This is an essay professor Richard Lindzen of MIT sent to the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va for their Opinion Page in March, and was recently republished in the Janesville, WI Gazette Extra where it got notice from many WUWT readers. It is well worth the read. – Anthony
To a significant extent, the issue of climate change revolves around the elevation of the commonplace to the ancient level of ominous omen. In a world where climate change has always been the norm, climate change is now taken as punishment for sinful levels of consumption. In a world where we experience temperature changes of tens of degrees in a single day, we treat changes of a few tenths of a degree in some statistical residue, known as the global mean temperature anomaly (GATA), as portents of disaster.
Earth has had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a 100,000-year cycle for the last 700,000 years, and there have been previous interglacials that appear to have been warmer than the present despite lower carbon-dioxide levels. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th century, these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat, and, indeed, some alpine glaciers are advancing again.
For small changes in GATA, there is no need for any external cause. Earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Examples include El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, etc. Recent work suggests that this variability is enough to account for all change in the globally averaged temperature anomaly since the 19th century. To be sure, man’s emissions of carbon dioxide must have some impact. The question of importance, however, is how much.
A generally accepted answer is that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (it turns out that one gets the same value for a doubling regardless of what value one starts from) would perturb the energy balance of Earth about 2 percent, and this would produce about 2 degrees Fahrenheit warming in the absence of feedbacks. The observed warming over the past century, even if it were all due to increases in carbon dioxide, would not imply any greater warming.
However, current climate models do predict that a doubling of carbon dioxide might produce more warming: from 3.6 degrees F to 9 degrees F or more. They do so because within these models the far more important radiative substances, water vapor and clouds, act to greatly amplify whatever an increase in carbon dioxide might do. This is known as positive feedback. Thus, if adding carbon dioxide reduces the ability of the earth system to cool by emitting thermal radiation to space, the positive feedbacks will further reduce this ability.
It is again acknowledged that such processes are poorly handled in current models, and there is substantial evidence that the feedbacks may actually be negative rather than positive. Citing but one example, 2.5 billion years ago the sun’s brightness was 20 percent to 30 percent less than it is today (compared to the 2 percent change in energy balance associated with a doubling of carbon-dioxide levels) yet the oceans were unfrozen and the temperatures appear to have been similar to today’s.
This was referred to by Carl Sagan as the Early Faint Sun Paradox. For 30 years, there has been an unsuccessful search for a greenhouse gas resolution of the paradox, but it turns out that a modest negative feedback from clouds is entirely adequate. With the positive feedback in current models, the resolution would be essentially impossible. [Note: readers, see this recent story on WUWT from Stanford that shows Greenhouse theory isn’t needed in the faint young sun paradox at all – Anthony]
Interestingly, according to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the greenhouse forcing from manmade gases is already about 86 percent of what one expects from a doubling of carbon dioxide (with about half coming from methane, nitrous oxide, freons, and ozone). Thus, these models should show much more warming than has been observed. The reason they don’t is that they have arbitrarily removed the difference and attributed this to essentially unknown aerosols.
The IPCC claim that most of the recent warming (since the 1950s) is due to man assumed that current models adequately accounted for natural internal variability. The failure of these models to anticipate the fact that there has been no statistically significant warming for the past 14 years or so contradicts this assumption. This has been acknowledged by major modeling groups in England and Germany.
However, the modelers chose not to stress this. Rather they suggested that the models could be further corrected, and that warming would resume by 2009, 2013, or even 2030.
Global warming enthusiasts have responded to the absence of warming in recent years by arguing that the past decade has been the warmest on record. We are still speaking of tenths of a degree, and the records themselves have come into question. Since we are, according to these records, in a relatively warm period, it is not surprising that the past decade was the warmest on record. This in no way contradicts the absence of increasing temperatures for over a decade.
Given that the evidence (and I have noted only a few of many pieces of evidence) suggests that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, so too is the basis for alarm. However, the case for alarm would still be weak even if anthropogenic global warming were significant. Polar bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc., all depend not on GATA but on a huge number of regional variables including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind and the state of the ocean.
The fact that some models suggest changes in alarming phenomena will accompany global warming does not logically imply that changes in these phenomena imply global warming. This is not to say that disasters will not occur; they always have occurred, and this will not change in the future. Fighting global warming with symbolic gestures will certainly not change this. However, history tells us that greater wealth and development can profoundly increase our resilience.
One may ask why there has been the astounding upsurge in alarmism in the past four years. When an issue like global warming is around for more than 20 years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue. The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence and donations are reasonably clear. So, too, are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of carbon dioxide is a dream come true. After all, carbon dioxide is a product of breathing itself.
Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted to save Earth. Nations see how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages. So do private firms. The case of Enron (a now bankrupt Texas energy firm) is illustrative. Before disintegrating in a pyrotechnic display of unscrupulous manipulation, Enron was one of the most intense lobbyists for Kyoto. It had hoped to become a trading firm dealing in carbon-emission rights. This was no small hope. These rights are likely to amount to trillions of dollars, and the commissions will run into many billions.
It is probably no accident that Al Gore himself is associated with such activities. The sale of indulgences is already in full swing with organizations selling offsets to one’s carbon footprint while sometimes acknowledging that the offsets are irrelevant. The possibilities for corruption are immense.
Finally, there are the well-meaning individuals who believe that in accepting the alarmist view of climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue. For them, psychic welfare is at stake.
Clearly, the possibility that warming may have ceased could provoke a sense of urgency. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, the need to courageously resist hysteria is equally clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever-present climate change is no substitute for prudence.
Richard S. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan professor of atmospheric science at MIT. Readers may send him e-mail at rlindzenmit.edu. He wrote this for The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va.
Anu (17:44:53) :
I suppose nobody here has mentioned to you that Dr. Lindzen was one of those “IPCC people”
===============
Odd you mention that without mentioning that Lindzen, like others, resigned from the IPCC in exasperation because he could not go on with that kind of propaganda organization purporting to write scientific reports. This is what he said, among other things:
“It’s not 2,500 people offering their consensus, I participated in that. Each person who is an author writes one or two pages in conjunction with someone else. They travel around the world several times a year for several years to write it and the summary for policymakers has the input of a handful of scientists, but ultimately, it is written by representatives of governments, and of environmental organizations, each pushing their own agenda.”
Vincent Gray, another former reviewer of this propaganda organization, has commented more profusely on the kind of stench that drove him away from it:
“They were corrupt from the start, as they are a political organisation set up to provide evidence for “Climate Change”, defined by the Framework Convention on Climate Change as being exclusively caused by humans. The science is selected, distorted, and occasionally fabricated to support this view, and to downplay or marginalise any other climate influences. Their reports have to approved by the politicians who set them up and the Lead Authors are all chosen because they are willing to carry out their orders.”
http://www.theclimatescam.com/2008/04/22/the-climate-models-are-worthless-interview-with-dr-vincent-gray/
Paul Reiter had to resort to threatening to sue the IPCC before they agreed to drop his name from a report
David Evans has described the old days when he was in the “Global Warming Gravy Train”
http://mises.org/daily/2795
Anu (17:44:53) :
I suppose nobody here has mentioned to you that Dr. Lindzen was one of those “IPCC people”
===============
Odd you mention that, since everyone knows that Lindzen, like others, resigned from the IPCC in exasperation because he could not go on with that kind of propaganda organization purporting to write scientific reports. This is what he said, among other things:
“It’s not 2,500 people offering their consensus, I participated in that. Each person who is an author writes one or two pages in conjunction with someone else. They travel around the world several times a year for several years to write it and the summary for policymakers has the input of a handful of scientists, but ultimately, it is written by representatives of governments, and of environmental organizations, each pushing their own agenda.”
Vincent Gray, another former reviewer who left, has commented more profusely on the kind of stench that drove him away from it:
“They were corrupt from the start, as they are a political organisation set up to provide evidence for “Climate Change”, defined by the Framework Convention on Climate Change as being exclusively caused by humans. The science is selected, distorted, and occasionally fabricated to support this view, and to downplay or marginalise any other climate influences. Their reports have to approved by the politicians who set them up and the Lead Authors are all chosen because they are willing to carry out their orders.”
http://www.theclimatescam.com/2008/04/22/the-climate-models-are-worthless-interview-with-dr-vincent-gray/
Paul Reiter had to resort to threatening to sue the IPCC before they agreed to drop his name from a report
David Evans has described the old days when he was in what he calls “The Global Warming Gravy Train”
http://mises.org/daily/2795
cohenite (16:38:19) :
Anu (09:13:05)
I can see I was mistaken
Yes you were.
warming has been occuring since 1850;
And the Industrial Revolution started about 1775 – let’s skip the 2000 years of Chinese use of coal, the 1000 years of British use of seacoal, and the whole Newcomen engine era. Go on.
The little ice age which stopped around this time is well documented as is the increase in TSI.
The so-called Little Ice Age, yes. Not yet proven to be global.
The TSI is inferred from such things as sunspot records and radioisotopes, which are controversial and not precise. Even in the satellite era, there are arguments over how to stitch together the TSI records of multiple satellite sensors. But perhaps it dropped down 0.05% during the Dalton Minimum.
Go on.
As for your nonsensical idea that “If each decade warmed at exactly 0.2C that would still make each new decade “the warmest on record”; not in any meaningful way
If each decade is 0.2° C warmer than the last, that is meaningful.
Especially 10 or 20 decades in a row.
Try to get over your fixation on “anomaly” and “rate of change”.
because as I say it is not the absolute anomalous amount which is important in a generally [and naturally] warming system; solar heating is sustained so there will be a build-up but whether that build-up is accelerating or declining is the issue;
No, you’re completely wrong. The sun is not driving the warming.
You can wave your hands and say some event in 1000 AD was “natural”, only because we don’t have all the data from that event – proxy data is a very vague, poor substitute for Argo armadas and satellite constellations and global Internet connecting thousands of instruments. Today, in the modern Science era, you don’t get to wave your hands and say “natural warming”. They are measuring everything, and they see the radiative imbalance and the TSI and the ocean currents and the entire planetary surface and the atmosphere layer temperatures, etc. If you want to explain the warming, you have to use the data – no hand waving allowed.
“solar heating is sustained” –
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Sunspot_Numbers.png/800px-Sunspot_Numbers.png
If you want to use sunspots as a loose proxy to TSI, are you implying that the sun is like a constant flame under a pot of water, causing it to heat over time?
I won’t even bother debunking this notion unless you insist that is what you mean.
The gap at the end of the 70’s is due to the step in temperature caused by the PDO phase shift and is known as the Great Pacific Climate Shift; but it is clear that the rate of increase is declining from the 90’s to the noughties; the statement that the noughties is the warmest is therefore misleading; but what else is new with AGW.
You can “assert” the temperature curve correlates to the PDO, but many people have looked at this and it doesn’t hold up – ocean oscillation patterns would not explain a rising temperature curve:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Pdoindex_1900_present.png
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
And what, exactly, does a PDO “warm” phase mean ?
The west Pacific becomes cool and part of the eastern ocean warms.
During a “cool” phase, the opposite pattern occurs.
Ocean heat sloshes around – the only important thing for a global temperature is how much extra heat is released to the atmosphere or surface during this 2D sloshing.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
The PDO index is negative again – are you predicting 30 years of cooling, starting in 2007 ?
I will admit though – the PDO explanation is the best of the alternate explanations of the recent warming of the planet. Not good, but best of the non-mainstream explanations. They still have a lot of ocean study to do, the Argo floats are helping there…
Will you admit that if the planet warms another 0.2° C this decade, the PDO “explanation” is dead ? Or will you opt for the Ptolemaic approach of adding epicycles within epicycles ? (It’s a PDO, NAO, AO, ENSO, AAO superposition beat – sure to cool down in 1, 2, 5 or 7 decades…)
How about a PDO of Unusual Period (PDOUP) ?
“Alternate” explanations are endless, if you tailor them to the data so-far.
Mmm; well let’s look at a couple of points: you say, “The sun is not driving the warming”; it might be worth while having a look at this:
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2010/03/sgw.html
Professor Glassman says this:
“All data for this model are primary data preferred by IPCC in its Reports for solar radiation and for Earth’s surface temperature. The solar running trends are elementary, backward-looking (realizable) mathematical trend lines as used by IPCC for the current year temperature, but computed every year for the Sun.
Any variations in the solar radiation model sufficient to affect the short term variability of Earth’s climate must be selected and amplified by Earthly processes. This model hypothesizes that cloud albedo produces broadband amplification, using established physical processes. The hypothesis is that while cloud albedo is a powerful, negative feedback to warming in the longer term, it creates a short term, positive feedback to TSI that enables its variations to imprint solar insolation at the surface. A calculation of the linear fit of surface temperature to suitably filtered solar radiation shows the level of amplification necessary to support the model, and isolates the short term positive feedback from the long term negative cloud albedo feedback.
This model hypothesis that the natural responses of Earth to solar radiation produce a selecting mechanism. The model exploits evidence that the ocean dominates Earth’s surface temperature, as it does the atmospheric CO2 concentration, through a set of delays in the accumulation and release of heat caused by three dimensional ocean currents. The ocean thus behaves like a tapped delay line, a well-known filtering device found in other fields, such as electronics and acoustics, to amplify or suppress source variations at certain intervals on the scale of decades to centuries. A search with running trend lines, which are first-order, finite-time filters, produced a family of representations of TSI as might be favored by Earth’s natural responses. One of these, the 134-year running trend line, bore a strong resemblance to the complete record of instrumented surface temperature, the signal called S134.
Because the fingerprint of solar radiation appears on Earth’s surface temperature, that temperature cannot reasonably bear the fingerprint of human activity. IPCC claims that human fingerprint exists by several methods. These include its hockey stick pattern, in which temperature and gas concentrations behave benignly until the onset of the industrial revolution or later, and rise in concert. IPCC claims include that the pattern of atmospheric oxygen depletion corresponds to the burning of fossil fuels in air, and that the pattern of isotopic lightening in atmospheric CO2 corresponds to the increase in CO2 attributed to human activities. This paper shows that each of IPCC’s alleged imprints due to human activities is in error.
The extremely good and simple match of filtered TSI to Earth’s complex temperature record tends to validate the model. The cause of global warming is in hand. Conversely, the fact that Earth’s temperature pattern appears in solar radiation invalidates Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).”
The history of sunspot activity over the 20thC:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__VkzVMn3cHA/SIFs9m3EmII/AAAAAAAAADM/q1Zk0U-n0YI/s1600-h/Sun+Spots.bmp
Confirmed by wiki;
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Sunspot_Numbers.png
It’s true that solar activity took a downturn in the last decade of the 20thC but there was still increasing SW reaching the surface, sufficient to maintain current heati; how can that be? Simple, less clouds as Pinker et al show;
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;308/5723/850
Anu (17:44:53) :
mikael pihlström (04:19:23) :
“I suppose nobody here has mentioned to you that Dr. Lindzen was one of those “IPCC people”:
I see. in the third assessment and now resigned. Actually I have the
4th assessment on my desk. In the summer I kill flies with volume1.
It is really interesting, but to complicated for a non-expert to take a
stand on AGW – unless you really have the time to dig in and check
other litterature also.
So, for non-experts the plausability of AGW projections could be judged
if we hear proponents and opponents in direct debate. But, I assume
that is not offered?
Passing on the modelling, there are two areas easier to have an opinion
on, (1) the warming trend, (2) the scientific process. On both accounts I tend to be a AGW proponent.
philc (12:11:14) :
But I have to stress again, Spencer is describing weather not climate. I am sure climate scientists understand that there are immediate short-term feedback effects at work – but that is not the point. You have to look at the whole radiative balance of the whole climate system over a longer period of time. The amount of heat coming in compared to the amount of heat going out. Look here:-
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling.htm
This lays out the process very well. Most of the heat being retained on earth is stored in the oceans – which are going up in temperature (and heat content) relentlessly.
One brilliant paper recently posited (and I believe proved) that the oceans are acting like a giant mercury thermometer.
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/51/21527.full.pdf
It makes the effort to prove conclusively the blindingly obvious! Not many people bother to do this but it is worth it when trying to convince died in the wool sceptics (in the proper sense) like me. I won’t even believe self evident truths without a peer reviewed study!
As the sea warms, it expands. Thus the rise in sea levels is directly related to the rise in global temperatures. So if you want to you can take the sea level as a proxy for global warming – all the fuss and fracas over the accuracy of weather stations can be discarded – just read the sea level, something that is now possible to the nearest millimetre thanks to the satellites.
http://www.climate4you.com/SeaTemperatures.htm#Global sea level
I highly recommend the Sceptical Science web site. Being sceptical by nature I like to see proper reasoned and preferably science backed answers to my questions – and this is a brilliant place to find them.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
It was essential in my journey from “doubting sceptic” to “grudgingly convinced sceptic”. It is also clear from that site that the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence is on the side of AGW, even though it pains me to say so.
Oops! “died in the wool sceptic” should have been “dyed in the wool sceptic”! I hope that is not a Freudian slip…
Anu (21:59:35) :
“You can wave your hands and say some event in 1000 AD was “natural”, only because we don’t have all the data from that event – proxy data is a very vague, poor substitute for Argo armadas and satellite constellations and global Internet connecting thousands of instruments. Today, in the modern Science era, you don’t get to wave your hands and say “natural warming”. They are measuring everything, and they see the radiative imbalance and the TSI and the ocean currents and the entire planetary surface and the atmosphere layer temperatures, etc. If you want to explain the warming, you have to use the data – no hand waving allowed.”
=================
Very representative and amusing example of delusional belief about the magik powers of current science and its capabilities. I particularly like the notion that if events of 1000 years ago (MWP, say) could be observed with today’s magikal instruments, they would not be considered natural. Whatever that means, it is rich.
First, the radiative imbalance that would be expected from increases in CO2 is at present unmeasurable by instruments because much too small.
“How do we know there is such a radiative imbalance? In reality, we don’t. The Earth-orbiting instruments for measuring the Earth’s radiative components are not quite accurate to measure the small radiative imbalance that is presumed to exist. That imbalance is, instead, a theoretical calculation.”
– Roy Spencer in “Global Warming and Nature’s Thermostat” http://tinyurl.com/y52qqyz
Second, radiative balances, to the extent that can be measured in the tropics, show VERY LARGE decadal variability, caused by variations in cloudiness, it is presumed. See this paper in Nature.
Evidence for Large Decadal Variability in the Tropical Mean Radiative Energy Budget
“It is widely assumed that variations in Earth’s radiative energy budget at large time and space scales are small. We present new evidence from a compilation of over two decades of accurate satellite data that the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) tropical radiative energy budget is much more dynamic and variable than previously thought. Results indicate that the radiation budget changes are caused by changes in tropical mean cloudiness. The results of several current climate model simulations fail to predict this large observed variation in tropical energy budget. The missing variability in the models highlights the critical need to improve cloud modeling in the tropics so that prediction of tropical climate on interannual and decadal time scales can be improved.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/295/5556/841
Third, even if a small imbalance of the small, unmeasurable magnitude expected from CO2 changes could be measured (again, it can’t) if would not say anything whatsoever about its cause. The cause could be any short or long term change in a number of things solar output, ocean heat release, planetary albedo, vapor, whatever.
If that weren’t enough, we do not even know how much warming has occurred in the last century, unless we take a leap of faith and choose to believe that the arcane, opaque, secret, unexplained, unkept, lost etc methods and data used to arrive at a physically questionable construct called “global surface temperature” are trustworthy and represent something real.
See also, for further edification:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/04/earths-energy-balance.html
[…]
You can see that we roughly know the major energy flows through the atmosphere, as long as you allow for the uncertainties of order 30 W/m^2 (up to ten percent of the energy flows). Now, open the paper by Hansen et al.:
* Hansen et al. 2005
[…]
* Their favorite computer models happen to claim that the Earth absorbs “0.85+-0.15 W/m^2” more energy than it emits; the same number “0.85 W/m^2” is calculated from the increasing temperature of oceans as the average extra energy stored by the oceans.
You can see that their advertised error margin is roughly 100 times smaller than the error margin of any conceivable calculation that someone may want to do today or in the near future.
Francisco (05:06:16) :
OK so you don’t believe any of the large number of scientific studies into either the Earth’s radiative balance or its temperature.
OK then, see my last posting – and read the sea level. It is a direct proxy to global temperature. Admitedly it is measuring ocean temperature only but (as many folks on this site are keen to point out all the time) the oceans and atmosphere are closely coupled. You can even see the recent levelling off of temperatures in the sea level and the 1998 El Nino, and subsequent La Nina, are very obvious. However the rise in sea levels has resumed and is currently running a rate of 4mm a year.
To me the evidence is incontrovertible, Earth is warming up and the amount of energy held in the seas is increasing enormously. This can be caused either by;
a. Direct warming of the Earth through an increase in the Sun’s output or
b. The Earth is retaining more heat than it is emitting (radiative balance out of kilter).
Now there is plenty of evidence that the energy from the sun is insufficient to account for all this warming in which case you are really only left with b. above. The obvious explanation for this is that something on Earth is stopping as much energy escaping as is entering. I wonder what that could be?
Hmmm…. now let me think… I know! Windmills! All those darn windmills are blowing all the heat around and stopping it escaping! I will write a paper for WUWT right away, no time to lose.
I see no reason to believe that “the amount of energy held in the seas is increasing enormously.” The Argo buoys used to show significant cooling up until recently. But this was scandalous, so of course they corrected it.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/11/correcting-ocean-cooling-nasa-changes-data-to-fit-the-models/
Meanwhile, global sea ice has remained virtually unchanged for the last 30 years of satellite data, and has increased in the arctic over the last three years, making one wonder where the “enormous” heating is taking place. A funny detail in these commedies is that, while the Argo buoys showed cooling, they were blaming it on the melting ice. Now that things have been corrected to show no cooling, or some warming, the ice comes back smiling, because it likes the heat. Anyway, I see no reason whatsoever to think that something worrisome is happening anywhere with the climate.
TLM (02:41:03),
The current ARGO site still has graphs showing that the oceans are cooling. If the oceans’ heat is “increasing enormously” and “relentlessly”, then show us the raw data. Here is what ARGO shows: click
And mikael pihlström (01:26:09) wonders why there are no formal AGW debates.
The answer is that every debate held so far has been lost by the promoters of AGW. For example:
So the audience went into the debate believing AGW is a problem, and following just one debate, the numbers had reversed.
The debate losses have gotten so bad for the AGW crowd that they are now publicly advised to avoid debating with skeptics.
I would love to see a nationally televised public debate series, held in a neutral venue and moderated by a Moderator acceptable to both sides under strict rules of debate, with each side choosing its participants.
But that will not happen, because the climate alarmists would be exposed in front of a wide audience as the charlatans they are.
Climategate was just the tip of the iceberg, giving us a peek at what goes on when they think people aren’t watching.
What they are practicing is not science, it is propaganda based on an unsupportable catastrophic AGW agenda designed to convince the public that a rise in a tiny trace gas comprising only 0.00038 of the atmosphere will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe.
Any educated person who still believes that is naive beyond belief; they have left science behind, and entered the realm of religion. Cognitive dissonance has taken hold.
Certainly the central players in the Climategate scandal no longer believe what they’re selling. They are in it for the money, the status, and for their constant, expense-paid trips to vacation spots around the world to strategize about how to sell their snake oil to an increasingly skeptical public.
Smokey
“The answer is that every debate held so far has been lost by the promoters of AGW.”
Is that an estimate or a really counted? Live debates are very good
since the general public gets involved, but good performers have an
edge. To balance somewhat, G.Monbiot versus I.Plimmer:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2009/12/15/2772906.htm
I was thinking more of debate though written text, which would be
more rigorous.
Vincent (14:09:36) :
“We all know that “green energy” is going to cost much, much more.
Less goods at a higher price equates to society becoming poorer.”
Your formulation of the economic logic is convincing and helpful,
although as a sceptic, I have to say that it might turn out differently
in reality. Seriously though; what do you include in green jobs and
why should they always be less-paid? Some more points:
– green technology has been seriously underfunded; there is potential:
but you were probably assessing the competetivness right now as my text
probably implied?
– with green technology I meant not only green energy, but energy
efficiency and smart solutions. This would compensate high energy
prices to an unknown degree.
– besides AGW, fossil energy forms have considerable other negative externalities, but the green energy forms also should undergo CBA.
mikael pihlström (10:45:34),
Questions asked by a television talking head is not what I thought you meant by a debate. A debate begins with a formal proposition. And who chose Plimer? The TV station, of course.
The problem with these pseudo-debates is that they are always a set-up. I’ve made a point of this before. The mainstream media always plays these games.
For example, the Economist has a debate series that is good for nothing, because the editors pre-select the participants. Allow me to select the debaters, and I’ll put you or Al Gore up against Viscount Monckton. Would you like that? Plimer was selected precicely because he had made a few mistakes in his book, and they were made the issue. Gore won’t debate. Can you guess why not?
Finally, you can call yourself a skeptic, but you are no scientific skeptic. Take away GCMs, and what real world, reproducible, testable evidence do you have showing convincingly that CO2 is the primary cause of global warming? Report back after you’ve checked with Wikipedia.
A skeptic demands testable evidence based on raw data, code and any other methods used, which can be reproduced with the same results. That’s how the scientific method works.
When you start thinking like a scientific skeptic, you will see that CAGW is a baseless scare story, used as a front for money, control, status, and similar rewards. But it’s not science.
Smokey (12:05:23) :
Ian Plimer insisted on the debate, I believe that is how it went.
What real world evidence … well up to this minute we have consistent
evidence of warming and no better mechanism than GHG to explain it.
From this minute on, we can only predict. Some scientists make an effort;
since we are talking about the future they have to model; and they
continously improve on these models. I put it to you that there is a
hundred times more scepticism involved in the work of those 10 000 scientists working on that, compared to the repetitive, frozen scepticism
on your side. Your understanding of scepticism is peculiar.
mikael pihlström (12:33:44),
You are obviously unhappy because you can not overcome scientific skepticism with your vague assertions. The problem that the believers in the CAGW conjecture are unable to overcome is this: the scientific method requires skepticism, first and foremost. And honest, rigorous skepticism demands testable evidence, based on raw data, code and any other methods used to construct the hypothesis, which must then be reproduced with the same results. That’s how the scientific method works.
The promoters of CAGW fail because they can not produce the necessary empirical evidence showing that CO2 is the principal driver of global warming.
You complain about “repetitive, frozen skepticism,” but what you are saying is that you can not validate your CO2=CAGW hypothesis. You are just complaining because you don’t have the evidence to support your beliefs.
When you say “we have consistent evidence of warming and no better mechanism than GHG to explain it,” you are simply making an argumentum ad ignorantiam: the logical fallacy of assuming something must be true simply because it has not been proven false. You are arguing that CO2 causes runaway global warming because nobody has demonstrated conclusively that it does not.
But there are other, more credible causes of global warming: the PDO, AMO, clouds, the planet’s emergence from the Little Ice Age, etc.
Stay away from the false arguments, and try to find testable, reproducible evidence based on raw data that shows what you claim. You will be the first to do so, and you will be well on your way to a Nobel prize.
Smokey (09:38:04) :
Early Argo buoys were subject to major problems with pressure sensors – which meant that temperature readings were not being taken at the depths they thought they were collecting it them at. As more accurate buoys were introduced the temperature appeared to go down, but actually it was simply becoming more accurate. After corrections were added for the faulty temperature sensors on those buoys that had the problem the apparent cooling goes away.
Corrected data here:
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/global_change_analysis.html#temp
That is the Argo web site – so it is from the horses mouth.
I suggest you make sure you check your information is up to date before you post.
And TLM, I suggest you look at up to date OHC measurements such as NODC’s revised graph:
http://i48.tinypic.com/14e6wjn.gif
And the measure of OHC when the 2003 transition error is removed from the graph:
http://landshape.org/enm/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/fig3.png
TLM (15:16:19),
Your graph is only for the upper ocean, 0 – 700 meters.
This is from the current ARGO page showing SST: click
And another graph showing the effect of El Nino: click
And the recent ICECAP chart showing the difference between the models and reality: click
Note that this is several years after the transition error was fixed.
Francisco (05:06:16) :
Very representative and amusing example of delusional belief about the magik powers of current science and its capabilities. I particularly like the notion that if events of 1000 years ago (MWP, say) could be observed with today’s magikal instruments, they would not be considered natural. Whatever that means, it is rich.
Very interesting example of poor reading skills combined with anti-science bias.
“Natural warming” is not an explanation, but a description. Given adequate data, one would explain the “natural warming” by giving the cause or combination of causes, whether it is a brighter sun (some infrequent change to the UV part of the spectrum ?), a change in planetary albedo (forest die off ?), ocean circulation patterns (thermohaline disruption ?), whatever. “Natural warming” is just admitting you have no idea what caused it.
Like saying “the sky gods caused the rains to dry up”.
Bronze Age people would also misunderstand todays science.
South America colliding with Central America was once the cause of vast changes to ocean circulation patterns, and a change in Earth’s climate – but that “natural” explanation no longer applies in the 21st century.
Current explanations are based on current measurements – “natural variability” is just the residual, unexplained parts.
See “God of the gaps” : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
TLM (15:16:19) :
What many people here avoid looking at is the Argo data for the upper 2000 meters of the ocean, which shows consistent warming during the time period which shows slight cooling in the upper 700m:
The complicated currents within the ocean slosh the growing heat around, in 2D (ENSO, PDO, NAO, AO, AAO) and 3D (thermohaline conveyor belt, coastal upwellings, ocean terrain dependent vertical currents, etc). You must measure allthe water to see all the heat gained.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/ocean-heat-2000m.gif
This graph is from Figure 11a:
http://www.euro-argo.eu/content/download/49437/368494/file/VonSchukmann_et_al_2009_inpress.pdf
to see Ocean Heat Content broken down by Pacific, Atlantic and Indian ocean basins:
http://www.mercator.eu.org/documents/lettre/lettre_33_en.pdf#page=3
If you choose some subset of the data ( southeast of Japan, Pacific Ocean, upper 100 meters) you could probably “prove” the ocean is cooling. There.
But for the entire ocean, down to 2000 m depth – Argo shows warming.
Smokey
“You are arguing that CO2 causes runaway global warming because nobody has demonstrated conclusively that it does not. But there are other, more credible causes of global warming: the PDO, AMO, clouds, the planet’s emergence from the Little Ice Age, etc. ”
Nobody is saying that the mechanism is conclusively proved. A large majority of scientists find the ‘CO2=CAGW hypothesis’ much more
credible than the causes you cite. It also fits the best available dynamic models. As model assumptions & results must be examined with
a critical attitude, it would help to have contributions or alternative
models from skeptics. I say this sincerely, taking note of the sharp
analytic capacities of many sceptics on this site.
I have no ambitions for a Nobel prize, nor for the Skeptic medal, established in late 20th century, after a group captured the attitude
of scepticism and now supervise the use of the label.
Mmm, well the Schuckman paper is wrong to begin with about steric increase in sea level as these 2 papers show:
http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/6/31/2009/osd-6-31-2009.pdf
http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/files/Cazenave_et_al_GPC_2008.pdf
In addition, it is uncontroversial that the upper ocean [to 700 metres] heating has been decreasing since 2003 as has SST; in addition Levitus has found decreasing OHC from 1990 onwards;
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/prwaylen/reprints/levitus%20ocean%20warming.pdf
See figure 4, although anyone who can get a global 69% increase in OHC over the period with the SH increasing by 62% and the NH by 68% needs watching.
@Anu (19:41:04)
“Very interesting example of poor reading skills combined with anti-science bias.” […]
“Natural warming” is just admitting you have no idea what caused it.
====================
Admission of ignorance, by any name, is much, much preferable to blowhard pretensions of knowledge and understanding where none exist. The truth is nobody has the slightest idea what the small variations in “global temperature” over the course of the 20th century (or any other century) are supposed to mean. And nobody even knows the magnitude of such variations, given the cabalistic methods by which they are conjured up. Instead, there are innumerable different conjectures, that we can describe as hunches, and more or less streched correlations between all kinds of phenomena keep multiplying. The one correlation that seems to be most absent, is the one that is needed most by this field. Or rather say, the correlation exists, and is very strong, but the driver and the driven are in the wrong order, and refuse to switch positions
This whole house of cards is kept together by the magic powers of Mammon, I suspect, as every aspect of it is highly dubious and afflicted by vast ignorance, starting with the carbon cycle, sinks, our questionable ability to even accomplish a doubling any time soon in view of current fossil fuel reserves, the actual effect if any of the demonized molecule (this engenders the most disparate and esoteric theoretizing,) which effect apparently cannot or will not be empirically verified, and so on. The effect of a slight change on the amount of this essential trace molecule in the atmosphere is, as I have said many times, the *ideal* question for the construction of an inexhaustible and indestructible bs-generating machine, cloaked as Science, if only because a conclusive demonstration that current CO2 emissions pose no grave danger seems as impossible as a conclusive demonstration that imps don’t exist.
And if all that ignorance weren’t enough, there is the core ignorance of what could we really do to forestall the projected increases in temperature, assuming they were correct and assuming they were due to the accused molecule. First, the “projected” increases range from 2 to as much as 7 C, over periods equally elastic (and these ranges and elasticities, by themselves, give a measure of the complete uselessness of this vaunted science, or sceance). Anyway, a question carefully avoided is: Assuming all the official calculations to be true, by how much and for how long would we need to reduce emissions to prevent, say, a 1 C increase? Well, calculations I’ve seen suggest that if we took the most radical measure possible — bring emissions down to zero immediately and go back to the stone age, or actually something infinitely worse than the stone age, since there are some 6 billions of us around now) –- we would need to keep up that kind of hell for something like 30 years in order to accomplish a 1 C prevention. And this, again, assuming the almost certainly exaggerated scenarios regarding the CO2-temperature coupling were true. If you assume they are exaggerated 3 or 4 fold at least, multiply the 30 years by the corresponding number, and contemplate that hell.
Clearly none of this makes the slightest bit of sense. There are excellent and rather urgent reasons to find alternative sources of energy, and to conserve energy, since the supply of easy and high quality fossil fuels is far from infinite. And there are excellent reasons to continue and expand strict controls of the *real* crap that gets released into the air by the combustion of these things. Measures in that direction over the last few decades have resulted in much cleaner air in the western world. You can read 19th century narrators describing the air in places like London or Pittsburg under veils of floating soot. Did the people of late 19th century London emit more CO2 than today? Do the people in the capitals of poor countries emit more CO2 than in the first world? Yet within hours of landing in many of those cities, your eyes and your airways begin to itch, your fingernails get black, your nose gets plugged. What does CO2 have to do with any of this? Nothing.
In a more recent post on this site
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/13/lies-damned-lies-statistics-and-graphs/
you can see that temperature increases come almost entirely from cold-reduction during the winter months, not by heat increases during the summer months, thus doubling the irrelevance of alarmist arm-waving, unless you believe in the enormous suffering of future high-latitude generations when their winters become insufficiently cruel and they don’t have to spend as much on paying heating bills as energy prices continue going up with or without “carbon credits”. Can you imagine the suffering of Minnesotans, Swedes, Finns, Siberians, Canadians, as their winters become a little bit less cold? There may even be a reduction in the psychological disorder known as “cabin fever”. God forbid.
What on earth are we talking about?? Isn’t is clear that this is a non-existent problem, and that even if it were a problem no amount of carbon credits or any other nonsense would have the slightest effect on the problem?
As for your perception of me being “anti-science” you should not worry too much. Science is olympically immune to the justified snorts of people like me. If it needs anything, is more critical eyes and more bs detectors to call the bluffs and drivel of charlatans cloaked under scientific robes.
As for the overworked “god of the gaps” I suspect he will remain increasingly busy, since it is a well known fact that for every gap that gets plugged anywhere in science, 100 new gaps pop up precisely as a result of the plugging. Or like that man said: as the island of our knowledge grorws, so does the shore of our ignorance. Keep in mind the surrounding ocean is endless. And that is precisely as it should be.
I’m not interested in steric ocean level rise – just eustatic. The interesting processes won’t take place for a few more decades.
The upper 700 m warmed quite a bit in 2003 – after 2004, its been roughly constant:
http://i38.tinypic.com/zxjy14.png
But the upper 700m, or upper 300m, is not the whole story of ocean warming. Argo goes to 2000m, and 3000m or 4000m data would be even better. But there’s still the problem of measuring the poles, under ice…
Levitus in 2000 did not have any Argo data to analyze – but I like the fact that he looked down to 3000 meters with the sparse data he had back then.
In 2009, Levitus sees plenty of ocean warming:
ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/PUBLICATIONS/grlheat08.pdf
as does Schuckmann. Remember, there is vertical mixing of ocean heat.
As for that Fig. 4 in your 2000 Levitus paper, that is not 69% “increase in OHC” – that is the “percent variance accounted for by this trend” (see Figure caption).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trend_estimation
That just means the trend fit for the entire ocean is slightly better than the trend fit for either SH or NH – the regional variability cancels out a bit on a global scale.
The Argo float armada is getting better and better (number of floats, calibration shakedown, software for analyzing results) – I wouldn’t be surprised to see 2009 and 2010 showing ocean heat increase down to 2000m, when the next wave of papers comes out.