Congratulations to Harold Ambler, who frequents here in comments, for breaking the climate “glass ceiling” at HuffPo. This essay is something I thought I’d never see there. Next stop: Daily Kos? – Anthony
By Harold Ambler on The Huffington Post
You are probably wondering whether President-elect Obama owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming. The answer is, not yet. There is one person, however, who does. You have probably guessed his name: Al Gore.
Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that “the science is in.” Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind.
What is wrong with the statement? A brief list:
1. First, the expression “climate change” itself is a redundancy, and contains a lie. Climate has always changed, and always will. There has been no stable period of climate during the Holocene, our own climatic era, which began with the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago. During the Holocene there have been numerous sub-periods with dramatically varied climate, such as the warm Holocene Optimum (7,000 B.C. to 3,000 B.C., during which humanity began to flourish, and advance technologically), the warm Roman Optimum (200 B.C. to 400 A.D., a time of abundant crops that promoted the empire), the cold Dark Ages (400 A.D. to 900 A.D., during which the Nile River froze, major cities were abandoned, the Roman Empire fell apart, and pestilence and famine were widespread), the Medieval Warm Period (900 A.D. to 1300 A.D., during which agriculture flourished, wealth increased, and dozens of lavish examples of Gothic architecture were created), the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850, during much of which plague, crop failures, witch burnings, food riots — and even revolutions, including the French Revolution — were the rule of thumb), followed by our own time of relative warmth (1850 to present, during which population has increased, technology and medical advances have been astonishing, and agriculture has flourished).
So, no one needs to say the words “climate” and “change” in the same breath — it is assumed, by anyone with any level of knowledge, that climate changes. That is the redundancy to which I alluded. The lie is the suggestion that climate has ever been stable. Mr. Gore has used a famously inaccurate graph, known as the “Mann Hockey Stick,” created by the scientist Michael Mann, showing that the modern rise in temperatures is unprecedented, and that the dramatic changes in climate just described did not take place. They did. One last thought on the expression “climate change”: It is a retreat from the earlier expression used by alarmists, “manmade global warming,” which was more easily debunked. There are people in Mr. Gore’s camp who now use instances of cold temperatures to prove the existence of “climate change,” which is absurd, obscene, even.
2. Mr. Gore has gone so far to discourage debate on climate as to refer to those who question his simplistic view of the atmosphere as “flat-Earthers.” This, too, is right on target, except for one tiny detail. It is exactly the opposite of the truth.
Indeed, it is Mr. Gore and his brethren who are flat-Earthers. Mr. Gore states, ad nauseum, that carbon dioxide rules climate in frightening and unpredictable, and new, ways. When he shows the hockey stick graph of temperature and plots it against reconstructed C02 levels in An Inconvenient Truth, he says that the two clearly have an obvious correlation. “Their relationship is actually very complicated,” he says, “but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others, and it is this: When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer.” The word “complicated” here is among the most significant Mr. Gore has uttered on the subject of climate and is, at best, a deliberate act of obfuscation. Why? Because it turns out that there is an 800-year lag between temperature and carbon dioxide, unlike the sense conveyed by Mr. Gore’s graph. You are probably wondering by now — and if you are not, you should be — which rises first, carbon dioxide or temperature. The answer? Temperature. In every case, the ice-core data shows that temperature rises precede rises in carbon dioxide by, on average, 800 years. In fact, the relationship is not “complicated.” When the ocean-atmosphere system warms, the oceans discharge vast quantities of carbon dioxide in a process known as de-gassing. For this reason, warm and cold years show up on the Mauna Loa C02 measurements even in the short term. For instance, the post-Pinatubo-eruption year of 1993 shows the lowest C02 increase since measurements have been kept. When did the highest C02 increase take place? During the super El Niño year of 1998.
3. What the alarmists now state is that past episodes of warming were not caused by C02 but amplified by it, which is debatable, for many reasons, but, more important, is a far cry from the version of events sold to the public by Mr. Gore.
Meanwhile, the theory that carbon dioxide “drives” climate in any meaningful way is simply wrong and, again, evidence of a “flat-Earth” mentality. Carbon dioxide cannot absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation. Why not? Because it only absorbs heat along limited bandwidths, and is already absorbing just about everything it can. That is why plotted on a graph, C02’s ability to capture heat follows a logarithmic curve. We are already very near the maximum absorption level. Further, the IPCC Fourth Assessment, like all the ones before it, is based on computer models that presume a positive feedback of atmospheric warming via increased water vapor.
4. This mechanism has never been shown to exist. Indeed, increased temperature leads to increased evaporation of the oceans, which leads to increased cloud cover (one cooling effect) and increased precipitation (a bigger cooling effect). Within certain bounds, in other words, the ocean-atmosphere system has a very effective self-regulating tendency. By the way, water vapor is far more prevalent, and relevant, in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide — a trace gas. Water vapor’s absorption spectrum also overlays that of carbon dioxide. They cannot both absorb the same energy! The relative might of water vapor and relative weakness of carbon dioxide is exemplified by the extraordinary cooling experienced each night in desert regions, where water in the atmosphere is nearly non-existent.
If not carbon dioxide, what does “drive” climate? I am glad you are wondering about that. In the short term, it is ocean cycles, principally the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the “super cycle” of which cooling La Niñas and warming El Niños are parts. Having been in its warm phase, in which El Niños predominate, for the 30 years ending in late 2006, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to its cool phase, in which La Niñas predominate.
Since that time, already, a number of interesting things have taken place. One La Niña lowered temperatures around the globe for about half of the year just ended, and another La Niña shows evidence of beginning in the equatorial Pacific waters. During the last twelve months, many interesting cold-weather events happened to occur: record snow in the European Alps, China, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, the Rockies, the upper Midwest, Las Vegas, Houston, and New Orleans. There was also, for the first time in at least 100 years, snow in Baghdad.
Concurrent with the switchover of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to its cool phase the Sun has entered a period of deep slumber. The number of sunspots for 2008 was the second lowest of any year since 1901. That matters less because of fluctuations in the amount of heat generated by the massive star in our near proximity (although there are some fluctuations that may have some measurable effect on global temperatures) and more because of a process best described by the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark in his complex, but elegant, work The Chilling Stars. In the book, the modern Galileo, for he is nothing less, establishes that cosmic rays from deep space seed clouds over Earth’s oceans. Regulating the number of cosmic rays reaching Earth’s atmosphere is the solar wind; when it is strong, we get fewer cosmic rays. When it is weak, we get more. As NASA has corroborated, the number of cosmic rays passing through our atmosphere is at the maximum level since measurements have been taken, and show no signs of diminishing. The result: the seeding of what some have taken to calling “Svensmark clouds,” low dense clouds, principally over the oceans, that reflect sunlight back to space before it can have its warming effect on whatever is below.
Svensmark has proven, in the minds of most who have given his work a full hearing, that it is this very process that produced the episodes of cooling (and, inversely, warming) of our own era and past eras. The clearest instance of the process, by far, is that of the Maunder Minimum, which refers to a period from 1650 to 1700, during which the Sun had not a single spot on its face. Temperatures around the globe plummeted, with quite adverse effects: crop failures (remember the witch burnings in Europe and Massachusetts?), famine, and societal stress.
Many solar physicists anticipate that the slumbering Sun of early 2009 is likely to continue for at least two solar cycles, or about the next 25 years. Whether the Grand Solar Minimum, if it comes to pass, is as serious as the Maunder Minimum is not knowable, at present. Major solar minima (and maxima, such as the one during the second half of the 20th century) have also been shown to correlate with significant volcanic eruptions. These are likely the result of solar magnetic flux affecting geomagnetic flux, which affects the distribution of magma in Earth’s molten iron core and under its thin mantle. So, let us say, just for the sake of argument, that such an eruption takes place over the course of the next two decades. Like all major eruptions, this one will have a temporary cooling effect on global temperatures, perhaps a large one. The larger the eruption, the greater the effect. History shows that periods of cold are far more stressful to humanity than periods of warm. Would the eruption and consequent cooling be a climate-modifier that exists outside of nature, somehow? Who is the “flat-Earther” now?
What about heat escaping from volcanic vents in the ocean floor? What about the destruction of warming, upper-atmosphere ozone by cosmic rays? I could go on, but space is short. Again, who is the “flat-Earther” here?
The ocean-atmosphere system is not a simple one that can be “ruled” by a trace atmospheric gas. It is a complex, chaotic system, largely modulated by solar effects (both direct and indirect), as shown by the Little Ice Age.
To be told, as I have been, by Mr. Gore, again and again, that carbon dioxide is a grave threat to humankind is not just annoying, by the way, although it is that! To re-tool our economies in an effort to suppress carbon dioxide and its imaginary effect on climate, when other, graver problems exist is, simply put, wrong. Particulate pollution, such as that causing the Asian brown cloud, is a real problem. Two billion people on Earth living without electricity, in darkened huts and hovels polluted by charcoal smoke, is a real problem.
So, let us indeed start a Manhattan Project-like mission to create alternative sources of energy. And, in the meantime, let us neither cripple our own economy by mislabeling carbon dioxide a pollutant nor discourage development in the Third World, where suffering continues unabated, day after day.
Again, Mr. Gore, I accept your apology.
And, Mr. Obama, though I voted for you for a thousand times a thousand reasons, I hope never to need one from you.
P.S. One of the last, desperate canards proposed by climate alarmists is that of the polar ice caps. Look at the “terrible,” “unprecedented” melting in the Arctic in the summer of 2007, they say. Well, the ice in the Arctic basin has always melted and refrozen, and always will. Any researcher who wants to find a single molecule of ice that has been there longer than 30 years is going to have a hard job, because the ice has always been melted from above (by the midnight Sun of summer) and below (by relatively warm ocean currents, possibly amplified by volcanic venting) — and on the sides, again by warm currents. Scientists in the alarmist camp have taken to referring to “old ice,” but, again, this is a misrepresentation of what takes place in the Arctic.
More to the point, 2007 happened also to be the time of maximum historic sea ice in Antarctica. (There are many credible sources of this information, such as the following website maintained by the University of Illinois-Urbana: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg). Why, I ask, has Mr. Gore not chosen to mention the record growth of sea ice around Antarctica? If the record melting in the Arctic is significant, then the record sea ice growth around Antarctica is, too, I say. If one is insignificant, then the other one is, too.
For failing to mention the 2007 Antarctic maximum sea ice record a single time, I also accept your apology, Mr. Gore. By the way, your contention that the Arctic basin will be “ice free” in summer within five years (which you said last month in Germany), is one of the most demonstrably false comments you have dared to make. Thank you for that
A curiously titled paper mentioned over at Climate Science is really talking about decadal variation in albedo seemingly mediated by clouds …
New JGR Paper “Inter-annual Variations In Earth’s Reflectance” By Pallé Et Al 2009
That essay is eloquent. Now what about Dr. Hansen? How can this man remain a scientist?
RK
It is good to see journalists getting the word out about the reality of political lies. It is just awful that scientists lost their objectivity and brought science into disrepute by mixing it with their own value judgements and political aspirations. Hopefully this will be the year that the politicians realise they have to drop the AGW movement. This blog is a wonderful resource and service to the community and it is great to see the influence it is having.
We will see more of this in 2009.
It’s a disgrace that it takes such a long time.
But as always, better late than never.
Oh my, how invigorating. I suspect that the American College of Cardiology will be sending Mr Ambler a stiff note on the collective apoplexy he just caused.
I think this should be sent to each and every member of Congress. Although I’m not sure it would do any good, it would give them something to think about.
I wonder what the comments to this article will be like. Actually, I don’t, anyone who is a convinced warmist is not going to change their mind until the glaciers come back to Central Park in Manhattan. And even then they will prefer to believe Global Warming was involved. But it is nice to see the “let’s not talk about science because time is short and actions are needed” phase of this hoax is over.
Stunned disbelief!!
This is like seeing the sun rise in the west
or
Senator Boxer (D-CA) holding hearings on the environment and asking Al Gore to not show up while she mends fences with Senator Inhofe (R-OK).
Before you know it, Mr. Obama will be announcing that we have more serious concerns confronting us than the amount of CO2 we release into the atmosphere.
Incredible! This was on the HuffPo?!
I have to say I am excited with a growing trend I see of actual scientific truth trumping the hype of ‘Global Warming’. In a WordPress tag surf on the same term, I will typically see 7 or 8 common sense climate posts to each alarmist or sound-byte reguritator. Everyone keep blogging the truth!
A couple of other good climate tipping point info nuggets:
published for the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. This is an excellent, and needed, counterpoint to the politically-motivated 4th IPCC Assessment Report.
Also, I found that the surprisingly accurate “the Old Farmers Almanac” uses the Henrik Svensmark theory of solar/cosmic ray forcing theory in their . Their prediction for the next decade or two?: surprise (or should I say no surprise?)- Global Cooling!
Sorry- my previous post didn’t come out quite right. On the last info nuggets:
The first piece of info was on the NIPCC report: “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate: Summary for Policymakers of the
Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change”
The second is the Old Farmers Almanac using the new Svensmark theory in their widely read climate predictions vs. carbon dioxide alarmism.
Could Al Gore not be held accountable for the economic damage he has inflicted, once the truth is recognized generally? The latter can’t be far off.
Winter of 2008/09:
When AGW and ‘Climate Change’ got it’s cold shower.
KlausB
When I took my family on a tour of Scotland, I learned of the tremendous influence the movie BRAVEHEART had on Scotland and England. Shortly after the movie Scotland was allowed to seat it’s own parliment.
I also see the influence AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH has had on the public and politicians. I believe there can be many scientific studies that refute anthropogenic global warming and they will not have the impact that one well made, entertaining, and accurate movie will make.
I commend Harold Ambler: Is there another Michael Crichton to take up the cause?
I’m shocked! Huff Puff? Incredible. Even some of those who frequent that site see AGW for what it is… nonsense and a way to cripple our economy. About time. Anthony, I’m sure this blog and those like it are responsible for this turn around. My heartfelt thanks for all those who continue to fight against the CO2 haters.
Harold Ambler’s piece:
It is a pity that Ambler mars hi otherwise excellent piece by erroneous solar contentions, like:
As NASA has corroborated, the number of cosmic rays passing through our atmosphere is at the maximum level since measurements have been taken, and show no signs of diminishing.
Not true, the flux at minimum [remember to correct for small changes due to changes of the Earth’s magnetic field] at every solar minimum since measurements started in 1952 has been very constant.
Major solar minima (and maxima, such as the one during the second half of the 20th century) have also been shown to correlate with significant volcanic eruptions.
Both minima and maxima?
These are likely the result of solar magnetic flux affecting geomagnetic flux, which affects the distribution of magma in Earth’s molten iron core and under its thin [2900 km thick!] mantle.
This is total nonsense, if anything it is the other way around, it is the circulation [change of distribution] that affects and generates the geomagnetic field.
I am a layman, so I can’t directly evaluate the science of Imminent, Catastrophically Anthropogenic Climate Change. Nor do I know the motives of the editors who originally published Mr. Ambler’s article. What I can say is that I am glad there is at least a renewed debate.
My deepest hope is that here, and in other issues, the truth will out–eventually. Thank you for bringing this to public attention.
Its gratifying to see another member of the mainstream media writing about the “other” argument. I suspect many more will follow in 2009.
Happy New Year from a long time lurker.
Richard Sharpe (12:39:33) :
A curiously titled paper mentioned over at Climate Science is really talking about decadal variation in albedo seemingly mediated by clouds …
The paper states that since 2000 the albedo has been flat, hence the clouds flat, hence not following the cosmic ray flux that has increased from the 2000 solar max until the present solar minimum conditions. Direct observational refutation of the Theory of the ‘New Galileo”.
Leif Svalgaard (14:19:08) says:
Sure, but then they say that there was a rise after 1998 … interesting, n’est pas?
It is the inevitable emergence of articles like this one that so much urgency has been attached to responding to the AGW claim. The shrill, urgent demands for such actions have the intent of coercing governments into committing to huge financial and social change before the truth gets a public platform.
What ‘ends’ with articles like Amblers is not the world but the corrupt hypothesis.
In sum, you just witnessed the difference between a progressive and a liberal. A progressive really is genuinely curious about the facts. A liberal not so much.
Unfortunately, President elect Obama is an old fashioned liberal and not a progressive, so I do not share the writer’s enthusiasm for hope in the global warming arena. I am hoping that Obama is a closet progressive, but his picks for his cabinet are clearly not progressive, save one or two exceptions, and those exceptions have nothing to do with climate or energy.
Richard Sharpe (14:24:43) :
Sure, but then they say that there was a rise after 1998 … interesting, n’est pas?
No, not at all. It said that from December 1998 to mid-2000 there was an increase. This is so short that not much can be concluded from it, and during that short time interval, the cosmic ray flux was decreasing [hence clouds decreasing, hence predicted albedo decreasing].
Peter S (14:28:11) :
What ‘ends’ with articles like Amblers is not the world but the corrupt hypothesis.
The article would have even greater impact and credibility without the solar nonsense.
Bravo to the Huffington post!
When you mix up science and ideology, you get ideology and no science.
Some “scientists” are going soon to be red in the face. And when you see how those expressing serious doubts about that theory have been treated by their fellow “scientists”, it reeks of McCartyism!
C’mon! this tautology: ‘climate change is redundant because climate always changes’ is just absurd and undermines the author’s claims – we all know that the in-context definition is really, ‘climate change is likely accelerating due to human greenhouse emissions’ – once that is out of the way, we can argue the truth of the AGW proposition – upon which, I agree, the jury is still out.
Non-scientists don’t understand that in science, the jury is ALWAYS out.
I think that many sceptics do great harm to the debate by falling into the same propogadistic traps they claim ensnare their opponents: i.e. cherry-picking supporting data, treating data as conclusive, attacking the messenger, etc.
Sceptics seem to be pretty silent on their own list of inconvenient topics. Examples: ocean acidification, pollution effects, the social injustice that results from the current distribution of resource consumption, the strategic and economic costs of dependence on hostile oil and gas producers.
Forgive me if I remain skeptical of your skepticism.
Leif Svalgaard (14:07:34) : says
Harold Ambler’s piece:
It is a pity that Ambler mars hi otherwise excellent piece by erroneous solar contentions, like:
. . .
“These are likely the result of solar magnetic flux affecting geomagnetic flux, which affects the distribution of magma in Earth’s molten iron core and under its thin [2900 km thick!] mantle.
This is total nonsense, if anything it is the other way around, it is the circulation [change of distribution] that affects and generates the geomagnetic field.”
Ambler does not suggest that the solar magnetic flux is the sole cause of movements in the Earth’s magma. Anyone with a proper knowledge of magnetism understands that when the movement of a medium with magnetic properties (eg the magma) generates a magnetic field, any externally imposed changes to the magnetic field (eg from changes to the solar magnetic flux) will impose a reverse effect on the medium. That is what Ambler is telling us. And that these reverse effects will tend to disrupt (not stop) the flow of the underlying medium, which will cause abnormal pressures on some parts of the mantle, which may manifest as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc.
Since Svalgaard seems determined to misunderstand Amber’s points, he will probably likewise misunderstand this. But it needs to be said.
I never knew that 2007 was a record for maximum Antarctic ice. And weird that I got this information from a leftist source.
Bryan St. James, the Old Farmer’s Almanac meteorologist is Joe D’Aleo of ICECAP.
http://www.almanac.com/timeline/author.php
http://icecap.us/
Ambler says:
“Indeed, increased temperature leads to increased evaporation of the oceans, which leads to increased cloud cover (one cooling effect) and increased precipitation (a bigger cooling effect). Within certain bounds, in other words, the ocean-atmosphere system has a very effective self-regulating tendency.”
Except, of course, when the temperature increase is caused by something other than CO2. When it’s “caused” by cosmic rays, sunspots, PDO, etc., then the “self-regulating tendency” miraculously stops.
Mostly the same old PRATTs (points refuted a thousand times) in Ambler’s article, but the bit about sunspots influencing volcanic activity was a new one for me!
If there was only some evidence…
gondwannabe (15:23:22) :
I searched the whole thread for “jury” and I failed to find who you were agreeing with on the jury being out.
Also, are you seriously suggesting that just because they may not choose to discuss them on this blog the so-called sceptics do not think about, even act on other global issues ?? Get real.
What a great essay. Not being a solar expert, I’m hoping he has the opportunity to correct any misspeaks. The bit about voting for Obama 1000 times didn’t come out quite right either !!!
Gondwannabe: Re: Ocean acidification… since CO2 still provably trails temperature rises even to the present day, and CO2 has been much higher in ages past, what does ocean acidification have to do with anything?
The rest of the topics have zero dot zero to do with AGW per se.
It’s not enough for AGW advocates to have noble intentions; if AGW isn’t happening, AGW initiatives are wasting money and costing lives.
What utter rubbish. I don’t worship at the alter of AGW but my lack of worship does not mean I either approve or disapprove of any of the above. Worshiping wouldn’t demonstrate approval or disapproval either.
Your list of “topics” have no relationship whatsoever as to whether climate change is natural, anthropogenic or both.
Al Gore has really stepped in it this time. He could have spent the rest of his global warming career collecting money by spreading fear over events that were a centure or at least half century in the future. Oh, but that wasn’t good enough for Big Al. He’s now told the biggest global warming whopper of his alarmist career:
AL GORE HAS GUARANTEED THAT THE NORTHERN POLAR ICE CAP WILL BE COMPLETELY GONE IN FIVE YEARS!!!
When I heard this I assumed it was a rumor started by skeptics to make Gore look bad. It wasn’t until I viewed the video that I realized what Gore had done. Gore has started a five year credibility countdown timer ticking and it’s up to all of us to make sure that he is held accountable and proven to be a fraud when his dire prediction aimed at drumming up support doesn’t come close to comming true.
The mainstream media isn’t going to let this video see the light of day because they, unlike Al, understand the precarious position in which he has placed himself.
It is therefore up to us to spread the word about Big Al’s prediction. He must be exposed for the fearmongering opportunist that he has become.
To view the video, please visit the following site and click on the picture of Big Al holding up five fingers.
http://www.hootervillegazette.com
While visiting this site, you might want to watch a preview of the film “Not Evil, Just wrong” or watch “The Great Global Warming Swindle” which is found in the video section. Happy Viewing!!!
OT but this is great! NASA still does many things very well.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,475577,00.html
Gondwannabe,
Social injustice in energy resource distribution refers to people who are NOT on the grid of any coal or nuclear power plants, something the skeptics have been complaining about for a long time. Misguided attempts to cut back on these power plants will result in greater social injustice, not less.
I also have to repeat that C02 is not pollution. Everyone here wants a cleaner environment, but to put C02 on the list of pollutants would be (as the article refrains) flat-earth thinking.
Life would be impossible without C02 in the air, and its only a trace gas (385 parts per million = .000385 = 1/3 of 1% of the atmosphere, 0.0385% ).
Regarding ocean acidification or other things on the loooooooooong list of things that are being blamed on man-made global warming: few will argue against the fact that nature changes and that species rise and either adapt or fall, and that natural cycles have a 4 billion year history of wiping out populations that evolved in places and times that…that…
Oh wait, maybe you are arguing against that. A static earth? Please correct me if that’s not what you meant.
The point is that most here are just as concerned with the environment and with social injustice in energy distribution as the greenest of the greens. In fact most of us would argue that we are even more concerned about it than those who want to make such power even less available, such that only the wealthy can afford to stay warm.
The media worm turns…..
I. Am. STUNNED! That the Huffington Post would publish this.
“Inconceivable…..”
Al Gore apologize? Hah! He’s too busy laughing all the way to the bank.
May this article be a tipping point, with first a trickle, and then an avalanche of such articles, and even news stories exposing the AGW fraud.
RK @12:45:01 , Hansen is no longer a “scientist”. He is a political hack for Al Gore, the High Priest. Hansen is his bag carrier.
Harold Ambler, thank you very much. You are warmly appreciated, flaws or no. Because you have come from the right space and said words that deserve to be said, you help restore the covenant which has been broken.
Can anyone tell those of us who don’t know the stateside political scene so well, what the significance of the ”Huffington Post’ carrying this article is please? Has it previously been strongly pro AGW? Is it a clarion of the liberal left?
As I summed up my argument to one Margary, who seemed to think CO2 was pollution: Reality burns, baby!
Mike B @12:58:57,
All democrats in Congress, or their hirelings, bucket sniffers and hanger-arounders, follow Huffington Post. It is a blog of great consequence and communal hugging for the left, but of little actual utility or serious argument.
HuffPo — Clarion of the liberal left. Maybe not quite. For a European, it would be very middle of the road; but for the US, most would say it is a liberal blog; but not a progressive blog, although every now and then they have a few articles written by progressives. A progressive blog would probably qualify as left in European terms.
gondwannabe:
May I deconstruct? Thank you:
The ocean is not acidifying. It is becoming marginally less alkaline, and the very slight change is not caused by atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Next, on a per-capita basis the U.S. has become the cleanest country in the world. We are the ultimate non-polluters. As a non-signer to the Kyoto Protocol, the U.S. has reduced emissions significantly more than the countries that signed Kyoto. But perhaps the ‘pollution effects’ referred to were meant for China, Russia, India, etc.? Then why didn’t you say so? Alarmists seem to be pretty silent on that score, no?
‘Social injustice’? What’s that? Is that like when a certain well-to-do presidential candidate with mediocre grades and a poor SAT score bypasses thousands of Asian applicants with 4.25 GPA’s and 1500+ SAT scores, and gets into Harvard?
Is that the ‘social injustice’ you meant? Or maybe you really meant economic injustice. We know the cure for that: get a job, and save a bit of money every paycheck, and avoid bad habits like drugs and gambling. Is the ‘injustice’ in having to buy an alarm clock?
Finally, depending on other countries for our oil isn’t smart. We need to start drilling right here, big time. So we do agree on something. It’s a start.
On the issue of cosmic radiation causing clouds, has this article ever been discussed on this blog? Published in 2006. And if so who discussed it and what was said about it?
http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/77543w3q4mq86417/fulltext.pdf
A minor point about a big effect:
The “Dark Ages” kicked in due to the Sunda Caldera pyroclastic event in the early 6th Century more than an inherent climate swing. It did, of course, have a huge impact on climate (and civilizations) around the globe. But one might want to be careful about keeping “normal” climatic swings separate from pyroclastic-induced climate dips. An outstanding book on the Sunda event was accomplished by David Keyes in “Catastrophe, A Quest for the Origins of the Modern World.”
The “Flat-Earthers” are in a conundrum. The earth is cooling, without their carbon reduction plans in effect. If action is not taken immediately to enact their draconian mandates then they will not be able to take credit for “saving the earth” from their warming scenario…even though history has shown that cooling, not warming, spells disaster.
Al Gore and his disciples bring new meaning to the term “Political Science.”
Galileo (15:24:43) :
Since Svalgaard seems determined to misunderstand Amber’s points, he will probably likewise misunderstand this. But it needs to be said.
Saying it does not make it more plausible. The solar field near the Earth is a 1/10000 of the Earth’s field. During strong [and rare] magnetic storms that fraction can increase hundredfold for brief moments. The Earth’s field is rotating with respect to the Sun’s field so the relative directions of the two fields change constantly. The Sun’s field [and dynamo action from thermal movements of air] creates currents in the ionosphere and ‘mirror’ currents about two hundred kilometers under the surface that shield the interior. Only very slowly varying currents can penetrate to any depth and none [as far as we know, penetrate to the liquid core]. Earthquakes do not happen below about 700 km because the mantle is not brittle enough at that and greater depths. All in all, the whole scenario is nonsense and detracts from the otherwise reasonable message of the paper.
First Merkel turning on cap and trade, then Vaclav Klaus becoming EU President, and Gore making an ass of himself — a bigger ass that is– over Arctic ice, and now this Huffington blog. Wow ! What a Christmas!! But does does Obama know that Holdren, his new scientific adviser, is a loon too. He advised Erhlich ( “only 22 million Americans would be alive in 2000” ) that 5 metals Holdren selected would not be around in a few years and lost a $1000 bet to Julian Simon. With Boxer and Browner around however, we still face problems. But how much longer can the “media-evil ” warm last?
Leif, you quote:
As NASA has corroborated, the number of cosmic rays passing through our atmosphere is at the maximum level since measurements have been taken, and show no signs of diminishing.
and then comment
Not true, the flux at minimum [remember to correct for small changes due to changes of the Earth’s magnetic field] at every solar minimum since measurements started in 1952 has been very constant.
Actually your quote and comment upon it are not mutually exclusive.
At zero sun-spots, the orbitally-corrected flux (what type?) is constant, cycle over measured cycle; I will not argue this with you as you know this stuff. This is why I disguss with you.
I don’t know about others, but my contention would be that, with lower sun-spot activity, due to longer minimums and lower maximums, over several (5-6) cycles, will result in lower relative total flux on the Earth, meaning less energy dumped into the atmospheric system, over that period. Remember, the Earth, because of its oceans, cannot be expected to respond to a step change in Solar output of energy (of all types) within a period of less than 60 years, and probably much more. Any shorter changes are merely weather or local turbulance.
As we AGW scientists know.
There are known knowns, as for example the greenhouse effect.
Then there are things we know we know such as CO2 and Methane are greenhouse gases.
We also know
There are known unknowns that we don’t want to know.
That is to say
We know there are some things we can know, but we don’t want to know
We do not know the things we don’t like to know
But there are also unknown unknowns things we cannot know, because they are unknown
The ones we don’t know, but we like to know are unknown
We don’t know
That is to say, we know one thing, we know the unknown
gondwannabe @ 15:23:22 :
Sceptics seem to be pretty silent on their own list of inconvenient topics. Examples: ocean acidification, pollution effects, the social injustice that results from the current distribution of resource consumption, the strategic and economic costs of dependence on hostile oil and gas producers.
You reveal the real, political ideological agenda for the warming hysteria with these remarks. There is not one global warming related issue there, although two are claimed,a s a last desperate clutch of the straw to be so. It is all political.
As is the Global Warming hysteria.
Chris V. (15:33:51) :
the bit about sunspots influencing volcanic activity was a new one for me!
I think he meant the LACK of sunspots [although he has a nice CYA statement that both solar minima AND maxima are responsible]
If there was only some evidence…
There has been several studies that suggest that when both 14C and 10Be are high, volcanic activity is high. It is much more likely that the ‘effect’ is caused by a link to the climate: volcanoes => climate => deposition of radionuclides [deposition rather than production]. Amber’s proposed ‘mechanism’ is ludicrous and he should have a scientist look at his ‘paper’ first to weed out the nonsense.
Hitler created his fanatical following mainly through the effectiveness of propaganda:
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/ww2era.htm#Material
It worked for a while until reality overcame fantasy and he ended up incinerated outside a bunker in a devastated city.
Now, I would not wish the same fate on good old Al – just a two week paid holiday in a tent in the Arctic in 2012 would do – Oh… and only 2 bullets in his rifle.
Robert Wood (17:17:59) :
the Earth, because of its oceans, cannot be expected to respond to a step change in Solar output of energy (of all types) within a period of less than 60 years, and probably much more. Any shorter changes are merely weather or local turbulance.
A lot of people with disagree with your 60-year delay. Many studies find a delay of one tenth of that. See e.g. some discussion by lucia: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/schwartz-scafetta-estimate-climate-time-scale/
ah, the cat is truly amongst the pigeons…thanks for those who have risen to the bait…perhaps I should clarify.
if, like me, you’re an AGW skeptic, all I’m saying is, ‘hold yourself to the same standard you hold the AGW proponents, so the debate can move forward’;
my point about social justice has to do with the unease many of us are feeling about the sustainability (yeah, I hate that word, too) of 10% of the world’s population consuming 60% of the world’s resources (or pick your own set of numbers) – it isn’t a moral issue for me, just think about the strategic implications;
so yes, I do believe the AGW debate needs to move up to the broader issues around carbon-fueled lifestyles…if your motivation about batting away AGW is to justify the status quo, then I’m concerned about your vision;
I’m arguing that there are measurable costs for plowing ahead – such as the real and immediate threat of pollution or the ramifications of our dependence on imported gas and oil – some here obviously aren’t concerned with this – but these ultimately tie directly to carbon emission policy;
ocean acidification is actually de-alkalinization? you’ve out-tautologized ‘climate always changes’! honestly, I don’t know if it’s good or bad, natural or anthropogenic – but would you consider that this correlates with CO2? Yes, CO2 has been higher in the primordial past, but do you consider the rate of change. Hint: it’s something like 3 orders of magnitude faster over the past 100 years – if that’s the case, it may make it difficult for organisms to adapt successfully to the change – would you consider that this could be a risk?;
finally, would you even consider that there may be real benefits in treating AGW as a real, urgent crisis, even if ultimately all the current AGW models fail? unless you think the AGW politicians are just being cynical, then consider that they may be pursuing a rational risk management policy. I don’t particularly like or agree with Al Gore, but I don’t think he owes us an apology for raising the debate to its current intensity.
gondwannabe (17:50:57) :
Why does a transvestite wear a dress?
Those of you here nit-picking the details of Harold Ambler’s well-written essay seem to be missing the big picture. HuffPo’s readers don’t give a damn about the technical details of climate analysis. Their take-away will be that an erudite writer has claimed that Al Gore’s anthropogenic global warming claim is a lie, and supports this accusation with 2,000+ words of supporting information, in a publication that they respect. The significance of an essay such as this, appearing in a well-known liberal publication as HuffPo, is huge. The technical details are irrelevant, largely because, let’s face it, AGW is not a scientific debate, but a sociopolitical debate.
Brick by brick, the façade of AGW is crumbling. Harold Ambler has arrived with a bulldozer to lend a hand. Rather than criticizing the details of his analysis, we should be applauding his achievement of having reached an audience that has been misled for too long.
Tallbloke — Having the Huffington Post come out for global warming skeptics, is like having Hillary Clinton endorse Sarah Palin.
“john stubbles (17:17:34) :
First Merkel turning on cap and trade, then Vaclav Klaus becoming EU President, and Gore making an ass of himself — a bigger ass that is– over Arctic ice, and now this Huffington blog. Wow ! What a Christmas!!”
I would add #4… AGW proponents appearing on this blog disguised as sceptics. The AGW faithful are really getting desperate. 🙂
Nice try, though Gond…
Joseph (18:14:21) :
Those of you here nit-picking the details of Harold Ambler’s well-written essay seem to be missing the big picture. HuffPo’s readers don’t give a damn about the technical details of climate analysis.
I think the readers deserve that the technical details are correct, otherwise we are back in Gore and Schneider territory where we are allowed to be incorrect as long as we get our message across. If Ambler had claimed that the climate is manipulated by little green men from outer space rather than AGW, would that be OK too? as long as we bash AGW anything goes… I think not.
Joseph (18:14:21) :
Rather than criticizing the details of his analysis, we should be applauding his achievement of having reached an audience that has been misled for too long.
Misleading them down a different path is just as bad.
I am not qualified to argue Ambler’s “science” which, as more qualified commenters have pointed out, is quite weak. But his historical claims (#1 in his essay) are verifiable and largely true. Humanity and civilization have flourished during historically warm periods and suffered during the cooler ones.
Warmer means longer growing seasons, more rain, fewer crop failures, more abundance, less famine and disease, etc. Most of humanity lives closer to the Equators than to the poles. The warmer agricultural regions are far more productive than cooler regions. Plant and animal diversity (species per acre) are greatest in Equatorial regions, least in polar regions. Etc. etc.
Warmer Is Better. Awareness of that fact is increasing. The purported negatives regarding GW, such as rapid sea level rise, more hurricanes, and the demise of polar bears are easily disproved by empirical evidence. Alarmists are forced to predict ridiculous scenarios, such as the Venus Effect, to justify their anthropogenic global cooling (AGC) political/economic proposals, because warmer is so obviously better.
Now the non-progressive but still leftwing Huffington Post has tested the skeptic water. It is doubtful that they will plunge in, but it would not be a bad strategy for them. There is nothing inherent in Socialism that demands cooling the planet. They could adopt the Warmer Is Better philosophy and still cling to the precepts of Marxism. I’m just saying…
Joseph. I agree. And what journalist ever gets the details right anyway?
The main thing is to get the public aware of a different point of view.
Asking again about the article I posted above:
http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/77543w3q4mq86417/fulltext.pdf
To encourage interest in the article the title is:
“Empirical evidence for a nonlinear effect of galactic cosmic rays on clouds.”
From the abstract:
Across the UK, on days of high cosmic flux…, compared with low cosmic flux…, the chance of ( i ) an overcast day increases by ( 19 + or – 4 ) % and ( ii ) the diffuse fraction [clouds] increases by ( 2 + or – 0.3 ) %.
The author compared UK cloud data for 50 years with the cosmic ray data from Climax, Colorado and found this correlation.
Any takers out there to advise me about citing this article as authoritative? Lief?
There’s also a link in the HuffPo to Vaclav Klaus.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/03/new-eu-president-climate_n_154949.html
In which case it is no longer a debate about AGW and the science surrounding it. It is a debate about carbon-fueled lifestyles.
There are no benefits in corrupting science to suit your political agenda. Convince people with the truth not with pseudo science and misdirection.
AGW is a religion. It has all the hallmarks of a religion which are:
1. A fundamental belief: CO2 is responsible for GW
2. Man in general is evil: Man is the cause of the CO2 and hence of GW
3. True believers are smarter and better than other people: They aren’t flat-earthers, they believe in social justice. They care about the planet and the environment etc.
4. True believers will be rewarded after their death: Their children (and children’s children) will prosper and live in a better world because of the true believers actions.
5. Non-believers are stupid and evil: They are flat-earthers, they don’t care about social justice or the environment etc.
6. Non-believers wont be rewarded: Their children will suffer from pestilence and starvation etc.
7. Non believers must be converted.
Ah, the ways in which I could pick apart the “science” in Harold Ambler’s article. However, instead I will choose to note one amusing factoid:
Every time he talks about carbon dioxide, he uses “cee” “zero” “two” rather than “cee” “oh” “two”.
(also, Smokey, “The ocean is not acidifying. It is becoming marginally less alkaline, and the very slight change is not caused by atmospheric carbon dioxide.” – um, become less alkaline and becoming more acidic are the same thing. Do you say “the temperature is becoming less cold” when it warms from -5 to -3 degrees C? And given that the change in ocean acidity in fact agrees quite well with what we theoretically predict from increased CO2, what is your evidence that there isn’t causality here?)
Lots of new places are starting to carry essays like this: click
Science has fads just like any other human endeavor. It has dogmas, and rigid orthodoxies too. The difference is that in scientific culture, there is a powerful incentive to reveal them. As long as science is a viable enterprise in society, there will be scientists attempting to falsify theories, especially bad ones!
I am not surprised that there is a growing “common sense” reaction to the AGW movement. And I’m not surprised or particularly troubled that it has taken as long as it has. AGW has drawn together many deep trends in our contemporary culture: mass anxiety about the environment; ignorance of scientific method; the desire to replace religion with a nature-cult, etc.
My bet is that AGW will peter out before too much irrevocable damage has been done. The intensity of the AGW advocates has always been driven by their realization of how infeasible their goals were anyway…
The Buddhists have a notion of “skillful means”. It basically says that it is OK to lie and bend the rules so long as the result is a good one (and you haven’t really harmed anyone along the way.)
I’d say that Al Gore has served, more likely, to highlight deep problems in science, authorities, and funding–problems that all need addressing, so that we can move forward to better quality science in these very complex fields where bias has been all too easy to introduce. Get auditing in there and proper verification.
As for social justice, it is odd to try to change people’s culture and justice by forcing on them material changes. I mean, you do change people’s culture in that way, but you really need to study culture FIRST and understand how that develops, before you even get into what possible material changes would be needed to force a desired change. Basically, if you’re really worried about social justice, then the whole thing should be driven by social / moral / philosophical schools of thought, by religious institutions, psychologists, anthropologists, and so on. Why do we consume so much so selfishly? That’s what you’re asking. Simply forcing a redistribution only angers everyone and can’t be sustained, except by draconian means. So just trying to force AGW on people as the “reason” won’t work. But that’s the sort of simplistic, “AGW leads to Justice” thinking that these scientists seem to be using. And guess what, they’re not qualified in the knowledge of human social change. You wouldn’t ask a chemist to give a sermon in church on infidelity. It’s just not their area of competence.
It is no accident I suppose that Hansen gives talks at Evangelical churches, and that the more progressive churches are looking for ways to heal the apparent split and sometimes outright war between science and religion. And so they welcome Hansen, and his perspective on the ecosystem, as it resonates with the Church’s notions of human morality, and they go on to redefine their morality in terms of including the environment, define it as “care for Creation” as Hansen puts it, and AGW and selfish consumption are “destruction of Creation”, as Hansen puts it. They have this dialogue and they have been including it into their religious life and teaching.
But whilst science and religion perhaps have indeed become unnecesarally polarised and antagonistic over the years, the way to solve that is NOT to try to smoosh them together. Rather, you simply accord each its own space. In church discuss religious and ethical issues. In the lab discuss scientific issues. Do each on its own, and have each STICK TO ITS OWN AREA.
So on this blog, it is right to remain generally silent on the ethical issues. It is not an ethics blog. We come here to find out about science issues. If you want ethics, pick your favorite religion, philosophy school, or grandma.
I know Gore talks about and is quoted as saying that AGW is a “spiritual issue”. But spiritual issues are even more complex than global warming science. Really complex. It is bad enough trying to disentangle mixed up ideas in science, let alone trying to disentangle the mixed up ideas of the world’s faiths, moral outlooks, ethical philosophies. Let’s just get the science right… even get the public presentation of the science right…
Morality and social justice do not rely on science or any science theory. If you think they do then you’re simply not noticing the subtle implicit value and moral judgements which you are making. Science can tell you that X leads to Y. But is Y “better” ? Do you have an instrument that can measure “better” or “good” ? If sharing wealth is truly the good thing to do, then there should exist moral justification for doing so, in its own right. A fair number of people will hear about impending resource wars and make the moral judgement, “well ok, we’re always fighting wars, and if there is going to be another, we’d better make sure we win! We’d better start hoarding all the resources we can so we’re the strongest!”
Don’t assume that the AGW scare will have on people the moral influence that you hope it will. Often you just can’t change people. Often it can just backfire. What kind of world do you envisage where everyone is desperately worried for their survival? You think that leads to cooperation?
Sorry that’s along post. I just wish we could disentangle the moral/spiritual thing from AGW debate.
Yeah, and when the Warmerers manage to quit laughing they’re going to beat him mercilessly about the head and shoulders with that “Cosmic Rays causing Earthquakes” madness.
It would be better, I fear, that the article had ne’er been borne.
-snip-
AGW is a religion. It has all the hallmarks of a religion which are:
1. A fundamental belief: CO2 is responsible for GW
2. Man in general is evil: Man is the cause of the CO2…
-snip-
yes, conceded, and big Al is guilty as charged…and now, what about the converse?
very few of us are qualified to argue the science from either side – so the sociopolitical debate is what this really is – even if you pretend you’re arguing with science – that’s why Ambler fails – that’s why Gore fails…meanwhile, what should we be debating?
(lurking as a long-tailed relativist in a room full of rockin’ absolutists)
davidgmills (18:52:45) :
Any takers out there to advise me about citing this article as authoritative? Leif?
The statistics is marginal. Cosmic ray counts [and weather] has high persistent, meaning that the number of degrees of freedom is much less than the number of data points. I couldn’t find any discussion of how that affects the significance. This is a minus point.
The paper states: “Although the statistically significant nonlinear cosmic ray effect is small, it will have a considerably larger aggregate effect on longer timescales”
It is not discussed how this ‘memory effect’ would work.
Other people looking at Forbush decreases have not found any effects. And the usual kicker: cosmic ray intensity at minima has been very constant the past 60 years when we have actual measurements.
All in all, I would not discount the paper, but also not claim it as good evidence.
Anthony: Maybe a new view on the whole issue is timely now that it is becoming apparent that Co2 does not drive temps.
1. Everyone agrees that co2 does not drive temps (will problably take another full 2-3 years)
2. Everyone agrees there is an environmental problem (browns clouds Asia ect, overpopulation, UHI ect).
BTW UHI could be potentially be considered to be part of local warming induced by humans and of course the warmers will pounce on this but what the heck…
Re Best web site ect beware of dividing the vote between you and CA apparently this favors that other naughty site realclimate LOL
And here is another article linking cosmic radiation and sunspot number to rises and falls in the Parana River of South America (world’s fifth largest) for the last 100 years.
http://www.iafe.uba.ar/httpdocs/reprint_parana.pdf
Title of the article: “Solar Forcing of the Stream Flow of a Continental Scale South American River”
From the Abstract of the article:
“For the last century, we find strong correlation with the sunspot number, in multidecadal time scales, with larger solar activity corresponding to larger stream flow.”
I had posted a similar article about the Vaal River in South Africa several months ago and Lief lambasted it. It also noted the same phenomenon — that solar minimums produce much less rain.
http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/alexander2707.pdf
It seems odd that rainfall would decrease given the extra cloud cover observed at solar minimum. I guess it would mean that the water vapor fails to precipitate out.
Marcus,
I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know what you do. I am a plumber, but I know crXX when I see it and hear it, and AGW is definitely cXXp. I also know when people are trying to feed me a line of XXap, and that would be what you are doing. Why not use your real name and come into the light. Is it because you have seen the writing on the wall, and know that even plumbers know that AGW is full of XXXX?
Mike Bryant, Plumber
Leif Svalgaard and gondwannabe, I need to speak as a non-scientist, although I am a trained statistician. I was a true believer in Global Warming, I must have watched the day after tomorrow and and inconvenient truth maybe 20 times. I had been really impressed with “the Mann hockey stick”.
It was like finding out your spouse has been cheating on you and lying to your face. When I found out, that the whole thing was manipulated so that any random numbers would generate a hockey stick; the polar bears were not dying off, that world had been cooling since 1998 and Gore knew that when he made that film. I felt rage, at being lied to, rage. You are arguing about “ocean acidification” and “social injustices”. I want to know, “Why did you lie to me?” Why hasn’t anyone come out and said, “1998 was a bit of anomaly.” ? Why do you go before the Supreme Court saying “Polar bears should be endangered, when they are at near high in population levels?” “Why hasn’t the hockey stick been publically disavowed, so that people like me who believed can hear it?”
You are lying to me and to others to accomplish your social agendas of “social inequalities”. You are scam artists and con men up there with Madoff, out there to seperate countries and people from their money to be spent how you see fit. You are using this to scare people and countries into doing environmental changes that they would never freely choose, if they knew the truth. When the truth comes out and it will, prepare for this rage of betrayal that will follow. I am a foretaste of what is to come.
I found out about this site this summer and I have sent so many people here, because it is one of the few places where science over social agenda has been upheld.
“Re Best web site ect beware of dividing the vote between you and CA apparently this favors that other naughty site realclimate LOL”
I think everyone should vote for the blog they want to, and let the chips fall where they may. It’s only for fun anyway.
I’m going with WUWT.
This is my first post, after reading regularly since last January’s “Globally Cooler in last 12 months” article.
I’m a complete skeptic, religiously agnostic to boot! Finding, describing and reproducing “cause and [ae]ffect” is a Scientist’s #1 responsibility, yes, the very definition of Science.
In that light, my take on AGW has ALWAYS been a simplistic “If they can’t predict local weather, how can they predict GLOBAL ANYTHING?” My respect for the complexities within the Universe almost make me think “Why are they even wasting any time on this?” but I wouldn’t want others to stop trying! I’d put more money on predicting the next volcano eruption or earthquake.
I took an Astronomy course in college–not the “moons for goons” easy course, but the one for students with math aptitude…Calc I was a prerequistie. In that class, we learned that someday, the sun would grow to be so large that its diameter would completely fill the Earth’s orbit. The Earth will certainly burn to a crisp in the future! And we can’t do a darn thing about it. It will be very gradual. Maybe it has started? How will we know? I don’t understand those who think the sun has nothing (or very little) to do with our climate. If the sun went away, we’d be gone! The sun is #1 for cryin’ out loud.
When I see charts of historical temperatures, with all of the “high ones” happening since the invention of the themometer, I think “Hmm, maybe our measuring instruments should be looked at too.” Yup, I’m VERY SKEPTICAL. I can’t even trust the thermometers! I’m amazed at the “pass” given to the simplest charts/measurement processes. That’s why I love Anthony’s site…he’s always slamming on the measurment process! With pictures
I drive a Toyota Matrix. I set out to calculate my personal %CO2 concentration in the athmosphere. First I had to find out how much CO2 my car emits. I found a few sites, and they disagreed with each other. Then I tried to calculate the the volume of the atmoshpere. OK, so the earth is 8000km in diameter…all I need to know now is how high the atmosphere reaches above the earth. Oops, no one agrees on that either.
So I started playing with max/min assumptions, using different driving habits, different gasoline, different estimates for atmosphere height, etc. Pretty soon, i was going to need Calculus, cuz I wanted to do some rates of change tests too. I started feeling like the Climatologist Model Makers! Like a mad scientist, I would add variables, rates of change limits/timeframes, and smirk all the way to my conclusions.
Sure enough, some of them were whacky! “If I drive my Matrix for 10 years non-stop at 80mph using premium gasoline,and the engine gets 3% less efficient every year, I might break into 1 googol-ill-ionth of 1 %!” I kid. My point is: HOW IN HELL CAN WE TRUST ANY OF THESE MODELS? There must be 1000 variables, and infinite different rates of change!
The elitism in these people (Gore takes the cake, obviously) is almost criminal! It should be against the law to look down on other humans as they do. It’s obviously all about POWER [ego] and nothing about science. Too bad most people seem to be willing lemmings in this insect-infested world.
I know Leif is a well-respected poster here. I admit that whenever I’d read an article re: sun, I’d look forward to his replies. He made me take pause with one comment (and ultimately drove me to make this post). His answer to another poster’s claims was “a lot of people disagree with your [point].” This gets my goat to no end, and illuminates the Super Difficulty in Climatology: It’s 1% Science and 99% Consensus. When Galileo proved the Earth revolved around the sun, it was “Consensus” that said it didn’t.
Hopefully, the ratio of Science to Consensus will swing to Science in my lifetime, but I’m not holding my CO2-filled breath.
Good article…. He could slow down on the magnetic stuff though and just stick to the atmosphere and the lack of observational evidence in support of the AGW hypothesis.
There is lots of interesting stuff around… But it is best to stick with Pertinent points of contention.
The next piece of misinformation that needs to be addressed is the bunk about “ocean acidification”. When most modern ocean life first appeared, Earth’s atmospheric CO2 content was several times higher than that of today.
In fact, Earth’s atmospheric CO2 was at record low levels before rebounding during this interglacial. In fact, it was getting so low as to lead many scientists to believe that the demise of Earth will be from a lack of CO2 causing plant life to die out resulting in the collapse of the rest of the food chain.
Every bit of oil, gas, coal, limestone, and practically all other carbonates are CO2 removed from the atmosphere. The rise of the Himalayas have resulted in the removal of huge amounts of CO2 through erosion. Earth’s oceans are at record low “acidity” and increases today can be looked at more along the lines of “recovery” than of “pollution”. The oceans are recovering to something closer to what they have been over most of recent geological history.
Marcus (19:13:43) :
The pH of the ocean is greater than 7. It can’t get more acidic when it’s not acidic to start with. It’s getting less alkaline.
Smokey (19:14:06) :
“Lots of new places are starting to carry essays like this: click”
Smokey,
This is a very nice article and I completely agree with it’s conclusion.
“Some pundits are calling 2008 the year global warming was disproven. I prefer to call it the year science triumphed over alarmism”.
I am convinced that Blogs like WUWT, ICECAP and many others earn a lot of the credit for spreading the correct message.
I also underwrite Leif’s efforts and arguments to point out the importance of sound arguments based on sound science.
There are a lot of “confused” people (not only politicians) in this world and it won’t serve any cause to add to that confusion.
This blog, it’s postings and the way the readers respond (with good solid arguments and very often with a lot of patience), results in a remarkable way to get to the very essence of fact finding.
This is the core of it’s success.
Anthony, thank you for the initiative.
Ah, Dr Svalgaard, you would be well aware that Mr Ambler is correct in saying that the number of cosmic rays is the highest since measurements began. Taking the Oulu record found at http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/, the previous monthly peak was 6,620 in 1965. November 2008 had a reading of 6,704. Neutron count usually peaks a year after solar minimum. So, as Mr Ambler notes, the count is still climbing. My own prediction is 6,900 in July 2010. A 19th century type reading (as backcast by Usoskin) to give us 19th century type winters.
Joseph (18:14:21) :
Those of you here nit-picking the details of Harold Ambler’s well-written essay seem to be missing the big picture. HuffPo’s readers don’t give a damn about the technical details of climate analysis. Their take-away will be that an erudite writer has claimed that Al Gore’s anthropogenic global warming claim is a lie, and supports this accusation with 2,000+ words of supporting information, in a publication that they respect. The significance of an essay such as this, appearing in a well-known liberal publication as HuffPo, is huge. The technical details are irrelevant, largely because, let’s face it, AGW is not a scientific debate, but a sociopolitical debate.
Brick by brick, the façade of AGW is crumbling. Harold Ambler has arrived with a bulldozer to lend a hand. Rather than criticizing the details of his analysis, we should be applauding his achievement of having reached an audience that has been misled for too long.
So misleading crap like this article is OK with you?
My congratulations to Mr Ambler also. His essay structure is much the same as what I do: start with the variability of climate, debunk CO2 as a warming agent with the log curve, then point to solar variability as the climate driver. What he could have added is the plant growth benefit from increased atmospheric CO2. All in all, a very readable piece from a professional wordsmith who as looked at the science.
Marcus,
This is basic high school stuff, everything over pH 7 is alkaline.
A drop from say pH 9 to pH 8 makes it less alkaline and NOT more acidic.
Acidic is a buzz word the AGW folks like to use cause it sounds more threatening.
When the history of mankind has to be rewritten and basic science has to be changed to fit the AGW mantra just maybe the hypothesis of AGW is wrong after all.
Any increase in temperature below 0 degree C is considered less cold at least where I live and that is Canada we know cold.
I think that focusing in on global warming in the first place was very short-sighted. If you want to rearrange the economy and redistribute wealth by getting everyone fearful about destructive weather, it would have been much wiser to focus on “cooling” rather than warming. In general, the earth’s climate is below ideal conditions (for most days of the year in most regions). So, since most of us would prefer warmer temps (I’ll bet even people in the Arctic!), it is hard to take the global warming threat seriously — even if it were not phony. But cooling — now, not only is cooling apparently really happening, I personally would be much more likely to modify my lifestyle if there were even a remote chance that what I was doing was causing cooling. Too late — they decided that the issue would be warming. Now it’s all a waste. Nobody is going to be duped about the weather again — even if a new ice age starts up — and it looks like it is.
David Archibald (20:56:33) :
Mr Ambler is correct in saying that the number of cosmic rays is the highest since measurements began.
Neither he nor you have considered that the cosmic ray counts at a given station change slowly over time because the Earth’s magnetic field is slowly changing. At Oulu the GCR rate has crept up. At Moscow, the rate has stayed constant:
http://cr0.izmiran.rssi.ru/mosc/main.htm then click on ‘monthly’
and at Hermanus the rate has declined a bit:
http://www.puk.ac.za/opencms/export/PUK/html/fakulteite/natuur/nm_data/data/hermanus_e.html
Globally the rate at minima has been very constant.
The problem with both him and you is that you cherry pick datasets that match your ideas and ignore the ones that don’t. This is typical for Climate AGITPROP but is not tolerated in scientific work.
My own prediction is 6,900 in July 2010.
Will you publicly abandon your theory and ideas should the prediction fail? As you must in scientific work.
Sorry to set off all your filters Charles. Will try and keep to science rather than social although I have noticed quite a few social issues being raised of late.
Was it the reference to only two bullets?
If so, make it a couple of thousand rounds. Then Al will be safe, provided he has plenty of warm clothing, but will have to face the prospect of killing lots of polar bears.
Bruckner8 (20:32:51) :
“This is my first post, after reading regularly since last January’s “Globally Cooler in last 12 months” article”.
I hope you are feeling better now.
If Harold is going to wait for anAL GOREtentive to apologize for trying to scam the entire planet with his latest fraud,it could be a long wait….he has yet to apologize to the American people for trying to steal the Presidency in 2000…..it simply isn’t part of his character to admit moral or intellectual failing
Reply: Everyone, everyone, please let’s try and avoid political tangents more appropriate for either littlegreenfootballs or dailykos.
And I don’t care who started it.
~ charles the moderator
“So misleading crap like this article is OK with you?”
No, Phil., I much prefer the misleading crap that Al Gore shovels. That way he can make big bucks, and I can be taxed within an inch of my life. 🙂
Another thing that needs to be pointed out and driven home every time is the relationship between “warming” and the number of ground stations used to calculate monthly averages. GISS uses today about half the number of ground stations they used in 1989 to calculate global temperatures. Most of the deleted stations are rural. the result is predictable as UHI impacts from a larger proportion of urban stations increases its influence. “Global average temperature” rises as rural stations are removed from the average calculation.
That is another way we can have “man made global warming” … by cherry picking the stations most likely to show warming from urbanization as representative of the globe as a whole.
It is absolutely ridiculous and Hansen should by now be a laughing stock in scientific communities.
This is the AGW version of “original sin”. Simply by being alive you are killing the planet and MUST do everything in your power to mitigate your existence.
Not to mention the amount of atmospheric CO2 needed for the atmosphere to affect the CO2 content of the ocean to any measurable degree is probably astronomical.
This is proof that there is climate change even in hell: it has frozen over!
Leif,
any comments on this recent NASA article:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/30oct_ftes.htm
“The portal takes the form of a magnetic cylinder about as wide as Earth.”
a link to more info would be great, thank you.
gondwannabe:
very few of us are qualified to argue the science from either side
Speak only for yourself, gond. But, if you are not qualified to argue the science, then who are you to dismiss Ambler- or indeed anyone? Or to question what we “should be debating”?
At least follow your own rules, gond.
[But if , as you proudly claim, you are a “relativist” then you actually contradict yourself by making any judgments whatsoever. Which essentially leaves you nowhere.]
Sure they will. All it takes is a generation or two for people to forget.
I sure hope Mann, Hansen, Santer, Jones, Briffa, et al get the message…
goodwannabe:
–the social injustice that results from the current distribution of resource consumption–
This piece of nonsense is one that really irritates me. How is it that some people can look at the relationship between wealth and energy use (i.e., the more energy a country uses, the greater its wealth, due to leveraging human resources through technology) and instead of seeing the obvious need to help poorer countries exploit more energy, think that the answer is to restrict the amount of energy the wealthy countries are using.
Really boggles the mind.
@Poster that think a skeptic leaning article in the Huffington Post is “a good thing” even if it doesn’t stand on solid scientific ground.
No. No. No. No. No.
Meeting alarmist dogma that plays fast and loose with the facts with skeptic dogma that does the same is worse than simply sitting quietly. You deal with politically driven propaganda campaigns by calmly pushing facts and data at people, not by making up your own version of reality in some misguided attempt to “offset” the bad on the other side. Anthony and Steve McIntyre do this quite well. Roger Pielke does this with a balance and intellectual depth that is amazingly effective.
What I’ve learned from reading this and other climate related blogs for a while now:
1) Try to follow the data and methodology, even when it’s being deliberately hidden or obfuscated
2) Don’t feed the trolls
3) When in need of amusement, read Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate (I’m still chuckling over the 1/4 staff-year comment – a babe in the woods, him)
4) When Leif posts, read it and think hard about it
5) Don’t get too upset about politicians being politicians, just label them and move on
6) Get very upset about politicians labeling themselves as scientists (they’re represented on both sides of the issue BTW)
7) Get down on your knees and give thanks every day for this thing called the Internet – it to a certain extent levels the playing field between the politico-scientific elite with access to massive funding and the lonely voices of the dissenters that rely on PayPal donation jars
8) Call out nonsense when you see it, regardless of whether it supports your view of things.
OA
“Not to mention the amount of atmospheric CO2 needed for the atmosphere to affect the CO2 content of the ocean to any measurable degree is probably astronomical.”
Yes. CO2 gas probably goes more from ocean to atmosphere than the other way around. The primary sources of CO2 would be volcanism and decay of organic matter. There are going to be many more volcanoes dumping CO2 into the oceans than there are on land dumping CO2 to the atmosphere. Most “spreading centers” where there is nearly continuous volcanic activity are under the sea. Deep volcanoes dump pure liquid CO2 into the ocean (kept liquid due to the extreme temperature). There is also a tremendous amount of decaying organic material in the oceans.
As sea temperatures change, the amount of CO2 out gassed into the atmosphere changes. Sure, there is going to be some exchange from air to water but I believe that is swamped by the amount moved in the other direction. Atmospheric CO2 is removed by erosion (dissolved CO2 in rain creating weak carbonic acid which reacts with exposed rock to produce insoluble carbonates), production of charcoal from burning of organic material, and through creation of such things as beds of peat in boggy areas where organic material is buried.
As volcanoes dump CO2 into the oceans, this CO2 is, in turn, released into the atmosphere. Yes, water splashing around on the surface can dissolve some CO2 from the air, but looking at the tons of CO2 dumped into the oceans directly from volcanism alone (not to mention the sulfuric acid and other “pollutants”), it would seem to me that most of the gas exchange will go in the other direction … from sea to atmosphere.
Just saw this over at News Busters:
So it looks like HuffPo published it but bent over backwards to attempt to hide it by slipping it in under articles people had probably already read and wouldn’t notice. Sort of like if Mr. Watts were to slip an article in between a couple of postings from last week. People probably wouldn’t notice it.
I will repeat here a part of the article above, with comments, keeping in mind the neutron counts from both Archibald site and the two sites that Leif provided.
Mi> Regulating the number of cosmic rays reaching Earth’s atmosphere is the solar wind; when it is strong, we get fewer cosmic rays. When it is weak, we get more. As NASA has corroborated, the number of cosmic rays passing through our atmosphere is at the maximum level since measurements have been taken, and show no signs of diminishing.
The three site show an undulating correlation with the sun cycle.True the two by Leif do not show much excess over other minima, still the cosmic rays are at a maximum, at the same time as the PDO is cooling and a Nina is developing etc. etc.
The result: the seeding of what some have taken to calling “Svensmark clouds,” low dense clouds, principally over the oceans, that reflect sunlight back to space before it can have its warming effect on whatever is below.
Svensmark has proven, in the minds of most who have given his work a full hearing, that it is this very process that produced the episodes of cooling (and, inversely, warming) of our own era and past eras.
It might be so, the science is not settled on this as far as I have been able to find out, although I would be mightily surprised if the cosmic ray mechanism is not just one part of the forces at play here, sometimes important and sometimes suppressed. In the many coupled oscillators model of the climate this makes sense.
I do not think the article is exaggerating, it is just glossing over controversies that belong to scientific fora and not HP.
As for the volcanic issue, I have never checked it.
Ah, Dr Svalgaard, you are a champion data set adjuster – not only aa Index and TSI, but now also neutron counts. I thought the effect you invoked would be too small to have any effect, so I checked with an expert. His reply follows:
“Concerning your question, I am not sure I understand it. What magnetic field do you (Dr. Svalgaard) keep in mind?
If the Earth’s magnetic field is considered, it is definitely not the case, because Oulu NM is located in the polar region, where the geomagnetic cutoff rigidity is already low (below the so called atmospheric cutoff – energy a particle must posses in order to initiate a cascade which can reach the surface). Therefore, Oulu NM count rate is not affected by the changing geomagnetic field during the last decades. However, the decreasing Earth’s dipole moment may slightly affect long-term count rates at lower latitude stations.
If the heliospheric mag. field (HMF) is considered, it is more correct, but many factors should be considered. Important are a very long quiet period in 2007-2008; a proper polarity of the HMF, and a not-very-flat heliospheric current sheet – HCS (its effect is strongest for small but non-zero tilt angle, as it is now).
Concluding, in the current highest count rate you should not blame the geomagnetic field but rather HMF (long undisturbed period) + unusual HCS structure (not flat during the 11-yr cycle minimum).
Because of the latter one should not use the fact of high NM count rate as a proof of unusually weak HMF (again, more important is the length of undisturbed period rather than the HMF strength per se).”
It is written, and it shall be: Oulu neutron count is at an all time high and going higher.
Marcus.
If you walk up a steep gradiant, which then gets a little easier, are you now walking down hill?
The answer would be yes if you argue that going from pH 8.15 to 8.1 is making the oceans more acidic. And then again, only a believer could answer in the affirmative.
Whoever thought science was the truth!!!!!!
David,
“Ocean Acidification” sounds much scarier than “the ocean has become slightly less alkaline in the last 100 years”. So it only makes sense that we use the scary one. Also I understand that “Climate Change” will now be known as “Human Climate Mega-Death Kill”.
Reporters, please update all news stories immediately.
Mike
From reading, I know there are other chemists on this site, so they may have different opinions, but I will offer my two-cents-worth.
Are the oceans getting more acidic or less alkaline? I would say that both views are correct. (or at least I think I can see the logic of both views.) If the pH is moving down (actually toward neutral at 7), then the hydronium ion concentration is higher, which would be more acidic. But, I think this is a more simplistic view. The idea that they are getting less basic is probably more correct in that it accounts for the fact they are slightly alkaline to begin with and moving toward neutral. The idea they are getting less alkaline would get full credit, the idea they are more acidic only gets partial credit.
It does not surprise me in the least that Ambler’s article would be published in a far left site like HuffPo. Obama’s various appointments reveal that he is a closet moderate. (Appointing the lunatic Holdren as “science adviser” is merely a sop to the remaining leftist tools he hasn’t discarded.) He does NOT need or want to deal with the AGW agenda. Conversations are taking place. Friendly sources in the MSM and on the internet will be glad to change the narrative.
C’mon, now. The only reason why we’re having these discussions in the first place is because of the one-sided message delivery by the media. AGW was an effective weapon as long as the Other Guys were in power and temperatures were relatively warm. Look for more of these “unusual” story placements like the Politico had a few weeks ago or like Chad Myer’s comments during the CNN weather forecast last week. The Conventional Wisdom will change. The media and punditry will provide Obama cover for not acting on climate change.
Nature is, of course, making it very easy for the media to accomplish this. They could certainly use a competing theory produced by scientists who have not had a dog in this fight but that ain’t gonna happen. My guess is you will start seeing a lot more stories on the relatively historic low levels of solar activity in the meantime. (I said “relatively”, Leif.)
For fun, see if you can guess who will cooperate! 🙂
Dan Lee:
Life would be impossible without C02 in the air, and its only a trace gas (385 parts per million = .000385 = 1/3 of 1% of the atmosphere, 0.0385% ).
You dropped a zero. Should read 1/30 of 1%.
1,000,000 / 385 / 100 = 0.02597 or 1/26th of 1% of the atmosphere.
It is almost like history re-running itself: one of my first great scientific ‘reads’ was a review of the first half of 20th century physics by Banesh Hoffman, a collaborator of Einstein.
In it he described a community of smug, self-satisfied physicists who had solved the world and excoriated anyone who dared say otherwise.
Along came Einstein with the photoelectric effect, special relativity and Brownian motion……
I see the same in the ‘climate change’ arena. Not sure who the ‘Einstein’ is, but the debunking is about to accelerate and usher in a 50 year renewal of climate science, geological research and oceanography. IMHO.
The only amusement to me is the assumption that scientists are rational reasonable people. They have amongst their membership some of the most vain, egotistical, aggressive, rude and totalitarian people I’ve ever met. I’ve also met some of the finest human specimens you could hope to meet in there too.
It’s the same everywhere, despite the ‘scientists are pure gold’ party line taken by the world’s media………
David Archibald (02:49:25) :
Oulu neutron count is at an all time high and going higher.
You are very carefully qualifying your statement by limiting it to ‘Oulu’ [cherry picking again].
Here is the count from another polar station [Sanae in Antarctica]:
http://www.puk.ac.za/opencms/export/PUK/html/fakulteite/natuur/nm_data/data/sanaenm_e.html
If anything a decrease.
If in the opinion of your unnamed expert, Oulu should not suffer from the decrease of the Earth’s field, then the Thule station near the northern magnetic pole should even less. Oulu’s cut-off rigidity is 0.81 GV [Moscow 2.42 GV], but Thule’s is really 0.00 GV, so no cutoff.
Thule data can be found here:
http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/~pyle/bri_table.html
and a graph here: http://www.leif.research/thule-cosmic-rays.png
Some numbers for Thule:
1965 1 4674
1965 2 4652
1965 3 4668
1965 4 4700
1965 5 4703 <===
1965 6 4663
1965 7 4642
1965 8 4635
1965 9 4625
1965 10 4647
1965 11 4675
1965 12 4674
and
2008 1 4566
2008 2 4561
2008 3 4544
2008 4 4542
2008 5 4553
2008 6 4554
2008 7 4570
2008 8 4594
2008 9 4622
2008 10 4630
2008 11 4645 <===
2008 12 4641 [estimate]
not up to 1965 levels
There are even indications that the primary cosmic ray intensity may be decreasing:
http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/reprints/2007bieber.pdf
That link also contains a good discussion of all the factors involved in long-term cosmic ray assessment.
And BTW, Oulu counts have stopped increasing:
2008 Jan 6592
2008 Feb 6576
2008 Mar 6577
2008 Apr 6586
2008 May 6578
2008 Jun 6582
2008 Jul 6598
2008 Aug 6636
2008 Sep 6658
2008 Oct 6678
2008 Nov 6704
2008 Dec 6702
Now, you did not react to my question if you would abandon your theory and ideas if your prediction fails [as you should – unless it was not really a ‘prediction’ but just a WAG], so I ask again.
and a graph here: http://www.leif.org/research/thule-cosmic-rays.png works better
Thanks Leif for your response.
Bruckner8 (20:32:51)
You don’t need to do such complicated calculations. You only need know the average air pressure at sea level. This will give you the mass of the gas column over a given unit of area. Although the calculation is complex it has been done by credible scientists. At sea level the average is 14.7 pounds per unit of area. You can of course convert this to metric. This is Andrews area expertise and perhaps he can guide you to a paper that can give you the formula for calculating the total (notional) mass of the atmosphere.
Calculating the volume is extremely complex because it can vary with temperature at any given altitude and in any given area.
Obviously the author, and Huffington Post, need to be indicted, tried and forced to retract this piece of Exxon-funded denialist propaganda.
lol.
AGW is to Climate Science what Eugenics was to Evolutionary Science.
gondwannabe, at least you admit you are undertaking a political argument. The answer to the poverty of a large chunmk of teh human race is increased wealth; not making the entire human race poor.
Now, let’s get back to science if we can.
Mike Bryant (05:14:41) :
Mike, I couldn’t agree more. Once you start to study this subject you can’t help but become a sceptic when you see the extent that scientists will go to exaggerate even the simple aspects of AGW.
KuhnKat (22:50:44) :
“The portal takes the form of a magnetic cylinder about as wide as Earth.”
a link to more info would be great, thank you.
I don’t know what all the excitement was about. This is old news. Here is a link to a 30 year old article on FTEs:
http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/papers/153/index.html
A major thank-you to Anthony for the link. I was traveling yesterday and unable to respond sooner.
My offer to go sledding with Dr. Svalgaard in the hills above Stanford University stands. The last time this was possible was at the tail end of the last negative PDO. I believe the current negative PDO will bring snow to the Bay Area sooner than the last one, due to the well-known effects of significant solar minima on global temperatures.
I will be very surprised if the opportunity for sledding on Stanford’s Cow Hill does not exist before 2013. I plan to fly in for the event, if humanly possible, from wherever I am at the time. Also invited for the winter fun: Stephen Schneider and all of his staff and colleagues who have been staring at computer screens for too long.
Harold Ambler (08:46:15) :
I believe the current negative PDO will bring snow to the Bay Area sooner than the last one,
And I think you are right on this one, but for the wrong reason:
due to the well-known effects of significant solar minima on global temperatures.
May I add that, perhaps, Svensmark´s effect it is just one more driver of climate, not the only one?. During hot events, as the 98 el Nino, life in the seas increase its numbers, and, believe or not, deserted hills, as those which surround Lima City (SA) became green, without any rain whatsoever.
So if there is such a thing as “global warming” this phenomena will make flourish life everywere.
Let me emphazise again the fact that if gw´s succeed in decreasing CO2, they will be destroying forests everywere, depriving them of the gas these breathe, better than the best expert in burning amazon jungles.
I enjoyed erading the article, even with the faults pointed out by others.
Climatology today, reminds me of the six blind monks, standing around an elephant, trying to describe what they think it is, with complete authority. I’m not a Buddhist, but I do understand the blind ignorance of those who propose to simplify our climate system to the extent they have. Expertise in one aspect of our climate system area can definitely lead to being just like one of those monks described, and leads them to conclude wrongly just as anyone else is capable of.
I don’t know who out there is able to look at the whole and say what it might be, but our issue seems to be the lack of synergy, and maybe just an acknowledgement that we just don’t know. Pride is such a terrible thing.
Why am I a skeptic? I trust none of the players involved to be able to satisfactorily define all the issues, their causative factors, reach a meaningful consensus in an open and disciplined manner, their methods free of political or social biases. When someone spouts that they know something definitively on this issue, it reminds me of someones post invoking “Kansas” “…if I claim to be a wise man, it surely means that I don’t know….”
“I don’t know what all the excitement was about. This is old news. ”
The excitement is all about maintaining funding for a NASA project in the face of an economic downturn. I believe the idea was to get across to the people that important science is being done and is worth spending money on, even if it was a bit hyped.
There was a snowfall in the East Bay region in early 1970 which threatened long term succulents and caused so many fender benders that the police appealed via the media that those in accidents ‘act like civilized people’ and exchange personal and insurance information and report later. I’m often tempted to cry out in the climate wars, to all participants including myself ‘Act like civilized people’. There has been a dearth of that on this earth, lately.
===========================================
I like to say thanks for this piece, it is also fascinating that it is getting an airing on HuffPo. I found this a very impressive condensation of the issues on the subject, I really do think that Al Gore will have to offer an apology one-day, if he really believes the stuff he says he must be very blinkered and one day he may come round to applying some critical self-reflection. Harold Ambler mentions the Pacific Ocean cycles in an insightful and useful way, it wasn’t till recently, when the ‘troubling’ plateauing and cooling period started, that these cooling cycles ever really appeared in the media narrative, apparently only because they became useful to educate us about the overlaying of La Nina cooling.
However I recently found out that Al Gore was saying that the warming from the El Niño in 1997-98 was evidence of man-made CO2 warming, the shifting slipperiness of these explanations from some scientific gurus is almost breathtaking. I think I am your typical layman engineer sceptic, I’ve been reading a lot around the subject in recent years, especially with all the undoubted changes that have gone on in western perception of energy usage and resources. You often see quite a shockingly poor level of understanding of science being handed to us in the media. I agree with a poster above that James Hansen seemed missing from this piece, but I guess you can only cover so much, and Hansen seems to have insulated himself from real criticism by ensuring that the spin of ‘beleagured seer’ is attached to himself, however I think he should be left to spin out his own descent in credibility, I cant believe he can be taken seriously for ever.
Thinking of Hansen, also makes me wary when I hear the lofty label of ‘Galileo’ , I have also read The Chilling Stars, and whilst I found it very interesting IMHO, I don’t think I could go as far to say that Henrik Svensmark is the new Galileo, even if he turns out right across the board, unless Mister Ambler is aware of something that is coming up on the horizon?
Harold Ambler (08:46:15) :
You could have gone sledding on the frost this morning in Briones Regional Park in the East Bay Hills, it was so thick.
Please though, don’t take time off for sledding when you could be writing!! As you have pointed out, there will be plenty of time for sledding in the future.
While Ambler may be right about some things there are significant errors in his article. For example: CO2 does indeed follow temperature but not anthropomorphic CO2 for which temperature follows CO2.
I am not sure I follow this.
“While Ambler may be right about some things there are significant errors in his article. For example: CO2 does indeed follow temperature but not anthropomorphic CO2 for which temperature follows CO2.”
Is there a reference I could read?
A question:- is the (theory of) Svensmark cloud formation based on the same process found in the Wilson Cloud Chamber which was used to detect ionising particles when I was at school? Is there similar detection for the diffusion cloud chamber and bubble chamber?
Many Thanks
Sandy
Mr Ambler’s blog can be viewed simultaneously in WUWT and also in today’s HuffPost.
Identical.
Except for the comments.
In HuffPost there were, at last looking, about 200 posts, whereas WUWT can claim, at present only 126.
The interesting thing is the difference in the posts, reflecting the different beliefs of the two sets of readers.
Should be PhD in there somewhere, for someone.
As I read and continue to learn about climate I am getting pretty confident there are so many factors that determine climate that it will be a long, long time before anyone can make any (accurate) predictions. With this in mind I think it is dangerous to get tied to alternate theories. Correlations may exist and they may have some meaning, but that meaning may be small in the overall scheme of things. This also makes it easy for AGW alarmists to attack some of these pet theories which has an overall negative impact on the case against AGW. I noticed this on the thread about James Hansen. Clearly, a couple of pro-AGW posters came out of the woodwork to protect Hansen’s image as I have not seen them since. They jumped on some of these pet theories and demonstrated they were far from established facts. Of course, this doesn’t prove AGW, but it also makes it obvious the skeptical claims about climate are not on any firmer ground.
With this in mind I think it would be a better idea to focus more on the weaknesses of AGW. A good list was recently posted on this blog. There’s a lot more ammunition in this area and it puts the AGWers on the defensive. That is exactly where they belong.
@Doug (12:13:47)
“While Ambler may be right about some things there are significant errors in his article. For example: CO2 does indeed follow temperature but not anthropomorphic CO2 for which temperature follows CO2.”
I am not sure why you blankly say this is an error on Harold Amblers part without developing it. I would say he has made a point that needs making. I.e. an error and distortion has been made on the part of Al Gore, that needs to be put to bed.
It was Al Gore who used this ice-core example as a clincher/ metaphor to help support his current day impending peril narrative.
Don’t you think, that given that the difference in scales of time CO2 level, temperature used in the two examples, ancient and current day modern, (not forgetting factoring in proxy uncertainty ;)) makes it worthwhile pointing out that Al Gore was being enormously disingenuous by using this as a clincher?
Our current day Co2/ temperature correlations look can look full of information from this perspective and explanations from either ‘side’ can be proffered, however any relatively short term observations about correlations look naked to me without a decent explanation.
Harold Ambler has shown a couple of theories here that are up for debate, and I am always fascinated by the aerosol theory that explains mid century cooling while Co2 rose, but Al Gore still seems incredibly wrong to use this ancient ice-core data to support a contemporary analogy on our relatively short decadal timescales, no credible scientist has defended him I noticed, and some have criticised him I think.
Peter M.: “In HuffPost there were, at last looking, about 200 posts…”
I just clicked on the link to read some of the comments. There are now 253 with 16 pending.
Basic chemistry says that the ocean cannot become either too acidic or basic.
Carbonate buffering in the oceans keep pH relatively constant. If the water is too basic, then: H2CO3 -> HCO3 + H, and the pH falls when the hydrogen ion is released. If the water is too acidic, then HCO3 + H -> H2CO3, and the pH rises, when the ion combines with the carbonate.
Geological data shows that when CO2 atmospheric levels were 10-20 times higher than today, sea life and coral reefs thrived.
Acidification of the oceans is a non-starter, especially as more CO2 is released from warming waters.
The last time I looked – “Obtaining money via deception” was Fraud – and also illegal.
Now who’s been a very naughty boy selling Carbon Indulgences?
Good essay. I made similar observations last week. The fact is climate is changing and if you look at the long-term graph (I have it) you can see the planet is in an overall warming trend and it could get a lot warmer. Just look at where it has been. In the shorter term we could see another cooling spell as seen between 1650-1850. Sunspots, as you pointed out, seem to be an indicator of this. My feeling on this is that if Obama takes aggressive action in a false belief that humans are “driving” global warming, it will produce such a drag on the global economy that it could have a lasting negative effect. Check out my graphs and conclusions at http://anamericanidiot.wordpress.com/2008/12/29/a-lasting-footprint-on-the-middle-class/
Thanks for the interesting viewpoint.
doug (12:13:47) :
While Ambler may be right about some things there are significant errors in his article. For example: CO2 does indeed follow temperature but not anthropomorphic CO2 for which temperature follows CO2.
Very interesting – could you please do the following.
1. Provide a scientific reference for the above “fact”, and
2. Provide a clear description of the physical distinction between (a) CO2 and (b) anthropomorphic CO2 – the physical distinction between these two “substances” such that one can trail temperature, while the other leads temperature is somewhat mysterious.
Thanks. Inquiring minds would like to know.
Graeme
Didn’t you know that man made co2 molecules are coloured bright blue so they can be more easily seen amongst their much more numerous natural brethren? The blue version has a completely different structure, definitely causes temperature rise, and takes up to 1000 years to degrade whilst causing a 4.6C temperature rise and sea levels to increase by 20 foot. The natural stuff lags temperature rise, degrades in around 15 seconds, has always been in perfect equilibrium, causes no temperature or sea level rise and in fact has won a nobel peace prize and three Olympic gold medals.
I would have thought a contributor to the potential science blog of the year such as yourself would know those incontrovertible facts.
TonyB
Oops I linked to the wrong article. It should be http://anamericanidiot.wordpress.com/2008/12/26/global-warming-threatens-earth-obama-saves-planet/
Sorry.
TonyB
‘Blue’? Of course! I can see it!
I wonder what color the sky was pre-1850? lol
TonyB (15:13:14) :
I would have thought a contributor to the potential science blog of the year such as yourself would know those incontrovertible facts.
Tony, perhaps we’re a bit behind in the colonies…
I notice that your linked website is in the UK domain. Does the location of the observer impact the colour of “anthromorphic CO2”?
I’m suggesting that BLUE “anthromorphic CO2” may be location dependent. If you view “anthromorphic CO2” from the southern hemisphere it shows up as “RED”. I hadn’t noticed this colour effect until you pointed it out.
The natural CO2 is of course GREEN in accordance with environmental principles that all good things are green…
Graeme
Of course Doug might have a different version but my understanding is that the natural green co2 has a little halo round it and sings hymns. This helps to distinguish it from the man made stuff which does nothing but utter profanities and plays loud rock music.
As you rightly point out the man made co2 is coloured red in the southern hemisphere. As it mixes with the blue Northern hemisphere man made co2 onn the equator it turns a sort of muky cerise, grows horns and sets about the poor green carbon molecules with a battle axe-destroying them utterly. This demonstrates scientifically that the man made stuff is much more aggressive than the innocent natural greens who were simply milling around minding their own business when they were set upon.
Again, this is solid well researched material which was peer reviewed in the book ‘One million and one incontrovertible facts about carbon’ published by IPCC enterprises.
Ruth. There was no sky prior to 1850 so obviously it wouldn’t have a colour would it?
TonyB
an⋅thro⋅po⋅mor⋅phic /ˌænθrəpəˈmɔrfɪk/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [an-thruh-puh-mawr-fik] Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective 1. ascribing human form or attributes to a being or thing not human, esp. to a deity.
2. resembling or made to resemble a human form: an anthropomorphic carving.
Now I understand, there are those who belive that CO2 produced from burning coal takes on a human form.
The end of the world is coming!….Everyone of us is closer 24 hours to our death today than…yesterday.
Psychiatrists call this phenomena a “projection”: a personal or a local crisis projected to the world, or at least, to others. The others are the ones to blame.
Wow, those “people” at HuffPo are positively apoplectic at Ambler’s posting. Let’s hear it for reasoned debate.
Actually what has surprised me at Huffingtonpost is the number of people who are skeptical and congratulate Mr. Amber. Hardly a consensus of believers even on Huffington.
Re: Leif Svalgaard (18:33:28)
Re: Leif Svalgaard (18:34:44)
Leif, I respectfully disagree. You still don’t get it. There are two separate and distinct AGW debates occurring. The first is in the arena of science, the second is in the sociopolitical arena. The scientific debate is attended by scientists, such as yourself. The second debate is attended by the average person, otherwise known as voters. The scientists are intensely focused upon the correctness of the details. The average person is not. Politicians and public-policy decision makers, that may or may not make decisions that do more harm than good, have no real interest in the first debate, only the second, for the obvious reasons. Scientists don’t elect politicians to office, the average person does.
Harold Ambler’s essay was clearly directed towards the sociopolitical arena. HuffPo is not a scientific, peer-reviewed journal. HuffPo IS Technorati-rated with an authority of #1! HuffPo is very widely read and respected by a great many people (voters). Harold’s essay may not have been technically correct, in your opinion, but it is very effective in communicating the message that climate science is not settled. Let’s face it, there is very little about climate science that is settled.
Whether you realize it or not, the AGW debate, and how it ends up affecting peoples lives, especially economically, will be decided in the sociopolitical arena, not the arena of science. I don’t like it anymore than you do, but that is the way it is. I understand that those of us who participate here at WUWT thoroughly enjoy debating the details of climate science, but we cannot allow that to distract us from the bigger picture of the social implications of a mistaken perception of climate by the average person leading politicians to make poor policy decisions that may be very damaging. In the greater scheme of things, the average person’s opinion of climate (however misinformed) is of equal importance to that of climate scientists.
Re: davidgmills (18:42:33)
Thank you. Yes, I agree.
Re: Phil. (20:59:08) :
Same response to you as to Leif above.
Mark_0454 @ 17:37:26:
Actually what has surprised me at Huffingtonpost is the number of people who are skeptical and congratulate Mr. Amber. Hardly a consensus of believers even on Huffington.
Me too, Mark. Perhaps he has shattered the PC glass ceiling on this issue.
AL GORE HAS GUARANTEED THAT THE NORTHERN POLAR ICE CAP WILL BE COMPLETELY GONE IN FIVE YEARS!!!
When I heard this, I assumed it was a rumor started by skeptics trying to make Gore look bad. It wasn’t until I viewed the video with my own eyes that I realized what Gore had done. Gore has started a five year credibility countdown timer ticking and it’s up to all of us to make sure that he is held accountable and proven to be a fraud when his dire prediction aimed at drumming up support doesn’t come true.
The mainstream media isn’t going to let this video see the light of day because they, unlike Al, understand the precarious position in which he has placed himself.
It is therefore up to us to spread the word about Big Al’s prediction. He must be exposed for the fear mongering opportunist that he has become.
To view the video, please visit the following site and click on the picture of Big Al holding up five fingers.
http://www.hootervillegazette.com
While visiting this site, you might want to watch a preview of the film “Not Evil, Just wrong” which is linked to from the home page or watch “The Great Global Warming Swindle” which can be found in the video section.
Happy Viewing!!!
Les Johnson (14:15:52) :
Basic chemistry says that the ocean cannot become either too acidic or basic.
Carbonate buffering in the oceans keep pH relatively constant. If the water is too basic, then: H2CO3 -> HCO3 + H, and the pH falls when the hydrogen ion is released. If the water is too acidic, then HCO3 + H -> H2CO3, and the pH rises, when the ion combines with the carbonate.
Geological data shows that when CO2 atmospheric levels were 10-20 times higher than today, sea life and coral reefs thrived.
Acidification of the oceans is a non-starter, especially as more CO2 is released from warming waters.
Makes you wonder how the pH of carbonated drinks is 3.7?
The pKa of the carbonic acid system are ~6,3 and 10.25, note that “the buffering capacity of the buffer solution is also likely to be highest at pKa because both undissociated and dissociated forms are present in equal concentration. Upon addition of acid, it will be immediately neutralized by A- and if alkali is added, HA will be plentiful to neutralize it. Hence, a buffer solution is always used in the pH range of pKa-1 to pKa+1.”
http://technical.scienceboard.net/?p=15
Joseph (18:12:31) :
Leif, I respectfully disagree. You still don’t get it.
No, you don’t get it. I understand that the lay person don’t understand the science and that it is hopeless to try to force him, but my point is that it is just as easy to be scientifically correct as to serve half-truths, pseudo-science, and wild ideas [easier, in fact, as you don’t have to make things up]. And the voters deserve to be told the inconvenient truth rather than some mumbo-jumbo, dressed up for public consumption by Joe Six-pack.
MSM picked up the Ambler story from Huffington Post.
Houston Chronicle (my hometown newspaper) is the leading (perhaps only?) daily in the fourth-largest city in the U.S. Although Houston is home to many energy companies and huge petrochemical manufacturing, the newspaper is decidedly left-leaning IMHO. The news articles continually hound and pound the energy companies.
Perhaps the tide is indeed turning?
http://green.chron.com/green/2009/01/03/261149113-harold-ambler-mr-gore-apology
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
Anthony,
WUWT got a plug in the comments section in the Houston Chronicle article shown above. As we would say back there, Way to Fire!
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
A quickly cooling world is making even a far left blog like The Huffington post to acknowledge the truth.
Even with record cold temperatures being reported I still am shaking my head that The Huffington Post, of all blogs, would allow so much lucidity to be posted.
I can only imagine that it has lasted this long because it’s a holiday weekend and tomorrow it will quickly be deleted after it is noticed by the more politically left moderators at the blog followed by an apology for allowing it to be posted at their blog. 😉
Not really. They still have all the alarmist advertising and headlines. I think they allowed the article so they could ridicule it, nothing more.
Leif,
thank you for the link.
The older article suggests 3 events per hour which is a lot slower than every 8 minutes they are now seeing.
I guess I should hunt for some more info!!
This post is of similar quality to those of Deepak Chopra that HuffPo likes to promote.
Leif,
Are you suggesting that Al Gore’s production of the movie by that name was NOT some mumbo-jumbo, dressed up for public consumption by Joe Six-pack? I have no respect whatsoever for Gore bcause he and we don’t really know, nor can we say with certainty what changes will occur or at what rate. (One poster referred to 1,000 variables when there are far more than that.) Yet Gore has rediculously claimed the Arctic will become ice free in five years and was probably well paid to do it. This is clearly mumbo-jumbo dressed up for public consumption by Joe Six-pack. Please don’t make comments that in any way appear to support those who are issuing the mumbo-jumbo in the first place.
Phil. (19:43:54)
If you are seeking a pH of 3.7 you need to look somewhere other than CO2. Buffering solutions are designed to operate within a specific pH range for calibration. They in no way suggest that adsorption of CO2 will produce a pH anywhere close to a figure of 3.7.
Can I repeat a post and ask for replies to be made in the Solar Geomagnetic thread so I can keep an eye out for them. Thanks
“Also can I make a plea for links to national (or regional) temperature records as I want to collect them all together in one place for use as a general resource. The longer the better. I know there are good ones for Armagh (Ellie where are you) Germany and Holland amongst other places. If anyone knows if this has already been done please let me know.”
TonyB
Re: Leif Svalgaard (19:45:00)
Leif, I think we will end up agreeing to disagree on this. I agree with your contention that scientifically correct is always better than hogwash. On the other hand, I also recognize that if the other guy is going to fight dirty, I had better as well or else I am going to lose. I don’t think it is fair to critique Ambler’s essay as if it had appeared in a science journal because it didn’t. The AGW advocates have Al Gore spouting his nonsense, and, well, I guess I don’t mind too much if someone with sceptical leanings spouts a little back at him. With the MSM having stonewalled anything that sounds the least bit anti-AGW, I view the printing of Ambler’s essay as a good sign, even if his claims were flawed. Hmm, maybe Dr. Roy Spencer should consider submitting an article to HuffPo.
I am a bit astonished at how authoritative the author of this piece chooses to be; it seems that a bit of hand-waving is all that is necessary to cool the earth back down again.
Look: I _liked_ what he says. It makes be feel comfortable and complacent. But while he criticizes the IPCC’s models, let’s ask, where are _his_ models? Where are _his_ detailed calculations of heat and vapor transport, adjusting the impact of GCRs on cloud formation, the release of CO2 from the seas as they warm (Really?! Did the IPCC models overlook something as obvious as this?? I don’t know, I haven’t looked, but I call bullshit on that.)
Everyone’s looking for a simple reason to ignore the possibility of global warming; it’s natural. Say, ‘absorption of infrared by CO2 is saturated, so no more global warming, QED’. But when you sit down and run the numbers, and look at how the rot-vib spectrum changes with temperature, guess what, absorption increases. That’s why you write flipping million-line computer codes, stupid.
So enough with the hand-waving already. I don’t think there _is_ a simple answer, this is a massively complicated system. Someone has to sit down and systematically compute the detailed models, and spend a couple of decades testing and refining them until they start to look reliable. And when people go to all that trouble, have the decency to listen with a bit of respect rather than put all your credulous faith in the flavor of the week just published some book – Sventsmark? – who’s got some pet theory with the answer you like and has cherry-picked the data to prove it.
Phil: your
Makes you wonder how the pH of carbonated drinks is 3.7?
Because of the partial pressure of the CO2 above the solution. At 2.5 atmospheres, the pH will indeed be lower, at 3.7.
Carbonic acid in solution, is in equilibrium with the CO2. The vast majority of CO2 stays as CO2, with very little of the CO2 converted to H2CO3.
Carbonic acid is an important BUFFER in blood. It keeps the pH in a narrow range.
Joseph (13:37:23) :
Leif, I think we will end up agreeing to disagree on this. I agree with your contention that scientifically correct is always better than hogwash. On the other hand, I also recognize that if the other guy is going to fight dirty, I had better as well or else I am going to lose.
He will lose in the end. And if we must, we’ll disagree. I find your argument morally reprehensible, but recognize that people have different moral and ethical standards and that my bar may be set too high for some.
dahduh (14:25:36) :
rather than put all your credulous faith in the flavor of the week
I agree with dahduh’s post. People are too often looking for the simply, easy answer, rather than recognizing that the problem is hard and possibly beyond them.
Leif agrees with dahduh who says:
Well, the problem from my perspective is that the IPCC and the AGW crowd look like they have come up with a bunch of post-hoc stuff to try to support their simplistic theory that it is all the fault of human produced CO2.
However, we know that there is more than order of magnitude more H2O in the atmosphere than water, and we know that CO2 levels were up to 30 times as large at times in the past and we never saw any thermal run-aways then.
Moreover temperatures around those of the MWP would be much more salubrious than those of today.
And it seems all it takes is a bit of handwaving to make people think there’s a catastrophe going on.
Roy Spencer puts those CO2 increases in perspective:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/01/50-years-of-co2-time-for-a-vision-test/
(And for the paranoid among, you can click on the link and see what it is all at the same time.)
The beginning of the end for Al. Obama should get off the Gore/Hansen bandwagon before it goes over the cliff.
… than when?
What is your source please for this assertion?
Is geologic history so well known then that, for any given 100 year period of earth’s history, today’s rate of change is 3 orders of magnitude faster?
I think not.
“I don’t particularly like or agree with Al Gore, but I don’t think he owes us an apology for raising the debate to its current intensity.”
Al cannot be given any credit for raising the debate. It is the climate scientists that refute the IPCC and the AGW alarmism that can be credited for that. Al has done everything in his power to prevent and stamp out debate, to the extent that he personally refuses to ever debate the science or the politics of climate change. He will lecture and earn fortunes from pontificating and propagandising about it, but will never EVER debate it. When you refuse to debate your opinion, it shows that you are scared of being found lacking.
Al Gore is a liar, and opportunist and a coward.
… than when?
What is the source for your assertion?
Is the geological CO2 record of the Earth known so well that, for any given 100 year period, the current rate of increase is known to be three orders of magnitude faster?
To add to the record:-
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24876451-7583,00.html
dahduh (14:25:36) :
Is amazed at
“…how authoritative the author of this piece chooses to be;”
Authoritive-ness can only be achieved by substance, not tone, in my opinion,
For example dahduh says:
“But when you sit down and run the numbers, and look at how the rot-vib spectrum changes with temperature, guess what, absorption increases. That’s why you write flipping million-line computer codes, stupid.”
Running the numbers may be very comforting and persuasive to some but you don’t have to set up your own model making industry to qualify as still being able to criticize said models. This is one of the most specious distracters’ used in this debate by the modeling community. The bottom line is if you are making models that predict things you must answer any valid criticism, or is it the case that I can’t ask “why have no models predicted the current plateauing of temperature while CO2 still rose?”
It seems a running theme that you sometimes see this implicit desire to restrict who should be listened to, it seems very convenient to me, you just need to say they are stupid.
Most of this is rebutted in:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/080728farley.php
StuartR: “you don’t have to set up your own model making industry to qualify as still being able to criticize said models”.
Quite right. If you have reason to question the assumptions in any given model, go right ahead, nobody’s stopping you. But take the trouble to study the models, be specific about the failures, and at least have a back-of-the-envelope calculation to justify why you think the faults are significant. I just don’t see that kind of criticism very often; it’s usually of the “my theory of dinosaurs” variety, and if you find some people dismissive then maybe a lack of substance is the problem.
StuartK: “why have no models predicted the current plateauing of temperature while CO2 still rose?”
Huh? You mean this? That’s a plateau? Would you also call 1998 an ‘anomalous peak in temperature’?
There are no error bars on this chart, but given the spread in measurement and model values I wouldn’t even think of posing a question about ‘plateaus’. Can you point to a calculation demonstrating this ‘plateau’ is statistically significant?
Phil. (19:43:54) re; low Ph; It is probably the phosphoric acid in most brown soda.
Statistically the entire manmade-CO2-global-warming argument falls apart. There should be no argument that the earth has been warming since 1850. First there is evidence and second there is the forgotten fact that 1850 was the end of the so-called, little ice-age, (1650-1850.) However, the statistical problem arises from the fact that the planet is roughly 4 billion years old and we are drawing conclusions, scientific or not) from a sampling of 150 years. The earth’s population is roughly 6 billion would any credible statistics be gleaned from a sampling of 225 random people from around the globe? Could an election be accurately predicted from a random sample of 3 American citizens? That is what these scientists are attempting to do.
Ambler’s reference to an 800-year lag between temp and CO2 readings bothers me. If the seasonal changes in Keeling’s Mona Loa graph are evident as regular wiggles, how can anyone claim a multi-century lag time in the broader curve?
Freeman Dyson’s paper, “The Question of Global Warming”, published in N.Y. Times last summer, addresses this issue partly.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21494
Bill P (10:05:13) :
Ambler’s reference to an 800-year lag between temp and CO2 readings bothers me.
The lag is a typical argument designed for lay people. The lag is not well determined, but it doesn’t really matter, because it is not the lag that shows that CO2 was not causing the ice ages. Solar insolation was and CO2 just tags along because it is driven out of solution at higher temperatures. Note that this is a two-part argument and Joe Sixpack can only understand a one-part argument [so the theory goes], hence activists tend to prefer the one-argument lag. Another case of oversimplification to the point of being ridiculous. By the 800-year lag theory, the CO2 increase we are now seeing must be caused by the MWP 800 years ago. Even Joe can see through that one and therefore doubt the whole thing.
@dahduh (09:07:33) :
I hold my hands up and say I shouldn’t have said plateau, that implies I know something about the future i.e. that world temperature is definitely going to go down, I should have said levelling off. And as for statistical significance, I guess I would have to come back to you with a trend that lasts 30 years, and again I can’t do that.
I still hold that models can be criticised without dealing with every aspect of that, for instance everything in your model may be ticketyboo, making the right assumptions about physics and having perfectly formed mathematical assumptions. However there could be something missing from the model that makes it totally redundant. I know this may sound like a copout, but this could mean “unknown unknowns” are not catered for, or even speculative things like cosmic ray effects could be more significant (they are not in any models are they?).
If so, it seams that only way to check the models worth is by comparing them with some aspect of reality. When you pointed to “this” I saw a blizzard of lines that must be model runs, with thick lines indicating real world temperature projections (after adjustments have been made by the various entities who provide those projections, and also provide the models), I don’t doubt that at least one of model run that was frighteningly spot-on, but I worry about the usefulness of these models. For example, here in the UK the Met office is beginning to make a name for itself by predicting what the next six months weather will be, I don’t know how seriously they want us to take them but I’m sure that if they ever got it right over two seasons they would certainly want to be taken seriously 🙂
In conclusion, really, whilst everything you say about studying the actual models and criticising them in detail can’t be denied as worthwhile, it still remains that the onus is on the people who create these models to show that they have any worth in the real world and have useful predictive power. I know the “precautionary principle” could be invoked, i.e. that we should assume that the worst projections are correct and large-scale endeavours should be taken up to mitigate them. However I think this pre-emptive action could be dangerous for the modelers cause, because when situations occur such as today when the undoubted recent warmth gives way to “surprising” cool periods, then people across the board may end up forever disbelieving the models .
I remain unconvinced that model making is a mature enough science to have this responsibility.
Les Johnson (15:06:44) :
Phil: your
Makes you wonder how the pH of carbonated drinks is 3.7?
Because of the partial pressure of the CO2 above the solution. At 2.5 atmospheres, the pH will indeed be lower, at 3.7.
But your buffer theory said that couldn’t happen!
Les Johnson (14:15:52) :
Carbonic acid in solution, is in equilibrium with the CO2. The vast majority of CO2 stays as CO2, with very little of the CO2 converted to H2CO3.
Carbonic acid is an important BUFFER in blood. It keeps the pH in a narrow range.
In large part because of the return of excess CO2 vis the lungs, note that blood pH is ~7.4 just within range of the pKa of 6.36 (neutral pH ~6.85). Sea water is at a pH of ~8.3, outside the buffer range.
Also I forgot to include in the previous post:
Carbonic acid in solution, is in equilibrium with the CO2. The vast majority of CO2 stays as CO2, with very little of the CO2 converted to H2CO3.
Not true for sea water which typically has CO2 & carbonic acid (H2CO3) = 1%, bicarbonate (HCO3-) = 93%, carbonate (CO3–) =6%.
So the vast majority of dissolved CO2 in sea water is in the form of the HCO3̄̄- (bicarbonate ion)
StuartR (02:21:45) :
dahduh (14:25:36) :
Is amazed at
“…how authoritative the author of this piece chooses to be;”
Authoritive-ness can only be achieved by substance, not tone, in my opinion,
For example dahduh says:
“But when you sit down and run the numbers, and look at how the rot-vib spectrum changes with temperature, guess what, absorption increases. That’s why you write flipping million-line computer codes, stupid.”
Running the numbers may be very comforting and persuasive to some but you don’t have to set up your own model making industry to qualify as still being able to criticize said models.
But you’d better know something about the material that dahduh referred to so that you don’t say such crap as: “Carbon dioxide cannot absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation. Why not? Because it only absorbs heat along limited bandwidths, and is already absorbing just about everything it can. That is why plotted on a graph, C02’s ability to capture heat follows a logarithmic curve. We are already very near the maximum absorption level.”
I’ve highlighted the only part of that quote which is accurate!
If the original author wants to criticize the science he’d better get it right, otherwise he deserves whatever flak comes his way.
@Phil. (12:26:02)
“But you’d better know something about the material that dahduh referred to so that you don’t say such crap as: ..”
Thanks for the warning; although I really don’t see what made you think I would say anything like that.
Rotation-vibration effects (I Googled- is that right?) may provide extra complexity to CO2 absorption behavior in real world physics, and Harold Ambler may be remiss in not mentioning that, but I still don’t feel reassured that you only need to write a million lines of guaranteed bug free code to prove this.
StuartR (13:19:56) :
@Phil. (12:26:02)
“But you’d better know something about the material that dahduh referred to so that you don’t say such crap as: ..”
Thanks for the warning; although I really don’t see what made you think I would say anything like that.
You were supporting the original writer’s right to criticize without his being a modeller himself. I was pointing out that he at least needed to be conversant with the science which in this case he clearly isn’t.
Rotation-vibration effects (I Googled- is that right?) may provide extra complexity to CO2 absorption behavior in real world physics, and Harold Ambler may be remiss in not mentioning that, but I still don’t feel reassured that you only need to write a million lines of guaranteed bug free code to prove this.
But issues such as this are why the model needs to be as long as it is. Ambler was remiss in writing a load of crap about something he doesn’t understand. And Ro-vib doesn’t provide extra complexity to CO2 absorption, it’s what CO2 absorption is all about!
Rys Jaggar,
You were asking for the name of the next Einstein that would turn the conventional wisdom upside down,and upset the self-satisfied scientific community? ? We in the scientific community can already name him. He is NASA’s (or was), Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, working at the Ames Laboratory in Hampton Virginia.
He was one of the Physicists who saw the results of NASA weather data from their then new weather satellites, and tried to reconcile them with conventional theories; and they didn’t correspond.
So he went back to the Swartzchild-Milne mathematical equations, just like Einstein did to Newtons’s equations, and found an unaccounted for error. Like Einstein, the error was in a mathematical simplification that was obviously correct. Except it isn’t.
As with Einstein, the results are fundamental to a different understanding of the way nature operates our atmosphere.
Yes GHG theory works, but in a world of an essentially infinite pool of liquid GHG covering 70% of the Earth ‘s surface, the Earth does NOT run away in Global Warming. Why Not? Because the mathematics says it has achieved a “Saturated GHG” condition billions of years ago, based on energy balance reasons. For every increase of a GHG like CO2, or Methane, the major GHG changes to compensate. It gets rained out of, or evaporated into, the atmosphere as required to a new equilibrium value, to return to the “saturated GHG equilibrium” condition. So the only way to really warm the Earth is to alter the Albedo or percentage of sunlight reflected or absorbed by the Earth. So thermal pollution from Solar installations is possible, but changing CO2 levels do not.
By the way, Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi was muzzled, thoroughly frustrated, prevented from publishing his work, and has quit his lifelong position at NASA. At the same time, Astronomer-trained Dr. Hansen acting as if he is a Climate Scientist, and master of Information technology, neither of which is the case, complains of censorship while conducting over 1400 public media events on NASA paid company time.
At the same time, his mis-management of one of the five historical climate temperature databases deviates from the other four worldwide systems by a inexplicable and continuing set of inconceivable, incomprehensible “corrections” meant to show that other times, like the “Grapes of Wrath dust bowl thirties were not as hot and today is hotter still. In the opinion of this Scientist, he should be publicly excoriated, and then prosecuted for destroying the integrity of one of mankind’s precious historical databases. He is as guilty as those barbarians whose arson burned the Ancient Library of Alexandria.
Just as aside, Dr. Miskolczi is a jovial, round- faced, silvery haired individual who even looks much like Einstein. His peer-reviewed papers published here and abroad, represent a long list of radiation theory work going back into the 1980s. Debate over his theories roil the physics department at many institutions, and requests for reprints of his papers are very high.
Huff Post ought to interview him…
I agree by the way, Mr. Holgren and Ms. Browner are unfortunate appointments by Mr. Obama.
@Phil. (19:40:06) :
My high school physics is many years ago, so my understanding of absorption stems from stuff like remembering the discovery of helium in the Sun’s spectrum and that elements have specific fingerprints that absorb in only certain frequencies. So an understanding of rotational vibration and temperature relation to absorption characteristics of CO2 is hint towards an extra bit of knowledge for me, I guess this means there are some feedback considerations? I will have to look into it more. But dare I say, the idea that CO2 has merely a linear relationship to temperature I think is very prevalent in the casual layman’s mind, when you hear stuff like Venus has a high concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and its surface can melt lead, you may see what I mean.
So I think Harold Ambler was at least doing something worthwhile by putting out some information about the relationship not been so simple, frankly I still don’t see
“Carbon dioxide cannot absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation…”
as being a wrong part of that sentence either.
The models may still be very impressively complicated, but I still wait to see them proved in the real world as being useful.
StuartR (01:16:13) :
@Phil. (19:40:06) :
But dare I say, the idea that CO2 has merely a linear relationship to temperature I think is very prevalent in the casual layman’s mind, when you hear stuff like Venus has a high concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and its surface can melt lead, you may see what I mean.
Which has nothing to do with it being a linear function, just an increasing one which the log function is.
So I think Harold Ambler was at least doing something worthwhile by putting out some information about the relationship not been so simple,
No he was putting out false information, how is that worthwhile?
frankly I still don’t see
“Carbon dioxide cannot absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation…”
as being a wrong part of that sentence either.
Of course it is, just increase the amount of CO2, which is what this whole business is about!
The models may still be very impressively complicated, but I still wait to see them proved in the real world as being useful.
The Hitran model of IR absorption does a really impressive job of modelling that part of the real world and is widely used for that purpose.
Have you seen that Arianna repudiates Ambler’s article? She says that posting it was an error in judgment made by an editor. She believes that there should be no debate about the science of global warming.
So much for reality based.
===============
Phil., you oughta give it up. The feedback of water vapor to initial CO2 forcing in the models is simply wrong. Welcome the truth. It really can’t hurt you.
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kim (04:56:24) :
Have you seen that Arianna repudiates Ambler’s article?
link?
Ambler: “So, no one needs to say the words “climate” and “change” in the same breath — it is assumed, by anyone with any level of knowledge, that climate changes.”
This argument merely plays with words and does nothing to refute AGW. In the current context, it is understood that the term ‘climate change’ is shorthand for ‘anthropogenic climate change’.
The assumption in Ambler’s argument is that climate change is always due to natural causes. His argument can be expressed:
P1: Climate always changes, due to natural causes
P2: The climate is currently changing
Conclusion: Therefore, the current climate change is due to natural causes.
This argument is fair enough as far as it goes, since the conclusion follows from the premises, but it totally fails to refute anthropogenic climate change. Why? Because Ambler’s starting point, P1, is the very issue in contention.
He simply assumes that all climate change is due to natural causes, in effect deleting the ‘anthropogenic’ from ‘anthropogenic climate change’ and substituting ‘natural’.
Refuting AGW requires empirical evidence, not mere word-play.
stas peterson
I have read this post on Miskolczi here:
http://www.dailytech.com/Researcher+Basic+Greenhouse+Equations+Totally+Wrong/article10973.htm
Miskolczi showed that the CO2 equations for forcing in climate models where flawed because they treated the atmosphere as infinite instead of a decreasing medium. So the IPCC climate models show the CO2 forcing much stronger than it really is.
And another research published a paper in Journal of Geophysical Research that showed CO2 effective forcing tapers off sharply beyond 300ppm, like a capacitor charging. Here:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HANSENMARSCHALLENGE.pdf
I have read numerous articles from either credible sources or individual that show the extra contribution of CO2 by humans just isn’t causing the warming. More likely it’s the suns radiance that fluxes with the variations of the thermal fusion engine in the suns core as reflected in sunspot magnetic anomalies.
This energy is absorbed by the land and things that inhabit it but the greatest absorber is the oceans which a researcher at NOAA showed was most likely influencing land temperatures.
You will notice that most of the melting in the polar ice occurs in the sea ice and not land bound ice. That proves to me that air is not the significant medium of warming. And the last time there was significant absence of
Arctic ice was back in the 20~30s. It seems to cycle with the PDO and ADO ocean current cycles.
So I think the worlds AGW alarmists better forget about CO2 levels and start worrying how they can keep the populous from running out of energy and freezing or starving to death. I seriously doubt that PV solar, wind grid tie-in or biofuels will be able to supply that need unless there is a significant decrease in population or more effective use can be made of the regulars of oil, coal, and nuclear. Looking at future population trends I think the world needs a massive sterilization treatment otherwise significant conflicts will ensue over water and energy. Security is also an issue.
Rite now Obama’s plan just won’t really vitalize the economy, it will just lead to either more inflation or a long term depression. Allowing companies to make effective use of of exiting reserves of coal, oil and gas will generate enormous tax revenue. I also think that energy companies are better able to develop viable energy sources without excessive subsidizations and mandates. Right now the Democratic congress and presidency will just hamper that severely by trying to regulate CO2 emissions.
Energy efficiency yes, carbon emission regulation or sequestering no. It’s a money scam to burden consumers with more taxes to fund congressional pork and socialism. Consumerism without significant manufacturing will not bail out this economy, government can’t create real jobs or productivity, but as we have been seeing for the last 100 years they can sure screw things up.
No, it’s more likely the oceans moving heat around that’s always there. When the oceans all end up in roughly the same phases, you get an extreme one way or another (warming or cooling). When they’re in disparate phases you get something in between. But of course, these are all regional effects, as all things are. There’s no “global” climate or temperature.
Whew
Now I can stop recycling, buy an SUV, and fire up my aerosol cans again. Because I can now rest assured that I cannot affect the global climate.
http://www.livescience.com/environment/070716_gw_notwrong.html
Wait, there’s scientific evidence that says what?
http://www.realclimate.org/images/2008_from1979.jpg
http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publications/warming_earth/scientific_evidence.htm
http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/globalwarmA.html
But that temperature rise must be just a natural cycle, right?
http://www.monthlyreview.org/080728farley.php
Caused by people, huh? Who says?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,475367,00.html?sPage=fnc/scitech/naturalscience
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686
Thousands huh? Do they all agree?
http://www.reason.com/news/show/34939.html
I found this article to filled with much more hot air and bluster than scientific fact. It was more on the political and media argument
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy
than the scientific one about global warming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
I find appalling the lack of citations for the author’s assertions. Thankfully, at least some are in the comments. Great job, Leif, for adding scientific credibility to this discussion.
Deny all you want, but hard evidence for global warming over the past 50 years is solid. Whether humans caused it is arguable. Whether the conclusions can be debated is allowable. Whether or not you deny global warming, it doesn’t absolve you of responsibility for taking care of our environment. I think I’ll keep recycling and give up the SUV and aerosol cans.
REPLY: Here’s a link to round your’s out:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/27/james-hansens-former-nasa-supervisor-declares-himself-a-skeptic-says-hansen-embarrassed-nasa-was-never-muzzled/