Weekend open thread

@otter17:
Over 9000 PhDs in the hard sciences suggests a lot of people who know enough about physics, chemistry and biology to be able to make a contribution to the field of climate. Being a ‘practising climate scientist’ or not is irrelevant in terms of being able to demonstrate an understanding of the processes that could conceivably play a part; in fact, you could say that not being a practising climate scientist is equivalent to being a non-executive director, able to bring some independent thought to the field.
The main point, though, is that there is not a consensus on AGW, which the main battering ram used in the PR campaign behind it.

Keith says:
October 23, 2011 at 5:49 pm
…
The main point, though, is that there is not a consensus on AGW, which the main battering ram used in the PR campaign behind it.
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Keith, a scientific consensus is a different beast to a political consensus. A scientific consensus is what happens when scientists stop having to defend a theroy and start accepting it as a basis for further work. Doctor’s accept germ theory, that’s a consensus, physicists accept relativity, and so on. Climate scientists accept the reality of GHG-driven warming. It’s not about PR, it’s not done by petition.

JohnWho

In any event, if you want to understand the skeptical position, I would strongly suggest that you attempt to discern it from the skeptics and not from the warmist/alarmists.

My impression of skeptics’ views comes entirely from skeptics.
THE most deplorable thing about this debate is the tribalism.
Based on your comments, then, could we phrase a question for the poll thus?
There is little doubt that increased CO2 will warm the world, but this effect will be negligible – strongly agree/agree/disagree/strongly disagree
I think you are dead right that a majority of skeptics will strongly agree with that particular statement.
My own preference for the poll would be that no language that can be construed towards a political end be admitted. ‘Catastrophic’ is a qualitative judgement. It’s too vague and carries political baggage from the debate in general. Perhaps there is a call for a poll with a more political angle, but I’d like to keep these contexts separate (as I do in the general debate).
In fact, it would be good to save tertiary questions for a different poll. If the basics are so controversial, there can be little hope for progressive discussion or understanding further along. Eg, you say:

You are correct – there is not solid agreement among scientists that there is a “green house effect

Among scientists is there is extremely solid agreement that certain gases in the atmosphere inhibit the flow of radiation from the surface of the planet to outer space, thereby making the Earth warmer than it would be without them (the ‘greenhouse effect’ – as far as I know, maybe 4 scientists in the world have written anything formal rejecting it). Rejection of the greenhouse effect has far more traction among non-scientists in the skeptical milieu. A poll would help discover whether that was an issue of significance to the skeptical understanding, or whether only a handful of people endorse it. Such are the kinds of determinations that might streamline the skeptical argument and the wider debate. As it is, it’s a mess of often contradictory ideas rather than a coherent formulation.

Khwarizmi says:
October 23, 2011 at 9:09 pm
Otter 17 –
At 1500ppm of CO2, plants grow 2-3 times faster than at ambient concentrations.
(refs: personal experience, thousands of peer-reviewed studies, a 60 year history of CO2-enrichment in the greenhouse industry, Gardening Indoors Van Patten)
That is why I encouraged R.Gates to refrain from 2nd and 3rd hand accounts, and instead try performing a simple experiment in the real world by growing plants in a CO2-enriched environment. In response to my suggestion, R Gates produced a desultory confabulation about “tree shrew” like ancestors living in a a “steamy jungle” inappropriate for producing the grains required to sustain a modern civilization.
Grains, of course, like most plants, benefit significantly from CO2-enrichment:
https://www.crops.org/publications/cs/abstracts/20/6/CS0200060687
Like R.Gates, you should try the experiment at home.
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Suggestions that we should embrace a return to a time of CO2 levels when human ancestors were tree-shrews and the crops of wheat, rice, barley, and corn did not exist (which of course, allowed for the development of human civilization) is a bit of a gamble. The Holocene has been very kind to humanity (and the grain crops). Leaving it behind to boldly go where CO2 levels have not been for millions of years probably has some risks….

Lucy Skywalker @ur momisugly here

if you go to RealClimate, you will find NO links to skeptics websites. Zilch. Nada.

Not quite. They link to Roger Pielke Senior’s climate blog.

Jesse you are exactly correct. You need dense enough atmosphere and then you get warmer surface. Thin atmosphere – cold Mars; 1 bar atmosphere – liveable Earth; 90 bar atmosphere – hot Venus. Simple heat retention of the bulk mass is totally ignored.

Seems to be strange, that at the same time some are arguing that changes in CO2 concentration are so small, that they can’t be significant, and at the same time they arguing that changing CO2 level concentration has huge positive effects on plants growth.

Regarding R. Gates’ posting of ink @ur momisugly 0, 280, and 560 parts per million: Analogies are seldom perfect, but even if less than perfect, some might be useful. After thinking through the illustration, I believe that the ink analogy is not useful. Several points to consider:
1. It is a strawman argument. Reasonable skeptics who point out that a 50% in the low CO2 concentration is still low are NOT arguing that small quantities in everything are meaningless. A miniscule amount of plutonium is not meaningless. Yeast is not meaningless. However, the urine from a moose urine in a mountain stream is meaningless, and the urine from two moose is still meaningless. The key is to understand what situation we are discussing. To point out that ink colors water is quite a strawman.
2. The analogy works against the arguments of CAGW in considering marginal impacts. Even with only three examples, one can see that increasing ppm has a decreasing marginal impact. The first 280 increase has a great impact on opacity, the next 280 has less.
3. Ink is not a natural part of water; CO2 is a natural part of the atmosphere. Of course, polluting water with ink will have a impact. Doubling a small natural part of a system may not be expected to have a large impact.
4. What if that which constitutes a small portion has positive contribution? Perhaps a better analogy than ink-in-water would be Vitamin A in one’s diet. Vitamin A composes a miniscule portion of my volume intake of food. If I double it, I probably will have positive health benefits from doing so. If I increased Vitamin A intake by 100 times, then I may have negative health benefits. Likewise, if we increase CO2 by 50%, the increase in crop production is remarkable. At least 17% of the current crop production is due to increased CO2 concentrations from pre-industrial times. No doubt, the actual # is in the twenties. Also, you lose credibility amongst analysts if you assert that we will double the CO2 concentration.
5. Water does not have a feedback loop. In Scenario A of Hansen’s 1988 work, he assumed that we would have 1.5% growth rate in CO2 emissions, reaching 394 ppm by now. In reality, we have exceeded the 1.5% growth rate, but the ppms have lagged behind – why? – because there is a feedback loop as the CO2 has promoted plant growth which has absorbed CO2.

LazyTeenager says:
October 23, 2011 at 2:33 am
Myrrh says:
October 23, 2011 at 1:08 am
Carbon Dioxide is heavier than air, it therefore displaces air and sinks unless work is done to move or mix it, it will not, as your analogy extrapolates to and which is the implied message in this junk analogy, mix thoroughly into the fluid gaseous ocean of air of our atmosphere as does the ink. What is the temperature of each in your analogy? Use a drop of something with the same relative weight to water as carbon dioxide to air. Tell us what happens.
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All of this is wrong. Its true that CO2 is heavier than air and if you pour pure CO2 out into a room full of air it will sink immediately. But this is temporary.
There is a process called diffusion that will distribute the CO2 throughout the entire volume of the room eventually. Bulk mixing of the gas via a fan simply hastens this process.
Go on then, explain to us exactly what you mean by diffusion.
There is some segregation of CO2 from the bottom to the top of the atmosphere, but the degree of this effect is dictated by the weight of CO2 relative to the atmospheric temperature. The effect is very small and is typically ignored.
The same effect applies in water. The dye molecules are much heavier than water molecules, but as long as the dye molecules are soluble in water or otherwise dispersible they will spread evenly throughout the liquid.
How do they spread?
The same applies to suspensions of clay in water. In effect the thermal jiggling of the clay particles by water molecules prevents them from settling due to gravity. Therefore for settling to happen the partakes must be large enough for gravity to overcome thermal motions.
? what clay particle experiment is this? New one on me.
Hope that’s clear.
As mud, please expand.
And Myrrh just because you don’t understand it does not mean that it’s stupid. A bit more humility will lead to less humiliation.
Hmm, are you showing humility by assuming that I don’t understand it when it could be you who are wrong?
The example of ink in water was stupid. I didn’t extrapolate to those who thought it was such clever science that we must all immediately suspend our critical faculties. As An Inquirer says, a strawman argument. One of several reasons it was a stupid analogy.
An Inquirer says:
October 24, 2011 at 12:41 pm