Guest post by Joe Bastardi, WeatherBell
With the coming Gorathon to save the planet around the corner ( Sept 14) , my stance on the AGW issue has been drawing more ire from those seeking to silence people like me that question their issue and plans. In response, I want the objective reader to hear more about my arguments made in a a brief interview on FOX News as to why I conclude CO2 is not causing changes of climate and the recent flurry of extremes of our planet. I brought up the First Law of Thermodynamics and LeChateliers principle.
The first law of thermodynamics is often called the Law of Conservation of Energy. This law suggests that energy can be transferred in many forms but can not be created or destroyed.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume those that believe CO2 is adding energy to the system are correct. Okay, how much? We have a gas that is .04% of the atmosphere that increases 1.5 ppm yearly and humans contribute 3-5% of that total yearly, which means the increase by humans is 1 part per 20 million. In a debate, someone argued just because it is small doesn’t mean it is not important. After all even a drop with 0.042 gm of arsenic could kill an adult. Yes but put the same drop in the ocean or a reservoir and no one dies or gets ill.
Then there is the energy budget. The amount of heat energy in the atmosphere is dwarfed by the energy in y the oceans. Trying to measure the changes from a trace gas in the atmosphere, if it were shown to definitively play a role in change (and it never has), is a daunting task.
NASA satellites suggest that the heat the models say is trapped, is really escaping to space, that the ‘sensitivity’ of the atmosphere to CO2 is low and the model assumed positive feedbacks of water vapor and clouds are really negative. Even IPCC Lead Author Kevin Trenberth said “Climatologists are nowhere near knowing where the energy goes or what the effect of clouds is…the fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
We are told that the warming in the period of warming from 1800 was evidence of man-made global warming. They especially point to the warming from 1977 to 1998 which was shown by all measures and the fact that CO2 rose during those two decades. And we hear that this warming has to be man-made with statements like “what else could it be?”
However, correlation does not mean causation. Indeed inconveniently despite efforts to minimize or ignore it, the earth cooled from the 1940s to the late 1970s and warming ceased after 1998, even as CO2 rose at a steady pace. Some have been forced to admit some natural factors may play a role in this periodic cooling. If that is the case, why could these same natural factors play a key role in the warming periods too.
Ah, but here is where the 1st law works just fine. After a prolonged period of LACK OF SUNSPOT ACTIVITY, the world was quite cold around 1800. The ramping up of solar activity after 1800 to the grand maximum in the late twentieth century could be argued as the ultimate cause of any warming through the introduction of extra energy into the oceans, land and then the atmosphere.
The model projections that the warming would be accelerating due to CO2 build up are failing since the earth’s temps have leveled off the past 15 years while CO2 has continued to rise.
Then there is a little matter of real world observation of how work done affects the system it is being done on. When one pushes an empty cart and then stops pushing, the cart keeps moving until the work done on it is dissipated. How is it, that the earth’s temperature has leveled off, if CO2, the alleged warming driver continues to rise?
The answer is obvious. They have it backwards. It is the earth’s temperature (largely the ocean) which is driving the CO2 release into the atmosphere. That is what the ice cores tell us and recently that Salby showed using isotopes in an important peer review paper. These use real world observations not tinker toy models nor an 186 year old theory that has never been validated.
Finally, as to the matter of LeChateliers principle. The earth is always in a state of imbalance and weather is the way the imbalances are corrected in the atmosphere. Extreme weather occurs when factors that increase imbalances are occurring. The extremes represent an attempt to return to a state of equilibrium.
The recent flurry of severe weather – for instance, record cold and snow, floods, tornadoes,, is much more likely to be a sign of cooling rather than warming. The observational data shows the earth’s mid levels have cooled dramatically and ocean heat content and atmospheric temperatures have been stable or declined. Cooling atmospheres are more unstable and produce greater contrasts and these contrasts drive storms, storms drive severe weather. A warmer earth produces a climate optimum with less extremes as we enjoyed in the late 20th century and other time in history when the great civilizations flourished.
Time will provide the answer. Over the next few decades, with the solar cycles and now the oceanic cycles changing towards states that favor cooling, there should be a drop in global temperatures as measured by objective satellite measurement, at least back to the levels they were in the 1970s, when we first started measuring them via an objective source. If temperatures warm despite these natural cycles, you carry the day. We won’t have to wait the full 20-30 year period. I believe we will have our answer before this decade is done.
UPDATE: I’m told that a follow up post – more technically oriented will follow sometime next week. Readers please note that the opinion expressed here is that of Mr. Bastardi, at his request. While you may or may not agree with it, discuss it without resorting to personal attacks as we so often see from the Romm’s and Tamino’s of the nether climate world. Also, about 3 hours after the original post, I added 3 graphics from Joe which should have been in the original, apologies. – Anthony
Oops, here’s the Fowler quote correctly italicized:
And as CO2 concentrations continue to rise, there is pronounced cooling taking place in the U.S.
http://thetruthpeddler.wordpress.com/2011/08/13/government-data-still-confirms-a-long-term-cooling-trend-for-the-us/
R. Gates, No where in the geologic record is there proof CO2 has any of the power you give it. The earth is technically still in an Ice Age. Ice ages can possibly experience warmer and cooler periods; like the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. We don’t know exactly where we are in the Milankovitch Cycles; because no scientist on this planet knows exactly how long it takes from peak (really warm) to trough (really cold) because the data resolution is not clear going back in time so we cannot “see” or “know” such small time frames like “now” in the geologic record. And “now” there is still a lot of ice on this planet. The last interglacial period we can see in the data gave us sea level high stands in some places near 20 ft higher then now without any “extra CO2” and we are no where near that even with all the “extra CO2” you are worried about.
You are still just arguing over tenths of one degree of temperature on a graph; which happens to go up at the end of the Little Ice Age which; happens to also be the start of the “Industrial Age”. You don’t talk about the Little Ice Age; focus all of your attention to the Industrial Age and are throwing around the word “interglacial” without knowing what you are saying or even understanding geologic time and what we can say about it from the data.
In the Wikipedia writeup of Le Chatelier’s principle, it says, “Where a shock initially induces positive feedback (such as thermal runaway), the new equilibrium can be far from the old one, and can take a long time to reach.” This wouldn’t seem to contradict AGW very strongly. I doubt that more than a few warmists predict no stability ever.
netdr says
CO2 traps heat; too bad but that has been proven by Arrhenius around 1850.
A bottle filled with 100 % CO2 and another filled with air 380/1,00,000 Parts heat differently. if exposed to sunlight.
[The CO2 one heats more. Would the one with 380/1,00,000 Parts be measurably warmer ? ]
henry@netdr
were you able to follow my argument here
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
especially what we see happening in figure 6 (concerning the re-radiation of CO2)?
So are we agreed that from where I am standing, like heatentrapment (24hr/day), CO2 also causes cooling (12hrs/day)?
Now how do you know which amount is larger, the cooling or the warming?
Roger Knights says:
August 13, 2011 at 8:57 am
Good old Fowler’s! Thanks, Roger.
Roger Longstaff says:
August 13, 2011 at 8:48 am
Dear Roger,
I was reading up from the bottom so replied to Mr. Knights first. I do love good old Fowler’s.
Yes, you were here first. The evidence is in John Locke, George Berkeley (pronounced Barkley), and David Hume. My heart tells me that we should follow David Hume’s usage.
“Well it’s not called lag for nothing.”
But according to Bastardi’s (and Salby’s) thesis, there is not supposed to be any lag. The warming is supposed to change CO2 levels right away. It clearly doesn’t. Why? Because changing temps are not what is causing the increase in CO2, we are. Changing temps take a *long* time to affect CO2 concentrations; the feedbacks are slow. That is why you can look at the ice core data and only see small changes in CO2 while there were significant (6-7 degrees C) changes in temperature. This is basic stuff.
“And as for global average temperature it is a mere statistical hodgepodge phenomenon that actually has gone down slightly all pending your point of view of course.”
Nonsense. You are not entitled to your own facts.
“This is also very easy, if your a rational sane person who looks at proper data it has gone down, but, if you’re a green socialist staring at phony data it has gone up. See, also very easy.
Did you see what I did there?”
Yes, you used an an hominem argument to evade the fact that the warming has not stopped. BTW, I’m a free market libertarian. I’m just honest enough to accept the evidence. Unlike Bastardi, for instance, who up above wrote a downward arrow for the trend from 1996 to present when in fact the trend is going up, and it has warmed about .12C. Phony data, indeed.
Theo:
Sceptical is indeed the English spelling, as in English as written in Britain. My understanding of the American spelling is because of the very real and deliberate ‘bastardisation’ ( that’s not an insult to Americans, it’s the proper term for it ) of British English during the pioneer years of American colonisation. I’m going off the top of my head here so don’t take anything as stone cold fact but as far as I am aware most of the settlers travelling west were barely literate and in a bid to make things easier for settlers to communicate with trading posts etcetera the spelling of many words was simplified, often phonetically, just so these people could write the way it sounded. This is why letters deemed superfluous such as the U in rumour, colour etc. were simply dropped. The K in Skeptic probably came about so as not to cause confusion with the soft ‘c’.
Of course ‘sceptic or skeptic might not have been in use by the frontiersmen but it’s the way that American English ( a phrase I dislike immensely as it’s just English, incorrectly used) has developed and been used.
Etymology puts it back to the Greek sképtesthai ( consider, examine) which oddly gave rise to the Latin scepticus and had by that time come to mean ‘initial doubt’. The Greek Skep also gave rise to the English word scope.
just my thoughts.
“netdr says
CO2 traps heat; too bad but that has been proven by Arrhenius around 1850.”
But even poor old Arrhenius noted that predicting the effects of CO2 is a matter of predicting the forcings and that, given forcings, the net effect could be cooling. Warmista have no physical hypotheses about forcings.
Theo Goodwin says:
August 13, 2011 at 7:51 am
Matt says:
August 12, 2011 at 6:36 pm
“Your claim that the broad science community is not in touch with physical, empirical reality is thoroughly unfair. There are countless empirical measurements of climate sensitivities and feedbacks and for a wide variety of forcing mechanisms. You can always claim that it is “not enough” and that’s fine. But, don’t say that it doesn’t exist.”
“Your response is yet another Classic Example of a Red Herring Fallacy. Warmista, when challenged, always change the subject. My claim was that Warmista, either of the Radiation Only Gaia Modeler or the Hide the Decline variety, have produced no reasonably well confirmed physical hypotheses that could explain and predict the forcings found in natural processes such as cloud formation. They are not working on them and have no interest in doing so. They are not physical scientists and they are not empirical scientists. They are teenagers obsessed with their supercomputers. In the future, supercomputers will have to be treated the same way that cigaretters are treated today, if not outrightly banned”.
I was astonished reading in a paper edited by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany,
This fallacy is also known as: Non causa pro causa.
“The fallacy of Non Causa Pro Causa occurs when something is identified as the cause of an event, but it has not actually been shown to be the cause.
For example: “I took an aspirin and prayed to God, and my headache disappeared. So God cured me of the headache.”
V.
ZootCadillac says:
August 13, 2011 at 9:51 am
“Of course ‘sceptic or skeptic might not have been in use by the frontiersmen but it’s the way that American English ( a phrase I dislike immensely as it’s just English, incorrectly used) has developed and been used.”
Thanks much. Actually, it was in use, most likely. They lacked polish not intelligence.
@ur momisugly Ryan Maue in response to my posting
I don’t think Bastardi is a great candidate either, since he is not an expert climate scientist, but he does seem to hold a lot of weight in certain circles because of the title “meteorologist” (it is not as though any of us can randomly get speaking time on FOX news). He does seem to be vocal, so I don’t think the choice is any poorer than those that think Al Gore should be publicly debated. But I think serious debate is confined to the academic literature; such “public” debates I think people like Bastardi are a good candidate for.
In any case, there are virtually no remaining “skeptical” climate experts publishing in the literature aside from the Alabama duo and Lindzen, and I think we’ve had more than enough commentary on them, so it is difficult to assess just how one should pick their battles when the “battle” is confined exclusively to the minds of people such as those on this blog…
Chris Colose says:
“I think serious debate is confined to the academic literature…”
Confined?? What an ignorant statement. Are you really that unaware of the fact that Climategate exposed the fraud and self-serving gaming of the climate peer review system by Mann and his pet journals?
The female FOX host looks like she’s admiring Joe’s biceps.
Well, so much for a science site 🙁
I thought surely here was a place to get an answer to a relevant question, but it looks like no one knows the answer to my simple question. I guess arguing with fools like R.Gates is more important then disusing science.
I know that I am an aspie, and that I have difficulty serializing my thoughts when I try to express myself. Believe me, I am use to being misunderstood. But I really took pains to be clear this time.
phlogiston,
No doubt. click
1DandyTroll says:
__________________________________________________________________________
Because the temperature that is driving the increase in CO2 is the temperature of the ocean. It takes far longer for the temperatures in the ocean to change than the atmosphere.
Here you are WRONG! … ie: the infamous “hot spot” at 400Mb … the models DO predict this, but the question is, where is it? .. a: it doesn’t exists as the models DO predict!
—————
C. Colose,
I will apply your logic to yourself. Chris, make sure your “serious debate is confined to the academic literature”.
By your own thinking, you are not saying anything serious here because this venue isn’t academic literature. So we do not need to take you seriously here. I will take your opinion of your own commenting here and disregard it, using your own logic.
And Chris, please post all your serious debate in your academic literature authored by you. Not here, of course since this is not serious academia. Post it with academia so the professor friends of mine can share it with me outside of the “confines of academic literature”.
Nice day here on the lakeshore in the Adirondack Mtns of upstate NY. Do you ever get over here? It is nearby. I will happily buy you a brew and we can continue our discussion.
Chris, with your attitude, is it a wonder supporters of CAGW are increasingly not trusted?
John
For somebody who’s published nothing, Chris Colose talks a lot of crap.
Chris Colose says
when the “battle” is confined exclusively to the minds of people such as those on this blog…
Chris,
a lie, if it is repeated ofthen enough is eventually accepted as the truth.
In fact, people are inclined to believe a bigger lie rather than a smaller one
And who controls this? It is not the people on this blog. In fact it is not even all the people on all the science blogs.
Even Hitler knew that the media was important….to get his propoganda across…
It is the media that are perpetrating the lie, not only because the people watching want to believe that they are doing things that will doom them, but also because, and many people have overlooked this,
of the fact that there is an enormous investment in “clean” energy. They cannot go back, because even your and mine pension fund will suffer if it turns out that we don’t need the windmills….
in this respect I find that many sceptics including myself are perhaps too laid back in accepting the rubbish that is broadcast in the media as the truth and we don’t complain. Perhaps it is our (higher?) intelligence that “convinces” us to let those people be in believing that catastrophes and doom will come from the back of our cars.
(where it is in fact the opposite – unless someone can prove to me that the CO2 warms more than it cools and that it destroys rather than builds life on earth ?)
I have complained twice now here at a radio station, and even though I lost my complaints at the BCCSA (quoting from my pool table on global warming) because of lack of peer review (I don’t have the time for that nor do I know anyone here who is a learned sceptic), I have noticed that they have not gone again to the same subject or in the direction of promising doom and gloom from more CO2 and methane. They have become a lot more careful.
So perhaps our answer to the lies must be that we (sceptics) have to become more active and that whenever we notice the media talking nonsense again, we simply have to query them on the science and demand answers (even though we know the answers or that there are no answers).
Prior to the mid 18th century, the spelling of English was not standardized. According to this link,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences
current British spelling follows Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary while American spelling follows
Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary. Both Johnson’s and Webster’s dictionaries list the derived from Greek word as ” skeptic”. I guess the British think the word comes from French, whence their spelling.
Smokey says:
August 13, 2011 at 11:08 am
phlogiston,
No doubt. click
Looks like even his cheek muscles have definition.
To be clear what the logarithmic effect of co2 means – it means that if you have 50wm2 of heat escaping at 300ppm c02, then you have 4wm2 delayed heat transfer. If you have 50wm2 of heat leaving, then you still have 4wm2 delayed.
More c02 doesn’t mean more energy/radiation delay – something like a factor 10 sunblock doesn’t increase to factor 20 if you double the amount you put in your skin.
You’d have to buy a factor 20 instead.