UPDATE: 11/10 From the Sydney Morning Herald
Michael Duffy
November 8, 2008
Last month I witnessed something shocking. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was giving a talk at the University of NSW. The talk was accompanied by a slide presentation, and the most important graph showed average global temperatures. For the past decade it represented temperatures climbing sharply.
As this was shown on the screen, Pachauri told his large audience: “We’re at a stage where warming is taking place at a much faster rate [than before]”.
Now, this is completely wrong. For most of the past seven years, those temperatures have actually been on a plateau. For the past year, there’s been a sharp cooling. These are facts, not opinion: the major sources of these figures, such as the Hadley Centre in Britain, agree on what has happened, and you can check for yourself by going to their websites. Sure, interpretations of the significance of this halt in global warming vary greatly, but the facts are clear.
Satellite derived lower troposphere temperature since 1979 – Click for a larger image
Reference: UAH lower troposphere data
So it’s disturbing that Rajendra Pachauri’s presentation was so erroneous, and would have misled everyone in the audience unaware of the real situation. This was particularly so because he was giving the talk on the occasion of receiving an honorary science degree from the university.
Below: find out how you can tell Mr. Pachauri directly what you think – he has a blog!
Later that night, on ABC TV’s Lateline program, Pachauri claimed that those who disagree with his own views on global warming are “flat-earthers” who deny “the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence”. But what evidence could be more important than the temperature record, which Pachauri himself had fudged only a few hours earlier?
In his talk, Pachauri said the number of global warming sceptics is shrinking, a curious claim he was unable to substantiate when questioned about it on Lateline. Still, there’s no doubt a majority of climate scientists agree with the view of the IPCC.
Today I want to look at why this might be so: after all, such a state of affairs presents a challenge to sceptics such as me. If we’re right, then an awful lot of scientists are wrong. How could this be?
This question was addressed in September in a paper by Professor Richard Lindzen, of the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen, probably the most qualified prominent global-warming sceptic, suggested that a number of changes in the way science is conducted have contributed to the rise of climate alarmism among American scientists.
Lindzen believes another problem with climate science is that in America and Europe it is heavily colonised by environmental activists.
Here are just two examples that indicate the scale of the problem: the spokesman for the American Meteorological Society is a former staffer for Al Gore, and realclimate.org, probably the world’s most authoritative alarmist web site, was started by a public relations firm serving environmental causes.
None of this is necessarily sinister, but the next time you hear a scientist or scientific organisation warning of climate doom, you might want to follow the money trail. Sceptics are not the only ones who have received funding from sources sympathetic to their viewpoint. (And yes, Lindzen did once receive some money from energy companies.)
Lindzen claims that scientific journals play an important role in promoting global warming alarmism, and gives a number of examples.
Someone else who’s looked closely at scientific journals (although not specifically those dealing with climate science) is epidemiologist John Ioannidis of the Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. He reached the surprising conclusion that most published research findings are proved false within five years of their publication. (Lest he be dismissed as some eccentric, I note that the Economist recently said Ioannidis has made his case “quite convincingly”.)
Why might this be so? Later work by Ioannidis and colleagues suggests that these days journal editors are more likely to publish research that will make a splash than that which will not. They do this to sell more copies of their publications and of reprints of papers in it. Ioannidis believes these publication practices might be distorting science.
It’s possible the forces described by Lindzen and Ioannidis have imbued climate science with a preference for results that involve (or seem to involve) disastrous change rather than stability. Rajenda Pachauri’s recent Sydney lecture suggests that in this relatively new field, inconvenient truths to the contrary are not welcome.
Kim, what did the last energy bill have for oil companies? $13 Billion?
Of course, that doesn’t count the approx. $800 Billion we’ve spend in the Persian Gulf, and the 4,000 Dead young men, and women.
Ethanol, today, is replacing 8% of our gasoline, 1.4 Billion Bushels of corn is available (carried over from last year) for About $0.06 per pound, and, not a single life (or dollar) has been lost protecting the Nebraska corn fields.
Doesn’t sound like much of a debacle to me.
Oh, and we’re still paying farmers Not to Farm 34 Million Acres.
One other thing: You might want to ask yourself why gasoline is down to less than $2.00 gallon, and Diesel is still up around $3.00/gal.
Kum Dollison,
You’re slipping. No mention of yellow grease in your last two posts.
Hope you’re feeling OK…
KD:
OK, I’m sorry. In the words of Dan Quayle, that was uncalled for.
My bad.
Anne,
In one of your many posts you mention your concern about doing something because you would not like your children and grandchildren to blame you, as a representative of an earlier generation, for not doing something to mitigate some future problem effect that might be linked back to now.
I think that is the gist of what you are concerned about, I may have missed some details.
But of course the reality of the comparison of what may happen is that it will be unprovable one way or the other. So you still run the risk of the accusation. This will be a matter of politics, not science. You will have little or no influence over how it is presented.
Unless ….
Being a political situation people will look to political history. If political history were to conclude that a series of decisions made around 2010 set in motion a significant decline in the wealth, power and influence of the developed nations (with unknown effects of course but I do not assume that other parts of the world would suddenly progress to take the pinnacle of the pyramid, though it may happen) your children and grandchildren would be unlikely to thank you for that either.
I am. of course, assuming that future conditions lead to today’s children feeling that it is acceptable to have children of their own and that they would still have free choice in such matters. It is possible that you are trying to be protective of a generation that will barely exist.
If could be even worse.
There are a number of organisations around who strongly support the idea of a much reduced world population and for this to occur quite quickly. Indeed one might expect that the people making such proposals would like to see the results for themselves so assume that they would prefer 20 years to 40 years.
Think about that. In the developed world the logical approach would be to reverse attempts at life extension and survival of the unfit. Easy to present economic and carbon footprint benefits for those cases. Then limit births. If that does not work ….? well, forced euthanasia is extreme and unlikely, but then, who knows where ecological philosophy might head off to should social and economic stability continue to wobble.
It is easy to contemplate the effects today should one wish to. Let’s say it is decided to suddenly reduce the planets population by 50%. Too off the wall? Probably, but in fact one of the few things we actually could do with certainty.
So, you are head of family and are instructed to make a list of who is to be ‘let go’.
How do you choose?
Who do you choose?
Would you prefer someone else to choose for you?
Too far fetched?
Maybe, but strange things happen when mass beliefs and a few powerful movements and people come together, as can be seen time and again through history. Famine has been a common cause, along with financial problems. Energy availability is likely to be a strong factor in our modern world alongside the other two.
Whether those three real current issues (amongst others) are more likely to brings disruption than the hypothesis of anthropogenic CO2 induced climate change is anyone guess. But they certainly seem to be more real, visible and measurable as a threat in our time.
What do you think your children will feel about such matters and their outcomes in, say, 20 years from now?
Smokey,
No Worries, Mate. 🙂 Feelin, fine; but thanks for askin.
I enjoy this blogsite, and appreciate the level of weather/climate discourse. I’ve, also, had the feeling, almost from jump-street that the whole “CO2-driven, AGW” malarkey was . . . . . . . well, malarky.
However, I have studied biofuels (I don’t have much of a life) rather extensively, and hate to see a good cause (anti-AGW) lose it’s credibility due to misconceptions about alternative energies.
Here is one reason (Click) I think it’s important. Note: The guy that draws these charts works from the “bottom/up” and has a very good track record of predictions.
I’ll go back to “lurking” now. (And, dreamin of “yellow” grease.) 🙂
Kum Dollison (18:52:39) Oh, please, don’t give me ‘No blood for oil’. It’s just such a pitiful argument. Why don’t you tell me how happy the Iraqis were under Saddam? The metric right now is about one US soldier dead for every 3,000 enfranchised Iraqi voters, a steep but fair price.
And corn ethanol still is subsidized with tax dollars, still makes it in the market because of government mandates and still uses land that would otherwise be growing food.
Diesel has more energy in it than gasoline, and a lot more than ethanol does.
===============================================
Anne says,
“The main problem holding back renewables is cost. If you see what mass manufacturing does to cost of nearly everything imaginable (cars, telephones, televisions, air travel, computers and even space travel), then there is only one way where that cost is heading: down. That is why I believe that nearly all renewables will become cost-effective sooner or later.”
I generally agree with you on the first point, that cost holds back renewables for liquid fuels. The reason is that the current technologies don’t make thermodynamic, engineering, or economic sense in the first place, unless you apply a carbon tax to the fossil fuels or provide huge subsidies. These energy sources are being touted as being clean and promising by the MSM and politicians. This is a diversion from reality in an attempt to fool the public into believing there is a near term alternative to fossil fuels. Actually I think it is criminal to lie this way to the public when the stakes are so high. Obama was honest when he said the cost of electricity will increase significantly without coal. Currently, there are very few viable economic subsitutes to carbon and hydrogen from fossil fuels especially if you take Nuclear off the table.
The worst example is that it requires at least as much (if not more) energy to manufacture ethanol from corn as we get out of it when we burn it. Most of that energy comes from electricity, natural gas, diesel for the farmer’s tractors, diesel to transport the ethanol to market, natural gas to make the fertilizer, etc. Do you ignore all the fossil energy (and pollution) required to manufacture ethanol which has about 70% of the energy value of gasoline? The price of ethanol is burdened with the price of the feed stock as well as the cost of the energy required for manufacture. Not to mention the many other problems. Yet Congress ignores all these problems and has mandated 4 to 5 times increase in Ethanol. That is no way to find a solution.
Basic economics apply when it comes to any energy manufacture. The comment that “all renewables will be cost effective sooner or later” lacks a fundamental understanding of engineering principles, energy production and business economics. The analgy of reducing cost of TV’s etc by mass production is not applicable. All similar commercial plants are highly automated to begin with and require minimal labor to operate. The cost of feed stock and energy consumption is not going away with mass production. The capital cost for constructing plants is significant. Unfortunately any plant that produces energy is burdened with the need to follow all the laws of science and thermodynamics rather than those laws produced in Washington. BTW except for the recent downturn, cars have not become less expensive where I live.
Can you explain where the savings from mass production will come from with renewables?
One can’t start with a significantly inefficient process and expect mass production to make it efficient. Did you ever wonder why the large energy companies don’t get into these as commercial ventures (except for research) unless they get a subsidy from Congress. They would go out of business quickly if they spent the share holders dollars on enterprises that make no engineering or business sense to start with. There are no commercial celluosic feed ethanol plants operating that I know of. Do you know of any? Why bet the farm on yet to be developed technology?
The other myth that is being perpetrated is that these technologies are clean. The fact of the matter is that cellulosic feeds have all the same “nasty stuff” that coal has. Think about it, they both come from the soil and the technology required to clean up the ash and other elements is essentially the same: scrubbers etc. Some emissions is inevitable just like with coal. Oil or natural gas is actually cleaner. The liquid products are typically very corrosive and require a lot of processing.
John Philip wrote:
“PS We had fireworks last night. At one point I lit a roman candle. The fuse burned for about 45 seconds, there was a brief pause then the firework began to emit an increasing amount of light and then the local temperature rose considerably as the explosives combusted. Clearly, however, since the temperature rise from the explosives occurred after the burning of the fuse it is not possible that the black powder was responsible for the increasing temperatures.”
Hmm.
But the fuse was only lit because you lit it and, despite the wet conditions that many will have experienced when trying to enact their firework displays, it managed to burn for the 45 seconds required to transfer the heat to the point of secondary ignition.
The fuse was merely a transmitter unless you are suggesting it could self-combust. You could also have obtained the main combustion with a shorter fuse, no fuse at all (with some increased in risk to yourself) or using a remote electronic ignition system – for examples.
The fuse merely did what is was supposed to do – delay the final outcome. But absent a strong initial energy input it could do nothing by itself.
I’ll give you topical and almost a convincing analogy but in my view rather flawed in some when considered in its component parts.
Don, THIS is an example of how costs come down. We have increased Yield by 67% since 1980, and DECREASED Fertilizer use by 10%.
It’s just not true that it takes as much energy to produce ethanol as it contains. An ex. – Corn Plus in Winnebago, Mn uses 17,000 btus of nat gas to brew a gallon of ethanol. The fertilizer, and seed is embedded with another 6,000 btus of nat gas, and it contains less than 2,000 btus of diesel for farming, and transportation. It takes approx 5 gallons of diesel to raise an acre of corn, and, after allowing for DDGS, you will get about 720 gal of ethanol/acre.
Okay, you’ve got 25,000 btus of fossil fuel in a gallon of ethanol that, in a properly compressed engine, will replace 116,000 btus of gasoline. That’s a bit over 4.5:1 eroei.
Of course oil companies don’t want to sell ethanol. Why in the world would they? Thus, it HAS to be “mandated.” It’s true, it is subsidized to the tune of $0.51/gal, but it’s a young industry getting started, and, heck, oil is subsidized, also. In many different ways.
KL Process Design Group is producing 1.5 Million gallons/yr. of Cellulosic Ethanol, as we speak, and has been doing so for 6 months, or so.
It costs about $1.50 gal to produce ethanol, today; and, that’s probably about what cellulosic is going to come in at.
That’s the Numbers, guy. You can talk about thermodynamic toomadiddles all day long; but it doesn’t change the numbers.
Kim, you said, “one US soldier dead for every 3,000 enfranchised Iraqi voters, a steep but fair price.”
Did you mean that?
Kum Dollison (18:52:39) :
Kim, what did the last energy bill have for oil companies? $13 Billion?
Reply
Kum, I asked you for some specificss on this claim about a month ago. You only came up with programs that expired decades ago such as oil depletion allowance and the Texas RR comission. I am well aware of the many subsidies to the ethanol folks in the last energy bill, can you enlighten me on specifics of the 13 Billion for oil companies. I don’t doubt that there might be something in it since everyone else got a some break, but I would appreciate specifics for just the oil companies not an across the board tax incentive for all business.
“Of course, that doesn’t count the approx. $800 Billion we’ve spend in the Persian Gulf, and the 4,000 Dead young men, and women.”
Kum, if you really believe what you are saying there is not much point in discussing much further. Keep in mind that 77 Senators voted for the resolution in favor of the Iraq invasion and many Democrats including Kerry, Clinton, Rockerfeller gave strong speeches for regeim change in Iraq. As you know, very little of our imported oil comes from the middle east so I don’t understand your point. If you think we invaded Iraq and Afgahstan for oil (I don’t agree), then blame the Democrats since they will not let us drill for our oil resources in the USA. Since we could be virtually independent of foreign oil, so I assume you blame Obama and the Democrats for this issue.
“Ethanol, today, is replacing 8% of our gasoline, 1.4 Billion Bushels of corn is available (carried over from last year) for About $0.06 per pound, and, not a single life (or dollar) has been lost protecting the Nebraska corn fields.”
Kum, How many people did your food to fuel policy starve last year? Also you are ignoring the huge taxpayer $$$ subsidies to the farmers and ADM for ethanol.
I tried to verify your 8% since it seems high and this is the best I could find which is admittedly two years old.
“A major challenge is getting enough biofuel. Already, 14.3 percent of corn grown in the United States is converted to ethanol, replacing just 1.72 percent of gasoline usage. Even if all the remaining corn were converted to ethanol, the total ethanol would only offset 12 percent of gasoline. The entire soybean crop would replace a much smaller proportion of transportation fuels–only 6 percent of current diesel usage, which itself amounts to a tiny fraction of gasoline usage.”
Do you have an better source for the 8%?
Finally are you ignoring the fact that we had to burn a lot of coal, use a lot of natural gas, use diesel for the farm and transportation for the ethanol production and distribution. Most unbiased sources have proven that it takes at least as much energy to produce the ethanol from corn than you get out of it considering the fact that it only has 70% of the energy value of gasoline.
Did you mean that?
More to it than just that.
Kim: Thanks. Appreciated.
To All: I daresay the majority of the readers and contributors here are at least somewhat skeptical. To those of you who support the AGW point of view, we know you are in “enemy territory”. That can get pretty lonely at times. I salute you. It takes character. And I think I can safely speak for our honorable host, the moderators, and everyone else here when I say that we respect that, and your presence is welcome–and valued. Anyone who defends their ideas as honestly as they can and keeps their cool is welcome here.
Kum Dollison (18:52:39) :
“Ethanol, today, is replacing 8% of our gasoline, 1.4 Billion Bushels of corn is available (carried over from last year) for About $0.06 per pound, and, not a single life (or dollar) has been lost protecting the Nebraska corn fields.
Doesn’t sound like much of a debacle to me.”
I believe the debacle discussion was in relation to ethanol’s impact on Catastrophic Global Warming. Energy Security is a separate issue and is probably a good reason to subsidize ethanol until better/cheaper sources are available. When national energy policy decisions are being made all factors should be considered in the cost benefit analyses that (should) underlie them.
John Philip (17:09:05) :
I can’t find the compilation of studies which indicated a 5 year residence time for CO2, but I did find a Tom V. Segalstad paper at http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm, which says in the conclusion:
“This coupling is in turn coupled to the much larger lithospheric reservoir. The rates and fluxes of the latter coupling control the amount of carbon in the surface reservoir of the Earth. All kinds of measurements show that the real residence time of atmospheric CO2 is about 5 years.”
Maybe there is a definition issue involved.
Don, here is a complete list of our operating refineries, plus those under construction.
http://www.ethanolrfa.org/industry/locations/
Note that we’re NOW producing at the rate of 11 Billion gallons/yr. That come out to 11,000,000,000 / 42 /365 = 717,000 barrels/day. Divided by 9 Million barrels/day (we’re actually using just a bit less than that, now) and you get 7.97%.
As for oil subsidies? Well, they never have taken away that provision that exempts them from paying $13 Billion/yr in Royalties for oil produced on some rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. And, then there was, what, about $3 billion for exploration of deep water in the gulf?
The elephant in the room of course IS our action in the Persian Gulf. If you don’t think we’re there to protect the oil supplies, well, that’s your business.
Our ethanol policy didn’t starve ANYONE last year that I know of. If YOU know of someone that it starved by all means share it with us. Good Lord, man, field corn never got to more than about $0.14/lb. If anything starved anyone, I’d say it was $5.00 gasoline.
We paid no price supports to farmers for corn, soybeans, or wheat last year. If you would care to go to treas.gov you will find that the slightly higher corn prices saved the American taxpayer about $11 Billion last year compared to 2004.
The $0.51 blenders’ credit goes to the “blenders” (usually, an oil company.)
Approx 25,000 btus of nat gas is used (fertilizer, plant processing, seed processing) and 2,000 btus of diesel (farmer, transportation) to produce a gallon of ethanol. That gallon of ethanol, in a properly-compressed engine, can replace 116,000 btus of gasoline. That’s a bit better than 4.5:1 eroei.
After accounting for DDGS you get about 720 gallons of ethanol from an acre of corn. Thus, 11 Billion/720 = 15,27 million acres. We, presently, rowcrop 250 Million Acres (we used to rowcrop 400 million acres) so we are using 6% of our present rowcrop land.
We’re Still paying farmers NOT to farm 34 Million Acres.
The elephant in the room of course IS our action in the Persian Gulf. If you don’t think we’re there to protect the oil supplies, well, that’s your business.
It is my business, partly. What protect? Afghanistan has no oil to speak of. And nearly all of Iraq’s oil was under embargo. With the blockade and no-fly zone on, Iraq wasn’t much of a direct threat to Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, either. Or even Iran, for that matter. When we invaded, we hardly got any oil at all for years (and didn’t really expect any). And even now that Iraq’s production (rebuilt by us at our own expense) is back on line we do not siphon it off, they sell it to whomever they please. And not so much to us, thanks to the dems in congress queering the deal (thanks a whole heap, guys). So whatever we are there for, it sure ain’t oil, not as a main priority, anyway.
JamesG:
Well, you have and you do. You presume to know the extent of the truth and the problem, but the Dueffler & Kay reports reveal much much more — no neocon chicanery there.
And good and serious leftist thinkers like Christopher Hitchens have a different view from the liberal majority. We are not of the ilk that would appease this emergent theocratic fascism that threatens the world. It doesn’t require PNAC neocon foolishness to reach one’s own conclusions that eventually the failed state of Iraq had to be confronted or that atavist and nihilist forces do portend a global threat.
As for the UN sanctions being responsible for malnutrition and infant mortality in Iraq, that is utter bunkum. The Saddamists, the Baathists and the corrupt UN bureaucrats allowing graft and corruption were responsible for the untold thousands who suffered under the perversions of the “smart sanctions.” To claim otherwise is to play apologetics for the very forces who are complicit in Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, for the theocrats who’d usher in a new Jewish genocide.
More is coming down the road, in North Africa where untold riches in uranium stock lay in Niger, neighbored by countries where atavists militate to reclaim their long lost caliphate. In Sudan we can already understand the scope of the danger where the Sudanese government took the lives of millions of Christian and animist black African Sudanese under the aegis of jihad. The pretext for a war in Chad is being set in the Sudanese Arab govt’s genocide in Darfur.
Just three states away, Iran has yet to recant it’s claim to destroy Israel – in fact, its political leaders continue to reiterate antisemitic pretexts as first principles. This is the peril faced, of millions more dead, possibly taken in mere moments of nuclear brinksmanship with Tehran and Tel Aviv in smoldering ruins.
Think this is overblown? Think of the two times India and Pakistan came within a hair’s breadth of annihilating each other’s capital cities and militaries. Only the aggressive and intense intervention of the USSR and the USA prevented real nuclear holocaust in Central Asia. We mightn’t fare so well in keeping the lid on nuclear combat between Israel and Iran, no Mexican standoff could be kept for long.
This is where I agree with the movement toward sustainable energy that we need to ease our dependence on oil from theocratic regimes in order to diffuse the theocratic bomb. But this is also where liberals like myself find ourselves parting ways from green pusillanimity in the face of fascist murder. If we care about civilization’s future, we have to confront the problem of virulent theocracy and thugocracy emboldened by oil money. No naive hope in diplomacy, or bitter resentment against oily Cheneyites will prove a real nostrum to the seriousness of the problem.
evanjones (16:50:49) :
“You’ll be needing to go back further than that.
‘There is a logical theory that postulates that baseline climate is dependent on the positions of continents around the globe.’
Surely. If Antarctica were not there, if the Southern extremes were ocean rather than land, we’d have a much warmer planet.”
Evan,
I also used to think the same thing. However, unless we are completely wrong about geology, the two snowball earth events (and maybe a third way back) occurred when there were no land masses over the poles.
Polar ice actually cools the planet very little. It keeps the high latitudes cold, and increases the temp gradient between poles and equator, but does not radiate much heat into space. More importantly, it does not reflect much solar radiation into space. A Russian mathematician (forgot his name) once calculated the latitude that polar ice needed to spread before it cooled the Earth enough to start a mass glaciation.
The current thinking from a geological standpoint is that snow and ice at low latitudes reflect way more sunlight than at high latitudes. So, once the Himalayas started accumulating ice, the Earth’s albedo increased significantly and started the recent cool down. In fact, the Himalayas became glaciated 10-20 million years before Antarctica.
Bill marsh:
Thanks for backing me up on more of the salient points WRT Iraq. If only well-intentioned folks like JamesG would step back from partisan outer doctrine & look toward the deeper realpolitik that the West must confront in preventing a next world war.
If only wind & solar energy were truly ready and economical!
I read the link provided be Anne on carbon dioxide and plants : http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2002/december11/jasperplots-124.html
Talk about spin
“The three-factor combination of increased temperature, precipitation and nitrogen deposition produced the largest stimulation [an 84 percent increase], but adding carbon dioxide reduced this to 40 percent,” Shaw and her colleagues wrote. ”
Note: the INCREASE was diminished with the addition of CO2, when all four factors were fiddled. The authors speculate might be due to :
“Why would elevated carbon dioxide in combination with other factors have a suppressive effect on plant growth? The researchers aren’t sure, but one possibility is that excess carbon in the soil is allowing microbes to outcompete plants for one or more limiting nutrients. ”
The only thing this proves is that we should drain the fields, i.e. change a bit our cultivation methods, and control nitrogen fixation, i.e. real pollutants to get benefits from warming and CO2. ( though I had the impression that nitrogen is entering the ground from the numerous lightnings hitting the earth every second, but what the h$$$)
It’s my contention that Dubya was extremely worried about the sanctions breaking down, and Saddam, eventually, getting the bomb. When he invaded Kuwait the first time he was, supposedly, within 6 months, to a year, of having a workable warhead.
The vote to go after him only passed by two Senators if I recall correctly. If he’d waited, and popped that thing before heading South he would have owned all that Saudi oil to this day. There’s no way in Hades, from my viewpoint, that Congress would have authorized action against a Nuclear-armed Hussein.
Remember, the CIA has been caught off guard every time someone’s gone nuclear. India, Pakistan, to name two. Anyway, as I said, if you believe we went to Iraq for any reason other than to protect 40% of the World’s oil reserves, that’s your business. I just don’t believe it.
And, yes, I supported the war, and I haven’t voted for a Democrat for President in my life.
I agree with you about 1990. But by 2003 the situation was entirely reversed. Saddam just wasn’t the threat he was in 1990. Not to Kuwait nor to Saudi Arabia. And yes, I voted for the Slickster in ’92, largely because Pops callously sat back and let Saddam scrag the Kurds and South Shia. (Little did I know that Clinton would be worse–I expected more from an ex-Contra supporter. Live and learn.) We went to Iraq for a list of legit reasons as long as your arm (WMD was mainly an ill-chosen selling point), but oil, which was dirt cheap at the time, and not under any material threat, just wasn’t particularly high on the list. (And, yes, that is my business.)
Anne:
If you had looked at the data charts you would recognize I believe that CO2 causes warming. The question is, how much? The extant trend lines of the past 125 years do not show a catastrophic increase in temperatures. The IPCC’s AR4 projected temperature forecasts have been falsified while Keenlyside has issued yet another forecast showing another decade of stable temperatures.
Thus far neither Argo nor Aqua data are showing dangerous warming in the seas or extra water vapor in the atmosphere.
Meanwhile more data & climate models are revealing atmospheric soot to be a far larger culprit in ongoing temperature anomalies, possibly exculpating CO2 by some margin.
Again, look at the graphs:
http://tinyurl.com/co2trend
If the seas aren’t warming at a dangerous rate, and the seas are where more than 80% of global warming would reside, and there’s no threat of a vast latent heat burp from the seas then why would the globe experience a sudden jump in global warming when it hasn’t happened yet? Even Kevin Trenberth of NCAR famously commented that it appears the extra errant heat has succeeded in escaping back into space! Some greenhouse effect!?
http://tinyurl.com/co2trend2
Likewise, if the trends of CO2 levels vs temperature continue to diverge, then it could well indicate that CO2’s warming effect is – as Arrhenius himself found – saturating; that CO2’s warming effect is logarithmic & decreases in effect for every new unit of concentration added.
The quandary isn’t whether CO2 causes warming, but whether the concern that increased humidity would inhere runaway heating – disproportionate to the baseline effect – has any basis in fact.
The evidence for such water vapor feedback greenhouse effects is being confronted with counterveiling evidence that shows that the middle troposphere is both cooler and drier than expected, that the climate models have wrongly assumed constant relative humidity and hence warmer temperatures in altitude, that CO2 is evenly distributed throughout the atmosphere, that soot-ladened brown clouds cause more heating than cooling, that the ongoing glacial losses have been from droughts caused by brown clouds, soot and deforestation, not atmospheric warming and that atmospheric soot has been a far more pernicious heating agent than heretofore known.
That’s aside from the evidence that most of the ongoing boreal thaw of the past 150 years has been consistently attributed to snow-darkening sootfall, yielding easily 20% of all sesquicentennial global warming.
n.b.
My previous post should read: “…that CO2 is *un*evenly distributed throughout the atmosphere…”