By S. Fred Singer
Gallia omnia est divisa in partes tres. This phrase from Julius Gaius Caesar about the division of Gaul nicely illustrates the universe of climate scientists — also divided into three parts. On the one side are the “warmistas,” with fixed views about apocalyptic man-made global warming; at the other extreme are the “deniers.” Somewhere in the middle are climate skeptics.
In principle, every true scientist must be a skeptic. That’s how we’re trained; we question experiments, and we question theories. We try to repeat or independently derive what we read in publications — just to make sure that no mistakes have been made.
In my view, warmistas and deniers are very similar in some respects — at least their extremists are.
They have fixed ideas about climate, its change, and its cause. They both ignore “inconvenient truths” and select data and facts that support their preconceived views. Many of them are also quite intolerant and unwilling to discuss or debate these views — and quite willing to think the worst of their opponents.
Of course, these three categories do not have sharp boundaries; there are gradations. For example, many skeptics go along with the general conclusion of the warmistas but simply claim that the human contribution is not as large as indicated by climate models. But at the same time, they join with deniers in opposing drastic efforts to mitigate greenhouse (GH) gas emissions.
I am going to resist the temptation to name names. But everyone working in the field knows who is a warmista, skeptic, or denier. The warmistas, generally speaking, populate the U.N.’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and subscribe to its conclusion that most of the temperature increase of the last century is due to carbon-dioxide emissions produced by the use of fossil fuels. At any rate, this is the conclusion of the most recent IPCC report, the fourth in a series, published in 2007. Since I am an Expert Reviewer of IPCC, I’ve had an opportunity to review part of the 5th Assessment Report, due in 2013. Without revealing deep secrets, I can say that the AR5 uses essentially the same argument and evidence as AR4 — so let me discuss this “evidence” in some detail.
Read the full essay here: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/climate_deniers_are_giving_us_skeptics_a_bad_name.html#ixzz1nn0SciyO
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For far, the body count for this climate catastrophe seems rather small.
I think more people die each year by choking on children’s marbles than are dying from this climate catastrophe. In the US, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) considered some time back requiring that a warning label be etched into each child’s marble, but it was deemed unworkable and set aside.
This climate catastrophe deserves the same treatment.
Back radiation is a hypothesis. Is it a testable hypothesis via a reproducible experiment? It has been neither falsified nor proven [at least to my knowledge].
But AGW not a hypothesis, it is simply a conjecture with no supporting empirical evidence. And it will remain a conjecture until it’s testable.
. . .
Mike Smith:
Nice rundown of the -isms. They are all Authoritarian, both left and right. Their antithesis is the Constitution and Bill of Rights. That’s the only form of government that supports individual freedom. The others are all coercion at gunpoint.
. . .
Ferdinand Engelbeen,
It’s very likely that the rising CO2 level is due to human emissions. But what, exactly, is the problem? That’s the real question.
There is zero evidence of any global or regional harm from more CO2, and plenty of evidence that the rise is very beneficial. Even if CO2 were to double from here [very unlikely], it would still be a tiny trace gas. And the biosphere would love it as much as we would love the added ≈1°C of warmth — which as we know, would occur primarily at night, and in the higher latitudes, and in the winter, and it would tend to raise low temperatures, not high temperatures. Plus, it would open up new land to agriculture. What’s not to like?
Comments on this site always seem to degenerate into diatribes on ‘Socialism’. No wonder the world still thinks Climate Skeptics are all Right Wing nuts…
Chris Watson:
You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you. [Originally attributed to Pericles, but since then attributed to Leon Trotsky].
There are plenty of folks from the Left who comment here, and all of them seem to understand that the AGW conjecture isn’t about science, it is about money and control:
“One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”
~ Ottmar Edenhofer, IPCC WG-3 Co-Chair
Above we are to understand that there is no such thing as blackbody radiation and if there was, such impossible radiation from the earth would not impact any CO2 in the atmosphere because there is so little. If it did the impossible and impact some CO2, it would not produce thermal energy (warm the atmosphere) and none of that increased energy would ever reradiate towards the earth in increasing amounts. If it did radiate towards the earth it would not warm the earth. If it did warm the earth it would negligible (e.g compared to UHIE).
While any of these ideas may be true they would overturn a lot of physics which would need to be reconciled. But it is obvious that all these ideas cannot be true. I stand by my statement above that these are all worth studying. Science is always worth redoing and very much worth overturning when it is wrong. But it is one thing to do that in forum dedicated to critical thinking (this forum is a good example although there are better) and quite another to disseminate to the general public as a “refutation” of greenhouse theory.
The warmers use the term denier about anyone who disagrees with the greens determination to create social justice as they see it in the world.
No matter if the science of global warming is all phony … climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” -Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
Sceptics swing from the perjorative and bigotted word denier to some agreement as new research comes to hand and is disseminated and discussed. There is no call for Singer to use the term denier simply because it is derogatory and has no relevance to examining issues at hand. The use of the term shows a closed mind. not an investigative mind open to new discoveries.
Singer should answer a simple question, Would Climategates,1&2 have ocurred if there was no scepticism?
Further, would the expose of the IPCC by Donna Laframboise have been so devestating if the concerted PR campaign from the warmists was not such compelling rubbish?
Falling for the use of the term denier, which is reprehensible, indicates Singer should step back for a while.
O H Dahlsveen says:
February 29, 2012 at 3:39 pm
You ask to be hammered on a few points and since you wrote such an amusing piece of fiction I think you deserve it. So, if you don’t mind. You say….
1) There is Electromagnetic “heat- or thermal radiation” from the Earth’s surface.
2) The surface does not lose any heat as this thermal transfer from surface to atmosphere takes place.
3) The GHGs in the atmosphere are sending at least one half of this heat radiation back to the surface causing, at the moment, 33 deg. Celsius (or Kelvin) of warming.
Explain how any of the three points above are possible. If you cannot explain them then don’t rely on Singer to do so either.”
——————————————————————————————————
Let’s take them one at a time.
1) There is Electromagnetic “heat- or thermal radiation” from the Earth’s surface.
– Yes….all bodies above absolute zero emit electromagnetic radiation. The energy they emit is proportional to the 4th power of their absolute temperature. The Earth is no exception. It emits over a wide range of wavelengths with most of its energy in the infrared region, peaking at about 10 microns.
2) The surface does not lose any heat as this thermal transfer from surface to atmosphere takes place.
– Radiation transports energy. Any object that radiates is losing energy and, as a result, it would cool down unless there was some other heat source keeping it warm. In the case of planet Earth, there is an external heat source called the Sun. So the Earth doesn’t cool down; it simply adjusts to a temperature where its heat loss due to radiation is balanced by that received from the Sun.
3) The GHGs in the atmosphere are sending at least one half of this heat radiation back to the surface causing, at the moment, 33 deg. Celsius (or Kelvin) of warming.
– Essentially correct. See how it happens…..
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/17/the-steel-greenhouse/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/20/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-a-physical-analogy/
“If you really believe in the fable that heat can radiate …”
For accuracy, that particular fable is called the Stefan-Boltzmann Law.
“By the way heat is not energy, but it will take too long to explain that one here”.
Shame. I was having a good laugh – but heat is a form of energy.
I believe we should not argue against the fact that we humans are contributing to the increase in CO2 over the last few hundred years. After all, the CO2 we produce has to go somewhere. As well, we cannot blame warming oceans for the increase in CO2 since they have not been warming for the last 15 years. But even between 1975 and 1998, oceans absorbed more CO2 than they gave off. As proof that humans are responsible for the increased CO2 due to burning of fossil fuels, the O2 content should decrease approximately as much as the CO2 increases. And it does. See:
http://www.disclose.tv/forum/atmospheric-oxygen-levels-fall-as-carbon-dioxide-rises-t29534.html
A quote from here:
“It is roughly true that the oxygen depletion is equivalent to a displacement by carbon dioxide. But it is not exactly true. First, some of the carbon dioxide produced has been absorbed by the oceans.”
Doug Cotton, after quickly scanning this thread your comment stands out as the one very close to what I now believe is happening in this topic of climate “science”. There is now propaganda emitting from both camps and no one is really portraying the correct science… on both sides… except yours comment. I sure am glad there are a few like you that are able to stay firmly planted in reality. I just had to stop and give you my support in your views for to me that is the real<science science. You are right, there is a duality in radiation and both aspects have to agree at the macroscopic level.
So much of this has to do with pure spherical geometry of planetary bodies and it that aspect that is actually being ignores and to make me sick doing it in the name of science. It never ceases to amaze me.
The “greenhouse effect” of the raising mean temperatures above the simplified Stefan-Boltzmann global calculations seems at this point to be purely geometry of curved spheres with maximum radiation power always over exactly one point and I now have the data matrices on my machine that confirms this (still in verification). For other’s “out there”, I would be very careful just whom you call a “denier”, you may have the players reversed.
Chris Watson says:
February 29, 2012 at 4:21 pm
Comments on this site always seem to degenerate into diatribes on ‘Socialism’. No wonder the world still thinks Climate Skeptics are all Right Wing nuts…
_______
That’s okay. It could be Communism. Then, we’d all be Red-Baiters! Or maybe Trostkyites… I’m not sure. How far left can you go and still be right of somebody? Were the Bolsheviks right Marxists? Stalin was going for Socialism in one country. In Soviet Russia, Stalinists didn’t quite buy into the Eugenics thing because of the Lysenko thing.
What is latin for ‘false dichotomy’? I want to use it to sound smart :). It’s being used here. A ‘denier’ is simply a skeptic who, though skeptical about it, has come to the conclusion that the world really isn’t getting hotter. He’s still just a skeptic and open to changing his mind when new info arrives on the scene.
Biff33 says on February 29, 2012 at 11:17 am:
“Lindzen, at House of Commons, February 22, 2012:
• “Carbon Dioxide has been increasing.
• “There is a greenhouse effect.
• “There has been a doubling of equivalent CO2 over the past 150 years.
• “There has very probably been about 0.8 C warming in the past 150 years.
• “Increasing CO2 alone should cause some warming (about 1C for each doubling).
“[None of these statements] is controversial among serious climate scientists.”
=========
• “There is a greenhouse effect. – Yes, I too agree with that, but not as it is being advertised by CAGWarmists or those you describe as serious climate scientists.
Even the GHE in greenhouses bear no resemblance to their so called GHE, which is probably why there are so many different explanations for it.
The best explanation I have ever read is from Dr. Roy Spencer Ph.D. –
Under the heading ‘Global Warming 101’ he writes a story called “Global Warming Theory in a Nutshell” – a brilliant and believable piece. However as an epilog comes:
“This is the basic explanation of global warming theory. (The same energy balance concept applies to a pot of water on a stove set on “low”.”
Here I can only assume the pot of water represents the Atmosphere, the top of the stove, or hotplate – takes the place of the Earth’s surface and the electric current that of the incoming solar irradiation. –Spencer continues:
“The water warms until the rate of energy loss through evaporation, convective air currents, and infrared radiation equals the rate of energy gain from the stove, at which point the water remains at a constant temperature. If you turn the heat up a tiny bit more, the temperature of the water will rise again until the extra amount of energy lost by the pot once again equals the energy gained from the stove, at which point a new, warmer equilibrium temperature is reached.)”
If he is tweaking up the electrics to further warm the water, then he is – of course – explaining how solar heating works -. But I’ll let Spencer continue:
“Now, you might be surprised to learn that the amount of warming directly caused by the extra CO2 is, by itself, relatively weak. It has been calculated theoretically that, if there are no other changes in the climate system, a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration would cause less than 1 deg C of surface warming (about 1 deg. F). This is NOT a controversial statement…it is well understood by climate scientists. (As of 2008, we were about 40% to 45% of the way toward a doubling of atmospheric CO2.)”
========
So, it is all theoretically calculated with the “Piltdown man” as factual data.
And as of the end of January 2012 we have lost all the warming previously gained. Where does that leave the AGW Theory, let alone the CAGW one?
Two points. First, the terms ‘warmist’, ‘skeptic’, and ‘denier’ have been so over-worked, and carry so much baggage, that attempts to define clear boundaries using these terms seems futile. Second, frequently one sees references to the term ‘the basic physics’. The physics may indeed be ‘basic’ in the sense that an understanding of that physics is fundamental to making judgements concerning future climate. However, application of ‘the basic physics’ to the real world is a subtle business, is rarely unequivocal, and always requires an abundance of clear thinking to get it right. For those choosing to stand on the solid ground of ‘the basic physics’: when standing on a lofty tower, it pays to make sure that the foundations are robust.
I’ve always had a bit of a problem with the isotope arguments. I don’t remember that isotopes can change over time as in: Plants die. They get sequestered for millions of years. They are mined and then burned for energy. So this is the question: How did the isotopes change from being natural to being unnatural? Also, are the oceans only able to take up one kind of isotope? What happened to all the bad isotopes from the petroleum released during WWII submarine warfare? Do the bacteria process only one isotope?
Werner Brozek says:
February 29, 2012 at 5:21 pm
“After all, the CO2 we produce has to go somewhere.”
But, we may not know all the places it can go. The fluxes are so enormous that a small change in sources or sinks can easily overwhelm the fossil fuel contribution. The pat answers by guys like Ferdinand project more confidence in quantifiables than we actually have.
For example, here we recently learned that plants take in more CO2 than was thought. And, this quantity is dynamic. Sequestration of atmospheric CO2 via weathering or minerals is an area of active research.
“As well, we cannot blame warming oceans for the increase in CO2 since they have not been warming for the last 15 years.”
All that may indicate is that the response is not immediate, and the time constant is fairly long. A time constant of perhaps 30 years could easily produce little discernible change for a couple of decades or more after cessation of the warming input.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
February 29, 2012 at 3:51 pm
“If oceanic CO2 has a too high level of d13C, it is impossible that it is the cause of the DEcrease of 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere.”
Much too much certainty on display here, and ruling out potentially viable alternatives based on personal preference for what “feels” right. Your narrative here is consistent with a certain set of assumptions which may or may not be a fair representation of what is currently known, but our knowledge base is growing all the time, and the Earth is a very complex system. We are dealing with very small quantites here, and though current measurement technology allows us to obtain accurate measurements to the required level, it does not take a lot of perturbation to the underlying assumptions to radically alter the interpretation of the data.
It is a bit of a sideshow and a moot topic, I’ll admit, because there currently appears to be insufficient contrary evidence to sway those who are firmly convinced of the anthropogenic culpability, and the action in the climate debate is where reality is unequivocally diverging from the AGW consensus, i.e., in the sensitivity of the climate to CO2 in the atmosphere. But, I have well grounded theoretical reasons for believing that the narrative is wrong, and that likely will become evident somewhere down the road in the years or decades ahead.
Well, I’m moderately on the Left, and I find the bad science of AGW very disturbing.
Equally disturbing is the thought that being a skeptic means giving support to extreme right wing ideas I don’t support. Honest skepticism would benefit if it skeptics could forget about their political baggage.
For example, Andrew Bolt in Australia does more harm than good to the skeptical cause. He does promote it, but he also connects it to all his other horrible causes.
For example, I’m opposed to AGW, but I’m not opposed to most other environmental legislation. In fact I think the focus on CO2 has distracted from other much more important environmental issues. I don’t like the fact that AGW skeptics are so rabidly anti-environmentalist. I don’t want to be seen to be giving tacit support to that, nor to many other ‘anti-Socialist’ ideas.
If you really care about the bad science, you should pay attention to this criticism.
Chris Watson says:
“I don’t like the fact that AGW skeptics are so rabidly anti-environmentalist.”
“Fact”?? Whatever gave you that idea? It is not a fact. You must be new here. In fact, the purveyors of “environmental policy” use that canard as part of their cover story for hijacking the wealth of productive citizens, sending it through the totally corrupt UN [which takes its usual hefty cut], and then it goes into the pockets of dictators. The poor stay poor as always. Skeptics are probably more environmentally friendly than alarmists, because skeptics at least know the difference between CO2 and black carbon. As for the bait-and-switch scammers:
One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.
~ Ottmar Edenhofer, IPCC WG-3 Co-Chair
I think there is a sub-faction of the “warmista” that Singer missed. The faction that WANTS major catastrophe just so they can say “i told you so”. It wouldn’t even matter if the catastrophe was wholly human caused or not.
Werner Brozek says:
February 29, 2012 at 5:21 pm
“After all, the CO2 we produce has to go somewhere.”
We do not produce any CO2 except by natural means,
Burning coal is not producing CO2, it is releasing CO2 that was once available, but got buried.
We are NOT creating something new, that wasn’t once here.
Werner Brozek says:
“I believe we should not argue against the fact that we humans are contributing to the increase in CO2 over the last few hundred years”
yes, Well done humans.. keep up the good work.
Phil. says:
February 29, 2012 at 12:56 pm
You mean like the many who post on here that homonuclear diatomics like O2 and N2 absorb in the IR, in contravention of many years of detailed spectroscopic measurements and well established (and tested) theories of molecular structure and dynamics?
;——————————————————————————————————————–
For nitrogen and oxygen, look up rotational collision induced absorption – the collision induces the dipole moment.
Note, 2400 cm^-1 is equivalent to 4 microns. These results have been around for over 20 years.
Also, the dipole moment in CO2 is induced by vibrations where as in H20 the dipole moment is permanent.
Since water has permanent dipole moment, if it’s rotating, it’s radiating something.
Because I am old, I’m not so much a believer as an observer of climate change.
The climate cycles on every conceivable time frame.
These interact.
It’s chaotic.
But it is NOT directional.
Now I must not mention certain names, or I’ll be banned again, it seems.
But there is a paper floating around the internet that examines the long term temperature of eight solar planets and moons and explains what determines their long run equilibrium.
All else is just fluctiation.
But to we weak humans, the weather is sometimes terrifying.
The gods must be angry.
They must be appeased.
Tax Tax Tax until it hurts and then tax some more.
There’s nothing like a good taxing tax to keep the climate away.
OK, I’ve pondered this a while.
While I’ve proudly called myself a “Denier” (after having it applied by others in an “I Accuse!” way…) based on my interpretation of “I Deny your claim is valid” (that there is AGW). I see in this ‘essay’ a different twist. “I deny that IR happens”. (As the limit case – yes, argument to the absurd) To that I must protest.
Why?
For the simple reason that it PRESUMES that the “IR MODEL” is the operative one, and to deny that it [matters / works] is to deny some kind of basic truth.
Same “raspberry” to the notion that one must say “IR works, the argument is only over how much”.
For the very simple reason that it can be a complete and utter Red Herring. Yes, IR happens between molecules and atoms. It can also be completely and utterly irrelevant to the heat transfer regulation.
In a ‘nut shell’: If I say “Infrared radiation is irrelevant and orthogonal to the earth heat flow system.”, I fit neither the “Skeptic” definition of “Sure it works we are just haggling over how much” nor the “Denier” definition of “IR between molecules does not happen so I must be an ignorant denier of known physics.”
I do not need to either say “God IS” or “God IS NOT” to say “Um, I think life just evolved on its own. God may have started it and admiring evolution is admiring His Work, or there may be no God at all, I just don’t know nor care much.”
So, for me, I’m sure all the IR radiative functions by all the great physicists of time (at least up until about 1970 when science became
abnormalpostnormal) work just fine. I’m also quite sure they are entirely irrelevant to how heat flows off the surface of the planet. That little gem is driven by the Hydrological Cycle. Water evaporates, rises to great altitude, condenses and dumps heat, then rain falls to pick up another load. More incident solar heat makes the cycle run faster. More CO2 might make it run faster, but not hotter. IR is 100% blocked at the surface for the wavelength of interest anyway (per the warmistas), so it just isn’t going to matter… The air will just convect faster and by the time it’s late afternoon the heat is on a fast boogy out of here.(That daily convection move has been measured in Africa. Yeah, field measurement of the rate of heat flow. There’s a couple of HOUR lag from max sun to max heat leaving. Not years, months, weeks. Not even days. Hours… Also one look at global rainfall shows where the planet has max heat gain, the equator, it has max precipitation. More heat makes more hydrologic cycle speed. Places with low heat load have a slow water cycle. Alaska gets thunderstorms in summer, but they tail off in spring and fall… )
Now, move to the Stratosphere and the IR function matters. But at those altitudes, more IR radiation means more heat LEAVES the planet. Oh Dear…
So, in short, I “Deny that IR Matters below the stratosphere but accept the physics of IR between gasses and from gas to space”. So I don’t fit your buckets.
I’m NOT going to argue over “how much surface IR matters” as that is chasing Red Herrings, and I don’t do that if at all possible. I deny it’s worth.
So is it appropriate to castigate me as an unwashed “Denier”? To have the washed “Skeptics” call me names because I’m unwilling to fish in the Red Herring Pond and argue about who caught the biggest nothing? Does it make me “unscientific” to assert that another non-IR mechanism is the right, proper, and controlling one? Or does that actually make me “Skeptical” of the unsettling “AGW Settled Science” as I think they have completely ignored the giant Elephants In The Room of the hydrological cycle: Rain, Snow, Evaporation, Cloud formation, Hadley cells, Polar Vortex, Cyclonic Storms…
In summary:
You are measuring on a broken axis, arguing over the size of the Angels on the Pin. I’m asserting there are no angels, and the pin is just a pin, so any pain you feel is from the pointy end…
I deny the God CO2 matters and that the Arc Angle InfraRed does anything of interest below the Stratosphere. All hail the hail, and snow, and rain, and clouds, and evapotranspiration, servents of the God Convective Heat Transfer and his Arc Angel Enthalpy.
So I’m not a Denier, I’m a “CO2 / IR Heretic” and believer in the Gods Hydrology and Convection…
Oh, and as solar changes happen, the UV level shifts, that changes the ocean heating at depth as UV is what goes to depths. It also changes the Ozone at altitude and lets the total air column hight compress. That gives much colder downward air flow at the polar vortex and we get both a “loopy jet stream” (aka Rossby Waves) and those remarkable cold patches folks up north have been having lately… We also get warm air excursions further north so places like the East Coast of N.A. get warm wet air from the Gulf while out West gets more cold dry air.
Playing mathematical games of averaging the Rossby Wave temperature excursions to find a ‘Global Average Temperature” during “Flat Jet Stream” PDO state vs “Loopy Jet Stream” state and claiming it means something is a fools errand. I’ll leave that to Hansen, UEA/CRU and NOAA/NCDC. They seem well suited to it.
So, as much as I’ve loved Singer’s books, I have to give the thesis that we ought to divide up into “Skeptic washed” and “Denier Unwashed” and toss rocks at each other over IR / CO2 models and sizes to be a wasteful and self defeating idea.
I’d rather work on showing how UV changes / solar wind changes modulate the stratosphere and polar vortex (and thus the AMO / PDO / AO and Rossby Waves and clouds) and on how the Hydrological Cycle moves all the heat to the Stratosphere. ( The “IR Rules” guys can have it from there on up, IMHO. It’s likely to be the right model once above ALL clouds, even the stratospheric ones and the noctilucent ones. Above the Stratopause…
So put me in the orthogonal camp of “CO2 Heretic” or “Worshiper of Aquarius”…