OK, so my art is a bit tongue in cheek. But it does fit the disaster theme of the topic.
This op-ed piece in the Herald Sun is interesting, because it touches on many of the points covered here on WUWT. This is the first time I’ve seen all these collected in one article in a major newspaper. Andrew Bolt routinely uses material from WUWT, and this is the first time I’ve been able to reciprocate. There are some truly unique points raised by Bolt that are indigenous to Australia that we haven’t discussed here, but they are valid for discussion nonetheless. In cases where we have covered a point on WUWT, I’ve made a footnote link [in brackets] – Anthony
From Andrew Bolt, The Herald Sun
Global Warming Alarmists Out in the Cold
April 29, 2009 12:00am
IT’S snowing in April. Ice is spreading in Antarctica. The Great Barrier Reef is as healthy as ever.
And that’s just the news of the past week. Truly, it never rains but it pours – and all over our global warming alarmists.
Time’s up for this absurd scaremongering. The fears are being contradicted by the facts, and more so by the week.
Doubt it? Then here’s a test.
Name just three clear signs the planet is warming as the alarmists claim it should. Just three. Chances are your “proofs” are in fact on my list of 10 Top Myths about global warming.And if your “proofs” indeed turn out to be false, don’t get angry with me.
Just ask yourself: Why do you still believe that man is heating the planet to hell? What evidence do you have?
So let’s see if facts matter more to you than faith, and observations more than predictions.
MYTH 1
THE WORLD IS WARMING
Wrong. It is true the world did warm between 1975 and 1998, but even Professor David Karoly, one of our leading alarmists, admitted this week “temperatures have dropped” since – “both in surface temperatures and in atmospheric temperatures measured from satellites”. In fact, the fall in temperatures from just 2002 has already wiped out a quarter of the warming our planet experienced last century. (Check data from Britain’s Hadley Centre, NASA’s Aqua satellite and the US National Climatic Data Centre.)
Some experts, such as Karoly, claim this proves nothing and the world will soon start warming again. Others, such as Professor Ian Plimer of Adelaide University, point out that so many years of cooling already contradict the theory that man’s rapidly increasing gases must drive up temperatures ever faster.
But that’s all theory. The question I’ve asked is: What signs can you actually see of the man-made warming that the alarmists predicted?
[ Ian Plimer, Temperature trends]
MYTH 2
THE POLAR CAPS ARE MELTING
Wrong. The British Antarctic Survey, working with NASA, last week confirmed ice around Antarctica has grown 100,000 sq km each decade for the past 30 years.
Long-term monitoring by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports the same: southern hemisphere ice has been expanding for decades.
As for the Arctic, wrong again.
The Arctic ice cap shrank badly two summers ago after years of steady decline, but has since largely recovered. Satellite data from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre this week shows the Arctic hasn’t had this much April ice for at least seven years.
Norway’s Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre says the ice is now within the standard deviation range for 1979 to 2007.
[Antarctic Ice Growth, Arctic Ice Recovery ]
MYTH 3
WE’VE NEVER HAD SUCH A BAD DROUGHT
Wrong. A study released this month by the University of NSW Climate Change Research Centre confirms not only that we’ve had worse droughts, but this Big Dry is not caused by “global warming”, whether man-made or not.
As the university’s press release says: “The causes of southeastern Australia’s longest, most severe and damaging droughts have been discovered, with the surprise finding that they originate far away in the Indian Ocean.
“A team of Australian scientists has detailed for the first time how a phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean Dipole – a variable and irregular cycle of warming and cooling of ocean water – dictates whether moisture-bearing winds are carried across the southern half of Australia.”
MYTH 4
OUR CITIES HAVE NEVER BEEN HOTTER
Wrong. The alleged “record” temperature Melbourne set in January – 46.4 degrees – was in fact topped by the 47.2 degrees the city recorded in 1851. (See the Argus newspaper of February 8, 1851.)
And here’s another curious thing: Despite all this warming we’re alleged to have caused, Victoria’s highest temperature on record remains the 50.7 degrees that hit Mildura 103 years ago.
South Australia’s hottest day is still the 50.7 degrees Oodnadatta suffered 37 years ago. NSW’s high is still the 50 degrees recorded 70 years ago.
What’s more, not one of the world’s seven continents has set a record high temperature since 1974. Europe’s high remains the 50 degrees measured in Spain 128 years ago, before the invention of the first true car.
MYTH 5
THE SEAS ARE GETTING HOTTER
Wrong. If anything, the seas are getting colder. For five years, a network of 3175 automated bathythermographs has been deployed in the oceans by the Argo program, a collaboration between 50 agencies from 26 countries.
Warming believer Josh Willis, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, reluctantly concluded: “There has been a very slight cooling . . .”
MYTH 6
THE SEAS ARE RISING
Wrong. For almost three years, the seas have stopped rising, according to the Jason-1 satellite mission monitored by the University of Colorado.
That said, the seas have risen steadily and slowly for the past 10,000 years through natural warming, and will almost certainly resume soon.
But there is little sign of any accelerated rises, even off Tuvalu or the Maldives, islands often said to be most threatened with drowning.
Professor Nils-Axel Moerner, one of the world’s most famous experts on sea levels, has studied the Maldives in particular and concluded there has been no net rise there for 1250 years.
Venice is still above water.
[Sea Level in the Maldives, Sea Level satellite data]
MYTH 7
CYCLONES ARE GETTING WORSE
Wrong. Ryan Maue of Florida State University recently measured the frequency, intensity and duration of all hurricanes and cyclones to compile an Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index.
His findings? The energy index is at its lowest level for more than 30 years.
The World Meteorological Organisation, in its latest statement on cyclones, said it was impossible to say if they were affected by man’s gases: “Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point.”
[Ryan Maue and Hurricane energy, Hurricane landfall trends]
MYTH 8
THE GREAT BARRIER REEF IS DYING
Wrong. Yes, in 1999, Professor Ove Hoegh-Gulberg, our leading reef alarmist and administrator of more than $30 million in warming grants, did claim the reef was threatened by warming, and much had turned white.
But he then had to admit it had made a “surprising” recovery.
Yes, in 2006 he again warned high temperatures meant “between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef could die within a month”.
But he later admitted this bleaching had “minimal impact”. Yes, in 2007 he again warned that temperature changes of the kind caused by global warming were bleaching the reef.
But this month fellow Queensland University researchers admitted in a study that reef coral had once more made a “spectacular recovery”, with “abundant corals re-established in a single year”. The reef is blooming.
MYTH 9
OUR SNOW SEASONS ARE SHORTER
Wrong. Poor snow falls in 2003 set off a rash of headlines predicting warming doom. The CSIRO typically fed the hysteria by claiming global warming would strip resorts of up to a quarter of their snow by 2018.
Yet the past two years have been bumper seasons for Victoria’s snow resorts, and this year could be just as good, with snow already falling in NSW and Victoria this past week.
[New low temp record at Australian ski resort this year]
MYTH 10
TSUNAMIS AND OTHER DISASTERS ARE GETTING WORSE
Are you insane? Tsunamis are in fact caused by earthquakes. Yet there was World Vision boss Tim Costello last week, claiming that Asia was a “region, thanks to climate change, that has far more cyclones, tsunamis, droughts”.
Wrong, wrong and wrong, Tim. But what do facts matter now to a warming evangelist when the cause is so just?
And so any disaster is now blamed on man-made warming the way they once were on Satan. See for yourself on www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm the full list, including kidney stones, volcanic eruptions, lousy wine, insomnia, bad tempers, Vampire moths and bubonic plagues. Nothing is too far-fetched to be seized upon by carpetbaggers and wild preachers as signs of a warming we can’t actually see.
Not for nothing are polar bears the perfect symbol of this faith – bears said to be threatened by warming, when their numbers have in fact increased.
Bottom line: fewer people now die from extreme weather events, whether cyclones, floods or blinding heatwaves.
Read that in a study by Indur Goklany, who represented the US at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “There is no signal in the mortality data to indicate increases in the overall frequencies or severities of extreme weather events, despite large increases in the population at risk.”
[Going down – death rates due to extreme weather events]
So stop this crazy panic.
First step: check again your list of the signs you thought you saw of global warming. How many are true? What do you think, and why do you think it?
Yes, the world may resume warming in one year or 100. But it hasn’t been warming as the alarmists said it must if man were to blame, and certainly not as the media breathlessly keeps claiming.
Best we all just settle down, then, and wait for the proof — the real proof. After all, panicking over invisible things is so undignified, don’t you think?
RW (07:03:26),
Not one word in that entire post falsifies the the theory that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability.
RW is using the fallacious argumentum ad ignorantiam:
The fallacy of assuming something [e.g., the CO2=AGW=runaway global warming hypothesis] is true, simply because it hasn’t been proven false. An appeal to ignorance.
RW could just as well insist that an asteroid will hit Beijing within five years, simply because it hasn’t been proven false. That is the situation the alarmist contingent is in. They say that we must look at entirely normal and natural climate variations, and see something that just isn’t there.
RW’s incorrect facts aside, the climate’s current variability is well within its normal and natural historical parameters. Nothing is out of the ordinary. There is no mythical “tipping point,” there is no runaway global warming, and there certainly is no scientific basis for spending $Billions to $Trillions on a fake hypothesis.
Robert Bateman (18:17:16) :
“It’s the fault of the AGW’ers who keep crying wolf. If they had a lick of sense about them, they’d be off on a more sensible bandwagon, namely conserving energy. Making corporate & industrial more energy efficient, just like the consumers did in the 70’s… Stop yelling fire on a crowded planet.”
Good quote Robert! Hopefully, most skeptics here do not discourage cogent energy conservation. It is not an unreasonable goal given the vast sums U.S. and industrial nations send overseas for oil. But this goal can be accomplished without the need for CO2 “pollutants,” melting ice caps, and ocean acidification. There are good, solid reasons to conserve energy.
Nor is adopting supplemental alternative energy unreasonable. But what is truly discouraging is the damage AGW has done to the name of conservation. Unfortunately IMO, with the demise of AGW we may see justified skepticism toward any conservation movement – a tragedy brought on by “climate change” hubris.
“Exaggeration leads the coalition of disbelief.”
April 2009 sunspot numbers ….. Nothing happing here ….Move on ….
The just released SIDC report of “official” April sunspot daily numbers and April totals show 25 sunspot free days and 5 days with fleeting sunspots.
http://sidc.oma.be/products/ri_hemispheric/
An excellent article by SIDC on how SIDC measures and obtains these numbers is at
http://www.icsu-fags.org/ps11sidc.htm
“It is also the case for the contributing network to the definitive International Sunspot Number, and the sub-networks for the provisional and definitive North and South Sunspot Numbers, respectively stabilized at 90, 28 and 50 contributors. The geographical distribution for the definitive sunspot number network is 10% for Belgium, 59% for other European countries, and 31% for the rest of the world.”
In this 1994 posting they list the many observing sites submitting data. As noted in a recent Wattsupwiththat discussion, it is improbable that the historical sunspot reports from a few observing sites in Europe in the 17th through the 19th century can be correlated to modern techniques.
Those fleeting sunspots we now can measure would, for the most part, not be recorded by early observers.
If we had the 100-200 observatories with 21st century solar observing techniques observing the sun during the Maunder Minimum, some on moutains and in diverse geographical areas (no cloud cover), I doubt if we would find approx 3600 days in a row without some SIDC qualified fleeting sunspots.
The Maunder Minimum may have been an extended period of years of very low sunspot activity similar to what we are currently encountering — not zero sunspots, just very low activity.
Time will tell … stay tuned.
The number of stations whose data was acceptable and used in the April 2009 report is listed after the data. The Rn and Rs refer to the northern or southern hemispheres. Ri combines both to get the total.
Current May 1st report on April 2009 sunspots
:Issued: 2009 May 01 0921 UTC
:Product: documentation at http://www.sidc.be/products/ri_hemispheric
#——————————————————————–#
# MONTHLY REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL SUNSPOT NUMBER #
# from the SIDC (RWC-Belgium) #
#——————————————————————–#
APRIL 2009
PROVISIONAL INTERNATIONAL NORMALIZED HEMISPHERIC SUNSPOT NUMBERS
Date Ri Rn Rs
__________________________________________________________________
1 0 0 0
2 0 0 0
3 0 0 0
4 0 0 0
5 0 0 0
6 7 7 0
7 0 0 0
8 0 0 0
9 0 0 0
10 0 0 0
11 0 0 0
12 0 0 0
13 0 0 0
14 0 0 0
15 0 0 0
16 0 0 0
17 0 0 0
18 0 0 0
19 0 0 0
20 0 0 0
21 7 7 0
22 7 7 0
23 0 0 0
24 0 0 0
25 0 0 0
26 0 0 0
27 0 0 0
28 0 0 0
29 8 0 8
30 8 0 8
__________________________________________________________________
MONTHLY MEAN : 1.2 0.7 0.5
COOPERATING STATIONS : 62 55 55
PILOT STATION : Specola Solare Ticinese, Locarno
__________________________________________________________________
Reproduction permitted if source mentionned
R. Van der Linden
avenue Circulaire, 3 B-1180 BRUXELLES – BELGIUM
#——————————————————————–#
# Solar Influences Data analysis Center – RWC Belgium #
# Royal Observatory of Belgium #
# Fax : 32 (0) 2 373 0 224 #
# Tel.: 32 (0) 2 373 0 491 #
# #
# For more information, see http://www.sidc.be. Please do not reply #
# directly to this message, but send comments and suggestions to #
# ‘sidctech@oma.be’. If you are unable to use that address, use #
# ‘rvdlinden@spd.aas.org’ instead. #
# To unsubscribe, visit http://sidc.be/registration/unsub.php #
#——————————————————————–#
MikeN (08:11:57),
I don’t recall anyone here saying that global warming doesn’t exist. Who said that? The Earth has been naturally warming, in fits and starts, since the end of the last great Ice Age.
The disconnect occurs when people claim that CO2 is the cause of all the warming, based on very flimsy to non-existent empirical, real world “evidence.”
In fact, increased CO2 is the result of warming. Sure, humans add some CO2, but it’s very little compared to what nature puts out. And the amount is well within the natural year-to-year variable emissions from the oceans, volcanic activity, and the biosphere. If human emissions were at all significant, the bar graph showing human emission fluctuations would show up in the Mauna Loa graph. But they don’t. The human addition is too insignificant.
The fact is that the climate warms, and the climate cools — irrespective of human activity. The climate is currently well within its long term pattern of natural variability. There is nothing out of the ordinary occurring regarding temperature, sea level, coral bleaching, hurricanes, or whatever else the scare du jour is.
This link shows that there have always been alarmists running around trying to scare the public: click
Read it, and you will see that an alarmist contingent has always been with us — and they have always been wrong. Every time. Things are no different this time around.
Mike McMIllan (22:22:34) : sea level rise
I’m not sure of the point you wish to make. What we call Florida is quite flat and has only recently (speaking in Earth-time) emerged from the ocean. Two items of interest: One: the building material – coquina — for the fort built at Castillo de San Marcos on the Atlantic coast of Florida:
http://florida-vacation-travel.com/castillo-de-san-marcos.html
and two: the “Trail Ridge” at The Okefenokee Swamp on the Georgia – Florida border. “The swamp was formed over the past 6,500 years by the accumulation of peat in a shallow basin on the edge of an ancient Atlantic coastal terrace, the geological relic of a Pleistocene estuary. The swamp is bordered by Trail Ridge, a strip of elevated land believed to have formed as coastal dunes or an offshore barrier island.” From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okefenokee_Swamp
These two things suggest that the relative ocean-land interface is dynamic. The ocean may re-occupy part of the US southeast coast, it may not, or the land may continue emerging from the water. I’d love to be around in 1,000 years to see which way it goes, but I’ll surely move along before then.
M White (07:45:50) :
Monckton reported that some environmentalist tore down the tree that Nils-Axel Morner talks about starting at the 2:15 minute of that video.
Smokey – you still don’t get the basic facts. For warming to have caused the post-industrial rise in CO2 concentrations, it would have to have warmed by 15°C. Isotopic studies prove beyond doubt that fossil fuel burning is what has caused CO2 concentrations to rise 40% higher than they were at any point in the 800,000 years before humans started burning fossil fuels.
This is a fact.
For some bizarre reason you keep on claiming there’s no evidence that CO2 could affect climate. Again, I’ve explained this to you, and while you cannot and do not argue, you simply refuse to accept it. Again, flat-earthism. CO2 is a strong infrared absorber (see eg. Tyndall, 1868). Strong infrared absorbers cause the greenhouse effect. Increasing the concentration of strong infrared absorbers causes temperatures to rise, inevitably.
This is a fact. You’re in ~snip~. I think even most of your fellow ‘sceptics’ accept and understand the simple physics of CO2, and many have now even accepted the conclusive evidence of the fossil fuel origin of the rise in CO2. You’re pretty much on your own with your strange and untenable opinions.
Do you ever read scientific papers?
MikeN: if the Sun is the dominant factor, as you believe, then why is it even now, in the midst of a deep solar minimum, warmer than it was during the last, shallower minimum? Why was that minimum warmer than the one that preceded it, which was warmer than the one that preceded it?
DJ (16:21:12) :
A nice demonstration of the sceptic echo chamber bouncing inaccurate tid-bits around the globe.
DJ, where’s your data? And I don’t mean a powerpoint of Hansen’s auto generated pseudo-data. If you approached this blog with legitimate information, THAT is what we’re seeking here. Fortunately, legitimate scientific analysis of the warming theory yields failure after failure of that theory to confirm…. and I regret to inform you that we’re not all going to roast, drown, starve, succumb to violent storm-drought and rampant disease as a result. I’m sorry. I know it’s a disappointment.
RW (10:29:46) :
“For some bizarre reason you keep on claiming there’s no evidence that CO2 could affect climate. Again, I’ve explained this to you, and while you cannot and do not argue, you simply refuse to accept it. Again, flat-earthism. CO2 is a strong infrared absorber (see eg. Tyndall, 1868). Strong infrared absorbers cause the greenhouse effect. Increasing the concentration of strong infrared absorbers causes temperatures to rise, inevitably.”
“Do you ever read scientific papers?”
Do you ever think for yourself?
Why do you and other people posting here, use this utterly simplistic statement of physics to justify AGW on the planet Earth?
I can also give a simplistic example of physics. Put the end of a bar of steel in a bowl of hot water and measure how long it takes the other end to warm up. Do the same with a bar of wood, lead, iron etc. You will soon see they all warm eventually but at different rates and you can draw conclusions that confirm a known law of physics.
Now put an inanimate cellular based object in the bowl and voila the same effect.
Now put your feet in the bowl and wait for your head to warm up. OOPS! What has gone wrong with the physics?
Nothing of course. However this physical law is now operating in a dynamic environment where the heat may trigger other processes within the object/system.
Unless you can confirm that you have an excellent understanding of all the possible significant connected processes within the Earths climate system (Sun, oceanic circulation, clouds, biomass response, albedo etc etc etc) and how changes in one might drive changes in others then how can you possibly predict the future?
If anyone says that they have settled the science because of they have such an understanding I would call them naive, a liar or deluded.
Which are you?
Alan
RW has made up quotes by me that I never stated, such as:
“For some bizarre reason you keep on claiming there’s no evidence that CO2 could affect climate.”
Please show me where I have ever stated that CO2 has “no” affect [sic] on climate. I have not changed my position: that the effect of CO2 is merely insignificant at current levels. Misrepresentations like RW’s occur most often when the actual statement can not be refuted.
I made my position clear in my @08:33:23 post. Rather than respond to the points contained in that post, RW sets up several straw man arguments, brave straw man killer that he is, and fearlessly attacks his new inventions.
And I dispute the RW statement:
Citation, please [but not from the propaganda site RC; they’re incredible].
Unbiased readers can see how very small the human CO2 emissions are, by comparing them to natural CO2 emissions: click
RW says: “Isotopic studies prove beyond doubt that fossil fuel burning is what has caused CO2 concentrations to rise 40% higher than they were at any point in the 800,000 years before humans started burning fossil fuels… This is a fact.”
Not really.
“Please show me where I have ever stated that CO2 has “no” affect [sic] on climate”
“people claim that CO2 is the cause of all the warming, based on very flimsy to non-existent empirical, real world “evidence.” “
Why are you introducing your own grammatical errors and marking them with a [sic]?
You don’t believe that isotopic studies have shown beyond doubt that the increase in CO2 concentration from 280 to 390ppm is due to fossil fuel burning; this doesn’t surprise me. Here’s a couple of papers that would convince you of this fact, if you were rational. At the moment all the evidence is that you’re not rational but I hope that will change.
A 1000-year high precision record of d13C in atmospheric CO2
Oceanic Uptake of Fossil Fuel CO2: Carbon-13 Evidence
Sorry, too late! The Administration, the Senate and Congress are all heavily in global warming preventing cap and trade and we are all going to pay through the nose.
“Research by three New Zealand scientists may have solved the mystery of why glaciers behave differently in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
… the new work topples theories based on climate in the Northern Hemisphere changing in tandem with the climate in the Southern Hemisphere.
The research argues that at times the climate in both hemispheres evolved >b>in sync and at other times it evolved differently in different parts of the world.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/environment/news/article.cfm?c_id=39&objectid=10569888&ref=rss
So should we start talking about climates – in the plural ?
Perhaps RW would like to consider this scientific paper which uses actual chemical measurement to determine CO2 levels. These are real, scientifically observed values which show CO2 levels at over 470ppm in the 1820s and 1940s.
Does the isotopic study he refers to identify these directly observed levels, and if not perhaps he would concede that they are not “beyond doubt”?
To see if we’ll possibly see Global Warming coming back take a look at this chart of ENSO forecasts
http://www.climatelogic.com/system/files/forecasts/winter10/IRImodelsApr09.gif
And this one
http://www.climatelogic.com/system/files/forecasts/winter10/CPCconsolidationApr09.gif
Then look at this one from the Japan Met. agency
http://ddb.kishou.go.jp/climate/ElNino/elmonout.html#outlook
The depth cross-section doesn’t show anything pointing to a strong El-nino event coming soon like in 1998 or 2006.
And now the link to the paper:
http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/180_years_accurate_Co2_Chemical_Methods.pdf
Apologies for the omission from the previous post.
Flanagan: Don’t use old data to prove a point. What you did was prove that it is not warming.
Myth1:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/mean:12
Since the increase in global temperature since 1850 is .8 C and the globe has dropped .7 degrees C since 1998, that is more than half.
Myth 2:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
The global sea ice are is over the 1979 to 2000 mean for 2009 and 2008 and 2004 and 2003 but you picked 2007? Any reason for that?
Regarding Steven Chu’s use of the Mann Hockey stick in the 2009 Energy Conference. I saw that, thanks for posting it. I emailed them a comment that using that graph destroyed the validity of the presentation.
I was horrified that one of their suggestions is to turn your thermostat to 65 in the daytime and lower at night. Who is going to tell Obama who keeps the temperature in the Oval Office at 77?
Seriously, I am not freezing to death for the global warming terrorists. They can freeze to death if they want to.
Interesting essay that reports on another nail in the coffin of CO2 as a problem here.
Strange, for a while there some scientists were claiming Global Warming was a myth.
Thanks Smokey, very interesting.
Smokey, there is about a 1.2C effect on temperature of a doubling of CO2, absent feedbacks. I got this from climate-skeptic.com, just scroll down a little.
You yourself say that the planet is coming out of a little ice age, so you don’t think global warming has stopped.
>if the Sun is the dominant factor, as you believe, then why is it even now, in the midst of a deep solar minimum, warmer than it was during the last, shallower minimum?
The Sun isn’t the only factor, just large enough to cancel out the effect of CO2. Why do you think it is cooling right now?
Smokey says:
No, rather it is the embrace of every crackpot theory by those who are trying to put nails in the coffin that demonstrates that they are not skeptics at all but will believe just about anything that agrees with their preconceptions. Read Nick Stokes’ comment on that blog. He is absolutely right…The use of the virial theorem by Miskolczi is completely incomprehensible as the atmosphere is not in free orbit around the earth any more than we are. And, if one just plugs in numbers, one finds that the prediction of the virial theorem for the relation between the potential and kinetic energy of the atmosphere isn’t even close to being satisfied! You guys complain about models not reflecting reality but when some guy comes up with a crackpot theory and doesn’t even bother to do the simplest consistency checks against reality, you embrace it!
MikeN:
Stop misquoting me. You keep doing it. I never said the Sun is the dominant factor: “>if the Sun is the dominant factor, as you believe…”
You set up that straw man and knocked him right down, you brave straw man slayer. Except that I didn’t say what you claim. And earlier you stated that my position was that there is no global warming. That is false.
It’s a bad habit to get into, misquoting other people for what you perceive to be a temporary advantage. I am very careful with my words. Please stop misrepresenting what I say.
Joel Shore: I have no idea at this point what is causing climate change. But I do have a pretty good idea about what is not causing climate change: carbon dioxide.
It’s funny reading your statement that skeptics “will believe just about anything that agrees with their preconceptions.” That’s projection, right? Either that, or you still don’t get it. So I will explain it once again: it is not the job of skeptics to prove anything. The preconceptions are on the AGW side. Skeptics simply question — but the CO2=AGW folks won’t give us straight answers.
It is the job of skeptics to say, “Prove it.” Or at least: provide us with substantial, real world evidence that CO2 will cause runaway global warming. Convince us. We’re skeptical. So far you haven’t, because all the incessant arm-waving over coral bleaching, sea levels, polar ice, receding glaciers, polar bears, acid rain, the ozone hole, and whatever else is the scare du jour, eventually turns out to be someone crying “Wolf!”
This is what the debate is all about; if a rise in CO2 only causes a small temperature change, making for a warmer, more pleasant climate, then there is no reason to waste $Trillions doing anything about it. There are much more urgent uses for that money, don’t you think? Be honest. Wasting it on a false CO2 scare is extremely irresponsible.
So far, the planet itself is proving the alarmists flat wrong: as CO2 steadily rises, the planet’s temperature has steadily fallen. To a scientific skeptic that fact raises big red flags. It means that either CO2 has no measurable effect on the Earth’s temperature, or that its effect is so small as to be inconsequential.
Either way, there is no reason to immediately start pouring $billions to $trillions into this non-problem. Especially when Elmer Gantry Gore will be taking his cut out of every dollar.
The CO2 = AGW hypothesis is owned by the climate alarmists. It’s your baby. So once again: it is not the responsibility or the duty of skeptics to do anything, except to say: prove it. Show us. Convince us — not by your always-inaccurate computer models — but by solid, real world, empirical evidence, that CO2 will cause runaway global warming. So far, all I see is conjecture.
And if CO2 doesn’t cause runaway global warming, as is becoming increasingly apparent, then we can certainly come up with plenty of better suggestions about where that money should go. I suggest putting it right back into the taxpayers’ pockets.
Flanagan
“Myth 2
“THE POLAR CAPS ARE MELTING” The trye prediction being that Arctic is melting.
“The Arctic ice cap shrank badly two summers ago after years of steady decline, but has since largely recovered.” I guess we’re not talking about the same Arctic
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2007.jpg
etc etc. I could go on, but damn I can’t stand such a level of hypocrisy. Are some people then really ready to do anything in the name of political beliefs?”
If you want an honest view of what happened since 2007 just click on “NH Anomaly” on CT. The current value is about minus 500 000 km2, which is about one SD from the mean (in other words: it’s more or less “normal”). And since “Polar 5” found thicker Eisdeckendicken that thought, “largely recovered” is correct.