We need more guys like this speaking out

Thanks to Dr. Frank for speaking out and informing the general public.
What can the scientific community do to confront the recent unscientific findings of the EPA and associate governement propaganda claining carbon dioxide is a threatening atmospheric pollutant?

I wish some GW would strike Dallas. I am tired of winter already.

Charles Higley (10:14:49) :
The other question is whether Congress, when asked to send billions to the third world for damages that we have supposedly done to them with our CO2 emissions, will start looking seriously at the science to find, easily, reasons not to send the money, particularly in light of the recent over-spending. The real science will support doing nothing.
————————-
Right now, if Bolivia or Venezuela, as good examples, sued the US for those damages in the World Court, could they not subpoena Al Gore and the EPA leadership (to name just a few), as witnesses for the prosecution ??

It will be increasingly difficult to hide behind the “Climategate does not undermine the science of climategate” excuse if a few more papers publish pieces like this.

“Rob M. (10:27:24) :
[…]
Just thought I’d point that out to save the warmists a job.”
So the skeptics control both sides of the debate now by posing as pro AGW? That’s a Fenton Communications move and should be below us.

A great post from Andy Revkin’s blog
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/02/the-greatest-story-rarely-told/?sort=recommended

62. felixw USA
January 2nd, 2010 7:56 pm
If global warming activists want to be taken seriously they might consider:
(1) Debating their opponents rather than pretending they don’t exist;
(2) Treating this issue as a scientific matter dealt with by scientists, and not as an ideological campaign spearheaded by politicians and pundits.
(3) No longer destroying the raw data so their work can’t be checked.
(3) Insisting that groups (such as NASA) share the data they have been hiding, despite repeated requests under the Freedom of Information Act.
(4) No longer saying that the climate is warming in public, but admit that it is cooling in private emails.
(5) No longer manipulating the peer review, tenure and grant systems to marginalize researchers who disagree with them.
(6) Encouraging an atmosphere of openness and transparency in the scientific community.
But if they violate all of these reasonable conditions, they shouldn’t expect to be taken seriously by impartial minds.

What should happen is that any university associated in any way with a “team member” should lose its accreditation. All team members should be barred from receiving any federally sponsored contracts. All team members employed by the federal government should be immediately fired for violation of the Hatch act.
What will happen is that the media will try to muzzle the outcry and things will remain quiet. Remember who is in power. This will infuriate the members of the general public who are informed. The next round of elections will create a turnabout that is unprecedented.
Perhaps from the media perspective, “Its worse than we thought!”.
🙂

Some propositions:
1. Amending Frank, slightly, you don’t have to be a skeptic, but just an observer, to see that the warming since 1850 is nothing unusual, much less alarming or dramatic. Yet it has been sold as alarming and dramatic.
2. The correlation between CO2 and this nothing unusual warming could have as much meaning as the correlation between the increase in the popularity of the cigarette during WWI and the dramatic increase in Western longevity in the 20th Century. Correlations, in other words, are everywhere.
3. A parallel line of climatologists could produce research that shows CO2 is suppressing natural warming rather than adding to it. Where there is no distinct signal, you can fit data to whatever hypothesis you like.
4. What makes Climategate doubly infuriating is that the CRU blokes and their chums elsewhere worked so hard to raise waves in what turns out to be a teacup and now serious people have to attend to fraud on top of the original exaggeration. And “the world” is still spinning around the AGW axis and making a fool of itself.

Meanwhile from the Financial Times we get this:
Will 2010 be the hottest year globally in recorded history?
Climate change sceptics frequently point out that 1998 was the hottest year since measurements began. If the world is warming, why has the record not been broken, they ask.
Scientists say 1998 was so hot because of the exceptional El Niño warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean that year. With another El Niño apparently developing now – and superimposing its effect on man-made climate change – it is more likely than not that 2010 will beat the 1998 record, according to the much-maligned but often accurate UK Met Office.
Although a big volcanic eruption or El Niño’s sudden death would cool things down, I’ll go for the big heat. Next year’s global average temperature will be the highest on record – which may give renewed impetus to international action against global warming, after the Copenhagen fiasco. Clive Cookson
My response, bahahahaha

@philincalifornia
You are saying that Hugo Chavez and Al Gore will become close friends, helping out each other? That’s a logical consequence, right.
Happy crazy New world.

The silence in the main stream comedia has been deafening. It must be a horse size pill to swallow after spewing misinformation all these years. If I were a journalist that had been going on and on about CAGW based mainly on the findings of the IPCC and CRU, I would be loath to admit that my basic assumptions were based on falsehoods. Personally, I would still have the cajones to admit I was wrong, and then let history judge me and my credibility. Fat chance that any of those journalists are going to do that.

“Now that Copenhagen is past history, what is the next step in the man-made global warming controversy? Without question, there should be an immediate and thorough investigation of the scientific debauchery revealed by “Climategate.”” NEIL FRANK
___________________________
So true! But By Who? (Whom?)
The professional associations? Whose boards sold their souls to the big bidders in spite of the divisions within their membership on the issue?
The politicans? Who sold their souls.. scratch that it doens’t make any sense.
The legal system? Give me a break.
Nope! Can’t think of anyone up to doing what the author is saying needs to be done. The only people who can do anything close to what is being suggested are the membership of the “professional” associations. Now they generally didn’t do anything before Copenhagen, so I guess there’s little chance of them cleaning their own houses after the great debacle.
PS: “When a house of cards gets too big it starts to fall.” (Unk)

Mike, I will now pose a question to you that I posed to a poster named Skeptical Skeptic on another thread. What kind of world do you want to see? Where do you see mankind in the future?

It was a sad day in Houston when Dr. Frank retired. Always clear headed, minimum of flim-flam, just the facts, and frequently a little dose of additional knowledge for the public.
The Houston Chronical, has largely been a pro-AGW organ. The cracks are appearing in MSM.

Mike (11:08:42) :
“There is a lot of talk about what “skeptics believe” in this article. There is truth in that: the so-called skeptics are basing their opinions on belief”
After all of this, you really are a true believer, aren’t you?
Anyone without doubts, and that is not seriously questioning it all, at this point would have to be.

CLIMATEGATE
THE LEBENSRAUM FALLACY
The Lebensraum doctrine of Green activists rests on three tenets they accept with an act of faith:
• We are running out of space. World population is already excessive on a limited planet and cannot grow without dire effects.
• We are running out of means. The planet’s non-renewable resources are being depleted by consumption at a rate that renders economic expansion unsustainable.
• We shall fry. Carbon dioxide emitted by human economic activity causes global warming that shall make the planet uninhabitable.
When such tenets are quantified, the contrast between true and false stands out sharply.
Is overpopulation a grave problem? The sum of urban areas of the United States is equivalent to 2% of the area of the country, and to 6% in densely inhabited countries such as England and Holland. And there is plenty of green in urban areas. If comparison is limited to land covered by buildings and pavements the occupied land in the whole world amounts to 0,04% of the terrestrial area of the planet. With 99.96% unoccupied the idea of an overcrowded planet is an exaggeration. Population forecasts are uncertain but the most accepted ones foresee stability of world population to be reached in the 21st century. According to some, world population may begin to decline at the end of this century. With so much elbowroom it is untenable that world population is excessive or shall ever become so.
Strictly speaking, no natural resource is non-renewable in a universe ruled by the Law of Conservation of Mass. In popular form it holds that “Nothing is created, nothing is lost, all is transformed.” Human usage is not subtracted from the mass of the planet, and in theory all material used may be recycled. The possibility of doing so depends on availability and low cost of energy. When fusion energy becomes operative it will be available in practically unlimited quantities. The source is deuterium, a hydrogen isotope found in water, in a proportion of 0.03%. One cubic kilometer of seawater contains more energy than can be obtained from combustion of all known petroleum reserves of the world. Since oceans hold 3 billion cubic kilometers of water, energy will last longer than the human species.
There is no growing shortfall of resources signaled by rising prices. Since the middle of the 19th century The Economist publishes consistent indices of values of commodities and they have all declined, over the period, due to technological advances. The decline has been benign. The cost of feeding a human being was 8 times greater in 1850 than it is today. In 1950, less than half of a world population of 2 billion had an adequate diet, above 2000 calories per day. Today, 80% have the diet, and world population is three times greater.
There is a problem with the alleged global warming. It stopped in 1998, after having risen in the 23 previous years, and unleashing a scare over its effects. Since 1998 it has been followed by 11 years of declining temperatures, in a portent of a cold 21st century. This shows that there are natural forces shaping climate, more powerful than manmade carbon dioxide and anything mankind can do for or against world climate. The natural forces include cyclical oscillation of ocean temperatures, sunspot activity and the effect of magnetic activity of the sun on cosmic rays. All such cycles are foreseeable, but there is no general theory of climate with predictive capacity. What knowledge exists comes from one hundred fields, such as meteorology, oceanography, mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, paleontology, biology, etc. with partial contributions to the understanding of climate.
Devoid of support of solid theory and empirical data, the mathematical models that underpin alarmist forecasts amount to speculative thought that reflects the assumptions fed into the models. Such computer simulations offer no rational basis for public policy that inhibits economic activity “to save the planet”. And carbon dioxide is not a pollutant; it is the nutrient needed for photosynthesis that supports the food chain of all living beings of the planet.
Stories of doom circulate daily. Anything that happens on earth has been blamed on global warming: a Himalayan earthquake, a volcanic eruption, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, tribal wars in Africa, heat wave in Paris, recent severe winters in North America, the hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico, known for five centuries, the collapse of a bridge in Minnesota. Evo Morales blames Americans for the summer floods in Bolivia.
Global warming is not a physical phenomenon; it is a political and journalistic phenomenon that finds parallel in the totalitarian doctrines that inebriated masses deceived by demagogues. As Chris Patten put it: “Green politics at its worst amounts to a sort of Zen fascism; less extreme, it denounces growth and seeks to stop the world so that we can all get off”. In the view of Professor Aaron Wildavsky global warming is the mother of all environmental scares. “Warming (and warming alone), through its primary antidote of withdrawing carbon from production and consumption, is capable of realizing the environmentalist’s dream of an egalitarian society based on rejection of economic growth in favor of a smaller population’s eating lower on the food chain, consuming a lot less, and sharing a much lower level of resources much more equally.” Their dream is the hippies’ lifestyle of idleness, penury, long hair, unshaven face, blue jeans, sandals and vegetarian diet, imposed on the world by decree of Big Brother, and justified by the Lebensraum fallacy.

rob m (11:39:45) :
@ Pascvaks (11:21:24) : I think the professional associations and trade publications need to agree on a set of standards for peer review, etc. Science (GW mostly) has become too politiczed and needs to regain some of its legitamecy.
_____________________
Couldn’t have said it better.
The older I get the more disillusioned and sarcastic I become. Thank you.

>Coal is a much bigger CO2 problem than oil. Coal, coal, coal – not oil. The big problem is coal.
How is coal a problem? (except for mountain mining). I live in Pennsylvania and we get a large % of our electricity from coal. Our winds are from the west and Indiana, Ohio and Illinois all burn a large amount of coal. Yet, we have no pollution, except for some in the cities, where they burn NO COAL.
http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Existing_U.S._Coal_Plants#Statistical_Data_On_Existing_U.S._Coal-Fired_Generating_Stations

“Believers think the warming is man-made, while the skeptics believe the warming is natural and contributions from man are minimal and certainly not potentially catastrophic à la Al Gore.”
Is this what skeptics think? I am a skeptic, and I say it is not known what the truth is. I could have as a hypothesis that man’s contributions will not lead to catastrophic consequences, but I would hope my fellow skeptics are not so balkanized by the egregious actions of the warmers they leave science behind.

The solution to the energy security problem is simple and doesn’t involve slapping consumers with carbon and other hidden taxes. It would also speed up the task of bringing clean energy and halt this misanthropic carbon cult.
Governments should lower corporate taxes on energy producing companies by at least 20%. The savings the companies make should go directly into a collective fund in which all the companies of the world come together to create an open source project to discover the all the best means to power the future.
Once they have worked out the answer the technology will be 80% owned privately by the consortium of companies and 20% nationalised. The latter will be compensation for the tax breaks they received and all the free public thought they received during the globalised open source project.
Memorise that and spread it, push your governments to think like that, because I can’t think of a better and more fairer solution that serves everyone’s interests.

It is fair to assess the outlook of skeptics to read ‘disbelief’. The Believers are the Warmists followers, who are practicing a form of faith. Upon examination, it’s hard to continue blind acceptance when the world around us grows colder.
The science has been railroaded, the record monkeyed with or erased, the predictions pre-determined, the evidence offered cherry-picked, and the storyline monopolized. Collusion was assured by rich rewards or smear threats.
Meanwhile, the Climate did an about-face, backwards march from the warm state it has been in for nearly 3 decades.
It looks like Transylvania out here. What little sun there has been is weak and seen through misty days.
Record snows cover much of the Northern Hemisphere with ever more serious cold snaps in the wings.
It’s very painful to watch the official mainstream forecasts beach themselves in twisted agony. Trapped between climactic reversals and warming-programmed models, the big fish find themselves snared in their own netting.
No exit.
The smart ones stepped away many months ago.

“Roger (12:01:23) :
[…]
Somebody please tell me their thoughts?”
Roger, the basic mechanism of greenhouse gases is not disputed.
But: The greenhouse effect is created by CO2 and water vapour.
These two gasses have a complex interrelationship. It works a bit
counterintuitively:
Earth sends radiation upwards (to cool down).
CO2 and water vapour diffuse this radiation, in the end sending hald of it back downwards and half upwards. due to the physics of absorption and re-radiation, this is always 50:50 !
The greenhouse effect of combined CO2 and water vapour already did this to ALL the IR even before we started emitting industrial CO2!
Now what happens when we increase CO2? Here it becomes complicated.
Basically, the atmosphere becomes optically denser for IR. The absorption and re-radiation happens even earlier – closer to the surface. As a consequence, the higher layers of atmosphere cool down a little and the HUMIDITY DROPS!
When Pinatubo emitted huge amounts of CO2 this was observed!
This means: More CO2 –> less humidity –> same overall greenhouse effect.
It all balances out.
Don’t take my word for it, read this:
http://ker-plunk.blogspot.com/2008/06/saturated-greenhouse-effect-wrecks.html
and for the underlying theory the formulas from:
http://miskolczi.webs.com/ZM_v10_eng.pdf
I know it sounds counterintuitive but there IS NO RUNAWAY FEEDBACK BECAUSE THE ENERGY IS JUST NOT THERE.
Sorry to say this loud but that’s what it boils down to. We already had a maximum greenhouse effect for millions of years.

It will be tough for any computer program or form of data manipulation
to smooth the following ro conform with the warmistas Paradigm:
From:
http://www.wunderground.com/US/WI/002.html
Record Report
Statement as of 3:57 PM CST on January 02, 2010
… Record low temperature set at International Falls MN…
A record low temperature of -37 degrees was set at International
Falls MN today. This breaks the old record of -34 set in 1979.
Public Information Statement
Statement as of 09:15 am CST on January 03, 2010
The temperature observations below are low temperatures from
Sunday January 03 2010 as of 0900 am and may not depict the
lowest temperature of the morning.
Orr 3e … … . -40
Ash Lake … … . -39
Littlefork … … . -39
International Falls… -37
Embarrass … … . -38
kabatogama … … . -36
Crane Lake … … . -35
Orr … … . -35
Cook … … . -35
Bigfork … … . -33
Ely … … . -33
Longville … … . -31
Pine River … … . -31
Brainerd … … . -30
Aitkin … … . -29
Grand Rapids 15n… … -29
Cook 8ne … … . -29
Bruno 7ne … … . -28
Moose Lake … … . -27
Hibbing Arpt … … . -27
Duluth Airport … … . -26
Two Harbors 7ne… … . -26
Grand Rapids … … . -26
McGregor … … . -26
Eveleth … … . -24
Hayward … … . -22
Cloquet … … . -22
Silver Bay … … . -24
Finland 3se … … . -20
Hinckley Arpt … … . -20
Siren … … . -19
Grand Marais Arpt… .. -17
Two Harbors … … . -17
Phillips … … . -17
Superior … … . -13
Sky Harbor … … . -9
Grand Marais Harbor… -6
Ashland … … . 0
All temps are in the key of F not C degrees.
Reply: Well….Orr 3e could just as well be Celsius. ~ ctm

Somebody please tell me their thoughts?

Well, first the obvious: The Earth is not a coke bottle.
But second, although there are some here who question the basic link between CO2 and atmospheric warming, I think the vast majority of folks here accept the “basic physics and chemistry”, but not the convoluted arguments based on global circulation models and the magical “everything is caused by global warming” claims.
Sure, “all things being equal”, the earth is likely to be warmer with a higher level of CO2, but that’s the trick isn’t it? “All things being equal”.
And that leaves us with:
1) how much?
2) by when?
3) so what?
Item 3 is not just meant as a smart a$$ remark. It is asked in all seriousness. So the Earth warms by x amount by year y. What does it really mean to the Earth?
You can’t answer that with a coke bottle experiment.

Well, Roger, AGW was sold on the basis of the hockey stick. It was sold as recent, dramatic, unprecedented warming. But it isn’t dramatic or unprecedented. That was merely an artful presentation that has taken years to put in context. The AGW people had a big head start and then held both carrot and hockey stick with which to intimidate skeptical attitudes, much less entice researchers into not rocking the boat.
I don’t know if there is a counter-consensus about CO2. But if I was forced to guess, then I would say that it would be that the Earth’s climate system is too complex and too formidable in that complexity to be overridden by even a substantial increase in a relatively minor if essential atmospheric gas like CO2.
Otherwise, scientists can argue all night about the complexities involved, but the A signal in the very minor GW of the past 150 years is very faint, which is being generous.
At least that’s what I get out of my ten years following this. I have always been very conscious of the environment and spent several years of an otherwise misspent youth writing and editing on solar technologies. I looked into the AGW matter cold, and I’ve always sensed that the skeptics have made the better case, starting with the great ones like Lindzen.

Great article Dr. Frank – here we have a man who has spent his life working in Meteorology and Al Gore, a wannabe climatologist, gets the press – we are victims of a dumbed-down media circus. We have a new provincial gov. in N.S. (New Democratic/Socialist) busy chasing their tails with a green agenda, while they are facing a hefty deficit. Their leader took an entourage to Copenfraud and they all returned with high expectations for new green business in 2010. Our schools are filled with this so called “settled” science and our smaller municipalities are on the same path as the big guys. I’m waiting for the day the Old Stream Media are exposed for being co-conspirators in this U.N. driven pseudo-science. Until then we can only keep up the GOOD FIGHT… follow the money!!!

OT
Since December 19 there has been record snow every day in the US.
you can do daily map here
http://mapcenter.hamweather.com/records/7day/us.html?c=maxtemp,mintemp,lowmax,highmin,snow

If you have not heard, hackers penetrated the computers of the Climate Research Unit, or CRU,
We don’t yet know it’s hackers. But anyway.

I found this list of “skeptical” scientists.
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html

This will, indeed, go a long way to spread some sanity around locally. Dr. Frank spent many years here as the “go-to” guy on anything weather related and especially hurricanes.
As someone previously said, he’s a “just the facts ma’am” kind of no-nonsense character. If he says it, then Brother, in Houston it’s gospel!

There is no such thing as settled science. The very term is unscientific.
The term “made up my mind” means what? It means I will no longer entertain additional input, regardless of its veracity and the degree to which it invalidates my opinion at this moment. It means that I will not change my mind, even when confronted with unimpeachable evidence that I am wrong.

Neal (12:45:44) :
In the EUSSR, nuclear is given a carbon equivalence value making France officially one of the most carbon polluting countries in the EUSSR with ~80% nuclear.
DaveE.

From Dirk 12:29
Roger, the basic mechanism of greenhouse gases is not disputed.
But: The greenhouse effect is created by CO2 and water vapor.
These two gasses have a complex interrelationship. It works a bit
counter intuitively:
Earth sends radiation upwards (to cool down).
CO2 and water vapor diffuse this radiation, in the end sending hold of it back downwards and half upwards. due to the physics of absorption and re-radiation, this is always 50:50 !
COOL and accepted so far so good!
The greenhouse effect of combined CO2 and water vapor already did this to ALL the IR even before we started emitting industrial CO2!
All Good here why we have habitable atmosphere – the sweet spot. so then you agree that without global warming we’d be out of luck and earth would a whole lot colder – YES?
My point the same mechanism that caused this as a habitable (sp) planet was due to naturally occurring CO2 and the mechanism you described above.
I believe we accept this premise.
Pinatubo cooling was basically ejection material ash and other chemicals which caused much more reflected sunlight in the stratosphere i,e See “Year without a summer”, 3 volcanoes mainly Mt. Tambora ejection material with more outgoing long wave radiation OLR which then cooled the earth? I do not think CO2 had much if anything to do with that cooling.
I’ll wait for your response thank you very much! I think this is where might start to differ on causes. I want to explore more of this.
Thanks Dirk

Neil Frank,…was director of the National Hurricane Center (1974–87)…
Ah, I see. So he’s not on the fringe.

Throwing them out of office is essential. Another journalist went so far as to say that American voters are the last, best hope for this task, as the rest of the free world is no longer “free.”
Today, Nature Magazine, called a “great” science magazine, has a front-page write-up on their hero, Steven Chu, the US energy secretary who is going to direct the spending of billions of dollars on global warming. He uses the hockey stick as his evidence. (He just received billions more of stimulus money.)
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091223/full/462978a.html
Look at his power. Look at the money.

P.S., Yall may have heard that Houston had a record-early, snowman-capable event on Dec 4th. I’ve got a really dead banana tree to prove it. This was a bit less than a year after tying the previous record on Dec 12th, 2008. Two snow years in a row is also unprecedented, as far as I know.
But, as we all know…weather is not climate!

photon without a Higgs (12:54:28) :
Fair to say that it was “rumored” to be hackers by those with mud on thier faces. The hacker theory is a diversion.
There are other far more plausible explanations.
Like someone on the inside bent on delivering a ‘payback’.

PJP 12:56 wrote.
Thanks for the reply. In the experiment which was supposed to be botched the skeptic of the experiment stated:
“A greater amount of carbon dioxide will be warmer when heat is applied. This is not a surprise!”
Well then – admission? to what I’m trying to get at. We accept that CO2 works just fine to stay in our current climate sweet spot and the very admission that when you add CO2 it heats is exactly my point and is a law of physics that was discovered back to 1816 I believe.
We are not as the feedback level yet which is debatable, but I hear read that CO2 heating the planet does not work and I beg to differ in that if it did not we would be living on an inhabitable planet – NO?
So with the premise it works OK for sustainable life – why not the argument that too much of it (CO2) drives warming and a lot of it makes it unsustainable perhaps?
I’m just looking for the logic train here and thanks very much for your respectable indulgence.

John M (12:35:45) :
Somebody please tell me their thoughts?
Well, first the obvious: The Earth is not a coke bottle.
But second, although there are some here who question the basic link between CO2 and atmospheric warming, I think the vast majority of folks here accept the “basic physics and chemistry”, but not the convoluted arguments based on global circulation models and the magical “everything is caused by global warming” claims.
Sure, “all things being equal”, the earth is likely to be warmer with a higher level of CO2, but that’s the trick isn’t it? “All things being equal”.
And that leaves us with:
1) how much?
2) by when?
3) so what?
Item 3 is not just meant as a smart a$$ remark. It is asked in all seriousness. So the Earth warms by x amount by year y. What does it really mean to the Earth?
You can’t answer that with a coke bottle experiment.
John all well taken. I’m agnostic on EVERYTHING. It is not my religion as it might be to some, but that plays both ways, but i want to stay with the science because I can learn from you as you can learn from me – I think it’s improvement in dialogue and that’s healthy.
I think the 1.2.3’s are really important
all I was after is to see basics apply so we can agree and dispute with some reasonable agreement.
Thank you John M.

Mike (11:00:17) :
The big problem is coal.
You’re right. There isn’t any where near enough of it being used!
This is a big problem.

Mike (11:08:42) :
those who accept the preponderance of scientific evidence for AGW are derided as “believers”.
I see you played the ‘Big Tobacco’ card in your comment.
Would you list the scientific evidence for the disaster scenarios of ‘manmade global warming’. You used the word ‘preponderance’. So you must have a long list of data to back this word.
BTW, computer climate models are not data. Science needs data to be real science. So will you list the data that shows disasters are coming to the earth from manmade co2?
Also, I see manmade global warming disaster believers are using the word preponderance lately. Is this planned?

“Roger (13:39:43) :
[…]
We are not as the feedback level yet which is debatable,”
Roger, of course there is feedback! But beware! Water vapour gives birth to more watervapour! Of course! But the gain is extremely weak as in a near-saturated absorption it is a very flat part of a logarithmic function – whether we talk about CO2 or water vapour.
See the grafic by Anthony Watts in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/15/9373/
So the “echo” of the feedback gets ever so faint… The alarmists proudly show their feedbacks and their tipping points but what they don’t say is that the feedback must be so weak as to be statistically insignificant.

Woo Teva (13:04:12) :
…the fact remains: THE OIL WILL RUN OUT!
There’s no need to use caps and yell at us. Many people who comment on this blog know the facts about natural resources. Yelling at them won’t change their minds.

DirkH (11:58:13) :
I think he meant denial and not cognitive dissonance.

westhoustongeo (13:27:24) :
But, as we all know…weather is not climate!
But climate is climate. The earth has been cooling for years. There has been earlier starting and longer lasting winters all around the world for 3 years. And summers in the Northern Hemisphere have been milder. (I don’t know if this is true of the Southern Hemisphere—can anyone fill me in?) All of these things add up to climate and not weather.

Woo Teva (13:04:12) Nice try!! The emails and all they contain are significant in the extreme. Did you even read them? These guys are in trouble and they know it. As for the oil stuff, it is the only viable alternative at the moment, despite what you might believe. We need energy to move forward and to discover better alternatives. Do you believe we need to go backwards to go forwards? If so, it is you who is insane.

Sorry, another retiree article on AGW, my my, will that ever see mainstream news. Nope. Nice to read it, but the alarmist are regrouping for an counter attack.
The myth must be shattered decisively. We must choke off their flow of money. We must demand that both sides must receive the same share of Government monies into climate change research. We must put pressure on business that support networks that peddle this hoax that it is in their best interest to support media that are willing to give a balanced account of the science.
A movie on climategate or a series on HBO or some other cable mainstream provider.
Unlike Y2K we don’t have a count down date to expose this hoax, we need to shove harder. Unfortunately the Canadian Government has decided that whatever the U.S. government decides is what Canada and other nations will be compiled to do or face trade sanctions.
It really is an American game, you have the ball now, push, push hard.

Mike (11:08:42) :
There is a lot of talk about what “skeptics believe” in this article. There is truth in that: the so-called skeptics are basing their opinions on belief, not on facts or scientific evidence. Meanwhile, those who accept the preponderance of scientific evidence for AGW are derided as “believers”. The cognitive dissonance is loud and not so astonishing. The parallels between the way Big Tobacco fought science and the current “debate” are deep and significant.

Mike, that’s a problem of interpretation. I just watched an episode of Wallander, the Swedish detective. He is struggling with himself because he has the impression that the criminals are dark and foreign, but he is trying to ignore this impression because he is worried that it may just be a product of his own racism. I’ll not say how the story ends.
Sure, you can draw an interpretative parallel with Big Tobacco. But if anything, Big Tobacco illustrated that science can be corrupted. So how do you tell the real culprit? Carbon trading is a potential corruption. How would you make that judgement? How are we to interpret you, when you claim that the preponderance of evidence is in your favour, whilst people here are left scratching their heads over how the evidence could make any sense? Do you always trust experts? Do you trust the scientists who say there is no evidence that genetically modified food is unsafe? Do you support genetically modified food?
I refer you to David Ball’s question:
What kind of world do you want to see? Where do you see mankind in the future?

I’m thinking we are over the target once again.

“Roger (12:01:23) :
…Somebody please tell me their thoughts?”
Roger, I am a now retired R&D chemist. When I looked at the experiment you mentioned the first thing I saw was the warmer line on the graph corresponded to the bottle containing the most mass (mwt CO2 = 44; av mwt air is approximately 29). Thus for an interesting ‘like vs like’ experiment you might (carefully) pressurise the bottle full of air to 1.5 bar, and leave the bottle of CO2 at atmospheric pressure. The mass in each bottle would then be similar, but then the graph would be different, possibly with the relationship reversed.
My point is that arguably both experiments are in theory equally valid, but give quite different results. It would be hard to extrapolate either to the real world.

“DirkH (14:20:04) :
Roger, of course there is feedback! But beware! Water vapour gives birth to more watervapour! Of course! But the gain is extremely weak as in a near-saturated absorption it is a very flat part of a logarithmic function – whether we talk about CO2 or water vapour. ”
And to bring this into the context of Ferenc M. Miskolczi’s just so its complete: Right after this feedback has increased water vapour a tiny bit – near the surface where water can evaporate – we should see a drop in the temperature higher above, reducing the water carrying capacity of the air above as it gets colder and probably some of it will rain down.
Also, pondering further, it is never explicitly mentioned in the greenhouse-effect-for-schoolkids grafics, all this GHG of course also reflects some of the incoming IR right back into space. Half of it.

dekitchen:
“it means nothing unless we know what their PhD was in”
What part of this did you not understand?:
“Ph.D. from Florida State University in meteorology”
Frank has been a top-notch weather expert for decades, as you or anyone can look up.
photon:
“The earth has been cooling for years”
Couldn’t agree more. I was anticipating the “weather is not climate” argument and ridiculing it in advance.
Look at this arctic sea-ice graph, for example:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
25% MORE (at minimum) since 2007!

As far as oil (more specifically, hydrocarbons) running out: I can tell you that everybody with a coast (except West and the East Coast US) is hunting offshore for (and finding) same. In the US and abroad, black marine shales like the Bakken, Barnett and Marcellus are quietly producing more and more natural gas and sweet light crude.
The amount of hydrocarbon reserves has just exploded. Oil companies won’t provide details for competitive reasons. It is probable that a century would not exhaust said reserves.
Doubt me if you must, but those last three letters on my ID do not stand for geometry. I know whereof I speak.

***************
Roger (12:01:23) :
http://www.picotech.com/experiments/global/globalwarming.html
Somebody please tell me their thoughts?
***************
Hi Roger,
Here is a much better experiment. Here the physicists explains why the experiment is justified.
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073/

Dr. Neil is a man of the highest integrity.
It was my pleasure to watch him over many years.
What the AGW hack promoters are going to do to him now is only indicative of how corrupt the AGW community is.

royfomr,
You can snidely pretend you are arriving at belief in AGW after reviewing the facts, but you are only fooling yourself.

Roger, two problems right away are the pop bottle has far more CO2 than the atmosphere and worse, the bottle is under pressure which raises the temperature (all other things being equal).
As for the amount of warming from CO2, it is real but small. Here are some graphs showing different estimations of the amount of warming from CO2 doubling http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/co2greenhouse-X2.png There is some controversy about those charts, but no quantitative argument that it is much more than shown.
The real controversy comes from water vapor feedback, otherwise known as weather. It boils down to a few simpler questions, if tropical convection becomes more concentrated in the tropics after the slight warming from CO2, then there will be negative feedback. If not, there will be positive feedback. Also the height of the tropopause will matter and the boundary between tropical and temperate zones. Weather features such as convection are extremely poorly modelled in the climate models (inadequate resolution).
The real world measurements of water vapor feedback have been measure and argued in both positive and neutral or negative directions. The resolution of the feedback question is far more important than any effect of CO2 itself.

“westhoustongeo (15:27:26) :
The amount of hydrocarbon reserves has just exploded. Oil companies won’t provide details for competitive reasons. It is probable that a century would not exhaust said reserves.”
Do you mean in-situ hydraulic crushing of shale to extract shale gas? That was already in the news. In Lower Saxony in Germany where i live Shell (i think) will start some tests this year AFAIK, we probably have a lot of that.

DirkH (15:05:27) :
“… this GHG of course also reflects some of the incoming IR right back into space. Half of it.”
Not true. Not all IR radiation is equal(Incoming is much shorter wavelength than outgoing). Sorry.

Well said!
I always liked Dr. Frank when he was head of the Hurricane Center.
Thinking out loud here…just take some of the premiere hurricane experts out there:
Frank….Gray……Landsea…..Maue……
Not ONE of these mentioned is a Warmist.
I have a question: Just where….where the is that “small minority” of global warming skeptic scientists???
Small minority, my ***!
More like a SIGNIFICANT “minority”.
And one day in the future, the number will a MAJORITY….because NATURAL SELECTION demands it!
Under the blue shroud of a severe NH cold outbreak, as CRU and the UKMet and NASA Goddard and their piss-poor leadership continues to lose credibility, that day may happen sooner than later.
Can’t happen fast enough for me.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Roger (14:31:03) :
I will throw a party if there is no AGW
Have you checked the data? Climate is cooling. AGW predictions are wrong.
Of course when you talk about AGW you could be meaning a broad range of things.
But in general it mean disasters are now on earth and more and even worse ones are coming from manmade co2. There is no science to prove this is true.
So have your party.

Woo Teva (13:04:12) :
Try reading instead of emoting. If you had bothered to follow the threads on Climate Audit, read the Wegman report or any of the sites that are actually trying to replicate the temperature data you’ll find that the so called “climate scientists” are doing anything but using standard statistical methods. And since when was throwing in “fudge factors” a standard statistical method?
So if the oil runs out: problem solved right? What has the oil running out have to do with whether CO2 is driving the climate to a catastrophic state? Get a grip and stop drinking the Kool-aid.

“acementhead (16:48:50) :
DirkH (15:05:27) :
“… this GHG of course also reflects some of the incoming IR right back into space. Half of it.”
Not true. Not all IR radiation is equal(Incoming is much shorter wavelength than outgoing). Sorry.”
Oh, thanks for the correction. Found this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmospheric_Transmission.png
I would’ve thought the suns spectrum was broader. My fault.

Woo Teva (13:04:12) :
“Oh my god you people are just plain insane!”
—-
Reply: If open discussion and being inquisitive are the hallmarks of insanity, may it strike me and everyone else here.
“Did you even read the controversial parts of the emails?
Aside from standard “We have to make sure we are the ones to get published” BS the statistical methods that has been questioned are standard procedures that any minor stat student would know.”
—-
Reply: I understand Mann formulated his own statistical methods rather than buying several off-the-shelf statistical packages that were far superior to what he was able to cobble together (It’s also a big reason he’d never let any statisticians review his work–the results would be…well, about what we have found they were–laughable).
But to counter your assertions, I would say it is you who has not read any of the emails. And I would also submit that, as a scientist myself, their content show professional actions that are deplorable in the extreme. These people truly cannot be called by the name “scientist”.
“Even if you distrust the treehuggers, the fact remains: THE OIL WILL RUN OUT!”
—-
Reply: This has been handled sufficiently by many comments above. However, you’re asking me to trust “treehuggers” regarding a solution? (An image of Fred Flintstone foot-peddling his “tree car” just struck me.) As an engineer, I have not seen a single solution proposed by “treehuggers” that has merit. And many solutions that I consider viable are being ignored.
“So even a lie regarding the climate change is IN YOUR BEST INTEREST!”
—-
Reply: Not if we all invest in a wardrobe that’s geared to hot weather just to find another glacial epoch has arrived. You’re going to look pretty silly on that glacier barefoot and nearly naked. And no amount of sun block will keep you warm.
[FURTHER REPLY – Peak Oil: Peek and ye shall find. ~ Evan]

Anthony, might I suggest that you give all your moderators a healthy rise in pay. They are truly magnificent !! ( I know that they do not get payed, but if they did, they would rightly deserve a substantial bonus in this months envelope.) If I had the resources, I would supply said envelope. *SIGH* If only there were some truth to the “big oil shill” debasement. Now I must go and carpe my diem !!
REPLY: [ I’ve heard a rumor our pay will be doubled! 😉 -mod]

While we are busy investigating the CRU fiddle consider the fact that the GISS and NOAA data is compliant with that of CRU.
CRU was adulterated by the heroes at CRU so that it fit the results of the other two. Ergo the other two must be “fudged” as well.

I read parts of the comment section in the Houston Chronicle (it long) and the AGW proponents have now picked up the meme that since the AP (Associated Press) says the Climategate docments don’t disprove AGW then it must be so!
Please, the AP is a committed liberal media group.
The AP is no more qualified than anybody else to judge the documents of Climategate and likely less objective because they have a liberal bias (like many MSM).
Just because the Associated Press says so?
Fat chance — take that argument back to the barn and throw it in with the pigs where it belongs.
It stinks…

James F. Evans (00:03:17) :
“I read parts of the comment section in the Houston Chronicle (it long) and the AGW proponents have now picked up the meme that since the AP (Associated Press) says the Climategate docments don’t disprove AGW then it must be so!….
Just because the Associated Press says so?
Fat chance — take that argument back to the barn and throw it in with the pigs where it belongs.
It stinks…”
PALEEASE do not insult the pigs. They are very clean and smart… which is more than I can say for the Associated Press.

If the science is settled, we should cut the funding for research.
The money can be used to build nuclear power plants, the cheapest alternative to coal plants. Perhaps even cheaper.

Ed, from Portland,OR (11:06:27) :
Ed, link?

Woo Teva (13:04:12) :
“Even if you distrust the treehuggers, the fact remains: THE OIL WILL RUN OUT!”

Reply: WRONG! E.M.Smith reply is on the money, read and learn.
In addition to oil there is still plenty of low hanging fruit from hydroelectric schemes and as technology progresses new forms of energy will be developed (e.g. Fussion Reactors). When forecasting the future of the development of the human race, never underestimate our intelligence and creativity. Things tend to be developed quicker if our backs are against the wall. The coming cool climate period will test this to the maximum degree, but I’m sure we will get through this period with minimal loses.

# Tenuc (05:38:42) :
Woo Teva (13:04:12) :
“Even if you distrust the treehuggers, the fact remains: THE OIL WILL RUN OUT!”
Reply: WRONG! E.M.Smith reply is on the money, read and learn.
In addition to oil there is still plenty of low hanging fruit from hydroelectric schemes and as technology progresses new forms of energy will be developed (e.g. Fussion Reactors).
Fusion reactors sound nice and clean, but in reality they are very, very dirty at the moment. You produce the heat in the fusion process by slowing the nuclear fragments produced in the process. This leads to radioactive waste in large quantities. I am sure in time we can deal with it, but that is off in the future sometime. Till then, I would be much more in favor of breeder reactors and fuel reprocessing. We know how to do that right and it would get rid of a lot of our waste fuel problem. Unlike the “greens”, scientists and engineers are optimists. The greens would have us all huddling around a fire, being sick and dying early.

Where are the responses from the skeptic bashers? Any rebuttal ? I am here because I want to learn. I am willing to read the rebuttals and digest them. We may disagree, but we are not disagreeable. The discussion is what I enjoy and it is what makes this site worthy of my time. That being said, E.M. Smith, I have always been impressed by your posts and research. Every post continues to impress and I thoroughly hope that one day I may be able to present my viewpoints as clearly and eloquently as you, sir. Many thanks.

Roger (12:01:23) :… I believe that AGW is real, it’s why we have had the recent warming, but that there are other cycles and “natural variation” … I’m after the facts and want to learn from any skeptic that would give me a little of their time and respect …. forget the hockey stick and the so called climate gate… if the basic science is correct… Somebody please tell me their thoughts?
Roger, if it’s not too late, try reading the Primer I wrote (click my name). What I found was that it was difficult for me to be really really certain on any single issue with the limited understanding of science I had at that time; but put all the arguments together and the evidence against AGW is overwhelming. When I’d looked into every crevice of the science, I wrote it all up as this Primer. And gradually I gained certainty about every single detail as well.

Woo Teva (13:04:12) : Oh my god you people are just plain insane! … Grow a geard will ya!
No idea if this drive-by type will ever return to actually debate or even discover that debating here is possible, unlike some places… might it be possible to have a standard invite-to-debate tag that moderators can add?… then we can also count how many respond.

A bit O/T, but one of the promising technologies is cold fusion.
I know, I know… everybody’s laughing.
But the reason “cold fusion” isn’t in the news much anymore is because they’ve changed the name–it’s now know as LENR, for Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, and there’s a lot of headway being made overseas in places like Japan and Israel. Indeed, a number of patents have been granted regarding the phenomenon and recently a medical device which operates on the basis of LENR has been marketed. Even the US Navy has demonstrated LENR in their laboratories. They’ve even gotten the theory pretty much figured out, but there’s still a lot more to investigate. It is a very fascinating field and I believe there’s a lot of potential there, too.

@steve4319
I disagree. The impact of cap and collar regimes on western economies will be non trivial while the likely impact on the climate will be close to zero.

Gail Combs (02:24:38)
I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have insulted the pigs that way — they are way cleaner than the Associated Press.

That has been my argument all along. If these computer models can’t get a 5 day forecast right why in the world would we believe a 1, 10, 50, or 100 year forecast??? Shoot just look at the hurricane forecasts, those are rarely accurate on point of impact even at only a few days out.

[funny, but this is not an “anti-scientist” site ~ ctm]

David Ball (17:01:46) :
Steve4319, might I refer you to the question in my post at David Ball(11:25:35). Same question for you. And anyone else who might care to answer.
David Ball (11:25:35) :
Mike, I will now pose a question to you that I posed to a poster named Skeptical Skeptic on another thread. What kind of world do you want to see? Where do you see mankind in the future?
Answer:
A world of truth, kindness and cooperation. Instead of a world that contains lies, hatred and competition.
As for mankind in the future, that I cannot predict and neither can anyone else. However I am positive and optimistic.

Aneutronic fusion energy is near to become a reality, it is safe and clean, without radioactive wastes, it is neutron-free, carbon-free, and can reduce the climate change.