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
Les – re taking Miskolczi with a pinch of salt.., 🙂 one thing I particularly enjoy about WUWT is this kind of exchange from the interaction of people with interests in all the wide range of aspects scientific, that there’s an argument about something is like a magnet drawing me in. Which is how I first got interested in exploring AGW, when someone set up a discussion taking on all comers against the concept – until then I hadn’t realised it was being questioned. And the ‘it is well-known’ meme now out of habit spurs me to check out what others are saying, this is how I found that AGW had so infiltrated thinking by promoting science flaws as scientific fact that even those against AGW hypothesis often accepted them as real science if they were outside their particular field of knowledge. There was a lot of discussion already around the meme ‘the atmosphere transparent to IR’, but the arguments concentrated more on re-radiation via CO2 and its ‘saturation’ point and there were fewer discussions, hardly any I could find, about the ‘well-mixed in the atmosphere’ meme. As I knew a little about weights of gases I found this last easier to think about, by questioning AGW’s explanation.
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You said: 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%.
What had me struggling about this at first was the imbalance between the AGW claim that IR re-radiated back from CO2 caused the earth to heat and extra minute amounts of it would create huge amounts of heat globally and with that AGW’s lack of reference to any other heating going on in our atmosphere. (Not the aspect I looked at above, that these were of such small quantities compared with atmosphere, etc.)
The first I’ve gone into above, that Carbon Dioxide never previously having shown any propensity for being any kind of a driver of temperature in the really vast and dramatic changes in the interglacial/glacial pattern in our climate history, had suddenly taken over the role of whatever it is that does drive these changes, and these real drivers, which haven’t been shown to have stopped, have been dismissed as “insignificant”.
However, even adding water vapour to the reasons for rejecting CO2 as the “main driver” of AGWScience, doesn’t address this point, that the amount of IR re-radiated from them might well exist as IR, but not as heat – in other words – just how far can that travel as heat? Or stay trapped as heat?
We’re talking about AGW saying that IR trapped in CO2 delays heat loss from the earth and in bouncing back and forth continually adds to the heat on the earth driving global warming, adding water into that concept to make CO2 of lesser value than it had as AGW’s major driver, and so water vapour playing the greater part and CO2 the lesser, doesn’t address the problem I have with the concept. Just how much has IR radiating and re-radiating in the water and CO2 in the atmosphere have to do with actual heating?
If you take a photo with an infrared camera of a person at night in a forest you’ll pick up the IR being radiated from points of greater heat as bright spots. It is very site specific on that person, coming from the warmest bits, but, the whole body is actually radiating IR as AGW keep pushing the idea, as are the trees around that person; the ‘everything above absolute zero radiates IR’ tack. But these other areas of the body and the trees aren’t picked out as bright spots by the camera because it’s the intensity of IR radiated from greater heat that shows as strong light. That intensity comes from heat, the rest of the IR is of not much account re amount of heat compared with it. Standing next to a tree in a snowy forest isn’t going to keep you warm from the IR it’s radiating because the IR isn’t radiating heat to any palpable level. The middle of the snowy forest might be warmer than outside it on an open plain, but if cold enough in minus degrees, being surrounded by trees emitting IR as light won’t stop you freezing to death.
What I’m saying is that this concentration of argument pro and con on CO2 with or without Water added to the mix, doesn’t explain how this as ‘greenhouse gas’ can radiate actual heat back to the earth, or trap heat from escaping quicker than it would otherwise. I think the whole argument is a red herring because AGW keeps talking about heat but avoids discussing it by misapplying the concept of heat to light and so anti-AGW are pulled into arguing about IR as light as if it’s heat.
So, what I’m trying to say is that although the claim is that only ‘greenhouse’ gases trap IR, this is being equated with heat while it’s actually describing light, it’s another sleight of hand. That IR has an insignificant part to play in the transport of heat at any distance from a Carbon Dioxide molecule (the pictures show IR re-radiated back to the ground from high in the atmosphere) and not taking into account that the rest of the atmosphere when heated, the oxygen and nitrogen, are also giving off IR, and they are the major constituents of the atmosphere, is simply ignored by AGW.
Anyway, I found, mainly by lurking in discussions, that the responses to AGWScience from applied science people such as engineers where the only ones helpful in pinpointing the problem I was struggling to articulate, because these understood the difference well they could explain it.
And this page is a good summary of the problem I had with AGW, even coming from ‘major scientific bodies’, solved with the real science solution from real scientists.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/the_hidden_flaw_in_greenhouse.html
Alan Siddons says: Recently, I chanced upon an Atmospheric Science Educator Guide published by NASA. Aimed at students in grades 5 through 8, it helps teachers explain how so-called “greenhouse gases” warm our planet Earth.
These guides are interesting on a number of levels, so I recommend that you look them over. But what caught my eye was this:
o Question: Do all of the gases in our atmosphere absorb heat?
o Answer: (Allow students to discuss their ideas. Don’t provide the answer at this time.)
Indeed, that’s a good one to think over yourself. Almost all of what we’re breathing is nitrogen and oxygen –do these gases absorb heat? Lakes and rocks absorb heat, after all, and thereby reach a higher temperature. So can nitrogen and oxygen molecules do the same?
Well, I won’t keep you hanging. After allowing students to discuss it, the instructor is instructed to give them the final verdict.
o Answer: No. Only some gases have the unique property of being able to absorb heat.
These are the infrared-absorbing “greenhouse gases,” of course, substances like carbon dioxide and water vaor, and not nitrogen and oxygen.
Now, is something wrong here? Most definitely, for NASA has a finger on the scale. Let’s review a few basics that NASA should have outlined.
What do think?
Les, sorry, I have to go out now, will come back to the rest of your post later.
Smokey – I don’t see any dialectical relevance between anything I’ve posted and your questions to me. I posted to ask about a specific and common form of argument, one that (among others) Myrrh has repeatedly put forward. That argument moves from the claim that rises in CO2 have, in the past, occurred after rises in temperature, to the claim that this shows that rises in CO2 cannot cause rises in temperature. My posts have asked whether this move – inferring the second claim from the first – is logically valid. I gave reasons for thinking that this is a fallacious argument.
Your “responses” have not addressed this question. First you mentioned – in what seemed to be an attempt to respond to my question – the example of Greenland’s temperature rising 27F in 10 years in the absence of a sharp rise in CO2. I didn’t see how that fact had any bearing on the issue I had raised, so I asked you about how you thought it was relevant to anything I had said. (There being good reasons to be skeptical wouldn’t show that the argument I’ve targeted has any merit to it, would it?)
In “response,” you’ve instead asked me a very general question about global harm resulting from a rise in CO2. Again, you seem to think that this question will somehow help us make progress on something I’ve said or asked about. For the life of me, I can’t see the relevance.
It would be a bit like me “answering” your question by switching the topic to something completely different, e.g. saying “but the Greenland ice sheet has lost more than twice as much ice this year as the average of the past 30 years. Explain that! And don’t forget about Occam’s Razor – wouldn’t it be simpler to appeal to a common factor (e.g. warming, or CO2) than to give “individual” explanations for Greenland, for glaciers, for migrating species, etc.?”
Saying something like that would go no distance toward addressing your questions, right? Even if it might be interesting to talk about such things as the widespread misunderstanding and misapplication of Occam’s Razor, the use of single data points to support or refute claims of longer-term trends and so on, it’s just a change of subject, no?
I was merely trying to give reason to excise one particular bad (yet common) argument from discussions of climate change – one that’s been featured prominently in this discussion thread. One at a time seems best, no?
Brian says:
“…you’ve instead asked me a very general question about global harm resulting from a rise in CO2.”
Wrong. I asked you a very specific question, within very specific parameters. There is no wiggle room in my question.
In response, you chose to dissemble.
I’ve asked the same question of many in the climate alarmist camp. Not one has been able to identify any verifiable global harm due to the rise in CO2.
That is because there is no damage due to CO2. It is an entirely harmless and beneficial trace gas. More is better. The current atmosphere is starved of CO2.
By dodging the specific question I asked, you are implicitly acknowledging that the rise in CO2 has caused no global harm. And the extremely *mild* 0.7° temperature rise over the past century is completely indistinguishable from numerous rises throughout the Holocene; some much steeper in a shorter time period – and during a time when CO2 levels did not change.
Warming is good; cold kills. That is a provable fact.
Like everyone else in the alarmist crowd, you’re terrified of the snake you’re convinced is under your bed. But when you get up the courage to look under the bed… there is no snake. And there never was.
Answer my question, or admit that you cannot show any measurable difference between the null hypothesis and the alternate CO2=CAGW conjecture. By not being able to show that the CO2=CAGW conjecture can falsify the null hypothesis by showing a quantifiable amount of harm to the globe from the rise in CO2, your conjecture fails. They cannot both be right. Unlike CO2=CAGW, the null hypothesis has never been falsified.
Smokey – In my previous post, I almost included a statement intending to preempt just the sort of ad hominem non-response you gave, but I thought it wouldn’t be necessary. I’m disappointed I was wrong.
I weary of interacting with interlocutors who do not converse in good faith. For instance, what gives you the impression that I am “in the alarmist crowd”? Or that I am “convinced” of anything (other than that the arguments I’ve carefully laid out are fallacious)? Care to provide any evidence for your assumption?
How about this: for sake of argument, I will grant that there is no evidence proving that global harm results from a rise in CO2.
Now do you wish to address the questions I’ve raised about a very common – but in my view mistaken – argument that has appeared on this site, and in this particular thread, numerous times? Or my question concerning why you thought that mentioning a 27F spike in Greenland temps was relevant to assessing (my take on) Myrrh’s particular argument? (Notice – as I’ve said many times – that what I just granted to you has no bearing on these questions I’ve posed to you!)
It’s fine if that does not interest you – there is no obligation to engage with these (simple) questions. But there is a dialectical expectation that, since you addressed your initial comments to me in a way that implied that you took yourself to be responding to my original comments (about Myrrh’s argument), it is fair for me to point out that you did not, in fact, give a response at all – you simply starting asking me unrelated questions. (They are unrelated because answering them would not shed any light on the topic I brought up.) In other words, don’t pretend to be responding to (i.e. dialectically engaging with) my comment if in fact you are just trying to start a new conversation.
Smokey – maybe a little parable will make my position clearer, by analogy. In case it isn’t obvious, A = Myrrh (and others who use that argument), B = me, C = you.
A: “2010 was the warmest year on record; this proves that global warming is occurring.”
B: “It doesn’t follow from the fact that 2010 was the warmest year on record that long-term global warming is occurring; one data point doesn’t establish a trend, and it’s the trend that’s relevant.”
C: “Thanks for your comment, B. But there are all sorts of data proving that there is a trend – pick any data source you want, and there’s a trend upwards over the last, say, 30 years.”
B: “I don’t understand how that’s relevant to my point. I just said that you can’t infer the existence of a trend from a single data point. Do you agree? Isn’t that fallacious?”
C: “I can answer all your questions. Numerous independent lines of evidence establish a statistically significant trend, both over the last 30 years, and since the dramatic rise in CO2 began about 150 years ago. If you control for known exogenous factors, like solar cycles, volcanic activity, etc., there is a pronounced warming trend. It fits just what we would expect if CO2 acted the way we say it does. So, prove to me that there is no warming. Be sure to reference the relevant statistical methods.”
B: “I don’t get it. I was just trying to rule out one particular argument – a common one – as being fallacious. One sees it a lot – people point to recent records as being proof of a trend. Maybe there is a trend – but that’s not established by pointing to a record high year. Do you agree that that particular argument fails?”
C: “Oh you denialist! You can’t answer a simple question – I’ve asked it many times before of denialists, and they can’t answer it – so that proves that you’ve got your head in the sand! You’ve tacitly acknowledge I’m right! I win!”
Get it? Wouldn’t you find C a rather frustrating interlocutor? Wouldn’t C’s behavior be confusing? Don’t you think B would at this point rightfully make it clear to C that, although C took himself to be replying to B’s point, C did not in fact do so, and instead began a new conversation that bore no relevance to B’s point?
Brian says:
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.)
Fine, if you want to pick nits, there are no hard and fast “conclusions” in science, only theories that are amendable. [And CO2=CAGW is not a theory; neither is it an hypothesis. It was, but it has been reduced to a conjecture, as I will show below. Words matter. Please don’t try to elevate a falsified hypothesis to a theory.]
The conclusion can be that CO2 could cause a slight warming, so a mental construct can be made that CO2 causes a small rise in temperature. But that is not the conjecture. The conjecture is that a rise in CO2 will bring about positive feedback, causing climate catastrophe. The real world does not agree.
In reality the effect is small, and overwhelmed by other much more significant effects – which has been my unchanging position for the last several years, not just here today. The problem in the real world is that the climate sensitivity number was wildly overstated, by 300 – 600%: the IPCC and others claim 3° – 6° per doubling.
Preposterous. If it was that high, temperature would closely track changes in CO2. It doesn’t. In fact, it appears as likely as not that the rise in CO2 is simply coincidental with the rise in temperature. Or, it may be the delayed effect of the much warmer MWP. And there are no proven positive feedbacks, since positive feedbacks would lead to runaway global warming; that has not happened. What we observe are cycles within specific parameters, no different than past cycles, and well within those parameters.
Second, forgive me if I still am not quite clear on what you meant your example of the 27F rise in temperature over 10 years to show, but let me try again. Is this 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
My question to you, then, would be: why do you think (if this is what you think) that if temperature and CO2 are causally related, we should not get events like the 27F spike happening in the absence of a dramatic rise in CO2?
You assume too much. For example, you assume that climate ‘science’ is mature, that its basis rests on tested theories, and that there is broad general agreement on cause and effect. None of those things are true.
The relationship between CO2 and rising temperatures is the same as the relationship between opening a cold and a warm beer: the warm beer outgasses much more CO2. When oceans warm, CO2 is outgassed. That is why CO2 follows temeprature in the geologic record.
Don’t read any more into it than that. Your assumption seems to be that CO2 is the primary driver of the climate, and you disregard more important factors such as the AMO, PDO, AO, el Nino, la Nina, clouds, cosmic rays, etc.
“I will grant that there is no evidence proving that global harm results from a rise in CO2.”
Bingo.
The null hypothesis remains un-falsified, thus falsifying the alternative hypothesis. QED.
The null hypothesis is what scientists test the alternative hypothesis against. If there is no difference, the alternative hypothesis is rejected. The null hypothesis is ‘the statistical hypothesis that states that there are no differences between observed and expected data.’ Since you cannot show that there is a quantifiable, measurable difference in the global climate before or after the industrial revolution, the CO2=CAGW conjecture is falsified.
[And: ‘For the sake of argument’? No. For the sake of factual observations. There is no evidence that the increase in CO2 has caused any global problems at all.]
I don’t understand your attempts at logic, since empirical observations show the logic to be faulty – probably because climate science is in its infancy. You’re assuming you know everything about what makes the climate tick. None of us knows enough about it.
Prof Richard Feynman put those speculating in their place: if real world observations/experiments don’t agree with the theory [or law, or hypothesis, or conjecture], then the theory is wrong. “That’s all there is to it.”
CO2=CAGW does not agree with observation, and no testable, replicable experiment has been done that falsifies the empirical [real world] observations in the ice core record. So although it’s remotely possible that CO2 follows temperature, and then turns around, and by a convoluted chain of untested inferences triggers runaway global warming and climate catastrophe, you need to show a testable mechanism.
Finally, the 27° F spike in temperatures was merely intended to show that CO2 was not an actor. Many scientists claim that CO2 and temperature are related, but IMHO they grossly overestimate the effect. My example showed that despite low CO2 levels, other factors caused the temperature rise. Don’t read more into it than that.
Myrrh – just to clarify: I haven’t joined the dark side yet 🙂
But – if the climate change religion is to be successfully fought – we can’t use arguments that, on closer examination, are no better than what they use.
That is why I am trying (sometimes) to point out (to you, but also to other people) – that you should be careful with the arguments you use – becaue some of them are either weak or simply incorrect – which give Al Gore and his mob more ammo.
The article by Alan Siddon kind of makes me laugh and cry at the same time. He tries to refute the CO2 greenhouse theory – and uses false arguments in the process.
As I said above – Al Gor and his cronies must be very happy…
For instance – Al Sidon says:
“Heat is transferred and absorbed in several ways, then, and no substance is immune to being heated, which means that all gases absorb heat — contrary to what NASA tells children.”
and:
“Why does NASA go wrong? Because it has a flimsy yet lucrative theory to foist on the taxpaying public, that’s why. As the space agency explains in the Main Lesson Concept, the core idea of greenhouse theory is that downward radiation from greenhouse gases raises the earth’s surface temperature higher than solar heating can.”
In short – Al Sidon does not understand a thing.
Let’s review his first statement: all true – except “…contrary to what NASA tells children.”
Gases absorb heat – absolutely true. What Al Sidon does not understand is this: planetary bodies (like Earth) display absorption/emission characteristics very close to black body.
This means they can absorb radiation in every wavelength – and heat up in the process – until thermodynamic equilibrium is reached with the source of radiation.
Gases, in general, don’t. Almost all of Sun’s radiation has wavelength below 4 micrometers: almost all of Earth’s radiation is above 4 micrometers. This is due to surface temperature.
Atmosphere (including CO2) is almost 100% transparent to Sun’s radiation. In other words – no heating from there (well – certain portion is absorbed, but let’s skip this – just for the purpose of this explanation).
Solar radiation hits the Earth, is absorbed – and re-radiated up in different wavelengths.
Greenhouse gases are NOT transparent to Earth’s radiation – and heat up. This heat is partially transferred to other atmospheric gases (conduction) – and partially re-radiated BOTH UP and DOWN. The portion going UP – we do not need to be concerned with, the portion going DOWN is absorbed by Earth. Earth’s surface temperature needs to raise to bring energy balance into equilibrium.
This is the VERY BASIC mechanism explaining why the sum total of the radiation that Earth receives is more than the radiation delivered by Sun, and this is the cornerstone of “greenhouse effect”.
I am not going to question the mechanism – because I know and understand the laws of physics that govern it.
(NOTE: The sum total of outgoing energy, though, is equal to the total energy delivered by Sun – as observed from ABOVE the Earth atmosphere: sensor pointed toward Sun will pick up 237W/m2, sensor pointed toward Earth will pick up 237W/m2. And yes – Sun’s radiation will be in wavelengths shorter than 4 micrometers, it will need to be divided by 4 to account for total Earth surface, and multiplied by 0.7 to account for albedo, and Earth’s radiation will be in wavelengths above 4 micrometers – so anybody reading this please do not try to correct me here, or I am going to lose my patience :).
The problem IS NOT WITH THIS MECHANISM.
The problem is with energy balance. The observed difference between Earth’s actual average temperature and the thermodynamic equilibrium temperature (in the absence of atmosphere) is ALL attributed to CO2. In this way – the CO2 runaway greenhouse effect is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And this is where the science ends, and cult influence starts, mixed with greed and political interests.
If climate science was really a science – the climate scientists would be busy as hell trying to find the missing parts of the puzzle. Instead – some of them at least – only look for facts which, on the surface of it, support the CO2 theory. Otherwise – their grants would be removed, and the whole thing would fade into oblivion. That’s why all the opposition is being silenced, and anyone outside IPCC is not a “climate scientist” and his opinion is to be disregarded.
Regarding the second statement – here is the link with what NASA thinks about the issue.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBalance/
Pretty good, I think.
The key – for the untrained eye like mine – is the albedo. Higher Earth temperature = more vater vapor in the atmosphere = higher albedo = less solar radiation hitting Earth’s surface = less IR radiation going up = less heat from greenhouse gases = new equilibrium. It would be warmer – yes. How much ? The point is: at this time – ANYBODY’S GUESS IS EQUALLY GOOD.
Since there are so many questions remaining – in particular the past history of Earth which shows VAST variations in climate – the science should look for answers – not Al Gore with his pocket ready to receive taxpayer money.
Les continued: 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.
I questioned the “well-mixed” re CO2, and found they were using weird physics again as they do with IR mixing up heat with light. That’s how conmen sound plausible, but when this comes from actual respected as scientific bodies such as NASA, it’s extremely difficult to even get a supporter of AGW to even look at different explanations of the science – the real science sounds to them like some kind of innovation. That’s why we get them asking for proof that they’re wrong and not accepting it.
And it’s very cleverly done. Their avoidance of dealing with the greater amount of water to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, their models excising water’s forcing role in its own right by claiming that it’s not something that can be modelled.., has taken a bashing since AIRS freaked them out by saying they concluded that water was the prime mover as this ‘greenhouse gas’ and CO2 insignificant in comparison, and that modellers would have to rethink this. That was at the end of 2009 I think, I’ll have a look for it again, and since then we have this from early 2010:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18457-water-vapour-worse-climate-change-villain-than-thought.html
A rise in water vapour in the atmosphere fuelled 30% of the global warming that took place during the 1990’s. This discovery suggests that the potent greenhouse gas plays a bigger role in climate change that we previously imagined.
That last “that” looks like it’s a typo and should be “than”, but maybe it’s a Freudian slip; they had actually previously imagined it, but weren’t going to let on until forced by the AIRS data.. 🙂
Don’t know how they got their “third of the warming”.
But whenever they’re confronted with anything which rocks their boat they’ll find a new spin to explain it, however convoluted the science or data becomes in the new adjustment, and, it never changes their “consensus view that human emissions drive climate change” says a climate modeller at the University of Bern..
So now global warming causes harsh winters, and this will get repeated and repeated and repeated until it becomes the new meme and global warming melting ice caps and creating a parched earth will be avoided until it becomes a footnote in AGW history, ‘we’ve got better models now and really we’ve always said that…, and the polar bears are going to die because the ice isn’t melting and they can’t fish’
I really do feel sorry for this generation brought up to believe AGW junk science is real because it does come with ‘scientific authority’. I really can’t make sense of NASA which produced that teacher’s guide. A conman works by knowing what the truth is, and weaving a deception around that – it’s not rocket science to be know the difference between light and heat so how many at NASA know that’s twisted?
“…the difference between light and heat…”
In fact – there is none – if treated as forms of energy. Everything else – is just transformation of energy from one form to the other. At the bottom of it – there is nothing but energy.
Les – shrug, I don’t live in a world where only water vapour and carbon dioxide get hot in the atmosphere, nor in a world where gas molecules have no volume and are not subject to pressure and gravity and where the only method of transferring energy is radiation. In other words, I live in the real world.
My house is nicely warm and dry at the moment with the oil powered central heating system on (without it on in the winter the house is cold and damp), all the radiatiors on the two floors, ground and first, are on the same setting, I have an open staircase leading to the first floor, it’s hotter there than downstairs because hot air rises.
Myrrh quotes New Scientist:
A rise in water vapour in the atmosphere fuelled 30% of the global warming that took place during the 1990′s.
New Scientist perpetuates false information in order to support its CAGW propaganda. Global relative humidity is declining.
Old Scientist is right, findings confirmed by two intrepid contributors
http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/films/granddayout
And thus the science is settled… Unfortunately – on both sides of the argument there are many misconceptions – and, in general, laws of physics have nothing to do with reality.
Or – so they wish…
What misconception re heat and light? The reason cloud cover initially can ‘trap’ heat is because water has a higher capacity to store heat, it takes longer to heat up and longer to cool; in cloudless nights the air cools more rapidly. Carbon dioxide is even less able to do this than oxygen and nitrogen, releasing its heat practically instantly to getting it, it can’t trap heat.
There was a BBC propaganda programme last year, maybe it was the year before, which showed a typical AGWScience experiment to ‘prove’ carbon dioxide was a problem. One jar of carbon dioxide and one of ‘air’ were heated for comparison. The oohs and aahs, and instant conversions from sceptics to believers in the audience, was accomplished by showing that in the time given the jar of carbon dioxide was heating up so much more quickly than the jar of ‘air’. So this ‘proved’ that carbon dioxide was a problem in the atmosphere.
No indication of what the jar of ‘air’ contained, but my bet that it had a goodly amount of water vapour because oxygen and nitrogen only slightly more able to retain heat than carbon dioxide. So, no comparison re constituent parts, the timing stopped as soon as carbon dioxide was shown to be ‘so much hotter’, (the jar of air therefore not tested to see how long it would take to get to the same temperature), and no timing to see how long it took these to cool from the same temperature. What kind of experiment is that?
Water vapour on both sides of argument is ‘well-known’ to be a greenhouse gas and the meme that this adds to heating the earth is prevalent. It’s also only half the picture as is the jar experiment. The water cycle cools the earth and this is water’s main role in our real greenhouse atmosphere. The meme that ‘greenhouse gases warm the earth’ and the earth would be so much colder if they weren’t there isn’t what is actually happening. Wherever water vapour is it first takes heat away from the earth and with its much greater heat capacity it does this very efficiently and more as water vapour is lighter than air to begin with. When it cools at height and condenses it releases that heat as it turns back into heavier denser water to come down as rain.
Water vapour is not ‘well-mixed’ in the atmosphere but variable to local conditions, deserts not the same as balmy seaside in South Pacific…, so also carbon dioxide, which doesn’t take to travelling being heavier than air it’s a bit of a stay at home. If the atmosphere was ‘well-mixed’ then water vapour and heat would also be well-mixed and that’s clearly not what is observed. How carbon-dioxide can be ‘well-mixed’ against the physics of the real world is a mystery only to be solved in AGWScience which has a physics all of its own, having stepped through the looking glass anything is possible it its world.
Hey Myrrh,
There was a BBC propaganda programme last year, maybe it was the year before, which showed a typical AGWScience experiment to ‘prove’ carbon dioxide was a problem. One jar of carbon dioxide and one of ‘air’ were heated for comparison. The oohs and aahs, and instant conversions from sceptics to believers in the audience, was accomplished by showing that in the time given the jar of carbon dioxide was heating up so much more quickly than the jar of ‘air’. So this ‘proved’ that carbon dioxide was a problem in the atmosphere.
No indication of what the jar of ‘air’ contained, but my bet that it had a goodly amount of water vapour because oxygen and nitrogen only slightly more able to retain heat than carbon dioxide. So, no comparison re constituent parts, the timing stopped as soon as carbon dioxide was shown to be ‘so much hotter’, (the jar of air therefore not tested to see how long it would take to get to the same temperature), and no timing to see how long it took these to cool from the same temperature. What kind of experiment is that?
So what you are saying is that if you see an actual experiment which shows something which you don’t want to see, then you assume that the people doing the experiment are dishonest and trying to mislead you?
Its extremely unlikely that you’ll ever be convinced of anything at all…….
John – the experiment was bull. It gave absolutely no information about carbon dioxide except that it got hot quicker than air, the conclusion, ‘therefore CO2 is a dangerous greenhouse has which is going to drive global warming’ was not possible from that incomplete analysis.
I’m not saying they were dishonest, I said it was another propaganda piece from the Beeb. I don’t thing the majority of those promoting it are dishonest, I think they really believe AGWScience and this experiment is just another example of the ‘proofs of science’ they’ve been given to back up the idea that there’s real science behind this, when its junk science and experiment showing nothing; like the picture of the greenhouse and hot car. But like the previous examples I’ve given, there’s no connection of real science between A and B in any of the claims, to go from ‘look how quickly carbon dioxide gets hot’ compared with a jar of air of unknown constituent parts, to saying this ‘proves’ what AGW says about carbon dioxide is just unadulterated nonsense.
That’s all AGW claims are, they keep mixing up real science, taking bits from one aspect of properties and misapplying it to another, as par for the course. The well-mixed for example is also explained by ideal gas laws, so we have carbon dioxide which is heavier than air and subject to gravity and pressure being described as moving at great speed through the atmosphere thoroughly mixing, of its own volition!
This confusion between light and heat is just another example of the AGWScience technique of misapplication. I do think, however, that if there was a whoever who first began finding such ‘proofs’ then he could well have known the difference, but just as likely that it was scientific incompetence from the beginning which just growed and growed like topsy.
How can Carbon Dioxide which is 1.5 times heavier than air stay up in the atmosphere for hundreds and thousands of years?
Myrrh…this has been answered…you have asked this question before…
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2010/10/is_co2_well_mixed.php
The way this is going – I will have to join the cult of man-made climate change – just to differentiate and separate myself from people who use idiotic arguments in attempt to defeat the cult…
There is a lot of good science behind climate research. Not all scientists are crooks. The issue has been hijacked by big finance and politicians. Learn some physics and thermodynamics – then you will have a chance. Otherwise you just making a laughing stock of yourself and make the task more difficult for people who actually can understand what is going on (and I do not necessarily count myself among their numbers).
Enough said.
This may also be an interesting observation in support of Earth’s albedo having the most influence (at least short-term) on the amount of solar radiation received by Earth – and, in consequence, observed temperatures.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/10/17/earths-albedo-tells-a-interesting-story/
So what answer did I get? That the wind mixed it up? But of course, we live in a washing machine on a perpetual wash cycle with no respite.
AIRS categorically showed that CO2 is not well-mixed in the atmosphere. Regardless those pushing the concept ‘well-mixed’ don’t understand why it isn’t well-mixed and can’t explain how it is well-mixed, that stands.
Myrrh…
Here is the link to AIRS.
http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/story_archive/Measuring_CO2_from_Space/Measurement_to_Science/
You need to read what they write – carefully. They do not consider CO2 to be well mixed – because its concentration varies by UP TO 1 %. WHOA !
This means – it may be, say, 380ppm +-1.5ppm.
What practical difference would it make ?
Considering that CO2 production is not uniform – I would call this mixing pretty good…
Daily variations are way bigger than that…
Again – the cult needs to be kept honest – but please, let’s use sensible arguments…
It makes a difference because even this is an admission finally that the concept “well-mixed” AS IT IS DESCRIBED by AGW supporters, is nonsense. ‘”Thoroughly mixed”, “homogeneous”, “so mixed that it can’t be unmixed”. With this the claim that it accumulates in this “homogeneous whole for hundreds and thousands of years”.
This is what was stated in AIRS significant findings conclusion.
That it would come as a shock to those who thought it was this “homogeneous whole”.
You clearly don’t appreciate the concept that AGW pushed here, this falsifies it. Not that they care much when they’re confronted even with their own data which falsifies their claims. Vostok and time lag of CO2 is now answered by the new meme from them, history doesn’t matter..
They, the AIRS people, said they don’t understand what they’re seeing, of course they don’t. They’ve never worked to observation of the real world, but pull concepts out of thin air and find out of context physics to ‘explain’ their concepts. They continually shut their eyes to all observed data, they can’t do so here.
To present AGW’s mythical “well-mixed” they give two basic nonsense physics, “the winds thoroughly mix it up” and “ideal gas laws/brownian motion”.
Winds do not mix thoroughly around the globe nor are they constant, this explanation is simply ridiculous. It it were true for carbon dioxide it would be true for heat, for water. By producing another imaginary concept, that CO2 is different from water vapour, doesn’t address the problem that heat isn’t thoroughly mixed around the globe which it would have to be if this can be claimed for CO2. Their imaginary solution for water vapour not being well-mixed is to say that it has a different life-cycle to CO2, which is not proved by observation and is against the actual properties of CO2 which being heavier than air, “does not readily rise into the atmosphere”. This latter quote is from one of AGW’s official sources, re volcanoes . If it doesn’t readily rise into the air then how can it become “well-mixed”? It can’t. It is subject to outside forces to move it, wind, water, heat, etc. and as AIRS admits, ‘it appears that wind plays a bigger part than was thought’; wind is limiting, it follows paths. Real wind, not this imaginary constant mixing wind that AGW presents as if the atmosphere is in ceaseless turmoil. How far and how strong is the wind moving in your area? I’ve just looked out the window, there’s no wind, not even the fine tops of the trees moving. Any CO2 which “does not readily rise up into the atmosphere” being produced today in my locality, ain’t going nowhere.
And conversely, any CO2 in the atmosphere around me is going to be sinking downwards, because CO2 being heavier than air displaces air. It no more readily stays up in the air than it readily rises up into it. AGW does not describe the physical world.
Carbon Dioxide cannot stay up in the air of its own volition, it is subject to local forces and is constrained by its own properties. Nor is the atmosphere empty space with CO2 molecules rushing around at great speeds bouncing off other molecules until it is thoroughly mixed, which is the other ‘reason’ given by taking ideal gas laws out of context of real gravity and real air pressure and real volume. AGW doesn’t have any feel at all for the real physical world at the end of their noses. It seems to me you are giving them far more credibility with reference to their capacity to understand and use actual science than they are due.
They are not scientists, they are an ideological group using out of context ideas from science to create their own imaginary world.
More, another ‘scientific reason’ given by AGW that CO2 is “well-mixed” in the atmosphere is because it stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, giving this imaginary wind or Brownian motion or whatever lots of time to thoroughly mix it, this covered above, but, as with all other such statements, uncomfortable facts which falsify this have a habit of intruding; facts from their own sources.
Regardless of which way one poses the problem, the existing CO2 in the atmosphere has a mean residence time of 1.5 years using IPCC data, 3.2 years using University of Colorado data, or 4.9 years using Texas A&M data. The half lives are 0.65 years, 1.83 years, and 3.0 years, respectively. This is not “decades to centuries” as proclaimed by the Consensus. [Climate Change 2001, Technical Summary of the Working Group I Report, p.25.]
On: http://www.freeconservates.com/vb/showthread.php?49327-On-Why-Co2-Is-Known-Not-To-Have-Accumulated-In-The-Atmosphere-amp-What-Is-Happening-Wit
That hasn’t stopped the Hansen and his blind followers claiming CO2 has these supermolecule powers to stay up in the atmosphere for even thousands of years!
Which makes more sense? That the shorter times are in accord with CO2’s actual properties or that CO2 has become this supermolecule defying gravity against all know physics to stay up accumulating in the atmosphere for supermolecule lengths of time?
What does AGW do with these uncomfortable facts? Firstly, it keeps ignoring them, then it tries to find ways it can garble an excuse for them. All the while it keeps claiming their supermolecule CO2 has these extraordinary powers against wind and rain, it readily dissolves in water in the real world and comes down every time it rains, and gravity.
How can CO2 which readily comes down under its own weight and through the actions of wind and rain clearing it from the atmosphere, stay up accumulating? HOW??!!
It doesn’t matter how much CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere at any one source, half a ton or 10, when it dissolves in the water of clouds and comes pouring back to earth it takes all of it with it. There isn’t some supermolecule CO2 resisting getting dissolved, holding itself aloof from the processess it’s in, let alone capable of defying gravity.
One good rainfall and it clears the air of all dust and dirt and CO2. Rain drops form around dust, CO2 dissolves in water and has a natural bent to do so. Recognise that fresh smell of clean air after a fall of rain?
A typical page of typical AGW excuses, blaming the IPCC for ‘confusing the issue with uncomfortable facts’ against the AGWScience brainnumbing rants of thousands of years :
http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0812/full/climate.2008.122.html
I do hope you can see the irony in the statement therein: The longevity of CO2 in the atmosphere is probably the least well understood part of the global warming issue,” says paleoclimatologist Peter Fawcell of the University of New Mexico. “And it’s not because it isn’t well documented in the PICC report. It is, but it is buried under a lot of other material.”
compared with, for example:
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2009/01/what-is-average-lifetime-of-atmospheric.html
Which makes more sense?
All I am saying, Myrrh, do not let yourself be carried away…
? Carried away? Why has this suddenly become about me? These are sensible arguments, I don’t know why you’re not responding to them and instead making it personal.
These people are impacting all our lives to a malignant extent by pushing this ideology backed up with corrupt and quite frankly, idiotic science. I see no reason to say nice things about this pseudo-science belief system than I would about marxism or any or totalitarian political/religious organisation, but this is world-wide. Many have tried to achieve that kind of domination in the past, some are succeeding now through this indoctrination. This is backed by governments, banking and big business and off the wall environmentalists, rather a lot of whom believe their lives superior to those not of their ilk and think mass extermination of these others as ‘a very good idea’.
You want to take their doctrines seriously as science that’s up to you, but even if only one of those trapped in this manipulated AGW net gets free by reading the discussions on this site, I think the whole of the enterprise would have been worth while.
These are questions they should be asking of those promoting it to them, their teachers, college professors, members of parliament, senators – the more information they get pointing out how far the AGW claims are from scientific reality the easier it will be for them to ask the questions. These are basic science concepts that any junior level child should be taught. The last century was chock-a-block full of regimes imposing their ideolgies on the people to the extent that no-one was allowed to question anything, that’s a history worth remembering here.