Below is the press release (on the web here) from the American Physical Society, responding to the resignation letter of APS fellow Dr. Hal Lewis made public last Friday, October 8th. APS Members Dr. Roger Cohen, Dr. Will Happer, and of course Dr. Hal Lewis have responded in kind, and have asked me to carry their response on WUWT. I’ve gladly obliged, and their inline comments are indented in blue italics in the document below. – Anthony
October 12, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Tawanda W. Johnson
Press Secretary
APS Physics
529 14th St. NW, Suite 1050
Washington, DC 20045-2065
Phone: 202-662-8702
Fax: 202-662-8711
tjohnson@aps.org
APS Comments on Harold Lewis’ Resignation of his Society Membership
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a recent letter to American Physical Society (APS) President Curtis A. Callan, chair of the Princeton University Physics Department, Harold Lewis, emeritus physics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, announced that he was resigning his APS membership.
In response to numerous accusations in the letter, APS issues the following statement:
There is no truth to Dr. Lewis’ assertion that APS policy statements are driven by financial gain. To the contrary, as a membership organization of more than 48,000 physicists, APS adheres to rigorous ethical standards in developing its statements.
We know that the existing 2007 APS Statement on Climate Change was developed literally over lunch by a few people, after the duly constituted Committee had signed off on a more moderate Statement.
The Society is open to review of its statements if members petition the APS Council – the Society’s democratically elected governing body – to do so.
We have yet to receive a response to our Petition:
http://www.openletter-globalwarming.info/Site/Signatures__APS_Council_Study.html
…delivered last spring and signed by 260+ members and former members, including nearly 100 Fellows, 17 members of national academies and 2 Nobels. Driven largely by the ClimateGate revelations, the Petition asks that the Society conduct an independent study and assessment.
As for democratic membership participation in matters of science, consider the reaction to a grass roots outpouring of APS member opinion on the 2007 APS Statement http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200912/apscouncilors.cfm . “[APS Councilor] was uncomfortable with the idea of a membership-wide referendum on statements. He said that he was concerned that having a membership wide vote on controversial issues could lead to the adoption of scientifically unsound statements.” Evidently physicists should be excluded from inputting on a question of physics; only “physics monks” are entitled to do so ex cathedra .
Dr. Lewis’ specific charge that APS as an organization is benefitting financially from climate change funding is equally false. Neither the operating officers nor the elected leaders of the Society have a monetary stake in such funding.
The chair of the Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) that re-endorsed the 2007 APS Statement on Climate Change sits on the science advisory board of a large international bank http://annualreport.deutsche-bank.com/2009/ar/supplementaryinformation/advisoryboards.html The bank has a $60+ billion Green portfolio, which it wishes to assure investors is safe…not to mention their income from carbon trading. Other members of this board include current IPCC chief Pachauri and Lord Oxburgh, of Climategate exoneration fame. The viability of these banks activities depends on continued concern over CO2 emissions . Then there is the member of the Kleppner Committee (that reviewed the APS 2007 Statement prior to POPA) who served on that committee while under consideration for the position of Chief Scientist at BP. The position had been vacated when Steve Koonin left to take a post in the administration at DOE. Soon after the Kleppner Committee report in late 2009, this committee member took the BP job. BP had previously funded the new Energy Laboratory at Berkeley, which was headed by current Energy Secretary Steve Chu.
Moreover, relatively few APS members conduct climate change research, and therefore the vast majority of the Society’s members derive no personal benefit from such research support.
This does not mention the firm expectation by federal government agencies such as the NAS and the Presidential Science Advisor’s office that the APS will continue to support the huge funding machine that diverts billions of taxpayer dollars into research that must support the alarmist credo. APS has been silent on the documented practice by some climate scientists aimed at preventing opposing research from being published.
On the matter of global climate change, APS notes that virtually all reputable scientists agree with the following observations:
- Carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere due to human activity;
- Carbon dioxide is an excellent infrared absorber, and therefore, its increasing presence in the atmosphere contributes to global warming; and
This passes over the fact that carbon dioxide absorption lines are nearly saturated.
- The dwell time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is hundreds of years.
Well, it depends on what you mean by “dwell time.” If it is the conventional half life of an impulse loading of carbon dioxide, the statement is wrong – by a lot.. The IPCC’s Bern carbon cycle model http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~joos/model_description/model_description.html gets a 16 year half life. If it is the time for the last molecule to get picked up by a sink, the statement is meaningless. At the very least, the statement is sloppy and hardly befitting a world class scientific society.
On these matters, APS judges the science to be quite clear. However, APS continues to recognize that climate models are far from adequate, and the extent of global warming and climatic disruptions produced by sustained increases in atmospheric carbon loading remain uncertain.
This is much better than the 2007 APS Statement itself. However, the phrase “climate disruptions” is noteworthy because it is the new buzzword recently introduced by Science Advisor John Holdren http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100054012/global-warming-is-dead-long-live-er-global-climate-disruption/ , evidently enabling advocates to assign any unusual weather event to human causes. It is curious that that the APS press release happens to echo this new phrase.
In light of the significant settled aspects of the science, APS totally rejects Dr. Lewis’ claim that global warming is a “scam” and a “pseudoscientific fraud.”
What we have here is a bait and switch. No one is saying that the greenhouse effect itself is a scam. This passage seeks to transfer the ‘scam’ charge from its real target to the trivial. The fraud/scam is to be found in the continual drumbeat that the science is settled; that the effects will be catastrophic; that it requires draconian economic sacrifices to avoid; and that mandates and subsidies for rent-seeking corporations are justified.
Additionally, APS notes that it has taken extraordinary steps to solicit opinions from its membership on climate change. After receiving significant commentary from APS members, the Society’s Panel on Public Affairs finalized an addendum to the APS climate change statement reaffirming the significance of the issue. The APS Council overwhelmingly endorsed the reaffirmation.
Never mind that the Panel on Public Affairs is chaired by an individual whose research funding stream (from BP) depends on continued global warming alarm. And you have to keep your eye on the pea. The dispute was not over the “significance” of the issue; it was over the alarmist nature of the statement. The addendum used more than five times the number of words to try to explain what the original statement meant. Not a good sign that they got it right the first time.
Lastly, in response to widespread interest expressed by its members, the APS is in the process of organizing a Topical Group to feature forefront research and to encourage exchange of information on the physics of climate.
Never mind that the Topical Group was proposed in a petition organized by a group of five members that included Dr. Lewis. Also, the Council has not yet approved a TG; therefore it is not in the process of being “organized.” It is being considered. No formal charter or bylaws have been set down. What we have here is the first attempt to co-opt the TG for PR purposes. This before it has even been approved by the APS Council.
Read the APS Climate Change Statement and Commentary: http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm.
APS should be very reluctant to draw public attention to this Statement, with its infamous phrase, “The evidence is incontrovertible,” despite the fact that nothing in science is ever incontrovertible.
About APS: The American Physical Society (www.aps.org) is the leading physics organization, representing 48,000 members, including physicists in academia, national laboratories, and industry in the United States and internationally. APS has offices in College Park, MD (Headquarters), Ridge, NY, and Washington, DC.
Tawanda W. Johnson
Press Secretary
APS Physics
529 14th St. NW, Suite 1050
Washington, DC 20045-2065
Phone: 202-662-8702
Fax: 202-662-8711
tjohnson@aps.org
=================================================
This page is available as a PDF here: APS Press Release Deconstruction
=================================================
Dr. Roger Cohen writes in with an addedum:
I would like to clarify one technical point for your visitors. It relates to: “This passes over the fact that carbon dioxide absorption lines are nearly saturated.”
The statement is fact, but it does not by itself imply that additional amounts of atmospheric CO2 will not cause significant warming. Straightforward radiation transfer calculations have established that the effect of doubling atmospheric CO2 would be to increase global average temperature by only about 1 deg. C. — if there were no other climate effects involved. However, these other effects, generally called “feedbacks,” can amplify or attenuate the primary radiation altering effect of additional CO2. The most prominent feedback is the “cloud-water vapor feedback,” which is very difficult to calculate or determine empirically. The IPCC says these feedback effects are in aggregate large and positive, giving rise to their most recent estimate of 2 to 4.5 deg. C for doubling, with a most likely value of 3 deg. C. However, a substantial body of other research points to a much lower value, much closer to the zero feedback value of 1 deg. C, or even lower. The actual aggregated effect of feedbacks is a critical aspect of the debate.
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I wonder, did he complained about the post-WWII influx of vast monies for weapons and atomics research?
And is he distancing himself from this, now that it’s getting more press? “It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist” Now they seem to say that’s about policy debates, not science.
Follow the money
The chair of the Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) that re-endorsed the 2007 APS Statement on Climate Change sits on the science advisory board of a large international bank http://annualreport.deutsche-bank.com/2009/ar/supplementaryinformation/advisoryboards.html
I am guessing that regular readers of this site do not have investments in Deutsche Banks Green Portfolio.
I wonder whether closet readers of this site may be issuing instructions to sell?
Another scientist destroys data
http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4742.html
even admits to being unable to keep up with information
REPLY: oh puhleeeze….
Compare these two statements:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Aaserud:
Your papers — correspondence, notes, manuscripts, things of that sort — what’s the status of those? That’s another thing we’re interested in.
Dr. Lewis:
Yes. I really don’t have them, you know. I’ve long since either lost in moving or discarded everything that I had. So I have no papers around from JASON, if that’s what you mean.
Aaserud:
No, generally — both JASON and generally speaking.
Lewis:
There are lots of things, but they’re scattered in a complicated way. Generally speaking, I throw things away after a few years, so the only things I have are the things that have accumulated over the last few years and are relevant to the things I’m actually doing these days.
Aaserud:
That’s another thing that the Center is strongly involved in — just saving papers for historical purposes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now the Climategate deletion:
From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008
Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Big difference between discarding old things as you move, versus asking other to delete.
Your point fails.
-Anthony
the Hal Lewis resignation news gets one more outing, in OneIndia, an Indian online portal owned by Greynium Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd., but that is one too many for tawanda:
from page two of the comments, twjohnson jumps in with the APS response:
12 Oct: One India: Global warming ‘the most successful pseudoscientific fraud ever’: US physicist
(ANI): An American professor has branded global warming as “the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud” he has ever seen…
FROM THE COMMENTS: TWJohnson has the APS Press Release broken up into six comments no doubt due to length…
http://news.oneindia.in/comment/0000/00/2/105493.html
TAWANDA’S COMMENTS ARE FOLLOWED IMMEDIATELY WITH A COMMENT BY “kevin”. note the “we do NOT need another review”. who is the “we” kevin, and who is the “kevin”, kevin?
“Lewis resigned because the APS rejected his petition to again review the APS analysis of the threat of human induced global warming. Lewis and his group spent 7 months seeking signatures from the APS membership, including access to part of the APS email list and several ads. The result was only 206 out of 47,000 members signed! This is a clear message from the American physicists that we do NOT need another review. The scientific evidence is clear and we should do something about global…”
so, given the MSM has not reported the resignation, how do they report the response?
Jimbo says:
October 13, 2010 at 11:12 am
The dwell time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is hundreds of years.”
Then are the following in error or am I missing something?
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5e507c9970c-pi
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef800581r
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V12/N31/EDIT.php
Dr A Burns agreed:
October 13, 2010 at 1:49 pm
and
bubbagyro says:
October 13, 2010 at 2:00 pm
However, the actual data in the text of the IPCC report separately states a value of 4 years.
Well all the references are wrong: The 4-6 years mentioned in the different references and the IPCC 4 years are the residence time, that is how long any single molecule of CO2 stays in the atmosphere before being catched by a tree or the oceans. This depends only of the turnover of CO2 in and out the atmosphere over the seasons. That is in total some 150 GtC going in and out within a year of the 800 GtC in the atmosphere, or about 20% or a refresh rate / turnover / residence time of about 5 years. If both the inputs and outputs are equal, that doesn’t change the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere at all.
Compare that to the turnover of a factory. The turnover doesn’t say anything about the profit or loss of a factory, only how much material did go through the factory over a year.
Thus the turnover of CO2 within a year has nothing to do with the speed at which an excess amount of CO2 (currently some 110 GtC) in the atmosphere will be removed from the atmosphere. That is a quite different and near independent item: humans emit 8 GtC per year, but only 4 GtC per year shows up in the atmosphere, that means that some 4 GtC per year is really removed from the atmosphere. That is the real loss from the atmosphere, not the 150 GtC turnover. Thus the real removal time will be quite longer than 4-5 years…
Far less than the hundreds of years the APS (and the IPCC, based on the Bern model) claims, which anyway is only relevant for a fraction of the total excess and if you burn all reachable oil and lots of coal.
But some 40 years half life time for the bulk of the excess will do the job, see the calculation of Peter Dietze at:
http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm
Jimbo says: October 13, 2010 at 11:12 am
“The dwell time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is hundreds of years.”
Then are the following in error or am I missing something?
Hi Jimbo. The analyses you link to estimate the “residence time” of an individual CO2 molecule in the atmosphere (on the order of 10 years). That is, if a tagged CO2 molecule is released today, its “residence time” is the average time it takes to remove that specific molecule from the atmosphere.
A related question is “how long would it take to remove a pulse of CO2 from the atmosphere?” In this case, as CO2 is continually being exchanged to and from the atmosphere by the carbon cycle, the time in question does not relate to “residence time” of individual CO2 molecules, but to the slower change in overall concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is sometimes termed the “effective residence time” (and is of the order of 100 years).
It is a very easy to confuse “residence time” and “effective residence time” (I have created such confusion in the past by accidently omitting the single word “effective”.) Note the use of “dwell time” in the quote above. Hope this helps.
So APS admin doesn’t trust it’s members, all being scientists, to know enough proper science to be able to vote on APS’s public standings? But the few at the admin do?
Very interesting. (APS plunges into the ___)
By sharper00 on October 13, 2010 at 2:47 pm
——
sharper00,
Thank you for your reply. I think there is a lot to openly discuss. I thank Anthony (for the Nth time where N is a very large number) for this place to do it. I also sincerely thank you for coming here where all can benefit.
I will need to wait to respond since I am hosting some associates this evening. Tommorrow.
John
@ur momisugly Roger (2:25): Thank you. But now I have an additional question. It is my understanding that water vapor is also a strong absorber, yet you don’t hear any calls for reducing “water emission”. I had it explained to me once by a climate scientist that this was because water absorption was saturated (i.e. at the wavelengths water absorbs, all of the radiation was already being absorbed). My question now is, do your comments about CO2 also pertain to water?
@Golf Charley
“Follow the money
The chair of the Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) that re-endorsed the 2007 APS Statement on Climate Change sits on the science advisory board of a large international bank”
Do you not think that’s a pretty tenuous link? Remember you’re accusing the guy of perpetrating a massive hoax/scam/whatever and your evidence is that he sits on “the science advisory board” of a bank which I guess you’re also saying profits somehow from climate change.
It appears his involvement is related to “The Carbon Mitigation Initiative” at Princeton
http://cmi.princeton.edu/
And that Deutsche Bank are seeking to limit their carbon emissions
http://www.db.com/presse/en/content/press_releases_2009_4525.htm
This is a good thing surely? Private organisations working to limit their carbon output without any need for government regulation?
Could anyone reading this site clarify something for me;
I don’t understand why doing work for Deutschebank or BP is evidence of corruption in favour of a global warming agenda.
A major international bank and a multinational oil company? Clearly I’m missing something here, but I can’t think of two institutions with less to gain from a radical Green policy
The suggestion seems to be that the bank has a green investment fund; well, yes, it does, and I would guess it accounts for a tiny part of their total investments.
And BP have an alternative energy research fund. Again, a tiny percentage of their business which was, last time I looked, oil. That’s oil, as in the supposed CO2 producer.
I know I’m being dumb here, so please, help me out.
@Nonplused: In this context, I would expect “the lines are saturated” to mean that there’s enough CO2 to absorb essentially all light of the absorbed wavelengths, so that additional CO2 wouldn’t result in much increased absorption. (I’m not qualified to assess the accuracy of the statement, but that’s what I believe it means.)
My take on the original letter from Professor Lewis were that he was calling out the APS for its refusal to comply with the procedures mandated in the APS Constitution. The APS Constitution provides:
“ARTICLE VIII – DIVISIONS, TOPICAL GROUPS, AND FORUMS
Organization. – If at least two hundred members wish to advance and diffuse the knowledge of a specific subject or subfield of physics, they may petition the Council to establish a Topical Group. The Council shall distribute to the Chairperson and the Secretary-Treasurer of each existing Division and Topical Group a statement of the areas of interest of the proposed Topical Group for review and comment.” Under the Constitution, the Council SHALL distribute the petition for the topical group. Said the APS, “extraordinary steps to solicit opinions from its membership on climate change.”
“Extraodinary steps” means “we did things differently.” A proper response (if they had one) would be, “We followed all procedures outlined by the APS Constitution.” This wasn’t said, meaning that from an objective standpoint the “extraodinary steps” are appropriately described as “arbitrary.”
The APS did not deny any of the allegations of procedural irregularites, which, again, I found to be the most telling. A person may have a different opinion – that’s fine. What is not fine is when the procedural mechanisms – the very rules of operation – are dismissed or ignored when there is a command under the rules to act a certain way. The Council has the authority to disapprove a new Topical Group but only AFTER the appropriate procedures have been followed.
Playing fast and loose with facts is common. Playing fast and loose with procedure is an indication that fairness would be a downfall.
btw a google search on “hal lewis” or “harold lewis” or “american physical society” + “express” or “express.co.uk” does not bring up the Express article in “News”, only the “oneindia” article comes up.
also interesting is tawanda johnson’s husband is a member of the APS:
Wikipedia: Kerry G. Johnson
In 2005, he illustrated a coloring book for the American Physical Society about famous physicists. In 2005, he designed the official logo for the American Physical Society…
He currently resides in Columbia, Maryland with his wife, Tawanda W. Johnson, a press secretary, media specialist and co-writer of Harambee Hills, along with their daughter and son…
He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha (ΑΦΑ) Fraternity, Inc., the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), the National Caricaturists Network, American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and the American Physical Society (APS).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerry_G._Johnson
kerry does a cartoon:
Kerry G. Johnson Blog: President Obama’s Nobel Bling Bling!
http://kerrygjohnson.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/president-obamas-nobel-bling-bling/
tawanda’s links:
Linkedin: Tawanda W. Johnson
http://www.linkedin.com/in/tawandawjohnson
tawanda does most of the posting on the APS blog, physicsfrontline, this post, however, is by jodi:
27 Sept: physicsfrontline: by jodi: The Storm Continues Unabated…
Yes, Congress passed COMPETES. Yes, Congress set science on a 10-year doubling path. And yes, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA , or stimulus) provided additional funds for much-needed infrastructure projects and other programs for the DOE Office of Science, National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
But, unfortunately, this hasn’t been enough. That because, as the U.S. has tried to catch up, other countries, too, have gotten the same message: Investments in science, engineering and math are the keys to robust innovation and competitiveness. They have outpaced us and outspent us. And it shows.
The panel, again chaired by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine, concludes in its follow-up report Rising Above the Gathering Storm Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5, that
“In the five years that have passed since Rising Above the Gathering Storm was issued, much has changed in our nation and world…”…
http://physicsfrontline.aps.org/2010/09/27/the-storm-continues-unabated%e2%80%a6/
interesting:
2008: DailyGothamBlog: mole333: Scientists Respond to Culture Kitchen on Global Warming
Every now and then DG’s sister site, Culture Kitchen, gets targeted by global warming deniers. Honestly, we are way past the time for denial on this issue, but deniers are still out there and CK is one of the sites they target. And having to counter the same denial yammering over and over again gets a bit frustrating for me.
But sometimes we also get responses from another corner: actual scientists. And I find those reponses far more gratifying. In a diary I wrote addressing the latest denial drivel is an excellent response from the American Physical Society (APS) that is worth highlighting in a diary (thanks to Tawanda Johnson for posting the APS statement in my diary on CK):
-APS Reaffirms Position on Climate Change” blah blah…..-
This really highlights that people need to be careful of what the denial lobby says. They took the comments of one particular section of the APS and attributed them to the society as a whole, ignoring even the statement by the APS itself refuting the denial lobby claims. I am happy to help set the record straight that the American Physical Society officially recognizes Anthropogenic Global Warming as valid. In fact, they call the evidence supporting global warming as “incontrovertible.”…
So here are two examples of global warming deniers misrepresenting scientists. Again, I am happy to help set the record straight for the American Physical Society and for Carl Wunsch, using their own words.
I also want to note that John Mashey, something of a celebrity in the UNIX field, also stopped by the same diary on CK in which the APS posted their statement, and offered some links for those who want to learn more about why the global warming denial lobby is wrong about the science….
http://www.dailygotham.com/blog/mole333/scientists_repsond_to_culture_kitchen_on_global_warming
@Original Mike
“I had it explained to me once by a climate scientist that this was because water absorption was saturated (i.e. at the wavelengths water absorbs, all of the radiation was already being absorbed).”
What he likely meant is that the atmosphere in general already holds as much water vapor as it can. Obviously some locations like deserts are water limited but you don’t have much in the way of human activity producing water there either.
Water needs heat in order to be held in the atmosphere. If the atmosphere heats up there’s almost always a plentiful supply of water to provide it. Human water vapour emissions can’t make the atmosphere hold more than it already can.
Water also cycles out of the atmosphere in a matter of days so it doesn’t accumulate.
C02 emissions from fossil fuels do accumulate because we’re extracting it from where it was previously inaccessible and it takes a very long time for it to be removed from the atmosphere again.
Every successful organization will end up being hijacked by zealots. Zealots have the time and energy, because nothing else is of comparable importance. Healthy people have other concerns, defend weakly, and are driven off in disgust.
How strange that the trolls cannot remember the emissions trading schemes and the carbon exchange and so forth … ideas that banks, at least, could charge fees for for managing and the likes … and ideas that require that everyone agree that CO2 is evil and will cause the world to fry …
John Holland.
I do not think you are being dumb, and I think you know that.
Why would any corporation not hedge its bets by maintaining a foot in both camps? The oil companies is an easy one to explain.
Deutsche Bank, and it’s rivals, is also easy to explain.
Simply follow the money.
If there is no money to be made from it …… sell …… sell ……sell
Can you work it out yet?
Thanks Peter.
Could I be given the opportunity to chip-in on the point about saturation of the spectral lines (I have seen Roger’s post).
I raised this objection when I first started looking into the CAGW arguments (a couple of years ago). The explanation I got was that the troposphere is (in broad terms) saturated at the relevant frequencies, but the lower stratosphere is where an enhanced GHE effect could manifest itself. There is scope for CO2 accumulation at the lower stratosphere where it is too cold for H20. This was put to me as part of the argument behind the predicted upper-tropospheric “hot spot” – most warming should be evident at the upper troposphere because of the enhancement of the GHE in the lower statosphere.
This is not to say that I agree with these assertions. The “hot spot” doesn’t seem to be showing itself with regard to Recent Warming and this tends to suggest taht these detailed arguments about CO2 accumulation and enhanced GHE are wrong.
Another comment if I may. It is possible to observe CO2’s radiative properties in the laboratory, but that does not permit us to conclude that these properties are necessarily evident in the climate.
A simple laboratory experiment can show how gravity causes mass to “drop like a stone”. If we insist on the laboratory observation for all things in the real world, there would be an immediate contradiction with the existence of an atmosphere. Solar wind, powered flight and orbital motion would run into the sme problem.
A saturated effect would be where the “ideal laboratory response” to CO2 is fully compensated by other processes, and it might even produce a null response. I think this is what is proposed by Ferenc M. Miskolczi.
My “dwell time” graph for the Bern Model (IPCC, saturating sinks) and the Dietze Model (constant half life). CO2 is diffusing in an exponential way out of the atmosphere:
http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/co2afname.gif
James Delingpole (and whoever quoted him inline) seems to be wrong about that “new buzzword” ‘climate disruption :
Google results for “climate disruption”, 1970 through 2005.
over 1000 results :
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22climate+disruption%22&hl=en&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:1/1/1970,cd_max:12/31/2005&prmd=n&ei=DRy2TKuvNMrCnAeX_YXsDw&start=80&sa=N
Curtesy of :
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/10/11/take-a-deep-breath/#comment-21208
@John Holland: “A major international bank and a multinational oil company? Clearly I’m missing something here, but I can’t think of two institutions with less to gain from a radical Green policy”. Deutschebank and BP, and various other big corporations pump millions of dollars into global warming ‘research’, whereas the world’s leading climate skeptic needed donations from his readers to attend a meeting in the UK. Money for the liars, not the deniers.
When your assumptions fail, you abandon them. It’s easy to assume big oil is more concerned about making money from destroying the planet than of funding a mob of hippies led by green politicians pretending to be scientists, but there it is. It turns out capitalism doesn’t work the way we thought.
John Holland says; “I know I’m being dumb here, so please, help me out.”
Not dumb but cute. Where do you believe these climate folks will be employed in these very large organiztions? As an investment analyst at the bank or perhaps as a “roughneck” in the oil fields. Or perhaps in the “green” areas of lobbying for favorable tax treatment or investment credits?
Theo Goodwin:
—-There is not one single physical hypothesis that describes some natural regularity in the behavior of CO2 in the atmosphere. I dare you to state one – in your own words, as I say to my students.—-
Actually, theories about how it behaves in the atmosphere have been around since Arhennius and Chamberlain. This was furthered by Elsasser in the forties and confirmed by direct observation by satellite after military studies for WWII flight personnel. Gilbert Plass first studied the infrared spectroscopy of the atmosphere and since then, several other scientists (Kiehl, Trenberth, Ramanathan, Coakley, Myhre, etc.) have used empirical satellite observation to detail the radiative forcing of the different atmospheric gases.