by Joe Bastardi
Being I am branded as a “denier”, I am having trouble dismissing the relevance of the tree ring studies that challenge the hockey stick, in light of the magnitude of the weight against co2 having any relevance to the climate.
I am hoping Dr. Mann can clear some things up for me, a PSU meteo grad that as I understand is no longer welcome in our department because of my outspoken stance on the climate change issue. A response here can also enlighten the other Neanderthals, some of them apparently devious enough to fool entire departments so they have PHDs, as to the latest “situation” with you and Andy Revkin. Andy, I am hoping this is not too “divisive or toxic”.
You tweeted that this graph, which has a version that shows no hockey stick was “largely irrelevant”
Here is the tweet:
And yet we see that the Chinese find no hockey stick in their studies:
In light of the Chinese studies, how can you say the other finding is largely irrelevant?
In addition you are asking us to believe that a gas that is 1/400th of the greenhouse gasses in a mixture ( air) that has 1/1000th of the heat capacity of the ocean,
WHICH IS BY FAR THE GREATEST CONTRIBUTOR TO THE NUMBER ONE GREENHOUSE GAS, WATER VAPOR, is somehow so relevant its pushing around the climate system. Even more remarkable is that this gas ( co2 if you have not guessed) has a specific gravity of 1.5 that of air, heats and COOLS faster than air, has different radiation properties and according to NASA satellite data, does not mix well.
Add to that the fact that in that mixture, air, it occupies .004 and according to DOE, mans total contribution is 3 to 5 %,
meaning using the high end 5% we have contributed .0002 to a mixture that has 1/1000th of the heat capacity of a prime source of the number one greenhouse gas , water vapor, that is 400 times the amount of co2.
Since I am an actual graduate of PSU meteo, and would like to again show my face there, I would hope you can explain to me and the rest of the “denial machine” how assigning such a high value to what would appear by the PHYSICAL evidence to be a non factor is somehow consistent with 2 studies showing NO HOCKEY STICK being largely irrelevant.
Again here is my problem: we have 2 studies showing no hockey sticks, they are irrelevant, yet the sheer weight of evidence AGAINST co2 being able to push the climate around seems to be of a much greater magnitude than the 2 studies.
And just for good measure, perhaps you can help us deniers with the apparent misconception with the ocean and sun correlation and the disconnect to co2 seen here:
TOP LEFT CO2 VS TEMP top right global temp since pdo flip bottom left ocean vs temp correlation pdo plus amo bottom right solar correlation
ocean strength of correlation is .83 solar is .57 co2 is .44
I look forward to the response convincing me that by looking at all sides of the issues, and reading just about everything you have done, that I am wrong, so I recant my Neanderthal views, and once again be able to sing “ may no act of ours bring shame” in our alma mater, since after all I am a graduate of PSU.
I am also a letter winner, so along with sweating out classes, I sweat and bled on our wrestling mats, so you might understand why my relationship with my University and its most famous member of our esteemed meteorology department is important to me.
Joe Bastardi
State Collge, PA
I hope you get a reply Joe! However typos crept in.
a gas that is 1/400th of the greenhouse gasses in a mixture
CO2 occupies about 0.04% or 0.0004 of the atmosphere. If you assume water vapor averages 1.6%, then that would be 40 times more, not 400.
Even more remarkable is that this gas ( co2 if you have not guessed) has a specific gravity of 1.5 that of air, heats and COOLS faster than air
Cp of CO2 is .844 J/g C or 37 J/molC
Cp of air is 1.01 J/g C or 29 J/molC
So for clarification, when measured per gram, CO2 does indeed have a lower specific heat capacity, but when measured per mole, the heat capacity is higher for CO2. So if you had identical jars of the same volume and temperature and pressure, but one filled with CO2 and the other with air, the one with CO2 would actually heat and cool slower. But having said this, the heat capacity of CO2 is not the property that makes it a so called greenhouse gas.
Aside from the obvious snark value of “Yamal largely irrelevant. Mountain meet molehill”, in all seriousness his tweet is very telling.
1. If he is admitting that Yamal is largely irrelevant, then is he really admitting that Yamal is flawed and that the flaw doesn’t take away from the other AGW “evidence”? If he believes Yamal in not flawed but only a small piece of the “evidence”, then why use the term “largely irrelevent” it is either relevent or it is not. I can only read this as conceding Yamal is flawed.
2. If it is a concession of the flaw of Yamal … he must explain if is it due to an oversight or fraud. We know what he would say, but it must be explained.
If I file taxes correctly 9 times out ten but 1 time I mess it up and get it “flagged” and audited, doesn’t it mean that the other 9 times are suspect too? What if the 1 time really was intentional fraud on my tax return?
It would be nice to nail him down on the meaning of “largely irrelevant”
Robbie says:
May 8, 2012 at 12:06 pm
“Mr. Bastardi: Can you explain to us why global temperatures are still high?
The PDO, AO and the sun has turned to cooling. So where are the cool temperatures from the eighties or seventies? I asked you that same question before here somewhere on WUWT in another one of your blogs. Never got a reply.
Oh Mr. Bastardi: April temperatures are going up again (RSS MSU) while they should go down in a cooling world. And how about the pathetic weak La Niñas the globe faced during 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 while you people were constantly propagating these were huge La Niñas. No they weren’t.
Mr. Bastardi: I considered you as a serious and objective person in climate and weather, but you are losing credibility.
Global temperatures are not going down like you would us have to believe in your last graph, but they will remain constant and increase again when the sun becomes active. Even in the “Cold” phase planet Earth is way too warm currently.”
If you look back to the 1970’s the last cool phase we had, you should be aware (unless your speaking from a position of total ignorance) that the PDO had been running consistently negative for nearly 30 years and the AMO for 10 years.
Currently we are approaching solar maximum, the 109 year running mean for the PDO has only turned negative in recent years and the AMO is just coming off its peak for the 10 year running mean. Even with all these factors we’ve seen no significant increasing temperature trend for approaching 15 years.
Where is the heat?
Your comments are ludicrous and uninformed. If your going to post try and do a little research about the subject your posting on.
Gail,
Thanks for your comment.
1. Mann used more than 12 trees in his paper. I’m not sure where this idea comes from, but you can find Mann’s paper online to see for yourself.
2. The graphic Mr. Bastardi presents shows that CO2 is indeed well-mixed with about 4% variation.
3. I think you misunderstood what I was looking for with respect to correlation between CO2 and solar during the twentieth century and latter twentieth century. Mr. Bastardi implies that since CO2 doe snot correlate well int he last 15 years, then it cannot be a driver of temperature. However, CO2 correlates much better than solar and etc. for longer time periods. That seems to fly in the face of his conclusions.
Oh and if you want to see cool wait and see what the next 30 years brings.
DJ @ur momisugly May 8, 2012 at 11:17 am
Call it what it is, LYSENKOISM.. Politicised science.
Robbie: High according to WHO just what should the temperature be you know so we can set the thermostat ???
Kerry R Jennings
Boris states CO2 correlates much better than solar and etc. for longer time periods no it doesn’t, that is the lie!
I know that Anthony hates it when anyone mentions coughcreationismcough in the blog, but the answer to your question is the exact same as we always got from the c-ists:
“Things were different then.”
Worked for them — works for CAGW alarmists.
Continuing “Boris, that is the lie”. what is this “and etc.” that you cannot name? I would say that CO2 correlates with temperature, rather than the other way around. But I am skeptical of that too. It surely must correlate with ocean temperature.
Temperatures appear to correlate with piracy. This theory was first postulated, well at least the earliest reference I can find to it is from fellow Canadian Stéfan Sinclair http://stefansinclair.name/global-temperature-and-pirates/
Now, temperatures had been increasining from the 1980s, when piracy was increasing, reaching a peak around 1998 to 2002,; but piracy is being tackled by the Navies of the world and piracy is diminishing, and temperatures are not increasing.
Oh, wait a minute, I misread the article. Perhaps we need piracy after all; there is an INVERSE realtionship .. perhaps … but the point of my post is that statistical correlation is not proof. Even with a correlation of 1.0, we we would have to determine which was correlated with what .. which came first.
Mann will not answer. He’s already drowning in his “disingeniousness,” to borrow a word he likes. But maybe the ubiquitous Connolley will give it a shot, no? Perhaps one of his lurking acolytes will see this:
Dr Connolley? Paging Dr Connolley!
[Boris says:
May 8, 2012 at 3:21 pm
1. Mann used more than 12 trees in his paper.]
That’s the problem, he should have used eleven. I guess you missed that small detail.
Robert of Ottawa says:
May 8, 2012 at 3:30 pm
Boris states CO2 correlates much better than solar and etc. for longer time periods no it doesn’t, that is the lie!
I was going to say that !
Because its true !
Borris: the problem with CO2 levels and temperature is that over time they follow quite different stochastic processes with differing unit roots. You can eliminate one unit root by taking the first level of integration and regressing temperature change with co2 change on an annual basis with varying time lags. What soon emerges is that there is zero correlation between this year’s change in temperature and this year’s or any previous year’s or indeed any combination of year’s change in co2. It is this fundamental problem with the statistical relationship between temperature and co2 that has led to large amounts of intellectual muscle being applied to the attribution problem with optimal fingerprinting techniques. However, these data torturing techniques have the same result as any other form of torture – any information gained is worthless. If there really was the level of correlation you suggest then the debate would be largely over but as it stands at the moment even if we were to cut co2 levels by any amount we could not say when if ever global temperatures would respond.
Robert of Ottawa says:
May 8, 2012 at 3:30 pm
Boris states CO2 correlates much better than solar and etc. for longer time periods no it doesn’t, that is the lie!
____________________
No Robert he is correct. CO2 does correlate with an 800 year lag because as the oceans warm they outgas CO2. That is well know chemistry.
Boris says:
May 8, 2012 at 3:21 pm
Gail,
….2. The graphic Mr. Bastardi presents shows that CO2 is indeed well-mixed with about 4% variation…..
____________________________
Actually you are missing something very important.
The NASA photo Bastardi shows is the CO2 averagedfor the air in the mid troposphere. “…The monthly average of carbon dioxide in the middle troposphere made with AIRS data retrieved during July 2003 Image credit: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio. (right) AIRS sensitivity to carbon dioxide with altitude The graph on the right shows that AIRS is sampling a column of air in the middle troposphere over a change in altitude.
So even with averaging of a column of air across a month you STILL are seeing variation.
Even NASA says CO2 is not uniform as previously thought.
This new information sheds completely new light on Beck’s historical data and Callendar tossing out most of said data. see pg 228
OOP for got the NASA link for AIRS Carbon Dioxide Data
For ages, Revkin should be well aware that the hockey stick is pure fiction based on bad science.
The only reason I can think of why he and others do not speak out may be a state of fear created within certain media outlets and it would be up to insiders to reveal how these regimes have been created and are maintained.
Joe is still going with the C02 isn’t well mixed nonsense? It’s pretty odd that such a blatant and easy demonstrable falsehood is a tenor of his bizarre pseudo-scientific beliefs. Better avoid low-lying areas Joe, or else you might be suffocated by those pools of CO2!
Boris said:
“Mr. Bastardi,
1. Yamal and China are regions and thus not representative of the entire globe or hemisphere.”
“Own Goal” Boris ! ( How embarresment )
This is an excellent summary with just enough text and graphics to hammer home the relevant points, well done Joe Bastradi !
I am interested in the vertical profile of Co2 as I am suspicious about the mix of the very dense gas,and not just using a satellite looking down at the troposphere and averaging the result.
That link that Gail provided also says :
But the graphs only show CO2 against time.
Are there vertical CO2 profiles, like temperature profiles from different sites, would Radiosondes provide this information ?. I will do some checking when time permits but someone may enlighten me first.
It’s good, but I’ll add my own proviso. By introducing other aspects of the climate debate you give your opponent room to side step the present major issue which is the disappearing/reappearing hockey stick. Mann should be made to explain that.
@Robert of Ottawa.
Re:Perhaps we need piracy after all; there is an INVERSE realtionship .. perhaps … but the point of my post is that statistical correlation is not proof.
__________________
An analogy I use is the following: umbrellas correlate with rain. But umbrellas don’t cause rain …
Jerky, it seems you were pwned by Gail Combs before you even wrote your first word. Perhaps you should explain to NASA that their stance that CO2 is not being well-mixed in the atmosphere is “a blatant and easy demonstrable falsehood.”
Oh, and Gail provided links to support her statements. Where are yours?