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
unfortunately, nature abhors human logic, just as it did in Galileo’s day when he went to the top of the leaning tower of Pisa to disprove Aristotle’s assertion that an object weighing 10 times another object will reach the ground 10 times more quickly because it is 10 times heavier.
Same story with doubling co2. It just changes the distance of heat absortion – and adds nothing to the energy budget
Chris Colose says:
August 13, 2011 at 10:16 am
“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…”
OK, I will explain one more time. Science is the critical discipline par excellence. When a scientist puts forth a hypothesis, the scientist and all other interested scientists begin the process of criticism. This process of criticism is far more important the the hypothesis that was put forth. After criticism, the hypothesis might not even resemble what the scientist started with but great advances might have been made in understanding.
You hold the simple-minded belief that science is just dueling hypotheses. You hold the simple-minded belief that if you are not putting forth hypotheses then you are somehow deficient as a scientist. What this shows about you is that you have a deficient understanding of science and scientific method. You do not respect criticism because you do not have a clue how it is done and you cannot do it.
Warmista continually trumpet your simple-minded view because all they have ever created is Radiation Only Gaia Models, magical statistics, and some historical reconstruction that has to hide the decline. They have not one reasonably well confirmed physical hypothesis that can be used to explain and predict forcings such as cloud behavior. They have shown themselves incapable of criticism of their own work and incapable of intelligent defense against criticisms coming from sceptics. The only game they have is to try to change the topic to their Radiation Only Gaia Models, etc. That is the same game you are playing. The Radiation Only Gaia Models are total and complete failures by any standard used to judge scientific hypotheses. They are now far beyond failures; they are downright cookie-cutter same old same old boring.
I will be happy to receive your focused, reasoned response.
addendum – typing too quickly – to 1st para
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, at 500ppm co2 then you still have 4wm2 delayed.
Has anyone collated the nonsense experiments and claims from AGW? How big a blanket around the Earth stopping heat from escaping?? As Kelvin Vaughan asked, where’s the majik? It’s practically 100% not Carbon Dioxide, so 100% holes.
Heating air and carbon dioxide – was the experiment ever shown complete? Carbon dioxide has a low heat capacity which means it heats up more quickly than air, (especially humid air because water has a very great heat capacity), but loses the heat more quickly too because low heat capacity is saying that. This means practically instantly with CO2, which would be shown if the experiment was timed. CO2 with low heat capacity cannot ‘store’ any heat, water with higher can – which is why we put water in our central heating systems. Water having a much higher heat capacity takes longer to heat up and but longer too cool down. Nitrogen and Oxygen have higher heat capacities than Carbon Dioxide.
Volker Doormann says:
August 13, 2011 at 10:01 am
Excellent work, Volker. It is very important that fallacies are explained to the Warmista. The poor Warmista live among fallacies as the homeless live among thieves.
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 often 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 propaganda 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).
Henry@desertyote
I did answer your question here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/12/bastardi-science-and-reality-point-away-not-toward-co2-as-climate-driver/#comment-718558
Nobody knows the answers because there are no real test results.
the doubling nonsense just started with somebody who thought he had real test results.
Methane is also mentioned in fig. 6, so it also cools the atmosphere.
try to understand my quoted post and soon you will be on your way to become a sceptic – or is it skeptic
Alan D McIntire says:
August 13, 2011 at 12:03 pm
Excellent information, Alan, Thanks. Let me retreat to what I believe with great confidence. Among American academic philosophers of the last sixty years, ‘sceptic’ is the accepted spelling.
Myrrh says:
August 13, 2011 at 12:26 pm
Yes it was shown by Knut Ångström, who asked an assistant to measure the passage of infrared radiation through a tube filled with carbon dioxide. The assistant put in rather less of the gas in total than would be found in a column of air reaching to the top of the atmosphere. The assistant reported that the amount of radiation that got through the tube scarcely changed when he cut the quantity of gas back by a third. Apparently it took only a trace of the gas to “saturate” the absorption — that is, in the bands of the spectrum where CO2 blocked radiation, it did it so thoroughly that more gas could make little difference.
what really matters are things like air pressure, humidity, water vapour, cloudiness and factors like that, to temperatures.
calling trace gases the critical factor in climate is like saying that the needle makes the haystack
Liza Robinson says:
August 13, 2011 at 9:07 am
Very well said! Hats off to Liza the geologist.
//”I will be happy to receive your focused, reasoned response.”//
When you are capable of writing a post that demonstrates familiarity with the field (i.e., not making things up like we consider only radiation) or without the typical conspiracy theories, then we can have a dialogue.
Joe Bastardi says:
August 12, 2011 at 7:07 pm
Someone is right and someone is wrong…..
Let reality decide what was right and wrong…..
You have eyes, you be the judge.
———————————————————–
Who loves ya Joe baby?
Good ole US of A enterprise, cut out the “hypothetical” middle men!
Henry@P Wilson, myrrh
Your theories are interesting but
again,
they do not explain what I see happening
there is re-radiation
so there is heat entrapment (deflection back to earth ) and there is cooling (deflection back to the sun )
try to understand what happens in fig 6 that I quote in my footnote, here
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
Chris Colose is a naive young know-it-all, literally wet behind the ears.
Thanks Smokey, and what is your background?
well not really about re-radiation or back radiation, That notion was put together when they couldn’t find the infamous *hotspot*, so therefore concluded that if the part of the atmosphere (upper troposphere) wasn’t heating then that radiation must be coming back to earth.
http://cbdakota.wordpress.com/2010/01/02/agw-where-is-the-predicted-hot-spot/
However, the laws of thermodynamics enter into this equation. Co2 intercepts radiation at 15 microns – which is the equivalent of minus 36C – the sort of temperatures at the poles. Thepart of the atmosphere where co2 is active is therefore some several km up where it is -36C. If heat leaves at 10 microns (equivalent to 15C) then co2 is invisible to this – so as you can see, there is not much logic to explain how radiation at -36 can come back to earth and elevate temperatures by another 1C, to 16C, say as example. Its like arguing that freezing water will increase cause it to warm.
Chris Colose appears to be an “Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences student at UW-Madison.” Sheesh! Wasting his time studying climate related stuff at university when he could just be picking up cherries from ther likes of Smokey. What a loser!
chemman says:
August 13, 2011 at 11:21 am
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.
Actually more CO2 is released into the atmosphere after the fact of warming so it doesn’t matter how long it takes to warm the oceans. And besides the oceans has been warming since the last ice age at the very least. Statistically speaking the oceans has been cooling for the last couple of billions of years though. Still CO2 comes later.
Smokey,
Consider that we might be dealing with a fragile personality acting out in compensation for it.
John
Chris Colose says:
“Thanks Smokey, and what is your background?”
Thirty years employment in a large [140+ engineers and technicians] national Metrology lab, designing, calibrating and repairing weather related instruments such as dew point meters, humidity meters, temperature dataloggers, thermocouples, thermometers, PRTs, RTDs, and related instruments. All traceable to the National Bureau of Standards, later to N.I.S.T. / ISO9000, both primary and secondary standards. I also did calibration of Mass standards. Retired in 2003.
We received most all of the peer reviewed literature, gratis, from the calibration instrument vendors, and I witnessed first-hand the ramp up of the CO2 [“carbon”] scare, along with the absolute degradation of peer reviewed papers. I don’t recall a single engineer out of more than 140 who believed in the runaway global warming scare [that’s probably because they were engineers, not sociologists, or grant-seeking climatologists].
So now I must ask John B: And what is your background?
Liza Robinson says:
August 13, 2011 at 9:07 am
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.
_____
Liza,
Don’t know your background, and I would not presume to school you the way you’ve attempted to school me in this rather rude post. I know quite well the difference between ice ages, interglacials, glacials, and their relationship to each other. Furthermore, I’m quite aware of the role of Milankovitch cycles in bringing about the shift from glacial to interglacial periods. You are correct that we don’t know exactly where we are in this current interglacial, however, we do know exactly where we are in the current Milankovitch cycle, as these astronomical calculations are relatively easy to figure out. The peak of NH summer insolation occurred during the Holocene Climate Optimum, and indeed, temperatures had been declining since that time, with the exception of the MWP and of course, the 20th and early 21st century. Since the time of the Holocene Optimum, CO2 levels had been generally about 280 ppm, until dropping a bit during the Little Ice Age, and then exploding upward with the beginning of industrialization about 1750. If anyone wants to really look at the figures, and this graph, and try to tell me that they don’t think that human activity has play THE significant role in the explosion upward in CO2 levels since about 1750, then it seems you simply don’t want to see the facts:
http://i39.tinypic.com/if0m5g.jpg
Now, do warmer ocean temps cause CO2 to increase through outgassing? Yes, of course, up to a point, and we should be glad this is the case as a little bit of warming of the NH oceans and the subsequent outgassing of CO2 seems to be a major positive reinforcement effect during a Milankovtich induced interglacial. But, the CO2 increases we’ve seen since about 1750 is way out of proportion to anything that outgassing of the ocean could have caused, and indeed, so much CO2 has been released from the burning of fossil fuels, that the ocean has been taking up much of this excess over this period rather than any sort of outgassing. The ocean over the past few centuries have be net carbon sinks, not sources.
Chris Colose says:
August 13, 2011 at 12:51 pm
“When you are capable of writing a post that demonstrates familiarity with the field (i.e., not making things up like we consider only radiation) or without the typical conspiracy theories, then we can have a dialogue.”
So, you are here just to tell us that we are too ignorant to discuss climate science with you? That is the sum total of what you have to say? What an interesting person you are! What sort of person would go to a group of people for the purpose of telling them that they are too ignorant to engage in dialogue with him?
I will state the gist of what I said in detail above. You are completely ignorant of scientific method. You are completely ignorant of the role of criticism in science. You are completely ignorant of the duty of each scientist to be his own most severe critic. But I am not like you. I did not seek you out to call you ignorant. I simply responded to the ignorance demonstrated in the posts that you made here.
When you are capable of writing a post that demonstrates familiarity with scientific method then we can have a dialogue.
Smokey, with respect:
Although I am a graduate student, as John B notes, I have at least taken the opportunity to properly educate myself in the atmospheric sciences, and am now doing research on climate related issues (currently stationed at NASA GISS and alternating between that and classwork). This is unlike most people who feel that they have become qualified as an expert based on blog commentary and youtube videos. I have seen a lot of (generally retired) engineers, programmers, etc who think they understand climate.
We can go on all day about who has done what. Personally, rather than being a “know-it-all” I generally only comment confidently about topics I am confident in. For example, I probably would not start arguing with you about how you designed an instrument with your engineering colleagues. I would not go on a blog site denying the existence of black holes and then start arguing with an astrophysicist. I do not know if you are simply confused, or as a retiree if you feel that the issue of climate change somehow threatens you, or whether you are basing your science on “scares” experienced in the course of your lifetime. However, as someone in the sciences, I am not given the freedom to simply make things up on a whim, create straw man arguments (like “we’re going to have runaway global warming!”), and in terms of my education I am certainly not going to elevate an engineer with no exposure to the field over professors and researchers I interact with daily (who have published and are at the forefront of their specialty).
In any case, my challenge to Bastardi to actually defend his arguments still remains. He has made very definitive and confident claims on venues like Fox News, and seems to prefer vague statements through the few comments he has made here that do not address any particular person or counter-argument, but simply utters useless commentary like “Someone is right and someone is wrong” or irrelevant distractions like how people put CO2 in a greenhouse to help plants. Ryan Maue argues that this is a useless challenge, in part because Bastardi is not an academic researcher, but he nonetheless holds enough weight to convince various groups of people (including those watching on TV) and apparently the people here at WUWT.
Only seeing as you asked: Chemistry degree (1981), 30 years as a software engineer, Master’s in Bioinformatics (2010). I aslo teach Java and other software stuff for a large American technical training organisation. Skeptic (yes, really)