I had the opportunity to talk with John at length during the Weather Channel 30th anniversary reunion which I attended (and live blogged) this past weekend in Atlanta (thanks so very much to all of you who helped with travel expenses, it was a true honor for me to be there.). John felt that this story is one that should be covered by every TV station in America, and I agreed. So, as John does, he leads and hopes others follow.
In the video he says this:
The idea that carbon dioxide produced by our fossil fuels threatens the planet Earth — that one seems to have pretty well failed the test of time.
Of course many on the other side of the AGW debate don’t want to accept that, but the fact is that some have come to their senses and climbed down, such as James Lovelock did recently.
This will be up on YouTube for maximum exposure at some point John assures me, until then, please visit the KUSI-TV website here to watch the video:
Here it is on YouTube, including the fix for the hurricane rotation:
Jeef says: May 1, 2012 at 6:37 pm
Brick by brick, the edifice of CAGW crumbles…
But it is based on the foundation of post-modern “science” (i.e. science consensus not evidence).
The danger is that as catastrophic manmade warming fails, all that will happen is the same scam machine will hitch its hysteria onto a new scare like the Maunder Minimum.
There are real reasons to fear a new Maunder-type Minimum (up to a quarter of Scotland’s population died in the 1690s during the Maunder Minimum, However there are reasons to be optimistic given our modern fossil fuel global economy. (Which is precisely what the warmists wish to destroy).
But the big danger, is that based on the same “consensus” lack of actual research and manure heaps of speculation … egged on by a media frenzy of “what is the worst possible”, the public and politicians could yet again be whipped up into a pathetic frenzy on solar activity.
Personally, I think the three big manmade causes of 20th century warming were:
1. Drop in pollution
2. Conversion of forest to farming affecting evaporation rates and rising local/global temperature
3. Urban heating (which is in fact another way of stating 2)
All these are problems worthy of investigation in their own right, but they were ignored by the CO2 hysteria.
Likewise, I suspect that when the CO2 gravy boat capsizes, that we will see another myopic strand in climate “science” developing and although the main focus may merit work, it will yet again go into this denialist hysterical spin.
So, we may see the end of the catastrophic manmade global warming doctrine, but unless we tackle the anti-science foundation, it will be a short time before another equally bad doctrine is built in its place.
Rather simplistic but probably well written for the target audience.
They could do well to crop off the female presenter’s dumb comment about weather at the end.
Jeef says: May 1, 2012 at 6:37 pm
Brick by brick, the edifice of CAGW crumbles…
No, it doesn’t. In fact, it is gathering strength now that virtually everyone on the planet “knows” that the science is settled and man is the culprit. To the great unwashed we critical thinkers are the outsider, lunatic, fringe.
Dumbed down education removed critical thinking capability from the masses and science went out the window in favour of Big Brother exactly as our leaders planned.
The argument was lost years ago, only the apologies by the likes of Lovelock can save us because pointing out that empirical data proves the alarmists wrong just isn’t working and never will.
Pessimistic? Yes but also very, very, angry at what junk climate science and the delusional left bandwagon is doing to us.
Scottish Skeptic says
All these are problems worthy of investigation in their own right, but they were ignored by the CO2 hysteria.
————–
But they were not ignored. Otherwise you would not know about them.
Do we get to call people who don’t believe Cosmic Ray Cloud Theory deniers?? Well, I guess we don’t want to be complete assholes now, do we?
@Mardler
I tend to agree with you. We are not operating in an evidence-based reality. No matter what I say, what objection to CAGW I bring up, nothing changes among the hardcore followers I know. As evidence for this, please read yesterday’s (5/1/12) NYTimes front page article, “Clouds’ Effect on Climate Science Is Last Bastion of Dissenters,” which contains such gems as “over time, nearly [every dissenter] argument has been shot down by accumulating evidence, and polls say 97 per-cent of working climate scientists now see global warming as a serious risk.” How do we contend with this? Front page! I seem to recall the poll was web-based, sent to over 10,000 “scientists,” only 75 of whom responded & 72 of this motley crew were panic-buttoners. I realize the ‘reporter,’ Justin Gillis, is in the CAGW tank, but it must be noted that most people will read the headline and maybe the first paragraph of the story. Damage done. I wish Anthony, or someone else here with a good grasp of the science, would to a take-down of this Gillis fellow.
Ultimately, this is a political matter. We can shoot down every single argument CAGW supporters make, but as long as no one is really listening, the massive funding will continue, and inertia will push us toward Orwell’s world (I cite most recent UN findings on the “crisis” in biodiversity as evidence that the Borg will not be stopped). Cheers.
A recent NY Times article by Justin Gillis refers to clouds as the last bastion for dissenters.
It contains the usual Warmist “consensus” blather, but goes on to say “Yet in recent years, the climate change skeptics have seized on one last argument that cannot be so readily dismissed. Their theory is that clouds will save us.” He then focuses on Richard S. Lindzen and his theory of the “iris effect”, which suggests that clouds in a warming world act as a negative feedback. Perhaps. Heaven forbid, though, that clouds could actually act as climate drivers.
It is rather amusing that the Warmists, with their ideology in its death throes, would try to portray Skeptics as “seizing upon” an argument.
Purakanui: Yes, sunspots do modulate the cosmic rays on shorter time-spans. That’s where we get the 11, 33 and 66 year cycles in weather. But the cosmic rays themselves are variable on much longer time scales (100,000 year range).
Svensmark’s earlier reseach focused mainly on the decade-scale solar modulation; this time he’s focusing on the millenia-scale cosmic ray source variation.
Purakanui says:
May 1, 2012 at 9:56 pm
—
They both matter. Think of a high frequency signal imposed on top of a low frequency signal.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 1, 2012 at 9:31 pm
He must have borrowed material from Al Gore: check the video at 3:20 the hurricane is rotating the wrong way.
REPLY: Having been at KUSI and worked with John, that error likely originated with an editor. John doesn’t do the editing or graphics/b-roll insertion. I’m sure they’ll get it fixed now that it has been pointed out. – Anthony
Doesn’t John watch his own stuff?
Originally, Maxwell experimentally determined that light had a constant velocity regardless of the relative velocity of the Earth. This was regarded as interesting, but too hard to model within Newtonian physics. After all, Newton had advanced the theories of the Physicist, i.e. Aristotle and therefore, the “science was settled”. Physicists were advised not to look at Maxwell’s results because they created too many unanswered questions and could lead to wasted careers and a lack of academic appointments. It remained for a Swiss patent clerk to follow up the experimental evdence with a radically new model.
Is it surprising that very few of the GCM attempt to include clouds in their inputs?
I suppose not, since, at least in the opinion of Her Majesty’s MetO, the science of clouds is “settled” and beyond further experimentation.
Would be interested to hear how this new addendum to Svensmark’s cosmic ray / cloud theory would explain emergence from “snowball Earth” type conditions or explain the relative stability of the Earth’s climate over its 4.5 billion year history considering a 30% dimmer Sun in its early stages.
@B.O.B. There is a theory at the present time is that the sun or the matter that became the sun (at least) was ripped off the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical galaxy. Aside from our orbit around the Milky Way, the angular momentum of the sun and the planets do not like up correctly with the balance of the Milky Way. The hypothesis will be hard to test however. About all you can say is that it may be consistent with the observations. In any event, it probably does not matter where we came from, it is where we are at.
Bill Wood says:
May 2, 2012 at 7:29 am
Physicists were advised not to look at Maxwell’s results because they created too many unanswered questions and could lead to wasted careers and a lack of academic appointments
Nonsense, Maxwell’s equations were well accepted and were a pillar of physics at the start of the 20th century.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 2, 2012 at 8:42 am
Bill Wood says:
May 2, 2012 at 7:29 am
Physicists were advised not to look at Maxwell’s results because they created too many
unanswered questions and could lead to wasted careers and a lack of academic appointments
Nonsense, Maxwell’s equations were well accepted and were a pillar of physics at the start of the 20th century.
They were well accepted because the challenges to Maxwell’s experimental findings had held up to the challenges of the time. They had not been explained because of the influence on scientific thought of Newton.
Bill Wood says:
May 2, 2012 at 9:01 am
They were well accepted because the challenges to Maxwell’s experimental findings had held up to the challenges of the time. They had not been explained because of the influence on scientific thought of Newton.
Same thing with quantum mechanics today: well accepted, but not explained at all.
James Lovelock was an absolute ass when he predicted that billions of people would die within a couple of decades. He has now climbed down – but has he compensated anyone for his non-scientific alarmism? £billions have been spent in persuit of his alarmist claims, and now he simply says ‘it was’t as bad as I thought – and that is ok? We just accept that £billions have been wasted for nothing??
.
B.O.B. says:
May 1, 2012 at 7:45 pm
“…why does our solar system not share the same trajectory and consequently move in concert with all of the matter that is around us as we orbit the centre of the Milky Way from the same distance ?”
Every orbit is different. There are differences in semi-major axis, eccentricity, inclination, right ascension, argument of periapse, and true anomaly. A circular orbit at a given radius may intersect that of an elliptical orbit with apoapsis at or above the same value periodically. Two orbits which differ only in inclination will intersect each other twice per orbital period.
Silver Ralph says:
May 2, 2012 at 11:06 am
“…and that is ok?”
Careful, Ralph. We don’t want to make it harder for them to climb down. Sometimes, it is better to let the opposing army disperse and become inconsequential than force them into a corner where they have to fight for their lives.
Brian H says:
May 1, 2012 at 8:57 pm
“B.O.B.;
All stars do this. The spirals are not physically linked, like beads on chains, or composed of stars moving together. They are “illusions”, waves of concentration of stars and matter that circle the core. The solar system circles the galaxy about once every 250 million years; other stars at other distances from the center do it faster or slower. In the course of a circuit, the Sun moves in and out of many gaps and arms and other features.”
A little more on this. Though the spirals are not physically linked they are gravitationally linked which is the logic behind B.O.B.’s question. In addition to the different velocities at different distances from the core, the various consequences of gravitational disturbances within the galaxy, stellar explosions, supernovae and such cause velocity vectors for gas clouds, stars or other matter not in the same direction as the rotation of the entire mass of the galaxy. This is in some ways like our own solar system and the changing orbits (over very long time periods) of its members due to various disturbances by the gravitational tugs by one and other. In either case these factors can actually cause ejection from the main body if escape velocities are achieved. It would therefore not be unusual for our solar system to travel through various densities of various materials along its path.
Thank you, Mr John Coleman.
Michael Searcy says:
May 2, 2012 at 8:25 am
“Would be interested to hear how this new addendum to Svensmark’s cosmic ray / cloud theory would explain emergence from “snowball Earth” type conditions or explain the relative stability of the Earth’s climate over its 4.5 billion year history considering a 30% dimmer Sun in its early stages.”
Regarding the faint early Sun paradox:
“Professor Minik Rosing, from the Natural History Museum of Denmark, and Christian Bjerrum, from the Department of Geography and Geology at University of Copenhagen, together with American colleagues from Stanford University in California have discovered the reason for “the missing ice age” back then, thereby solving the Sun paradox, which has haunted scientific circles for more than 40 years. Professor Minik Rosing explains: “What prevented an ice age back then was not high CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, but the fact that the cloud layer was much thinner than it is today. In addition to this, Earth’s surface was covered by water. This meant that the Sun’s rays could warm the oceans unobstructed, which in turn could layer the heat, thereby preventing Earth’s watery surface from freezing into ice.”
“Minik Rosing and his team have by analyzing samples of 3.8-billion-year-old mountain rock from the world’s oldest bedrock, Isua, in western Greenland, solved the “paradox.”” “The analyses of the CO2-content in the atmosphere, which can be deduced from the age-old Isua rock, show that the atmosphere at the time contained a maximum of one part per thousand of this greenhouse gas. This was three to four times more than the atmosphere’s CO2-content today. However, not anywhere in the range of the of the 30 percent share in early Earth history, which has hitherto been the theoretical calculation.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100331141415.htm
“One of the early attempts at solving the problems has been basically to adjust the greenhouse effect and you can do most prominently by just adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.” “We’re not happy about it because we have deposits from the ocean at that time, and these deposits contain iron oxide minerals and we know from the observation of how they form today that this kinds of minerals cannot form if there’s a very high amount of CO2 or carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the greenhouse solution to the faint sun paradox required about 30% CO2 in the atmosphere, but what we could see is that its very much lower.”
“There is a lot of geological evidence to suggest that the continents on earth have grown over time, so there were very little or no continents 4 billion years. Of course there’s about one-third of the planet is covered by continents today. And continents are much lighter in colour than ocean and therefore, if you had less continent, you would have a darker earth and it would’ve absorbed more heat from the sun if it’s darker. So that’s one part of it. The other thing is that in order for the sun to be able to efficiently heat the surface, it needs to be able to penetrate the clouds and today a lot of the sunlight is reflected by the clouds; but again clouds are different today than they were on the early earth because at that time, we didn’t have the type of organisms that produce chemicals, an active part in cloud formation today.”
http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/v464/n7289/nature-2010-04-01.html
I’m not finding a full-text link online at the moment, but, regarding snowball earth and cosmic rays:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFM.U11A0018M
Leif,
A “typo” in eye candy graphics is a far cry from amateurish yet deliberate slight-of-hand video fakery in a purported and ballyhooed “science experiment” where the faked video is presented as the actual “proof” itself! Can’t help yourself, I know, but gadflies soon lose their cuteness when they become 100% predictable.
Brian Adams says:
May 2, 2012 at 2:00 pm
A “typo” in eye candy graphics is a far cry from amateurish
Looks very amateurish to me, just as bad as in Al Gore’s book. In this polemic subject you cannot afford to be even a little bit wrong. By ‘predictable’, I take it that you think predictably catch errors and ‘typos’. Some are easy to catch and are harmful.