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Guest Post by Thomas Fuller
You readers here at Watts Up With That have been very kind to me during my guest-blogging stint here, and I’d like to express my thanks for the cordial reception I have found, especially since I’m well aware that my views are not really congruent with those of many viewers. You all are certainly more open-minded and accommodating than the audience at many other internet locations. (Okay, enough sucking up–get on with it!)
However, one commenter on my last post had the audacity–the sheer audacity–to criticize my writing because this is a science blog after all, and my guest posts have not been about the science. Well, touche and all that, my dear sir, but well, I’m not a scientist.
We are not really at the point where only scientists can say intelligent things about climate change.
Two reasons: First, the basics are pretty well understood. CO2 should cause about a 1.5 to 2.1 degree Celsius rise in temperatures if we double its concentration in our atmosphere. (If it doesn’t, it’s because other forces are counteracting it, not that it doesn’t exist.) This really is not very controversial at all.
Second, the controversial part of the discussion is not going to be settled any time soon. We really do not know the sensitivity of the atmosphere to a doubling of CO2 concentrations. We are not likely to know for at least 30 years–and that’s if we’re lucky, according to Judith Curry.
To offer the extreme and absurdist example, as Roger Pielke Jr. points out on his weblog, we could achieve our emission reduction goals overnight, by switching from BP’s estimate of our 2009 emissions of CO2 to the IEA’S estimates of the same. There’s quite a bit of uncertainty out there.
So, despite their protestations, climate scientists at this point have about as much ‘clout’ in deciding what we should do as anybody else. So your comments and my guest posts here are not automatically dismissable as coming from the rabble. What we write on this weblog and others should be evaluated on the merits of what we say. Of course, people who have been studying the biology, chemistry, geology and ecological interactions of this planet should be treated with quite a bit more respect, and many climate scientists got their start in one of those fields–by no means am I trying to exclude them from the conversation, just because they can’t point at a red dot on a thermometer and say ‘that’s where we’ll be in 90 years.’
It is my own belief that other things we do here on this Earth have an impact on this planet, and that we should be aware of the impacts and in some cases work to lessen them. It is a happy coincidence that lessening these other impacts may also serve to reduce the impacts of whatever climate change we may be causing with CO2.
In the past century we have gone from cultivating about 3% of the world’s land for agriculture to about 33%. And of course this has had an effect on the planet, and of course that includes this planet’s climate. It has changed the albedo of the land and it has changed the level and movement of moisture over (and around) the cultivated areas. The vertical columns of air that shape what we perceive as weather are hugely affected by this. As they are by creation of manmade reservoirs behind the 850,000 dams we have built.
We have cut down forests, and not only for agriculture. They’re recovering in the developed world, but not in the emerging nations that still need the wood for fuel and the land for space. And again, this has affected the entire ecology and that does include climate.
(Digression–with the increasing urbanisation of this planet, some of these effects will lessen. More of us will live in cities, occupying a smaller space. Technology will reduce the amount of land needed for agriculture, despite our growing population. Some things will get better–maybe a lot of things, if we work for them.)
I could go on, but the point is clear enough for you to either agree or disagree. We are changing our planet, and one poorly understood change is the composition of the atmosphere.
Had the IPCC and others been savvy enough to look at all the changes we are making instead of just focusing on the ‘flavor of the month,’ I think the science–and our options–would have been more clearly expressed and more believable.
Instead, they focused on CO2 and treated all who disagreed as the rabble I mentioned before. What they wanted was a rabble alarmed. What they got was a rabble in arms.
We Talk About Politics Because The Science Is Uncertain
You readers here at Watt’s Up With That have been very kind to me during my guest-blogging stint here, and I’d like to express my thanks for the cordial reception I have found, especially since I’m well aware that my views are not really congruent with those of many viewers. You all are certainly more open-minded and accommodating than the audience at many other internet locations. (Okay, enough sucking up–get on with it!)
However, one commenter on my last post had the audacity–the sheer audacity–to criticize my writing because this is a science blog after all, and my guest posts have not been about the science. Well, touche and all that, my dear sir, but well, I’m not a scientist.
We are not really at the point where only scientists can say intelligent things about climate change.
Two reasons: First, the basics are pretty well understood. CO2 should cause about a 1.5 to 2.1 degree Celsius rise in temperatures if we double its concentration in our atmosphere. (If it doesn’t, it’s because other forces are counteracting it, not that it doesn’t exist.) This really is not very controversial at all.
Second, the controversial part of the discussion is not going to be settled any time soon. We really do not know the sensitivity of the atmosphere to a doubling of CO2 concentrations. We are not likely to know for at least 30 years–and that’s if we’re lucky, according to Judith Curry.
To offer the extreme and absurdist example, as Roger Pielke Jr. points out on his weblog, we could achieve our emission reduction goals overnight, by switching from BP’s estimate of our 2009 emissions of CO2 to the IEA’S estimates of the same. There’s quite a bit of uncertainty out there.
So, despite their protestations, climate scientists at this point have about as much ‘clout’ in deciding what we should do as anybody else. So your comments and my guest posts here are not automatically dismissable as coming from the rabble. What we write on this weblog and others should be evaluated on the merits of what we say. Of course, people who have been studying the biology, chemistry, geology and ecological interactions of this planet should be treated with quite a bit more respect, and many climate scientists got their start in one of those fields–by no means am I trying to exclude them from the conversation, just because they can’t point at a red dot on a thermometer and say ‘that’s where we’ll be in 90 years.’
It is my own belief that other things we do here on this Earth have an impact on this planet, and that we should be aware of the impacts and in some cases work to lessen them. It is a happy coincidence that lessening these other impacts may also serve to reduce the impacts of whatever climate change we may be causing with CO2.
In the past century we have gone from cultivating about 3% of the world’s land for agriculture to about 33%. And of course this has had an effect on the planet, and of course that includes this planet’s climate. It has changed the albedo of the land and it has changed the level and movement of moisture over (and around) the cultivated areas. The vertical columns of air that shape what we perceive as weather are hugely affected by this. As they are by creation of manmade reservoirs behind the 850,000 dams we have built.
We have cut down forests, and not only for agriculture. They’re recovering in the developed world, but not in the emerging nations that still need the wood for fuel and the land for space. And again, this has affected the entire ecology and that does include climate.
(Digression–with the increasing urbanisation of this planet, some of these effects will lessen. More of us will live in cities, occupying a smaller space. Technology will reduce the amount of land needed for agriculture, despite our growing population. Some things will get better–maybe a lot of things, if we work for them.)
I could go on, but the point is clear enough for you to either agree or disagree. We are changing our planet, and one poorly understood change is the composition of the atmosphere.
Had the IPCC and others been savvy enough to look at all the changes we are making instead of just focusing on the ‘flavor of the month,’ I think the science–and our options–would have been more clearly expressed and more believable.
Instead, they focused on CO2 and treated all who disagreed as the rabble I mentioned before. What they wanted was a rabble alarmed. What they got was a rabble in arms.
LOL! Love that pick! My sis-in-law has a lakehouse about 5 miles from the Uncertain Inn. (Caddo Lake is a cool place, btw)
And actually the politics ARE certain now – a wave is coming that is going to wipe out the congressional dems in 60 days. There will now be no cap and trace, no climate bill, no carbon cap of any time. Also, Kyoto is going to expire and nothing is going to replace it – there will be no international regime, no new treaties. Politically speaking, you can chisel that in stone.
So whatever is going to happen as a consequence of that inaction is going to happen. You really should hope (as I happen to believe) that nothing at all of note is going to happen and life will go on as always, proving that this was never anything but a manmade scare. Because it’s too late for any political fix to come along now.
Dusty
September 4, 2010 3:08 pm
Tom Fuller says:
September 4, 2010 at 1:03 pm
As many of you have pointed out and others inferred, I should have written 33% of arable land is now under the plough, not total. Thanks to all who have noted this.
—-
I’m not so sure about that either. As I noted earlier:
“Then, I found this table at the FOA (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) for 1990 to 2000: http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/AC832E/ac832e03.htm#bm03.2
Bottom line for world for both 1990 and 2000 is 11.2%.”
There is also this pdf from FAO — Food and Agriculture Statistics Global Outlook (2006): http://faostat.fao.org/Portals/_Faostat/documents/pdf/world.pdf
In it, under “Resources” it lists Arable Land at 1,402,317* and Permanent Crop Land at 138,255* yielding a usage of 9.86% (if A is inclusive of PCL) or 8.97% (if A does not include PC). There is reason to think it’s the latter.
In the first link, the total for A+PCL is 1,497,365* This differs from the second, if added — 1,540,572*. Not a lot, but different. But so does (Permanent) Pasture — 3,459, 836* vs 3,432,834*. If the numbers for each are added from each link it results in 4,957,201* vs 4,973,406*, which is a 16,205* difference and close enough, when considering the dates for the data, to say we’re talking about the same numbers for the purpose of deciding whether the 33% Arable land usage is still questionable.
Now the UN data used might have an error, making the above work useless. I’d be happy to have someone check my work to make sure I didn’t screw up. But if neither of those are possibilities, then the 33% Arable land usage is wrong.
In the meantime, what was your source for the 33%?
Dusty
September 4, 2010 3:10 pm
Darn it. The * was meant to carry over the *= 1000HA in the two reports which I neglected to include, above.
One of the problems I see with arguments which say “we can’t take the chance, we need to act now” is that they are sometimes double edged swords as I believe is the case here. It can be reframed as “if we do reduce carbon, the next ice age, that hasn’t come yet because of our CO2, will start” Since we don’t know enough about the atmosphere to know how to predict what will happen in 100 years, anything we do or not do may have serious adverse consequences. Yes, that is scary, but there are no guarantees in life.
Now, I’d like to show you a little chart put out on the NOAA site. http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/f10.gif
This cute chart shows the NOAA’s prediction for solar cycle 24. It isn’t really a prediction though. It is some kind of normalized curve that they always put where the current data ends. When I started paying attention to this stuff, this curve was shifted two or more years to the left. We’d be at the maximum now by their lights. Governments all over the world would love to tell us what will be a hundred years from now and they can’t even get the present right.
Then we all found out, just as we expected, the science was not settled, but rather fudged to the end of trying to convince us to cut back our energy use. When an international body has to use non-peer reviewed material and hearsay to pursue a single aspect of global climate and exclude all the others, we have a right to be disgruntled. I’m old enough to remember all the scare stories in the 70s about the coming ice age and that we’d need to be considering ways to stop it.
So to sum up, I’d like to be an AGC (cooling) fan and suggest we DO need to do something and that something is to put MORE CO2 into the atmosphere to cushion against a potential ice age. The only problem is that I don’t think CO2 was the problem in the first place, and it follows that it wouldn’t be too effective if the world started going cooler. If we react one way and we’re wrong, we could be really, really sorry. So I’d favor learning more about the system that we live in before taking catastrophic economic steps. I’d really favor doing things we know can help like pumping up the volume on nuclear energy worldwide rather than killing carbon use before we have something to replace it. So if the AGW crowd really were serious, they’d be pushing nuclear and fusion research to get there. But they aren’t, so we suspect agendas for which their current direction would help. With nuclear or any other replacement energy source, the oil and coal will fall by the wayside without having to be forced. So just because we’re paranoid doesn’t mean somebody isn’t out to get us….
Jeff
Michael Larkin
September 4, 2010 3:37 pm
Joel Shore:
“Since this thread is all about coming together and finding a middle ground…”
Depends what “middle ground” means. This thread, and very many others at WUWT, are about trying to get to the truth, which has nothing to do with “middle ground” in the sense of making a compromise.
Having said that, I have no objection to your posting here and what you write seems level-toned and respectful. If by “middle ground” you mean meeting and sharing/debating ideas with all parties being open to persuasion – in an attempt to get closer to the truth – then I’m all for that.
There may also be some points which are not in dispute by most on both sides, however…
Tom Fuller:
As you’ve probably realised, you made assumptions about what it was easy for all to agree on, and have now discovered that many reject those assumptions.
To me, this is a key issue. We all tend to have pet assumptions, and maybe we project those onto others. Scepticism, in my book, is what happens when people cultivate the habit of a) identifying the things they take for granted (often through uncritical acceptance of received opinion), and b) checking whether they are justified.
The more we are acquainted with a subject, the better we’ll be able to understand it, but I think most, if not all, of us, also know that that leads to the realisation of how much we still have left to learn.
All teachers (I am one) realise early in their careers that trying to teach something very rapidly reveals how ignorant one actually is. But teachers have no choice but to deal with the awkward, “simple” questions that students ask that they haven’t previously though to ask themselves. They have to try to learn more about their subject, maybe beginning to understand it in depth for the first time.
Unfortunately, the “teachers” on the subject of CAGW have for too long isolated themselves from the obligation to deal with the “simple” questions, and seen no necessity to identify and challenge their own assumptions. I think they are becoming increasingly discomfited now that they are having to address issues they have blocked out for years.
Some folk (to be fair, on both sides) really only *want* certain things to be true, and seek out authoritative sources to back them up. They’re abrogating their responsibility to try to understand for themselves, which, in the end, is the only way to truly understand *anything*.
Without scepticism, one can’t learn. Without learning, there can be no true knowledge. Without knowledge, the best we can manage is to parrot assumptions, our own or borrowed. For my money, the smartest people here, however great or small their expertise, are those who know and admit how little they really know.
Do you know how little you know? I’m not having a dig at you. I’m just encouraging you to be smarter than you currently are, and hopefully I try to be just as tough on myself about this.
Dr. Dave
September 4, 2010 4:04 pm
_Jim,
OK…so let’s discuss biofuels. Their only redeeming attribute that I can figure is that they are “renewable” sources of energy. They’re just hydrocarbon fuels and like all other hydrocarbon fuels emit CO2 upon combustion so there’s no advantage there. Prior to the great ethanol boondoggle most corn grown in the US was used to feed livestock. Now a whole bunch of it is used to make ethanol for fuel (which seems a shameless waste of ethanol to me). This increases feed prices and increases the cost of meat.
From a 42 gallon barrel of crude oil a refinery can usually get about 11 gallons of refined gasoline (and a bunch of other products like diesel, Jet A, fuel oil, heavy oils, lubricants, etc.). Just like a slaughterhouse, there’s very little waste.
So what does it take to produce a gallon of ethanol? First you have to grow corn and that takes land, machinery to till and plant, fuel, seed, fertilizer, water, pesticides and herbicides, labor, time and favorable weather. Then you have to harvest it and transport the harvest for processing. Then it has to be processed and this product combined with more water and allowed to ferment. Once fermented the mash has to be distilled and this requires no small amount of energy. Eventually you’re left with pure ethanol (which must then be denatured according to federal law).
The economies of scale have been maxed out in this process and yet still, analysis after analysis have shown that you actually put more energy into producing a gallon of ethanol than you can get out of a gallon of ethanol. Not only does it take hundreds of gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol, it ties up arable land and removes food crops from human and animal consumption. This produces scarcity and drives up food costs all along the consumer food chain. And what do we do with it? We add it to gasoline which results in lower gas mileage. A harsh reality of physics and chemistry is that a gallon of ethanol contains less energy than a gallon of gasoline. Worse still, we’re subsidizing this waste with taxpayer dollars. Without subsidies and government mandates ethanol fuel would quite literally evaporate away.
Biodiesel is just as great a waste for many of the same reasons except it removes even more important crops like soybeans from the human consumption food chain.
_Jim, please explain to me how these technologies are viable. We can’t possibly grow enough food to convert to fuel and still have enough to eat so how can this possibly be a “good idea”? Biofuels are every bit as wasteful and inefficient as wind or solar power.
Gail Combs
September 4, 2010 4:16 pm
Dr. Dave says:
September 4, 2010 at 2:34 pm
_Jim says:
September 4, 2010 at 1:07 pm
“Another ‘old wives tale’ debunked?”
The issue of water rights vary widely across the country. In much of the midwest if you own the property you own everything beneath it.,,,,
_____________________________________________
Dr. Dave thankyou, I am get rather sick of defending any statement I make from attacks by Jim calling me an out right liar. He usually never even bothers to cite a reference during his attacks although I normally do if possible. And yes I own my mineral/water rights per my deed but that has never stopped a money hungry politician.
The towns I was talking about were Mebane NC and a well owned by Alton and the other town was Ashburnham MA and a well owned by Larry and Sue. So no Jim googling is not going to find the information about the complaints by my personal friends. Do you want me to ask for a copy of their water bills, a copy of their deeds and a photo of their wells all notarized so you will believe me???
Joel Shore
September 4, 2010 5:05 pm
Gail Combs says:
Orthodox climate scientists assume “early anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission prevented the inception of a glacial that would otherwise already have started…
That was a quote from the peer reviewed paper not me.
“The orthodox climate scientists assume” part was not from the paper. You took one quote from one peer-reviewed paper on climate science amongst the thousands published each year and used it to imply that this hypothesis has been embraced by the climate science community. I am just telling you that it hasn’t. It has attracted interest in the community, but a fair bit of skepticism too, for the reason that I stated and for other reasons. To claim it is an assumption of the climate science community is ridiculous.
As for the rest of your post, yes I know that there are people who are making claims about the sun but this stuff is all pretty vague and unconvincing…Even Leif, who is a skeptic on climate change (or at best a lukewarmer) hates when people try to claim that the sun is the cause. I also find it interesting that many of the same people who rail against scientists invoking the notion of positive feedbacks which apply to any warming mechanism about equally (and for which there is considerable evidence for) are so quick to embrace some vague notions about positive feedbacks that are specific to one particular mechanism (i.e., the solar mechanism). Where is their skepticism?
Jim Barker says:
Many papers have been written by eminent Physicists mathematically analyzing the effect of CO2 in strict accordance with the laws of physics. All reach the conclusion that the effect of CO2 is saturated and no longer has any impact on temperatures.
As a physicist, I’ll take the bait: Which papers are you referring to? And, please, don’t tell me Gerlich and Tscheuschner!
Dr. Dave
September 4, 2010 5:20 pm
Gail Combs says:
September 4, 2010 at 4:16 pm
“Dr. Dave thankyou, I am get rather sick of defending any statement I make from attacks…”
No problem, Gail. Yours are always some of my favorite comments on these threads. Besides…_Jim hit a couple of my buttons. I don’t get it. Your comments are always quite erudite and well-referenced. The issues of water rights and biofuels are guaranteed to make me see red. I still mourn the loss of my sweet well in Texas (part of the post-nuptial agreement) and the local eco-nazis have ridden roughshod over the water supply here ever since they had the water facility legally condemned so they could buy it from the Dutch company that owned it. They wanted “local control”. This really just meant that a cabal of local enviro-zealots got to run it and double the rates.
Biofuel debates nearly send me into a rant. This is the dumbest “good idea” I’ve ever heard. Just do the math! Consider the variables. One bad season could wipe out most of a year’s fuel production…if you weren’t already starving. I grocery shop frequently and I casually watch the prices of beef, pork and chicken. I wonder if anybody ever taught these geniuses about the “corn-hog cycle” in introductory economics.
Evan Jones
Editor
September 4, 2010 5:28 pm
One thing you are neglecting is the difference between equilibrium climate sensitivity and transient climate response. The oceans create a large lag time in the climate system so that the system has not yet equilibrated with the current greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.
How big a lag? A big enough lag so as not to show up during the 20th Century — yet small enough to create a 3.2C rise in the next 90 years? For this and other reasons, the unfortunate fact is that the 20th century climate record does not provide a very tight constraint on climate sensitivity.
Or the sensitivity/feedbacks are not as expected. Within the errors that we know the total forcings, with the intrinsic climate variability, and with the lag time for the climate system to equilibrate, the empirical data for the 20th century is compatible with quite a broad range of climate sensitivities that includes the IPCC range and then some on either side. Better constraints are obtained by combining this with other empirical data. Perhaps the best constraints are from the ice age – interglacial cycles, for which the forcings and temperature change are reasonably well-understood and the time scales are long enough that you see the “equilibrium” change. Others data is provided,for example, by the Mt. Pinatubo eruption. All these data taken together agree well with the likely range for climate sensitivity given by the IPCC.
Assuming that the “empirical data” by which you mean adjusted data is correct. The average USHCN station warmed 0.14C over the 20th century. USHCN has adjusted this to +0.72C for no good reason I can tell. Only TOBS ought to be a positive adjustment. The rest should be neutral (e.g., FILNET) or negative (SHAP). All are positive. And certainly the onset and disappearance of the Younger Dryas shows no such gradualism.
Besides, IPCC stakes its lot on positive feedback loops which don’t have anything to do with the ocean “catching up”, so far as I can tell. Those feedbacks are not and have not been in evidence.
I have trouble buying (at huge expense) any theory which has constant pressures that bring about a slow response up to now but will surely be a Real Big Response in the Real Near Future (pay the man at the door). Especially since the man at the door is the same dude who rooked me three times before on similar issues.
Money, Money , Money , always funny in a carbon trading goldman sachs world.
H.R.
September 4, 2010 7:53 pm
Dr. Dave says:
September 4, 2010 at 5:20 pm “[…]
Biofuel debates nearly send me into a rant. This is the dumbest “good idea” I’ve ever heard. Just do the math! Consider the variables. One bad season could wipe out most of a year’s fuel production… […]”
Now that’s the first mention of that point I’ve seen and it’s a doozy! Good one, Dr. Dave.
Our congresscritters can legislate the use of biofuels but they can’t legislate the corn to grow.
Joel Shore
September 4, 2010 8:25 pm
evanmjones says:
How big a lag? A big enough lag so as not to show up during the 20th Century — yet small enough to create a 3.2C rise in the next 90 years?
Most of the forcing has occurred near the end of the century. The estimate is there is about another 0.5 C in the pipeline, the majority of which I believe we would see over the next 20 or 30 years. The IPCC makes two different sorts of estimates, one of equilibrium climate sensitivity upon doubling CO2 and another of what the temperature would be in 2100 under various emissions scenarios (and using the transient climate response, so that temperatures would continue to rise after 2100 even if greenhouse gas levels didn’t). I have no clue which of these your 3.2 C number actually refers to, since there are a range of estimates for both climate sensitivity and the temperature rise by 2100 and the latter, of course, depends on the emissions scenario as well as the climate sensitivity.
Or the sensitivity/feedbacks are not as expected.
No…Saying that the data does not constrain something means that the data do not constrain it. It means that the sensitivity and feedbacks are consistent with the data; on the other hand, the data do not demonstrate that the sensitivity and feedbacks are in the IPCC range either since the data are consistent with a broader range than the IPCC estimates of the likely sensitivity.
Assuming that the “empirical data” by which you mean adjusted data is correct. The average USHCN station warmed 0.14C over the 20th century. USHCN has adjusted this to +0.72C for no good reason I can tell.
So, now all of a sudden you don’t believe the data that a moment ago you were claiming showed that the climate sensitivity is not what the IPCC predicted. And, I have no idea why you are even talking about the 20th century data when I just got through explaining that better constraints are provided by the empirical paleoclimate data (e.g., the ice age — interglacial) and the Mt. Pinatubo eruption (which is a short-term event in the 20th century…not a long-term trend issue).
Besides, IPCC stakes its lot on positive feedback loops which don’t have anything to do with the ocean “catching up”, so far as I can tell. Those feedbacks are not and have not been in evidence.
I have trouble buying (at huge expense) any theory which has constant pressures that bring about a slow response up to now but will surely be a Real Big Response in the Real Near Future (pay the man at the door).
You can believe what you want to believe but it might behoove you to understand why the scientific community as a whole has indeed bought the theory and why people like Tom Fuller are struggling (what seems to be a losing battle) trying to make the “skeptic community” at least marginally relevant to the discussion.
Roger Carr
September 4, 2010 9:05 pm
Smokey says: (September 4, 2010 at 5:16 am) Still, governments are forced to continue with the CO2 charade, because taxing water vapor is next to impossible.
You underestimate “government”, Smokey. Give them a little time… or rope…
Julian Braggins
September 4, 2010 9:26 pm
I came across a blog a couple of years ago that pointed out that the emissivity of GH gases increase with temperature resulting in an increase in radiation for a fixed temperature of the atmosphere, unlike other power absorption changes.
To quote the last two paragraphs:-
“Again, calculating the epsilon (emissivity) for the atmosphere for an old and new value using atmospheric absorption from the Hitran database results in a negative result when the new emissivity is applied. That means the temperature drops because the radiation output of the atmosphere becomes more efficient with the new increased emissivity.
That brings to question, what does cause the earth to be warmer if ghgs don’t have much of anything to do with it. It would appear that cloud cover might be the actual reason – that combined with albedo – as well as being the dominant reasons for variations.” http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-174215.html
Has anyone any explanation to refute this? It does seem very important in that arguments about the effects of GHG’s in raising temperatures at all become irrelevant.
Michael Wassil
September 4, 2010 10:55 pm
I must have missed something. What exactly is the point of this article?
Philip Thomas
September 5, 2010 1:22 am
Isn’t this just the soft approach to reinforcing the old CO2 ‘science’ being settled premise
“Two reasons: First, the basics are pretty well understood. CO2 should cause about a 1.5 to 2.1 degree Celsius rise in temperatures if we double its concentration in our atmosphere. (If it doesn’t, it’s because other forces are counteracting it, not that it doesn’t exist.) This really is not very controversial at all.”
He massages our egos then suggests that we are all in acceptance of the CO2 ‘science’.
Classic trick. Lets not give this guest any more time.
Blade
September 5, 2010 1:58 am
Joel Shore [September 4, 2010 at 6:24 am] says:
Joel Shore [September 4, 2010 at 7:22 am] says:
Joel Shore [September 4, 2010 at 9:38 am] says:
Joel Shore [September 4, 2010 at 9:49 am] says:
Joel Shore [September 4, 2010 at 9:59 am] says:
Joel Shore [September 4, 2010 at 10:52 am] says:
Never has anyone said so little with so many words! With the exception of your mega-FAIL condescending pseudo-lecture on Exponential/Logarithmic functions (you really think people here do not understand this?) you appear to have no focus. Well here is your chance, and we get to stay right on topic (paragraph 4 of the top post) …
Question to Joel Shore: if the CO2 concentration doubles from the current 390 ppm to 780 ppm, what will happen to the temperature?
This is the heart of the matter and now you can set us all straight! Although it will take decades if ever for this experiment to play out, it is time to take a stand. No ducking. And I suggest you show your work, people here are merciless 😉
Julian Braggins
September 5, 2010 2:11 am
It seems a good place for a discussion on CO2, whether it has any effect on climate in the real world, as correlation does not seem to point that way, and to bring forward ideas that do explain climate variations.
Here is one for discussion, http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/FunctionOfMass.pdf
in which the author thinks that greenhouse gases are only relevant as contributing to the total mass of the atmosphere. I think we had a discussion here on pressure and temperature on Venus which also pointed that out, with much opposition!
Then there is Miscolski’s latest paper, http://www.suite101.com/content/no-greenhouse-effect-in-semi-transparent-atmospheres-a243477
Which does away with any need to invoke CO2 as a warming agent.
Together with several other posters above they seem to dispel the ‘Evil CO2’ myth, but as the initial posit by the IPCC was not scientifically motivated, and was purely political, it will take more than science to refute it.
As for variation in climate, how about the thinning of the atmospere recently that took many by surprise but is explained by a quiet Sun emitting less Extreme UV in a long Solar Cycle, lowering the thermosphere temperature by 41°K.
This may allow the polar jet streams to move equatorwards, giving rise to more extreme weather events, especially when blocked.
Think of say a heatwave in Russia,together with low temperatures in Siberia, and blocking of the monsoon in Pakistan giving flooding. Plus, say a cold jet stream reaching up to the Amazon, killing millions of aquatic animals and fish, 400 people dying of cold in Peru, and temperatures lower in Argentina than Antarctic stations, and a cold wet winter in S.E. Australia with more rain than we have had for 20 years, at least where I live.
That was this year, Mongolia suffered the coldest winter for decades last winter and lost over half their stock. You don’t even need an average temperature drop, just a change in circulation patterns to create catastrophic extremes, 540 A.D. saw the Seine and Rhine dry up, and that was a ‘cold’ period.
Just ideas, let the scientists work it out to their satisfaction, it won’t change the climate.
Tenuc
September 5, 2010 2:53 am
Michael Wassil says:
September 4, 2010 at 10:55 pm “I must have missed something. What exactly is the point of this article?”
CAGW brigade damage limitation – “now we’re losing the war, let’s regroup and rethink so we can get at least some of the sceptics to believe that some of our cargo cult climate ‘science’ is right.”
Dave Springer
September 5, 2010 4:13 am
@Fuller
“CO2 should cause about a 1.5 to 2.1 degree Celsius rise in temperatures if we double its concentration in our atmosphere.”
That would be Fahrenheit not Celsius. IPPC figure is 1.1 Celsius for CO2 forcing without feedbacks.
_Jim,
Try this link. I used Bing and just removed the operative “Massachusetts” from the search.
http://www.rense.com/general53/wasa.htm
You guys talking about arable land should read Willis E’s article about the carbon footprint. It discusses arable land at length.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/26/ecological-footprints-a-good-idea-gone-bad/
LOL! Love that pick! My sis-in-law has a lakehouse about 5 miles from the Uncertain Inn. (Caddo Lake is a cool place, btw)
And actually the politics ARE certain now – a wave is coming that is going to wipe out the congressional dems in 60 days. There will now be no cap and trace, no climate bill, no carbon cap of any time. Also, Kyoto is going to expire and nothing is going to replace it – there will be no international regime, no new treaties. Politically speaking, you can chisel that in stone.
So whatever is going to happen as a consequence of that inaction is going to happen. You really should hope (as I happen to believe) that nothing at all of note is going to happen and life will go on as always, proving that this was never anything but a manmade scare. Because it’s too late for any political fix to come along now.
Tom Fuller says:
September 4, 2010 at 1:03 pm
As many of you have pointed out and others inferred, I should have written 33% of arable land is now under the plough, not total. Thanks to all who have noted this.
—-
I’m not so sure about that either. As I noted earlier:
“Then, I found this table at the FOA (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) for 1990 to 2000:
http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/AC832E/ac832e03.htm#bm03.2
Bottom line for world for both 1990 and 2000 is 11.2%.”
There is also this pdf from FAO — Food and Agriculture Statistics Global Outlook (2006):
http://faostat.fao.org/Portals/_Faostat/documents/pdf/world.pdf
In it, under “Resources” it lists Arable Land at 1,402,317* and Permanent Crop Land at 138,255* yielding a usage of 9.86% (if A is inclusive of PCL) or 8.97% (if A does not include PC). There is reason to think it’s the latter.
In the first link, the total for A+PCL is 1,497,365* This differs from the second, if added — 1,540,572*. Not a lot, but different. But so does (Permanent) Pasture — 3,459, 836* vs 3,432,834*. If the numbers for each are added from each link it results in 4,957,201* vs 4,973,406*, which is a 16,205* difference and close enough, when considering the dates for the data, to say we’re talking about the same numbers for the purpose of deciding whether the 33% Arable land usage is still questionable.
Now the UN data used might have an error, making the above work useless. I’d be happy to have someone check my work to make sure I didn’t screw up. But if neither of those are possibilities, then the 33% Arable land usage is wrong.
In the meantime, what was your source for the 33%?
Darn it. The * was meant to carry over the *= 1000HA in the two reports which I neglected to include, above.
One of the problems I see with arguments which say “we can’t take the chance, we need to act now” is that they are sometimes double edged swords as I believe is the case here. It can be reframed as “if we do reduce carbon, the next ice age, that hasn’t come yet because of our CO2, will start” Since we don’t know enough about the atmosphere to know how to predict what will happen in 100 years, anything we do or not do may have serious adverse consequences. Yes, that is scary, but there are no guarantees in life.
Now, I’d like to show you a little chart put out on the NOAA site.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/f10.gif
This cute chart shows the NOAA’s prediction for solar cycle 24. It isn’t really a prediction though. It is some kind of normalized curve that they always put where the current data ends. When I started paying attention to this stuff, this curve was shifted two or more years to the left. We’d be at the maximum now by their lights. Governments all over the world would love to tell us what will be a hundred years from now and they can’t even get the present right.
Then we all found out, just as we expected, the science was not settled, but rather fudged to the end of trying to convince us to cut back our energy use. When an international body has to use non-peer reviewed material and hearsay to pursue a single aspect of global climate and exclude all the others, we have a right to be disgruntled. I’m old enough to remember all the scare stories in the 70s about the coming ice age and that we’d need to be considering ways to stop it.
So to sum up, I’d like to be an AGC (cooling) fan and suggest we DO need to do something and that something is to put MORE CO2 into the atmosphere to cushion against a potential ice age. The only problem is that I don’t think CO2 was the problem in the first place, and it follows that it wouldn’t be too effective if the world started going cooler. If we react one way and we’re wrong, we could be really, really sorry. So I’d favor learning more about the system that we live in before taking catastrophic economic steps. I’d really favor doing things we know can help like pumping up the volume on nuclear energy worldwide rather than killing carbon use before we have something to replace it. So if the AGW crowd really were serious, they’d be pushing nuclear and fusion research to get there. But they aren’t, so we suspect agendas for which their current direction would help. With nuclear or any other replacement energy source, the oil and coal will fall by the wayside without having to be forced. So just because we’re paranoid doesn’t mean somebody isn’t out to get us….
Jeff
Joel Shore:
“Since this thread is all about coming together and finding a middle ground…”
Depends what “middle ground” means. This thread, and very many others at WUWT, are about trying to get to the truth, which has nothing to do with “middle ground” in the sense of making a compromise.
Having said that, I have no objection to your posting here and what you write seems level-toned and respectful. If by “middle ground” you mean meeting and sharing/debating ideas with all parties being open to persuasion – in an attempt to get closer to the truth – then I’m all for that.
There may also be some points which are not in dispute by most on both sides, however…
Tom Fuller:
As you’ve probably realised, you made assumptions about what it was easy for all to agree on, and have now discovered that many reject those assumptions.
To me, this is a key issue. We all tend to have pet assumptions, and maybe we project those onto others. Scepticism, in my book, is what happens when people cultivate the habit of a) identifying the things they take for granted (often through uncritical acceptance of received opinion), and b) checking whether they are justified.
The more we are acquainted with a subject, the better we’ll be able to understand it, but I think most, if not all, of us, also know that that leads to the realisation of how much we still have left to learn.
All teachers (I am one) realise early in their careers that trying to teach something very rapidly reveals how ignorant one actually is. But teachers have no choice but to deal with the awkward, “simple” questions that students ask that they haven’t previously though to ask themselves. They have to try to learn more about their subject, maybe beginning to understand it in depth for the first time.
Unfortunately, the “teachers” on the subject of CAGW have for too long isolated themselves from the obligation to deal with the “simple” questions, and seen no necessity to identify and challenge their own assumptions. I think they are becoming increasingly discomfited now that they are having to address issues they have blocked out for years.
Some folk (to be fair, on both sides) really only *want* certain things to be true, and seek out authoritative sources to back them up. They’re abrogating their responsibility to try to understand for themselves, which, in the end, is the only way to truly understand *anything*.
Without scepticism, one can’t learn. Without learning, there can be no true knowledge. Without knowledge, the best we can manage is to parrot assumptions, our own or borrowed. For my money, the smartest people here, however great or small their expertise, are those who know and admit how little they really know.
Do you know how little you know? I’m not having a dig at you. I’m just encouraging you to be smarter than you currently are, and hopefully I try to be just as tough on myself about this.
_Jim,
OK…so let’s discuss biofuels. Their only redeeming attribute that I can figure is that they are “renewable” sources of energy. They’re just hydrocarbon fuels and like all other hydrocarbon fuels emit CO2 upon combustion so there’s no advantage there. Prior to the great ethanol boondoggle most corn grown in the US was used to feed livestock. Now a whole bunch of it is used to make ethanol for fuel (which seems a shameless waste of ethanol to me). This increases feed prices and increases the cost of meat.
From a 42 gallon barrel of crude oil a refinery can usually get about 11 gallons of refined gasoline (and a bunch of other products like diesel, Jet A, fuel oil, heavy oils, lubricants, etc.). Just like a slaughterhouse, there’s very little waste.
So what does it take to produce a gallon of ethanol? First you have to grow corn and that takes land, machinery to till and plant, fuel, seed, fertilizer, water, pesticides and herbicides, labor, time and favorable weather. Then you have to harvest it and transport the harvest for processing. Then it has to be processed and this product combined with more water and allowed to ferment. Once fermented the mash has to be distilled and this requires no small amount of energy. Eventually you’re left with pure ethanol (which must then be denatured according to federal law).
The economies of scale have been maxed out in this process and yet still, analysis after analysis have shown that you actually put more energy into producing a gallon of ethanol than you can get out of a gallon of ethanol. Not only does it take hundreds of gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol, it ties up arable land and removes food crops from human and animal consumption. This produces scarcity and drives up food costs all along the consumer food chain. And what do we do with it? We add it to gasoline which results in lower gas mileage. A harsh reality of physics and chemistry is that a gallon of ethanol contains less energy than a gallon of gasoline. Worse still, we’re subsidizing this waste with taxpayer dollars. Without subsidies and government mandates ethanol fuel would quite literally evaporate away.
Biodiesel is just as great a waste for many of the same reasons except it removes even more important crops like soybeans from the human consumption food chain.
_Jim, please explain to me how these technologies are viable. We can’t possibly grow enough food to convert to fuel and still have enough to eat so how can this possibly be a “good idea”? Biofuels are every bit as wasteful and inefficient as wind or solar power.
Dr. Dave says:
September 4, 2010 at 2:34 pm
_Jim says:
September 4, 2010 at 1:07 pm
“Another ‘old wives tale’ debunked?”
The issue of water rights vary widely across the country. In much of the midwest if you own the property you own everything beneath it.,,,,
_____________________________________________
Dr. Dave thankyou, I am get rather sick of defending any statement I make from attacks by Jim calling me an out right liar. He usually never even bothers to cite a reference during his attacks although I normally do if possible. And yes I own my mineral/water rights per my deed but that has never stopped a money hungry politician.
The towns I was talking about were Mebane NC and a well owned by Alton and the other town was Ashburnham MA and a well owned by Larry and Sue. So no Jim googling is not going to find the information about the complaints by my personal friends. Do you want me to ask for a copy of their water bills, a copy of their deeds and a photo of their wells all notarized so you will believe me???
Gail Combs says:
“The orthodox climate scientists assume” part was not from the paper. You took one quote from one peer-reviewed paper on climate science amongst the thousands published each year and used it to imply that this hypothesis has been embraced by the climate science community. I am just telling you that it hasn’t. It has attracted interest in the community, but a fair bit of skepticism too, for the reason that I stated and for other reasons. To claim it is an assumption of the climate science community is ridiculous.
As for the rest of your post, yes I know that there are people who are making claims about the sun but this stuff is all pretty vague and unconvincing…Even Leif, who is a skeptic on climate change (or at best a lukewarmer) hates when people try to claim that the sun is the cause. I also find it interesting that many of the same people who rail against scientists invoking the notion of positive feedbacks which apply to any warming mechanism about equally (and for which there is considerable evidence for) are so quick to embrace some vague notions about positive feedbacks that are specific to one particular mechanism (i.e., the solar mechanism). Where is their skepticism?
Jim Barker says:
Hmmm…Strange that you would find such a presentation so convincing.
Hi Tom,
You created some interest, didn’t you? I like it.
Booker, in his Sunday Telegraph column posted online today,says that the IPCC was always a political pressure group.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7981979/A-cunning-bid-to-shore-up-the-ruins-of-the-IPCC.html
Barry Moore says:
As a physicist, I’ll take the bait: Which papers are you referring to? And, please, don’t tell me Gerlich and Tscheuschner!
Gail Combs says:
September 4, 2010 at 4:16 pm
“Dr. Dave thankyou, I am get rather sick of defending any statement I make from attacks…”
No problem, Gail. Yours are always some of my favorite comments on these threads. Besides…_Jim hit a couple of my buttons. I don’t get it. Your comments are always quite erudite and well-referenced. The issues of water rights and biofuels are guaranteed to make me see red. I still mourn the loss of my sweet well in Texas (part of the post-nuptial agreement) and the local eco-nazis have ridden roughshod over the water supply here ever since they had the water facility legally condemned so they could buy it from the Dutch company that owned it. They wanted “local control”. This really just meant that a cabal of local enviro-zealots got to run it and double the rates.
Biofuel debates nearly send me into a rant. This is the dumbest “good idea” I’ve ever heard. Just do the math! Consider the variables. One bad season could wipe out most of a year’s fuel production…if you weren’t already starving. I grocery shop frequently and I casually watch the prices of beef, pork and chicken. I wonder if anybody ever taught these geniuses about the “corn-hog cycle” in introductory economics.
One thing you are neglecting is the difference between equilibrium climate sensitivity and transient climate response. The oceans create a large lag time in the climate system so that the system has not yet equilibrated with the current greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.
How big a lag? A big enough lag so as not to show up during the 20th Century — yet small enough to create a 3.2C rise in the next 90 years?
For this and other reasons, the unfortunate fact is that the 20th century climate record does not provide a very tight constraint on climate sensitivity.
Or the sensitivity/feedbacks are not as expected.
Within the errors that we know the total forcings, with the intrinsic climate variability, and with the lag time for the climate system to equilibrate, the empirical data for the 20th century is compatible with quite a broad range of climate sensitivities that includes the IPCC range and then some on either side. Better constraints are obtained by combining this with other empirical data. Perhaps the best constraints are from the ice age – interglacial cycles, for which the forcings and temperature change are reasonably well-understood and the time scales are long enough that you see the “equilibrium” change. Others data is provided,for example, by the Mt. Pinatubo eruption. All these data taken together agree well with the likely range for climate sensitivity given by the IPCC.
Assuming that the “empirical data” by which you mean adjusted data is correct. The average USHCN station warmed 0.14C over the 20th century. USHCN has adjusted this to +0.72C for no good reason I can tell. Only TOBS ought to be a positive adjustment. The rest should be neutral (e.g., FILNET) or negative (SHAP). All are positive. And certainly the onset and disappearance of the Younger Dryas shows no such gradualism.
Besides, IPCC stakes its lot on positive feedback loops which don’t have anything to do with the ocean “catching up”, so far as I can tell. Those feedbacks are not and have not been in evidence.
I have trouble buying (at huge expense) any theory which has constant pressures that bring about a slow response up to now but will surely be a Real Big Response in the Real Near Future (pay the man at the door). Especially since the man at the door is the same dude who rooked me three times before on similar issues.
Money, Money , Money , always funny in a carbon trading goldman sachs world.
Dr. Dave says:
September 4, 2010 at 5:20 pm
“[…]
Biofuel debates nearly send me into a rant. This is the dumbest “good idea” I’ve ever heard. Just do the math! Consider the variables. One bad season could wipe out most of a year’s fuel production… […]”
Now that’s the first mention of that point I’ve seen and it’s a doozy! Good one, Dr. Dave.
Our congresscritters can legislate the use of biofuels but they can’t legislate the corn to grow.
evanmjones says:
Most of the forcing has occurred near the end of the century. The estimate is there is about another 0.5 C in the pipeline, the majority of which I believe we would see over the next 20 or 30 years. The IPCC makes two different sorts of estimates, one of equilibrium climate sensitivity upon doubling CO2 and another of what the temperature would be in 2100 under various emissions scenarios (and using the transient climate response, so that temperatures would continue to rise after 2100 even if greenhouse gas levels didn’t). I have no clue which of these your 3.2 C number actually refers to, since there are a range of estimates for both climate sensitivity and the temperature rise by 2100 and the latter, of course, depends on the emissions scenario as well as the climate sensitivity.
No…Saying that the data does not constrain something means that the data do not constrain it. It means that the sensitivity and feedbacks are consistent with the data; on the other hand, the data do not demonstrate that the sensitivity and feedbacks are in the IPCC range either since the data are consistent with a broader range than the IPCC estimates of the likely sensitivity.
So, now all of a sudden you don’t believe the data that a moment ago you were claiming showed that the climate sensitivity is not what the IPCC predicted. And, I have no idea why you are even talking about the 20th century data when I just got through explaining that better constraints are provided by the empirical paleoclimate data (e.g., the ice age — interglacial) and the Mt. Pinatubo eruption (which is a short-term event in the 20th century…not a long-term trend issue).
Here is a paper that will give you a good lead into understanding the increasing amount of evidence for a water vapor feedback that is closely matching the expectations of the models: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;323/5917/1020
You can believe what you want to believe but it might behoove you to understand why the scientific community as a whole has indeed bought the theory and why people like Tom Fuller are struggling (what seems to be a losing battle) trying to make the “skeptic community” at least marginally relevant to the discussion.
Smokey says: (September 4, 2010 at 5:16 am) Still, governments are forced to continue with the CO2 charade, because taxing water vapor is next to impossible.
You underestimate “government”, Smokey. Give them a little time… or rope…
I came across a blog a couple of years ago that pointed out that the emissivity of GH gases increase with temperature resulting in an increase in radiation for a fixed temperature of the atmosphere, unlike other power absorption changes.
To quote the last two paragraphs:-
“Again, calculating the epsilon (emissivity) for the atmosphere for an old and new value using atmospheric absorption from the Hitran database results in a negative result when the new emissivity is applied. That means the temperature drops because the radiation output of the atmosphere becomes more efficient with the new increased emissivity.
That brings to question, what does cause the earth to be warmer if ghgs don’t have much of anything to do with it. It would appear that cloud cover might be the actual reason – that combined with albedo – as well as being the dominant reasons for variations.”
http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-174215.html
Has anyone any explanation to refute this? It does seem very important in that arguments about the effects of GHG’s in raising temperatures at all become irrelevant.
I must have missed something. What exactly is the point of this article?
Isn’t this just the soft approach to reinforcing the old CO2 ‘science’ being settled premise
“Two reasons: First, the basics are pretty well understood. CO2 should cause about a 1.5 to 2.1 degree Celsius rise in temperatures if we double its concentration in our atmosphere. (If it doesn’t, it’s because other forces are counteracting it, not that it doesn’t exist.) This really is not very controversial at all.”
He massages our egos then suggests that we are all in acceptance of the CO2 ‘science’.
Classic trick. Lets not give this guest any more time.
Joel Shore [September 4, 2010 at 6:24 am] says:
Joel Shore [September 4, 2010 at 7:22 am] says:
Joel Shore [September 4, 2010 at 9:38 am] says:
Joel Shore [September 4, 2010 at 9:49 am] says:
Joel Shore [September 4, 2010 at 9:59 am] says:
Joel Shore [September 4, 2010 at 10:52 am] says:
Never has anyone said so little with so many words! With the exception of your mega-FAIL condescending pseudo-lecture on Exponential/Logarithmic functions (you really think people here do not understand this?) you appear to have no focus. Well here is your chance, and we get to stay right on topic (paragraph 4 of the top post) …
Question to Joel Shore: if the CO2 concentration doubles from the current 390 ppm to 780 ppm, what will happen to the temperature?
This is the heart of the matter and now you can set us all straight! Although it will take decades if ever for this experiment to play out, it is time to take a stand. No ducking. And I suggest you show your work, people here are merciless 😉
It seems a good place for a discussion on CO2, whether it has any effect on climate in the real world, as correlation does not seem to point that way, and to bring forward ideas that do explain climate variations.
Here is one for discussion,
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/FunctionOfMass.pdf
in which the author thinks that greenhouse gases are only relevant as contributing to the total mass of the atmosphere. I think we had a discussion here on pressure and temperature on Venus which also pointed that out, with much opposition!
Then there is Miscolski’s latest paper,
http://www.suite101.com/content/no-greenhouse-effect-in-semi-transparent-atmospheres-a243477
Which does away with any need to invoke CO2 as a warming agent.
Together with several other posters above they seem to dispel the ‘Evil CO2’ myth, but as the initial posit by the IPCC was not scientifically motivated, and was purely political, it will take more than science to refute it.
As for variation in climate, how about the thinning of the atmospere recently that took many by surprise but is explained by a quiet Sun emitting less Extreme UV in a long Solar Cycle, lowering the thermosphere temperature by 41°K.
This may allow the polar jet streams to move equatorwards, giving rise to more extreme weather events, especially when blocked.
Think of say a heatwave in Russia,together with low temperatures in Siberia, and blocking of the monsoon in Pakistan giving flooding. Plus, say a cold jet stream reaching up to the Amazon, killing millions of aquatic animals and fish, 400 people dying of cold in Peru, and temperatures lower in Argentina than Antarctic stations, and a cold wet winter in S.E. Australia with more rain than we have had for 20 years, at least where I live.
That was this year, Mongolia suffered the coldest winter for decades last winter and lost over half their stock. You don’t even need an average temperature drop, just a change in circulation patterns to create catastrophic extremes, 540 A.D. saw the Seine and Rhine dry up, and that was a ‘cold’ period.
Just ideas, let the scientists work it out to their satisfaction, it won’t change the climate.
Michael Wassil says:
September 4, 2010 at 10:55 pm
“I must have missed something. What exactly is the point of this article?”
CAGW brigade damage limitation – “now we’re losing the war, let’s regroup and rethink so we can get at least some of the sceptics to believe that some of our cargo cult climate ‘science’ is right.”
@Fuller
“CO2 should cause about a 1.5 to 2.1 degree Celsius rise in temperatures if we double its concentration in our atmosphere.”
That would be Fahrenheit not Celsius. IPPC figure is 1.1 Celsius for CO2 forcing without feedbacks.