It always helps to review the topics discussed here, as doing so always provides an educational opportunity for everyone.
Given we are starting a whole new year of bringing the science to people who have doubts about the veracity of some claims in climate science, this seemed like a good opportunity to run this excellent global warming primer video from Warren Meyer who runs climate-skeptic.com.
It is well worth your time to watch, and it is edited for the layman with some real-world examples to help explain concepts.
NOTE: If you can’t see the video, it may be due to your Windows Internet security zone being set too high. Try Control Panel> System and Security> Internet Options> Change security Settings and set to Medium or Low.
This video is a critique of catastrophic man-made global warming theory, based on presentation slides used in a series of public presentations and debates in late 2009 and early 2010. The author is Warren Meyer, author of the web site climate-skeptic.com.
While the world has almost certainly warmed since the end of the Little Ice Age in the early 19th century, and while it is fairly clear that CO2 and other greenhouse gasses may be responsible for some of this warming, climate alarmists are grossly overestimating the sensitivity of climate to CO2, and thus overestimating future man-made warming.
While the theory of greenhouse gas warming is fairly well understood, most of the warming, and all of the catastrophe, in future forecasts actually comes from a second theory that the Earth’s climate system is dominated by strong positive feedbacks. This second theory is not at all settled and is at the heart of why climate models are greatly over-estimating future warming.
Note: Charts last updated Jan 2010. The earlier live version of this video has 8000 views on Vimeo.
Video link not working….
When I grew up in North Norway I learnt that when people didn’t have anything else to talk about, they talked about the weather. I couldn’t understand how adults could produce so much talk about so little. My parents and every other adult I knew of, listened to every weather forecast on the radio and when TV arrived in the late 60s, they had to watch the whole weather forecast there too, both in the evening and in the late night. And then you had to stay silent because they might miss any small detail. The weather forecast was the most serious part of daily listening.
Then I found that people willingly talked about the weather simply in order to have something neutral to talk about, so that they didn’t have to talk about anything else. You could show emotion when you talked about the weather, you could agree and disagree and get into all kinds of arguments including anecdotes about how the weather had been then and then and then and then. How was it possible to bring up so much about something which you couldn’t do anything with, I thought?
Then I read that story about the two different types of people in my English textbook, which stated that if you talked about the weather, you were found to be a social and caring person listening to others, but if you talked about anything else your mind was set upon, you were seen as boring and selfish and – just talking about the weather!
Then I began to hitch-hike as a teenager, and I quickly learnt that the one thing to talk about with the drivers was the weather. I learnt how to fuel conversations that could last for up to two hours with weather-related anecdotes and details of every conceivable – and absurd – kind.
Then I went to university and all the weather-related conversation fodder became redundant.
And this is probably the reason that the whole stupidity about global warming and the Kyoto protocol and the UN IPCC reports went by without me even noticing. I think we all viewed this CO2-stuff as something completely redundant, something that some politicians took a little too seriously while we, the populace, were laughing secretly at them, just as we were of our parents when they had to listen to the weather forecast 6 or 8 times a day.
Anthony with his WUWT blog and his happy and informed helpers has brought weather to me and countless others all over the globe in a new fashion, as something relevant, something interesting, something that I can speak with others about. Something that counts in our lives.
Only that it seems that I too easily get into details of the kind that makes my conversation a little too high-brow for people. So I have become that fellow of the English textbook story and when I bring up a new topic from WUWT at work, my colleagues snarl : Ah, he only talks about the weather!
Happy 2012 to you Anthony and all your brilliant contributors!
Trouble is, for some reason, the video does not come up, just a 4″ white hole in the post. (Hehe, not in that kind of post!)
Found the problem, and those running higher security it seems must lower all security settings, just trusting vimeo does also not work either, at least it doesn’t for my environment.
“…while it is fairly clear that CO2 and other greenhouse gasses may be responsible for some of this warming”
Exactly what is the evidence for this ?
Such unsupported statements are what we expect from alarmists !
Its all about the sun and that wet stuff between the plates, volcanicity, corriolis, solar cycles, milankovitch cycles and basic physics of atmospheric pressure, the rest is myth, unscrupulously fabricated to suit an overtly political agenda. Lets face it, we have even incorrectly named the planet, it should be called Ocean.
It is not ‘clear’ that warming since the LIA was in part due to GHG’s. That claim is an act of faith not science. The LIA was due to planetary cycles not an atmospheric makeup of gasses that were certainly present during the LIA period. Why did these GHG’s not stop the LIA? Because the theory of GHG’s is flawed and violates the laws of thermodynamics.
See:- Unified Theory of Climate by Nikolov and Zeller 2011.
BTW, happy new year to all at WUWT, one hundred mill’ coming up.
This is a really excellent exposition by Warren Meyer, which I have seen before. In it he identifies the real weakness of the catastrophic theory of global warming.
So many sceptics try to attack this theory by claiming that the world has not warmed, the greenhouse effect does not exist, back radiation is impossible, glaciers are not retreating etc. As Warren Meyer says, this is exactly what the warmists want you to do. Because you then attack where the enemy is strongest, indeed unassailable in the eyes of mainstream scientists.
But catastrophic global warming has an Achilles heel – and that is what all sceptics should focus on.
Can’t get it to play.
Works ok here.. and great video.. I’ll be sharing it amongst my alarmist-believing friends..
For those having problems running this video, I was unable to run it from Firefox, probably because of Flash and Ad blockers. I just got a big white space in the middle of the text where the video was when I switched to Microsoft Explorer.
The big Start button is confusing. It seems to imply that you should start the video by clicking on that – but that doesn’t work with any browser. Following the link to Warren Meyer’s site gives you another option to play the video, it is a shame to miss it.
Meanwhile – happy new year to everyone.
Bomber sez~ ‘So many sceptics try to attack this theory by claiming that the world has not warmed’
In light of the fact that it has clearly gotten .6 degrees warmer since the LIA, Could you name names?
‘ glaciers are not retreating etc’.
I haven’t EVER seen a single skeptic making that claim, can you give links?
Happy new 2012 to everyone !
Onward then, ye people, join our happy throng !
2011 was kind to my calculations too:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC7a.htm
Vuk
If your using a Firefox browser and the video won’t load (I think it’s a Vemo ad issue) Right Click over the blank frame where the video should be/ select from the menu “This Frame” then select “Open Frame In New Tab”. that should bypass any cookie issues etc…
Anthony Watts says the theory of greenhouse gas warming is fairly well understood.
However there is a lively debate on this site that the there is no greenhouse gas warming. Many believe the temperature of the lower part of the atmosphere is increased by a well known gravity effect, the lapse rate.
This effect is also seen on other similar planets
Direct Link: http://player
Belief in the greenhouse effect is based upon
a radiative transfer theory that cannot distinguish between directed rays from the Sun and omnidirectional heat energy (yet naively assumes no scattering of IR — which IS heat energy — within the atmosphere), and assumes the surface of the planet a blackbody merely by “correcting” the directed solar irradiation for obvious reflection (even though a blackbody can only absorb, not reflect, all incident radiation) but omitting any consideration of the omnidirectional heat energy (including, but not limited to, IR in the atmosphere) as a function not only of radiation but of convection and conduction as well. That radiation transfer theory is really just a one-dimensional “light extinction” model (how much of an incident light beam is removed in traversing a nearly-transparent medium), based upon an assumption (the Beer-Lambert formula) that is not valid in the presence of multiscattering of individual incident photons by the traversed medium (the atmosphere). In short, the theory only knows an incident beam, and reflection of the incident beam, not the real thermodynamics of the traversed medium. If that is too hard for you to understand (and it is for everybody these days), then simply observe the fact, from my detailed Venus/Earth temperature comparison, that there is no greenhouse effect, of increased atmospheric temperature with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, at all.
Decent video with some useful graphs. However, advocating for a carbon tax at the end is shocking. What’s the purpose of a carbon tax if there is no CAGW? If warmists and Dems could get the populace to agree to that they would go for it in a heartbeat. The Dems would “temporarily” drop the income tax a few % for a few years to get a trillion dollar a year, economy and middle class destroying carbon tax on the books. I can’t believe Warren actually thinks that is a good idea in terms of the Precautionary Principle. Much better idea is to rein in the EPA and the overly strict environmental laws being put into place – CO2 is not a pollutant and we already have stringent enough particulate and mercury laws. Make energy from coal inexpensive again to power our economy and raise the standard of living for all. Invest in fusion and advanced fission energy research so that when the coal is gone we have the next inexpensive and reliable energy source for the future.
Dr Burns says:
January 1, 2012 at 1:47 am
“…while it is fairly clear that CO2 and other greenhouse gasses may be responsible for some of this warming”
Exactly what is the evidence for this ?
Such unsupported statements are what we expect from alarmists !
I am looking at a plot of the solar spectrum seen from the Earths surface. Strange thing is there dosen’t appear to be any back radiation showing on it?????????????????????
An excellent video, but sadly way beyond the comprehension and attention span of the average alarmist.
IT is OFFICIAL
The CET 2011 was second warmest year on the record at 10.7 degrees C.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET2011.htm
2011 may have its share of extreme weather, but a look back at 1971 puts things into proper perspective.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/putting-extreme-weather-into-perspective/
The usual story line by supporters of the IPCC AGW position a few years ago was that the top 1500 (or 2500) climate scientists in the world all agreed that….
The current story line seems to be that all extreme weather is caused by global warming. The culmination of that spin was the NY Times front page, Sunday edition, Christmas day article last week, prompting Pielke Jr. to write about “The Worst NYT Story on Climate Ever?”
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/12/worst-nyt-story-on-climate-ever.html
As the weather effects of the recent strong La Nina fade, perhaps there will be less of the attribution nonsense in 2012.
Anthony and others:
This should be the year in which we come to accept, not that the effect of carbon dioxide has been over-estimated, but rather that it has no effect what-so-ever.
Back radiation from a cooler atmosphere simply cannot warm the surface. It does not have enough energy to get over the threshhold needed for warming. So this fact switches off the power of any assumed “greenhouse effect” and the GHE hypothesis crumbles. No one has ever proved that such back radiation does in fact cause warming and the onus is very much upon the IPCC so to do, because it has always been their false assumption – nothing from the pages of physics. Maybe some oil companies should post a reward for anyone who can prove such – the publicity would be great.
I leave you with Prof. Claes Johnson’s words http://climate-change-theory.com/Johnson_quote.jpg