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.
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 @ur momisugly#$% in those @ur momisugly#$^$# 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?