From:Canada Free Press
By Dirck T. Hartmann Thursday, July 3, 2008
(Editor’s Note: To many in the know, Dirck T. Hartmann, who worked on the Apollo Space Program and many other significant NASA projects, was a fighter pilot in WWII, flying P38s. So when this gifted scientist/engineer/physicist and 87-year-old hero felt compelled to answer the questions of Man Made Global Warming, not only his son and grandchildren knew he had something to say with factual substance, truth and knowledge. What he has to say is clear and concise and should be read by everyone.)
What is your carbon footprint? That is the wrong question to ask. A more meaningful question is–How much carbon dioxide does it take to grow the wheat required to produce a loaf of bread? Or–How much carbon dioxide does it take to grow the corn for the chicken feed required to produce a dozen eggs?
Far from being a pollutant, man along with every animal on land, fish in the sea, and bird in the air is totally dependent on atmospheric carbon dioxide for his food supply.
Some politicians complain that the United States with only 3% of the world population uses 25% of the energy. But the clean carbon dioxide which we produce is increasing food production everywhere on earth. China, on the other hand, is building new power plants at a record rate using the abundant domestic supply of coal they have and has now passed the United States as the leading producer of carbon dioxide. Although their coal has a high sulfur content, they are building the new plants without any pollution controls. The sulfur dioxide which these power plants are releasing to the atmosphere, besides smelling like rotten eggs is, in sunlight, readily converted to sulfur trioxide, the highly solublegas responsible for most acid rain.
Photosynthesis is the process by which plants, using energy from sunlight, convert carbon dioxide and water into high energy fuels. It is responsible for all the fuel that feeds forest fires, and for the rapid grow-back of fuel after a fire. But even with the hundreds of millions of tons of coal and the billions of barrels of oil and gasoline that are burned annually, the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere remains about .04%.
It has been estimated that more than two hundred billion tons of atmospheric carbon are fixed yearly by photosynthesis, 10%to 20% by land plants, and the remaining 80%to 90% by plant plankton and algae in the ocean, which constantly resupply us with oxygen. Atmospheric carbon dioxide acts like a thermostat for plant growth, increases triggering vast blooms of ocean algae, and spurts in the rate of growth of land plants. As long as man burns coal and oil responsibly, that is with pollution controls that minimize the production of acid rain, the earth can never have too much carbon dioxide. The plants will not permit it.
Anyone who has lived in a desert area where the relative humidity is frequently below 5%, knows that dry air is a lousy green house gas. It can be 115 degrees F (46 degrees C) during the day yet cool off so rapidly that a sweater is needed two or three hours after sunset. Despite the heat sink of the ground with rocks hot enough to fry an egg, the heat is radiated rapidly away through the dry air to the clear night sky. Since dry desert air has about the same .04% concentration of carbon dioxide as air everywhere else, it is not credible to conclude that carbon dioxide is causing global warming
Water vapor is the most effective greenhouse gas by far With high humidity, even without cloud cover, the night air cools at a rate so slow as to be nearly imperceptible, particularly if you are trying to sleep without air conditioning.
High humidity is the reason nights are so balmy in the tropics. At 100 degrees F and 100% relative humidity, water vapor accounts for only 2% of the atmosphere. It has a greater effect than all other greenhouse gases combined but, since it cannot be regulated, is rarely mentioned as a greenhouse gas.
If human activity is not the cause, why are the ice sheets on the earth poles receding? They are melting for the same reason that the polar caps on Mars are melting. For the 200 years or so that a record of sun spot activity has been kept, it has been observed that global temperatures on earth correlate closely with sun spot activity,very low activity corresponding to a mini ice age, and high activity to global warming.
Every second the sun converts 564 million tons of hydrogen into 560 million tons of helium, consuming its mass at the rate of 4 million tons per second. It has been doing this for 4.5 billion years and has about 4.5 billion years to go before all its hydrogen is used up. At that time it will have consumed less than 1% of its mass. This enormous solar furnace is responsible for climate change as well as all weather on earth.
The U.S. has a domestic supply of coal that is alone sufficient to meet our present power needs and projections for growth for at least 1,000 years, even without building any new nuclear power plants. Burning the coal responsibly and releasing the carbon locked up in it as clean carbon dioxide will benefit crop yields all over the earth. The great atmospheric patterns of air movements ensure a steady supply of carbon dioxide for crop growth, and a steady supply of oxygen for animals and people. To increase the rate at which photosynthesis removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, a respected scientist proposed to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, seeding the ocean to trigger algae blooms. This practical, inexpensive, highly effective means for sequestering carbon dioxide would benefit the food chain in the oceans and increase fish populations. But because it did not impose hardships, require trading carbon credits, punish the U.S. or any other nation, or require increased governmental control, the IPCC rejected it. The IPCC uses the hoax of man made global warming to increase its power and that of a corrupt, anti-American United Nations that has proven itself impotent in combating world wide acts of terrorism, genocide in Sudan, the real threat of nuclear proliferation in the mid-east from Iran and Syria, or human rights violations in China and Africa.
Our mainstream media uses every opportunity to hype the hoax of man made global warming by repeated reporting of data and events that appear to support it, and ignoring those that contradict it. When the NFC championship game In 2007 between the Packers and the New York Giants was played at Green Bay in record low temperatures and blizzard conditions, there was no mention of global cooling; nor was there any in 2007 when below freezing temperatures threatened the vegetable crops in the south and the citrus crops in Florida. The drought in California is the result of colder than normal conditions in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, and the fact that ocean temperatures along the Pacific coast have been falling for the last three years is never mentioned. But after hurricane Katrina we were fed a host of dire predictions which warned of the increasing severity of storms, the melting of the polar ice caps, and the flooding of coastal areas from rising sea level, if we do not drastically reduce the release of greenhouse gasses to combat global warming. Which greenhouse gasses is not specified. We already have pollution controls in the smokestacks of most power plants, steel mills, and factories that minimize the release of sulfur dioxide.
The only completely uncontrolled exhaust gas is carbon dioxide, and photosynthesis automatically controls its atmospheric concentration for us.
Three billion years ago when the earth’s atmosphere was an unbreathable brew of noxious gases with almost no oxygen, a small green algae evolved in the ocean which, using the energy from sunlight over a few million years, completely altered the earth’s atmosphere. This oceanic green algae, the first plant to use photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide and water into high energy fuel, was of course followed by the evolution of an almost limitless number and variety of carbon dioxide consuming plants.
Fortunately for mankind and all animals, fish,and birds, all of whom are totally dependent on plants, the oceanic green algae continues to perform its magic in the oceans of the earth today. Every three centuries all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and dissolved in the waters of the earth goes through the cycle photosynthesis, decay, photosynthesis, with the cycle constantly renewing the earth’s supply of oxygen.
People on the left claim global warming is real, a threat to the continued existence of mankind, and the debate as to its cause is over! Although none of this is true, it nevertheless is what four of my grandchildren were taught in high school. Most politicians on the left have little respect for truth and no regard for clarity, and apparently many high school teachers reflect their views. My oldest granddaughter just graduated from MITwhere she was spared the political rhetoric of the left on global warming. However Caltech’s Argyros Professor and professor of chemistry, in an article titled “Powering the Planet”states “The carbon dioxide we produce over the next 40 years, and its associated effects will last for a timescale comparable to modern human history. This is why, within the next 20 years we either solve this problem or the world will never be the same.” This is nonsense. It ignores the more than 200 billion tons of carbon that is sequestered yearly through photosynthesis from carbon dioxide In the atmosphere. Since this has been known for 40 years, I can only assume he is politically motivated to make such a statement. Hopefully man made global warming will come to be recognized for the hoax It truly is.
Dirck T.Hartmann is a retired Aerospace Engineer living in Huntington Beach, CA.
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Brendan H.
Have you heard about Lysenko and the thousands of biologists etc following his dicta in the USSR? If not, google it. It in very instructive in that when science becomes a political tool thousands of scientists may parrot the dogma to keep their posts. And also the destruction that happened to USSR agriculture by following his theories.
When a political body, as the UN, the EU etc come out behind a theory with rhetoric forbidding questionings and stating “the science is settled” the smell of Lysenkoism is in the air, and yes “, AGW is regarded as a politically motivated” if not conspiracy, plan. A worldview is being imposed politically on false science.
[…] found another really good article on global_warming yesterday. I have also decided to add http://www.wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com to my list of links […]
Nice irony there, fred.
Therefore, Hartmann is claiming that AGW theory is a leftist hoax, that the proponents of AGW are deliberating peddling a falsehood; in other words, that thousands of climate scientists around the world are cheating in order to produce a pre-determined outcome and then blatantly lying about what they’re doing.
Michael Crichton has documented the history of these psuedo-science driven politically motivated frauds.
http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html
And see my link above for the garbage peddled by climate scientists. Read the article. It doesn’t matter if it’s fraud, because it’s complete junk. Evasion and obsfurcation to avoid the blindingly obvious; increased CO2 causes increased plant growth.
But the dogma is that no good results from increased CO2 therefore any and all potentially beneficial consequences must be evaded and obsfurcated away.
As I said, most climate science is junk. Trash peddled to the ignorant.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0605_030605_climatechange.html
fred; These are the one I feel for most. (00:12:28, 5 July.)
“…the futures of my nieces’ cousins’ grand children, twice removed.”
How can we help?
As one who would probably be considered a “person on the left”, I can say that not all on the left believe human-caused carbon dioxide emissions are the problem some say they are. Leaning towards political comment instead of science and data not only dilutes the discussion, but decreases the credibility of the writer. The comments of the last paragraph do a disservice to the rest of his observations. Some of his statements also need more facts, as I have been unable to find any credible studies saying we can burn coal at our currently increasing rate and have it last 1000 years. More constructive scientific discussion and less knee-jerk politics all around would be a good thing, IMHO.
I am concerned that our problem is not global warming (though human impact on the environment needs to be carefully assessed, discussed, and understood for our own good). I believe the eventual cost rise that will occur for our current fuel sources, combined with our ever increasing world population and the economic ascent of large countries, will pose far greater problems in the next 50 years. We will need a lot of good science, both meteorological and social, and a lot of clear-headed, open-minded discussion to mitigate those problems. I hope this blog and its commenters will lean in that direction and be an educational means to constructive change rather than a political rant space – there are quite enough of those already.
– Tim http://www.timprosserfuturing.wordpress.com
If we all acted with real care and true love for the planet, ‘walking the walk’ as opposed to ‘talking the talk’, I believe it would be in a better state than it is.
After that, if you feel like something on a lighter note, something to cheer you up, check out my blog http://www.gerrardtwilson.wordpress.com. Thanks.
The use of the word “hoax” to describe AGW is not accurate, simply because there is no one word that accurately describes it. It was an obscure hypothesis from the 1880’s up until 1979 when Thatcher, who had a BSc degree in chemistry latched on to it for political reasons, and who then promoted the issue internationally. Thatcher’s UK party also supported AGW as it provided a perfect excuse to downgrade coal (and thus the political power of the National Union of Mineworkers, who opposed them) and push nuclear power instead. Nuclear powers’ public image had been damaged considerably by the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island incidents. Then, the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research was established, and the rest, as they say is history. The bandwagon was started. Environmentalists, the Media, Politicians, and yes, even scientists jumped on the bandwagon, for either political or monetary reasons. The idea of “saving the planet” has a mass appeal, particularly to people who are of a religious bent, but who have eschewed religious institutions. It is thus a sort of mass neurosis, fulfilling a need to believe in something, regardless of whether or not it is true, which is why true AGW believers hang on to their belief so fiercely.
Tony
Glad you didn’t put your entire ‘blog into “time out.” Did you see this (dunno if you get Benny Peiser’s newsletter…)?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080702.RREYNOLDS02/TPStory/Business
The article describes a serious AGW scientist who essentially corroborates Bjorn Lomborg’s point, that putting money into abating CO2 output would prove fruitless and expensive at this point in time.
“…Dr. Nordhaus notes that a single technological advance in 2050, or in 2100, could render redundant trillions of prematurely invested dollars. This is one of the reasons why the most aggressive climate change strategies – the celebrated Stern Review proposals, the controversial dictums espoused by Al Gore – badly flunk the Nordhaus computer analysis test.
When countries “front-load” investment in carbon reduction, Dr. Nordhaus says, they merely ensure that opportunity costs will rise to unacceptable levels…”
After burning quite brilliantly for during the late 20th C, the sun is evidently crashing hard. A hard crash typically means a longer lull. So in a heliogenic global cooing (whoever coined that in another thread deserves a prize) “worst case” with CO2 having negligible effect, we’re in trouble. In a HGC “best case” CO2 has a mid-case AGW effect that’ll offset serious HGC & keep thing comfortable until we have fusion-powered climate machinery.
Heh. As my friend has said, upon hearing another man made lake was built near Austin, if we can terraform Texas, by God we ought to be able to terraform Mars!
Just to add my 2cent worth, here in Ireland plants are much greener and lusher than ever, a comment you hear quite a bit of around here. Considering it is nearly always green here then it’s saying something We could do with some warming here, at the moment it is 15 degrees centigrade on the South coast (13 centigrade in Donegal) and it is July!!
Incidentally, following on from earlier posts on hurricanes, this year has started in an unprecedented manner, tropical storm Bertha http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/at200802_sat.html#a_topadis unique, it is the only tropical storm to start east of 32 degrees in the first half of July, not even a tropical depression has formed this far east. http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/at200802.asp#a_topad. SST’s mean it should weaken but so far it has been holding its form and when it hits warmer waters later next week could pose early problems.
“The hoax must be both invisible and in plain sight”
You are describing a conspiracy, not a hoax. Just because a lot of people beleive something, doesn’t mean it isn’t a hoax.
wiki on “hoax”
“A hoax is a deliberate attempt to dupe, deceive or trick an audience into believing, or accepting, that something is real, when in fact it is not; or that something is true, when in fact it is false.”
“a hoax is often perpetrated ….. to provoke social change by making people aware of something.”
fred- I thought I had fallen into Dot Earth world for a moment there! You captured the strident tone quite well.
fred,
Brilliant! Thank you.
If it is an empirically poor hypothesis, with a lot of devout adherents propping it up with billions of dollars and the force of government, that’s not too different from an organized hoax.
Global Warming is not a hoax.
Individuals who believe in GW do so from the bottoms of their hearts.
GW, like many other things in history, unfortunately happens to be wrong. The story of science (real, experimental, hypothesis-testing science) is the story of the relentless confrontation of things which are universally believed with evidence.
Example: the spontaneous generation of life. Everyone once knew that life spontaneously generated, and that is why food got moldy and spoiled. It took Pasteur years to prove this was false.
Example: phlogiston (the Aristotelian element of fire). Everyone knew that fire was one of the four elements. It took centuries (and a careful experiment boring a hole in a cannon) to prove that phlogiston has no weight.
Example: color vision as the result of three distinct types of cone receptors in our retinas. The authoritative explanation was in my college Physics book. This was refuted by Land, who was not trying to disprove anything, but make a camera which produced immediate color prints.
I could go on for days. The unfortunate fact for GW is that anthropogenic GW cannot be documented.
Once someone explains to me how our variable Sun goes through cycles of sunspots and no sunspots, I will have some evidence to build upon. Until then, climate change depends on old Sol.
I’ve been beaten to the punch on the main point that I wanted to make: that this piece is a political tract, not a scientific one. It should be obvious to any reader that the author started with a political stance, and then cobbled together a mishmash of semi-scientific arguments to support his political views. Let’s consider a few of his basic arguments:
1. That increased CO2 will lead to increased agricultural output. It is true that SOME plants grow better in an atmosphere with higher CO2 concentrations. It not true that ALL plants grow better in such an environment. Right now, we don’t know a great deal about this issue. Will higher CO2 concentrations cause crops to grow faster or will they cause the weeds to grow faster than the crops? In the latter case, higher CO2 concentrations would reduce agricultural yields. Then there are the undoubted dessicating effects of higher CO2 concentrations. If you make the atmosphere warmer, water evaporates from plants and the soil at a higher rate. This will decrease agricultural yields. There are many other factors at work here, some positive, some negative, and we have no idea what the overall balance will be. But this author blithely asserts that crop yields will increase. This demonstrates gross ignorance on his part.
2. The whole “water vapor is a more important greenhouse gas” argument is truly pathetic. Yes, water vapor is a more important greenhouse gas — but we’re worried about the differential in the greenhouse effect. Carbohydrates are a much bigger component of a healthy diet than potassium — but if don’t get any potassium, you die.
3. He retails the false claim that earth’s temperature is rising because the solar output is rising. Any second-year physics student can show with a simple calculation how absurd his claim is. Indeed, that material is standard in physics courses taken by engineering students. This fellow appears to have forgotten what he learned in college.
4. He also endorses the algal bloom proposal, apparently without any idea of the difficulties this proposal raises. I have not yet rendered judgement on the idea — it has some merits, and if the negative consequences can be handled, we might want to proceed. But endorsing this idea at this time can only be based on ignorance of its ramifications.
5. He makes the standard “weather is not climate” mistake. No surprise here. Will anti-AGW people NEVER learn?
6. Here’s irony for you: Since this has been known for 40 years, I can only assume he is politically motivated to make such a statement.
Lastly, I’d like to comment on anna v’s comment regarding Lysenkoism. Yes, the Lysenko episode is a powerful demonstration of just how much damage can be done when people permit their political preferences to intrude into the science. Everybody would have been much better off if Stalin had just trust the scientists as a group to figure things out, and trusted their consensus.
And that lesson applies here, too. My impression is that the great majority of anti-AGW people don’t really give a damn about the science; that they have allowed their political preferences to intrude into the scientific realm. That is surely the case with the author of this piece, and seems to be the case with some of the commentators here. Like Stalin, they start with their political preferences and then pick and choose their science in order to support their political preferences. This is a sin against intellectual integrity. There are a few anti-AGW people who strike as genuine skeptics in the noble tradition of scientific contrarianism; Steve McIntyre strikes me as one such person. However, my impression is that the great majority of anti-AGW people are political conservatives who have instead followed the dishonorable tradition of subordinating truth to political preference. Shame on such people!
I hasten to add that there are plenty of political liberals who are driven by political rather than scientific considerations. These people deserve just as much contempt as their conservative opposites, even though they happen (purely by accident) to have the weight of evidence in their favor. Politics should NEVER drive science! Without intellectual integrity, humankind is doomed.
I would be interested in seeing a 60-year world plant biomass curve as matched with CO2. Assuming reliable data exists. Is there a correlation?
Evan Jones, biomass is difficult to calculate since it’s not directly measurable in many places (deep Amazon, mid-ocean basin) and highly variable from place to place, sometimes in the space of just a few meters (think seaweeds on a narrow rocky coastline compared to open water phytoplankton). The estimates probably have such large margins of error that no reliable correlation is possible. As an exercise, though, you might hunt down a bunch of general ecology books published over the last few decades just to see what you get. Try to find the original sources they cite, too.
There’s a difference between a hoax and a deeply felt conviction that the world would be a better place if we were all united beyond simple greed and competition. I think it was Al Gore who said, words to the effect, “even if it’s not true, it should still be done for other reasons.” Of course, “greed” is a simplistic analysis of the world, so the effort is not a good idea for reorganizing the planet’s development.
Thank you for a balanced presentation of factual information in an objectively framed arguement. It’s appreciated.
“Mac”
Fred,
like Gore and most other AGW types you cite no science and assumed facts, and you blather at length with this lack. Thanks for demonstrating yet again the LACK of underpinnings for alarmism.
Daniel Rothenberg
A list of those scientists would be enlightening – only the ones with climate related qualifications please.
Lucy Skywalker
Hi – glad you came over from the dark side… (a feat of courage in a place like Glastonbury and I applaud you for it)
Brendan:
A hoax does not require the collusion of all of its proponents. Just like Gore, *most* of these people are “merely” feeding their families. There is no organised plot to extort monies via funding or to spread fear by lies )except at a governmental level where they know exactly what is happening) the deck has fallen in such a way as to facilitate it is all.
Some hoaxes, however, do have collusion as a necessary component, such as the criminals (the highest of crimes, against humanity) who “made” hemp illegal so as to gain from nylon and newspapers.
Hemp is incredible (some would argue the same for its psychotropic cousin cannabis, but let us not digress) and has the capability of turning the world economy around in short order. I have written on it before and this thread’s focus on plant life leads me to reiterate:-
We have had the lungs of the world ripped out to gain the privilege of reading propaganda, downright lies and advertising for more of the same on paper made from trees, yet the people who brought you the first mass circulation “newspapers” fought, successfully, to destroy a plant that produces vastly superior paper far more cheaply and easily than killing trees ever could and at 4x the amount per acre(over 20 years) using zero dioxins and it can be recycled 2.5x more. This plant produces more biomass per acre than any other almost anywhere on the planet with low maintenance and no fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides or fungicides.
Its seeds have an oil content of 34% (more than any other seed) and, after that oil is extracted, to make fuel(at a mind boggling 95% ratio) or foodstuffs, the remaining cake is only (slightly) beaten by the perilous soya bean in protein content. It provides the world’s strongest natural fiber that, when made into fabric, lasts the longest of all the soft fibers, is warmer than cotton, more absorbent and produces 3x as much per acre.
It is massively efficient as a rotated crop, with corn and legumes for instance. It has a 3 to 4 month growing season even at altitude or in high latitudes. When dried in the field it returns over 50% of the nutrients it took from the soil during growth and this, coupled with the deep nutrients it draws upon with its root system and then sheds in its leaves, makes it easier on the soil and of more benefit to subsequent crops than any other. Little wonder that it used to be against the law NOT to cultivate it. What else is this plant capable of that strikes so much fear into the hearts of the chemical company owners that they continue to suppress it and any investigation into it.
Oh yeah, for those of you who believe we should limit our production of plant food(CO2), this marvel of nature can sequester over 20 tons of carbon dioxide per hectare per crop and if its mass, after extracting the good stuff, is then made into its own, extremely viable, version of concrete (in fact, excluding glass and metal, every component of modern housing from damp course via flooring and insulation to roof shingles) you have the perfect double whammy – carbon sequestering par excellence and carbon reduction through concrete reduction. But, currently, that is the last thing that is going to happen because of point one above.
Do not get me started on “peak oil” (can you hear me laughing?) or “there are too many people” as these should be our very next targets after we prove that we are being lied to on a colossal scale about CO2, the stuff of life itself.
It is all about education (most people cannot even winnow the wheat from the chaff in the “results” from a search engine) and instinct (most people can no longer reach a place within themselves where they may discern truth from lies just by relaxing and thinking). All around is misinformation, obfuscation and outright deception. Education and trusting your instincts are the antidotes.
Since you directly responded to my comment, I’ll reply to yours, Mr. Watts.
Your first paragraph contains my pre-eminent grievance with this article. It was written by a retired aerospace engineer, not by someone who has even a modicum of history working within the atmospheric sciences. As such, the question is begged, why are you posting this piece? Presumably, it’s because this is an “expert” who disagrees with the AGW premise. But what is this man’s opinion really worth? I’m drafting a response to some of his claims, but seeing as I’m spending time with friends this weekend, it likely won’t be posted for a few days. I guarantee you, however, that the embrace of this article within skeptics’ circles will garner a response from other sources; will you post that rebuttal to this article?
This article “gets my goat,” so to speak, because of the warm reception it has among skeptics. Anyone – skeptics included – should be able to look at this article and vivisect its examples for conflating short term/long term phenomena, omitting details about concentrations, and all manner of other things. However, they refuse to do so, because it “looks good” for them if a so-called “expert” agrees with them. Furthermore, it pushes this contrived notion that AGW is some sort of leftist, anti-American propaganda, which is patently false.
You point out that Gore is not an expert on climate science. Guess what? I agree with you. Here’s the difference between Gore and Hartmann, though: Gore’s arguments are supported my mainstream science. If I open a scientific journal – say, BAMS – and I find an article about climate change science, will Hartmann’s hypothesis or Gore’s hypothesis be supported?
Look, you’re an influential person, Mr. Watts. I greatly respect the work you do with surface stations; you should be given a grant by the government to go out and audit all of these field stations so that we can manually adjust for the biases present at them. However, you often use your soapbox to disseminate not sound skeptical science, but anti-AGW propaganda, which is precisely what this article is. It boggles my mind why you choose to cater to the rabid skeptics of the blogosphere who refuse to believe, under any circumstances, that the AGW hypothesis might have some validity, when you could be an important player in the scientific community by espousing a strong skeptical opinion which doesn’t rely on one-time hit pieces by retired engineers with no experience in climatology to bolster its case.
REPLY: Sorry you feel that way, sure I’ll post rebuttals, with one condition, read on. It truly amazes me how threatened some folks are getting over an opinion by a retired engineer. I did another one a few months ago, and it it worth reviewing also, because it is more in depth.
See this post:
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/detailed-comments-on-an-inconvenient-truth/
Bob Edelman, also an aerospace engineer, picks apart the really bad science in Al Gore’s call to action movie.
Regarding surface stations, you might want to look at what Jim Hansen, Gavin Schmidt and some of the anonymous coward bloggers like Rabbet and Tamino had to say about the surface stations project when it was in it’s infancy. They drew conclusions before it even got 10% of the network surveyed, then published those conclusions in the form of opinion, without even looking at the data. Hansen, when confronted with the data processing error discovered as a result of the Detroit Lakes station survey that made 1934 the warmest year in the USA instead of 1998 wrote and opinion piece calling Steve McIntyre and I “court jesters”. He’s now adjusted the data again to put 1998 back on top. Now THAT’S propaganda.
When the most influential scientist in the debate does this like that, are you certain that the people discussing the issues here are the ones that are “rabid”, as you put it? In your rebuttal, no use of such labels. That’s the condition.
In case you haven’t noticed, when science starts excluding other possibilities without looking at the data, basing conclusions only on opinion, that’s no longer science then.
It might interest you to know that I was once a very fervent believer in AGW, Jim Hansen’s 1988 testimony moved me to create a nationwide project in cooperation with the National Arbor day Foundation with TV meteorologists nationwide in 1990 and 1991 to plant hundreds of thousands of trees. What changed is that I began seeing places where the AGW theory didn’t hold up, and in 1998 when a strong El Nino morphed into “man made global warming” in the science and media, I realized that AGW was no longer much about science, but mostly about alarmism.
UPDATE to my reply: see the latest alarmism trotted out on the main page, with no regard to the actual data.
[…] http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/07/04/alleviate-world-hunger-produce-more-clean-carbon-dio… […]
Please note that Brendon’s argument against Mr Hartmann’s stance is a logical one, and does not challenge the facts presented. Obviously this 87 year old has a sharp mind, and a knack at writing. Nice to have you home sir.
Science fact counts Mr Brendon, and your logic proves that once again, the weight of an elephant is equal to a mouse if you divide by zero.
An aeronautical engineer probably has more atmospheric science in their background that most other vocations. Mr. Hartmann has done his research and done it well.
Opie,
1. Your first point is that “WE” don’t know what higher concentrations of CO2 will do to plants. Please don’t say “WE”, it is you who don’t know. There are many studies that have addressed this issue on a single site experimental level and globally as plant growht is being tracked (6%+ growth over the past 17 years). All these studies have been overwhelmingly positive to plant growth, and negatives mentioned in the studies use tortured logic try to find a negative like your point about weeds also growing faster to try to accomodate the anti-C02 crowd who will use any positive article to kill an budding scientist’s career.
2. I accept your statement about looking for the differential. Once again, you make a correct statement, but let’s take your statement to the logically conclusion – is their a growing differential in water vapor, sun energy output, local warming, > why should C02 be the only differential that we care about. I agree we should track the differential in C02, figure out it’s contribution to warming, look for correlation in the temp data vs. C02 concentrations etc. Please agree with me that we should do the same for all other contributors to Global warming.
3. The sun’s energy has been rising and will continue to rise until the oceans boil away in ~1 billion years. In fact, the sun’s energy is ~25% higher now than when green algea made it’s first entrance. I disagree with your statement.
4. Plant growth, algea blooms are what caused the earth to cool in the first place, it is entirely plausable that plant growth is a negative feedback mechanism to keep C02 under control and temperatures with in an average 15C band. We see global temps over the pass 1 million years 10C colder and 4.5 C higher than today.
5. Climate is not weather I agree. Be a bit easy on this one, because Global warming advocates are far worse in this regard. For example, hurricanes (New Orleans), every single heat wave (Chicago), glacial retreat (Greenland), … they do this HUNDREDS UPON HUNDREDS of times.
6. I agree Politics should never drive Science. I dearly wish this was true. Unfortunately, so many scientists are terrified that if they present any paper that would be less than supportive of the crisis mongering global warming mob they will be banned, get fewer grants, and possibly loss their positions. Already, many skeptics have lost their jobs.
I believe that global warming has occured since the last ice age, that sea levels have risen 400 ft already, that glacial retreat has gone on already by hundreds of miles, that C02 levels have risen due to human burning of fossil fuels, that C02 is a global warming gas … however, I believe that 99% of that is a GOOD thing for life, plants, etc. and that 99.9% of that had nothing to do with humans. I also believe another 1 to 4C won’t be that big of deal either and that C02 level are historically at their extreme low levels when averaged over millions of years. Humans are bringing balance back to the Earth.