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.]
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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.
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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.
jheath says:
November 24, 2011 at 3:16 am
Ok – so I may be an intellectual Oxford educated snob, and I know little of academic rankings in the US, but does a Community Collecge merit having a Professor in Physical Sciences? Does the same need to know any physics?…
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A community college is a two year school. I took an accounting course at the local Community college and ended up having to teach the darn course myself because the teacher did not have enough basic ARITHMETIC (adding and subtracting) to teach the course or a high enough reading level to read the darn book the night before. The book was decently written and fairly easy to understand.
Good grief first level bookkeeping is taught in high school here for the kiddies who do not want to take real math and this accounting course was not much beyond that level.
To put it more bluntly I have taken several community college courses to keep my ASQ certification and my high school courses were a lot more difficult.
James Sexton says:
November 23, 2011 at 11:57 pm
I have not looked at the equation itself, but what you say is not correct. Volume is the amount of space. That has nothing to do with ‘how much’ fills that space, as you imply. That is a factor of (or indeed, causes) pressure.
Back to the drawing board, my friend, I think LT is probably right.
What a plonker!
“The physics of greenhouse gases has been understood for more than 100 years”.
The physics is understood by the physicists since the 1930-ies, not by the climatologists of
today. They simply haven’t read the literature and made a dogs breakfast of it.
And so the debate goes, when 97% or more of the debaters–and their admiring followers–are incompetent (through decades-long, systemic miseducation). In such an atmosphere, only the decisive facts, not pretentious theory, can save science, and I am, as far as I have yet found, the only scientist to have logically and dispassionately homed in on, found, and immediately recognized, the simple, definitive facts (which are 20 years old and should have been brought out as I have done, long ago–by even the students, if not their professors; that is how easy it really is, and should be for all of those who consider themselves competent physical scientists). There is no greenhouse effect, of increasing temperature with increasing carbon dioxide. When a believer in the greenhouse effect can explain why the ratio of temperatures in the atmospheres of Venus and Earth, over the range of Earth tropospheric pressures, is precisely explained by their distances from the Sun, and nothing else–the definitive fact–then he/she will be worth listening to, not before. I say it is because both atmospheres are fundamentally warmed by direct absorption of the same portion of the incident solar radiation (in the infrared, since the two planets reflect quite different proportions of the visible radiation); and I say that is what I would expect any competent physicist MUST say. The best such “experts” have been able to do is say, “It is a coincidence”. That is laughable, because it is pathetic. It is not a coincidence, it is the definitive fact, the simple comparison of two detailed atmospheres, denying the greenhouse effect entirely. Focus on that fact–only the distance from the Sun is needed, not a further “greenhouse effect”, or “albedo” (reflection of visible radiation) effect–it explains why, in spite of the widely-believed and hotly defended “settled science”, there is such a war over it, between skeptics and believers. Fundamental incompetence–dogmatic belief, with the refusal to face decisive facts–is at play. Climate science based upon the greenhouse effect is simply a complete farce, and so is the continuing, clueless debate among incompetent “experts” on the subject.
Dammit!
I need a new shipment of popcorn – again!!
Still, cheaper than the ‘green’ theft in my energy bill…
Gail Combs,
“The Climate Scientologists messed with that number too. Recently NASA cites TSI as “1361 W/m2”
I believe the figure you referred to is the solar constant, which is the amount of solar radiation striking a square metre at the distance the Earth is from the sun. The smaller figure is the average amount of radiation on the Earth’s surface, allowing for night time, the fact that the Earth is a sphere, not a plane, and the earth’s albedo. The second figure is directly derivable from the first by simple geometry.
John Sexton,
“So, 239.7 X 0.0004 X 0.15 X 0.5 = 0.007191w/m2 ”
In what sense is the amount of back radiation from CO2 a direct function of it’s concentration in the atmosphere? If anything, the function is logarithmic. Any formula would have to include the area under the curve of radiation absorption across all emitting wavelengths.
The general “consensus” is that a doubling of CO2 leads to an increased radiative forcing of about 3.7 w/m2 without feedbacks. Even Richard Lindzen accepts that.
@ur momisugly Jer0me and Victor Causey
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LazyTeenager says:
November 23, 2011 at 11:25 pm
James Sexton calculates
…==============================================
LT, you’re not looking at the percentage properly….. the 0.04% is by volume, not as percentage of the various molecules out there. Maybe this will help you….. Volume is the quantity of three-dimensional space enclosed by some closed boundary.
Try again, sparky!
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I have not looked at the equation itself, but what you say is not correct. Volume is the amount of space. That has nothing to do with ‘how much’ fills that space, as you imply. That is a factor of (or indeed, causes) pressure.
Back to the drawing board, my friend, I think LT is probably right.
==========================================================
Oh my…… atmospheric CO2 is expressed as volume. Do take the time to look it up, because this creates a bit of confusion. So, when expressed as a percentage, it is expressing the percentage of the space occupied. This would be important because of the omnidirectional characteristics of earth’s IR radiative properties.
And, yes, that causes pressure…… look at the Ideal Gas Law for application. And pressure’s effect on temps. But, I’m not addressing pressure, only the radiative effects on CO2. And I assume the space occupied would be replaced by another gas with similar properties except the IR absorption.
Yes, the equation isn’t exactly proper. There are other factors, which I touched upon in my original comment that the equation doesn’t address, but specifically towards the logarithmic effect, right, I don’t address saturation or spatial differences.(which is the logarithmic effect).
Vince, I know you’ve been at WUWT often enough to know many of us don’t give a damn about “consensus”. I posted this equation to illicit critiques, but I thought I’d get a bit better than what I’ve received, so far. BTW, you are entirely correct in your response to Gail. But, even that number varies depending upon source.
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Hey MIKE!! Tone is not spelled TOME….Just thought you might want to proof read your comments…have a good pay!! lol
Mike Bromley the Canucklehead says
“Mandia can’t even spell “Durban”. It is (albeit petty) things like this that further undermine the sloppy unscience that he flails away with. It’s bad enough to see misinformation, but when the proofreaders miss spelling errors, it just reinforces the whole messy tome. This in the face of the oft-cited need to “improve the message”
Ha.
[MODERATOR’S NOTE: Hmmmm…. another case of pot calling kettle calling cauldron blak… -REP]
And here i was thinking he was a State, Penn, escapee laying sacrificial tribute before a Mannikin.
.. “and humans are changing the climate by emitting massive amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other gases” ..
Some facts:
– In spite of consistent rising of human (and non human) CO2-eq emissions for the last decades, warming has stopped to grow during last decade;
– Global earth climate during the medieval ages (~850-~1350 AC) was considerably warmer than during the last 30 years (as confirmed by several paleoclimate and temperature proxies studies), in spite of no human CO2-eq emissions at that time.
Knowing these facts, how can people accept Mr Mandia beliefs for good?
He is going to need taller boots to wade through the c*** he writes.
The concern is that he is teaching and we can assume grading papers. Are students being educated in science or activism and are blankets and the flat earth in his lectures and tests?
As Gail Combs comment questions the academic qualifications required at a community college I question the ability for rational thought of the caped crusader with hip boots. Exhibit A is Prof Scott Mandia’s article.
The hockey stick is a bit of a giveaway. Any one who knows anything knows that it has been utterly discredited. So much so that the Chicken Littles have been trying to distance themselves from it. This of course has proved difficult due to it being their favourite icon for several years and they formed a habit of delivering their doom-mongering speeches in front of it.
Hmm… well that’s sad. Usually, when I get an idea that I know is wrong, I can run it up over here and get a quick explanation as to why it is wrong…. … well, since I put it out there….. atmospheric CO2 is expressed in ppm by volume….. 390ppm which is where the ~0.04% comes from. So, that’s why its wrong…….. thanks guys.
To all, have a happy Thanksgiving!
Really stupid people think that everyone else is stupid but them. I bet he can’t leap tall buildings, either. LOL!
“BillySam33 says:
November 24, 2011 at 8:03 am
Hey MIKE!! Tone is not spelled TOME….Just thought you might want to proof read your comments…have a good pay!! lol ”
No, actually I think he does mean TOME. Look it up – it is a word.
crosspatch says:
November 23, 2011 at 1:56 pm
There should be a “Facepalm” award. Make it look sort of like the sculpture “The Thinker” but with his palm covering his face.
I think it should actually be the “face-plant” award as in what you do when you come of your skateboard and don’t get your hands down in time.
jheath says:
November 24, 2011 at 3:16 am
Ok – so I may be an intellectual Oxford educated snob, and I know little of academic rankings in the US, but does a Community Collecge merit having a Professor in Physical Sciences? Does the same need to know any physics? Is this the same as a Prof at Princetonor MIT? And is he like Prof Jones – made a prof in a subject needing statistical analysis but unable to use Excel? I left the academic world in 1973 despite offers to remain in it – and find that its intellectual capability has been ever eroded since that time. And predictably so.
I am also puzzled about this. At my university a professor was head of a faculty or occupied a chair, not just an academic employed by the university. It wasn’t “a professor” but “the professor of …”. e.g. Stephen Hawking who occupied the “Lucasian Chair of Mathematics” aka “Lucasian Professor of Mathematics”. I did a supervision with “Dr Oatley” and he wasn’t professor Oatley at the time, just one of the top guys in the Engineering Dept. Then they created the chair of electrical engineering and he became “Professor Oatley”. Professor meant something. Different systems – different definitions.
The AGW theory must be correct. Otherwise; his mommy sewed that cool suit for nothing. It’s gotta be true.
Agree. Lukewarmists are just trying to avoid being called bad names.
The GHG speculation has not been subjected to any proper testing of its null(s); the partial observational checks so far spectacularly fail to reject such null(s).
I enjoy reading all the comments from the educated people here, and learn a lot. No one has answered the most important question that us common people want answered: Are these guys going to the penalty box for high sticking?
btw the hockey stick is a necessary artifact; they use it to beat the skeptics into submission.
Just a little icing on the cake. Super Mandia Reviews Donna Laframboise:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1U43LM86A5W5P/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview
Somebody does not understand research… just sayin’
When one begins to drink a glass of spoiled milk, it only takes a sip or two to understand that there is nothing good in there and I better put the glass down now. The same is true for LaFramboise’s book. After reading about 50 pages, and it was a struggle to go that far, it is clear that the author does not understand the scientific process. To claim that the IPCC reports are “not true” is to misrepresent thousands and thousands of scientific papers by thousands of international scientists.
Sour milk indeed!