Burt Rutan writes in via email about an exchange he had with the proprietor of the website Scholars and Rogues, Brian Angliss. Burt writes:
I recently read a treatise showing that CAGW theory is a fraud. I thought it was a good summary and agreed to have my name used as a supporter of the facts when it was published by the Wall Street Journal. You can find it here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html
Then, shortly after publication, an alarmist engineer wrote and “open letter to Burt”.
http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2012/01/27/open-letter-to-burt-rutan/
I usually ignore these diatribes, but found a few moments to respond:
Scroll down to comment #4 for my answer.
I’ve reproduced Burt’s answer here for all to see:
Brian,
In my background of 46 years in aerospace flight testing and design I have seen many examples of data presentation fraud. That is what prompted my interest in seeing how the scientists have processed the climate data, presented it and promoted their theories to policy makers and the media.
What I found shocked me and prompted me to do further research. I researched data presentation fraud in climate science from 1999 to 2010.
I do not have time here to define the details; if interested in my research, a PPT or PDF can be downloaded at:
http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm
In general, if you as an engineer with normal ethics, study the subject you will conclude that the theory that man’s addition of CO2 to the atmosphere (a trace amount to an already trace gas content) cannot cause the observed warming unless you assume a large positive feedback from water vapor. You will also find that the real feedback is negative, not positive!
Specifically, the theory of CAGW is not supported by any of the climate data and none of the predictions of IPCC since their first report in 1991 have been supported by measured data. The scare is merely a computer modeled theory that has been flawed from the beginning, and in spite of its failure to predict, many of the climate scientists cling to it. They applauded the correlation of surface temperatures with CO2 content from 1960 to 1998 as proof, but fail to admit that the planet has cooled after 1998 in spite of the CO2 content increasing.
The failure of the IPCC machine is especially evident in the use of “models” to justify claims, so it might be worthwhile to just look at modeling and science.
Modeling is more correctly a branch of Engineering and there are some basic rules that have been flouted by CAGW _ CO2 modelers.
Firstly there has to be a problem analysis which identifies relevant factors and the physical, chemical and thermodynamic behaviors of those factors within the system.
Any claim that this has been done in the CO2 warming problem is PREPOSTEROUS.
There are perhaps a thousand PhD topics there waiting to be taken up by researchers.
We could start with work on understanding heat transfer between the main interfaces; eg Core to surface / surface to ocean depths/ ocean depths to ocean surface / ocean surface to atmosphere and so on, not having yet reached the depth of space at just slightly above absolute zero.
To claim that the entire system of atmospheric temperature moderation has been described by the fluctuations of atmospheric CO2 content while excluding the other obvious factors such as atmospheric water vapour content, solar flux and orbital mechanics is just nonsense.
The whole point of modelling when done correctly is that it links accurately measured input of the main factors and accurately measure target output. Where you have major input factors that are not considered and poor and uncertain measurement of all factors then all you have is a joke or more seriously Public Fraud based on science.
You do not have science.
CO2 is not a pollutant. When the Dinosaurs roamed, the CO2 content was 6 to 9 times current and the planet was green from pole to pole; almost no deserts. If we doubled the atmospheric content of CO2, young pine trees would grow at twice the rate and nearly every crop yield would go up 30 to 40%. We, the animals and all land plant life would be healthier if CO2 content were to increase.
Do the study yourself. Look at how and why the data are manipulated, cherry-picked and promoted. I will bet if you did, you too would be shocked.
The mark of a good theory is its ability to be falsified by new data. The mark of a good scientist is the ability to accept that.
Burt
The Difference between an Environmentalist and a Denier.
You can easily tell if someone is a true environmentalist, i.e. an advocate for a healthy planet – he is one who is happy to hear the news that the arctic ice content has stabilized. He is one who celebrates when the recent climate data show the alarmist’s predictions of catastrophic warming might be wrong. The denier, if he is an eco/political activist, always denies new data that show the planet may be healthy after all. The Media usually defines deniers as those who deny the scientist’s computer model predictions. However, denying the measured climate data meets a better definition in the world of science.
My issue with CAGW has always been the dire predictions based almost solely on computer model projections. In all of my research on the subject I’ve never seen someone lay out the issues with climate modeling better than Burt Rutan did in his reply. That was AWESOME.
My respect and admiration for Burt Rutan just went up another notch or two and it was extremely high to begin with. Hats off to Burt Rutan!
Pwned. 🙂
I love the fact that Michael Tobis is the follow up post to Burt Rutan….if you all do not remember:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/22/friday-funny-f-word-fusillade-by-michael-tobis/
Did you see the first comment at that post?
So that pretty much sums up my problem with AGW alarmism. They’re clearly anti-human. In short, they want us all to die (but not them, of course).
On the “scholarsandrogues” site, if you scroll down, you’ll see one of the bloggers takes naturpathic like “Michael’s Naturopathic, Cholesterol Metabolism Factors” that have no basis in science.
Samuel Clemens writing as Mark Twain; “The War Prayer”
The open letter to Burt has this: In the case of human-caused climate disruption
It used to be global warming. But according to RSS and HadCrut3, there has been no warming for about 15 years. The only conclusion I can therefore come to is that somehow the additional 0.01% CO2 must be the culprit to cause climate disruption without the warming. I am well aware of the reasoning behind ocean level rise due to warming such as ice melting and hotter water expanding. But it is a total mystery to me why CO2 alone should have any huge effect on climate disruption. In the absence of warming, how did CO2 alone cause frosts in Florida in a previous winter; how does CO2 alone cause ocean levels to rise; how does CO2 alone cause hurricanes to be more severe? Etc.
I expected to read more about data presentation fraud in this thread. I am interested in that especially because that was the first thing that came to my mind when I read IPCC AR4WG1 report several years ago.
Manipulative data presentation is a norm in climate science. Graphs show expanded Y-axis which make small variations look more meaningful. Zero point something in temperatures is nothing. Think about signal to noise ratio and our skill to measure temperature. To show even smaller changes they use W/m2 in Y axis.
Timescale, X axis, is cherrypicked to advance the “Cause” and then there is the trick. They combine a smoothed history at a peak with another time series at a low to get an illusion of increase.
Did Rutan jump ships ? I thought he used to be a true believer ?
Good on ya Burt. The problem analysis is so clearly lacking that I am astounded that scientists are taking alarmist positions. But then look at the scientists who brief the politicians. Geologists and geophysicists. Guys with PhDs in dirt science. Or biologists; guys who cut up squishy things and, to the benefit of all, cure diseases. Climate science? Look up the local university’s curriculum and see if you find climate modeling. And remember, PhD guys know more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing. Where’s the thermal free body diagram? Part of it is tossed out. 6 billion people breathing out generates the same order of magnitude CO2 production as the industrial output of the US; so it’s ignored. And then there are the ‘solutions.’ For goodness sake, don’t take a thermodynamic approach. That would require a full systems analysis of the production of all the heat generated by inefficiencies in the solutions. Zero emission electric cars? Add in the line losses and power production thermodynamic costs. Get serious and do some serious engineering. Thank you Burt Rutan.
I don’t know that I have the energy for such arguments anymore. I always just want to ask, “what predictions have you made that have proven true? Show your work.”
I do not find “if you won’t take drastic measures to prevent something that is not clearly happening, you are a rotten old egg” sufficient motivation.
I have to see the work, not just affirmations. So many subject areas (medicine as well as climatology) have suffered from not only a coarsening of debate but a lowering of standards (of significance for one thing) so awful as to render abstracts and summaries entirely untrustworthy.
And (ahem) if someone is hiding the work, I will reject the conclusion out of hand. I can only assume it’s because the work doesn’t support the conclusion.
To the point… very good synopsis!
In all fairness, Burt, as a now several year follower of WUWT, a strong supporter of scientific transparency and a highly skeptical thinker, I can’t really justify letting the NPK comment slip through without being addressed.
Studies showing that growth rates are limited by the least available factor are extremely robust, common, and applicable. While it’s very reasonable to assume that crop yields in first world countries, who can afford nearly endless supplies of high quality fertilizers, poorer countries and undeveloped areas will run out of natural sources of phosphorous long before they are going to utilize all the added CO2 that they can now pull down from the atmosphere. I’m pretty sure we are going to hit a wall on total available biomass, based on regional shortages of nutrients, at which point CO2 increases will not significantly affect growth rates outside of areas where the limiting factor is water availability and then only because the higher CO2 means less stomata opening and slower transpiration (see the greening of the Sahel).
In general, I’ve been thinking about the role of nutrient availability on aspects like the size of fauna and flora, growth limiting factors, and global biomass, and one of the things that consistantly keeps popping up in my mind is that if we assume that oil/gas/coal are the remains of plants and animals that lived millions of years ago, then isn’t all of the fossil fuels effectively trapped potential biomass? Given that it contains high percentages of NPK (making it a major source of fertilizers) when we collect the oil from being trapped deep underground, aren’t we allowing the planet to return to a high natural biomass level? I’d like to see someone find a way to try and accurately describe how much biomass must have existed concurrently during the Carboniferous period, for example. It may be that as a species, we’re unintentionally increasing the total planetary capability to support life, even as the enviro-nuts are arguing the exact opposite. Not arguing that it will be “life as we know it”, it may be that we’re going to dramatically increase the biomass of a species most adept at rapidly adapting to the changes and taking advantage of that spare capacity (like the dramatic increase in the number of jellyfish we’re seeing… less predators + more food = population explosion) but over time it may balance out to an overall more robust planetary ecosystem.
Hmmm …
I would hardly call the open letter from Brian a `diatribe’!!
Sure, he disagrees and his reasoning is a bit familiar, not to say thin. But, so what?
Are we developing a slightly thin skin, here? Or some sort of addiction to a `take-down’ of all CAGWers and their sympathisers?
I say we stick to debating them with facts, logic, well presented analysis and the occasional, engaging opinion piece.
As to the overall required political effect, it will take some time to form up and will largely come about through convincing more and more credible scientists to speak out against the excesses of the Warmanistas …
It promises to be an interesting exchange if the usual warmist comments deletion policies don’t apply. I’ve just asked Angliss and Tobis to tell the world if they subscribe to CAGW rather than simple AGW and what kind of observation would change their mind. In the case of Tobis I suspect the answers be Yes and None.
Burt Rutan is a true engineer, and true engineers will pick a bad hypothesis apart when the data does not support it. In engineering, there is no ignoring of the data, because when you do that, people can die. We need more engineers in climate science.
Fine, common sense critique Mr. Rutan
QED Burt.
That’s the difference between some one who fly’s kites and someone who designs and engineers flying machines that transport living humans safely.
A strong voice of reason,
We need many more of these people for the public to realize the truth.
Will the real denialists please stand up!
I use to argue with Creationists back in the day and they have a lot in common with Warmists.
You see, Warmists don’t actually believe in Climate Change, they believe in Climate Stasis. That’s what the hockey stick fraud was all about. A failed effort to prove that climate didn’t change at all in the last 2,000 years, no MWP, no LIAs.
The idea seems to be that we lived in a climate Garden of Eden and only when we bit into the forbidden fruit of Knowledge during the Scottish Enlightenment were we cast out to live in sin as a capitalist industrial civilisation based upon techo-cultural evolution. Naturally, the Warmists have their prophets (Gore, Mann, Hansen, Karl Marx, Mao, et al) and, of course, a fire-and-brimstone apocalypse sermon.
Modern climate was created by Man in his own image, the Warmist gospel reads. The Warmists acolytes don’t believe in natural climate evolution because they are Climate Creationists in deep denial of rational evidence to the contrary.
It’s time to enforce separation of Church and State.
Burt, the fundamental sticking point is political/functional, not a failure of scientific or modelling process per se.
The politicians benefit hugely, as Mencken opined, from having the public alarmed and willing to give up money and control to them; climastrologers benefit greatly from having politicians pay them to keep the alarm bells tolling. It’s a partnership made in Hell.
Thank you for visiting our planet, Mr. Rutan.
It gives us some small hope, despite all the nonsense we are drowning in.
Burt’s right.
Eventually, the most ardent supporter of the cAGW ‘theory’ will have to accept that the amount of evidence falsifying the notion – that 0.04% of the atmosphere has the ability to exert a significant effect on global temperature – is inexorably increasing.
Its all about evidence.
It never ceases to amaze me that the warmists argument always carry the same frugal claims as well as direct attacks on the individual. They claim the high road when in reality, they always exceed in demonstrating their ignorance and bias. Here is one of the best examples of a warmists being bbq’d, quartered and basted on their own petard..
Brilliant..
Thank you for this Burt.
Bottom line: the intersection between climate science and economics needs an engineering level of precision. At the moment we have a batch of unverified assertions, a bit of data running the other way and a lot of sheer arrogance from the modelers and their enablers.
I would not fly into space if these boys were designing the vehicle; I am saving my pennies to fly in yours.
Thank you Burt. The quality of your writing matches the excellence of your light air craft designs.
You can easily tell that Brian Angliss is not a true ‘planet caring’ environmentalist as he seems rather delighted by his own very strange theory that increased CO2 will not lead to more food, and greater plenty, for all the inhabitants of this wonderful planet.
Thank you Mr Rutan. You clear headed logic has got you far in life and deservedly so.
“he is one who is happy to hear the news that the arctic ice content has stabilized.”
http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/arctic_sea_ice_volume_freefall.png
Excellent article, the fact that CO2 levels were once 6-9 times higher than they are today proves that a positive feedback mechanism does not happen as the warmists predict. AGW is the biggest scam to have been perpetrated on mankind. It has spoiled our landscape with hideous, useless windmills and diverted valuable resources to liars and cheats who call themselves scientists. The economies of the First World are in a very precarious state and the cost of combatting this fictitious threat are likely to impoverish those nations stupid enough to believe these liars and cheats. The fact that any scientist who publicly questions AGW is in danger of losing his/her job, shows that the “science” is nothing of the kind, it is bigotry.
The difference between Burt Rutan and the average climate modeller is that Burt has a lifetime record of calculating, modelling, and then actually producing a multitude of end products which work exactly as calculated and designed.
hide, you believe that? You believe that the Arctic yearly minimum sea ice volume decreased 38% since 2007? 67% since 2002?
> http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm
I think it is great that BR is attempting to provide a coherent theory – not something many do. But, his own slides are not self-consistent. On p 20, he can’t bring himself to believe the ice core CO2 record, preferring the Beck-type stuff. But by p 29, the ice core CO2 record has become exact and accurate (you can’t see the effect he wants to see from that chart, of course, if anyone looking is puzzled by what the funny arrows are for).
To pick up some other obvious errors: the pic on p 12 (human CO2 is 3.4% of natural) is emissions, not (emissions-takeup), and so is irrelevant. People, you need to give up on the idea that the CO2 rise isn’t caused by fossil fuels, and move on to the real questions. If you get stuck on that stuff you become irrelevant and funny.
p 30: CO2 increases affect the radiative balance logarithmically, this is well known. Since CO2 is increasing nearly exponentially, the radiative effect is nearly linear.
The rest is wrong too, but in more complex ways.
I’m looking through an experimental aircraft book that I bought in 1982 and first learned about Burt Rutan. I took flight lessons a few years later and was close to going solo before finances, and practicing stalls did me in (I’m not fond of roller coasters ). I even have a poster of the “Quickie” on my wall “A bold new Burt Rutan concept…” So yeah I’m a fan of Burt Rutan.
“People, you need to give up on the idea that the CO2 rise isn’t caused by fossil fuels, and move on to the real questions. If you get stuck on that stuff you become irrelevant and funny.”
William, how much of the rise is caused by “fossil” fuels? 100%? 99%? How do you explain correlations between temperature and atmospheric CO2 annual change?
The climate science we speak of here, soon, will have no ear.
Markus Fitzhenry.
Oh the irony of Brian Angliss’ closing suggestion to “discuss why I think your opinions are based upon incorrect and incomplete data.”
Brian should check what is being measured, how it’s being measured and how the data are processed to support the alarmist case. It’s the reverse of measure with micrometer; mark with chalk; cut with axe.
Engineers solve problems. Real problems. Not imaginary or fictitious ones. The first step that an Engineer must take in problem solving is to confirm that the problem exists. If the problem is intangible, it cannot be fixed by engineering measures.
Still wonder why the CAGW “problem” is being “fixed” by imposing taxes?
hide the incline says (January 29, 2012 at 1:31 am) re arctic ice volume.
Wow, incredible graph! No, truly *incredible*.
Source: http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/
Surprise. It’s another model, at the U. of Washington: “Sea Ice Volume is calculated using the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS, Zhang and Rothrock, 2003) developed at APL/PSC.”
From the commentary on validation:
“It is difficult to validate total Arctic sea ice volume directly. There are no true measurements of total ice volume that can be compared to model-derived estimates.”
Incredible graph! Incredible credulity!
William M. Connolley says:
January 29, 2012 at 2:04 am
Mr. Connolley, have you taken time off from your sensorship-quest over at wikipedia? Job done there, is it? Starting to be afraid of the impact from WUWT now, are you?
Lucky for us you cannot hide what people write here then.
Regarding what we should focus on;
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/dr-david-evans-the-skeptics-case/
@ hide the incline:
Why did the global warming alarmists in 1990 say that you shouldn’t look to the arctic to tell you anything about climate change?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5949034802461518010#
William Connolley: Since CO2 is increasing nearly exponentially….
I’m puzzled by this. I assume you are referring only to the human contribution to ambient CO2.
Mr William Connolley:
Ya know…there is a reason why I can’t use Wikipedia or Real Climate for my homework references, – Can you guess why?
I fully agree with Bert Rutan’s philosophy that the data are of critical importance. However, as I’m sure he and others have found, the data are often provided in an undigested form. To remedy this I and a colleague set up a site few years ago with a wide range of climate data reformatted as CSV files. It is at:
http://www.climatedata.info.
We’d welcome any comments on the accuracy of what is there and on its content.
William, your claim of exponential rise in CO2 combining with logarithmic effect of CO2 to produce a linear rise in temoerature requires proof. Can you provide? A strongly logarithmic effect combined with a weak exponential growth.?
I agree with your comment about CO2 rise. The evidence that the rise is related to fossil fuels is strong and unless evidence to the contrary becomes available most scientist will accept this. That is how the scientific method works. Ferdinand Engelbeem has an excellent discussion of this on his site.
Can you explain why the planet is not warming as the GCM models predict?
Absolute and utter demolition! Thanks, Burt!
(But, please, can you try to explain it to your buddy Richard Branson? His “Carbon War Room” antics and public appearances with Rajendra K. Pachauri go on everyone’s nerves.)
Burt is a hero of mine. Engineers cannot triumph by assuming spherical cows.
> I assume you are referring only to the human contribution to ambient CO2.
Nope, I’m referring to the overall CO2 level in the atmosphere.
> how much of the rise is caused by “fossil” fuels?
From memory, human emissions of CO2 are about twice the observed rise in atmospheric CO2. The other 50% is absorbed by land+ocean.
There are some helpful graphs at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/07/some-people-claim-that-theres-a-human-to-blame/
Mr Connolley, your words.
If you have a planet with a radiatively non-active atmosphere, and make the usual assumption that you can consider it a point and forget about rotation and geometry.
If the atmosphere is radiatively inactive (as O2 and N2 nearly are), then whatever its pressure, the atmosphere acquires energy-as-heat by conduction from the surface. In equilibrium (and this is important; it is why all the tyre-pumping-up stuff is irrelevant) it must be in balance with the surface (inevitably, since it is in equilibrium) hence there can be no conductive flux at the surface, hence th surface temperature cannot be affected at all by a radiatively inactive atmosphere (again, assuming a point-planet type of idea).
——————————————————————————————————-
Is not your efforts merely tyre-pumping-stuff, when you left that place without answering.
What energy is need to stop a atmosphere from shearing off in your theoretical planet with a radiatively non-active atmosphere argument. Bolts?
Markus Fitzhenry.
William M. Connolley says:
January 29, 2012 at 2:04 am
“The rest is wrong too, but in more complex ways.”
Hello, Winston.
1.) You did not refute Burt’s critique of the insufficient accounting of the inputs and outputs; his critique of the models stays valid.
2.) “The rest is wrong too, but in more complex ways.” – How about this : We will give you warmists all the time you need to work out exactly how Burt is wrong, and in the meantime we as a civilization will do exactly NOTHING about CO2. (Oh, BTW, you will need quite some time for that; so please, do it in a self-funded way; it’s a bit much to ask for public funding for solving a non-problem…)
“Since CO2 is increasing nearly exponentially….” oh really ??
Anyway, isn’t it good that plants have so much more CO2 to grow with.
Luvly BENEFICIAL CO2 !!!!!
Burt (lifelong great guy) is right of course but, if they were honest, the people running the climate scare would tell you it’s nothing to do with the climate. Who’s driving policy? The European Union (EU). Why? Take a look at the BP statistical review of world energy (use search as URL is long).
When Americans talk about oil and gas they often talk about the industry – even Mann and Hansen do all the time. The EU on the other hand doesn’t have one, and is the biggest importer of energy in the world. Large countries like Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland have little or no oil & gas. Only the UK has significant amounts and that’s in decline. In 20 years there will be nothing left. The current annual EU import bill for oil alone is over $400 billion. Add to that the huge quantities of Russian gas. They have to find other countries (suckers?) willing to take about $600 billion of exports just so they can pay for oil & gas imports. They are terrified. The resentment against the US is easy to understand – less for you is more for me. The EU is willing to pay a premium (via carbon credits) to any country that ships oil and gas to it rather than anywhere else.
Science never drove policy. The climate scientists are just spouting what they are paid to say and the useful idiots of the world – environmentalists and others – sing along it tune.
William Connolley: ‘CO2 increases affect the radiative balance logarithmically, this is well known.’
As an engineer I have like Burt done an assessment of climate science and followed up on the physics. What you say is based on the assumption of 100% direct thermalisation of IR quanta by symmetrical molecules bit by bit due to collisions.There is no such mechanism because the energy is quantised. Thermalisation must be at second phases. The logarithmic function has no mathematical basis.
Tyndall’s experiment was done at constant volume so because CO2 has higher CTE than air, much of the temperature rise was due to increased pressure. Do the experiment at constant pressure and the remaining heating is probably at the walls of the container.
The three other mistakes are:
(1) To shield the upward IR thus removing the Prevost exchange offset to claim ‘DLR’ is from a heat source is seriously dumb as any process engineer knows, There is no ‘back radiation, no strong positive feedback – it’s an artefact of the modelling.
(2) Hansen’s 33 K present GHG warming includes lapse rate warming so is also dumb; reduce it to ~9 K.
(3) In 2010, it was revealed from experimental data that the climate models use double real optical depth also 40% of low level clouds with bimodal droplet size distribution have different optical physics.The net AIE is slightly positive, much greater in the past and polar atmospheres. It explains present Arctic melting and much present warming. A side effect is that because the data processing from albedo to optical depth is also broken, you can’t trust derived satellite data.
So, the IPCC models are useless. .This programme has been appallingly run. It’s time the farrago was ended. CO2-AGW may well be slightly negative due to self absorption near the Earth’s surface. The proof that it is low is that the N. Atlantic is cooling as the Arctic heads to the freeze part of its 50-70 year cycle. As for the 3% compound increase of CO2, have you read Murray Salby’s work and have you calculated the effect of warming SSTs, now reversing?
Excellent post and well argued. This should be read by every politician and presidential adviser, like Holdren, and in the UK that fool Huhne.
hide the incline says:
January 29, 2012 at 1:31 am
““he is one who is happy to hear the news that the arctic ice content has stabilized.”
http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/arctic_sea_ice_volume_freefall.png
”
You do realize that this is not data, but a model?
On a somewhat tangential topic, I’ve wondered for some time about the feasibility of raising the CO2 concentration within greenhouses to promote higher productivity of high-value crops. Could anyone here offer some insight on the costs of obtaining clean CO2, and what kind of effect it might have on, say, watermelons or strawberries if they were grown with double or quadruple the current atmosphere’s level of CO2?
Brain Angliss (Scholars and Rogues) writes “You may not be aware of this, but greenhouse crops are very productive because farmers take great care to ensure that the crops have optimal nutrition. The farmers ensure that the crops in the greenhouses have enough water, nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients in addition to higher carbon dioxide. Without increasing all of these nutrients merely increasing carbon dioxide in the greenhouse’s air will not produce fast growing, nutritious crops. This is why the greenhouse claim made in the Journal commentary was incomplete and misleading – higher atmospheric carbon dioxide only leads to greater productivity when all other nutrients are also more available.
This is one example of incomplete and misleading information from the commentary you signed.”
Once again the Alarmist position is (to quote Gavin at Realclimate) “simply wrong”.
The largest study, to date, of this has shown precisely the opposite:
Ainsworth, E.A. and Long, S.P. 2005. What have we learned from 15 years of free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE)? A meta-analytic review of the responses of photosynthesis, canopy properties and plant production to rising CO2. New Phytologist 165: 351-372.
This meta-analysis of 279 published experiments in which plants of all types were grown under paired stressed and unstressed conditions found that CO2 induced growth enhancement was some 200% under stressed conditions compared with 80% enhancement under unstressed (optimal) conditions.
Where are these morons getting their information? Oh yes Nobel Prize winners, like Al Gore!
Do Burt Rutan and Sir Richard Branson ever get “off topic” from making their space plane and discuss global warming? Burt seems quite passionate about his position, Sir Richard seems to have taken a more politically expedient one that earns goodwill from all the “important” people.
William M. Connolley says:
January 29, 2012 at 2:04 am
——–
I think it is great that BR is attempting to provide a coherent theory – not something many do. But, his own slides are not self-consistent. On p 20, he can’t bring himself to believe the ice core CO2 record, preferring the Beck-type stuff. But by p 29, the ice core CO2 record has become exact and accurate (you can’t see the effect he wants to see from that chart, of course, if anyone looking is puzzled by what the funny arrows are for).
———-
Billy; you need to READ. Don’t just sound out the words. READING involves thinking about the concepts being presented.
p20 refers to actual measurements of CO2 levels. Direct measurements. Those are always preferable to proxies because proxies suffer from confounding factors. Where direct measurements are available, one uses those direct measurements. The ice core record, which is a proxy, needs to be calibrated against direct measurements. Not the other way around.
There is nothing about Burt not being able to bring himself to “believe” the ice core record. That’s in your imagination. The ice core record not used because there are direct measurements available.
p29 addresses the period substantially before direct measurements were taken. It is not scientifically valid to splice data from different sources into the one line. The ice core record is used to present the case of long-term “continuous” records over a period of 10,000 years up to 10,000 years before present.
Your statement that Burt takes the ice core record as exact and accurate must also be derived from your fantasies. Burt makes no statement about the exactness/accuracy. He just plots the lines and says where they come from.
If you have a record of direct measurements of CO2 available for that period somewhere in your archives; perhaps within your massive deletia from Wonkypedia, then cough up. You’re holding back science.
As for the “funny arrows” on p29 that seem so “puzzlling”, READ the whole slide.
The absolute accuracy isn’t important in that case because it’s the temporal distance between points of inflection that are significant. If those points can’t be accounted for by confounding factors in e.g. measurement methodology, then they are useful data even if they can’t be extrapolated to global scale; as could e.g. the tree rings of a lone, bristle-cone pine.
Mr. Rutan’s assertion that “Arctic ice content has stabilized” seemed cuckoo to me! Even here on WUWT, no-one claims that!
The US Navy (which from direct observation knows more about Arctic ice content than any other institution) is completely convinced of the opposite, and has addressed the American Meteorological Society (AMS) to this effect: Climate Change & National Security — Navy Implications.
When we check today’s sea ice level at the excellent web site Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis, we find that as of this very hour, Arctic ice is at record low levels.
This sure doesn’t seem “stabilized” to most folks!
Moreover, when we compare the 1981 nonskeptical predictions of James Hansen and colleagues (“Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide”, James Hansen et al., Science, 1981) with the 1989 skeptical critique of Richard Lindzen (“Some Coolness Concerning Global Warming,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1989), we find that the nonskeptics have proved to be far more foresighted than the skeptics.
It is striking that nonskeptics like Hansen et al. are proud of their early-80s on-record scientific predictions, and reference them often, whereas skeptical community seldom references its own 1980s skeptical analyses … skeptical analyses that nowadays mostly look narrow-minded and short-sighted, or even just plain wrong, especially in light of the hockey-sticks that open-source studies like the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) now have affirmed.
Skepticism that doesn’t reference its own primary literature … WUWT, indeed?
So with regard to Mr. Rutan’s analysis, although he is undoubted a wonderful aerospace engineer, when it comes to climate-change the PowerPoint presentation that Rutan posted is objectively “a few rivets short of a cowling.”
Fortunately, the science is self-correcting. As the “hockey-stick blades” that are so strikingly absent in the 1980s skeptical literature, continue to gain in length and strength in modern climate records, worldwide appreciation is growing of the outstanding strength of Hansen-style climate science, and the relative weakness of Rutan/Lindzen-style skeptical science.
I heard Burt speak at a corporate event several years ago – most memorable business trip ever! Go Burt!
“From memory, human emissions of CO2 are about twice the observed rise in atmospheric CO2. The other 50% is absorbed by land+ocean.”
It’s not about twice the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 – it varies with the temperature. In cold years, the rise is only ~20% of the annual human emissions and in warm years it’s up to ~80%. Temperature is obviously driving the annual change.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo_anngr.pdf
But, you didn’t understand my question. One part of the obseved rise in atmospheric CO2 is from warming climatic factors (ocean’s outgasing…) and not from the anthropogenic CO2 emissions. How much of the rise is due to the warming climatic factors?
Reblogged this on contrary2belief and commented:
Burt Rutan presents reality to confront belief
Not only has Burt eloquently explained the fallacy of the AGW arguments, he has in a larger sense shown the differences between engineers, and scientists who deal with modeling. Engineers must understand and deal in reality, for there can be serious consequences for ignoring realities of flaws or problems in theories, designs, and ideas, something Burt realizes for he was often the guy putting his own butt on the line flying his designs. The computer modelers, well let’s just say, many spend too much time on their computers and the internet.
As a fellow engineer, a hearty BRAVO
William M. Connolley said: “From memory, human emissions of CO2 are about twice the observed rise in atmospheric CO2. The other 50% is absorbed by land+ocean.” It’s true that the human emissions of CO2 are about twice the observed rise in atmospheric CO2. It’s not quite true that the other roughly 50% are absorbed. The absorption is based on the excess amount of CO2 over the new short-term equilibrium. Nature (soil, biosphere, ocean) absorbs extra CO2 regardless of the source, and the extra CO2 is that which has accumulated since the industrial revolution.
It’s important to keep that in mind since as we switch to carbon-free energy by continuing scientific and technological progress, we will see a rapid drop in CO2 towards the equilibrium (if we stopped producing CO2, we would drop half way back to preindustrial levels in less than 40 years). Progress depends both on scientific and technological advancement and on economic growth. The false concern over CAGW is a very real threat to economic growth and policies are constantly being advanced that take or keep large percentages of mankind below the tipping point which allows leisure and thus more energy efficiency. Below that point there is rapid population growth, environmental degradation, very inefficient use of energy, and great suffering.
I met a normal sort of bloke in the pub last week. He told me how he just cannot trust the ‘facts’ given by Wikipedia these days. The name William Connolley cropped up in the conversation.
The truth will always win through no matter how the likes of you try to prevent it.
I’m proud to be a fellow Cal Poly SLO alumnus along with Bert. Their motto (at least back then): “Learn by Doing”.
Thanks Burt
Guess we can put Fox News in the Alarmist camp. Allison Camarata “renowned investigative reporter” just nailed two of the signators in the article with the NOAA :”Weather is Climate” record highs map on Fox and Friends Sunday. Willis or Burt needed to be there!
Weak response, and only a 5 minute segment!
DirkH says:
January 29, 2012 at 3:07 am
Absolute and utter demolition! Thanks, Burt!
(But, please, can you try to explain it to your buddy Richard Branson? His “Carbon War Room” antics and public appearances with Rajendra K. Pachauri go on everyone’s nerves.)
==========================
ah but that pair are in it for? MONEY! its amazing bransons planes are now ok to go over the Arctic while no one elses are?
seems to me his so called green friends in high places may have a LOT to do with that?
and oddly enough? not ONE outcry over nasty planes over pristine areas or scaring the bears has eventuated?
so he saves fuel and flying time and profits greatly but thats ok cos hes seen to be green, while increasing pollution by increased flights..nice work hey.
Burt Rutan said:
“They applauded the correlation of surface temperatures with CO2 content from 1960 to 1998 as proof, but fail to admit that the planet has cooled after 1998 in spite of the CO2 content increasing.”
——–
Respectfully, this is not an accurate statement. 9 out of the 10 warmest years on instrument record have occurred since 1998, with 2010 being warmer than 1998. For one claiming to pride himself on what the data tells him, it seems odd that you would misconstrue this so horribly. But then again, maybe not that odd, as you seem to have made up your mind about the status of things.
Anthony, you realize, of course, that Connolley’s presence here is not to engage for fruitful discussion, but to drive traffic to his link. The downside of having the most visited climate website is being abused by the freeloaders. I think its time for you to consider shutting off the handle links…
> your claim of exponential rise in CO2 combining with logarithmic effect of CO2 to produce a linear rise in temoerature requires proof. Can you provide?
It requires maths. log(a.exp(b.t)) = log(a) + b.t
I didn’t say that the temperature rise was linear, though, I said “the radiative effect is nearly linear”. Temperature is expected to rise in line with forcing, though the relationship is not simple, when looked at in detail. In particular, interannual and interdecadal fluctuations are expected.
> Can you explain why the planet is not warming as the GCM models predict?
No, because the planet is warning as the models predict.
Edbhoy asks:
“Can you explain why the planet is not warming as the GCM models predict?”
—–
If this is an honest question then you can easily find the answer. First, the models are horrible at predicting natural variability, as that is not their function. Second, numerous attribution studies show clearly the effect of the solar, ENSO, and aerosols over the past decade, and even though these have served to flatten the rise in temperatures, they have not “cooled the planet” as Mr. Rutan wants to have us believe. When the next El Nino aligns with or near Solar Max 24, expect another instrument record breaking year of high temps as would be expected when natural variations align with the underlying warming.
William Connelly says “blah blah blah”.
Then why aren’t global temps increasing?
Did somebody say “fraud”?
Is it a coincidence that when somebody did, William M. Connolley joins the discussion?
Just wonderin’.
From “Dictionary.com”:
fraud [frawd]
noun
1. deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage.
2. a particular instance of such deceit or trickery: mail fraud; election frauds.
3. any deception, trickery, or humbug: That diet book is a fraud and a waste of time.
4. a person who makes deceitful pretenses; sham; poseur.
I’d say Burt Rutan has used the word correctly.
Connolley says:
“… the planet is warning as the models predict.”
Wrong:
http://policlimate.com/climate/cfsr_t2m_2011.png
Well done sir !!!!!
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 5:25 am
Respectfully, this is not an accurate statement. 9 out of the 10 warmest years on instrument record have occurred since 1998, with 2010 being warmer than 1998.
Thank you for once again demonstrating that which Burt Rutan and many others have described.
Your statement is only accurate if you accept GISS temps as shown here:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/mean:12/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1979/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:1979/mean:12/plot/rss/mean:12
However, the other 3 data sets do not agree that 2010 was warmer than 1998. Most likely this is because they have not been manipulated to make it appear so. (Can’t wait for you to even attempt to prove that the GISS data hasn’t been manipulated/adjusted.) Show us the statistically significant warming in the other 3 sets since 1998. You can not. This clearly makes Burt Rutan’s point while putting you squarely in the group he is describing.
The travesty isn’t that the warming has “flat-lined” somewhat, the travesty is that the CAGW proponents won’t admit that they are wrong.
William M. Connolley says: January 29, 2012 at 3:13 am
I assume you are referring only to the human contribution to ambient CO2.
Nope, I’m referring to the overall CO2 level in the atmosphere.
> how much of the rise is caused by “fossil” fuels?
From memory, human emissions of CO2 are about twice the observed rise in atmospheric CO2. The other 50% is absorbed by land+ocean.
______________________________________________________
Are you the same person who corrupted wiki climate science articles for years? I shall ignore that possible history for the sake of this technical discussion:
You say:
“From memory, human emissions of CO2 are about twice the observed rise in atmospheric CO2. The other 50% is absorbed by land+ocean.”
That is about right. It is part of the “material balance argument” that has been argued repeatedly between Ferdinand Engelbeen (for) and Richard Courtney (against).
I agree with Richard – I think the material balance argument is deeply flawed. Here, in part, is why:
Total atmospheric CO2 is rising (from memory) at about 2 ppm per year, and natural seasonal flux causes annual variation in atmospheric CO2 in the far North of about 16 ppm, or about eight times the annual increase, attenuating to almost zero at the South Pole. It is clear that natural seasonal CO2 flux is many times greater than the human component.
Examine the 15fps AIRS data animation of global CO2 at
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003562/carbonDioxideSequence2002_2008_at15fps.mp4
It is difficult to see the impact of humanity in this impressive display of nature’s power.
In the animation, does anyone see the impact of industrialization? USA? Europe? India? China? Anything related to humanity?
Does one conclude from the animation that the Canadians and Russians have heavy industry emitting megatonnes of deadly CO2 in the far northern Arctic? Are the Inuit using power tools to carve their soapstone?
In fact, it is a natural system that chases equilibrium, and is driven by photosynthesis and other seasonal factors, dominated by the large landmass in the Northern Hemisphere, and consisting of huge seasonal fluxes of CO2 into and out of the landmasses and oceans. .
We also infer, from ice core data, that atmospheric CO2 lags temperature by ~~600-800 years. Is it possible that the small increases we see in CO2 today are after-effects of the Medieval Warm Period?
We also know from the modern data record that average dCO2/dt varies contemporaneously with average global temperature, and CO2 lags temperature by about 9 months*, so CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
So your theory assumes that the future is causing the past. Here, I detect a serious flaw in your logic.
The warmist counter-argument, that the 9-month lag is a “feedback mechanism”, is unsupported by any evidence that I am aware of.
It seems that when you global warming alarmists get into trouble, you like to throw in the f-work – FEEDBACK – to waive off dissent.
“Runaway warming will be driven by positive FEEDBACKS!”
Religious nonsense – there is ample evidence that climate feedbacks are negative – if these feedbacks were positive, life on Earth would be very different, if it existed at all.
“The 9 month delay is CO2 after temperature is caused by FEEDBACKS!”
More religious nonsense.
Then there is the predictive record of the IPCC and the warming alarmists – not one of the scary scenarios predicted by the global warming alarmists has materialized. Earth has not warmed this century.
At some point, you global warming alarmists will have to fold your tents and go home.
There is no global warming crisis.
* http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
I’ve planted trees since a kid. I think CO2 “enhancement” is already clearly present. I planted a mail-order, bare-root Tuliptree in partial shade (at most 6 hrs sun/day) in 2004. It’s now 40′ tall! A mail-order hybrid-pine (pitch x loblolly) planted in the poorest of soil (mostly crushed limestone) in 2006 is now 25′ tall. No fertilizer.
Everything about increased CO2 is good, not bad.
AlanG says:
January 29, 2012 at 3:29 am
“When Americans talk about oil and gas they often talk about the industry – even Mann and Hansen do all the time. The EU on the other hand doesn’t have one, and is the biggest importer of energy in the world. Large countries like Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland have little or no oil & gas.”
So THAT’S the reason the Germans had to do coal liquefaction during WWII! Because they didn’t have any oil and gas! WOW! And why was it that Japan invaded the Dutch East Indies? They didn’t have any oil either? I’ll be danged…
William Connelly,
After January temperatures come out, the models will fall out of the 95 % confidence factor:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/la-nina-drives-hadcrut-nhsh-13-month-mean-outside-1sigma-model-spread/
So no the models are not predicting reality. And if you go back to modeling where there is time ie: >30yrs you can see models have failed miserably:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/13/is-jim-hansens-global-temperature-skillful/
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 5:37 am
“Edbhoy asks:
“Can you explain why the planet is not warming as the GCM models predict?”
—–
If this is an honest question then you can easily find the answer. First, the models are horrible at predicting natural variability, as that is not their function.”
R. Gates, you have just said the same thing as Burt Rutan.
Ask yourself : WHAT IS natural variability if not a failure of the models to take every part of the climate system into account that influences temperatures – most prominently, the oceans and the oceans-surface interface.
The atmosphere is the continuation of the oceans with other means. The tail doesn’t wag the dog.
Now, please, draw the conclusion – the models are bunk, let’s fire all the modelers; let’s save that money; it’ll save billions, they’re doing harm, not good. They’re damaging science, not building it up. Let’s throw away everything they’ve done for the past 30 years. Let’s throw away wikipedia, well, at least all the climate drivel.
It’s all a house of cards. Do not tolerate these morons and the continuing damage they do.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 5:37 am
…
First, the models are horrible at predicting natural variability, as that is not their function.
I’m not sure you, and most climate modelers, appear to understand the significance of that statement. We don’t understand planetary climate thermodynamics. We suspect many things. We’re not even sure the planet is warming- the degree variation presently bandied about is mostly the noise of an unknown number of perturbers. We think the instrument record is starting to tell us something, but we are 100s of years, if not thousands, on any confirmation beyond natural variability. Arriving at a conclusion through models thatseems to agree with an outcome expected does not, in and of itself, indicate that the path to the result is correct. Unless the model can predict natural variability, its not modeling the system, period. Until your models can deal with natural variability, the end result can only be contrived, or coincidental – nothing more. Correlation does not absolutely validate causation. The vast majority of AGW proponents conflate UHI with global warming. That there are local atmospheric effects to UHI is without question, but then, for the moment, that’s weather, not climate…
It is truly sad that William M. Connolley is in charge of any sort of science editing at Wikipedia. He says “It requires maths. log(a.exp(b.t)) = log(a) + b.t” Does he realize that is a crude approximation, not proof that was asked for? He says “the planet is warning as the models predict.” Does he realize that models don’t predict?
Very nice of Mr Connolley to stop by and contribute. Perhaps some day he will start reading.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 5:25 am
Hey Gates, I think everyone here has heard your message. Dozens of times. Maybe hundreds. I’m tempted to write a program to read all the comments to WUWT and count variants of your 9 out of 10 mantra.
Plateau!
William Connelly:
> Can you explain why the planet is not warming as the GCM models predict?
No, because the planet is warning as the models predict.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8299079.stm
What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.
To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.
The models do NOT predict another 10-20 years of cooling, at least not the ones that are being used to justify action to governments. Maybe there are hidden models that are much better that no one will show us. The warming community basically just says, “But eventually all of that cooling will dissappear with even faster warming and get back to what we predicted.” That’s not a model, that’s not even a forecast, that’s speculation at best.
Thank You Burt for spending the time and effort to discuss this fraud and why it is a fraud.
Terry and Hyon
William Connelly, thank you for your tireless effort to invalidate what could have been a useful tool, rather than the insipid, irrelevant and to be perpetually ignored piece of crap you turned Wikipedia into.
Don’t you love aeronautical and aerospace engineers. If they were off by .5 degress, we would have missed the moon.
William;
There is no question that the measured (almost exponential) CO2 increase is coming from some source other than human activity. Please note that the world has been in a deep recession for several years now. This ultimately translates into less productivity, less movement of goods, fewer services, less travel and, hence, LESS fossil fuel consumption on a world wide basis. Open your eyes. How could such an increase in CO2 be coming from anything humans are doing?
Missing from the entire AGW argument are at least a couple of null hypotheses that desperately need studying, i.e. that the observed CO2 increase is due to some factor or factors other than human activity, and that temperature increases (and decreases) are due to some factor or factors other than human activity.
Go back to the ice cores. Why does temperature increase first by hundreds of years to then be FOLLOWED by CO2 if CO2 is the cause? Why has it done this cyclically for millenia?
William Connolley wrote:
“No, because the planet is warning as the models predict.”
10 words of hilarity. Thanks for making my day Billy.
I think we should ignore the guy who made Wikipedia useless – not even the education field will allow its use anymore even though Wikipedia had the potential to be the greatest resource the planet has ever seen.
Why would we respond to a guy who did that and allow discussion on Burt Rutan’s response to be highjacked.
TomB says:
January 28, 2012 at 10:47 pm
“So that pretty much sums up my problem with AGW alarmism. They’re clearly anti-human.”
That’s OK – I’m anti-CAGW-climate-“science”-funding! And after November 2012, we’ll be rapidly ramping down the government-funding for useless and in most cases redundant “climate products”.
“No, because the planet is warning as the models predict.
Time you hoist you flag on the mast, William M Connolly. Are you a believer?
Mr William Connelly:
“No, because the planet is warning as the models predict.”
Nonsense!
If this were true, Mr Hansen , Mr Gore, Mr Mann, et al would have empirical [ repeatable ] observational evidence to support the hypothesis.
There would be no need to “adjust” the data.
A moral scientist welcomes facts that do not show that their model or thesis is not predicting the future. These allow them to modify the model or thesis to more accurately represent reality. The immoral “scientist” manipulates the facts so that they are what their model would predict. AGW falls in the latter class. As such, the folks like Hansen, Mann, et al. are not scientists but simple frauds. They should be defunded and sued for the return of the funds given to them to date given that they have done this acts with malice aforethought.
RGates – that was quite a weak argument. What data set are you referring to? Maybe Burt looked at one or all of the other global temp data sets. I think that HADCRUT, UAH and RSS all had 2010 lower than 1998…. And i think even the data set that you might (?) be referring to had the difference between 2010 and 1998 so small that it was within the margin of error and hence technically should be treated as a tie with 1998…..
The reason why carbon dioxide has no effect is contained in Prof Claes Johnson’s “Computational Blackbody Radiation” linked from my website.*
All it would take to disprove Prof. Johnson’s hypothesis is a simple experiment. You just have to show that backradiation can warm something like a metal plate that is already warmer than the cold atmosphere. It appears that backradiation cannot melt frost which is in shade all day long, but who knows, maybe it can warm the oceans (LOL.)
But seriously, I am seeking ten companies to sponsor a reward of $50,000 for the first person or organisation who can do so.
For details watch for my book in about May or June this year and advertisements in the press and other media.
If any company wishes to offer $5,000 please contact me. The 10 companies doing so will get plenty of free publicity I believe.
I don’t believe the reward will ever have to be paid out.
Doug Cotton
* http://climate-change-theory.com
As a genuine skeptic (treat all opinions with caution, search for proof, check the data, etc.), it is a pleasure to see Wm Connelly here. I also greatly appreciate the presence of Stokes, Gates, etc. here. (I think I left out someone here.) They are to be commended and treated with courtesy as they are attempting to maintain an open dialogue.
(Note that Connelly did not have a link so how can he be accused of trying t drive traffic to his site). I am, of course, aware of his manipulations at Wikipedia.
Even A Physicist (after his irrational foray into energy economics) has demonstrated his knowledge and integrity when he sticks to stuff he knows.
I stress that I am continuing to evaluate the evidence and, as an engineer, I very much appreciate BR’s input and WC’s comments thereon.
Thank you, Anthony for providing such a great forum.
One problem I never see addressed by the alarmists is how the concentrations of CO2 and H2O are handled. I’ve only seen them handled as averages but that does not seem right. The H2O concentration high in the atmosphere is very small. Most of it exists in the first 3km or so. What that means is the CO2 in the lower levels of the atmosphere has almost no energy to work with. H2O does all the hard work.
However, at higher levels of the atmosphere CO2 becomes the dominant radiating gas. Interestingly, it is at this level that radiating gases may just start producing more cooling than warming. The radiation sent downward just gets absorbed by and generally redirected back towards space. The radiation upwards has a higher and higher probability of getting a free path out of the atmosphere as the density decreases.
I’m beginning to think this is why the overall GHE has reached its maximum level. The H2O already has maxed out the GHE at the lower levels of the atmosphere and adding more CO2 there does almost nothing. And, whatever small increase does occur is balanced by the cooling effect of CO2 at higher altitudes.
Thanks Burt,
Today I posted a link to “Burt Rutan on Climate Change” in my Web pages.
I’m glad to see engineers are not drinking the Kool-Aid!
No, the planet has not warmed during this century. period. And manipulating wikipedia does not make it true.
By the way, the mere fact that there are more than 2 models, 23 are described on last IPCC report if memory serves, and each one has a different value for the “climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling” proves that at least 22 models have to be wrong, since there can only be 1 real value, the other ones have to be wrong.
Does anyone really think Burt Rutan knows what he is talking about? The PDF presentation on his website is appalling. Almost every slide contains a facepalm.
On slide 10 he claims “The temperature trend is so slight that, were the global average temperaturechange which has taken place during the 20th and 21st centuries were to occur in an ordinary room, most of the people in the room would be unaware of it.”
Comparing a change in global average with the temperature in a room? Seriously.
On slide 12 he erroneously claims just 3.4% of CO2 in the atmosphere is caused by human activity.
On slide 17 through 22 he argues the ice core data cannot be trusted, but then on slide 27 he relies on the ice core data being remarkably accurate.
Slide 23 is a ridiculous strawman.
> why aren’t global temps increasing?
They are.
> Time you hoist you flag on the mast
I did that a while back [snip]
> how the concentrations of CO2 and H2O are handled. I’ve only seen them handled as averages but that does not seem right. The H2O concentration high in the atmosphere is very small…
Indeed. If you want to examine this in detail, then you need a climate model, which splits the atmosphere into typically 20 vertical levels (finer closer to the ground) and 300 km horizontal boxes. Within those boxes, H2O varies; CO2 doesn’t, of course, as it is well mixed to a close enough approximation.
If you don’t care for the detail then you can just consider a single atmospheric column and make water depend on temperature as you’d expect.
> Why does temperature increase first by hundreds of years to then be FOLLOWED by CO2 if CO2 is the cause?
Because the situation is rather more complex than you think it is. I’ve had people point me at 400,000 year ice core records and tell me “look: you can see the lag!”. But of course you can’t; a few hundred years is invisible on that scale. scienceblogs for the details, but be prepared to read closely.
[Note: self-serving advertising snipped. Readers can find your blog without much trouble. -mod]
Just a word of caution folks about William M. Connolley.
Experience has told me that arguing with him is an exercise in futility, as this zebra isn’t capable of changing his stripes, or even considering that a different camo might be better suited for him. What he does is to provoke responses, then quote mines those responses to use in an upcoming diatribe to claim to the few dozen or so people who read his blog how stupid we are here at WUWT. Followed by accolades from his peanut gallery. Think Tamino light. He did this last time when Willis tried to explain the significant errors of Equation 8 in the recent Nikolov and Zeller calim on gravity induced atmospheric heating.
Best to simply ignore him here, IMHO.
“Jay Curtis says:
January 29, 2012 at 6:42 am
William;
There is no question that the measured (almost exponential) CO2 increase is coming from some source other than human activity.”
Haha seriously? Is this guy serious?
I tried to read his post as a joke but I don’t see any humor in it. WTF!
R. Gates says:
Others have already shown your arguments are deeply entrenched in religious fervor. There’s only one real argument that alarmists can argue. That is, natural cooling effects have overridden the warming. Claiming recent years are among the warmest years actually goes against your case. Emissions have increased which means, all else being equal, the temperatures should be ever increasing as well.
That gets us down to a little critical thinking. If natural cooling could have impacted recent temperatures then natural warming could have impacted the 1980-1998 years. Unless you claim uber-knowledge of what drives climate you’re pretty much left with a coin flip.
Or, one might consider the GHE works as advertised but has reached its maximum effect.
Bob B says:
January 29, 2012 at 6:16 am
“After January temperatures come out, the models will fall out of the 95 % confidence factor:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/la-nina-drives-hadcrut-nhsh-13-month-mean-outside-1sigma-model-spread/
”
Wonderful comment by Lucia over there:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/la-nina-drives-hadcrut-nhsh-13-month-mean-outside-1sigma-model-spread/#comment-86459
“Perhaps some mannian end point filtering could save it.
I think if we fit a line, and then assume the upcoming 6 months is a reflection of the past six months, we can show a rise at the end.”
William M. Connolley, have you already written the wikipedia entry about this great climate science technique?
INteresting article in the Mail Online.
Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)
Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html
Didn’t think I would ever see this.
Ben
William M. Connolley says:
January 29, 2012 at 8:06 am
[> how the concentrations of CO2 and H2O are handled. I’ve only seen them handled as averages but that does not seem right. The H2O concentration high in the atmosphere is very small…]
Indeed. If you want to examine this in detail, then you need a climate model, which splits the atmosphere into typically 20 vertical levels (finer closer to the ground) and 300 km horizontal boxes. Within those boxes, H2O varies; CO2 doesn’t, of course, as it is well mixed to a close enough approximation.
Sorry, but having worked in computer science for my entire career, I am far more of an expert on what they can do than your typical climate honcho. When you layer your models you lose the entire 3-dimensional movement in the atmosphere. That alone makes them pretty much useless. Not only that, but I’ve also heard the models are hydrostatic which is not the case in our atmosphere. I can only guess at the hundreds (or thousands) of other swags necessary to attempt any real time simulation of the massively complex and chaotic system know as the atmosphere.
I actually has a good laugh when someone mentioned above that only one out of 23 models could be correct. The real answer of course is zero.
Approximations after approximations eventually lose the real dynamics. This is exactly what Burt is trying to tell you. The lack of understanding of computer limitations I see demonstrated by your statement is appalling (but not surprising).
Mr. William M. Connolley is a person who projects the 1/2 of climate science that agrees with his thoughts, and wants the 1/2 that disagrees with his thoughts to be silenced.
Enough said.
nomnom,
You are truly clueless. Burt Rutan is accurate when he says human CO2 emissions are only around 3% of the total. The numbers come straight from the UN/IPCC. The rest of your silly criticisms are equally ridiculous.
As for the deceptive William Connolley, the CO2 lag behind temperature can be clearly seen on a chart of the past 400,000 years. On all time scales, from months to hundreds of millennia, CO2 always follows temperature. Therefore, CO2 is an effect of changing temperature, not a cause. The fact that CO2 lags temperature has been documented in the peer reviewed literature.
Connolley can get away with his lies on Wikipedia. But not here on the internet’s Best Science site.
@Cal65 says:
January 28, 2012 at 10:59 pm:
Hold on there with your condemnation. While Mann and a couple other prominent “warmints”™ hold degrees in geology, many of the most strenuous objectors, in academia and industry, and here on this board, are geologists. At some point a geologist gets a course or several concerning the development and 4.5 billion year history of the Earth. That usually is enough to cause one to look askance at claims of AGW catastrophe, and to dig into the question.
Jay Curtis – the world has not been in a recession, certain comparatively lightly-populated parts of it like the US and Europe have, while other more densely-populated areas like China have (until very recently, at least) still been managing substantial economic growth – and building lots of coal-fired power plants to support it.
On the other hand, that doesn’t make Connolley’s “all is proceeding as I have foreseen” claim regarding temperature and models any more accurate.
I found the first comment interesting at S&R: get rid of mankind.
The rest of the comments were surprisingly timid, with little or no data. Not the usual repetition of ‘consensus’, models, ‘masked warmth’, glaciers, Arctic ice extent, or references to NOAA, MET, etc. Clearly the Warmists’ foundation is going wobbly.
jlc says:
January 29, 2012 at 7:41 am
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I fully endorse the sentiment expressed.
I am an ardent sceptic and therefore welcome the views of all.
Whilst I frequently find myself unconvinced by the views expressed by Mr Gates, I consider Mr Gates to be one of the more knowledgeable commentators, and, accordingly, I always look out for his comments, and always make a point of reading them. I particularly like the fact that Mr Gates often supports his comments with links to referenced articles. Time permitting, I will always read these. Of course, those articles are frequently of variable relevance, variable quality, based upon biased sample sets, conclusions not fully supported by the data or otherwise over-hyped, fail to set out uncertainties and/or error margins etc, but nonetheless they form piece of what is a very complex jigsaw puzzle, one which is made the more difficult since we do not know how many pieces the puzzle contains nor what the picture is.
This site would be much poorer if Mr Gates and his like did not contribute. They have much to bring to the debate and I for one thank Mr Gates for the time and effort he displays in coming to this site and posting his views. It helps learning about possible underlying issues, causes and effects and I (and I suspect that this is a view shared by many) would look at this site far less frequently if it was one sided only.
Mr Connelly is a welcome addition. I do hope that we will see more of him in the future with his comments on articles being posted on this site. I beg to differ with those who argue that he is blinkered and that it is a futile waste of time arguing with him. Whilst that may be so (and I make no comment on whether that is or is not the case), it appears to me that that stance misses the real issue. In my opinion, the real issue is not to persuade him to change his views but rather to test one’s own views and to add to one’s own knowledge and understanding of issues relating to the understanding of climate and the status of climate science.
PS. I do not know whether this is solely my perception which perhaps is misconceived, but these past 6 months or so, I have gained the impression that Mr Gates is becoming slightly more sceptical in his views. I gain the impression that some of his comments are now more cautious in their certainty, and that whilst it is still clear on what side he thinks the dice will fall, he is beginning to express views to the effect that only time will tell as to whether the dice are loaded mainly by CO2 or whether they are significantly (and I would say mainly) loaded by natural variations (including ocean cycles and even solar). Time will indeed tell.
It will be interesting to look at this debate in 10 to 15 years time and to review people’s comments when we have the benefit of a further 10 to 15 years of data. It is quite likely that some may look very foolish.
James of the West says:
January 29, 2012 at 7:34 am
RGates – that was quite a weak argument. What data set are you referring to? Maybe Burt looked at one or all of the other global temp data sets. I think that HADCRUT, UAH and RSS all had 2010 lower than 1998…. And i think even the data set that you might (?) be referring to had the difference between 2010 and 1998 so small that it was within the margin of error and hence technically should be treated as a tie with 1998…..
————
Either way, we’ve not seen global cooling this past decade as Mr. Rutan contends. Fortunately, we have a verifiable prediction of future underlying warming that should show itself easily when the natural variability aligns once more with greenhouse gas forcing. This prediction comes directly from attribution studies. If we get a decent intensity El Niño around the peak of Solar Cycle 24, 1998 and 2010 temperatures should both be broken ( if, of course we don’t get a Pinatubo level eruption around the same time). But all of this kind of prediction is outside the bounds of what climate models are all about. This natural variability is just noise riding atop a much longer- term forcing from the perspective of the GCMs, which is as it should be.
It’s obvious to the CAGW lunatics that they are losing the PR war:
Just today,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html
People like Mr Connolley are getting desperate as well, and are acting out of desperation on blogs like WUWT
I don’t think any greenhouse is purchasing “bottled” CO2 for greenhouse atmosphere addition. That would be expensive. They are merely burning propane or kerosene to produce the CO2 for plant growth enhancement. The set-up is similar to the propane mosquito traps which burn propane to create CO2 as bait for the little devils. CO2 is one of the easiest (and useful) substances for humans to create. It is why we create so much of it. Hope that clears up the question for you. GK
“Human Caused Climate Disruption”
I prefer CAGHGGWICD: Catastrophic Anthropogenic-GreenHouse-Gas Global Warming Induced Climate Disruption.
Urederra says:
January 29, 2012 at 7:49 am
“…By the way, the mere fact that there are more than 2 models, 23 are described on last IPCC report if memory serves, and each one has a different value for the “climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling” proves that at least 22 models have to be wrong, since there can only be 1 real value, the other ones have to be wrong….”
////////////////////////////////////////////
THis fact reminds me of the Dire Straights song Industrial Disease and the line “…Two men say they are Jesus, one of them must be wrong…”,
I have made this point many times. It is an incontrovertible fact that at least 22 models MUST be wrong. Does that give any faith that one might be right? In my opinion the fact that so many are known to be wrong suggests that the chance of one of those models being right is very weak, Indeed, as of today, not one single model mirrors observation and this further confirms the weak confidence level one could place on their projections and that any of them could be correct.
PS. I have not checked whether 23 is the correct number or whether it is slightly less.
Pronounced cagwick. Yes, I work for the goverment.
Here’s a bit of a mind experiment to show how climate models can be “wrong” in the sense of not being 100% accurate, but still useful, and it even tells you why. Place a drop of water at the top of a window and write a computer model that tells me the exact path that drop of water will follow. Now the models will know the force of gravity, and the molecular attraction between water and glass, and even impurities in the glass, but no model can tell you exactly the path that water drop will follow, but every one of them, or at least the consensus of them will tell you that the drop of water (if it was big enough and the glass pane not too tall) will end up at the bottom of the pane). Think how much vastly more complex the climate is, yet you would expect models to predict chaotic natural variability? That is not their function and it is impossible anyway. But of course, when we get a year that eclipses 2010 ( or 1998) in temperature, it will be “recovery from the Little Ice Age” for many skeptics, as a way most likely, of reducing their cognitive dissonance.
Some interesting quotes today in an article titled…
Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)
Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years
* * *
‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’
* * *
‘If temperatures continue to stay flat or start to cool again, the divergence between the models and recorded data will eventually become so great that the whole scientific community will question the current theories,’ he said.
‘The real issue is whether the model itself is accurate,’ Dr Scafetta said.
* * *
‘The responsible thing to do would be to accept the fact that the models may have severe shortcomings when it comes to the influence of the sun,’ said Professor Curry.
* * *
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html#ixzz1krtHnFX9
Anthony Watts says:
January 29, 2012 at 8:24 am
“Just a word of caution folks about William M. Connolley…”
Don’t worry Anthony. Like most people here (and in the general public), I have 1000 times more respect for Burt Rutan than William Connolley. Burt’s contributions to the science, engineering, and practice of aviation dwarf whatever minor contributions Mr. Connolley has made to anything…
One lesson that anyone can learn here on WUWT is the utter futility of science-and-skepticism that cherry-picks the noisiest data, the weakest science, and the weakest skeptical analyses.
Conversely, a positive lesson that WUWT teaches is the immense benefits of science-and-skepticism that matches the best science with the strongest skepticism.
Of all the signers of the WSJ-16 letter, it is Richard Lindzen who has authored one of the earliest, best-regarded, and most-cited skeptical analyses: “Some Coolness Concerning Global Warming” (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1989).
Similarly, James Hansen was lead author of the earliest, best-regarded, and most-cited nonskeptical articles: “Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide” (Science, 1981).
These two articles are outstandingly representative (IMHO) of strong science and strong skepticism; they both have been cited hundreds of times; and therefore they both are highly recommended to skeptic and nonskeptic alike (a Google search finds both articles available on-line).
It is striking how little has changed (for skeptic and nonskeptic alike) since these two articles appeared in the 1980s; Hansen and Lindzen equally deserve great credit for the outstanding foresight and proven durability of their ideas. And for this reason, it is hugely dismaying that Burt Rutan’s PowerPoint presentations never refer to this seminal early work, by either Hansen or Lindzen, and indeed show no knowledge or appreciation of this work at all.
Which side is getting the better of the debate so far, Hansen-style scientific ideas or Lindzen-style skepticism of those ideas? Hmmmm … skeptics and nonskeptics alike can spin and dance and cherry-pick (and both sides most certainly do!) but neither side can change what they published back in the 1980s. As various climate “hockey sticks” gain in strength and length — per the open source Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) analysis, for example — the 1981 (nonskeptic) climate-change predictions by James Hansen and colleagues are looking stronger-and-stronger, relative to the 1989 (skeptical) climate-change criticisms of Richard Lindzen and his WSJ-16 colleagues like Burt Rutan.
Elevator Summary: The track record of Hansen-style climate predictions is (so far) more impressive than the track record of Rutan / WSJ-16 / Lindzen-style skepticism, yet both are valuable, and each augments the value of the other. Thus skeptics and nonskeptics alike would benefit, if greater acknowledgment and respect were given, for the outstanding early works of climate-change science and skepticism.
I already put in several comments on the WSJ article Burt Rutan signed that may possibly have gotten lost because there are already 1946 of them. My point was exactly what Rutan says – their predictions are based on defective modeling and they refuse to be corrected on that. Worst of all is their use of the greenhouse effect to predict warming which Ferenck Miskolczi’s work has proved to be non-existent. I myself proved in a peer-reviewed paper that greenhouse effect in the Arctic is impossible and even offered my paper to Anthony Watts. But Anthony rudely rejected it because I said bad things about Keenlysides’ work. You would think that science would count for a skeptic website but no – Anthony had to use a pretext only his namesake, the Oxford don, would use to refuse posting a paper. Peer review, he said, was wrong not to strike out my comments about Keenlyside, and besides that I was ending my sentences with exclamation points! You can get it now at: http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/arno-arrak.pdf
Bill Illis says:
January 29, 2012 at 6:53 am
“I think we should ignore the guy who made Wikipedia useless – not even the education field will allow its use anymore even though Wikipedia had the potential to be the greatest resource the planet has ever seen.
Why would we respond to a guy who did that and allow discussion on Burt Rutan’s response to be highjacked.”
_____________________________
Can we get an Amen?
On related note, seriously, Mr. Angliss, “human- caused climate disruption“?
Really?
If you only knew how ridiculous and sophomoric that statement makes you appear, without even considering the rest of your weak argument.
CO2 rise is likely mostly anthropogenic, but it’s not a sure thing. If what would be caused by outgassing is lower than human emissions, the level of non-human CO2 would not increase since the equilibrium state would be reached without outgassing. Of course, I’m not sure that outgassing could plausibly explain that amount of CO2.
What would be interesting is if non-fossil fuel based CO2 is also rising.
Mr. Connely says: CO2 increases affect the radiative balance logarithmically, this is well known. Since CO2 is increasing nearly exponentially, the radiative effect is nearly linear.
Sir, you are wrong R.Gates has said numbers of times CO2 effects can not be expressed logarithmically.
Other than that you’re just wrong about the exponential increase of CO2. Less than two ppm per year is not exponential.
Not only do I agree completely with Burt Rutan but I feel I must express my admiration of him for designing the most magnificently beautiful twin engine airplane the world has ever seen. It’s a pity they turned out to cost as much as a small jet, but that wasn’t Burt’s fault. Ladies and gentlemen, gaze upon this flying machine with awe:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://rps3.com/Images/Pages/Starship/Starship%2520page/star1385%252012×9%2520lg.jpg&imgrefurl=http://rps3.com/Pages/Starship.htm&h=801&w=1068&sz=274&tbnid=t4Qlu5TBYU1msM:&tbnh=96&tbnw=128&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dbeechcraft%2Bstarship%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=beechcraft+starship&docid=IB7iWy7xjdRgYM&sa=X&ei=Y4IlT5y3DeaKsQLRkq2MAg&ved=0CD8Q9QEwAw&dur=2532
Am reading The delinquent Teenager. WOW is all I can say. I knew of the shady side of the IPCC but no anywhere near the actual BS pulled by the IPCC. Every journalist in the world should read this book and it is definitely Pulitzer material.
Smokey: CO2 always follows temperature. Therefore, CO2 is an effect of changing temperature, not a cause.
And eggs always hatch into chickens. Therefore chickens can’t lay eggs. Great logic!
Richard wrote: “I have made this point many times. It is an incontrovertible fact that at least 22 models MUST be wrong. Does that give any faith that one might be right? ”
The loons don’t think like that. They have a whole department dedicated to analyzing all the models statistically. They then take an average based on the analysis and call it a scientific result.
It really is true. I saw a lecture by a chief loon priest explain it all. Thankfully I have forgotten his name.
Fantastic to see that Burt Rutan has such street credibility that the CAGW “thought police thugs” have appeared en mass in an orchestrated smear campaign.
At first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
CAGW is definitely as dead a doornail. Although they still fight it is clear that skepticism has won.
Now the sooner we can cut off taxpayer funding to all these CAGW clowns (“scientists”, unelected agencies, NGO’s), the sooner we can get back to real problems: restoring Western economies, lowering the cost of energy, improving the environment and helping the poor.
Amen to the death of CAGW.
Simple question people never seem to ask, or least I have never seen asked. How did CO2 level reach 5x-9x the current levels historically before cave men existed? How is it possible that the minor jump this time is human induced but the proven historical higher levels were always natural before?
“Smokey says:
January 29, 2012 at 8:33 am
nomnom,
You are truly clueless. Burt Rutan is accurate when he says human CO2 emissions are only around 3% of the total. The numbers come straight from the UN/IPCC. The rest of your silly criticisms are equally ridiculous.”
No Rutan says 3% of the atmospheric CO2 is human caused. See the difference? He’s claiming just 3% of the 390ppm is caused by man. Just 11.7ppm. So he’s claiming most of the CO2 rise documented by Mauna Loa and other sites is not caused by man. Which is completely incorrect.
“As for the deceptive William Connolley, the CO2 lag behind temperature can be clearly seen on a chart of the past 400,000 years.”
But Rutan calls that chart into doubt. He cites the Beck CO2 study that disagrees with ice core data. Therefore he shouldn’t accept ice core data is accurate enough to a lag between CO2 and temperature.
“On all time scales, from months to hundreds of millennia, CO2 always follows temperature. Therefore, CO2 is an effect of changing temperature, not a cause.”
Wrong. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and is therefore a cause of warming.
“Connolley can get away with his lies on Wikipedia. But not here on the internet’s Best Science site.”
You are the one lying.
“mkelly says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:34 am
Other than that you’re just wrong about the exponential increase of CO2. Less than two ppm per year is not exponential.”
It’s accelerating. Just look at the data. Why do you think they call it the Keeling **Curve**?
Seriously why are so many commenters slapping down facts and celebrating ignorance?
Gates says:
“…when we get a year that eclipses 2010 ( or 1998) in temperature, it will be “recovery from the Little Ice Age” for many skeptics, as a way most likely, of reducing their cognitive dissonance.”
Gates misunderstands scientific skepticism. Skeptics are generally immune to CD because skeptics have nothing to prove, therefore cognitive dissonance cannot apply. The alarmist crowd is badly afflicted with cognitive dissonance [Orwell’s “doublethink”]. They have the irrational ability to hold two contradictory thoughts at the same time, just like Gates is doing. Temperatures have been flat to declining for almost fifteen years, but Gates believes that isn’t real. He truly believes that there is a lot of hidden heat in the pipeline, which will jump out any time now. Doublethink. Cognitive dissonance. Usually incurable.
HarrisonN, thanx for making clear that you’re a lunatic with that ridiculous analogy. Rises in CO2 always follow rises in temperature, on all time scales. I provided verifiable evidence showing that is true. You provided a baseless opinion.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:11 am
WOW!
mkelly says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:34 am
Mr. Connely says: CO2 increases affect the radiative balance logarithmically, this is well known. Since CO2 is increasing nearly exponentially, the radiative effect is nearly linear.
Sir, you are wrong R.Gates has said numbers of times CO2 effects can not be expressed logarithmically.
________
That is not what I said at all, but you knack for misquoting can probably be expressed exponentially.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:11 am
But of course, when we get a year that eclipses 2010 ( or 1998) in temperature, it will be “recovery from the Little Ice Age” for many skeptics, as a way most likely, of reducing their cognitive dissonance.
But of course, if we get 10 years with no increase in temperatures, it will be “aerosols”, or “hidden heat”, or “natural cooling”, or (pick your favorite excuse since you seem to have used them all) as a way most likely, of reducing their cognitive dissonance.
Yes, all models are wrong. It’s good you recognize that. However, we just had William C. telling me to go look at models to “understand” how climate works. I hope you see the problem. Models are being used as THE evidence behind the alarmism. Your typical non-scientist trusts computers. The result is many people actually believe the models are evidence. Just look at all the peer reviewed nonsense we see based on models. These are PhDs that don’t understand that models are no more than a biased guess.
Here’s a tough problem for you. Go out ask 23 registered democrats who they believe would make the best president in the 2012 elections. Do you think you will get an unbiased answer? How many models are built by skeptics? Need I say more?
If William M. Connolley is allowed to post in this thread, then I am out of it.
For the same reason I wouldn’t have a dinner with the KGB officer who tortured me.
Here’s an excellent essay written by Trenberth related to models and uncertainty:
http://www.nature.com/climate/2010/1002/full/climate.2010.06.html
And here’s a very appropriate quote from the end of the essay:
“The timescale dictated by the IPCC process brings with it the risk of prematurely exposing problems with climate models as we learn how to develop them. In other disciplines, this might not matter so much, but what to do about climate change is a high-profile, politically charged issue involving winners and losers, and such results can be misused. In fact — to offer one more prediction — I expect that they will be.”
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:11 am
Here’s a bit of a mind experiment to show how climate models can be “wrong” in the sense of not being 100% accurate, but still useful, and it even tells you why. Place a drop of water at the top of a window and write a computer model that tells me the exact path that drop of water will follow. Now the models will know the force of gravity, and the molecular attraction between water and glass, and even impurities in the glass, but no model can tell you exactly the path that water drop will follow, but every one of them, or at least the consensus of them will tell you that the drop of water (if it was big enough and the glass pane not too tall) will end up at the bottom of the pane).
And this example precisely illustrates my previous comments about “Gates’ models”. Of course the model will find the drop at the bottom of the pane. The model has a preconceived conclusion even if the run itself fails its hypothesis: that of the route.
Climate models, as promoted by warmists are structured the same, The conclusion is assumed: there will be warming. Even the methodology is assumed: the warming will be due to CO2 (uinlike the relative certainty of gravity). Being unable to predict either the assumed methodology OR any other mechanism falsifies the assumed conclusion. No amount of dressing up or down will fix that. Lipstick on a pig.
aaron says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:33 am
CO2 rise is likely mostly anthropogenic, but it’s not a sure thing. If what would be caused by outgassing is lower than human emissions, the level of non-human CO2 would not increase since the equilibrium state would be reached without outgassing. Of course, I’m not sure that outgassing could plausibly explain that amount of CO2.
What would be interesting is if non-fossil fuel based CO2 is also rising.
I suspect it is. With all the destruction of trees in 3rd world counties we could certainly have a situation where the natural CO2 cycle has been changed. I see very little data on this. And, man also has been responsible for some pretty impressive forest fires.
We could in fact be witnessing man-made climate change. However, the actual causes could be
poorly understood.
Macro Contrarian (@JackHBarnes) says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:50 am
Simple question people never seem to ask, or least I have never seen asked. How did CO2 level reach 5x-9x the current levels historically before cave men existed? How is it possible that the minor jump this time is human induced but the proven historical higher levels were always natural before?
Dinosaur farts, don’t you know? Sheesh.
/LOL
Please explain why you believe we haven’t recovered from the depth of then LIA. Doesn’t recovery from historic cold constitute warming in your circles?! Perhaps you should get some of your science from another source other than Connelly’s wiki distortions. In fact, our respect for you would be greatly enhanced, if you would just take a moment, to condemn Connelly’s redaction policies. Or is it possible you are not interested in what is really going on, and science is a subtractive field… not an additive field of inquiry.
William Connelly – Your policies and practices are despicable. One day you will reap the whirlwind of your anti-knowledge actions. There will be quite the audience applauding your tar and feathering fall. Others will hardly notice your passing. GK
I was a true believer in CAGW until I saw Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. My background in Aerospace R&D gave me enough knowledge to start throwing up red flags as I watched the movie. That movie caused me to actually study both sides of the argument with an open mind rather than swallow the MSM bias. Something few warmists do. When all was said and done; I was officially a true skeptic.
I’ve come to the conclusion that there are only 2 types of people that believe in any form of AGW; those that are stupid sheep with a hate for humans and fossil fuels, and those with an agenda that includes power and control of the masses. While these people sink tons of money into halting the discharge of an odorless colorless gas that is an essential building block of life; true pollutants are not being controlled. These people are far from being true “Environmentalists” as I’ve been since grade school. There is a happy medium that can be struck between man and nature. Making Co2 the enemy is not one of them. Co2 is green.
Macro Contrarian (@JackHBarnes) says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:50 am
Simple question people never seem to ask, or least I have never seen asked. How did CO2 level reach 5x-9x the current levels historically before cave men existed? How is it possible that the minor jump this time is human induced but the proven historical higher levels were always natural before?
______
You’d probably have to go back to the mid-Pliocence or Early Pliocene (more than 3 million years ago) to find CO2 levels as high as they are today. Humans were of course very primative in that time frame and were not affecting CO2 levels. This minor (if 40% is minor!) jump in CO2 levels beyond what the Holocene average was of around 270-280 ppm, is quite easily accomplished through the billions of tons of fossil fuels burned every year and the great changes in land use that humans have undertaken. The issue (among reasonable scientists) is not whether humans have caused the increase in CO2, but rather, what the sensitivity of the climate will be to this rapid increase.
Food for thought to those thinking that humans have not caused the current increase in CO2: During no previous interglacial period did CO2 ever get above 300 ppm, even when some of those interglacials exceeded the Holocene maximum temperatures. If, as some claim, warming always proceeds increases in CO2, then how could it be cooler during this interglacial, yet we see higher CO2 levels? It doen’t add up, and that’s because CO2 levels are now higher because humans have brought the extra carbon out of the ground in the form of burning of fossil fuels.
Aaron;
>>CO2 rise is likely mostly anthropogenic….
It this statement is true, then how do you account for the countless times in past millennia that CO2 has risen substantially above what it is today without humans even being present on the Earth? If those instances were due to some factor or factors other than fossil fuel emissions, then how does your research (or your computer model) control for the possible influence of those other extraneous variables?
The fact that CO2 is now rising while temperatures are falling pretty well sums up the failure of the GCMs I think. Nicola Scafetta also does a nice job of dealing with the failure of the models. http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/06/dr-nicola-scafetta-there-is-little-hope.html
R.. Gates says (interminable):
—–
I think climate is the most complex thing scientists have ever tried to study, barring the brain. And it can all be reduced to one linear equation (2*CO2 = ~3C)?
Meanwhile all other factors can be ignored – “First, the models are horrible at predicting natural variability, as that is not their function.” Hey, but never mind, everything else is just noise…
Although the ‘noise’ can drown the ‘signal’, not just for years, but perhaps for decades?
This is not going to end well…
aaron,
“CO2 rise is likely mostly anthropogenic, but it’s not a sure thing. If what would be caused by outgassing is lower than human emissions, the level of non-human CO2 would not increase since the equilibrium state would be reached without outgassing.”
The net CO2 flux into the atmosphere is positive, no doubt about it. The net annual CO2 flux equals the annual atmospheric CO2 change. It’s the sum of anthropogenic emissions and net natural flux (into atmosphere). So, you’re right that the equilibrium state is reached without net outgasing because there’s more than enough anthropogenic input (the overflow goes into oceans) to reach the equilibrium. However, the CO2 rise can still be caused 100% by the warming climatic factors, in spite of no net ocean outgasing. We simply emit more than what would be caused by outgasing, so in total oceans don’t have to outgas to reach the equilibrium – they will even absorb any extra CO2 it’s not needed for the equilibrium.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:11 am
All this reveals is that you do not have a clue what a rigorously formulated physical hypothesis looks like.
cui bono says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:30 am
Meanwhile all other factors can be ignored – “First, the models are horrible at predicting natural variability, as that is not their function.” Hey, but never mind, everything else is just noise…
Although the ‘noise’ can drown the ‘signal’, not just for years, but perhaps for decades?
______
The relationship between noise and signal is a complex one, and made all the more difficult when you are at or near crossover points when what was previously noise is becoming the dominant signal and visa-versa. The ultimate signal is Milankovitch, and now it appears that we have a interesting period of time when signal and noise is a bit confounded (at least to the casual observer) but not to closer study. Somewhere between 10 and 20 years appears to now be the maximum period in which natural variability can mask the forcing from CO2.
nomnom,
Connolley lies. You apparently have him confused with me. And you are no different than Connolley. Your comments are simply baseless opinion. Here is a chart of atmospheric CO2 as measured at Mauna Loa. Connolley is either ignorant or lying when he claims that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is accelerating. I don’t think Connolley is ignorant. But he is certainly a propagandist, and propagandists lie. Why are you carrying his water for him? It should also be noted that more CO2 is beneficial, not harmful. CO2 has been up to twenty times higher in the geologic past, when life thrived. The biosphere is currently starved of CO2, so the recent rise is beneficial.
Next, Beck’s data does not go back 400,000 years, it goes back to the 19th century. I am not arguing with Burt Rutan, I am pointing out your obfuscation. Furthermore, I cited a peer reviewed paper and charts verifying the fact that CO2 follows temperature, thus contradicting Connolley’s deceptive propaganda. Anyone capable of reading charts can see the fact that CO2 is a functtion of temperature; an effect, not a cause. It is obvious even when the x-axis covers hundreds of millennia.
Next, CO2 may cause some minor and beneficial warming. But there is no empirical, testable evidence showing the percentage, if any, of human-caused temperature change. CO2=AGW is simply an unproven conjecture. It may turn out to be eventually proven, or it may be falsified. But as of now it is a conjecture. I happen to think that CO2 causes some minor warming. I also think that warming is entirely beneficial, and that the increase in CO2 is completely harmless. The planet is in agreement that CO2 is harmless and beneficial, and that Authority trumps your belief system.
Finally, you accused me of lying by citing my statement: “Connolley can get away with his lies on Wikipedia. But not here on the internet’s Best Science site.” Show where anything in that statement is untrue. Connolley is a global warming propagandist who mendaciously alters thousands of comments on Wikipedia to conform to his alarmist agenda, therefore he is ipso facto dishonest; he does not allow legitimate contrary views. And WUWT has won the Weblog Awards for Best Science site, twice running. Therefore, my statement stands in its entirety, and you are bearing false witness.
R. Gates so how come we did not cook when C02 was much higher as most doom sayers predict for our future unless we send them money?
R. Gates says: January 29, 2012 at 9:11 am
Here’s a bit of a mind experiment to show how climate models can be “wrong” in the sense of not being 100% accurate, but still useful, and it even tells you why.
Which most of us understand. But here’s the counter problem: You don’t know you have a functional model until it has been tested against reality.
We’ve only got one ‘drop of water’, and it hit the side of the glass instead of the bottom – which was the prediction.
The pre-Copernicans had models as well – and they had more predictive skill that we’ve seen out of
the current crop of climate models. The entire raft of climate models are mostly ‘validated’ by hindcasting. That is, exactly like the pre-Copernicans, they fiddle with parameters whose actual value isn’t quite completely quantified until their model matches history. (Although Hansen/GISS is doing the reverse, which should be putting people in jail.)
That isn’t validation though. Actual validation comes from -actual- forecasting. The best validated models we have so far aren’t -completely- wrong. That isn’t a strong endorsement.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:40 am
“The relationship between noise and signal is a complex one, and made all the more difficult when you are at or near crossover points when what was previously noise is becoming the dominant signal and visa-versa.”
Can you explicate the terminology of “noise and signal” in a way that is useful to physical scientists? Or do we all have to buy into some ersatz statistical magic before we can use the terminology correctly?
I think it is great that so-called “warmists” are here. It allows for direct question/answers. definitely a plus is any debate about complex issues.
So in keeping I ask Mr (Dr., so dont know which) Connelly and R. Gates the following question.
It is well recognized that the CO2 content of the atmosphere was 6-9 times higher in the distant past. Therefore please explain how a small by comparison rise over the past few decades can cause run-away global warming when levels 6-9 times higher did not?
“The Watermelons and Strawberries are past their prime and their perfume is turning to stench, soon they will be compost” pg
‘a physicist’ says:
“…James Hansen was lead author of the earliest, best-regarded, and most-cited nonskeptical articles…”
Yes, Hansen is a non-skeptic. Thank you for acknowledging that pertinent fact.
The only honest scientists are skeptics. That is also a pertinent fact. If you’re not a scientific skeptic, you are a true believer. Hansen’s wild-eyed statements and actions show conclusively that he is a true believer, not an honest scientist. Hansen is the polar opposite of the rational Prof Richard Lindzen.
And your endlessly repeated claim that Hansen’s predictions were accurate do not make those claims correct. They are not. Hansen’s predictions have turned out to be wrong. All of them. The claim that they were accurate is a classic example of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy: shoot holes in a barn door, then draw a bullseye around them. That’s what GISS does. They regularly “adjust” the past temperature record to show that Hansen got it right. He didn’t.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:26 am
______
You’d probably have to go back to the mid-Pliocence or Early Pliocene (more than 3 million years ago) to find CO2 levels as high as they are today. Humans were of course very primative in that time frame and were not affecting CO2 levels.
***
The time period above that you are using has only happened in the last 1/1000th of Earths history. Has not CO2 been significantly higher at times over a much more longer period of history? Is it intellectually honest to quote an extremely condensed period of time in Earth’s history to evaluate the natural fluctuation in CO2 levels?
Every time we burn a bit of fossil fuel, we are simply putting the carbon back where it came from originally.
It is time to stop sequestering carbon, SET IT FREE!
jlc says:
January 29, 2012 at 7:41 am
richard verney says:
January 29, 2012 at 8:42 am
Your underlying method is sound and I value your decency but I’ve been had too many times to disregard obvious signs. We must test facts and ideas wherever they come from—especially if they disagree with ours—but we don’t have to give comfort to dishonest brokers.
JLC, you may have missed that William M. Connolley did provide a link to his handle. It leads to “Tweaking the Wackos”. That includes you, I think.
Good things come from experience and much experience comes from bad things. Listen to what Anthony says about Connolley. It comes from experience.
William M. Connolley says:
January 29, 2012 at 8:06 am
Oh heavens, let him post it. Anyone who likes Go can’t be a complete jerk even though his name links to something shows him to be nearly a complete jerk. Heck, Anthony lists Skeptical Science (with a warning).
OTOH, I figure I’ve read enough Connolley-tainted stuff at Wilipedia that I don’t think I need the pure form. I might do the Go problem, though.
“Smokey says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:43 am
nomnom,
Connolley lies. You apparently have him confused with me. And you are no different than Connolley. Your comments are simply baseless opinion. Here is a chart of atmospheric CO2 as measured at Mauna Loa.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/CO2%20MaunaLoa%20Last12months-previous12monthsGrowthRateSince1958.gif
Connolley is either ignorant or lying when he claims that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is accelerating.”
Your graph shows that CO2 rise is accelerating. Your graph is of the annual growth rate of CO2 and it shows that is increasing. That’s an acceleration.
I think I see what happened here. Most people who go looking for a graph of Mauna Loa CO2 will come up with a graph like this:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/programs/coop/scripps/img/img_scripps_co2_record.gif
But you managed to find a graph depicting the annual growth rate of Mauna Loa CO2. That takes some effort because they are far rarer. So here’s my hypothesis:
You went through a bunch of Keeling Curve graphs but ignored them because you were looking for a line not a curve (confirmation bias). You eventually stumbled on one that looked like a straight line, it’s just you didn’t realize it was actually depicting acceleration.
Am I right?
Leave it to a bona-fide rocket scientist to put the warmists back in their place.
Good On him. I had the pleasure of shaking his hand once.
“Macro Contrarian (@JackHBarnes) says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:58 am
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:26 am
______
You’d probably have to go back to the mid-Pliocence or Early Pliocene (more than 3 million years ago) to find CO2 levels as high as they are today. Humans were of course very primative in that time frame and were not affecting CO2 levels.
***
The time period above that you are using has only happened in the last 1/1000th of Earths history. Has not CO2 been significantly higher at times over a much more longer period of history? Is it intellectually honest to quote an extremely condensed period of time in Earth’s history to evaluate the natural fluctuation in CO2 levels?”
There are 30,000 centuries in 3 million years. What are the chances that the only century in those set of 30,000 to see CO2 jump to 390ppm happened to be the only century in which humans emitted more than enough CO2 to explain the rise?
R. Gates says:
Isn’t it true that before Keeling et al
The 19th century averages of CO2 were approximately 350 ppm?
Rutan definitely handed the alarmists their heads. Like all good engineers, he makes sure the data is pure of bias and aligns with reality. In his field, you cannot afford to be even minutely wrong.
I also should note that applauding the correlation between CO2 and temp over the very period they required correlation (1960’s to late 1990’s) is a bit of a joke. Correlation with your primary calibration period is sort of a no brainer.
In case people are interested, I have posted on another rocky theory of ‘Climate Science’. I am finding it less and less likely that El Nino is an artifact of climate. I think climate perturbations from El Nino are secondary effects of geological, volcanic activity.
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/18003
Who wrote this?
“A more philosophically nuanced recognition that there are different categories of truth (historical, scientific, mathematical, theological, etc.), just as there are different genres of literature (history, story, metaphor, poetry, etc.), would not diminish the force of his detailed arguments.”
In other words, don’t ask for credit as a kick in the fork often offends.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html
> > Time you hoist you flag on the mast
> I did that a while back [snip]
No dangerous links eh? Don’t want to scare the horses. ‘Nuff ssaid.
> When you layer your models you lose the entire 3-dimensional movement in the atmosphere. That alone makes them pretty much useless. Not only that, but I’ve also heard the models are hydrostatic
No the GCMs permit 3-d movement, of course. Most (but not all) are indeed hydrostatic. HadCM3 was HadGEM isn’t,if I recall correctly. It marginally improves the dynamics but nothing to worry about for the level of detail we have here.
> human CO2 emissions are only around 3% of the total
Of course. We already know that. But what matters are the fluxes, i.e. emissions minus drawdown. Natural emissions are large, but then so is the drawdown; this has to be true, because pre-industrially, they balanced. Human emissions are large compared to the net natural flux, which is why CO2 is increasing.
> the CO2 lag behind temperature can be clearly seen on a chart of the past 400,000 years
Of course it can’t be seen on that chart! The claimed lag is ~500 years. That chart covers 400 kyr in 400 pixels, so each pixel is 1000 years. Hence, you can’t see anything less than 1000 years.
> How did CO2 level reach 5x-9x the current levels historically
I don’t think they have “historically”, in the sense of within-the-historic record. You have to go back about 100 Myr, and even then the variation is uncertain. See pics and text in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere#Past_variation
> William Connelly – Your policies and practices are despicable
You (and your like) are long on words but short on evidence. And spelling.
> Here is a chart of atmospheric CO2 as measured at Mauna Loa. Connolley is either ignorant or lying when he claims that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is accelerating
That isn’t a chart of CO2; it is a chart of the rate of change from year to year. And as you see, it goes u, from ~1 ppm/yr at the start to ~2 ppm/yr at the end. Which is to say, the rate of increase is increasing, which is to say the actual CO2 value is accelerating.
> come we did not cook when C02 was much higher
Because that was more than 50 Myr ago. We weren’t around.
> Therefore please explain how a small by comparison rise over the past few decades can cause run-away global warming
It won’t cause run-away warming; that forms no part of the std IPCC picture which I subscribe to. I had a link to “what I think about GW” that would have made this clear, but your mod didn’t like it so it was snipped. CO2 changes in the deep geological past > 50 Myr ago aren’t all that well established; try looking at the wiki CO2 pic I linked to, which shows that estimates vary wildly. If you want times when everyone agrees CO2 was high, you have to go back more than 300 Myr, when the continents were in different places.
Smokey says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:54 am
What gets lost in the discussion is that there is a long term warming trend. It did NOT start in 1973 as some would have you believe.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1900/to:2012/plot/gistemp/from:1900/to:2012/trend:1.0
The trend is actually longer in duration, but I don’t want to confuse some with climate rather than weather.
Smokey, although I enjoy the vigor of your posts, it is easy to check that the above assertion is dead-wrong.
As anyone can verify for themselves, in their 1981 article “Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide” (Science, 1981), James Hansen and his colleagues painted two specific bulls-eyes:
(1) “Opening of the fabled Northwest Passage” (see Hansen’s abstract), and
(2) Hockey-stick warming of the the earth’s temperature (Figures 6 and 7).
Thirty-two years later, the opening of the Northwest Passage for commercial shipping the last three years in-a-row, and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) “hockey-stick” (to cite one “hockey-stick” among many), have verified the strong 1981 predictions of Hansen and his colleagues.
To the best of my knowledge (and I would be pleased to be corrected!), skeptics like Rutan / Lindzen / the WSJ-16 cannot cite any similarly long-term predictive successes.
Elevator Summary: James Hansen and his colleagues have predictively “hit more bulls-eyes” than skeptics like Rutan / Lindzen / the WSJ-16.
R Gates said:
“Fortunately, we have a verifiable prediction of future underlying warming that should show itself easily when the natural variability aligns once more with greenhouse gas forcing.”
For give my unlearned skepticism …..Are you saying that “the broken clock will be accurate when the time comes”?
Seems that way.
Gates says:
“You’d probably have to go back to the mid-Pliocence or Early Pliocene (more than 3 million years ago) to find CO2 levels as high as they are today. Humans were of course very primative in that time frame and were not affecting CO2 levels. ”
I guess you meant “primitive” but do you really believe there were humans on Earth 3 million years ago? I have to assume you were making a joke, the alternative is embarrassing. The surprising thing is that you did not check this factoid with your WikiWanka bible http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human
It is like trying to communicate to a drowning person that there is a life preserver right behind them and they are refusing to listen. Panic has rendered them deaf, dumb, and blind.
Alarmists are their own worst enemy.
A physicist says:
January 29, 2012 at 11:54 am
“Elevator Summary: James Hansen and his colleagues have predictively “hit more bulls-eyes” than skeptics like Rutan / Lindzen / the WSJ-16.”
Your standard applies to marksmanship but not science. In science, one incorrect prediction that proves to be substantiated brings down whole theories.
If hitting bulls-eyes, as you put it, is to count in science then it has to be an unbroken string of bulls-eyes. After such a string, you might have a reasonably well confirmed physical hypothesis. At this point, you have entered the scientific arena. People practicing without such well confirmed hypotheses are practicing something other than science. But the first miss calls your hypothesis into question.
Hansen and crew have not managed to produce a well-confirmed physical hypothesis beyond what Arrhenius produced in the 19th century.
You really should read up on physical theory and scientific method.
David Ball says:
January 29, 2012 at 12:20 pm
Ha ha ha ha ……Thumbs up!
Anyone who thinks proxies are better than Observational Evidence…Models are evidence / validation for unproven hypothesis – post-normal science equals Normal Science
doesn’t deserve a life preserver
A challenge to William M. Connolley:
No “consensus” climate science working at this time will address the claim that there are no well confirmed physical hypotheses that can explain even one physical connection between increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and the behavior of clouds and related phenomena. They will not address the claim because they know that no such physical hypotheses exist. And that is the scandal of climate science today. Even Arrhenius knew that without the “forcings” and “feedbacks” there is no way to know what effects increasing concentrations of CO2 might have on Earth’s temperature. Thus, “consensus” climate scientists are mistaken to claim that there is scientific evidence that supports the CAGW or AGW thesis.
When I say that “consensus” climate scientists either do not understand the requirements of empirical science or seek to avoid those requirements, it is their failure to address the nonexistence of these necessary physical hypotheses that is uppermost in my mind. This is the scandal of climate science and every critic should be doing all that he can to hold “consensus” scientists’ feet to the fire. They are beaten on the science. All that is necessary is that we press the case.
What “consensus” climate scientists are willing to discuss are unvalidated and unvalidatable computer models and the laughable proxy studies. Those two topics are nothing but grand Red Herrings.
Finally, if you need proof that “consensus” climate scientists have no well confirmed physical hypotheses that can explain and predict the effects of CO2 on clouds, just ask them for the hypotheses. None have produced them and none can produce them. The necessary physical hypotheses do not exist.
Produce the well confirmed physical hypotheses, Mr. Connolley. Explicate them in your own words. Do not assign homework. This is a debate.
William M. Connolley says:
January 29, 2012 at 11:52 am:
In reading some of your comments I find them interesting but not very factual. I am sure you mean well, and post to the best of your ability.
1. You seem to be concerned about the continueing trend of warming that started approx 200 years ago. Why are you concerned and what can be done to stop this continueing trend? Why would we want to stop this trend?
2. The Holocene Optimum is called that for some reason. Could it be that the warmth, the thriving Sahara allowed mankind to emerge, learn, adapt?
3. The temps of the Holocene Optimum were prob higher than the current temps for a much longer period of time. This publication confirms this as the Arctic was virtually ice free during the summer.
http://www.ngu.no/en-gb/Aktuelt/2008/Less-ice-in-the-Arctic-Ocean-6000-7000-years-ago/
During this period of warmth CH4 outgassing did not seem to affect climate to any great extent.
Do you expect different results from less stimuli this go around?
4. Are the scientists wrong who have ascertained that there is an approx 800 +- 200 years lag in co2 and temp correlation?
5. When looking at paleo records,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Co2-temperature-plot.png
one can see that temperature falls even as co2 continues to rise. I am sure there are other unknown climatic forcings also involved in this, however; the above chart does show that co2 continues to be a lagging effect, and not a leading effect on climate.
6. Current warming trend of the past 200 years. Current AGW folks keep wanting to tell us that the early 20th century warming was caused by increased sun activity. Sorry, that dog’s tail doesn’t wag.
http://www.leif.org/research/The%20long-term%20variation%20of%20solar%20activity.pdf
I have been straightforward in my response to you and your percieved information. Being you are a smart feller, I would appreciate documented information to refute what I have posted to you.
Thank you in advance for your detailed response.
It seems the warmists missed my question so I will ask it again.
I think it is great that so-called “warmists” are here. It allows for direct question/answers. definitely a plus is any debate about complex issues.
So in keeping I ask Mr (Dr., so dont know which) Connolley and R. Gates the following question.
It is well recognized that the CO2 content of the atmosphere was 6-9 times higher in the distant past. Therefore please explain how a small by comparison rise over the past few decades can cause run-away global warming when levels 6-9 times higher did not?
nomnom says:
January 29, 2012 at 11:32 am
There are 30,000 centuries in 3 million years. What are the chances that the only century in those set of 30,000 to see CO2 jump to 390ppm happened to be the only century in which humans emitted more than enough CO2 to explain the rise?
_____________
You are obviously begging the question…
Correlation is not causation.
How did CO2 rise to 5x + current levels historically, before humanity existed? How did it naturally fall each time before? Why would you believe this time is uniquely different then every single event in 4 Billion+ years of activity before this century?
Both yourself and R. Gates keep returning with answers to the latest 3 million years, a blink of an eye in the history of the planet. However, neither of you will comment on the elephant in the conversation. The planet has had significantly higher CO2 levels before, and in the big picture, it will again.
nomnom says,
“So here’s my hypothesis:
“You went through a bunch of Keeling Curve graphs but ignored them because you were looking for a line not a curve (confirmation bias). You eventually stumbled on one that looked like a straight line, it’s just you didn’t realize it was actually depicting acceleration.
“Am I right?”
No.
The Climate4You graph was the very first one I went to. I have it in my CO2 folder along with many others. As you can see, when a normal y-axis is used, the chart is not nearly so scary.
CO2 is rising in large part due to a rising sea surface temperature [SST]. Human emissions add around 3% annually, greening the planet.
As we see, there is only spurious correlation between rising temperature and rising CO2. It may, in fact, be mostly coincidental. Over the past decade, CO2 and global temperatures have diverged, falsifying every last GCM.
The rise in CO2 is entirely beneficial – a central fact that the alarmist cult avoids. The biosphere is starved of CO2. More is better, and there is no identifiable downside. Even if all available fossil fuels were burned, CO2 levels would not double. And if they did, so what? CO2 would still be a tiny trace gas. The upside would be a greener planet.
William M. Connolley:
To avoid any potential confusion, be sure to read the link:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Co2-temperature-plot.png
from right to left
Thank you.
A physicist says:”One lesson that anyone can learn here on WUWT is the utter futility of science-and-skepticism that cherry-picks the noisiest data, the weakest science, and the weakest skeptical analyses.”
Yamal, Upside Down TIjlander, strip-bark tree cores, short-centered PCA, “CENSORED” ftp directories, Landsea, DeFritas, Daly, IPCC ‘transparency’, etc. etc. – sound familiar?
Cherry-picking data, fraudulent statistics, libel, slander, and fascistic campaigns to get fired from their jobs those who understand the requirements of the Scientific Method are POLICY for your side of the CAGW fence, physicist (and your censorious pal Connelly). Wrapping your anti-science, anti-human Lysenkoist principles and policies in the mantle of Science makes it clear that you haven’t any interest in honest discourse of any kind.
That you are losing your war on science and human freedom must really eat at you these days, no?
R. Gates says:
“Somewhere between 10 and 20 years appears to now be the maximum period in which natural variability can mask the forcing from CO2.”
————
Santer said 17 years (a peculiarly precise figure). So given the flatline since 1998, not much longer to go before the alleged signal is presumed to be awol?
William M. Connolley:
I am sure that you understand the implication of how long it would have to be warm to melt the Arctic for 1,000’s of years so that the north shore of Greenland would be ice free.
And I am sure that you understand how the mass loss of Greenlands glaciers are a current concern. Of course, this is really nothing new is it?
“51] The warmest year in the extended Greenland temperature
record is 1941, while the 1930s and 1940s are the
warmest decades. Two distinct cold periods, following the
1809 (‘‘unidentified’’ volcanic eruption and the eruption of
Tambora in 1815 make the 1810s the coldest decade on
record.”
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/greenland/vintheretal2006.pdf
With all the recent talk about Greenland’s glacial melt, one would think it was not a repeat offense wouldn’t one? Or….is it?
I can only suggest you read the paper I posted above.
Thank you for allowing us to share knowledge with you.
Perry says:
January 29, 2012 at 11:47 am
“Who wrote this?”
_____________________
Jesuit musings on truth, attribution, heresy and consequence…
please, Sir. No tricks.
cui bono says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:30 am
I think climate is the most complex thing scientists have ever tried to study, barring the brain.
This is a very good analogy. If we go back to the 60s and 70s you will see all kinds of computer experts predicting AI would be equivalent to the human brain capabilities before the turn of the century. Didn’t work out too well.
The reason for the failure was too much confidence in what they thought they knew and little understanding of the potential for unknowns. My own opinion is that climate scientists have fallen into the same trap. And, of course, they want to as well. Who would want to kill the goose that has laid so many golden eggs.
Ever wonder why we need 23 climate models? Who paid for them? What would R. Gates being doing today if money hadn’t been allocated for these kind of activities?
RobW says:
January 29, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Rob, you ain’t gonna get an answer. I’ve asked for experimental data of the effect of 5,000 ppm of CO2 added to air in a closed container and the predicted rise in temperature to no avail. And I’ll add that I didn’t expect any response when I made the post. We should continue to press them for data that can be experimentally verified.
Wonder what happened to Mr. Connolley?
William M. Connolley says:
January 29, 2012 at 11:52 am
No the GCMs permit 3-d movement, of course.
The actual level of 3-dimensional processing has to be necessarily small or you’d run out of processing time quickly. Simply a matter of scale. Trying to imply the models do any kind of realistic 3-d simulating is seriously lacking in credibility. One can only wonder why you would try and claim otherwise.
I ve just came in here, read Burt Rutan’s dissertation which is one of the best I ever rread. I havnt read any of the comments, so apologies if I’m repeating:
What really shocked me was that Burt’s critic is an engineer. I am a mechanical engineer about to retire. When many years ago, I started reading about man-made global warming I was already skeptical, having known full well that the few (aprox 300ppmv at that time) molecules of atmospheric CO2 could in no way make the atmosphere hotter, unless there was some sort of positive feedback of a some orders of magnitude while time has proven that this feedback does not exist and could be even negative.. My bottom line: I never expected an engineer to be taken in by a thermodynamic scam.
Tallbloke has got a good post on why the atmosphere was much warmer when dinosaurs ruled theearth. and why CO cools the planet. Very basic physics and thermodynaics.
“R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:11 am
Here’s a bit of a mind experiment to show how climate models can be “wrong” in the sense of not being 100% accurate, but still useful, and it even tells you why. … Think how much vastly more complex the climate is, yet you would expect models to predict chaotic natural variability? That is not their function and it is impossible anyway. …”
While climate models appear to be deterministic (produce the same results if run twice with the same inputs) and can’t predict true chaos, it is possible to mimic chaos with deterministic equations. The creator of Mathematica has written a book on this subject and the Mandelbrot set is an example. Like all simulations, accuracy is dependent on the precision of the computer. One can even introduce chaos into models by adding slight randomness to the inputs.
The problem I have with climate models is: they are not entirely based on physics but include many tabular experimental inputs (lookup tables, etc.) that are adjusted to get the results right. Where we don’t understand the physics we simply substitute best guesses. In addition, there are many things that can cause such models to go chaotic and give useless results such as too big a step size or too large of a measurement cell. I saw a reference in the comments above for about 20 atmosphere layers. How do we know this is enough?
I fully understand Burt Rutan’s concern about using models. We use very similar models to determine the best wing and airplane shape before we build and fly one. But we aren’t stupid enough to put passengers on the first one we build and take off. That is reserved for a crazy person called a flight test pilot and possibly an engineer to go along and watch the computer collecting the data.
I have no faith that the climate models, even though they all suggest warming, are providing any kind of useful prediction. It’s a bit hard to do a test as we would need to build another earth and play around with it. Perhaps some of us think we are god, but not me. Only time will tell if the models are correct and so far it appears that the data collection has been “homogenized’ somewhat to come to a preconceived conclusion which doesn’t help my understanding.
Theo, you are absolutely correct. Having scored two impressive “bullseyes” with 1981 predictions of a global warming “hockey stick” and open Northwest Passage sea-lanes, Hansen and his colleagues are now “doubling-down” their scientific reputations, with a prediction of accelerating sea-level rise.
Will rising sea-levels become a third bulls-eye prediction for Hansen and his colleagues? Only time will tell, but for the present, the oceanographers of the US Navy (who obviously know a lot about sea-and-ice levels) seem to think that Hansen and his colleagues very plausibly are correct.
As a fan of both solid science and solid skepticism, it seems to me that (1) Hansen and his colleagues deserve credit for publishing forthright predictions, and (2) in the long run, the cause of skepticism would be advanced if Rutan / Lindzen / the WSJ-16 would venture to publish similarly concrete predictions. Because those brands of skepticism that make no predictions are weak.
Richard M says:
January 29, 2012 at 1:17 pm
“The actual level of 3-dimensional processing has to be necessarily small or you’d run out of processing time quickly. Simply a matter of scale. Trying to imply the models do any kind of realistic 3-d simulating is seriously lacking in credibility. One can only wonder why you would try and claim otherwise.
I don’t know what Mr. Connolley does, but it is very clear he has not studied climate and the underlying science. His claim @January 20, 2012 @ 11:52 shows this very clearly.
It is nice that he stopped by this site so that he could learn some of the very basic items.
“When dinosaurs roamed we had 3 to 5 times current co2 and planet was nearly all green, pole-to-poleNear”
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irrelevant – the continents were in different positions. Why is this always brought up?
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“(We now know that the Ozone changes were notcaused by human CFCs)”
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what!? -where’s the proof?
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“The temperature trend is so slight that, were the global average temperaturechange which has taken place during the 20th and 21st centuries were to occur in an ordinary room, most of the people in the room would be unaware of it.”
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A ludicrous statement
It is not just the change it is the effect of all the extra energy in the system
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“Carbon Dioxide content is very small, invisible on a bar chart”
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O3 is an even smaller constituent of the atmosphere yet it stops getting on for 100% of high energy UV. Just because it is small does not make it insignificant. Why does no one understand this?
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“Water vapour chart”
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Ridiculous – less heat = less water vapour = less water vapour. IE positive feed back (should be obvious to an engineer) You need another “temperature increaser” to make water vapour increase the temperature. Not Water vapour is a GHG but at temps fond in the atmosphere it is liquid and only present as gas through vapour presseure. Note GHG
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“Looking back 600 million years”
This is of course followed by the statement:
“But -accurate CO2direct measurements are only available for the last 50 years.”
surely something wrong!
——-
same old guesswork chart created to show worm/cold periods combined with a MODEL guessing CO2 concentrations of 600M years.
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He select CO2 charts that show what he wants and ignores other more accepted charts.
=
“The danger is too-low atmospheric CO2”
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What relevance is low CO2 when we are talking High CO2?
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“27Atmospheric warming with human carbon emissions shows „good‟ correlation only after 1970.”
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An engineer not understanding noisy signals is seriously worrying!
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“This chart shows a 10,000-year period during the last ice age recovery. The temperature changes, thenCO2 responds 500 to 800 years later.”
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So what 800 years ago caused the current increase. Co2 from the mwp should have been increasing from 1700 onwards not 1970. Also he believes in CO2 plots of concentrations with as many humps as a herd of camels. What caused these?
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“A Close look at Modern CO2Measurements
Accurate enough for prediction?”
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An obvious curve and an engineer predicts using a straight line! why?
———————
As an engineer, you design aircraft using all the modern CAD/Simulation tools available. This shpuld provide you with an aircraft capable of carrying passengers the moment you build the first one.
BUT
you use a test pilot and no passengers WHY
ALSO
Your test pilot wears a parachute. WHY?
Perhaps there is the mearest possibility that something has been ovelooked :
“Pilots on the first of two aircraft delivered so far to ANA were forced on Sunday to deploy the landing gear using a manual backup system,”
“Airbus blamed a combination of manufacturing and design flaws for wing cracks on its A380 superjumbo but said it had found a simple ”
Perhaps with something as slow to react as the earth we may be seeing the beginnings of a problem.Perhaps it would be wise to take preventative measures? As an engineer – I would!
Richard M says:
January 29, 2012 at 1:17 pm
William M. Connolley says:
January 29, 2012 at 11:52 am
No the GCMs permit 3-d movement, of course.
The actual level of 3-dimensional processing has to be necessarily small or you’d run out of processing time quickly. Simply a matter of scale. Trying to imply the models do any kind of realistic 3-d simulating is seriously lacking in credibility. One can only wonder why you would try and claim otherwise.
_____
The current global climate models of course take 3D movement into account. It would be impossible to have any sort of a sophisticated climate model without it. Hence why they need supercomputers to run.
Richard M. asked:
“What would R. Gates being doing today if money hadn’t been allocated for these kind of activities?”
____
I as derive no part of my income from the existence of climate models, nor their use, nor their development, nor their study, nor any field remotely related to them, I would be doing exactly what I am doing.
> A challenge … No “consensus” climate science… there are no well confirmed physical hypotheses that can explain even one physical connection between increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and the behavior of clouds and related phenomena
I’m not entirely sure what your challenge is. The basic theory is that increasing greenhouse gases such as CO2 affect the radiative properties of the atmosphere, leading to a radiative forcing that tends to warm. This doesn’t directly affect clouds, though, only indirectly. But you are correct that the direct effect from CO2 is smaller than that total effect including feedbacks, from water vapour and ice-albedo and suchlike.
> continueing trend of warming that started approx 200 years ago. Why are you concerned and what can be done to stop this continueing trend? Why would we want to stop this trend?
That is the “recovery from the LIA” idea. I don’t believe that. The trend is caused, principally, by increasing CO2 consentrations; it can be stopped by slowing and halting the CO2 increase. As to Why: you can read IPCC for that: but my own version would be: sea level rise, and unexpected ecological effects.
> The Holocene Optimum is called that for some reason
But it is just a name. And we’re already warmer than it was then, see pix at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum . I know you claim “The temps of the Holocene Optimum were prob higher than the current temps for a much longer period of time” but evidence for that isn’t clear. Raised Arctic beaches are only one line of evidence (and are, obviously, not global).
> During this period of warmth CH4 outgassing
But we know that CH4 levels were far lower than now, then. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_420ky_4curves_insolation.jpg for then, and it is, what, 1,900 ppbv now?
> ascertained that there is an approx 800 +- 200 years lag in co2 and temp correlation?
I already posted the link that discussed that (summary: it is more complex than you think), but your mod here didn’t want you to read it (try searching for “Wolff” on my blog). I’ll try again: “http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/03/yet_more_tco2_lags.php” – lets hope that one isn’t too scary.
> When looking at paleo records,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Co2-temperature-plot.png
one can see that temperature falls even as co2 continues to rise
If you’re referring to the way the red and blue lines are out of sync at ~320 kyr, that is just because whoever drew that didn’t align the EPICA and Vostok timescales.
RobW> the CO2 content of the atmosphere was 6-9 times higher in the distant past. Therefore please explain how a small by comparison rise over the past few decades can cause run-away global warming when levels 6-9 times higher did not?
Done that already: see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/28/burt-rutan-on-schooling-the-rogue/#comment-878805. Might be mod-delay.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html#ixzz1kt07umCC
——————–
Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’
—————-
Dr Nicola Scafetta, of Duke University in North Carolina, is the author of several papers that argue the Met Office climate models show there should have been ‘steady warming from 2000 until now’.
‘If temperatures continue to stay flat or start to cool again, the divergence between the models and recorded data will eventually become so great that the whole scientific community will question the current theories,’ he said.
He believes that as the Met Office model attaches much greater significance to CO2 than to the sun, it was bound to conclude that there would not be cooling. ‘The real issue is whether the model itself is accurate,’ Dr Scafetta said. Meanwhile, one of America’s most eminent climate experts, Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said she found the Met Office’s confident prediction of a ‘negligible’ impact difficult to understand.
‘The responsible thing to do would be to accept the fact that the models may have severe shortcomings when it comes to the influence of the sun,’ said Professor Curry. As for the warming pause, she said that many scientists ‘are not surprised’.
She argued it is becoming evident that factors other than CO2 play an important role in rising or falling warmth, such as the 60-year water temperature cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
Macro Contrarian (@JackHBarnes) says:
January 29, 2012 at 12:41 pm
“Both yourself and R. Gates keep returning with answers to the latest 3 million years, a blink of an eye in the history of the planet. However, neither of you will comment on the elephant in the conversation. The planet has had significantly higher CO2 levels before, and in the big picture, it will again.”
____
Suggest you do a bit of reading on the carbon cycle, rock weathering, the rise of animals (on a planet that was once only full of plants), the movement of continents, etc.
Some would like us to believe that given the current output of the sun (higher than in the distant past) and the hot steamy jungles that existed when CO2 was much higher, and the fact that mammals were quite a marginal group at best with very narrow ecological niches (humans perhaps much like tree shrews), and that there was no grains like wheat in existence, that somehow we (meaning humans) would be better off to return to such times. Well, mammals pretty much filled a niche made available by the end of such steamy jungles, as dinosaurs were all but wiped out, as CO2 levels fell in general. We’ve done well with CO2 staying in a range from about 180-280 ppm during the past few million years. Going outside this range is simply taking a chance that the niche we’ve grown accustomed to is not going to change in some unpleasant ways.
Indeed, “life” might do better with CO2 levels higher, but that remains to be seen, especially given the rapidity of the recent rise. But as to whether humans would do better with CO2 levels at 500, or 700, 0r 1,000 ppm, (specifically do better by having our food supply stay intact) is a huge question mark. The Holocene has been good to us and to move outside of this range becomes a gamble no matter which way the climate moves.
I am not sure about anyone else’s cities, but my city cannot seem to model traffic flow effectively.
Burt Rutan – Good Job on Schooling the Rogues.
I wonder if resident troll R.Gates would explain why Warmist sites don’t allow dissenting comments from skeptics, yet all skeptical sites allow CAGW warmist to spout freely. Could it be there is room for every body at Skeptical sites? and no tolerance for comment’s or discussion at warmist sites if one is a none believer in the AGW / CO2 modeling theory. A good example of that is William M. Connolley’s nefarious data and article/Wiki smudging activity’s and others that have created mistrust to such a degree that climate science is a rats nest.
What is frightening about the fraudsters that promote the CAGW / CO2 doom and gloom model theory would they have us go back in time to 280ppm of CO2 would they prefer a cold world say 0.8°C cooler?
If we have dangerous warming and the global temperature has increased by 0.8°C since the Little Ice Age, does this mean that the ideal temperature for life on Earth is that of the Little Ice Age? During the Little Ice Age, people and all life forms died from starvation and cold, the economies of the world suffered, it was not a good time to be on Earth. Besides the cold, there were crop failures, famine, warfare and disease. Yes that’s really something to look forward to again!!
One calculation of Rutan’s is mathematically meaningless — the change of {the percentage change of the May to January temperature difference relative to the previous December}. The numbers, and result, are unit-dependent! The pct change numbers are different in Celsius and Fahrenheit, and for cold Decembers (closer to 0 C) the percentage change diverges in Celsius (but not, of course, Fahrenheit)!
This is such a trivial error that I have to wonder about his other conclusions….
Niels says:
January 29, 2012 at 12:06 pm
“Do you really believe there were humans on Earth 3 million years ago?”
____
Some form of early human ancestor certainly was around then yes. They certainly were not Homo Sapiens, but they would continue to evolve. Probably some form of Australopithecus seems most likely.
“You do realize that this is not data, but a model?”
Have you ever known a CAGW believer who could tell the difference?
Wow, you just know the war is nearly over when the generals are having to do the hand to hand fighting.
‘a physicist’ actually believes Hansen scored bullseyes. Heh. And he believes in hockey stick charts [not understanding that the hockey stick shape is a complete artefact of a zero baseline chart, something that has been repeatedly explained to him]. Hansen fudges the numbers to make himself look good. But it’s pure charlatanism.
Also, the number of recording stations has been drastcally reduced, mostly in rural areas. That reduction also causes a rising temperature artefact. You can see the result here.
Since CO2 follows temperature, all the handwaving over “carbon” is being debunked, proving Hansen wrong. So Hansen meddles with the temperature record. Even the Mauna Loa CO2 record is “adjusted“.
Hansen is still at it, drawing bullseyes around his misses. There is no honesty in the guy. Don’t trust anything Hansen says. He is a self-serving climate charlatan, and anyone beliving what he says is his credulous tool. There is nothing unusual happening. Climate alarmists are simply being religious, instead of being scientific.
Dave says (January 29, 2012 at 1:57 pm)
“I wonder if resident troll R.Gates would explain why Warmist sites don’t allow dissenting comments from skeptics, yet all skeptical sites allow CAGW warmist to spout freely.”
Simple. Warming sites are so popular they have to filter down the vast number of visitors wanting to comment. Meanwhile, blogs such as WUWT have so few visitors that contributions from anybody, anybody at all, are most welcome.
Slight sarc. 🙂
Connolley: “Because the situation is rather more complex than you think it is.”
That’s comedy gold there, folks.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 5:25 am
Hey Gates, I came back, hope you don’t mind.
I was wondering what your data source was, I figured you wouldn’t want to use UAH, and I certainly don’t want to use GISS.
Apparently the UEA has released data through the end of 2011, so here’s some data for us. This all comes from http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/crutem3gl.txt as linked to by http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/ Look for CRUTEM3 item GL for global.
Here are the 20 warmest years. ‘*’ marks the last 10 years, ** marks the last 5:
So, only 8 of the last 10 years now are in the top 10. That’s news. What isn’t news is that 2010 was 0.107° cooler than 1998. What’s the data you’re using?
Of course, we need to respect El Niño and La Niño, but note that two recent years, 2008 and 2011, are not in the top 10. Only 2 of the last 5 are in the top 5 and 2 don’t make the top 10.
Plateau.
>> nomnom says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:52 am
But Rutan calls that chart into doubt. He cites the Beck CO2 study that disagrees with ice core data. Therefore he shouldn’t accept ice core data is accurate enough to a lag between CO2 and temperature. <<
You and Angliss both fail to understand the difference in usage (or maybe you do understand and are flat out spinning nonsense in an attempt to confuse the easily mislead). The CO2 measurements from ice core data could very well understate the past CO2 levels, if (say) CO2 slowly migrates out of the ice. But that has no effect on the dates of turnover of increasing/decreasing CO2 levels. Even if there is a monotonic increase in error in CO2 measurement vs. time, it is small compared to the rate of change of atmospheric CO2, so the peaks and valleys in CO2 level would still show up at the correct times.
Logically, the most likely error in CO2 measurements is a gradual migration of CO2 from ice with higher CO2 levels to ice with lower CO2 levels. That would level out the measurements somewhat, but not change the dates used to measure the lag between CO2 and temperature.
William M. Connolley says:
January 29, 2012 at 1:46 pm
Raised Arctic beaches are only one line of evidence (and are, obviously, not global).
Yes, only one line of evidence. The amount of warmth required to keep the “Arctic” beaches ice free for 1,000’s of years is very substantial. I don’t recall any studies that show there were curtains around the Arctic during this time period.
Also, the resolution of proxy data from the Holocene Optimum indicates that presently we could be much cooler than that time as well as near the same temperature. As we go back in time, the error bars grow larger. The physical proxy records argue for a time of more warmth than present as the Sahara was green, the Arctic was ice free, just to name two areas. It is very concieveable that during the Holocene warm period there were temp spikes, such as what we are in now, that were VERY much warmer than present. I am sure you agree with this assesment as it is factual.
That is the “recovery from the LIA” idea. I don’t believe that. The trend is caused, principally, by increasing CO2 consentrations; it can be stopped by slowing and halting the CO2 increase. As to Why: you can read IPCC for that: but my own version would be: sea level rise, and unexpected ecological effects.
Why are the supposed rise in co2 that started at the end of the LIA not evident in any proxy record? And when you state this, this defies logic. The LIA was a cooler period, which would result in more asorption by the oceans of co2. Your statement makes no scientific sense at all.
Concerning sea level rise, you mean we are going to get back to the levels of the Roman Warm Period? The Sargosa Sea records indicate warmth during that period, the salt mining in Italy certainly indicate a higher sea level than present. The rate of sea level rise at present is certainnly not out of the norms of the Holocene in the whole. Being we are presently in a period called the “Interglacial” do you honestly think anything man can do will stop the onward march of glacial melt as a whole? The only way I can see to stop glacial decline is to enter another Ice Age, and I hope that does not happen any time soon.
I shall await your kind response to my other facts as your post only addressed a few.
Thank you in advance.
“On all time scales, from months to hundreds of millennia, CO2 always follows temperature. Therefore, CO2 is an effect of changing temperature, not a cause. ”
Careful there. We can’t say increasing temperatures cause higher CO2 levels (“correlation is not causation”). What we can say is that increasing CO2 CANNOT be the cause of increasing temperatures, because the cause cannot follow the effect.
Ted said:
“During the Little Ice Age, people and all life forms died from starvation and cold, the economies of the world suffered, it was not a good time to be on Earth.”
____
This is just a wee-bit-o exaggeration as to the severity and extent of the Little Ice Age. Yes, some weather patterns and effects were global, but certainly Europe suffered more than the rest of the world, primarily because of changes to the THC and warmth from the Gulf Stream. But even Europe had warm periods during the LIA, as it was not a monolithic period of cold. To suggest it was “not a good time to be on Earth” is certainly a hyperbole in the extreme. Even periods like the Younger Dryas period (1,000 times worse that the Little Ice Age) was still not severe enough to say it was “not a good time to be on Earth”. It was not a good time to be in the far northern hemisphere, but life did quite fine further south. In short, there seems to be a bit of exaggeration in some people’s minds about how bad the Little Ice Age was, probably because it is mislabeled an “ice age” at all, and probably because our history is dominated by European history, of which, the cooler period of the mislabel Little Ice Age was a part.
R.Gates: “Here’s a bit of a mind experiment to show how climate models can be “wrong” in the sense of not being 100% accurate, but still useful, and it even tells you why. Place a drop of water at the top of a window and write a computer model that tells me the exact path that drop of water will follow.”
I would not expect the world to force itself into poverty and starvation based on that model, while you DO expect us to do just that based on a model you admit is even less reliable!
nomnom: “It’s accelerating. Just look at the data. Why do you think they call it the Keeling **Curve**?”
Mathematically, a line is a curve.
Harrison N says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:41 am
I believe that the egg had to come before the chicken, and therefore Smokey is, in fact, correct.
Sandy
R.Gates: ““The relationship between noise and signal is a complex one, and made all the more difficult when you are at or near crossover points when what was previously noise is becoming the dominant signal and visa-versa.”
You have never studied anything where “noise” and “signal” are rigorously defined, have you?
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 1:30 pm
The current global climate models of course take 3D movement into account. It would be impossible to have any sort of a sophisticated climate model without it. Hence why they need supercomputers to run.
Taking “3-d movement into account” and doing any true simulation of meaningful 3-d interactions is different by many orders of magnitude. Why are you and Connolley trying to imply otherwise?
Since you have nothing to do with models, why would you even claim to have an knowledge on this topic? The cell size of models is huge in real terms. They simply can’t get into real atmospheric interactions. They can only average out the data they are trying to simulate and move that into the next time interval. While this does allow some 3-d processing, it is far from anything realistic.
Hey Gates, I came back, hope you don’t mind.
Here’s woodfortree’s HadCrut data showing trend lines over the last 20, 15, 10, and 5 years.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1992/to:2012/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/trend:2012/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2007/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1992/trend
In general, I’m not fond of trend lines like these since they’re so sensitive to the start and end points. They’re marginally better than Roy Spencer’s polynomial fit which he presents for amusement purposes only. The recent La Niñ certainly drag the slope down a ways, it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next few years.
At 1:46 Mr. Connely cites Wiki as a source for his Holcene comment. This has to be one of the funiest things ever done. Mr. Connely you missed the part of the graph that shows our interglacial is lower in temperature than several of the past interglacials. Oh ya no people to cause it.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 2:22 pm
The LIA not only affected Europe, but was stong enough for glaciers to advance rapidly in Glacier National Park. This was a recovery from the Roman Warm Period on earth.
> Why are the supposed rise in co2 that started at the end of the LIA not evident in any proxy record?
I’ve no idea what you mean by that. The, err, “official” so to speak CO2 record looks like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png CO2 variations in the ~10 kyr period before 1800 are minor.
> sea level rise, you mean we are going to get back to the levels of the Roman Warm Period? .. the salt mining in Italy certainly indicate a higher sea level than present.
Again, not sure what you mean. Sea level is higher now than during the Roman Period. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png, perhaps.Or read http://people.rses.anu.edu.au/lambeck_k/pdf/242.pdf
> I shall await your kind response to my other facts as your post only addressed a few…
Alas I don’t know which I missed. Maybe it was
> Current AGW folks keep wanting to tell us that the early 20th century warming was caused by increased sun activity
Do we? You’ll need a cite for that. I counter with:
“Modelling studies are also in moderately good agreement with observations during the first half of the 20th century when both anthropogenic and natural forcings are considered, although assessments of which forcings are important differ, with some studies finding that solar forcing is more important (Meehl et al., 2004) while other studies find that volcanic forcing (Broccoli et al., 2003) or internal variability (Delworth and Knutson, 2000) could be more important.”
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-4-1-2.html
Thanks Burt Rutan for another brick in the wall enclosing the AGW Camp. AGW is the biggest political scam to have been perpetrated in history. It is not Science it is just self-serving biogotry. It has diverted valuable funds to Rogues, spoiled our landscape with hideous, useless windmills. Increasingly the economies of the whole World are on a knife edge and AGW impose crippling taxes to fund their insane junket. The cost of this junket will impoverish those nations stupid enough to believe these liars and cheats.
>> A physicist says:
January 29, 2012 at 1:27 pm
As a fan of both solid science and solid skepticism, it seems to me that (1) Hansen and his colleagues deserve credit for publishing forthright predictions <<
Given that Hansen predicts basically no change in sea level rise until 2040 (from the graph in your link), at which time he'll probably be long gone from God's green Earth, I think you're giving him too much credit. Any fool can predict something so far in the future that he faces no consequences from failure.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 2:01 pm
Niels says:
January 29, 2012 at 12:06 pm
“Do you really believe there were humans on Earth 3 million years ago?”
____
Some form of early human ancestor certainly was around then yes. They certainly were not Homo Sapiens, but they would continue to evolve. Probably some form of Australopithecus seems most likely.
Pathetic answer Mr. Gates, and you know it.
“A physicist says:
January 29, 2012 at 1:27 pm
Theo, you are absolutely correct. Having scored two impressive “bullseyes” with 1981 predictions of a global warming “hockey stick” and open Northwest Passage sea-lanes, Hansen and his colleagues are now “doubling-down” their scientific reputations, with a prediction of accelerating sea-level rise.”
I had a quick look at what Hansen is proposing and I’m not buying it. He is saying that ice loss will be exponential in the future. Funny how the ice after the last ice age didn’t seem to go away exponentially. Take for example the Columbia Ice Age Floods. They lasted from about 12000 to 15000 years ago (around 40 floods spaced around 50 years apart). This means that the North American glacier stayed in place and even returned after the flood water washed it away many times. And this was at a time when the earth was rapidly warming unlike the minor warming going on now. Ice is very hard to melt exponentially when there is a lot of it. While cataclysms can occur (the floods prove this), I think Hansen needs to come up with a good reason for any sudden conversion of ice to water. You only need to read the first comment in the linked article to figure out what this is all about.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 8:45 am
Either way, we’ve not seen global cooling this past decade as Mr. Rutan contends.
Please see the following slopes, each of which is for more than 10 years. Note that I am not getting into significance levels, but merely pointing out the slope is negative.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.58/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/plot/rss/from:1997.83/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1980/plot/gistemp/from:2001.67/trend
#Time series (hadcrut3) from 1850 to 2012
#Selected data from 1997.58
#Least squares trend line; slope = -0.00126185 per year
#Time series (rss) from 1979 to 2012
#Selected data from 1997.83
#Least squares trend line; slope = -0.00381703 per year
#Time series (gistemp) from 1880 to 2012
#Selected data from 2001.67
#Least squares trend line; slope = -3.86942e-06 per year
In fairness, I would like to point out that UAH is not yet negative for any time above 10 years, but that could easily change once the January or February stats are out.
Phew Anthony, I think we just witnessed the crossing of the climatic Rubicon or something similar; The Wall Street Journal article, Burts calm and measured response to a critic, the UEA/CRU Met Office capitulation? Global cooling trend for past 15 years!! and all coinciding with a noticeable rise in trenchant warmists or should that be former W? clamouring to get onto your site and clarify? justify their predictions/projections modeling before the inevitable media and public wake -up exposes them all. Or am I being too hard on them.
Erinome,
This is such a trivial error that I have to wonder about his other conclusions….
You are not even fit to tie this man’s shoes. The work he has done with making stuff work speaks for itself. The problem many University types and “Climate Scientists” have is most think they can go off and do a simulation, publish a paper and they are done. Do you realize how many simulations —good and bad–and real-world trial and error there is in actually making stuff like high altitude flights work?
Why do climate scientists shy away from devising testable, scenarios fir their models? I was on Brigs blog and Gavin refused to even talk about testing climate models. We have to wait 100yrs–so they say. The oldest 1988 forecast by Hansen is not even close to actual temperatures now. If he worked for like a drug company he would be fired such such a lame result
William M. Connolley says:
January 29, 2012 at 11:52 am
“I had a link to “what I think about GW” that would have made this clear, but your mod didn’t like it so it was snipped.”
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Is not Connolley’s somewhat snarky complaint the height of irony?
R. Gates said:
“Burt Rutan said:
‘They applauded the correlation of surface temperatures with CO2 content from 1960 to 1998 as proof, but fail to admit that the planet has cooled after 1998 in spite of the CO2 content increasing.’
——–
Respectfully, this is not an accurate statement. 9 out of the 10 warmest years on instrument record have occurred since 1998, with 2010 being warmer than 1998. For one claiming to pride himself on what the data tells him, it seems odd that you would misconstrue this so horribly. But then again, maybe not that odd, as you seem to have made up your mind about the status of things.”
______
Respectfully, this is not an accurate statement. The current anomaly is well below 1998. The negative changes in anomaly are getting more frequent. The amount of anomaly change is pretty even, but slightly more negative in recent years. And, as looking at changes in17-2 year moving averages, it is clear that the current average anomaly is negative for 10 out of 16 as of 2011, the frequency and magnitude of 2011 negative trends generally increases as the number of years in average, and such is the case for other recent years (I have the values in exel, but don’t know how to display it here).
Rank Year Anomaly Delta 98 Delta Cumulative Relative Delta 98
Anomaly Change Change Anomaly Rank
1 1998 0.55 0 12
13 1999 0.103 -0.447 -0.447 -0.447 -0.812727273 1
7 2001 0.245 -0.305 0.142 -0.305 1.378640777 6
5 2002 0.316 -0.234 0.071 -0.234 0.289795918 8
4 2003 0.324 -0.226 0.008 -0.226 0.025316456 9
10 2004 0.208 -0.342 -0.116 -0.342 -0.358024691 3
3 2005 0.334 -0.216 0.126 -0.216 0.605769231 10
8 2006 0.232 -0.318 -0.102 -0.318 -0.305389222 5
6 2007 0.261 -0.289 0.029 -0.289 0.125 7
9 2009 0.226 -0.324 -0.035 -0.324 -0.134099617 4
2 2010 0.476 -0.074 0.25 -0.074 1.10619469 11
12 2011 0.147 -0.403 -0.329 -0.403 -0.691176471 2
Question was -How come we did not cook when C02 was much higher
Connolley answer -Because that was more than 50 Myr ago. We weren’t around.
Yep an answer that I expected. Me hitting head, why did I not think of that.
Was not C02 well above the tipping point then? What happened to runaway warming? R. Gates care to jump in.
Niels says:
January 29, 2012 at 2:55 pm
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 2:01 pm
Niels says:
January 29, 2012 at 12:06 pm
“Do you really believe there were humans on Earth 3 million years ago?”
____
Some form of early human ancestor certainly was around then yes. They certainly were not Homo Sapiens, but they would continue to evolve. Probably some form of Australopithecus seems most likely.
Pathetic answer Mr. Gates, and you know it.
_____
? Obviously scientific research into the subject of human ancestry you find “pathetic”.
If you ask a broad question, you’ll get a broad answer. Ask a specific question, and you’ll get a specific answer.
Apologies for my poor editing.
Respectfully, this is not an accurate statement. The current anomaly is well below 1998. The negative changes in anomaly are getting more frequent. The amount of anomaly change is pretty even, but slightly more negative in recent years. And, looking at changes in 17-2 year moving averages, it is clear that the current average anomaly is negative for 10 out of 16 as of 2011, the frequency and magnitude of 2011 negative trends generally increases as the number of years in the average decreases, and such is the case for other recent years (I have the values in exel, but don’t know how to display it here).
@Rgates – I think you will find that the point is that real world measured atmospheric temperature and model predicted temperatures are deviating in a way the models do not cater for. If natural climate change can prevent CO2 warming for the most recent decade then this beggars the question as to the role of natural forced in the observed climate record from the 1980s and 1990s. What is the real role of CO2? Is it really the primary driver of atmospheric warming or a bit player?
Bob B says:
Erinome,
& This is such a trivial error that I have to wonder about his other conclusions….
You are not even fit to tie this man’s shoes.
At least I know not to present results that depend on the choice of units. Rutan, obviously, does not.
It’s exactly the kind of error an engineer makes in a science where he is badly out of his depth.
if there ever was a man who knew how make use of the atmosphere, Burt is THE man. Mr. Rutan has no peers.
connolley belongs on the pelosi couch.
nc says:
January 29, 2012 at 3:10 pm
Question was -How come we did not cook when C02 was much higher
Connolley answer -Because that was more than 50 Myr ago. We weren’t around.
Yep an answer that I expected. Me hitting head, why did I not think of that.
Was not C02 well above the tipping point then? What happened to runaway warming? R. Gates care to jump in.
_____
First, I’m am not a believer in “catastrophic” global warming, with the term catastrophic specifically meaning “the end of all life on earth”, or “run-away warming leading to the end of all life on earth.” Could CO2 levels rise to the point that human existence become a matter of doubt? Possibly. Our civilization has thrived during a period that CO2 has been around 280 ppm, and the grain plants that fueled our civilization have done well under Holocene levels of CO2 as well. It is a gamble to see what happens if CO2 levels go much outside this range, higher or lower. What will it do to the oceans and to our grain plants, would be my biggest concern.
But in general, it is very hard to compare two periods so remote in time as 50 million years ago and today and make any conclusions. Why would we want to look at time when human ancestors were tree shrews? The sun was much weaker in these past periods and the continents were differently arranged. The closest analogue we have in terms of levels of CO2 being like today and the continents being roughly like today is the mid to early Pliocene…around 3 mya or so. Lot’s of very smart people doing research every day into this period.
R. Gates says: January 29, 2012 at 3:13 pm
? Obviously scientific research into the subject of human ancestry you find “pathetic”.
Gates, stick to subjects you know. Australopithicus was not a human ancestor and it is likely that the creatures who were our ancestors at that time lacked tool-making capability, the ability to make and use fire, and even language itself.
William M. Connolley says:
January 29, 2012 at 1:46 pm
“I’m not entirely sure what your challenge is. The basic theory is that increasing greenhouse gases such as CO2 affect the radiative properties of the atmosphere, leading to a radiative forcing that tends to warm. This doesn’t directly affect clouds, though, only indirectly. But you are correct that the direct effect from CO2 is smaller than that total effect including feedbacks, from water vapour and ice-albedo and suchlike.”
Yes, and those who favor some version of an AGW theory must produce some reasonably well confirmed physical hypotheses which describe some connection between atmospheric CO2 concentrations and some feedback or admit that there is no physical science which shows that rising CO2 concentrations cause warming.
You do not know what reasonably well confirmed physical hypotheses are? I admire your frankness and humility. But your level of understanding reveals that you should not be commenting on these matters at all.
A physicist says:
January 29, 2012 at 1:27 pm
For your own good, please put down the pipe (or whatever) and go to bed.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 3:13 pm