by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Michael Steketee, writing in The Australian in January 2011, echoed the BBC (whose journalists’ pension fund is heavily weighted towards “green” “investments”) and other climate-extremist vested interests in claiming that 2010 was the warmest year on record worldwide. Mr. Steketee’s short article makes two dozen questionable assertions, which either require heavy qualification or are downright false. His assertions will be printed in bold face: the truth will appear in Roman face.
1. BASED ON PRELIMINARY DATA TO NOVEMBER 30, SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES AROUND AUSTRALIA WERE THE WARMEST ON RECORD LAST YEAR, AS WERE THOSE FOR THE PAST DECADE.
The record only began ten decades ago. As for sea temperatures, they are less significant for analyzing “global warming” than estimated total ocean heat content. A recent paper by Professors David Douglass and Robert Knox of Rochester University, New York, has established that – contrary to various climate-extremist assertions – there has been no net accumulation of “missing energy” in the form of heat in the oceans worldwide in the six years since ocean heat content was first reliably measured by the 3000 automated ARGO bathythermographs in 2003. This finding implies that the amount of warming we can expect from even quite a large increase in CO2 concentration is far less than the IPCC and other climate-extremist groups maintain.
2. THE WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANISATION SAYS THE YEAR TO THE END OF OCTOBER WAS THE WARMEST SINCE INSTRUMENTAL CLIMATE RECORDS STARTED IN 1850 – 0.55 C° ABOVE THE 1961-90 AVERAGE OF 14 C°.
It is easy to cherry-pick periods of less than a calendar year and say they establish a new record. The cherry-picking of the first nine months of 2010 is particularly unacceptable, since that period was dominated by a substantial El Niño Southern Oscillation, a sudden alteration in the pattern of ocean currents worldwide that leads to warmer weather for several months all round the world. The last few months of the year, carefully excluded from Mr. Steketee’s statement, showed the beginnings of a La Niña event, which tends largely to reverse the effect of its preceding El Niño and make the world cooler. Indeed, the calendar year from January to December 2010, according to the reliable RSS and UAH satellite records, was not the warmest on record. Besides, what is important is how fast the world is warming. In fact, the rate of warming from 1975-2001, at 0.16 C° per decade, was the fastest rate to be sustained for more than a decade in the 160-year record, but exactly the same rate occurred from 1860-1880 and again from 1910-1940, when we could not possibly have had anything to do with it. Since late 2001 there has been virtually no “global warming” at all.
3. THE LAST DECADE ALSO WAS THE WARMEST ON RECORD.
After 300 years of global warming, during nearly all of which we could not on any view have influenced the climate to a measurable degree, it is scarcely surprising that recent decades will be warmer than earlier decades. That is what one would expect. If one has been climbing up a steep hill for a long time, one should not be surprised to find oneself higher up at the end of the climb than at the beginning.
4. THE WORLD IS NOT COOLER COMPARED TO 1998.
Actually, it is cooler. There was a remarkable spike in global temperatures in 1998, caused not by manmade “global warming” but by a Great El Niño event – an alteration in the pattern of ocean currents that begins in the equatorial eastern Pacific and spreads around the globe, lasting a few months. In the first nine months of 2010 there was another substantial El Niño, but even at its peak it did not match the Great El Niño of 1998.
5. THE TRENDS HAPPEN TO FOLLOW CLOSELY THE PREDICTIONS OVER THE PAST 40 YEARS OF TEMPERATURE RISES RESULTING FROM INCREASED GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS.
In the 40 years since 1970, global temperatures have risen at a linear rate equivalent to around 1.3 C°/century. CO2 concentration is rising in a straight line at just 2 ppmv/year at present and, even if it were to accelerate to an exponential rate of increase, the corresponding temperature increase would be expected to rise merely in a straight line. On any view, 1.3 C° of further “global warming” this century would be harmless. The IPCC is predicting 3.4 C°, but since the turn of the millennium on 1 January 2001 global temperature has risen (taking the average of the two satellite datasets) at a rate equivalent to just 0.6 C°/century, rather less than the warming rate of the entire 20th century. In these numbers, there is nothing whatever to worry about – except the tendency of some journalists to conceal them.
6. MOST SCIENTISTS AGREE THAT DOUBLING THE CARBON DIOXIDE IN THE ATMOSPHERE IS LIKELY TO LEAD TO WARMING OF 2-3 C°.
It is doubtful whether Mr. Steketee had consulted “most scientists”. Most scientists, not being climate scientists, rightly take no view on the climate debate. Most climate scientists have not studied the question of how much warming a given increase in CO2 concentration will cause: therefore, whatever opinion they may have is not much more valuable than that of a layman. Most of the few dozen scientists worldwide whom Prof. Richard Lindzen of MIT estimates have actually studied climate sensitivity to the point of publication in a learned journal have reached their results not by measurement and observation but by mere modeling. The models predict warming in the range mentioned by Mr. Steketee, but at numerous crucial points the models are known to reflect the climate inaccurately. In particular, the models predict that if and only if Man is the cause of warming, the tropical upper air, six miles above the ground, should warm up to thrice as fast as the surface, but this tropical upper-troposphere “hot-spot” has not been observed in 50 years of measurement by balloon-mounted radiosondes, sondes dropped from high-flying aircraft,
or satellites. Also, the models predict that every Celsius degree of warming should increase evaporation from the Earth’s surface by 1-3%, but the observed increase is more like 6%. From this it is simple to calculate that the IPCC has overestimated fourfold the amount of warming we can expect from adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Take away that prodigious exaggeration, demonstrated repeatedly in scientific papers but never reported by the likes of Mr. Steketee, and the climate “crisis” vanishes.
7. WARMING OF 2-3 C° RISKS SIGNIFICANT ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC DAMAGE.
Actually, the IPCC’s current thinking is that up to 2° of warming compared with the present would be harmless and even beneficial. Since far greater temperatures than this have been the rule on Earth for most of the past 600 million years, there is no sound scientific basis for the assumption that “significant environmental and economic damage” would result from so small an additional warming. However, significant economic damage is already resulting from the costly but pointlessly Canute-like attempts governments to try to make “global warming” go away.
8. GREENHOUSE GAS CONCENTRATIONS ROSE BY 27.5% FROM 1990-2009.
Since anthropogenic effects on the climate are net-zero except for CO2, we need only consider CO2 concentration, which was 353 parts per million by volume in 1990 and is 390 ppmv now, an increase not of 27.5% but of just 10.5%.
9. ARCTIC SEA ICE SHRANK TO ITS THIRD-LOWEST AREA IN THE SATELLITE RECORDS, OFFSET ONLY SLIGHTLY BY GROWTH IN ANTARCTIC SEA ICE.
In fact, the global sea-ice record shows virtually no change throughout the past 30 years, because the quite rapid loss of Arctic sea ice since the satellites were watching has been matched by a near-equally rapid gain of Antarctic sea ice. Indeed, when the summer extent of Arctic sea ice reached its lowest point in the 30-year record in mid-September 2007, just three weeks later the Antarctic sea extent reached a 30-year record high. The record low was widely reported; the corresponding record high was almost entirely unreported.
10. GLOBAL SNOW COVER IS FALLING, INFERENTIALLY BECAUSE OF MAN’S INFLUENCE.
In fact, a new record high for snow cover was set in the winter of 2008/2009, and there is some chance that a further record high will be set this year.
11. GLOBAL SEA LEVELS ARE RISING, INFERENTIALLY BECAUSE OF MAN’S INFLUENCE.
In fact, the rate of increase in sea level has not changed since satellites first began measuring it reliably in 1993. It is a dizzying 1 ft/century – not vastly greater than the 8 inches/century that had previously been inferred from tide-gauges. A recent paper has confirmed what marine biologists had long suspected: coral atolls simply grow to meet the light as the sea rises, and some of them have even gained land mass recently according to a
just-published scientific paper. Professor Niklas Mörner, who has been studying sea level for a third of a century, says it is physically impossible for sea level to rise at much above its present rate, and he expects 4-8 inches of sea level rise this century, if anything rather below the rate of increase in the last century. In the 11,400 years since the end of the last Ice Age, sea level has risen at an average of 4 feet/century, though it is now rising much more slowly because very nearly all of the land-based ice that is at low enough latitudes and altitudes to melt has long since gone.
12. MUNICH RE SAYS 2010 SAW THE SECOND-HIGHEST NUMBER OF NATURAL CATASTROPHES SINCE 1980, 90% OF THEM WEATHER-RELATED.
There are really only three categories of insurable natural catastrophe – meteorological, epidemiological, and seismic (volcanism, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.). Except during years when major seismic disasters occur (such as the tsunami caused by an earthquake in 2000), or when major pandemics kill large numbers at an unexpected rate (and that did not happen in 2010), weather-related natural disasters always account for getting on for 90% of all such disasters. Because the climate is a mathematically-chaotic object, the incidence of weather-related disasters is highly variable from year to year, and there is no good reason to attribute the major events of 2010 to manmade “global warming”.
13. THE TEMPERATURE OF 46.4 C° IN MELBOURNE ONE SATURDAY IN 2010 WAS MORE THAN 3 C° ABOVE THE PREVIOUS HIGHEST FOR FEBRUARY.
February is the height of summer in Melbourne. Since the planet has been warming for 300 years, it is not surprising to find high-temperature records being broken from time to time. However, some very spectacular cold-weather records were also broken both in early 2010, when all 49 contiguous United States were covered in snow for the first time since satellite monitoring began 30 years ago, and in December, which was the coldest final month of the year in central England since records began 352 years ago. However, neither the hot-weather nor the cold-weather extremes of 2010 have much to do with manmade “global warming”; like the heatwave of 2003 in Europe that is said to have killed 35,000 people, they are known to have been caused by an unusual pattern of what meteorologists call “blocking highs” – comparatively rare areas of stable high pressure that dislodge the jet-streams from their usual path and lock weather systems in place for days or sometimes even months at a time. No link has been established between the frequency, intensity, or duration of blocking highs and manmade “global warming”.
14. IN MOSCOW, JULY 2010 WAS MORE THAN 2 C° ABOVE THE PREVIOUS TEMPERATURE RECORD, AND TEMPERATURE ON 29 JULY WAS 38.2 C°.
And the lowest-ever temperatures have been measured in several British and US locations in the past 12 months. Cherry-picking individual extreme-weather events that point in one direction only, when there are thousands of such events that also point in another direction, is neither sound science nor sound journalism.
15. THE HEATWAVE AND FOREST FIRES IN CENTRAL RUSSIA KILLED AT LEAST 56,000, MAKING IT THE WORST NATURAL DISASTER IN RUSSIA’S HISTORY.
More cherry-picking, and the notion that the forest fires were the worst natural disaster in Russia’s history is questionable. Intense cold – such as when General January and General February defeated Corporal Hitler at the gates of Stalingrad in 1941 – has many times killed hundreds of thousands in Russia.
16. IN PAKISTAN, 1769 WERE KILLED IN THE COUNTRY’S WORST-EVER FLOODS.
In fact, the floods were not the worst ever: merely the worst since 1980. The region has long been prone to flooding, and has flooded catastrophically at infrequent intervals when a blocking high combined with unusually strong runoff of snow from the Himalayas swells the numerous rivers of the region (Punjab, or panj-aub, means “five rivers”). The flooding was not caused by manmade “global warming” but by a blocking high.
17. THE HURRICANE SEASON IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC WAS ONE OF THE MOST SEVERE IN THE LAST CENTURY.
In fact, Dr. Ryan Maue of Florida State University, who maintains the Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index, a 24-month running sum of the frequency, intensity and duration of all tropical cyclones, typhoons and hurricanes round the world, says that the index is at its least value in the past 30 years, and close to its least value in 50 years. For 150 years the number of landfalling Atlantic hurricanes has shown no trend at all: this is a long and reliable record, because one does not require complex instrumentation to know that one has been struck by a hurricane.
18. EVEN CAUTIOUS SCIENTISTS TEND TO SAY WE CAN BLAME MANMADE CLIMATE CHANGE.
Cautious scientists say no such thing. Even the excitable and exaggeration-prone IPCC has repeatedly stated that individual extreme-weather events cannot be attributed to manmade “global warming”, and it would be particularly incautious of any scientist to blame the blocking highs that caused nearly all of the weather-related damage in 2010 on us when these are long-established, naturally-occurring phenomena.
19. CLIMATE CHANGE HAS CONTRIBUTED TO THE 20% DECLINE IN RAINFALL IN PARTS OF SOUTHERN AUSTRALIA OVER THE PAST 40 YEARS.
Climate change began 4,567 million years ago, on that Thursday when the Earth first formed (as Prof. Plimer puts it). The question is whether manmade climate change has contributed to the drought. Interestingly, there has been very heavy rainfall in previously drought-ridden parts of southern Australia in each of the last two years. Australia has a desert climate: it is no surprise, therefore, that periods of drought – sometimes prolonged – will occur. One of the longest records of drought and flood we have is the Nilometer, dating back 5000 years. Periods of drought far more savage than anything seen in modern times were frequent occurrences, and entire regions of Egypt became uninhabitable as a result. A 20% decline in rainfall in a single region, therefore, cannot be safely attributed to anything other than the natural variability of the climate.
20. THERE IS STRONG EVIDENCE THAT “GLOBAL WARMING” MADE THE BUSH-FIRES AROUND MELBOURNE WORSE.
There is no such evidence. As the IPCC has repeatedly said, ascribing individual, local extreme-weather events to “global warming” is impermissible.
21. THERE HAS BEEN A SUCCESSION OF EXTRAORDINARY HEATWAVES, WITH BIG JUMPS IN RECORD TEMPERATURES, STARTING IN EUROPE IN 2003 AND CONTINUING ALL AROUND THE WORLD, CULMINATING IN RUSSIA LAST YEAR. MORE THAN 17 COUNTRIES BROKE THEIR MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE RECORDS IN 2010, AND “YOU REALLY HAVE TO STRAIN CREDIBILITY TO SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CLIMATE CHANGE.”
The heatwave in Europe in 2003 is known to have been caused by a blocking high similar to those which gave Russia its record high temperatures in 2010 and kept the monsoon fixed over Pakistan for long enough to cause catastrophic flooding. You really have to stretch credibility to say it has anything to do with manmade “global warming”. Though that heatwave may have killed 35,000 right across Europe, a three-day cold snap in Britain the previous year had killed 21,000 just in one country. The net effect of warmer worldwide weather, therefore, is to reduce deaths, not to increase them. That is why periods such as the Holocene Climate Optimum, when temperatures were 3 C° warmer than the present for most of the time between 6000 and 8000 years ago, are called “optima”: warmer weather is better for most Earth species – including Man – than colder weather.
22. FOR 20 YEARS MORE HOT-WEATHER THAN COLD-WEATHER TEMPERATURE RECORDS HAVE BEEN SET.
This is merely another way of saying that temperatures today are generally higher than they were 20 years ago. Since there has been some warming, more hot-weather than cold-weather records have been set. Not exactly surprising, and not exactly alarming either: for the mere fact of warming tells us nothing about the cause of the warming, particularly when the rate of warming in recent decades has been no greater than what has been seen in two previous quarter-century periods over the past 160 years.
23. EVEN IF GREENHOUSE-GAS EMISSIONS WERE TO STABILIZE AT LITTLE MORE THAN TODAY’S LEVELS, 2 C° OF FURTHER WARMING WILL OCCUR – FOUR TIMES THE INCREASE OVER THE PAST 30 YEARS.
This value of 2 C° – like too many others in this regrettably fictitious article – appears to have been plucked out of thin air. Let us do the math. We can ignore all Man’s influences on the climate except CO2 because, up to now, they have been self-canceling, as the table of “radiative forcings” in the IPCC’s most recent quinquennial Assessment Report shows. In 1750, before the Industrial Revolution, the concentration of CO2 was 278 ppmv. Now it is 390 ppmv. Taking the multi-model mean central estimate from Box 10.2 on p.798 of the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, plus or minus one standard deviation, we can derive the following simple equation for the total amount of warming to be expected in 1000 years’
time, when the climate has fully settled to equilibrium after the perturbation that our carbon emissions to date are thought to have caused:
ΔTequ = (4.7 ± 1) ln(390/278) F°
Let us generously go one standard deviation above the central estimate: thus, a high-end estimate of the total equilibrium warming the IPCC would expect as a result of our CO2 emissions since 1750 is 5.7 times the natural logarithm of the proportionate increase in CO2 concentration in the 260-year period: i.e. 1.9 C°. Even this total since 1750 to the present is below the 2 C° Mr. Setekee says is lurking in the pipeline.
Now, to pretend that manmade “global warming” is a problem as big as the IPCC says it is, and that there will be more warming in the pipeline even if we freeze our emissions at today’s levels, we have to pretend that all of the observed warming since 1750 – i.e. about 1.2 C° – was our fault. So we deduct that 1.2 C° from the 1.9 C° equilibrium warming. Just 0.7 C° of warmer weather is still to come, at equilibrium.
However, various climate extremists have published papers saying that equilibrium warming will not occur for 1000 years (or even, in a particularly fatuous recent paper, 3000 years). The IPCC itself only expects about 57% of equilibrium warming to occur by 2100: the rest will take so long to arrive that even our children’s children will not be around to notice, and the residual warming will happen so gradually that everyone and everything will have plenty of time to adjust.
Bottom line, then: by 2100 we can expect not 2 C° of further “global warming” as a result of our emissions so far, but 0.4 C° at most. The truth, as ever in the climate debate, is a great deal less thrilling than the lie.
24. ADAPTATION TO THE CONSEQUENCES OF “GLOBAL WARMING” WILL GET MORE DIFFICULT THE LONGER WE DELAY.
This assertion, too, has no scientific basis whatsoever. The costs of adaptation are chiefly an economic rather than a climatological question. Every serious economic analysis (I exclude the discredited propaganda exercise of Stern, with its absurd near-zero discount rate and its rate of “global warming” well in excess of the IPCC’s most extreme projections) has demonstrated that the costs of waiting and adapting to any adverse consequences that may arise from “global warming”, even if per impossibile that warming were to occur at the rapid rate imagined by the IPCC but not yet seen in the instrumental temperature record, would be orders of magnitude cheaper and more cost-effective than any Canute-like attempt to prevent any further “global warming” by taxing and regulating CO2 emissions. It follows that adaptation to the consequences of “global warming” will get easier and cheaper the longer we wait: for then we will only have to adapt to the probably few and minor consequences that will eventually occur, and not until they occur, and only where and to the extent that they occur.
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A PDF version of this document is available here
The Hadcrut3 data for December is now out. You can check the numbers here where it shows 2010 was tied for third spot:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
Or you can check the graph here where it is in second place:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/
So 1998 is still the mark to beat according to Hadcut3.
You have to go back to the 1940s to find a time according to the Hadcrut3 data where the previous high mark was not beaten in ten years or less.
Werner – I did have a look at the data (BTW, isn’t CRU the outfit whose adherence to truth has been put in question before…OK – just teasing :).
So what exactly does it show or prove ?
That the temperature is raising ?
Or that it is falling ?
I do not care one way or the other: what I care about is:
1) Taxation is not likely to change Earth’s temperature
2) If climate researchers want to be called scientists – they need to follow the scientific method a bit more closely: transparency, access to data, clearly defined criteria for accepting/refuting of their theories, empirical evidence confirming their theories.
If a computer model is considered to be a proof of global warming or cooling – then this is very far from (real) science. A bit more is needed than a positive review from a buddy and a publication in a friendly journal…
For instance – all publications where the original data was “lost”, or “misplaced”, or “adjusted” – should be immediately withdrawn – to start with.
“Les says:
January 19, 2011 at 8:23 pm
So what exactly does it show or prove ?”
The IPCC had a range of predictions as to what should happen to temperatures if their theory was correct. See page 21 of the article below to see how their predictions are matching with reality:
http://sciencespeak.com/MissingSignature.pdf
So if their theory was correct, the 1998 mark should have been beaten several times by now, even without the help of an El Nino that we had in 2010. The way I see it, every year that the 1998 mark does not get beaten by Hadcrut3, that is another nail in the coffin for CAGW. And with the La Nina affecting things now, no one is predicting any record in 2011 either.
Michael, I’ll make a start at answering your post, will continue later.
You said, re my “You are saying CO2 is a driver because AGWScience says it.”
No, because real normal science have been saying it for a very long time. General physics and actual experiments can show how CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Do you read my posts?,
& re my ” AGWScience is lying when it says that CO2 is the driver of global temperatures.”
Science has never said that it is THE driver, it is one of a posssible many drivers, it is just the only one that explains what’s happening now as Science has checked all other possible drivers that it is aware of to a 95% confidence.
I stand by what I’ve said, you’re saying it because AGW is saying it, and you’re saying it now. Show me the physics and actual experiments which back up what you’ve just said as coming from actual physics and experiment apart from AGWScience claims, which you’ve yet to show me even exist.
Again, if Carbon Dioxide is shown never to have driven the vast global temperature changes in the past so other factors were at play in these great events of huge flooding and freezing, how has it suddenly become the only driver now? So you are exactly saying what you say has never been said in Science, that it is THE driver.
In other words, you’re right Science has never said it, only AGWScience says it and you’re repeating it.
What does AGW say about it being a greenhouse gas? It points to Arrhenius and says, ‘see, it’s a done thing, the father of greenhouse and of global warming by CO2, he established the idea and gave a figure for doubling, etc.’. What it doesn’t say is that he later revised this in light of further information on the subject, it doesn’t say that he was specifically referring to carbonic acid in the paper they reference, it doesn’t say that he thought global warming would be a good thing for us, it doesn’t say that his ideas were discredited later.
Here’s a link to a discussion about Arrhenius last year on WUWT – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/13/6995/ The points I’ve made come from posters in the discussion (Monckton’s post points out the further revision Arrhenius made), and there’s other interesting stuff which will help with adjusting perspective. But one in particular I’ll look at here.
DocMartyn’s post April 14, 2009 at 7:23 pm says:
It should be remembered that Knut Angstrom kicked Arrhenius’s ass with respect to his extinction coefficient, and hence, his CO2 driven global warming postulate.
And links to a book Physics of the Air by W.J. Humphreys which I’ve found can be read online here: http://www.archive.org/details/physicsoftheairs032485mbp
From which: 7. (c) The Carbon Dioxide Theory – This theory, advocated by Tyndall, Arrhenius, Chamberlin, and others, is based on the selective absorption of carbon dioxide for radiation of different wave lengths, and on its assumed variation amount.
It is true that carbon dioxide is more absorptive of terrestrial than of solar radiations, and that it, therefore, produces a greenhouse or blanketing effect, and it is also, probably true that its amount in the atmosphere has varied through appreciable ranges, as a result of volcanic and other additions on the one hand, and of oceanic absorption and chemical combination on the other. But it is not possible to say exactly how great an effect a given change in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would have on the temperature of the earth. However, by bringing a number of known facts to bear on the subject it seems feasible to determine its approximate value. Thus the experiments of Schaefer show that, at atmospheric pressure, a column of carbon dioxide 50 cm. long is ample for maximum absorption, since one of this length absorbs quite as completely as does a column 200 cm. long at the same density. Also, the experiments of Angstrom, and those of E. v. Bahr, show that the absorption of radiation by carbon dioxide, or other gas, increases with increase of pressure, and, what is of great importance, that, both qualitatively and quantitatively, this increase of absorption is exactly the same whether the given higher pressure be obtained by compression of the pure gas to a column of shorter length, or, leaving the column unchanged, by the simple addition of an inert gas.
According to these experiments, if a given column or quantity of carbon dioxide at a pressure 50 mm. absorbs 20 per cent of the incident selective radiation, then, at 100 mm it will absorb 25 per cent, at 200 mm. 30 per cent, at 400 mm. 35 per cent, and at 800 mm about 38.5 per cent.
Now, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is equivalent to a column of the pure gas, at ordinary room temperature and atmospheric pressure, of, roughly, 250 cm. in length. Hence, as a little calculation proves, using the coefficients of absorption at different pressures given by the experiments of Anstrom and E. v. Bahr, just described, the carbon dioxide now in the atmosphere must, under its present vertical distribution, absorb radiation very approximately as would a column 475 cm. long of the pure gas at the barometic pressure of 400 mm. But Schaefer’s experiments, above referred to, show that such a column would be just as effective an absorber as a cylinder two or three time this length, and, on the other hand, no more effective than a column one-half or one-fourth as long; in each case, the absorption would be complete in the selective regions of the gas in question.
Hence, finally, doubling or halving the amount of carbon dioxide now in the atmosphere, since this would make but little difference in the pressure, would not appreciably affect the total amount of radiation actually absorbed by it, whether of terrestrial or of solar origin, though it would affect the vertical distribution or location of the absorption.
Again, as explained by Abbot and Fowle, the water vapor always present in the atmosphere, because of its high coefficients of absorption in substantially the same regions where carbon dioxide is effective, leaves but little radiation for the latter to take up. Hence, for this reason, as well as for the one given above, either doubling or halving the present amount of carbon dioxide could alter but little the total amount of radiation actually absorbed by the atmosphere, and, therefore, seemingly, could not appreciably change the average temperature of the earth, or be at all effective in the production of marked climatic changes.
This is looking at theories on causes of ice ages, he does go on to wonder if CO2 above variation of absorption of water vapour might contribute to global cooling. But anyway, do you have any physics and experimentation from AGWScience to contradict this?
Much more work has been done since which confirms that CO2 is insignificant in the scheme of things, even the recent AIRS data said that CO2 was insignificant compared with the water vapour – and water vapour is something the AGW models just don’t like dealing with because they want to put all the blame on CO2. AIRS also said that CO2 was lumpy and not at all well mixed in the atmosphere.
So you see, another example of half truth from AGW, missing out vital information from Science which contradicts its hypothesis, deliberately leading supporters to believe that real Science confirms it when it clearly doesn’t.
For now.
“If a computer model is considered to be a proof of global warming or cooling – then this is very far from (real) science. A bit more is needed than a positive review from a buddy and a publication in a friendly journal…”
This is ridiculous, the problem is that you don’t understand science, it is the same as looking at math and thinking it works like arithmetic. A maths teacher will tell you that arithmetic is adding and multiplying, whereas math is statistics, probability, calculus, geometry et cetera.
You call what I think is a belief, but on my side I have actual genuine scientists who have specialised and spent years in a field of study. They look at actual data and spend their time evaluating the data and searching for more data, and aggregating data from other sources together, and seeking experts in other fields to complement and explain their work to them. They then pass those conclusions around and accept criticism from their colleagues and adjust and fix. They then publish that data and the results for the whole world to criticise and examine and where errors are found they fix those. The majority of the raw data you seek is available. Also you should not cherry pick your data but aggregate many sources together. For instance I’m quite happy to accept Hadcrut 3 but as I understand it, it is not a global measurement, it misses out the Arctic.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Quick-and-Dirty-GHCN-Analysis.html
On your side you have self-proclaimed experts and ex-politicians proclaiming that everything is one big conspiracy were all the governments (and a lot of them aren’t friendly to each other), all the scientists and scientific bodies are colluding in some huge scam that in reality hardly benefits any of them. Your proof is based on data from thousands and millions of years ago before man existed that came from ice cores in one area to say that man did not cause this so how could man cause it now. You say it’s all natural as if that is an excuse when all the natural causes are well-known and have been accounted for. If anything the planetary cycle were in and measurements from the sun tell us we should be cooling, lucky for us or things would be much worse. But the data says were warming and over the same timeframe as CO2 is rising, a well-known greenhouse gas accepted scientifically and experimentally. You say that a model cannot explain the climate when the fact is the theory is based on models and cold hard facts and evidence from many areas. Apart from that models and theories in science are like the math in mathematics, most of what runs the world around us are based on models and theories. If the standard model of physics, a theory, did not work neither would the computer you are using to view this, GPS, television, microwave et cetera. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model
Apply your own Ockhams razor, is a global conspiracy and convoluted twisting of generally accepted science and data, more believable than basic data that says a greenhouse gas is rising at the same time as temp and we have ruled out all other causes.
Your side is not based on proven facts and theories it is based on the other side is wrong, so I know which one I consider a belief.
“…Michael says that oil companies are the most profitable companies on the planet.
Wrong, as in so many other false assertions.”
To quote the Fortune 500 magazine for 2010
“Oil companies are the biggest money makers on this year’s Global 500, including besieged BP.”
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2010/
“We all see a pattern here – topping the charts are companies from oil & gas industries, as much as we often hate and curse them for ruining the environment.”
http://www.penn-olson.com/2010/08/30/the-worlds-most-profitable-companies-infographic/
and of couse this does not count the major sources of oil those Arab countries and Arab Billionaires.
—
“…I’ve conclusively debunked Michael’s claim that weather disasters are getting worse.”
Are you joking? You consider your cherry picked irrelevencies proof? You have a very low standard of proof and the ignore the mountains of evidence for climate change.
“Perhaps we should start looking harder at the present. Recent extreme weather events include not only the Victorian bushfires and record floods in Queensland. According to the international insurance group Munich Re, 2010 saw the second-highest number of natural catastrophes since 1980, with 90 per cent of them weather-related.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/global-weather-disasters-a-sign-the-heat-is-on/story-e6frg6zo-1225983256858
and a pretty strong start to 2011.
—
“…It is certainly much too weak a conjecture to justify wreaking havoc on the U.S. economy by trying to mitigate a harmless and beneficial trace gas, when China alone is emitting much more CO2 than America. ”
China is demonstrably making large strides and big efforts in cutting emissions and developing renewable industries. They are likely to become world leaders in it. Why, they are struggling with the problem on a daily basis and can see the future problems unfolding and want to be ahead of the pack.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/11/2842415.htm
—
“…“One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.”
~William of Ockham, 1285-1349”
I agree, so lets have a look at that. So in the absence of any natural basis for the current increase in temperature and considering that CO2 is rising at the same time, the most straightforward explanation is that mans pumping of billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere is causing temps to rise. Natural variability is not an answer, most natural causes can be pinpointed and measured. Real scientists know them and have done this.
—
“…Regarding the “average salary” – I do not know: what I know is that over $2.5 billion this year is going to be spent on grants related to climate research, ”
This is pocket change to the 9 trillion dollar oil industry, and trillion dollar economies. Remember you are talking global, whats that approx 30c each for an issue that has the potential of ruining our way of life?
Myrrh,
whether Michael comments back to you or not I would like to comment on yours. That is a very good pieceoif information you just laid out, especially on Humphrey’s book and the experiments within.
It took me literally three month’s on and off to absorb Miskolczi’s paper well enough to were I could clearly see what he did and how he did it in his analysis of the radiosondes data. Don’t know if you are aware of his work or the depth you have gone to understand it. But there is a surprising parallel between his results and Humphrey’s you pointed out. That is when he took the measures of the absorption of LWIR across the last 61 years he found virtually no variance when all latitude bands and season are combined each year and this 61 years is during the largest increase of co2 concentration since the industrial revolution began.
I guess what I am saying is Miskolczi’s radiosonde analysis shows exactly what Humphrey was point out in Schaefer’s experiments.
If you do take the time to read Miskolczi’s papers, or already have and not understood exactly, here’s a tip. Don’t get thrown by his parameters. They do not mean what you generally read in K&T’s budget or from IPCC. Ed is not the same as the arrow of downward LW flux in Trenberth’s graphic. He did it as I had always viewed this complex system, first remove the knowns. The Ed equal Au is just a portion of the IR flux, it is the portion of ground to surface and surface to ground resonance that exists in the lower troposphere and is by physics and Kirchhoff’s law guaranteed to be zero over any long period of time, as a year. That removes the greatest amount of energy flux from the problem that we concretely know, not that it’s exact value at any instant, or at all, but that over time they are equal. His analysis then goes to dissect the remaining energy flows. That is what took me so long to notice the discrepancy to ‘normal’ AGWspeak and what he was doing. Forget for a moment IPCC’s thought pattern, his whole approach is different.
After doing all of his analysis, a plot of the absorption (optical path length) from all GHG’s of the LWIR across 61 years all fall basically on top of each other. Sixty one dots on top of themselves being the ground to space portion of the flow. The othr portion leaving earth is the up half of the IR within the atmosphere.
To me that shows Humphrey to be exactly correct in what he was saying in the book.
I might now ask, have you ever investigated this aspect?
Myrrh said: “I stand by what I’ve said, you’re saying it because AGW is saying it, and you’re saying it now. Show me the physics and actual experiments which back up what you’ve just said as coming from actual physics and experiment apart from AGWScience claims, which you’ve yet to show me even exist.”
Michael said: “Try the following sites for a bit of an education.
http://school.familyeducation.com/outdoor-games/greenhouse-effect/37442.html
http://www.picotech.com/experiments/global/globalwarming.html
http://www.practicalchemistry.org/experiments/the-greenhouse-effect,296,EX.html
Maybe you would like to try some experiments yourself, without greenhouse gases the planet would be a snowball.”
You are not reading what I write, or at least not understanding it. This is not AGWscience (whatever that is) its basic science done in high schools.
Thanks, Werner – very nice article.
Les said: “1) Taxation is not likely to change Earth’s temperature”
As has been said 1,000,000 times, no one is claiming taxation changes the Earth’s temperature. What we say is taxation is the most efficient means to change behaviour and focus research into desirable areas. It is used to factor in the cost of the damage to the environment into the price of fossil fuel so that a more realistic cost is obtained. At the moment it is the cheapest because you dig it out of the ground and burn it. This does not take into account pollution, increased CO2 in the atmosphere, and that it is not renewable. I know you guys have enough understanding to understand that but you purposely ignore it and proclaim the simplistic argument. I say again act like sceptics and examine all sides with the same critical eye without discounting and ignoring data from one side because somebody told you to.
Also follow the REAL money, who actually does profit at your expense, Governments as individuals don’t get to keep the money, scientists are accountable for their grants and normally are not paid much. The people who win are oil company executives and individuals who have made this their claim to fame.
But of course, Michael – I do not understand science 🙂
“This is ridiculous, the problem is that you don’t understand science, it is the same as looking at math and thinking it works like arithmetic.” You wrote it.
Simple solution to a problem – heh ?
The real problem. Michael, is that climate science is not a science at all…
At best it could be described as “applied science” – if it followed strictly scientific principles. But, alas, it does it only when it suits its preconceived ideas, while discarding it totally when convenient – or when inconvenient facts are discovered.
Believe it or not – I do not really care who is right. It may well be that we humans are causing a run-away climate problem. Even if similiar climate changes (much more severe if we are to believe scientific data) took place many times in the past – all without our input.
But so far it hasn’t been proven SCIENTIFICALLY. The gravitational constant does not need to be modified every 10 years to matcht the observations – because scientific principles have been used to determine it. Objects fall toward Earth – not away from it. Of course – this is all subject to a relatively simple theory in terms of observation, explanation and measurement.
Climate changes are not happening due to some mystical “climate change laws”. Climate changes are subject to laws of physics, thermodynamics, chemistry etc. etc. – very well known for the most part.
Science, Michael, is NOT formulating an outcome, then creating a theory (based mostly on debatable computer models), and supporting it with selected facts while discarding inconvenient facts.
Real science looks for any available proof to discard a theory. Strength of the theory is judged on how well it resists attempts to find a proof against it.
Climate change theories do that – by constantly changing goal posts, by backflips, by finally making them non-verifiable – because they try to explain any possible outcome.
Floods – climate change. Droughts – climate change. Hot – climate change. Cold – climate change. Ice – climate change. No ice – climate change. And climate change, as we all know, is driven by CO2 – generated by humans. The solution – taxation. BS.
Climate science, in particular, is mostly political and financial interests – and whatever science is actually applied – serves mostly to add air od respectability to the whole affair.
This is not science, Michael. I know that many honest scientist working on climate research would be outraged reading this – and rightfully so, at least to some extent.
But the whole issue is now so thoroughly hijacked by political and financial circles – that, IMHO, there is no hope. Or, maybe there is…we just need to wait.
The fact that a lot of our money (mostly yours) is going to be stolen by the crooks who claim the climate control powers – does not worry me too much either.
I just started building a house – in a rather remote area. For the most part – it is going to be self-sufficient. I will quit working and paying taxes – and will stick my hand out – like the politicians, bankers and some climate scientists do – and like them, will get some money for nothing. Since I am not very young – this will do it for me – although I could work for another 10-15 years. You, on the other hand, will be in circulation much longer, because – I am guessing – you are much younger than me.
At least it looks like it.
Myrrh said “Much more work has been done since which confirms that CO2 is insignificant in the scheme of things, even the recent AIRS data said that CO2 was insignificant compared with the water vapour – and water vapour is something the AGW models just don’t like dealing with because they want to put all the blame on CO2. AIRS also said that CO2 was lumpy and not at all well mixed in the atmosphere.”
Physical Chemistry of CO2 absorption
http://www.skepticalscience.com/The-Physical-Chemistry-of-Carbon-Dioxide-Absorption.html
PDF showing all the calculations
http://www.hfranzen.org/GWPPT6.pdf
What AIRS says
http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/AIRS/gesNews/airs_co2_global_trend
Also Science does not ignore water vapour.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm
Where did Brian go?? Is he avoiding my specific question @January 19, 2011 at 4:09 pm am above?
That’s OK, maybe Michael can answer it. Stay within the parameters of the question, please. No linkys, you can speak for yourself. I want to hear your thoughts on the matter.
Oh, and thanx for your different definition of “profitable,” Michael. There are a number of definitions for what is profitable. I gave the return on shareholder equity, which is only about 9% for oil companies. The “biggest” one you selected, Exxon Mobil, has a ROI of less than 9%. That’s profitable, but not outstanding. Many companies do better.
And rather than demonize a company whose products you willingly pay for, why not just buy some shares of Exxon? Then you can share in their humongous profits. You can be an oil baron! Or does hating them while leaving your savings in a savings or checking account paying ≈1% make more sense to you?
Now, on to the question of the null hypothesis! Take your time, I’m retired. I can wait.☺
Michael – this link talks about the same issues as the PDF – but is written better (easier to read, that is).
http://scienceofdoom.com/2009/11/28/co2-an-insignificant-trace-gas-part-one/
As I said before, though, a notion that taxation can change climate is absurd – irrespective of accuracy and validity of warming models. It looks to me like Earth follows its own schedule and plan regarding climate changes anyway – I am a big fan of taking a long view, and the past history of Earth indicates that the forces at work here are way bigger than our ability to control them – even if we end the civilization by commiting a mass suicide.
Wayne – thank you for your comments. I don’t have a science background, just basics from school, so while I now understand enough to be able to follow Humphrey’s explanation I haven’t had the time to explore it any further in greater detail. I have to say that’s been one of the frustrating aspects since I first wondered why people were arguing about AGW, that it goes into so many fascinating areas most of which I’ve had to leave as I continued to try and make sense of the variety of AGW claims and the arguments for and against. But you’ve piqued my curiosity here, and I’ll certainly bear your advice in mind when I read Miskolczi.
Cynthia – thanks for your Ockham reminder, like the ‘you don’t really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother’. It should certainly apply to the basics of any arguing about a something, but I find with AGW supporters that their belief in the meme ‘the science is settled’ makes this complicated because each claim, from my research so far, has proved to have the actual science missing and supporters for the most part refuse to engage with this problem by beginning examination of it again on a basic level. This isn’t entirely their fault, it’s very hard to even think for a moment that information presented by ‘august and mainstream’ bodies promoting the correctness of AGWScience could be wrong in this. It came as quite a shock to me to find how widespread the meme; now taught in schools as basic science it has become a brainwashing of the younger generations who are still in their formative years and with no reason to doubt the information being given to them.
Michael –
Slow down, please. You keep missing the points I’m trying to make and this is adding to the problem I have in trying to reply to all the points you’ve been making.
My main point around which I’m working is that AGWScience is not real science, but at every junction deviates from presenting the full facts of real scientific knowledge and because it has to do this to maintain the illusion of being ‘science based’. Understand this please, you are not presenting me with new AGW material I don’t know anything about. I’ve already been through countless such examples and read countless arguments pro and con about them. I’ve given the arguments pro and con a lot of thought. When I began I had no reason to doubt what AGW supporters were saying. In other words, if I came into this with any bias at all, it was with a bias to not doubt that AGW was true, because, as for the many like me, it was something in the background of my life which I had no reason to give any thought to. It didn’t take me long to begin spotting the flaws, but I did feel as if I was on a see-saw for quite a while when it went into areas I didn’t know anything about, and each side’s arguments seemed right to me until I read the replies to them..
So, let’s take the sites you’ve given me for my education..
http://school.familyeducation.com/outdoor-games/greenhouse-effect/37442.html
The Greenhouse Effect Experiments
With all the talk about global warming these days, do you know how to explain the greenhouse effect to your kids? For a great example of this phenomenon, look no further than your own driveway! Did you know… You can observe all the principles of the greenhouse effect in a parked car in the sun:
Really? The earth and its atmosphere is like a car parked in the sun with the windows closed? Ditto the greenhouse picture. A closed system presented as if correct to explain the greenhouse? Try parking your car in the sun with all the windows open, does it make a difference? Opening the windows in the greenhouse?
But note, it says: Some of the gases in earth’s atmosphere act like the glass in the car windows. They let in solar energy and block or absorb infrared energy. As a result the atmosphere gets warmer.
Hmm, “some of the gases in the earth’s atmosphere act like the glass in the car windows”
So, in earth’s atmosphere there are bits of ‘gas glass’ acting like the windows in a closed car or closed greenhouse.
Then the picture should at least be a greenhouse with a certain percentage of its window glass smashed, equal to the amount of ‘greenhouse gases’ to our real atmosphere, size for size.
How much ‘glass’ is there in our atmosphere? How much of that greenhouse depicted would have any glass left if compared? Enough to still be called a greenhouse, do you think? Enough glass in our atmosphere to make our global atmosphere get warmer?
It goes further
What does pollution have to do with it?
In all, 30 greenhouse gases have been discovered to date, including carbon dioxide (CO2), water vapor, methane and ozone. But lately new gases are being added to the mix: Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). These are the harmful gases produced by cars and factories, and we humans are responsible!
This is what really makes me very, very angry with AGW, because it isn’t true.
Your next link, http://www.practicalchemistry.org/experiments/the-greenhouse-effect,296,EX.html
Read the responses from Tom Bolger and Alan M Calverd, and please think about them.
http://www.picotech.com/experiments/global/globalwarming.html
Introduction A build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to the use of fossil fuels and other industrial processes has led to an increase in the earth’s temperature. Since 1896 it has been known that these gases (carbon dioxide, methan and nitrous oxide) help stop the earth’s infrared radiation from escaping into space and it is this that maintains the earth’s relatively warm temperature.
This goes on to give an experiment. But first, is there anything of real science in these opening lines?
In just these ideas:”A build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to the use of fossil fuels and other industrial processes has led to an increase in the earth’s temperature. is enough material to explore and analyse to check if what it’s saying is true or not.
Has there been a build-up of greenhouse gases? Measured against what levels and when, where, and how were these past and present measurements recorded?
Look at Becks v Mauna Loa, for example. Do you think that Mauna Loa can be a “pristine” site from which to measure “background levels of CO2 uncontaminated by local conditions”, which is how it’s described by AGWScience, when its measured from the top of the world’s largest active volcano and surrounded in active volcanoes in the area of a volcanic hot spot beneath the warm sea, constantly producing massive amounts of carbon dioxide as it builds more volcanoes? It’s like measuring the smoke from a cigarette in a room full of smokers, and with no way to tell apart which smoke comes from which cigarette because they’re all exactly the same and thoroughly combined by the time it reaches the instruments measuring. The claim that there is a ‘background CO2’ being accurately measured is simply irrational. Then, when you look into how the ‘base’ measurement was first established by Keeling, cherry picking a low number so he could add his agenda driven ‘increasing man-made CO2 from fossil fuels’ to his ever-rising line on his graph.. etc. etc.
Can these gases build-up in the atmosphere? How does Carbon dioxide do this? It is heavier than air. One and a half times heavier than air. It therefore always sinks through air down to the ground unless another force is acting on it. Carbon Dioxide near the ground does not readily rise into the atmosphere because it is heavier than air. Read again the analysis of the experiment above. So how does this gas which is constantly reverting to type and displacing air to come to the ground, stay up in the air to “build-up”? Accumulating AGWScience says, for hundreds and even thousands of years..
We can see from ice core like Vostok that Methane and CO2 rise behind temperature ( http://motis.blogspot.com/2006/07/carbon-dioxide-and-temperatures-ice.html ), maybe we are adding more through burning fossil fuels and industry, but is this actually having any real effect on our global temperatures? As we’ve already gone through, if these are shown to not be drivers of temperature in the past, no sign of them boosting temperatures by their entry behind global warming, how have they suddenly acquired this new property to be able to do this? (How many pieces of glass are they in our atmosphere and how large?)
Mr Calverd summed it up perfectly. It’s a travesty.
Read instead http://ww.suite101.com/content/laws-of-physics-ready-to-defeat–the-global-warming-theory-a230496
What does Nahle mean when he says: “Atmospheric gases act only as conveyors of heat”?
Re AGWSCience’s water vapour feedback – http://kirkmyers.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/harvard-astrophysicist-dismisses-agw-theory-challenges-peers-to-take-back-climate-science/
If you want to explore further and just for heck of reading a scientist whose interest is in looking at our natural world to see how it works.
We already do know much about how our physical world works. It really is a travesty to keep having this non-science which violates the actual well known and understood basic laws of physics, which engineers and other applied scientists use daily in their work, to keep being presented in these ‘teachings’.
As I’ve tried to convey to you, one has to look at every single statement made and pick it apart to see what is being really being said. Ask the questions, find out what other scientists, whose work would be nonsense if they didn’t use basic physics in their jobs, think about it. If miners didn’t know that methane being lighter than air rises to collect in the ceiling and carbon dioxide being heavier sinks to pool on the ground, we wouldn’t have miners left to pass on that they didn’t know… This was understood to happen before science began to explain what was happening, that these were two different gases with different properties, different weights and so on.
“Since 1896 it has been known that these gases …” Indeed, and known that Arrhenius changed his mind, and known that he got it wrong anyway..
So, what questions can be asked about the experiment on that last link? “Comparison of Thermal Properties of Air and Carbon Dioxide”.
Your “Null Hypothesis”, is a non-issue and not relevant to the current situation at hand. I have gone over why this is so several times in the posts above but will try and summarise in a simpler way for you. For example let’s look at year 8152 from your single area, single region Vostok ice core data, as it seems to be at the particularly high end. Before I can answer that question can you provide me with some additional data.
What volcanic activity occurred that year? tell you what, you can average the decade :- 0
What was the solar activity that year? (I believe the sun was hotter then, but be specific)
What were the precise positions of the landmasses?
What was Earths orbit?
What actual plant and animal species (including numbers) were available on the planet?
What was the composition of the oceans and their temperature?
What was the composition of the air and temperature, from a representative sample of spots around the globe?
Also your graph does not show CO2 concentration, please show for various spots and altitudes around the globe.
What was the actual population of mankind and the amount of CO2 they were emitting?
Get back to me when you have that data. Until then I cannot give you a reasoned scientific response. This is where it is obvious that you are not a skeptic looking for a scientific explanation but instead attacking the other side with religious fervour protecting your beliefs. You will look to irrelevant data, global conspiracies, self-proclaimed experts and personal attacks on scientists (and real ones if the threats to the CRU scientists are to be believed) before you would believe actual data, scientists who have specialised in the area, scientific organisations and the observations from your own eyes. The way you’re trying to prove your case would be funny if the consequences weren’t so serious.
Smokey says: “Oh, and thanx for your different definition of “profitable,” ”
You’re Welcome! Most shareholders have no real control over the company, it is the oil tycoons and executives calling the shots.
Smokey says: “And rather than demonize a company”
I do not demonise companies or gases. I look at effects, companies want to make money so to change their behaviour you would need to use taxation or legislation. Gases are doing what their composition requires them to do. They are neither good nor evil (though you keep trying to give them that connotation) but their effects are good for us at some concentrations and situations and bad for us at others.
Smokey says: “Now, on to the question of the null hypothesis! Take your time, I’m retired. I can wait.☺”
Yes you have pointed out several times you don’t really care and that I should not look at the situation in terms of the precautionary principle. While that’s okay for you, I have children and one of those are having children and I desperately worry about the world we are going to leave them. If scientists (with 95% confidence), my own investigations and reading and my own observations are telling me that something is likely to be wrong but we can fix it now before it’s too late then I say fix it now. What you always choose to ignore by ignoring the precautionary principle is that if you are wrong (and surely how arrogant are you?) the consequences are truly horrendous. This is not a game.
Michael – re snowball earth. The theory is still much in debate that there even was such a thing. Several articles of the research being done on this, with some saying they’ve shown it could have been this, because, others saying it couldn’t, because..
There’s a collection here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070323104746.htm
If everything was frozen then CO2 levels would have gone down with the drop in temperature, as Vostok etc. show, and not risen until the world was warm enough for it to begin appearing again, so where would the CO2 have come from to take the earth out of this? Nothing alive on land or in the sea, no plants or animals producing CO2, so only from the actions as we still have of earth transferring heat from beneath the crust. Which, I think, in itself could be enough to warm us up again and for life as we know it to begin again, in the Carbon Life Cycle (you’re around 20% carbon, the rest mostly water). But it would be the heat melting the ice, the carbon dioxide as irrelevant then as it is now.
We know that descent back into ice ages can happen extremely rapidly. When geologists first appreciated the long time scales involved in such things as erosion and began to get an idea of how long the earth was in existence, they became entrenched in the view that great geological change happens only gradually, their thinking had to change when they finally accepted that massive changes could take place in very short periods of time. (*) Estimates around now of how quickly we can get in and out of our ice age has been revised down, from thousands of years to hundreds to a couple of decades and even to ‘practically instantly’. All depends where and when and so on.
Mountains of ice, mile+ high which we have in our ice age, when it begins to melt will often keep its boundary longer as ice than in the centre, this is when dramatic flooding occurs. As when the boundary of ice at the edge of what is now the North Sea finally broke and the vast lake it had been damming burst out. As ice melts at the bottom of these walls it causes the ice above and around it to move and crack, and this instability speeds up. The principle can be seen in glaciers and their movement in carrying massive boulders for hundreds of miles as they gouge out a path for themselves through mountains, they’re sliding on water.
A snowball earth would not, I imagine, have stopped the internal working of the earth which is constantly trying to release the pressure of its internal heat. At some point, beginning from the moment the water or land above was frozen, this would begin to melt and cause the ice above to melt and move further. How long it would take to unfreeze a solid block of sea and land I have no idea, but as it would do so first along whatever fault lines and volcanic activity was around it should eventually cause the unfreeze even from such a scenario. As the crust begins moving forming more fault lines, more volcanoes, breaking up into plates and so on and releasing more heat. In the same kind of fits and starts we see from the beginning of our own Holocene probably.
(*) The story of how entrenched positions clinging to bad science can be changed.
http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/scablands.htm
http://www.thegreatstory.org/scablands.html
Another example in the idea of tectonic plates and that land masses moved apart had the same initial response of the many entrenched in their beliefs refusing even to consider what another was producing in evidence. He didn’t live long enough to see his reasoning proved correct.
http://www.pangaea.org/wegener.htm
Myrrh said: “Which, I think, in itself could be enough to warm us up again and for life as we know it to begin again, in the Carbon Life Cycle (you’re around 20% carbon, the rest mostly water). But it would be the heat melting the ice, the carbon dioxide as irrelevant then as it is now.”
One of the theories was that explosive volcanoes was what helped bring us out of the ice age. I am not sure if you know but the gases Volcanoes emit are greenhouse gases including CO2. I also particularly enjoyed how you searched high and low in your religious fervour to bring up a study from 1929 discounting all the science, scientific bodies, current theories and modern measuring equipment to prove a point that wasn’t even on the current topic. Yes I know about Miskolczi and errors have been pointed out in the math. But of course you will only believe what supports your fervent belief and discount or discredit anything that doesn’t.
But of course skeptics believe they know more than governments, scientific bodies, and scientists and can tell which modern measuring equipment and theories are valid to choose from. It must be nice knowing everything. Sort of omnipresent…
Les Said: “As I said before, though, a notion that taxation can change climate is absurd”
I agree, and for the umpteenth time not what anyone, including me says. Is it a comprehension issue?
Obviously I cannot reason with people who continually misquote and misrepresent what I say and cherry pick to prove points, and consider limited regional data from 10s of 1000s of years ago to more accurately represent the global situation now than current data from current modern measuring equipment evaluated by scientists specialising in the field. Talk about arrogant and conceited.
http://hot-topic.co.nz/easterbrooks-wrong-again/
“The last word goes to Richard Alley, who points out that however interesting the study of past climate may be, it doesn’t help us where we’re heading:
Whether temperatures have been warmer or colder in the past is largely irrelevant to the impacts of the ongoing warming. If you don’t care about humans and the other species here, global warming may not be all that important; nature has caused warmer and colder times in the past, and life survived. But, those warmer and colder times did not come when there were almost seven billion people living as we do. The best science says that if our warming becomes large, its influences on us will be primarily negative, and the temperature of the Holocene or the Cretaceous has no bearing on that. Furthermore, the existence of warmer and colder times in the past does not remove our fingerprints from the current warming, any more than the existence of natural fires would remove an arsonist’s fingerprints from a can of flammable liquid. If anything, nature has been pushing to cool the climate over the last few decades, but warming has occurred.”
Hi Smokey! I don’t see that you asked any questions of me in your post from 1/19, 9:58am.
By contrast, though you said that you could “answer all my questions,” I didn’t see anywhere where you answered either of my very simple, straightforward questions in my post of 1/19, 2:55pm. For your benefit, here they are:
Question #1:
Consider the following common argument, which Myrrh appears to endorse:
P1) In the past, rise in temperature has preceded rise in CO2
P2) Effects cannot precede their causes
C) Therefore, a rise in CO2 cannot be a cause of a rise in temperature
Do you think that the conclusion follows from those premises? Or do you think that this is a mistake in logic? (Note: agreeing that this is fallacious would not show that a rise in CO2 can cause a rise in temperature; it would only show that this argument fails to establish its conclusion.)
Question #2:
In reference to the example you brought up in which temperatures in Greenland went up 27F in 10 years despite CO2 remaining relatively low, does the following argument fairly represent (at least roughly) how you thought of that particular case functioning?
P1) In Greenland, average temperature rose 27F over 10 years, while levels of CO2 remained quite low
P2) If (as most scientists claim) CO2 and temperature are (“non-trivially”) causally related, P1 would have to be false
C) Therefore, CO2 and temperature are not (or only “trivially”) causally related
This argument is (unlike Myrrh’s argument above) logically valid. Does it represent (at least roughly) the work that this particular example of a 27F spike in temperature is supposed to do for your overall case?
Again, in your “response” to me, you seemed to ignore these specific, straightforward questions, and instead switched to speaking about a whole range of “big picture” issues. I prefer to think slowly and carefully, one issue at a time; I find it unhelpful to try to address “everything” all at once. If you’re still interested, could you take a stab at answering my two questions? (And again, I don’t know which question(s) from your 9:58am post you meant for me to address – I don’t see any questions there, but perhaps you meant a different post?)
Thanks!
Michael said: One of the theories was that explosive volcanoes was what helped bring us out of the ice age. I am not sure if you know but the gases Volcanoes emit are greenhouse gases including CO2.
? It was these I was referring to. As it’s shown that CO2 levels do not start to increase until nearly a thousand years after temperatures even begin rising, they are obviously completely irrelevant to dramatic increases in global warming. Whatever the causes of global warming, therefore, happen without being at all bothered by CO2 levels. What you still haven’t addressed is that these have not stopped and so can not be dismissed as insignificant by replacing these with CO2, the known non-driver of these dramatic changes, as the main driver now. The logic isn’t there.
I also particularly enjoyed how you searched high and low in your religious fervour to bring up a study from 1929 discounting all the science, scientific bodies, current theories and moder measuring equipment to prove a point that wasn’t even on the current topic.
I brought it into the conversion because you kept insisting I was ignoring it and that I didn’t understand the ‘greenhouse’ effect. It was also another very good example of the point I’m making here, that AGWScience by elision and half truths manufactures a clever sleight of hand, making those taking it on trust believe that there is real science and real rational thinking behind its claims.
As is the example of the irrationality of using CO2 as the main driver of temperatures now when it is obviously nonsense to anyone who looks at what is actually being said, and what has, critically, being left unsaid.
AGWScience never connects the claims A and B it makes, because ‘the science’ in between is missing to make this logical. It leaps directly from one to the other because The real science in between falsifies its claims.
So, the AGWGreenhouse is based on Arrhenius’ earlier 1896 paper, and ignores that he revised this later, and that later work by others showed his hypothesis was wrong, as I outlined above. I assumed from your insistence on your superior knowledge of the science about the ‘greenhouse effect’ that you were familiar where these AGW claims came from. Now you know. There is no actual tested science that agrees with Arrhenius. For AGW to keep using his early work regardless of the advances made later in understanding shows deliberate disregard for RealScience. The AGWGreehouse claim is falsified here. You cannot keep using the argument that RealScience backs AGW claims about this, because it doesn’t.
AGW supporters are taking far too much on trust from AGW scaremongers. The page linked below is good on why AGWGreenhouse scenario is a non-starter. From actual well know real science, as knowledge of physical facts confirmed, from the exploration of gases and atmosphere after the first tentative questioning of reasons for our climate changes from around the time of the the earlier Arrhenius paper. Please read the WUWT page I linked to on Arrhenius and the explanation in Humphrey’s book to understand AGWScience’s use of the falsified claim about IR absorption etc. and to help follow the information here:
http://junkscience.com/Greenhouse/index.html
And read this just to get a ‘feel’ for how our atmosphere really works in the transport of energy, convection not radiation the prime mover and the water cycle the ‘greenhouse gas’ that cools the earth. Cloud cover may temporarily ‘trap’ heat, but the direction of heat transfer from the earth is ever upwards, water vapour taking the heat away from the earth and rising into cooler atmosphere above, condensing.
That’s why AGW models do not include water in the models except as in their imaginary ‘forcing’ from CO2 which they base on the earlier Arrhenius, and even that they’ve put through their usual garbling process, because they would have to admit that the real greenhouse gas effect includes the cycle of water removing heat from the earth, not just cooling by deflecting heat from reaching the earth by cloud cover as in the models.
Please remember my point here, that when looking more closely at the AGW claims for carbon dioxide you will always find how a sleight of hand has been used to give the appearance of backing for the claim when real science has already falsified these concepts in basic physics. And then you might start to ask yourself, why are they doing this so consistently?
For example, looking at one of the pages you linked to later: http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/AIRS/gesNews/airs_co2_global_trend
provides yet another evidence of rising global concentrations.
Hmm, as I touched on briefly, this ‘pattern’ of rising concentrations was manufactured first by Keeling and his son continued to be in charge of showing that such a thing existed in his co-ordination of data from Scripps. As we’ve seen with temperature data, so many ‘adjustments’ as made to keep the illusion of ‘rising carbon dioxide levels because of man-made causes’ that the first question should be from what base? Keeling’s imaginary ‘background’ level was cherry picked to show a constant rise over time because he was against the use of coal, an early greenie. Only someone with an agenda would announce that he had found such a trend after less than two years of gathering information, some trend…
That’s besides all the other nonsense he claimed to be able to do from measuring CO2 levels in possibly the greatest and the most consistently CO2 producing hot spot in the world! These ‘rising levels’ have been gradually catching up to all the known at the time measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere when Keeling first cherry picked his low bottom line, and in all the studies since and currently which show these high levels of CO2 are close to the ground and thin as they get higher in the atmosphere. CO2 is local production, it doesn’t like travelling much, it is heavier than air and will always sink displacing air to reach the ground. Etc.
Out of 16 major gaseous components of dry atmosphere, CO2 holds fourth place by concentration, being about a thousand times “thinner” than Nitrogen and Oxygen.
In dry air? Missing out water because … And this concentration is actually what? At .035% just how is that sufficient amount compared with the 99% percentage of Nitrogen and Oxygen to make any difference in heat transport? Or against the percentage of water vapour in the atmosphere, which must be included if trying to understand our climate. ‘Dry air’ is a lab construct, much like ‘average’ and ‘ideal gas’, the water cycle around the globe in both its aspects of cooling and warming can’t be excluded as the main ‘greenhouse gas’, which AGW does in its models.
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/molecular_mass-air-d_679.html
Nevertheless, CO2 is the second most potent green house gas of Earth’s atmosphere, trailing only the water wapour by warming potency.
Yeah, right, insignificant amount, again only looking at warming and not cooling in the ‘greenhouse’ budget re water, and excluding completely the greenhouse gases of oxygen and nitrogen in our real greenhouse earth, which is the whole atmosphere as the greenhouse. Within this the extremes of warming by the sun and cooling by its absence, day and night, summer and winter, are what make our planet the ‘goldilocks’ one. Vast areas teeming with life in the circulation of heat and water and wind (moving air).
The trend of CO2 concentration retrieved by AIRS shows no signs of leveling, thus leaving little doubt that the global CO2 concentrations will be reaching 390 parts per million (ppm) by the end of 2010.
Trend as I’ve mentioned above, is an AGW agenda driven construct. But this gives the ‘impression’ that there is this ‘blanket’ of CO2 building up in the atmosphere – which is then falsified by AGW itself but on another page of the AIRS data linked to from this introduction.
http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/AIRS_CO2_Data/About_AIRS_Co2_Data/
Significant Finding from AIRS Data
Carbon dioxide is not homogeneous in the mid-troposphere; previously it was thought to be well-mixed Etc.
As I said, AIRS found CO2 to not be a well-mixed homogeneous whole, which is the fiction told by AGW.
AIRS concluded that water vapour was the most important factor and that this would come as a shock to those who (AGW) who thought otherwise and ignored its importance in its own right, and that CO2 was insignificant. The link to that particular gem is now hard to find, perhaps others will have better luck.
But still, here, ignoring the AIRS findings that CO2 is not a homogenous blanket but bitty and lumpy subject to the atmosphere’s transport systems (and explained also by its weight relative to air), AGWScience continues to push the falsified information as ‘science fact’.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm
Besides all the other parroting of falsified facts we’ve already looked at it has this:
Thus the amount held in the atmosphere as water vapour varies greatly in just hours and days as result of the prevailing weather in any location. So even though water vapour is the greatest greenhouse gas, it is relatively short-lived. On the other hand, CO2 is removed from the air by natural geological-scale processes and these take a long time to work. Consequently CO2 stays in our atmosphere for years and even centuries. A small additional amount has a much more long-term effect.
? AIRS significant findings in the page above says CO2 part of that prevailing weather in any location. So, as likewise neither water nor heat is well-mixed in the atmosphere, but, against all these forces of weather and gravity and pressure acting on CO2 to move it around, AGW claims CO2 has such superpowers that it moves itself to mix thoroughly in the atmosphere remaining aloof from them, and so stays up in the air accumulating for hundreds and thousands of years..? How?
CO2 comes down to earth every time it rains, gets driven down by winds and when all is calm even for a mo, being heavier than air it displaces air to fall to earth.
Anyway Michael, I hope I’ve given you enough examples of what I found when I began exploring for you to see that AGWScience is not as it presents itself. It’s only by clever manipulation, juxtaposition, elision, sleight of hand, and adjustments of data and by playing with half truths as here, its own AIRS data falsifying its own claims, that it has managed to get away with so far, but, mainly, through shouting down the atheists who keep having the audacity to point out that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.
If nothing else, I hope I’ve given you something to think about.
Where’s Brian?? I looked forward to his response to my question, since he was being genuinely inquisitive as far as I could tell.
Michael, on the other hand, is suffering from a severe case of cognitive dissonance. His “On/Off” switch has been wired around, and he can’t reset; he cannot have an open mind; the planet could decline into an Ice Age over the next decade, and he would still be insisting that non-existent catastrophic AGW is right around the corner.
Michael devotes a lot of energy trying to convince us that the “Null Hypothesis is a non-issue and not relevant to the current situation at hand.”
Wrong. Climatologist Dr Roy Spencer explains it this way: No one has falsified the hypothesis that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability.
Michael’s rejection of the climate null hypothesis is a rejection of the scientific method. It is just wishful thinking based on cognitive dissonance. [Scientific skeptics are largely immune from cognitive dissonance, because skeptics ar only asking questions, which put together amount to: “Can you prove it?”]
The null hypothesis is part of the scientific method, and the climate null hypothesis is central to the climate debate. The fact that it debunks CO2=CAGW is what Michael can’t face, so he contorts himself into a pretzel trying to avoid answering the specific question: What putative global harm/damage has occurred as a direct result of the 40% increase in CO2? In fact, there is no verifiable evidence of any global damage due to CO2. So Michael goes off on other tangents.
Michael threw out some spurious questions that in his cognitive dissonance-afflicted mind refute the null hypothesis. That is nonsense:
Michael: “What volcanic activity occurred that year? tell you what, you can average the decade.”
Red herring argument. There is geologic evidence that significant volcanic activity is relatively rare. We don’t experience a Krakatoa every decade, or even every century, and the effect of much smaller eruptions such as Pinatubo and Mt. St. Helens dissipates within a few years at most.
Michael: “What was the solar activity that year? (I believe the sun was hotter then, but be specific)”
Michael’s belief is wrong. I will be specific: The Sun is hotter now than it was during the prior eight millennia of the Holocene. Michael’s belief shows he is still far down on the learning curve. The Sun has been cooler the farther we go into the past. More than a billion years ago it was ≈25% cooler.
Michael: “What were the precise positions of the landmasses?”
Answer: Essentially identical to today, throughout the Holocene – which is the most recent sliver of time in the earth’s 4.6 billion year history. The continents are in the same relative configuration; they move at about the rate your fingernails grow. In 10,000 years you might have fingernails a couple hundred feet long. But that is nothing compared with continental land masses, so that minuscule factor has no effect on the climate null hypothesis. Michael’s question is simply due to a lack of knowledge.
Michael: “What was Earths orbit?”
Another red herring argument: Atomic clocks verify that the earth’s orbit and rotation have not varied by even one second over the past 10 millennia.
Michael: “What actual plant and animal species (including numbers) were available on the planet?”
Plant and animal species are in constant flux, even today. But the biosphere is what matters, not the turnover, and the biosphere is dependent upon CO2 levels. More CO2 = a larger, more diverse biosphere. Charts available on request.
Michael: “What was the composition of the oceans and their temperature?”
Answer: the same as today, within very narrow error bars. pH levels are within null hypothesis norms. Prof Richard Lindzen states that “there is ample evidence” that the earth’s temperature at the equator has not varied by more than ±1°C over the past billion years from current temperatures. Earth is a water world; 71% of the planet is ocean. If the ocean’s parameters had changed significantly, we would be hearing about it 24/7/365, because it would have falsified the null. That is why Trenberth is so desperate to replace the long-accepted climate null hypothesis with his own cherry-picked “null” hypothesis.
Michael: “What was the composition of the air and temperature, from a representative sample of spots around the globe?”
The Greenland GISP-2 and Vostok ice cores are proxies for air temperature, and they show the same warming and cooling in both hemispheres. Trying to re-frame the question by insisting on air temps is a diversionary tactic. The anomalies shown by the representative ice cores show that the climate has fluctuated by several degrees up and down during the Holocene. And ice core proxies are universally accepted as being accurate – unlike Mann’s and Briffa’s treemometers.
Michael: “Also your graph does not show CO2 concentration, please show for various spots and altitudes around the globe.”
CO2 concentrations are taken from ice core samples. Of course Michael is trying to move the goal posts to impossible positions by demanding “various spots and altitudes.” When you can’t refute the facts, question the sources, eh?
The sources we have are ice core samples – empirical evidence – which show CO2 levels over the past 420,000 years. Note that CO2 follows temperature.
Michael: “What was the actual population of mankind and the amount of CO2 they were emitting?”
The population was in the very low millions early in the Holocene, and their CO2 emissions were so negligible as to be unmeasurable, which supports the null hypothesis: today the population is 6.7 billion, and CO2 concentration has risen to 390 ppmv. Yet there is no discernable difference between the climate during the Holocene and today’s climate. None. No verifiable global harm attributable to the rise in CO2 can be shown. Therefore, CO2 has no measurable effect on the planet, except for verified increases in agricultural productivity. It’s all good.
Michael engages in psychological projection; imputing his faults onto others when he says: “it is obvious that you are not a skeptic looking for a scientific explanation but instead attacking the other side with religious fervour protecting your beliefs.”
Ah, but I am a scientific skeptic. Those like Michael who are promoting the baseless CO2=CAGW conjecture are the religious zealots, akin to Leon Festinger’s Mrs Keech, who founded the flying saucer cult, the Seekers, which Festinger infiltrated. Festinger wrote his book about the experience [When Prophesy Fails], showing that even when the predictions of the cult were debunked [the flying saucers did not arrive as prophesied – just as CAGW is not arriving as prophesied], cultmembers couldn’t let go of their beliefs. A flying saucer was supposed to take the cult away, sparing them before the earth was destroyed. When it didn’t arrive, their belief system was actually ratcheted up. Festinger’s term for this phenomenon is “cognitive dissonance.”
So what happened when the flying saucer didn’t arrive? Mrs Keech simply re-set the date of arrival. When the flying saucer again did not arrive, Mrs Keech had a mental communication: because her cult was so good, the flying saucers didn’t have to take them away, and the earth would be spared.
The Seekers was a religious cult, very similar to the CAGW cult: when the predictions don’t materialize, they ratchet up their belief system. In the cult Festinger studied, the intersting aspect was that rather than realizing Mrs Keech’s prophesy had been debunked, cult members didn’t abandon the cult, but redoubled their efforts to convert others. Sound familiar, Michael?
True belief is based on cognitive dissonance, which infects other beliefs. Michael says: “Most shareholders have no real control over the company, it is the oil tycoons and executives calling the shots.”
Again, that is contradicted by reality. “Most shareholders” voted for the CEO and Board of Directors in a legal election. Majority rules. The control that sharehoolders have over a company is in their right to vote for the executives. Calling them “oil tycoons” is demonizing corporate officers legally elected by shareholders. That pejorative results from cognitive dissonance. They are not “tycoons,” they are legally elected officers with a fiduciary duty to maximize profits. And if they continue to do so, they will probably be re-elected.
Finally, Michael asserts: “What you always choose to ignore by ignoring the precautionary principle is that if you are wrong (and surely how arrogant are you?) the consequences are truly horrendous. This is not a game.”
It has been discussed on WUWT that the odds of a catastrophic asteroid strike are enormous compared with the non-existent harm from an increase in a beneficial trace gas. The probability is non trivial: recently a large asteroid passed between the moon and the earth – and NASA was unaware of its existence until it had already passed.
For only a small fraction of what is being wasted on “global warming studies,” we could have an early warning system for NEO’s. With enough advance knowledge, an asteroid can be deflected. But once cognitive dissonance takes hold, its victims become religious cultists. Any diversion of funds from their chosen religion is seen as apostasy. Accusing questioning skeptics of being “religious” is simply projection on the part of a CAGW cultist.
Smokey – scroll up. You’ll see my response at 9:13am.
Hi Brian,
My apologies, I must have scrolled right past your response.
You said you couldn’t find my question. OK, I guess we’re both having trouble finding things. Here it is, from my post above:
I’ll check out your answer, then answer your two questions.
Myrrh – Miskolczi’s ideas should be treated with a pinch of salt – as some of his assumptions are rather risky – so be careful 🙂
Fortunately – he is not the only one trying to construct a comprehensive theory which would explain stability of the system – with or without CO2 being present.
And – it appears that at least some of them start giving reasonable answers.
Regarding nitrogen and oxygen – these gases are transparent to the radiation coming from the Sun. So – the radiation is absorbed by land and water.
Then it is radiated up in different wavelengths – and CO2 – but also water vapour – are no longer transparent to it. Greenhouse effect follows.
This is all well known -but CO2 is responsible for only about 16% of the effect, while water vapour for about 60%.
Here comes the climate changers’ argument -“but CO2 is well mixed, while water vapour is only in the lower areas of the atmosphere etc. etc.”
This is also a fact – that water vapour levels, unlike CO2 – can change VERY rapidly. Shouldn’t it be looked at with much more attention ?
What the climate changers do, however – they cherry pick one fact, concentrate on it, then they say that “the science is settled”.
This, as far as I am concerned – is not science, it is just a scam.
I said before – good propaganda is a mix of truths, half-truths, and lies.
Michael – you must be joking asking for “Get back to me when you have that data.”
The onus of proving something is on the proponent of a theory, not on the sceptics. You seem not to have any idea that a theory is false until proven right, not the other way around.
The “other way” is precisely the approach all religious, cult, and – recently – at least some of the climate scare believers, have chosen to follow.
The PDF (and the better formulated, but essentially presenting the same approach in the link I posted) – makes sense, yes.
Of course – the energy balance in the PDF is so simplistic – that it can’t be used a serious attempt to prove anything. But – as an example, and to illustrate the principles of physical chemistry – is very good indeed, if one can follow and understand the physical laws and data involved – which I can.
The facts described there should ring an alarm bell – but for the reasons totally opposite to your agenda…
The facts about CO2 and the basics regarding greenhouse effect are for the most part true – but SOMEHOW FAIL TO MATERIALIZE THE DESIRED EFFECT – and do not provide explanation regarding climate changes in the past.
The logical conclusion should be – WE DO NOT KNOW HOW IT REALLY WORKS. The CO2 is part of the puzzle – where is the rest ? Why did glaciation happen in the past ? How did ice ages ended and why ?
Instead – “the science is settled”…
Science does not start at the point where the first confirmatory answers are found.
Science starts wher NO facts or analysis results can be found which would contradict the theory – and not because for ther lack of trying.
A lot of climate scientists and followers (like you) seem to forget that. An example – “this science is settled” etc. etc.
It is not settled – until many thousands of scientists who don’t agree with the approach, method and conclusions of climate science- are convinced.
Climate scientists should be trying to find facts and data which could potentially contradict their theories – not prevent other people from publishing their findings and their approach.
But, in the meantime, we can always rise taxes – can’t we ?
And yes, I noticed that you declared a “votum separatum” – but you don’t call the shots here, do you ?