Skeptic Agrees with Climate Change

 

[Note: Jim sent me this in response to an group email pointing out yet another hopeless alarmist website climatetruth.org. He says it is his stock response, written somewhat like a poetry or haiku, and some of you may find it handy – Anthony]

By Jim Goodridge, former California State Climatologist

It is hard to disagree with receding glaciers.

The increase in atmospheric CO2 is undeniable.

Yet as skepticism survives it is not about facts – but about cause.

There are those who would interpret facts to fit their agendas.

The Smithsonian Intuition initialized a solar constant measurements project

In about 1910 using the finest pyranometers available

They were not able to measure solar variation closer than 1%

The variation due to atmospheric water vapor was close to 2%

 

Thirty years of solar constant numbers were not usable for that objective

Solar constant measurements were made from orbiting satellites starting in 1978.

Measurements were made normal to the suns rays.

They were corrected for the mean Earth Sun distance

 

The resulting solar constant measurements were made to an accuracy of 0.1%.

They were found to vary as the historic Sunspot Numbers.

Sunspot numbers are available since 1700.

Sunspot numbers are cyclic and repeat every eleven years.

 

Taking the sunspot numbers since 1900 and plotting an 11-year running average

Results in a graph showing an increasing sunspot trend for 110-years

The Hadley Center has a 110-year sea surface temperature record

The trends in sea surface temperature and sunspot trends are similar

 

The effect of rising SST is lower solubility of dissolved CO2

The increase in atmospheric CO2 is consistent with rising SST

Where there is a need to support a conservation ethic.

The increase in CO2 was attributed to tailpipe emissions perhaps in error.

 

Some say that a skeptic is a thing of evil

Some should not consider alternatives.

If your job depends on a specific interpretation

Perhaps you should ignore the solar evidence.

 

Our lives are filled with self-delusion it is handy to deceive others

“Aside from skeptics in the history of philosophy

Others were strangers to the first principals of intellectual honesty”

Objectivity is the goal. Skepticism is a tool.

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Durr
December 9, 2011 4:59 pm

They seem to like the word “cause” on the other side, don’t they…

Bill H
December 9, 2011 5:13 pm

loos like some one is having a hissy fit and loosing the battle…
no facts, just conjecture…. platitudes….
they real y are getting desperate..

Brian H
December 9, 2011 5:16 pm

I don’t see the “Agrees” part in there anywhere. Pliz explificate.

Alan Clark of Dirty Oil-berta
December 9, 2011 5:17 pm

Jim Goodridge is a skeptic.
Skepticism is a tool.
Jim Goodridge is a tool.

John-X
December 9, 2011 5:18 pm

Control is the Goal
People are tools.

December 9, 2011 5:34 pm

But the word “cause” in line three refers to the varying climate—as in “correlation does not mean causation.” Hence, facts and cause. For CAGW proponents the “cause” means a political agenda or misanthropy, as the science certainly isn’t there.

Sean Peake
December 9, 2011 5:34 pm

With all due respect to Mr Goodridge, what he wrote could have been set down over 10 years ago. He believes that correlation is causation. He focuses on the minor variability TSI and sunspots whilst ignoring that solar magnetics is likely a much bigger influence. He relies on data that no longer shows what he states. To quote Bob Dylan, “Things have changed.” I hope he snaps out of it.

December 9, 2011 5:36 pm

Durr. Funny. “Cause” taken out of…..context.

DirkH
December 9, 2011 5:42 pm

Climate truthiness?

DirkH
December 9, 2011 5:43 pm

Even better. Climate Truthers.

Ted Dooley
December 9, 2011 5:53 pm

Is he a poet?
and doesn’t know it?

u.k.(us)
December 9, 2011 5:53 pm

If only,
there are fortunes invested in the outcome.
The smart money is pulling out now, it will take longer to wean others from the subsidies.
Just another failed Ponzi Scheme.
Brought to you by your elected officials.
Who, in case you forgot are only worried about the children.

Gail Combs
December 9, 2011 6:00 pm

Durr says:
December 9, 2011 at 4:59 pm
They seem to like the word “cause” on the other side, don’t they…
_______________________________________
The CAUSE is political and Climate PSYCience is the Whorse they use to pull their “bus”
As a PSYCentist, if you do not get with the “Cause” you get tossed under the bus like Judith Curry was. Because the “Cause” is what is important not science because science does not even exist.

….postmodernism, the chief characteristic of which is the rejection of absolute objective truth. “What’s true for you may not be true for me,” encapsulates the postmodern idiom fairly well……
The history of the last 2,000 years can be divided into three periods. The pre­-modern world (up to the 17th century), the modern world (17th to late 20th century) and the postmodern world (late 20th century onwards). ……
Cracks began to appear in modernism with the dawning of the Romantic era (1775-1850) which encouraged subjectivity and personal experience. Building on David Hume’s ideas about the limitations of observation by sense alone, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) popularized the belief that knowledge is ulti­mately a matter of interpretation. After all, he reasoned, we cannot with any certainty know that our minds are correctly mirroring reality. Kant said, “You kant know.” Agnosticism became fashionable. The ship of reason was holed below the waterline. This laid the foundation for existentialism. If reality was a matter of subjective inter­pretation, truth and morality were relative not absolute…..
Existential philosophers like Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and others, proposed that the most important questions in life were not explainable by science. Science, contrary to public perception, is not a pure discipline where scientists with pure motives search for pure truth. These writers exposed what they felt were the false assumptions and presuppositions behind modernism. Karl Marx (1818-1883) claimed a person’s thinking was influenced and shaped by economic structures; Frie­drich Nietzsche by the desire to wield power (truth claims are mere power plays); Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) by unconscious sexually-oriented drives. With all of this psychological baggage in the mind, how could a person ever state with any certainty what ‘reality’ really is? Facts are ‘theory-laden’ and true objectivity is impossible. “There are no facts, only interpretations,” said Nietzsche. (He thereby assumed his own perspective was neutral!). The door to postmodernism had been opened…..
http://www.webtruth.org/articles/cultural-issues-26/postmodernism-35.html

This explains why we can never ever win an argument with a Warmist. To them there are no objective facts.
I actually had some idiot try to teach this nonsense to me in a management class. I told the philosophy teacher if he really believe the stuff he was trying to teach, then he could hand over his wallet and car keys and go outside and lay on the rail road tracks (Train due in about 15 minutes) That was the end of his part of the course. ~ Reality stomps wishy washy philosophy.
I never could understand why they include such crap in a management course in the first place. Must have been part of the general brainwashing I guess. No doubt we would get a “Sustainability” section added now a days and something else that was actually important would be deleted to make room.

Eric
December 9, 2011 6:04 pm

I may be wrong but I believe alot of you are missing the point…Jim is a skeptic and the haiku is his stock argument for alarmists… IMO alot of it rings true.

Andrew Harding
Editor
December 9, 2011 6:15 pm

If my interpretation is correct then the following is true:
Sunspots have an 11 year cycle from maximum to minimum and this has been observed for 311 years.
Sea surface temperature reflect this, therefore implying that the solar radiation emitted is also cyclical. (There will presumably be a lag due to the high specific heat capacity of water).
Oceans affect local climate disproportionately compared to latitude, due to the high specific heat capacity of water, which produces higher or lower temperatures depending upon the SST adjacent to any particular location.
This effect is negligible in the middle of a continent because the ocean is too far away and then latitude becomes the main consideration.
Because gases are more soluble in liquids at lower temperatures, then atmospheric CO2 will increase as the ocean temperature increases because the CO2 has to go somewhere.
To summarise:
Increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are a consequence of global warming, not the cause.
PH of the oceans goes up, not down as temperatures rise due to decreasing levels of carbonic acid.
Weather stations situated here in the UK will show a greater variation in cyclical temperature than weather stations in the middle of Asia, Australia or North and South America because we are closer to the ocean.
The amount of CO2 present in the atmosphere/oceans produced by mankind is tiny in comparison to the amount found naturally.
AGW is total b******s and is the biggest scam ever perpetrated on mankind, by mankind.
Is this a reasonable, if simplistic analysis of climate change?

David
December 9, 2011 6:26 pm

It is a bit confusing and I’d never be so obtuse were I to write it. I’m understanding that he is attributing increased CO2 with reduced solubility of the oceans (to CO2) due to increased surface temperature which is correlated with increases solar activity (sunspots). I GUESS. Others seem to be confused as well………

tokyoboy
December 9, 2011 6:35 pm

Andrew Harding says: December 9, 2011 at 6:15 pm
“Sunspots have an 11 year cycle from maximum to minimum”
Should be: “…….. from maximum to maximum”

Jimmy Haigh
December 9, 2011 6:41 pm

Andrew Harding says:
December 9, 2011 at 6:15 pm
For the record, I totally agree with your reasonable, if simplistic analysis.

richard
December 9, 2011 6:51 pm

just been flicking through this paper,
Death and Death Rates Due to
Extreme Weather Events
Global and U.S. Trends, 1900–2006
Indur M. Goklany
when i came to this,
aggregate
mortality and mortality rates due to extreme weather
events are generally lower today than they used to be.
Globally, mortality and mortality rates have declined by
95 percent or more since the 1920s. The largest
improvements came from declines in mortality due to
droughts and floods, which apparently were responsible
for 93 percent of all deaths caused by extreme events
during the 20th century,
This is a good thing isn’t it.

Curiousgeorge
December 9, 2011 6:54 pm

As has been noted many times, the issue is not whether CO2 in creasing or the planet is warming or the seas are rising or falling. The issue is whether any of these things, separately or together, represent a clear and present danger. That has yet to be established. The sky has not fallen, nor does it appear likely to do so. Therefore the “cause” (saving humanity from itself) has no foundation. Like VIKI in the analogy below, they claim their “logic is undeniable”.
“VIKI decided that in order to protect humanity as a whole, “some humans must be sacrificed” and “some freedoms must be surrendered” as “you charge us with your safekeeping, yet despite our best efforts, your countries wage wars, you toxify your earth, and pursue ever more imaginative means of self-destruction”. In light of this understanding of the Three Laws, VIKI is controlling the NS-5s to lead a global robotic takeover, justifying her actions by calculating that fewer humans will die due to the rebellion than the number that dies from mankind’s self-destructive nature.”

jae
December 9, 2011 7:07 pm

Far too many bumper sticker statements to get on all my bumpers. The “Hope and Change” ones make more sense, LOL.
Stupid.

Joanna
December 9, 2011 7:07 pm

I agree with Andrew and Eric…of course he’s a sceptic. And I like the haiku format…can just imagine chanting it as a sort of mantra when entangled with yet another person arguing that ALL climate change is anthropogenic…

JJB MKI
December 9, 2011 7:24 pm

Brilliant and elegant. For some that might be getting the wrong end of the stick here, it seems Jim is saying the observations and perceived facts may be used to fit in with more than one preconceived agenda (the example he gives is a simplified illustration). The myriad complexities of the climate system make this very easy to do whilst retaining a sense of total conviction and righteousness. Objectivity can only be found through scepticism, yet scepticism is now being presented as an ‘evil’ by those with a vested interest in stamping out objectivity and defining one narrative at the exclusion of all others, even (or especially) if they are not completely aware of their own behaviour. This is motivated by an endless cycle of religious self justification: ‘I am right because I believe this; I believe this because I am right’.
Or maybe I’m getting the wrong end of the stick?

Gillian Lord
December 9, 2011 7:30 pm

Most important thing about it is that it is easy to read for people with low attention spans.

Erinome
December 9, 2011 7:38 pm

Sean Peake wrote:
With all due respect to Mr Goodridge, what he wrote could have been set down over 10 years ago. He believes that correlation is causation. He focuses on the minor variability TSI and sunspots whilst ignoring that solar magnetics is likely a much bigger influence.
How so? Here is what the CERN CLOUD scientists wrote in their press briefing:
“This result leaves open the possibility that cosmic rays could also influence climate. However, it is premature to conclude that cosmic rays have a significant influence on climate until the additional nucleating vapours have been identified, their ion enhancement measured, and the ultimate effects on clouds have been confirmed.”

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