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.
Many thanks to WUWT for all that you do, and best wishes for a happy and healthy 2012!
Happy New Year.
Interesting video, and actually much to agree with, even for a “warmist”. However, 1C of temperture rise by the end if this century as we see a doubling of CO2 from pre- industrial levels is simply way too low. Compounded on top of that is the warming we’ll see from N2O and methane increases. 3C is far more realistic, and an entirely different issue is whether or not that will be “catastrophic” for humanity.
First, happy new year to all of you.
Then, “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 …” is surprising language for me.
1. “clear that may be …”? Whether something is ‘clear’ or something ‘may be’.
2. We rightfully claim that CO2 in icecores follows increase in temperature. Now here’s said hat GHG have brought the climate ot of LIA, part of it? Really?
Sometimes my impression is that we sceptics don’t dare to touch AGW pillars like greenhouse theory, fearing we may appear ‘unscientific’.
Let us be a bit more sceptic in 2012. Nothing is ‘clear’ in climatology.
Roger Clague,
The lapse rate does not set a temperature, it sets a temperature gradient. You still need something else to anchor the absolute level of the gradient to particular values of temperature. With no greenhouse effect, the ground is where the outgoing long wave radiation energy level matches the absorbed solar radiation, so that determines the temperature that locks the lapse rate gradient. You would also need convective mixing to get the lapse rate for that case. Otherwise, the atmosphere would tend toward constant temperature, or even possibly an inversion of temperature. With greenhouse effects, the average effective location where outgoing radiation matches absorbed solar is at some altitude above the ground, and that average location determines the lapse rate curve temperature at that altitude. The lapse rate increase below that level is now what determines the higher ground temperature. More greenhouse gases slightly raise that level, so that raises the ground temperature. If the atmosphere is much taller (as on Venus) the lapse rate times the greater altitude gives a much higher increase in ground temperature. That is all there is to the process. Notice you need both a lapse rate and a greenhouse effect to have a temperature at the ground greater than without a greenhouse effect.
climate alarmists are grossly overestimating the sensitivity of climate to CO2, and thus overestimating future man-made warming.
================================================
You think?
http://www.real-science.com/hansen-peering-enso-abyss
Anthony, I do so enjoy your “What’s Up With That” Posts and it’s so informative I know! Keep up your great work! Also, please remember, as the William Shakesphere Troop put it: “All the world’s a stage and ALL the men and women are merelyplayers and EACH MUST PLAY A PART in their time! WATCH!
M.A.Vukcevic says:
January 1, 2012 at 4:55 am
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
The warmest year was 2006 with a mean temperature of 10.82°C that’s a difference of 1.01°C cooler than 2006. In the video the Warren Meyer says the IPPC predicted a warming of 1°C and R. Gates above has the warming down to 3°C, so how can it be that for a doubling of CO2 has there has been a cooling of 1.01°C.
What am I missing?
M.A.Vukcevic says:
January 1, 2012 at 4:55 am
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
The warmest year was 2006 with a mean temperature of 10.82°C that’s a difference of 1.01°C cooler than 2006. In the video Warren Meyer says the IPPC predicted a warming of 1°C and R. Gates above has the warming down to 3°C, so how can it be that for a doubling of CO2 has there been a cooling of 1.01°C.
What am I missing?
10.82
-10.70
=00.12
I enjoyed Warren Meyer’s presentation. It’s a very good summary of reasons to be skeptical of AGW / Climate Change.
I haven’t seen this before; beautifully made.
Fred from Canuckistan says:
10.82
-10.70
=00.12
Difference of? 🙂
Leonard Weinstein says:
January 1, 2012 at 6:48 am
“Otherwise, the atmosphere would tend toward constant temperature, or even possibly an inversion of temperature.”
Yep! Temperature inversions are a fact of life.
“The lapse rate increase below that level is now what determines the higher ground temperature. More greenhouse gases slightly raise that level, so that raises the ground temperature.”
The lapse rate determines *NOTHING*! The lapse rate is an EXPLANATION of a phenomena. It is NOT the phenomena! Sheesh!
Happy New Year, Y’all!
Thank you for linking to this video. It us useful for those of us laypeople to have general overviews of the issues from time to time. It is quite easy to get bogged down in individual issues. I was also quite impressed with Warren Meyer’s use of logic. He spent a long time organizing his thoughts for this presentation.
Great work, and will post on my site.
But it is a bit incoherent to claim there as been 0.6°C warming since the late 1800’s and then note the UHI studies show a 3rd of the warming measured could be UHI (dropping the warming from 1800 to 0.2°C).
We cannot rely on the 0.6°C number for reasons of accuracy and coverage of readings before 1940, and UHI effect since 1900. It is LOGICAL that the world has been warming since the LIA – even expected.
But sadly, given the data it is not clear we have warmed at all since the 1930-1940 period. We all assume we are coming out of the LIA. An assumption not proven.
Ahh, good! I knew if I waited long enough, someone more knowledgeable than myself would take down bombers’ bit about GHGs and back radiation. Which leaves bombers’ argument against skeptics with…. Nothing.
EeeK! It’s “you are” or the contraction “you’re” .
Please!
(Run of the mill typos I can over look … but this, is not a typo, not when it involves the absence of *two* characters … okay, technically one punctuation and one character!)
And – Happy New Year, Anthony and ‘staff’!
.
_Jim says:
January 1, 2012 at 10:21 am
…
Error noted Jim, there really is no excuse for sloppy grammatical mistakes, ha ha!
@Fred from Canuckistan says:
10.82
-10.70
=00.12
What I meant, the difference between two sets of averages (mean temperatures) not the difference between the two numerical values.
Hi Sparks,
You were nearly there.
2011 was about 2 C degrees up on the 2010; if the doubling of CO2 temps go 1C up, there must have been quadrupling of the CO2 in 2011?!
Strange theory that.
I hope it gets even warmer, no ice, no car defrosting, most of the garden geraniums are still there, not to mention the savings on the house heating.
I watched Warren Meyer’s presentation soon after it was available on his site and then again today. It remains “mostly good”. I too, take exception to any notion of a carbon tax (i.e. one of the thinnest components of thin air). There’s no reason for it. If anyone ever gives government the right to tax ANYTHING you can count on that right being abused.
Warren Meyer is quite an amazing fellow. If I recall correctly there were several state parks in Arizona that were to be shut down for lack of funding. Warren stepped in and effectively privatized them and kept them open. Once again he proved that the private sector can do nearly anything better and more efficiently than government.
@_Jim You’ll love this lol
1. atmos-pheric should be atmospheric.
2. GutLess should be Gutless.
3. excerise should be exercise.
4. terrestiral should be terrestrial.
5. terrestially should be terrestrially.
Link: http://www.freerepublic.com/~jim/
Nice video. There’s just one thing he gets wrong. The alarmists didn’t originally rebrand to “climate change”. It was skeptics. The original view was a relatively constant, non changing climate, and then a sudden unprecedented catastrophic warming. So climate change could not have been planned by the alarmists. In fact, it was George W. Bush who brought it into the mainstream vernacular in one of his speeches because his advisors told him that climate does change over time and he asked why is it called “global warming” and not “climate change”. So that’s what he decided to call it and the alarmists went NUTS. I still remember the backlash at this.
After a while, the alarmists had no choice but to adopt the term because it was such a powerful argument against those that claimed that climate was relatively unchanging in the past. So much so that they forgot where it came from. So did many of the skeptics.
But whenever an alarmist asks me why I don’t believe in climate change, I tell them I do believe in it and fought to change the term “global warming” to “climate change”. When they’re all stunned, I tell them that if climate has been changing over time and we’ve had warm temperatures in the past, it can’t be unprecedented. And if it’s not unprecedented, then it’s not catastrophic. This tends to leave a great many alarmists dumbfounded.
Sparks says on January 1, 2012 at 12:15 pm
You do realize, a) some of that material, esp the *atmos-pheric [sic] material was another’s product (which is quoted; note the indent), and b) some of that was written pre-modern Opera (circa Opera 6, 7) which was sans spell check feature! (I am nothing without my spell check which is why I don’t harp on typos! For those you are forgiven.)
Happy New Year!
.
PS *Atmosphere – New Latin atmosphaera, created in the 17th century from Greek ἀτμός [atmos] “vapor” and σφαῖρα [sphaira] “sphere”
I keep on wondering about the whole CAGW-theory and greenhouse gases, especially CO2.
How on earth can we fear a LITTLE trapping of heat by CO2, while burning the hydrocarbons in the first place produces a LOT of heat anyway?
Is there any of you who can do the math on the amount of energy that is released by
1. burning a litre or a gallon of gasoline, and
2. the trapping of heat by the CO2 that would be released?
In my opinion, the heat produced by the burning will be so much more than what ever may be trapped, that the whole CAGW-theory is as lame as one could possibly think.
I hope any of you could make this calculations! I would be very gratefull!
Geir in Norway says:
January 1, 2012 at 1:05 am
Well said! Of course, you do speak common sense and observations of basic human behaviour, not mathematical algorithms. Since you have neither computer code in your discussion, a Ph’d before your name, or the backing of Green funds, I have to conclude, however, that nothing you say is material. As they say on the current TV sitcom, Big Bang Theory, my dismissal of your views is a “non-optional social convention.” Sorry.
By-the-bye, in Norway where alpine glaciers are common, have you heard of any increase in the outflow of rivers sourced in glaciers? If Alpine glaciers are contributing an increasing amount to sea level rises, you should be seeing it.
Not that the observation would mean anything. Satellite measurements and computer models say alpine glaciers are increasingly responsible for the rise. It’s settled and certain. If you see, feel, hear something different, you are confused at best and a shill for Bad People at worst.
Sorry. New Year, same problems.
Great comment! Halleluyah! You’ll be proven right quicker than even you may believe. Watch!