Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach (see Update at the end)
I had tweeted the following:
Various people either liked or retweeted this, including my mad mate and human lightning rod, James Delingpole. This post started because someone named Robin Whitlock tweeted the following:
Delingpole is a knuckledragger, pure and simple. It’s a wonder his brain hasn’t shrivelled by now, or perhaps it has…
To which I replied:
Ah, schoolboy insults. They make you look so sophisticated and wise.
Sadly, Mr. Whitlock declined the opportunity to actually say what was wrong with James Delingpole’s ideas, and instead said;
Okay, Mr Eschenbach, let’s see how much you actually know about it. Debate CC with me if you dare
Now, I’m always happy to debate climate change, but not in 140-character chunks. So I said:
I’m happy to debate, although I don’t see how I can do so on Twitter. My blog is available. What do you wish to debate?
Of course, nothing is that simple. Before debating the ideas, the charming man has to start with the seemingly obligatory ad hominem arguments about my education, my ancestry, and my general unfitness for human consumption, viz:
Ha, okay, just seen this. That tells me everything for a start: You’re a ‘professional’ climate change denier
A “professional climate change denier”? If so, where’s my dang paycheck? I am an amateur scientist, and proud of it. I’m one of the few amateur scientists to have anything peer-reviewed published in Nature Magazine. It was only a “Brief Communications Arising”, but it was solidly peer-reviewed. In addition, at present, I have more than sixty citations to my publications in the scientific journals … not bad for a self-taught man with absolutely no scientific education.
He followed this with:
Construction Manager and former Accounts Manager. That is, not a climate scientist.
This scientifically challenged person thinks that reading a very slanted bio written by my enemies tells him “everything” about the scientific validity of my claims … yeah, that’s the ticket. No need to debate the issues, just accuse your opponent of being unqualified … amazingly, this good fellow actually seems to think this makes the slightest difference as to whether my scientific claims are true.
He then goes on to a series of tweets, which I’ve condensed into one for easy reading:
So, let’s go on to some of the statements mentioned here. First, the “eight tenths of a degree” statement. That’s being way too optimistic. Even 2 deg C is probably too optimistic. Most climate science says we’re heading in the direction of 4 or even 6 degrees C. Furthermore, at 2 degrees C, melting permafrost releases methane into the atmosphere, which is even more dangerous than CO2.
I also see that you draw on climategate again, when the scientists involved were cleared of any wrongdoing by several investigations. You say that greenland has only lost a small fraction of it’s total ice mass but the evidence indicates that Greenland’s ice loss is accelerating and will contribute to sea level rise in the order of metres over the next few centuries.
OK … let’s take that one at a time. First, I have no idea which “eight tenths of a degree” he’s talking about. Apparently, he’s talking about some claimed warming by 2100, but from memory, I’ve never claimed that it would be 0.8°C. I’m not sure what I’m missing here …
He then says regarding Climategate that “the scientists involved were cleared of any wrongdoing by several investigations.” Because I was actually discussed in the Climategate emails, which revealed that the people at UEA lied to my face, I can assure you that the whitewashes that were done were pathetic imitations of a real investigation. In fact, the Brits said that the only reason that criminal charges weren’t laid because of their lies was that the statute of limitations had expired. And Acton’s “investigation” of the actions of Briffa and Jones never interviewed either one of them … investigations? Don’t make me laugh. See Steve McIntyre’s excellent blog for dozens of well-informed and researched articles on the subject. I fear Mr. Whitlock is far out of his depth on this one, as both Steve and I were involved in the actual event.
He next claims, without attribution or citation, that “most climate science” (whatever that might be) says we’ll warm by “4 or even 6 degrees C“. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find folks other than wild alarmists who make that claim, so I’d be interested in his sources.
Finally, he says that if the arctic warms by 2°C it will somehow release huge amounts of methane … again, this is not scientifically supported. Instead, it is based on … wait for it … climate models:
The new study found the rate of old carbon released during the past 60 years to be relatively small. Model projections conducted by other studies expect much higher carbon release rates—from 100 to 900 times greater—for its release during the upcoming 90 years. This suggests that current rates are still well below what may lay ahead in the future of a warmer Arctic.
This is typical of all of the claimed dangers of CO2. We have computer models, we have lots of alarmist claims, we have failed sequential doom-casting, in the above quote we have “this suggests” and the other usual weasel words, “might happen” and “could lead to” and the like … but what we don’t have is any evidence that anything out of the ordinary is happening. Yes, people say that we’ll get a ten foot sea level rise by 2100 … but there is no sign of acceleration in the rate of rise despite the warming of the last three centuries.. Similarly, people say we’ll get mega-methane from arctic warming, but actual studies show no such increase happening despite the warming of the last three centuries. The bizarre truth is that we are studying a claimed phenomenon (increased warming due to humans) when we have no actual evidence that anything out of the ordinary is occurring. No unusual warming. No increase in extreme events. No increase in rainfall. No change in sea level rise. No increase in methane. If Mr. Whitlock has any such evidence, I hope he produces it.
Finally, in general the claimed sensitivity of the earth to CO2 has been falling. It used to be 3°C per doubling, then 2°C per doubling, and now it’s about 1°C per doubling. Given the claimed future increases in CO2 (which may never come to pass), this pretty much rules out his four to six degree C warming scenario.
==============================================
But enough of what passes for a debate on Mr. Whitlock’s planet. Here’s the part that drives me nuts in discussions like this:
• Nobody knows why the globe was generally warmer in Roman times
• Nobody knows why the globe generally cooled after Roman times
• Nobody knows why the globe generally warmed up again in Medieval times
• Nobody knows why the globe greatly cooled after Medieval times, leading to the “Little Ice Age” in the 1600s/1700s.
• Nobody knows why the Little Ice Age didn’t descend into a real Ice Age.
• Nobody knows why the earth started generally warming at about 0.5°C per century since the Little Ice Age.
• Nobody knows why this warming continued through the 20th century.
• Nobody knows whether the ~ 0.5°C warming of the 21st century is 100% natural and just a continuance of the warming of previous two centuries, or whether some or all of of the warming is due to humans.
• Nobody knows why there has been a two-decade “hiatus” in the ongoing three centuries of warming.
Given our total inability to understand or explain the climate of the past, the idea that a Tinkertoy computer model of the climate can tell us what will happen in the next hundred years is … well … let me describe that claim as “extraordinarily optimistic” rather than say “stunningly foolish” …
I’ve invited Mr. Whitlock to continue the discussion here, to avoid the 140-character limit. Let’s see if he is man enough to step up to the plate.
If he does, please keep the ad hominems not just down but out. This place is, or should be, about debating the science and not debating the man or woman behind the science.
Best regards to all, including Mr. Whitlock,
w.
PS—When you comment please QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS THAT YOU ARE DISCUSSING, so we can all be clear on both your subject and who you are addressing.
[UPDATE]
I assume I’m supposed to be frightened … but in fact I’m mystified. I ask why, despite his bluster, he hasn’t shown up to debate. He replies that he won’t tell me how he is “deploying his forces”.
Say what?
“This is typical of all of the claimed dangers of CO2. We have computer models, we have lots of alarmist claims, we have failed sequential doom-casting, in the above quote we have “this suggests” and the other usual weasel words, “might happen” and “could lead to” and the like … but what we don’t have is any evidence that anything out of the ordinary is happening.”
Three years in a row record temps. Hmmm.
Oh, please. We know that temperatures have been generally rising for three centuries. So … where will we find the highest temperatures? Oh, the most recent years? Gosh, that’s shocking news … not.
If you think that is significant, think about it a bit more deeply.
w.
Don’t – no below average temp months for 30 years – give you slight pause?
Willis, you should not bother to reply to people who have no qualifications and no understanding of heat and mass transfer, or thermodynamics.
Why on earth do you bother wasting your time even arguing with Mr Whitlock?? He is not even a bona fide believer in “climate change”.(Yes, there exist a very few of them).
Don’t – massive tampering of the data by NASA & NAOO – give you slight pause?
@ Tony,
Wow, the cooling of the 1930’s temperature record has hit new lows.
Sort of like climbing a mountain, at any point along the path, will be the highest on the journey.
In reply to Tony McLeod
NO
Oh rot. The link between rising temperatures and human-produced atmospheric CO2 is proven and extensive. That’s why guys like you have to lie about it.
robinwhitlock1966 April 29, 2017 at 9:00 am
Robin, a quick note. Passionate statements like yours carry zero weight here UNLESS YOU CITE THEM AND SUPPORT THEM. I say there is no evidence that increasing CO2 warms the planet. Yes, there are theories, and yes, there are climate models.
But EVIDENCE is what science is built on.
So … if you wish to claim that rising CO2 causes the planet to warm, where is the evidence to back that claim up?
Please note that EVIDENCE doesn’t include learned pronouncements and claims from people with lots of PhDs. Those are OPINIONS.
So, please point us to the evidence.
w.
Alan,
I do believe you have uncovered the cause of the apparent hiatus in the data. They “paused” the adjustments to the source data in 1993
There has been no statistically significant warming in the 21st century. The so-called “surface” data are totally bogus, anti-scientific fantasy perpetrated by lying, tough-feeding bureaucrats in order to try to make their GIGO models look less epically failed and to keep the CACA gravy train rolling.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_March_2017_v6.jpg
The peaks in 1997-98 and 2015-16 are from super El Ninos, totally natural events. The recent one was fractionally warmer, but there is no reason to suppose that humans are responsible for the insignificant difference.
robinwhitlock1966 April 29, 2017 at 9:00 am
Please state how you imagine such a link has been “proven”. There’s a Nobel Prize in it for you, since IPCC has failed to do so.
Thanks.
Very dubious chart from tony mcleod.
NOAA cherry pick their start date at 1978. What happens when we select 1935 as our start date? The chart shows the peak of 2015/16 El Nino but this anomaly has since gone, so averages come back to only ~ 0.75C above your cherry picked base anomaly. The same as before it. Why are you withholding the recent data? Why does it not show the 1998 El Nino in a more pronounced way? That’s just for starters using common sense arguments.
Will the average anomaly for 2011 to 2040 be higher or lower than that for 1981 to 2010? If higher, by how much?
If climate sensitivity really be 3.0 degrees C per doubling, should CO2 actually exceed 560 ppm by AD 2100 and if there has been one degree of warming already since c. AD 1850, then the 30-year interval of 2011-40 would need to be about 0.72 degree C warmer than the previous thirty years (disregarding the logarithmic effect). That is, if CO2 indeed be the predominant driver of “climate change”. IMO there should be scarce difference between transient and equilibrium CS.
Earth is highly unlikely to warm that much by 2040. It might well cool.
But by then the charlatan shamans of CACA will have retired on fat pensions, having cost the world trillions in treasure and millions of lives.
Tony, does not a tropospheric record of warming over the past 35 years that is less then 1/3 of the projected computer model mean for the troposphere, ( note, not just the missing hotspot) cause you to question the deeply adjusted surface record.
At any rate, whatever the cause of the surface warming, ( real warming, UHI, one way adjustments, etc…) Per CAGW theory, the surface warming CANNOT be from CO2, as that surface warming must occur as a result of prior tropospheric warming.
David,
Just one of the many ways in which the CACA hypothesis can be easily falsified.
According to it, the troposphere ought to warm first, more and faster than the surface. Based upon the fake “surface record”, the opposite of all those things has happened.
Tony, do you have any non-manipulated data to show. 40% filled in data does not a credible argument make!
Tony McLeod, Do you understand the graph that you have posted? Every skeptic I know understands the derviation of that graph, and because of that understanding, they are not worried.
Willis, let’s please not forget NOAA’s “adjustment” to the current temperature via Karl, et al, that “busted” the apparent pause in warming.
Willis … In case you have not been made aware of this already, Robin Whitlock has decided to ‘debate’ you on his own blog.
http://energyandenvironmentblog.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-battle-of-blogs-whitlock-goes-to-war.html?showComment=1493536729688#c4738949479030123217
Since it appears his blog is not widely read, there’s not much of a debate occurring. I think he’s afraid of appearing on WUWT … claims there are too many ‘unqualified’ commenters.
Geezer,
Yet, strangely, he imagines himself qualified to comment upon science.
I tried to read his blog. Got about halfway through and just gave up. His idea of a ‘debate’ appears to be to copy/paste every ad homine he can find written about someone.
Like most Leftists he automatically believes anything written by his thought leaders, no matter how little evidence is provided. And no amount of conflicting data will ever change his mind.
I recently had a long debate over at Climate etc. With Jim D that was similer. He was convinced that Milo Yiannopoulos had made a racist attack on twitter because that’s what the Left Wing media said had happened. When I provided the evidence proving that it wasn’t true then he tried to move the goalpost twice, then basically declared that he KNEW Milo must be racist, because his thought leaders said so.
The problem is that, for decades the Left has been programing our children like Pavlov’s dog. They have been trained to Hate whenever the media declares someone is the enemy (racist, homophobic, capitalist, whatever). They have been trained to believe whatever the left tells them. They have been trained to rise up in righteous fury when ever they are told that someone stands in the Lefts way. And they have been especially trained to NEVER question what the Left has told them.
Frankly, trying to debate people like this is usually a lost cause. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. Every time we show that what they believe is nothing but lies is one more chance for the truth to finally brake through, if not for the one you’re debating, then one of the silent watchers following the debate.
That’s how the truth finally got through to ME. I can’t point to one time where the light suddenly dawned, but some time in my early twenties I finally realized that just because the Left said so, that didn’t make it true. I’d seen too many things they said be proven not to be the way they said it was. I learned to verify what I was told.
I learned to be SKEPTICAL. ○¿●
Beyond that, the so called records are by amounts that are one to two orders of magnitude below the precision levels of the thermometers being used to measure temperate.
And that’s without dealing the the fact that we need 2 to 3 orders of magnitude more thermometers before we could begin to claim that the earth is being adequately monitored.
tony mcleod April 28, 2017 at 11:06 pm
One of my favorite climate shuffles is the ability to deprecate the idea that the trend will continue to be .2 degrees per decade while simultaneously pointing at the .2 degrees per decade trend and saying “Look! Look at that trend!”
Rally Skeptical —
You don’t think very clearly.
Are you aware that since coming out of the Little Ice Age on average every third year has produced a record temperature? Apparently not. So looking at all the data extending back to the end of the Little Ice Age, tell me, what great significance has your harrowing statement — “Three years in a row record temps. Hmmm”??????
Please tell me for I can see none.
Eugene WR Gallun
Eugene-san:
Since the end of the Little Ice Age (1280~1850), we’ve ENJOYED 0.83C (HADCRUT4) of warming recovery (0.05C/decade trend), of which, manmade CO2 contributed around 0.3C of the total….
Since CO2 is a logarithmic function (each incremental increase has less and less of a forcing effect), we’ll likely enjoy another 0.3C of beneficial CO2 warming recovery by 2100, LESS the likely cooling effects of collapsing solar cycles.
Depending on what, if any, solar cooling actually occurs, there is a real possibility global temps may well be cooler than they are now by 2100. We just don’t know for sure, and that’s the point Willis is trying to make– WE DO NOT KNOW with any real certainty what th cumulative effect manmade CO2 has on global temps.
It’s becoming increasing certain that CAGW’s “best guess” ECS projections of 3.0C~4.5C is now very highly unlikely, as such a high ECS would require the global warming trend to suddenly increase to 0.32~0.48C/decade (starting from tomorrow) and lasting unabated for 87 straight years…. Meh, not so much…
Every day, week, month and year the global warming trend falls below 0.32~0.48C/decade, requires ever increasing future warming trends to confirm the CAGW hypothesis…Again… very highly unlikely.
Samurai writes: “of which, manmade CO2 contributed around 0.3C of the total….”
I’d rather not be a complete dickhead about this, but where exactly do you come up with this nonsense? Is it another of those “factoids” we’re just eventually expected to accept as truth if it’s repeated often enough or is there some observational basis for the claim?
Bartley-san:
The 0.3C of CO2 warming we’ve enjoyed is based on CO2 logarithmic forcing equation:
5.35*ln(400ppm/280ppm)*(.31 Stefan-Boltzmann constant)*(.5 negative cloud feedback)=.3C…
CAGW advocates assume CO2 forcing has been around 0.4C to date (50% of 0.83C total warming since 1850)..
Using the same CO2 forcing equation, and assuming CO2 levels reach 560ppm by 2100, yields a paltry 0.3C of additional warming recovery between now and 2100:
5.35*ln(560ppm/400ppm)*(.31 Stefan-Boltzmann constant)*(.5 negative cloud feedback)=.3C…
CO2 forcing is a logarithmic function, which is why CAGW’s projections are so absurd, because each incremental CO2 increase equates to less and less forcing….
The irony (although Willis, whom I respect greatly, doesn’t agree) is that collapsing solar cycles will likely lead to substantial cooling over the next 70~100 years, so any added CO2 warming would help ameliorate some of the detrimental future cooling…
Cheers.
SAMURAI —
My post originally was the second reply to Really Skeptical — appearing just under Willis’s reply. People replying to Willis moved my post down a bit.
Willis and I said, essentially. the same thing — pointing out that since temperature have been rising since the Little Ice Age temperature records would inherently be set every few years for the time span running from the Little Ice Age to the present.
This subject was discussed a couple years ago on WUWT (in off topic posts) and about every three years was what seemed likely. The discussion may have been about data from a shorter time period but If I remember correctly, (which I doubt) I, myself, initially said every six years, posted, then my mind clicked in and I realized I was double what seemed most likely. I said to hell with correcting my post and someone else got it right. So I used the “every three years” here.
i think you are overestimating the contribution of CO2 to warming since the Ice age. I don’t feel that CO2 has ever been much of a factor in the earth’s warming.
It is late and my mind is drifting. i am going to bed.
Haha, I am suddenly reminded of a very old cartoon I once saw. A man is hunched over this keyboard and his wife tells him to come to bed. And he replies — I can’t! Someone has just said something untrue on the internet!
Eugene WR Gallun
. . .
You certainly do not need our assistance. You have repeatedly demonstrated your ability to achieve that unique individual lack of brilliance repeatedly.
It is amusing to read your “factoid” claim; since you operate on that “accept as truth if it’s repeated often enough” principle in complete defiance of evidence and research.
is based on CO2 logarithmic forcing equation:
================
that is based on the notion of “all things remaining equal”. however, this is highly unlikely, and ignores the role of the gravity in determining and maintaining the tropospheric lapse rate.
the more CO2 tries to increase the surface temperatures, the more the vertical circulation will increase to try and prevent this, due to warm air rising, which will bring cool air to the surface.
the energy balance models completely ignore this because they only consider the change in total energy. this is a nonsense because the total energy of the system is unchanged by vertical circulation. the total of potential and kinetic energy remains constant, so very little energy is actually required to maintain the circulation.
however, the change in temperature is enormous, as only kinetic energy affects temperature.
In reply to Bartley and Samurai, another equivalent way to compute those figures is to use Trenberth’s radiation figures:
http://www.climate.be/textbook/chapter2_node8.xml
Earth’s surface receives 493 watts, 97 watts of that is dissipated in latent heat of convection and evaporation. Using Samurai’s, and IPCC’s formula that additional wattage will be
5.37 ln 2 for a doubling of CO2 for an additional 3.72 watts,
assuming that same fraction will continue to be dissipated in the latent heat of convection and evaporation,
that current average temperature is about 288 K
And applying the Stephan-Boltzmann formula,
the temperature increase for a doubling of CO2 will be
288*[ (493+3.72)/(493)]^0.25 = 288.54.
since ln (396/280) is half of ln(560/280), we’re already over halfway there, for a warming due to CO2 of about 0.27 C.
Samuri-san,
What exactly about Euler’s (Ln) constant applies to CO2? It is an x and y equal exponential proportionality, widely misappropriated for use as “natural”. There is nothing natural about it, except that it appeals to human senses like “squares”.
While Pi, is a universal property of circles (probably another human construct), 2.71 is not a niversal property of anything.
I have thought of a good way to example my increasing disbelief about the importance of CO2 in causing rising temperatures.
Climate is like a team sport. The team is composed of players who all have skills that relate to the game. Each player can be examined and his skills stated. BUT THE GAME IS ONLY PLAYED BY THOSE PLAYERS ACTUALLY OUT ON THE FIELD! You can talk all you want about the supposed ability of CO2 to affect global warming but CO2 is really only a bench warmer that never gets into the game. Its contribution to the game AS IT IS BEING PLAYED is zero.
Though inherently overstated and imperfect my above comparison of climate to sports has, I think, some validity. It, at least, clearly states (or overstates) a position.
Eugene WR Gallun
If you’re on a plateau, any little knoll is a high point.
Considering that we have been generally warming for nearly 300 years, it is logical to make the assumption that 200 or more those years set a ‘record high’ global average temperature, if we start the records 300 years ago. Of course, we don’t have records that go back 300 years. In fact, what we have today is probably not sufficient to get an accurate ‘global’ temperature. The closest thing we have is the satellite data, which is not as bullish on warming as the highly manipulated surface data. “Three years in a row record temps.” has probably happened dozens of times in the last 300 years, mostly before the increase in CO2 began. It says absolutely nothing about the human influence on climate.
jclarke341 writes: “Considering that we have been generally warming for nearly 300 years…”
Well J, considering that by all accounts we’ve been generally cooling for 6000 years, I think you’re out of line.
What has climatologists concerned is the big spike upwards in global temps after the industrial revolution. Also, climate temps can be checked going back 800,000 years with the use of glacial ice core drilling. That’s what has scientists concerned. There’s never been a spike in temps like the one we are having now.
We are yet to be back to the Roman warm period,we are not even warm enough yet to be at the medieval warm period and loons are screaming disaster.I do hope I have gathered enough fire wood this year.
Dan says: “There’s never been a spike in temps like the one we are having now.”
Absolute bollocks. Also regarding the ‘correlation’ between the Industrial Revolution and temperature rise, have alarmists ever stopped to think that maybe the IR happened because of the rise in temperature out of the Little Ice Age? At all times in the past cold periods have been associated with stagnation or decline of civilization and nature while warmer periods have been associated with growth and prosperity.
There’s never been a spike in temps like the one we are having now
================
nope. we have had much more massive spikes in much shorter time periods. for example, the Younger Dryas.
Originally this was missed by the early ice cores, that were low resolution. This led to the notion that natural climate changes gradually, over periods of centuries.
However, more recent high resolution ice cores have shown a much more dramatic tale of natural climate change. That huge swings in temperature occur naturally over periods a short as decades.
As such, the current warming is not at all surprising given the high resolution ice cores. In contrast, a climate event such as the Younger Dryas could kill millions if not billions of people.
Dan April 28, 2017 at 11:52 pm
Wrong. Not even close.
Not only in paleo proxies, but even in the thermometer record there have been lots of spikes as big or bigger than whatever has happened in recent decades.
Look at the CET for the early 18th century, for instance. The warming cycle then was greater and lasted longer than the late 20th century warming, coming as it did after the depths of the LIA during the Maunder Minimum.
The early 20th century warming cycle is indistinguishable from the late 20th century warming, despite all the “adjustments” to older “data”.
There is no human fingerprint detectable in unmanipulated data, or even a significant one in the rigged “record”.
ReallySkeptical you failed to refute the quote you attached. In stead of stating which of the failed multiple predictions based on climate models actually came true (none) you refer to record temperatures occurring at the end of an agreed period of warming that essentially encompasses our entire instrument record. Skeptics are not claiming there hasn’t been warming so your point is irrelevant. It is the likely cause of warming and the extent to which it might continue going forward that is the subject of debate. You can’t win the debate by changing the proposition.
Andrew writes: “You can’t win the debate by changing the proposition.”
You’re right about that, but it won’t stop any of them from trying. It’s been standard operating procedure since this entire sensless game started 60 years ago.
Sorry if I’ve lost patience, it’s been going on far too long for me.
The intention is never to win the debate by changing the proposition – the intention is to set the tone of the debate in the hope that those with only a passing interest (the majority of the population) won’t read past HIS assertions to discover the obvious falsehoods he’s made.
Stating your case at the ‘top’ of the post then refusing to defend that position proves this adequately.
Record compared to what?
The earth has been much, much warmer than this in the past.
Norm writes: “The earth has been much, much warmer than this in the past.”
Indeed– these days we call it the Holocene Optimum. 12,000 years ago it started getting warmer and the ice age ended. Sea levels rose dramatically. It got a lot warmer for awhile and most of the ice melted. Now it’s getting colder and has been for 6000 years.
The best records we have of this can be found here:
“A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years”, Shaun A. Marcott, Jeremy D. Shakun, Peter U. Clark, Alan C. Mix, Science, March 2013.
It’s based on proxy evidence, but it’s the best we have. All of this fooforaw about warming is pure foolishness.
Three records nearly indistinguishable from zero, based on many editorial selections of the record keepers. Why must old temperature records be modified? Why can’t the past temperatures just stay the same?
Why do the long ice core records show CO2 lagging temps, then when temps turn down, CO2 is still rising and not until temps have actually fallen does CO2 PEAK! If CO2 was the driver of these major shifts in glacial to inter-glacial and back, the temperatures could NOT fall as CO2 was rising and reaching a peak. Please read the laughable RealClimate statement about this. It’s far below pseudo-science, it’s down right magical in it’s thinking.
Statistics and models may be necessary for trying to eventually understand something as complex as the Earth’s climate. But they make it very difficult to say much with any certainty right now. We know they don’t work for even 30 years, so saying they will start to be accurate in 100 years is more wishful, magical thinking.
Micky Reno writes: “saying they will start to be accurate in 100 years…”
is saying we’ll all be long dead before anyone catches on.
It’s so difficult to pin down all the flaws in the CAGW position. A few years back, Judy Curry ran a very eye-opening thread about what would be your top 5 scientific objections or questions to the consensus. I don’t think I can cut myself off at just 5, but here are a few more of my issues.
Of course the biggest issue is distinguishing what change is “natural” vs. what is anthropogenic. The “proofs” for these distinctions don’t exist. Observations are too noisy to evaluate easily, and yet, magically, a self-interested group offers its expert opinion in favor of their own monetary and status improvement. These experts are part of a partisan political elite class, including politicians, government scientists and ivory tower academics who get their funding from governments, sometimes indirectly via the UN, or in some cases, tendentious politically motivated NGOs. What will CAGW scientists do to show these influences to be minimized or negated?
When talking about GCMs, what scientific process or inquiry led to model output becoming “evidence?” NONE! It is NOT evidence. It is a man-made guess about what the future will be. Nothing any suite of models or Monte Carlo spread says about the Earth is true, none is objective reality, none is empirical evidence. And without GCM runs, there is no impending calamity. Will CAGW alarmists agree to try to falsify climate models, or not? And if not, then get them out of the science business?
When did “peer-review” become the end-all of scientific advancement? It is NOT. It is only the beginning of a long process of replication and either confirmation, partial acceptance (like Newtonian physics) or outright rejection by future scientists. Will CAGW climate alarmists acknowledge their own peer-review, pal-review and rush to cite misdeeds? Will they agree to stop these particularly egregious forms of sophistry and self-serving propaganda?
When did any group of science in history, advance the idea that correlation DOES imply causation when you cannot think of another explanation, as is the case with CAGW alarm? The idea “CO2 must be the climate driver because it’s the only explanation we can think of” is insulting to the entire history of science. Will CAGW alarmists agree to allow the “unknown unknowns” to regain the respect and circumspection that category of possible physical phenomena deserves? Of course, you will all have to become a bit more like Judy Curry, an idea that I suspect terrifies you all.
What steps has CAGW “science” taken to prove the alarmists are not fooling themselves in the best Feynman-esque tradition? The IPCC process seems 180 degrees wrong for this. Indeed, how have any of the modern published history of CAGW science systematically tried to avoid tendentious experiments? It seems to me that MOST of the alarmist science I read is tendentious, and I see NO effort within any of the statistical analyses or meta-data aggregations to build-in formal processes to avoid working backwards from an obviously desired conclusion? In fact, how can you even begin an experiment before you have acknowledged the obvious desire for the specific conclusion you so clearly want? This desire has been stated explicitly a few times, e.g. when Phil Jones stated that he preferred human catastrophe over hockey-team science being falsified. But the PR optics of this admission is so bad, that hockey team players know they cannot admit if this is their desire, and so usually avoid addressing this tacit belief. How will you address this, CAGW believers? How will you endeavor to become more Feynman-esque?
When will the grand pronouncements of harm to society be evaluated against actual social outcomes? Crops are being harvested in record amounts. But CO2 still must be bad. Warmer is better, but it must be worse. The goal posts move, crops aren’t what some unknown expert expected them to be, or Miami King Tides are now a cause for alarm, as if they weren’t happening for all of Miami’s history? And this revelation of someone’s expectation being proved wrong is somehow science? Hurricanes and tornadoes are not trending up, and may be trending down, the IPCC even says so, but can this ever be an important part of the narrative? If you watch the recent performance of Dr. Mann and the Democrats in Congress the other day, 1/2 the political people seem to be denying reality, the half that calls the other half “deniers.” Can you look into your own souls after some journalist writes that the Syrian civil war is due to CAGW, and look at such situations with a sense of reality over magic?
When will you stop brainwashing school children in green politics, under the guise of science, before these very young children have had any formal science education at all? Just now, on NPR, I heard that some small boy, terrified by CAGW alarm, organized 20 of his classmates to join the climate march. Do you think this is an appropriate social outcome, for primary school children to be terrified to the point where they become politically active? Do you think a parent that allows his child to be exposed to this level of Armageddon thinking is being a responsible parent? Is there no one on your side of the political debate that considers this a form of child abuse?
This has gone on long enough. I won’t even get started on the folly of renewable energy as a valid replacement of fossil fuels in electrical generation, or the understated damage to society your most fervent Luddites like Bill McKibben would gladly foist on the human race in a human experiment potentially more deadly then the Holodomor.
You have so many issues to explain, and they will not be explained away by the same old propaganda and BS. I want to know when will you start, or failing that, to start looking for a new job?
Mickey Reno April 29, 2017 at 11:31 am
Excellent statement. It deserves a post of its own. Thank you.
/L. E. Joiner https://WalkingCreekWorld.wordpress.com
Expressed in anomalies calculated to three decimal places, which is completely unsupportable by the measurements. When the temperature is taken in tenths of a degree, it’s statistically incorrect to state a mean with more than one decimal point. We’ve just had a very long conversation about this here.
“Expressed in anomalies calculated to three decimal places…”
It’s a fallacy they don’t expect you to catch. The “law of large numbers” tells us we can increase precision and accuracy through repeated measure, but the measures have to all be of the same thing for it to work.
No “average” of global temperature is a repeated measure of the same thing, and that’s where they hide the pea under the shell. The law of large numbers doesn’t apply. They’re taking thousands of measures of thousands of different things, not the same thing over an over.
And they’re expecting folks who only did HS level maths to buy it. Most do.
Bartleby
You are correct about the large number of readings of different things, precision and alla that. In additional they are making those thousand of readings with different instruments. This point is often overlooked as are the implications.
The claim for the temps being the highest three years in a row are delivered in thousandths of degrees. The temperature are not measured to thousandths of a degree.
The Law of Large Numbers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers
does not apply in the simple sense of replicating an experiment. If an experiment is replicated using the same equipment, protocol and conditions, then the Law applies. Taking measurements using different instruments one at each location at a number of different times (when the temperature at each location is different each time) does not qualify as ‘replication of the experiment’. That qualifies as thousands of different experiments each conducted once.
If the temperature were to be measured thousands of times in a row rapidly at one location using the same instrument, then the Law applies. That is the measurement of one thing many times using the same instruments.
Measuring thousands of things using thousands of instruments once each does not permit us to identify with greater precision the central point of the uncertainty range.
When it is claimed that the temp last year was 0.001 degrees C warmer than last year, they are really saying the temperature is nn˚ C , +-0.1˚ . Even if the number of readings are a large number of locations has an average 0.001˚ higher, the uncertainty rules out making any claim for it actually being higher.
RS: “Three years in a row record temps. Hmmm.”
As Willis points out, very few folks actually don’t think temperatures are increasing. What is at issue is how fast and whether that’s bad. I’d argue, probably not very fast, and probably somewhat more good than bad. I could change my opinion on that if we had GCMs that weren’t so obviously broken and they predicted temperature and precipitation well enough to see even hazily what the future looks like. In their absence, I find it hard to find much gloom in the thought of the planet’s two largest countries by area — Canada and Russia — becoming more habitable, more populous, and richer..
Aside from that, The geometry of the Earth’s continents and their effect on oceanic and atmospheric flows makes “planetary temperature” (PT) a somewhat dubious metric. PT is very sensitive to the El Nino phenomenon and, worse, not all El Ninos are equal. 2015-2016 featured a very strong El Nino.and thus “record” temperatures. The problem with that is that from your point of view is that — as with the very strong 1998 El Nino — it might be a while before we see another record notwithstanding that the planet probably continues to slowly warm.
Yeah, champagne is already on ice.
http://images.winespectator.com/wso/Articles/2017/NS_frost042817A_1600.jpg?w=800
Tasteless.
Hello. Al Gore types will have a gaping hole in their Champagne, Bourgogne and even in Bordeaux collections due to this a rare and exiting eventTM at the end of April. And that’s the best you can come up with? Try again cherie, but take note in my country of origin even corn cannot survive the cold, hottest evah or not.
ReallySkeptical things correlation is causation, please remove the skeptical part of your name, it’s dishonest.
The fact that NOAA, the Australian BOM, UK MET office and others have all been faking temperature records should say something about the quality of the evidence for the global warming fraud.
No “hmmm” here. As CO2 emissions by humans go up logarithmically, atmospheric CO2 rises linearly and recently even at a lower rate. Therefore, if we are having no effect on atmospheric CO2 and CO2 controls the climate, then we are having no effect on climate and it remains that CO2 is plant food and is greening the planet.
“Three years in a row record temps. Hmmm.”
How can we have three years in a row of record temps [2014,2015, and 2016] when 1998 was hotter than all but 2016, and 2016 was only hotter than 1998 by one-tenth of a degree? Answer: It didn’t happen.
Btw, 1934 was about 0.5C hotter than 1998, according to Hansen.
Here’s the most accurate Earth temperature chart, UAH/RSS according to NASA. Do 2014 and 2015 look hotter than 1998 to you on this most accurate chart of them all?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_March_2017_v6.jpg
What wè do know is the science of the greenhouse effect that has been science for more than 100 years is the reason the planet is warming. All those who claim otherwise can claim their nòbel prize for physics. Oh wait …… it cant be done. I await the tin foil hat brigade with there conspiracies as I know there won’t be any science behind the replies.
Steve
You’re right – the greenhouse effect has been known for over 100 years. And if Arrhenius had done his experiments in a greenhouse with gable vents and ceiling fans, they would have been relevant to this discussion. Unfortunately, he didn’t, and measurements in a closed system don’t tell us much about the real world.
Also, if you’re so sure the recent warming is due to co2, how do you explain the many (possibly millions) of cycles the climate experienced before the industrial revolution. The IPCC hasn’t reached its apparent goal of adjusting the past to a static state yet, so you still have to account for past variability.
Your argument is so simplistic that I’m probably the only one that will bother replying. Post something intelligent next time and I’m sure you’ll be overwhelmed by the science included in the responses. Can you direct me to an alarmist site where actual science is discussed as much as it is here. On this site, even people on the same side of the argument critique each other’s posts (ruthlessly at times). Where else does that happen.
The so-called “greenhouse effect” is the reason that the planet is warm, not warming. (Without this effect, the Earth would be very, very cold). For the planet to be warming, something must be changing, either the energy input from the sun or the overall emissivity of the planet. That CO2 is the sole or even primary cause of any observable change is, of course, the question and has not been adequately demonstrated.
I still have yet to understand how 2016 was only slightly hotter than 1998 but yet 2014 and 2015 keep getting trotted out as record breaking as well. Stop watching CNN and start thinking for yourself.
Data refutes alarmists’ assertions
Mr. Whitlock, did you oppose the statement “Our children will not know what a snow was”? If so, please document it.
Mr Whitlock, if he deigns to respond, should answer whether James Hansen’s congressional testimony was correct. He should also deal with Michael Mann’s recreation of temperature history, and why he thinks that is defensible.
This was not an “invitation to debate.” Rather it was an opportunity to listen to a parrot.
Of course, most of us know what kind of brains parrots have!
Again, let me request that we concern ourselves with his ideas rather than claims about his intelligence.
Thanks,
w.
I agree. This is an excellent test to see if there can be a true scientific debate or just a reinforcement of of belief systems, but it should not be about personal attacks. No profit there.
i see no ideas that are his own. its just the usual ecoagitprop verbiage
Leo Smith April 29, 2017 at 2:11 pm
Doesn’t matter. We don’t ask that someone’s ideas be 100% unique and original. If someone comes in and quotes from someone’s solid scientific study, should we reject it because the words are not their own?
w.
Ya, but even the ad hominems weren’t his own.
I mean, that’s just lazy. ^¿^
Norwegian blue
Please, sir, do not disparage parrots.
They are actually intelligent creatures capable of reason, not just mimics, like mynahs.
Yeah, birds are smart.
TA,
Some of them are. They vary, as do mammals and mollusks.
Alex taught Irene quite a bit.
Did you know that after just 2 weeks in captivity dolphins can teach humans to throw them fish.
And humans. 🙂
Anthony, it might be a good time to get WUWT TV out of the mothballs?
Just sayin, we could probably get Vegas odds on this debate.
WWF could now be WCF ;-}
Willis Willis Willis!!!!
There are 10 types of people, those who understand science and those who do not.
Willis understands science, and Whitlock does not.
There are 10 types of people. Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
There are 10 types of people. Ones, and zeros. Having marshaled his forces, Mr. Whitlock produces … ReallySkeptical and tony mcleod. Two more zeros.
Funny, but here we are presented with just two types of people, ie a binary situation.
One is those who understand statistical representations of reality, and those who don’t.
That would be Steve, in the first case, and Willis, in the second. I’m going with Steve.
That only makes sense with :”understands binary” – nor “understands science.”
The problem with the debate from the alarmist perspective, is that they only have a binary view on AGW/CC in that CO2 is the only source of their magical pronouncements of what future temperatures will be in 2030, or 2100. With blinders on for only seeing CO2 as the new driver of climate, it is hard to have a debate with them because that is the scope of what is important to them. There is no prescient precedent in history of humans producing excess CO2 to compare to, and correlation is not causation. They have violated the first law of science in skepticism being the main check and balance on science by those with an ‘Agenda’.
Future generations will look back at this debate over the last 20-30 years and wonder how did mainstream science co-opt/hijack science to the exclusion of CO2 only being relevant to anything. And then they will thank us for a slightly warmer and much greener planet, perhaps ensuring that we averted some future catastrophic cooling from a volcanic event that would have severely curtailed agricultural production globally.
There are three types of people; those who can count and those who cannot count.
Haha!
First chuckle of the day (-:
Made me smile.
Great answer Willis. I am taking a sit in front of my monitor, with a big bag full of popcorn. I guess I’ll finish it long before Mr. Whitlock answers your invitation.
1. Temp goes up with CO2 increase if nothing else changes and CO2 has increased.
2. Arctic ice extent has shrunk in recent years. [DMI needs a rework again by the Danes as it is starting to go positive again].
3. Some glaciers are melting. more than are growing?
4.The temperature may be warmer now than 47 years ago.
Have I missed anything?
Your take Willis.
Thanks, angech. You say:
angech April 28, 2017 at 8:30 pm
You know this how?
True. Before that, arctic ice extent increased. In fact, at any instant, it will be doing either one or the other … and?
Don’t know which is more, glaciers are poorly counted and hard to study. When the earth cooled in the Little Ice Age, glaciers grew. There was a village in Switzerland who asked the Pope to pray for them that they not be over-run by their local glacier … and it stopped.
Assuredly, the people found this to be powerful scientific evidence …
Curiously, that glacier has receded during the last three centuries of warming. Because it was a huge tourist draw, the villagers have now asked the Pope to pray for its return …
It seems to be, although we’re talking tenths of a degree of data coming from a very noisy and poorly sited and maintained set of stations.
Good enough for now,
w.
Just tryin to get debate ideas clear if anyone wishes to add to them or discuss them.
1. You know this how? Well if it is not the case then everyone on both sides will have to pack up and go home. I sort of assumed that CO2 has gone up from Mauna Loa data and that it being a GHG and all that in theory the earth temp should go up.If, as I specified, nothing else changes with it.
This is the nub of the debate, is CO2 a switch, and how sensitive is temperature to it and what feedbacks are acting that affect the change clouds and sinks etc.
2. … and? for the purposes of the debate shrinking ice is an indicator of increasing temperature, just like expanding arctic ice would be [was] an argument to the contrary.
3. glaciers if Antarctic ice mass has been increasing [GRACE] and most glaciers by volume are in Antarctica then Glaciers might be said to be increasing overall in the world. Any view from others ?
4. It seems to be – as you say “We know that temperatures have been generally rising [slowly] for three centuries”.
There must be other fingerprints etc to discuss than just 4, surely.
Re receding glaciers: Isn’t some of the blame for that due to soot deposits. (I remember reading that the receding started in the 19th century in the Alps and that soot was implicated.) Also, the multi-decadal global decline in cloudiness would presumably have an effect.
Ice melts due to the temperature of local environment. Not because global average temperature is rising.
New Zealand glaciers are advancing, and advancing glacier in the arctic, USGS say tides and currently poorly understood (to me on twitter when I asked)
Ice melting in a specific location has to do with the location and it’s temperature and nothing else.
During winter of 2016\17 apparently there was a tiny patch of climate change warming part of the arctic and the rest was,, just weather, because it was freezing 😀
CO2 apparently is very selective for a well mixed gas
Mark – Helsinki April 29, 2017 at 1:16 am
It is not only temperature that controls Glaciers, it is also how much moisture there is in the air to cause precipitation to replace any ice loss.
Assumptions are of zero value and fail to provide actual value.
Reading alleged CAGW research is a struggle from one assumption to probable to likely to nowhere false reasoning.
There are recent warming periods, late 1800s, 1930s; whose warming rates match or exceed the recent rise of temperatures.
What exactly, makes our current warming period different?
Any ‘evidence’ off CO2 causing any portion of warming is absent.
A laboratory “theory” of CO2 GHG actions is without real world influences and interactions.
CO2 is a minimalist GHG; i.e. CO2’s effects are limited in IR frequency for both absorption and emission. Meanwhile, H2O is very GHG active over a broad range of IR frequencies and even Earth’s driest climates have more atmospheric H2O than CO2.
CO2 is alleged to have risen from 280ppm to a recent high of 410ppm.
Physical relative terms places 280ppm as 2.8 molecules of CO2 for every then thousand molecules of atmosphere.
410ppm represents 4.1 molecules of CO2 per ten thousand atmospheric molecules.
The CO2 increase over the last one hundred years is 1.3 molecules of CO2 per ten thousand molecules of atmosphere
Tell us how fractions of one molecule CO2 increases temperatures, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, locally, regionally, etc. etc.
Especially in a world where atmospheric water vapor experiences large scale changes hourly and daily?
The moment one reads weasel words in alleged research, it is immediately and apparently not research. False pretenses and specious fictional claims are as far from science as one can get.
After thirty years of false CAGW prophecies and failed alarmist disasters, It is time to wake up.
Roger Knights
“Re receding glaciers: Isn’t some of the blame for that due to soot deposits.”
There is going to be a conference at the end of May in Warsaw on the topic of Black Carbon (BC) and its influence and effects, in part organised by the ICCI. http://iccinet.org/the-cryosphere. Dr Tami Bond, previously mentioned on this site as a BC expert, will be a keynote speaker.
It will discuss the impact space heating stoves still commonly used in Eastern Europe, both biomass and coal burning, and what can be done to reduce emissions of BC and fuel consumption in general.
One of the phenomena that mitigate against this type of BC warming is that once soot is deposited, it is soon covered by a thin layer of frost that hides it. Once exposed in spring, BC promotes cooling of the surface it is on at night, lowering the temperature and the effectiveness of daytime warming.
Which way does it tilt the wheel? Don’t know. It is not simple. Will listen and try to find out.
-Just tryin to get debate ideas clear if anyone wishes to add to them or discuss them.
1. You know this how? Well if it is not the case then everyone on both sides will have to pack up and go home. –
We assume that if Earth warmed, then a result would be an increase of CO2. Rather than knowing that adding CO2 to atmosphere would cause Earth to warm.
Or the ice core records indicate that CO2 increase in atmospheric concentration- this follows after long periods of warming.
This can be explained, due to a warming ocean can release CO2- and the Earth oceans have large amount of CO2 which could me release were the oceans to warm up [as compared to amount of CO2 in the atmosphere].
It should be noted that we don’t know how much the oceans have warmed. We know the oceans are cold- somewhere around 3 C. In contrast the surface oceans of the tropics are quite warm, but the average temperature of the ocean is about 3 C. Or the warmer top 100 meter of tropical ocean is dwarfed by colder ocean which averages- “Its average depth is about 3,688 meters (12,100 ft), and its maximum depth is 10,994 meters (6.831 mi) at the Mariana Trench”- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean
-2. … and? for the purposes of the debate shrinking ice is an indicator of increasing temperature, just like expanding arctic ice would be [was] an argument to the contrary.-
Well, the antarctic ice is increasing and it’s a larger and could said to be more significant polar sea ice. But a more significant factor is we have not measured arctic sea ice for much time.
This *is* “nub of the debate” and all of the instrumental measurements demonstrate that the sensitivity is vey low. TCR = 0.5-1.5 C. ECS 1.0-2.50.
It is generally agreed among both skeptics and adherents to global warming theory that atmospheric temperatures will rise to some extent due to a rise in atmospheric CO2. The degree of rise is central to the debate, however ice core evidence also shows the reverse to be true (CO2 rise due to a rise in temperature) and that may be an even stronger effect due to release of CO2 from warming oceans. Yes arctic sea ice declined, and then increased, the antarctic sea ice did the reverse during the same period. Yes glaciers have in many cases been shrinking but that has been well recorded as starting long before human industrial activity had any potential role and it continues apace, while other glaciers are increasing. The regionality of this suggests that precipitation and snow accumulation may be much more important than global temperatures. Yes, temperatures increased over the past 50 years, but they declined before that and then before that they increase a similar amount and at a similar pace to the last half century, but before human CO2 emissions are thought sufficient to have had any significant impact.
We can agree on all these points, but it still does not address the alarming claims and predictions about human-caused global warming /climate change which are the real area of debate.
the real area of debate.
================
actually, whether the climate is warming or cooling is really quite irrelevant. it is similar to arguing if capitalism or socialism are better economic models.
the reality is that all economies on earth are ultimately market based. you can try and ignore this by imposing rules that try and enforce socialism or capitalism, but in the end all these rules will be defeated by the market.
contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t capitalism that defeated the USSR. It was the market. It wasn’t capitalism that forced the communist party of China to switch to a market economy. It was the market itself.
and the same is true for “global warming” or “climate change”. politicians, scientists, economists a plenty can argue both sides of the coin until the cows come how. in the end the market will prevail.
All the arguments of global warming and climate change will eventually end up in the dustbin of history, much like the arguments over capitalism and socialism in the previous century.
@ ferdberple , I made a similar argument in my “groundworks” column , http://cosy.com/Liberty/LogicOfLiberty.htm , in my Logic of Liberty series in the Manhattan Libertarian Serf City corner tabloid in the mid 2000s . This line was pulled out as “catch line” in the print edition :
Angech, let me be a bit clearer
1: True, if you live in a gas chamber. We don’t. While this generally holds true, quantification is effectively impossible due to the fact that “nothing else changes” is impossible.
2: Overall, this is true,
3: Again, I’ll accept the vague statement as generally true.
4: True. While the data is noisy, this statement is pretty much unchallenged.
However, you definitely missed a lot. You’ve stopped at step 1, proving that we are warming. Almost everyone agrees on that. However, before we can decide on actions, we need to prove:
2: How much warming we will expect (this is where the quantification becomes very important)
3: That this will be a bad thing. Overall, warmth (especially concentrated at the poles in the winter) has always proved a benefit, and CO2 itself is significantly beneficial in helping plant growth. Other items, such as rising sea levels, are quite slow and proper city/country planning can account for it. Specifically, the Maldives are in danger or being subsumed due to mismanagement of the coral reefs that form the island chain. If properly managed, the islands themselves grow with the sea (again, they are made out of coral).
4: That we can meaningfully cut CO2. Estimates range in the trillions and even these measures are questionably effective
5: That cutting CO2 is not more harmful than allowing the CO2 to be released. After all, the best case scenario is that it will cost trillions, and if the damages are minor, then we will be better served in doing practically anything else.
You are asking the wrong question, and thus you think you have the answer when you don’t.
BD,
Related to your perceptive remarks is, I have never seen an alarmist make a case that the optimum level of CO2 is that which was the level prior to the industrial revolution. (What are the odds that over a 4.5 billion year history, the CO2 levels just happened to be at the optimum 100 years ago?) By implication, they complain that temperatures are going up and therefore a lower concentration must be desirable. However, I have not seen a rigorous cost-benefit analysis.
Antarctica ice levels conveniently not mentioned – again
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170428/w58n5t7c.png
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170430/6ejndhm9.jpg
The lower chart ends by dec 2016, I was too lazy to download from colorado.edu since then.
Don’t panic! It’s certainly of temporary nature.
Bindion,
A super El Nino has just ended. It’s not surprising that sea ice is lower than average. But for most of the time since 1979, Antarctic ice has grown, while Arctic has shrunk. Thus, CO2 in the air can’t be the cause.
Have you noticed that Arctic sea ice is melting unusually slowly this spring, thanks largely to colder than normal ocean temperature? Extent is already higher than 2016 at this point and will soon exceed 2015 and 2014 if the present melt rate continues, as it has done since around April 7. Before that, it was even slower in March and April. Indeed, it grew from about March 28.
According to NSIDC, anyway (whom I don’t trust anymore than any government organ):
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
2017, a 1 year dip in an otherwise increasing trend
Above 2008, and quickly catching back up to the mob.
Chimp on April 29, 2017 at 5:45 pm
Have you noticed that Arctic sea ice is melting unusually slowly this spring, thanks largely to colder than normal ocean temperature?
Such strange remarks are nothing new for me here, look e.g. at:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/27/inconvenient-record-arctic-sea-ice-growth-in-september/
and we know what happened later (the same is valid, if I well remember, for another WUWT head post last year concerning a short extent increase in the Antarctic).
Thus maybe you should be a little more patient and wait for a couple of weeks:
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170430/74qgbf2n.png
And anyway: I never have seen Chip & alii commenting about Arctic or a fortiori Antarctic ice extent decrease. Interesting!
Moreover, you always invoke this El Niño braveheart as the origin of all warming, though we lay(wo)men here all do not have even a percent of a clue of what El Niño really represents wrt that warming.
A super El Nino has just ended.
Aha! Did you ever compare it with its predecessors in the satellite era?
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170502/i9csreut.png
Another, more complex comparison:
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170502/3kauwtzr.png
It seems to me that like Werner Brozek, you think that the higher the UAH anomalies, the stronger the El Niño.
Wrong assumption! Please compare e.g. MEI and UAH6.0 to be convinced…
angech, Point 1 is irrelevant:
It may well be true in a laboratory but has no meaning in the real world.
Why would “nothing else change”?
Maybe humidity will rise. Maybe more clouds will form cooling the planet (exact opposite effect).
Or maybe warming will cause amplification of the warming from rising water vapour effects as predicted (except the Tropical Hotspot that was on the cover of AR3 turned out to not exist).
Maybe increased CO2 will increase vegetation that will increase pollen and particulates and increase patchiness of clouds causing greater temperature variations and more frequent but gentler rains. Local effects then overwhelm Global Warming.
Maybe…
The fear of CO2 is actually a fear of Temperature changes from CO2 – but if something else changes instead then all the predictions are off.
An Invitation To Debate “Climate Change”
M Courtney ” It may well be true in a laboratory but has no meaning in the real world.”
CO2 has gone up from Mauna Loa data and it being a GHG and all that in theory the earth temp should go up.If, as I specified, nothing else changes with it. if it is not the case then everyone on both sides will have to pack up and go home.
You seem to have a view outside the theory that both sides tend to work with, maybe Willis as well.
“You know this how? ”
There are CO2 measurements. They have apparently gone up. People report these things, they are documented.
There is a GHG theory, apparently the world would be a lot colder without GHG, I presume you agree with this statement having said “It may well be true in a laboratory “.
Then you make a jump of faith/logic, “It has no meaning in the real world.”
Laboratories exist in the real world as well so true in a lab, true in the real world, not no meaning as truth is a meaning.
You could mean it has little practical value in the real world, the real world being more than just a laboratory and CO2 having a lot of confounding effects that do not occur in a laboratory. Hence there are cloud formation , albedo effects which are poorly understood and not modeled at all, only parametized.
These could give negative or positive feedbacks which need debate.
The CO2 increase could be secondary to rising ocean temperatures.
I feel your objection is more deeply rooted though, you really either believe CO2 has not gone up or that it has but can have absolutely no effect.
In this case there can be no debate as one of the vital planks has been removed.
Is that stating the position correctly?
If not we are probably in agreement.
“-Why would “nothing else change”?” I am on your side there, Of course other things change. I was stating the theory that GHG climate change starts from to clarify the debate.
That CO2 has risen was not disputed by me.
That CO2 is a GHG was not disputed by me.
That we live on a dry planet with no atmosphere but CO2 was disputed by me.
No laboratory experiment replicates the effects of Oceans or Forests or Clouds. If they did then they wouldn’t need be modelled by computers. Yet the computer models do not replicate reality (the Tropical Hotspot does not exist for instance).
For these models to have any meaning in the real world they would need to be able to make accurate predictions. They don’t.
For these models to have any meaning in the real world they would need to correctly understand the feedbacks. But you, yourself, agree that they don’t when you say “Of course other things change.”
Beer Lambert’s Law states that the effect of a doubling of CO2 diminishes exponentially. It is only the hypothesised – fantasised – feedback from water vapour that makes AGW significant. In the real world we have no evidence for that.
Point 1 is irrelevant as “Temp goes up with CO2 increase if nothing else changes and CO2 has increased” means nothing.
Point 1 would have meaning if it said “(a) Temp goes up significantly with CO2 increase when (b) we know what else changes and (c) CO2 has increased”.
But that statement would be:
(a) False, so far.
(b) Definitely False.
(c) True and probably manmade too.
Surely that’s not enough to base policy upon.
angech, I recognise that you are debating, not defending the AGW orthodoxy but it is important to remember that the orthodoxy includes the amplification effect of water vapour on CO2’s warming.
If it doesn’t then there wouldn’t be any scary effects to worry about.
There are many issues in debate.
Since Mauna Loa data has come on stream, it is clear that CO2 levels have increased, but it is not so clear that temperatures have risen, still less that if they have risen then this has been caused by the rise in CO2.
One of the issues in debate is whether CO2 is a GHG. It is a radiative gas, the laboratory properties of which are well known. However, whether it is a GHG can only be answered by observational empirical evidence which presently is lacking. One reason why the evidence may be lacking is that all other matters do not remain constant when CO2 levels increase, and this change may mask the effect of CO2.
One thing is fairly clear, until such time as we can fully explain and fully understand natural variation, it is highly unlikely that we will know what effect results from increasing CO2 (other than it greens the planet).
We know that there is no statistical difference in the rate of warming between 1860 to 1880, 1910 to 1940 and 1975 to 1998, and yet the level of CO2 only significantly changed in the latter period. See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
We know that according to the satellite data, there has been no statistically significant warming since before 1998 even though about 30% of all manmade C02 emissions have taken place during that period.
There are multiple lines of evidence that suggest that temperatures today in the Northern Hemisphere are no warmer than they were back in 1940 notwithstanding that more than 95% of all manmade CO2 emissions have taken place since then. Hansen in his 1981 paper thought that temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were about 0.3degC cooler in 1980 than they were in 1940. Likewise Jones and Wigley similarly considered this to be the case, and NASA/NAS considered 1980 to be up to about 0.5degC cooler than 1940.
Since 1980, it has warmed by about 0.3 to 0.4degC so this suggests that Northern Hemisphere temperatures are very similar to those seen in 1940. The US, Iceland, Greenland raw data suggests if anything that it is still not as warm as it was in the 1940s, and Russia has complained that much of its high latitude data has been left out of the global data sets and this high latitude data shows no warming since 1940.
The Southern hemisphere, particularly pre ARGO, is too sparsely sampled to draw any conclusion on Southern Hemisphere temperatures (Hansen in his 1981 paper notes this, and Phil Jones in the Climategate emails also makes the point). Since we have insufficient data coverage of the Southern Hemisphere and Equatorial regions, we do not know what the global position is, but as mentioned, there are many lines of evidence that suggest that the Northern Hemisphere is no warmer than it was in around the late 1340s/early 1940s notwithstanding the substantial increase ion CO2.
I would suggest that the claim that CO2 is a GHG is one that is not supported by hard empirical observational data and is merely speculation. I accept that there are scientific reasons for that speculation, but until there is hard empirical observational data substantiating the claim that CO2 is a GHG, it is speculation and no more..
According to the Mauna Loa data world CO2 has gone up, basically at the same rate as for the past 30-40 years, which was attributed to Man, however the production of man made CO2 has been on a plateau for the last 3 or so years.
So how come the CO2 is still rising at the same rate?
@angech
“There must be other fingerprints etc to discuss than just 4, surely.”
There are indeed more fingerprints to be discussed. One very important one.
Whilst the theoretical, and to date (after more than 40 years) catastrophic consequences of AGW/climate change have notably failed to materialise, the observed benefits are clear and unambiguous.
NASA studied their satellite data and found the earth has greened by 14% in the last 30 years, 70% thanks to increased atmospheric CO2 alone, a net 9% benefit to mankind. I’m sure you know of the study.
So the single observable phenomenon affecting mankind at the hand of increased CO2 is beneficial.
sea level rise continues at somewhere between 0mm per year and 3mm per year, depending upon where the measurements are taken, but 3mm is not abnormal as far as I can glean.
Hurricanes, the great green hope of convincing people the planet is going to hell in a hand basket, are notably quiet. Indeed there appears to be far fewer of them than over the past 100 years plus, and certainly well before satellites detected all of them, including those that would have previously gone unreported because they were confined to the oceans.
So what are the observable downsides to increased atmospheric CO2?
Thanks Hotscotch, the earth has greened by 14% in the last 30 years, might as you say be one of the few observable fingerprints.
Hurricanes, the great green hope of convincing people the planet is going to hell in a hand basket, are notably quiet.
Hurricane frequency is something I prefer not to mention. I may be wrong but less activity is possibly a sign of a warming world so Skeptics and AGW probably have their shoes on the wrong feet.
“”So the single observable phenomenon ” is one fingerprint. Are there no warmists around to point out more? Or are there no more?
angech, why would you prefer not to mention a hurricane frequency? The debate is not really about temperature, but about negative consequences should the temperature rise as alarmists predict. One of them was “more hurricanes”.
Our warming(?) world is becoming a better place on many counts.
M Courtney
That CO2 has risen was not disputed by me.That CO2 is a GHG was not disputed by me.
That we live on a dry planet with no atmosphere but CO2 was disputed by me.
the orthodoxy includes the amplification effect of water vapour on CO2’s warming.
OK I agree with you.
I said 1. Temp goes up with CO2 increase if nothing else changes*
the feedbacks negative and positive of other components of the atmosphere are very complex and do change the issue.
Atheok agrees with you in stating
“Any ‘evidence’ off CO2 causing any portion of warming is absent.”
And Willis Eschenbach 1. Temp goes up with CO2 increase if nothing else changes and CO2 has increased.
You know this how?
Yet you did say “Beer Lambert’s Law states that the effect of a doubling of CO2 diminishes exponentially”
implying that CO2 rise must have some tiny perceptible effect even if practically insignificant.
i agree with andrewpattullo April 28, 2017
It is generally agreed among both skeptics and adherents to global warming theory that atmospheric temperatures will rise to some extent due to a rise in atmospheric CO2.
Some [minuscule, possibly] being the operative word.
It would be easier to try to have a debate if we all agreed to some shade of grey being possible.
Straight out denial of the possibility of an effect, because of other circumstances is not helpful.
Willis, If I gave you two otherwise identical worlds apart from the CO2 level being different would you consider that the higher level might be slightly hotter even with all the feedbacks operating.
Note this is a silly question as there can only be one identical world and a change in CO2 levels would mean circumstances were different anyway.
Given Mr. Whitlock’s ad hominem attacks on me for not being a scientist, I was quite surprised to find this:
Dang … just … dang …
w.
That’s a good find, Willis. Unfortunately it means if he is sensible and wants to keep his job he would have the sense not to raise his profile too far here. On the other hand with attitude means he might be foolish enough to do so.
I hope you have some thread moderation in place to remove intemperate comments which will surely occur.
And yet, in spite of a lack of relevant credentials I am sure we would all welcome sensible scientific arguments in support of Mr. Whitlock’s arguments, though some of us would prefer to read them before the century-out predictions of climate models can be tested against real world conditions.
Ya think there is some incentives for such behavior?
http://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/robin-whitlock
http://robinwhitlock1966.wixsite.com/robin-whitlock
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/robinwhitlock
http://robinwhitlock.blogspot.com
I think that is enough for baselining.
Look at the applicable dates. Hunger games?
this guy is just a troll. Roast the F out of him!
“Given Mr. Whitlock’s ad hominem attacks on me for not being a scientist, I was quite surprised to find this . . . ”
It shouldn’t surprise anyone at all. If a person is scientifically illiterate, the only basis for their opinion on scientific controversies is to bow to the pronouncements of whoever they consider to be experts, and they lack any ability to wade into the weeds on the merits. It’s the scientifically literate ones who can judge for themselves whether what the ostensible experts are asserting makes sense, and the scientifically literate can respond on the merits.
Every aspect of your recitation of the back-and-forth you had with this guy indicates that he has no grasp of science. First, he is swayed merely by what he thinks are your credentials. Second, every response he made to you simply parroted conclusory dogma, without any facts or reasoning to support it. The problem is that, lacking the ability to discern what does or does not make sense scientifically, he’ll never understand the arguments you, or I, or anyone else here chooses to make, and will always just default to his appeal to authority fallacy.
Kurt,
It is unfortunately true amongst scientist as well. They are all too busy working in their microscopic specialties to take a deep look at the work in another field. As a result, they tend to be very trusting of the scientific literature. When one side of the debate achieves capture of the literature, they haven’t the time or inclination to go hunting for the other side. It is only when someone claims something in climate that goes against one of the concepts in their own studies that they finally object and take a peek. If their faculty has been taken over by people whose political identity is challenged by any question of CAGW, they may not raise their objections or publish their rebuttal for fear of retribution. The Church of CAGW True Belief rules with a steel glove against any who dare question the veracity of their faith.
One of the inevitable effects of the way we educate graduate students is that the farther along they get in their studies, their knowledge gets narrower and narrower until they know almost everything about one very specifically narrow topic and very little about anything else when we award them their PhDs. Some then come up for air and look around once they are applying for employment. Others become professors and never leave their tiny bubble ever again. (There are exceptions to every rule – some even post here occasionally, obviously fully tenured or retired!)
Willis
From his Linkedin page…..
“I graduated from Bath Spa University in 2008 with a BA(Hons) in Psychology and English Literature.”
Nuff said
I wonder what his psychology tutor would make of the likely strength of a position that a person refuses to debate? Hmmm. On that point, Occam’s Razor falls squarely on the side of sceptics.
** His principle can be interpreted as stating ‘Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.’ **
Sceptics say natural variation. Alarmists say man made, human CO2, high climate sensitivity, positive feedbacks / amplifications and finally H2O water vapour. That’s five assumptions versus just the one. Checkmate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
Generally, my specialist interests include: …
Oil depletion (“peak oil”)
Heritage railway preservation [so not all bad then!]
History (particularly if its ancient history), mythology, folklore, spirituality and religion,
Getting the picture I think!
Were you one of those peak oil guys from 10 years ago saying that we would not see oil under 100 a barrel in our lifetimes?
JW,
That sounds like Steve Mosher’s background. 🙂
Nigel S April 29, 2017 at 2:57 am
Elsewhere he says he’s interested in WWII and Vietnam. Ancient history?
At Oxford, “modern” history begins in AD 476, with the fall of Rome to Germanic general Odoacer. Thus it includes the Dark and Middle Ages.
He should have at least done statistics in his psychology degree but maybe Bath Spa U does not worry about stats. Many places leave stats until post-grad.
A journalist with particular interest in climate change hasn’t heard of Willis until he looks him up on Desmog
So he is in the pay of Big Green (or the Green Industrial Complex). He must be biased by all that money from his work as a propagandist for Big Green. His opinion is therefore worthless.
This is an example of the arguments warmists apply to rational skeptics.
“So he is in the pay of Big Green…”. Bingo, we have a winner
Believing big green is bigger than big black is not rational.
Tony,
Wrong, when you consider that the government and academic bureaucrats are in the pay of Big Green. Big Black wouldn’t pay them because they’re worthless in a performance based economy.
Although Mann and his unindicted coconspirators have managed to siphon off a lot of payola from Big Oil.
“Big green” won’t even be bigger than “big black” (coal) in 2040. Wind & solar (other renewables) might account for 5-10% of primary energy sources in 2040… And this EIA forecast was from last year, before Trump killed the Clean Power Plan and began reversing Obama’s regulatory malfeasance.
Globally, it’s even worse for “big green”…
Another clima loon posing as a journalist.
it seems to be always journalists that join the fray with little knowledge, little understanding and massive arrogance. Think jon snow UK, Appel US
SR,
My definition of a journalist is “A professional, know-nothing wordsmith.”
A freelance journalist, yeah. That profession surely belongs to cutting edge climate science, I have no doubt whatsoever.
Pot calling the kettle black.
Why would you like to bring such a pathetic dude into debate?
Willis, he accused you of being a “paid climate denia|ist.”
It seems fair to me to ask if he is a “paid climate alarmist”.
Education:
BA(hons), Psychology and English
2005-2008
Bath Spa University
What in the heck’s a “transport field”?
It is a field which trucks and cars enter when they run off the road.
I am pretty sure that I have interacted with him in the past, see
https://disqus.com/by/robinwhitlock/
for the same name and a similar (younger?) picture.
In one exchange someone said his post was twaddle and that there is no evidence whatsoever that building expensive windmills reduces carbon emissions at all. His reply was:
“Yes there is. Typical denier. Be off with you and your utter tripe. Go and read some proper climate science.”
When asked “to write down the basic equation of AGW” his response was
“I read peer-reviewed reports, the bits of those reports that explain the report and not the bits with the equations. The reason for that is simple – I am a journalist not a scientist” and
” It’s a question of listening, and trusting, the right people, rather than those who aren’t. Climate scientists are trustworthy because they do climate science.” and
“I am saying therefore that with regard to climate science, we should take our cue from climate scientists and everyone else should follow on from there.”
I said
“So according to you, a physicist with decades of experience cannot be trusted to make a sensible comment on the climate but a wet behind the ears PhD who happens to have ‘climate science’ in his thesis title can be?”
In his reply he wittered on about academic specialisation and then said
” Physics isn’t enough, so although a meteorologist may fully grasp climate science, to cite just one example, a straightforward physicist may not be able to”
I said
So thermodynamics, statistical mechanics & kinetics are not key topics for a ‘climate scientist’? What about the absorption mechanisms & frequencies of atoms & molecules? Radio-isotope dating of samples? Spectroscopic analysis? Those are all physics.
And if someone has to be a ‘climate scientist’ to comment on the matter then you will of course ignore everything that is said by:
– Michael Mann; bachelors in physics & maths, MS & MPhil in physics
– Phil Jones; bachelors in environmental sciences, M.Sc. in engineering hydrology, Ph.D. in hydrology
– James Hansen; bachelors in physics and maths, M. S. in astronomy in 1965, Ph.D. in Physics
– Gavin Schmidt; bachelors in maths, PhD in applied mathematics
Science is not neatly pigeon-holed and only someone anointed with the special mark can talk about a subject. That is the way that some religions work. In science you put your work out there and anyone can try and find a flaw with it.
A peer-reviewed paper about a physical process that cannot be understood & commented on by an experienced physicist should not be published because it is not well written.
“so although a meteorologist may fully grasp climate science”
Now you are parading your ignorance. A bachelors in meteorology will not prepare you any better for research in that area than one in physics. Look at the Royal Meteorological Society page on PhDs,
https://www.rmets.org/our-activities/careers/phd-opportunities
– Cambridge, Depts of Chemistry, Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and Geography
– Imperial, Department of Physics, Space and Atmospheric Physics Group
– Oxford, Department of Physics, Sub-Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics
And answer came there none.
[The mods have always what stainless steel alloy DiRat was made of … .mod]
He looks a bit like Spock, but without the brain power.
Nope. Jaws in the James Bond movie, only with mouth closed. Willis needs to get Oddjob’s razor rimmed bowler and practice throwing it. Or perhaps not. But, note Willis wishes to debate the merits, not the man. So posed some additional current events climate debate questions below, as Steve McIntyre rightly questioned Willis’ paleoclimate starters.
Professional? Thus far he comes across as a complete amateur.
I find this a lot. They argue that lack of a PHD makes you unable to enter the debate. They however make grand statements about what the “science” says (rarely an actual quote from a paper or scientist), but if you correct any of their comments…again, your not a PHD so you can’t comment.
This is the new attack plan. They can say anything as long as they add “consensus” or “climate scientist” in their comment, they refuse to actual respond to any actual comment changing the argument back to “not a PHD”. If you quote a credentialed PHD and/or paper, they fall back on “oil funded” or the old “doesn’t know what they are talking about”. Point out they don’t have the credentials to criticize the paper or scientist, they resort to name calling and fall back on consensus.
I find that if you can keep them going for a while they expose their extreme views and biases quick enough for any casual viewer to see. But it is a lot like a grade 2 argument where the other child covers their ears and goes “lalalalalala”. Best antidote to their comments is to keep posting intelligent points between their pointless name calling. It will never penetrate their religious façade, but the other reading may just learn something about the uncertainties that are being hidden and the attitude of the defenders.
Yeah, I get that a lot too. Had a guy say something about sea level rise, showed him the actual data. There is literally no acceleration in any tide gage record or the satellite record unless you add it. It all came down to him having faith that “climate scientists” even though oceanographers would be the ones to do that…along with help from geologists, who would know more about the rising/falling of the land (which is the reason all the tide gages show different rates..and that their averaged rate is not the same as the satellite record).
The worst part is that in liberal forums, if THEY can go on about “consensus” then turn around and say “consensus is probably wrong and it’s much, much worse” and quote a climate projection that is clearly not well supported by the most alarmist of the “Official” projections. Then you can swoop in with actual data from official sources showing beyond all doubt that the projections are wrong…and get censored/banned or have them demand that you show “peer reviewed science” showing that the other person is wrong.
Gee Willis that makes Mr Whitlock almost as qualified as Bill McKibben,
Slightly o/t, but a very good chance to debate is happening now, with Bret Stephens’ first column for the NY Times. It draws a delightful parallel between the certainty of the climate change believers and that of the HIllary Clinton believers. Very good stuff. 700 comments, mostly from the Blue Bubble readership of the Times. I threw in my 2 cents and WUWT readers might want to welcome Bret to the conversation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/climate-of-complete-certainty.html?ref=opinion
“How about a reasonable conversation on what to do about our warming planet?”
Celebrate
This is wise strategy by NYT to increase their circulation.
Thanks for the heads-up. Submitted the post below. I’m a new commentator there so it may take a while to get through. I noticed a couple of other posts with embedded links, so hopefully this won’t disqualify me.
“The certainty of imminent (decades) catastrophe from AGW is a socially enforced consensus, which hence has nothing to do with science. This same certainty is pushed by presidents, prime minsters and governments world-wide and is the primary narrative that drives policy. Whether ACO2 is good, bad, or indifferent regarding the real physical climate, in the social domain this cultural narrative of certainty hugely dominates. The problem with this is that no cultural narrative in history has ever been true. It’s a fairy story, like religions. Cultural narratives have been net very +ve for humanity on evolutionary timescales, which is why we’re sensitized to them. Yet they can go very wrong too. The promotion of critical urgency short-circuits due consideration, so leading to massive misfires like European diesel policy or bio-fuel debacles. More generally, it seems likely that connecting world economies to a fairy tale is a high risk option (despite indeed we’ve done this with different fairy tales in the past). Few scientists speak to the wide disparity between an immature science and a narrative of certainty; those that do are typically demonized. This is part of social bias and enforcement, mechanisms that sustain strong cultures throughout history.
Regarding ‘100% right’, this may cause rejection due to long-evolved mechanisms. Yet the rejection may be either apt or inapt. See the section ‘The entanglement of science’ in the link below.
https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/20/innate-skepticism/ “
Now approved:
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/climate-of-complete-certainty.html?comments#permid=22309394
• “Nobody knows why the Little Ice Age didn’t descend into a real Ice Age.”
Because we are only 2/3 the way through the Milankovitch cycles that governs ice age dynamics through orbital solar forcing? We have been in an ice age for 1.5 million years, interspaced with very short interglacials and we will undoubtedly enter another ice age maximum at some point in the future. Was the LIA a false start to a full blown ice age, as we see in the repeating patterns of ice ages?
Plus.. I thought this has been acknowledged by both sides that lack of sunspot activity for decades had some overwhelming level of causation with the LIA and an increasing active solar activity after the LIA increased the temperatures through various mechanisms that is starting to be fairly well understood? The solar cycles do tend to pair well with the temperature record over a long term trend.
IMO, the little bit of warming that AGW does do (2-3 watts m2 if that) will in no way be able to override not only sunspot activity as we may see over the next 20-30 years, but absolutely can’t compete the orbital forcing variation up to 70-80 watts/m2 at the latitudes where ice ages begin.
Hopefully we can all agree that we are heading towards another ice age forcing?
Ron – The rising water vapor trend is countering the decline into another glaciation. Also, according to Vostok data, the rate of decline trend from the peak has been decreasing for the last 3 interglacials.
Unfortunately you have brought science to a climate alarmism debate.
That is as much use as the proverbial knife to a gunfight.
What you need to do is bring emotion, ignorance and venom.
People like Lobin Rockwit are unaffected by having their arguments shot down.
Looks as if Whitlock plans on bringing a pen to a gunfight.
Looks like a rug on his head.
You mean a toupee.
Robin Willows April 28, 2017 at 8:57 pm
Well, after my requesting twice that people talk about the ideas and avoid ad hominems, you’ve revealed yourself to be immune to a polite request. So let me say, STFU ABOUT HIS APPEARANCE!! That is meaningless ad hominem nonsense of the type that he is pushing, and you’ve just put yourself firmly in his camp.
My respect for you just went through the floor.
Sadly,
w.
Play nice.
I agree with Willis.
The “playing the man, not the ball” comments detract from an argument’s credibility.
Jon Jewett April 29, 2017 at 6:04 pm
I did. Twice. At that point it reminded me of the story of the mule that wouldn’t move. The mule’s owner said to the driver “Just tell him “Giddyup” and he’ll move”. The driver tries it, but the mule stays motionless.
So the owner picks up a big stick, whacks the mule on the lazarette with it, and says “Giddyup”, and the mule moves.
The driver says “Hey, you said I just had to tell him “Giddyup” and he’d move!”
The owner says, “That’s true … but sometimes you have to get his attention first.”
=====
In the current instance, I could see that I was having trouble getting Robin’s attention …
w.
Willis, in my opinion, the GISP2 ice core (especially the Alley temperature) reconstruction have been over-influential in the long view because it disguises long term Holocene temperature decline resulting from standard Milankowitch. You say:
Nobody knows why the globe was generally warmer in Roman times
– for the same reason that it was even warmer in the Holocene optimum. Much higher summer insolation at northern latitudes where there’s a lot of land. Higher by 40-60 wm-2 in Holocene optimum.
• Nobody knows why the globe generally cooled after Roman times
– disagree. part of long term cooling through the Holocene
• Nobody knows why the globe generally warmed up again in Medieval times
– you’re assuming that there was a cool period between Roman and medieval periods. Not so sure about this.
• Nobody knows why the globe greatly cooled after Medieval times, leading to the “Little Ice Age” in the 1600s/1700s.
– continued Milankowitch. high-lat NH insolation returned to levels similar to great Ice Age. Incipient neo-glaciation in Baffin Island, one of last places of Laurentide glacier.
• Nobody knows why the Little Ice Age didn’t descend into a real Ice Age.
– one explanation is that we released enough CO2 in the early industrial age and that it was a near miss e.g. Ganopolsku
• Nobody knows why the earth started generally warming at about 0.5°C per century since the Little Ice Age.
– it looks to me from paleo data that 19th century was colder than 17th century and that warming began only in late 19th and 20th century. Conventional explanation for warming. Much paleo evidence that 19th century was coldest since LGM.
• Nobody knows why this warming continued through the 20th century.
– conventional explanation for slight warming
• Nobody knows whether the ~ 0.5°C warming of the 21st century is 100% natural and just a continuance of the warming of previous two centuries, or whether some or all of of the warming is due to humans.
– not convinced that two centuries of warming. More like 150 years.
• Nobody knows why there has been a two-decade “hiatus” in the ongoing three centuries of warming.
– it seems to me that rate of warming is about 50% of model average, as opposed to having stopped.
The main thing to me is this: if doubling CO2 was going to cause anything existentially bad, there’s been enough CO2 increase that we should already be feeling serious adverse effects. But on the contrary, our species is flourishing as never before. Indeed, as noted above, I think that there’s a plausible case that CO2 emissions may have averted increased glaciation in the 20th and 21st century.
On sea level rise, I think that disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been going on for 15000 years and is probably unavoidable under Holocene conditions (due to erosion of its oceanic baseline by ocean currents, not air temperatures.) Thus another 5 m sea level rise over 5000 years is probably baked in and preventable only by returning to NH glaciation. Modern King Canutes, like their predecssor, will be unable to command it to stop.
Simply to supplement the trends referenced. From NOAA themselves.
Yep – that graphic seems proof enough to all that would look at it.
Yet, why are so many still not able to grasp that simple truth.
By the way…do you have a link so I can get a better look at the graphic?
Cheers.
Seems the page is less than it was before. Go figure. Censorship?
https://www.glerl.noaa.gov/education/ourlakes/background.html
Thanks for that link.
Another supplement… looks like 15,000 to 20,000 years is supported by the geology of Florida; but it’s also evident that significant sea level variability has occurred over much longer term periods.
?h=428&w=1024
Steve, thanks for that. However, blaming both the Roman/Medieval warming and the LIA on Milankovich seems like handwaving. Have you written any posts that show that in more detail?
And then to explain three centuries of warming with “– conventional explanation for slight warming” … um, what is the “conventional explanation”?
Next, please note that I said “Nobody knows”, and not “Nobody has theories” … yours are certainly not the only theories for the RWP, the MWP, the LIA, and the succeeding warming. No one theory has gained enough adherents to claim that we know what’s going on.
I do agree, however, that the warming has generally been beneficial for humans.
Finally, I’m surprised that you would make a prediction spanning not five decades, not five centuries, but five millennia … on my planet such claims, being unfalsifiable, are very unscientific.
Thanks as always for all of your good work.
w.
It is far from handwaving. Only a solar influence d@nialist could fail to see the obvious and blatant reality of the record in both paleoproxies and thermometer record.
Willis writes
Here’s a nice tool to see the net effect of insolation at 65N due to the Milankovitch cycles
http://biocycle.atmos.colostate.edu/shiny/Milankovitch/
Frankly I find any arguments that Milankovitch cycles drive climate to be hand waving. But then again, its the best we’ve got.
“on my planet such claims, being unfalsifiable, are very unscientific.”
We only have the one world and no chance of falsifying what it will be observed to do.
I think some claims and ideas can be very scientific without us having the ability to test them out yet.
Your argument applies to much of climate science in general but it does not mean we cannot take the data and make scientific extrapolations.
I guess the non scientific extrapolations of some some climate scientists is the cause of the angst.
TimTheToolMan April 28, 2017 at 9:44 pm
It is not insolation at 65 N which drives glaciation. It’s insolation at higher latitudes, under the influence of the tilt cycle, ie another Milankovitch cycle, which has controlled NH ice sheet advance and “shrinkage”, with all due respect to the writers of “Seinfeld”.
I have a question that I have not seen asked. Is there a finite amount of carbon on our wonderful planet?
Over the last 2000 years, the change in June insolation at 60°N looks like this:
Data Source
Note that over the last 1,000 years it has changed by less than one W/m2. Steve McIntyre above claims that this change explains both the Medieval warming and the Little Ice Age. Chimp says I’m a denialist for doubting that it does explain both.
Me, I don’t see it at all. What am I missing?
w.
Willis,
Had you actually read my reply, you wouldn’t even have asked that question.
My whole point is that it isn’t insolation at 65 N that controls the glacial/interglacial cycle, which you could easily have learned had you bothered to read with comprehension what I wrote.
Chimp writes
So I assume you have a paper that supports the “Greater than 65N and not insolation but angle of incidence” theory you seem to be putting out there?
Tim,
I guess you’re not a regular here. Do you accept only pal-reviewed papers from the Carbonari, or are you open to real science by actual scientists contributing to improving our understanding of nature? Such as the work of Javier:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/29/earths-obliquity-and-temperature-over-the-last-20000-years/
His case for axial tilt controlling the cycles of glacial advance and retreat, IMO, is beyond persuasive.
Chimp writes
Yeah, I often use cartoons as the basis for my science. Which part of that is supposed to be convincing that the axial tilt is responsible? Javier’s work from that reference concentrates on the Bray cycle.
https://judithcurry.com/2016/09/20/impact-of-the-2400-yr-solar-cycle-on-climate-and-human-societies/
“I have a question that I have not seen asked. Is there a finite amount of carbon on our wonderful planet?”
Well, considering that the only alternatives to something being in finite supply are for it to be in infinite supply or for there to be zero of it, the answer is very obvious.
In fact, everything on our finite planet is in finite supply, with the possible exception of scientific illiteracy.
Willis:
“Note that over the last 1,000 years it has changed by less than one W/m2.”
I think you’re reading the graph backwards. In the first 1000 of the last 2000 years it changed a little less than 1W/m2. In the last 1000 years it changed by over 2W/m2.
Chimp April 28, 2017 at 10:09 pm
I read it. Your claim was that it was insolation at “higher latitudes” that caused the MWP and the LIA. The problem is that the insolation at higher latitudes varies in lockstep with the insolation at 65 N. For the last twenty thousand years, the correlation of the two is 0.998 … like I said, they are intrinsically linked. So you can use the data I gave above for 65°N, just multiply all the numbers by 1.1 and you have the data for 90N.
Now, please explain to me how that caused both the MWP and the LIA as Steve McIntyre claims …
w.
Never mind – I looked at it and thought it was a years-before-present chart.
Willis,
There are some observations that throw shadows over this discussion with Steve Mc.
1. There are limits to what can be discussed, other than speculatively, because of our present inability to separate natural change from anthropogenic.
2. Specifically for global average temperatures, nobody has yet been able to make that attribution. Please correct me if I have made missed an advance.
3. Assertions made by many authors along the lines of “Global temperature rise for the last 150 years is recovery from the Little Ice Age” would be stronger if supported by a quantitative mechanism. Where does such added heat come from or lack of prior cooling?
4. Mechanisms for global temperature forcing by ice and albedo change appear to be rather weaker in Wm-2 than measured effects of plausible cloud cover change. Lacking measurements of the latter over long terms one is left with an impression of weak mechanisms getting more inspection than at least one other stronger mechanism, cloud coverage. Reminds me of the frog in boiling water.
5. An unresolved issue. Is GCM modelling as a whole in questionable territory, or are there parts of it now good enough to accept? Are any such parts relevant to the discussion at hand?
Cheers to all. Geoff
Regarding Willis June 60N solar insolation, here is one for 65N which provides a little more context backwards and forwards.
Right now, we are are more-or-less right at the low point of 65N solar insolation. It declines by a tiny 0.5 W/m2 over the next 1500 years and then it goes back up again. The tiny 0.5 W/m2 decline over the next 1500 years is nowhere close to that required to slip us back into an ice age. The math on when snow and ice stops melting in the high arctic in the summer says that it needs to decline by at least 15.0 W/m2 lower than this bottom dip point to put us closer to ice age resumption conditions.
After it goes back up again, the next big dip is 52,000 years from now. But even that is probably not low enough to start an ice age cycle. It is 128,000 years from now before the Ellesmere Island glaciers come back and the ice age restarts. In fact, by that time, ALL of the ice on Greenland will be gone. It is too far south to have glaciers that last through an interglacial of 140,000 years long. Sea level will rise more than 10 metres in those 128,000 years remaining It will be by far the longest interglacial in the last 2.7 million years since the ice ages started.
Willis Eschenbach April 29, 2017 at 12:09 am and Tim,
Bill Illis has often posted here that what counts is sunshine at around 75 degrees N. The insolation might be the same, but the angle of incidence is different.
Bill,
IMO high latitude insolation isn’t the only factor. So is axial tilt, which affects the angle of incidence of the incoming radiation. However if eccentricity be more important than obliquity, we’re also in for a very long interglacial.
And yes, even temperatures lower than now would lead to melting the entire Southern Dome of the GIS and probably the Northern as well. Call it catastrophic natural global warming, ie CNGW.
However, people would have millennia in which to adapt to slowly rising sea level.
Cmimp writes
Arguments using angle of incidence over straight out W/m^2 must rely even more heavily on albedo effects from reflection. And if you’re trying to make that hand waving argument you cant do it with a heavily smoothed graph of the impact from the Milankovitch cycles as Willis and Bill appear to have done because…well snow and ice melts. And shorter amounts of time, matter.
If you compare the 65N insolation values from the link I posted above which shows the actual effect to the smoothed graph Willis shows, they’re nothing alike and Willis’ argument makes sense only with his smoothed representation. When you look at the detailed graph, Willis’ argument makes a lot less sense but then again its still not easy to see how 65N insolation works as a driver of climate either.
Tim,
I’m largely in agreement with you, but at the latitude at which glaciation starts, as per Bill, rather than at 60 degrees N or even 65, albedo and angle of incidence do make a measurable and, IMO, significant difference. Which is why I’m in accord with Javier re. axial tilt as the most important of Milankovitch cycles.
PS: Which is why I think that science blogs such as this actually are contributing to the advancement of science, possibly more than the suborned, wholly captive journal of the AAAS.
Unfortunately our gracious and esteemed host does himself a disservice and equally jeopardizes the standing of CACA skeptics by permitting creationists to spew their raving lunacies here, while banning astrology and the actually fairly scientific “Slayers”.
But it’s his blog, and I thank him for maintaining it. He and it have done much good
Less I be misunderstood, my point is that astrology has more going for it than creationism, and astrology has very little going for it.
I wrote
But had misread the scaling so in fact both Willis’ and Bills’ graphs are not heavily smoothed and so from a Milankovitch cycle point of view, their argument makes sense, but reality still has years and seasons and freezing and melting so its still not a clearcut argument (IMO)
At any rate GCMs cant resolve this because they start out with the wrong surface temperatures (cold biased usually) and that’s fatal for this kind of argument.
75N-80N is where all the action is.
This is the latitude that the snow and ice first stops melting out in the summer in the ice ages.
The summer sun is always strong enough to melt out the winter snow at 65N, even in the deepest downturns of the Milankovitch. The only time it reaches that level, when the snow stops melting in the summer is when a 1 km high glacier is bearing down on 65N having built-up and moved down from 75N. This is when global albedo is rising enough so that cooler temperatures help an ice age to continue building.
A good example is Eureka Canada at 80N. Here the snow melts out in early June and doesn’t come back until the beginning of September. 3 months snow-free. The sea ice at 75N melts out in early August and doesn’t come back until late October. There needs to be huge change to get to ice-sheets building up again even at this very high cold latitude. Now there are higher elevation mountain chains near-by that still have glaciers on them and mountain-chains play an important role in glaciation as well, like on Ellesmere Island, Norway and the Torgat Mountains in northern Quebec which continue into Baffin Island.
Eureka also has a world-class weather research station. This is what their Solar Tower records. The snow is melting out once solar insolation gets to 450 W/m2. That is your Magic Number for ice building up or not. The Magic Number for sorting out what these solar insolation graphs mean. Albedo feedback and mountain chains are the remaining part of the picture.
Bill Illis
I do not often disagree with you, but I’m skeptical about this. There just isn’t very much land area up north of 75 latitude outside of the north half of Greenland. And that land area is already 95% covered with high-albedo permanent land ice and glaciers. The Canadian islands are listed by latitude of the center of each islandfrom north to south, and with each area by square kilometers and Mkm^2. Few are very large, although many would be “connected” across the shallow straits between the islands once large glacieration begins. Even the total (at 1.3 Mkm^2) is small compared to the 14 Mkm^2 of the nominal Arctic Ocean between the pole and 72 north latitude.
Further, there just isn’t very much solar energy that far north to reflect, even in today’s conditions of 14 Mkm^2 of Arctic sea ice.
Now, Antarctic sea ice is a different case: It receives (reflects) nearly 1.7 times the energy that the Arctic sea ice receives over the course of a year, and there is no limit to Antarctic sea ice growth.
Bill writes
All fairly standard Milankovitch cycle theory…
Its just that when I compare insolation due to the Milankovitch cycles with the actual ice ages, I find myself scratching my head because they simply dont line up with any kind of consistency. There is cooling where there should be warming and warming where its not at all obvious that should be happening. These are big time scales too so passing it off as lag isn’t terribly convincing either.
I’m inclined to think the Milankovitch cycles play a role but like so many things “earth’s climate”, there’s something else that’s important going on and we’ve not got a complete picture yet.
So much for including the picture.
Maybe this’ll work…
http://www.periodni.com/gallery/milankovitch_cycle.png
RACookPE1978 April 30, 2017 at 8:06 am
The area you quoted are not islands when an ice age has just started. They are 1 km high glaciers that even extend out over the ocean. The whole peninsula become one big land mass made up of 1 km high ice. In the deepest part of the ice ages, they become 2.5 km high glaciers.
Most of the islands are created by ice age conditions depressing the continental shelf in certain flow channels over the last 2.7 million years of ice ages – like the U-shaped valleys left on land by glaciers. Have a look on Google Earth and you can see the gouges left by glacial. Hudson Bay is like this as well. It would be above sea level if the ice stayed away for 100,000 years or so.
So the glaciers building up and permanent sea ice down to only 70N (versus no change in any other latitude) changes Earth’s Albedo from 29.8% to 30.0% or just a small change really. [I built an Albedo calculation model to understand this myself]. But this is just enough to continue the glacial advance.
TimTheToolMan April 30, 2017 at 6:56 am
I agree with Javier that the axial tilt, ie “obliquity”, cycle rules. During ice ages (glaciations) of the past million years or so the 41,000 year periodicity that was controlling before the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (to an apparent 100,000 year glacial period) is still in effect. But it’s colder now, and some would be interglacials are stillborn, giving rise to the apparent 100 millennium cycle. In fact, that’s an average of 82 K and 123 K because some glaciations last two tilt cycles and others three.
I also agree with Bill, who has studied this topic six ways to Sunday, that very high latitude insolation is also important in initiating glaciations. I don’t know that summer snow will always melt at 65 N, even in when tilt allows more permissive angles of incidence, but seems reasonable to me.
Steve,
Brilliant, as always. I stand amazed at your physical and mental stamina and vigor.
While I agree with your unanswerable critique of Willis’ assertions, still IMO the depths of the LIA during the Maunder Minimum were significantly colder than the coolest intervals of the 19th century. By, like, a lot.
But I’d be happy for you to present me evidence to the contrary.
Thank you Mr McIntyre. In awe.
If we are to have a true Invitation To Debate “Climate Change” you would be one of the first people I would like to see on board.
It would be good to see some of the blue team here as well without their bags of tricks engaging in open discussion and without jeering .
Hopefully you will all have a forum in the next year but one has to start somewhere.
“– one explanation is that we released enough CO2 in the early industrial age and that it was a near miss e.g. Ganopolsku”
Not happy, implies either extreme good luck or a sensitivity to CO2 changes that I just would not want to contemplate.
For the first I would rule that out as said on the extreme improbability of such fortuitousness.
For the second nothing in the data shows such extreme climate sensitivity.
This is the big statement.
“The main thing to me is this: if doubling CO2 was going to cause anything existentially bad, there’s been enough CO2 increase that we should already be feeling serious adverse effects.”
Exactly. There seems to be a blind spot as to how quickly temperatures should match CO2 levels. If we go by the science the earths atmosphere should heat up to the temperature dictated by science for that CO2 level that day. In other words we should already be 2 degrees hotter now for those scientists postulating a 6 degree sensitivity.
And it is not.
Nobody knows why the globe generally cooled after Roman times
– disagree. part of long term cooling through the Holocene
• Nobody knows why the globe generally warmed up again in Medieval times
– you’re assuming that there was a cool period between Roman and medieval periods. Not so sure about this.
First you say the post-Roman cooling was part of long term cooling (I agree), then you say you’re not so sure there was post-Roman cooling. Contradiction? The cooling was the Dark Ages, better known as the Cold Ages.
Steve it is worth pointing out that the 1880 to 2017 temp record is mostly made from thin air, and nothing can be claimed off the back of it
@Steve McIntyre
I hate to be pedantic, but my understanding is that King Canute commanded the tide not to come in, to demonstrate to his court that not even a man as powerful as him could hold it back. The opposite of common belief.
You are correct.
The belief you cite isnt all that common, among people who actually know who Canute was.
I’ll agree w/ Steve McIntyre’s general observation that even if CO2 is slowly warming temps, the amount is small and gradual enough that the results are mostly beneficial, so far. IMO, results are very beneficial — the increases in plant production & drought-resistance are hard to overestimate. Boreal forests are advancing slowly into tundras, savannas are advancing slowly in sub-deserts. Less sea-ice increases phytoplankton production in those waters. The list goes on. The disadvantages are almost all “could be”, “maybe”, “might”, “projected”, etc,etc.
Thanks for all that you do. Hope you are well.
IMO there is good evidence for cool periods in between the warm intervals. The Dark Ages Cool Period (~1.5 Ka) shows up in every paleoproxy with which I’m familiar, not just in GIS ice cores. So do the Cool Periods sometimes called the Greek Dark Ages (~2.5 Ka) after the Minoan Warm Period and Biblical (~3.5 Ka) after the Egyptian WP. There is also the Bronze Age Cool Period (~4.5 Ka) between the end of the Holocene Climate Optimum and the Egyptian WP.
Based upon the axial tilt cycle, we’re not due for another glacial phase yet. IMO we came out of the LIA naturally. Same as we did out of the Dark Ages Cool Period, which might have been of similar intensity.
“The main thing to me is this: if doubling CO2 was going to cause anything existentially bad, there’s been enough CO2 increase that we should already be feeling serious adverse effects. But on the contrary, our species is flourishing as never before. Indeed, as noted above, I think that there’s a plausible case that CO2 emissions may have averted increased glaciation in the 20th and 21st century.”
Yeah, it doesn’t seem that CO2 will cause anything bad to happen, and I would add it doesn’t seem to me as if CO2 has caused anything bad on Venus or anywhere else.
I see no evidence that Venus was once like Earth nor favor the idea that Earth was “lucky” that it didn’t become like Venus at some point or the past- or that it ever could resemble Venus in the future.
But I don’t think, ‘there’s a plausible case that CO2 emissions may have averted increased glaciation in the 20th and 21st century.”. Nor do I think it’s likely that any or all human activity had any effect upon it.
Or I would not favor the idea of deliberately increases the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere so as to prevent any future chance of having increased glaciation of Earth.
And I think it’s correct to regard Earth as being currently in an Ice age. And I would no problem with the general idea of doing something so as to cause us to leave this global ice age which has been happening for millions of years
I think it’s rather silly to regard Earth as being currently too hot.
The average temperature of Earth has nothing to do with heatwaves or daytime air temperature being over 100 F.
I think high daytime temperatures [and heatwaves] are conditions which are affected by human activity- this effect is known as the Urban Heat Island Effect {UHI effect].
What creates Earth’s average temperature is the night and day average temperature of the tropics. The average temperature of Earth’s tropics have remained roughly the same for billions of years. And the changes of Earth average temperature have occurred from changes of average air temperatures in the Temperate and Arctic climate zones.
The Tropics is about 40% of the surface area of Earth. Leaving 60% of earth’s surface being in North and South Temperate and arctic zones- so with Northern Temperate being 25% with Arctic being 5%.
Most of heating done by sunlight occurs in the Tropics. And most of sunlight energy which is absorbed occurs in the Tropical oceans- they [the tropical surface waters] are warm and rest of planet is much cooler. And it’s the large area of the tropical ocean which increases the average global temperature. And the warmed tropical water warm the rest of the world- the temperate and arctic zones. .
Roughly the way to increase or decrease global average temperature will be related to altering global heat transport mechanisms and these things aren’t alter by butterflies flapping their wings or insignificant human UHI effects.
Anyhow, I think there ways humans could warm the planet, but I think increasing CO2 in regard increasing “Earth Greenhouse Effect’ would not work as efficient way of doing this- or I think the greening effect from enriched CO2 could be more significant in terms of affecting ‘global warming”. But would probably also be a minor effect.. Or I think greening the Sahara desert could more significant or better bet [in terms of small scale changes which are possible by humans- which doesn’t include doing things from the capability of being able to competently use the space environment [Ie, such as controlling how much sunlight reaches Earth].
“On sea level rise, I think that disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been going on for 15000 years and is probably unavoidable under Holocene conditions (due to erosion of its oceanic baseline by ocean currents, not air temperatures.) Thus another 5 m sea level rise over 5000 years is probably baked in and preventable only by returning to NH glaciation. Modern King Canutes, like their predecssor, will be unable to command it to stop.”
I think simply based upon previous interglacial periods, one could expect sea levels to rise by another 5 meter over periods of thousands of years [last interglacial period, Eemian was about 5 meters higher- and average ocean temperature was few degrees warmer then our present average temperature of our oceans.
Excellent comments, Steve, thanks for sharing.
BTW did you see Javier’s post at Climate Etc? I thought it was an interesting piece in the same vein. I was surprised how strong the correlations were.
Strawmen burn brightest in the Liberal mindset. That’s why the Left loves building them to burn them down and claim a victory.
The Left’s Climate religion dogma rests entirely on the GCM ensemble as their prophecy of doom. A prophecy that becomes the Left affirmation of faith, that unless mankind repents from its fossil fuel ways and submits to global socialism (run by the Left elites of course.) we will incur some level of temperature rise that destroys a highly adaptable biosphere.
So forget about NASA and NOAA surface temp fudgery of cooling the past, getting rid of “blips,” and other surface data chicanery. The real fight is over how wrong the models are, and how, for so many reasons, they cannot “work.” Just the fact that there are so many, and they average them, to get “model consensus” tells any one with an ounce of critical thought they must be BS. For if they were valid, only 2 or 3 would be needed to cross check each other. Then there’s the human tunung element that makes them even more junk science.
Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) has convincingly argued on line why the Climate establishment’s use of so many climate models identifies Climate Change “science” to him as the same elements used in financial securities fraud and hucksterism. Basically, make a huge number of scatterred predictions, and post hoc some will be close to right in the future. Then use those “forecasts” to show how good you were, ignoring all the much larger number of failures. Works everytime on the gullible and weak minded (can you say, “Millenials with Common Core educations and participation trophies?”).
“Given Mr. Whitlock’s ad hominem attacks on me for not being a scientist, I was quite surprised to find this …..[see above]”
Nopta bene that the pot is trying to call the kettle black. Where is the scientific training for this kneee-jerk shill for the Alarmist cause? Nowhere to be seen! Nothing remotely compared with the carefully considered gravitas that Willis brings to the Debate, earning him the accolade of scientifically trained colleagues, NONE OF WHICH THIS HOT-AIR BELCHING, IGNORANT BERK WHITLOCK IS ABLE TO ADDUCE TO ADVANCE SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING ON THE MATTERS IN HAND.
Whitlock writes
Neither is being a journalist. Taking the time to investigate and understand climate science, and by that I mean years of research, not an afternoon or even a month, trumps “being a scientist” and having an opinion. Its pretty obvious when you deal with people on forums whether they have a logical mind or not.
I was studying the ACS Climate Change tool kit sections on the single and multilayer theories (what I refer to as the thermal ping-pong ball) of upwelling/downwelling/”back” radiation and after seeing a similar discussion on an MIT online course (specifically says no transmission) have some observations.
These layered models make no reference to conduction, convection or latent heat processes which leads me to conclude that these models include no molecules, aka a “non-participating media,” aka vacuum. This is a primary conditional for proper application of the S-B BB ideal, i.e. ε = 1.0, equation.
When energy strikes an object or surface there are three possible results: reflection or ρ, absorption or α, transmission or τ and ρ + α + τ = 1.0.
The layered models use only α which according to Kirchhoff is equal to ε. What Kirchhoff really means is that max emissivity can equal but not exceed the energy absorbed. Nothing says emissivity can’t be less than the energy absorbed. If α leaves as conduction/convection/latent (macro effect, non-thermodynamic equilibrium) than ε will be much less than 1.0.
These grey bodied layered models then exist in a vacuum and are 100% non-reflective, i.e. opaque, surfaces, i.e. just like the atmosphere. NOT!
So the real atmosphere has real molecules meaning a “participatory” media and is 99.96% transparent i.e. non-opaque.
Because of the heat flow participating molecules only 63 W/m^2 of the 160 W/m^2 that made it to the surface leaves the surface as LWIR.
63 W/m^2 and 15 C / 288 K surface gives a net effective ε of about 0.16 when the participating media is considered. (BTW “surface” is NOT the ground, but 1.5 m ABOVE the ground per WMO & IPCC AR5 glossary.)
So the K-T diagram is thermodynamic rubbish, earth as a ball in a bucket of hot mush is physical rubbish, the Δ 33 C w/ atmosphere is obvious rubbish, the layered models are unrelated to reality rubbish.
The atmosphere is not in thermodynamic equilibrium, is a closed system and as a consequence neither Stephan Boltzmann nor Kirchhoff nor thermodynamics can be a abused the ways the GHE theory applies them.
What support does the GHE theory have left besides rabid minions?
I see no reason why GHE theory gets a free pass on the scientific method.
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/atmosphericwarming.html
http://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/notes/node136.html
http://www.mhtl.uwaterloo.ca/courses/ece309_mechatronics/lectures/pdffiles/summary_ch12.pdf (example 12.4)
http://writerbeat.com/articles/14306-Greenhouse—We-don-t-need-no-stinkin-greenhouse-Warning-science-ahead-
http://writerbeat.com/articles/15582-To-be-33C-or-not-to-be-33C
The condition of thermodynamic equilibrium is necessary in the statement, because the equality of emissivity and absorptivity often does not hold when the material of the body is not in thermodynamic equilibrium.
In non-equilibrium systems, by contrast, there are net flows of matter or energy. If such changes can be triggered to occur in a system in which they are not already occurring, it is said to be in a metastable equilibrium.
Nick, before you continue down that path, let me strongly recommend that you read and understand two posts, The Steel Greenhouse and People Living In Glass Planets. The poorly-named “greenhouse effect” does not get a “free pass” as you claim, it is solid science.
Best regards,
w.
33c from atmosphere, ghgs, the atmosphere also cools the planet by a lot, 30c? Hydro ect.
So without hydro how warm would earth be from the GHG effect?
Willis,
You may be amused to hear that, at the time that controversy raged, I finally decided that the two sides of the debate were not reconcilable, such was the anger and disdain expressed, mainly within the skeptical spectrum. Increasingly I felt it was in danger of calling into question the skeptical climate challenge generally.
Finally, in exasperation at the lack of reconciliation, I suggested in email correspondence with several of the key protagonists that the only way to resolve it was to build an experiment to replicate the steel greenhouse proposition in the laboratory. To my surprise, both sides of the argument scathingly rubbished my suggestion as being a pointless waste of time!
Nevertheless I went ahead and, at some cost to myself and over several months, built a properly engineered simulacrum of your steel greenhouse ‘thought experiment’. With the help of a wonderfully helpful high vacuum-pump supplier in Bristol, UK, who helped me to use their sophisticated equipment free of charge, I proved definitively that introducing an intermediate shell between a constantly heated inner shell and an enclosing outer shell that acted as a constant temperature heat sink very definitely caused an increase in the inner shell’s surface temperature, absolutely in line with standard physics/mathematics.
So did this persuade me that global warming of the climate was a serious problem and that the alarmists were correct after all? Of course not – any more than it would have persuaded you.
But, for me, it did effectively dispose of the influence of a small group of extreme skeptics who were in danger of seriously damaging the real ongoing debate with the warmists. I note with some relief that the ‘slayers’ have almost vanished away in recent years.
Cheers, DC
I’ve read them both. They’re more multi-layer nonsense.
In his 2011 paper Pierrehumbert compared the atmosphere to the insulated walls of a house and a blanket. EXACTLY and he should have stayed with that theme.
Pushing current through an electrical resistance requires a voltage difference.
Pushing water through the physical resistance of a heat exchanger requires a pressure difference.
Pushing energy through a thermal resistance (heat is energy in motion) requires a temperature difference.
Q=U*A*dT is a more than adequate explanation for the warm surface of the earth without resorting to any LWIR handwavium anti-thermo hocus-pocus.
U is NOT simply air, but a complex combination and interaction between conduction, convection, latent and radiation heat processes and Hadley cells, Rossby waves, clouds, precipitation, etc. Conductivity is the inverse of resistance. All of the processes that resist the flow of heat from the ground to 32 km where molecules become scarce are responsible for the warm surface temperature.
Arrhenius’ contemporaries Angstrom, De Marci, and R. W. Wood all felt the GHE was flawed, Angstrom so much so that he considered it a waste of his time.
Very well stated Nicholas!
A “giveaway” is that the formulaic calculations always end up with the maximum warming possible given an atmospheric CO2 content.
In essence the calculations are one way expressions without other interactions or interferences or any hint of difficulty for CO2 to achieve maximum energy transfer in spite of atmospheric condition.
My physics teacher always told us it was a fudge to calculate the ‘ideal’ solution and then substitute that number for actual measurement. So it goes for using an ideal CO2 GHG absorption/emission/vibratory impact energy transfer as a critical atmospheric solution.
Earth’s refusal to lockstep match CO2 to temperature is just one giveaway that the base CO2 GHG formula lacks real world veracity.
it is solid science
===========
actually, real greenhouses warm by limiting vertical circulation, not through radiation at all. and the US government tells us that GHG warms the planet by SAME MECHANISM that warms real greenhouses. so, based on what the US government tells us, we should be able to account for the 33C of GHG warming via vertical circulation. And it turns out, we can:
the GHG effect can also be explained as the conversion between KE and PE due to vertical circulation of the troposphere leading to the lapse rate. otherwise the atmosphere would be isothermal. Only KE affects temperature, so when air rises we reduce KE and increase PE, which reduces temperature without changing total energy. this is the problem with energy balance models that only consider temperature (KE), they ignore PE.
the lapse rate warms the surface and cools the upper atmosphere. how much? the center of mass of the circulation is approximately 5km. the lapse rate is approximately 6.5C/km. therefore surface warming is:
5km x 6.5C/km = 32.5C
that doesn’t leave very much wiggle room for the 33C observed warming to be due to radiative GHG effect.
So I went back for a closer look. Nothing new. These two attempts at science have the same problems as the ACS layers.
No consideration of conduction, convection, latent heat processes. It’s entirely radiation. See UofWaterloo’s example 12.4. Convection and latent heat are the most powerful methods of moving energy in/around/and through the atmosphere. R. W. Wood realized that in 1909.
The thought experiment shells are 100% opaque, zero transmission, zero reflection. There is no way 0.04% of the atmosphere can render the entire atmosphere opaque. That’s not even remotely similar to the actual atmosphere which is 99.96% NOT opaque.
So what would the earth be like without an atmosphere?
The average solar constant is 1,368 W/m^2 with an S-B BB temperature of 390 K or 17 C higher than the boiling point of water under sea level atmospheric pressure, which would no longer exist. The oceans would boil away removing the tons of pressure that keep the molten core in place. The molten core would rupture flooding the surface with dark magma changing both emissivity and albedo. With no atmosphere a steady rain of meteorites would pulverize the surface to dust same as the moon. The earth would be much like the moon with a similar albedo (0.12) and large swings in surface temperature from lit to dark sides. No clouds, no vegetation, no snow, no ice a completely different albedo, certainly not the current 30%. No molecules means no convection, conduction, latent energy and surface absorption/radiation would be anybody’s guess. Whatever the conditions of the earth would be without an atmosphere, it would most certainly NOT be 240 W/m^2 and 255K.
The “back” radiation effectively doubles the energy in the system from an equation, a very clear violation of energy conservation. A shell that radiates in both directions is impossible, violating conservation. If it even existed it would absorb on one side and radiate on the other. Hallucination.
The K-T 333 W/m^2 perpetual loop on the K-T diagram doesn’t make any net difference at ToA and is thermodynamic nonsense. See my WB posting.
The 240 W/m^2 is the radiative balance at the ToA which NOAA says is 100 km NOT the surface and which I consider 32 km since that’s where molecules basically disappear.
Summary of these two papers in a word or two: amateur hogwash. Maybe instead of thinking you should look out the window. Or get a real job where applying real science pays your salary – or not.
Your thought experiment steel shell has two sides with identical conditions on both sides, but the atmosphere does not. The earth side of the atmosphere is solar heated, the space ToA side is “cold.” Energy flows, i.e. heat from surface to ToA through the atmosphere on one side which resists the flow and warms the earth per UAdT.
It’s 160 W/m^2 at the surface not 235 W/m^2. And 342 W/m^2 times a moon like albedo of, say, 0.15 means 290.7 W/m^2 or an S-B BB temperature of 267.6 K or -5.4 C.
“… no atmosphere…” & “… past the clouds…” What clouds? No atmosphere means no clouds. No atmosphere means no molecules. No molecules and the concepts of energy, heat, hot and cold sort of lose any meaning.
“A single layer model is not physically possible.” Well the earth as a ball in bucket of warm mush, aka the K-T graphic, is just as physically not possible.
Trenberth et al 2011jcli24 Figure 10
This popular balance graphic and assorted variations are based on a power flux, W/m^2. A W is not energy, but energy over time, i.e. 3.4 Btu/eng h or 3.6 kJ/SI h. The 342 W/m^2 ISR is determined by spreading the average discular 1,368 W/m^2 solar irradiance/constant over the spherical ToA surface area. (1,368/4 =342) There is no consideration of the elliptical orbit (perihelion = 1,415 W/m^2 to aphelion = 1,323 W/m^2) or day or night or seasons or tropospheric thickness or energy diffusion due to oblique incidence, etc.
This popular balance models the earth as a ball suspended in a hot fluid with heat/energy/power entering evenly over the entire ToA spherical surface. This is not even close to how the real earth energy balance works. Everybody uses it. Everybody should know better.
An example of a real heat balance based on Btu/h is as follows. Basically (Incoming Solar Radiation spread over the earth’s cross sectional area, Btu/h) = (U*A*dT et. al. leaving the lit side perpendicular to the spherical surface ToA, Btu/h) + (U*A*dT et. al. leaving the dark side perpendicular to spherical surface area ToA, Btu/h) The atmosphere is just a simple HVAC/heat flow/balance/insulation problem.
Here’s a better model.
Picture a cast iron pizza stone in a 425 F oven (love at 425 degrees). Remove from oven and hang from pot rack over kitchen island. Pizza stone radiates in all directions transferring heat to the surroundings until the stone cools off and the kitchen heats up to equilibrium.
Now slap a 2” thick slab of pink foam insulation (atmosphere) on one side. This greatly reduces the flow of heat from this side to the surroundings, let’s say by 90%. Does the radiation from the uninsulated side increase to 190%? No. What happens is, since the bulk temp & W/m^2 does not change and half the area has been removed, the time it takes to reach equilibrium now almost doubles.
Now let’s say the surrounding kitchen is really hot, 500F. Heat flows from the kitchen, through the pink foam (atmosphere) to the pizza stone that then radiates it to the kitchen.
The surface of the earth is heated by the sun. That heat rises up through the progressively colder layers of the pink insulating atmosphere by conduction, convection, latent and radiative heat processes (composite conductivity) until it reaches 32 km or 100 km where, with no mo’ molecules, radiation becomes the only form of heat removal, i.e. 240 W/m^2 out into space.
342 ISR minus 100 albedo = 240 ASR = 240 OLR. All balanced.
Earth itself also produces some 44 terawatts, but of course little of that heat makes its way to the surface.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2011/07/17/kamland-geoneutrinos/
I would ask Mr. Whitlock to connect the dots between a planet without an atmosphere which obeys the SB Law exactly and a planet with an atmosphere like Earth, which according to the IPCC has a surface sensitivity about 4 times that of a black body receiving the same amount of energy, yet emits only about 60% more energy.
I would ask him to explain how each of the 239 W/m^2 of post albedo solar input power results in only 1.6 W/m^2 of net surface emissions, while the next W/m^2 is claimed to increase surface emissions by more than 4 W/m^2.
I would ask him to plot the sensitivity as a function of surface emissions and integrate this to arrive at the current average surface emissions and temperature while still ending at the stated sensitivity.
I would ask him what effect the ‘back radiation’ that offsets latent heat, thermals and other non radiative transports of energy between the surface and atmosphere has on the radiative balance and sensitivity, other than the net effect they have on the average surface temperature and its consequential emissions.
I would ask him to explain how forcing and temperature are linearly related as required by the Bode feedback model used by Hansen/Schlesinger as well as identify the infinite source of Joules powering the gain that Bode assumes must exist.
I would ask him to explain how the conflict of interest at the IPCC helps advance science. This conflict arises because they require significant warming from CO2 emissions to justify their existence, yet have become the arbiter of what is and what is not climate science by what they publish in their reports,
I have a long list of other questions, but a proper answer to any of the above ones will make the answers to all of the other questions either obvious or moot.
“I would ask Mr. Whitlock to connect the dots between a planet without an atmosphere which obeys the SB Law exactly and a planet with an atmosphere like Earth,…” You don’t need a planet. Look to the moon for your answer. We need GHS to cool us down during the day and keep us warm when the sun goes down. Without water, water vapor and convection our planet would lifeless.
old construction worker,
Yes, the Moon is a black body and it’s average sensitivity per the slope of SB is about 0.3C per W/m^2. The dots they need to connect is between the 0.3C per W/m^2 of the Moon and the claimed 0.8C per W/m^2 sensitivity of the Earth, especially considering the average temperatures of both are not very different and that most of the effect of an atmosphere is not to increase the sensitivity, but to smooth out min/max temperature variability.
The point is that the SB law works exactly for the Moon and the only free variable is the emissivity which can only be decreased to make it appear as an equivalent gray body emitter rather than a black body emitter (the T^4 dependence and SB constant are immutable). In order to get a sensitivity of 0.8C per W/m^2, the emissivity relative to the surface would need to be less than 0.2, while measurements show it to be about 0.62.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/05/physical-constraints-on-the-climate-sensitivity/
What started out as an enjoyable rant turned into nine unnecessary & untrue proclamations.
You don’t speak for everybody when you say “• Nobody knows why ” (x 9)
If you really think ‘nobody knows why’ then you’ve really missed a lot.
A large number of papers were published in the past two years demonstrating the overwhelming solar and ocean influence on climate change. There’s no need for ignoring that fact and pretending there aren’t already quite a few people who understand the real major driver behind climate change.
If at this late stage of the game you’re still not clear on what’s happened, or what is happening now, then you’ve self-selected yourself out of contention as unqualified to debate for the case as to “why” the climate changes.
The inherent weakness of your ‘nobody knows why’ position is that it’s an open invitation for warmists’ to cast doubt on the skeptical case. We should be debating from a position of strength with the positive knowledge of what caused the nine things listed.
Otherwise tear ’em up Willis!
Willis, I sat in the Physics classes at UC Davis during the mid 1980’s and was astounded by all the mistakes humans made trying to figure out the world around them. My take away from this experience is still the wonder and excitement of what we don’t understand.
The administration was kind enough to graduate me: I suspect that was the path of least resistance and I’m grateful.
I would add a few more:
• Nobody knows how much the planet will warm (or cool!) by the end of the century.
• Nobody knows what impacts another 1 to 2c of warming will have.
No changes are all good or all bad yet scientists seem to only be looking for potentially bad impacts of a warming world. It’s rare to find an article that mentions possible benefits. I highly doubt that we got so fortunate that current global temp happens to be ideal and anything warmer only has negative impacts.
Hear, hear.
We know that cold periods have had extremely negative consequences for us. We know that warm periods have had significant positive consequences for us. Why fear the warm when we have seen it to be good?
Hey Willis,
In lieu of Cock Robin showing up to debate you, I will offer up some proxy debating points on his behalf.
You say:
“• Nobody knows why the globe was generally warmer in Roman times”
This was not a global warming event as clearly illustrated in this xkcd cartoon [insert link] loosely based on another cartoon published by Marcot et al, and if it was it never showed up in the millennially averaged proxy reconstructions.
“• Nobody knows why the globe generally cooled after Roman times”
How could it have cooled if it never warmed in the first place (see above)?
“• Nobody knows why the globe generally warmed up again in Medieval times”
Everyone knows the so called Medieval Warm Period was a regional warming event limited to western Europe and the north Atlantic Ocean. Proxy records from other places in the world like the Yukon, Alaska, Chile, South Africa, the Red Sea, China, New Zealand and the Antarctic clearly show that these places were geographically located in the north Atlantic 1,000 years ago.
“• Nobody knows why the globe greatly cooled after Medieval times, leading to the “Little Ice Age” in the 1600s/1700s.”
How could it have cooled if it never warmed in the first place (see above)? And volcanoes.
“• Nobody knows why the Little Ice Age didn’t descend into a real Ice Age.”
This is because of all the greenhouse gases emitted during the 17th century. Every molecule matters. Oh and volcanoes.
“• Nobody knows why the earth started generally warming at about 0.5°C per century since the Little Ice Age.”
Everyone knows that this is entirely due to greenhouse gas emissions, all of it. Every second, of every minute, of every degree.
“• Nobody knows whether the ~ 0.5°C warming of the 21st century is 100% natural and just a continuance of the warming of previous two centuries, or whether some or all of of the warming is due to humans.”
97% of all scientists who have ever existed anywhere in all dimensions agree that it was all due to humans. If humans had not been there no one would have measured any temperature changes.
“• Nobody knows why there has been a two-decade “hiatus” in the ongoing three centuries of warming.”
This is a total fabrication. There is no and never was a so called “hiatus” the warmest global temperatures ever recorded by science have all been in the last 150 years or so. How can you deny this fact? Anyway there is no missing heat, it is all in the oceans. Heat energy trapped by greenhouses gases in the troposphere was… and then it showed up in the abyssal ocean. This has been reported by scientists who know this stuff which I read about at several web sites you might be interested to read if you weren’t such a denier.
Who killed Cock Robin?
I, said the Willis,
with my facts and knowledge,
I killed Cock Robin.
Who saw him die?
We, said the skeptics,
with our very own eyes,
We saw him die.
Who buried his body?
Nobody, said the world,
They’re all zombies,
Who cannot stay dead.
You’re funny Jeff… You are supposed to use the /sarc tag when making comedic relief here.
Oh, I think we get it.
Nicely done.
Regardless of man’s percieved impact on climate from our waste products, we have no clue as to what our planet holds for the future. The lack of funding on the study of natural variability will become evident before the rest. Mark that down and check with me in 20 or 30 years.
Just sayin, who is studying that potentially wicked problem now days?
C’mon man!
Crickets………..
Nobody knows what a graphical illustration of “Acceleration” looks like. If they did all the “accelerating” nonsense would stop instantly.
Nobody knows.
That’s why it’s called science.
Steven,
But we do know from observations of the climate system that adding a fourth molecule of CO2 per 10,000 molecules of dry air has no measurable impact upon GASTA.
Hence, CACA is caca and you’re out of a job. And should be ashamred ot the millions of deaths and trillion in lost treasure the losses of which to which you’ve contributed.
You know no such thing.
And when you volunteer. ..it’s hard to be out of a job.
Silly goose.
“And when you volunteer. ..it’s hard to be out of a job”
Volunteers are notoriously unreliable.
Just ask Nick Stokes.
Andrew
Steven,
A volunteer job is still a job.
You do it because you get something out of it, or you wouldn’t volunteer. It doesn’t have to be pay.
Steven Mosher April 28, 2017 at 10:18 pm
Nope. Not even wrong. It’s not called science because “nobody knows”.
Science is a PROCESS for using the things we do know in order to find out the things we don’t know.
But you know that, so I must assume you’re just trying to cause trouble. Either that or the meaning of your comment is totally opaque.
w.
Mosh is famous fro being opaque, being clear isn’t his thing.
Tom Trevor April 29, 2017 at 8:00 pm
The problem is that he’s damn smart, and when he gives up on the drive-by posting style he has interesting ideas. Grrr …
w.
Fox would get a lot of eyeballs if it lined up a debating team of skeptics and challenged warmist advocates to debate them for a dozen 90-minute segments. (This is something PBS should have done a decade or two ago.)
Until now, warmists, being ahead, followed the advice of their PR counselors not to give skeptics a chance to close the public perception and governmental policy gap by engaging in debates. Maybe now, with Trump in office, they’ll feel that the gap has closed already, and they need to take a chance.
PS: If such a debate is televised, I suggest that it not be live, but rather assembled from segments of each side’s presentation with multi-hour-long gaps between them, to give the responding side time to get its act together.
Each segment should be on a different sub-topic of the debate.
Every couple of years maybe another debate-series could be held, with a large turnover in debaters and sub-topics.
That’s because science is not a verbal war.
If you want to challenge science you actually have to do better science.
Current science explains the warming since 1850 remarkably well.
The temperature of the surface is a function of radiative forcings: GHGs ( co2, methane, etc) aerosols, and solar forcing. The residual, the difference between observations and the radiative forcing..that’s your internal or unforced variability. .it looks like amo.
There is no need to explain anything before this time. It would be nice buts it’s unnecessary. The only way to dislodge this theory is with a better theory. Science trumps science. Debate is not a form of falsification or a form of improving science.
Debate is theatre and rhetoric. Entertainment.
Steven Mosher:
You assert
I never cease to be amazed that you have the gall to spout complete bollocks such as that I have quoted here.
If “current science” did explain “the warming since 1850 remarkably well” then the committed warming would not have disappeared.
In reality, the climate models are curve fitted to the historic annual global surface temperature anomalies (GASTAs) by “parametrisation” of “radiative forcings: GHGs ( co2, methane, etc) aerosols, and solar forcing”. Such curve fitting provides no explanation of the warming since 1850.
I choose to make the unlikely assumption that you don’t know the truth of these matters, so I will reveal to you how wrong you are by explaining the missing committed warming.
The explanation for the committed warming is in IPCC AR4 (2007) Chapter 10.7 which can be read at
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-7.html
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 significant rise and we are now way past the half-way mark 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 3 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 before 2020 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. Hence, it demonstrates that you are asserting rubbish when you claim, “Current science explains the warming since 1850 remarkably well”.
Indeed, if we reach 2020 without any detection of the “committed warming” then it will be 100% certain that “current science” is so wrong that all its projections of global warming are complete bunkum.
Richard
Mosher,
You said, “There is no need to explain anything before this time. It would be nice buts it’s unnecessary.”
If you can’t explain past warming (or cooling) then you aren’t in a position to invalidate the hypothesis that all, or most, recent warming is spurious correlation with anthropogenic activities. As I demonstrated in a previous post, (using BEST temperatures) the correlation of temperature with population is higher than it is with CO2. But, that doesn’t prove causation.
Mods,
This is a repost of an item that vanished. Please post the original if it is found in the ‘bin’ otherwise please post this. With thanks in anticipation
Richard
Steven Mosher:
You assert
I never cease to be amazed that you have the gall to spout complete bollocks such as that I have quoted here.
If “current science” did explain “the warming since 1850 remarkably well” then the committed warming would not have disappeared.
In reality, the climate models are curve fitted to the historic annual global surface temperature anomalies (GASTAs) by “parametrisation” of “radiative forcings: GHGs ( co2, methane, etc) aerosols, and solar forcing”. Such curve fitting provides no explanation of the warming since 1850.
I choose to make the unlikely assumption that you don’t know the truth of these matters, so I will reveal to you how wrong you are by explaining the missing committed warming.
The committed warming is explained in IPCC AR4 (2007) Chapter 10.7 which can be read at
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-7.html
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 significant rise and we are now way past the half-way mark 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 3 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 before 2020 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. Hence, it demonstrates that you are asserting rubbish when you claim, “Current science explains the warming since 1850 remarkably well”.
Indeed, if we reach 2020 without any detection of the “committed warming” then it will be 100% certain that “current science” is so wrong that all its projections of global warming are complete bunkum.
Richard
Mosher writes
A hypothesis can be undone by inclusion of a fact that wasn’t initially considered. A hypothesis can be undone by pointing out a logical flaw. There are many ways science can be done without providing a new hypothesis. Don’t underestimate the value of disproving a theory over creating a new theory. Without the former, nobody would do the latter.
No warming in eighteen years, That’s my theory/rebuttal to your nonsense.
No need to provide an alternative theory to explain anything — that’s the Scientific Method, which you are clearly incapable of understanding.
Your theory has been falsified.
You fail.
Live with that, learn, and grow as a person.
Mods:
26 hours have passed since I twice tried to post a reply to Mosher’s post. Both attempts vanished.
I would be very grateful if you were to check the ‘bin’ for them. If you find them then please post the first one, or if you don’t find them please tell me so I can again try to post my reply to Mosher.
Richard
[Nothing pending, nothing in queue. Request you repost. .mod]
Mods:
Many thanks for all your trouble. It has now appeared: how and why I know not.
Richard
Writes Clyde Spencer April 29, 2017 at 12:13 pm:
An friend of mine, named Byron, used to argue that warmer climates were in fact caused by more people. The evidence is quite plain: look at the populous nations of the warm Equator; look at Antarctica, very cold, no people at all. Rooms full of people are usually warmer than rooms without people: empirical evidence, no less!
We should keep this hypothesis under our hats. No need to suggest to the ecochondriacs that reducing the population is the way to cool the Earth. . . Or have they already thought of it?
/Mr Lynn
Willis Eschenbach, you and James Delingpole each have earned a reputation for rationality and wisdom. A plague on your ill-informed and ignorant detractors. In Australia we have the shocking situation where the largest bank Westpac is now officially on the side of the enemies of civillsation. Westpac has announced that it now has a low-carbon lending policy, and has cancelled plans to contribute to funding Adani’s Carmichael Mine. Westpac has lined up with GetUp!, Greenpeace, 350.org, WWF Australia, AVAAZ, the Australian Greens and their ilk. This interlinked cabal of anti-energy, anti-humanity organisation pushes the racist line that 300 million people who do not own a light bulb should be denied access to the electrical energy they crave because they are only Indians. Proof of the malign nature of these self-styled anti-coal groups lies in their enthusiastic promotion of Earth Day in Myanmar, where severely inadequate electrical power is generated 74% by hydro and 20% by gas, with the remainder diesel. These people are not anti-coal; they hate all energy.
If Carmichael does not go ahead, the likely alternative is that India’s ample coal reserves will be used. One of the problems is the cruel social disruption involved in shifting very large numbers of families for new mines or the extension of exiting mines.
Thanks for your kind words, Michael. I read today about Westpac’s lunacy. However, what will likely happen is that IF Adani can thread its way through Oz’s insane bureaucratic regulatory maze, some other bank will step up. That’s what happened when the World Bank decided not to fund Indian coal plants. It was a perfect opportunity for Chinese banks to step in …
w.
Thank you Willis, let us hope the Chinese do step up
“Westpac has lined up with GetUp!, Greenpeace,…” So, If a green energy business fails and defaults on the loan who pick up the tab? The bank and share holders or your tax dollars?
Willis, the reason so many alarmists have to use what I call “summarising” statements (“denier”, “most climate science”, “not a climate scientist”, “evidence indicates”, …) is that they have an awful suspicion that if they allowed a calm, detailed discussion to occur, they would be shown up very badly.
You are quite correct to insist on specifics. They will always, always cave rather than get involved in that.
Hey Robin Whitlock,
Since you are an expert on climate science, please answer one simple, basic question:
What is the actual evidence that man’s CO2 is causing serious global warming?
Talking about debating. This article is well worth a read. It seems not all skeptics stay that way….
https://theintercept.com/2017/04/28/how-a-professional-climate-change-denier-discovered-the-lies-and-decided-to-fight-for-science/
I read this. Interesting. It really seems like his arguments are emotional, at least here. OK, I can understand why you might want to do SOMETHING about climate change, or to at least “hedge” -as he says. But so does everybody on this blog. Anthony often makes the point that he is probably ten times more “green” than anybody else. We can all hedge, but not because we believe all this nonsense, but because we want to be economical, good shepherds of the earth, non polluting, etc! Bankrupting the world for a tenth of a degree is not hedging.
Chimp
OK I see your problem. And it is not easily sorted. Please detail for me why they are such a pack of lies and if you can, point to a reputable study that agrees with you. I’ll be waiting when you find one.
What exactly did Hansen get right?
If we’re on the Venus Express, as he says, leading to boiling oceans, then why has so much more CO2 (~55 ppm) in the air since 1988 had such little effect?
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/guest/evans-david/hansen-1988-a-b-c-scenarios-600.gif
The recent super El Nino would have spiked above Scenario C last year, but it assumed CO2 cuts. Instead CO2 has risen steadily since 1988.
Mmm this is more up to date….
http://www.realclimate.org/images//hansen88.jpg
Simon,
It also uses GISTEMP, which is a work of anti-science fantasy. It doesn’t even rate as fiction. It’s a pack of lies.
Yet, even so, you’re not showing the post-El Nino reversion to the mean and it still couldn’t breach Scenario B, which the label on your graph mischaracterizes.
Should you be interested in the differences between Scenarios A and B, Steve puzzled them out back in 2008:
https://climateaudit.org/2008/01/18/hansen-scenarios-a-and-b-revised/
I should also have added that until recently, when Schmidt took over, GISTEMP was created by Hansen himself, who had every reason to try to make the “data” resemble his scenarios.
The series has most recently been perverted by Karl’s totally unjustified “pause buster” corruption of SST “data”.
Thanks to Bill Illis, from here on April 4:
Chimp
So why aren’t you using NOAA or any of the other surface based data? I wonder?
Simon,
Because they are antiscientific packs of lies.
Chimp
OK I see your problem. And it is not easily sorted. Please detail for me why they are such a pack of lies and if you can, point to a reputable study that agrees with you. I’ll be waiting when you find one.
I do so love people pretending to ignorance /sarc . Is that a tip in Troll 101?
Simon,
Elsewhere in these comments, I’ve done so. Every reputable study has found the same.
Only the self-serving Team covering its own ar$e has found otherwise.
All the so-called “surface data sets” are pure fantasy.
Chimp
Since there are sooo many…..Just give me your best one?
Chimp
Your silence is telling. Come on, just one investigation into current climate data that says it is unscientific?
Simon,
No silence. I just didn’t see your usual standard issue CACA request.
1) No such paper could get published. But the facts speak for themselves.
2) It’s not needed. The Climategate emails tell all.
That there is a conspiracy is not in doubt. You can speculate about the conspirators’ motives, but that it exists and is extensive is obvious to anyone who bothers to look.
Have you bothered to look at Mikes’ Nature trick, for instance?
“Talking about debating. This article is well worth a read. It seems not all skeptics stay that way….”
OK, read that article. He says he was a “professional skeptic” (riiiiiight…) whose mind was changed and he became a believer. Well, here’s a skeptic (a real one). I am always willing to be convinced, so I was all agog – what incredible evidence had he encountered that I had missed, despite begging all and sundry since 2008 to post some positive evidence that might change my mind. And what do I get: “Well, I changed my mind about this, Hanson was right about something unspecified, and my beliefs were left in tatters about that.” But, yet again, NO ACTUAL EVIDENCE! It’s a propaganda piece pure and simple. If that guy cannot write a follow-up that includes the actual evidence that performed this miraculous conversion, I call him out, I don’t believe he was ever a skeptic, let alone a “professional” one.
I suspected as much.
Thanks.
According to Wiki:
According to Wiki:
That’s one guy. I’ve read about many, including scientists, who have moved from the warmist camp to the skeptic camp. Several scientists who switched said that, basically, they simply believed the ‘consensus’ until they did some research and discovered it was nonsense. They also said they believed it because it had never occurred to them before that scientists could be so dishonest or so incompetent.
It would seem that this Taylor that you are bragging about used climate activist money to finance his new think tank after breaking with the Cato Institute. Doesn’t that make his opinion highly suspect? Certainly as suspect as any skeptic who is being vilified as being paid by big, dirty oil … whether they are or not? This appears to be a clear cut case of an opinion on the climate debate being influenced by money … is it not?
The alarmists really hate debate. They also seem to viscerally hate skeptics. Maybe it’s because they lose when they are confronted with the facts or when they have their made-up facts challenged.
My favorite debate was on the CBC show, The Current. Lawrence Solomon demolished two alarmists and really got up the nose of the host, Anna Maria Tremonti. By the end, she was spitting mad. link
There haven’t been many debates but I wonder if there’s a list and a score card.
Willis has citations. There are lots, maybe the majority, of PhDs who don’t. Just saying.
Willis — adding to your list of “Nobody knows”es:
.- Mumbling about Milankovic notwithstanding, nobody really knows with any certainty why the Earth is subject to periodic glaciations
– Nobody knows why the glaciations are interrupted by warmer interglacial periods.
– Nobody knows whether 30 and 60 year cycles of temperature and precipitation (AMO and PDO) are real. Neither are the causes understood.
– Nobody knows all that much about ENSO although we’re quite certain that it’s a real phenomenon
“Tomorrow Never Knows”
Willis mentioned methane. Alarmists routinely claim that ‘methane is 30 times more powerful GHG than carbon dioxide‘. I don’t see how or why. Methane is a symmetric, so a non-polar molecule. It shows a few vibration modes which give rise to infra red absorption (here), but it is not a 30 times more powerful GHG than CO₂. Methane’s vibration modes are already covered by water since water is H₂O, but methane H₄C. They both have hydrogen sigma bonds. Water is more polar (because oxygen is more electronegative, methane more symmetric, and oxygen has two lone electron pairs opposite to the hydrogen sigma bonds). More polar molecules are more powerful GHGs than less polar molecules. Unsurprising that water is the most powerful GHG (as the chart above shows). Adding a lot of methane to the atmosphere (say 1ppm) will be like adding 1ppm water vapour (almost unnoticeable). Because the atmosphere already has lots of water (averaging 10,000 ppm or more)! So the methane GHG effect will be overwhelmed by the existing water GHG effect which is already absorbing where methane can absorb.
Compare the two camel humps [called Spectral Intensity] above. The LHS (red) is solar output (warming). The RHS is earth infrared output (ultimately to space, so cooling). Notice how methane’s only peak of interest is the right-most one [ ~ 7.7 µm]. Its other 2 peaks happen where earth does not output IR!. Yet this 7.7 µm is already covered by H₂O.
Conclusion: Methane is not a dangerous GHG. Runaway warming due to methane release is nothing to be worried about. The GHG of note is obviously water: H₂O, which we can do nothing against because like CO₂, water is the stuff of life itself.
Mark. I’m not sure that I disagree with you, but I did notice that the vertical scale for your absorbance chart(s) doesn’t seem to be labeled. I couldn’t really figure out what the dimensions might be or whether it was the same for all the gases. So I decided, what the heck, I’ll go look for some data. I found some here: https://srdata.nist.gov/gateway/gateway?keyword=absorption+spectrum.
The spectra for CO2, CH3 and H2O are at http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C124389&Units=SI&Type=IR-SPEC&Index=1#IR-SPEC , http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C74828&Units=SI&Type=IR-SPEC&Index=1#IR-SPEC , and http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C7732185&Units=SI&Type=IR-SPEC&Index=1#IR-SPEC
They are difficult to compare precisely. And there are some differences in the baselines. For example — different molecular weights and CO2 was run at 200 mmHg pressure while CH3 was run at 150 mmHg. But I’ll be damned iif I can see how a 20 or 30 times difference in absorbance could by hypothecated based on that data.
It’s one of Will Happer’s presentation slides from this document. The document seems to be a summary of his talk ‘Why has global warming paused‘.
Alarmists tend to not bother giving evidence for their ideas. Alarmists don’t explain how the climate is supposed to work. Because they don’t ‘debate the science‘. Without debate they are preaching to the converted who don’t need to see any science. So I have no corresponding (alarmists or believer) chart showing the most important GHG absorption spectra below the curves for black body radiation and solar absorption. I could do my own but it’s tedious to get that data for H2O, CO2, O3, CH4, and N2O. All to the same scale.
Mark. You might want to look at the pages I linked to above. They seem to contain real IR spectrograph curves for water, CO2, and methane. My problem is that even though on paper I have the training to interpret them, that training was more than 50 years ago. And I’ve only ever seen one real IR spectrograph output in my life– 57 years ago. My feeling is that properly interpreting them requires some hands on experience that I don’t have.
That said, I don’t see anything that looks remotely like a 30x or 20x or even 10x difference between CO2 and CH4 IR absorbance. The only thing I can see that might remotely explain the numbers we’re quoted is that CH4 with its four single bonds presumably has many more bending modes (8 more?) than CO2 with its two double bonds.
I think I could use some help here from someone who understands this stuff a lot better than I do.
Wonderful comment, mark4asp. I too have been wondering where this magic multiplier comes from. Check out this page: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials
And this passage:
Note the “accounts for some indirect effects…” bit. I.e., the figure is not methane’s direct on outgoing radiation, it is a modelled value based on all sorts of putative outcomes from chemical conversions to other stuff (methane being quite reactive). Also note the “over X years” stuff. These figures are also put through a mill that includes all sorts of overall lifetime projections.
None of this is, of course, ever mentioned when horror figures like 30x or 72x are trotted out.
Climate Change Rule One. Never pick an argument with Willis…..
When asking the true believers for evidence it’s always the skilless models, the faux consensus or the manipulated data used for never ending, nor appearing claims of doom.
That about sums them up.
Rule 2:
If you do – come prepared or fold your tent before it gets blown away.
Climate change debate is 97% political. Anthropogenic global warming arguments may perhaps be debated in scientific terms, but so far efforts seem futile.
Willis, what most annoys these paid up “academics” who I find are almost always responsible for the worst hate on social media, is that you are as good or better than them, but you don’t bow down to the academic consensus as they know they must and that you’re free to research outside the academic box.
But from their perspective you are in what other industries would be called a “black leg” or a “union breaker” or in religious context a breakaway sect.
And the more you look and sound like an academic the more they attack, and indeed, if like Salby, Cristy, Spencer, Curry you are an academic, they attack relentlessly.
It’s all in my “book”: “The Academic Ape: Instinctive aggression and boundary enforcing behaviour in academia” (available free if – unlike the alarmists – you know how to use a search engine – and note it is written in a way that means no academic could cite it).
Trouble is, Salby’s claims n origins of CO2 are not backed by Curry. The attack is understandable.
Openness to debating is good. Unfortunately you don’t get very far if you pick the wrong venue. Try debating some subtle point about Jesus on an Islamic blog. OK, some of you not convinced of that and are going to tell me about the time they invited the Vicar and the Imam round for tea and biscuits (may or may not include Jaffa Cakes). What about an experiment then….?
I challenge WUWT to set up a thread to debate the following:
“The theory of a gravity induced temperature gradient in a planetary atmosphere as postulated by Loschmidt in the 1870’s, expanded & explained by Doug Cotton in his book :’) , and verified experimentally by R.Graeff (2007) is the true explanation for how the earths atmosphere works and explains the surface temperature without the need for any Greenhouse Gas Effect”
How about it, Anthony ? (Yes, you are allowed to leave the exiting banned cnuts out of it !)
Thanks, Badger, but we’ve been there and done that. I have given a conclusive proof that a gravity induced temperature gradient is cannot warm a planet. And Dr, Robert Brown gave a different proof that a gravity induced temperature gradient is impossible.
Sorry, amigo, but you have been proven wrong already. It’s not that we think you are wrong. We have two different proofs that you are wrong.
w.
The second proof dosn’t seem to link to anything.
And yet we have gravity and with it, a temperature gradient, just like every other planet with an atmosphere.
schitzree, thanks for the note. Fixed.
w.
AndyG55 May 1, 2017 at 2:43 pm
Yes, we do … but that has nothing to do with either proof, or with the claim that there is a gravity-induced temperature gradient. Read the two proofs again.
w.
“claimed dangers of CO2” … a local editorial board referred to CO2 as a ‘dangerous pollutant’
If Carbon Dioxide were a pollutant then we could say things like:
– pollution is the base of the food chain
– pollution is necessary for life
Good point Thomas – hopefully brings sunshine also to Robin Whitlock.
Yes, I’ve read where we humans exhale CO2 at 40,000 ppm, increasing the amount by 100 times that which we inhale (for a total of 2.3 lbs/day). Thank goodness plants are responding according to Le Chatelier’s principle.
“No-one knows’: What is the ideal climate for this planet, NOR, how to achieve it.
When asking the true believers for evidence it’s always the skilless models, the faux consensus or the manipulated data used for never ending, nor appearing claims of doom.
That about sums them up.
I know WE said no ad hom. but ‘BA(Hons) in Psychology and English Literature’ from UK’s 90th best university (founded in 2005) isn’t much of a qualification for a debate in this field. Somewhat ironic given all the attacks elsewhere on Lord Monckton who has an MA from UK’s best university (founded in 1209).
Don’t say Whitlock is a ‘BA(Hons) in Psychology and English Literature’ ten years ago!?
I would like to point out that Mr Whitlock has yet to join this debate, which I think says it all.
I would like to add my thoughts to this debate (as a layman, but with an interest in science):
1) Since 1979, temperatures have been measured by satellites, which have shown no temperature increase for 20 years apart from during the last El Nino which was predicted years before it occurred.
2) Prior to 1979 temperatures were measured on the ground in all sorts of inappropriate places with equally inappropriate historical “adjustments”.
3) The Earth is a closed system (apart from cosmic dust, meteors and meteorites). CO2 is an inert gas, in nature it is broken down by plants into Carbon and Oxygen and by animals into CaCO3 to form bones (with other elements) and shells. Since the source of CO2 can only be atmospheric, in a closed system, the CO2 that formed fossil fuels and the huge quantities of Limestone and Marble then the concentration of CO2 must have been a great deal higher in the past, but we are here to discuss it (I understand that it was 7000ppm 300 million years ago).
4) The “cure” for this “problem” seems to me to be worse than the problem itself. Wind turbines depleting rare earth metals, with a life-expectancy of about half of what it is claimed. Roads that have to be specially built and strengthened, whose sole purpose is the construction and maintenance of these things and then 800 tons of concrete for there foundations. Each one cannot possibly negate the CO2 produced in their construction. Likewise felling trees to dry, pulverise, reconstitute into pellets and ship across the Atlantic to produce 2/3 of the heat energy by weight that coal would produce.
The only conclusion that can be drawn (if my thought processes are correct) is that either the proponents of AGW are incredibly stupid, or there is some sort of hidden agenda, I think the latter is more likely than the former.
andrewmharding on April 29, 2017 at 3:42 am
1. I would like to point out that Mr Whitlock has yet to join this debate, which I think says it all.
Yes it does!
If I was a warmist, I would ask him to retire off any forum discussing about climate: a worse public relation for the warmist cause I can’t imagine.
2. Since 1979, temperatures have been measured by satellites, which have shown no temperature increase for 20 years apart from during the last El Nino which was predicted years before it occurred.
In 2014, Santer et al. have extracted volcano influence and ENSO signals out of the RSS3.3 TLT series; the residual temperature trend for 1979-2013 was about 0.09 °C / decade (compared with about 0.12 for the original record at that time).
I wouldnt’t call that “no temperature increase”. Moreover you seem, like do so many people, to solely consider ENSO’s warming part. Imagine I would ask you for eliminating all La Niñas out of UAH6.0!
3. Prior to 1979 temperatures were measured on the ground in all sorts of inappropriate places with equally inappropriate historical “adjustments”.
Well such a sentence calls for some proving material, doesn’t it? And I do not mean unverifiable blah blah originating from the blogosphere. I mean a thorough analysis with valuable results.
4. Since the source of CO2 can only be atmospheric, …, but we are here to discuss it (I understand that it was 7000ppm 300 million years ago).
You are certainly correct. And anyway, this CO2 debate becomes a bit too boring for me. But nevertheless: may I ask you why you write that?
– How many humans did live at that time?
– Is it not more interesting to care about the situation in 100 years, when the Humanity will consist of about 10 billions of people, with a fragile technological infrastructure?
5. Wind turbines depleting rare earth metals, with a life-expectancy of about half of what it is claimed. Roads that have to be specially built and strengthened, whose sole purpose is the construction and maintenance of these things and then 800 tons of concrete for there foundations.
Depleting rare earth metals? Do you mean neodyme, dysprosium and the like? Wow! Do you know how much of these guys is used everywhere you need strong magnetism, beginning with your own computer’s hard disk, every loudspeaker, every smartphone, etc etc etc?
Rare metal depletion is a real problem! But it is caused by billions of PCs and cell phones dropped to waste, and not by windmills where 100% recuperation is requested upon dismantling, e.g. in Germany. And anyway: neodyme is inbetween so incredibly expensive that nobody on Earth would be foolish enough to view it as waste.
6. Roads that have to be specially built and strengthened, whose sole purpose is the construction and maintenance of these things and then 800 tons of concrete for there foundations.
Did you ever consider
– the number of roads built by the shale gas industry to access the boreholes?
– how long is the lifetime of a shale gas borehole?
7.Each one cannot possibly negate the CO2 produced in their construction.
The best will be an english source I guess.
Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Utility-Scale Wind Power
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00464.x/full
Well, wind power for electricity production certainly is not the best idea Humanity has ever had.
But please compare the life cycle energy balances of nuclear plants and windmill farms when taking the complete treatment of nuclear waste into account, including full dismantling (no: I didn’t write ‚decomissioning‘, that’s nonsense here).
UPDATE:
I guess I’m supposed to be terrified …
w.
I expect he’s communicating with the SkS kids.
They’re probably getting dressed for battle.
Costumes by Hugo Boss?
Cos-Playtime?
All you want is a discussion. All he wants is a battle. That tells us all a lot about the guy. Fight first, talk later. He deserves no respect.
“the pen is mightier than the sword”, which means that words and ideas are themselves weapons. My writing is how I fight, because I am good at it.
It is easy for well educated people to see through charlatans like RW. He may be good with words but he’s bad on policy and world understanding. Bad understanding leads to bad policy : his love affair with renewable energy. Here is that David MacKay talk again explaining why renewables are pointless.
Robin Whitlock writes
Its important to express yourself clearly to best get your message across but in this forum it’s the message that matters, not its form so much.
If your plan is to regurgitate mainstream science in prose then I wouldn’t bother, Willis wants a discussion of the science itself. A lot of mainstream science is weak at best but it takes a person who understands the science, not a journalis whose gif is expression to discuss. And a participant in discussions not a writer of an “answer” no matter how beautiful that answer may read.
Perhaps nothing to do with Robin, but this image persists in my vitreous humour
http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/_img/chars/chicken-little-walt-disney-specials-68.7.jpg
Peaceful Mr. Whitlock only thinks in military terms.
I thought this was a debate not a war?
A war of words, ideas, opinions, a battle for public opinion. Its as old as history. Galileo and da Vinci no doubt had to do the same thing, as did Columbus.
Robin,
As you may know, Columbus was actually wrong about the size of the earth and the eastward extent of Asia. Had he not run into the New World, he would have had to turn back or run out of food and water.
Not sure for what you think da Vinci had to fight. He was always able to find work from many and varied patrons, it seems.
No. But a battle of words and ideas is still battle. I am hardly going to show you my hand before I am ready. I have my ways of doing things.
How about leaving the “battle” talk behind and actually engaging in an exchange of information or ideas? A battle seems to imply you’ll be entrenching yourself in an attempt to not lose ground. In the scientific arena, this is perhaps the most certain way to be on the wrong side. It doesn’t allow you to adapt to new and changing information. For consideration, I submit the examples of plate tectonics, Clovis First model, and peptic ulcers. There are actually many examples to be used, but a few will suffice to make the point. In each of these subjects, there was, for all intents and purposes, 100% consensus that plate tectonics was wrong, that the Clovis people were first in North America, and that stress caused ulcers. With scientific advancements, we now know that the overwhelming consensus in each of these fields were wrong. This is actually a long standing pattern with advancement in general.
In the realm of climate science, one of the most important things to first admit is that the science is not settled. Not even close. Anyone saying the science is settled is either ignorant, dishonest, or attempting to sell you something. The next thing to understand is that climate science is a multi-disciplinary field of study. No single person has complete mastery over every possible area of study. Another extremely important point to understand and admit is that within a given subject, such as ECS, there is a range of possibilities which runs from zero to even higher than IPCC ranges. To refuse to admit these lower ranges exist or are a possibility and only stand on the pulpit of high ECS values, is dogma. Dogma is the enemy and the very antithesis of science.
Richard Feynman famously said,
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.
It seems there’s a good chance you believe all the catastrophic predictions and projections commonly found in the mainstream news media. If I’m wrong, please forgive me. With that, you’re going to find sources to reinforce your belief, even further reinforcing the belief you already have. That’s the nature of bias and is simply a part of the human condition. If you’re absolutely sure you are correct, then you’ve fallen victim to your own bias. If you refuse to question your own belief, then you’ve fallen victim to your own bias. Remember, science doesn’t begin with answers, but with doubt. As with Feynman, I would rather live with doubt than with answers that might be wrong.
So, let’s set aside the talk of war and battles, lay down our ad hom spears. Let’s first make an honest attempt to be less dogmatic and to not fool ourselves. Let’s admit that consensus beliefs are often wrong and that there’s still far more that we don’t even know we don’t know. Let’s admit that ranges of possibilities exist and that we each have a bias toward which we lean. This is how true science starts.
Even Shaku Zulu was able to muster his unmechanized army to engage his enemy in less time than you have spent making promises/threats. Are we to collectively hold our breath while you sharpen your pen and wit? Of course, you could be using time to your advantage to make a strategic retreat. Nobody would really blame you. You don’t appear to have the arms necessary to engage in a “battle of words and ideas.” You may be a wordsmith, but unless you can provide a cogent argument based on supportable facts, few people here are going to be swayed by your writing skills alone. You are obviously impressed with your abilities, but it remains to be seen whether you can convince the readers here if your self assessment is justified.
Clyde,
You’d think that, as an expert on “climate change”, which is his avowed beat as a “journalist”, Robin would have all his forces already deployed in battle array, requiring no further mobilization. All the science should be at his fingertips all the time.
The issues are not many, although climate be complex.
1) Has Earth warmed since, pick a date?
2) If so, by how much?
3) Is this much warming out of the ordinary, requiring a special explanation beyond natural variability?
4) Can it be showed with a high degree of statistical confidence, that human activities are that explanation?
5) If yes, then are this warming and the GHGs allegedly responsible for it a good thing or a bad thing?
6) If bad, how bad? Enough to warrant dismantling the world’s energy and industrial systems?
Did I miss an issue?
My views:
1) Yes, since the depths of the LIA, c. 1690. Since the Minoan WP and Holocene CO, no. Earth has been in a long-term cooling trend for over 3000 years. It continues.
2) Since 1690, maybe a bit more than one degree C, with the present insignificantly warmer than the 1930s, if at all.
3) No.
4) No.
5) So far, so good. Warmer and more plant food in the air is definitely better.
6) Not bad. Good.
Joz,
It’s more accurate to say that the hypothesis of continental drift was opposed by the consensus. After the discovery of seafloor spreading, Wegener’s hypothesis was confirmed and the science of plate tectonics began.
While the use of the term “plate” in geology is first attested from 1904, “plate tectonics” dates only from 1967, to the best of my knowledge. Always a good chance that I’m wrong.
It’s similar to the situation with evolution before 1858. Rock layers showed that life changed over time, so the fact of evolution had long been known (although called “development”, and there was even the heretical hypothesis of species “transmutation”), but no good explanation for how it happened came along before then.
WE;
What is Mr. Whitlock accusing you of denying?
He put up a long-winded oratory on his own never-read blog. It’s been up for a couple days and, so far, has exactly one comment … besides 3 of his own. And the one is basically mocking him.
A reference to his interests perhaps.
‘History (particularly if its (sic.!) ancient history), mythology, folklore, spirituality and religion,
Aspects of military history – particularly World War 2 and Vietnam.’
Hoist on his own petard more like.
‘For ’tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard: and ‘t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon: …’
Political “Scientist” Michael Mann Prefers Censorship, Slander and Punitive Action Over Debate
“It should trouble everyone in the scientific community that the primary response of its leading voices when they encounter a voice they don’t like is to try to get that person fired from their job. That is doesn’t trouble anyone very much says something,” wrote Roger Pielke, Jr. in a blog post this month.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/political-scientist-michael-mann-prefers-censorship-slander-and-punitive-action-over-debate/
This one is pretty good too.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/07/i-am-woman-hear-me-roar-michael-manns-bullying-backfires/
Plenty more on MM in Mark Steyn’s ‘A Disgrace to the Profession Volume 1:’, I hope everyone here has a copy.
Thanks for the comment.
There’s the problem. Unlike many of us who spent several years learning where the evidence leads us, Willis’ opponent is still not ready for battle. About how long is this getting ready going to take? If Mr. Whitlock had sufficient evidence to justify launching a challenge then why is he not already on the field?
The arguments are getting old and tired. The system is way more complex and chaotic than most of the arguments taken into account.
Back in the early days of WUWT someone (I think it may have been Willis) posted a beautiful essay about the hubris of those who thought they could encapsulate climate in a few simple parameters. The essay talked of winds and mountains and oceans and clouds and many other things in a most poetic way. It made the point that climate is complex, well beyond the debate about one atmospheric chemical.
Willis, if you were the author of that beautiful essay I would love to see it again on these pages. I have thought many times that we have really not moved beyond that benchmark.
The man is not debate material. He doesn’t even seem to have touched base with the new talking points in quite a few years.
“He replies that he won’t tell me how he is “deploying his forces”.”
Making sure that he rounds up 20-30 of his closest alarmist friends to chime in here to claim he won the debate before starting?
In the field of investment, the ones you have to be wary of are the ones who think they know.
The same is true in climate “science.”
Ah, just read the update.
Folks, sounds like you need to prepare for a Griffstorm…
You just gott Griffrolled.
Uh Huh.
Andrew
“whole article”, excellent Willis.
Willis, you are dealing with a derivative neverwuzzer who can’t debate. He clings to his fundamentalist view his religion- climate science- and repeats mantras to stoke the fires of his faith and keep his reasoning capacity to a minimum. He seems to gave succeeded well in that regard.
Here, in Portugal, is impossible to debate the global warming issue. All newspapers and television channels, no matter the political tendencies and ideology of the shareholders, are controlled by the left wing ideology which follows the official alarmist theoryof the IPCC (exclusion made to the Portuguese Communist Party which doesn’t take position in this matter).
Unfortunately the right wing parties in Portugal are stupid enough to consider the alarmist theory as the one politically correct, submitting themselves to the ridicule of supporting the left-wingers in their climatic fantasies.
In fact, with very rare exceptions, no newspaper or television informs the Portuguese public about any facts or events that contradict the official theory of the IPCC. In summertime, when a heat wave blows, they are very prompt to invite the so called “specialists” in climate changes. They are nothing more than charlatans. In wintertime, when half of Europe and USA are dead freezing under several inches of snow, they forget to invite the so-called specialists.
If we want to know anything about global warming we have to read the foreign blogs, like this one, for which I compliment Anthony Watts and many others.
Jorge Pacheco de Oliveira
Electrical engineer, 71, retired
Jorge, it isn’t much better in the US. We even have a Senator who advocated RICO ( organized crime) prosecutions of skeptics like myself and Willis and Anthony.
I’m sure the situation is the same throughout the Western bubble from Australia to France and from California to Vermont.
Willis wrote: I assume I’m supposed to be frightened … but in fact I’m mystified. I ask why, despite his bluster, he hasn’t shown up to debate. He replies that he won’t tell me how he is “deploying his forces”.
Maybe he is waiting for his force to return from Huntsville, Alabama.
/sarc – I hope.
Frank,
It made me smile!
TRUMP and PRUITT get the SCIENCE RIGHT – NATURAL CYCLES DRIVE CLIMATE CHANGE.
Climate is controlled by natural cycles. Earth is just past the 2004+/- peak of a millennial cycle and the current cooling trend will likely continue until the next Little Ice Age minimum at about 2650.See the Energy and Environment paper at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0958305X16686488
and an earlier accessible blog version at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-coming-cooling-usefully-accurate_17.html
Here is the abstract for convenience :
“ABSTRACT
This paper argues that the methods used by the establishment climate science community are not fit for purpose and that a new forecasting paradigm should be adopted. Earth’s climate is the result of resonances and beats between various quasi-cyclic processes of varying wavelengths. It is not possible to forecast the future unless we have a good understanding of where the earth is in time in relation to the current phases of those different interacting natural quasi periodicities. Evidence is presented specifying the timing and amplitude of the natural 60+/- year and, more importantly, 1,000 year periodicities (observed emergent behaviors) that are so obvious in the temperature record. Data related to the solar climate driver is discussed and the solar cycle 22 low in the neutron count (high solar activity) in 1991 is identified as a solar activity millennial peak and correlated with the millennial peak -inversion point – in the RSS temperature trend in about 2004. The cyclic trends are projected forward and predict a probable general temperature decline in the coming decades and centuries. Estimates of the timing and amplitude of the coming cooling are made. If the real climate outcomes follow a trend which approaches the near term forecasts of this working hypothesis, the divergence between the IPCC forecasts and those projected by this paper will be so large by 2021 as to make the current, supposedly actionable, level of confidence in the IPCC forecasts untenable.””
Question. SO2 is known to nucleate cloud formation but does CO2, which has many similar chemical characteristics to SO2, have any cloud nucleation capability? No prizes for guessing why I’m asking this question.
In a word, no.
Water has a bond angle of 105 degrees and a permanent dipole, therefor it will be attracted to other molecules with a charge, either a slight dipole or a formal charge.
SO2 has a bond angle of 119 degrees, and is hugely polar. The Sulfur has a formal +1 charge, with the -1 charge distributed between the two Oxygen atoms. Formally, it is a zwitterion. So it is about as polar a neutral molecule as you get, without doing exotic chemistry. The affinity of water for the charged SO2 molecule will be quite high.
CO2 is linear and as non-polar as you can get non-polar. CO2 does dissolve in water to form bicarbonate which is charged, of course. But it seems that for this to happen, you need enough water molecules present to stabilize the bicarbonate ion and to hydrate the proton (or H+, if you will). In other words, nucleation and droplet formation has already happened, before CO2 can do this. So the affinity of (gas phase) water for CO2 will be quite low.
Great explanation, Tony. Thanks!
Many thanks, Tony. It was just a passing thought.
Here’s why he hasn’t shown:
Those sounds beat CNN.
A news blurb today about Orcas hunting Gray whale calves in Monterey CA. Happens every year. Article quoted scientist as stating that 20 minute kill time may have been a record. Any person with two brain cells would realize that there is no way to verify that statement.
In journalism school they teach you how to punch up a story to get readers. In graft and corruption school they teach the same skill to get money
This would be my reply in the dialog, much like Willis, there is a lot we do not know. But we do know this: It is not all due to CO2.
Earth Day 2017. Real Climate Change.
It’s time for the annual Earth Day
to celebrate Lenin’s old birthday.
Less “carbon pollution”
is not the solution.
Eat less! Let it be a “Less Girth Day!
We are called to take care of ourselves, be good stewards of the Earth, and strive to leave it a better place than we entered it.
I grew and went to school in Sweden. At that time the way Sweden exited the Ice age was taught in all schools, the signs from the ice age were everywhere. We learned the exit from the exit could be expressed with the acrostic BYAL, signifying four phases in the deglaciation.
Describing BYAL and the rise and fall of temperatures: https://lenbilen.com/2017/04/20/earth-day-2017-real-climate-change/
The most important modifiers to oceans coughing up warming or hogging heat are the amount of heat the oceans can absorbe before pendulum swing capacity is reached, amount and location of cloud cover, and the position of the sweet spot Milanchovitch incident angle of incoming solar radiation. Because there will be three way interactions, I doubt any one of these parameters are perfect predictors of stadial/interstadial periods. But what we can say is that attention to comparatively minutiaeal temperature swings up and down keeps us occupied…and fairly ignorant.
There are really only 2 numbers that matter. 15C and 27C. (60F and 85F)
The first number is the average temperature of the earth. The second is the average temperature below which humans die of exposure without clothing and fire.
We are one of the best warm weather adapted animals on the planet. The naked human can survive the hottest places on earth so long as we have water. In contrast, the naked human dies in less than a day in cold weather.
The average temperature of the earth could increase 12C, and still we would survive. Yet, the paleo record is clear. The average temperature of the earth has never been more than 10C warmer than today, even when CO2 levels were much higher. Global warming is not a threat to humans.
Degrees: 85 F is 29.44 C.
However, the number usually quoted for exposure risk is 82 F or 27.78 C.
Somehow the Yaghan of Tierra del Fuego managed to survive being naked in a cold environment, without huddling around a fire all the time. The name of the region suggests that they relied on fire at night. Their high fat diet of sea lions and shell fish might also have helped.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/11/chile-biocultural-centre-charles-darwin-scientific-research
Darwin wrote of them:
“The different tribes have no government or chief; yet each is surrounded by other hostile tribes, speaking different dialects, and separated from each other only by a deserted border or neutral territory: the cause of their warfare appears to be the means of subsistence. Their country is a broken mass of wild rocks, lofty hills, and useless forests: and these are viewed through mists and endless storms. The habitable land is reduced to the stones on the beach; in search of food they are compelled unceasingly to wander from spot to spot, and so steep is the coast, that they can only move about in their wretched canoes. They cannot know the feeling of having a home, and still less that of domestic affection; for the husband is to the wife a brutal master to a laborious slave. Was a more horrid deed ever perpetrated, than that witnessed on the west coast by Byron, who saw a wretched mother pick up her bleeding dying infant-boy, whom her husband had mercilessly dashed on the stones for dropping a basket of sea-eggs! How little can the higher powers of the mind be brought into play: what is there for imagination to picture, for reason to compare, or judgment to decide upon? to knock a limpet from the rock does not require even cunning, that lowest power of the mind. Their skill in some respects may be compared to the instinct of animals; for it is not improved by experience: the canoe, their most ingenious work, poor as it is, has remained the same, as we know from Drake, for the last two hundred and fifty years.”
http://literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-voyage-of-the-beagle/chapter-10.html
Wow, looks like you’ve been having fun Willis, with all these gentle folk. So, my response is here: http://energyandenvironmentblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/the-battle-of-blogs-whitlock-goes-to-war.html
Nothing there. Clickbait.
A nice try to increase your traffic. If you have something to say, say it here.
Most of Robin’s screed is ad hominem attack on Delingpole, Willis and Steve. At the end of his tirade, he does attempt to get science-y with references and to defend “climate scientists” like Mann from the charges leveled against them.
I would urge Robin to post a version of that part of his response here, so that others don’t need to up the traffic to his blog.
RW666,
You were invited to respond here. What if somebody gave a war and nobody showed up?
Robin Whitlock torpedoes himself before he even starts with
So Robin starts out with an admission that he doesn’t actually know the science and is planning to go looking for the scientific arguments.
Lol Robin. Why debate with you when you don’t understand the mainstream arguments let alone the sceptics arguments.
His non-reply on his own blog does nothing but cite and link to such characters as Mann.
I see that my comment on your website was not allowed.
That’s it? That’s all you have?
robinwhitlock1966 April 29, 2017 at 8:45 am Edit
Pass.
You have anything to say, say it to everyone here where it reaches both sides of the discussion. Don’t hide your light under the bushel of your tiny blog where only a few can see it. Man up and talk to the masses!
w.
Rather than ad hominem attacks, why not focus on measuring the accuracy of the forecasts based on the models.
Let’s start with the Hansen paper of 1988:
https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_ha02700w.pdf
Figure 1, shows a forecast of a surface temperature rise of c. 1.1 deg C from 1980 to 2016 under scenario A.
Plate 4 and section 5.2.3 predicts even faster warming of the troposphere, particularly the tropical troposphere. Indeed the troposphere warming is cited as an ‘useful diagnostic’ for the greenhouse effect.
Now to what happened.
1) Greenhouse gas emissions have been even higher than predicted under scenario A.
2) According to wft, surface temperatures have risen by about 0.9 deg C (Giss), from 1980 to 2016, but have since fallen as the El Nino effect dissipates. Many challenge the GISS dataset, as the level of warming from 1880 to 2000 shown by that dataset has risen from around 0.5 in 2002 to about 1.2 deg C in 2014. Surely, they knew how to read thermometers in the early 20th century?
https://realclimatescience.com/alterations-to-climate-data/
3) Troposphere temperatures have risen about 0.4 deg C for the same period.
http://woodfortrees.org/graph/gistemp-dts/from:1979.1/offset:-0.32/mean:12/plot/rss/from:1979.1/mean:12/plot/gistemp-dts/from:1979.1/offset:-0.32/trend/plot/rss/from:1979.1/trend
At the same time, estimates of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) to CO2 doubling have fallen to about 1.6 deg C. This is (just) within the IPCC range of 1.5-4.5 deg C, but interestingly quite a bit below the alleged danger limit of 2 deg C.
https://judithcurry.com/2016/04/25/updated-climate-sensitivity-estimates/
In conclusion, Hansen’s forecast was wrong. He predicted far more warming than has actually occurred. Crucially, the troposphere has warmed less than the surface, so the prediction about the troposphere being a useful diagnostic for the greenhouse effect has been proven wrong.
Ergo, the greenhouse effect has been over-stated. Moreover, spending trillions to reduce CO2 emissions is probably the wrong solution to global warming. If far more of the warming is natural than we thought, then it would be better to spend on adaptation, since that will also help with CO2 induced warming.
*fun (typo)
BA hons literature? Monckton beats you both in maths and literature.
Freudian slip?
robinwhitlock1966 April 29, 2017 at 8:46 am
Fixed. Typos are a bane, my own or anyone’s.
w.
Nobody knows why
================
the 1000 year climate oscillation?
https://phys.org/news/2017-04-ice-age-displaced-tropical-belt.html
Ferd,
A likely effect, if not ultimate cause. iMO solar and orbital and rotational mechanical effects are the cause.
Willis,
You cannot win fighting with a sissy. Win or lose, you lose. Either he doesn’t show up and you are a bully or you woop him and you are a meany.
Wow, look at all these comments….and so it goes on….:-)
No comments on your blog piece though Robin. No reasoned argument either, only a lot of ad homs and links to other websites.
No ffs the blog is pathetic. But it’s all green!
You’ve ample time to make a number of comments here yourself, Robin, but haven’t engaged in the debate offered you by Willis. Why not?
Read my earlier comment to you, if you don’t mind. If you find nothing there worth your time, then I apologize. My reply is even-tempered and respectful. I can only hope you return the courtesy.
Robin the reason that this SHOULD be a debate and not a war is as follows:
http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/how-settled-science-caused-a-massive-public-health-crisis/
Briefly this discusses the “settled science” of diet, massive publicity was given to the “consensual view” that saturated fats were the cause of obesity and that carbohydrates should take their place. The result a huge increase in obesity and type 2 diabetes causing death and misery to millions of people worldwide. Similarly another study discouraged parents from allowing their children to play in the sun without being covered from head to toe in clothing due to the risk in later life of skin cancer. The result was a resurgence of rickets and increase in the incidence of multiple sclerosis, both of which are related to vitamin D deficiency.
If AGW is grossly exaggerated (which I am sure it is and my degree in Dentistry makes me as ably qualified as yourself to debate this issue), then £trillions are going to be spent over the years to produce expensive and unreliable electricity over which people have no control. I did have control over what I and my family ate and wore in the sunshine so we are all healthy because I did not take any notice of what was poor science. There is nothing I can do about expensive, unreliable energy, I am lucky and can afford to pay for it, but many people can’t, just think what these £trillions could do for mankind over the coming decades and then remind me why this should be a war and not a debate.
Pretty desperate stuff on Whitlock’s blog, even referencing the Mad Cat Lady. It’s the wrestling with a greased pig problem but WE is a brave man.
http://www.wikihow.com/Catch-a-Greased-Pig
I’m not a scientist, so a lot of these comments really go over my head. But I have a question about the 2010 NOAA paper on water vapor in the stratosphere. When the paper came out, Susan Solomon, the first author of the study, stated, “Current climate models do a remarkable job on water vapor near the surface. But this is different — it’s a thin wedge of the upper atmosphere that packs a wallop from one decade to the next in a way we DIDN’T EXPECT.” The scientists who authored the study suggest that ALMOST ONE-THIRD of the global warming recorded during the 1990s was due to an increase in water vapour in the high atmosphere, NOT HUMAN EMISSIONS OF GREENHOUSE GASES. A subsequent DECLINE in water vapour after 2000 could explain a recent slowdown in global temperature rise, the scientists add. These scientists also stated their research does not undermine the scientific consensus that emissions of greenhouse gases from human activity drive global warming, but they call for “closer examination” of the way climate computer models consider water vapour.
So my question is if scientists ignore their own observational data, how can they claim that there is still some “missing heat?” Could the water vapor decline in the stratosphere be one of the main reasons for the pause? Especially since the scientists admitted this was an unexpected finding?
Just from looking at both sides of the debate, I have noticed over and over that no matter what new finding, climate scientists are quick to point out this doesn’t change the consensus and I have heard many times when an alarmist is debating they say things like if 97% of doctors say you have cancer, are you going to ignore them? Well, if 97% of doctors practiced science the way climate scientists practice science I probably would ignore them. My analogy goes something like this……97% of scientists and doctors agree that Staphylococcus aureus, is the main driver of temperature increases in humans. But a new study shows that ALMOST ONE-THIRD of the temperature increases in humans thought to be due to Staph is actually due to Escherichia coli. The experts say their research does not undermine the scientific consensus that Staphylococcus aureus is the driver for human temperature increases, but they call for a “closer examination” of the way their models consider Escherichia coli.
If the study of Medicine was treated the same way as climate science, all other variables would be ignored and the scientists’ treatment would be to treat us for just one type of bacteria….not taking into account the thousands of viruses, bacteria, perforated appendixes, perforated colons, heat stroke, drug abuse, glandular disorders, etc. We would be dead.
The debate reminds me so much of the debate between those supporting a market based economy resting on private property and the rule of law and those who believe in the inherent value of a managed economy (socialism). As Hayek made the point in his book “The Fatal Conceit”, it is hubristic to think that some decision maker on high can make better decisions than the millions of voluntary transactions that occur daily amongst people seeking to benefit themselves. Likewise in the debate regarding climate change we have those that believe they have figured it all out and thus a wise and beneficent government can control the future climate versus those who realize that the climate is a chaotic non-linear coupled system affected by a multitude of factors, making it frustrating and useless to predict the future climate based on the level of a trace gas.
This is essentially an evolutionism vs. creationism argument. Does a natural evolution (millions of transactions in parallel) inherently produce a next generation that is in some sense “better” than a previous generation? Can we improve upon the process, or is thinking that way just a hubris? Think Monsanto, or the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
If “better” mean better adapted to its environment and conditions of life, then yes. But there is no value judgement involved. The biological term is “fitter”. Fitness is a measure of differential reproductive success. Biologically speaking, a couple with a child is infinitely fitter than a couple without any, regardless of the kid’s quality in one way or another.
LOL the flaccid “deploy my forces” comments reminds me of North Korea’s Lil Kim. All blow and no go.
[snip – you are using a fake name, fake IP address, and fake email to troll here – banned- Anthony]
Mie,
You seem to have a fixation about peer reviewed (read that as expensive subscription) journals. Yet, you know full well that there is little chance of something like Willis’ article being accepted by and physics or climatology journal. Where would you suggest Willis submit it?
[snip – you are using a fake name, fake IP address, and fake email to troll here – banned- Anthony]
Mie,
There have not been three consecutively warmer years in the satellite data, despite the super El Nino just past. And the “records” are in any case trivially higher than the 1998 El Nino. The long period without a super El Nino naturally allowed a lot of heat to build up in the tropical Pacific.
Your link completely ignores the satellite data in favor of the bogus “surface records”.
Please do better next time. Thanks.
[snip – you are using a fake name, fake IP address, and fake email to troll here – banned- Anthony]
I noticed that 2013 is missing from the UAH series at 14,000 feet. But that is as nothing compared the fictitious nature of the “surface series”.
The unwarranted adjustments to GISS and other “surface series” have been presented not only on blogs, not that there’s anything wrong with blogs. What matters are the facts, not where they are published.
“Surface data” are absurd on their face. The oceans were sampled in a restricted and unregulated manner in the 19th and 20th centuries and still are poorly sampled. That lets Karl do with the “data” whatever he wants. SST is subsurface, while land stations record the air close the surface.
The only acceptably consistent data which exist are from satellites and balloons. The so-called “surface data” are imaginary constructs.
PS: GISTEMP might be the worst of a bad lot, but they’re all bad. HadCRU can’t even be considered science, since the original data upon which its reconstruction relies was lost, so it’s not repeatable. Besides which, Jones admitted that they too warmed the oceans, even before Karl, so that SST would agree with the warming they manufactured on land.
Once GISS’ secret algorithm for UHI adjustment was finally made public, thanks to FOIA requests, we learned that they handle it by warming the “data” rather than cooling it to match the rural stations. They all simply make up “data” for vast swathes of the planet. If a station is within 1200 km, that’s close enough. And they’re free to pick the warmest station if a number lie within the “close enough” zone.
The whole preposterous charade would be laughable, if not for such serious consequences to the sc@m.
[snip – you are using a fake name, fake IP address, and fake email to troll here – banned- Anthony]
MieScatter April 29, 2017 at 4:46 pm
No, the adjustments aren’t. Apparently you haven’t followed the debate about Karl’s manipulation of “data”.
Here is what NOAA currently imagines to have happened with SST:
Note the enormous error bars, which should be even wider, for readings before 1950. It’s possible that average SST is no higher now than in the 1940s.
[snip – you are using a fake name, fake IP address, and fake email to troll here – banned- Anthony]
Chimp on April 29, 2017 at 1:36 pm
There have not been three consecutively warmer years in the satellite data, despite the super El Nino just past.
Well it’s not so interesting, but nevertheless should be noticed. Yearly UAH6.0 anomalies wrt 1981-2010, in °C / decade (2 sigma omitted, I mention them only for monthy or daily data):
– 2011:0.03
– 2012: 0.07
– 2013: 0.15
– 2014: 0.20
– 2015: 0.29
– 2016: 0.51
It is a little, insignificant detail, but it is typical for your relation to exact data. Such comments based on wrong assumptions you produce all the time.
http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html
In RSS, 2014 and 2015 look indistinguishable to me. I admit that I didn’t average the monthly data for an annual anomaly. But there clearly is no statistically significant difference between them.
Maybe the rising super El Nino did push 2015 ahead of 2014. Obviously, 2016 was exceptional, comparable to 1998, so the string of warmer years will end this year. Also, 2013 was cool, so it didn’t take much for 2014 and 2015 to beat it.
OK, I went to the UAH monthly data, and 2014 was cooler than 2015 on average. However, that’s because of the arrival of the Christ Child late in the year, when the monthlies soar.
Overall, if my arithmetic be correct, 2014 averaged an anomaly of 0.176 degrees C, rounded, while 2015 averaged 0.258, rounded. But Oct-Dec 2015 averaged .393 v. .230 for the same quarter of 2014. The heat was on, thanks to El Nino.
http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt
You might want to check my addition and division.
Chimp on April 30, 2017 at 11:54 am / 1:19 pm
Sorry Chimp, I have lots of work and didn’t see your replies since they were published.
Maybe the rising super El Nino did push 2015 ahead of 2014. Obviously, 2016 was exceptional, comparable to 1998…
I sent you a longer comment about that yesterday but I couldn’t see it yet.
Chimp on April 29, 2017 at 1:36 pm
1. And the “records” are in any case trivially higher than the 1998 El Nino.
They are not, with one exception: UAH6.0. Look at the graph below; you will see that
– UAH is the only series that shows 2015/16 above 1997/98;
– the mean of 3 satellite and 3 surface series shows the inverse.
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170504/c4vl9kwm.jpg
I dropped UAH for a while off the mean average, and the result was that 2015/16 was kept even far below 1997/98 for all 20 months.
2016 was not a „super El Nino“ year: it was rather a „super UAH“ year!
2. Your link completely ignores the satellite data in favor of the bogus “surface records”.
There is imho not much bogus in the surface records, Chimp. The difference between surface and satellite plots you can’t see here, but be sure it is in perfect accordance with the hypothesis that ENSO must be far more visible in satellite readings than in surface measurements, as it is the signal of huge amounts of ocean warmth evacuated up into the lower troposphere, and moved poleward.
If I had a 2.5° gridded GISS dataset in text format, I could show you exactly how UAH and GISS behave between 20N and 60N.
Robin Whitlock, since you showed up, but have not offered anything substantive, debate the following objective, easily verifiable facts:
1. Except for the now cooled 2016-16 El Nino blip, it hasnt warmed this century unless by Karlization. Yet this century comprises ~35% of the increase in atmospheric CO2 since 1958 (Keeling curve). Control knob?
2. The warming from ~1920-1945 is essentially indistingushable from the warming ~1975-2000. iPCC AR4 WG1 SPM figure 8.2 said the former period was mostly natural; there wasn’t enough of an increase in CO2 for CMIP3 climate models to reproduce it. Yet AR4 and AR5 attribute the later period warming to CO2. That attribution cannot be correct, as natural variability did not stop in 1975, which the lack of warming this century proves.
3. Sea level rise is not accelerating as predicted.
4. Arctic summer ice has not disappeared as predicted.
5. Polar bears are thriving after hunting was curtailed. They have not been endangered by AGW as DeRocher and Stirling predicted and Gore claimed. Polar bears do not depend on summer sea ice, they depend on spring ice during the seal whelping season. And too thick spring ice is detrimental cause the seals go elsewhere.
6. The planet is greening thanks to rising CO2 (per NASA). No detrimental effects are in evidence, including weather extremes according to IPCC SREX 2012.
7. Every single one of the US detrimental effects in the 2014 National Climate Assessment is misrepresented and/or completely false. See essay Credibility Conundrums in ebook Blowing Smoke for specifics. This demonstrates, at least for the US, the unscientific politicization of the general topic using cherry picks, half truths, and in some cases justnplain misrepresentations.
8. The CMIP5 models run about 2-3x hot. There is no tropical troposphere hotspot as modeled, and even after applying an inappropriate stratosphere correction (none is needed in the tropics) big AGW supporter Ben Santer’s new November 2016 paper has the CMIP5 models running 1.7x hot.
9. … There is lots more about how IPCC WG1 and WG2 are biased, wrong, or worse in both AR4 and AR5, but lets start with these simple observations concerning general CAGW representations.
Looking forward to your objective rebuttals. Doubt we will see them either here or at Willis’ or your blogs.
Good work.
?w=768
I’d add spring landfast ice, further to distinguish the ice important to the bears from summer drift ice.
https://polarbearscience.com/tag/fast-ice/
Ringed seal pup in snow cave on landfast ice. Polie chow.
Chimp, main purpose of comment was to offer WUWT skeptics simple ‘uniform’ soundbites to use in the broader debate. Speaking with ‘one voice’ politically amplifies that voice, something not yet happening as skeptics have been conducting the equivalent of disjointed guerrilla warfare against an organized opposition with compliant media messaging support. IMO we need to enter a more effective messaging end game phase.
Not the first time these sound bites have appeared here. Usually in a varied form, because the essence is the idea, not the exact words. This is attempting to move the debate to the political arena using scientific underpinnings. In other words, lets get out of the blogosphere and start making a skepticsl difference in the political sphere. The Climate March in Washington used plenty of polar bear props. Skewer them with facts and ridicule.
I usually post 10 sound bites (a nice round number) but this numpkin probably cannot count that high.
You are right about landfast ice and seals/polar bears, but for most purposes is an unnecessary refinement when people don’t know polar bear basics. ‘Trust me’–not– but once was a champion debater, and learned a small bit about effective appelate legal argument at HLS plus Boardroom argument at HBS. Simpler is almost always better.
Much appreciate your support and further insights. Regards.
Simpler is better, if possible. IMO most people don’t have trouble distinguishing landfast ice from drift ice, and it reinforces the point that summer sea ice isn’t critical to bear survival.
Besides conducting guerrilla warfare against the consensus Goliath, skeptics also engage in internecine combat, as shown here over so many issues. One voice is hard to achieve under such circumstances.
This situation arises naturally where science is so unsettled. Skeptics can agree that the consensus is wrong, but not on much else.
Robin Whitlock reminds me of Davd Appell.
For that matter any of the rest. They’re all the same.
Their idea of debate is to continually make claims of immense certainty and substantiation while avoiding debate, declaring victory and maligning the opposition for having not understood the evidence it or recognizing defeat.
No, Appell is a candle in dark compared to this lump of coal. I seldom see such a multisyllabic ad hominem as mr. dicklock did. Twit.
Actually, yes. I tangled with Appell once ‘recently’ over at Judith Curry’s concerning Greenland ice mass balance. He thought was still losing when I said had recently stabilized to no net loss. Was on one of my several SLR posts there. He challenged my sources. i sent him to the annual ‘official’ NSIDC Greenland ice summaries for 2014 and 2015. For some strange reason, he never got back…
C/AGW is a religion.
Debate is futile.
Only properly vetted ‘ Climate Scientists ‘ who have proven that no data can’t be altered or twisted to conform to the orthodox view that humans are destroying the earth are allowed to speak of such things. ( you can them by their white lab coats, raised voices, and rants about others are not quite human) Those that oppose these views are heretics, committing crimes against humanity The time honored way of proving that you are right in a religion is to cite chapter and verse, replaced with cut and paste from the annals and cannon of the new prophets of doom. SCIENCE forbid there is conflicting evidence to the all powerful molecule co2. It is capable of all things evil and mysterious. All say, 97 % Consensus!
” Looking forward to your objective rebuttals. .” [ Objective, from C/AGW? You’re kidding right?] The SCIENCE is settled. What part of settled don’t you understand? (sarc)
I agree, the debate is not getting us anywhere. We need a different approach. I suggest concentrating on repeatable scientific experiments.
-Nobody knows why the globe was generally warmer in Roman times
The ;globe’ was not generally warmer, the North Atlantic was generally warmer due to Atlantic Meridional Oscillation driven by a negative PDO during that period. you are conflating Greenland ice core temperatures for ‘global’
-Nobody knows why the globe generally cooled after Roman times
see above
-Nobody knows why the globe generally warmed up again in Medieval times
same as above
-Nobody knows why the globe greatly cooled after Medieval times, leading to the “Little Ice Age” in the 1600s/1700s.
same as above (wow you really need some more deceptive talking points!)
-Nobody knows why the Little Ice Age didn’t descend into a real Ice Age.
The little ice age was cause by multiple major volcanic eruptions these sulfate layers are found in ice core samples in BOTH Greenland and Antarctica. Also, early anthropogenic agriculture is now known to be a significant factor in preventing a return to a real ice age that would have otherwise started around 2,000 B.C.
-Nobody knows why the earth started generally warming at about 0.5°C per century since the Little Ice Age
Volcanic impacts on global cooling wear off on decadal time scales Also increase population growth and westward expansion increased early pre-industrial CO2 emissions
-Nobody knows why this warming continued through the 20th century.
This warming has accelerated greatly since the advent of the industrial revolution, the production of massive volumes of sulphur dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere from coal has contributed significant cooling effects and is currently offsetting about 1/2 of the total warming potential of greenhouse gasses.
-Nobody knows whether the ~ 0.5°C warming of the 21st century is 100% natural and just a continuance of the warming of previous two centuries, or whether some or all of of the warming is due to humans.
Wrong, the models cant definitely state that early warming is caused by humans because they underestimate the impacts of GHG warming AND SO2 cooling. This has been proven recently as the pacific shifts into a strong positive +PDO (another El Nino coming this year).
-Nobody knows why there has been a two-decade “hiatus” in the ongoing three centuries of warming.
Similar cooling effects happened after WWII when the post-war industrial expansion occurred, with a resumption of warming that happened when the clean air acts were passed in both Europe and the U.S. Similarly the expansion of Chinese air pollution directly cooled the pacific leading to a strong negative PDO.
— you should really stop referring to yourself as a ‘nobody’ it just ain’t healthy
Hadn’t seen you here much in the last couple of years, now I see why.
jai mitchell
Do you believe that the climate has ever changed without human activity forcing?
Do you believe in the garden of Eden?
jai mitchell
Dead wrong. Deliberately dead wrong – You are repeating (again) the propaganda as told by those whose income and reputation are built on maintaining their government funding stream by promoting the CAGW myth.
Evidence for the Medieval Warming period is found across ALL continents, in ALL environment types, under ALL oceans and seas, and by dozens of different proxies in hundreds of different studies by hundreds of different institutions worldwide. (The only “study” that cannot find the MWP used one tree in one forest in Yamal written up by one (prejudiced) fund-seeker. )
Climate reconstructions of the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ 900-1200 AD
Umm – this link takes me to Google maps (?)
Try clicking on the map in Pierre’s article.
http://notrickszone.com/2015/12/23/new-comprehensive-map-by-scientists-confirms-medieval-warm-period-was-real-and-global-climate-models-faulty/#sthash.t0I5lEnc.dpbs
Thanks a million! That’s great.
The few sites showing cooling during the MWP and warming during the LIA are instructive.
This will save me the trouble of presenting studies from each continent and ocean every time this particular lie gets bruited.
Increasing atmospheric SO2 would dampen a warming trend whatever the cause.
Compared to pre-WW2 CO2 emissions from human activity were insignificant and cannot explain the GAT trend before ~1945:
Oops, editing problem:
“Pre-WW2 CO2 emissions …”.
World population has increased over threefold since 1945, while wealth has gained even more than carbon emissions (perhaps tenfold for GDP to sixfold for carbon).
http://krusekronicle.typepad.com/kruse_kronicle/images/2008/03/05/worldgdpregion_3.gif
Per capita GDP growth about threefold, times ~3.3x for population.
Jai these are old ball claims especially the really odd ball claim that paleoclimatic record is only basic on ice cores from greenland, and not ice cores in Antarctica.
OK the tally so far in Whitlock’s glorious battle:
Total posts on Willis’ blog version of the debate: 296 and counting …
Total posts on Whitlock’s blog rant: 0 and counting …
A day and a half later, he has 4 comments … one anonymous mocking him, three by Whitlock himself.
Willis = 540 comments.
Whitlock is debating himself. Nobody else is. Is it too early to call the winner of the debate?
” to have anything peer-reviewed published in Nature Magazine.”
..
Here we go again, you had a “comment” published in Nature’s Brief Communications Arising. It wasn’t original research, it was a “comment” about this: https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v424/n6950/full/nature01833.html
…
Note: “Critical comments on recent Nature papers may, after peer review, be published online as Brief Communications Arising, usually alongside a reply from the criticized Nature authors. If the submission only serves to identify an important error in the published paper, it is published in the form of a clarification statement (corrigendum or retraction, for example) by the Nature authors (see section 7). ” http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/commsarising.html
.
.
Your “thing” that was published was a comment. When you leave out the fact it was a “comment” that was published, you are not being honest.
David,
Willis’ comment was indeed a BCA, hence in some sense peer-reviewed, as per your own note. the link you provided indeed labels it as such.
Yes Chimp, it was a peer-reviewed comment. The reply from the authors of the original paper is noteworthy: http://www.africamuseum.be/publication_docs/O%20Reilly_et_al_2004b.pdf
David Dirkse April 29, 2017 at 2:36 pm
You nasty little man, only quoting part of my statement. What I actually said was:
I made no attempt to maximize it. To the contrary, I said it was “only” a Brief Communications Arising”. No, it’s not a “comment”. What you posted above is a comment. What I wrote was a peer-reviewed independent analysis of the data which came to a different conclusion.
What I said above is a TRUE STATEMENT, and your attempt to belittle it speaks volumes about the bleakness of your spirit. Get back to us when you publish something peer-reviewed in Nature and we’ll talk about it further. Until then, re-read Aesop’s fable about the fox and the grapes.
w.
David Dirkse:
You say
I have no objection to the release of any of the emails from me that were leaked as part of Climategate (I wonder why you think they were “stolen”).
I refer you to my submission to the Parliamentary Select Committee. In light of where we are writing, I point out that it begins
My submission to the Select Committee “interpreted” nothing: it reported what an email from me was about.
The Select Committee recorded no discussion of the submission despite the importance of the matter it reported and the 18 signatories to the submission’s Appendix B. You claim to know about the Select Committee inquiry so perhaps you are willing to tell me why that inquiry turned a blind eye to my submission? I really want to know.
Richard
David,
It was a comment which qualified as a Brief Communication Arising, so was indeed peer-reviewed, just as Willis said. He never claimed otherwise, that I have seen.
Yes Chimp, in Willis’ case it’s peer-review, all others are considered “pal-review”
It’s only pal review when you’re reviewed by a pal, as is the case with so-called “climate science”.
Tell me Chimp, is it peer review or pal review when it’s double-blind?
When it’s the Team, they don’t need to know which one of their mates drivel it is. As long as it’s on message, it passes review.
See Climategate emails for how it works.
Chimp, you can get anything published, especially in “boutique” journals. (just pay the fee) Or, if the editor of the journal leans the right way, you can get your stuff published, like in Energy & Environment.
David,
Have you ever read a skeptical paper in, say, Nature Climate Change?
Climategate emails:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/24/the_fix_is_in_99280.html#ixzz4fgPHvlrk
“In response to an article challenging global warming that was published in the journal Climate Research, CRU head Phil Jones complains that the journal needs to “rid themselves of this troublesome editor”-hopefully not through the same means used by Henry II’s knights. Michael Mann replies:
“I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.
“Note the circular logic employed here. Skepticism about global warming is wrong because it is not supported by scientific articles in “legitimate peer-reviewed journals.” But if a journal actually publishes such an article, then it is by definition not “legitimate.”
“You can also see from these e-mails the scientists’ panic at any dissent appearing in the scientific literature. When another article by a skeptic was published in Geophysical Research Letters, Michael Mann complains, “It’s one thing to lose Climate Research. We can’t afford to lose GRL.” Another CRU scientist, Tom Wigley, suggests that they target another troublesome editor: “If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.” That’s exactly what they did, and a later e-mail boasts that “The GRL leak may have been plugged up now w/new editorial leadership there.”
“Not content to block out all dissent from scientific journals, the CRU scientists also conspired to secure friendly reviewers who could be counted on to rubber-stamp their own work. Phil Jones suggests such a list to Kevin Trenberth, with the assurance that “All of them know the sorts of things to say…without any prompting.””
David,
Reply lost in cyberspace again. Apologies if it reemerges in our neck of spacetime. Short version:
Have you ever read a skeptical paper in, say, Nature Climate Change?
Please see paragraphs on editors and journals:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/24/the_fix_is_in_99280.html
Chimp, linking to a site that focuses on politics and polling is not they way you distinguish between “peer” and “pal” review. But, I will admit, that if you cherry pick certain phrases out of a batch of stolen emails, you could prove that Trump owns the Brooklyn Bridge, having bought it from George Soros. Got any reputable data on this topic?
David,
The source doesn’t matter. The author quotes the emails. My comment with them in it was not permitted.
What the emails make clear is what everyone already knew, ie that the whole CACA scheme is corrupt, antiscientific political activism and careerism, not even remotely disinterested science.
The source most certainly matters, you are quoting from stolen property. Secondly, the only thing the emails make clear is what you are INTERPRETING them to make clear. If it’s corrupt, when will the arrests for fraud start happening? I seem to remember that several investigations were brought about concerning the emails, and even the House of Parliament investigated. Tell me did the investigations find anything amiss?
David,
Unless you consider the Team’s own words as disreputable.
Which of course, they are.
David Dirkse:
You wrote
I am a member of the Editorial Board of Energy & Environment (E&E) so I can and do refute your untrue smear absolutely.
E&E provides very proper peer review and, for example, Willis Essenbach is on record as saying on WUWT that he experienced more severe review from E&E than from Nature when he published in those journals.
Richard
This appeared in the wrong place so I am copying it to here, Richard.
David Dirkse:
You say
I have no objection to the release of any of the emails from me that were leaked as part of Climategate (I wonder why you think they were “stolen”).
I refer you to my submission to the Parliamentary Select Committee. In light of where we are writing, I point out that it begins
My submission to the Select Committee “interpreted” nothing: it reported what an email from me was about.
The Select Committee recorded no discussion of the submission despite the importance of the matter it reported and the 18 signatories to the submission’s Appendix B. You claim to know about the Select Committee inquiry so perhaps you are willing to tell me why that inquiry turned a blind eye to my submission? I really want to know.
Richard
“a batch of stolen emails”
There are literally dozens of things wrong with the current theories relating to the greenhouse effect and AGW. Many have been pointed out here and in other threads. We see them over and over again but due to a lack of proper repeatable scientific experiments, particularly laboratory experiments, the arguments/debates continue. How about trying some real science and getting your lab coats a bit dirty?
Let us start from the beginning and get the understanding of how the sun warms the earth’s surface correct before we consider the gaseous composition of the atmosphere. How does the earth become a relatively warm +15C as opposed to a cold -18C ? Let’s test our theories experimentally.
When we have done some good experiments, and a few others have repeated them, then I think that is a useful time to have a debate about the results and what they mean.
And to start off (just for practice if you like) how about debating those nice experiments which R.Graeff HAS ALREADY DONE concerning Loschmidt’s theory of a gravity induced temperature gradient in the earth’s atmosphere ?
R. Whitlock has simply been trying to drive traffic to his blog. A quick look through some of his posts, including the ‘Battle of the Blogs’ post, revealed that none had any comments what so ever. Definitely an echo chamber.
No friends to drive his count up?
Sad.
My comment was either deleted or not permitted.
I’ve accepted one on there this morning. If it was the one about Russia it’s probably yours. A temporary response only from me at the moment as its the weekend and I have other stuff to do, so a fuller response on Tuesday when I am back at my desk. So no I haven’t ignored it.
Robin writes
I dont want to criticize you for “having a life” and enjoying your weekend. That’s completely normal and fully expected…but you’re going to be debating people who dont do “climate 9-5” as part of their job. They do it because they’re genuinely interested and willing to spend their own time researching for personal fulfillment, better awareness and even straight out fun.
Their motivations aren’t financial. There is no “big oil” here.
Keep that in mind.
Robin – I read your rather long diatribe. I wonder what you think a science debate actually is? All I saw from you was argument, admittedly a form of debate, but certainly not a science debate. Supporting a sensitivity claim by asking why various bodies mention it isn’t a science debate, it is argument from authority. Science is not about authority, nor is it about numbers of scientists on any given side of an issue. A guy named Einstein convinced me of same, as did Feynman. My being convinced by either of them is not a scientific argument however.
If you are going to dispute Willis’ claims, stop with the crying about credentials, you just look silly. He SAID he was an amateur, so pointing out that he has no professional credentials is just silly, he already said that. Instead, let’s see an ACTUAL debate about the actual science. He listed several issues, pick one. Sensitivity would be my pick, but that’s just me.
Point being, if you think that sensitivity is as high as you claim, then stop pointing to opinions expressed by one body or another. Point to the SCIENCE upon which those opinions supposedly are based. Which specific papers using which specific data? What does the IPCC AR5 say and why (the actual report, not the silly summary for policy makers which barely resembles the science it is purported to represent)? Is it a fair representation of the data and analysis? Does the SPM fairly represent this?
Data and analysis that can be analyzed and discussed Robin. That’s science. I’ve seen many from Willis, some of which I don’t agree with, many which I do. From you, so far, I’ve seen no science at all.
If ECS were settled science, then there wouldn’t be such a range of derivations and estimates, including even from credentialed, professional “climate scientists”, whatever they are (mostly computer gamers, but a few real, old climatologists have managed to survive, despite their dying off and not being replaced).
?w=768&h=1042
Looks like 12 with best estimate of 2.0 degrees C or below and six above, with Tan an outlier:
Two significant things come out of that. The first being that the newer the study is, the lower the ECS (as a generality). In other words, as time moves on, we have more data and higher CO2 levels, and ECS keeps falling as that process goes along. The other important point is how the IPCC AR5 range spans all the studies. They’ve had to continuously lower the low end of the estimate, grudgingly admitting in AR5 that it could be as low as 1.5 degrees, and twisting themselves in knots to make keeping the high end of the estimates in their projection range, even though there is less and less evidence to support the upper range claimed by Robin.
I hoped Robin would actually show and get into a proper science discussion, but nothing so far. The last point that needs to be made to him is that in AR5, the sensitivity range was established not by models, but by “expert opinion”. They admitted that the models run “too hot”. In other words, they don’t actually have the solid science they claim (else they would not have to toss the models aside in favour of “expert opinion”) and Robin’s appeal to authority dies right there. He can cite all the indirect references he wants, ask why it is mentioned by various organizations, but the ACTUAL science by ACTUAL scientists as documented by the United Nations in the global central repository for climate science under the IPCC, doesn’t ACTUALLY say ANY such thing.
C’mon Robin. Show us some game. You shot your mouth off, let’s see some science from you.
David,
What many don’t realize is that the supposedly “canonical” 3.0 degrees C central value for ECS is nothing but an average of two very rough estimates made in the 1970s. The higher one, 4.0 degrees C per doubling of CO2, was by Jim “Venus Express” Hansen, so should be rejected out of hand on that basis alone. The lower, of 2.0 degrees C, is on the high side, but not unreasonable given the state of knowledge then, ie practically nothing.
The error range guess of 0.5 degrees C was simply made up, by adding that amount to the high “estimate” and subtracting it from the low.
In 1979 American meteorologist Jule Gregory Charney chaired an “ad hoc study group on carbon dioxide and climate” for the National Research Council. The resulting 22-page report, “Carbon dioxide and climate: A scientific assessment”, is one of the earliest assessments of “global warming”. Its main conclusion was: “We estimate the most probable global warming for a doubling of CO2 to be near 3°C with a probable error of ± 1.5°C.”
This estimate of climate sensitivity has remained essentially unchanged for 38 years and counting, despite the squandering of untold wealth on the CACA sc@m. Clearly, the taxpayers of the world are not getting their unit of currency’s worth from the trough-feeding “climate scientist” pigs.
The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007) said that “equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely to be in the range 2°C to 4.5°C, with a best estimate value of about 3°C. It is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C. Values substantially higher than 4.5°C cannot be excluded, but agreement with observations is not as good for those values.” Note the totally unjustified exclusion of the 1.5 to 2.0 degrees range, which is far more likely than 4.0 to 4.5 degrees C.
Since CO2 seems to be the crux of CAGW, I agree that sensitivity should be the main event of the “debate” from Robin. Considering the vast amount of academic papers showing CO2 as having little to no effect, I don’t see this ending well for him.
Okay, call it ‘arguing from authority’ then, or whatever you want. I write drawing on the expertise of real climate scientists using links. I don’t philosophise, lie or cherrypick as most of these guys here do. I am a journalist, not a scientist, so I draw on the expertise of scientists I trust. I don’t do the science myself, because I am not a scientist. Simple concept to grasp really.
Are you a Biased journalist You seem to “trust” only a certain type of science/scientist!
robinwhitlock1966 April 30, 2017 at 12:56 am
I don’t do the science myself, because I am not a scientist.
So, by your own admission, you don’t understand the science. Your whole ability to debate science is predicated upon your ability to quote scientists you trust? Wow. You have no ability to ascertain the truth behind their claims, yet you trust them. You are worshiping on faith, and faith alone, you have no argument to present.
I understand some much of the science. When I read the IPCC reports, and more importantly, the papers upon which the reports rely, they have little to do with what I see in the press from “journalists” such as yourself. It becomes readily apparent that the journalists do not understand what they are reporting on, and now you have admitted publicly to same.
DH, yup. That was a treffer comment.
There is no “two decade hiatus” in the warming of the planet. The rate of warming was slower then projected. Once the Atlantic and Pacific Decadal Oscillation was added to the equation the models were very accurate. Deniers take the ball and run with it claiming that this “hiatus” proves the models wrong. In truth it actually validates the models and is another example of how people who still debate the validity of the science by referencing parts of the equation without considering the rest.
Yes, there is, even with a superduper El Nino just past.
Please draw linear regression lines through the satellite and balloon records since 1998, ie two decades. You will find no statistically significant warming. In fact, you can go back farther than 20 years.
The models are worse than worthless Garbage In, Garbage Out exercises in rent-seeking, trough-feeding and bias confirmation.
“Very accurate?” First of all, they’re not, even when estimates of natural climate variability are added-in as a fudge-factor.
Secondly, they fail miserably regionally/continentally. Even if they appear to be accurate on a global temperature scale, arriving at those values is based on garbage. If my model says that 6+5=15 over half of the globe and 8+2=6 on the other half, it’s obviously garbage. But add those halves together, and 6+5+8+2=21, while 15+6=21…hey, it’s “accurate!!!!!”
Beyond that, when the models are generating poor and widely-varying results when it comes to processes like evapotranspiration, cloud formation, etc, that play a major role in temperature and radiative balancing, yet still come close to the same answer on temperature…another tell-tale sign of garbage.
You stink.
John Enns April 29, 2017 at 4:16 pm
Once the Atlantic and Pacific Decadal Oscillation was added to the equation the models were very accurate.
What? The models totally missed these things?
So, by YOUR OWN ADMISSION, the models are WRONG, because they uhm… MISSED SOME IMPORTANT STUFF, but when you take SOME of the stuff they missed that HAPPENS to make them right while ignoring ALL OTHER STUFF THEY MAY HAVE MISSED AND PRETENDING THERE ISN’T ANYTHING ELSE WRONG, then, THEN! the models are right. For this instant in time.
Robin you paying attention? This is your side getting crushed and you, with all your supposed knowledge, just sit on sidelines saying nothing.
The fact that the models don’t do clouds alone disqualifies them for being taken seriously.
the models don’t do clouds
And they have wildly different values for aerosols. And they have massive error bars. And at least a third of them run so hot that including them in the ensemble is just a joke and serves no other purpose than to drag the average of the ensemble higher. And, and, and…
Where are you ROBIN? Some of us are discussing science here, you can jump in any moment…. don’t let us be an echo chamber Robin. Save us! Engage! Engage!
David,
True. I but scratched the surface of the disqualifying problems with the GCMs.
CACA has not a single leg upon which to stand.
Robin probably doesn’t know that, not having done science, but clearly instinctively knows he can’t win, so shies away.
So, since there “was no hiatus”, when can we expect to see retractions of all the warmest studies that explained why it was happening? I think there were about 50 or 60 of then.
Have you actually looked at the model ensembles? They’re all over the place, high, medium, and low. You could cherry-pick a few models which seemed to perform well, but how do you know it wasn’t an accident? How do you falsify the models you picked which performed well? What about the vast majority of the models which weren’t even close? You would think that if scientists had a good handle on the actual science, a greater number of models would agree with observations. Instead, we continue seeing model ensembles project a wide spectrum of temperatures. Feynman famously said about computers,
There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It’s a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you ‘play’ with them!
Dang! Got here ‘late’. Whitlock is a no-show?
And I popped popcorn and cooled a six’er of Killians Red….
Oh well! Guess it’ll have to be a screening of “Cowboys and Aliens” instead!
That’s is a record of what actually happened. It is real, it’s in colour.
From what I see Mr Whitlock appears to be delusional. He thinks he is fighting some war (no doubt played a lot of video games). He thinks he is fighting a battle of good vs. evil and he is a hero for good vanquishing some imagined evil forces. People really shouldn’t reinforce his delusions. He really needs medical care.
When a person has nothing going for him or her in real life, then delusions of grandeur, competence and value rush into the void.
The most memorable debate on this topic in modern history: Peter Hatfield vs “Lord” Monkton, right here at WUWT! Nothing can compare with that!
Yes indeed. Lots was learned that day.
It would be fun to have a re-run now. How is “potholer” these days?
That’s kind of pathetic. Invite us to a debate and then doesn’t show up other than to make a few cracks. Not a good way to start.
Whom you’re talking to.
He’s fired already:
http://robinwhitlock1966.wixsite.com/robin-whitlock
The skeptics aren’t on Mr. Whitlock’s website, they are on the WUWT website. Whitlock was invited to debate on WUWT and he has declined because he knows he can’t win this argument on WUWT. It looks like he is promoting clickbait for his website rather than a debate on climate science.
Bold talk. Then nothing. I’m not impressed.
Willis, you have offered the opportunity to debate with Whitlock and yet he has done nothing but bloviate.
“robinwhitlock1966 April 29, 2017 at 8:53 am
No. But a battle of words and ideas is still battle. I am hardly going to show you my hand before I am ready. I have my ways of doing things.”
When people make statements like this to do “battle” you know they have absolutely nothing to “battle” with, not even words or ideas. As we say in England, he is “all mouth and trousers”!
In Texas they say, “He’s all hat and no cattle”, Patrick. 🙂
R. Whitlock has had numerous articles published over the years, including, in The Ecologist Vol. 29, No. 5, August/September 1999, titled ‘The Trouble With Transmitters.’ The article deals with the health problems associated with mobile phone masts, and the ‘… emerging evidence of long-term risks to public health caused by electro-magnetic fields.’ https://robinwhitlock1966.wordpress.com/the-trouble-with-transmitters-1999/
Sums up R. Whitlock quite succinctly.
I am accepting comments on my blog, non-insulting ones anyway. I’ve posted the first of these already, with a temporary response (It’s the weekend and so I will write a proper response presently). Furthermore, I am going to try to respond to these 400+ comments posted here, but I will do so first on my own blog, my home turf basically, before posting them here. This will take a while, but hey… As for the reasons for not taking part in a live debate here, I suspect virtually none of you are qualified climate scientists. It would be like throwing myself into a melee, which would be pretty dumb, a bit like a character from ‘The Walking Dead’ entering a warehouse full of walkers. So, this debate will be carried out on my terms with me writing from my own blog initially. Don’t like that? Tough, that’s the way it’s going to be.
Hey, Robin since you obviously want to walk away from the debate that you invited, you don’t need all those weasel words and pathetic excuses. Just say you’ve decided not to do it, you’ll look much more dignified that way.
As to “qualified climate scientists”, more of them read this blog than any climate blog on the planet, and certainly more than read your blog.
And yes, real science is indeed like throwing yourself into a melee. It’s not an echo chamber like you are used to. Don’t like it? Get another job.
As to the “debate being carried out on your terms”? Not in this lifetime. You said you wanted to debate. Now you want to set terms. Not gonna happen. Put up or shut up.
Finally, in addition to being illegible due to the background and colored print, your website has an Alexa rating of 20,496,906 … and this is a rating that starts with the most visited website at number one, so smaller is better.
Watts Up With That, on the other hand, has an Alexa rating of 41,147. This means that we reach about FIVE HUNDRED TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOUR TINY BLOG. So, of course, you want to play in your little puddle …
Let us know when you want to leave your puddle and come put your ideas on a blog with some reach. If you were a serious journalist, you’d jump at the chance to reach five hundred times what your blog reaches …
The invitation is still on … but no, we’re not playing in your puddle. We play here in the big ocean, you’re welcome to join us.
w.
I suspect you wouldn’t stand a chance against against Hansen or Mann, But hey, you’ve got your ground, I’ve got mine. That’s it.
Robin, thanks for the reply. So I take it you are indeed walking away from the debate that you asked for? Why am I not surprised?
And dear heavens, if you think Hansen or Mann are heavyweights, I am shocked by your misunderstanding of the entire field of climate. Both of them are viewed as beyond the pale by most mainstream climate scientists because they are hopelessly lost in the clutches of Noble Cause Corruption. Mann’s newbie mathematical mistake in the Hockeystick paper is a cause for laughter all around the blogosphere … but clearly you never noticed. And James “Death Train” Hansen? I have no words for how clueless he is.
Anyhow, I’m here if you decide you want to debate your ideas on the big stage. You know, here where your words will be read by FIVE HUNDRED TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS ON YOUR TINY BLOG. You are desperate to hide this debate on your blog. However, as with any debate, it should be in the open where as many people as possible will see it.
Of course, I can understand that you wouldn’t want to have lots and lots of people your words … but dang, bro’, you’re supposed to be a journalist. Don’t you want your words to be read?
Ah, well. This debate, as many before it, looks like it will end with the warmist refusing to debate.
w
“I suspect you wouldn’t stand a chance against against Hansen or Mann”
Wouldn’t we love getting Hansen and/or Mann over here for a discussion. How about suggesting that to them. They are two of the main ones we have been complaining about. We would love to have some words with them. And with you, too. Come on, give us something to chew on.
Willis, the Alexa rank metric is a RANK. Not a measure of NUMBER of people visiting.
Given a probable lognormal distribution to the visits by site, a 41K site might have a tens of thousands of times more visitors than a 20M site and a 41 ranked site may have tens of thousands more clicks than a 41K site.
Willis said: “As to “qualified climate scientists”, more of them read this blog than any climate blog on the planet, and certainly more than read your blog.”
How do you know that is the case?
Stephen Rasey April 30, 2017 at 8:29 am Edit
Too right … I took the straight line case because that is most conducive to Mr. Whitlock’s side, but in fact it is Worse Than We Thought™
Chris April 30, 2017 at 9:12 am
I say that because 1) some of the climate scientists post or comment here, 2) my posts here are often quoted on their own blogs (generally not favorably), 3) I see responses to my posts on twitter, and 4) I hear about it from other climate scientists.
Plus, if you’re interested in climate science, this is the number one climate blog on the planet. So skeptical scientists read it to find out what the news is, and alarmist scientists read it to find out what that madman Willis is up to today.
Best regards,
w.
” if you’re interested in climate science, this is the number one climate blog on the planet.”
..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
Michael Darby April 30, 2017 at 12:47 pm
Nope. It would indeed be an “argumentum ad populum” if I had said that something posted on WUWT is valid and correct because this is the number one climate blog on the planet. But I didn’t say that.
Instead, I said we should have the debate here because of the wide reach of the blog, which is not an “argumentum ad anything” …
All the best,
w.
You missed it Willis…..this blog isn’t about climate science, it about anti-climate science (note avoidance of the “D” word)
Tell you what, Mr. Darby. You don’t like the debate here, come over to Judith Curry’s more severely scientifically moderated blog. Because she is a genuine certified climate scientist. Glad to debate you either place, any time, on any climate or energy related subject.
Willis said: “I say that because 1) some of the climate scientists post or comment here, 2) my posts here are often quoted on their own blogs (generally not favorably), 3) I see responses to my posts on twitter, and 4) I hear about it from other climate scientists.”
That’s fine, but that does not prove the number that post or comment here is greater than on other climate related sites.
“I’ve posted the first of these already, …” A parapraxis perhaps, the author is anonymous?
“… ,I suspect virtually none of you are qualified climate scientists.” Are you? Is that why you have not entered into a debate?
As I mentioned previously Willis, once I have finished dealing with each comment on my own blog, I will provide a copy of my response to it as a reply on this one. I am playing this my way, not yours.
Whitlock says:
I am playing this my way, not yours.
Wow, what an ego. Clearly he has a bad case of noble cause corruption.
He has to publish it all here, becuase he has almost no regular readers at his nearly invisible blog.
Robin, over 3/4 of the content of your reply at your own blog seems to be about identity and personalities, not about climate change science. However these aspects are viewed by either side, for better or worse they do not affect science. As the original terms of the debate indicated ‘CC’, so climate change presumably meaning the physical domain of climate along with the science of same, if you choose to continue could you attempt to distill out the science part and arrange it as one coherent argument with a minimum of identity entanglement? Within a highly polarized domain it isn’t possible to lose this completely, but a flood of such stuff submerges even any possibility of objective science consideration. This way, the many on both sides who are into climate mechanisms would have something much more concentrated to bite on.
It’s important to ascertain who has real climate science qualifications and who doesn’t, even more important to discern those who are real scientists, in terms of qualifications, from those who aren’t. So while I do indeed intend to look at the science (and have already begun this morning – see the comments on my blog), I am not going to cut out comments on personal background entirely.
“Proper qualifications” is rather like demanding an imprimatur from the Church when discussing the authority of the Church. What qualifies as a proper argument is exactly the point that is being discussed, and “proper qualifications” is backdoor use of the Appeal to Authority fallacy,
McIntyre and MacKittrick made a devastating critique of Mann despite not being “climate scientists”.
Whitlock says:
It’s important to ascertain who has real climate science qualifications and who doesn’t
Yet Whitlock himself has none other than those he self-proclaims. He’s never published a peer reviewed paper on climate [that I know of], but both Willis and I have.
Robin,
A scientist is anyone who uses the scientific method to investigate nature and the universe. Having a PhD in a hard science discipline doesn’t make someone a scientist. He or she has to practice the scientific method to find things out, as well. More education of course can better equip a person to be a scientist, but obviously isn’t required.
Faraday had no formal scientific education but read books while apprenticed to a bookbinder, enabling him to practice the scientific method. Einstein had an undergrad degree from a technical school, but was a patent clerk while practicing the scientific method. Faraday was one of his three scientific “heroes”, with Newton and Maxwell, both of whom had Bachelor’s degrees from Cambridge. Maxwell had previously studied at Edinburgh as well, like Darwin.
Callendar, advocate of beneficial AGW in the 1930s, was a steam engineer. Due to the severity of winters in the early ’60s, he considered his hypothesis falsified.
Robin writes
Only if you cant understand the argument being made. If the argument made is flawed then there are no shortage of real scientists on this site who will happily tear it to shreds.
“This will take a while, but hey… ”
You should probably speed things up because this thread will expire in about 14 days. Of course, you can always express your opinions in any thread on WUWT and you will get a response. But really, if you have the science down so good, what is taking so long for you to make your first asserton? Let’s start with one assertion about the Earth’s climate on your part, not a dissertation.
@robinwhitlock – You might want to take another look at “The key to science”. If you haven’t studied Richard Feynman, you should:
He’s not hard to find, is he?
http://robinwhitlock1966.wixsite.com/robin-whitlock
https://www.google.com/search?q=robin+whitlock&rlz=1C1CHFX_en-GBGB547GB547&oq=robin+whitlock&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.8734j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Technical cry off and win to Willis !
Your entitled to your opinion on that…
You said you were good with words…
Patrick, that can be taken two ways. 🙂
@robinwhitlock
Your blog post has 4 comments, and three of those are yours.
Have you not had any other responses?
I thought he was preparing in some MASSIVE, double secret manner, guess not!
David Cosserat April 29, 2017 at 4:34 am
David, that is most excellent news. You can’t imagine how many people have told me that the steel greenhouse definitely violates the Laws of Thermodynamics, and how little success I’ve had convincing them otherwise.
PLEASE, if you have not done so, take some photographs and write up the experiment, as I know that Anthony would be more than happy to publish it.
My best to you, and thanks for both the experiment and the report. Keep up the investigations, science is an unending and joyous puzzle.
w.
MieScatter April 29, 2017 at 1:26 pm
The editors of Nature magazine disagreed with you when they peer-reviewed and published my words. As did the editors of the other peer-reviewed journals that have published my scientific work. So did the more than one hundred scientists who have cited my work in their own peer-reviewed publications.
You really should do your homework before you uncap your electronic pen, MieScatter, you’ll look much less foolish …
w.
[snip – you are using a fake name, fake IP address, and fake email to troll here – banned- Anthony]
Good job, stay safe these guys are whack jobs.
It appears, as we suspected all along, that Robin Whitlock is all hat and no cattle. It also appears that he thinks using the irrational Appeals to Authority and to Consensus are legitimate debating tactics. No wonder he refuses to debate. He loses by default. Skeptics win. Again.
What’s really sad is this fool actually believes his own BS. He doesn’t want to talk science. He is deathly afraid of what he might learn. He will continue to deny any and all real science that conflicts with his world view.
I find this out every time I present satellite data to climate cultists. The first words from them are always 100% denial that it could be real. It shows the mindset of these folks. They have been completely brainwashed.
Well, Willis…. I doubt Mr. Whitlock will rise to the occasion of a debate with you, although I would relish the encounter.
The main reason for his reticence I believe is your humble statement: “I have more than sixty citations to my publications in the scientific journals … not bad for a self-taught man with absolutely no scientific education.”
I get a chuckle every time I see that–it would be like arguing flight with the Wright bros.
Besides, getting an “education” in their current rendition of “climate science” requires that you get a degree is post-normal poly sci, which would obviously be a waste of time and money.
Have a good day!
correction: “a degree in post-normal poly sci,”
richard verney April 30, 2017 at 4:48 am CO2 has gone up from Mauna Loa data and it being a GHG and all that in theory the earth temp should go up.If, as I specified, nothing else changes with it. Since Mauna Loa data has come on stream, it is clear that CO2 levels have increased, but it is not so clear that temperatures have risen, still less that if they have risen then this has been caused by the rise in CO2.
They appear to have risen recently and in the period 20 years ago pre 1998?
They certainly have no obvious correlation with CO2 in the observations.
One of the issues in debate is whether CO2 is a GHG. It is a radiative gas, the laboratory properties of which are well known. However, whether it is a GHG can only be answered by observational empirical evidence which presently is lacking.
This is a big call on your part. Y
Angech, misdefinition. Tyndall showed the Royal Society in 1859 that CO2 is what we now call a GHG. The climate issue lies in its supposed atmospheric feedbacks. The rather well established primary SB grey earth effect of CO2 doubling is 1.16C. Lindzen uses 1.2 C for simplicity. Even Monckton agrees with that physics based number indirectly via previous posts here.
“It’s important to ascertain who has real climate science qualifications and who doesn’t”
Does Robin realize this is the same tired garbage we’ve been exposed to for 2 decades?
Andrew
His claim is of course nonsense. There is nothing complicated about understanding the basics of climate. In fact, it is not a real science. It uses aspects of real science from dozens of other fields. The funny thing is that experts in many of these areas are skeptics.
He doesn’t care. All he needs is an excuse to maintain his belief system. The fact his excuse is laughable nonsense is beyond him. He can’t give up his belief system because it would make him an outcast in his social group. This is more important to these fools than the truth.
This is a big call on your part. You cannot be half pregnant.
Either CO2 is a GHG or not.
This is an issue that all us skeptics need to acknowledge though reading the comments I suspect that there is a schism here.
CO2 is a GHG. Water vapor is a GHG in bigger proportion.
Both help the atmosphere they are in reach the temperature it is.
You cannot believe in one and not the other, that is denying the science.
You can deny both but then you are not being scientific or helpful at all.
Observational empirical evidence is there every day when you watch the temperature rise with the sun coming up and when you study the effect of clouds on trapping heat.
The debate is simple. what is the effect of a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Which is not a doubling of all the GHG by the way, only a small overall increase.
What feedbacks apply.
Why has the expected “scientific” level not occurred.
Why has the unscientific positive feedback loops of models not occurred.
Denying that CO2 is incapable of having any effect may feel good is a point of view as extreme as any warmist position.
Explaining why it has little to no effect is the debate.
Willis you could put up the same questions and debate without the reluctant bride and get an ad hominem reduced, more nuanced discussion going but this is fun anyway.
angech,
“You can deny both but then you are not being scientific or helpful at all.”
The problem is that climate science itself isn’t very helpful in determining what has what effect.
The science sucks, so I think you are expecting too much from people who try to form opinions about all this.
Andrew
I mean, really, what tools does climate science have to educate people with? Graphs of averages of a weather system no one understands? Black Box Simulations? Speculative doomsday claims? Climate is a dubious concept to begin with. It only exists an after-the-fact result of analysis. There’s nothing for climate science to demonstrate. It’s a dysfunctional psychiatrist trying to fix your crazy uncle.
Andrew
Bad Andrew But a good commentator.
‘ I think you are expecting too much from people who try to form opinions about all this.”
Not at all. My expectations are rather low.
For example we had Steve McIntyre come in to make some comments and Rud putting up some questions but little debate when there really was a chance.
Yet we have a range of views where some are frightened, insecure or unscientific to ordain that CO2 has no effect.
I feel it has little effect but we need people to declare themselves, scientifically and then have a scientific debate.
No CO2 never does anything and is not a GHG.
No CO2 will cause runaway global warming tomorrow.
Just plain vanilla use proper observations, proper science, and try to work out more about climate and all it’s triggers plus recognize that life has survived through a whole lot more complexities than a little transient puff of natural CO2.
“The debate is simple. what is the effect of a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere?”
The question should be: What is the *net* effect of a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Theory says CO2 should add some warming, but there are other things involved in the process like negative feedbacks to CO2 warming which might mean that any CO2 warming is offset by negative feedback and there may be no net heating of the atmosphere from additional CO2. The theory that CO2 will heat the atmosphere does not operate in a vacuum. That’s only part of the process we need to look at.
So far, temperatures are within natural variability. We are cooler today than in the 1930’s when there wasn’t nearly as much human-caused CO2 in the atmosphere. Anyone who claims to see signs of human-caused climate change due to CO2, in our current weather patterns is delusional. They couldn’t prove it if their lives depended on proving it.
“TA
April 30, 2017 at 8:27 am
“The debate is simple. what is the effect of a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere?”
The question should be: What is the *net* effect of a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Theory says CO2 should add some warming, but there are other things involved in the process like negative feedbacks to CO2 warming which might mean that any CO2 warming is offset by negative feedback and there may be no net heating of the atmosphere from additional CO2. The theory that CO2 will heat the atmosphere does not operate in a vacuum. That’s only part of the process we need to look at.”
According to Wiki, the theory says Co2 does:
“carbon dioxide, 9–26%”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
So, as I understand it, 9 -26 % of 33 K.
And as I understand the stated theory, all greenhouse gases cause + 33 C.
So, 33 times .09 – .26 is 2.97 K to 8,58 K.
So the existing level of CO2 [say, 300 to 400 PPM] and if removed all CO2, it would cool planet earth by 2.97 to 8.58 C. Or 15 – 2.97 to 8.58 is global average temperature of 12.03 to 6.42 C.
Or roughly make Earth have average temperature of about 8 C.
But some climate experts claim if include “the feedbacks’ [which according to their idea, CO2 causes there to be water vapor on planet earth] removing all CO2 would cause earth to be colder by 33 C. 15 C – 33 K being about -18 C, Or removing all CO2 would make earth average temperature be -18 C rather than 15 C.
Now, as far as doubling CO2. Most believing in this theory [don’t count me as one] believe a doubling of pre-industial level CO2 [a very vague term btw] causes 1.2 C plus water vapor increase cause by the “forcing” of doubling CO2. So 260 to 290 ppm x 2 causes 1.2 C from “CO2 forcing” plus the 2 to 5 C from water vapor increase [feedback].
{and theory doesn’t including negative feedbacks- other it’s general vagueness could said to “allow’ for it].
Also according to theory, no other factors cause increase or decrease of planet’s average temperature other than greenhouse gases and the amount that a planet reflects sunlight.
Ie, Earth gets 1360 Watt per square meter from the sun. Divided by 4 it’s 340 watts “averaged” and reflects about 100 watts on average. leaving 240 Watts.per square meter.
Or of the 1360 watts 400 watts is reflected and 960 water per square meter disk area divided by 4 due to spherical planet.
And Earth on average radiates 240 watts per square meter. And perfect blackbody which radiate 240 watts is -18 C.
TA April 30, 2017 at 8:27 am
” We are cooler today than in the 1930’s when there wasn’t nearly as much human-caused CO2 in the atmosphere.”
Do not think this is correct if we are talking about the world atmosphere temperature.It might apply to parts of the USA but the best evidence assessments show that we are warmer than say 150 years ago and warmer than in the 1930’s.
Examples.
Eugene WR Gallun Are you aware that since coming out of the Little Ice Age on average every third year has produced a record temperature?
SAMURAI Since the end of the Little Ice Age (1280~1850), we’ve ENJOYED 0.83C (HADCRUT4) of warming recovery
jclarke341 Considering that we have been generally warming for nearly 300 years.
Reasonable people.
If you wish to deny the reasonable evidence that we have then no rational discussion is possible. Unadjusted Temperatures were slightly cooler back then unless yiou can prove differently
Because, angech, the main doubling was from 11ppmv to 22 ppmv. Every doubling since has been increasingly less significant. The science behind carbon arc welding.
Subsequent doublings, from possibly @200ppmv whenever that ‘was’, will have an overall cooling effect (my very messy guesswork), there will be only @one more doubling from us burning things before we wean ourselves off fossil fuels – or die out.
imvho, wrt CO2 – CS ≤ 0.0K
sarc/ As with all the finest climate prognostications I will be long gone by the time someone shows them to be junk 😉 /sarc.
CO2 is a GHG, just not very potent currently.
Henry Galt
Every doubling since has been increasingly less significant.
Subsequent doublings, from possibly @200ppmv whenever that ‘was’, will have an overall cooling effect.
Sigh.
A robinwhitlock comment from a skeptic.
The warming trend upwards will lessen.
It will still get warmer
Overall .
An overall warming effect.
This blind refusal to stick to the facts.
The problem with people like Patrick is they wrongly believe that what scientists say has to be correct and that to engage in a debate on a subject you always have to be a SME. Both are incorrect assumptions; in subjects like climate you need only an engineering or scientific background and intelligence. The sceptical position is yes, we understand the theory but can clearly see that the predicted results aren’t happening. The sceptical position also recognises the incompatibility of the scientific and political aspects.
Inviting Mr. Whitlock to debate you here is like the time I invited Bobby Russo to my gang’s clubhouse and fifty of us beat him with baseball bats for twenty minutes.
[metaphorically of course, we don’t condone violence here -mod]
Are you writing this from prison?
Yes, it was a metaphor and entirely fictional to illustrate how foolish he would be to debate here. It’s just the wrong forum.
No, it is the RIGHT forum. I’ve seen all sorts of scientists in this blog over the years, many of them heavy weights with world wide recognition debating the most detailed science. Nor is Mr. Whitlock confined to go it alone, this is a pretty open blog, he could easily bring fifty of his friends with him. He won’t. Here’s why:
1. Upthread, Mr Whitlock said “I don’t do the science myself, because I am not a scientist.“. So, his ability to debate the science himself is, by his own admission, non-existent.
2. He probably won’t be able to find any of his science friends that he professes to trust to come with him. They’ve been making their proclamations, refusing to expose their data and code, and refusing to debate for years. Their only argument has been “trust us, we’re climate scientists”. They won’t show, and if they do;
3. An actual discussion of science may actually break out, in which case an observer like Whitlock will have no choice but to conclude that what the science says, what the IPCC science says, and what the journalists say are very different matters.
If by some miracle, Whitlock does bring some friends to the table, I suggest heavy moderation or perhaps breaking the topics up into separate threads (wouldn’t THAT be something, an actual debate about actual science!) With the use of comment threading, detailed back and forth on multiple issues between multiple commenters gets really hard to follow.
DH, you don’t have to be a scientist to understand ‘climate science’ and be able to debate it. You do have to take the time to understand what climate science claims, and what support there is. Start with IPCC, and then branch out find its logical errors, data omissions, and reliance on fundamentally flawed papers. Most skeptics do (to some extent, skydragons and such excepted), most warmunists don’t. Robin Whitlock has proven himself a classical warmunist, which is why he is a content no-show.
I posed 8 simple climate propositions to him upthread. Fact based sound bites. He must have read them because he commented to Willis below them. He has not responded to any, anywhere. Control knob, attribution, SLR, polar bears, greening, SREX, … simple core basics. Nothing fancy or complicated. Now, if perchance he did study up on those basics, he could not help being converted to skepticism. Which is why he won’t. Nor will any of his friends, including climate science friends. Because each sound bite is a carefully and simply crafted, easily verifiable inconvenient truth challenging the core of his ‘settled science’ warmunist religion.
ristvan April 30, 2017 at 2:13 pm
Agreed Rud. I actually had a rather long follow up comment on the matter that got corrupted when I tried to post it and I just don’t feel like typing the whole thing in again. Plus Willis posted something on the same issue. In brief, a number of years ago, Keith Briffa published a tree ring chronology that restored the MWP. A NASA modeler named Perlw1tz insisted that only climate scientists could understand it. I asked what about it someone with nothing more than first year stats could not understand, and he refused to answer the question. My point being to Robin, that the notion that one has to be a climate scientist to understand and debate it is so ridiculous that when pressed on the issue, even alarmist climate scientists themselves can’t justify that argument.
I also pointed out to him that the IPCC, that august body of the United Nations which assembles all the known and best climate science in the world in the AR reports, seems to think we have a lot more to worry about in the coming years than climate change. One need not be a scientist to understand this chart, and I challenge Robin to say otherwise (or refute the United Nations IPCC, pick one Robin):
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/01/we-have-bigger-problems-than-climate-change-so-sayeth-ipcc-ar5/
robinwhitlock1966 April 30, 2017 at 5:12 am
Robin, thanks for the comment. However, it shows that you truly do not understand science. Science is not pronouncements by “experts”. It is meaningless to determine who has “real climate science qualifications”. That is just a way that people use to avoid examining the science itself.
Science is a PROCESS by which we can determine which statements about the real world are valid and supported by the evidence and which are not. What you seem to be oblivious to is that this process does NOT include examining the credentials of the person making the scientific statement.
As an example, we didn’t decide whether E=MC2 is valid and supported by the evidence by looking at Einstein’s CV … but despite that, you wish us to decide whether some scientific statement about the climate is valid by looking at say Michael Mann’s CV. Nothing could be further from science.
(And as an aside, no, I’m not comparing myself to Einstein. I’m merely using him to make a point.)
Here’s a lovely quote I found the other day that may help you make the distinction:
Note that there is not one word in there about the people who are making the scientific statements.
Why?
Because their race, education, sex, nationality, height, personal habits, and credentials are IMMATERIAL to a scientific debate. Meaningless. Without value. Worthless. All that is important is whether their scientific claims are valid and supported by the evidence.
As a result, your insistence that people’s credentials are a valid subject in a scientific debate merely marks you as someone with no clue about the scientific process …
w.
Well played. It is obvious to most here that you have won by substance no-show default, from Fiji, while surfing Frigates head high left hand curl.
I am reminded of Mann’s recent congressional testimony where he denied on the record ever calling anyone a climate denier, to which Judith Curry replied, you called me that in your writtten testimony for this hearing. TKO.
Yes, an almost perfect piece of testimony by the courageous Judith Curry! WE’s list of characteristics immaterial to a scientific debate left out type of school attended. Whitlock seems wierdly obsessed by James Delingpole’s schooldays and hints at abuse suffered there that Whitlock’s psychological witching skills enable him to sense.
robinwhitlock1966 said:
Near as I can tell, so far you’re not “playing this” at all.
Still waiting …
w.
It’s nice that a warmist is “willing” to debate, but you really need some warmist “heavyweights” willing to do this. But they are like Democrats these days. Simple obfuscation to any “way forward” – status “gravy-train” quo. I figure the only way we inch forward is if Trump pulls out of the Paris accord. That might stir a few hornets more. But it sounds like his daughter is “hedging.”
Dunno. His daughter has said nothing, Only political pundits saying what his daughter might have said. Now, Tillerson’s position we know cause he has repeated it publicly. What Trump will do, dunno. But his public campaign promise was clear, and there are no complicating nuances like China/Korea, which he seems to be playing rather well per his ‘The Art of the Deal’.
“Brits said that the only reason that criminal charges weren’t laid because of their lies was that the statute of limitations had expired.”
We don’t strictly speaking have a statute of limitations in criminal matters, the Limitations Acts generally apply to civil cases…. The law at point here is the Magistrates Act that sets time limits on offences that may only be tried in the magistrates court. It’s there for a good reason, to prevent minor offences being indefinitely and abusively held, Damocles like, over defendants heads. In your case it is reasonably possible to interpret that act as applying to the 6 months from the moment when the information commissioner became aware that an offence had been committed…. In short they weren’t prevented from acting, they chose not to and used this as an excuse.
Mike Ozanne:
The matter was a blatant ‘cover up’ excused by the false claim of a ‘statute of limitations’. .
Christopher Booker provided this report that says,
“Gordon Smith, the deputy commissioner, confirms that the university’s refusal to answer legitimate inquiries made in 2007 and 2008 was an offence under S.77 of the Information Act. But he goes on to claim that the Commission is powerless to bring charges, thanks to a loophole in the law – “because the legislation requires action within six months of the offence taking place”.”
Bookers account was published in ‘The Telegraph’ on 30 Jan 2010 under the heading
It is more informative than your account and in full it says
Richard
Robin Whitlock in action
Willis is the rake.
Written yesterday and not posted until now, sorry.
There are three stages to the real ‘the Nihilists’.
1) The refusal to address a) the lack of evidence for the guesswork b) the malfeasances of the practitioners of the faith and c) the twisting of the method.
2) Then they resort to ramped up scumbaggery – insults, appeals to authority and ignorance, strawmen, ad homs, ad nauseam.
3) Then they block you.
This guy is a waste of space. A mouth breather. An oxygen thief. He is a product(sic) of the creative writing department of a credential mill of the lowest order. He ‘cites’ Cox and the SS ffs.
My boringly constant and continuously validated prediction fwiw is, as always: He will not engage with the science, he will continue quoting the scriptures and claims of his false gods and he will run off to proclaim ‘the win’ when it suits him or when he runs out of support from his more entrenched betters/handlers.
He will not learn. His type cannot, even in extreme circumstance. He will preen and attempt to stick some jollies to his resume and hope some funding/kudos will rub off on him.
He is a prime example of the difference between clever and intelligent.
Just sayin’
I am (have been since before the turn of the century in the case of climate science) willing to change my mind. Who knows, maybe he is ‘The One’? Maybe, in his exhaustive investigations, he will discover that shred, that iota, that previously elusive morsel of repeatable, falsifiable evidence that ‘we did it guv’.
Willis
Why are you wasting your time here ?.
As you are making extraordinary claims then the burden of proof is with you , present your evidence for peer review like real scientists do and put us out of our collective misery please.
Most peer-reviewed scientific papers published in reputable journals have found the central value and range of ECS to be lower than the WAG of 3.0 +/- 1.5 degree C quoted in every IPCC report, without any sound basis.
Without net positive feedbacks assumed but not in evidence, there is no risk of catastrophic global warming from human activities. Since we do things which both cool and warm locally and maybe even globally, we can’t even be sure of the net sign of any human effect.
The 1.2 degrees C per doubling of CO2 derived in the lab doesn’t occur in the real, complex climate system. It wouldn’t, unless net feedbacks precisely balance each other out. If they are net negative, as is usual on a self-regulating planet such as ours, then ECS will be less than 1.2 degrees C per doubling. In the unlikely event that net feedbacks are positive, then something between 1.2 and 2.0 might be possible. But 3.0, let alone 4.5 degrees C, not so much.
CACA is much ado about nothing, unfortunately having cost us all dearly, especially those who have lots loved ones due to the shameless, antihuman sc@m and its unspeakably evil charlatan promoters.
fredcehak:
Please state what “extraordinary claims” you assert Willis is making because I know of none. And Willis HAS published in the peer reviewed literature.
Your post is innuendo and smear. Crawl back under your bridge.
Richard
Says Whitlock:
This blog has long been dominated by scientists and engineers, which is why I come here, though I am not one. Even when it’s over my head, there’s nothing like listening to experts and craftsmen discussing their trades and their interests. That these involve climatology, amongst many other topics, makes it even more interesting to me. And believe me, the disciplines of physics, mathematics, astronomy, thermodynamics, chemistry, geology, electrical engineering, etc., etc. all bear on the mysteries of the Earth and its climate.
I don’t think you’ll find another blog with such a diverse collection of very smart people who are devoted to the scientific method and its defense against ideologues with political agendas. I hope you’ll start reading the posts and comment threads here regularly. If you do, you just might find that the politically-correct cocoon you have woven about yourself is one you can break free of. Butterflies aren’t confined to one narrow tree trunk; they have the whole world to explore.
/Mr Lynn
Compared with his blog, which is nothing but Robin talking to himself.
Not a scientist, engineer or even knowledgeable laymen to be found.
“I’ve never claimed that it would be 0.8°C. I’m not sure what I’m missing here ”
That’s the sensitivity for 0 feedback and comes from calculations in the early 70s (eg. Rasool Schneider 1971). I’m guessing you’re being confused with people, like my self, who point that out to counter the argument that sceptics are in the pay of Big Oil.
So far, there are four comments on Whitlock’s blog post. Three of them his…
And, at the time of this comment, 554 other comments here. Nearly 140:1. The thing is, upthread, Whitlock said he preferred to build his argument at his own blog as he did not want to debate among non-scientists. Well, it strikes me, his blog post has been commented on 100% by non-scientists – so he’s in good company (I wonder if he comments in the third person). I think the proportion of comments on this thread is nearer 50/50 for science-led comments is nearer the mark. Personally, I like to think of Willis as a scientist who knows a bit about boat handling and carpentry.
Mr Whitlock figured a carpenter/fisherman/accountant, how hard could it be to slap this guy down?
And then there is such confounding stuff about greening of the planet, increasing forest productivity, doubling of crop harvests, no trends in storms, droughts, floods. Shrinking of Mars ice cap in concert with that of the earth. We get sparingly little on these topics these days that support considerable benefits and no harm by CO2 except in models.
For a good laugh, have a look at Mr. Whitlock’s current twitter feed, and scroll down a bit. In addition to endless ad hominem attacks on me, he’s retweeting every lie that Slandering Sou over at HotWhopper has ever published about me. He’s gone rabid attacking me for every crime real and imagined, and Sou says among much other nonsense that I’m a “racist Trump fan” …
But of course, not one word about the science. For them, it’s all about attacking me personally. They truly seem to think this means something about my scientific claims.
This joker is just as sick as Sou …
w.
Mr. Eschenbach,
Sentient persons easily recognize four flushers. Both Mr. Whitlock and the joke known as “Sou” perfectly define the notion of “four flusher.”
Thank you for calling the bluff that is Mr. Whitlock and thank you for all that you do to ensure that scientific method and common sense come to the fore.
The first of the comments made by a commentator on this post, though as a comment on my own blog, I have now answered in detail here: http://energyandenvironmentblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/historical-temperature-records.html Only, what, 500+ comments to go I guess…
Robin writes
So they used model output to justify model output in that study. Seems legit. I’d recommend looking closely at the models because they’re the achilles heel of the AGW theory.
You haven’t got 500 comments on your blog, Robin. There is only one comment on there that is not from you. Why don’t you copy ‘n’ paste your response to it here (you do know how to c ‘n’ paste, don’t you?).
[2,042,138 replies and comments and corrections here at WUWT. .mod]
Typical! One of Eschenbach’s clowns accuses me of having no understanding of thermodynamics. I say this: http://energyandenvironmentblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/more-comments-on-eschenbachs-blog.html
Robin, may I just remind you of blog etiquette here (as pointed out at the top of this thread):
PS: Do you or don’t you understand the laws of thermodynamics?
‘Really Sceptical’ responds to a denier with a few succinct words: “This is typical of all the claimed dangers of CO2….” etc etc
“Three years in a row record temps” he says (Really Sceptical). True, but of course temperatures have been rising since the industrial revolution in reaction to humans putting loads of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon, up there. These few words were enough to make Eschenbach respond:
“Oh, please. We know that temperatures have been generally rising for three centuries. So … where will we find the highest temperatures? Oh, the most recent years? Gosh, that’s shocking news … not.
If you think that is significant, think about it a bit more deeply.”
This response by Eschenbach is of course nonsense. He’s trying to suggest that the temperature rise is entirely natural, but of course it isn’t. Yes, climate scientists have to distinguish between what is natural climate variation and what is man-made climate change, but the evidence for human-caused climate change is incontrovertible (http://ete.cet.edu/gcc/?/globaltemp_ghgandtemp/).
Next we have someone by the name of Tony Mcleod, who posted this interesting graph from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (graph):
Cementafriend wrote this:
“Willis, you should not bother to reply to people who have no qualifications and no understanding of heat and mass transfer, or thermodynamics”
I admit I am not a scientist, but I do listen to them actually. As a result, I copied this into a word document from Skeptical Science, in response to the claim that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics contradicts global warming:
“The sun warms the Earth. The Earth and its atmosphere radiate heat away into space. They radiate most of the heat that is received from the sun, so the average temperature of the Earth stays more or less constant. Greenhouse gases trap some of the escaping heat closer to the Earth’s surface, making it harder for it to shed that heat, so the Earth warms up in order to radiate the heat more effectively. So the greenhouse gases make the Earth warmer – like a blanket conserving body heat – and voila, you have global warming.
The second law of thermodynamics has been stated in many ways. For us, Rudolf Clausius said it best:
“Heat generally cannot flow spontaneously from a material at lower temperature to a material at higher temperature.”
So if you put something hot next to something cold, the hot thing won’t get hotter, and the cold thing won’t get colder. That’s so obvious that it hardly needs a scientist to say it, we know this from our daily lives. If you put an ice-cube into your drink, the drink doesn’t boil!
The skeptic tells us that, because the air, including the greenhouse gasses, is cooler than the surface of the Earth, it cannot warm the Earth. If it did, they say, that means heat would have to flow from cold to hot, in apparent violation of the second law of thermodynamics.
The skeptic is ignoring the fact that the Earth is being warmed by the sun, which makes all the difference.”
(from: https://www.skepticalscience.com/Second-law-of-thermodynamics-greenhouse-theory.htm)
Michael Hammer also has this to say on Jo Nova’s blog (http://joannenova.com.au/2011/05/why-greenhouse-gas-warming-doesnt-break-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/):
“The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics applies to net flows of heat, not to each individual photon, and it does not prevent some heat flowing from a cooler body to a warm one.
Imagine three blocks of metal side by side. They are 11°C, 10°C, and 9°C. Think about what happens to the photons coming off the atoms in the middle of the medium temperature block between the other two. If heat never flows from cooler blocks to warmer blocks, all those photons have to go “right“, and not ever go “left”, because they “know” that way is towards a cooler block? (How would they?!)
The photons go both ways (actually every way, in 3D). There are more coming from the 11°C block to the 10°C block, sure, but the the 10°C block is sending ‘em back to the 11°C block too. So heat is flowing from cold to hot. It happens all the time. Net heat is flowing always hot to cold. But some heat is going the other way, every day, everywhere, bar possibly a black hole.”
Jo Nova herself has this to add:
“People are being caught by semantics. Technically, strictly, greenhouse gases don’t “warm” the planet (as in, they don’t supply additional heat energy), but they slow the cooling, which for all pragmatic purposes leaves the planet warmer that it would have been without them. It’s a bit like saying a blanket doesn’t warm you in bed. Sure, it’s got no internal heat source, and it won’t add any heat energy that you didn’t already have, but you sure feel cold without one. – Jo”
Michael goes on:
“I have lost count of the number of people claiming that global warming is impossible because the atmosphere is colder than the surface and thus cannot return heat to the surface since that would contravene the second law of thermodynamics. This is wrong and is based on an incorrect interpretation of the second law. The second law does not say a cold object cannot pass heat to a warmer object, it states that NET heat flow is always from warmer to colder.”
And:
“Imagine you are standing outside on a cold winters night. It’s really cold and you are soon chilled to the bone so you step inside.
Inside it’s a pleasant 20°C and almost immediately you feel warmer. But you are at 37°C and the room is 17°C cooler at 20°C how can it warm you, the second law of thermodynamics forbids it! No it doesn’t. When you were outside, your body was radiating energy to space but because the environment was so cold there was very little radiating back to you so the net loss was substantial.
When you step inside your body is still radiating exactly the same amount of energy (remember the amount radiated depends only on the temperature and emissivity) however now the warmer walls of the room radiate more energy back to you than did the cold outside. Since the walls are colder than you are you still radiate more energy than you receive (heat flow is still from you to the room) but the difference between what you radiate and what you receive is less. You lose less net energy when inside than when outside so you feel warmer inside the room and it is easy to feel the room is warming you. In fact it is more accurate to say the room cools you less than did the outside.
Exactly the same situation exists with respect to Earth’s surface. Without the green house gases in the atmosphere the surface would be radiating directly to outer space which is extremely cold (-269°C). The green house gases prevent some of that radiation to space and thus keep the surface warmer than it would otherwise be. They do not do this by reducing the amount of energy the surface emits – doing that would entail changing the surface emissivity. Instead they radiate energy back onto the surface so that the net energy loss is reduced.”
I am not a scientist and yet even I can get this. So don’t accuse me of having no understanding of thermodynamics!!!
Actually, RW, what you should read is Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer” (1951) to get a better understanding of your own attitudes, and the movement you are defending.
Robin, That blogpost you quoted from Jo Nova is over six years old. You have cut ‘n’ pasted it whole – as if you were fed it. I do not believe you, who didn’t know who Willis Eschebach was, knew who Jo Nova was. You have been fed the link and the words. My guess is that you do not even understand what it is you have
postedcut ‘n’ pasted. However, that you have discovered Jo Nova, I do hope you took the opportunity to read her ‘Skeptics Handbook’.Unfortunately people like Mr. Whitlock poison the debate with the name calling and my expert is better than your expert rather than debating the facts. When this happens everyone else is drawn into the downward spiral. Typical of so many online debates that I participate in.
“My expert is better than your expert” – yes exactly. Because if you can’t prove your facts, which climate scientists are doing all the time, then its just fake news. This entire debate revolves around supporting evidence, of which there is loads to support man-made climate change, and who has the authority to convincingly present that evidence, in other words, yes, it IS about fields and specialisms, and so my climate scientist beats your non-climate scientist or even ‘amateur scientist with no science qualifications’…like Willis for example. If you don’t like that, tough.
robinwhitlock1966:
You wrote:
I went to that link and it provides no indication of any kind that you have any knowledge of thermodynamics, but it includes this
Firstly, you ‘put words’ in the mouth’ of Eschenbach who merely pointed out fact but you to assert he ascribed attribution of cause which he did not. However, even the UN Intergovernmental on Climate Change (IPCC) says there was no significant human contribution to global temperature rise prior to ~1940.
Secondly, the link you provide from that quotation does NOT provide evidence that “temperatures have been rising since the industrial revolution in reaction to humans putting loads of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon, up there”.
Indeed, thirdly and very importantly, in reality there is no empirical evidence for anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) global warming (AGW); n.b. no evidence, none, zilch, nada. In the 1990s Ben Santer claimed to have found some but that was almost immediately revealed to be an artifact of his improper data selection. Since then research to find some – any – evidence for the existence of AGW has been conducted worldwide at an annual cost of more than $2.5 billion p.a..
That is ‘big business’ and it is pure pseudoscience which has been a total failure: nothing to substantiate AGW has been found.
And the politicians who provide the research funds agree there has been NO scientific advance in the field.
Theoretical climate sensitivity was estimated to be between ~2°C to ~4.5°C for a doubling of CO2 equivalent at the start, and the IPCC now says it is estimated to 2.1°C to 4.4°C (with a mean value of 3.2°C).
Richard
Footnote
Science is a method which seeks the closest possible approximation to ‘truth’ by seeking information which refutes existing understanding(s) then amending or rejecting existing understanding(s) in light of found information.
Pseudocience is a method that decides existing understanding(s) to be ‘truth’ then seeks information to substantiate the understanding(s).
More bullshit
robinwhitlock1966:
I agree that I did quote your BS but you seem to have failed to read my refutation of it. Please do read my refutation and attempt to answer the facts it presents.
Richard
Wow, you really are full of it.
DaveS:
Oh goody! Whitlock has obtained a ‘mini -me’. That should add to the fun.
But, of course, it would have been helpful if he had obtained the help of somebody who knew something – anything – about climate change. Even Mosher and Stokes have run away for fear of being associated with the evidence-free, ill-informed and illogical blathering from Whitlock.
Richard
Next up on Eschenbach’s blog is this comment by A C Osborn:
“Don’t – massive tampering of the data by NASA & NAOO – give you slight pause?”
I am unsure of whether Osborn is supporting or criticising this ‘tampering of data’ claim here, but it gives me an opportunity to squash the claim (again) anyway.
NASA – the organisation that sent man to the moon…really? Brian Cox had said something to say about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxEGHW6Lbu8
So I covered this just now, but let’s go over it again:
The series of blog posts, written by climate change denier Paul Homewood (https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/01/20/massive-tampering-with-temperatures-in-south-america/) were highly publicised in the Daily Telegraph by Christopher Booker – who has regularly been criticised (for example by George Monbiot – https://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/oct/13/christopher-booker) – for his woeful knowledge and regular mistakes. Both Homewood and Booker focused on the adjustments made to temperature readings at particular monitoring stations around the world, claiming that these adjustments throw the entire science of global warming into question. However, this isn’t the case at all, because these adjustments, as I recently mentioned and explained, are a normal and important part of climate science.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. agency responsible for monitoring national and global temperature trends, has debunked these accusations of data manipulation on several occasions on its website. So, explaining again, over time, the thousands of weather stations around the world have undergone changes that often result in sudden or unrealistic discrepancies in observed temperatures requiring a correction, for example a building might be constructed nearby that affects the temperature readings collected by the measuring station, or the technology might be updated or changed etc. However, there is detailed station history available that helps to identify and correct the discrepancies. Some of the corrections required are relatively simple.
NOAA maintains about 1,500 monitoring stations, and gathers data from more than a thousand other stations in countries around the world. This data is shared freely by many national and international organisations. There are actually fewer monitoring stations today than there used to be; modern stations have better technology and are accessible in real time, unlike some older outposts no longer in use. The raw, unadjusted data from these stations is available from many sources, including the international collaboration known as the Global Historical Climatology Network and others.
As the years go by, all those stations undergo various types of changes: This can include shifts in how monitoring is done, improvements in technology, or even just the addition or subtraction of nearby buildings.
For example, a new building constructed next to a monitoring station could cast a shadow over a station, or change wind patterns, in such ways that could affect the readings. Also, the timing of temperature measurements has varied over time. And in the 1980s, most U.S. stations switched from liquid-in-glass to electronic resistance thermometers, which could both cool maximum temperature readings and warm minimum readings.
Monitoring organizations like NOAA use data from other stations nearby to try and adjust for these situations and the impacts they have on the accuracy of the data. This data from other stations is used to either raise or lower the temperature readings for a given station, a process known as homogenisation. The most significant adjustment around the world, according to NOAA, is actually for temperatures taken over the oceans, and that adjustment acts to lower rather than raise the global temperature trend.
These homogenisation methods have been validated and peer-reviewed. For example, a 2012 paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research confirmed the effectiveness of the homogenisation processes for NOAA’s network of stations, and even noted that “it is likely that maximum temperature trends have been underestimated.” In other words, there may have actually been more warming than NOAA has reported.
Another paper, from 2010 (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009JD013094/abstract), looked into the siting of U.S. monitoring stations in particular, and again found no problem with the homogenisation methods. “The adjusted [U.S. Historical Climatology Network] temperatures are extremely well aligned with recent measurements. … In summary, we find no evidence that the [conterminous United States] average temperature trends are inflated due to poor station siting.”
Berkeley Earth, a climate science nonprofit founded in early 2010 by scientists expressing skepticism at the time about global warming, has also found no undue manipulation of temperature data in its own analyses. Its page specifically on the Paraguayan Puerto Casado station that Homewood mentioned shows the adjusted readings do in fact show a rise in temperature over time.
An October 2011 paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011JD016187/full) provides an overview of the entire Global Historical Climatology Network’s temperature data set, including detailed information about adjustments. In total, at least one “bias correction” was applied to 3,297 of the 7,279 stations in use at some point since 1801, though most of these occurred from the 1950s through the 1980s. There are approximately equal numbers of adjustments in the positive and negative directions.
So the claim of ‘data tampering’ is just ridiculous actually.
RW, your apparent standard is that as Thomas Karl and the crew at NOAA have not confessed, they are utterly innocent of any wrongdoing.
robinwhitlock1966:
You say
Rubbish!
If I had a bias it would be supportive of NOAA because I accepted the nomination that NOAA made for me to be an Expert Peer Reviewer for the IPCC.
The issue is NOT the alteration of recent data to overcome recent changes such as the construction of buildings. The issue is the frequent alteration of data with the effect of causing e.g. this.
And if you were to read this then you would now how bad the problem is.
Richard
Thanks, Richard, for those links and your contribution to exposing this sh@m, which has cost humanity so dearly.
In comments to another post, I pointed the same facts out to Simon and Nick, but was dismissed as a Tin Foil Hat-wearing conspiracy theorist. As I said there, the fact of a conspiracy is not in doubt. One might however speculate as to motive.
richardscourtney
I accepted the nomination that NOAA made for me to be an Expert Peer Reviewer for the IPCC.
Repeated for effect. Pay attention Robin.
Seeing as you have named me directly do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?
The first is have you actually looked at any Temperature Raw, Intermediary and Final data yourself?
The second is I assume that you know how anomalies work?
If you do, can you explain it to me please?
Whitlock:
“. . .the evidence for human-caused climate change is incontrovertible.”
OK, we’re waiting. What exactly is that evidence?
/Mr Lynn
L. E. Joiner:
You write
Despite all efforts, no such evidence has been found. Anybody who did find such evidence would certainly be awarded two Nobel Prizes (i.e. Peace and Physics) and possibly a third (i.e. Chemistry).
So, the entire world eagerly awaits Whitlock’s answer to your question .
Richard
Oh bullshit. Loads of it, you’re just denying it. That kind of attitude is going to lead me towards ad hom attacks, or more likely just ignoring your crap.
[We recommend you answer the facts of the argument, not call the argument and those who present that argument excrement. .mod]
robinwhitlock1966:
No there is no evidence for anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) global warming (AGW); none, not any of any kind.
You do not present any such evidence because you are not able to provide some of something that does not exist. And the complete lack of any empirical evidence for AGW is why those who like you promote AGW use three kinds of pseudo-science.
Advocates of AGW use ‘argument from ignorance’.
This isn’t new. In the Middle Ages experts said, “We don’t know what causes crops to fail: it must be witches: we must eliminate them.” Now, experts say, “We don’t know what causes global climate change: it must be emissions from human activity: we must eliminate them.” Of course, they phrase it differently saying they can’t match historical climate change with known climate mechanisms unless an anthropogenic effect is included. But evidence for this “anthropogenic effect” is no more than the evidence for the effect of witches.
Advocates of AGW rely on not-validated computer models..
No model’s predictions should be trusted unless the model has demonstrated forecasting skill. But existing climate models have not existed for 20, 50 or 100 years, so they cannot have demonstrated forecasting skill.
Simply, the climate models’ predictions of the future have the same demonstrated reliability as the casting of chicken bones to predict the future.
Advocates of AGW misuse the Precautionary Principle .
They say we should stop greenhouse gas emissions in case the AGW hypothesis is right. But that turns the Precautionary Principle on its head.
Stopping the emissions would reduce fossil fuel usage with resulting economic damage. This would be worse than the ‘oil crisis’ of the 1970s because the reduction would be greater, would be permanent, and energy use has increased since then. The economic disruption would be world-wide. Major effects would be in the developed world because it has the largest economies. Worst effects would be on the world’s poorest peoples: people near starvation are starved by it.
The Precautionary Principle says we should not accept the risks of certain economic disruption in attempt to control the world’s climate on the basis of assumptions that have no supporting evidence and merely because they’ve been described using computer games.
Richard
Actual science as opposed to playstation science has found that as methane is released, in the arctic, it is consumed by bacteria and moss before it can enter the atmosphere.
Link?
There have been several:
US Geologic Survey http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016RG000534/full
Princeton University (no link to the paper, but the abstract is in this article, and if the full paper is important to you, I’m sure you can find it) https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/19/the-arctic-methane-emergency-appears-canceled-due-to-methane-eating-bacteria/
Or the American Geophysical Union http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL069292/pdf
I’m sure you’ve heard of these organizations? Or are they suddeny not scientists? There’s more, if you look for the science instead of the hype….
http://energyandenvironmentblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/ah-1930s-temperature-record.html
Next up on Eschenbach’s blog, a comment by Steve Case about the 1930’s temperature record:
“Wow, the cooling of the 1930’s temperature record has hit new lows”
The New Scientist has this (https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11639-climate-myths-the-cooling-after-1940-shows-co2-does-not-cause-warming/) to say:
“After rising rapidly during the first part of the 20th century, global average temperatures did cool by about 0.2°C after 1940 and remained low until 1970, after which they began to climb rapidly again.
The mid-century cooling appears to have been largely due to a high concentration of sulphate aerosols in the atmosphere, emitted by industrial activities and volcanic eruptions. Sulphate aerosols have a cooling effect on the climate because they scatter light from the Sun, reflecting its energy back into space.
The rise in sulphate aerosols was largely due to the increase in industrial activities at the end of the second world war. In addition, the large eruption of Mount Agung in 1963 produced aerosols which cooled the lower atmosphere by about 0.5 degrees C while solar activity levelled off after increasing at the beginning of the century.
The clean air acts introduced in Europe and North America reduced emissions of sulphate aerosols. As levels fell in the atmosphere, their cooling effect was soon outweighed by the warming effect of the steadily rising levels of greenhouse gases.”
I am going to skip forward now, but only a little bit, to a quite ridiculous statement by someone called Chimp, who says:
“There has been no statistically significant warming in the 21st century. The so-called “surface” data are totally bogus, anti-scientific fantasy perpetrated by lying, tough-feeding bureaucrats in order to try to make their GIGO models look less epically failed and to keep the CACA gravy train rolling.”
Of course, its utter bull. Chimp provides no evidence to support either claim. However, the Australian Government reported that 2013 was the hottest year ever on record: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/annual/aus/2013/ :
“2013 was Australia’s warmest year since records began in 1910. Mean temperatures across Australia have generally been well above average since September 2012. Long periods of warmer-than-average days have been common, with a distinct lack of cold weather. Nights have also been warmer than average, but less so than days.
The Australian area-averaged mean temperature for 2013 was +1.20 °C above the 1961–1990 average. Maximum temperatures were +1.45 °C above average, and minimum temperatures +0.94 °C above average. Temperatures were above average across nearly all of Australia for maximum, mean and minimum temperatures, with large areas of inland and southern Australia experiencing the highest on record for each.
Australia has experienced just one cooler-than-average year (2011) in the last decade. The 10-year mean temperature for 2004–2013 was 0.50 °C above average, the equal-highest on record. Averages for each of the ten-year periods from 1995–2004 to 2004–2013 have been amongst the top ten records.
The Australian mean rainfall total for 2013 was 428 mm (37 mm below the long-term average of 465 mm). In comparison with rainfall in all years since 1900, 2013 sits close to the median or mid-point of historical observations.
Annual rainfall was below average across a large region of the inland east centred on western Queensland and extending into northern South Australia and the Northern Territory. Rainfall was above average over parts of the Pilbara and the south coast of Western Australia, as well as along the east coast and northern Tasmania.”
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) confirmed that 2016 was the warmest year on record (https://library.wmo.int/opac/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=19835#.WQdBddy1vIU)
So Chimp’s statement is just utter nonsense. However, he goes on to say:
“The peaks in 1997-98 and 2015-16 are from super El Ninos, totally natural events. The recent one was fractionally warmer, but there is no reason to suppose that humans are responsible for the insignificant difference.”
….except that data from NOAA shows that the 2014-2016 El Nino didn’t even begin until October 2014 and was pretty borderline until mid-2015. It did add to the warming from late 2015, but if the El Nino factor is removed, 2016 is still the warmest year on record. So Chimp’s statement on this is again a load of nonsense.
Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather from Berkeley Earth says more on this here https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-newspaper-claim-about-global-temperature-is-deeply-misleading
“It is all but certain now that 2016 will shatter historical records to be the warmest year ever by a wide margin. It was helped along the way by a large El Niño event, which tends to be associated with warmer temperatures globally. But, even without El Niño, 2016 would likely still be the warmest year ever.”
He goes on to say that David Rose’s article in the Mail on Sunday in November 2016 was “deeply misleading” based on cherry-picking an obscure temperature record, the creator of which warned that it should be “used with caution”. Hausfather says that the warming of 2014, 2015 and 2016 has been driven by human greenhouse gas emissions, not El Nino.
Robin: “Hausfather says that the warming of 2014, 2015 and 2016 has been driven by human greenhouse gas emissions, not El Nino.”
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2014.5/to
So, if all the warming was due to GHGs then why did the atmospheric temperature revert back into the same range after the end of the El Nino?
“Hausfather says…”
Did you know that Hausfather has hung around this blog for years?
Andrew
robinwhitlock1966:
I am not interested in the self-serving assertions of Zeke Hausfather concerning newspaper articles about global average surface temperature anomaly (GASTA) time series..
I want an answer to this scandal.
Richard
Jeepers Richard, that is quite some scandal. Has there been any movement at all as a result of your very informative and troubling publication?
Dear me, still flogging that dead horse. Give it up. The scientists were cleared. You lost. Get over it.
Keitho:
Sorry, nothing.
Richard
robinwhitlock1966:
Nobody was “cleared”.
You are a loser who is losing.
Read the link I posted and try to learn from it because your pontificating about climate issues is combining with your very obvious total ignorance of the subject to make you look foolish.
Richard
That there has been no statistically significant warming this century is simply a fact. If you control for ENSO, the earth is in fact cooling.
Do a linear regression from now backwards and you’ll find no warming from late in the past century.
The years 2015 and 2016 were higher because of the super El Nino. Its effect will disappear, just as it did after the 1998 super El Nino. The only question is by how much and how rapidly the planet will get back to flatline.
That you don’t know this just shows how ill-informed you are about climatology.
OK, Robin, seems you were having problems with the laws on thermodynamics, and it now looks like you’re having trouble with statistics: What part of ‘not statistically significant’ do you have a problem with? Even if 2014 was the hottest (do you now by how much the warmists claim that margin was by any chance?), within statistical limits it makes little difference.
Let me help you here: In your teens your rate of growth would have been significant, but in your 40s (your 50-something, yes?) that slowed down and is now insignificant. However, I bet the height you achieved at your last birthday was the highest you have ever been – and the years before that were, in their turn. See how it works now? The point is, you are never going to hit the height that could have been extrapolated from your teen years’ growth rate.
Yes I’ve encountered that statistically significant argument before. Don’t worry, I’ll come to that eventually…
Still 499 to go….
BTW: You seemed not to have heard of Willis Eschenbach before this post. I wonder how many other sceptics you are ignorant of. Ever hear of Bob Carter? Chris Monckton? (No peeping!) etc… (not to mention some other luminaries on this very blog. Talk about a free education.).
Robin Whitlock:
– Once you’ve been fed the correct ‘line to take’ from either Desmog or SkS (I take it you’ve heard of John Cook?).
The next myth to demolish is the idea that CO2 isn’t responsible for climate change: http://energyandenvironmentblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/co2-as-driver-of-climate-change.html
Moving forward a little big on Eschenbach’s blog comments to another statement by Chimp, he says:
“That is, if CO2 indeed be the predominant driver of “climate change””
More utter nonsense. That carbon dioxide (CO2) is the driver of man-made climate change is basic science. The warming potential of CO2 has been known about since 1859 when John Tyndall conducted laboratory experiments to identify gases in the atmosphere that trap heat. He identified water vapour (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2) as two of the most important (http://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm). The warming potential of CO2 remains true even though it is only present in the atmosphere in small quantities, i.e. a few parts in ten thousand. Tyndall’s conclusions were supported by other scientists, such as Svante Arrhenius and Arvid Högbom, and many others afterwards.
There is also this question of whether CO2 lags (i.e. fails to keep up with) temperature. However, the science confirms that 90 percent of the warming followed an increase in atmospheric CO2. Skeptical Science (https://skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm) puts it like this:
Over the past 400,000 years CO2 and temperatures are closely correlated. However, data from Antarctic ice cores show that the initial changes in CO2 followed changes in temperatures by about 600 to 1000 years. This has led to deniers to conclude that CO2 can’t be responsible for current warming.
The problem with this claim is that the initial changes in temperature were caused by changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun. Orbital changes affects the amount of seasonal sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface. However, the lag between temperature and CO2 is explained by the oceans. As the temperatures of the oceans rise, they release CO2 into the atmosphere, which in turn increases the warming, leading to yet more CO2 being released. Thus the CO2 increases becomes the cause and effect of more warming. This is known as a positive feedback.
Shakun et al found that:
The Earth’s orbital cycles triggered warming in the Arctic approximately 19,000 years ago, causing large amounts of ice to melt, flooding the oceans with fresh water.
This influx of fresh water then disrupted ocean current circulation, in turn causing a seesawing of heat between the hemispheres.
The Southern Hemisphere and its oceans warmed first, starting about 18,000 years ago. As the Southern Ocean warms, the solubility of CO2 in water falls. This causes the oceans to give up more CO2, releasing it into the atmosphere.
The New Scientist (https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11659-climate-myths-ice-cores-show-co2-increases-lag-behind-temperature-rises-disproving-the-link-to-global-warming/) explains that this proves that “rising CO2 was not the trigger that caused the initial warming at the end of these ice ages”, but no scientist has claimed that to be the case anyway. Rather, it was to do with the orbital changes (Milankovitch Cycles). This does not in any way negate the fact that CO2 drives warming.
And so here we go, the next of vipers that is Eschenbach’s little circus of deniers, liars, cherry-pickers, pretend scientists, dreamers, fantasists, and so forth. I am really only posting here because you lot just insisted on whining that I do so. I couldn’t give a stuff about any of you. The people I do give a stuff about are all the people who don’t know as much as I do about climate change, haven’t got as much time as I do to research the subject, and thus who are more vulnerable to being seduced by your lies than I am. That’s why I am posting on my own blog first and tweeting, to get to them first and telling the truth, before you get to them with your lies. This space is basically a lost cause. You’re all here saying to each “well what if we do this, what if we do that”, pretending to be scientists by messing around the with the research that has already been done by real scientists and which confirms man-made climate change. Pretty pathetic really. You’re so mind-f***d by your own delusions that none of you are ever going to change. But it’s a useful template to go through Willis’ blog and all these comments just to show people elsewhere what kind of utter crap deniers spew, and what the truth of the matter is. Other than that, you’re all just a waste of space, as indeed all deniers are.
Comment of the YEAR!!!! You win Robin:
Please, Mods, make this a hilight. Tremendous hubris. ROFL
Harry Passfield:
You say a comment from Robin Whitlock shows
.
Yes, and I add that Whitlock seems to be learning the hard way that Nemesis followed hubris.
Richard
Robin: You said:
Yet, upthread you said:
question: Do you think it would be good policy if WUWT was to follow your rules about commenting? Do you think that this comment of yours would have been published? (Fortunately WUWT is a tolerant blog). Do you think you should tone down your vituperation? After all, for someone who says he has studied philosophy there’s a certain ‘tell’ in your comments that leads me to suspect you fear something. Losing?
“pretending to be scientists by messing around the with the research that has already been done by real scientists and which confirms man-made climate change.”
A high percentage of posters here are perfectly capable of reading and understanding scientific papers. Most of us rely on peer reviewed research and empirical data to base our opinions. The political statements made in the media are not supported by the underlying uncertainties in the data. There is very little support for the dangerous warming meme in the scientific literature, It is obvious to anyone familiar with the scientific method and how science is conducted in other fields that much of climate science ignores standard protocols. Definitive conclusions are only justified by definitive data. Treating hypothetical climate model projections as scientific truth is pseudoscience.
I became a skeptic in 1997 after reading a paper on solar weather. The paper used empirical measurements to show that climate models at that time were underestimating the solar contribution. Computer modelers came out of the woodwork to criticize the paper. The discussion was online. The author encouraged peer review hoping flaws could be found to improve the paper. The modelers refused to acknowledge the empirical measurements insisting that their non-physical assumptions were correct. That is a pattern that continues to this day. Empirical validation is the basis of science and the entire skeptic case.
In 2002 I started commenting that climate models and studies were overestimating CO2 rise by not taking into account the increase in biomass from enhanced photosynthesis. I was labeled a science denier even back then for those comments. It wasn’t until 2012 that James Hansen wrote a paper about it blaming the measured increase I predicted for the pause in temperature that was happening. If these scientists you trust are so smart. How can a layman be 10 years ahead of them?
Science is moving on. You can become knowledgeable or stay in denial of the empirical facts. Here is a list that represents our most current understanding of climate.
http://searchprivacy.co/?q=crumbling%20consensus%20no%20tricks%20zone&a=21&chnm=sv9-21-b789b162636134ea784f8a19cbc9d089#web
Robin. Nobody who isn’t already a confirmed believer or sceptic, really cares about climate any more and most of us know more about the issues than you do. Only a newby wouldn’t know who Willis was. We’re all marking time until the data shows which side is right and anything like a return to the pause will be the end of the road for the catastrophic versions of the future. Some of the tipping points have tipped and nothing happened, others have been rejected by the relative experts and their ongoing science. Only the generalist climate scientists and those with a spot in a favourable newspaper are still campaigning. The specialists are edging into the background because they know that the signs are for a lesser CO2 effect. Governments are getting bored of virtue signaling on renewables that are expensive white elephants. China was never really interested other than as a new revenue source. The US is out for another 4 years at least. The UK and the EU has more to worry about than CO2. Who is left to care?
Organisations bigger, better and more timely have produced their best efforts to sway the people you ‘give a stuff about’. They failed or you’d not be here. Either we’re really, really good at influencing the public or your side is really, really bad… or the science just isn’t convincing. If you cared about CAGW, you’d dwell on that.
robin wrote: “And so here we go, the next of vipers that is Eschenbach’s little circus of deniers, liars, cherry-pickers, pretend scientists, dreamers, fantasists, and so forth”
Start right off with a personal attack on everyone on WUWT. That will win the argument.
Robin writes
So finally we have the inevitable result of an individual who knows nothing about the AGW hypothesis, its supporting physics and many weaknesses, coming here thinking that quoting a bunch of mainstream science without addressing (or understanding or even listening to!) the arguments made, will be well received.
I’ll carry this on tomorrow…bye for now 🙂
It would have been nice to have an answer for this post that i made earlier:
Robin the reason that this SHOULD be a debate and not a war is as follows:
http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/how-settled-science-caused-a-massive-public-health-crisis/
Briefly this discusses the “settled science” of diet, massive publicity was given to the “consensual view” that saturated fats were the cause of obesity and that carbohydrates should take their place. The result a huge increase in obesity and type 2 diabetes causing death and misery to millions of people worldwide. Similarly another study discouraged parents from allowing their children to play in the sun without being covered from head to toe in clothing due to the risk in later life of skin cancer. The result was a resurgence of rickets and increase in the incidence of multiple sclerosis, both of which are related to vitamin D deficiency.
If AGW is grossly exaggerated (which I am sure it is and my degree in Dentistry makes me as ably qualified as yourself to debate this issue), then £trillions are going to be spent over the years to produce expensive and unreliable electricity over which people have no control. I did have control over what I and my family ate and wore in the sunshine so we are all healthy because I did not take any notice of what was poor science. There is nothing I can do about expensive, unreliable energy, I am lucky and can afford to pay for it, but many people can’t, just think what these £trillions could do for mankind over the coming decades and then remind me why this should be a war and not a debate.
All you have done so far is “carry on”…. …
we’ll see, so far your behavior has been below par, and quite insulting.
Good. I don’t mind insulting deniers at all actually….
i don’t think this is a good forum for a debate unless the comments are restricted only to you (Willis) and the antagonist – otherwise the result turns out chaotic
JEyon May 1, 2017 at 12:30 pm
I had the same thought. I wonder if a new thread could be started with just the two of them. Limit the two man debate to a day or two, agreed to by both parties, and then let them go at it. I would follow that thread.
JEyon, teapartygeezer: Willis would end up talking to himself. Robin Whitlock would not turn up – in any meaningful way – other than to abuse him.
Harry … I agree that would be the probable result. But it would have the advantage of showing Whitlock to be the unknowledgeable blowhard that he is. I have to give him credit, though, for finally showing up here … several days later, after realizing no one was going to read his blog or debate over there. Of course, he’s the one who decided to be distracted by, and responding to, other commenters, here, rather than restricting his replies to Willis.
that’s an assumption (an ad hominem) – now we’ll never know
by going one-on-one with Willis – the debate could have been as focused as the 2 debaters could (and were willing) to make it
teapartygeezer already made the point i wanted to make
nicely said
“i don’t think this is a good forum for a debate”
It’s not really a debate. Robin Whitlock is just posting links to talking points and trashing the residents of WUWT.
TA … True, but only the ones who have been following this really, really long thread are aware of that. If the two could face off, isolated from other commenters/distractions, it would highlight just how weak his arguments are … not to mention how weak his character is.
This was never actually going to be a real, or fair, debate. In a real public debate, you have so many debaters on one side, and the same amount of debaters on the other side, with a chair to ensure the discussion is balanced with each side having equal opportunity to discuss. As I explained before, this isn’t a debate, it’s an ambush, a snake pit, a forum within which to attack, harass and humiliate. This is why I’ve taken the approach I have.
[Gosh you are really suffering from a lack of self-awareness, in the previous comment to me you said:
“Good. I don’t mind insulting deniers at all actually….”
See, right there, your hypocrisy burns brightly for all to see – Anthony]
Robin writes
Most of which has been by you. You’re right its not a debate and never was going to be. You’re not equipped to debate the issues. Cut and Paste isn’t debate.
Robin wrote: “this isn’t a debate, it’s an ambush, a snake pit, a forum within which to attack, harass and humiliate.”
I wonder if Einstein would shrink from introducing his theories in a forum like WUWT? Do you think Einstein would be afraid he would be ambushed? No, Einstein would be the one doing the ambushing because he knows what he is talking about. You only get ambushed if you are uncertain of the facts.
I’m waiting for Robin Whitlock to attack the UAH chart. I imagine he will tell us it has been “adjusted”! and post a link from someone to that effect. Then we can tell Robin that NASA says UAH is the most accurate temperature gauge we have, and UAH doesn’t show the temperatures steadily climbing higher like the bastardized, bogus surface temperature charts do. The surface temperature charts being the only thing Robin and his army can hang their hats on as evidence for CAGW. The GISS flim-flam man has Robin and the other alarmists under his spell.
Without a doubt. It is only through denial of the best data from satellites that true believers like Robin can maintain their “faith”. I already quoted RSS above and Robin had no response. I complete destroyed his entire argument with one piece of empirical evidence.
It is now beyond obvious that Robin is just another religious follower not unlike the followers of Harold Camping.
[snip – don’t be rude -mod]
I’m assuming Robin’s snipped comment had nothing to do with satellite charts? 🙂
On melting glaciers (in case I mess this up and my comment doesn’t go where intended.)
Let’s say the average annual temperature at which a specific glacier begins to melts is called its melt point. Since melting requires a lot of energy this is likely to be a slow process. In a ‘hottest year evah’ it may well melt a little bit faster, in a cooler year a bit slower (and of course grow a bit more than usual in the next winter). Either way it will continue to melt as long it’s melt point is exceeded. Now if the melt point was reached soon after the end of the little ice age, over all, it will continue to melt and will continue to do so even if the average temperature where it is declines quite a lot.
So I don’t think melting glaciers prove a great deal per se. One would need to go to a lot if effort to accurately determine the actual rate of melting consistently over a reasonable period of time, and take into account other factors like the increase in altitude of the place where the melting takes place to draw a meaningful conclusion. A lot easier to read a thermometer …
I prefer to look at it this way. The tide comes in. The tide goes out. The outgoing tide continues to flow at any point below the high-water mark until the very instant it is met by the incoming tide.
Given the way the sun is behaving at present I think our focus should be on the incoming tide. If not get ready to swim!
robinwhitlock1966 May 1, 2017 at 8:42 am
And so here we go, the next of vipers that is Eschenbach’s little circus of deniers, liars, cherry-pickers, pretend scientists, dreamers, fantasists, and so forth.
Did you mean “nest” of vipers? Being a professional writer, when stooping to insults, could you at least get your grammar correct?
As for lies and such, I challenged you, and cited IPCC AR5. So, you being grammar challenged and all (despite being a professional writer), and stooping to a series of insults rather than any meaningful debate of the facts (despite being a professional writer) perhaps you could elaborate. Who are you accusing of the lie?
Me? Or the IPCC?
I was using a mobile last night, small buttons, so the odd typo is unsurprising, but it’s morning in the UK now and I am back on my desktop
Which doesn’t address the issue I raised re the IPCC. So, you’ve got excuses for typos, but no response to the actual issue? Is that correct?
We’re still waiting, Whitlock:
Where is the evidence that “human-caused climate change is incontrovertible”?
/Mr Lynn
While this has been somewhat entertaining, it appears to me that Mr. Whitlock’s arguments are primarily ad hominem and appeals to authority. He seems to be blissfully unaware that these are fallacies. In my view, as soon as one party to an argument stoops to name calling and profanity, he has lost and the debate is over. In score it Willis and the WUWT skeptics 10; Whitlock DQ’d.
It is not worth wasting more time on this one
robinwhitlock1966 May 1, 2017 at 6:09 am
Typical! Mr. Whitlock accuses me of having “clowns” … tell us, Robin, how that works? Am I paying them to be my clowns? Is there some kind of clown adoption process?
Dude, you are beclowning yourself with all of these endless nasty ad hominem attacks on people you’ve never met, while you are totally ignoring the actual science.
w.
Great googly moogly. The only thing worse than having this guy hang around his own blog talking to himself and marshaling his army while not answering the questions was coming here and not answering them in mile long comments.
Not only does he not understand the science or even the basis of science he also really stinks at using words as weapons, as he weirdly boasted upthread.
There was only one little fish in the barrel. Can’t we declare him DOA and end the pain? I’m starting to feel a little sorry for the poor jamoke.
Actually not going to bother posting my responses to comments directly on here anymore. If you want to see them, you can visit my blog. This post though concerns a comment posted directly to my blog. A clarification of a misunderstanding about Hansen’s paper of 1988: http://energyandenvironmentblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/hansen-1988.html
With the attitude you display towards people here, why would anyone bother to visit your blog? It’s all vinegar.
Fine. Don’t then.
Cowardice and bad spelling:
So far Mr. Whitlock has not impressed anyone. I doubt he could handle either Willis or I on a live stage debate, he’d somehow claim it was unfair while hurling insults.
Lol, total lack of self-awareness, with essential zero readers, zero comments, zero reach.
A response to David A’s comment regarding the Troposphere posted by him on April 29th: http://energyandenvironmentblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/tropospheric-warming.html
[This is a strange way to respond. You post a link to one of your own comments on your blog, why not just clip and paste it here? If you are just trying to drive traffic to your blog that’s a bit cheap of you but if it is for technical reasons I would be happy to clip and paste it here on your behalf. Let us know. . . mod]
Note to Mods: Not only is this strange but the comment wasn’t even ‘in stream’ with the original blog post, so it appeared entirely out of context and stood alone. Therefore, no-one reading Whitlock’s blog could easily see the direction of travel in ‘the debate’ (which was as much a debate as saying theat Mann’s HS was all proxies.)
This is going nowhere. I have the feeling that Mr Whitlock has no intention of debating whatsoever. I have asked him twice why he thinks this a war not a debate, he has not replied. The only conclusion that I can draw, especially with his lack of scientific background, is that his stance is political. I would guess politically he is very Left, a Corbynista. The irony of this is that Jeremy Corbyn’s brother, Piers (an Astrophysicist but also Left leaning), has this website: http://www.weatheraction.com which totally bunks AGW and states categorically that it is the Sun that is the main driver of climate.
‘Very Left’? Ha, thanks for the laugh. Nope. Left-of-Centre ecosocialist. Or if you want to be exact, Green Party supporter. I am not even sure Corbyn is a Marxist or a Trot or anything like that, his supporters deny it. But I am certainly not that far left. For a start, Corbyn wants to renationalise the energy market. I am certainly not in favour of that, given that most of the real advances in renewable energy are being made now by the private sector, including big corporations like Google, Apple and Amazon. And besides, maintaining a habitable planet by stopping climate change isn’t a Left versus Right issue. It’s an issue between those who realise the planet is in danger and want to protect it, and those with a bias towards the fossil fuel industry who basically don’t give a monkeys as long as things stay how they’ve always been, i.e. dominated by fossil fuels. At the moment, given that most of the world is leaning towards clean energy and action on climate change, YOU are losing. I am glad to say….
Oh well, I wasn’t a million miles away. As for losing, your assumption that I care more for my lifestyle and don’t give a monkeys about the planet is untrue. I just don’t believe that an increase in CO2 of 0.01% or even 0.02% is going to put the planet at risk. Being green becomes a better option when people are more prosperous, when sewage is treated, when factories dispose of their waste safely, when child labour is unnecessary. That cannot happen when electric power is expensive and unreliable.
Aha, you say, with onshore wind power currently the cheapest form of energy generation…besides, there are loads of costs with fossil fuels not taken into account, aside from carbon emissions….smog, urban air pollution, etc. Still, up to you. Coal is dying anyway, North Sea oil peaked in the 70’s, and oil generally is on its way to peaking globally, with gas not far behind. The momentum is moving away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy, and you’re not going to stop that.
robinwhitlock1966:
You say
and onshore wind power is the highest cost form of electricity generation except for offshore bird swatters.
Subsidies hide the very high cost of wind powered subsidy farms from the price of their electricity but we poor electricity consumers pay the total cost.
If you want to know the true nature of the bird swatters then read this.
Richard
Robin Whitlock won’t comment anymore, he’s taken his ball and run home to safety:
He writes on his blog:
robinwhitlock1966 May 2, 2017 at 7:15 am said
“And besides, maintaining a habitable planet by stopping climate change isn’t a Left versus Right issue. ”
Robin reveals his ignorance. He is going to get all sciency on us and stop the climate from changing. LOL, this poor fellow is nothing but a parrot who has little comprehension regarding the words he copies and pastes.
Robin, you say:
I think you may find, with a little bit of unbiased research that you are wrong on all three counts. Which makes me wonder: did you/have you read ‘The Limits to Growth’? It’s a Green handbook, I guess (I still have my copy). If so, do you believe the predictions that were put forward in it? And do you know how wrong they have turned out?
Gee, that’s ages old…do yourself a favour and compost it….
Robin: To be precise, that piece of toilet paper from the Club of Rome is 45 years old. I guess your comment would mean that when your similar beliefs are 45 years’ old we can compost them too. (as it happens, your beliefs and atttitudes you have displayed here have a lot in common with a compost heap)
Okay. I am done now. Pointless communicating with anyone on here at all. However, be in no doubt I will continue to ridicule you all on Twitter and elsewhere. Good riddance!
LOL! Looks like a clear case of retreat, from Whitlocks own blog:
Enjoy the safety!
LOL indeed — retreat back into your safe-space. But unfortunately we’re again left w/nobody capable of a rational debate.
He might, possibly, be a decent enough chap in civvy street but on this showing he comes over as someone who knows nothing about the climate and the debate. Having encountered people here who are nothing like his mental construction of what a denier is he has thrown in the towel and run off into the distance crying.
One day we might have a decent debate again. The only one I can remember was when the “potholer” gave it a go with Chris Moncton, apart from that nothing much. We had the Wiki guy try for a while but he failed and we have had Betts from the Met Office who was quite decent.
This chap was just rank. Poor in knowledge, poor in ability and poor in character.
Keitho: I shall always remember this fool for his quote further up thread:
Harry Passfield May 2, 2017 at 10:58 am
Ah, but does he care about all three of them, or just one or two?
w.
I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
Gotta love the Python!
w.
https://youtu.be/b5R4-ryRLAY
Think of all the CO2 involved in the French taunt. On second thought, I’d rather not.
Not to mention methane.
Congratulations! You just handed Whitlock all the ammo he needs to smear skeptics everywhere, while simultaneously lowering yourself to his level of name-calling and ad hom attacks … and dragging us down with you. You’ve just embarrassed yourself … and us. What were you thinking?
Apparently this is another cultural reference that has gone right over my head. Never saw the movie. Apologies.
Geezer,
If you haven’t seen the movie, then you don’t get what Tim was about.
Robin did not realize he was stepping into the deep end, when he first decided to test his skills on WUWT. He’s a pretty quick learner though, at least on that aspect, and has pulled himself back out of the pool.
Robin doesn’t really want to debate. He doesn’t want to have to think he may be wrong about the subject, and debate will throw all that uncertanty in his face. I think that is the main reason the alarmists want to shut up the skeptics. They want to maintain the delusional world they are living in, and don’t want skeptics coming in and bursting that bubble. I understand. It is traumatic to have one’s worldview ripped out from under you.
I will have to assume that he still regards that war will overcome debate, because my question still remains unanswered. He also did not argue against my point that affordability of Green issues can only occur during prosperity. I can take the next logical step which is that when a war is waged, it is not the concepts of right or wrong that win, it is superiority of strategy, tactics and military might. The latter is not relevant here, but the former two are so I think we have the WC Fields strategy: “If you can’t blind them with science, baffle them with bullshlt”
Nope. Can’t let this rest.
I’m still struck with the quote from Whitlock that “The people I do give a stuff about are all the people who don’t know as much as I do about climate change”.
As he’s a philosophy grad he should know that this is a classic tell for a Walter Mitty syndrome. Failing that, it is the worst case of Dunning-Kruger I have ever come across:
(And as Whitlock likes citations: It’s HERE.
Robin, I sincerely hope you come to your senses before you do more damage to younger minds and before you find that a large part of your intellectual life has been wasted on a perverted crusade, a crusade designed only to make some rich men very much richer – and some poor people very much poorer.
robinwhitlock1966 May 2, 2017 at 9:16 am
Robin, you’ve put your finger on the very problem. You claimed that you wanted to debate climate change. However, all you’ve done here is to unsuccessfully try to ridicule me, Anthony, and everyone who has tried to engage with you.
So I’m quite certain that you will “continue to ridicule”, as that is all you’ve done to date, and it seems to be the only weapon in your arsenal.
Now, if you ever decide to grow up and move past ridicule, let me suggest that you investigate the strange concepts called “evidence” and “observations”. You know, facts. Because that’s what we deal in here, and that is what science deals in. As Robert Heinlein once said, and he could have been speaking directly to you,
My best wishes to you,
w.
robinwhitlock1966 said
As both richard and I have pointed out, and as you have studiously ignored, the so-called “investigations” were whitewashes. What’s more, the “scientists” involved only escaped being charged in court because the statute of limitations had expired.
Now, after that was pointed out to you, if you were honestly interested in the truth you’d have read up on your foolish claims and found that they were false. Instead, you prefer to keep your eyes closed and crow about your imaginary victory.
Sorry, amigo. You lost. You’re just too scared to read up on the truth and face that fact.
Get over it, indeed.
w.
Robin, here’s an example of how we advance learning here …
A C Osborn May 2, 2017 at 9:21 am
A C, I can’t find any data to show that there is any kind of plateau in global emissions of CO2. Do you have a link?
=======================
Now Robin, when people ask you a question like that, folks like you and Slandering Sou over at HotWhopper start foaming at the mouth and calling them all kinds of names and making stupid allegations about their credentials. And when you’re not foaming yourself, you’re re-tweeting Sou’s foaming. Pathetic.
However, we strive here at WUWT to not get involved in that ad hominem nonsense.
So at some point, A C will come up with his link, and we’ll discuss it, and we’ll all learn something.
Perhaps you should take notes so this kind of interaction becomes clearer to you. It’s called “science”. Here’s how it works. Someone makes a scientific claim. Someone else questions it. The first person provides further facts, evidence, citations, mathematics, or whatever supports the claim. If other people can’t poke holes in the claim, it is accepted as (temporarily) valid … until someone else comes along to overthrow it.
It is that adversarial nature of science that you don’t seem to grasp. You think it is a “melee”, but it’s just the give-and-take of scientific debate. Not only that, but if someone can actually poke a hole in the claim, IT DOESN’T MATTER IF THEY ARE THE JANITOR AND NEVER WENT TO SCHOOL!!!
That’s the part you constantly seem to be missing. All that matters is the science. The people making the scientific claims, their sex, their race, their education, their personal habits, their credentials, all of that is MEANINGLESS …
… and despite being meaningless, that’s almost all you talk about.
Sadly,
w.
Willis, it is based on the BP numbers quoted here.
http://euanmearns.com/future-atmospheric-co2-scenarios/
There was also this showing earlier data
https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions
Plus this
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060051707
and this
https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2017/march/iea-finds-co2-emissions-flat-for-third-straight-year-even-as-global-economy-grew.html
Thanks, A C. I had asked:
I looked at the BP numbers. I cannot find a “plateau in global emissions”. Nor can I find any disconnect between emissions and atmospheric levels. Here are those two graphs, from the BP numbers and the Mauna Loa numbers.
I see no sign of any plateau, just the normal year to year variation. Note the reduction in emissions due to the recent global financial meltdown.
Here is a scatterplot of the two …
Again, I see no signs of any disconnection between the two.
Best regards, A C, and thanks for the links,
w.
==============
And if Robin Whitlock is still around, that’s how you participate in a scientific debate … using facts, not attacks on the character of your opponent.
w.
I think this was the source of the information. My gut instinct when I read it was that someone was lying about how much coal they were burning in their shiny new power stations.
https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2017/march/iea-finds-co2-emissions-flat-for-third-straight-year-even-as-global-economy-grew.html
“Global emissions from the energy sector stood at 32.1 gigatonnes last year, the same as the previous two years,”
The plateau was for 2014, 2015, 2016, so wouldn’t show up in data ending 2014.
Willis:
A C Osborn provided this link
https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2017/march/iea-finds-co2-emissions-flat-for-third-straight-year-even-as-global-economy-grew.html
which begins saying
That seems to be a clear agreement with the statement of A C Osborn saying
Also, the histogram on that IEA page shows the rate of the emissions slowed to provide the “plateau”.
The Mauna Loa data is at
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/full.html
It shows there was no divergence from the near linear rise of the last three decades during “the last 3 or so years”.
Simply, A C Osborn provided ample evidence to substantiate his statements that said
However, it is possible that the IEA is wrong because it is possible that some countries provided inaccurate emissions data.
Richard
So that’s it then. All done and dusted; the debate is over. What debate? I hear you ask. You’re right, there was none, leastwise from the person who called for it. Robin Whitlock picked a battle of wits well above his capability and then proceeded to wage a proxy war (his word) on behalf of SkS, Desmog and a few others well known to us. He gave up the field and slunk away. In time to come we shall tell our children about this week and remind them to never fall for the ‘Whitlock Effect’, which is what I shall now call this cut ‘n’ paste form of debate. If nothing else, Robin Whitlock has added a new eponymous law to the lexicon of debate; it follows such great laws as Godwin. I’m sure many here can think of a few others.
Thank you Robin.
Harry, although it is hard to disagree with you, you have to give Robin credit for researching that amount of cut & paste.
Unfortunately like all warmists he only seems to research the the information that agrees with his world view.
As the world cools over the next few years (and maybe more) perhaps he will try looking at why the warmists are actually wrong.
But I doubt it.
AC: I don’t believe he researched it. Some of it was very obscure (a six-year-old blog post from Jo Nova, for example). I believe he just dumped a ton of stuff from SkS and Desmog. Also, he gave the distinct impression that he didn’t know the key players in the AGW scam/blogs/science.
It will happen again with someone else being the keyboard warrior, in the meantime Robin might pop back just before this thread is archived so he can get the last word in and then publicise it to discredit this website. Moderators please keep an eye out to draw your attention to my post (sorry) Nazi.
Also, he gave the distinct impression that he didn’t know the key players in the AGW scam/blogs/science.
Agreed. He also didn’t seem to understand what the main issues even are. Also didn’t respond to points about the IPCC reports. I don’t think he knows who they are either. There were several science articles discussed in detail in posts following this one, had he read them and even skimmed through the comments, he would have seen the actual science being discussed right down to arguments about the proper applications of various laws of physics, and the “nest of vipers” he so despises debating each other, some of them taking positions that would surprise him.
In brief, he’s lost an opportunity to find out what the actual issues are and become the educated climate journalist he claims to be. Perhaps he’s still lurking here and will see this comment, but I sort of doubt it.
Oh well, the “N” word must be off the list now!
Yes, and I don’t appreciate that.
The guy had everyone’s attention. Epic fail.
I take it Mr. Whitlock’s forces have been deployed? Perhaps elsewhere . . .
Hahahaahahahaha.. oh boy. The CC people with their fake stats and insults are in full bloom. For 80% of Earth’s known climate history Earth has been warmer and wetter than it is now. Earth’s current 400PPM CO2 benchmark is only 1/4 of that it has been in the past. (1600PPM CO2). Historically, CO2 rises 600 years after warming has occurred. That means kiddos, that the atmosphere must warm FIRST not CO2 rising first when atmospheric warming occurs. Which means kiddos the alarmists have cause and affect reversed.
Last but not least. Warm = Life Cold = Death
Most of our evolution and bio diversity has occurred in warmer temps.