Heh, this is entertaining.
While Bill Nye argues for “in whose best interest is denial?” and brings up the ridiculous CO2 on Venus argument, Joe Bastardi runs circles around him with technical graphs and explanations on forcing factors and their magnitudes.
Warmists scream “weather is not climate!”. We need to shout back “Venus is not Earth!” since the Venusian atmosphere is entirely different in compositions and forcings, and we understand it far less than Earth’s.
Meanwhile, Bill O”Reilly seems more concerned about making his commercial break on time than saving the planet.
Nye needs a better argument, as Fox News viewers can see past the appeal to emotion. Bastardi while far more technically competent than Nye, needs to focus on explaining a bit about natural cycles, since few viewers would know what the “PDO” is.
A caveat for both men, doing live TV debate by the seat of your pants is tough. You can’t see each other, and you are communicating via earpiece audio. Live TV is never easy, live via satellite interlinks is even tougher.
Watch the segment => here.
h/t to WUWT reader “pwl”
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Julian Braggins (01:37:34) :
Ah, very good. I was going to say that too, but figured I’d see if someone else did already. The WUWT readership seems to be big enough so I don’t have to read everything any more to make sure my point of view or factoid gets heard. Maybe I can break my addiction to WUWT now!
Links to Venus atmospheric profiles:
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEM5A373R8F_index_1.html
http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/vel/1918vpt.htm
Warning: the second one is a bit weird. Okay, more than a bit weird. However, the graphs are easy to read.
Marvin (comments above), you are quite correct. TV for the most part is moronic and dumbed down to get ratings. This was pitiful to put Bill Nye clearly in-over-his-head against an expert meteorologist like Bastardi, but it’s better than anything else on TV. Every other network is pro AGW.
Mr ‘science’ guy Nye dismiss climate-gate as just typical of what happens in scientific debates. What?!
I wonder if O’Reilly will follow with a dopey segment on analyzing the body language of this ‘debate’
Our planet learned young to incorporate a resource it had to protect water from evaporating and boiling away and that is salt and rotation.
Without water a planet or gas can only absorb or reflect heat.
Our planet has learned to use a complex method to regulate itself from becoming too hot or too cold using evaporation and water.
Our land masses separating shows that we have not lost or gained any water as the edges of the land are still well defined.
Rotational energy is limited and will eventually slow to a stop when the compressed energy in the mass is used up.
Our concept of our core is incorrect as speed of rotation pushes mass to the outer edge. Our concept of the core being nickel because it was pulled down by gravity is incorrect.
The pompous unsmiling face of Bill Nye is mute testimony to the workings of his mind. He believes that he is smarter, better and holier than thou. Whatever he believes is not to be questioned; he believes that all must bow to his will.
No Meteorologist can know more than he does.
gcb (05:10:07) :
I used to faithfully watch Mr Wizard (Don Herbert). I learned a lot from
that show. I’m not sure how one learns from Bill Nye, way too frenetic.
Maybe a level in between would work.
Oh wow – Mr. Wizard’s on the Web!
http://www.mrwizardstudios.com/
I remember him making a hammer out of mercury frozen by liquid nitrogen. Mercury was great stuff, Dad would bring a little home from work from time to time. Sometimes while on a long car trip we’d buy one of those little plastic mazes with a drop of mercury instead a ball bearing.
Sadly, Dad didn’t work with liquid nitrogen.
I bet Bill Nye never made a mercury hammerhead!
I watched last night with open mouth. If Mr Nye is the best they can put up it is definitiely worse than they thought. A few incoherent talking points and appeals to authority and it’s all clearly OK not to be a skeptik ?
Joe did very well but I agree the lay memebers of the public might have been confused by his use of acronyms. Having said that he had only a few seconds. I like Joe a lot.
Mr O’Reilly didn’t come off well at all. He seemed to be in a complete fog all night for example not understanding the difference between a democratic socialist and a communist dictator. If you can’t undestand that one Bill it might be time to hang it up.
Mars has 9x the amount of CO2 as earth yet it’s cold.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/mars_water_011129.html
A little off-topic, but has anyone seen the post on slashdot about AGW?
here is a post on this thread that imho would be worth of post-of-the month, or some additional discussion here on WUWT….
Nope, i am not the author of this post, only read it and found it well written and highlighting what I have found disturbing from the begining with AGW alarmism, even before founding some problems with the science itself…
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1559622&cid=31242996
Actually, this was kind of a breakthrough for O’Reilly who has spurned the climate change topic previously. Six months ago he commented that he believed that there was global warming because he trusted the NOAA temp. history.
With his audience dwarfing the other cable networks, he could serve a function to show that there is still a debate. I doubt he’ll choose a side.
Peter Miller said:
“1. Venus’ atmosphere is 96.5% (965,000ppm) carbon dioxide, Earth’s is 0.038% (380ppm) -2,539 times greater.
2. Venus’ atmosphere is 92 times denser than Earth’s.
3. Venus is much closer to the sun – 67 million miles, as opposed to 93 million miles.”
You should add:
4. Venus has a permanent upper level cloud deck creating a legitimate greenhouse condition, which Earth does not have.
Nye also glosses over the fact that CO2 has not always been 280 ppm in the past, he implies that CO2 was low until recently.
E. Beck’s compilation of direct chemical bottle CO2 data shows clearly that CO2 has fluctuated from <280 to up to 550 ppm several times in the last 200 years, most recently above 440 ppm (at 388 ppm now) in the 1940s. This hokum that CO2 has been historically low is a proven lie created by cherry-picking the data.
Also, plants do not function well at CO2 below 200 ppm. 280 is too darned close for comfort, if we want our O2 levels to be maintained. Anybody thought about that little point, when they criticize and demonize CO2?
If Bill Nye remains one of the alarmists’ spokespeople….. awesome!
[snip I’ve snipped several comments on discussions of appearance, please don’t post any more]
I was under the impression that this debate was going to be about
Nye’s absurd assertion a couple of weeks ago that this winter was caused by global warming. That is what I was prepared for, and was going to link
the major external forcing factors I used for the winter idea to the triple
crown of cooling ideas I am pushing over the next 20-30 years. Unknown
to me, the debate changed to pure global warming as the latest IPCC
debacle ( how NYE refers to them with any seriousness is flabbergasting
given their credibility issues) about sea levels. So I was set to hammer
him on that, but it turned into a pure global warming debate.
And yes the Venus thing caught me off guard but not in the way you
might think. I just couldnt believe he would actually bring that up
because it has nothing to do with this. So I reacted in a way that hopefully got a sarcastic point across. Neither he nor I know how Venus got that
way, and the earth is certainly not on that path. But the ideas brought up
by you folks probably would have been better. I do more reading of spiritual
things and weather related items than I do on the planets, and so I reacted that way.
I am not someone who wants to be out front on global warming simply
to be part of this debate, but
instead wishes to show that my position is leading to better forecasts
and hence, attract business. Its like training with weights. I may know
inside and out what I am doing, but I do it to compete, not to be
a trainer. So I will fight like a tiger to show why you better darn well
understand where the earths temps are going, if you want to forecast,
but the debates I crave are weather oriented and I do every day by making a forecast!. Every time you forecast, you debate the weather, and other weather people
God made me to forecast the weather, and that is what I do. That I am convinced that we are cooling the next 30 years, and more worried about
ice, than fire is because I need to know things like this to improve forecasts.
Sheep get slaughtered, wolves eat. Following blindly along in this
matter can lead to being slaughtered in a forecast.
All the best
JB
Haha Venus is about 41 million kilometers closer to the Sun than Earth. Of course it will be warmer than earth. Is that really an arguement proving AGW?
Chris Wright said:
“As far as I’m aware, no one has been able to prove that the climate on Earth was driven by CO2 in any epoch of Earth’s history. ”
Right! Arrhenius speculated in 1896 about CO2 possibly warming the atmosphere, but his hypothesis was never proven.
What many people do not know is that CO2 absorbing IR does not produce warmed CO2. The energy is almost immediately re-radiated as IR – it is not realized as kinetic energy (heat). There is, however, the slight chance that, while temporarily energized by IR absorption, a molecule might bump into another and the energy could be transferred as heat, causing warming. This is not a high efficiency process and allows CO2 to have a tiny warming effect, which we all agree it can accomplish.
But, it’s effectiveness in this minor way is subject to Beer’s Law and diminishing returns as its concentrations in the atmosphere increase. At current levels it is 90-95% exhausted.
The IPCC would like to have us believe that this tiny effect by CO2 is magnified 10 or more times by water vapor, which is the dominant heat-trapping gas by far. However, this time 2+2≠4 as they get in each other’s way and do not have a strictly additive effect.
Much to the IPCC’s discredit, they systematically pretend that the Earth’s atmosphere is a real greenhouse in which the air does not circulate vertically. Water vapor is part of a global-sized heat engine which carries energy upwards where it is released by condensation and lost very effectively to space. This yields the principle heat-trapping gas in our atmosphere to be a huge negative forcing factor which prevents the atmosphere from excessive warming.
The icing on the cake that Arrhenius was wrong in his speculation is the recent work of Miskolczi and his colleague Zagoni in which they worked out the thermodynamics of CO2 and water vapor. They have elegantly described the interaction of these atmospheric components and shown that they interact such that water vapor decreases as CO2 increases, yielding a relatively constant heat-trapping effect. (A decrease i upper level water vapor has indeed been detected.) Their conclusion is that CO2 is effectively irrelevant to our climate.
CO2 is plant food and the source of our food and oxygen.
[snip]
Joe Bastardi (06:30:23) ,
Joe, I thought you did a very good job. Showing that you predicted this winter before hand gave you credibility. To the majority of people who are unsure about AGW this was probably key. You now have credibility and you don’t believe in AGW. That will be what convinces many people. They won’t understand the rest of it.
[snip]
Bastardi connected with reality. Sorry Joe was over Nye’s head.
As a Premium Member I posted the following on O’Reilly’s website after the show – ‘Bill Nye? He’s a micro-pinhead! On MSNBC he said, “The IPCC got a ….. scientific prize for making a discovery. They discovered climate change….” And the even dumber thing he said was, “Older people just have a much harder time grasping the idea that….” Mr. O, Bill Nye is less of a “science guy” than my pet squirrel.’
Now, I don’t actually have a pet squirrel but you have to keep explanations simple for Mr. O because as he has said many times, he’s a “simple” guy. The real tragedy here, as Marvin (03:01:46) pointed out above is “That debate was disturbingly poorly communicated.” Wrong people, not enough time, dreadful science analogies, incorrect format – – – it’s a real shame because The Factor has a very large middle of the road audience, but based on that segment last night, they should stick to political subjects and guests wherein (unfortunately) simple mindedness abounds and rules the day.
[snip – no comments on that here please]
@Joe Kirklin Bastardi:
As a long time consumer of your forecasts (usually via finance / investing related venues) I have to say: You Rock!
I always know when the hurricane season is serious and oil is a good trade because I’ll see your work showing up on two competing finance / trade TV channels. Neither one can afford to go with “second best” 😉
My theory, which is mine:
The Sun was once a planet like Earth, inhabited by humans, who unwisely emitted so much carbon dioxide that their home burst into self-sustaining nuclear fire.
Hope everyone sent a copy of their comment here to O’Reilly. TV personalities love fan mail like this. Keeps their feet on the ground.
Important people never know what Joe the Plumber is thinking unless he puts down his Monkey Wrench, turns around, and tells them.
The only thing this shows, is how utterly worthless television is.
(Well, except for Olympic Ice Hockey)
Marvin (03:01:46) :
I don’t respect O’Reilly one shred, he is a moronic shill and has constantly been an opinion journalist.
Of course he is an opinion journalist. His specific job is news analyst, i.e., he is specifically on Fox to report his opinion, not report the news.
O’Reilly claims no such thing. He is intentionally on Fox to offer an opinion.
Mark