[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.
Dear Mr. Springer
You seem to be in the camp that believes that warming is a good thing. That nothing bad can come from it. Probably not for you. But talk to the people in the Netherlands and Bangladesh.. oh but they are of no concern to you….
This here is the crux of the matter. Will warming affect you negatively (probably not if you are a rich american) or (probably if you are a poor farmer).
Here is the religious/political divide. Do you try to help fellow man, or step on their heads whilst they lie in the gutter.
Harvey.
The other interesting fact is that the earth seems to absorb measurably less CO2 in warmer years than in cooler ones. Maybe this portends something for the future of that fraction (about a half) that gets re-absorbed into the earth system. In other words, this fraction could decrease compounding the fact that the emission rate is increasing in future CO2 levels.
Dear Mr Springer.
You make hand waving statements about “no overall warming trend”.. Hang on, there is more than enough evidence in the satellite and world records to refute this. Can you please provide documentation for your wild assertions?
thanks
Harvey
Robert Brown says:
December 10, 2011 at 8:39 am
“You mean, aside from the mountains of proof including tabletop experiments that anyone can do in a decently equipped physics lab? You mean, instead of all of the rather solid spectroscopy involved, plus models that no reasonable person could call completely wrong?”
Table top? How about in the palm of your hand. I’ve posted many times here the theory of operation behind electronic infrared CO2 sensors which are basically John Tyndall’s 1860 lab setup which took up large room minaturized into a space the size of a thimbal. Moreover one can even prove to oneself that so-called back radiation happens in the atmosphere by taking a $50 handheld infrared thermometer and pointing it up at the night sky under varying conditions of clouds and humidity. It will give a warmer reading of the sky temperature when humidity is higher soley because water vapor is a greenhouse gas. This is why when all else is equal surface temperature falls faster in low humidity than high humidity and why deserts get much colder at night than non-desert regions where everything except humidity is equal.
“The disagreement here is in the details of the models — the relative strengths of different terms in a complicated equation that governs thermal balance in the open system that is the earth, not on “whether CO_2 is a greenhouse gas”. It is remarks like this that permit the “warmists” — quite rightly, in some cases — to accuse all skeptics of being batshit crazy as opposed to being “reasonable” about the issue.”
Yes, this has been a pet peeve of mine since forever. One can argue about the response of the system to increased CO2, the so-called sensitivity, but one cannot argue that CO2 in and of itself does not absorb infrared energy and emit a portion of it backwards toward the source. Tyndall experimentally confirmed that characteristic of certain gases 150 years ago and it is exactly how electronic gas-level sensors work today for any gases that exhibit infrared absorption which definitely includes CO2. These sensors are employed all over the world in ventilation controls for buildings where they sense the CO2 level caused by human occupation of the structure and turn on ventilation fans when the level rises above what’s acceptable.
Jennifer says:
December 10, 2011 at 8:31 am
Bullspit. The rise has a name. It’s called “The Modern Maximum”. Google it honey. Regardless of what some clueless “woodfortrees” site might claim the sunspot record is well known and so is the modern maximum.
Let me help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Maximum
Get a clue.
@harvey:
I’m not sure what your point is. If CO2 contributes less than 50% to the current warm temperature anomaly then natural variability will dominate CO2 effects over the long term. Simply put, if the current anomaly is .7C and CO2 accounts for .3C then natural effects which vary over time could easily drive the anomaly in a negative direction. Saying that it’s a fact now says nothing about what the world will be like in 50 years. Climate science is a lot like chess in that respect. You start with 20 possible opening moves (your “fact”) but after just 4 moves there can be over 72,000 different outcomes. The fact that you move your King’s Pawn first doesn’t make it a dominant player in the game.
There was a high level of solar activity throughout the last half of the 20th century. It was elevated even while the trend after 1980 was slightly negative. While the TSI increase wasn’t enough to directly account for all of the observed warming, there is no reason to believe that increased solar radiation would affect the Earth in a linear fashion. Why is it that climate scientists insist that warmth due to CO2 must be accompanied by feedbacks, but seem to ignore the possible side-effects of a clear increase in the primary energy source for the planet? (That’s a pretty easy question to answer: You can’t tax the Sun or seek “climate justice” because it’s more active.)
The political situation is not ambiguous. The UN is dedicated to redistributing global wealth and influence, which should give everyone reason to doubt their objectivity. The IPCC has made enough blatant errors, and always on the side of alarmists, to clearly indicate that they are politically driven. The Climategate emails show that the leading academics in the field have drifted into advocacy as well. For years we were told that the MWP/MCA didn’t exist, even though there was ample evidence that it had occurred and only Mann’s hockey stick to show that it hadn’t. In the face of overwhelming evidence the IPCC now grudgingly admits that the MWP/MCA was real, but still says that it’s likely (>50% probability) to have been cooler than the current anomaly. What they still don’t seem to get is that almost no one is disputing that CO2 can have SOME effect on global temperatures, so if it’s .2C warmer now than it was 1000 years ago, then we should be discussing that number instead of ascribing the entire anomaly to greenhouse gases. The problem for alarmists is that that level of warming isn’t very, well…alarming.
Without AGW, climate scientists would work in quiet anonymity, just as do researchers in most other fields. Instead they are courted by politicians, command enormous sums for speaking engagements, and are invited to exotic locations to plan the future of the world. I doubt anyone is resisting their call to action out of a misguided loyalty to Ayn Rand, but the unwarranted assumptions, shoddy practices, and outright obfustication of contradictory evidence creates an atmosphere of distrust. (Hm. “Atmosphere of Distrust”. Sounds like a great book title. I think I’ll start writing…)
There seems to be a lot of bad science, or lack of science, in this thread. Not all however, just rather a lot. The first bunch of replies seemed to have misunderstood Jim Goodridge and that’s a shame. And I find it sad to see issues that have been answered well here in the past, coming up for another airing and not always getting such good answers. All this reinforces my conviction that skeptics still need a Climate Science wiki. And when I have time I will take this idea further. Or if it speaks to you as a hot topic now, please email me.
I’ve been through Skeptical Science’s “debunks” of all the skeptic issues and de-debunked them one by one. That taught me a lot. The science was still nowhere near as clear as I would have liked. But three things were painfully clear
(1) there was no crisis
(2) any imagined solution would not only not work but would be horrendously expensive
(3) there was deep corruption in high places regarding the science.
So though I’m still not convinced by Ferdinand Engelbeen on CO2 (quite apart from having difficulty in following him and not falling asleep) we do agree at the most basic level of the 3 points above.
Click my name to learn about the science. And here are the numbers that Robert Brown is asking for, getting CO2 in proportion – together with pictures. Though doing my best to stay neutral and evidence-based, it’s still my POV and I could be wrong in places though I’ve had a lot of support and have examined, and sometimes corrected, many issues where challenged. Most importantly, I think it sheds a lot of light on the real issues and real science in Climate Science. But I come here (rather than our own forum!) to chat and discuss.
The level of comments here still makes me believe we need a skeptics’ climate science wiki, to capture the best of snappy facts, as well as provide the backup evidence and references that are largely missing from this thread.
Dear Phizzics.
Do you accept the fact that earth has been warming over the last 100 years.
Do you accept the fact that CO2 has been increasing in the atmosphere.
Do you accept the fact the CO2 “contributes” to said warming.
Forget the politics, Forget your religion, Forget your Idiology.
IF this warming trend continues, for whatever reason, are you, your family and your ancestors willing to accept the consequences?
thanks
Harvey
Solar activity confirmed by carbon-14 isotope ratio:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon-14_with_activity_labels.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation#Carbon-14_production
Carbon-14 level in well dated plant materials also happens to discount any claims that sunspot records are not comparable over the past 400 years because of changing methods of counting them. C14 is independent of astronomical observation and aligns perfectly with observatory counts going back to the year 1600.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/20675
Note the quick gratuitous denial of a relationship between solar magnetic activity and climate below. The hiliarious fact of the matter is that you have little chance of getting something like this published if you don’t explicitely state that you’re onboard the AGW bandwagon of cargo-cult climate scientists. What a fine mess.
Dear Lucy Skywalker
You make 3 points:
(1) there was no crisis
(2) any imagined solution would not only not work but would be horrendously expensive
(3) there was deep corruption in high places regarding the science.
1. The crisis is relative. Is there a current crisis? No. Is there a crisis for people living in Montana? NO Will there be a crisis in the future? Yes if the world keeps warming the way it is. The crisis will be world wide, and will affect different people differently. Some people will see no problems, or even an improved world, but others will face life threatening situations.
2. Yes the imagined solutions ARE expensive, and maybe not the right ones. Do you have some suggestions?
3. There was NO corruption regarding the science. There PROBABLY is corrupion regarding the POLITICS surrounding the science.
BTW i will make a pronouncement here, if you do not watch out, CHINA will be the dominant world power and the USA, and the opinions of the USA will become a has been. CHINA is proposing to build 200+ nuclear reactors in the next 40 years and lets not even talk about their installations of solar and wind power facilities.
thanks
harvey
Dear Mr Springer
Yes Humans always are messy. We are apes after all.
I would like to explore why you have a prejudice against published works in peer-reviewed articles? Do you think there is a world conspiracy against those who are rejected for publication? Is this conspiracy lead by the Cabal, or by the Bilderberg Council?
thanks
Harvey
harvey says: December 10, 2011 at 9:15 am
Dear Mr. Springer, You seem to be in the camp that believes that warming is a good thing. That nothing bad can come from it. Probably not for you. But talk to the people in the Netherlands and Bangladesh.. oh but they are of no concern to you….
Sir, you are terribly mistaken.
Click my name and go to the main part of our website to see our green credentials. I care about people and the planet. And so do many others here. Anthony’s interests at WUWT would have been palpably green, had not the problem of corrupt science raised its ugly head, big time.
Superstition means “building upon” – building up and up where the foundations are rotten. In this case, the highly-corrupted science is the rotten foundation. Sea levels are not rising fast, their rate of rise is tiny. And they are not rising faster, the rate of rise is slowing down. The icecaps are not melting overall, so catastrophic sea level rise is not on the cards. Click my name to correct your compass. If you choose.
The really horrendous problem the planet has, with all this, is the unbelievable corruption of the science, and the unwillingness of people in high places, at the tops of the Climate Science profession, as much as their supporters visiting WUWT, to look again, or even, at times, to play honest. That is what I find scary. People like that are much more likely to create problems like war, fascism, financial thuggery, etc. As we see from telling bits of evidence like the expensive non-solutions offered, or the video 10-10. Truth matters.
Dave Springer:
Bullspit. The rise has a name. It’s called “The Modern Maximum”. Google it honey. Regardless of what some clueless “woodfortrees” site might claim the sunspot record is well known and so is the modern maximum.
You sweet thing you. That site has the actual measured sunspot data. The guy said that if I plotted a running 11 year mean since 1900, I’d see “an increasing sunspot trend for 110 years”. I plotted what he said. I don’t see what he said I should see. If I somehow got it wrong, maybe you could point me to a chart you’ve made that shows it correctly.
Jennifer showed some plots earlier, and David Springer seems to have missed the point. The rise stopped, you may notice, around 1950, and there has been a decline since the 1980’s, as I also mentioned earlier. The warming has increased since then. This was the point that was missed. The original post implied a correlation that just isn’t there in his 11-year running average. I don’t know what his error was, and no one has yet replied that they know.
If this is Jim’s “stock response” to justify reasoned skepticism, I for one don’t get it. Is he trying to confuse the reader? Is there a point that isn’t conflicted or contradicted? Could he have been less convincing?
Maybe “Jim is a tool” was a bit outlandish but he’s definitely a “word nerd” who never uses a single word where a hundred or so will do.
Jennifer said it best Jim: “Your shot went way into the stands”.
Dave Springer:
At December 10, 2011 at 8:48 am you say:
“ It appears to me as if there’s a natural equilibrium point of 280ppm …”
No, you are wrong because there is NOT “a natural equilibrium point of 280ppm”, and your entire argument is based on the mistaken assumption that there is. If there were a “natural equilibrium point” then its value would vary in response to variations of several parameters (importantly, temperature).
Richard
harvey:
At December 10, 2011 at 9:48 am you say to Phizzics.
“Do you accept the fact that earth has been warming over the last 100 years.
Do you accept the fact that CO2 has been increasing in the atmosphere.
Do you accept the fact the CO2 “contributes” to said warming.
Forget the politics, Forget your religion, Forget your Idiology.
IF this warming trend continues, for whatever reason, are you, your family and your ancestors willing to accept the consequences?”
You seem to have made some misprints so I take the liberty of correcting them for you as follows.
“Do you accept the fact that earth has been COOLING over the last 10 years.
Do you accept the fact that CO2 has been increasing in the atmosphere.
Do you accept the fact the CO2 “contributes” to said COOLING.
Forget the politics, Forget your religion, Forget your Idiology.
IF this COOLING trend continues, for whatever reason, are you, your family and your ancestors willing to accept the consequences?”
There, corrected it for you.
Richard
Harvey@10:10
Isn’t it a travesty that the USA is not buiding nuclear power plants as China is? Instead, we are spending billions on solar farms etc that don’t do 24/7 generation.
Talk about stupid eh?
What will it take to get the CAGW crowd to get serious about emissions? As they are right now, it is readily apparant that they only want to redistribute wealth and the environment be dammed.
Robert Brown says on December 10, 2011 at 8:39 am:
“You mean, aside from the mountains of proof including tabletop experiments that anyone can do in a decently equipped physics lab? You mean, instead of all of the rather solid spectroscopy involved, plus models that no reasonable person could call completely wrong?”
===========
Thank you Robert Brown, I may have, at at long last, found the “right person” to ask. – Please choose just one out the mountains of your tabletop experiments and explain how it proves that there is such a thing as Long Wave Infra Red (LWIR) radiation that is absorbed by, and warms, CO2.
I have no quibble with long wave radiation, or radiation without light, but “Infra Red” denotes below or under Red and exists solely in solar or other irradiation that contain, at least, the wavebands of Red and Infra Red.
The Rules say; – as I am sure you know – that anything that has a temperature higher than absolute zero, must emit energy. Pray tell me, therefore; why do the other gases, N2, O2 and Ar not radiate their heat away, or back to the surface?
And also, while you are at it, please tell me, how does “solid spectroscopy” prove that heat can radiate?
“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.”
Hi Harvey:
Reasonable questions that I thought I answered in my first post. Sorry if I wasn’t clear.
Yes, I believe that the Earth has warmed over the past 100 years. Yes I believe that CO2 has increased. Yes I believe that it has contributed to the current warm anomaly.
None of that is particularly interesting though, as the devil lies in the details. Do I believe, or more importantly, has the science clearly shown CO2 to be the dominant factor in determining global temperature? Absolutely not. Has the science clearly shown that there will be negative consequences from the effects of CO2? Absolutely not. Are there other, more immediate concerns that are clearly understood and require attention. Certainly. Why then is such a huge emphasis placed on the possible effects of CO2? In our world CO2 emissions are closely linked to affluence, and exaggerating their effects offers a scientific basis for the UN’s ongoing effort to redistribute wealth.
If you don’t believe that there has been misleading information, please do a web search regarding the solar influence on global temperature. You’ll find that virtually all of the alarmist websites discuss the mismatch between the past 30 year trend in temperature (up) vs. the TSI trend for the same period (down).
Now do a simple experiment. Go to your kitchen and turn the oven up to 400 degrees. Monitor the room’s temperature. It will rise slowly due to the oven’s heat contribution. Now reduce the oven’s temperature to 396 degrees and continue to monitor the room temperature. It will continue to rise, even though the oven’s temperature trend is down. Eventually it will reach equilibrium, but it won’t depend on whether the oven is warming or cooling slightly, it will be dependent on the actual temperature of the oven. This is a VERY simple concept, and the fact that the equilibrium point is ignored in favor of discussing the minor trend is very revealing.
In short, there is advocacy where there should be science, and grandstanding where there should be humility. Even while the alarmists warn that CO2 will result in catastrophe, they jet set to conference after conference and speaking engagement after speaking engagement. They band together to support each other’s questionable conclusions and discredit those who disagree with them. If this kind of behavior were the norm in all sciences we’d still believe in the Steady State Theory and that “spiral nebulae” are our nearby galactic neighbors.
OHD, you will notice that O2, N2 and Ar only have one or two atoms in their molecule, while H2O and CO2 have three. This is where the IR effect begins. These types of molecules have vibrational modes that allow them to affect IR, which smaller molecules just can’t, because they don’t have energy states that interact with IR photons.
Lucy Skywalker says:
December 10, 2011 at 9:41 am
So though I’m still not convinced by Ferdinand Engelbeen on CO2 (quite apart from having difficulty in following him and not falling asleep) we do agree at the most basic level of the 3 points above.
Dear Lucy, didn’t know I was that boring… But repeating the main arguments may be boring, I suppose…
I have read a few parts of the GWJ reference you did supply, but that contains a lot of errors… Here a few important ones:
CO2 outgassed from 30m depth for 1ºC global temp rise = 600 Gt ie near-total atmospheric content
This is not what Henry’s Law says: “At a constant temperature, the amount of a given gas that dissolves in a given type and volume of liquid is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas in equilibrium with that liquid.”
Thus Henry’s Law is about pressure in the atmosphere, not amounts. As said before, when the sea surface increases with 1ºC, the equilibrium pressure of CO2 in solution with the atmosphere increases with 16 microatm. That means that with such a temperature increase, some CO2 will be released from the oceans until the atmospheric CO2 pressure also increased with 16 microatm (~16 ppmv). At that moment, a new equilibrium is reached. That is with a release of only 32 GtC from the oceans, whatever the further content of the ocean’s mixed layer or deep layers. Thus the 600 GtC release never will take place, simply because there is no driving force in one or the other direction.
The cumulative emissions curve’s slopes do not agree with the CDIAC/BP annual emissions graph. See below.
Of course they don’t. They are comparing the trend with the derivative of the trend! The year by year increase in the atmosphere is dominated by temperature changes, but that says next to nothing about the cause of the trend, as year by year temperature changes largely level out in a few years. By taking the derivative, one removes the trend itself…
BTW, the late Endersbee made a 21-year moving average over the period 1985-2008. If you do the same over the period 1945-1975, you have a negative correlation between temperature and CO2 level… The superb correlation between accumulated human emissions and accumulation in the atmosphere doesn’t need any averaging over the past 100+ years.
Many excellent studies show (see Segalstad) that CO2 only stays in the air around 5 years. No study shows a longer “life span” than 12 years.
How many times should be insisted that a residence time of 5 years is not of the slightest interest, as that only shows how much CO2 per year goes in and out of the atmosphere. Even if in one year all CO2 was going five times in and out the atmosphere, that doesn’t matter at all, as that doesn’t change the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Only the difference between what is going in and out matters. And currently that is only 4 GtC/yr at 210 GtC extra in the atmosphere. That means that the e-fold time to remove the total 210 GtC (at zero emissions) is 210/4 or about 57 years (~40 years half life time). A lot longer than the skeptic 5 years, but much shorter than the 100’s to 1000’s of years from the IPCC.
harvey says:
December 10, 2011 at 9:15 am
You seem to be in the camp that believes that warming is a good thing. That nothing bad can come from it. Probably not for you. But talk to the people in the Netherlands and Bangladesh.. oh but they are of no concern to you…
Living near the Dutch border, at 7 meter above msl, where a good NW storm may reach 10 meter extra sealevel… But the dikes here are at 12 m above msl, thus an extra 30 cm over this century (as the satellites show without any accelleration in the past 30 years) is no problem at all for The Netherlands. The lowest point in The Netherlands is even 12 m below msl…
Even Bangladesh is building dikes and high level shelters with the help of Dutch engineers for the occasional Tyfoon. Even there, most of its land area increases due to more deposit from the mountains than sea level rise…
I know that some commission in The Netherlands was expecting several meters of sealevel rise this century, thanks to the PIK (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research) of Schellnhuber (direct advisor of Angela Merkel for Climate matters in Germany) and the direct influence of some concrete firms (to build higher dikes with a lot of profit…). But Hans Von Storch from Geesthaagt, Germany (Echo-G climate model with low sensitivity for CO2), distanciated himself from the report.
Jim D says on December 10, 2011 at 11:48 am:
“OHD, you will notice that O2, N2 and Ar only have one or two atoms in their molecule, while H2O and CO2 have three. This is where the IR effect begins. These types of molecules have vibrational modes that allow them to affect IR, which smaller molecules just can’t, because they don’t have energy states that interact with IR photons.”
=========
Yes Jim D, I know the difference between di-atomic and tri-atomic molecules, but your “fact” that only gases containing 3 or more atoms can radiate heat away, is a new one on me.
Are you now saying that the Earth’s lower atmosphere cannot cool, for any reason what so ever, if it was not for tri-atomic GHGs?