This is a bit disturbing, though in retrospect, not surprising. One of our local IPCC wonks at Chico State University, Jeff Price, is a biologist, but lectures me about climate all the same. – Anthony
by Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
I had intended to return to this point when I originally posted about this debate last week, but time got away from me. Thankfully, my colleague Roy Cordato brought it up today:
During the question and answer session of last week’s William Schlesinger/John Christy global warming debate, (alarmist) Schlesinger was asked how many members of United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were actual climate scientists. It is well known that many, if not most, of its members are not scientists at all. Its president, for example, is an economist.
Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC – trained initially as a railway engineer
This question came after Schlesinger had cited the IPCC as an authority for his position. His answer was quite telling.
First he broadened it to include not just climate scientists but also those who have had “some dealing with the climate.” His complete answer was that he thought, “something on the order of 20 percent have had some dealing with climate.” In other words, even IPCC worshiper Schlesinger now acknowledges that 80 percent of the IPCC membership had absolutely no dealing with the climate as part of their academic studies.
This shatters so much of the alarmists’ claim, as they almost always appeal to the IPCC as their ultimate authority.
Hansen is an astrophysicist, not a meteorologist or climatologist. Not having credentials in the field of study doesn’t stand in the way of one’s work as long as they are on the “correct” side of the issue.
Doesn’t surprise me one bit. To get a bit biblical “By their works ye shall know them”. Judged by what they do and say I would not expect much expertise – would you?
But all are probably socialists, and that is what we are really dealing with.
And the photo caption?
Should read ‘Mandrake gestures hypnotically…”
It is a political organization, not a scientific one.
Yet the mainstream media refuses to entertain the concept that it may be biased for that very reason….. It’s kinda Socialist, Alice in wonderland stuff really.
Very bizarre.
Do we know which iteration of the IPCC he was referring to because I seem to recall reading a review of the drafting of the original IPCC report that indicated that less than a hundred of the 2000+ panel members were actually scientists with pertainent training.
crosspatch:
No, it doesn’t stand in his way because astrophysics provides an excellent background for studying climate science and because he has shown his expertise in climate science by publishing many widely-cited peer-reviewed papers in the field in prestigious journals. Scientists don’t care what the original field of study is of their fellow scientists … It is what you are publishing that counts.
As for the general issue of this post, i.e., the fraction of the IPCC folks who are climate scientists: You do realize that the IPCC has three working groups for its assessment reports because their mission is not just to review the climate science, but also its affects and how we can adapt to it and mitigate it? This necessarily involves such diverse fields as biology, economics, engineering, etc. After all, would you want only climate scientists talking about the effects of climate change on animal and plant species, or only climate scientists estimating the costs of mitigating climate change, or what sort of engineering solutions are possible?!?
Does that mean we are being railroaded? Hmmm…
Get a shave and a haircut buddy.
Seriously, get a personal grooming session.
Ok, really seriously, what I’d like to know is what experiments “prove” that AWG is happening?
By the way, if you want to see the list of the contributors to the WG1 part of the report, they are listed here: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-annexes.pdf So, you can investigate their credentials to your heart’s content. (You can also see the list of reviewers…The reviewers are distinct from the contributors and I believe are chosen both by governments and by NGOs, so basically anyone who wants to be a reviewer and can get some organization to support them can become one…For example, both Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick are listed as reviewers.)
It will be the EPA reaching to control the climate tht we have to fight against, and it will have to be, hopefully, via the ballot box.
It is bizarre……..
Mainstream media seems to dwell on negative news stories and the GW story has some sort of Mythological energy that must be fed almost daily. It is almost as if they are feeding anxiety about consumption and our standard of living to increase circulation.
It is going to be very hard for the media to turn this story around although there is now a slight trickle of letters and articles questioning the GW premise in the Australian Press.
Louis,
I’m not sure I agree with your assessment that economists, psychologists, sociologists, and other social scientists are at all qualified to comment on the validity of a theory as dangerous as anthropogenic global warming.
There are influential people within the UN who are Gaia believers. I wonder how many IPCC members are also Gaia believers?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis#The_Revenge_of_Gaia
http://www.green-agenda.com/
Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC – trained initially as a railway engineer
By “railway engineer”, are we talking slide rule, pencils in pocket protector mechanical engineer, or toot the whistle locomotive engineer?
http://i42.tinypic.com/2d9z4vq.jpg
I sometimes wonder … exactly what is climate science? Clearly it involves meteorology, geology, biology, oceanography, cosmology, math, physics, chemistry, paleo-this and paleo-that, etc., etc., etc.
Can anyone really be an expert in climate? I doubt it. So, I don’t really cast aspersions on people in the field based on their background. However, I do think it brings forward the point that climate science is still in it’s infancy. It’s extremely complex and so little is really known about key elements.
This also makes me wonder how these scientists, who know so little of the overall picture, can claim such confidence in their predictions.
joel shore
“You do realize that the IPCC has three working groups for its assessment reports because their mission is not just to review the climate science, but also its affects and how we can adapt to it and mitigate it? This necessarily involves such diverse fields as biology, economics, engineering, etc.”
And you think this helps the case for AGW? How? All this is is scientists in other fields assessing what would happen IF and what to do IF the climate models are correct. IOW, their research does nothing to scientifically bolster the case for alarmism except to alarm.
Some here may be repeating history by objecting to AGW and the IPCC as the authority that must make us all conform. In the near future these people may be forced to recant as Galileo was.
See the words of that document here:
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/recantation.html
What the propagandists fail to see (deliberately ?) is not the issue of “formal qualification” but of “scientific integrity,” moral integrity, simple honesty, humility (ability to recognize one’s own limits and prejudices – and work to exceed those limits) and character.
I do not need my years differential calculus classes, particle physics classes and Bessel function equations to recognize – on a graph of temperature vs time – whether the plot is increasing, sinusoidal, or decreasing.
I DO need to know that the man (or woman) who PRODUCED the chart is honest and presenting honest research, done with the available equipment and best interpretation of past (legacy) data as he can.
Or is a propagandist HIDING behind his degrees and his cronies to present a lie.
“something on the order of 20 percent have had some dealing with climate.”
What is the definition of having some dealing with climate ?
I would expect this includes climate scientists, meteorologists, geologists and others with a science degree. Then 80% are politicians, economists, lawyers, untrained indviduals et cetera
Joel Shore,
Are you forgetting that the UN/IPCC is composed of political appointees? And that the science must conform to UN political goals? And that no dissent is allowed within the IPCC?
But there is dissent, and lots of it. All of these [and many more – provided to you on request] strongly question, or outright falsify the IPCC’s ‘findings.’:
click1
click2
click3
click4
click5
click6
click7
click8
click9
click10
And please, no more typical ad-homs. Respond to the science.
It is rediculous to appeal to the IPCC in support of your argument.
The majority of the IPCC output is on what will happen given certain climatic changes – which is why you have so many economists and other non-climate scientists on the panel.
A small minority of members are the ones who actually do the “climate” work and produce the estimates and models of climatic changes for the economists to work on.
To say that the IPCC consists of over 2000 climate scientists is plainly wrong, to say that all 2000 agree that the climate is changing is impossible to tell (they may do, but most are simply modelling output based on what the climate scientists are saying – they would be doing the same if those climate scientists said it would cool; or it would stay the same with no more seasons; or we would have thermal armageddon).
The IPCC therefore is a group of modellers who base their work on a small group of climate scientists say the climate will be like. It is no more and no less than that.
IPCC – [snip]
What do you need them as an authority for when you can use Al Gore instead.
Both have the same level of scientific content.
Joel Shore (19:09:59) :
No, it doesn’t stand in his way … because he has shown his expertise in climate science by publishing many widely-cited peer-reviewed papers in the field in prestigious journals. Scientists don’t care what the original field of study is of their fellow scientists … It is what you are publishing that counts.
……
Does the ACCURACY of what you are publishing count in way?
Hanson has been WRONG in every one of his predictions, has become such a strident extremist that – in a recent EDITORIAL (not peer-reviewed by the way) in a UK paper – every sentence of his extremist retoric contained at least one lie or exaggeration.
Yet you claim he is credible because he publishes papers equally wrong?
Mann has been proven dead wrong in several papers. Fraudulent in others. Is he credible in your mind? Is he even criticized in your mind? Did you even know he has been proven wrong – but his cronies in the editors or so-called “peer-reviewed” papers have NEVER called on him to revoke his printed works. How can I recall his “credentials” – they clearly are worthless?
Keith Minto (19:24:29) :
It is bizarre……..
Mainstream media seems to dwell on negative news stories and the GW story has some sort of Mythological energy that must be fed almost daily. It is almost as if they are feeding anxiety about consumption and our standard of living to increase circulation.
It is going to be very hard for the media to turn this story around although there is now a slight trickle of letters and articles questioning the GW premise in the Australian Press.
Why would the MSM want to turn this story around?
The MSM is a machine designed to return value to the shareholders – not tell the truth – it needs to attract and retain the attention of the audience long enough to sell advertising space or it goes out of business.
Scare stories sell…
And we also have other “political organizations” who are joining the party to publicize dire future predictions. Here we have the World Bank warning about climate change in South America.
http://news.aol.com/article/world-bank-warns-of-climate-change-in/348019
Larry
Yes Smokey,the whole show is political. There is a debate going on at RC. about the Australian bush fires. This is one of the blog comments
“Re #11 Miranda Devine’s b*****t
The only way you will get any change is to email her and SMH and complain (as I have done) plus suggest this link.
We need to get out more, and push as hard as is reasonable.
Unfortunately we have a short attention span to deal with, so, as nasty as it feels we should use the current shock and grief to make our point while we may have some effect.
Comment by Al Breingan — 16 février 2009 @ 8:15 PM”
Thus using over 200 deaths, 2000 homes destroyed, 7000 homeless and 100’s square miles of land rendered sterile as a political ploy to press their case.
James S (20:26:38) :
The IPCC therefore is a group of modellers who base their work on a small group of climate scientists say the climate will be like. It is no more and no less than that.
Well, after all, it was only one chicken ( I believe it was reported that it was Chicken Little) who started the stampede of “the sky is falling”. A small group is best for this job.
The real story is not how many of the x thousand scientists (and others) who participated in the IPCC were climate scientists, however defined.
The real story is how many of those scientists agreed with the IPCC report and the Summary for Policymakers.
All we can say for sure is that some of the scientists participating disagreed with the conclusions, because they have come out and said so.
We do not know how many participants agreed in absolute numbers or as a percentage.
The error (aka dishonesty) is to promote the number who participated as the number who agreed with the conclusions.
We can not even say a majority of the participants agreed, because they never voted on any part of the IPCC report or its conclusions.
BTW, this is why the word ‘consensus’ is used so often. It’s because they can’t produce any numbers to support the claim of most participants agreeing.
And were you to write a scientific paper with no data to support its conclusions, just claims of ‘consensus’ in some appointed group, you would be laughed out of the room.
Interesting.
When a skeptic points out these well known facts, he’s branded a denier and publicly vilified for daring to question the party line. Meanwhile, the major media keeps on posturing about how the 2000+ scientists with the IPCC have given us a consensus overview of out dire future.
That an AGW proponent admits how few scientists make up the IPCC panel will surely be unreported by the major media — an inconvenient truth.
Drawing a straight edge over a global temperature graph of 1975-1998. Tah-dah! See? Warming during over two decades of the hundred-year record! Proof!
The whole “Appeal to Authority” argument is a dead loss…
In the 1600s the Catholic Church maintained that the Earth was the centre of the Universe – because it said so – and burned those who had the audacity to disagree. For example Giordano Bruno.
From the Wiki article his “sins” included,
Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers.
Holding erroneous opinions about the Trinity, about Christ’s divinity and Incarnation.
Holding erroneous opinions about Christ.
Holding erroneous opinions about Transubstantiation and Mass.
Claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity.
Believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes.
Dealing in magics and divination.
Denying the Virginity of Mary.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno
Appeals to Authority are no more valid now then they were then, and represent an inability or unwillingness to deal honestly with actual hard empirical evidence.
(Not that I’m saying the GB was right on everything…. – just a useful example)
“Can anyone really be an expert in climate? I doubt it. So, I don’t really cast aspersions on people in the field based on their background.”
I agree, and I recently posted something similar. But the fact highlighted at the start of this thread mkes a great Tu Quoque (You Too) whenever some snooty warmonger dismisses a critic for not being a climate scientist, or appeals to authority in the form of the IPCC.
“But all are probably socialists, and that is what we are really dealing with.”
If you know which way the wind blows, you needn’t be a weatherman.
=============
Incidentally, if AGW is debunked, its promoters and their doctrines will be tainted as well, including:
Persons who promote regulation & redistribution & demonize monied interests (socialists),
Governmental bureaucracies like NASA & the EPA,
the UN,
The scientific establishment (gatekeeper editors + the officialdom of scientific bodies like the NAS),
Scientism–the idea that the scientific process is disinterested and self-critical enough to weed out error, and that “pseudoscience” is primarily an amateur, uncredentialed affair.
The authority of any future scientific and/or social “consensus,”
The mainstream media,
Advocacy research in general
“Concerned” + crusading persons in general (fanatics, alarmists, insisters, single-vision types)
IOW, these people have a lot to lose if AGW is disposed of. So they’re redoubling their efforts to avoid being put in the wrong. (Which makes them even more discreditable. They’re digging themselves a deeper hole.)
If you haven’t seen the debate, it’s worth watching if you like to see facts and reason crush opinion. Click on link provided in intro…
DJA (20:45:26) :
“There is a debate going on at RC. about the Australian bush fires. ”
whoa – but I had it on good authority from a greens councilor called El Gibbs in the dickheads thread here that it was way too early to blame anything & we musn’t talk about it. Paid up member of the greens in NSW… naturally she/he would be over in comments there telling them to calm down & wait for the Royal Commission?
Among more heretical beliefs, Giordano Bruno also claimed that the Sun was a star.
Jim Greig
I wrote: “But all are probably socialists, and that is what we are really dealing with.”
to which you wrote: “I’m not sure I agree with your assessment that economists, psychologists, sociologists, and other social scientists are at all qualified to comment on the validity of a theory as dangerous as anthropogenic global warming.”
I don’t follow your reasoning.
Nice picture of Pachauri. For a second there I thought it was Tim the Enchanter warning Arthur and his Knights about about the Killer Rabbit. Perhaps Pachauri is telling the public to be wary as “The Killer CO2 Monster has really big teeth”.
I have a Bachelor of Science, but it’s in Aviation Management. However the study of meterology was required in my degree program. Interestingly the very first page in my meterology text book stated that the Sun was the driving force for all weather on Earth. Of course this was in 1982 and much has changed since then. Perhaps there is a future for me at the IPCC…. nah!
AnonyMoose (21:39:11) :
pwl (19:20:55) :
…
Ok, really seriously, what I’d like to know is what experiments “prove” that AWG is happening?
Drawing a straight edge over a global temperature graph of 1975-1998. Tah-dah! See? Warming during over two decades of the hundred-year record! Proof!……
AnonyMoose
That is only proof that the earth warmed from 1975 – 1998. It is not proof that the warming was due to AGW.
“Among more heretical beliefs, Giordano Bruno also claimed that the Sun was a star”
And from this data it can be extrapolated, with 1- 100% accuracy, that 99% of discusions about the sun will get you burned! lol 😉
this is it on the nose, nice one Anthony!
my Alma Mater
http://www.lssu.edu/
But when I post just asking a question, and read in RC and others
WE ARE NOT climate scientists so there for we are stupid deniers!!!!
humm????
Joel Shore (19:09:59) : No, it doesn’t stand in his way because astrophysics provides an excellent background for studying climate science
Oh really? Which other planet has a 70% water ocean surface? I must have missed it…
and because he has shown his expertise in climate science by publishing many widely-cited peer-reviewed papers in the field in prestigious journals.
You know, I’ve been pondering this constant din of “PEER REVIEWED LATEST PAPERS!!!” that gets tossed about by the AGWs. Don’t really ‘get it’. Sure sounds like an attempt to ‘pack the jury’ by having your friends choose who got published lately. “Widely cited” sounds a lot like a popularity contest…
Me, I like the old dusty papers that have stood the test of time. I like the paper that took a decade to get published because it overturned the ‘good ol boys’ network with a new, correct, thought. Einstein. Wegener. Ovshinsky. Alfven. and a long list of others… ( I expect that Landscheidt will join the list and I’m pondering Vukcevic’s stuff… it makes me think long and hard, and that’s a good thing… but it will be 10 to 20 years before we hear the jury on their insights… the sun has only now started voting…)
Never had much use for fads nor for social networking control structures. And don’t fool yourself, the peer review process is as much about social control as anything else. The history of folks fighting if for 20 years to finally get published, with ideas that then changed the world, make it more parody than peer, IMHO… And the list of peer reviewed junk is, er, well, a bit on the long side…
But you’re welcome to your opinion. Becoming enough of a media darling with friends in the right places is all it takes to become the recognized expert? OK, I’ll put that one in the old hip pocket against the day you yelp “But he hasn’t got a degree in climate science!” Me? I’m gonna stick with the guy who can correctly and clearly state how things work, demonstrates his work, has clue, and came up with a really neat bit of truth that explains things. Something that makes my jaw drop with it’s clarity, especially if the ‘peers’ are squealing… That, unfortunately, is not Hansen. He likes buckets with more hole than bucket, but it looks nice and his friends like the color. I like buckets that hold water; and have done so for decades…
You do realize that the IPCC has three working groups for its assessment reports because their mission is not just to review the climate science, but also its affects and how we can adapt to it and mitigate it? This necessarily involves such diverse fields as biology, economics, engineering, etc.
You mean like “Umbrella or sunscreen? Decisions decisions…”. Look, we have an annual swing of about 75F / 45C where I live and I’m not going to get excited about 0.anything C or F. Heck, even 1.something C or F is a joke. Add in the fact that you can’t even define what the ‘global average temperature’ is, or means, and that the error band is about 1C+ and season with the fact that GIStemp ‘cooks’ the data and I’m positively completely uninterested in what all the IPCC engineers and economists and biologists have to say about a non-existent problem that they are fantasizing about based on broken models using bad cooked input data.
So you can take all the unelected UN political appointee leaches and their junkets and ‘projects’ needing funding and put them on yourdime, not mine, and have them tell you how to live your life, not mine. And then I won’t care what degrees they have or where they publish. Not my problem then…
Until that day, any chance I get to do the ‘salt on a slug’ truth test on their claims, well, let just say I can make a lot of salt with a little sunshine in the right places…
Sorry if someone has already pulled him for this but;
Joel shore said
No, it doesn’t stand in his way because astrophysics provides an excellent background for studying climate science
Isn’t one of the IPCC contentions that external factors such as the sun have no bearing on AGW
As someone who takes a passing interest in this (as I believe the arrogance implicit in AGW is mind boggling) isn’t this a little bit of a contradiction?
Joel
I think you sort of miss the point. Hansen is an astronomer, Steve Mc , is a reviewer not a contributor, In fact Steve complains bitterly at times that his review comments get ommitted and last but not least, Steve is a STATISTICIAN and that is actually the key skill required for climate assessment.
Oh and Joel
Have at look at this UNIPCC scientist’s view
http://lostconservative.blogspot.com/2008/06/real-truth-about-agw.html
Manfred (20:07:40) : I would expect this includes climate scientists, meteorologists, geologists and others with a science degree. Then 80% are politicians, economists, lawyers, untrained indviduals et cetera
As an Economist, I’d expect them to be counted among the ‘has some dealing with’ since we have to pay a fair amount of attention to climate and weather as they impact crop production, government policies, and population dynamics (fancy words for death from famine…) and there is a long history of Economists being involved with weather and solar issues (William Stanley Jevons work on sunspots and business cycles, for example.)
I don’t think that makes them the right folks to pronounce the existence of global warming (I’d take a TV weatherman over an economist or an astrophysicist or even a climate computer modeler…), but I do think that it would, for the purposed of the UN speaker, put them in the ‘some dealings’ arena…
The “media” have been “reporting” doom and gloom stires about every possible subject since the late 19th century.
As for the idiots claiming the Victorian bush fires are as a result of AGW, really, you kow nothing about his country at all and makes me furious. As I’ve stated before, summer here started very cool, bit a bit warm for a short while, is now cool again, but will warm up a bit in the next few day. As at the start, temperatures well down (On average).
I think that this should close another avenue of attack from alarmists against the increasing number of scientists who are sceptical of AGW. As massive amounts of money has become available to study the climate, more and more scientists from other backgrounds and disciplines have been tempted into this field of study. Many of them are now finding that upon closer scrutiny, the AGW hypothesis is flawed.
However it is the fact that many of these scientists did not specifically train in climate science originally that the alarmists constantly attack any sceptical scientist, regardless of their actual qualifications or of the merits of the argument or hypothesis presented. Strange how they support any scientist that is NOT sceptical, regardless of their original speciality. The same argument should apply work both ways!
Although it is all nonsense in the sense that a rigorous scientific approach IS a rigorous scientific approach whatever the specialisation of the scientist involved.
Likewise car salesmen can just as easily adapt their selling skills to sell double glazing. Selling is selling. Or a computer programmer in banking can just as easily write code for internet shopping. Coding is coding. Science is science. Provided the scientists spends enough time familiarising themselves with the contemporary literature and then applies known rigorous scientific methods to evaluate the hypothesis presented, then science is science.
So the next time an alarmist claims a sceptical scientist is not a CLIMATE scientist, just tell them (a) it does not matter as science is science and (b) neither is Al Gore, Dr Hansen, or 80% of the IPCC so does the original scientific specialisations of the IPCC invalidate the IPCC then?
Science is science! End OF!
AnonyMoose (21:39:11) : Drawing a straight edge over a global temperature graph of 1975-1998.
Please define the ‘global temperature’. Show that it is calculated based on sound numbers and that these sources are distributed over the globe in such a way as to support your definition and it’s use as described. Show also that the data are not subject to unsupported manipulation after collection, and in the creation of the ‘global temperature’. Then describe what physical properties this ‘global temperature’ reflects and what it responds to. Finally, show that this ‘global temperature’ is not changing from completely natural causes (address the PDO, AMO, ENSO, and related ocean oscillations, solar variations, GCR effects, cloud formation) and pay particular attention to explaining Bond Events and the historic episodes of Optimum and Minimum climate; then show that the 1970-2000 period is not just a 30 year PDO cycle that has flipped in the 2000-2009 interval.
Oh, and after that, show that you meet the Nyquist requirements for sampled data for cycle control and show how you will implement that control (and state what your set point will be, your feedback mechanisms, and how you will measure time lags in your control circuit…
Joel Shore:
You say of Hansen “he has shown his expertise in climate science by publishing many widely-cited peer-reviewed papers in the field in prestigious journals.”
The trouble is that the field of “climate science” would not know peer-review if it tripped over it. I bet the peer-reviewers of Hansen’s work (his buddies, who knows?) and the prestigious journals he publishes in really give him a hard time.
Joel… By the way, if you want to see the list of the contributors to the WG1 part of the report, so, you can investigate their credentials to your heart’s content.
Jim Prall also lists the 619 contributing authors to the IPCC WG1 here, complete with links to home pages and pre-built Google Scholar queries. This is a subset of his list of over two thousand most-cited climate scientists here with photos. He also gives figures for those who have signed up to various ‘sceptical’ or ‘activist’ declarations. A handy resource if you don’t know your Spencer from your Jawarowski …
On a related topic, Bob Grumbine has done a breakdown of how many signatories to the much-cited ‘Oregon Petition’ are actually scientists (as opposed to engineers, MDs or veterinarians etc) here.
@Louis Hissink
I’m a socialist! I think you’ll find plenty on both sides of the political devide that go for AGW line. For me though, it’s not about politics, it’s about the science. I tentatively suggest a better line might be the devide between arts graduates and science grads. Then again…
Louis,
Mea culpa–I misread “scientists” where you wrote “socialists”.
Mark N,
Thanks for your illuminating comment.
Perhaps you might support your case with data?
I find having a couple of Science Degrees a real obstacle, so I can appreciate those not so burdened having a simpler view of the issue.
Louis Hissink (18:51:31
Well no, Louis, a lot are politicos, bureaucrats, sociologists, economists and various other hand-wavers.
Joel Shore;-)
It is all very well quoting a list of names of apparent scientists et al who have “contributed” to the workings of the IPCC. The point is this, they have “contributed” to the workings, what of course they cunningly omit to say is whether they “agreed” in all or part or none of the findings! Clever political play on words & that is all it is. It may as well be 2,000,000 contributing scientists for that matter it makes no difference. As Professor Paul Reiter said, he insisted on having his name removed from WGII as a contributing author as he vehemently disagreed with their conclusions & the process, but IPCC “officials” insisted he be named because he had “contributed” to the panel. After threatening them with legal action they finally relented. The IPCC has a political viewpoint & will make whatever decisions it wants to, & merely pays lip-service to hearing all sides of the argument.
Dr Rajendra Pachauri has to my knowledge PhDs in Industrial Engineering & Economics only, yet is frequently referred to in the UK media as the world’s “leading climate scientist” for which there can be no justification. It seems a little unfair that when a non climate scientist announced evidence of more warming he/she is lauded for his/her stance, yet when non a climate scientist speaks the other way, they are rounded upon because of the lack of their climate science qualifications! Two faced springs to mind.
John Philip, your J. Grumbine website has the same problem that the pro-AGW population in general has: try as they might, the believers in the AGW/CO2 hypothesis can’t seem to round up one-tenth the number of petition signers that the OISM site has.
So Grumbine resorts to parsing who, in his opinion, qualifies as a scientist. Is an M.D. a scientist? Grumbine doesn’t seem to think so. An engineer? Maybe not, but compare engineers’ credentials with Al Gore’s credentials.
Since Grumbine fails to make a valid case, it’s no surprise that his blog post has gotten a total of four (4) responses since July ’08. His engineer-disparaging position doesn’t generate much enthusiasm, and his argument generally fails.
There is a good reason why people like Prof. Freeman Dyson and over 31,000 others have co-signed the OISM petition. It states their position in clear, no-nonsense language:
Those educated in the hard sciences agree with the statement above by about 10 – 1 over those who don’t; about the same ratio that WUWT trounced RealClimate when winning this year’s “Best Science” site award. That’s a real consensus, no?
I’m at work right now, but I always enjoy watching debates like this on Youtube.
IQ2 did a debate a couple years ago with an all star cast, including Michael Crichton. You can find it on Youtube in 10 parts. VERY interesting debate. Before the debate, the audience was Pro Global Warming by almost 20 points, after it was flipped but only 6 or 7 points.
Still very cool.
Here is a link I found to the debate
http://www.crichton-official.com/video-iq2debate-part1.html
If AGW “science” were real science, the journals would be full of publications seeking to disprove it. Show me one. AGW “science” is classic Kuhnian “normal science.”
Louis Hissink (18:51:31) :
“But all are probably socialists, and that is what we are really dealing with”.
Louis,
Yes, and this could very well be their agenda:
http://green-agenda.com
The AGW/Climate Change doctrine puts the State in a position of TOTAL CONTROL over the entire society, from industry to aviation, from Agriculture to every individual citizen. They execute their Green Dreams wich will proof “your biggest Nightmare in time”.
Now you know what “Change” is brought to the world and how the “Wealth” will be devided.
Do you already feel the rope around your neck?
OT: I urge you all to go to Kevin Kelly’s “Cool Tools” site (the successor to the Whole Earth Catalog, which he edited) and check out the recent review (plus 74 comments) of “The Deniers,” a sympathetic look at critics of the hypothesis of manmade global warming. Here’s the link:
http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/003532.php
Remember me?
Just saying hello and checking to see who is still trying to figure out what makes the world go around.
Have a great day!
pwl (19:20:55)
No we are getting derailed!
Do you know chaps, I really believe that if we now managed to fill the IPCC with objective and dedicated scientists who were allowed to publish their papers falsifying the AGW climate models, the press and politicians would ignore them. AGW is such a religious faith for the media and politicians that scepticism seems a lost cause.
Every politician of note has, I am sure, been made aware of the 31,000 petition, the 100 prominent scientists letter to the UN Secretary General and many other pieces of information that has occasionally make the headlines. But they do not want to believe. Who has the nerve to risk political oblivion to crack first? No best ignore these people and they might go away.
As a retired physicist but with little or no knowledge of climate science I believed the AGW alarmist up to about two years ago when I heard Lord Lawson complain that he found it difficult to get a book published that expressed doubt about the dogma. I then began to read both sides and was, and am still amazed at the lies propagated by such men as Hansen, Gore, Pachauri, Mann and just recently Field and many others. Surely, I ask, our political leaders must see through them. I am sure they do yet every day politicians of all persuasions, the press and the BBC speak of catastrophic global warming as if it is an absolute and undeniable fact. I suppose controlling carbon is too big a prize to give up.
Just a quick comment about “peer reviewed journals”. As anyone in science knows, there are a lot of journals out there, very few of which are worth the paper they are printed on. The poorer journals are referred to cynically as “write-only” because no one bothers to read them. They exist because grad students and scientists have to publish papers to further their careers – whether or not they have anything useful to say.
So “peer reviewed” is an essentially meaningless term. You have to be a specialist in the field to know which journals actually apply decent standards.
A list of IPCC members is available on the web. Some are bizarre. One member’s claim to fame is that he invented a stove that uses little wood (I think he is from Sudan). The committee is heavily weighted to members from undeveloped countries (or third world if the thought police allow that use). I am not sure how thorough their training and education would be in dealing with something as complex as climate change. It’s the UN after all, possibly the most corrupt organisation on the planet.
Meanwhile….the sun keeps on taking a long, long nap…
What Louis said!
“Louis Hissink (18:51:31) :
But all are probably socialists, and that is what we are really dealing with”
“This shatters so much of the alarmists’ claim, as they almost always appeal to the IPCC as their ultimate authority”
Huh? This makes no sense, even for this site. Working groups 2 and 3 are on impacts and mitigation and adaptation, so, yes, there are biologists and economists. This is not a secret.
Here’s a list of WGI climate scientists
I’d be interested to see a skeptic’s list like this. (Hint: not Marc Morano’s list)
Ooops… tidied up version..
Those educated in the hard sciences agree with the statement above by about 10 – 1 over those who don’t; about the same ratio that WUWT trounced RealClimate when winning this year’s “Best Science” site award. That’s a real consensus, no?
No. 31,000 is a tiny percentage of the millions who are eligible to sign up and you present no evidence for your first assertion; no reputable poll would use loaded language like ‘catastrophic’, a reputable survey takes pains to ensure that the questions and any accompanying material do not influence the opinions of the respondents. By contrast the Oregon Petition included an error-strewn, biased and bogus scientific paper mimicking the font and layout of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The NAS even had to issue a press release distancing themselves from the paper and its conclusions.
The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal … The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy.”
From Jim Prall’s ‘long’ list of the most-cited climate scientists:- of the top 500 most cited authors in the larger list, just 19 (3.8%) have signed any climate skeptic declaration, while 181 (36%) — over nine times as many — have signed an ‘activist’ statement (aside from the IPCC reports themselves.) See the site for definitions.
Amongst the general public, last year’s Heartland sceptic’s conference ‘Manhattan Declaration’ garnered just 525 ‘citizen endorsers’ [try doing a search for the word ‘coal ;-)] while the Alliance for Climate Protection’s ‘We Can Solve It’ campaign just passed the two million mark. …
*********
E.M.Smith (02:48:24) :
Minor point: The UK is very well suited for wave power, it would take far less area than wind (water density is higher..) and waves are much more reliable. While I’m generally in favor of some wind power, the ‘reasonable’ percentage has to stay small since it is not ‘dispatchable’ (fancy word for ‘no wind, no power’ when you need it). Were I the UK energy czar, I’d do about 50% baseload nuke, 35% wave, 25% baseload fossil (coal), and 15% wind / solar. I’d also hold a 25% dispatchable fossil (gas turbine, for example) on cold standby.
********
There’s some good info on the web about Texas’ experience w/only 6% total wind capacity and how that small percentage causes transmission problems (& blackouts) during very changable wind conditions. Google “Texas wind power blackout”.
It looks like there’s a surprisingly small percentage of random-output “renewables” that a grid can withstand w/o stability problems. It may not be possible to have over 5-10% of such sources & still have a reliable (24/7) power supply. Wind/solar can stop almost instantly & even fast-starting NG/turbine units couldn’t start up quickly enough.
Joel Shore (19:09:59) :
You do realize that the IPCC has three working groups for its assessment reports because their mission is not just to review the climate science, but also its affects and how we can adapt to it and mitigate it? This necessarily involves such diverse fields as biology, economics, engineering, etc. After all, would you want only climate scientists talking about the effects of climate change on animal and plant species, or only climate scientists estimating the costs of mitigating climate change, or what sort of engineering solutions are possible?!?
I guess as a meteorologist, this is one of the things that bothers me most about GW. The climate scientists that support the theory need to prove AGW to their supports AND critics. They need to answer the questions inside the climatologist community first. Unfortunately climatologists are divided and concerned politically about their jobs.
I absolutely ignore all peer-reviewed scintific papers that start infer GW is already happening and what it is doing to the (insert animal name). I would really like to get more answers on what we don’t know than make hypothetical leaps based on the theory.
If I publish a paper about AGW is going to melt the polar ice caps, using other sources like the IPCC, I could site that the temperature of earth will climb 6° C by 2080. Then I could spend my entire paper looking at the impacts of a 6° C climb on Arctic sea ice. The problem is that the paper is worthless because I used an assumption at the beginning….. and this is where most of the peer-reviewed AGW papers fall.
It’s like publishing a ‘scientific paper’ about what occurs when you sail to the edge of a flat earth. It’s just pointless until the theory is proven and the doubts are investigated….. not shouted over.
Smokey,
Joel Shore cannot respond to the science for 2 reasons.
1) Personal Bias
2) The science itself is not sufficiently developed to adequately predict long term climate change.
Why? Too many variables with insufficient data about those that are known and too many unknown variables with no data at all.
What is fun for someone like me is to read all the pithy comments (Oh no, an O’reillyism) that “experts” make based on inadequate data.
Meanwhile AGW supporters really seem to reflect an arrogance that human beings have significant long term influence on this planet. Considering all the mass extinctions that have occurred on earth, I rather doubt that the dominant species in existence at the time was the cause. I think that human beings do have the capacity to alter life on earth and ultimately its climate. We could set off thousands of thermonuclear weapons in an all out war. Beyond that I don’t see any science that says we’re destroying the planet. We do, however, need to stop fouling our nest with real pollutants and CO2 is not one of them.
The thing which is most important is whether they have common sense, integrity and political probity, not what their academic discipline is.
I worked in biological research for 11 years in academia and there was so much posturing and twisting of facts in little ways to get grant income, to get papers past referees at journals etc etc that, to anyone not au fait with the game being played, it would have been incredibly misleading. In fact, as a PhD student, my views on many things were distorted because, being a simple chap at heart, I took what was being said far too literally because I thought, wrongly, that medical researchers were above that kind of thing. Big mistake.
It’s the same in business, politics and economics. People tell fibs/lies/call it what you will to manoeuvre people into position. IPCC will have done that. I knew people who needed to raise VC money for a biotech and the only way to do that was to spin the position in a certain way. You tell me whether that’s practical politics, fraud or taking the least worst option in an imperfect situation when people genuinely believe that what they are doing is for the good of mankind………
I’ll tell you this. You need some people without climate expertise in ANY panel like that because that panel is not a research council doling out grant income, it’s potentially an expert witness body informing global policy.
I don’t object to the composition as such, but I do object to the conclusions they have drawn.
But don’t for a moment believe that scientists with no training in economics and no understanding of practical global politics will necessarily, per se, come up with something better.
They might.
But it’s definitely not a given. Particularly given the spectacularly large sums that academics manage to spend on things which far too often don’t lead to the outcomes intended………
I used to believe in peer-reviewed papers.
Unfortunately the mainstream media was long annointed the ultimate authority.
Dude looks like one of those neanderthals in the car insurance commercials.
Oh, come on, now. They just want to make the World a “better place.”
They have an “Earth Charter,” approved for all audiences by the UN….
http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/religion/2007/11/un_report_highlights_the_earth.html
…and they have a cute little box to keep it in, and to make you feel all warm, fuzzy and secure about how justified they are to dictate how you live your life…
http://www.arkofhope.org/
Just because they haven’t a clue what they are doing is no reason to belittle the incompetent delusional buggers.
Remember, the UN is the same organization that puts out the IPCC, so obviously they only have our best interests at heart.
“”” Joel Shore (19:09:59) :
crosspatch:
Hansen is an astrophysicist, not a meteorologist or climatologist. Not having credentials in the field of study doesn’t stand in the way of one’s work as long as they are on the “correct” side of the issue.
No, it doesn’t stand in his way because astrophysics provides an excellent background for studying climate science and because he has shown his expertise in climate science by publishing many widely-cited peer-reviewed papers in the field in prestigious journals. Scientists don’t care what the original field of study is of their fellow scientists … It is what you are publishing that counts. “””
Well I agree with your assertion Joel, that Hansen’s background is not a bar to his utterances on Climate. Dr Willie Soon, is also an Astrophysicist, but that hasn’t stopped the MMGWCC crowd from dissing him. The Astro part, I am sure gives one an understanding of the star (solar) processes, and also orbital dynamics which can affect short term and long term climate; but presumably the Physics part is paramount in the case of either of those gentlemen.
One might argue that Physics is merely Applied Mathematics; Chemistry is just Applied Physics; and Biology is just Applied Chemistry.
But Physics has to be central to any organised study of the observable Universe.
I disagrre with your assertion; “… It is what you are publishing that counts. ”
What you are publishing seems to matter most in Academia. Could it be that the Publish or Perish dogma actually colors what “scientists” actually say in their publications; they do after all have to drum up grant money to keep themselves employed as researchers.
In Industry, Publication is most commonly used as an advertising tool; and modern companies tend to prefer to keep advanced developments as either trade secrets, or else go the patent route; after all, research results turn into competitive profit opportunities.
I’ve been a practising Physicist working in Industry for about 50 years since I left Academia. Much of that work might be considered as Engineering; rather than Science; But the actual Engineering currcula, at the Universities that I am familiar with; is a far cry from the Science curricula, including in the mathematics disciplines.
My work is judged by my employers only on the basis of how it affects their bottom line; it has to work first and foremost; it has to be reliable; and it has to cause customers to freely place their own money down in exchange for products containing my works.
I have far more US Patents, than I do Technical Journal Publications, and I am sure that most of those patented ideas would never have arisen if my formal trainning had been engineering, rather than Physics, and Mathematics. An optical patent, that I filed just yesterday employs at least one unique optical surface, that heretofore has been entirely unknown; yet Optics is very old branch of Physics, and the case that I discovered is a relatively simple alteration of one of the most well known results in all of geometrical optics. A supervisor, with a PhD in Optics, from the University of Arizona Optical Sciences Center; simply couldn’t believe the result, when I showed it to him, let alone that I figured it out on the back of an envelope, and not with an expensive automatic Optical optimisation software program.
I have found that the Physics foundation has made me a better engineer, and allows me to work productively in a great number of different fields.
In the time that I have been following Anthony’s forum here; it seems that the statistical mathematicians seem to outnumber by far, any other basic discipline; including basic Meteorology, that I would think should be central to the study of climate.
So I believe that publication is a quite poor measure fo expertise; I’ve seen too much publication where the authors just wanted to be the first with papers in the field; and it mattered little to them, that ultimately it would be widely recognised as junk. “Researchers” with that central modus operandi, are quick to move on to a new field, once the real practical problems of the one they were working on, rear their ugly head, and need to be solved before the technology is useful. They’s rather be first in the new field with more of the soon to be junk publications.
So I’m not one of those, willing to declare Dr Hansen incompetent (in climate science). I don’t know what motivates him; but I don’t think it is ignorance on his part; even though I disagree with his viewpoint.
History will judge him and his disciples.
George
Joel Shore—-on the IPCC and its working groups…., yes, 3. One studies the science behind AGW, the two others deal with it—-, the two others????
So, it is a foregone conclusion the humans cause the planet to warm. Hmmmm……., why then do we need that first group?????
And no one had better question them.
Yes?
John Philip attempts to re-frame the argument. Here is where he’s off base:
First, only those with degrees in the physical sciences are eligible to sign the OISM Petition. That limits it to real players. Compare that to the “We Can Solve It” feel-good way for even the most scientifically illiterate, uneducated person to sign up and send money with a few mouse clicks. Signing the OISM Petition requires sending it by First Class mail, and signers must be American scientists. Attempting to re-frame the argument with a comparison to a world wide mass emailing is typical disinformation of those promoting AGW.
Unlike the slick but meaningless “We Can Solve It” production, which is aimed more at fundraising from the masses of Kool Aid drinkers rather than credentialed people, the OISM Petition is crystal clear in its statement and intent:
It is a revealing comment arguing completely dissimilar petitions, rather than debating the scientific method-based OISM statement. But that is the typical alarmist M.O.
I too have had ‘some dealings with the climate’, I went for a walk and it rained on me, the sun came out and it became quite windy, this dried me out somewhat!
Could I get on the IPCC gravytrain too?
Ill get my coat.
Mike Bryant (19:54:05) :
On Galileo’s recantation:
“…should I know any heretic, or person suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office, or to the Inquisitor…”
This is the frightening part of an authority that brooks no dissent. That a country like the U.S. founded on a principle that dissent is perhaps the most healthy way to amend social ills – the direction we see the AGWs moving disturbs. But the analogy is near perfect. IPCC and its MSM cohorts are determined to silence or ridicule any skeptical (read heretical) view. It took 400 years for the Church to admit its gross, indeed, “heretical error,” and apologize to Galileo. Bruno still awaits.
Which is why sites such as this, and the dialog established by like minds the world over – is the antidote to anti-science. We have here a publishing forum potentially as influential as MSM. Thank you Anthony and the cogent contributors here. The greatest learning I took from college may yet prove to be correct: “Know the Truth, and it will set you Free.”
Seems to me that the biggest danger of what these folks (IPCC) are doing is what they intend to do about Earth’s climate.
They intend to control it by what means?
Cloud seeding?
Contrails?
Nuking Volcanoes?
Mass CO2 stripping and sequestration?
Whose laboratory will they use : Private or the Entire Earth?
“But all are probably socialists, and that is what we are really dealing with.”
This really is disgusting.
Frankly why not say they are all do-gooders or evil-doers.
This is nothing but an ad hominem attack.
“History will judge him and his disciples.”
Nice take George. You are indeed, a gentleman and scholar.
I watched the tapes of the debate between Schlesinger and Christy, and was a little surprised by how poorly Schlesinger did. It seems that the stereotype of the alarmists is quite accurate: they assume their models are correct, or correct “enough”, and are a little annoyed that there are still people out there that don’t believe them (catch his closing remarks on tape 8). He offered no defense to Christy’s critique of the models, which Christy based on observational science. No wonder the alarmists don’t want to debate.
Roger Knights (06:45:07),
In looking at that site, Roger, it was pretty apparent that Kevin Kelly has drunk of the magical catastrophic AGW Kool Aid potion. I’ll agree with you that many of the follow-up comments were reasonable, and as you can see they made Kelly squirm a little.
So I thought I’d contribute a reasonable [IMHO] comment. I prudently saved it, in case it was censored [it was]. So I submitted it again. It was censored again. I submitted it a third time. Censored again.
I believe my comment was no more worthy of deleting than other comments I’ve made at RC, which were similarly censored. Here’s what Kelly deleted 3 times today:
WUWT welcomes dissenting opinion. Most pro-AGW sites censor uncomfortable comments. That tells us all we need to know about which side is confident in its side of the debate.
I know why scientists are not lining up to publish research disproving AGW. I know what motivates scientists like Hansen to lie, cheat, defraud, etc.
I applied Occam’s Razor and an old adage to get the answers.
Follow the money.
I think that picture of Rajendra Pachauri should be put up on huge advertising hoardings all over the world with the caption “Your future is in his hands”.
“Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC – trained initially as a railway engineer”
TOOOT TOOOT All Aboard for the IPCC’s AGW wild ride to global control of what you do and how you do it.
Pay no attention to natural variation.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/05/global-warming-on-jupiter.html
(that gif of AlBore is priceless!)
Blame yourselves and submit to the control of those who want you to think they are smarter and better than you.
Come on, hurry up. There’s no time to waste, or you’ll be run over by that swiftly oncoming disaster…
http://gustofhotair.blogspot.com/2007/12/sunshine-duration-accounts-for-93-of.html
…and you’ll delay the gravy train of the AGW alarmists, a truly unforgivable sin.
Why don’t I ever read about any recent former skeptics?
You know, ex skeptical scientists now in the IPCC camp?
Which would be the opposite of scientists like this.
http://lostconservative.blogspot.com/2008/06/real-truth-about-agw.html
Well, I am an Expert Peer Reviewer for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); i.e. I am one of the often touted “thousands of UN Climate Scientists”. I and thousands of others speak, publish and sign petitions in attempt to get the media to tell the truth of man made global climate change. And in response to your invitation I post that truth below.
The AGW-hypothesis asserts that increased greenhouse gases (GHGs) – notably carbon dioxide – in the atmosphere will cause the globe to warm (global warming: GW), and that anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide are increasing the carbon dioxide in the air with resulting anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) global warming (AGW).
I think a clear distinction needs to be made between (a) the science of AGW, and (b) the perception of AGW – and the use of AGW – by non-scientists.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
http://lostconservative.blogspot.com/2008/06/real-truth-about-agw.html
The Religion of Global Warming II
Dr. Edward F Blick
Prof. of Engineering,, Univ. Of Oklahoma, 1959-2007
He has also been Adjunct Prof. Of Medicine and Adjunct Prof. of Meteorology at the same institution. He was formerly a U.S. Air Force Weatherman.
http://www.tccsa.tc/articles/warming_religion_excerpt.pdf
MIT Professor, Richard S. Lindzen may be the top climatologist in the world. He was elected to the National Academy of Science (NAS) at the age of 37. He wrote an opinion editorial for the Wall Street Journal, where he stated that he and members of the National Academy of Science did not agree with the notion that the U.N.’s IPCC “Summary for Policy Makers” was based on true science. They concluded it represents a consensus of U.N. politicians (many of whom are also their nations Kyoto representatives.) He stated, “As a scientist, I can find no substantive basis for the warming scenarios. CO2 and methane are minor greenhouse gases, with water vapor accounting for 98% of the greenhouse effect. The earth is cooled primarily by air currents, which carry the heat upward, and poleward. Present models have large errors on the order of 50%. These models are unable to calculate correctly the average earth temperature or variations from equator to poles. Fudge factors are added to get the answers they want! The most alarming long range predictions rely on these untrustworthy models, which cannot even accurately forecast the weather a week from now”!
Hi Smokey,
I think KK is on the fence, or appreciates the need for minority voices to be heard, or both. I don’t think the site would block a comment such as the one you’ve just posted above. I suspect you didn’t fill out the “capcha” field before clicking Submit. Try it again.
Today’s Episode, A FLY IN THE OINTMENT, or WHEN REALITY BITES BACK
@george E. Smith (10:52:28) :
“My work is judged by my employers only on the basis of how it affects their bottom line; it has to work first and foremost; it has to be reliable;…”
But why can’t we just tell the customer’s it works, and if they aren’t satisfied it must be THEIR fault?
“…and it has to cause customers to freely place their own money down in exchange for products containing my works.”
Now there’s your mistake, George. You are allowing the customer to determine what products are in his best interest. You’ll never get rich quick with that attitude, son.
Now, if you go into politics, you can pass laws that require the customer to buy whatever you want, without him having to be happy about it, and it’s all nice and legal like. And the best part is, you don’t need to waste all that money on college, though if you already have, it’s a great way to offset that loss.
I like the George E Smith prose for describing a sceptic. (not sure about that spelling.
I too am an old physicist exMInstPhy, qualified electrical, telecomms and radio engineer and I too have doubted the CO² science but for more than 20 years.
My physics and electrical knowledge allows me to have a ‘feel’ for the science but NOT for the statistics and it is the statistics which is the major skill and knowledge required to do climate science. Look at the shinanigans that Mann and Hansen have indulged in. Only a knowledgeable statistician could have found the really bad maths (not science) in their old work and in their latest attempts of resurection.
Climate science is not IMHO a science in its own right it is an application of the fundamental sciences such as physics and maths but as a physicist I do not feel able to verify and validate the work of the climate science community but I am very well qualified to asses their scientific behaviour. It stinks.
Scepticism is not the right of scientist it is their duty and the exposure of method and data is a requirement which cannot be dodged. If you employ either method then you are not a scientist. Ergo, H & M.
Thanks to George
Ron de Haan
I knew some years back that the AGW was a smokescreen for the Fabian agenda – I know lefties, some as public servants, who agreed that AGW “science” was seriously flawed and that it was more about forcing us to become more sustainable.
In my area of work, mineral exploration, the regulation and sheer dictatorial mind set of, what we disparagingly call, the Eco Police has got to the ridiculous stage. Whenever we drill a bore hole, we now have to put the cuttings back down the hole, and if we can’t fit it all in, we then have to dispose of the residue ….where I wonder. Those are the regulations. They also expect us to advise the bureaucrats names, rank and serial numbers of all personnell who go out on field trips, where they are going, for how long, when expected back etc. This regulation is hidden somewhere but one of my peers stumbled on it recently.
So yes, the Greenies want to destroy the mining industry, and killing exploration will do that very nicely. Except I don’t think the mob will put up with it.
Judging some of the reactions here, I think I hit a raw nerve.
John Philip (01:52:47) :
Having just spent an hour studying and evaluating your link it appears that…
1. The signers of the much abused so called Oregon petition are generally more likely to be scientists than the supposed 2500 claimed by the IPCC. Even omitting Engineers, though why you would do that and count economists and zoologists I can’t imagine, the percentage on the Oregon petition that are qualified in related fields appears to exceed the optimistic 20% of IPCC contributors with “SOME BACKGROUND”.
2. Going down your list of activists and deniers on your link; I was happily accepting your numbers, but noticed that nearly none of the flagged activists were in physics, meteorology astronomy, geology, in fact nothing I would even consider a physical science of any type. 2 or 3 out of the first 100! I quickly found 3 lead authors from past IPCC reports, all of them in the technical field (not policy fields) who are deniers. The claim that only Chris Landsea is a denier is clearly bogus. He is the only one who forced them to remove his name because he didn’t want to be associated with the bad science he saw. Richard Lindzen and John Cristy are of course also former lead authors of Science sections of the IPCC report who are now by your own admission considered in the deniers camp.
It appears your criterion for selecting the top names in the field is baddly flawed if you think these are the top 619, as very few of them have any more qualification than I do.
Thanks for the link but it appears the numbers there and the supposed consensus they represent have to be considered BS.
How not to check for correlation
Let the function T be a function of time t and be a sum of four functions:
g1(t) = t / 4000 , a straight line
g2(t) = 0.25 * arctan((t-30)/5) , a step function
g3(t) = -(t/3) * exp(0.0001 * (t-55)^2 * (t-60)^2) , a “bump”
g4(t) = gaussian noise, realized by adding 6 calls to the random() function and dividing by 12 (that’s a good enough approximation)
Plots of these functions are shown in the topmost chart in this image:
http://i39.tinypic.com/296652.png
Adding them all results in the second plot from the top.
The small plots show, from left to right, T(t) over g1(t), T(t) over g2(t) and T(t) over g3(t). These are the kind of plots you would use to see correlations between temperature and a single forcing as it was suggested by Smokey (12:22:57). Each of them shows, that the respective function is NOT responsible for the behavior of T. However we do know in this case already, that T is the sum of g1, g2 and g3 plus some “weather” noise.
Plotting just one contributing factor vs. the signal T is NOT a viable way to evaluate that factor’s contribution. If anyone tries to sell you this nonsense, you should know you are being had. And it is exactly what is done, if you plot CO2 vs. temperature to disprove the role of CO2 on long term plots.
Anyone who can enter equations into a spreadsheet can verify the above.
What matters is the science, not an appeal to authority. On that front the AGW is having many difficulties because the science clearly shows that they are on the wrong side of the debate. Climate change is natural and changes in CO2 concentrations are not drivers of temperature trends.
“”” John H (12:32:24) :
<>
Well, I am an Expert Peer Reviewer for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); i.e. I am one of the often touted “thousands of UN Climate Scientists”. I and thousands of others speak, publish and sign petitions in attempt to get the media to tell the truth of man made global climate change. And in response to your invitation I post that truth below.
The AGW-hypothesis asserts that increased greenhouse gases (GHGs) – notably carbon dioxide – in the atmosphere will cause the globe to warm (global warming: GW), and that anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide are increasing the carbon dioxide in the air with resulting anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) global warming (AGW). “””
Well John H, welcome to the discussion. So you are an expert Peer reviewer for the IPCC. I take your word for that; no reason I should doubt your claim.
But how do you justify this:- “The AGW-hypothesis asserts that increased greenhouse gases (GHGs) – notably carbon dioxide – in the atmosphere will cause the globe to warm (global warming: GW), ”
Now John, I am neither an expert peer reviewer for the IPCC, nor a recognized “climate Scientist; but even I know; beyonfd any shadow of doubt, that water vapor is far and away the most dominant GHG in earth’s atmosphere.
It isn’t even a close call. Water vapor starts its work in warming the atmosphere at around 760 nm wavelength in the near Infra-red, where about 40-45% of the total solar spectrum radiation occurs, of which water vapor takes out about one half, to prewarm the air before the sunlight ever touches the surface. The water vapor absorbs in bands all the way out to about 17 microns, after which is becomes essentially totally opaque.
CO2 on the other hand; your GHG of choice, has no effect on the incoming solar spectrum before about 1.9 microns wavelength; and only about 67% of the soalr spectrum occurs beyond that; and CO2 absorbs in three separate bands, which contain very little of the soalr spectrum, and no effect on the earth emitted thermal radiation before the 13-17 micron bending mode CO2 absorption band; where the CO2 also has to compete with the much more plentiful water vapor, that absorbs significantly in that same band.
So I am supposed to be moved by your indictment of CO2 when clearly it is but a minor player in the total atmospheric GHG picture.
Perhaps that explains why the IPCC cannot point to ANY observational data that shows atmospheric CO2 increases causing increasing surface temperatures. All of the available data, shows that temperature rise is a cause of the CO2 increases, and for well known Physical Chemistry reasons.
So John; perhaps if you were a little more diligent in examining the science behind atmospheric Physics, rather than the politics behind MMGWCC alarmism; you might accomplish something more for the human population on this planet; and for the planet itself.
If you just wrote down the nominal values for the air mass zero and air mass one “Solar constants” on a piece of paper, and kept that in your wallet; you might be able to show people how unreal are the wild eyed visions of a green renewable energy future beyond carbon.
Regards.
George
Roger Knights (12:44:57),
Thanks, Roger, but I filled in the anti-spambot code each time. The last two times I was extra careful. But I don’t want to be wrong about this, so I’ll try it once more.
Isn’t it true that an actual degree in “climatology” wasn’t even offered until the last 10 years or so?
So his answer “something to do with climate” seems okay to me, but the 20% of even the broadened definition is certainly pretty telling.
Smokey: Don’t forget to add your e-mail.
If your submission still doesn’t work, maybe it’s because the system automatically rejects comments over a certain length. Maybe you could try breaking it into two pieces, such as by providing certain material as a footnote in a second submission.
Hey, wait a minute, “degrees” are something to do with “weather” and not “climate”, there is a difference between the two after all!
“The steadily increasing resolution of GCMs [General Circulation Models] is blurring the already fuzzy distinction between weather and climate.” – David Lindley, “Calculating the Future”, ACM, January 2009, Vol. 52, No. 1, page 10.
Oh, darn.
Roger Knights (16:22:11),
Roger, I did include my email. All four times. And a couple of other posts were at least as long, if not longer than mine.
Could KK be miffed about the “Best Science” reference? I can’t think of anything else.
George E. Smith:
“Now John, I am neither an expert peer reviewer for the IPCC, nor a recognized “climate Scientist; but even I know; beyonfd any shadow of doubt, that water vapor is far and away the most dominant GHG in earth’s atmosphere…blah…blah…blah… The usual ignorant babble about CO2 only being a minor GHG.”
Far from being a minor player, CO2 accounts for at least 14 percent of the “greenhouse effect”. Its concentration has increased by about a third since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The water vapor concentration has only slightly increased during this period (you do understand why, don’t you?).
“All of the available data, shows that temperature rise is a cause of the CO2 increases, and for well known Physical Chemistry reasons.”
The isotopic composition of CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels differs from that of CO2 produced by “natural” processes. Therefore, the source of the increase in CO2 can be identified, so it is a fact (not a hypothesis or theory) that the increase in CO2 concentration over the past 150 or so years is essentially entirely due to the burning of fossil fuels.
I don’t know what the point of this posting is; it does not add to the discussion at all. We all know that the UN is a political body, that their mandate was to determine how bad anthropogenic global warming is and not whether it was happening, that “consensus” is not a scientific idea but a political one, that the all important IPPC summaries were largely written and edited by politicians and not scientists, that the most relied upon papers in each section were written by the lead authors in those sections, that independent critical reviewers like Steve McIntyre were for the most part dismissed and outright ridiculed. None of this is new, so why rehash it now?
davidgmills (11:59:43) :
“But all are probably socialists, and that is what we are really dealing with.”
This really is disgusting.
Frankly why not say they are all do-gooders or evil-doers.
This is nothing but an ad hominem attack.
I take it that you are acknowledging their politics?
To be “Ad Hominem”, a statement must be BOTH:
A. True
B. Largely irrelevant
I don’t think the statement qualifies.
Well, I would not “diss” Soon just because his background is in astrophysics. On the other hand, I would not give him a free pass either. I would ask what he has published in the field of climate science, in what journals he has published it, and is his work widely cited, etc.
Being a physicist too, I won’t argue with that.
It may (or may not) surprise you that our backgrounds are remarkably similar. I too am a physicist working in industry (although I infer that I am a fair bit younger). And, I agree with what you say here. (Actually, a fellow physicist where I work says that he was once told that if you work in industry long enough, you eventually are doing essentially engineering. But, I agree that we physicists do bring a different approach to the work than most people trained as engineers do.)
And, I agree with you that the criteria for judging work in industry are different than the “publish or perish” mentality in academia. And, certainly, there are aspects of that mentality that are not good. However, overall one has to judge someone’s work somehow…one of the only ways to judge a scientist’s work when you are not working closely enough with him to have direct contact is by what he has published…or patented…since this is essentially what he has communicated to the outside world, especially if he is not working in industry and is thus not restricted in what he can publish or disclose because of trade secrets.
Of course, it is best not just to look just at the quantity of publications but at some measures of the quality…What journals are the papers published in? How often are the cited? and so forth. Again, I am not claiming this is perfect..But if a scientist is publishing a lot in the editorial pages of the newspaper on climate change but not in the recognized journals in the field, that is problematical to me…I.e., it provides little evidence that his views are considered very credible by his scientific colleagues. And, more direct study of those views in manay cases has confirmed to me that this is not too unreasonable a measure.
Sorry…I meant to properly attribute the statements that I was quoting and responding to above to George E. Smith.
I’m at the tail end of the comments here so I will take a swing at a few of you
Joel Shore
“Scientists don’t care what the original field of study is of their fellow scientists … It is what you are publishing that counts.”
I don’t know whether you are a scientist or not Joel but it is exceedingly difficult to get a paper published in a given discipline if you are an outsider. It is virtually impossible if your views also differ from generally held opinions (the “peer” group would soon send you on your way). My best example is that of Alfred Wegener an early 20th century meteorologist and arctic explorer who, noting that the eastern coast of N and S America seemed to fit fairly snuggly with the western coast of Europe and Africa, proposed the hypothesis of “Continental Drift”. Geologists around the world villified and insulted this fellow and then invited him to the AAPG (Am. Assoc. Petrol. Geol) annual meeting in 1927 (This organization was the the science’s “Synod of Medieval Bishops”) to excoriate him some more. He declined and soon after died before his theory became the jewel of geological science – albeit renamed Plate Tectonics out of shame. At the AAPG meeting noted, the president said that if Wegener was correct, we would have to consign all we have learned in geology over the past 100 years to the waste basket. We had to wait another 30 years before we consigned it there.
George Smith
You are inordinately scornful of engineers. Everything from a drink of water, your ability to send a blog post, robots walking on mars etc. are of course the product of engineering. Computer “science”, rocket “science” and other marvels are none the less engineering or nowadays known as applied science.
Richard M
” Can anyone really be an expert in climate? I doubt it. So, I don’t really cast aspersions on people in the field based on their background. However, I do think it brings forward the point that climate science is still in it’s infancy. It’s extremely complex and so little is really known about key elements.”
Try typing “climatologist” in Word or looking it up in the on-line Oxford Dictionary. Word underlines it in red and Oxford can’t find the word anywhere on its site! It is new indeed and probably this is the reason that the entire of spectrum of science, engineering, economics, sociologists and especially socialists have adopted it as their own. Such a group didn’t move in on medicine, chemistry, physics, etc.
“The claim that only Chris Landsea is a denier is clearly bogus.”
Yes, it’s bogus, because Chris Landsea is NOT a denier. A quote from his abstract for a seminar: “It is not disputed (by this speaker) that anthropogenic forcing has been the cause of at least a substantial portion of the observed warming during the 20th Century.”
That dude just saved me money on my car insurance.
Steve Moore
Ad Hominems do not have to be true. They can be any kind of an attack on a person, true or not.
And why would I acknowledge their politics? I have no idea what “their” politics are because I have no idea of the identities of all of them are.
That was nothing but a blanket slam on a group of people.
I also have no doubt that there are fascists who believe in AGW.
But the politics should be separated from the science.
Anthony won science blog of the year award. I doubt he wants to win political blog of the year award next year.
Gary Pearse:
“Try typing ‘climatologist’ in Word or looking it up in the on-line Oxford Dictionary. Word underlines it in red and Oxford can’t find the word anywhere on its site! It is new indeed and probably this is the reason that the entire of spectrum of science, engineering, economics, sociologists and especially socialists have adopted it as their own.”
Cognitive dissonance at its finest! The government of the state in which I currently reside has had a position titled “State Climatologist” for decades.
Gary Pearse says:
I am a scientist (a physicist). And, I think this claim is greatly exaggerated. I have to admit that I have not really published far outside my discipline…but I have published outside of my discipline. And, my thesis work, while inside my discipline, was entering a new subfield that neither my advisor nor I had published in and did in fact challenge a generally-held opinion in that subfield. And yet, we were still able to get it published in one of the top journals. Sure, people were somewhat skeptical of our results…but they did not seem to be closed-minded.
As for climate science, I have to say that people often use this excuse but I have not seen evidence of a lot of very good “skeptical” work that can’t seem to get published. To the contrary, it seems like some “skeptical” papers have gotten published that really probably wouldn’t have been published if the referees had simply done a little bit of due diligence (Douglass et al being one example). It almost makes one wonder if there is a little bit of a bending over backwards not to be biased that causes them to give real problems a pass.
As for Wegener, of course I am not going to claim that it is always easy getting new ideas accepted. But, I am sometimes a little suspicious of these histories and have also read (although I can’t remember where) in the particular case of Wegener that the story is actually more complex than it is made out to be. [It is also interesting to note, by the way, that the organization that you say played such a big role in excoriating Wegener [AAPG] was somewhat infamous for being the only major scientific organization to have a statement that was actively dissenting from the IPCC conclusions…although it recently adopted a new statement that is described as “noncommittal” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change ).]
Finally, it is worth noting something that is often forgotten in these discussions about paradigms and so forth, namely that AGW was not always the accepted theory in the field. In fact, the hypothesis spent a long time gaining acceptance. A good history of that is given here: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
Joel Shore:
Harvard’s Dr. Willie Soon has published numerous peer reviewed papers on climatology. He is very widely cited. A small sampling gleaned from a few search clicks [which anyone could do if they were really interested in answers]:
click1
click2
click3
click4
click5
click6
click7
click8
click9
click10
AGW promoters hate Dr. Soon because his studies don’t toe their line.
Hey, blanketness is not in there either but it explains well the warming properties of greenhouse gases. Just remember to say that Pamela coined that word.
Smokey,
I suggest trying just a tiny bit of quality control on your links. Hint: Reports put out by conservative think-tanks like Fraser Institute or George C Marshall Institute are generally not considered peer-reviewed publications. Or, do you want us to call reports from Greenpeace and Sierra Club peer-reviewed too? As near as I can tell, the only link that goes to a peer-reviewed paper in a real journal in the field is the first one. That alone does make for a stellar publication record.
“The isotopic composition of CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels differs from that of CO2 produced by “natural” processes. Therefore, the source of the increase in CO2 can be identified, so it is a fact (not a hypothesis or theory) that the increase in CO2 concentration over the past 150 or so years is essentially entirely due to the burning of fossil fuels.”
Please cite the studies that show that the increase is due to fossil fuels and not volcanic activity, forest fires, or ocean degassing. And try citing studies that show that CO2 concentration changes drive temperature changes because the ones that I see show that the hypothesis is not supportable by the science.
Chris Landsea IS a denier, …of sorts…
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=ae9b984d-4a1c-45c0-af24-031a1380121a&k=0
He presented solid data, and was dismissed by those whose agenda didn’t agree with him because it undercut their fraudulent message.
To the contrary, it seems like some “skeptical” papers have gotten published that really probably wouldn’t have been published if the referees had simply done a little bit of due diligence (Douglass et al being one example).”
My examples are the Mann papers. The man showed that he is either a fraud or can’t understand simple statistics. Wegman crucified him and the review process, which was not at all independent and should have caught the obvious errors. From what I see, all the AGW proponents have are some very bad models that have no predictive abilities and have never been independently reviewed. And the situation for the AGW crowd is not too good because the warming that was supposed to take temperatures higher has not panned out and we haven’t seen a positive trend for a decade.
Joel, it’s your reading comprehension.
Since you asked your question, I provided a ‘sampling’ from doing a quick search, as I said. There is a lot more from Dr. Soon out there for anyone interested.
I know that a Harvard expert’s conclusions are hard for alarmists to take, but… well, there they are. CO2 is nothing to worry about. But we already knew that.
If you don’t bother check out who the esteemed Dr. Willie Soon is, others interested in finding out will, so it’s a win-win. I enjoyed the search, and learned a few things along the way – particularly the info on Michael Mann in ‘click10’.
Gary Pearse wrote:
Try typing “climatologist” in Word or looking it up in the on-line Oxford Dictionary. Word underlines it in red and Oxford can’t find the word anywhere on its site! It is new indeed
Not necessarily. My copy of OED has this entry for climatologist:
The next entry being climatology:
Just because you can’t find it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, merely that you have insufficient access to certain resources. Note that it’s defined as a physical science.
Jeff, you must be referring to the carbon 14 isotope of CO2. That is created in a cycle. Can you tell me how it is made and why it cycles? Here is a hint. The production of CO2 from fossil fuels has no affect on the production of CO2-14. And neither does plant growth or decline. Neither is it caused by any source of pollution. There has been only very small differences between the 12 and 13 CO2 isotope concentrations. One more question for you. How many isotopes are there for carbon and therefor CO2?
The bottom line is this, the increase (if you are referring to Mauna Loa data) is not at all made primarily of anthropogenic CO2.
Steve Moore wrote:
“To be “Ad Hominem”, a statement must be BOTH:
A. True
B. Largely irrelevant”
An ad hom is not identical with a spontaneous slam, although it’s beginning to be used in that loose fashion. It is a diversionary response to a claim. E.g.:
Claim: “You don’t know what 2 and 2 add up to.”
Ad hom: “Yo mama wears combat boots.”
Here’s Wikipedia’s definition:
“An ad hominem argument … consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the source making the argument or claim, ….”
[i]“Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC – trained initially as a railway engineer”[/i]
A death train engineer perhaps?
Looks like this blog is getting the full court press from the climate cooling deniers.
I guess the “Best Science Blog” award has made WUWT a target.
More questions. How many carbon isotopes are natural? What is the name of the one that hasn’t be found, yet? What is the name of the most recent isotope discovered and what is its atomic weight? What is the hardest natural substance on Earth made of? What is one of the softest natural substances made of? What is the central substance of study in organic chemistry?
More questions. How many carbon isotopes are natural?
I’ve only studied 57, but there are two more I intend to look into when time permits, Alaska, Hawaii, and Cleavland.
What is the name of the one that hasn’t be found, yet?
George.
What is the name of the most recent isotope discovered and what is its atomic weight?
Rosie Odonnell, and the Army Corps Of Engineers is still working on a scale that can handle the weight determination.
What is the hardest natural substance on Earth made of?
The heart of a vengeful woman.
What is one of the softest natural substances made of?
Trick question. A vacuum isn’t made of anything, just virtual particles, but they don’t matter because they aren’t.
What is the central substance of study in organic chemistry?
Home Brew. Well, at least that was MY central substance of study when I was an undergrad. (the lab stores custodian, who gave everyone else a hard time, and I had a good working relationship. I gave him home brew, and I never had a problem getting the chemical or equipment I needed for experiments.)
HasItBeen4YearsYet? wrote:
“Chris Landsea IS a denier, …of sorts…
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=ae9b984d-4a1c-45c0-af24-031a1380121a&k=0”
The next sentence from Chris Landsea’s abstract:
“It is likely that some increase in tropical cyclone peak windspeed has occurred and will continue to occur if the climate continues to warm.”
The anti-AGW bloggers have made Chris Landsea to be something that he’s not.
He’s a “denier” in the sense that his data clearly refutes some of their outlandish claims.
I’m aware of that sentence you seem to think invalidates his science in favor of their hysteria, and that is why I wrote, “of sorts” to indicate he isn’t a hard core ‘denier’ (at least not yet, anyway).
Maybe he’s afraid for his career?
http://nov55.com/firing.html
Intimidation is rampant, which is probably why only those who are honest and whose authority can’t be questioned, or who have retired, etc., have the ability to speak out publicly without fear of reprisal.
One more. Which station, or stations, land or satellite, dedicated to measuring CO2, currently differentiates and measures all 3 naturally occurring CO2 isotopes in the atmosphere?
I am confused. What you just showed here is that neither one of the factors in your little example is strong enough to be the driving factor, so neither one of them has strong correlation. Doesn’t it just illustrates that CO2 is not the driving factor, but just a driving factor, one among many others? Probably minor at that.
It couldn’t have been your intention to do that, right? So, what did you try to say?
David, Roger,
Ad Hominem (Argument To The Man):
Attacking the person instead of attacking his argument.
For example, “Von Daniken’s books about ancient astronauts are worthless because he is a convicted forger and embezzler.” (Which is true, but that’s not why they’re worthless.)
Or,
James Hansen is bald, therefore he knows nothing about climate.
For a good explanation:
http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/person.html
Or,
“Although some faulty arguers may call attention to distasteful features of their opponents in order to manipulate the responses of their audience, most abusers apparently believe that such characteristics actually provide good reasons for ignoring or discrediting the arguments of those who have them. Logically, of course, the fact that any of these characteristics might fit an opponent provides no reason to ignore or discredit his or arguments or criticisms.”
(T. Edward Damer, Attacking Faulty Reasoning, 4th ed., Wadsworth, 2001)
Bradley1 3
So “peer reviewed” is an essentially meaningless term.
Yep. Peer review can be anything. And, as we speak, Climate Audit has a post on this general topic concerning a McKitrick and McCollouh analysis of “due diligence”, which clarifies the situation by focusing on some examples of published work whose sources and methods were not checked by the publisher’s peer reviewers, if any, and were debunked only by interested parties at large doing the checking of things post-publication, sometimes having to go the foi route to get the data and methods.
Steve McIntyre makes the very worthwhile but/and obvious point that peer reviewers really cannot be expected to check everything the authors do to get their results, unless, of course. the peer reviewers and Publication have held out that they do in fact do this. Otherwise, at the extreme, for example, they’d have to do/replicate the whole study, which is rightfully left to other scientists and interested parties post-publication as an integral part of the Scientific Method, that is, if they can get the materials and methods, which has been a persistent problem in the case of “Climate Science”, as nearly everyone around here now knows.
Basically, not many peer reviewers claim that the studies they review and are then published are “true”.
An example related to those described at CA is the case of what Christina Hoff Summers found completely on her own and revealed in her book, “Who Stole Feminism”. She simply went to the sources referenced in support of various “Feminist” claims and found very many cases were the sources did not say what the Feminist claimants said they said, said even the opposite, or simply didn’t even exist. Yet it’s all the rage to repeat these claims incessantly in the media – and everywhere – as propaganda, unfortuneately.
Vangel wrote:
“Please cite the studies that show that the increase is due to fossil fuels and not volcanic activity, forest fires, or ocean degassing. And try citing studies that show that CO2 concentration changes drive temperature changes because the ones that I see show that the hypothesis is not supportable by the science.”
I’ll ask you the same thing. Why don’t you cite studies to show that there has been a 30 percent increase in forest fires in the past 150 years and a 30 percent increase in volcanic eruptions in the past 150 years? And cite a study that shows that the oceans have been “de-gassing” at an increasing rate over the past 150 years (actually, the opposite is true, but I’m too lazy to look up any of the recent news reports about this)?
Plants preferentially absorb lighter Carbon isotopes, so the ratio of Carbon-13 to Carbon-12 is lower in plants than in the atmosphere. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the ratio of Carbon-13 to Carbon-12 in the atmosphere and in the ocean has been decreasing. This implies that the additional CO2 must come from the combustion of plant matter, either living or fossilized (and ruling out volcanos). There are, as you suggested, 2 possible sources: fossil fuels or forest fires. I’m guessing that we can agree that humans have been burning fossil fuels – IIRC, about 500 billion tons worth of Carbon. This amount alone is more than it would take to explain the increase of 280ppm to 380ppm (most of the excess is absorbed by the ocean). If you can come up with a study that documents that there: 1) has been a large increase in the number of forest fires in the past 150 years; and 2) the forests have not re-grown and now hold roughly the same amount of Carbon as they did before the fires, then a case can be made that forest fires are a major contributor to the CO2 increase.
As far as CO2 not being able to drive temperature change, what happens to the additional energy that is absorbed by the increased CO2?
Considering that this is suppose to be the biggest threat to the continued existence of the human race since forever, isn’t that statement a bit like saying,
“approximately 20 percent of the people involved in my open-heart surgery have had some medical experience”?
Joel shore: I agree with you having a degree in a non-climate discipline doesn’t negate a person being expert in climatology. Our views are not shared over on RC however where Gavin refers to non-climate scientific opinion as the opinion of “citizen scientists”.
You are quite right to when you say that the majority of scientists are not climate scientists because they are working on the the effects of AGW and it’s possible mitigation. This leads to the obvious conclusion that the IPCC has pre-adopted the existence of AGW, and continues to do all in its power to stifle scientific debate.
Lastly the IPCC itself has given the impression that a large scientific body of opinion supports global warming by issuing press statements that 2400 sicentists agreed on the issue (any scientist worth his/her salt would, of course know instinctely that if 2400 of them agreed on anything it was bound to be wrong). now you cannot have it all ways, you cannot give the impression that all the scientists working on IPCC are experts in climate science and expect people not to criticise you if that is found to be untrue.
A very interesting new document stating the skeptical position of AGW may now be found at Skeptics Handbook
MikeF (21:21:56) :
You often encounter the argument “Temperatures dropped in the 60s while CO2 increased, therefore AGW is bunk”. I wanted to demonstrate in an example, why this argument is fallacious. Just substitute: “T(t) dropped between t=40 and t=60, while g1 increased; therefore ‘g1 is most important for T(t)’ is bunk”, yet we know that g1 is responsible for about 30% of the change in my example. I have deliberately chosen g1 rather small to make my point.
Now let’s see what happens, if I change parameters a bit, such that g1 is responsible for 70% of the change:
http://i44.tinypic.com/3022hwy.png
The small plot on the left can still be used to slam dunk g1 into the trash bin as a cause for the behavior of T(t).
P.S.: Anyone who is telling you (either explicitly or implicitly), that climate scientists supporting AGW consider solar forcing or aerosols to be negligible, is not telling the truth, for whatever reason.
I have just received a reply from our Energy and Climate Change Secretary Mr Ed Miliband to a letter I sent pointing out much of the evidence against AWG from sceptical scientists. Of course none of these questions were addresed and I was informed: “The most recent report, for instance is the result of six years work by over 1200 leading scientists from 130 countries and reviewed by 2500 scientific experts.” Things never change do they, but I will appraise him of Schlesinger’s remark .
However, surprise, surprise, he did admit that the MWP actually happened and that temperatures had been as high if not higher than today. Of course the 0.13 degrees C per decade over the latter part of the 20th century was quoted. So at least some Mannian science is now unacceptable to some politicians on our side of the pond.
Fred (22:28:38) :
Let’s expand on this analogy a bit. 1 or 2 of the people are indeed heart surgeons. One is doing the anesthesia, but that does not really count as heart surgery. There will be another 5 people assisting, none of whom is a surgeon. Then of course there are the people doing the rehab, which is part of a successful surgery. I have not even included the management here. So what was it about those 20%. Oh, you had watered it down to “some medical training” instead of “heart surgeon”. Why then is “only 20% climatologists” important, while the rest has expertise in economical and ecological impact?
Smokey: First, only those with degrees in the physical sciences are eligible to sign the OISM Petition. That limits it to real players.
Without wishing to get into the semantics of what constitutes a ‘physical scientist’, from the numbers on the Petition website it is demonstrable that over half are actually engineers, (including >2,000 Electrical Engineers) and just under one in ten is a Doctor or a Vetinarian. The combined number of Engineers and Doctors in the US runs to several millions, so this poll actually demonstrates overwhelming reluctance to endorse the propositions in the petition.
It is true that the petition is now mail only, however it has been running for nearly a decade and quality control was not always so rigourous, having been signed in the past by a ‘Doctor’ Geri Halliwell and at one point ‘Doctors’ Pierce and Jones, better known as Hawkeye and Trapper from the TV show M*A*S*H. When Scientific American investigated a sample of 26 signatories with climate science credentials, 6 (22%) said they would not sign the petition today and 3 (11%) of the sample had no memory of signing the petition. A little real scepticism called for here?
As I said: the language is also problematic. What does ‘catastrophic heating’ actually mean? No definition is given and catastrophe is not a word you will find in an IPCC report. Was 9/11 a ‘catastrophe’? Globally, mortality from climatic change is running at the equivalent of one 9/11 every week. Catastrophic for the individuals concerned and those around them but whether this constitutes ‘catastrophic heating’ requires a subjective value judgement on the part of the petition signatory, and who knows what they thought?
Pure hogwash. Unsupportable speculation and extrapolation from statistically insignificant speculation of trends multiplied by large population numbers. Unless you are counting deaths from starvation caused by global warming mitigation policies.
MikeF (21:21:56) :
I wanted to demonstrate that the following argument is wrong: “Temperatures dropped in the 50s/60s while CO2 increased, therefore AGW is bunk”. Maybe I chose the g1 contribution too low to make my point. Let’s change parameters a bit, such that g1 is responsible for 70% of the change, I hope this is “major” enough.
http://i44.tinypic.com/3022hwy.png
From the small plot on the left, where T(t) is plotted over g1(t), you can still make the point that there is no correlation between T and g1. Or if you look at the time series: “T(t) dropped between t=40 and t=60, while g1 increased; therefore ‘g1 is most important for T(t)’ is bunk”. However, in this example we know that g1 is responsible for 70% of the change in T, so the argument obviously leads to the wrong conclusion.
Why is that so? The argument wrongly assumed, that g1 is the only contribution to T, not just one of the major ones. The same goes for AGW and CO2, there are solar and aerosol forcings that need to be considered, too. Keep in mind, the CO2 forcing is still increasing and climate has not even adjusted to the forcing of the current level of CO2.
MikeF (21:21:56) :
I wanted to demonstrate that the following argument is wrong: “Temperatures dropped in the 50s/60s while CO2 increased, therefore AGW is bunk”. Maybe I chose the g1 contribution too low to make my point. Let’s change parameters a bit, such that g1 is responsible for 70% of the change, I hope this is “major” enough.
Click here for the image
From the small plot on the left, where T(t) is plotted over g1(t), you can still make the point that there is no correlation between T and g1. Or if you look at the time series: “T(t) dropped between t=40 and t=60, while g1 increased; therefore ‘g1 is most important for T(t)’ is bunk”. However, in this example we know that g1 is responsible for 70% of the change in T, so the argument obviously leads to the wrong conclusion.
Why is that so? The argument wrongly assumed, that g1 is the only contribution to T, not just one of the major ones. The same goes for AGW and CO2, there are solar and aerosol forcings that need to be considered, too.
P.S.: The forum software seems to eat up my comments today, this is the third attempt at posting this content. Neither of the previous attempts showed up as “awaiting moderation”.
[Reply: For some reason your comments went into the spam bucket. They’re all rescued and posted now. ~ dbstealey, mod.]
MikeF (21:21:56) :
I’m a bit frustrated, as the blog software seems to be playing games with me. This is my fourth attempt to post this content, the comments never showed up as “awaiting moderation”, so there seems to be a glitch somewhere.
Let me change the parameters of my plot a bit, such that g1 is responsible for 70 percent of the rise in T, I hope this is “major” enough:
Click here for the image
You can still make the argument, “T dropped while g1 increased, and have a look at the thumbnail plot on the left hand side, T and g1 are obviously not correlated”. Well, obviously this argument leads to the wrong conclusion.
I expect you to recognize, where this kind of “argument” crops up with regard to AGW. Neglect solar and aerosol forcing, which are included in the IPCC reports and GCMs, and you have a slam dunk case against AGW. A wrong one, but a “convincing” one.
Jeez- the mortality figure is calculated by the World Health Organisation. There are considerable uncertainties in the estimates, but the authors of the study, which was published in Nature, not usually a journal one turns to for hogwash, say their estimates are conservative and the true figure is probably far higher.
More here
John Philip states
Exactly as I stated, statistically insignificant suspected trends extrapolated by multiplying by large population numbers.
Approximately 60 million people die of starvation every year. What is the accuracy of that number? +/- 1%, 2%, 10%, I sure don’t know. So somehow these researchers attribute 1/4 of 1 percent of deaths to climate change, things such as droughts and heat waves. Of course every drought must have been caused by AGW, after all there never have been droughts before. Every heat wave must have been caused by AGW for the same reason. Somehow these researchers managed to tease precision to 3 decimal places out of figures with less than a thousandth of that precision. Someone they know exactly which death was caused by AGW climate change, as if people haven’t been dying from droughts or heat waves for millennia. This is simply a political activism piece, with the standard absurd methodologies commonly applied by public health data mining pronouncements, and unfortunately Nature is not above printing such garbage.
check this: http://www.sourceradix.com/sw3.html
No, Nature is not an unbiased and valid source w/r global warming. Neither is the World Health Organization nor certainly the IPCC – ALL of whose funding, power, and influence is based on furthering the AGW agenda.
For one, warming reduces deaths, increases the growth of food, fodder, and fuel; increases growing seasons, increases areas where plants can grow, and reduces the threat of disease. (Until environmentalists kill millions by banning pesticides and fertilizers.)
In winter, each degree drop in average temperature kills an extra 20,000 people. In the UK alone. Repeat that for the US. Canada. Australia. France. Soviet Union. Germany.
Increased heat (in the summer) has resulted in more deaths – many fewer than by the cold by a factor of 5. And ALL of those deaths through heat in the summer could be stoped by air conditioning and better house and appliance construction. Both of which are PREVENTED by active policies of the environment fanatics.
Your claim is dead wrong.
bluegrue
I think you are arguing trivia here, very few people would say that the 40’s to 70’s cooling proves AGW by CO2 is wrong. However, it is also certainly not evidence that it is right. On the other hand if that example is not disproof than the warming from the late 70s to late 90s certainly cannot be proof. You can’t change your standards that way with any believability. Yet, that is essentially what the entire catastrophic warming scare is based on.
If we accept that 30 years one direction or another is not proof than all we have left for evidence is historical and paleo records, and of course this is where the AGW case is in even worse shape.
One last thing. In order for a theory to be accepted it MUST explain what has been observed and be useful to predict the results of future experiments. Catastrophic global warming by CO2 is a theory that fails on both of these counts. Being occasionally not much worse than other explanations is not enough, if it fails in either case it must be altered or discarded.
It isn’t a popularity contest in this either, even if AGW was successful in explaining and predicting at a 99% rate it would by virtue of the 1% where it failed need to be discarded or revised.
JJ Thomson’s model of the structure of the atom successfully predicted the path of 99.9% of the Alpha particles that Ernst Rutherford fired at his gold foil. Therefore Mr. Thomson’s model was wrong and discarded. By the standards of proof accepted by AGW proponents the nucleus of the atom does not exist.
Kohl Piersen (18:52:32) :
And the photo caption?
Should read ‘Mandrake gestures hypnotically…”
Best ever. I’m still laughing.
John Philip (05:14:31) :
Jeez- the mortality figure is calculated by the World Health Organisation. There are considerable uncertainties in the estimates, but the authors of the study, which was published in Nature, not usually a journal one turns to for hogwash, say their estimates are conservative and the true figure is probably far higher.
From your link, 150,000 die of starvation annually. Regardless of accuracy, this again corresponds to political incompetence and social injustice, which are more to blame than GW. The state of Kansas has enough wheat blown off semis laying on the side of the road to feed 10 times that many http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3913969. We need to mitigate the effects of GW, from whatever cause, rather than unproductively manage it.
Re: John Philip
Neither the WHO snippet nor the entirely one-sided Wa Post article address the lives that are being saved by “climate change.”
It is widely known that more humans and other animals die from cold than from heat.
Have you ever looked into how those numbers are computed, and have you ever sought data yourself to determine on a net basis whether heating or cooling is most beneficial to human existance?
I am a biologist, biology is the study of life (all life), and from all reasonable biological perspectives on a net basis “warmer and wetter” is better for life than colder and more dry.
Ah, IPCC, the locus of all that “Wasted Effort”.
A reference to document the fact that the oceans are not currently adding CO2 to the atmosphere is
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.marine.010908.163834?amp;searchHistoryKey=%24%7BsearchHistoryKey%7D&cookieSet=1
“As far as CO2 not being able to drive temperature change, what happens to the additional energy that is absorbed by the increased CO2?
”
It is immediately re-emitted and not necessarily at the same wavelength. It slows heat loss at best.
After several years and much hard slogging, Campbell-Lendrum and his colleagues had their answer: the excess deaths from climate change in 2000 total at least 150,000 worldwide. That estimate was reached by comparing the climate in 2000 with the conditions averaged over 1961 to 1990, a 30-year-period that avoids distortions from year-to-year fluctuations.
The excess deaths are a minimum because researchers tabulated mortality figures for only four categories ? floods, diarrhea, malaria and malnutrition.
They focused on the rise in average temperatures in different regions, yet usually it’s temperature extremes that kill people. Because information is slim, the researchers also did not add deaths from forest fires or dust storms as climate-caused, although some definitely are.
The experts acknowledge that 150,000 is not yet a really big a number in a world where malnutrition and infectious diseases such malaria and diarrhea claim an estimated 6 million lives annually. But the extra mortality and illness linked to climate change has the potential to balloon rapidly.
Source: http://earthhopenetwork.net/150000_deaths_blamed_on_climate_change.htm
REPLY: This report is utter fabricated RUBBISH. It is not supported by anything other than conjecture. It is also off topic. – Anthony
Why don’t you show us the study that says there has been a 30 percent increase in Carbon-13 to Carbon-12 over the last 150 years.
This could indicate a higher uptake of CO2 by rapidly developing plant species. The replacement of slow growing timbers with broad acre farming could account for some of the difference. There may be other factors such as increased growth rate due to elevated CO2 levels.
What about microbial decomposition and ocean out gassing? The planet has been warming since the LIA I presume you would agree that would include the oceans. Out gassing is not rocket science.
Your recollection may be wrong. At any rate saying 500 billion tones without a time frame or stating the total mass of CO2 in the atmosphere is meaningless. As I understand things the main uptake by the oceans is biological or we would run out of Oxygen.
There isn’t any additional energy to be absorbed. The sun is a reasonable constant energy input. All the available black body radiation is already absorbed by the atmosphere we have had for a long time.
That being said, fossil fuel burning must have contributed to the total mass of the atmosphere but I believe not enough to make any noticeable difference to the rate of escape of the retained energy.
“The state of Kansas has enough wheat blown off semis laying on the side of the road to feed 10 times that many http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3913969.”
The obvious answer here is to stop that wind from blowing. Also, why are they going so fast? Wouldn’t this be a non-problem if wheat was transported by horse-drawn transport?
My last message was of course addressed to
Jeff (21:51:11) :
Jeff,
Your link didn’t work for me. I think this is a corrected version: http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.marine.010908.163834?
bushy says:
…Which is exactly what is relevant. In order for the earth to be in a steady-state, the power coming in from the sun in Watts and the power being radiated back into space in Watts must be equal (modulo the small amount of heat the earth produces, e.g., due to radioactivity). The effect of an increase in the greenhouse effect is to reduce the power being radiated back into space. The earth responds to this imbalance by warming until it reaches the point where it has warmed enough (by the T^4 radiation law) that the balance is restored.
John Philip (05:14:31) :
“Jeez- the mortality figure is calculated by the World Health Organisation. There are considerable uncertainties in the estimates, but the authors of the study, which was published in Nature, not usually a journal one turns to for hogwash,”
John, your links to the five year-old newspaper article and map never suggest it is man made global warming that is the culprit – simply (natural) warming. It also says:
“Some experts, however, questioned whether it was fair to attribute death and illness in the developing world to global warming.
“Wealth is the number one factor in determining vulnerability or adaptability of a country to any of the threats out there,” said John R. Christy, a climatologist who directs the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Christy, who lived in Kenya in the mid-1970s, added, “Thugocracies and other non-democratically accountable governments . . . have no real incentive to create a healthy populace with free markets and therefore free people.”
If the IPCC doesn’t work out, he can probably get a gig as a Geico caveman.
Wondering Aloud (06:54:44)
Please, don’t make up strawmen. All I said is, if you have several, non-negligible forcings, simple one-to-one correlations will give you the wrong answer.
I wish.
John Milloy conveniently leaves out the aerosols and lets the “informed” reader draw the conclusions he does not explicitly state. See the “What do we know?” section here on junkscience.
Christopher Monckton on SPPI
Conveniently ignoring solar forcing.
Or in comments on this blog:
Smokey (12:22:57) on this thread argues “There are scores of similar charts, all showing the same thing: CO2 rises, while the planet’s temperature has been flat to declining for the past decade.” No, it’s not the 60s, but still the faulty kind of logic I addressed.
John Galt (07:54:55) on the “Errors in publicly …” thread: “No positive correlation observed between rising levels of atmospheric CO2 and temperate”.
Look and you’ll find more occurrences on this blog, where a commenter makes a claim along the lines “temperature fell in period … while CO2 increased, so AGW is bunk”
“A reference to document the fact that the oceans are not currently adding CO2 to the atmosphere”
The article covers acidification, a contentious issue in itself.
Your conclusion about the import is fallacious.
Mike Bryant (08:52:11) :
“The state of Kansas has enough wheat blown off semis laying on the side of the road to feed 10 times that many http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3913969.”
The obvious answer here is to stop that wind from blowing. Also, why are they going so fast? Wouldn’t this be a non-problem if wheat was transported by horse-drawn transport?
Mike, with the initiation of carbon taxes, horse-drawn transports are in our future. So, I guess that would be mitigation ;~0
Mambo Bananapatch: I know it’s unkind and ad hom but that’s funny.
The railway engineer training reminds me of Jimmy’s calling himself a ‘nuclear engineer’. Wish that rabbit had caught him.
“Cassandra King (11:38:32) :
I too have had ’some dealings with the climate’, I went for a walk and it rained on me, the sun came out and it became quite windy, this dried me out somewhat!
Could I get on the IPCC gravytrain too?
Ill get my coat.”
No need for a coat, Cassandra….it’s going to warm up!
Really.
Sometime soon.
Maybe.
Or so the guy on TV said…
😉
JimB
Jeff (21:51:11) :
As far as CO2 not being able to drive temperature change, what happens to the additional energy that is absorbed by the increased CO2?
There is no additional energy absorbed by CO² because all the possible energy (infrared=IR) radiated by Earth is already absorbed by the current CO². The only thing that happens is the more CO² is added, the more probable the IR is trapped by CO² near the ground. But as 99.6% of the IR is trapped in the first 10m above the ground, that does not change anything that IR is trapped at a height of 3m or 2,5m.
As an analogy if you use a blind over a window on a sunny day, adding more blinds will not make the room any darker.
Bye,
TMTisFree
By the way, since many people in this thread have discussed the qualifications of Pachauri, it is useful to remind folks how he actually became Chairman of the IPCC: It happened after the U.S. government under George W. Bush refused to endorse the re-appointment of U.S. atmospheric scientist Robert Watson for another term as chairman of the IPCC.
And, this occurred after the Administration received a letter from one Randy Randol of ExxonMobil asking whether Watson could be replaced as Chairman at the request of the U.S.! (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Watson_(scientist) ). It seems to me rather disingenuous to complain about the head of the IPCC not being a climate scientist when the “skeptics” not only didn’t complain at the time that Watson was replaced but in fact when one of the main financial backers of the organizations backing the skeptical cause seems to actually have been influential in getting this replacement to happen.
It is not clear why the Bush Administration felt that Pachauri would be a better choice as head of the IPCC but one could speculate that it may well be because they thought that his technical background and national origin would make it easier for them to dismiss or ignore the IPCC’s conclusions than when the head was an American atmospheric scientist.
@joel Shore (11:01:02) :
“the U.S. government under George W. Bush refused to endorse the re-appointment of U.S. atmospheric scientist Robert Watson for another term as chairman of the IPCC.”
What the #@^^ are you blabbering about?
Like we would have been better off with him? NOT! And even if Bush didn’t support him, that would have been a GOOD thing.
It’s amazing the way the Leftists twist and turn everything around. There is definitely madness in their method. If someone puts out a fire, and then another starts, “well see, that second fire never would have started if you hadn’t put that first one out, so it IS your fault.” (must be a &$^#% lawyer)
gary gulrud says:
The fact that the oceans are acidifying is one of the pieces of evidence that the oceans are acting as a sink, not a source, of CO2.
The oceans aren’t “acidifying.” The pathetic alleged drop in pH is buried in the annual variation which is more than ten times the alleged drop, which is still in the range of “basic,” not “acidic.” It’s highly temperature dependent, and it is the height of dishonesty to pretend such a small difference is meaningful.
Measurements of Monterey Bay Incoming Seawater For the Aquarium show NO CHANGE from 2006 to 2007. Other reports I’ve seen are similar, some going down, other up, but always within a very high background variation and often seasonal, presumably temp dependent.
The oceans aren’t “acidifying.” The pathetic alleged drop in pH is buried in the annual variation which is more than ten times the alleged drop, which is still in the range of “basic,” not “acidic.” It’s highly temperature dependent, and it is the height of dishonesty to pretend such a small difference is meaningful.
Measurements of Monterey Bay Incoming Seawater For the Aquarium show NO CHANGE from 2006 to 2007.
http://sanctuarymonitoring.org/regional_docs/monitoring_projects/100240_167.pdf
Other reports I’ve seen are similar, some going down, other up, but always within a very high background variation and often seasonal, presumably temp dependent.
Measurements of Monterey Bay Incoming Seawater For the Aquarium show NO CHANGE from 2006 to 2007.
Sorry, that from 1996 to 2007.
Joel Shore (11:03:12) :
So where is your evidence that the oceans, after having acted as a sink, are ACIDIC.
Take your time, and please, no so called “peer reviewed”, Alice in Wonderland, Walter Mitty type explanations. I have seen enough to last me a life time.
Kohl Piersen (18:52:32) :
“And the photo caption?”
I like… “I call this pose, ‘Crouching Tiger, Screaming Locomotive’.” …myself.
Interviewer – “Could you tell us why did you quit locomoting?”
Rajendra Pachauri – “Are you kidding? It’s hot as @#$% in those @#$^$# things!”
But, seriously, the IPCC really only has our best interests at heart, as Rutu Dave reveals.
And besides, there are 4000 top scientists who support the IPCC’s conclusions on AGW.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/01/the-ipcc-cant-count-author-and-reviewer-numbers-are-wrong/
(Hmmmm…so, even that 20% “having something to do with climate” seems a bit on the high side, unless maybe you include those who aren’t hard core warmers.)
Joel Shore (11:01:02) :
An this occurred after the Administration received a letter from one Randy Randol of ExxonMobil asking whether Watson could be replaced as Chairman at the request of the U.S.! (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Watson_(scientist) ). It seems to me rather disingenuous to complain about the head of the IPCC not being a climate scientist when the “skeptics” not only didn’t complain at the time that Watson was replaced but in fact when one of the main financial backers of the organizations backing the skeptical cause seems to actually have been influential in getting this replacement to happen.
From your link at Slate:
Now let’s consider what is in dispute:
1) Who wrote the memo Exxon Mobil’s Randy Randol forwarded to the White House? Logically, it should be Randol, or someone who works for him. Chatterbox still thinks that’s very likely. But Exxon Mobil spokesman Tom Cirigliano told the Associated Press on April 19 that no one at Exxon Mobil wrote the memo—that Randol merely passed on a memo prepared by some mystery third party. “We’ve never taken any kind of public or private position on the subject of Dr. Watson or the leadership of the I[P]CC,” Cirigliano said.
2) Did the White House can Watson because Exxon Mobil told it to? This can’t be proved.
Another spurious claim with a decidedly poor source. When am I going to learn to quit wasting my time with your links?
Joel
“As for Wegener, of course I am not going to claim that it is always easy getting new ideas accepted. But, I am sometimes a little suspicious of these histories and have also read (although I can’t remember where) in the particular case of Wegener that the story is actually more complex than it is made out to be.”
Joel this is a very unscientific, disingenuous and dismissive statement. This is precisely what is wrong with much of the AGW crowd’s approach in deflecting criticism. I studied geology in the 1950s and there was by that time an inkling from geological data that Wegener’s idea could well be correct. However, not a small percentage of the brave souls that espoused the idea at the time lost their jobs with oil companies or were refused jobs in industry, government and academia and those in academia lost grants and were ridiculed by their “peers”. Finally, when the weight of evidence couldn’t be borne, a “new” theory came forward called Plate Tectonics with no reference at all to Wegener. This disgraceful behaviour by the status quo shocked young idealistic scientific mind to the core. I don’t look back on the treatment of Galileo as history. I can see it happening today.
Katherine – I stand corrected on the venerability of the science of climatology. I studied “paleoclimatology” in the 1950s but didn’t believe that there were any modern day ones that saw climate as other than stable for now and forever.
“The fact that the oceans are acidifying is one of the pieces of evidence that the oceans are acting as a sink, not a source, of CO2.”
Joel we’ve been through this before. CO2 fluences cannot be balanced at the end of a year’s time like a chemical equation. AIRS and MLO daily fluctuations indicate to me that the daily fluence out of the ocean into the air and back at night may reach 80Gtons of CO2.
Today on this or another thread it was found that mature forests are soaking up CO2 at surprising rates, contributing additionally to a yearly fluence in the 200Gton range. The yearly fluence via terrestrial erosion back into the ocean is 50Gtons.
Your putative excess of 4Gtons not taken up by the ocean is nothing against any of these natural fluences.
One year ago Spencer, here at WUWT, showed the variance in 13C:12C ratio of the seasonal signal in MLO data and that of the long term trend were identical under F-Test. The biogenic fluences are thought components of the seasonal, the anthropogenic thought part of the long term, no?
At the very least, Spencer’s result means the anthropogenic fluence is scrubbed from the 13C:12C record. You have no, I repeat no way to prove its existence. A trivial increase in the oceanic flux can produce the effects you claim exist. There are 50,000Gtons dissolved in the oceans and perhaps twice that in precipitates.
Get real.
Tim Clark:
Nitpick much, do we? The point is that the basic facts are these:
(1) The Bush Administration chose not to endorse the re-appointment of Watson as IPCC Chair and to support Pachauri instead.
(2) Watson was not popular with the “do-nothing-about-AGW” crowd. And, whether or not the Bush Administration’s decision to get rid of Watson was a result of Exxon Mobil’s influence (and I never claimed one can prove that it was), the fact remains that one Randy Randol, Senior Environmental Advisor for Exxon Mobil sent a FAX with his company’s name plastered all over it and a handwritten cover note that read:
The first page of the memo then has a couple of paragraphs detailing why they don’t like Watson followed by the statement:
You can see the actual memo here: http://www.nrdc.org/media/docs/020403.pdf
What aspects of the basic story are you actually doubting?
You can apply Spencer’s analysis to the Dow-Jones-Index 1990 to 1999 and the gold price 1970 and 1979 instead of 13C and 12C. You will find, that the slopes of the “Trend Signal” and the “Interannual Signal” are identical. If you look at the math involved, you will see that it must be so. In short, this is a non-proof.
REPLY: Well if you’ve proven it to be a non proof by those methods, then show you work. – Anthony
@Gary Young gulrud (14:22:16) :
“Today on this or another thread it was found that mature forests are soaking up CO2 at surprising rates, contributing additionally to a yearly fluence in the 200Gton range.”
It’s better than that…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/08/surprise-earths-biosphere-is-booming-co2-the-cause/
(sorry I can’t find it, but there’s even data on how wheat, etc., production is up due to warmer weather and higher CO2, and how it’s likely to get better with CO2 making plants more resilient under stress.
These guys have some good data, but they just can’t resist trashing the results with a, yeah but everyone knows CO2 is still bad, at the end.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/0603-can_carbon_dioxide_be_a_good_thing.htm
‘Cept that the price of wheat is in the toilet. Not enough people buying bread these days and too many fields produced too many bushels of red winter wheat (which is the preferred wheat for flour). So I guess I will stick to alfalfa and timothy hay. Damned global warming.
Still waiting for anyone to show me which station; land, balloon, or orbit, that is currently measuring CO2-12, CO2-13, and CO2-14 ratios in the CO2 that is being pumped into the atmosphere, from above, and below. The argument that plants don’t use the heavier CO2-13 is hogwash. It depends on which plants you are talking about and where they grow. Any farmer and greenhouse owner knows that one.
Let’s see, you CO2 equivalent is changing at 0.7 au over 100 aau, or 0.007 au/aau (arbitrary units per another arbitrary unit)
Your another equivalent forcing is changing by 0.2 au over 8 aau, or 0.025 au/aau or 3.6 times larger! The third one is 0.3 au over 8 aau, or 0.0375 au/aau, which is 5.4 times large. They are both significantly larger forcings then your CO2 forcing, and this is reflected in your simple example. OF course those other forcings do not continue for as long as “CO2”, but they are real and much larger then “CO2” forcing. The interesting question is why are they so large and what causes them to suddenly start and stop.
But I do agree with your assertion that this simplistic graph is not by itself a good proof of anything. Of course, if you used your logic to refute many similar graphs used by believers to prove AGW I would have responded differently. Perhaps I am wrong and you had sent (blogged, send letters to the editor, or such) similar objections after Inconvenient Truth had won an Oscar, for example? If you did I take back everything I had said.
There are roughly 10 billion people in the world. How many total had died
in 2008 from any causes? 100 millions? Maybe more? And 150 thousand of them had died due to global warming? How could someone come up with result that is statistically significant with such small number is beyond me. This reminds me of those articles in MSM that talks about new research that claims that consuming (insert your favorite food/beverage here) increases you chances of dying from (insert you method of death here) by 1%.
MartinGAtkins wrote:
“Why don’t you show us the study that says there has been a 30 percent
increase in Carbon-13 to Carbon-12 over the last 150 years.”
I didn’t say that there was a 30 percent change in the Carbon-13 to Carbon-12 ratio. The 30 percent referred to the increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
“‘This implies that the additional CO2 must come from the combustion of plant matter, either living or fossilized (and ruling out volcanos).’
What about microbial decomposition and ocean out gassing? The planet has been warming since the LIA I presume you would agree that would include the
oceans. Out gassing is not rocket science.”
The best information available to me indicates that oceans are net absorbers of CO2. And again, you’re dealing with different isotope ratios. This will become clearer later in this post.
“‘I am guessing that we can agree that humans have been burning fossil fuels – IIRC, about 500 billion tons worth of Carbon. This amount alone is more than it would take to explain the increase of 280ppm to 380ppm (most of the excess is absorbed by the ocean).’
Your recollection may be wrong. At any rate saying 500 billion tones without a time frame or stating the total mass of CO2 in the atmosphere is
meaningless. As I understand things the main uptake by the oceans is
biological or we would run out of Oxygen.”
The 500 billion tons was an estimate of the Carbon content of all the fossil
fuel consumption (not sure if it also included deforestization) since the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
I’ll try some back-of-the-envelope calculations. The atmosphere weighs roughly 6×10^15 tons. This means that the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere since the beginnng of the Industrial Revolution is about 600x
10^9 tons. This would be, what, maybe the amount of anthropogenic emissions in the past 30 years (we are currently putting in more than 25×10^9 tons/year)? Whatever the exact number of years, it is clear that the total amount of CO2 put into the atmosphere by human activities since the start of the Industrial Revolution exceeds the increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. If net out-gassing by oceans were to dwarf human emissions, that would mean that the oceans were out-gassing enough CO2 to have increased the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere by hundreds of ppm. For enough CO2 to be removed by an increased uptake by plants to limit the increase in the atmosphere to around 100 ppm would require the increase in uptake by plants to exceed the amount of CO2 that was in the atmosphere prior to the Industrial Revolution! Try finding a study that supports that result.
“‘As far as CO2 not being able to drive temperature change, what happens to the additional energy that is absorbed by the increased CO2?’
There isn’t any additional energy to be absorbed. The sun is a reasonable
constant energy input. All the available black body radiation is already
absorbed by the atmosphere we have had for a long time.”
Try Googling something like “Earth’s radiation balance”. You will learn how incorrect your statement is.
Pamela Gray wrote:
“The argument that plants don’t use the heavier CO2-13 is hogwash.”
Which is irrelevant, because no one (at least not in this forum) has made such an argument. It is true, however, that plants preferentially absorb Carbon-12.
Re Spencer’s carbon isotope post: If you look at the math involved, you will see that it must be so. In short, this is a non-proof.
REPLY: Well if you’ve proven it to be a non proof by those methods, then show you work. – Anthony
Spencer’s analysis was indeed based on an embarrassing mathematical fallacy, and his technique will give the same spurious result whatever two time series are input. See here.
REPLY: I said show YOUR work, not Tamino’s. Seeing you have none, I point out that Spencer has replied to that here with additional commentary by Ferdinand Englebeen here. – Anthony
Here you are.
The following is in response to the conclusions drawn from data presented in Figure 3 and Figure 6 of Dr. Spencer’s guest article “Spencer Part 2: More CO2 Peculiarities – The C13/C12 Isotope Ratio. By the time I had written this up, the thread was closed for comments. Please note, that since that posting I have registered at wordpress and had to change my moniker from “blue” to “bluegrue” in the process. You can find this entire post in my livejournal entry, too. I recommend to read it there, because of the better layout.
Notation
Some of the expressions in the following proof can get quite long, so I am using a very compact notation, suitable for a text blog:
1) Variables are one letter only and case-sensitive.
2) x(t) denotes a timeseries, i.e. a collection of n tuples (t_i,x_i) where i = 1 .. n
3) I’ll need a lot of sums over all elements of a timeseries and elementwise sums or products of these timeseries. Multiplication signs are dropped. I’ll use square brackets to denote them. Let [x] be the sum over all terms of the indicated timeseries. Examples:
[x] = x_1 + x_2 + … + x_n
[xy] = (x_1*y_1) + (x_2*y_2) + … + (x_n*y_n)
The mean value of a timeseries in this notation is [x]/n
Caveat:
[1] = 1 + 1 + …. + 1 = n
Regression Coefficient
We will need the slope m of the linear regression line of y(x), where x(t) and y(t) are series with n members:
m = (n[xy]-[x][y]) / (n[xx]-[x][x])
You can verify that in literature or see e.g. here at MathWorld equation 15. If requested, I can give you the derivation for this from least square principles.
Now on to the proof
Let u(t) and w(t) be two time series with n elements each, sampled at equidistant timesteps (i.e. daily, monthly or similar data).
Create two new time series, by lineraly detrending the above time series u(t) and w(t), where e,f,g and h are constants (Dr. Spencer used the regression lines for this, I’m proving the more general case) :
U(t) := u(t) – et – f
W(t) := w(t) – gt – h
Now take the derivatives with respect to time
x(t) := du(t)/dt
y(t) := dw(t)/dt
X(t) := dU(t)/dt = d(u(t) – et – f)/dt = x(t) – e
Y(t) := dW(t)/dt = d(w(t) – gt – h)/dt = y(t) – g
We can observe, that only the constants g and e survive, when taking the derivatives.
x(t) and y(t) are what Dr. Spencer called the “Trend Signal”.
X(t) and Y(t) are, what Dr. Spencer called the “Interannual Signal”.
The correlation coefficient of the “Trend Signal” is just
m = (n[xy]-[x][y]) / (n[xx]-[x][x])
Now let us calculate the correlation coefficient of the “Interannual Signal”:
M = (n[XY]-[X][Y]) / (n[XX]-[X][X])
= (n[(x-e)(y-g)]-[(x-e)][(y-g)]) / (n[(x-e)(x-e)]-[(x-e)][(x-e)])
= (n[xy-gx-ey+eg]-([x]-ne)([y]-ng)) / (n[xx-2ex+ee]-([x]-ne)([x]-ne))
= (n[xy]-ng[x]-ne[y]+nneg – [x][y]+ng[x]+ne[y]-nneg)
/ (n[xx]-ne[x]-ne[x]+nnee – [x][x]+ne[x]+ne[x]-nnee)
= (n[xy]-[x][y])/(n[xx]-[x][x])
= m
So the correlation coefficient of Dr. Spencers “Trend Signal” and “Interannual Signal” of any equispaced time series are identical by mathematical neccessity. Arguing “m equals M, therefore A holds true” is equivalent to saying “4 = 4, therefore A holds true”
Anthony, feel free to copy this to anywhere you feel appropriate.
MikeF (22:14:53)
The example is not a proof of AGW. It just knocks down one often repeated, yet faulty, argument against AGW. Nothing more, nothing less.
By the way, while bluegrue’s analysis demonstrates why Spencer did not show what he thought he showed, the fact that Spencer’s Fig. 3 and 6 had IDENTICAL slopes and R^2 should have been a huge clue to anyone with a skeptical bone in their body that something was wrong with his analysis! After all, with any real experimental data set, you simply would not expect that sort of exact agreement unless, as is the case here, the agreement is not due to any physical reason but is simply a mathematical necessity (because you are really just plotting the exact same thing over again)!
Gary Pearse says:
I don’t think it is unscientific to say that I have heard other accounts of the history that are at odds with this general meme. I was vague about what I had actually read though, simply because I couldn’t remember where I read it. But now I did manage to dig up what I had read that said that Wegener that the story is actually more complex than it is made out to be. Here it is: http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200311/viewpoint.cfm I’m not particularly wedded to the idea that James Trefil’s description of the history is more correct than yours…But, I am also not quite ready to believe that his is wrong and yours is right either.
Jeff (23:42:42)
You were using Carbon-13 to Carbon-12 ratio as a proxy measurement for the amount of CO2 man is responsible for in the atmosphere. If we are responsible for 30 percent of the CO2 in the atmosphere then there would have to be a 30 change in the ratio.
It didn’t say it wasn’t. I said that the absorption was due to biological action.
The 500 billion tons was an estimate of the Carbon content of all the fossil fuel consumption (not sure if it also included deforestization) since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Some of the increase is taken up increased growth of carbon absorbing organisms. Deforestation does not directly increase CO2 unless it’s burnt.
Go ahead. The IPCC bases it’s whole findings on such calculations.
Which of course leads to the conclusion that higher global temperatures lead to increased CO2 sequestration as well as higher production.
Please don’t infer that I have said something I haven’t. “dwarf human emissions” Is a childish attempt by you to skew the discussion off any meaningful path.
Your statement that ocean out gassing would have to add to CO2 levels by hundreds of parts per million is patently absurd. There is only 380 ppm in the atmosphere now.
“There isn’t any additional energy to be absorbed. The sun is a reasonable
constant energy input. All the available black body radiation is already
absorbed by the atmosphere we have had for a long time.”
Do go ahead and explain it to Me. We are in no hurry. Would you like me to explain to you the concept of thermal equilibrium or would you just prefer to google it?.
.
Joel
Re Wegener, I note that it is a physicist with perhaps only a snippet of the story to go on. He didn’t mention that in the 1950s it was worth an academic’s and some industrial geologists’ livelihood to entertain the idea – essentially a modern version of what happened to Galileo. Also, Wegener was a meteorologist – probably meaning he was a physicist of sorts. Surely with such a huge idea, he shouldn’t also be obliged to come up with the entire mechanism of how it occurred (your physicist was right that that was how they skewered him!). Let’s see how we can explain this aspect to a physicist? For example, a) whether light was corpuscular or waveform as competing theories: no one denied the existence of light because the precise mechanism or form was not agreed upon. Newton’s theory of gravitation was supplanted by Einstein’s but we didn’t erase Newton from the list of scientists. And lets face it, thinking physicists are frustrated by the fragmented bits that make up our understanding of the universe – do we have to find a unified field theory before we deserve to be recognized…. I think you get the idea.
I think after all this, a bit of editorializing on the subject of science and scientists and some advice to you, young man, seems a propos. I once was told by a scientist that there are more scientists alive today than the sum of all those who lived in the past. I replied that most of those he refers to in modern times, despite having a diploma, are largely technicians who have digested a curriculum (a lab coat and horn-rimmed glasses does not a scientist make). The only ones we know of in history are the mega thinkers who left behind a legacy of discovery (and partial discovery) we never new the others and the same will be true in the future of today’s lot. Now advice. Einstein was a very humble man despite guaranteeing his place forever in the history of mankind. It was partly because of his gentle nature and partly because he knew that the ultimate was still far out of reach. Don’t take yourself so seriously.
MartinGAtkins:
“You were using Carbon-13 to Carbon-12 ratio as a proxy measurement for the amount of CO2 man is responsible for in the atmosphere. If we are responsible for 30 percent of the CO2 in the atmosphere then there would have to be a 30 change in the ratio.”
Since I don’t have the interest in researching what the exact change in ratio has been, I’ll merely make the point that because some of the anthropogenic CO2 is absorbed by plants and since plants preferentially absorb Carbon-12, it’s perfectly plausible for the change in ratio to be less than 30 percent.
“‘The best information available to me indicates that oceans are net absorbers of CO2. And again, you’re dealing with different isotope ratios. This will become clearer later in this post.’
I didn’t say it wasn’t. I said that the absorption was due to biological action.”
Your quote was “What about microbial decomposition and ocean out gassing? The planet has been warming since the LIA I presume you would agree that would include the oceans. Out gassing is not rocket science.” And that is what I was addressing.
“‘The 500 billion tons was an estimate of the Carbon content of all the fossil
fuel consumption (not sure if it also included deforestization) since the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution.’
Some of the increase is taken up increased growth of carbon absorbing
organisms. Deforestation does not directly increase CO2 unless it’s burnt.”
I thought that it was obvious that I was referring to the gross amount of
Carbon put into the air by humans, not to a net change in Carbon.
“‘If net out-gassing by oceans were to dwarf human emissions, that would mean that the oceans were out-gassing enough CO2 to have increased the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere by hundreds of ppm.’
Please don’t infer that I have said something I haven’t. “dwarf human emissions” is a childish attempt by you to skew the discussion off any
meaningful path.
Your statement that ocean out gassing would have to add to CO2 levels by hundreds of parts per million is patently absurd. There is only 380 ppm in the atmosphere now.”
The claim was made by several posters that most of the increase in the CO2
content of the atmosphere was due to out-gassing by oceans, and because I
mis-read a sentence in your post, I thought that you were one of them. What
I did here was to merely show that it is implausible that most of the CO2
increase could be from out-gassing because it would require an implausibly
large increase in Carbon uptake by plants.
“‘There isn’t any additional energy to be absorbed. The sun is a reasonable
constant energy input. All the available black body radiation is already
absorbed by the atmosphere we have had for a long time.”
Try Googling something like “Earth’s radiation balance”. You will learn how\
incorrect your statement is.
Do go ahead and explain it to Me. We are in no hurry. Would you like me to
explain to you the concept of thermal equilibrium or would you just prefer to
google it?.”
Yes, I guess that you will have to explain to me how the Earth can absorb
radiation from the Sun, lose no radiation to space, and not have a long-term
warming trend. What has happened to the surplus energy that should have accumulated over billions of years?
The earth does lose radiation to space. It reaches equilibrium in that it will lose as much energy as it receives. Green house gasses only delay the loss.
Lost to space. That’s why there isn’t and cannot be runaway warming on earth.
MartinGAtkins says:
I don’t know what this means in terms of a scientifically-precise statement. If you mean the number of Joules that escapes per second (i.e., Watts) is lower because of greenhouse gases, you are correct…But that is all important, since it is the Watts in and Watts out that must balance.
If you mean something else, like the number of Watts is the same, then you are simply wrong.
By the way, any skeptic with even an ounce of scientific-credibility, e.g., Roy Spencer or Richard Lindzen, accepts that doubling CO2 results in about a 4 W/m^2 of forcing. The only seriously debatable point is what sort of temperature change this results in once the feedback effects are considered.
Joel Shore (07:35:54) :
The earth does lose radiation to space. It reaches equilibrium in that it will lose as much energy as it receives. Green house gasses only delay the loss.
What I am saying is the atmosphere delays the escape of black body radiation. Not that it stopsblack body radiation escaping.
And that is exactly what happens. If there were no atmosphere, then when the earths surface was facing the sun we would burn to death. When the earths surface was facing away from the sun we would freeze.
Although the atmosphere delays IR it reaches a point where the same amount of energy is lost as is delayed. That is thermal equilibrium.
Suppose we increase solar input. At first the extra energy is delayed and the earth warms. It will continue to do so until the amount of energy retained equals the amount of energy lost.
The earth will reach thermal equilibrium but at a higher temperature.
There is another way we can shift the balance without increasing the energy input.
By increasing the density of the atmosphere we increase it’s capacity to hold energy.
This has the effect of delaying IR for a longer period of time. It will warm up but only as far as the retained heat is balanced by the increased loss to space.
Again we reach thermal equilibrium but at a higher temperature.
I’m not sure how they arrive at their numbers, and if they use term “forcing” they are being verbally obscure. Feed back is more appropriate.
At least we can agree that feedback is a better term for other consequences that may arise from the basic model.
If you have any problem with my explanation of thermal equilibrium then have Dr. Gavin A. Schmidt explain it to you. It was he who taught me.
And the Goracle brought forth 2 chldren – the internet and AGW – and like Cain and Able one will kill the other.
MartinGAtkins says:
Conventionally, “forcing” is used to describe some perturbation that is imposed on the climate system and “feedback” is used to describe part of the climate system’s response that can either magnify or de-magnify the effect of the forcing. Since we are adding the CO2, it is a forcing. In the case of the ice age – interglacial transitions, it is probably more correct to call it a feedback since it occurs in response to the warming due to the Milankovitch oscillations and corresponding ice sheet albedo change…although in cases like this, the terminology gets somewhat arguable and, as long as one gets the physics right, people probably won’t care horribly about the pedagogy.
Nope…Now that you have expanded your explanation to make it clear that you understand that the effect of added greenhouse gases is to cause a radiative imbalance which persists until the earth warms enough to restore it back to equilibrium, I have no problem with your explanation.
I’m not trying to be pedantic but it’s important that you understand that adding more CO2 doesn’t mean more IR is absorbed.
With that we may close the thread.
Robert Wood (04:51:05) : economists and various other hand-wavers.
Sir! Economists do not “hand wave”! We manually oscillate.
😉
MartinGAtkins wrote:
“I’m not trying to be pedantic but it’s important that you understand that adding more CO2 doesn’t mean more IR is absorbed.”
And that’s because?
Because CO2’s IR absorption is logarithmic and current CO2 levels are close to maxing out IR absorption. Once CO2 levels reach/pass the maximum for IR absorption, adding more CO2 will not increase IR absorption. All the IR that can be absorbed will have been absorbed.
There are several posts on WUWT that deal with CO2 levels and IR absorption. Go check the archives and be enlightened.
Interesting what the late F. Kenneth Hare observed in 1979 (Ref. below)
(at http://www.whatisclimate.com/variousIV.html):
“The World Climate Conference (Geneva 1979) is a gathering largely of non-atmosphericscientists. It has dawned upon our colleagues in WMO, and its Executive Committee, that what matters about climate is not merely the question of its predictability, which is obviously our business; it is also the question of the impact it makes upon the world’s peoples. Andthat is not obviously within our competence. There is nothing in our training that makes us experts in the art of interpreting climatic impact. And so the World Climate Conference is going to be made up of nearly 80 % non-atmospheric scientists. There: will be economists,agronomists, foresters, politicians, all broadly speaking expert…….”
Reference: F. Kenneth Hare, 1979; „The Vaulting of Intellectual Barriers: The Madison Thrust in Climatology“, Bulletin American Meteorological Society , Vol. 60, 1979, p. 1171 – 1124
Getting back to the original topic of this thread, which was the qualifications of the IPCC members, some guy actually created a list of the contributing authors from Working Group 1, along with a list of publications for each. He reports, you decide:
http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/AR4wg1_authors_table.html
SUPLIMENTARY INFORMATION TO ASSIST IN MAKING DECISION
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/01/the-ipcc-cant-count-author-and-reviewer-numbers-are-wrong/
Katherine wrote:
“Because CO2’s IR absorption is logarithmic and current CO2 levels are close to maxing out IR absorption. Once CO2 levels reach/pass the maximum for IR absorption, adding more CO2 will not increase IR absorption. All the IR that can be absorbed will have been absorbed. ”
There’s no indication we are close to that point, which in any event is a bit of a moving target, given factors like pressure broadening.