DailyClimate.org is pleased to offer two opinion pieces by notable climate scientists commenting on the recent release of the climate science emails.
Get a load of this headline:
Opinion: Snippets of stolen emails cannot make the Earth flat
Wow, make the earth flat? That has to be some sort award winning headline for the most stupid strawman argument ever. But then, look who is writing it – Supermandia
The first paragraph sets the nauseating tone:
Here is what we know: The Earth is round, smoking is linked to lung cancer, and humans are changing the climate by emitting massive amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other gases. Like extra blankets at night, those emissions are warming the planet. The physics of greenhouse gases has been understood for more than 100 years. It is not new science.
[Update: Hmmm, commenter John-X points out this reference from Mike Mann’s PSU meteorology dept (shown below) which really throws a wet blanket on that statement.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Does the atmosphere (or any greenhouse gas) act a blanket?
At best, the reference to a blanket is a bad metaphor. Blankets act primarily to suppress convection; the atmosphere acts to enable convection. To claim that the atmosphere acts a blanket, is to admit that you don’t know how either one of them operates.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Of course, the rest of this is just a BS strawman argument, most skeptics (and certainly no skeptical scientists) don’t dispute the greenhouse effect, only the magnitude of the effect and confounding factors such as feedbacks and sensitivity. The phrase about smoking and lung cancer is right out of the slimer playbook championed by people like Romm and Gore, who have used such tactics before. The only purpose for it being there is to tar people you disagree with a broad brush.
But wait, there’s more sliminess. How about we link the climate debate to illegal steroid use too?
… Killer heat waves, devastating droughts and wildfires, and unprecedented floods are expected in our warmer world and we are witnessing these events now. Climate is the canvas and weather is what is painted on that canvas. Change the canvas and all weather is affected. The extra heat and moisture that human-caused warming is adding to the climate is like injecting steroids into our weather.
Scott Mandia must think everyone is stupid except him, because time and time again it can be demonstrated that there is no trend in severe weather that links to climate. Even NOAA puts the kibosh on such linkages, such as with the Russian heat wave wrongly blamed on climate change.
But hey, if you think of yourself as “superman of climate” I suppose supersized-ego powers come with the cape. You can read Scott Mandia’s super opinion here.
From the press release:
John Abraham is an associate professor of Thermal Sciences at the
University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minn. He teaches and carries
out research in the areas of thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid
mechanics, and climate monitoring. He is co-founder of the Climate Rapid
Response Team.
Scott Mandia is Professor of Physical Science at Suffolk County
Community College, Long Island, New York. He has been teaching weather
and climate courses for more than 20 years.
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The thing about di-oxy carbide is that increases in its content in the atmosphere are only beneficial, while those of carbon dioxide are horrendously hurtful to our environment.
Climate scientists are a rare breed, while ´climate scientists´are as numerous as their grant-addicted, unfounded scare stories.
In the beginning, cigarettes were healthy and did not cause cancer, likewise the Earth was flat and carbon dioxide was an evil gas. Now we are wiser – at least some of us are – and we know better.
He has been teaching weather and climate courses for more than 20 years.
Good heavens, lots of people will have to take the course again. Somewhere else.
As they say at Penn State, Mandia is just enjoying some ‘horseplay’ with the evidence.
jae says:
November 23, 2011 at 2:39 pm
mmmmm…. yeah, kinda.
I gotta quote Prof. Fraser, one more time:
“Let’s examine some of the nonsense frequently offered in the name of science.
Is the greenhouse effect a good thing?
Well, yes, if you appreciate living.
(…)
Does the atmosphere trap heat (in producing the greenhouse effect)?
Alas no. As rapidly as the atmosphere absorbs energy it loses it. Nothing is trapped. If energy were being trapped, i.e. retained, then the temperature would of necessity be steadily rising. Rather, on average, the temperature is constant and the energy courses through the system without being trapped within it.
Does the atmosphere behave like a greenhouse?
The name, greenhouse effect is unfortunate, for a real greenhouse does not behave as the atmosphere does. The primary mechanism keeping the air warm in a real greenhouse is the suppression of convection (the exchange of air between the inside and outside). Thus, a real greenhouse does act like a blanket to prevent bubbles of warm air from being carried away from the surface. As we have seen, this is not how the atmosphere keeps the Earth’s surface warm. Indeed, the atmosphere facilitates rather than suppresses convection.
One sometimes hears the comparison between the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere (not in real greenhouses) and the interior of a parked car which has been left in the summer Sun with its windows rolled up. This comparison is as phony as is the comparison to real greenhouses. Again, keeping the windows closed merely suppresses convection.
Whether the topic is a real greenhouse or a car, one still hears the old saw that each stays warm because visible radiation (light) can pass through the windows, and infrared radiation cannot. Actually, it has been known for the better part of a century that this has very little bearing on the issue. ”
again:
http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/BadGreenhouse.html
John-X says:
November 23, 2011 at 1:54 pm
“Hapless students at SUCOCC have been taught Bad Greenhouse for more than 20 years!”
In the Big Apple, that’s OK. What is important is that you are a communist.
I wonder if I should cut and paste this …
… Killer heat waves, devastating droughts and wildfires, and unprecedented floods are expected in our warmer world ….
… over at RealClimate as a response to Dr Gavin Schmidt when he says I’m raising strawman arguments about doomsday scenarios coming out of climate change scientists.
The targeted advertising on this website amuses me. Most of the ads displayed when I read this blog are for subsidized solar panels! The best one I’ve seen is for a private pension company which promises to invest my retirement fund in saving the planet. They call this ‘ethical!’ I don’t think there will be much left for my retirement in 50 years! This is the reality we are facing, normal people assume that anyone interested in the climate change debate must be desperate to waste money on shrinking their carbon footprint. How many people are even aware that there are two sides to the argument?
Is Supermandia available for Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and Birthday parties?
Well, Bobo is!
http://www.clownlink.com/images/blogimages//Bobo_barnett3.png
Having taken classes with John Abraham’s professors, when there were in graduate school, under Dr. Eckert, I wonder how impressed they are with the “wunderkind”.
Now now, AGW believers, don’t come unglued yet. I wouldn’t want to see you lose your heads over nothing, after all.
There will be no end to the silliness or the shrillness until the last tenured teacher succumbs to ridicule from his or her pupils for dragging out long discarded agw beliefs many decades hence. Sadly. The oil will still be flowing and the ENSO will still be ensoing and the ocean will still be 70% of the earth more or less.
He’s a Penn State grad. You know, the kind trained to help Mannkind.
The Left is a zombie cult who repeat whatever their ringleaders tell them to say. Mic Check!
The extra heat and moisture that human-caused warming is adding to the climate is like injecting steroids into our weather.
==
Global warming hey? He must never have learned about temperature gradient and storms… Mandia is a prat and I do not envy his poor students.
Now THIS is settled science! When you postulate a theory, conduct and experiment and say if this works thus, I’m right, and if it doesn’t, I’m wrong, and it works the way you predicted it would!
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100102296/sun-causes-climate-change-shock/
Mike says:
November 23, 2011 at 2:25 pm
Yes to both!
Honestly, these people really have issues…deep seated emotional issues. During my far-too-long tenure in academia I noticed the folks around me all had essentially the same character: intellectual ability generally advanced beyond “normal” folk, but socially – arrested development around the age of 5 years old. In other words: very smart preschoolers. They would throw temper tantrums, they think everyone should serve them..whatever they are thinking must be right..etc etc etc. I couldn’t get out of academia fast enough. And this guy is yet another example that proves my point. Would you ever catch the CEO of a major company dress like superman? The only people I see dressing like superman (outside of Halloween) are…..5 year olds.
Ozymandias..
The central theme of “Ozymandias” is the inevitable complete decline of all leaders, and of the empires they build, however mighty in their own time.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
==========================
A tool is a tool is a stool
Looks like a super-butt kisser too me.
This Mandia fellow is stuck on stupid, and resorts to the usual ridiculous tactics from the warmist playbook. Words simply cannot express my thoughts on this story, so I’ll just post this:
Notice this is an obvious lefty politically, because he diggs deep into using tobacco.
The Earth is round, smoking is linked to lung cancer, and humans are changing the climate by emitting massive amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other gases
Because they claim their opponants are using tactics similar to the “big tobacco” fight from the 90’s.
Scott Mandia,
The terminology ‘Greenhouse Effect’ is a misnomer and misleads scientists, environmentalists, politicians and general citizens alike. It is more correct to simply say instead that each of the various types of gases, vapors, particles and chemicals in the atmospheric has its own specific atmospheric behavior and properties. CO2 has its specific behavior and property; H2O has its own, O2 has its own; likewise N2; O3; Ar; etc. Each individual behavior separately considered, does not equal their interactive combined behavior. All gases combined yield a planetary atmospheric composite effect. Forget ‘Greenhouse Effect’. In spite of the CO2 myopia of the IPCC for the past 20+ years, CO2 has not been shown from observations to have any significant contribution when all aspects of the climate’s dynamics naturally vary.
Regarding the Climategate Release 2.0, the damaged integrity and scientific non-professionalism of the exposed core team of IPCC gaming climate scientists is widely understood to exist even within the community of scientists. The scientific product that is their product is exposed now. The self-correction processes within the science community have engaged. Rebalancing is already occurring. Science will move on now, having learned a valuable lesson from the ideological advocacy that infected IPCC centric climate science.
Your ‘Climate Rapid Response Team’ has become an ad hoc clique of vigilantes attempting to enforce accepted scientific truth that pretends to be enshrouded in an authoritarian mantle from the IPCC. They are absurd.
John
He’s right, you know; i’ve always found that when the nights are cold, instead of adding extra blankets to my bed, I just need to breathe extra heavily to increase the carbon dioxide in the room and I’m much warmer in no time.
“The extra heat and moisture that human-caused warming is adding to the climate is like injecting steroids into our weather.”
He gets credit for mentioning all the water vapor that is necessary to amplify the co2 greenhouse effects in the computer models.
But the caped academic marvel is going to need help.
Will the people be saved from flourishing national economies and abundant, affordable, reliable energy supplies? Who can win the battle against the “extra” “human-caused” “heat and moisture”?! To be continued…
This blanket is woven from the same thread as the Emperor’s new clothes