Physicist Dr. Denis Rancourt, a former professor and environmental science researcher at the University of Ottawa, has officially bailed out of the man-made global warming movement, calling it a ‘corrupt social phenomenon’.
He writes this in an essay on science trust issues plus adds this powerful closing passage about climate science:
And there is a thorough critique of the science as band wagon trumpeting and interested self-deception [4]. Climategate only confirms what should be obvious to any practicing scientist: That science is a mafia when it’s not simply a sleeping pill.
Now he thinks that fossil fuel burning isn’t a problem of significance based on the scale. Excerpts below.
Is the burning of fossil fuel a significant planetary activity?
by Denis G. Rancourt
This essay was first posted on the Activist Teacher blog.
After all, the Earth is a planet. Is even the presence of humans significant on the rough and diverse thin surface of this planet?
We certainly make every effort to see ourselves as significant on this spinning ball in space. We like to point out that the lights from our cities can be seen from our extra-atmospheric “spaceships” at night and that we have deforested continents and reduced the populations of large wild mammals and of fishes but is all this really significant in the planetary web known as the biosphere?
INSIGNIFICANCE OF FOSSIL FUEL BURNING ENERGY RELEASE
The present (2010) historic maximum of anthropogenic (caused by humans) fossil fuel burning is only 8% or so of global primary production (GPP) (both expressed as kilograms of carbon per year, kg-C/y). GPP is the rate at which new biomass (living matter) is produced on the whole planet. And of course all biomass can in principle be considered fuel that could be burned with oxygen (O2) to produce CO2 gas, H2O water, energy, and an ash residue.
This shows the extent to which anthropogenic energy production from fossil fuel burning is small in comparison to the sun’s energy delivery to Earth, since biomass primary production results from the sun’s energy via photosynthesis.
…
In summary, the total amount of post-industrial fossil fuel burned to date (and expressed as kilograms of carbon) represents less than 1% of the global bio-available carbon pools.
More importantly, bio-available carbon is a minor constituent of the Earth’s surface environment and one that is readily buffered and exchanged between compartments without significant consequences to the diversity and quantity of life on the planet. The known history of life on Earth (over the last billions of years) is unambiguous on this point.
…
This ocean acidification side show on the global warming science bandwagon, involving major nation research centers and international collaborations, is interesting to compare with the 1970s-1980s hoax of boreal forest lake acidification. [1][2]
More importantly, scientists know virtually nothing about the dynamic carbon exchange fluxes that occur on all the relevant time and lengths scales to say anything definitive about how atmospheric CO2 arises and is exchanged in interaction with the planet’s ecological systems. We are barely at the point of being able to ask intelligent questions.
…
For left progressives to collaborate with First World governments that practice global extortion and geopolitical wars in order to pass carbon schemes to undemocratically manage and control the developments of non-First-World communities and sovereign states is obscene, racist, and cruelly cynical.
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This is excellent.
A small percent change in the 95% of CO2 production due to non-human sources (bacteria, fungi, insects, etc) could clearly dwarf the small changes in human production. A naturally warming planet will have more bacteria, fungi, and insects, and they will each become more active, just as CO2 production clearly rises in the summer and falls in the winter.
It is sophistry to claim that the science, even on the production of CO2 on Earth, is settled. The science is in its infancy.
The link above the smoke stack photograph takes you to:
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/08/is-burning-of-fossil-fuel-significant.html
The links on the righthand side of the page lead to some very interesting articles.
Well worth a visit.
De Rode Willem says:
September 20, 2010 at 8:54 am
‘It is rather simple…’
Explaining the increase in atmospheric CO2 is simple if you ignore the much larger parts of the carbon cycle, such as biomass, oceans and volcanos. This what Engelbeen did in his recent attempt to justify the IPCC theory that attributes the CO2 increase to fossil fuel burning.
Dr. Rancourt does not deny any effect; he says the effect is insignificant.
This guy’s apostasy was mentioned earlier this year (and in 2007) by a few commenters here:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CB4QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwattsupwiththat.com%2F2010%2F07%2F26%2Fmissing-feedbacks-to-b-or-not-to-b%2F&rct=j&q=site%3Awattsupwiththat.com%20Rancourt&ei=gJWXTITjFYeqsAPq8KDlCQ&usg=AFQjCNF4f0kqcivU8-MGTYcnoJ8NvKJliA&sig2=gR_8okwqtGV9-AfxEmI_5g&cad=rja
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CCIQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwattsupwiththat.com%2F2007%2F10%2F04%2Fdetailed-comments-on-an-inconvenient-truth%2F&rct=j&q=site%3Awattsupwiththat.com%20Rancourt&ei=gJWXTITjFYeqsAPq8KDlCQ&usg=AFQjCNGNLI1QCCUImoqHIaR4L3i3Y__DcA&sig2=nqQ1nvFMaHccwpHGrfyf5g&cad=rja
Physicist Dr. Denis Rancourt addresses the lack of sufficient AGW (or much less CAGW) science that is actually of the “settled” or “consensus” variety. Thank you.
Maybe some humor on uncertainty and doom/gloom is in order. I posted this over at Bishop’s blog a few hours ago, addressed originally to Josh.
——————–
Above the doorway entrance to the IPCC’s HQ office should be an engraved plaque with the following quote inscribed:
“`all hope abandon, ye who enter here of assessing uncertainty in climate science”
[With my sincere apologies to Dante Alighieri]
Above the exit doorway of the IPCC’s HQ office should be a plaque with:
=> a smiley face labeled: “Have a nice apocalyptic CAGW day!”
John
THINK!, have you noticed that every green proposition is tanatic?, enthropic, against Eros, against Life itself?.
Their dream world: A Giant mountain of human compost!
Life is Nature´s “trick” to overcome Death
Let us awake!
They are the preachers of Thanatos, the pontifices of doom, the church of Negation, proclaiming the Gospel of Hate!
Then, we may sing:
Love is a many-splendored thing,
It’s the April rose that only grows in the early spring,
Love is nature’s way of giving,
a reason to believing,
The Golden crown that makes a Man a King.
Noting that his title indicates he is a “former” professor, I am sure that his comments will be dismissed by the liberal elite as the mere ramblings of a disgruntled crank. Alas, he will likely become a passing footnote marginalized, if necessary, by the same tired ad hominem attacks should he attempt to step out any further of his “place.”
Anthony,
Denis Rancourt’s first and most comprehensive essay on Global Warming came out in 2007, shocking many leftists.
This is the introduction:
“Global warming is often presented as the greatest potential threat to humankind and as the greatest environmental and ecological threat on the planet. It is also presented as a problem that could be solved or contained by determined international collaboration – by political will if it were present.
I argue: (1) that global warming (climate change, climate chaos, etc.) will not become humankind’s greatest threat until the sun has its next hiccup in a billion years or more (in the very unlikely scenario that we are still around), (2) that global warming is presently nowhere near being the planet’s most deadly environmental scourge, and (3) that government action and political will cannot measurably or significantly ameliorate global climate in the present world.
I also advance that there are strong societal, institutional, and psychological motivations for having constructed and for continuing to maintain the myth of a global warming dominant threat (global warming myth, for short). I describe these motivations in terms of the workings of the scientific profession and of the global corporate and finance network and its government shadows.
I argue that by far the most destructive force on the planet is power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might; and that the global warming myth is a red herring that contributes to hiding this truth. In my opinion, activists who, using any justification, feed the global warming myth have effectively been co-opted, or at best neutralized.
Full article is here:
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2007/02/global-warming-truth-or-dare.html
Mr. Rancourt comments on his blog “Just because many other factors were different one billion years ago say, does not invalidate this comparisons because the main factors were the same (same planet, same biomass, diverse life, same slowly evolving sun, same large latitudinal variations in incident irradiance, etc.)” http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/08/is-burning-of-fossil-fuel-significant.html#c974336068943468367
As a physicist, he can be forgiven for not knowing much paleontology, but not all things were the same a billion years ago…
I have had a heated discussion about this, perhaps the good readers of this blog can help.
Is this an 8% addition of human generated CO2, compounding annually? Or is 8% of all CO2 the human contribution?
As I am led to believe from the alarmists, the natural balance of CO2 has had an approximate equilibrium for many centuries. That is to say that the enormous amount of CO2 nature produced each year, was matched by nature in absorbing CO2.
Now, mankind is adding a small amount annually to the natural production of CO2 and each year our additions push this equilibrium further out of balance. Is this a correct interpretation of what is happening?
Alarmists also claim that CO2 was relatively stable at 200PPM prior to the industrial revolution, but now the current concentration of CO2 is 380PPM.
SO getting to the crux of my heated discussion, has our 8% been an on-going annual addition which has, over 150 years, almost doubled the concentration from 200 to 380PPM? Or is the total man-made percentage of current total CO2, only 8%? Meaning that the near doubling of CO2 from 200ppm – 380ppm is almost entirely natural?
Which view is correct?
I am of the belief that the small addition every year is compounding and although now only 8% of the CO2 produced each year is of human origin, that is still an amount above which natural processes cannot absorb and so the total CO2 still increases and so most, if not all of the increase from 200ppm – 380ppm is caused by man’s additional annual contribution, (even allowing for a short carbon cycle). This is as far as I go in agreeing with Alarmists, as I do not believe that doubling CO2 will cause a massive increase in global temperatures. I think it will have a small effect, but nowhere near the catastrophic scenarios of the Alarmists.
“We contribute 8% of the whole of GPP on earth by burning fossil fuel.”
I thought it was 4%. Has it recently shot up?
You’ve only just the other day hosted Ferdinand Engelbeen, patiently explaining how it is know, beyond all possible doubt, that fossil fuel burning has caused a 40% rise in the atmospheric CO2 concentration.
So why do you post this article promoting obviously mistaken views? To be deliberately rude to Ferdinand Engelbeen? To show that you did not understand his article? Just to be contrary?
Also I note again the tendency of disbelievers to use a bizarre royal we: “We are barely at the point of being able to ask intelligent questions”. He’s certainly not talking about climate scientists, because he is not a climate scientist. I presume that he means “I am” where he says “we are”
[REPLY – Differing views are permitted here. Personally, I happen to side with Ferdinand, but that doesn’t mean I can’t hear arguments from all sides and not take it as an insult. ~ Evan]
He calculates that CO2 generated by Fossil fuel burning is comparable to the CO2 exumed by humans and their domestic animals. In one of his previous blogs he says
“Furthermore, if we consider that all living things breathe (admittedly some microbes don’t breathe oxygen) and that Earth’s (living) biomass is approximately 10^15 kg-C, then total global breathing may well exceed the CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning by a factor of between ten and one thousand times greater.”
Quite a wide margin, but he says ants for instance have ten time our biomass, but even at the low end it puts our contribution to CO2 generation into perspective.
———————
bbttxu,
Please clarify.
Are you implying the laws of physics were not the same a billion years ago?
Are you implying that we don’t know anything about the earth system a billion years ago and cannot compare to today’s earth systems?
Are you implying physicists can’t understand the science of paleontology? Even when the principle science used by paleontology is physics (and the derivative science of chemistry)?
John
The FUTILITY of Mankind trying to Control Climate
Just running the numbers
On average world temperature is +15 deg C. This is sustained by the atmospheric Greenhouse Effect 33 deg C. Without the Greenhouse Effect the planet would be un-inhabitable at -18 deg C. The Biosphere and Mankind need the Greenhouse Effect.
Just running the numbers by translating the agents causing the Greenhouse Effect into degrees centigrade:
• Greenhouse Effect = ~33.00 deg C
• Water Vapour accounts for about 95% of the Greenhouse Effect = ~ 31.35 deg C
• Other Greenhouse Gases GHGs account for 5% = ~1.65 deg C
• CO2 is 75% of the effect of all accounting for the enhanced effects of Methane and Nitrous Oxide GHGs = ~1.24 deg C
• Most CO2 in the atmosphere is natural, more than 93%
• Man-made CO2 is less than 7% of total atmospheric CO2 = ~0.087 deg C
• the UK contribution to CO2 is 2% equals = 1,740 millionths deg C
• the USA contribution to CO2 is ~20% equals = 17.6 thousandths deg C
So closing carbon economies of the Whole World could only ever achieve a virtually undetectable less than 0.01deg C. How can the Green movement and their supporting politicians think that their remedial actions can limit warming to only + 2.00 deg C?
So the probability is that any current global warming is not man-made and in any case such warming could be not be influenced by any remedial action taken by mankind however drastic.
As this is so, the prospect should be greeted with Unmitigated Joy:
• concern over CO2 as a man-made pollutant can be discounted.
• it is not necessary to damage the world’s economy to no purpose.
• if warming were happening, it would lead to a more benign and healthy climate for all mankind.
• any extra CO2 is already increasing the fertility and reducing water needs of all plant life and thus enhancing world food production.
• a warmer climate, within natural variation, would provide a future of greater opportunity and prosperity for human development. This has been well proven in the past and would now especially benefit the third world.
Nonetheless, this is not to say that the world should not be seeking more efficient ways of generating its energy, conserving its energy use and stopping damaging its environments. And there is a real need to wean the world off the continued use of fossil fuels simply on the grounds of:
• security of supply
• increasing scarcity
• rising costs
• their use as the feedstock for industry rather than simply burning them.
The French long-term energy strategy with its massive commitment to nuclear power is impressive, (85% of electricity generation). Even if one is concerned about CO2, Nuclear Energy pays off, French CO2 emissions / head are the lowest in the developed world.
However in the light of the state of the current solar cycle, it seems that there is a real prospect of damaging cooling occurring in the near future for several decades. And as power stations face closure the lights may well go out in the winter 2016 if not before.
All because CO2 based Man-made Global Warming has become a state sponsored religion.
Anthony: Have you seen this? http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2010/09/20/rescuing_climate_science_from_agenda-driven_politics_98675.html
“For left progressives to collaborate with First World governments that practice global extortion and geopolitical wars in order to pass carbon schemes to undemocratically manage and control the developments of non-First-World communities and sovereign states is obscene, racist, and cruelly cynical.”
This is misplaced hyperbole. Human history is clear: states have used credit expansion (inflation of their currency) to finance war, either to deflect some domestic issue away from the ruling elites, or to seek economic domination over others.
But that was before the widespread adoption of welfare socialism by the west. Now governments use credit expansion to finance government spending on social programs. They in effect go to war against private holders of assets to gain resources to spread around to others in a frantic effort to retain power.
(And the biggest recent scheme of credit expansion was Fannie and Freddie via the Community Reinvestment Act. It amounted to about twice the size of the bailouts for the banks.)
The weapons of this new form of warfare are bureaucratic and legal in nature. Instead of conquering territory to benefit government by force of arms, for example, we have the creeping control over any land in a “watershed” in order to bring about the UN’s “Century 21” plan of land planning, complete with “wildlife corridors” and mass resettlement of rural populations, all in the name of saving the planet. We have such creeping control over the financial system that the Bank of America is now literally owned by the US Government and few people care. And what freedom we have will only diminish as our economic serfdom is perfected by our creditors, thanks to the Thelma and Louise spending plan: drive off a cliff while laughing about the things we accomplished.
Global Warming was the perfect weapon of this new war. Indeed, it was the Neutron Bomb, allowing government to stop any human use of energy but leaving the things government wanted to do, such as massive public works projects, untouched. The more complicated that government made the environmental laws, the more people who had to be employed and the more money government had to spend, in order to get something done. All these people, suppliers and subcontractors became beholden to the rulemakers and the money printers, and those in charge of “spreading the wealth around”.
Government is now at war against its own citizens for the purpose of gaining as much control over them as possible. That is exactly why those who view themselves as being on the side of big and Bigger government are reacting the way they are to the Tea Party. This is why the November election is so important.
Talking of Canadian scientists:
“That’s enough right there to put him firmly in the “nutcase” category. Humans have devastated the natural order of things over most of the globe. With the possible exception of the Greenland and Antarctic icecaps, there isn’t a square mile of land that hasn’t been seriously affected by human action, going back at least two thousand years and probably more than fifteen thousand.”
Been to Antarctica?
Be interesting to know many square miles on the continental USA “hasn’t been seriously affected by human action”
On one of its web sites that discusses methane hydrates, the US Geological Survey states:
“The worldwide amounts of carbon bound in gas hydrates is conservatively estimated to total twice the amount of carbon to be found in all known fossil fuels on Earth.” [1]
This carbon came from somewhere and that somewhere was either biological or from some physical process in the earth’s crust over time. This is all perfectly natural. I am amazed at how those who call themselves men of science presume that the present levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is somehow ideal.
Further, anyone who looks at the graphs of temperature and CO2 levels in the atmosphere over long periods of time, such as those from Vostok station (e.g.: http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/images/Vostok.jpg ) must surely realize that at a given level of CO2 there are two temperatures. These curves show that it is impossible for CO2 to be the primary driver of climate.
Finally, we have the quint native cliff villages in the wilds of the American southwest that show there was a time when the climate there was sufficiently moist to support agriculture. Yet long before humans started industrial-scale use of hydrocarbon fuels, the climate changed and the quaint natives perished.
The truth is that the climate is always changing. The only question is to what extent human activity causes harmful changes. And how can we even permit ourselves to foolishly try to extrapolate 0.1 degrees of signal when over 3/4 of our measuring stations are giving us junk readings? Only when those doing the work are hell-bent on advancing an agenda that has far more about increasing government control and reducing liberty and prosperity than it has to do with actually benefiting humanity.
[1] http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html
John, I italicized the text I took issue with. -bbt
“CO2 concentrations are going up. Humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere. Because of isotope ratios, we know that human fossil fuel sourced CO2 is accumulating.”
This is true, although the concentration would still be going up even without our contribution, and our contribution is probably not all that significant, especially when it comes to any measureable temperature variations.
“Conclusion: global warming is our fault.”
This is extremely likely to be false. The globe has been warmer in the past than it is now, and we were not even burning fossil fuels at the time unless you count wood-burning fires during some of the later periods when it was warmer than it is now. Also, it has yet to be shown that CO2 provides positive feedback which amplifies warming. If the feedback were positive, then back in the days when CO2 atmospheric concentration was 800ppm and higher (and yes that HAS happened in the past), then the Earth would have IRREVERSABLY heated to unbearable temperatures, releasing ever more water vapor and CO2 into the atmosphere, causing ever more heating, and it would have been an endless upward spiral of doom. Since this did NOT happen when CO2 concentrations were 800ppm and higher, I find it highly unlikely that it is going to happen with CO2 concentrations of 390 ppm.
Oooo! This will get them frothing!
GregL says:
September 20, 2010 at 9:56 am
a + b = c, so c = d. Your logic is defective.
Conclusion: global warming is our fault.
Ken Hall @ur momisugly September 20, 2010 at 10:23 am:
Ken, the IPCC itself actually says human CO2 production is currently about 4% of the total yearly output of the planet. If the accumulation to date were to have stayed in the atmosphere, the total concentration would be roughly 600 ppm. The CAGW advocates claim that the other roughly half of the accumulation went into the oceans, and the rest is just hanging around to be slowly removed.
Empirical evidence against this hypothesis argues that the correlation between estimated human production and measured change is poor across all spectral components. In fact, the last several decades’ measured accumulation in the atmosphere is remarkably linear.
Moreover, the hypothesized slow dynamics of reabsorption would naturally lead to a far ranging random walk-like behavior, which is not indicated by the historical record upon which the advocates rely. Just as Nature abhors a vacuum, it abhors maintaining any equilibrium which is not enforced by competing dynamics. To maintain the supposed historic tight equilibrium, the system would require a high bandwidth, but such a high bandwidth would prevent the observed buildup from being due to exogenous input, and so there is a contradiction.
The conclusions, to one who really understands how dynamic systems work, are that A) the greater part of the CO2 buildup we have seen in recent decades is due to natural variation, and B) the historical record is suspect. Even now, if one plots the rate of change in measured CO2 concentration, it is abundantly clear that it is decelerating, and we have reached an inflection point. It may take a couple to three more decades if the curve is smooth, or it could happen rapidly, which the historical data indicates at least qualitatively is possible, but average CO2 concentration will almost certainly begin to decrease again in time, as it likely has bobbed up and down for centuries before we were around to observe it.