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
Mr. Bastardi (or anyone else)–can you explain how you got that blue curve (the one with the arrow) that you derived from the HadCRUT data? I’ve tried to replicate it, but haven’t been able to do so. Thanks.
If temperatures drive CO2 and temperatures have not risen in 15 years, why have CO2 levels continued to rise?
HenryP
August 13, 2011 at 12:40 pm
###
Thanks, that’s certainly more info then I had before. BTW, I am already very doubtful that human CO2 emissions have any affect of global temperatures. I’m pretty good with both physics and ecology. I have spent most of my life taking measurements of physical phenomena, both as a test engineer working in the test equipment industry, and as a fresh water ecologist. I have set up, and maintained quite a few experimental aquaria with various methods of CO2 injection, all requiring careful monitoring. I am pretty familiar how CO2 behaves in fresh water systems. And the AGW theory dose not make any sense against what I have actually measured.
Smokey
August 13, 2011 at 1:58 pm
###
Sound like you work in a field very closely related to a field I spent 10 years in. You would probably recognize the name of my former employer.
re post by: Theo Goodwin says: August 13, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Well said!
re: post by: John B says: August 13, 2011 at 1:32 pm
John B, if you don’t believe that there are folks regularly posting here on WUWT who have vastly greater scientific credentials and experience than a simple Univ. student (or even recent grad), you would be sorely mistaken.
Smokey seems to have summed up Chris Colose pretty well. Almost all young college students are ‘wet behind the ears,’ virtually by definition. Fortunately not all suffer as much from the ‘know it all’ and naivete problems. I’d strongly suggest that Chris Colose spend some serious time studying the very basis of science itself for a bit – he seems to have slipped in that area of his studies and needs to solidify the basic tenets and principles of science in his mind before his other science studies can bear fruit.
Theo- I didn’t say people were too ignorant to discuss, just they should actually understand what the science says before they criticize it. I won’t defend phantom theories from attacks. I can also assure you I am familiar with the scientific method. Constructive criticism is one way to help science advance; making stuff up and repeating logically fallacious one-liner talking points does not count. Nor does using conspiracy theories as justification for why you shouldn’t have to familiarize yourself with the science. Sorry if you disagree.
@R. Gates
I agree with you that humans are at least partly responsible for increased co2 levels, but that does not change the fact that temperatures control the natural co2 cycle, which is something that ice cores clearly show.
I bet also a big part of the co2 increase is deforestation. But either way this increase in co2 wont have any significant effect on global temperatures.
sceptical says:
August 13, 2011 at 2:56 pm
If temperatures drive CO2 and temperatures have not risen in 15 years, why have CO2 levels continued to rise?
—————–
First, it is not true that temperatures have not risen for 15 years. A couple of outlier years (1998 and 2005) do not overturn the the warming trend. But as to why CO2 has continued to rise, it is because we continue to emit CO2, it’s that simple. Most “skeptics” must be embarrassed by Joe’s post. Why temperatures have not risen (much) in those 15 years while CO2 continued to rise is a separate question.
Rational Debate says:
August 13, 2011 at 3:56 pm
John B, if you don’t believe that there are folks regularly posting here on WUWT who have vastly greater scientific credentials and experience than a simple Univ. student (or even recent grad), you would be sorely mistaken.
——-
I don’t care about anyone’s “credentials”, just the quality of their arguments. It seems to me that Chris talks knowledgably about an area he has studied, while Smokey, for one, just posts out of context, cherry picked charts in an attempt to preach to the insufficiently skeptical choir to be found here.
Chris Colose says:
August 12, 2011 at 5:35 pm
This thread will be a good test to see how skeptical WUWT readers are of their own skepticism.
All of Bastardi’s talking points here can be traced back a long time, and they reflect severe unfamiliarity with the field and have been addressed countless times. Over at Tamino’s, he left a message full or errors at which I challenged him to an open debate on the matter.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/settled-science/#comment-53136
I would like to how well he can perform when required to scientifically address criticisms of his claims.
What do you mean by “all of Bastardi’s talking points”? It would be clearer to spell out the ones for which you have something to say.
The essence of JB’s post here is that the counter-hypothesis to AGW is that the recent global temperature rise is part of a natural climatic oscillation and that as such, one may expect temperatures to start declining in the not too distant future. Notably he also says: “If temperatures warm despite these natural cycles, you carry the day.” So he is willing to be proved wrong in the Karl Popper sense of science needing to be falsifiable (something you might consider working into your thesis intro chapter somewhere).
(Another tip for your write-up: severe is not a good adjective for unfamiliarity. Something else like “deep lack of familarity” would have been better.)
What problem do you have with that open and testable position? With the vulnerability to falsification? Have you been trained by Tamino to reject falsifiability as a scientific criterion, to stay in the safe regions of what can be muddled and fudged, and resist and testing?
There were some specific, testable points from JB to which you might have been referring:
1. Satellite data suggests that the radiative imbalance required by AGW is absent, that outgoing IR is greater than permitted by CAGW. This is really Roy Spencer territory, so it is with him you would need to take up this point.
2. The global temperature has risen in a quasi-linear manner since the end of the LIA, while CO2 concentration in air has risen quadratically over that time – a striking mismatch. This is a serious challenge to CAGW. Do you have anything to say about it? There is a trend in climate literature to try to explain every temperature change in the last century as resulting from a balance of an anthropogenic warmig effect of CO2 and an equally anthropogenic cooling influence from sulphate aerosols. This assumes a dominating effect of anthropogenic gasses on every wiggle of the temperature curve – thus the mismatch since the LIA is deeply problematic. CAGW proponents cany have it both ways – strong control of climate by CO2 but mismatching CO2 and temperature curves.
3. JB then dipped in to solar territory. He reiterated the body of opinion that solar changes, for instance reflected in sunspot numbers, reflect a strong solar controlling influence on climate. Here again JB is mainly citing others since he is not a solar scientist primarily – but he is one of the more successful meteorologists who maintains healthy curiosity in solar science and its climate implications, as indeed anyone should who wishes to understand something about climate. However the point here again is simple: we are now able to test this, yes or no, true or false? What dont you like about that? We are now entering a moderate to deep solar minimum, starting this decade and lasting several decades. Does the sunspot cycle dominate temperature? Then temperatures must now fall. If they dont, the theory is toast. What’s not to like about that?
4. JB then briefly touches on the CO2 and temperature chicken-and-egg question that is one of the biggest problems for CAGW. The several ice core palaeo datasets are unanimous that, over the last few glacial-interglacial cycles, CO2 change lags temperature changes, not the other way around. The CAGW position on this is one of the biggest pieces of tortuous nonsense I have every heard – that at first “something else” causes temperature to increase, this sets of a CO2 increase, but then the CO2, cukoo-like, usurps the role as driver of temeprature, effortlessly displacing the factor first causing the warming – and all the while the temperature rise shows no exponential or logarithmic form that would be expected if CO2 were propelling a positive feedback. Scientific theories to explain natural phenomena are supposed to be economical and parsimonious – this is the extreme reverse – it is little more than garbled wishful thinking. CAGW needs something better than this – do you have any ideas?
5. FInally JB makes what is, in this article, his most original and interesting point – that climate instability is more characteristic of a cooling than of a warming temperature regime. His deep familiarity with meteorologic records means he is on strong ground here. For me what is interesting is the fractal character of climate dynamics that this suggests. It is very clear from the Vostok and other ice core records of the last half million or so years that global fluctuations in temperature on a multi-century timescale are much more frequent and violent during descents into glacial periods than during warm interglacials, which are by contrast more stable regimes. The same is true when climate is looked at at a closer scale of decades (that is what fratal means). This is a serious challenge to the CAGW and media communities habit of trousering all extreme weather events as proof of CAGW. They might well be the opposite! More real science is needed. Do you have any?
So in summary, global temperatures go up and down naturally. Is the current rise from CAGW or just a natural up-wave? We can find out, just wait and see? This is real science, nothing to get offended at if you are a real scientist. Even the admission that one migh be wrong and that the future might prove this.
A recent post at WUWT showed how similar the recent temperature history is with many periods within the Holocene:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/01/whats-up-next/
In this context, the reference that springs to mind is the following (another one for your thesis!):
Ecclesiastes chapter 1
1 The words of the Teacher,[a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
3 What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11 No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.
R. Gates, I am sorry if I sound rude but you don’t know what you are talking about and I am tired of people like you trying to scare children. You’ve been doing so for over ten years. The kids are grown up now and can think for themselves btw. 😉
My husband is a scientist and an expert on the Milankovitch Cycles. The calcs aren’t “easy” because your data and timing looking at the past could be plus or minus thousands of years. As I mentioned above the data resolution makes it impossible to be so sure like you are. There is no precise notion of “where we are” in the Milankovitch Cycles or how long it takes from peak to trough. That’s BS. You and your calcs could be off by thousands of years and you are arguing about a few hundred years with a fraction of a degree of “average temp” difference compared to when again?
The scientists in the 1970s (who Time Magazine paid attention to and published) were worried about another ice age coming exactly because we don’t know where we are at in these cycles. That was me they were trying to scare back then.
Your graph shows C02 concentrations rising since 1600. Amazing that they can monitor things like that in the 1600s. 😉 1600 to 1850 was the Little Ice Age, yes. It was below normal cold for over 200 yrs over half of the globe. Life doesn’t like cold that much; it likes warm. CO2 = Life.
Cheers!
Desert Yote says:
“You would probably recognize the name of my former employer.”
And you would certainly recognize mine. Maybe we worked for the same company.
John Whitman says:
“Smokey,
Consider that we might be dealing with a fragile personality acting out in compensation for it.”
Of course. John B’s best argument to date is: “What a loser!” That’s generally how someone responds when they lack a credible argument.☺
Chris Colose writes:
“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).”
You are judging people who make arguments rather than judging the arguments that people make. If you want to take Al Gore as your career model, you are free to do so here in the USA.
However, if you want to follow some standard of rationality then the very first thing that you must do is to judge people’s arguments rather than judging people who make arguments. Warmista have demonstrated over a matter of years that they have an incredible problem embracing some standard of rationality, whether that standard be scientific method or some other standard.
I gave you a simple challenge. Produce some reasonably well-confirmed physical hypothesis that can be used to explain and predict some forcing such as changes in cloud behavior caused by increasing manmade CO2. You know that no such hypotheses exist. You also know that Warmista are not actively engaged in empirical research that could lead to such hypotheses. If you can produce one such hypothesis then I will bow to you and your professors. But if you cannot produce one such hypothesis then you must admit that Warmista have created no reasonably well-confirmed physical hypotheses that could take them beyond the work of Arrhenius. Warmista are neither physical scientists nor empirical scientists.
As an alternative which demonstrates your knowledge of scientific method, you might explain why I place such importance on the physical hypotheses that I have briefly described and why I am justified in claiming that the lack of them shows that Warmista are neither physical scientists nor empirical scientists. You may try to explain why my views of scientific method are mistaken. I would just love that debate.
Chris Colose says:
August 13, 2011 at 4:01 pm
“Theo- I didn’t say people were too ignorant to discuss, just they should actually understand what the science says before they criticize it.”
The two clauses say the same thing.
“I can also assure you I am familiar with the scientific method.”
Good. Explain how Gaia models have shown success in accordance with scientific method. Or show how “hiding the decline” is in accordance with scientific method.
Rational Debate says:
August 13, 2011 at 3:29 pm
Thank You! I enjoy your posts.
Smokey says:
August 13, 2011 at 5:23 pm
Of course. John B’s best argument to date is: “What a loser!” That’s generally how someone responds when they lack a credible argument.☺
——-
Smokey, you do realise that was a bit of sarcasm aimed at Chris Colose, don’t you? I wasn’t calling you a loser.
Actually, my best argument against you is that you post out of context, cherry picked charts. Over and over again.
John B says:
“Actually, my best argument against you is that you post out of context, cherry picked charts. Over and over again.”
If that is your best argument, it’s an extremely weak one. I post hundreds of different charts directly related to the subject being discussed, which contain many different time axes. If I was “cherry picking”, I would only use a particular starting date.
I also post many different peer reviewed citations, which show that your belief in catastrophic AGW is baseless and evidence-free. Come to think of it, I agree with your quote above. You give no examples of “cherry picking”, but simply throw a tantrum. That is your best argument! Hey, we agree.☺
Liza Robinson said:
August 13, 2011 at 5:16 pm
R. Gates, I am sorry if I sound rude but you don’t know what you are talking about and I am tired of people like you trying to scare children. You’ve been doing so for over ten years. The kids are grown up now and can think for themselves btw. 😉
My husband is a scientist and an expert on the Milankovitch Cycles. The calcs aren’t “easy” because your data and timing looking at the past could be plus or minus thousands of years. As I mentioned above the data resolution makes it impossible to be so sure like you are. There is no precise notion of “where we are” in the Milankovitch Cycles or how long it takes from peak to trough. That’s BS. You and your calcs could be off by thousands of years and you are arguing about a few hundred years with a fraction of a degree of “average temp” difference compared to when again?
The scientists in the 1970s (who Time Magazine paid attention to and published) were worried about another ice age coming exactly because we don’t know where we are at in these cycles. That was me they were trying to scare back then.
Your graph shows C02 concentrations rising since 1600. Amazing that they can monitor things like that in the 1600s. 😉 1600 to 1850 was the Little Ice Age, yes. It was below normal cold for over 200 yrs over half of the globe. Life doesn’t like cold that much; it likes warm. CO2 = Life.
Cheers!
———
You apologize for insulting me and then insult me again by accusing me of scaring children?
But anyway, I certainly have grown accustomed to insults by being one of the few “warmists” who bother frequenting this site.
Certainly I am not an expert but I do have a reasonable grasp of the science behind global warming, but I do not consider myself an alarmist. If your husband is an expert on Milankovitch cycles it is very likely I’ve read his work. What is his name? Or was this just a bit of spin on your part?
netdr said;
“FACT:
CO2 traps heat; too bad but that has been proven by Arrhenius around 1850.”
With all due respect Arrhenius HYPOTHESIZED that CO2 “traps heat”. He most decidedly did not PROVE it.
Netdr also wrote;
“A bottle filled with 100 % CO2 and another filled with air 380/1,00,000 Parts heat differently. if exposed to sunlight.”
Yes indeed this simplistic measurement of the thermal capacity of different materials proves nothing about the effect of those materials in a system as complex as the climate of the Earth. Unless we put all of the gases in the atmosphere into bottles, maybe then it will perform as defined.
Netdr also wrote;
“Denying this simple fact just makes the skeptical arguments look foolish.”
Misunderstanding this simple fact shows how shallow the understanding of how heat flows through a complex system really is among the climate science community.
Netdr also wrote;
“The CO2 slows the release of heat so of course it causes temperature to rise.”
Ah yes, the old, “so of course it causes….” clause. Well I would like to see the climate science community prove this “of course it causes the temperature to rise” statement, they have failed to do so thus far.
Netdr also wrote;
“It is like pulling on an extra blanket when you are in bed. It slows the release of heat.”
This is an incorrect analogy, you body is burning fuel and emitting heat like a true blackbody. The Earth (surface and atmosphere) is only absorbing and re-emitting energy, different situation entirely.
Netdr also wrote;
“Denying the obvious”
It is only obvious to those that just accept the “Argument From Authority” position of the climate science community.
The effect of increases in CO2 in the atmosphere is to change the response time of the gases in the atmosphere. This change is so slight that we could probably never afford to measure it. No “Higher Equilibrium Temperature” results.
Cheers, Kevin.
R Gates,
I looked at your scary chart showing the CO2 hockey stick. It doesn’t seem to be affecting temperature. And it’s nothing compared with CO2 levels over the past half billion years.
Notify us when we should start to panic: click
Chris Colose says:
August 13, 2011 at 2:18 pm
=====
Chris, you seem to be missing the point.
You can wrap yourself in the cloak of your studies.
The rest of us are concerned that, research has been driven by funding to deliver results which favor the current political agenda.
It’s not personal, it’s becoming a matter of survival.
R. Gates says:
August 13, 2011 at 6:24 am
Steep drop soon? According to whom? I would suggest you ask for an explanation from those predicting this. Out of the multiple forcings affecting climate, to suggest a “steep drop soon” would mean they are expecting some serious volcanic activity or perhaps all out nuclear war.
The cycle I am speaking of is the clearly visible cycle in the Vostok proxies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Co2-temperature-plot.svg
Please explain this cycle using CO2. Remember, there is an 800(ish) year lag period where you need a mechanism that causes warming all on its own. After you introduce this mechanism, you also have to explain why this mechanism is not responsible for sustaining the temperature while CO2 is. I’ve never seen convincing work on this. My ‘soon’ is relative to the time scale of this graph of course. I do apologize for not making that more clear in my original post.
RE: John H says:
August 13, 2011 at 12:33 am
“. ……You are making big bucks pontificating on a subject you obviously know nothing about.”
Ze pot calling ze kettle black? You obviously know nothing about Joe, and his ability to beat the socks off GISS. Or how about the El Nino the CFS was cranking out for this month, back in the early spring? How’s that working out for you? Now, who was it who said it wasn’t going to happen? Come on, spit it out. Confess. Confess. It was Joe, wasn’t it?
Perhaps it is ze pot calling ze stainless steel back, eh?
I want the bigs bucks we spent on those computers back. Sent a fraction to Joe. He gets better results.
David Falkner,
This chart also shows that CO2 follows temperature. We’re 800 ±200 years after the MWP, so the MWP-caused CO2 outgassing is added to human CO2 emissions. But the fact remains that CO2 isn’t causing the predicted warming, so its effect must be much smaller than claimed.