Andrew Bolt (via his reader John Coochey) of the Herald Sun notes an astonishing incongruity with expert claims on CO2 warming retention times made about 24 hours apart on radio programs in Australia.
Climate scientist and warmist Andy Pitman on Thursday:
If we could stop emissions tomorrow we would still have 20 to 30 years of warming ahead of us because of inertia of the system.
Climate Commissioner and warmist Tim Flannery on Friday:
If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years
As he titles the post:
Twenty years or 1000? One of these “experts” is hopelessly wrong
Heh, ya think?
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Cindy in San Diego says:
March 26, 2011 at 7:13 pm
But what is the optimal global temperature and why? What is the goal temperature?
########
14.34786541234682651C
Seriously, nobody who believes in AGW believes there is an optimal temperature. Here is a major concern. Physics tells us that adding more GHGs to the atmospher will warm the planet and NOT cool it. Our best estimates tell us that if we continue to put GHGs into the atmosphere the warming will be around 2C over the next 100 years. It might be more, it might be less. We also can estimate a sea level rise. The problem is that more than half the human populations lives on or near coasts. That means a sea level rise will cause damage. Question. what do we want to do about that?
There are many things we can do about that. We dont even need to know for certain what the sea level rise would be to take action to mitigate the potential damages.
we cant predict earthquakes, or tsunamis. But when we build nuclear power plants by the ocean, we can plan for unpredicatable events. Sometimes we do that well. othertimes we are overly cautious. Other times we are too optimistic.
They are both scientologists, one in the field of climastrology, the other in paleostrology…
What is wrong with a degree or two higher average anyway, we have just had that for the last two years in the NW Australian tropics and had a fantastic couple of wet seasons and dry seasons. Bring on the warming, I say.
Watching the expressions conveyed through Tims eye movements, he gives away when he is having flights of fantasy [see the whites of his eyes all the way round] and when he has to frame lies in an acceptable way for the interviewer {closes his eyes and blathers on} these unstable flashes of emotional responses shows the underlying lack of stability in his normal thinking patterns.
I would not buy girl scout cookies from this man.
steven mosher says:
March 26, 2011 at 7:58 pm
Oh really. I’ve seen multiple requests from Smokey (one just above, by the way) that you provide
And you know what, Mr. Mosher… you NEVER ANSWER HIS FREAKIN’ REQUEST. He’s asking for evidence… EVIDENCE and all you can come back to is some inane repetitive… REPETITIVE statement saying it’s a “GHG” over and over and OVER when in fact there’s no SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE AT ALL THAT IT’S CAUSING A PROBLEM!
At best all you’ve got is some 11th-grade teacher with CO2 in a liter 7-Up bottle assuming that’s how the earth reacts, or some algorithm in some computer model regurgitating assumptions written by some code-slinger. And those assumptions and projections are just that–assumptions and projections!
Do you ever read anybody else’s comments? Or do they just go over/through/under you without making any impression?
Because you can’t answer Smokey, you’re toast.
(And I bet I never hear a peep from you on this, either–but here it is for everybody to see and judge.)
But here’s the final word about your approach. You say:
You use the word “believes” twice in a very definable way because AGW isn’t a scientifically demonstrable phenomenon–it’s a BELIEF SYSTEM!
We also can estimate a sea level rise. The problem is that more than half the human populations lives on or near coasts. That means a sea level rise will cause damage.
The inverse problem is what will happen if conditions arise in the SH similar to the 1300 event.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1931-0846.2007.tb00277.x/abstract
Andy Pitman on Thursday: ” . . . stop emissions tomorrow we would still have 20 to 30 years of warming ahead of us because of inertia of the system.”
Tim Flannery on Friday: ” . . . cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years.”
Steve Mosher on Saturday: “The two views are consistent. see inertia.” ( comment @ur momisugly March 26, 2011 at 2:49 pm )
John Whitman on Sunday (Taiwan time): None of the above three futures are shown to have sufficient reality based credibility. [The models did not predict, with the observed increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, the actual >10 yr plateau like structure of that questionably significant climate parameter of the IPCC called avg GST ]
John Q. Public (ever since climategate and IPCC gates): We, not belonging to the self-named elite science community, will withdraw all funding until we see a comprehensively more independent (of IPCC and USA gov’t funded science) science to calibrate us toward an unbiased differentiation & integration of competing ideas. : ) Basically, we say to climate science . . . . you need to get with what reality is showing us, science girls and boys.
John
DirkH says:
March 26, 2011 at 5:11 pm
Tim Flannery, interviewed by the WWF, 2007 (when the AGW movement was in the news every day, oh, the good old times).
Flannery states we only have 3 decades in which to “stabilize the climate”? My gosh, what an idiot!
Flannery states “there’s a lot of heat being transferred into the ocean”. Observation isn’t seeing it.
Flannery states “there far too much pollution in the air for the climate to stabilize” and he blames severe weather events are evidence of that, when in fact there hasn’t been an uptick in weather events (what happened to all the hurricanes in the Atlantic this year?)
Flannery states “the ice will melt away and the sun’s energy will be trapped in the ocean” yet when this happens (ice is there in the wintertime), there’s no sunlight on the polar region for the ocean to trap.
That’s as far as I could go with this bozo Flannery in the video. Anybody that believes what he says hasn’t got any more clue than does Flannery. He’s obviously making things up.
Warmer is OK for lifeforms.
Dinosaurs+Hotter Climate+?Violent Storms? = Millions of Years of Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs+Big Asteroid Impact = Extinction
If temperatures were lots warmer when dinosaurs were alive, then they survived “alleged” violent weather storms for millions of years. It took a big asteroid to take them out, not weather or climate.
Any future violent weather allegedly induced by a temperature increase will be quite survivable for our species. Besides, the Earth never gave any guarantee to be gentle on us, and violent events are just “business as usual” for the Universe. Remember Shoemaker-Levy:
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/
I’m glad Jupiter was “in the way” for that one. For guaranteed survival, we need to colonize off the planet. The moon will do for now. “Global Warming” is insignificant in the BIG picture.
Got to run, I smell the turkey I put in the electric oven at 7:30 to celebrate that 1 hour event tonight… mmmmmm… good ! ps: all the neighbors around here kept lights ON!
Steve says “Another way to look at it is the damage goes with the square of the temperature increase, so preventing temperature increase has a lot of leverage.”
What evidence do you have that damage goes as the square?
We have had temperature rise in the past. Has damage squared?
And what is this damage of which you speak.
Most of the leverage requires things like more hurricanes (not happening) and more “extreme” climate events (not happening as you know from the historical record).
The argument that damage is somehow the square of temp increase needs references, but, more importantly, some sort of serious set of evidence. I don’t see any here.
(But maybe I am blinded by the lights of out family’s “Hour of Power” celebration.)
Talk about Dumb Luck…
Me thinking the lighting event started at 7:30 (but not really caring)…
my Oven Clock started auto cooking at 7:30 but it is still on Standard Time, so it really started at 8:30.PDT. I was wondering what took the turkey so long….
Sometimes Murphey winds up working FOR you.
“Bulldust says:
March 26, 2011 at 2:46 pm”
WOW! That is some serious funding there, and that, I am sure, is not even the tip of the AGW iceberg.
Mosher,
Here is some of the “damage” caused or to be caused in our ‘warming’ world.
Boreal forest fires may continue decreasing
Coral island atolls rise
Gulf stream speeds up a little
Indian rice yields to increase
Malaria may continue decreasing in a warming world
Sahel to get more rain
Sea level rise
Was the Roman Empire damaged by warming?
Read this:
[More “Bad for Good and Good For Bad”]
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/02/20/more-bad-for-good-and-good-for-bad/
Mosher,
Here is some more damage
North Atlantic cyclone frequency to decrease [full pdf]
From memory I recall that some of the worst hurricanes occured during the Little Ice Age.
DirkH says:
March 26, 2011 at 5:11 pm
Thanks for that video.
Anyone who doesn’t see that for what it is needs to have their head examined. It is so obviously political. I love the way he (Flannery) is so dismissive of skeptics as to forget that his statements will follow him name in perpetuity. At least his lineage will not have to look all the way back to Neanderthals for the beginning of family enlightenment…IMHO!
steven mosher says:
March 26, 2011 at 6:04 pm
Steven, indeed there is the inertia of the heat accumulation in the oceans, which need theoretically some 30 years to get in equilibrium with the changes in radiation fluxes caused by increased GHGs. But the observations don’t follow the theory: there is no increase of heat content of the oceans, no heat in the pipeline measured since the floats are at work.
The other point is the reduction of CO2 when we should stop all emissions. The thousand years by Flannery is often mentioned, but that is only part of the CO2 equation: The IPCC and others use the Bern model, which is composed of different speeds of CO2 sinks: Ocean surface (app. 1.5 years, but only 10% of the increase in the atmosphere), deep oceans (app. 15 years), vegetation (app. 70 years), rock weathering (1,000 years),… The latter only plays an important role if the deep oceans (and vegetation) are saturating, which is only the case if near all oil and much coal is burned (10-20 times current emissions total since 1850). Until now, there is no saturation of the relative fast CO2 sinks observed (average half life time still is ~38 years). Thus in the current circumstances Flannery is completely wrong, while Pitman is theoretically right, but that is not observed.
If we should stop alle emissions totday, the excess CO2 would halve in about 38 years, thus back to the CO2 levels of some 50 years ago. That also means that the extra heat retention would halve in the same period, thus back to the extra heat of 50 years ago, or halve the extra heat of today. That makes that there would be a theoretical cooling already about 20 years from now, independent of the sensitivity for 2xCO2…
Having read some of the other contributions I now think I see where the AGWers are coming from. They talk about the inertia of the system but are actually describing the persistence of elevated CO2 levels and therefore proposing a sort of warming momentum.
This distinction is is a bit more than pedantry since we are confusing different physical properties.
The intertia of the climate system can be used to explain why the forcing due to CO2 has not so far resulted in as big a rise in temperature as predicted. However the ocean heat data does not support this explanation.
The persistence of CO2 in the atmosphere can be cited as a reason why any warming effect might continue for some time but this is quite hard to justify physically.
As the level of CO2 increases the level of outgoing radiation in the 14 -18 micron band should reduce. In order to maintain the energy balance the surface temperature of the earth has to rise so that increased radiation at other wavelengths can compensate. Exactly how much change in radiation is brought about by this mechanism is still up for debate because the actual measurements are inconclusive and swamped by natural variations as are the temperature changes.
What is unarguable is that if the world had no oceans the changes in outgoing radiation and surface temperature would reach equilibrium in a very short time. My guess would be that it would be a matter of weeks if not days. Once this new equilibrium had been reached there would be no further warming. This is equivalent to the acceleration effect in a car. If you depress the accelerator to a new fixed position the car will accelerate to a new speed where the increase in friction and air resistence balances the increase in power. If one holds the pedal at this point the car travels at constant speed. In the climate case we have pushed the “CO2 accelerator” to a new position so without oceans our current temperature would already be at the new equilibrium temperature resulting from all the accumulated CO2.
Therefore if we had no oceans we could be confident that the effect of CO2 was no greater than the rise in temperature that we have already seen in the last 50 years and on the basis that at least some of this was natural variation or mismeasurement the effect is pretty insignificant.
Therefore we are back to the oceans. This is why Pielke Snr is so adamant about using ocean heat content as the true measure of global warming. The whole argument revolves around the energy balance and this is 99.9% an issue of sea temperature. That is why the Argo buoys are so important and that is why the current tiny change in heat content is such a big threat to AGW hysteria.
“Pre-Industrial levels” is an AGW scam, no such thing. Only an idiot or a conman would think to measure the unproven “background level C02” from the top of the world’s biggest active volcano in a region of great volcanic activity. Why would anyone believe this is deemed a “pristine site measurements uncontaminated by local production” as it’s billed? The whole thing is utterly ridiculous.
CO2 is local everywhere it’s local, it’s heavier than air and doesn’t readily rise into the atmosphere, it comes down under its own weight and everytime it rains, to the ground. How convenient then for us that the plants which feed on it don’t live above cloud level floating in the air, they’d starve.
[Plant stomata are on the underside of leaves. Why?]
In the Thursday interview Professor Andy Pitman seems to show an unbelievable level of ignorance about climate.
He doesn’t appear to know what effect a unit of CO2 has on temperature. he certainly doesn’t volunteer that its effect is logarithmic and the CO2 band is close to saturation. He avoids the question by saying, after some thought, that it depends on the unit (of course) but doesn’t suggest any.
He regards CO2 as a pollutant and likens it to cadmium.
He says that the rise in temperature of 0.74 deg.C over the past century – which he says is certainly due to human activity – is a half ( or a quarter- he can’t remember ) of the difference between an ice age and our current climate. My God.
What amazes me, apart from Andy Pitman being professor of anything, is that he is described as a director of the Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. That says it all.
Jimbo says:
March 27, 2011 at 2:49 am
I looked at the abstract, it made no mention of the AMO’s huge impact on Atlantic storm frequency. I assume they must know about it, but their model can’t handle it.
Listening to the broadcast at the address linked in the article:-
Doesn’t Prof Pitman say, to explain the impact of such a very small proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere, ” it doesn’t really matter how much CO2 ” .
So what’s all the big deal about putting more in then ?
Does he also evade the very simple question , about how much warming for a unit of CO2 added , as the questioner hasn’t specified which unit .
I mean is this guy for real ?
OOps !
Is that the effect you were bemoaning a few days ago Anthony.
Did I really miss out the “> terminator ?
Sorry.
both of them has weaken current efforts done by most countries and agencies
Smokey says:
March 26, 2011 at 6:45 pm
steven mosher,
“Just for the sake of argument,” let’s say the warming effect from CO2 is ≤0.2°C. That’s Dr Lindzen’s understanding, and I think he knows something about the subject.
The fact is that two independent polls of scientists get a figure of 97% who disagree with Lindzen. Why take his word for the role of GHG’s?
There is no credible basis to argue that CO2 is responsible for 0.5° out of a total rise of 0.7°. That sounds like some wild-eyed realclimate WAG. [In fact, a good case can be made that CO2 causes little or no warming, but I’m playing your game here, admittedly with more realistic parameters.]
[SNIP]
With that in mind then, please cite the specific global “damage” caused by the extra CO2 molecules. Please stay within the scientific method, and provide us with empirical, testable, reproducible evidence of global “damage” caused specifically by CO2 [keeping in mind that models and pal-reviewed papers are not scientific evidence].
Since this damage is mainly in the future, and models are the only means of predicting the future, you are asking the impossible. Even determination of the role of CO2 in the past requires models. Your requirements preclude the use of science in understanding the past and predicting the future. Without scientific models we would still be in the pre-industrial age. This doesn’t seem like a recipe for the success of mankind.
And Latitude has a good point: U.S. CO2 emissions have been declining without the proposed EPA regulations, while China. Brazil, India, etc., etc., are all ramping up their CO2 emissions.
Latitude, is wrong. US emissions are on an increasing trend, which has halted temporarily in 2008 by the recession.
http://rainforests.mongabay.com/carbon-emissions/united_states_of_america.html
The planet has been several degrees warmer many times over the past ten millennia, and there was no corellation with CO2 leading to temperature rises. In fact, rising CO2 follows temperature rises.
The human population was not 7Billion people during these past times. The human population had time and space to migrate to different areas during the ice ages. Some species which didn’t have the ability to migrate were wiped out. The US defence department studied the projections of climate change and claimed that it would adversely affect the security of the US.
Given these facts, the rise in CO2 has been harmless and beneficial. Unless, of course, you can provide verifiable evidence of global damage due specificaly to the increase in CO2.
Your argument is a straw man. The expected damage from CO2 is not in the past, but rather in the future. In addition, what you call facts are fallacies.
Remember the most important rule of the AGW community:
If it can be construed as something bad, it is caused by CO2 and is worse than predicted.
If it is something good, it is actually bad, and worse than predicted.
So both the 20 – 30 year and the 1000 year claim are true, and both are worse than predicted.
Myrrh says:
March 27, 2011 at 4:34 am
[Snip. This is the second time today that you have called another commentator a “denialist.” Please read the site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]