This is rather stupid, in my opinion. Not one person I have ever professionally associated with in the cause of climate skepticism has ever said anything at all like what you are about to read below. For the record: Yes, both CO2 and CH4 are “greenhouse gases”, and yes they do have a warming effect by backscattered long wave infra red. The magnitude and risk from it is the central argument. Since it is a good time to review this, here is this graph of CO2 response, done by Willis Eschenbach in MODTRAN. Note it is logarithmic, not linear, as it is often portrayed in media. More here – Anthony
From Quadrant online: ABC fails listeners
by Tom Harris
ABC Radio fails listeners in climate change interview
What’s the worst radio interview ever conducted on climate change? Could it be Australian?
Maybe so. ABC radio’s Robyn Williams’ October 2, 2010 interview of UK-based public relations director Bob Ward is certainly a contender for the worldwide gold medal in the ‘worse ever’ category. The interview, broadcast on the nationally prestigious Science Show, is so bad that listeners don’t need to actually know anything about climate science to spot the most obvious flaws.
Ward says, “The uncertainties in the science are really about how much it will warm in the future and how it will affect the climate. We don’t know because this is a huge experiment that we’re running on our planet.”
Williams justifiably did not contest Ward on this point. The science of climate change is so immature that indeed we do not know “how much it will warm in the future and how it will affect the climate.” The warming could be large, medium (both unlikely based on recent trends), small, or even negative (known by climate campaigners as “interrupted warming” since “cooling” is not part of their lexicon). And, yes, it is effectively an experiment we are conducting. But then Ward’s UK government are already conducting another “experiment” to do with possible future hazard by not preparing for an invasion from Canada. You never know, Canadian forces with mass murder on their minds might hitch a ride on an American transport plane (we have few of our own) destined for Gatwick. Risk assessment also includes probability, Mr. Ward. Otherwise we would never fly in an airplane, drive a car or even cross a city street.
Despite his sensible initial caution, Ward also confidently asserts, “We know, despite the uncertainties, there is a significant probability that if we just carry on pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere we risk large changes in temperature with large impacts on the climate, impacts that will be very, very difficult for us to cope with and the kinda [sic] thing that I think most people would not want to risk if there’s a cost effective solution to reducing emissions.”
A good interviewer would have immediately cornered Ward since this comment contradicts Ward’s (correct) statement that we don’t know “how much it will warm in the future and how it will affect the climate”. Williams should also have asked, “What is “a significant probability” of large climatic changes due to human emissions?” 5%? 25%? 90%? This is important to approximate since we know with 100% certainty that if we spend trillions on Ward’s boss’ climate crusade (Ward works as Policy and Communications Director for Nicholas Stern, at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment in London), there will be far less money available to tackle truly desperate world problems that we know are real and immediate.
Take the 5 million people a year, mostly children, who die due to contaminated drinking water in Africa, for example. This is not some abstract possible threat postulated by theorists with vested interests in forecasting catastrophe to keep research dollars flowing. The drinking water crisis, and many other on-going world tragedies, are happening right now; there is no doubt. The UN has shown that the 1.5 billion people who lack clean water, sanitation and elementary health care and education could all be provided with it for about $70 billion/year. Contrast this with the one trillion dollar price tag estimated by George Taylor, former President of the American Association of State Climatologists, for one year’s compliance of OECD countries with the Kyoto Protocol. If Williams was on the ball, he would have asked Ward, “which is more important – the health and welfare of people suffering today, or those not yet born who might suffer someday due to climate change that even you admit is highly uncertain?”
Even if there is non-trivial warming over the coming decades, how does Ward, or anyone else, know that human activity is making a measurable contribution? We don’t of course. Even if Williams didn’t know this, he still should have asked, “who is to say warming “will be very, very difficult for us to cope with” or that the warming will even be detrimental overall?” In one of the many peer-reviewed scientific papers that Ward seems to have missed, former Environment Canada scientist Dr. Madhav Khandekar has shown that India has done very well in a warming climate and concludes that wealthier nations such as Canada have essentially nothing to fear should warming resume (the UK’s Hadley Center shows that temperatures have plateaued in the last decade despite an increase in carbon dioxide levels of more than 5% – see graph below).
And when Ward asserts that dangerous global warming is “the kinda [sic] thing that I think most people would not want to risk if there is a cost effective solution to reducing emissions”, why didn’t Williams ask Ward what such “a cost effective solution” would be? Is it perhaps because no one can complete a meaningful cost/benefit analysis when future climate states are even less understood than the economic and social impacts of both climate change or energy rationing due to the sort of greenhouse gas controls Ward promotes? Ward’s statement is also self-evident – no one would oppose eliminating risk, no matter how small, in any field if a “cost effective solution” could be found. But then to formulate such a solution we first need to know accurately the balance of cost and benefit – which, for climate change, we do not.
Next, Ward attributes nonsense to climate skeptics:
Anybody who seriously argues that carbon dioxide and methane are not greenhouse gases; that increasing the concentrations in the atmosphere doesn’t warm the world; I mean they’re basically fighting against 200 years worth of science….
and …
Now, you’ve got to be very, very blinkered in your view if you are saying “I know for sure there will be no increase in temperature and there’s no risk.”
Why didn’t Williams ask Ward to tell the listening audience who has made these sorts of absolute statements? Is it because no one actually has? Certainly, Ward’s primary targets for vilification in the interview, Professors Carter, Lindzen and Plimer, never have. Even with his relatively weak science background, Ward must know that.
Ward’s conclusion is classic:
… what’s worrying about this is they [climate skeptics] are creating confusion at a time when we have to make very serious decisions because the climate responds slowly to changes in greenhouse gas emissions and actually the decisions we gonna [sic] make today about emissions are about what kind of climate we’ll see 20, 30 years from now and has very large implications if we make the wrong decisions.
Given Ward’s overconfidence about a science that he admits is grossly uncertain, Williams should have jumped at the chance to ask him an obvious question, which is:
Since the impacts of major greenhouse gas decisions are delayed for decades, shouldn’t we take the time to carefully consider what leading experts such as Carter, Plimer and Lindzen are saying? Why rush decisions when the consequences of being wrong are so high? Either we are headed towards climate catastrophe or we are on the verge of wasting trillions of dollars worldwide on a non-issue. Either way, we owe it to our children and grandchildren to perform due diligence on the issue before making any decisions at all.
Finally, Williams should have pointed out that Ward is not treating the public like adults. We may tell very young children that the world is predictable to help them sleep at night. But telling the public that ‘the science is clear’, as UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon and other alarmists do all the time, when reality is precisely the opposite, does us all a great disservice.
Rather than labeling well-qualified experts such as Carter, Lindzen and Plimer as merely confusion generators who should be silenced, and trying to suppress their views, Ward should be helping the public to hear more of what they have to say.
For only if all sides of the science are on the table for discussion do we have any chance of making rational decisions about what may very well be the most complex issue humanity has ever tackled.
Tom Harris is Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition
=====================================================
The audio and transcript of this entire interview is online at ABC here:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2010/3023812.htm
Email addresses contacting people at ABC to express your views on this incident:
Chairman of the Board (Maurice Newman -via his personal assistant who is Angela Peters: Peters.Angela (at) abc.net.au
Robyn Williams: Williams.Robyn (at) abc.net.au
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I would like to see a Global Warming believer respond to Richard Holle’s comment at 7:42 am. If I can paraphrase, his basic question, which I happen to fully agree with, is this: Even if you are convinced that human caused CO2 emmissions are causing harm to the environment, can’t you see that the proposed solutions are having the exact opposite effect of what you purport to desire??????
Adding taxes and regulations to western nations which generally have better technology and environmental regulations simply forces production to nations with much less efficient technology and very little regard for the environment. Do you honestly think China and India are going to agree to or abide by any environmental restrictions? Until you can give me a reasonable explaination as to how this benefits the environment, your “precautionary principle” is a fool’s errand.
desmong says:
October 6, 2010 at 12:43 pm
The US geological Survey has no idea how much CO2 volcanoes put out – they quote one paper Gerlach 1991!! Try and find it. Their link to it is a recycle back to the same page. How much knowledge re volcanoes, especially submarine volcanoes, did they know about in 1991? 19 years later they are still discovering new submarine volcanoes every day and they still have no idea how many there are.
According to a leading British vulcanologist when asked how much CO2 the recent Iceland volcano emitted replied that no one actually knows how much CO2 volcanoes emit because no one has measured it precisely.
That TV interview with Plimer, Monbiot and Tony Jones was the most despicable piece of TV journalism ever!!
@JPeden says:
“[W]hy has water vapor, with an essentially infinite source for its supply, not already boiled us all many times over? Isn’t water vapor ~”a ghg which will likewise doom the World”? Why hasn’t the much greater “natural” CO2 concentrations of the past, which so far have been shown at best to follow temperature increases and decreases instead of preceding them, not done the same thing; and why did water vapor apparently not assist it then, when it allegedly will now?”
The amount of water vapor the atmosphere can hold is a function of the temperature. Your statement that there an essentially limitless supple of liquid water has no barring on the matter. Most past climate changes were triggered by “wobbles” in earth’s orbit. These small changes are amplified by feedback mechanisms such as a slightly warmer air temps leading to more CO2 which in turn causes a greenhouse effect which is further amplified by increased H2O vapor greenhouse effect. But the cycle can be started by higher CO2 levels as has happened from increased volcanic activity and is now happening because of human activity. Since you know so little of the science maybe you should not smugly lecture insinuate that the world’s leading climatologists don’t understand the “scientific method.” See The Discovery of Global Warming by Wert.
“What sane person wants to create a known disaster – such as exists right now in the underdeveloped world and is being dealt with there by massive fossil fuel CO2 producing construction projects involving coal fired electricity plants – in order to allegedly prevent a condidtion which has apparently never happened before with much greater CO2 concentrations and which the ipcc Climate Science has never shown by a proper analysis of benefits and detriments to be a net disease to begin with?”
There is no basis for assertion that cap and trade or a carbon tax would result in economic disaster. This is pure alarmism. It is agreed the developing countries will be permitted to further increase their GHG emissions for now. In the West initial reductions will not be that costly as there is plenty that can be done through greater efficiency. In the medium run nuclear power will be up and running. Major long term reductions may be difficult unless new technologies are developed – so better to start now. Any reductions we can make now we should do. The cost of adaptation is likely to be higher than the cost of mitigation although both will be needed. We should mitigate as much as is cost effective. We will have to develop post fossil fuel technologies someday anyway.
@Canadian Mike:
We could impose a ‘carbon tariff’ on goods from countries that do not comply with negotiated agreements if this were to become a problem.
@Mike
So, if I follow you, current CO2 emissions from western countries are an immediate threat but you will deal with significantly higher CO2 emissions and real pollutants from “developing” countries if they “become a problem”.
Further, “developing” countries are generally exempted from reduction agreements so your solution would have no real impact.
It seems clear to me the solutions being proposed by the left will have a negative environmental impact and will drastically redistribute wealth.
gryposaurus,
1. Harries et al. 2001, “Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997″ (65 citations)
“Actually that paper does not challenge the Harries paper. It merely questions modelling and correlations. Griggs showed evidence of an increased greenhouse effect and Raschke, as far as I can see, doesn’t say anything about that. And also, the Griggs paper was published before the Raschke paper, so I fail to see how the Griggs paper has been “challenged”.”
Yes it does challenge the paper’s conclusions and directly references it. Harries et al. was published in March 2001. Raschke was published in November 2001.
2. Griggs and Harries 2004, “Comparison of spectrally resolved outgoing longwave data between 1970 and present” (2 citations)
“Actually, I don’t know where you getting that from. It was published in the Journal of Climate. A peer-reviewed journal. Please provide you justification for saying this.”
Really? The paper explicitly named “Comparison of spectrally resolved outgoing longwave data between 1970 and present” was published in the the Journal of Climate? Please provide the link. Here I will help you.
Looks like you conceded on 3 an 4. The paper full of modeling (3) and the conference paper (4). Another epic fail for Skeptical Science.
“And yet you’ve not at all shown why he/she shouldn’t.”
Because it is a worthless source but Skeptical Science doesn’t care about their hypocrisy right?
For papers claiming to make an empirical case for AGW you would think they would all be published and widely cited. Funny how skeptics papers must be peer-reviewed and widely cited but AGW proponents can have 2 or less citations and be conference papers.
Steve Mosher:
Regarding your poll. Have you been here?
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/design-a-poll/
I see you link to Jeff’s blog on your blog.
I would suggest a “criteria for being counted”. I’m not sure how to do that, but I suspect such a poll would be a magnet for sock puppets.
Cheers
JE
James Sexton says . . .
“People often make incorrect assumptions about myself and other people with similar perspectives. It happens, and there isn’t much to be done about it, because we all engage in it. Right on cue, you engaged in the very same act, all the while railing against the ‘guilt by association’ and the broad brush alarmists try to paint us skeptics, and all the while painting conservatives with the same broad brush. Yes, I brought up God, guns and flag, and make no apologies for it. It doesn’t diminish my ability to reason, nor does it diminish my skepticism about climate science or the arguments I make. ”
No. Right on cue, YOU brought up God, guns, and flag. They have nothing to do with the issue, and make the skeptics’ side look retarded. You are behaving exactly the way the [liberal] warmists claim we all do.
Alan F. says . . .
“I myself am a Canadian, member of the National Democratic Party and vote for he/she who will do the least damage always. Own a successful business, don’t mind the enormous cost of Uni-Health to me at all, have more First Nations in my family than you’ve ever seen in a western movie, have worked hand and shovel conserving wetlands since 1980 and would have voted for Hillary Clinton if I was an American. To call out Republicans as religious zealots yet not deal in turn with Democrats who put Pierre Elliot Trudeau and David Suzuki to absolute shame is paradigm dishonesty. Call them all or not at all.
“There are already people posting here I skip as their content alters not a whit regardless of the topic in question.”
Apparently you skipped mine too, since I criticized the Democrats as much as the Republicans. I do not want to be branded as associated with either. Their leaders are ALL fanatic, self-serving charlatans imposing their fringe beliefs on everyone else, while claiming they represent the majority.
Today I received an e-mail with a video link from a liberal friend with a note asking me to send it on to all my friends and relatives. I clicked the link, and watched an absurd, bigoted, straw-man riddled commercial called Why I Am Voting Republican or some such featuring actors portraying Republicans as cruel primitives. It doesn’t matter that it’s all nonsense; millions and millions of people believe this because so many Republicans do conform to these stereotypes and the others do not stand up and put an end to it. The Democratic Party never tells the truth about anything, and always tries to pass the blame for its own blunders on its opposition, so that a vast majority of Democrats have no clue that their own leaders are responsible for many of the things they criticize.
Republicans and Democrats who do not want to join the Borg or have a handful of greedy manipulators control the country need to abandon both parties and form something new: an alliance based on common ground, not celebrating differences. Politicians are not public servants: They are vastly over-paid public cattle herders, trying to impose their values, or the values of their paid sponsors, on everyone else.
This November, I plan to vote against every sitting politician up for re-election that I can, regardless of party. These horrible entities have done incalculable damage, and not one of them deserves a second, third, fourth, or fifth chance.
Anton, you may want to look into Libertarians.
[Well, at least we agree on the need to construct more nuclear energy plants.]
Mike says:
October 6, 2010 at 2:28 pm
The amount of water vapor the atmosphere can hold is a function of the temperature.
So water vapor is not a “ghg” in its own right? Which increases atmospheric temp. by slowing Long Wave radiation loss to space, similar to the “ghg” function of CO2? But which is a much more potent radiation-capturing/slowing molecule than is CO2. A molecule which also by virtue of its greater atmospheric concentration, where present, completely cloaks any CO2 Long Wave radiation capturing/slowing, except in the ~15u band area. And whose concentration will increase by virtue of any initial increased atmospheric warming effect in response to an increased Long Wave source, where a water vapor source is available, thus allowing even more of any emitted Long Wave radiation still available to be absorbed/converted/slowed by the then increased water vapor concentration, and so on to a theoretical limit depending upon the amount of Long Wave available. A ghg which does not need CO2 to have an adequate atmospheric warming effect, as demonstrated by ice core data and also demonstrated by the fact that current CO2 concentrations are apparently at an ~630 million yr. low, but nevertheless apparently already at a concentration exerting nearly its maximal ability to capture/slow existing Long Wave radiation escape.
While water vapor’s more potent ghg effect has been effectively countered by water’s own negative feedback mechanisms.
Since you know so little of the science maybe you should not smugly lecture insinuate that the world’s leading climatologists don’t understand the “scientific method.”
Then why don’t the Climate Scientists use it? Why do you think Climate Science is in such trouble and disrepute? And why then is Climate Science most obviously only a massive Propaganda Op.?
There is no basis for assertion that cap and trade or a carbon tax would result in economic disaster.
Tell that to the Chinese and Indians, who already are in a state of economic disaster, and are working to get out of it by the unimpeded production of as much fossil fuel CO2/electrictiy as possible! Tell that to people in the developed countries who know that their current wellbeing/standard of living depends upon a certain level of easily available fossil fuel energy. Tell that to people like Indur Golanky who have presented studies right here at WUWT demonstrating increases in lifespan and decreases in devastation from severe climate events which are directly tied to fossil fuel technology and the resulting overall economic development. Tell it to every nation which is giving up on solar and wind as an effective replacement.
And, Mike, given your own concerns and alleged superior knowledge as to the alleged threat posed by fossil fuel CO2 and its resolution, please inform us as to what you have already done to decrease your own personal fossil fuel “footprint”. Here’s betting that you can’t come anywhere close to what I’ve done over a 40 year period to minimize mine, even though I am operating solely on the basis of principles having to do with common sense efficiency.
Have you done much of anything other than to abet those who want to loot and control everyone else’s energy use, hence most aspects of their very lives? Why are you on the wrong side of reason?
Poptech says . . .
“Anton, you may want to look into Libertarians.”
I have, and they don’t do any for me, either. Their pro-abortion, pro-recreational drug position repels me, and their selfishness does even more so. They should factually call themselves libertines, not libertarians.
But, thanks for the suggestion.
Anton
Regardless of the interview, Williams clearly selected an interviewee with the appropriate bias. Seems to be a recurring pattern at the ABC.
These are popular misconceptions,
On the abortion issue libertarians do not take a side as you will find both positions Libertarians for Life.
They are not pro-recreational drugs, rather decriminalization of their use. There is a big difference. I personally consider drug users to be weak minded idiots but I support their right to give themselves brain damage if they choose. It is effectively impossible to stop people from doing harm to themselves. My only concern is when their behavior effects others.
Selfishness is a personal choice and has nothing to do Libertarians.
I highly suggest watching this video as it corrects your popular misconceptions including your libertine comment,
What is a Libertarian?
BTW where did you hear these common misconceptions?
Right. Let’s read
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/2007/07_02_15.html
Let’s see what the US Geological Survey says,
Do we also doubt the USGS? Isn’t there any moderation on what is being said here?
—-Yes it does challenge the paper’s conclusions and directly references it. Harries et al. was published in March 2001. Raschke was published in November 2001.—-
All you’ve shown is that Raschke cited the Harries paper. You’ve shown no evidence of it questioning the Harries conclusion of evidence of increased greenhouse effect at man-made emission wavelengths. The paper merely asks if human attribution has “complete justification” for the all the surface warming. It doesn’t disagree with the consensus, either in 2001 or that latest IPCC in 2007, that human emissions are responsible for over 50% of the warming. Please provide the exact reason for the citation and then we can get somewhere in discussing whether or not he “challenges” the Harries results.
—Really? The paper explicitly named “Comparison of spectrally resolved outgoing longwave data between 1970 and present” was published in the the Journal of Climate? Please provide the link. Here I will help you.—
And here is the paper from the Journal of Climate. Same data, authors, conclusions, etc, and peer-reviewed. No need to question its whether it was reviewed or make accusations of hypocrisy without proof.
—-For papers claiming to make an empirical case for AGW you would think they would all be published and widely cited. Funny how skeptics papers must be peer-reviewed and widely cited but AGW proponents can have 2 or less citations and be conference papers.—-
I already showed you the initial, important papers on the enhanced greenhouse effect were widely cited. Why are you ignoring that and reposting the same irrelevant argument?
Poptech, I have been to Libertarian Web sites, I have read Libertarian literature, and I have listened to Libertarian spokespersons. If I have misconceptions about Libertarianism, it’s because of Libertarians, including the few I’ve met in person. The obsession with Me, Me, Me and Mine, Mine, Mine that seems to define the entire movement doesn’t do anything for me at all. I’m not interested in returning to covered wagons.
desmong says:
October 7, 2010 at 2:24 am
so your article suggests that the one volcano they measured (Kilauea) produced 30,000 tonnes of CO2 per day. That’s 10,950,000 tonnes per year.
They also say that the total CO2 output from the known volcanoes is 200,000,000 tonnes.
Therefore they are assuming there are 18.26 active volcanoes.
here’s an extract from an interview by the ABC’s Robyn Williams on the Science Show from earlier this year:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2010/2831536.htm
ignore the fact that 100 isn’t 1% of 50,000 but note the 50,000 – that’s a great deal larger than 18 don’t you think? But they are just guessing as no one actually knows, just as no one knows where to differentiate between an out gassing from multiple vents and an actual volcano. Add to that the thermal regions like Yellowstone and Rotorua globally and I suggest you’ll find there’s more natural CO2 around than the USGS would have you believe.
Ian Plimer’s book has page after page in a chapter on volcanoes which is why he waved the book at the two attackdog journalists (who had claimed to have read his book) as all his information was in the book fully referenced.
“They Blinded Me With”Science”. I am an Electronics Technician (avionics). Always, in an analog circuit there is “noise”. Noise in this instance is spurious electronic signals of very low level. Radios and other electronics filter and/or ignore this noise. With CO2 at .038%, 380 ppm, it can “backscatter” IR radiation to its extreme and at that low concentration(.038%) the temperature rise will not be greater than the natural noise in the system. It would have NO effect. This is the “common sense” view that occurred to me 20 years ago when I first considered the AGW scare. I stand by it today.
I challenge anyone to use the “Scientific Method” to prove AGW. But they haven’t. Seems much of the observed actual data won’t fit the models. HMMM.
Where is that pesky “Tropospheric Warm Zone”. Funny, it’s not there. despite the models.
Anton,
I hope you will consider watching this video,
What is a Libertarian? (Video)
I am not sure how many you have talked to but it only takes a conversation with one radical who is poor at communication to misinform someone. I am not sure your your exact concerns with the “me, me, me” statements unless you reject independence, personal responsibility and liberty? There is nothing about Libertarians that rejects charity, they simply reject socialist policies. Charity is widely discussed as the alternative to welfare. So without clarifying exactly what your “selfish” concerns are, I cannot address them. But as I have clearly pointed out, you have already presented multiple misconceptions so it is likely you have the same here.
I question you seriousness on discussing the issue when you mention absurdities like “covered wagons”.
gryposaurus,
1. My link to the full copy of the Raschke paper is broken and there does not appear to be another one online so I am unable to quote from it but it does specifically reject the implications of the Harries paper made by proponents of AGW. There are however other rebuttals to the paper,
A Smoking Pea-Shooter
“From the foregoing, we can safely disregard the media hysteria about this paper’s findings. At face value it proves little that we did not already know. The `increase’ in the greenhouse effect claimed was mostly caused by a real or imagined change in the methane spike at wave 1300, not by CO2.
The instruments themselves are so different as to make some variation between the two data streams inevitable. It should be no surprise therefore that some slight differences are present. The climatic states of the two years in question were very different. 1970 was during a solar maximum with a weak La Niña in progress, while 1997 was a solar minimum year with a powerful El Niño starting. Both these features would cause differences to occur in infra-red profiles from the very part of the world most affected by the sun and El Niño/La Niña – the tropics in the western Pacific.
And even if we accept the `statistical significance’ of the two gases identified as showing the greatest effect, namely methane and the CFCs, neither gas can be considered as problems at the present time. Methane has now stopped increasing, while CFCs are already in decline due to the restrictions of the Montreal Protocol.
The primary gas at the centre of the greenhouse controversy – CO2 – gives only weak indications in this study, well within the range of instrument error between two very different instruments separated by technologies 27 years apart.
This study is in no way a `smoking gun’ as hoped for by the industry. It’s more a smoking pea-shooter.”
2. Like I said the paper cited by bgood2creation, “Comparison of spectrally resolved outgoing longwave data between 1970 and present” was published by Proceedings of SPIE and was not peer-reviewed. The new paper you are citing is different,
5. Griggs and Harries 2007 “Comparison of Spectrally Resolved Outgoing Longwave Radiation over the Tropical Pacific between 1970 and 2003 Using IRIS, IMG, and AIRS” is only cited 2 times.
Do you reject that the number of citations a paper has as an important factor of it’s relevance?
My proof for hypocrisy was proven by bgood2creation citing two conference papers that were not peer-reviewed and had a low citation count.
@Smokey October 6, 2010 at 9:28
The volcanic contribution of CO2 is well-known and long has been, as is the isotopic evidence that rules out the biosphere and the ocean as significant sources for the CO2 rise as well. Desmong provided a fine link with documentation, but there are many more out there if you are interested. As even WUWT regulars Eschenbach and Ferdinand Engelbeen has recently shown on this blog, you are seriously wasting your time trying to blame the CO2 rise on anything but humans – especially volcanoes.
First of all, assessing AGW is not about “Bob Ward versus Richard Lindzen”, (or e.g. Gore vs. Monckton, for that matter) but about looking at what the scientific documentation says. Bob Ward simply makes the correct point that Lindzen, Carter and Plimer (and lots of others) are peddling obvious nonsense without a shred of evidence to back it up. I just listed three of the most glaring examples.
Second, I completely agree that Lindzen is a brilliant scientist. This is exactly what is troubling me when he quotes Khilyuk & Chilingar´s “total human combustion could only increase temperature by 0,01C”? I will allow myself to assume that you agree that there is no way that Lindzen could seriously think that the AGW hypothesis is about humans directly heating the planet by combustion. Why, then, does he approvingly quotes this utter rubbish as were it a serious scientific dispute? I do not know whether Lindzen has failed to read the argument he relies on in it entirety or whether he is simply dishonest, but in either case it is embarassing for someone who is – or perhaps, once was – a respected scientist.
In any case, no sane person could honestly dispute that Lindzen´s claim is exactly what Ward says: confusion-generating noise. And the fact that a PR guy like Ward (or a mere graduate student as I) does in fact get some very basic facts right which is missed (or deliberately evaded) by Lindzen, Carter and Plimer should give any sane, normally gifted person relying on those people reason to pause. You are (apparently unknowingly) making Bob Ward´s point.
@mkelly says: October 6, 2010 at 11:53 am
Leaving aside the fact that Plimer himself said exactly what I attributed to him in the debate with George Monbiot challenging him on this very quote (as Desmong noted) –
– even if your interpretation had been correct, it would make Plimers argument pointless. Plimer´s wording “one volcanic cough in just a day” certainly suggests that this is an ordinary phenomenon. If his argument merely were that some very rare kind of volcano could in theory add significant amounts of CO2 only in the most unlikely of imagined circumstances not witnessed in the last millenia, then what is the point of bringing it up in a debate about the last 250 years of CO2 increase? Surely not generating noise and confusion, or…….?
Besides, it is not even true that humans have added just one ppm – we have added about 110 ppm of the present 390 ppm. Neither is it true that even the largest of volcanoes could possible add as much in one day, or even a year. See the documentation quoted above in my answer to “Smokey”.
As Ward says, this is simply noise and confusion, and the only reason why anybody would want to hear more of this is if one wants to make it more difficult for people to reach the correct scientifically based conclusions.
@JPeden
Mike already answered part of this: Water vapour is a feedback, and not a forcing. This does not mean that H2O is not a GHG in its own right, but it does mean than it cannot trigger changes in itself, but only amplify changes brought about by forcings.
To make it clearer for you: The residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 1000-10000 times larger than that of H2O, so while CO2 or CH4 stay in the atmosphere for years or even decades, adding more H2O to the atmosphere than could be supported by the actual temperature conditions would simply cause it to rain out again in days or weeks. (This can be calculated by the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, which is secondary school or at least 1-year college basics – instead of harping endlessly about a perceived want of “The scientific method”, why don´t you go try it out yourself?)
First of all, there is quite a lot of evidence that GHGs have indeed caused large temperature rises and other dramatic disruptions in the past – e.g. under the Permian Mass Extinction 250 mya or the a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene–Eocene_Thermal_Maximum”>Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum about 55 mya.
Second, if you intend to repeat the question about why it did not happen e.g. 650 mya under the supposed “Snowball earth” with 10-12.000 ppm CO2 – then why not use your beloved scientific method again and do a couple of simple calculations? Assuming similar ingoing radiation (342 W/m2) and albedos for land and ice of 0,3 and 0,5, respectively, the forcing difference imparted from an Earth entirely covered by ice sheets would be about 342*0,2=68 W/m2. 10.000 ppm is just above 5 doublings relative to the present historic values (about 280 ppm ), and each doubling gives about 3,7 W/m2 (this value is acknowledged even by Lindzen). 5 doublings gives 18,5 W/m2 – far below the forcing imparted by the ice sheets. So you see, simple use of the scientific method does indeed provide quite a few good answers for your questions.
??? According to all literature on the temperature-CO2 lag in the glaciation cycles I have ever read, water vapour did assist CO2 (and the orbital and the ice sheet forcing, not to forget) in deglaciation. See e.g. Lorius et al. (1990). The orbital forcing was the initiator, and it was assisted by the triggered changes in ice sheet cover and atmospheric CO2, CH4 – and, of course, water vapour. See also Caillon et al. (2003).
Sorry, but not on Planet Earth. See e.g. Soden et al. (2005), Dessler et al. 2008 or Trenberth et al. (2010) – all show an empirically clear and unequivocally positive feedback (the latter paper specifically demonstrating where Lindzen has gone wrong).
Mr. Peden, I doubt that any of this will make you admit any error, let alone change any of your beliefs, but you are obviously unaware of many of the most basic facts and concepts on the topic of climate change. If it is the cap-and-trade and other economic issues that bother you, then why don´t you stick to criticising those? There is zero serious content in your objections to the scientific documentation, and I frankly think that you do your own case more harm than good by repeating basic misunderstandings as you do here and on your page.
Christoffer Bugge Harder says:
“As even WUWT regulars Eschenbach and Ferdinand Engelbeen has [sic] recently shown on this blog, you are seriously wasting your time trying to blame the CO2 rise on anything but humans – especially volcanoes.”
Is your reading comprehension really that bad?? Or, are you deliberately using a red herring argument? As Willis says: quote my exact words. And leave your assumptions for the head-nodders at the RealClimate echo chamber.
But here at the internet’s “Best Science” site, you’ll get push-back if you don’t have solid evidence to support your CO2=CAGW conjecture. So produce testable, empirical, replicable evidence verifying that CO2 is the main driver of the climate. If you can.
Re-read my post of October 6, 2010 at 9:28 am one more time. I stand by everything I wrote, and I note that it was you who gave a pretty precise number for a very big unknown [if you believe the number of undersea volcanoes is known with any accuracy, then by all means, please provide that number].
You also misrepresented what I wrote re: Willis and Ferdinand. As I have posted repeatedly here, I agree with them. You might also pay attention to the central question in the entire debate: will an increase in CO2 cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe?
You see, it doesn’t matter if CO2 is rising – which is mostly an effect, not a cause, of the planet’s emergence from the LIA more than anything, since rises in CO2 follow rises in temperature. The only thing that matters is whether a rise in CO2 will cause a catastrophic “tipping point” to occur. Because if the planet warms 1°C or less from here, the net effect will on balance be beneficial to the biosphere. But so far, the planet is falsifying the computer models.
Finally, keep in mind that scientific skeptics — the only honest kind of scientists — have nothing to prove. The onus is entirely on the purveyors of the debunked CO2=CAGW conjecture to provide any convincing, testable, empirical evidence showing that a minor trace gas is the primary driver of the climate.
So far, climate alarmists have failed to provide convincing evidence, due to one major obstacle: the scientific method — which the alarmist crowd avoids like Dracula avoids the dawn.
But if you do manage to find some evidence of that elusive tipping point, you will be the first to do so, and you will be well on your way to sharing the Nobel prize with Al Gore and Barry Obama. Good luck, I wish you the best in that regard.
Poptech:
—–1. My link to the full copy of the Raschke paper is broken and there does not appear to be another one online so I am unable to quote from it but it does specifically reject the implications of the Harries paper made by proponents of AGW.—–
So you can’t really tell anyone what the citation says? How does it “specifically reject the implications”? The implications are that there is extra energy on the planet at human emission wavelengths. Raschke doesn’t deny that from what you’ve posted. In fact, there is a sample page that states he only wants further investigation into whether the increased greenhouse effect can be attributed to all the warming, and wants to know what portion. It also questions the models ability to do this at the time (2001). Otherwise, I don’t see where Raschke “rejects” the paper’s “implications”. Being skeptical and wanting to get a better measurement of attribution is not the same as rejecting. That’s just good science.
—-There are however other rebuttals to the paper,
A Smoking Pea-Shooter—-
This is a blog post of a guy eyeballing a chart and not making sound conclusions based on it. He says, “As we can see, the differences are only slight, though detectable (thus making them `statistically significant’ – a far cry from being climatically significant).” He clearly didn’t understand what “slight” is, or what significance is important. He seems mainly concerned about media spin. Not only that, this blog post does not include all the follow up on this subject. I think John Daly passed in 2004 and didn’t see any of that data himself. This isn’t something that people, who want to know what’s going on, would care about.
—-2. Like I said the paper cited by bgood2creation, “Comparison of spectrally resolved outgoing longwave data between 1970 and present” was published by Proceedings of SPIE and was not peer-reviewed. The new paper you are citing is different,—–
The studies are the same. Take a look a the two and tell me why it is so critical they were published in two different places. The methodology, results and conclusions were peer-reviewed and that is what is important. The fact that one was released at a conference and the other was submitted to a journal is nit-picky silliness in order to put the label of hypocrite on AGW proponents. It’s an inaccurate account using this example.
— is only cited 2 times.
Do you reject that the number of citations a paper has as an important factor of it’s relevance?—
I’ve already discussed why; the initial paper and results are a more important citation than a six year extension of the same data. You still ignore this to win this stupid argument in order to make AGW proponents look like hypocrites. Why? Maybe this is more important to you than learning the reality of the science? Do tell.
—-My proof for hypocrisy was proven by bgood2creation citing two conference papers that were not peer-reviewed and had a low citation count.—
This is a poor case then. I wouldn’t bother calling attorney general on this one.
gryposaurus,
Do you reject that the number of citations a paper has as an important factor of it’s relevance? (Yes/No)