ocean plus melting (of land ice). To understand the workings of our climate system you have to examine ALL of the variables.
polarsci,
Maybe you can get away with that nonsense on the climate alarmist blogs inhabited by a small contingent of head-nodders, but here on the internet’s ‘Best Science’ site, we see when someone is trying to pull a fast one.
The most accurate global temperature data comes from satellites. Here is RSS:
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ScreenHunter_9549-Jun.-17-21.12.gif
And rather than global T being even partly attributable to CO2, the empirical evidence shows that there is no correlation at all. Furthermore, you have the causation backward. It is:
∆T causes ∆CO2. There is a mountain of empirical evidence showing that causation. But there is no such evidence showing that rising CO2 is the cause of global warming.
Next, we already know the sea level is rising. It has been rising since the Little Ice Age, and since the last great stadial before that. But the climate alarmist narrative: that SL rise is accelerating, has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked. So don’t even bother going there, or I’ll bury you in real world evidence to the contrary. And your “flat spot” argument is just prevarication. Sea levels have been steadily rising — naturally. There is no evidence that human activity has caused the rate of natural SL rise to change.
You attempt to justify your SL misinformation by saying:
The fact that things have gone on warming significantly, despite what the average global temperature says…
“The fact”?? The only relevant fact is that global warming stopped many years ago. Cherry-picking limited areas in the hope of making a case for ‘dangerous AGW’ is the best argument the alarmist cult has. But the scare is over global warming, so that argument fails.
Finally, you say:
To understand the workings of our climate system you have to examine ALL of the variables.
But it is clear that you have such a limited understanding of the issue that you would be far better off taking my helpful advice: read the WUWT archives on this subject. It will take you several weeks of full-time reading to get up to speed of the average reader here. Because right now, the only Authority that matters — Planet Earth — is debunking the ‘dangerous AGW’ nonsense. Everything currently being observed has been exceeded in the past, and to a much larger degree. There is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening.
All the wild-eyed Chicken Little-style clucking and arm-waving about ‘global warming’ is over this minuscule change in global T:
That *tiny* fluctuation — over more than a century — is a smaller change than at any comparable time period in the geologic record. The alarmist cult has picked the easiest argument imaginable for skeptics to debunk. The unusually small fluctuation of only ≈0.7ºC over a century is as flat as anything you can find. Yet it is the putative example of ‘runaway global warming and climate catastrophe’ that is being peddled to the public by an ethics-challenged clique of rent-seeking scientists…
…you wouldn’t happen to be on the receiving end of any federal or .edu taxpayer loot, would you? It’s the only thing that would explain your strange view of the real world.
I suppose ‘Colin Summerhayes’ is the same guy in this 10-member “working group” that presumes to speak for thousands of professional geologists:
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/~/media/shared/documents/policy/Climate%20Change%20Statement%20Addendum%202013%20Final.pdf
I also assume that “polarscientist” is Summerhayes, or maybe another member of that same self-selected group. But my guess is he’s one and the same.
After reading the .pdf linked above, I have to LOL! None of those guys would dare to engage in a fair, moderated, public debate with geologists who are skeptical of the “dangerous AGW” hoax. Because Mr. Summerhayes and his friends would be demolished in any such debate. They have no evidence connecting human CO2 emissions with changes in polar ice. All they have are the usual assertions that we see in their self-serving paoper.
So instead of debating they argue here, where they can hide behind their fake screen names. But I am glad they do anyway. Because they display the total scientific failure of their position.
For example, there is no CO2/T causation demonstrated in that paper. It’s no different from the usual T/CO2 overlay graph, when they say that at the same time global T was a few degrees warmer, CO2 was also higher. So what? The unanswered question is: which came first?
There is plenty of empirical evidence showing conclusively that ∆temperature is the cause of ∆CO2, while there is no comparable evidence showing that changes in CO2 are the cause of changes in temperature. In other words: ∆temperature came first, and ∆CO2 was the result.
And that is the crux of the entire debate. Because if CO2 does not cause global T to measurably rise, then the CO2=AGW conjecture is (if not falsified outright) shown to be inconsequential.
Therefore, no more public money should be wasted on that scare, or on any associated scare such as polar ice levels. Mr. Summerhayes and pals have coasted for too long on the public dole. They need to either produce verifiable, testable, empirical measurements showing that human CO2 emissions affect polar ice, or they need to get their fingers out of the public’s wallets.
Where are those measurements, Mr. Summerhayes? So far, you have lots of assertions — but zero measurements quantifying the changes you claim are due to human emissions.
You do love insulting people, don’t you. Ah well! I will not be drawn into that game.
Your NODC graph shows that ocean heat content did rise significantly from 1970 to 2004. The Wunsch graph shows total ocean heat content rising from 1994 to 2009. The altimetric ENVISAT data confirm that sea level rose along with those changes. The rate of rise of sea level was lower earlier in the last century and rose to ENVISAT levels (3.2mm/yr) late in that century. The groundwater data you cite does not change the overall picture of sea level rise, because, as the IPCC pointed out, while they could see what the rise was, and were certain that some of it came from warming the ocean and some from melting land ice, they were unsure where the rest came from. The Nature paper by Pokhrel et al 2012 shows where the missing bit came from, but doesn’t change the overall rate of rise picture.
As I keep pointing out, you cannot just focus on CO2 and temperature, because other things contribute to temperature change and can thus distort the underlying relationship between temperature and greenhouse gases. That explains why the 1997-98 El Nino gave rise to a massive temperature signal when there was no similarly large change in CO2 emissions. Equally, back in geological time, the 55 million year ago carbon event drove temperature change. There was no external thermal event capable of causing 5-6C of warming in a very short space of time. It was the emission of carbon to the atmosphere that made temperature rise. That carbon emission was large enough not only to warm the atmosphere by that amount, but also to acidify the ocean, making the CCD rise by about 2 km, and to cause sea level to rise by about 12m. A big event. The data has all been published by Jim Zachos and others. It puzzles me why you refuse to accept that, and the disconnect between temperature and carbon in, for example, the 1997-98 El Nino and the 2008 La Nina events. Perhaps you find it inconvenient to do so because those temperature rises did not drive significant CO2 rises, hence negating the guts of your hypothesis.
“Hence the rise is not due to some imaginary likely increase in the emission of old CO2 from the ocean depths.”
Imaginary likely? Like all the climate models today?
Its almost like you are saying that the (14c NEUTRAL) CO2 that results from a continual deep upwelling around Antarctica doesn’t spread around the world as part of that “well mixed atmosphere” that everyone talks about? Does the naturally 14c NEUTRAL water from those up-wellings NOT get mixed in with the other water in the oceans and thus spread around the world? Can the 14C NEUTRAL CO2 that comes from the deep ocean up-welling be distinguished from the 14c NEUTRAL CO2 that gets produced from burning fossil fuels?
Peer reviewed, recent, scientific papers-
http://www.mathis-hain.net/resources/Hain_et_al_2014_EPSL.pdf
http://instaar.colorado.edu/~marchitt/reprints/bryanepsl10.pdf
WUWT article from 2008 by Roy Spencer-
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/28/spencer-pt2-more-co2-peculiarities-the-c13c12-isotope-ratio/
The distribution of carbon isotopes in atmospheric CO2 is such that there is a gradient with less 13C towards the north, which one would expect since there is more fossil fuel burnt in the northern hemisphere. Moreover the isotopic change matches onto the change expected from knowing the isotopic composition of the fossil fuel that has been burnt, and the amount burnt over time. The distribution of 14 C in modern air follows the same pattern, as one would expect from its dilution by fossil fuel burning. Finally, the combustion of fuel removes oxygen from the atmosphere, as is shown by the inverse relation between growing CO2 and declining O2 (see Manning, A.C., and Keeling, R.F. (2006) Global oceanic and land biotic carbon sinks from the Scripps atmospheric oxygen flask sampling network, Tellus 58B, 95–116).
Re: CO2 lags temperature:
Re: polarscientist, 12/4/2015 @ 12:53 pm writes,
That post employs several questionable assumptions. The bulk of the upwelling of old CO2 rich water within the thermohaline conveyor system in fact happens in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica.
Upwelling occurs all around the globe along coastlines. These are local, wind and ocean current driven phenomena. The upwelling from the Ekman Transport at the Equator connected to the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCS) is global and persistent. It is the monster of upwelling, a feature of Earth’s surface that can be seen from space.
polarscientist’s comment about the bulk of the THC (MOC) occurring in the Southern Ocean and around Antarctica can be found in the literature, but it was never more than a speculation. See Marshall, J. & K. Speer. Closure of the [MOC] through Southern Ocean upwelling, nature geoscience, 2/26/2012. They write,
The main theme of this Review is the key role of Southern Ocean upwelling driven by westerly winds, drawing water up to the surface. This largely solves the missing-mixing paradox that has remained a theme of oceanographic literature. In that paradox, all dense water was assumed to upwell through the thermocline to close the circulation. To do so, strong vertical mixing is required in the thermocline, mixing that is not observed. Instead it seems that a significant portion of the water made dense in sinking regions ultimately returns to the surface in nearly adiabatic pathways along tilted density surfaces that rise from depth towards the surface around Antarctica (as hypothesized long ago by Sverdrup). Footnotes deleted, bold added, Marshall (2012) p. 171.
The absence of a strong vertical mixing invalidates the Southern Ocean MOC terminus model. What follows in the Marshall citation is but another speculation, and the authors suggest an entirely different terminus in their cartoon of the MOC. Id., Box 1, p. 177. In that diagram, the MOC terminates at the Eastern Equatorial surface in both Indian Ocean and the Pacific. It is there at the Equator that a strong, persistent, vertical current exists, and it is shown in several papers available online. See, for example, Ocean in Motion: Ekman Transport Background, http://oceanmotion.org/html/background/ocean-in-motion.htm
polarscientist next says
Besides, Mauna Loa (MLO in that post) is not the sole point for measuring background atmosphere CO2. It is also measured, among other places, at the US South Pole station. At both Mauna Loa and South Pole we see two things in the CO2 data.
But as IPCC says, the MLO record is the master time series and that measurements on Mauna Loa in Hawaii provide a true measure of the global carbon cycle AR4, ¶1.3.1 The Human Fingerprint on Greenhouse Gases, p. 100. IPCC also says it has a global surface sampling network … that is … inter-calibrated . TAR, ¶3.5.1, p. 205. It says it must resolve less than 1 ppm “annual average” in a background of 15 ppm in “seasonal variations” as great as 15 ppm, and to do so requires high quality atmospheric measurements, measurement protocols and calibration procedures within and between monitoring networks. TAR ¶3.5.3 Inverse Modelling of Carbon Sources and Sinks p. 211.
Calibration means to adjust the data into agreement, and into agreement of course with true measure, the master time series, i.e., MLO. IPCC justifies these data adjustments as follows: Because CO2 is a LLGHG and well mixed in the atmosphere, measurements made at such sites provide an integrated picture of large parts of the Earth including continents and city point sources. AR4, ¶2.3.1 Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, p. 138.
As pointed out above, that CO2 is a Long Lived GreenHouse Gas is a false assumption, disproved by IPCC’s own data and formula.
polarscientist continues:
First there are the annual ups and downs due to biology (plants eat CO2 in spring and it gets released by death and decomposition in the fall, the global signal being dominated by the northern hemisphere). Second, the annual variation is superimposed on a steady rise.
polarscientist is not talking about the data, he’s talking about a slightly upward curved trend line with a superimposed saw tooth seasonal variation that published reports represent in place of data. These are not measured, but are the subjective creations of investigators. Neither IPCC nor its sources show these curves superimposed on raw data, but sometimes on investigator filtered data. [Raw data are the complete set of the first samples in scientific coordinates (not voltage, for example).] For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the curves are unbiased and fit the data well, but these certified climatologists provide no data by which an independent scientist or statistician could validate the fidelity of their smoothed curves.
That rise correlates directly with the rate of change in the isotopic composition of the carbon in the CO2, which can be shown to relate directly (i) to the known emissions from fossil fuel burning, and (ii) to the rate of decrease of oxygen in the atmosphere, which is a result of the increase in burning fossil fuel. Hence the rise is not due to some imaginary likely increase in the emission of old CO2 from the ocean depths.
polarscientist here refers to IPCC’s fingerprint analysis by which it concluded that the rise in CO2 was manmade. For the diagram and analysis, see SGW, Part III, Fingerprints, http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2010/03/sgw.html#more. IPCC Figure 2.3(a) shows that the rise in (calibrated) CO2 has the reciprocal slope to measured reductions in atmospheric O2, confirming that the combustion of fossil fuels stoichiometrically accounts correctly for both the rise in CO2 and the depletion of O2 in the atmosphere.
Figure 2.3(b) show that the rise in lightweight CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels mixed into the heavier natural CO2 in the atmosphere accounts for the decrease in the isotopic ratio of C13/C12.
These charts exemplify the worst in scientific misconduct on at least four counts. (1) The pairs of records should be compared on the basis of correlation, and correlation first requires detrending. Calculating correlation without removing the trend lines will produce a non-zero correlation number for any two uncorrelated series where each happens to exhibit a trend. (2) The eye is easily fooled into misinterpreting correlation. Correlation must be determined numerically, which IPCC does not do. This is severely aggravated where the graph include trends. (3) Correlation is necessary but not sufficient in causal analysis. What needs to be calculated is not the instantaneous, zero-lag correlation coefficient, but the continuous correlation function for all lags. In Figure 2.3(b), for the production of CO2 to have cause the decrease in isotopic ratio, the CO2 curve must lead the isotopic ratio.
And fourth, and perhaps of gravest concern, the chart contains false parallels in both part (a) and part (b). Parallelism, made significant by including trends, is falsely portrayed by graphing the two components on separate ordinates adjusted in relative offset and scale factor to make the graph lines run parallel. This is called chart junk, and it is unethical.
IPCC’s attribution of the combustion of fossil fuels to the rise in CO2 by the appearance of the human fingerprint on the record is a failure.
The Keeling Curve, the true, master, global CO2 record, is in deep trouble. It doesn’t match the O2 record, so attribution to fossil fuel combustion is invalid. More importantly, it doesn’t parallel the warming over the same period. The IPCC conclusion that
Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident from the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system. AR5 SPM ¶D, p.15.
is incorrect. The data are far from evident, and the conclusion is invalid.
And then there’s this:
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2013-03-31-ScreenShot20130331at4.19.41PM.png
Where is the correlation between human emissions and global T?
you can’t just throw graphs at the reader without an explanation. What does airborne fraction mean, for example in relation to Keeling’s upward curve of CO2 in the atmosphere? What is the source of the graph? etc.
polar ‘scientist’ says:
you can’t just throw graphs at the reader without an explanation.
The graphs are the explanation. And you don’t post any empirical evidence yourself, do you? Just your cherry-picked pal-reviewed papers that support your alarmist narrative.
Next: if you don’t know how to determine the provenance of posted links, you’re not much of a scientist.
Finally: Complaining that you need an “explanation” indicates that you’re not up to speed. I can’t speak for the originators of any particular chart, but I think I understand what the “airborne fraction” of a particular atmospheric gas is.
I recommend that you take a few weeks at least, and read the numerous articles and comments here. Any related keyword will get your search started, such as: CO2, or Arctic, or polar, or ice, etc. Come back when you know more.
I know what the airborne fraction is, but that doesn’t mean that you should not indicate your sources. The fact is that the airborne fraction (for the uninitiated – the ratio of the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 to the CO2 emissions from anthropogenic sources – i.e. the proportion of our emitted CO2 that remains in the atmosphere) has remained more or less constant at close to 45% for decades. The ratio tells us that about half of what we emit is absorbed by the ocean and/or land plants. Your graph confirms that trend. It also shows from the isotopic composition of the airborne fraction that the stuff in the air increasingly comes from burning fossil fuel. Thanks for that.
You ask me to cite my sources but they are in fact clearly set out in “Earth’s Climate Evolution”. I recommend you read it and the papers on which it is based.
I am afraid you have mixed apples with oranges in your attempt to explain upwelling. The paper by Marshall and Speer 2012 confirms that deep water wells up along density surfaces to the surface of the Southern Ocean (something every oceanographer knows). The article is really pointing out that elsewhere in the ocean, for example the northeast Pacific, where people formerly thought deep water finally made it to the surface, there is no vertical mixing deep enough to bring deep water to the surface. The upwelling that occurs around the margins of the ocean basins (Benguela, Canary, California and Humboldt Currents) is different. It is wind driven and responds to the Ekman Spiral that brings Intermediate (not deep) Water up from depths of 100-150m. Those same depths are tapped by the equatorial upwelling across the Pacific. Those upwellings are completely different in nature, origin, and depth of water tapped from the upwelling around Antarctica, which taps water from depths of 2-3000 m. That brings really old CO2 to the surface. The other upwelling centres actually tap into Intermediate Water, much of which sank at the Polar Front in the Southern Ocean. It contains a mix of some of the original old upwelled CO2 plus younger CO2 absorbed from Antarctic air.
As to the second point regarding CO2 measurements, as far as I am aware the Keeling curve faithfully reflects actual measurements made at Mauna Loa, and has done since those measurements began in 1957.
As to the other point regarding the time that CO2 stays in the atmosphere, when you add CO2 to the atmosphere it has to equilibrate with the CO2 composition of the ocean, by exchange across the air-sea interface. While that reduces the concentration of CO2 in the air, it increases its concentration in the surface ocean. That higher ocean concentration keeps the atmospheric concentration of CO2 above what it was before you added CO2 to it. Assuming that we keep putting CO2 into the air, the exchange with the ocean will keep the concentration in the air high. If we stopped putting CO2 into the air, the long slow process of ocean mixing would eventually weaken the concentration at the surface, which would gradually cause the concentration in the air to fall. But that process is on a time scale of hundreds of years. It is a common misperception from 14C studies that added CO2 will disappear from the air within 4-5 years. The reason that appears so is because when 14C CO2 air molecules move into the ocean they are instantly massively diluted because the ocean is 14C poor. So it is a lousy tracer for CO2 exchange behaviour.
As I wrote upthread:
The most accurate global temperature data comes from satellites:
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ScreenHunter_9549-Jun.-17-21.12.gif
And rather than global T being even partly attributable to CO2, the empirical evidence shows that there is no correlation at all. Furthermore, you have the causation backward. It is:
∆T causes ∆CO2. There is a mountain of empirical evidence showing that causation. But there is no such evidence showing that rising CO2 is the cause of global warming.
The only relevant fact is that global warming stopped many years ago. Cherry-picking limited areas in the hope of making a case for ‘dangerous AGW’ is the best argument the alarmist cult has. But the scare is over global warming, so that argument fails.
The only ‘Authority’ that matters — Planet Earth — is debunking your ‘dangerous AGW’ nonsense. Everything currently being observed has been exceeded in the past, and to a much greater degree. There is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening.
All the wild-eyed Chicken Little-style clucking and arm-waving about ‘global warming’ is over this minuscule change in global T:
That *tiny* fluctuation — over more than a century — is a smaller change than at any comparable time period in the geologic record. The alarmist cult has picked the easiest argument imaginable for skeptics to debunk. The unusually small fluctuation of only ≈0.7ºC over a century is as flat as anything you can find. Yet it is the putative example of ‘runaway global warming and climate catastrophe’ that is being peddled to the public by an ethics-challenged clique of rent-seeking scientists.
Finally, there is no empirical, measurable evidence showing that the rise in CO2 is causing any global warming. In fact, global warming stopped many years ago! That fact debunks the “carbon” narrative, and your attempts to keep it alive amount to beating a dead horse.
Geologists who study climate take a different view from you, as is evident from Figure 1 in the Geological Society of London’s climate change statement at http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/climaterecord, published in 2010 with an update in 2013. This shows that northern hemisphere insolation fell from 10,000 years ago to the present and will stay low for the next 5,000 years. That drove Earth into the ‘neoglacial’ of the past 4000 years, which culminated in the Little ice Age. All things considered, with that orbital driver we should still be in the Little Ice Age. It should not have come to a ‘natural’ end. The figure in the statement shows the accompanying pattern of CO2 over the same period, with its sudden uptick after the beginning of the industrial revolution at around 1769, when Watt’s steam engines rapidly expanded. The only thing we can relate the present temperature rise to is that sudden uptick. It is not explained by solar activity, which is in decline. And it does not relate to volcanic activity. Nor is it connected to the ocean’s behaviour.
In the case of your graph showing the divergence of CO2 and temperature, you can of course adjust the CO2 curve to show a much more gradual rise, which would parallel the temperature rise from 1996 to 2010, ignoring the positive anomaly due to the major 1997-1998 El Nino and the negative anomaly due to the major 2008 La Nina. Behind all that is of course the current negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which has helped to keep the global average down since the year 2000, even while the Arctic continued warming and sea ice there continued to melt. It is no accident that there are now plants emerging from beneath the Baffin Island Ice Cap that last saw daylight 1600 years ago (Miller et al 2012 Geophys. Res. Letts. doi:10.1029/2011GL050168.; and 2010 Quat. Sci. Revs. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2010.02.008, 1-12.). My point is that you cannot focus just on curves of CO2 and temperature, as you do, because several other things also control temperature (e.g. El Nino, La Nino, the PDO, volcanoes). The search for 1:1 is a chimera. You have to extract those effects to see the underlying change in temperature. One such underlying change is caused by our outputs of aerosols. It was high between 1950 and 1970 before Clean Air Acts cleaned them out of the atmosphere. But the growing use of coal by China and India is likely to be reloading them into the atmosphere – witness the so-called Asian Brown Haze. That is something else that can temporarily appear to derail the underlying link between temperature and greenhouse gases. See “Earth’s Climate Evolution”, where the action of different variables on temperature is made clear.
That warming is continuing is evident from the oceanic data of Trenberth and Fasullo, 2013, which shows not only that the upper 700m of the ocean has continued to warm since 2000, but also that increasingly the water deeper than that has warmed significantly. Warming is not only continuing, but penetrating deeper into the ocean, which helps to explain why sea level continues to rise. The ongoing melting of Greenland and Antarctic land ice continues to add to ocean expansion caused by warming the ocean.
Finally, I do wish you would refrain from throwing around insults in your responses. Debate should be a civilised process.
polarsci says:
Geologists who study climate take a different view from you…
Wrong from the get-go. Geologists as a group are the most skeptical of all those with degrees in the hard sciences.
I read your link, and the .pdf’s attached. All I saw was propaganda issued by a small handful of rent-seekers who call themselves a “working group and Council”. They did not poll their thousands of members, and even if they were to do so we know from experience that the language would be so slanted and self-serving that the results would be akin to neo-Nazi John Cook’s “97%” propaganda.
Next, your small, self-appointed “working group and Council” states that the climate sensitivity number should now be doubled!
But doubled from what? From the IPCC’s 3ºC – >6ºC? Real world observations show that climate sensitivity is indistinguishable from zero: despite the steady rise in CO2, global warming stopped many years ago, and it shows no indication of resuming its rise.
So please take your ‘Appeal to Authority’ logical fallacies elsewhere. Planet Earth is busy debunking your “working group and Council” clique. As Chico Marx said: “Who you gonna believe, me or your eyes?”
Next, you say:
In the case of your graph showing the divergence of CO2 and temperature, you can of course adjust the CO2 curve to show a much more gradual rise…
BZZ-Z-Z-Z-Z-ZT!! WRONG!
It’s not ‘my’ graph; it is a WoodForTrees graph constructed from a widely accepted temperature database. You folks just love to “adjust” the numbers. But then it’s no longer ‘data’; it’s whatever you’re fabricating. And it’s clear that you still don’t understand how the start year of the so-called ‘pause’ is determined.
Next, you falsely assert:
That warming is continuing is evident from the oceanic data of Trenberth and Fasullo, 2013, which shows not only that the upper 700m of the ocean has continued to warm since 2000, but also that increasingly the water deeper than that has warmed significantly. Warming is not only continuing, but penetrating deeper into the ocean, which helps to explain why sea level continues to rise.
All you ever post are your assertions and your cherry-picked pal reviewed papers. I post empirical evidence, facts, and measurements.
Warming is not continuing in the oceans:
http://oi55.tinypic.com/2i7qn9y.jpg
Even some of your alarmist pals now admit that the deep ocean has stopped warming:
http://s27.postimg.org/idj4ait4z/Deep_OHC.png
The ARGO buoy network shows that most ocean levels are cooling, not warming:
http://tumetuestumefaisdubien1.sweb.cz/ARGO-sea-temperature-max-max.PNG
Here is more ARGO data, showing no deep ocean warming:
And sea level rise has not accelerated:
In fact, when isostatic adjustments are taken into account, sea levels are decelerating:
And since you’re so enamoured of published papers, this one shows that almost half the sea level rise is due to groundwater loss:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n6/full/ngeo1476.html
Next, this bar graph is from the journal Nature. It shows the raw data, which indicates that sea level rise is decelerating:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n5/carousel/nclimate2159-f1.jpg
So all in all, the objective, empirical evidence refutes the ‘man-made global warming’ hoax. Any questions should be referred to Chico Marx.
You can only label it a pause in hindsight, after it re-commences. Until then, it’s a stoppage.
That is exactly right… comrade.
I seem to have lost my latest post reply to dbstealey, so here goes again. You do love your insults, but I will not be drawn.
Your NODC graph shows ocean temperature increase from 1970 to 2004. The Wunsch graph shows heat content increasing from 1994-2009. The ENVISAT data confirm a sea level rise rate of 3.2 mm/yr, which is almost double what it was in the earlier part of the century. The Pokhrel et al paper of 2012 (your URL) shows that they found the missing part of what was causing the current rate of sea level rise. So for most of the end of the last century, into the early part of this century sea level and temperature and CO2 were all rising. Now, you seem to have a problem accepting that there can be a disconnect between CO2 and temperature, whereas I do not. Temperature rose in the 1997-98 El Nino, and fell in the 2008 La Nina. CO2 hardly changed at all. So the real world data is not following your logic. It is following my logic, which says that temperature has several controls, not just CO2, and will change independently of CO2 due to El Ninos, La Ninas, the PDO, and volcanics, for example. The 1:1 temperature-CO2 link that you seek is obscured. Take out all the temperature wiggles since 1900 and you are left with a curve of temperature rise that more or less well parallels the emissions rise of greenhouse gas emissions. I am not surprised, because geology tells us that 55 million years ago we had a similar event. Nature blasted carbon into the atmosphere, making temperature and sea level rise and acidifying bottom waters so that the CCD rose by 2 km. That’s what geology tells us.
Mr. Summerhayes (I trust my guess of your identity was accurate):
You cherry-picked certain factoids, out of only a few charts, which you believe support your conjecture that CO2 is the control knob of the planet’s temperature. But you disregarded all the other charts I’ve posted that debunk that notion. Well, hold on, because I have more, and they are all based on real world observations.
First, you say:
The Wunsch graph shows heat content increasing from 1994-2009.
Yep. And then the warming stopped. That was my point, which you could not refute.
Next:
The ENVISAT data confirm a sea level rise rate of 3.2 mm/yr, which is almost double what it was in the earlier part of the century.
You like your apples and oranges, don’t you? Envisat was not operating in the first half of the century, and your assertion is unsupported. Let me remind you of a famous physicist’s words:
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can – if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong – to explain it… It’s not right to pick only what you like, but to take all of the evidence…
~ Richard P. Feynman
But as we see, all your arguing is done to support your preconceived belief that CO2 controls global T. The only evidence you posted confirms your bias. You are so wrapped up in your conjecture that you cannot see the glaring errors in it. As a result, you constantly cherry-pick whatever factoids might support your argument, and disregard the rest. Prof Feynman would know exactly what’s going on.
Next, you say:
Now, you seem to have a problem accepting that there can be a disconnect between CO2 and temperature, whereas I do not.
You misrepresent my position. Let me be clear: I am saying that CO2 may have a minuscule effect on temperature (I thinkl it does), but that effect is too small to measure. I have never said anything else. Ever.
A much larger effect is that changes in temperature cause subsequent changes in CO2. I promised to post evidence:
http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/IceCores1.gif
I’ve got lots of similar charts showing that ∆T is followeed by ∆CO2:
http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/400000yearslarge.gif
Another one:
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/BGDL/images/Vostok_CO2_airt.gif
Here’s a shorter time scale; T leads CO2 by six months:
And here is another link, showing that ∆T causes ∆CO2.
Note the “Note:” in this chart:
[click in charts to embiggen]
We observe the same cause and effect on yearly time scales.
For years I have asked readers to post similar charts of observational evidence, showing that changes in CO2 are the cause of subsequent global warming. But no one has been able to produce any such charts. I invite you to try. The best they can do is to post overlay charts of T and CO2. But overlay charts do not show causation. All they show is coincidence.
So your CO2=AGW conjecture has been repeatedly falsified by the only Authority that matters: Planet Earth. Since no one has falsified the hypothesis that the observed temperatures changes are a consequence of natural variability, the climate Null Hypothesis stands: there is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening. Everything being observed now has happened before, repeatedly, and to a much greater degree — and before human emissions were a factor.
You’ve spent many years promoting your belief that CO2 is the cause of global warming. So at this point you would probably consider it a climbdown to admit you could have been mistaken. As Leo Tolstoy wrote:
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
^That’s you, Colin^. Despite no credible real world evidence showing that ∆CO2 causes ∆T, and a mountain of empirical observations showing that temperature changes are the cause of subsequent changes in CO2, you still cling to your belief that CO2 controls global T. Tolstoy understood the reason why (and if you think this is “insulting”, show me where I’m factually wrong).
Here’s more received wisdom:
A false conclusion once arrived at and widely accepted is not easily dislodged, and the less it is understood the more tenaciously it is held.
~ Georg Cantor
You refuse to let any contrary facts dislodge you from your belief. The rest of your reply above is nothing but tap-dancing around the fact that global warming stopped many years ago, while CO2 continued to rise. Your response is simply an excuse to explain why the planet is falsifying your conjecture (at this point I would quote Langmuir and Popper, but I prefer to quote myself. ☺
In summary, I post empirical evidence, while you fall back on pal reviewed climate papers that disagree. If you can’t do better than that, you lose the argument. Because the final Authority is the Real World.
Response to dbstealey
The problem is that what you say about me can equally be said about you – e.g. your quote “A false conclusion once arrived at and widely accepted is not easily dislodged, and the less it is understood the more tenaciously it is held ~ Georg Cantor”. That’s why it is wise not to sling insults around.
My take on the relationship between CO2 in bubbles of fossil air and the temperature of the associated ice in ice cores comes from the latest work by Frederic Parrenin et al, 2013, Synchronous Change of Atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic Temperature During the Last Deglacial Warming: Science 339, p.1060 et seq. Here is the abstract:
“Understanding the role of atmospheric CO2 during past climate changes requires clear knowledge of how it varies in time relative to temperature. Antarctic ice cores preserve highly resolved records of atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperature for the past 800,000 years. Here we propose a revised relative age scale for the concentration of atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperature for the last deglacial warming, using data from five Antarctic ice cores. We infer the phasing between CO2 concentration and Antarctic temperature at four times when their trends change abruptly. We find no significant asynchrony between them, indicating
that Antarctic temperature did not begin to rise hundreds of years before the concentration of atmospheric CO2, as has been suggested by earlier studies.”
Unfortunately I cannot seem to download their key figures, which is their figure 4. But the point is that their work negates all of the previous graphs of temperature and CO2 profiles from Vostok and Dome C. So the graphs that you keep putting on the screen, which display a lag between CO2 and temperature change, are no longer relevant. They are now out of date. The old data has been replaced by new data. You have to keep up with these changes.
Similarly, you seem to have forgotten already that in an earlier post I pointed out that you are also misleading yourself and your readers by displaying the graphs showing changes in the rate of temperature and of CO2 in recent years. All that you are showing there is biology – the fact that temperature rises in the spring but CO2 does not because it is being eaten by plants, and that temperature declines in the fall when the CO2 from plants is being released back to the air by their death and decay. This annual process has nothing to do with the underlying rise in CO2 from human emissions, which is causing temperature to rise gradually
So no matter how many graphs you throw around you are failing to get the point. While there is a general background trend to both CO2 and temperature due to rising emissions causing temperature to grow, there are also disconnects between temperature and CO2 at all scales from the seasonal (my point above), to the El Nino and La Nina (4-7 years), to the PDO (15-25 years), not forgetting the cooling effects of the occasional very large volcano like Pinatubo. You have to understand the origin of each wiggle in the temperature curve before you can see the big picture. The temperature signal has to be disaggregated into its component parts. You will not understand what the planet is doing until you recognise that. But if you stay stuck in your “CO2 doesn’t affect temperature” rut, you will never see this bigger picture.
It is geology that tells us that over millions of years the output of CO2 from volcanoes changed temperature, as did the extraction of CO2 from the air by chemical weathering as mountains rose. This is all well explained by Bob Berner in his 2004 book “The Phanerozoic Carbon Cycle”. It is also geology that tells us that when Earth’s orbit changed our temperature, that affected the amount of CO2 coming out of or going into the ocean during the Ice Age (which Parrenin shows happened with no delay). In other words, geology tells us that CO2 can change temperature, and temperature can change CO2. Both are equally feasible.
These simple and verifiable facts have nothing to do with who is paying me to do my research (in fact nobody is).
Given this situation, maybe Tolstoy was writing about you when he said (your quote) “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”
Finally, it seems to me that the significant difference between us, apart from those errors enumerated above, lies in your refusal to accept a substantial sensitivity for CO2. But in refusing to do so you are making an assumption, one that is not at all well supported by geology. You do not know if your assumption is correct. Geology suggests it is not.
Please let’s stick to arguing about what the science says, and avoid the use of slurs. They do not help take matters forward in terms of advancing understanding of how the planet works.
The problem is that what you say about me can equally be said about you…
Nope. As a skeptic, my job is to falsify conjectures and hypotheses if I can. I have repeatedly falsified your claim that human-emitted CO2 is the cause of polar ice changes, which is such an unusual conjecture that it requires very strong evidence to support it.
But all you have are your assertions; your opinions. That’s your false conclusion once arrived at, which you hang your hat on. But your conclusions are belief-based, not data-based. Baseless opinions like that are not good enough to alter national and international policy. By the same token, you’ve appended your name to propaganda that claims the climate sensitivity number should be at least double what it is. But you don’t even know the climate sensitivity number!
Next, it is widely known that bubbles migrate in ice. That’s been discussed here extensively. But there are other proxies that produce the same result, and which do not depend on migrating bubbles. That’s the same kind of false argument that alarmists use when they claim that satellite temperature measurements are wrong. But when it’s pointed out that many thousands of radiosonde balloon measurements corroborate satellite data, they go silent.
Your ‘bubble’ argument reeks of desperation; cherry-picking one proxy and claiming that proves everything. It doesn’t.
You quote one particular claim:
“We find no significant asynchrony between them, indicating that Antarctic temperature did not begin to rise hundreds of years before the concentration of atmospheric CO2, as has been suggested by earlier studies.”
It is clear you picked it because of your confirmation bias.
Next:
…All that you are showing there is biology
Isn’t it amazing, then, that every graph shows the same causal relationship between temperature and CO2? I’ve repeatedly asked you to produce the same kind of verifiable, empirical charts showing that changes in CO2 cause changes in temperature. Where are they? Once again, your claims are nothing more than assertions.
And the biological effect is shown here. Notice that it’s very different from the charts I’ve posted, so that argument can be discarded as well.
Next:
…the underlying rise in CO2 from human emissions, which is causing temperature to rise gradually.
Ho-hum. Another assertion.
And your ‘geology’ paragraph has nothing to do with the claim that human CO2 emissions are the cause of polar ice changes. Then you say:
…no matter how many graphs you throw around you are failing to get the point
Right. I’m just a dummy who asks questions you can’t answer — so I don’t get the point. I think that there is no limit to the number of graphs you would reject based on that self-serving statement. You continually ignore the fact that as a promoter of the ‘damgerous man-made global warming’ conjecture, the onus is on you, not on skeptics. You are the one who needs to provide verifiable, empirical, testable evidence to support your conjecture:
Ei incumbit probatio, qui dicit, non qui negat; cum per rerum naturam factum negantis probatio nulla sit. – The proof lies upon him who affirms, not upon him who denies; since, by the nature of things, he who denies a fact cannot produce any proof. As to the conjecture that CO2 emissions are causing “unprecedented” global warming: the onus lies on those who say so. As to the proposition that there has been an alarming spike in global temperatures: the onus lies on those who say so.
The onus is on you, Colin. But so far, all you have are your links to like-minded papers and your assertions. You don’t have empirical evidence showing that CO2 causes what you’re claiming. Without verifiable measurements all you have are your opinions. That isn’t good enough. The onus is still on you, and you have not performed.
Next, you preposterously say:
…it seems to me that the significant difference between us, apart from those errors enumerated above, lies in your refusal to accept a substantial sensitivity for CO2.
Yeah. How about that? I refuse to accept your baseless assertions as facts. You claim that the climate sensitivity number should be doubled, and my refusal to accept that without supporting measurements is a problem for you.
Then you say:
Please let’s stick to arguing about what the science says.
I agree — with the caveat that the onus is on you to produce verifiable, testable, data-based measurements that support your claims. Anything less is only an opinion, and one that I disagree with. I am very skeptical of the claim that dangerous AGW is occurring, especially since we have just been through a true “Goldilocks” century of unusually flat global temperatures. How is that something to be alarmed about? These constant climate scares are self-serving propaganda by a relatively small clique of rent-seeking scientists, who want to alarm the public when there is absolutely no evidence that there is a problem. That is dishonest, no?
Yes.
Finally, you say you aren’t paid for your opinion, but of course you are: your name is on what many would consider to be a alarmist propaganda. Therefore, you can’t simply admit the truth: that you have no compelling evidence. If you did, your name wouldn’t be on many more of those papers, and you clearly enjoy seeing yourself as some kind of ‘authority’.
But that’s there, in alarmist world; here on the internet’s “Best Science” site, you need more than just your opinion. You need facts, evidence, and most important, you need measurements based on empirical data. But so far, we haven’t seen that.
I have provided numerous references to work published in the scientific literature. You choose to ignore them. I see no point in wasting my time providing further references for you to dismiss as simply the product of what you call “rent-seeking scientists” (yet another of your barrage of slurs). I am disappointed that you fail to see that temperature is forced by multiple drivers, which is why one has to dig into the data to understand what it means – and which is what I have done but you have not. Science is not just about data – it is about developing hypotheses to explain the data. That is what the scientific literature does. It is as plain as the nose on one’s face that temperature is influenced by El Nino and La Nina events, and by large volcanic eruptions, which is why one cannot simply stack temperature against CO2 and expect to see a perfect 1:1 correlation. It is equally plain that on an annual basis temperature will increase before CO2 because the CO2 is responding to biology. As you seem to be disputing these basic facts, I see no point in continuing a discussion with you.
“My take on the relationship between CO2 in bubbles of fossil air and the temperature of the associated ice in ice cores comes from the latest work by Frederic Parrenin et al, 2013,…”
Shouldn’t that be your take SPECIFICALLY the relationship between CO2 bubbles of fossil air and the temperatures of the associated ice during “4 times of abrupt change” during JUST “the last deglacial warming”. Right? Because Parrenin et al 2013 only studied 4 times of abrupt change during one SPECIFIC period of warming.
I was curious as to how “the takes” of other “scientists” might have been influenced by Parrenin et al 2013. I found a blog by Daniel B. Botkin, PhD and it’s apparent from his blog that he’s very concerned about the environment, thinks we should scale back fossil fuel usage, stop deforestation etc. I see no evidence that he might be a “big oil shill” or some kind of rabid “denier” of any kind. Here’s what he said about Parrenin et al 2013:
http://www.danielbbotkin.com/2013/03/04/carbon-dioxide-and-temperature-who-has-led-whom/
*****
“The new paper in Science presents new ways of analyzing those events, yielding results that greatly reduce the time gap between rising temperature and rising carbon dioxide. The lag could still be there but much shorter — perhaps only as long as 130 years. Or it might not exist at all.
The new Science paper is objective and open, and very careful, allowing for a variety of interpretations, even the previous much longer lags. This is the way that the entire discussion of climate change should be going on.”
*****
Wow. He doesn’t claim or falsely insinuate that Parrenin et al 2013 establishes anything…like that there is no lag at all. He says that “the paper is objective, open and very careful, and that it allows for a variety of interpretations, even the previous much longer lags”!
But YOU insist that “…their work negates all of the previous graphs of temperature and CO2 profiles from Vostok and Dome C. So the graphs that you keep putting on the screen, which display a lag between CO2 and temperature change, are no longer relevant. They are now out of date. The old data has been replaced by new data. You have to keep up with these changes.”
How is it that two scientists, who both seem to be concerned about the environment would come to such DIFFERENT conclusions from the same paper? According to Botkin, Parrenin et al 2013 simply introduced a new method for examining the data. According to you, this new method invalidates all previous data. I find it so ironic that someone like you would read one study and suddenly decide that it’s methods should be viewed as the new “consensus method”, and that one new study has rendered all of that “overwhelming evidence” from past scientists “no longer relevant”! Even skeptics don’t do that! It’s the kind of idiotic, irrational behavior that some alarmists like to attribute to “climate deniers”, whoever they might be.
For someone who asks “Please let’s stick to arguing about what the science says”, maybe you should actually DO what you ask-stick to what the science, like Parrenin et al 2013, actually SAYS instead of presenting your interpretation of it as FACT?
You really must read the paper, not what some blogger says about it. Here’s an extract: “Our chronology and the resulting aCO2-AT phasing strengthens the hypothesis that there was a close coupling between aCO2 and AT on both orbital and millennial time scales. The aCO2 rise could contribute to much of the AT change during TI, even at its onset, accounting for positive feedbacks and polar amplification, which magnify the impact of the relatively weak rCO2 change (Fig. 4) that alone accounts for ~0.6°C of global warming during TI. Invoking changes in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation is no longer required to explain the lead of AT over aCO2”. In other words, the supposed lead of AT over CO2 has vanished.
“You really must read the paper, not what some blogger says about it.”
Really? “Some blogger”???? Are you engaging in logical fallacies in an attempt to somehow discredit his opinion? What on earth does him having a BLOG have to do with his extensive scientific credentials? Here’s a link –
http://www.danielbbotkin.com/about/
“Here’s an extract: ‘Our chronology and the resulting aCO2-AT phasing strengthens the hypothesis that there was a close coupling between aCO2 and AT on both orbital and millennial time scales. The aCO2 rise could contribute to much of the AT change during TI, even at its onset, accounting for positive feedbacks and polar amplification, which magnify the impact of the relatively weak rCO2 change (Fig. 4) that alone accounts for ~0.6°C of global warming during TI. Invoking changes in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation is no longer required to explain the lead of AT over aCO2’. In other words, the supposed lead of AT over CO2 has vanished.”
I’m sorry, where in scientific nomenclature does “close coupling” equate with “non-existent”?
But let’s look at their work-figure 4 information since you love that chart so! (AT stands for “Antarctic Temperature”, TI stands for “Termination I”, and aCO2 stands for “atmospheric CO2”)
******
“The temporal variations of aCO2 and AT across TI (Fig. 4) on our chronology are highly correlated (Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.993 for a 20-year resampled time series). Both records can be accurately fitted by a six-point linear function (Fig. 4 and supplementary materials). We infer the aCO2
-AT phasing at the four break points using a Monte-Carlo algorithm (supplementary materials): the onset of TI (10 +/- 160 years, aCO2 leads), the onset of the Bølling oscillation (–260 +/-130 years, AT leads), the onset of the Younger Dryas (60 +/-120 years, aCO2 leads), and the onset of the Holocene (–500 +/- 90 years, AT leads). The uncertainty takes into account the uncertainty in the determination of the break
points and the uncertainty in the determination of (Delta) depth. The only significant aCO2 -AT lags are
observed at the onsets of the Bølling oscillation and the Holocene.
It should be noted that during these two events, the associated sharp increases in aCO2 were probably larger and more abrupt than the signals recorded in the ice core, due to the diffusion in the gas recording process (17). This atmosphere-ice core difference biases our break point determination toward younger ages. If we use these fast increases to determine the break points in aCO2, we find a lag of –10 +/-
130 years (aCO2) for the Bølling onset and – 130 +/- 90 years (aCo2) for the Holocene onset; that is, no significant phasing. If, instead of using aCO2 we use the radiative forcing of aCO2 (18) [rCO2 =5.35W/m
2 ln(CO2 /280 parts per million by volume)], the inferred phasing is not significantly changed.”
********
Parrenin et al 2013’s revolutionary method INFERS the following-
Holocene- AT temps lead increase in aCO2 by -500 years (plus or minus 90 years)
Younger Dryas aCO2 leads increase by 60 years (plus or minus 120 years)
Bolling Oscillation- AT leads aCO2 by -260 years (plus or minus 130 years)
TI -aCO2 leads AT by 10 years (plus or minus 160 years)
“The only significant lags are observed at the onsets of the Bolling Oscillation and the Holocene”.
(SO Parrenin et al 2013 ESTABLISHES that in the past 22,000 years, there have been TWO times when aCO2 has “lagged significantly” behind Antarctic Temperatures.)
A careful, educated reading of the above quote from Parrenin et al 2013 leads one to understand that the ONLY WAY they could get ALL FOUR break points to result in “no significant phasing” was to use a method they had already, carefully explained prior to this point in their paper (quote) did “not provide constraints for the onset of TI” and had a larger “analytical uncertainty” than the method they chose. They emphasize the fact that the fast break point method doesn’t hold up by showing that when they used the radiative forcing equation, it more closely matches their preferred method of “inferred phasing” than the fast break method.
So, I propose that polarscientist, either cannot read and understand Parrenin et al 2013 as written, or is deliberately lying about Parrenin et al’s conclusions. Either way he is FALSELY claiming that Parrenin et al 2013 says something that it does NOT say.
Mr. Summerhill, AKA: Polarscientist,
You say:
I have provided numerous references to work published in the scientific literature.
Yes, you have. Often. However, that answer is the ‘Appeal to Authority’ logical fallacy. Those papers may be truthful and accurate, or not. I don’t know. That’s why I constantly ask you for measurements showing that things have changed due to human CO2 emissions. But I’ve seen no convincing measurements showing that (and I assure you, I can be convinced; just not by assertions or published papers alone. Keep in mind that most published papers eventually turn out to be wrong).
Really, you have never provided one iota of empirical evidence showing that human CO2 emissions are the cause of polar variability. And that is the central issue in the debate. Because if there is no evidence linking emissions with polar variability or global temperature changes, then even if that is happening it must be too small to measure, and thus it is in the same ballpark as arguments about angels dancing on pinheads. It simply doesn’t matter. It only matters if it affects us.
Are you aware of the climate Null Hypothesis? It states that if there are any changes caused by an extraneous forcing such as CO2, that those changes must be measurable. If they are not quantifiable, then they may or may not exist, but for all practical purposes they do not exist. Does that make sense?
The Null Hypothesis has never been falsified. If I’m wrong about that, then post your measurements showing changes caused by human emissions. And as I’ve asked before, please, no ‘overlays’ like those posted in charts showing the coincidental rise of CO2 and temperature. We need to see the cause. It is causation that matters, not coincidence.
Next, regarding your complaints about my rent seeker comments, etc., the facts exposed in the Climategate email dump are very incriminating. Normally I wouldn’t care a whit if someone tells tall tales. But as a hard-bitten taxpayer who is forced to pay more every year, and seeing more than one billion dollars wasted every year on the ‘dangerous AGW’ (DAGW) nonsense (just in the U.S., I might add), I get highly incensed. And this is the internet, Colin. As a skeptic questioning the ‘dangerous mann-made global warming’ scare, I’ve been called far worse names than you can imagine, and I’m not alone. I have a folder full of literal death threats from people who have been spun up by climate alarmism. So if ‘rent seekers’ bothers you, just pretend you’re skeptical of DAGW. Go post that on blogs like treehugger or hotwhopper. Then you will see how petty your own complaints are.
That said, I apologize for hurting your feelings. My frustration comes from the lack of answers. In fact, no one ever seems to answer my straightforward questions. For example, you have never answered the points I’ve raised since we began our conversation. I suspect that is because you cannot answer them, or you would have. You say the sensitivity number should be doubled, but you can’t even say what the sensitivity number is! What is it, in your opinion? Your name is on that paper, surely you stand behind their conclusions. And you attribute what appears to be completely natural polar fluctuations to human CO2 emissions, but without any corroborating measurements that convincingly connect the two. As you say, you have developed a hypothesis (actually, a conjecture) that explains the data — but what data?? Measurements are data, but you have never posted any raw data that connects polar fluctuations with human CO2 emissions.
Now you bring up el nino, la nina, and volcanoes. I agree that global T is influenced by those natural events. I also agree that CO2 is influenced by biology. But as I’ve shown, ∆CO2 is independent of biology, in addition to responding on a seasonal time frame. So contrary to your assertion, I am not disputing natural events. But when those natural cycles are removed, we are still left with the fact that changes in CO2 are caused by changes in temperature — but we never see any empirical evidence showing that ∆T is caused by ∆CO2. Once again, if you have charts that show that alleged causation, please post them here.
Next, I dispute the conjecture that human-emitted CO2 has a measurable effect on global temperatures, or on polar parameters of any kind. Prove me wrong, if you can. I will accept convincing, measurement-based arguments. If you can produce empirical, testable (meaning replicable) measurements that convincingly show human emissions are affecting either global T or polar ice cover, or volume, or any other climate parameter, please post that data here. If I cannot find any way to show that it’s due to other causes, then I will admit that you are right and I am wrong. That’s fair, no? But as a scientific skeptic, I accept the Null Hypothesis as the starting point: you need to convncingly show a human cause, if it exists. But so far, it’s all been links to papers, and personal opinions. I’m sorry, Colin, but that just isn’t convincing enough when the putative answer is essentially the destruction of our modern technological society. We cannot do that based on an unproven conjecture.
So please, enough with the peer reviewed papers, and with opinions that human emissions are responsible for polar variability or any other climate changes. There is simply too much money involved supporting that narrative. It’s become so political that we cannot trust conclusions unless thay are solidly data-based. As Climategate showed, corrupt scientists have co-opted the journal system to the point that they have excluded other scientists — for nothing more than having a different scientific point of view! That isn’t acceptable. I think there are plenty of honest climate scientists, and I’ve never said you aren’t one of them. But when those gatekeepers get to decide who will be published and who won’t (with the exception of a few scientists who simply cannot be kept out, such as internationally esteemed scientists with hundreds of published papers to their credit), then it is impossible for the average reader to know who is being throoughly honest — and who is grant-trolling. Furthermore, the pressure created by immense piles of grant money naturally pushes scientists to add words like ‘climate change’ to their papers. We see that constantly — and if they will do that, what else do they do?
Anyway, those papers are an appeal to authority. They may or may not be correct. If there is a real connection between CO2 and polar variabilty or other climate parameters, you can certainly make that case without resorting to those papers unless they show raw, real world measurements directly connecting CO2 emissions with variability — and for that you don’t need the links, you just need to post the data.
What skeptics want are real world observations and data-based measurements that convincingly show that human emissions are the cause of polar or other climate variations. But so far I have not seen any such measurements. If you have them, I request that you post them here, rather than linking to papers that may or may not be accurate.
I do appreciate your responding. That way I get to see what is influencing your argument. As I’ve said, you can convince me. I was pretty convinced by the late ’90’s that there was a global warming problem. But nothing ever came of it, and since then there has been no global warming at all. So now my view is that everything observed is due to natural variability. You can prove me wrong. All you need are convincing data-based measurements. But so far, I haven’t seen them.
(Deleted. This commenter has been banned for identity theft. -mod)
polarscientist doesn’t even understand that a paper he seems to agree with- Parrenin et al 2013- does NOT say what HE claims it says. But he has no problem opening his mouth here and declaring that HIS interpretation of that paper is correct. Why? Because this forum is for the open debate/discussion of what “the science” says or does not say. No one here is deluded enough to think that posting on a blog makes them a “scientist” or that debates/discussions on a blog are “how you do science”.
So attempting to correlate your own “appeal to authority” about how science is done, to this discussion here is both logically flawed and irrelevant.
(Deleted. This commenter has been banned for identity theft. -mod)
MD said-
“Citing published research is not an “Appeal to Authority” fallacy as claimed by Dbstealey.”
You’re right, it’s not. But citing published research as if that research is accurate simply by default of being published, or insinuating that citing it that by-default-accurate research therefore proves the one citing it is also accurate IS illogical for PS to do.
“If you disagree with what I wrote about “how science is done” it would make your post intelligible if you would either quote what you think I got wrong, or at the least tell us how YOU think science is done.”
I don’t think that what you wrote about how “science is done” is wrong. I think that bringing up “how science is done” is irrelevant because dbstealey didn’t claim to be “doing science” here in this blog. Instead of your “trying to focus on what dbstealey had posted”, you “drag(ed) in (an) extraneous and irrelevant point”. Oh the irony.
(Deleted. This commenter has been banned for identity theft. -mod)
1) Thank you regarding the “fallacy”
(You’re welcome)
2) Nothing I’ve posted references Polarscientists, so you bringing it up to reply to me is irrelevant. (The very quote you used referenced a response to polarscientist by dbstealey-and you refer to dbstealey lecturing a real scientist (PS) below-proving how relevant PS is to you. 🙂
3) Thank you regarding how science is done.
(Of course)
4) Dbstealey wrote a long winded post that amounts to nothing, although he is desperately trying to give the impression he knows of what he speaks. Being that he feels the need to lecture a real scientist on how “to do the science”….you might just get the impression (as I have) that he is simply a frustrated wanna-be scientist, frustrated that he has not accomplished being one.
(And here you go again, engaging in more flawed logic. Your OPINIONS about dbstealey do not constitute PROOF of anything about dbstealey. That his “long winded post amounts to nothing”, is your opinion, not a fact. That he is “desperately trying to give” some impression or another is ad hominem. He doesn’t lecture anyone on “how to do the science”, so that’s a strawman argument, and that YOU “get the impression that he is…a frustrated wanna-be scientist” is just more ad hominem/personal opinion attacking the messenger. Your responses are not how “logic arguments are done”, and I BELIEVE the last place that illogical arguments belong, is in scientific discussions.)
(Deleted. This commenter has been banned for identity theft. -mod)
DB wrote the below as a response to polarscientist on 12/8/2015 2:19
“What skeptics want are real world observations and data-based measurements that convincingly show that human emissions are the cause of polar or other climate variations.”
I followed every back and forth closely looking for the “thing” that would sway me concerning CAGW and the CO2 connection. Something that would push me off my current disposition to think the current climate is part of the natural variability.
I looked with anticipation that polar would supply the needed smoking gun peer review article(s) with replicable data, known rates of error and experimental design that tests the theory because I am schooled in evaluating the status of what is best available science on the basis of daubert factors. It’s what I know.
Perhaps things come along at the same time to create a push. I also just finished reading all the “data and dogma” testimony today and was particularly struck by the way Dr Curry articulated the broken social contract concerning the objectivity of the peer review process itself as well as the disappointingly rigged status of professional advancement.
I now lean more towards not trusting the peer review process than I have ever been before. In fact, in the case of CAGW/CO2, I think we have reached a point of polarization that any data AND experiment design needs to be consider VALID only after truly independent parties have also conducted the experiment and produced VALIDATED data.
The credibility of the peer review process has been lost.
An independent process needs to take its place.
If that process is unavailable, then neither side gets to claim “peer review best available science” status until the other side has concurred with the validity of the design and the data.
I see no other way at this point.
Well, there is another way and it’s mostly the sort of strategy left to thugs and nobody wants that to be the default for decision making.
Thanks to WUWT, Climate Etc and Jo to name a few for illuminating the struggles that take place in this field.
Thanks to the many bloggers and hosts who engage and keep the light flickering.
Thanks to the scientists who speak up and articulate the struggles to be true to their craft.
Dear Mr DBStealey, I cite scientific papers because they are the sources of the data. I am not generating data myself. I am reading a broad range of published scientific papers in reputable scientific journals that contain the results of many years of analyses by large numbers of bona fide scientists on multiple aspects of climate change. Together those multiple papers enable their readers to figure out what is going on with our climate system. Those papers are themselves stimuli to others to test the published conclusions. Climate science is a constant process of gathering data to test hypotheses, leading to gradual improvement in our understanding (e.g. Parrenin’s work overturns pervious understanding). My self-imposed task is to synthesise the available data and conclusions to produce an overarching hypothesis about how the climate system works, how it has varied through time, and what the main driving forces were in the past, what they are in the present, and – on the basis of that understanding – what they are likely to be in the future. That is how science works. See “Earth’s Climate Evolution”. This is about real science. It would seem that Michael Darby agrees with me.
Michael Darby seeming to agree with you is irrelevant. Your “self imposed task” obviously doesn’t include eliminating your own biases or accurately representing other author’s conclusions, because Parrenin’s work does not overturn all pervious, nor previous, understanding. They even SAY in the paper-
“Our results are also in general agreement with a recent 0- to 400-year aCO2-AT average lag estimate for TI (20), using a different approach. Although this study does not make any assumption about the convective zone thickness, it is based on coastal cores, which might be biased by local changes in ice sheet thickness; and firn desification models, which may not be valid for past conditions (see the supplementary materials
for a more detailed discussion).”
Their results AGREE WITH another paper that “ESTIMATES” a 0-400 year aCO2-AT average LAG for TI. (Not ALL Terminations-just TI) I’m sorry but only a delusional/biased “scientist” would declare an average/median lag time of 200 years ( 0-400 = 200 average/median) to be non-existent/ “vanished”.
Here’s Parrenin et al 2013 in case anyone else would like to read it themselves and determine whether or not polarscientist actually understands what it says vs what it does NOT say.
https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/global-change-debates/Sources/11-Temperature-leads-CO2-in-ice-cores/Parrenin_Science_2013.pdf
‘polarscientist says:
…I am not generating data myself. I am reading a broad range of published scientific papers in reputable scientific journals that contain the results of many years of analyses by large numbers of bona fide scientists on multiple aspects of climate change. Together those multiple papers enable their readers to figure out what is going on with our climate system. Those papers are themselves stimuli to others to test the published conclusions. …&etc.
Nothing is stopping the ‘polarscientist’ from posting whatever data/measurements that support his conjecture that human CO2 emissions are the cause of polar variability. But despite repeatedly asking for data showing a direct connection between human emissions and changes in polar climate parameters, all we ever get is that kind of vague response.
‘polarscientist’ also states:
…the significant difference between us, apart from those errors enumerated above, lies in your refusal to accept a substantial sensitivity for CO2.
What is “substantial”? Is that like, “big”? Sorry, but that’s not sufficient. I’m asking for ‘polarscientist’ to post his specific climate sensitivity number. The same sensitivity number he says should now be “doubled”. But getting a number from that ‘authority’ is harder than pulling teeth.
I’m asking for other data, too. For instance, the only empirical data I am aware of shows that changes in CO2 are caused by changes in temperature. That’s the “causation” I keep referring to. But despite repeatedly asking for the past several years, no one has ever produced any data-based charts showing that changes in temperature are caused by changes in CO2. That’s another thing that ‘polarscientist’ disputes — but he can’t, or won’t, post any real world examples of ∆CO2 consistently causing ∆temperature.
But that is the basis for the entire ‘carbon’ scare: that a rise in CO2 will cause global warming, so surely there must be supporting measurements… shouldn’t there? Or, are we expected to just take the word of these putative ‘authorities’? See, that’s the problem with some authorities: they think they can overrule the real world, just because they’re ‘authorities’.
I’ve repeatedly stated that the ultimate Authority is Planet Earth (or Reality, if you like). Michael Darby can disagree, but I remind him that most published, peer reviewecd papers are ultimately found to be wrong. He is welcome to accept whatever ‘authority’ he wants. But that same authority still avoids giving whatever climate sensitivity number that he says should now be doubled.
It’s fine to disagree, I have no problem with that. But when the putative ‘authority’ will not answer questions, the first thought that comes to mind is: Why not??
So once again: what specific value does the ‘polarscientist’ assign as the climate sensitivity number? Since his name is on the paper stating that the sensitivity number must now be “doubled”, he is putting himself forth as an authority. In fact, he is the Chair of the 10-member committee that wrote that statement.
So he should have those answers ready, but this is the third time I’ve asked. How many times do skeptics have to ask for specific data? I am asking a self-identified, self-selected authority on polar science, so surely he can provide that data if he wants to (and if it exists). Once again: I am requesting verifiable, testable, data-based measurements that convincingly demonstrates a connection between human CO2 emissions, and polar variability. That is polarscientist’s conjecture. Will he defend it, or not?
Scientists like to replicate the claims of other scientists. Replicating experiments is part of the scientific method. But polarscientist’s claims cannot be replicated with opinions, papers, assertions, or appeals to authority. We need specific, data-based measurements showing a direct cause-and-effect relationship between CO2 and polar variability. If that relationship cannot be shown to exist, the conjecture is falsified.
I’ve tried to make it clear that while papers have their place, whenever there is a discrepancy between the opinions they express and the real world, then empirical observations rule. Data-based measurements always trump opinions, whether peer reviewed or otherwise.
I think you’ll find that the relationship between CO2 and temperature was first documented by Tyndall in 1859. He published further data in September 1861 in the London, Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Series 4, v 22, No 146, “On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours, and on the Physical Connexion of Radiation, Absorption, and Conduction”. It is a paper, but it also contains original data.
Turning back to Parrenin, let me put this to you:
1. The temperature fluctuations of the Ice Age at any one location, as estimated by isotopic analyses (i.e. proxies), result, as far as we can ascertain, from the driving force of fluctuations in the Earth’s orbit and the tilt of the Earth’s axis.
2. These are the primary drivers of change for that period. Increasing insolation, e.g. at 65 deg North, warms the ocean.
3. Because warm water expels dissolved gases, the concentration of CO2 rises in the atmosphere as the ocean warms.
4. Because (according to Dick Lindzen among others) CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the atmosphere warms further (i.e. there is a positive feedback to temperature.
5. Orbitally induced warming also evaporates water vapour from the ocean, providing further positive feedback to temperature, since water vapour is another greenhouse gas.
5. The warming and the greenhouse gas feedback to warming stops when the insolation declines.
6. Experiment and theory indicate that the rising temperature will cause immediate release of dissolved gases and evaporation. Hence the rise in CO2 should occur with the rise in temperature, not after a significant delay.
7. Bearing that in mind it has long puzzled paleoclimatologists that the ice core records show an apparent delay between the rising temperature (proxy) and the rising CO2. They worried that the assumptions they had made about the relationship between the age of the ice and the age of the enclosed air bubbles at the same depth might be wrong.
8. Parrenin et al 2013 set out to investigate this problem by using a new method. It showed them that in the case of 2 out of 4 temperature changes between 22,000 and 10,000 years BP, there appeared to be no significant delay within the error bounds of their data. In the other 2 cases the answer was not so clear.
9. That raises the possibility that elsewhere down the EPICA ice cores we may find times when there was virtually no delay between the temperature and CO2 signals. This now needs investigating, as Parrenin et al point out.
10. So, we ought all to be able to agree that for the glacial to interglacial changes of the Ice Age, insolation (hence temperature) drives changes in CO2 (probably, if experiment and theory are right, with no delay). In other words, the new findings show that the older findings (of a delay) were in error. They confirm that the concept that temperature drives initial CO2 change was correct.
However, at other times in the geological past there is evidence that changes in CO2 did lead changes in temperature, for instance at the Palaeocene-Eocene boundary 55 million years ago, as pointed out by the likes of Jim Zachos. And in principle, given both experiment (Tyndall) and theory (Plass), there is no reason why that should not be the case – regardless of whatever one thinks the climate sensitivity is. That’s what you get when greenhouse gases behave the way they are supposed to – provided you can find a means of supplying them to the atmosphere. If you are prepared to accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, then you have to accept that possibility.
polarscientist
Odd effect then.
There is almost NO “ocean surface” at 65 north, and what little is at 65 north receives (on the horizontal ocean surface at 65 north below frequent cloud cover) almost no solar energy compared to ANY other area on earth. (The 14 million sq kilometers of Arctic Ocean receive even less, but that region is ice-covered most of the year, and the wide areas of ice cause it to receive even less solar energy per sq meter over the course of the year.)