UPDATE 1/28: Full text of Dr. Theon’s letter has been post on the Senate website and below.
This is something I thought I’d never see. This press release today is from the Senate EPW blog of Jame Inhofe. The scientist making the claims in the headline, Dr. John S. Theon, formerly of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Arlington, Virginia, has a paper here in the AMS BAMS that you may also find interesting. Other papers are available here in Google Scholar. He also worked on the report of the Space Shuttle Challenger accident report and according to that document was a significant contributor to weather forecasting improvements:
The Space Shuttle Weather Forecasting Advisory Panel, chaired by Dr. John Theon, was established by NASA Headquarters to review existing weather support capabilities and plans and to recommend a course of action to the NSTS Program. Included on the panel were representatives from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Air Force, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
For those just joining the climate discussion, Dr. James Hansen is the chief climate scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and is the man who originally raised the alarm on global warming in 1988 in an appearance before congress. He is also the keeper of the most often cited climate data.
EPW press release below – Anthony
Washington DC, Jan 27th 2009: NASA warming scientist James Hansen, one of former Vice-President Al Gore’s closest allies in the promotion of man-made global warming fears, is being publicly rebuked by his former supervisor at NASA.
Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist, Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA’s vocal man-made global warming fear soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.” Theon joins the rapidly growing ranks of international scientists abandoning the promotion of man-made global warming fears.
“I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man made,” Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. “I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results,” Theon, the former Chief of the Climate Processes Research Program at NASA Headquarters and former Chief of the Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch explained.
“Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress,” Theon wrote. [Note: NASA scientist James Hansen has created worldwide media frenzy with his dire climate warning, his call for trials against those who dissent against man-made global warming fear, and his claims that he was allegedly muzzled by the Bush administration despite doing 1,400 on-the-job media interviews! – See: Don’t Panic Over Predictions of Climate Doom – Get the Facts on James Hansen – UK Register: Veteran climate scientist says ‘lock up the oil men’ – June 23, 2008 & UK Guardian: NASA scientist calls for putting oil firm chiefs on trial for ‘high crimes against humanity’ for spreading doubt about man-made global warming – June 23, 2008 ]
Theon declared “climate models are useless.” “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,” Theon explained. “Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,” he added.
“As Chief of several of NASA Headquarters’ programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the research work by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who worked on climate research,” Theon wrote of his career. “This required a thorough understanding of the state of the science. I have kept up with climate science since retiring by reading books and journal articles,” Theon added. (LINK) Theon also co-authored the book “Advances in Remote Sensing Retrieval Methods.” [Note: Theon joins many current and former NASA scientists in dissenting from man-made climate fears. A small sampling includes: Aerospace engineer and physicist Dr. Michael Griffin, the former top administrator of NASA, Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, Geophysicist Dr. Phil Chapman, an astronautical engineer and former NASA astronaut, Award-Winning NASA Astronaut/Geologist and Moonwalker Jack Schmitt, Award-winning NASA Astronaut and Physicist Walter Cunningham of NASA’s Apollo 7, Chemist and Nuclear Engineer Robert DeFayette was formerly with NASA’s Plum Brook Reactor, Hungarian Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA’s Ames Research Center, Climatologist Dr. John Christy, Climatologist Dr. Roy W. Spencer, Atmospheric Scientist Ross Hays of NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility]
Gore faces a much different scientific climate in 2009 than the one he faced in 2006 when his film “An Inconvenient Truth” was released. According to satellite data, the Earth has cooled since Gore’s film was released, Antarctic sea ice extent has grown to record levels, sea level rise has slowed, ocean temperatures have failed to warm, and more and more scientists have publicly declared their dissent from man-made climate fears as peer-reviewed studies continue to man-made counter warming fears. [See: Peer-Reviewed Study challenges ‘notion that human emissions are responsible for global warming’ & New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears ]
“Vice President Gore and the other promoters of man-made climate fears endless claims that the “debate is over” appear to be ignoring scientific reality,” Senator James Inhofe, Ranking Member of the Environment & Public Works Committee.
A U.S. Senate Minority Report released in December 2008 details over 650 international scientists who are dissenting from man-made global warming fears promoted by the UN and yourself. Many of the scientists profiled are former UN IPCC scientists and former believers in man-made climate change that have reversed their views in recent years. The report continues to grow almost daily. We have just received a request from an Italian scientist, and a Czech scientist to join the 650 dissenting scientists report. A chemist from the U.S. Naval Academy is about to be added, and more Japanese scientists are dissenting. Finally, many more meteorologists will be added and another former UN IPCC scientist is about to be included. These scientists are openly rebelling against the climate orthodoxy promoted by Gore and the UN IPCC.
The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists’ equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. Reports from the conference found that Skeptical scientists overwhelmed the meeting, with ‘2/3 of presenters and question-askers hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC’ ( See full reports here & here ] In addition, a 2008 canvass of more than 51,000 Canadian scientists revealed 68% disagree that global warming science is “settled.” A November 25, 2008, article in Politico noted that a “growing accumulation” of science is challenging warming fears, and added that the “science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation.” More evidence that the global warming fear machine is breaking down. Russian scientists “rejected the very idea that carbon dioxide may be responsible for global warming”. An American Physical Society editor conceded that a “considerable presence” of scientific skeptics exists. An International team of scientists countered the UN IPCC, declaring: “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate”. India Issued a report challenging global warming fears. International Scientists demanded the UN IPCC “be called to account and cease its deceptive practices.”
The scientists and peer-reviewed studies countering climate claims are the key reason that the U.S. public has grown ever more skeptical of man-made climate doom predictions. [See: Global warming ranks dead last, 20 out of 20 in new Pew survey. Pew Survey: & Survey finds majority of U.S. Voters – ‘51% – now believe that humans are not the predominant cause of climate change’ – January 20, 2009 – Rasmussen Reports ]
The chorus of skeptical scientific voices grow louder in 2008 as a steady stream of peer-reviewed studies, analyses, real world data and inconvenient developments challenged the UN’s and former Vice President Al Gore’s claims that the “science is settled” and there is a “consensus.”
On a range of issues, 2008 proved to be challenging for the promoters of man-made climate fears. Promoters of anthropogenic warming fears endured the following: Global temperatures failing to warm; Peer-reviewed studies predicting a continued lack of warming; a failed attempt to revive the discredited “Hockey Stick“; inconvenient developments and studies regarding rising CO2; the Spotless Sun; Clouds; Antarctica; the Arctic; Greenland’s ice; Mount Kilimanjaro; Global sea ice; Causes of Hurricanes; Extreme Storms; Extinctions; Floods; Droughts; Ocean Acidification; Polar Bears; Extreme weather deaths; Frogs; lack of atmospheric dust; Malaria; the failure of oceans to warm and rise as predicted.
# # #
ORIGINAL FULL TEXT LETTER SENT VIA EMAILS:
From: Jtheon [mailto:jtheon@XXXXXXX]
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2009 10:05 PM
To: Morano, Marc (EPW)
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 12:50 PM
To: Morano, Marc (EPW)
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Joel Shore (06:45:37) : “And even your assertion that market economies are needed is false.”
You seem to have this habit in your post there of attributing to me things that I did not say. I talked about externalities in the context of market economics but I did not say that they are unique to market economies.
Fair enough. The context and phrasing seemed to imply that you were impugning market economies (and there are not many alternatives that, by implication, would be the choice); but I can see where I was bringing much to that assumption.
Probably a ‘bad habit’ that has served me well in many other contexts. I call it ‘seeing the negative space’. Great tool for forensics jobs. See what ought to be there, but isn’t, in the ‘negative space’ of what is, then follow it… Someone says they were at Starbucks, but no coffee cup or smell of coffee… Someone says they see problem in {specific market type} implies they did not see problem in other market types (or why else the specificity). But yes, that is being a cop or detective, and not simply reading what you wrote. My apologies.
Joel Shore (06:33:41) :
E.M. Smith says: “We can say with certainty that the proposed restrictions in the developed countries can not decrease atmospheric CO2. It simply will not happen.”
These are exactly the sort of long-term inertias in our human economic systems that make it necessary for us to delay no longer and to actually get to work on starting to convert our economies away from the reliance on fossil fuels (and/or learn how to sequester the emissions).
Or, to freely paraphrase the argument: It won’t work no matter what so we have to do it faster.
Would it not be better to fix the brokenness in the plan that prevents it from working? Assuming your AGW thesis were correct: You must have China, India, Brazil, and Russia ‘on board’ or you are wasting your time and money.
However, they understand that sometimes it is necessary to lead by example, particularly when you are responsible for most of the problem to date.
Setting aside the point that there isn’t really any problem, and even setting aside the point that the guilt trip of responsibility is ill placed (we are also responsible for much of modern prosperity in the world and for feeding much of the world, etc. all due to the same fossil fuels) this argument becomes substantially the same in form as:
I must destroy my workplace, home, income, and security so that my competitor will see my good example and follow it.
Are you really so naive as to think China will follow our lead to economic ruin?
I’ve worked with a couple of “mainland Chinese” over about a 30 year period. They don’t work that way…
Please see the example of melamine in baby milk for how well our example of the FDA has influenced them. Please see the lead paint toy recalls for how well our example has been followed. Please see a thousand and one product recalls, deaths, etc. And look at their rate of deaths in mining for how well our example of OSHA has influenced them. And please see their smog / soot levels for how well our example of CARB / EPA has influenced them.
China does what China wants and does not look to outsiders for guidance.
Mike Bryant (09:31:11) :
Thanks E M,
You are most welcome.
I hope we never have to hear the word “externality” again. It seems obvious that government produces more of them than anyone else.
Almost by definition, yes. In markets the participants are most of the time the folks impacted by the decision. Externalities are generally limited to things like environmental damage.
Once you have a non-market situation (i.e. governments of any stripe) the probability that someone is disenfranchised in the decision making rises dramatically, ergo far more externalities. (When are a politician and a lobbyest not conspiring to help themselves at some third parties expense???)
FWIW, this is why the field is named “Political Economics” and Stanford has a PhD in it…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy gives an idea and the Stanford pointer has:
“Political Economics: PhD Program: Stanford GSB
Political Economics is an interdisciplinary field focusing on the non-market, collective, and political activity of individuals and organizations. …”
PS Just because someone throws a big word around does not mean it makes sense.
Yup. And Economists love big words with strange sounding meanings. Mostly it’s just taking simple ‘common sense’ and packaging it so it looks like a masters degree ought to be granted 😉 “Price Inelastic Demand” sure sounds bigger & better than “Gotta buy gas!” or “Can’t live without food.”
And “Government Externality” is far more obtuse than “BOHICA” or “I’m from the Goverernment and I’m here to help you.”…
But never fear, I’m a decent Economicspeak Babblefish translator… and I like small words with clear thoughts in them.
“Dying unexpectedly is a catastrophe and I think we can already attribute deaths to anthropogenic climate change.”
What about this then?
http://www.csccc.info/reports/report_23.pdf
And this?
“During an average winter 25,000 people in England and Wales die as a result of cold weather. If the winter is colder than normal there are a further 8,000 deaths per degree centigrade below the average temperature.”
From here:
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:xrBTbZCWitoJ:open.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/comm/download3.asp%3Fdltype%3Dinline%26filename%3D35887/081217_Affordable_Warmth_F.doc+8,000+deaths+per+degree&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us
You are dreaming if you think warmer weather is killing more than cooling is…
China is already moving to reduce emissions — they’re convinced it’s the healthy and economic thing to do. No one seriously thinks that pollution control will lead to economic ruin.
But the sad fact is that China is leading the U.S. You America-lasters are finally getting your way, dammit.
Ed Darrell,
Can you provide a credible link proving that China is already reducing emissions?
…oh, I see. You said China is “moving” to reduce emissions.
Well, they’re moving mighty slow. So slow, in fact, that no movement is apparent.
According to the Economist, the Chinese are building an average of 1 – 2 new coal-fired power plants per week, and they admit that they plan to continue at this rate for at least the next fifteen years. That’s a minimum of 780 new coal-fired power plants, and likely more than double that number if the truth were known.
Chinese power plants don’t use expensive scrubbers, which is already resulting in Chinese coal plant soot covering the Arctic, as has recently been linked in a previous thread.
The deluded belief that China is pouring money into expensive pollution abatement has no basis in fact. As always, China announces what they want the world to believe, and then continues doing what they like, which is maximizing profits.
Useful fools lacking common sense take them at their word, instead of checking the facts. Try taking a tour of Chinese coal power plants and check for yourself… what? They won’t allow a tour of anything but a selected Potemkin village? What does that tell you?
You stated: “the sad fact is that China is leading the U.S.” What could you possibly mean by that? That China has taken the lead over the U.S. in emissions? Why yes, they have, by quite a lot. And they’re just beginning to ramp up.
Blaming others [“America-lasters”] for problems caused in reality by those with an anti-U.S. mindset deliberately ignores the facts. Since 1992:
Instead of bashing America, why don’t you expend some energy investigating why the U.S. has become the world’s least polluting country? Or can’t you bring yourself to say anything good about the U.S.?
Here’s a challenge, Ed: take your camera phone and go record some pictures of untreated, EPA-violating industrial pollution being poured into the environment in your county, and post those pictures right here. If you can find any. I’ll make it even easier for you: find untreated industrial pollution anywhere in your state.
Heck, anywhere in the country that you so clearly despise, Ed.
E.M. Smith says:
Thanks for the gracious apology!
I think it is alarmist to talk about economic ruin and such as befalling us all because we are going to make a gradual transition off of fossil fuels (or toward sequestering the emissions from those that we do still use). Surely, you wouldn’t be predicting such dire consequences if we were simply running out of them.
And, the sooner we start down that road, the more gradual and less costly that transition will be. We have already lost time that could have been spent providing the markets with the necessary incentives to be creating the alternatives that we are going to need.
Mike Bryant (13:00:39) :
See here:
Heat/drought ranked highest among the hazard categories, causing 19.6% of total deaths, closely followed by severe summer weather (18.8%) and winter weather (18.1%). Geophysical events (such as earthquakes), wildfires, and hurricanes were responsible for less than 5% of total hazard deaths combined.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081216201408.htm
and here:
Using models that estimate climate change for the years 2020 and 2050, it is estimated that summer mortality will increase dramatically and winter mortality will decrease slightly, even if people acclimatize to the increased warmth. Thus, a sizable net increase in weather-related mortality is estimated if the climate warms as the models predict.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1469832
But besides, I wastn’t specifically thinking of deaths directly attributable to temperature variations. There will always be a culling effect of outlier temperatures (although the general winter mortality rates in temperate climates are related as muc to associated illnesses as to temperature per se).
It is obviously simplistic to think of the effects of global warming simply in terms of it getting hotter. Crop failures in marginal regions are an evident consideration (and they will not be reported by the Nottingham City Council).
Joel Shore,
Your make a red herring argument above. The central issue in this entire debate is whether or not an increase in an atmospheric trace gas – carbon dioxide – will bring about climate catastrophe.
Because if CO2 is not a big problem, then this whole issue would be relegated to a few footnotes in an obscure journal. Instead, it is being used to extort literally trillions of dollars in new taxes. Money is the real motivation, not science.
By changing tack and arguing that if we simply get off fossil fuels [why, exactly?], and start to implement the most astonishingly stupid and expensive idea to ever come down the pike — sequestering billions of tons of CO2 underground — you are diverting from the original contention: that we must immediately begin to spend multi-$trillions to battle an imaginary problem.
There is not an economist alive who doesn’t understand lost opportunity cost. You cannot prove a negative, and it is difficult for the uneducated person to understand how badly taxing $trillions more out of an economy will hurt them. But the dollars that the government diverts into a completely non-productive enterprise, such as pumping CO2 underground, could have been spent by individuals, increasing demand that would grow the economy and make everyone wealthier.
The falsified hypothesis that the minor trace gas CO2 will lead to runaway global warming [ie, +3 degrees/century or higher] will not go away. Why not? Because the agenda is tax money and lots of it, not honest science.
Thus the steadfast refusal of the IPCC, or Gore, or Hansen, or Pachauri, or Mann, or any other AGW promoter, to agree to a well publicized series of televised debates about their AGW hypothesis in a neutral, moderated forum such as a well known university. They know they would eventually be ridiculed, if not laughed off stage, and the dollar signs in their eyes would become a distant memory. So they refuse to debate. Elmer Gantry wouldn’t debate, either.
And your psychological projection is showing when you accuse skeptics of being “alarmists” when it is always warmists who raise the hue and cry over the disaster heading for us if we emit more CO2.
Finally, you need to bone up on economics [which was at least my minor]: government spending distorts markets. The ‘necessary incentives’ to creating markets are produced by consumer demand. The government causes problems by using tax money to create inefficient supply and artificial demand, rather than allowing the free market to work.
Smokey (14:40:21) :
“runaway global warming [ie, +3 degrees/century or higher]”
Do you understand what ‘runaway’ means in this context? Your proposed definition suggests not.
Simon me boy, you have made a point of bird-dogging my posts for the past several weeks, especially since I pointed out that it wasn’t quite aboveboard for you to be using multiple screen names when posting, thus giving people the impression that there are more AGW believers than there really are.
Rather than respond by explaining the hypothesis that rapid warming leads to more warming, etc., I refer you to the IPCC’s projections. Or Al Gore if you like. Or James Hansen. Whatever.
The real killer is neither heat nor cold, but poverty. Whether the earth warms, cools or stays the same, throwing money at climate will have absolutely no effect except to make each of us poorer and less able to adapt. If you look at the weather deaths closely you will note that only the poorer countries have a problem. When the dictators and the collectivists are vanquished, and free countries are established, many of the weather deaths will stop.
” Crop failures in marginal regions are an evident consideration (and they will not be reported by the Nottingham City Council).”
For every region that is marginalized by climate change, there will be regions that are improved.
Smokey:
Man, Smokey, if you really don’t want us to compare AGW “skeptics” to creationists, could you lay off just a little bit in adopting their tactics: http://www.ridgenet.net/~do_while/sage/v12i10f.htm ? Such debates are primarily for people who have lost the argument in the scientific literature but still hope (with some justification) that they can confuse the public better than they can confuse their scientific colleagues.
Obviously, my use of the term “alarmist” was a very conscious choice on my part. Do you folks who use “alarmist” to describe science published regularly in the best peer-reviewed scientific journals in the world really think you can describe economic catastrophe with absolutely no citations providing evidence for this and expect a free pass!?!
Smokey says:
The term “runaway” is usually used to refer to an actual instability that occurs if the feedback effects are large enough that you essentially get a diverging series (i.e., if the direct feedback on 1 deg of warming is greater than or equal to 1 deg, where by direct feedback I mean just the feedback on the original warming and not yet the feedback on the additional warming caused by the feedbacks). Then you can potentially get the result like that on Venus where the temperature keeps rising until the oceans boil and so forth.
However, if the feedbacks are not large enough to cause such a divergence then what you get is is amplification, not a runaway. Mathematically, what you have is a converging series…For example, if the direct feedback on 1 deg of warming is equal to 1/2 deg, then you get a series like 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + …, which converges to 2, meaning that in the end the feedbacks double the original effect. The IPCC, Al Gore, and James Hansen all talk about a doubling of CO2 leading to somewhere around 3 C of warming (2-4.5 C being the “likely” range), which corresponds to a magnification of the warming by feedbacks but not a “runaway” effect.
Admittedly, Hansen has talked recently about the possibility of a “runaway” effect if we really go to town by burning all the conventional and perhaps also a significant amount of the unconventional fossil fuel reserves. Since, to my knowledge, he hasn’t published anything on this yet (and most other scientists have not, AFAIK, have not thought that this is a realistic possibility), it is still rather vague in my mind how he is expecting this to happen but I assume it involves, in addition to feedbacks on the temperature, some additional feedbacks in the carbon cycle (e.g., melting of permafrost). Hansen’s particular worry seems to be that processes that operate on geologic timescales to produce negative feedbacks (e.g., absorbing CO2 out of the atmosphere into geologic formations) could be overwhelmed by the rate of the increase in CO2 that we are producing. [Hansen also makes the point that the climate sensitivity that is estimated to be 3 C for a doubling is what he calls the Charney sensitivity, which does not include “slow” processes such as the eventual breakup of land ice sheets on Greenland and part of Antarctica, and Hansen thinks that these “slow” processes might not be as slow as we expect.] At any rate, I think it can safely be said that Hansen’s idea about a true “runaway” is an unsubstantiated hypothesis at this point.
You should buy a newspaper. It’s a good source of information for the Google- and information-impaired.
1. “China reports declines in three major pollutants,” June 2008 – http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/world/asia/06pollute.html
2. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=231121 – “Integrating Local, Regional and Global Assessment in China’s Air Pollution Control Policy,” World Bank, May 2000
3. Demand for air pollution control equipment in China to grow 18% annually, http://www.freedoniagroup.com/Air-Pollution-Control-In-China.html
4. James Fallows in The Atlantic, “China’s silver lining” http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/pollution-in-china
You can find others, if you look.
Smokey, while you’re reading the Economist, be sure to read all of it:
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11488548&CFID=43205155&CFTOKEN=16159598
http://www.economist.com/background/displayBackground.cfm?story_id=11488548
Ed Darrell,
I stand by my 14:40:21 post 100%, and neither your snark nor anything else you have said subsequently negates it. BTW, how’s that camera challenge coming along? [<– my answering snark; a required response according to the Prisoner’s Dilemma].
The reference to the Economist was not because they’re evenhanded — they’re not — but because of a fact that they repeatedly comment on: that China is currently constructing 1 – 2 new coal-fired power plants per week, and have stated that they intend to continue at this rate through at least 2024. You seem to be fine with that. As a matter of fact, so am I, at least regarding CO2 emissions; not so much regarding soot, though. [And the links you gave are not on point, although I did get a laugh out of “…at a time of fast-melting glaciers and strange rains, of spreading deserts and rising seas…” Strange rains?? Pure alarmist editorializing by the Economist.]
Why do you continue to heavily criticize the cleanest country on the planet, while giving other countries a free pass? Do they really need you as an apologist to excuse their pollution? [“We’re poor countries, so the rules don’t apply to us. But keep sending us your cash.”]
I should also mention that I’ve written to John Micklethwaite, the Economist jefe, asking him why his newspaper has bought into the alarmist AGW position. I’ve subscribed to the Economist for over thirty years, and the radical change in their editorial slant with regard to AGW has become glaringly apparent. I’m shocked at quotes like the one above, which began to appear routinely in the late ’90’s.
Surely Micklethwaite is smart enough to know that the question of catastrophic AGW is undecided, with the real world evidence failing to confirm it. Surely you know that, too. But unlike you or me, Micklethwaite has a lot of influence, and the question is, why has he adopted such an an alarmist agenda? Rather than answer [very polite] letters from a long time subscriber, he has chosen to hide out. Sound familiar? It seems to be a pattern among the closed-minded.
But I did enjoy this somewhat inaccurate chart from the article: click If the projections are anywhere near accurate, then China isn’t doing a damn thing to abate its [harmless] CO2 emissions. They are simply giving lip service to the NGOs you cite, who eat it up and ask for a second helping, while telling the world to give China a pass.
Your second link repeats verifiably false information: “Global temperatures and sea levels are rising because of a build-up of greenhouse gases…”. Hogwash.
To get back on point, when AGW alarmists publicly begin to reject the scary talk of a sinister “tipping point” in the face of solid evidence that rising levels of CO2 do not trigger rising global temperatures, then we can start to have a reasonable conversation about the really tiny effects of beneficial CO2 emissions.
Smokey (15:00:18) :
Simon me boy, you have made a point of bird-dogging my posts for the past several weeks
It’s simply fun to point out when you say things that are obviously not true, such as the following nonsense –
especially since I pointed out that it wasn’t quite aboveboard for you to be using multiple screen names when posting, thus giving people the impression that there are more AGW believers than there really are
I have never used multiple screen names, I have changed from a previous handle to using my own legal name, unlike you, and that was at the suggestion of Anthony Watts, as you very well know. Still, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re someone who would fabricate whatever you feel like.
Rather than respond by explaining the hypothesis that rapid warming leads to more warming, etc., I refer you to the IPCC’s projections. Or Al Gore if you like. Or James Hansen. Whatever.
Clearly you did not understand the meaning of ‘runaway’. Joel has explained it to you again, as it has been explained before. I expect you will go on misusing it anyway.
Smokey (01:50:54) :
“To get back on point, when AGW alarmists publicly begin to reject the scary talk of a sinister “tipping point” in the face of solid evidence that rising levels of CO2 do not trigger rising global temperatures, then we can start to have a reasonable conversation about the really tiny effects of beneficial CO2 emissions.”
Smokey, we do not need any conversation or discussion. The science is settled.
According this recent posting titled “Global Cooling and the Madness of Davos” the US Department of Energy provides the following data that settles the whole dispute, I quote:
“Here a revolutionary idea: we might actually be going through a natural cycle that these self-styled climate change “experts” are claiming is man made.
“So we asked the US Department of Energy. They tell us that all of humanity contributes 3% of the worlds C02. They also say that C02 is responsible for only 9% of the greenhouse gases. So multiply 3% of 9% and you get 1/370, or in other words all of humanity’s CO2 ‘footprint’ constitutes about 1/370th of the earths greenhouse gases. Humans are relatively insignificant, and real climate scientists know this but it does not pay to say so.” see this link for the entire article:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Global-Cooling-and-the-Mad-by-Patrick-St-James-090206-319.html
This article contains other interesting remarks.
For example why it is of no use to contact your congressman or even the President of the USA to represent your opinion, quote:
“We might cry to our Representatives, or even our President. But that’s no better than blaming the burger cook or the manager at McDonalds for the price of that Big Mac, whilst never once challenging the franchise owner. You never meet the franchise owner”.
It’s an interesting article and an eye opener, even to AGW alarmists who in the end will be hit as hard as anybody else paying the price for bad science, failed policies and a crashing economy.
The article provides a nice insight of the real objectives behind the AGW scare and the dream of World Governance.
Where did we hear this rumor before? http://green-agenda.com perhaps?
Ron de Haan (06:37:33) :
You link to an article which asserts the following as fact (I could have picked plenty of its other statements, but let’s keep this simple):
“One volcanic eruption emits more greenhouse gas to our atmosphere than we can do collectively in 100 years. “
Do you think that’s true. Ron?
Does anyone really think that a good sized volcanic eruption doesn’t emit more than humanity does? Mt. Pinatubo, unlike most volcanoes, only erupted for a day. But its mushroom cloud was bigger than most cities: click
And Pinatubo’s giant cloud, unlike cities that have scrubbers on their industrial chimneys and catalytic converters on their cars, was pretty much all ash and gases. Cubic miles of it.
Then there was Mt. Tambora, whose volcanic cloud lowered global temperatures by about 3 degrees. Fully a year after the eruption, most of the northern hemisphere was still experiencing sharply cooler temperatures. In Europe and North America, 1816 was known as “the year without a summer.” The emissions from all of Earth’s cities put together has never canceled out summer. Not even over a hundred years.
Pinatubo’s huge cloud of ash and ‘greenhouse’ gases spreading over the globe is easily visible from space in this NASA picture: click For comparison, try and see if there are any cities visible.
And don’t forget the 200,000 newly discovered active volcanoes on the ocean floor. Until very recently, no one even knew they existed. Face it, nature makes human activity puny by comparison.
Finally, the fantastic hypothesis of “runaway” global warming has an invented and equally fantastic cause: a mythical “tipping point” that is just around the corner, and which can only be averted by shoveling $trillions in new tax money into the pockets of the globaloney prophets and their indulgence selling acolytes.
When it comes down to common sense, promoters of the AGW scare are looking increasingly silly. No wonder this site has less than a dozen screen names desperately trying to convince thousands of rational viewers that AGW is gonna get ’em. The vast majority knows better, and the scare tactics and dire warnings are sounding more and more desperate.
Don’t be the last scientist to realize that your credibility and your career are on the line. Let everyone you know that AGW has been falsified.
Ron de Haan:
Ron, I hate to burst your bubble but there is a lot of utter garbage on the internet. You seem to have found a shining example! The 3% of CO2 claim is utter nonsense. The CO2 accounts for 9% of greenhouse gases is also a low estimate…although not as egregious of one. (In actual fact, since the effects of the greenhouse gases are not additive, it is hard to come up with a single number.) It also refers to the entire natural greenhouse effect, without which the earth would be a whopping 33 C (nearly 60 F) colder.
Smokey (08:40:59) :
Does anyone really think that a good sized volcanic eruption doesn’t emit more than humanity does? Mt. Pinatubo, unlike most volcanoes, only erupted for a day. But its mushroom cloud was bigger than most cities: click
And Pinatubo’s giant cloud, unlike cities that have scrubbers on their industrial chimneys and catalytic converters on their cars, was pretty much all ash and gases. Cubic miles of it.
The claim made was about volcanos emitting greenhouse gases!
Then there was Mt. Tambora, whose volcanic cloud lowered global temperatures by about 3 degrees.
Er, right, so that wouldn’t be greenhouse gases then.
What are you on about?
Joel Shore (09:11:48) :
Joel, I think the CO2 figure is quite correct.
Have a look at the following caculation:
THE NUMBERS ABOUT CARBON DIOXIDE IN OUR ATMOSPHERE
Here are the calculations, based on information obtained directly from the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute in De Bilt, Holland (KNMI).
Mass (air) = 4 pi R^2 * P/g, where
R=earth radius=6,371,000 m; P=surface pressure=101,300 Pa; g=acceleration due to gravity=9.8 m/s^2
Thus, Mass (air) = 5.3 x 10^18 kg = 5,300,000 Gigatons
Mass (CO2 = mass (air)*ratio (CO2/air)*mol. mass (CO2)/mol. mass (air), where
ratio (CO2/air)=380 ppm=380 parts CO2 per 1 million parts of air
molecular mass (CO2)=44 kg/kmol – molecular mass (air)=28.8 kg/kmol
Thus, Mass (CO2)=3 x 10^15 kg=3,000 Gigatons
CO2 missions due to burning of fossil fuels estimated at 5.4 Gigatons per annum plus minus 0.5 Gigatons is est. 5.5% of total CO2 emissions.
See: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZCiOfGwOj80C&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=human+induced+CO2+3%25+of+total&source=web&ots=zjHUJY_nB0&sig=EUBIYdCvr4sm0y3WVohzSRRE7Zc&hl=en&ei=1HmQSZLZG4mb_ga6m529DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result