This was a bit of a surprise, hat tip to Bucko36 – Anthony
In Science, Ignorance is Not Bliss
By Physicist Walter Cunningham, NASA Apollo 7 Astronaut in July/August 2008 Issue of Launch Magazine. http://launchmagonline.com/index.php/Viewpoint/In-Science-Ignorance-is-not-Bliss.html
Cunningham writes:
“NASA should be at the forefront in the collection of scientific evidence and debunking the current hysteria over human-caused” warming
“[James] Hansen is a political activist who spreads fear even when NASA’s own data contradict him.”
BIO Note: Physicist Walter Cunningham, an award-winning NASA Apollo 7 Astronaut, was the recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and Navy Astronaut Wings, the 1969 Haley Astronautics Award and named to Named to the International Space Hall of Fame. Cunningham is a member of the American Geophysical Union and fellow of the American Astronautical Society. He also worked as a scientist for the RAND Corporation prior to joining NASA. While with RAND, he worked on classified defense studies and problems of the earth’s magnetosphere. He has accumulated more than 4,500 hours of flying time, including more than 3,400 in jet aircraft and 263 hours in space.
For Complete bio see: http://www.waltercunningham.com/introduction.htm
Excerpts:
It doesn’t help that NASA scientist James Hansen was one of the early alarmists claiming humans caused global warming. Hansen is a political activist who spreads fear even when NASA’s own data contradict him. […] NASA should be at the forefront in the collection of scientific evidence and debunking the current hysteria over human-caused, or Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Unfortunately, it is becoming just another agency caught up in the politics of global warming, or worse, politicized science. Advocacy is replacing objective evaluation of data, while scientific data is being ignored in favor of emotions and politics. […] I do see hopeful signs that some true believers are beginning to harbor doubts about AGW. Let’s hope that NASA can focus the global warming discussion back on scientific evidence before we perpetrate an economic disaster on ourselves.
[…] The fearmongers of global warming base their case on the correlation between CO2 and global temperature, even though we cannot be sure which is cause and which is effect. Historically, temperature increases have preceded high CO2 levels, and there have been periods when atmospheric CO2 levels were as much as 16 times what they are now, periods characterized not by warming but by glaciation. You might have to go back half a million years to match our current level of atmospheric CO2, but you only have to go back to the Medieval Warming Period, from the 10th to the 14th Century, to find an intense global warming episode, followed immediately by the drastic cooling of the Little Ice Age. Neither of these events were caused by variations in CO2 levels. Even though CO2 is a relatively minor constituent of “greenhouse gases,” alarmists have made it the whipping boy for global warming (probably because they know how fruitless it would be to propose controlling other principal constituents, H2O, CH4, and N2O). Since human activity does contribute a tiny portion of atmospheric CO2, they blame us for global warming.
[…] The reality is that atmospheric CO2 has a minimal impact on greenhouse gases and world temperature. Water vapor is responsible for 95 percent of the greenhouse effect. CO2 contributes just 3.6 percent, with human activity responsible for only 3.2 percent of that. That is why some studies claim CO2 levels are largely irrelevant to global warming. Without the greenhouse effect to keep our world warm, the planet would have an average temperature of minus 18 degrees Celsius. Because we do have it, the temperature is a comfortable plus 15 degrees Celsius. Based on the seasonal and geographic distribution of any projected warming, a good case can be made that a warmer average temperature would be even more beneficial for humans.
Full Text at link below:
http://launchmagonline.com/index.php/Viewpoint/In-Science-Ignorance-is-not-Bliss.html
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Andrew W:
“Anthony, you do know this: “The reality is that atmospheric CO2 has a minimal impact on greenhouse gases and world temperature. Water vapor is responsible for 95 percent of the greenhouse effect. CO2 contributes just 3.6 percent, with human activity responsible for only 3.2 percent of that.” is just plain wrong don’t you?”
What is just plain wrong? I suspect you think the problem is the “3.2% of that”.
“What the science says…”
“Consumption of vegetation by animals & microbes accounts for about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 per year. Respiration by vegetation emits around 220 Gt. The ocean releases about 330 Gt. In contrast, human emissions are only around 26.4 Gt per year.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm
Work it out.
Andrew W (23:09:24) :
Here are some more facts for you:
From NASA
http://www-airs.jpl.nasa.gov/Science/ResearcherResources/MeetingArchives/TeamMeeting20060307/2006_03_07/Chahine-INTRO-Final.pdf
Page 7
The small fraction of
~5% of water molecules above 500hpa altitude produce about 50% the total greenhouse effect
of the atmosphere.
It’s easy to see water is much more important as a greenhouse gas than CO2. The astronaut’s guess of 95 percent of the greenhouse effect of water looks plausible with only this one fact.
And we can’t control water vapor, now can we?
Hmmmm… fuel cell cars produce only water vapor. Isn’t that a dangerous greenhouse gas? Perhaps we should ban fuel cell cars?
Regards,
Jack
Jack,
I’ve wondered about hydrogen releasing water vapor, what it would be like for millions of cars on the freeway continually dumping water into the air and ground. I get this picture of driving in fog while fighting all the vegetation and mold creeping over the windshield and everything, and clouding over everyone’s solar cells. We can’t go back to horses, the methane problem is bad enough what with all the cows, you know. Looks like we’re in a pickle without a paddle. I think the environmentalists should do an international “Hold your breath day” and hope for the best.
And we can’t control water vapor, now can we?
We can and do substantially influence water vapour levels in the atmosphere.
Irrigation puts at least several billion tons of water vapour into the atmosphere each year and wikipedia says its residence time is 10 days.
Joel Shore stated in response to Smokey’s comment:
“I hate to tell you but I kinda doubt it when he is just regurgitating misleading talking points like “human activity is responsible for only 3.2 percent [of CO2].” That’s the kind of stuff that may fly well with the non-scientific community but almost any scientist who knows, or has it explained to him, how that misleading figure was arrived at is going to be completely horrified that such arguments are being trotted out as credible arguments and is probably going to think that if this is the best that even someone like Cunningham can come up with, his case is pretty damn weak!”
Okay then. Here’s a challenge to you. Name a scientist or two (or more) with the “correct” calculation that CO2 has on atmospheric warming. Also provide the names of papers and any electronic links to those papers that include that data and are relevant to the topic at hand. My challenge lasts so long as the above article stays on Anthony’s website. I’m betting that you haven’t got anything except the elitist snobbery you threw up there.
It seems odd that so many of the posts on here from a pro-AGW standpoint do not seem to use their real names. I wonder why?
Seriously, why? what are they afraid of?
“human activity is responsible for only 3.2 percent [of CO2].”
The obvious problem with this number is it only tells us the source of current production of CO2. It doesn’t say a thing about where the total amount of CO2 currently in the atmosphere came from.
What percentage of CO2 currently in the atmosphere is from human production?
Also and unrelated question. If the earth and oceans haven’t warmed for the past several years, why does the CO2 keep going up? Don’t the oceans release CO2 as the earth warms? Thanks in advance.
Denis:
Yes, it’s curious (but I don’t know if it’s statistically borne out). But it does “feel” true. Especially when you summarize the major opposition to Anthony’s request/discussion about no anonymous posts (to help in the moderation of the blog). The loudest dissenters claimed that they wouldn’t be able to post their ANTI-AGW views because of possible retribution in their work environment. Yet, many of the adherents of AGW still seem to work in secret/anonymity.
That being said, I certainly appreciate the comments/postings by all honest brokers who are willing to stand up and be counted (especially by name).
Scott Ketcher:
“Also and unrelated question. If the earth and oceans haven’t warmed for the past several years, why does the CO2 keep going up? Don’t the oceans release CO2 as the earth warms? Thanks in advance.”
It seems to me that your question simultaneously debunks the argument. If I see something as RED and you see it as BLUE, will it rain in Seattle tomorrow? The answer is unrelated to the question.
If you do want to relate it, then I think it’s been pretty well shown that C02 concentration increases lag the temperature increases (by 800 to 1000 years). If that is true then why shouldn’t C02 concentration continue to increase given the warming since the LIA (despite recent and significant, in my view, cooling)?
Also, do you really mean to now lump all compounding C02 respiration, interaction and production by all past humans all the way back to our inception (insert your own timeframe/beliefs here) into the debate? And if that doesn’t work out… do we then add all mammals, invertebrates and other creatures with/whom human-kind has coexisted? Where does it end? How badly do we want to pin this on us?
At some point it seems like we’ll have enough evidence (I think we already do) to simply state: C02 is pretty important. Plants need it. Human activities provide a little bit of it. Plants make life on earth possibly by converting sunlight into sugar and other good things that we need to survive. Warm is mostly good. Cold is mostly death. But no matter what, significantly changing these things is predominately out of our purview. Better to adapt (as usual).
Sincerely,
JS
correction: possibly > possible
Glenn: Apart from the problems of producing hydrogen, transporting and storing, the net water vapor would be zero. In theory, no change in anything. Split water into O2 and H2, recombine to H2O. But it takes energy to split water, and to put the H2 into a container smaller than the Hindenberg, even more energy. A lot more. Which has to come from somewhere, and probably dumps a lot of CO2 and water vapor into the air. Without a major breakthrough, not a practical solution. Nuclear power plants can produce H2, what Green will stand still for building more of them?
“Almost any scientist who knows, or has it explained to him, how that misleading figure was arrived at is going to be completely horrified”
Oh no… we can’t have scientists horrified… It’s all us dummys out here who are supposed to be horrified.
Speaking only for dummys,
Mike Bryant
I’m glad Dr. Cunningham has added his voice to the gallery of people questioning the AGW hysteria. I hope more and more scientists start feeling free to question the IPCC orthodoxy. Heck, it looks as though even parts of the IPCC are about ready to drift off like an ice shelf calving away from a frozen continent of doctrine.
Meanwhile Hansen’s warning that the last great stade of Greenland might slough off like the Pleistocene Laurentide, swamping the world in almost no time at all. He says this without constraining the scenario – why the last great stades fell or what’s decimating Greenland ice pack more: Soot+surface ozone vs. GHG. The answer is, of course, soot & surface ozone. Even under the worst-case scenarios, Hansen’s analysis is half-baked b/c he doesn’t explicate other heating agents that are more-readily mitigated.
Perhaps Hansen’s Mountains of Madness, smoldering away, are melting it via geothermal activity.
“An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning.” While that may have been true when Max Planck wrote it, the AGW hypothesis became accepted as fact before it was proven scientifically. Outside forces in this case hijacked the science, giving us AGW pseudo-science instead. But, the lies, and political posturing of AGW nitwittery is, thankfully, beginning to backfire on them, and the AGW monstrosity is collapsing like a house of cards.
Cunningham Detractors —
1. Were you to read the original article there’s a comment to the effect that Burt Rutan reckons Cunningham to be correct. On one hand, then, we have a couple of certified “right stuff” genius types with a track record of designing and building and operating the most complex machinery in the history of mankind. On the other hand, we have atmospheric modelers using groupthink to assume that their models are correct. I think it’s telling that the smartest guys in the room (and in almost any room you can name) aren’t buying it.
2. The 3.2% is pretty close to the figure derived for proof (via isotopes) of fossil fuel burning. This is even more interesting given that —
a) there’s no accepted figure for how long a CO2 molecule lives in the atmosphere
b) the oceans absorb and emit CO2
…where the “interesting” part is that oceans emit the last that was absorbed, implying that the CO2 in the atmosphere is probably the sum total of that which humans have emitted for the past 200 years or so. I fail to see that Cunningham wrote anything that was incorrect.
3. The article is a brief synopsis, not a scientific paper meant to shed new light on things. He briefly spells out the upshot of the data vs the politics of the data. Cunningham is correct (in spades) in saying Hansen et al have transitioned from scientists to advocates, which is what his article is really about. In his view NASA employees ought to be specialists at their jobs and ignore politics; essentially the Hansen types are sullying an amazing history of nearly 50 years of spectacular success. I can see his point. At this juncture a number of us would still tend to believe something said by JPL but immediately suspect anything GISS does as being tainted. He knows this else he wouldn’t have bothered with an article about it. How long will it take for the agency (NASA) to regain the trust/image it once had?
This is an important question he raises, and apparenly you detractors can’t seem to figure this out. See comment #1.
I wonder why those that are AGW followers can’t admit that some folks have been in more than one mode of making a living. Most of the AGW scientists live on the Government grant tit. Mr Cunningham while for a time an astronaut has managed to make his living by science in the private sector. I find it to be mostly true that in the private sector that if your work isn’t correct enough to make a profit for your employer you don’t make it and are soon unemployed. Most of the AGW scientists are more concerned with massive costly change and disrupting the economy of many countries to stop something that has happened over the course of history for many centuries, Milena. Which study do you believe those that hide their work and only tell you their conclusions? Those that refuse to archive their raw data? Those that refuse to archive their adjusted data? I think not and this has been extremely evident in the AGW world. The question now becomes who do I trust?
I think that I will consider those that speak openly and give true bios. That tell me where they get their data and have it available for review. Those that consider recent data. Those that update their studies using the recently aquired data. Hide and seek is not part of the scientific method. I don’t care who the scientist works for if his data is available, his method is available, his computer codes are available, and his work is replicable. Most pro AGW Scientists are not providing most of the above and like a used car salesman saying just trust me. I think not. Having been in the real world and having dealt with the “just trust me” folks before I am skeptical of that argument.
IMHO we need more skeptic scientific thought. That is how science is self correcting.
Bill Derryberry Non-scientist!!!
Does UAH use James Hansens data as part of their processing? Does UAH use or do any systematic adjustment to their temp data?
I noted an odd use of language on their website, it is probably me being overly skeptical about so many climate scientist. However, I would really like to know if UAH data is raw or “adjusted”.
REPLY: It is processed, but not “adjusted” in the way that GISS does, i.e. there is no UHI adjustment for example. Here is a post I did on some questions previously that might help you understand. – Anthony
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/08/putting-a-myth-about-uah-and-rss-satellite-data-to-rest/
Someone else brought it up so I’ll ask the question….
If hydrogen vehicles create “water” then my question is “how much” and what impact will it have on our highways? Will it be a significant amount to affect the road conditions? What if it is below freezing?
I’m buying stock in salt.
The logistics of alternative fuels seem pretty hefty to overcome; not to mention the unintended consequences of “change”.
Hmmm, for the people who worry about water emission of hydrogen cars, it should be remembered that normal fuel combustion releases already water (from 1 to 2 moles of H2O for each mole of CO2 depending on the used hydrocarbon)
CH4 + 2 O2 => CO2 + 2 H2O
2 C2H6 + 7 O2 => 4 CO2 + 6 H2O
C3H8 + 5 O2 => 3 CO2 + 4 H2O
2 C4H10 + 13 O2 => 8 CO2 + 10 H2O
…
Here are the contributions from various gases towards the strength of the GH effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas
note: “Carbon dioxide causes 9-26%” and ” water vapor, which causes about 36–70% of the greenhouse effect on Earth. (Note clouds typically affect climate differently from other forms of atmospheric water.)”
also note: “It is not possible to state that a certain gas causes a certain percentage of the greenhouse effect, because the influences of the various gases are not additive.”
“These figures come from Ramenathan & Coakley (1978) the 95% figure for water often quoted originated from this DOE page:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/environment/appd_d.html
But as Gavin explains here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/co2-equivalents/index.php?p=367#comment-21829
“FR93 are discussing the absorbtion of downwelling SOLAR Near-IR by H2O and CO2 – that is the shortwave part of the spectrum (the 4.3, 2.7 and 2 micrometer bands). ”
The incorrect “95% water vapour” figure just goes around and around and around denialist blogs with blog hosts who should know better letting it live because it’s so useful to their cause.
On the issue of “human activity responsible for only 3.2 percent” of CO2, that’s on an annual basis, cumulatively we’ve lifted CO2 from 280 ppm to over 385 ppm, an increase of over 35%, and thats after natural sinks have removed about half of the anthropogenic contribution.
Anthony, a comment of mine was just caught by your spam filter (3 links)
Here are the contributions from various gases towards the strength of the GH effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas
note: “Carbon dioxide causes 9-26%” and ” water vapor, which causes about 36–70% of the greenhouse effect on Earth. (Note clouds typically affect climate differently from other forms of atmospheric water.)”
also note: “It is not possible to state that a certain gas causes a certain percentage of the greenhouse effect, because the influences of the various gases are not additive.”
“These figures come from Ramenathan & Coakley (1978) the 95% figure for water often quoted originated from this DOE page:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/environment/appd_d.html
@Bob B – Hydrocarbon engines produce water as well, and we’ve never noticed that being a problem yet (except for rusting exhaust systems). Fuel cell operating temperatures vary, but most seem to run hot enough to generate steam.
These Apollo astronauts where the elite and had huge “bottle”. Do any of us fancy sitting on the top of tons of LOx waiting to be blasted off.
The article is very well written and argued.
I wonder whether people in NASA are trying to change direction of the AGW “Super Tanker” which is difficult to change course.
It seems to me there may be people at NASA who realize that Hansen & Co’s predictions are not coming about , and perhaps they need to change direction to a traditional direction— like getting a man or woman on Mars. Wow think of the technical spin offs from that mission
Looking over the comments in response to Cunningham’s article, the arrogance of the pro-AGW’ers is palpable. Read between the lines and you’ll detect the ‘how dare anyone question us’ attitude, as they hide behind whatever bogus pseudonym they’ve chosen for that post. The sceptic side looks for a simpler explanation and cites references to back it up. No such behaviour by the other side. Have these so-called ‘experts’ with advanced degrees ever heard of Occam’s Razor?