Quote of the week – always happy to help

Computer Analyses, Generally Wrong
Continually Annoying Greedy Watermelons
Cash And Grab Wamistas

Tobis,
You’ve said that “The only way to simplify ourselves out of the present mess is by cutting our population 80%, unfortunately.”
Which you’ve later explained as meaning that the type of de-industrialisation being set in motion by you and your swivel-eyed eugenicist cohort will necessarily kill billions of people.
My country has signed up to 80% GHG emission cuts by 2050. That’s not enough to run our agricultural production even if every human in the country dropped dead. So I believe you might not be exaggerating for once in your wasted life.
Now you’re saying that this ongoing mother of all genocides isn’t even being carried out to prevent a catastrophe?
I cordially invite you to get your tiny twisted mind checked out by a mental health professional you foul-mouthed imbecile. You’re a menace.

Michael Tobis says (January 31, 2012 at 10:35 pm): “I do not know what the proposition I am supposedly defending actually is.”
I think we can take this as the “elevator definition” of CAGW.

CO2 a gaseous weapon?

Mr. Tobias;
if you are looking for a definition for 8 years then you are probably asking the wrong question. The biggest and most common dispute is over what level of warming effect is required to distinguish CAGW from plain ol’ non-catastrophic AGW. That’s a difficult question and one can distinguish the two by by saying CAGW justifies drastic actions while plain ol’ AGW only justifies non-drastic actions (that doesn’t help much and shifts to differentiating drastic from non-drastic action, but I repeat that’s a difficult question). There might be some other point of confusion, but if you want to know what distinguishes CAGW from AGW , then ask that question.

Michael Tobis says:
January 31, 2012 at 10:35 pm
“To my knowledge it is not used by actual climate scientists in any context.”
Michael, with all due respect (granted I have seen little to demonstrate your level of knowledge, but what do I know)…but I digress…I think I might be able to enlighten you on CAGW usage:
http://bit.ly/wVS3AZ
Andrew

An excellent discussion of possible scenarios is taking place over at Judith currys:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/01/31/climate-scenarios-2015-2050/#more-6931
It is the C in CAGW that skeptics maintain is not supported by the science, and that the extent to which the A in the GW (which few skeptics dispute) can be actually be attributed. The post I linked is as good a rational assessment of what to make of potential climate change (including possible cooling as well as warming) as any I have seen.

Michael Tobias:
Defining CAGW is easy. If you fear being locked up forever for the lies you spread when it all goes public, then you are a worshiper of CAGW. You and your people are costing countries billions of dollars each year, you advocate the dispossession of people’s lands for corrupt and wasteful carbon markets, you force Govts to extract more and more taxes out of ordinary people to pay for the demands, you force energy prices so high that people can’t even feed their own children, you brainwash large segments of the population, demand the wholesale slaughter of billions of people, and destroy honest science that will result in science and technology being set back for decades.
I hope you don’t mind that I wish you would be the first volunteer in your genocide program.

Climate Armageddon Goes Wobbly.

@ William N. Connolly
Jason Calley> …It has to be catastrophic. If it is NOT catastrophic, then there is nothing to get so worried about
Obviously. No-one ever worries about things that are short of catastrophic. Things that are merely bad, or unpleasant, you just ignore I suppose?
Hi William! I think you have what is called a “false dichotomy”. My actions are not limited by two choices; catastrophic worry, or inaction. Just like you, I am faced with events that are bad or unpleasant; I just deal with them — no worries. None of those bad or unpleasant things require me to impose restriction, regulation, taxes, rationing or legal and social sanctions on the use of energy for the entire industrialized world. None of those bad or unpleasant things require that I support the death of billions of people.

JC> Your original assertion amounted to “if it is not catastrophic, do nothing”. You’ve now realised that is wrong; good. Now you’re inventing strawmen about “support the death of billions of people”. So we’re faced with the prospect of global warming, and we need to have a rational discussion about what we might wish to do about it. We’ll need to know how large the temperature change is likely to be, and what effects that might have. Caricaturing it as CAGW and inventing gigadeaths is a way of avoiding rational discussion.

The IPCC report is a literature review, not a hypothesis.
As for “Control All Global Wealth” Count me (and everybody I know) as opposed.
Nobody is cutting climate scientists into this hypothetical cabal anyway, so it doesn’t explain our motivation. I know some of you think it’s possible to take, e.g., NSF grant money and just stuff it in your pocket, but it really doesn’t work like that. Talk to an actual scientist, in any field, and ask them.
Or read this:
http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/taking-the-money-for-granted-%E2%80%93-part-i/

Michael Tobis says (February 1, 2012 at 8:36 am): ‘Would it be fair to suggest that “CAGW” means “the proposition that continued accumulation of greenhouse gases at or above current (ca. 2010) rates over the next century is sufficiently disruptive to climate that it would produce widespread, unambiguously catastrophic consequences”?’
Not bad, although it should be amended to blame humanity for the greenhouse gasses. Otherwise there’s no “A” in “CAGW”. Of course it’s not as sexy as “…the f**king survival of the f**king planet is at f**king stake.”*, but at least it’s just as wrong. 🙂
*http://init.planet3.org/2011/04/moshers-team.html

Tobis: To my knowledge it is not used by actual climate scientists in any context.

That is like saying con men do not refer to their “proposals” as “scams” when trying to sell it to the mark.
It is a simple phrase that summarizes the intended message presented by the accumulated scare stories trotted out over the last couple decades so we don’t have to refer to a list the size of a phone book.
He is playing you guys. He knows full well what it is, and is trying to build up a red herring argument about nothing. The question what is he trying to distract everyone from?
Larry

“You do understand that temperature leads CO2, right?”
That’s a long story. I’ll put it on my list for a serious article. I have not been happy with any popular expositions on the subject.
Short version:
If warming causes CO2 releases on a glacial cycle time scale, as it indeed appears, that is an amplifying feedback. And indeed, we need an amplifying feedback, because the direct forcing and ice albedo effect don’t seem to be enough to account for the quaternary glacial cycle.
That does not constitute good news.
However, how temperature increase causes CO2 releases on that time scale is not nailed down (to my knowledge). It is among the biggest open questions in physical climatology.
Perhaps the mechanism is tapped out somehow in the interglacials, which would make the prognosis on a multi-centruy time scale somewhat less severe. Understanding the glacial cycle is incomplete and this is a major reason to keep working at it.
hth

Oh yeah – one more thing – if the pro-CAGW folks aren’t successful in their scheme to kill off 80% (or more) of the world’s population, don’t they realize that keeping the poor countries poor is the best way to keep them producing babies? Talk about your unintended consequences!

Michael,
I might have been superseded because of the time I have taken to post this. So you, backed up by the evil Connolley, are trying to re-frame the debate so that you can deny there is such a position as CAGW. I cannot understand why. So perhaps you have never used the convenient term CAGW, therefore it is not an accurate description of your beliefs. Let us parse it.
W = warming. You believe that the Earth is warming and will continue to warm until such a time as it starts to cool.
G = global. You believe that this warming is happening over the whole surface of the planet.
A = anthropogenic. you believe that the only driver of the warming we have experienced since about 1980 is due to human emissions of CO2 and , possibly, other GHGs, although this possibility is rarely alluded to.
C = catastrophic. You believe that, if nothing is done to stop or slow down human emissions of CO2, that there will be terrible consequences – flooding in Bangladesh killing thousands of people etc.
Do you accept that this is a fair summary of your views?
If so,. why do you shrug away from the characterisation of your views as “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming”? CAGW is a useful shorthand notation of these beliefs.
Now I know that people such as you and the egregious Connolley like to categorise people who disagree with you as “denialists”. But that is shallow and beneath you – although not beneath Connolley.
Do your opponents deny that warming is happening? Yes, some people deny this. The thermometer record is patchy. large areas of land are unmeasured – central Africa, the Chacos, Antarctica, central Asia. 2/3 of the planet is covered by water, and the measurements are paltry, to say the least. However, for 30 years we have had satellites measuring something close to temperature. So some?a lot of sceptics, me included, can agree that the planet is warming. Although the satellites show less warming than the sparse thermometers…fancy that..
Is it global?….perhaps. Same caveats. we have a global temperature index or set of indices that do not agree very well. the overall trend is up and the satellite measurements show less warming than the thermometers.
Is it due to human emissions of something? Who knows. If there were a simple relationship between emissions and temperature rise then the record would look different. it seems to have stalled, although GHG emissions have increased during the 2000s. Is it more complicated than you experts (including the egregious Connolley) pretend? The temperature trend is certainly running lower than the models…are the models in any way reliable? Have the various IPCC reports discovered new feedbacks to explain these discrepant results? Maybe sulphates can be blamed for the new divergence. Are nitrates properly modeled now?
is it catastrophic? No, Malthus. The next generation, unless taught by Connolley, will be smarter than us. Solutions will be found for the problems. If you had a PC 30 years ago, the gold on the circuit board would have had a worthwhile value. Now you have to harvest hundreds or thousands of mother-boards to get a recoverable amount of gold. Silicon is abundant.
Should we take measure to stop polluting the planet? yes, of course. However, we should not prevent the painful process of economic development. let us help the Chinese develop beyond one bowl of rice per day by giving them access to cheaper and less polluting technology..
Does this help, Michael? (knows that Connolley is out of his depth).

Michael Tobis says:
February 1, 2012 at 4:00 pm
It is important that you understand that temperature leads CO2. It is important for you to understand that the world’s oceans are a buffering system for CO2 whether emitted by man or whether naturally occuring.

These days, in all of the warmist camp model factories and peer-review redefinition centers, CAGW actually stands for:
Can Anyone Generate Warming …. please?

Bob Moss, “Bastrop TX ? It was warmer in the 1930s ”
maybe so, but the Lost Pines forest did not burn to the ground for ten thousand years until last summer.

Anthony: “In a nutshell Mike, there were no power lines in the forest for the last 9,900 years, but there were plenty of droughts and heat waves during that time.”
Michael, if you please, not Mike. Or just “mt”.
Yes, that is to some extent a fair argument. Lightning strikes were few and far between at the peak of the drought and would have been so if there were ever comparable heat-droughts in this part of Texas in the past.
On the other hand, we don’t know of any, and the (happily receding at the moment) recent summer drought and heat was an extreme outlier in the instrumental record.
And things can have more than one cause. Had the forest not been so stressed by the drought, the fire could have been more easily contained and surely would not have been so extraordinary.
Nevertheless the point is sound.

Michael Tobis says:
February 1, 2012 at 4:00 pm
Hi Michael
You stated..

CAGW: The hypothesis that if nothing is done to stop or slow down human emissions of CO2, that there will be terrible consequences.

If nothing is done? Nothing has been done since man started emitting industrial quantities of CO2 about…what…160 years ago.
Nothing has been done since the acceleration of these emissions immediately after WW2 66 years ago.
Nothing has been done since the industrialisation of some 4 billion people in Asia and SE Asia from about 20 years ago.
Now I’m supposed to believe “there will be terrible consequences” if nothing is done.
Sure, I’ll go along with it, as soon as I’m shown some solid proof that the last 160 years, the last 66 years and the last 20 years of reality will be different and different in a “terrible” way.
You got any?
regards

Michael

There’s a nice graph in this article that answers your question:

I don’t see how a graph of Mauna Loa CO2 concentrations answers my question.
I didn’t cast doubt on increasing CO2 concentrations, in fact I stated as much by drawing attention to historical emissions.
What I stated was that all those increases have thus far not caused “terrible consequences” and asked for evidence that despite the lack of past “terrible consequences”, there will be future “terrible consequences”.
Taking your military analogy, I can point to thousands of past factual events (e.g. half a million Huns at your door step with blood dripping from their swords and a trail of scrched Earth behind them) that point to an inevitable “terrible consequence”.
Where is the blood dripping sword of CO2 in a 4.5 billion year historical context? Where can I find a single instance of CO2 induced “terrible consequence” in the past 10, 100, 1000, 1,000,000 years?

MT:“But you guys indeed had better be really sure of yourselves that we are completely wrong. Otherwise you are being hugely irresponsible.”
Arh, the good old post normal science, blessed be the day that branch of science dies, you cannot simply take the worst case scenario and say this is why I need all your money.
To use another alarmist’s straw man, you don’t go to the dentist with a wobbly tooth to be told they all need to be pulled out just in case.

Gary Hladik says:
February 2, 2012 at 12:30 am
I’ve challenged mt about temperature leading CO2 to which he so far has refused to address other than indicating it’s a ‘long story’.

Babsy, I did respond. I said I would write a long article about it, and gave you a summary of what it would say.
Jeff, this is also an interesting question. I have raised it on Planet3.0 and will do so again. My short answer is an analogy. I am overweight and trying to cope with it. But I have not stopped eating.
Shevva, that is exactly my point. I am not taking the worst case. I am not even taking the risk-weighted case. Just the best estimate. **You** are taking the best case, or really, the best case and then some.
As for Gary H’s latest point, “There is nothing unprecedented about the current situation”, that is ridiculous. Of course the earth experienced very high CO2 levels in the distant past. But it had a dramatically warmer ice-free climate at those times.
That said, there is indeed something unprecedented about the current situation.
What is unprecedented is the **rate of change** of radiatively active gases. We can expect the transition to be very rocky. People live in the wrong places, borders are in the wrong places, biomes are in the wrong places, and fertile soil is in the wrong places.
The Paleocene/Eocene transition is the closest analogy. A very large carbon release, probably from clathrates, happened very quickly, probably over thousands of years. The fossil record is very clear that there was a major extinction event in the ocean due to ocean acidification as the ocean chemistry adapted. Land extinction was minor, but it probably was a slower event than the present one. Also, there weren’t billions of people constrained to stay where they are by border guards.
Finally, and this is a point that I make more than others do, in engineering we know that a sudden transition in a system is accompanied by “ringing”; all major modes get excited, and things break. On the time scales of the ocean and the ice, the transitions we are undertaking are extremely sudden, and we can expect huge adjustments to occur that are only beginning. This all is very hard to predict. I would call it outside our current modeling capabilities, though I know some glaciologists working on their side of the puzzle furiously. What it will mean on the ground is huge year-over-year and decade-over-decade swings, much to the detriment of agriculture. We are seeing signs of this already.
The idea that carbon fertilization is good for agriculture is not actually supported by evidence. There are three major issues that complicate the picture. First of all, crop growth is not limited by availability of CO2 but by other nutrients. Second, CO2 fertilization in many cases promotes the growth of the woody parts of plants rather than the seeds and leaves which we and our livestock eat. Third, CO2 fertilization also helps weeds.
Is Gary H in a position to offer me a guest posting? I’d like to hear it from Anthony.

REPLY: Huh? Sentence makes no sense, clarify -A

Anthony, are you offering me a guest post?
Else, is Gary H in an editorial position to do so?
REPLY: Why not both? I’ll combine both essays into a point-counterpoint post then. – Anthony

Michael Tobis says:
February 2, 2012 at 10:36 am
Really? Why haven’t we been bombarded with this information? I don’t believe you can take any volume of air, inject CO2 into it, and cause the temperature of the air to increase. That is the central premise of AGW. If you could do this, I believe you would be in line to get a Nobel Prize! It *CAN* be demostrated that a volume of sea water, or Diet Coke, for that matter, can be made to lose its CO2 to the atmosphere by simply raising its temperature, and it doesn’t require eons for the change to occur. No radiative forcing, or references to ancient earth history, or any other hocus pocus involved. The planet warms by that big yellow ball in the sky and the CO2 in the atmosphere increases without any interference by us humans and our quest to live somwhere other than in a cave. Have a great weekend!

Michael Tobis
Your ignorance is incredible, while you’re discussing CAGW and trying to semantically weasel in a redefinition of how much WARMING from the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause and still, you suggest that this will endanger the entire world, And your arrogant demand to see proof that it wont is an insult.
WOW!! just freaking WOW!
I’ll point out some recent developments in Europe,
the death toll went up to160 as PEOPLE struggled to cope with temperatures that plunged to record lows. Tens of thousands of PEOPLE have headed to shelters to escape the freeze.
In the Ukraine 63 PEOPLE died “Most of them literally froze to death on the street, with only a handful making it to hospital before succumbing to hypothermia”
In Serbia, the cold has killed seven PEOPLE and trapped 11,500.
Hundreds of PEOPLE are in hospital suffering from hypothermia and frostbite.
More than 1,000 schools remain closed in Bulgaria after 16 towns reported their lowest temperatures since records began 100 years ago.
The mercury also plunged below zero in central regions, with -14C (7F) recorded in Berlin, -8C (18F) in Paris and -20C (-4F) in Warsaw.
Now Tobis, As Anthropogenic production of Co2 (a trace gas) has gone up, would you like to further add insult to injury to all those PEOPLE shivering and hungry and literally freezing to death? Would you like to redefine CAGW for them? would you like reveal to the world how much of a complete moron you really are and redefine CAGW as Anthropogenic Climate change, Climate disruption or any other way that you can dream up that fits your cause?
🙂

Well, Sparks, thanks for letting me know about this interesting event. Cold outbreaks have not gone away yet.
Indeed, as climate shifts around, they may show up in previously unlikely places. It is the global energy balance that is the driver of all this. Climate shifts are the consequence. And with a shifting climate system we see unfamiliar weather. So, with regard to the current cold outbreak in Europe, consider :
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/02/grain-europe-weather-idUSL5E8D24QJ20120202
===
No actual damage has yet been reported in top producers France, Germany and Britain but if the cold snap continues there will be increased worry next year’s harvest will suffer.
Grains can survive frosts as deep as minus 20 degrees centigrade if they have protective snow to insulate them. But unusually warm winter weather up to the start of this week means snow is scarce in west Europe’s grain belts.
…
Soft wheat is about 2 to 3 weeks in advance of normal growth for the start of February and it is hard to say if plants are more vulnerable to frosts in their current advanced growth phase, observers said.
…
“We cannot say what will be the impact of the cold spell (on soft wheat) because it is a situation that we have never seen,” said Jean-Charles Deswarte of French crop institute Arvalis.
===
So part of the reason for concern is that the snow cover is absent amd that winter wheat is ahead of schedule. “Situation we have never seen” is the thing to watch for.
And the situation is indeed quite remarkable.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2024
These are deep and extensive anomalies.
(I believe these anomalies are re: 1980-2010. If so, much of the global warming is factored out.)

mkelly says (February 2, 2012 at 12:55 pm): “You missed Anthony’s example of this here on WUWT.”
mkelly beat me to it. But here’s the link, courtesy of Rick Werme’s Guide to WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/18/replicating-al-gores-climate-101-video-experiment-shows-that-his-high-school-physics-could-never-work-as-advertised/

Michael Tobis says:
“You still have to come up with a strategy that is the best one given the information at hand.”
Can you explain why mitigation (CO2 emission reduction) would be a better strategy than adaptation? Seems to me the best strategy is the one that works over the greatest range of possible outcomes. Adaptation works if it gets warm or cool or nothing at all happens, it’s cheaper than mitigation for any particular scenario, and as long as we don’t waste our resources on mitigation efforts it’s actually affordable.

Michael Tobis,
You have put your self in a remarkable position, when you say,
“It is the global energy balance that is the driver of all this. Climate shifts are the consequence.”
Are you in fact implying that Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide (a trace gas) is disrupting an “energy balance” of Earth on a global scale and Climate shifts are the consequence of this?
Yes/No?
So, In fact you have yet again redefined “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming”, (a very predictable Modus operandi from proponents of CAGW) as “Anthropologically Induced Climate Shifts”.
You now wish to assert that Freezing European winters are the result of “Anthropologically Induced Climate Shifts” WOW, Tobis, I don’t wish to cause you offense and do take attitude towards you lightly but, my built in Idiot Meter (common sense) just went off the scale, I originally thought that you were just a potential Moron and a bit misguided, uninformed, but you keep climbing up that scale towards being a complete village idiot.
All joking aside, how would you go about informing all those people battling Freezing temperatures over the Northern Hemisphere this winter that they are producing Carbon Dioxide to heat their homes to stay alive from the freezing cold and that in doing so this causes “Anthropologically Induced Climate Shifts” and as a result they will be battling Freezing temperatures in winter?
You’ll find that, in a desert, selling sand for camels doesn’t work either.
Definition of CAGW is similar in nature to you belief in “Anthropologically Induced Climate Shifts”
We’re all delighted you asked!
🙂

Re the Nye experiment, did you use 780 ppmv CO2 at 1 atm? I would expect the radiative effect of that in such a small jar to be undetectable with a homebrew setup.

Jeff, this is also an interesting question. I have raised it on Planet3.0 and will do so again. My short answer is an analogy. I am overweight and trying to cope with it. But I have not stopped eating.

Bad analogy. Either you believe we’re on the verge (or in fact in the middle) of global catastrophe or you don’t. If you do, and you have such a lackadaisical attitude about it, why should we listen to you? Being a little overweight would not be a reason to stop eating. But, the only way to reduce CO2 to pre-industrial levels is to cease ALL industry right now. Why aren’t you on board?

[SNIP: Not really appropriate, even with some of the letters changed. -REP]

Michael Tobis says:
February 2, 2012 at 11:21 pm
That is a straw man. I don’t know or know of anybody who believes anything like that.

Again, you should read up on Maurice Strong’s thoughts on the matter.