I’ll be offline most of this weekend, as I got virtually no work done for myself this week thanks to the BEST “PR before peer review shenanigans” and the compliant cadre of barking media lapdogs that followed with tails-a-wagging looking for a sound bite.
Discuss topics on science, weather climate, etc here quietly amongst yourselves. don’t make me come back here.
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I live in South Africa and I’d love to use my proximity to the upcoming IPCC Conference to make some sort of point. I considered a sky message saying e.g. ‘IT’S A SCAM, FOLKS’ or something, but it’s too expensive.
I’d love to rent a stand (if they will have such a thing) selling ‘The Hockey Stick Illusion’, ‘The Delinquent Teenager…’, and such.
Any suggestions?
Latitude says:
October 22, 2011 at 12:15 pm
“I don’t mean this as an insult….but I’ve seen that analogy before….and it’s the stupidest analogy anyone could ever use……
5000 ppm CO2 is not toxic……….”
___________________________
In order for it to not sound as insulting, one can frame it as “I disagree with the premise of the analogy”, rather than “it’s the stupidest analogy anyone could ever use”.
I wasn’t saying that CO2 is directly toxic to humans in large quantities. The purpose of the analogy is to show that small quantities of a substance can have a fairly large impact. In the case of CO2, potentially small quantities (in the parts per million) have a measurable impact on radiative transfer in the infrared spectrum (preventing heat from radiating out). Demonstration in Youtube video.
Here is a couple of projects for somebody else to do.
The tornado season of 1974 and 2011 are often compared. Today’s radar is better at identifying tornadoes. What percentage of tornadoes were missed by the 1974 radar?
Next major project. The year of each layer of ice core is known. Is there an interactive chart that can do the following. I am going to suggest that it be similar to stock market charts with which you can look at different lengths of time and show several stocks at once. The few ice core charts I have seen cover 400,000 years so if you have lines for temperature and CO2 to be able to see them they have to be so wide that they cover a thousand years and it will look like they move exactly together. If there was an interactive chart that would let us choose the gases or isotopes to be on the graph and allow us to zoom into, for example 250 years, then we could see without overlap the temperature and CO2 lines from 1,700 to 1,950.
This is the first of two excerpts from The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert, by Donna Laframboise…
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/10/21/book-excerpt-conspiracy-of-silence/
10 Steps to turning the American economic engine back on…
1. Repeal Obamacare & Reform Tort Law, Cut FDA by 30%
2. Eliminate Tax Code, deploy Flat Tax or Fair Tax…
3. Repeal EPA Regs. since 1990, Eliminate EPA, Block grant 30% of current EPA funds to States
4. Balanced Budget based on GDP w/ yearly outside audits released to public
5. Block grant Medicaid and Medicare to States, Reward Patients for better health
6. Eliminate the DEA, DOE, HUD, DHS, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
7. Further reduce Federal Employment by 30% via attrition over following 7 years
8. Term Limits, No Czars, No Fed. Gov. Salary > ???k but they can keep their pension & benefits
9. Sell Federal Assets and apply them ONLY to reducing the National Debt
10. Cut Foreign Aid by 50%, Close 50% of Overseas Military Bases, Defund United Nations
Mkurbo: Are you a talking parrot??
Vuk
Big Oil pays you by the page. You need to write at least 75 pages.
tonyb
otter17 still doesn’t get it. We’re not talking about plutonium here.
At current and projected levels CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
otter17 says:
October 22, 2011 at 12:44 pm
I wasn’t saying that CO2 is directly toxic to humans in large quantities. The purpose of the analogy is to show that small quantities of a substance can have a fairly large impact.
=================================================
otter said: “The increase in CO2 due to emissions is finite and measurable, not nothing. As an analogy, 40% increase in Blood Alcohol Content is not trivial.”
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Otter, go all out then. Compare it to arsenic, rat poison, valium….LOL
Compare it to something else that even in large quantities has very little impact……….
What are grasses? C3? or C4’s?
How high were CO2 levels that allowed them to evolve?
How efficient are they at sequestration?
At what level of CO2 do they stop growing?
What CO2 levels becomes limiting for them?
Why are CO2 levels so low?
>>
I got virtually no work done for myself this week thanks to the BEST
<<
This brings to mind the book written by Sandra Boynton, “Don’t Let the Turkeys Get You Down.” It seems appropriate.
Jim
http://earthquake-report.com/2011/09/25/el-hierro-canary-islands-spain-volcanic-risk-alert-increased-to-yellow/
Updated to Red Alert. Still possible for a major tsunami to hit the eastern USA when it does blow.
This is the first of two excerpts from The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert, by Donna Laframboise
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/10/21/book-excerpt-conspiracy-of-silence/
As a new approach, I would like to see a list of alarmists and their organizations, and the media who go along with them.
Every time they make some alarmist and unscientific pronouncement, they are given points.
Each week the list is sorted in descending order of the number of points, and the top 100 or so alarmists are published. Each week their point totals are reduced by a small factor.
So a new claim, say, that the sea level will rise a few metres, will get them 1000 points, while the points for some bad science done a few years ago will slowly fade away. So if alarmists stop saying alarmist things they will move down the list and disappear eventually.
The enormity of the alarmist claim decides the amount of points initially awarded.
Every media who publishes the worst of the alarmist stories gets points, and every cite of bad science gets new points.
I think I know who will be at the top of the list, but I would like to quantify that.
I propose that, as a start, WUWT articles since Climategate be analyzed for the points list. The alarmist stories don’t have to be about climate, but probably will be.
Smokey says:
October 22, 2011 at 1:05 pm
“otter17 still doesn’t get it. We’re not talking about plutonium here.
At current and projected levels CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.”
Latitude says:
October 22, 2011 at 1:11 pm
otter17 says:
October 22, 2011 at 12:44 pm
“Otter, go all out then. Compare it to arsenic, rat poison, valium….LOL”
_________________
Guys, I repeat: I am not saying that CO2 is an inherently toxic substance and the analogy isn’t meant to convey that meaning. I realize that CO2 is a part of the carbon cycle. The premise is that a release of long-sequestered CO2 changes the balance of the carbon cycle and can change the radiative transfer properties of the atmosphere. All I am saying is that even though it has a small quantity, that doesn’t mean that its properties are negligible.
otter17 says (October 22, 2011 at 10:19 am): “Say hypothetically that the CO2 emissions needed to be reduced down to zero by say 2050-2060 roughly. What would be the best policy, technology, and treaty measures to do so such that our livelihood, economy, etc remain productive/happy?”
(1) I reject the premise of the question. The worst realistic projections of the IPCC would not approach the catastrophe caused by eliminating fossil fuel usage by 2060. Note that the fantasies of the hysterics (“last breeding pair of humans in the arctic”) are in fact fantasies.
(2) Assuming it must be done, it can’t be done within the parameters of the question, i.e. economy remaining “productive/happy”. It can be done with a drastic reduction in the living standards of the world and the inevitable population crash, but that hardly qualifies as “productive/happy”.
(3) Assuming the priority is “productive/happy”, anthropogenic CO2 emissions can be reduced over the long term by rapid economic growth. Remove impediments to economic improvement like “green” power mandates, corporate subsidies (e.g. Solyndra), anti-nuclear hysteria, the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, minimum wage laws, Kyoto-like treaties, “carbon” trading, portective tariffs, etc etc ad nauseam. As the world gets wealthier, it gets “greener”, and population levels off. At some point the wealth-fueled technology improvements and increasing demand for fossil fuels will make alternatives (e.g. nuclear) more attractive, and fossil fuel consumption will decrease–wihout impeding economic growth.
Juraj V. says:
October 22, 2011 at 12:09 pm
“Coming La Nina seems pretty deep.”
if only they would chamge the scale so as we could see how deep… What’s the point of showing a graph with the interesting bit plotting off scale?
M.A.Vukcevic says:
October 22, 2011 at 10:22 am
Vuk – nice graphs! The second one says ‘its the Sun stupid’ about as strongly as is possible. The NA SST trend of 0.25 C/century is also interesting since the trend on the CET since 1659 is 0.24 C/century.
Looking forward to your write up!
otter17 says:
October 22, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Guys, I repeat: I am not saying that CO2 is an inherently toxic substance and the analogy isn’t meant to convey that meaning.
The premise is that a release of long-sequestered CO2 changes the balance of the carbon cycle and can change the radiative transfer properties of the atmosphere.
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But you set yourself up…..alcohol is toxic
Try another analogy, like food or fertilizer…..that would be a closer analogy to CO2.
Ex: the right amount of fertilizer…..too much kills the plant
CO2 only makes a few people woozie at over 10,000 ppm. Not drunk or toxic……
What I’m trying to get you to think about is……why was CO2 sequestered?
Just like fertilizer…plants, bacteria etc use it up….sequester it
What happens when it becomes limiting?
Some plants shut down completely around 200 ppm……..
Yes, it changes the balance of the carbon cycle….for the better
Levels much lower and we would start seeing certain groups of plants and bacteria going extinct.
otter17, that’s just trolling. You’re trying to re-argue the entire AGW hypothesis, and throwing in the Strong Precautionary Principle on top of it.
Here’s a wee question to ponder: human CO2 emissions have fluctuated strongly since the Mona Loa records began. None of those fluctuations show up. Why not?
@ur momisugly Gary Hladik
1) I did not ask anyone to accept the premise. It was only posited as a hypothetical situation and there was no mention of last breeding pairs. Nevertheless, thanks for the contributions.
As for items 2) and 3), don’t they conflict? In 2) you say that it is impossible to meet the parameters, but in 3) you indicate that rapid economic growth can reduce CO2 emissions (though I guess not to zero). So, I suppose they don’t conflict if in item 3) the CO2 emissions aren’t reduced to zero.
Ok, so let’s say that you believe that item 2) is unwaveringly true, what would the incentive be to believe in any scientists or scientific bodies that lay out CO2 emissions targets or predicted wide scale harm to the environment? There likely would be a default to adaptation to whatever comes if item 2) is held as absolute truth.
Brian H says:
October 22, 2011 at 1:55 pm
“otter17, that’s just trolling. You’re trying to re-argue the entire AGW hypothesis, and throwing in the Strong Precautionary Principle on top of it.
Here’s a wee question to ponder: human CO2 emissions have fluctuated strongly since the Mona Loa records began. None of those fluctuations show up. Why not?”
_________
No, the argument isn’t that the AGW hypothesis is true necessarily, only to find what back pocket plan to have if contrarians happen to be wrong and the NAS, AAAS, IPCC, etc happen to be right. You admit that there is a chance that the contrarians are wrong, right? Plus, ocean acidification seems to be an issue with some scientists. The plans that are thought up, don’t necessarily have to be implemented.
As far as human CO2 emissions and their relationship to the Keeling curve, this Wiki page offers some resources. I don’t know of any scientist that rejects the idea that human CO2 emissions are not the primary contributor to the measured increase in the atmosphere and oceans. If you know of any, provide evidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere
otter17 says:
October 22, 2011 at 2:04 pm
what would the incentive be to believe in any scientists or scientific bodies that lay out CO2 emissions targets or predicted wide scale harm to the environment?
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none what so ever……..
We are below our CO2 target now.
As an example of how close we are to being too low.
If you change that 40% increase, to a 40% decrease….
390 X 40% = 156ppm
390 – 156 = 234ppm
At 234ppm the growth rate of some very large groups of plants and bacteria would be so severely slowed down, they would not be able to compete. Hold those levels long enough, and they would go extinct.
How can we be that close to the edge, and want to limit CO2? Knowing that for no known reasons, CO2 levels have dropped much more than that in the past………….some of the reasons we do know. Evolution of grasses for one……….
Plus, ocean acidification seems to be an issue with some scientists.
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otter, the things they are worried about dying, because of “ocean acidification”….
….only evolved because CO2 levels were much higher
You can’t “acid” something until you run out of buffer…
…C(arbon)O2
Latitude says:
October 22, 2011 at 2:18 pm
“none what so ever……..
We are below our CO2 target now.”
_______________
Do you know of any scientist that indicates what you are saying? I haven’t heard of such a target, though I am curious.
“As an example of how close we are to being too low.
If you change that 40% increase, to a 40% decrease….”
______________
So you are worried about too little carbon dioxide? What would cause the carbon dioxide levels to decrease 40% below pre-industrial levels? Careful to not be too alarmed about the lack of carbon dioxide, haha (I kid).
Anyway, I’m not necessarily here to argue what the best CO2 level is. I’m just trying to see if recommendations for CO2 targets from scientists are realistically do-able and what type of mitigation plans would work as per NAS recommendations.
I like the graphic you have put up Anthony. Knots and splicing is a subject that should be part of science teaching.
Hey, otter17,
If you’re really worried about the “GHG” contribution of a couple parts per million of a relatively weak “greenhouse gas” (which is fairly odd to start with, since as others have pointed out, CO2 concentrations have been a lot higher in the past without killing dear mommy Gaia), why not focus on the stronger greenhouse gases?
I propose emergency funding to manufacture giant sponges to sequester the planet’s water. (I also propose emergency funding for me to buy up bottled water stock.)