The punch line from Rex Murphy’s recent editorial in the National Post will upset sensitive readers who still think Gore is the messiah rather than a barker.
Gore’s meltdown might just be the moment when the people of the planet saw the carney show for what it was.
Heh. He is of course referring to this.
Read the entire brilliant editorial here
I remember reading in Bob Beckman’s book, The Downwave, on economic cycles, that in the good times, people embrace crazy extremes of religion, and in the bad times, go back to the conventional ones…
Gore’s real downfall has begun, now that Toto pulled back the curtain….
Gore would be nothing more than a modern day humbug who has taken P.T. Barnum’s lessons to the next level, but for the added tactic of adding religious-quality scare tactics into his presentations.
I think that a big piece of falling sky must have hit old Al on his noggin and that is what caused his ‘cussin outbreak.
Reality is going to be so hard for St. Al to endure . . . the endless mockery, the cancelled interviews, having to travel coach on commercial airlines, talking to birds in parks because no one else will listen any more.
Bet he’s wishing now he hadn’t flunked out of divinity school.
Please don’t elevate Al Gore to the level of UFOs.
Rex Murphy is a rare gem in Canadian journalism. His long tenure with the CBC, which is a baby BBC when it comes to promoting the activist/socialist line, is a bit of a mystery to both the liberal/socialist faithful and the independent thinking class – he’s basically all that is worth watching on CBC-TV.
It was an inconvenient way to achieve “global governance” by an obscure elite. It has been replaced by other more sophisticated ideas, so HE is no longer necessary.
The National Science Foundation, which grades scientific documentaries intended for the public, gave “An Inconvenient Truth” a grade of 90%, noting that the errors in it were of detail, and not fundamental to its general argument. The average grade that the NFS gives to similar documentaries in 70%. Somehow, I put more stock in that grade than in an editorial, empty of everyhting except mockery, published in the newspaper of a convicted felon, Mr. Conrad Black.
Good editorial.
Lately, economics has been turned on its tail. Utility companies now claim they are in the conservation business, i.e. the business of not selling electricity or providing water. Often, they are legally mandated to utilize the least efficient method of generating electricity. Thus the public pays for evermore inefficiencies. If left to their original business model, these companies would be attempting to, sell more goods and services in order to generate more income, a huge portion of which , would go to even more efficient infrastructure.This current models end is already in sight: electrical and water rationing at ever increasing prices until the service stops all together.
there simply hasn’t been any signal that his White House is giving the great Gore crusade anything but the barest of rhetorical support.
Plenty of other regulatory support, however, from the EPA. If the EPA cannot regulate Carbon and CO2 in the open, they’ll do it by impossibly costly regulaitons to reduce mercury in coal from 48 bbp to 4 ppb. To compare, 990 ppb Hg in fish is safe to eat and 2 ppb Hg in water is safe to drink.
Jesse Fell,
I guess you’re one of the ones who ‘fell’ for Gore’s backward graph and the other nonsense in AIT. Face it, Gore’s propaganda has been thoroughly debunked, and only credulous fools still believe in his predictions of catastrophic runaway global warming and 20-meter sea level rises. Are you one of them?
I see this as a affirmation of the Law of Unintended Consequences. If Al hadn’t invented the Internet, he would not be such a popular target of derision. So it’s really his own fault. 😉
Particularly Goring are some of the comments posted in the FP piece. A couple more of those rambling cut-and-paste tirades about killing the planet and catastrophic species eradication, recited chapter-and-verse. And of course the usual “Rex Murphy is not a scientist” saw. Well, the climate scientists aren’t, either, so I guess things are pretty much even.
He is the only thing worth watching on CBC, I agree. But I far prefer his ability to cross borders on WUWT.
James Hansen says it; Al Gore believes it; that settles it!
But in really bad times, extreme beliefs become more common.
Smokey says:
August 22, 2011 at 10:06 am
Jesse Fell,
I guess you’re one of the ones who ‘fell’ for Gore’s backward graph and the other nonsense in AIT. Face it, Gore’s propaganda has been thoroughly debunked, and only credulous fools still believe in his predictions of catastrophic runaway global warming and 20-meter sea level rises. Are you one of them?
=======================
Don’t be too hard on Jesse, Smokey. There must be a lot of anger in the realisation that one has been following a charlatan all this time. This is a long process of reconcilliation, and right now, I would say he is just entering stage 1, denial: NFS gave AIT 90% – errors not fundamental – Conrad Black – convicted felon’s – yada yada yada. Still, I believe regular visits to WUWT, accompanied by a trully open mind, can help the process along.
When will Rex focus on Suzuki? Now there is a man who is mean, vulgar, dismissive and insulting to anyone who disagrees with him. He twists stats to serve his needs, logistically supports lawsuits against those (Tim Ball) disagree with his heros (M. Mann), and generally describes geologists who disagree (most of them) “anti-environmentalists” who are paid by the oil and gas industry to distort the truth and support their carbon-spewing industries.
Suzuki cannot stand the presence of other minds. It is no wonder he and his wife lie in bed at night, curled up and worrying about the fate of the planet. He has enough people in his own head to tell him that the sky is falling that he cannot help but be anxious, despite those outside on his lawn, looking up and going “Huh?”.
I`m convinced future historians will track Gore’s and Suzuki’s ilk like the famous witch-hunters of the 1700s, who made careers, fortune and beneficial personality cults through “discovering” witches amongst populations not previously afflicted by others than midwives, herbalists and the crazy. Back then the Gore-Suzuki cabal gathered up in their circle King James the First of Scotland, who wrote his own treatise on the devil incarnate. (Gore would be a messiah rather than a king; times are more tolerant of messiahs than kings these days.) King James had many so-called witches burned; thank someone or something that G & S do not have that power. If they did, Suzuki would identify them (I’m one of the new witches, apparently) and Gore would strike the match.
The witch-hunters caused great social distress and individual disaster in their times. Eventually the charge became so widespread no family was left untouched, and every family knew that the charges were false, malicious and based on a conspiracy of power. Yet, when it was over, there was little guilt amongst the persecutors and even less sympathy for the harmed. So it shall be again: the masses, duped, would prefer to think that the “bad people” brought it upon themselves, even if witchcraft weren’t actually involved. (Actually, those at Salem did apologize, years later. But their souls – and maybe their bank accounts – were in jeopardy.)
The warmists will grump-down eventually and turn to other matters, but the skeptics will still be the bad people who brought trouble onto themselves. What we did was disrupt the harmony of the flock (sheep allusion here). That is unforgivable.
But until then we need to keep attention on the Gores – and Suzukis – of our time. It is from their mouths, like that of Senator Joe McCarthy, that the truth will appear. America was never infested with Communists seeking the overthrow of democracy and the world is not infested with fossil-fuel users causing extreme weather (a common charge of witchcraft, by the way) in their drive towards personal pleasures and general pain (more witchcraft charges). When Gore and Suzuki rail against the world`s destruction of the environment with each new speech, you begin to realise that EVERYONE is an anti-environmentalist and shill for Big Oil, Big Gas or Big Coal.
Or a witch. On a practical level, the terms are identical.
I can’t think of a more appropriate epitaph for Al Gore’s tombstone than his own words:
Fred from Canuckistan says:
August 22, 2011 at 9:44 am
“Bet he’s wishing now he hadn’t flunked out of divinity school.”
The way I heard it he dropped out when he discovered it wasn’t actually a job training program.
Although I enjoyed reading Rex Murphy’s recent editorial in the National Post, I was disappointed that he missed an opportunity to probe for the fundamentally flawed premise of the Gore followers of the world and likewise of the ideological environmentalists who are militant activists for political shifts toward authoritarianism. It is important to understand their flawed premise because the next catastrophic scare story will use the same flawed premise.
Their flawed premise goes like this: mankind, by nature, is environmentally fallible under all forms of society/culture/government that have at their base fundamental individual rights and relatively non-subjective moral systems.
I leave it to the philosophical enthusiast to find the self-contradictory flaw in their premise.
John
If someone wants a great laugh then I caught this in the comment section over there:
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
Jesse Fell says:
August 22, 2011 at 9:57 am
“Somehow, I put more stock in that grade than in an editorial”
Changing the word “stock” to “faith” would be a more accurate portrayal of your credulity.
What is that sound?… Whoooshh… It’s the sound of the retreating tide…
Picked this out of Rex Murphy’s comment section, how true
Jim LadCollapse
Interesting that you should say that.
Here’s a thing.
I have a friend who used to go door to door selling encyclopedias.
Made a good living at it too.
Then in the mid nineties computers took over and those volumes made their way out of the living rooms and into thrift stores.
I daresay that Rex read a few of those as a lad.
I know I did.
Maybe it’s time we dug out those old books and get a real good look at what the world was like when they were printed.
Unlike the “Online” sources, the print is on the page and cannot be altered by everyone with an agenda.
How many polar bears were there twenty years ago?
What was the average temperature in each season for every major city in the world?
You know, with all of the information that’s freely available on the Internet, you can’t find an answer to that question online.
Odd, don’t you think?
So I’m with you, Christopher Johnson.
Let’s dig out the old books, find out what scientists were predicting twenty years ago and hold them to it.
The whole thing is unraveling. When a national TV news anchorman gives this 2-sentence answer (photo link here: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/assets/Lehrer%20letter.jpg ) in response to an 1100-word snail mail asking why skeptic scientists were excluded from offering their detailed views on his program 15+ years, or from debating with his IPCC scientist repeat guests, then we have a major reporting problem in the mainstream media. Speaking of which, my verbatim snail mail to PBS NewsHour anchorman Lehrer is online here: “PBS and Global Warming Skeptics’ Lockout” http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/pbs_and_global_warming_skeptics_lockout.html
Gore’s work is being handled quite nicely, thank you, by the extra-constitutional organization known as the EPA. Essential power plants are going to fall off line not because terrorists have blown the transmission lines or overrun the control rooms, or some rogue nation has lit off an EMP device over US soil – the EPA, with a weapon no mightier than the common pen, has put into motion the final fall of American manufacturing.
I imagine the final insult will be the body bags needed when rolling brownouts punctuate the hot days of summer and the frigid nights of winter will be imported from some smoke stack nation that has a growing industrial base.
Gore has won his battle, and the EPA has won the war. We’re screwed.
It is one thing to read his prose and another thing entirely to hear him speak on Climategate.
This video is from just after the Climategate story came to light and the MSN would not touch it; Rex on the other had had different ideas and used his Canadian national news segment (on the most watched newscast in Canada) to put the word out.
It is a succinct four minute condemnation of the climate science industry. Rex uses his vast vocabulary to select the specific words needed to communicate his ideas in an unambiguous way, if you understand English and have a good vocabulary there can be no misunderstanding.
Most if not all of the sentences in this video could have been ‘Quotes of the week’
Huffman has a very interesting blog. He demonstrates that the pressure/temperature profile comparison of the Earth and Venus shows that, between 1000 millibars (earth surface) and 200mb, Venus’ temperatures are consistently 1.176 higher than Earth (measurements in K degrees). It also turns out that, according to Stefan-Boltzmann when used properly, outside the earth’s atmosphere), that the radiating temperature of Venus invariably turns out to be be 1.176 higher than that on earth. The implications lead to a simple theory, proven by the data and some simple arithmetic that there is no greenhouse effect. It’s a simple theory so, if there is a rebuttal, it should be quickly demonstrable. If not easily rebutted, that already speaks to the “settled” science issues surround greenhouse gas. The few physicists who previously made this claim used rather sophisticated mathematics, probably beyond the ken of most climatologists, and those few who might have have understood probably opted not to bother because, after all, there was this “consensus” (ahem, sounds like SOP for warmists!). Gentlemen, start your engines.;…..
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html
Bravo Rex. Again.
The question that should be posed to you is why you put stock in anyone’s grading of any documentary? Why not think for yourself? Why this incessant appeal to authority from the CAGW believer side?
With any luck, Gore’s upcoming “Climate Reality Project” on Sept. 14 (only 22 shopping days left!) will be his swan song. Or, maybe in his case, it should be “swine song”.
What a waste. He would have made a good used car salesman, especially of the shadier variety.
I’ll keep reading articles at this most instructive web site, but I have to say that I am more impressed by arguments that address the scientific issues than by all the argumenta ad hominem.
And I would be more likely to be converted to general viewpoint expressed on this site if someone could come up with a better explanation of the following phenomena other than that “it’s a cycle of nature” or “we just don’t know”:
— The polar ice cap is shrinking; the Northwest passage has become navigable in the summers, something that has not been true at least since the time of Frobisher, Cabot, Baffin, et. al
— About 90 % of the world’s glaciers are melting and in retreat. The age of the ice that is currently melting is indicated by occasional discoveries such as the frozen body of the ice age hunter in the Alps a few years ago
— Nights are staying warmer, world-wide, a change that makes heat waves such as the one in Europe in 2003 particularly deadly to the old and the sick
— The year of Katrina produced three hurricanes of the highest intensity in addition to Katrina — making it the first year on record when three, let alone four, achieved this level
— The overall power of tropical storms has increased by roughly 50% since the 1970s
— The number of record high temperatures being recorded world wide is now running at about twice the number of record low temperatures, indicating that something has nudged the natural variability of the weather in the direction of greater warmth.
I would welcome being shown that I have “followed a charlatan”. When I had recovered from my initial embarrassment, I would buy a large, comfortable, gas-guzzling SUV and re-enact one of my favorite books — “Travels with Charlie” — and feel no guilt. Until then, I’m staying home.
Al appears to be in stage of upset where you say things, and know you’re saying them, that are burning bridges behind you. As we used to say in a shop I worked in decades ago, “It’s usually not good to burn your bridges behind you but the flames do cast a lovely light.” Usually associated with quitting on short notice and saying why in no uncertain terms on the way out the door. 🙂
Al’s going down in flames. Do we have a thread on spontaneous human combustion?
Jesse Fell 13,000 years ago much of Northern Europe was covered in Ice , some of it a mile thick. Now due to natural changes most of it has gone , now compare the scale of that with the changes you claiming can ‘only come about becasue of AGW.’
Jesse Fell says:
August 22, 2011 at 2:01 pm
I would welcome being shown that I have “followed a charlatan”
Judging from your standard CAGW copy n’ paste laundry list of warmist talking points, and your obligatory strawman arguments of “it’s a cycle of nature” or “we just don’t know”, somehow I doubt that. Don’t you have a bridge to scurry back to somewhere?
Jesse –
I’m curious, which of those items you listed do you feel shows that an anthropogenic action, specifically emission of CO2 into the atmosphere, is the cause?
We’ve been on a slight warming trend since the end of the Little Ice Age and most reasonable folks are thankful that we are. I’m fairly certain you will not find anyone here disputing that globally we are warmer now than we were in the mid-1800’s.
Remember, the primary tenet of Gore’s gospel is that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are causing us to be moving toward catastrophic climate events.
So who is going to replace Al as the face of the next enviro scam?
Hooray for Rex! He rarely disappoints!
Jesse said:
– The polar ice cap is shrinking; the Northwest passage has become navigable in the summers, something that has not been true at least since the time of Frobisher, Cabot, Baffin, et. al
You are actually agreeing that it was at least as warm 500 years ago as it is now? So, what did cause cause Northwest passage to be navigable in 1500? All that wale oil they were burning? Incidentally, Northwest passage was quite navigable in summer months in 1930s. Again, can you explain the reason for it to be navigable then?
– About 90 % of the world’s glaciers are melting and in retreat. The age of the ice that is currently melting is indicated by occasional discoveries such as the frozen body of the ice age hunter in the Alps a few years ago
THis one really cracks me up. Glaciers are retreating and they finding things previously covered by ice. What exactly does this prove, besides that it was warmer a while back than it is now (before those newly defrosted things got covered by ice).
Fair questions, John Who.
First of all, what can explain the fact that nights are staying warmer, other than a buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Then, if all we are seeing is a gradual warming that has been taking place since the Little Ice Age, what has caused this gradual trend, extending over hundreds of years, and why has the trend picked up speed in the last century — roughly, during the time when people starting pouring CO2 into the atmosphere in large quantities?
And, since it is undisputed that atmospheric CO2 absorbs heat energy radiated from the surface of the Earth in the form of infrared radiation, and then, becoming warm itself, sends some of this heat back to the surface of the Earth, again in the form of infrared radiation — how could the addition of billions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere annually NOT be damming up heat at the Earth’s surface? What principle or force is intervening to prevent what the nature of CO2 tells to expect to happen?
The audio of it:
Al Gore: the infamous “bulls@#t” rant
Yes, of course, the use of the word bullshit is obviously the beginning of the end. Is this opinion piece by Rexmurphy really the best that the alarmists can muster? Rexmurphy forgot to address any of the points Mr. Gore was saying bs to. Another alarmist opinion piece written so that the believers will have something to post on their blogs. An uninspiring personal attack.
Loved some of the comments that Murphy is not a scientist, like Algore is. The moron couldn’t even pass theology. The final nail in the coffin of AGW was anounced by NASA and virtually ignored by the MSM. Long wave radiation (heat) escaping into space has not changed since 1978 measured by satellite data despite the massive build up of CO2 at the rate of 1.5 parts per million per year. Every one of the computer models used by the so-called scientists utilize equations that ignore this reality. No wonder that their predictions are catastrophic. Not one of these models has been able to history match the actual temperatures when taken back to 1900 without using fudge factors(artificial manipulations to force the correct answer that the model can’t calculate.)
Jesse Fell says:
August 22, 2011 at 4:03 pm
Fair questions, John Who.
First of all, what can explain the fact that nights are staying warmer, other than a buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Any of a number of things, Jesse.
Here’s the problem, you (the Warmist collective) must show that it is the CO2 in the atmosphere that is causing anything in the climate. Then show that not only can it cause a change in the climate, but the change is enough to be either noticeable or detectable.
The “I think it is CO2 now you prove me wrong, but in the meantime let’s all change our way of life because, well, because “Al Gore said”” argument doesn’t do well here.
Then, if all we are seeing is a gradual warming that has been taking place since the Little Ice Age, what has caused this gradual trend, extending over hundreds of years, and why has the trend picked up speed in the last century — roughly, during the time when people starting pouring CO2 into the atmosphere in large quantities?
Uh, I’ll wait here while you discover that over the warming trend of the last 100 years (including the last 10 years or so there has been absolutely no significant increase in the warming trend “speed” at all. It’ll make you wonder – if the warming trend is roughly the same now as it has been for about 150 years, whatever started it is continuing at roughly the same rate very much independently of the rising of the CO2 level (which also may be an effect of this cause).
I know – Al Gore doesn’t teach that, so it just can’t be.
And, since it is undisputed that atmospheric CO2 absorbs heat energy radiated from the surface of the Earth in the form of infrared radiation, and then, becoming warm itself, sends some of this heat back to the surface of the Earth, again in the form of infrared radiation — how could the addition of billions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere annually NOT be damming up heat at the Earth’s surface? What principle or force is intervening to prevent what the nature of CO2 tells to expect to happen?
Gee, I dunno, Jesse. I guess we will just have to re-write all of the historical climate temperature records ’cause there were times when the atmospheric CO2 levels were much higher than they are now and the planet’s “global” temperature was cooler than it is now.
Darned inconvenient that historical data, isn’t it? Hmmm… now that I think about it, the current data is a bit inconvenient, too, isn’t it?
/trending sarc
jozwhales,
Please try to pay attention. Rex Murphy is certainly not a member of the alarmist cult. And he was responding to the Climategate emails, not to Gore’s recent complaints. Gore’s rant came about two years after Rex’s video.
.
Jesse Fell says:
“First of all, what can explain the fact that nights are staying warmer, other than a buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere?”
That is a classic example of the Argumentum ad Ignorantium fallacy: “Since I can’t think of any other cause, then it must be CO2.”
Maybe this explains it.
Seriously, where’s the correlation? The planet has been warming along the same trend line since the 1600’s, and the warming has not been accelerating. The correlation with the rise in CO2 may simply be a coincidence. If we get a few cold years, it’s almost certainly a coincidental correlation.
Jesse Fell, I was going to rebut your points item by item, but I don’t need to. It is incumbent upon you to demonstrate the null hypothesis, that all these things you mention (some of which I do dispute) are NOT naturally caused. In the meantime, I will assume they are, as these things HAVE occured before.
When your bull$hit moment is on youtube, you are toast.
“First of all, what can explain the fact that nights are staying warmer, other than a buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere? ”
Increased urbanization and irrigation in rural areas are two that come immediately to mind.
Of course, one has to question the premise of your statement itself, since the most recent peer reviewed literature contradicts the statement that “nights are staying warmer”.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/19/according-to-the-best-sited-stations-the-diurnal-temperature-range-in-the-lower-48-states-has-no-century-scale-trend/
Jesse – the climate varies naturally. It would be very unnatural for it to always stay in one place. One aspect of climate – temperature – has gone up and it has gone down as much or more than you have seen in your life time. It will never remain constant, and it will never always go in one direction or another. It never has – it can’t. There are too many drivers at work to allow it.
John M says:
August 22, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Anecdotally, I live in the same house I occupied growing up as a teen in the ’60’s. I remember many hot, dry summer days that for weeks at a time got into the mid- to upper-90’s, even hitting 100 or 101 on occasion. We had many summers that produced delicious red tomatoes from our garden.
However, during last year’s summer we had just 5 days where the temperature was 90 or better–the official record showed 90, 90, 90, 91, 93. Nothing close to 100; nothing 90 or above on consecutive days.
This summer is not much different–we’ve had 7 days where the temperature was 90 or better–just add a couple of 90’s to last year’s temperature records and that’s it. Again, nothing close to 100 but we’ve had a couple of consecutive days of 90 or better–maybe an improvement.
I’m hoping I’ll get some red tomatoes out of my garden this summer (17 big beautiful plants 5′ tall) but I’m not betting on it. I hate frozen green tomatoes.
Jesse Fell says:
August 22, 2011 at 4:03 pm
Convection.
WOW! I’m from Canada and I’ve watched his show a few time, but I never figured Rex would be this blatant about it. Seriously, if it’s gone this far, you know the great unprecedented man made global warming hoax has run out of gas.
Jesse Fell says:
August 22, 2011 at 2:01 pm
one of my favorite books — “Travels with Charlie” — and feel no guilt. Until then, I’m staying home.
Greetings Jesse,
I’ll let others comment on the errors in your list and only say you do need to examine everything more carefully – even Steinbeck. He apparently made up stuff too:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/books/steinbecks-travels-with-charley-gets-a-fact-checking.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
I find it telling that a man who has two plus decades of debate experience.Many speaking experiences in front of large audiences.Avoids all debate challenges from various “deniers”.
He has had many opportunities to destroy the skeptics opposition. If he was correct. But he never considered the angle. That if he destroys them in a debate, he would be able to crow over it. That he would be able to destroy the skeptics credibility. That he and other AGW believers would not have to deal with skeptics again.
But he never tried, and even NOW he is still not going to try. After all the indications that the AGW hypothesis is thoroughly exposed as being completely unverified in the few testable predictions/projections it has made. After the crashing of the carbon markets. After the Climategate revelations. After the various polling indicators of a waning interest in his message.
Even now Gore is STILL avoiding even a single debate. It is plain that he deep inside himself does not really believe the robustness of the AGW hypothesis. It was always about the money,the preening on the stage and the fame he craves.
He buys a mansion on the west coast. He buys a Houseboat. He has a large “carbon footprint”. But he wants us to send him carbon offsets to his company. So he can rationalize his profligate lifestyle.
The man will never make a stand for what he believes out in the open. In a public debate. In a forum or blog. Because he KNOWS that he would be utterly destroyed.
As far as I am concerned, he is a creep.
Jessie Feel,
How can you be that easily duped by the “hockey stick” paper?
I knew it was crap before I read the abstract.Just looking at his NORTHERN HEMISPHERE temperature reconstruction chart was enough.To tell me that it was junk.
Do you know that other fields of research has decades ago verified a very warm MWP and the cold LIA? The HS chart denies their existence.
I think you need to broaden your research horizons.
RockyRoad says:
August 22, 2011 at 6:50 pm
I’m hoping I’ll get some red tomatoes out of my garden this summer (17 big beautiful plants 5′ tall) but I’m not betting on it. I hate frozen green tomatoes.
My situation exactly; except I only have 14 big beautiful plants 5′ tall. Now the funny part is that about a mile away from my place is a lane called ‘Rocky Road.’ I hate green tomatoes too.
anothernonbob says: (August 22, 2011 at 9:24 am)
I remember reading in Bob Beckman’s book, The Downwave, on economic cycles, that in the good times, people embrace crazy extremes of religion, and in the bad times, go back to the conventional ones…
I did not read the book, Bob; but I did think the thought — and believe it.
Jesse Fell says:
August 22, 2011 at 2:01 pm
– Nights are staying warmer, world-wide, a change that makes heat waves such as the one in Europe in 2003 particularly deadly to the old and the sick
Ah yes, the French heatwave of 2003 wich killed about 14.000 mainly elderly people, three years later a similair heatwave hit France and did kill only a small number of people, the difference between the two heatwaves was that the 2003 heatwave struck in august wich is the tradtional holiday month and the country basically shuts down, including physicians and hospitals wich are running a bare minimum.
The Health Minister Jean-François Mattei got the blame for failing to return from his vacation when the heat wave became serious, and his aides for blocking emergency measures in public hospitals (such as the recalling of physicians)
As one French Red Cross official said: “These thousands of elderly victims didn’t die from a heat wave as such, but from the isolation and insufficient assistance they lived with day in and out, and which almost any crisis situation could render fatal.”, “The French family structure is more dislocated than elsewhere in Europe, and prevailing social attitudes hold that once older people are closed behind their apartment doors or in nursing homes, they are someone else’s problem.”
A lot of those 14.000 people would have not died if the heatwave had struck a month later or earlier like in 2006.
And the climate hippies, united, regurgitate: Back in the day of our earlier years, back when we couldn’t afford gas and electricity, we were so much colder, but today, when we’ve been sucker punched into capitalism over and over again, we are so much warmer. Even the newly manufactured tents are so much warmer than fifty year old rubbish open sided flap tents. OMG! Global warming is real, and it’s man made!
Climate hippies, united: Dismantle the capitalism that brought you your evil coziness, go poor!
:p
Jesse I live on Anglesey which has in the last 3 winters suffered snow and last year we were snowed in for 9 days for the first time in over 30 years and we had snow fall on some peaks [OK short lived ] last month so is there a problem with the warming theory or do I not live in a cooler place ?
Ric Werme,
Yes, convection currents are responsible for most of the heat transfer out of the troposphere. From there, however, heat is transferred almost entirely by radiation, and as the amount of CO2 in the upper atmosphere increases, more and more heat will back up at the surface of the Earth before the Earth restores its heat balance (heat energy reaching the Earth = heat energy leaving the Earth). It’s what’s happening in the upper atmosphere that will be crucial from now on.
Which brings up another (minor, but fun) point: “greenhouse gases” is not a very good description of CO2, methane, water vapor, et al. Greenhouses trap heat primarily by not allowing warm air to blow away; clear glass is not a barrier to IR. A better metaphor was made by John Tyndale, one of the early researchers in climate science. He said that CO2 etc. act like a dam; just as a dam causes a local back up of water which must rise to the level of the spillway before water can resume flowing downstream, so these gases interfere with the Earth’s attempt to shed the heat that it receives from the sun, causing a local backup of heat at the Earth’s surface. Without the naturally occurring greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the Earth’s surface temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit, or somewhat less.
An advantage of adopting Tyndale’s metaphor would be, that instead of blaming global warming on green house gases, we could blame it on “those dam gases.”
Jesse Fell says:
August 22, 2011 at 4:03 pm
“And, since it is undisputed that atmospheric CO2 absorbs heat energy radiated from the surface of the Earth in the form of infrared radiation, and then, becoming warm itself, sends some of this heat back to the surface of the Earth, again in the form of infrared radiation — how could the addition of billions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere annually NOT be damming up heat at the Earth’s surface? What principle or force is intervening to prevent what the nature of CO2 tells to expect to happen?”
Fair question. Over the ocean the principle or force is evaporation. Downwelling longwave radiation is totally absorbed by water in a skin layer barely a millionth of a meter deep. The energy isn’t transferred deeper than but rather goes to raising the evaporation rate. When water turns from liquid to vapor it absorbs an inordinate amount of energy in the process but, and here’s the key, it doesn’t get warmer after absorbing that energy. The energy is called “latent heat of vaporization”. It’s “latent” because it isn’t detectable with a thermometer. Heat that can be measured with a thermometer is called “sensible heat”. It’s a great deal of energy. The latent heat needed to turn a gram of liquid water into a gram water vapor, with no change in temperature, is about 1000 times the energy it takes to warm a gram of water by one degree fahrenheit.
So without heating the air or the ocean the downwelling radiation is carried back aloft in rising water vapor until such time as adiabatic cooling causes its temperature to fall below the dew point and a cloud is born. Upon condensation into liquid water again the latent heat is released into the environment as sensible heat. The key here is that the energy, or very little of it, sticks around near the surface but is rather transported efficiently and imperceptably thousands of feet off the surface to the cloud deck. Now those same greenhouse gases that tend to impede radiation leaving the surface headed for outer space now impede the radiation coming from the warm cloud from making it back down to the surface.
Over dry land it doesn’t work that way of course. The energy in the downwelling longwave radiation is absorbed by the land surface and stays there raising its sensible temperature or, for the purist, slowing down the cooling rate of the surface which pretty much amounts to the same thing as warming it because you end up with a surface that’s warmer that it woudl be without the GHG.
Just to add to Dave Springer’s comment, once the latent heat becomes sensible heat, it heats all atmospheric gases including the CO2. The additional CO2 in the atmosphere can radiate this energy to space that would not have been radiated with less CO2. This is the cooling effect of GHGs. Since we now know that the radiation from the atmosphere has not changed as predicted by warmists I think it’s safe to say the cooling effect is an equal and opposite effect to the commonly understood GHE.
The cooling effect works not only on latent heat, but also on heat directly conducted to the atmosphere and heat absorbed from the sun by the atmosphere.
As warmists like to say, it’s simple physics. Well, now you know the rest of the story.
The author of the article writes: “…there simply hasn’t been any signal that his White House is giving the great Gore crusade anything but the barest of rhetorical support.”
It’s true that rhetorical support by the Obama administration is sparse.
However regulatory support is stifling. Just look at the ban on off shore drilling (where they even altered scientific findings to get the results they wanted), effectively shutting down Yucca Mountain by having the NRC chief Commisioner refuse to allow a vote on whether to continue, and having the EPA promulgate new rules that will shut down multiple coal fired electric plants.
Obama is keeping his promise that electricity rates will “necessarily skyrocket” under his plans:
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/11/02/obama-ill-make-energy-prices-skyrocket/
David Springer and Richard M,
It is refreshing to read a post on this site that deals with science, and that doesn’t begin by telling me that Al Gore forgets to turn off the lights when he leaves a room. Thank you, gentlemen.
Yes, evaporation creates a “heat elevator” that conveys heat, in latent form, to the upper atmosphere. But it seems wishful thinking to argue that all condensation, which releases the latent heat, occurs at a high enough altitude to have no effect on climate. A good deal of condensation occurs well within the troposphere; I have never been in the stratosphere, but I have often looked down on clouds from an airplane window. And I have often been in fogs.(Naturally — I’m a liberal.)
And when the heat elevator releases the latent heat at the top of the troposphere, it is radiated in all directions, one of those directions being down. Another direction is up, into the stratosphere, where further heat transfer occurs almost entirely by radiation.
Here is where we are building a “heat dam” such as was described by John Tyndale, one of the first researchers into greenhouse gases. The amount of CO2 in the stratosphere is increasing, as is the altitude of the “skin” — the outer layer of the atmosphere from which outgoing long wave radiation can finally make a clean escape into outer space. Both of these factors — rising CO2 levels in the stratosphere, and the increasing altitude of the atmospheric skin — in effect raise the heat dam; with the result that heat has to back up more and more down below before it reaches the spillway. The backup is global warming.
Over time, the Earth will release as much radiative heat energy into space as it receives from the sun. But by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, we require the Earth’s surface to warm up more and more to achieve this.
And as I write all of this, I remember, uneasily, a few couplets by Alexander Pope:
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
I hope that we can all keep drinking, amicably, until we are darn sure that we are sober.
Jesse Fell says:
“A little learning is a dangerous thing…”
That applies to you, Skippy. Your ‘CO2 dam” doesn’t hold water: click click click
Temperature sensitivity to CO2 must be extremely small, otherwise ΔT would closely track ΔCO2. But it doesn’t, and as we know the only clear correlation is that CO2 follows changes in temperature, so your entire premise is wrong.
Jesse, everything you stated occurred before we started adding CO2 to the atmosphere. And, as we all know, the primary GHG is H2O. What needs to be understood is the change in effect by adding a small amount of CO2 (small relative to the entire atmosphere).
You claim energy would be radiated downward offsets the energy radiated to space, BUT that heat would have stayed in the atmosphere without the addition of CO2. The fact it radiates it downward just means a slight redistribution of energy. However, the energy that is radiated to space is a net loss of energy.
The effect is essentially the opposite of the GHE. With the GHE energy that would have been radiated to space is kept in the atmosphere. With the cooling effect I mentioned we have energy that would have been kept in the atmosphere that gets radiated outward. You can’t argue for just half of the physics to hold. It’s all or nothing.
The key empirical data is the fact that the energy radiated to space has NOT changed. It appears physics is working as it should.
Richard M says
the key empirical data —-NOT changed
Henry@richard M
not bad observation, but as we know more heat came in (maxima rising)
it means something has absorbed that extra heat that came in
where did it go?
I think I figured it out. What do you think??
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Jesse says,
“And, since it is undisputed that atmospheric CO2 absorbs heat energy radiated from the surface of the Earth in the form of infrared radiation, and then, becoming warm itself, sends some of this heat back to the surface of the Earth, again in the form of infrared radiation — how could the addition of billions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere annually NOT be damming up heat at the Earth’s surface? What principle or force is intervening to prevent what the nature of CO2 tells to expect to happen?”
Answer: the basic laws of thermodynamics.
1. Yes CO2 absorbs IR, but it equally re-radiates IR – back into space. As the troposphere is invariably COLDER than the earth’s surface it is impossible for the colder CO2 in the troposphere to ‘heat’ the warmer earth’s suface by back radiation. Otherwise, dear sir, we could generate infinite energy from a light bulb using a mirror to reflect its energy back to the filament, which, according the the ‘GHT’, will cause the filament to warm even more, thus radiating more, reflected back and heating it yet more etc etc in an escalating temperature rise. THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN IN THE REAL UNIVERSE. Or another example: when your pour hot coffee into a Dewar flask, the GHT, as you explain it, will cause the coffee to boil in the flask by reflecting back the radiation from the hot liquid. Again this does not happen in the real universe.
There really is no such thing as a ‘greenhouse effect’ in the atmosphere. CO2 actually causes minor cooling by blocking out half the IR (within its absorbtion bands) from the sun and sending it back into space. Also CO2 is an integral part of photosynthesis which itself COOLS the earth’s surface as it turns CO2 and WATER into sugar plus oxygen. Plants, for example, draw up water (liquid) during the process and transpire it as vapour from its leaves absorbing latent heat and therefore causing surface cooling. The more CO2 there is the more this takes effect.
Then you need to understand that CO2 levels are currently very low indeed by earth’s long history. Yes, they are rising, but from a dangerously low base level. If CO2 levels were to fall to around 180ppm then all life on earth would die except for for bacteria as photosynthesis would stop. The last time they were as low as today was 300 million years ago.
Difficult to go into detail here but can be contacted at philip.foster17 at ntlworld.com
Richard M,
Again, I appreciate your avoidance of the ad hominem approach, and your preference for actually talking about the science.
You write: “You claim energy would be radiated downward offsets the energy radiated to space, BUT that heat would have stayed in the atmosphere without the addition of CO2.”
What I’ve read is that the crucial stuff is happening at the outer edge of the atmosphere — the jumping off point for outgoing longwave radiation (IR). Here, the CO2 and all gases are quite cold, and absorb of lot of IR from below before they become significant radiators of heat into space. The amount and altitude of these gases at the jumping off point are both increasing, which means that the amount of heat from below that this last layer absorbs before it emits much IR is also increasing. Thus, we are adding thickness to this outer blanket as we add CO2 to the atmosphere. Here is what is causing the backup behind Tyndall’s dam.
With that, I sign off from this discussion. To achieve fuller sobriety, however, I intend to curl up with the following books:
— Principles of Atmospheric Science, buy John E. Frederick
— What We Know About Climate Change, by Kerry Emmanuel
These books are not as relaxing as “Travels with Charlie”, but, as Steinbeck’s son once said, “I think Dad just made a lot of that stuff up.”
When did the 1750-1870 tail of the LIA get to be the “ideal” climate? If there’s anything that gets and holds us well above that period, coldest in the last 10,000 years, bring it on!
Unfortunately, the CO2 mechanism is a dollar short and about 800 yrs late, on average. The current rise is probably a delayed reaction from the MWP.
Jesse Fell asks:
….how could the addition of billions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere annually NOT be damming up heat at the Earth’s surface? What principle or force is intervening to prevent what the nature of CO2 tells to expect to happen?
Transformed to involve the major “ghg”: how could the integrated addition of billions of tons of water vapor to the atmosphere annually, and occurring in some measure 24/7, not be damming up the Earth’s surface heat. What principle or force is intervening to prevent what the nature of water vapor tells us to expect to happen? Hint, see Willis Eschenbach’s “thermostat” schema.
Why does the CO2 = CAGW “physics” not ever yield an empirically confirmed prediction?
Jesse Fell
Your list looks like “it has warmed” , which is a given.
The question is is the warming enough to be a problem for mankind ?
Even whether mankind caused any of the warming is an issue which is important only to climatologists.
The warming after the little ice age began immediately and has continued until today but is only 1/2 ° C per century. Since it started in 1860 I doubt that CO2 caused it but since it is so slow who cares? Superimposed on that is a 60 year PDO sine wave that causes the illusion of warming or cooling.
The 1940 to 1978 natural cooling caused fears of a little ice age.
The 1978 to 1998 natural warming was right on schedule and can be easily explained by excess El Nino’s.
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest
So the whole CAGW scare story hangs on warming which is natural and so slow it is not a problem.
Perhaps Gore’s rant will turn out to be his “Howard Dean” moment.
Jesse Fell says:
August 23, 2011 at 1:02 pm
“What I’ve read is that the crucial stuff is happening at the outer edge of the atmosphere — the jumping off point for outgoing longwave radiation (IR). Here, the CO2 and all gases are quite cold, and absorb of lot of IR from below before they become significant radiators of heat into space. The amount and altitude of these gases at the jumping off point are both increasing, which means that the amount of heat from below that this last layer absorbs before it emits much IR is also increasing. Thus, we are adding thickness to this outer blanket as we add CO2 to the atmosphere. Here is what is causing the backup behind Tyndall’s dam.”
Jesse, there is no hot spot in the upper troposphere. There is no dam. The upper troposphere is not heating up faster than the surface like the climate model indicate. If Co2 and the rest of the “GHS” were so good at damming “heat”, we would not need Fiberglass insulation in our walls. The CO2 drives the climate hypotheses doesn’t make sense especially when you dig into the sensitivity, amplification and positive feedback part.
I wonder what Al Gore’s ex-wife has to say about him.
I am sure if he cheated all of us with his convenient lies, I bet he probably cheated on his wife as well?
anyway,
I wondered if you all figure out what was the real cause of the extra warming?
It was the increase in vegetation. That, in turn, could be partly caused by the extra carbon dioxide acting as a fertilizer.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/
So, in the end, it turns out that all those blaming the increase in CO2 were (partly) right after all….
….it was just the proposed mechanism that was completely wrong…..
which still makes Al Gore a cheat, does it not?
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Jesse Fell says:
August 23, 2011 at 1:02 pm
With that, I sign off from this discussion.
Hence all subsequent responses are pointless…or perhaps more pointless than those before he quit. I wonder if responding to the cut-and-paste is really the way to go? By their very content, Jesse’s posts indicated that his mind is made up, and no arguement will change that, despite his invitation to show him that he had been duped. All it served to do was clog up this post with yet another troll rant; and in so doing losing the focus: Rex Murphy’s scathing analysis of the ‘state’ of climate ‘science’. Jesse Fell succeeding quite nicely in disrupting the thread, and getting us to do all the work!
Jesse Fell says: I intend to curl up with the following books:
– Principles of Atmospheric Science, buy John E. Frederick
– What We Know About Climate Change, by Kerry Emmanuel
Because, being a warmist troll requires reinforcing his Warmist Beliefs. Reading anything not on the standard Warmist reading list would be verboten anyway, as it could cause (gasp) doubts to creep in.
@Bruce Too good. True. It is a religion. But without God in it. That’s sad.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/what-was-that-what-henry-said
It is to the CBC’s credit that it is afraid to dump Rex from the airwaves and leave the field to the Bugmeister. Perhaps visions of having its staff ‘staked’ à la Count Drakul Coast-to-Coast deter it?
Mike Bromley the Kurd says:
August 24, 2011 at 1:07 am
Jesse Fell says:
August 23, 2011 at 1:02 pm
“With that, I sign off from this discussion.”
Hence all subsequent responses are pointless…or perhaps more pointless than those before he quit. I wonder if responding to the cut-and-paste is really the way to go?
Other interested people are reading and still reading. So once someone like Jesse Fell enters, he must be responded to. Otherwise he can freely spread disinformation – illogic, falsehood, and anti-scientific argument – as, in effect, a propaganda tactic, whether he intends to or not.
His informal, unhinged, and utimately defective arguments are the kind which a lot of people out there might or do accept. And it’s always a challenge to try to defeat them in terms which open minded people of common sense can understand, while it’s also an opportunity to interject facts and the actual use of real science which are not widely known as a result of Climate Science’s tactics, which intentionally leave out the vast majority of validly applicable info and science.
Continuing to respond even after he disappears still helps me to see how others handle his arguments, and learn, and it keeps him from having the last word, another tactic meant to “convince” the not so savvy reader.
I’m always trying to develop and remember one-liners which might apply to the CO2 = CAGW “thinking”, so here I think we’re kind of stuck with making lemonade out of lemons.