By Joe Bast – Executive director, Heartland Institute via press release
OCTOBER 24 — On October 23, PBS’s “Frontline” program broadcast a special titled “Climate of Doubt.” The Heartland Institute had circulated a commentary prior to the program’s broadcast, which appears below, which said in part, “We hope the program is accurate and fair, but past experience with PBS and other mainstream media outlets leads us to predict it will be neither.” We offered some “facts to keep in mind when watching this program.”
So what did we think of the actual show? It wasn’t as bad as we had feared, but it wasn’t as good as it should have been. The following statement from Joseph Bast, president of The Heartland Institute – a free-market think tank – may be used for attribution.
It appears host John Hockenberry spent enough time with global warming “skeptics” to know we are sincere, honest, and effective, but not enough time to learn we are right on the science. Rather than examining the scientific debate directly – “looking under the hood,” as we like to say here at The Heartland Institute – he decided to rely uncritically on the claims of a few alarmists pretending to speak for “climate science.” That choice ultimately makes “Climate of Doubt” a biased and unreliable guide to the scientific debate.
The first half of the program consists mostly of short clips from global warming skeptics and political activists who helped convince majorities of the public and elected officials that man-made climate change is not a crisis. Included in this part of the show is footage taken during Heartland’s Seventh International Conference on Climate Change and interviews with Heartland Senior Fellows S. Fred Singer and James M. Taylor and the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebell and Chris Horner. This part of the program is generally fair, though surprisingly light on interviews with scientists other than Dr. Singer. More than 100 scientists have spoken at Heartland conferences, nearly all of them skeptical of claims that man-made global warming is a crisis. It’s surprising and disappointing that Frontline didn’t seek interviews with any of them or even show excerpts from their presentations, except Dr. Singer.
The quality of the program starts to deteriorate at about the 20-minute mark. Notorious global warming alarmists Gavin Schmidt, Katherine Hayhoe, Andrew Dessler, and Ralph Cicerone are presented as representative of the mainstream scientific community, which they are not. Rather than use the program to put an end to the myth of scientific consensus on this complex issue, Hockenberry repeatedly invokes the discredited myth of a 97 percent consensus. Evidence in support of that claim is farcical. The issue of what role, if any, consensus should play in science is not addressed at all.
The second half of the program also speculates on the role that corporate and philanthropic funding plays in the debate … but it only addresses the funding of skeptics, not of alarmists. Once again this was a missed opportunity. Why didn’t Hockenberry end the myth, started by Ross Gelbspan but never documented, that global warming skeptics were or are currently being funded by oil companies to “sow doubt”? The Heartland Institute certainly was never part of such a plan, nor were any of the scientists we work with. Yet this libelous smear is repeated without rebuttal by Hockenberry and by the alarmists he interviews.
A third strike against the program occurs at the very end, when the off-camera voices of alarmists assert scientific confidence in predictions of an impending climate apocalypse while images appear of deserts and extreme weather events. Gone is any pretense of a balanced view of the scientific debate. This technique, typical of propaganda films such as “An Inconvenient Truth” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” cheapens and discredits an otherwise thoughtful program.
No scientist interviewed for the program offered proof that any of the climatic events shown at the end of the program were caused by human activity, nor could they. One suspects this ending was tacked on after production to address the expected criticism and disappointment of environmental activists who object to anyone in the mainstream media treating skeptics with respect.
“CORAL DAVENPORT: I came up with the idea to ask every Republican member of Congress three simple questions about climate change. They were very simple. They were basically, you know, “Do you think that climate change is causing the earth to become warmer?””
And here I thought “anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for “most” of the “unequivocal” warming of the Earth’s average global temperature over the second half of the 20th century” and some scientists feel this is changing the climate “Climate change is occurring and is largely caused by human activities and poses a significant risk for a broad range of human and natural systems.”
How is it that climate change is now causing the warming?
“ANDREW DESSLER, Climate Scientist, Texas A&M University: Climate change is coming. It means drought. It means fire. It means suffering.”
Certainly no consensus about that.
How skeptical science views the 97% consenus
“Several independent studies have shown that 97% of climate scientists agree that humans are causing the climate to change, that CO2 is causing global changes to the climate, and that the consequences could be catastrophic. These views form the scientific consensus on climate change.” http://www.skepticalscience.com/OISM-Petition-Project.htm
“In the field of climate science, the consensus is unequivocal: human activities are causing climate change.” http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm
In fact neither surveys states this…
” Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing
mean global temperatures?
97.4% (75 of 77) answered yes to question 2.”
Nothing about changing the climate and it doesn’t even mention CO2
“Preliminary reviews of scientific literature and surveys of climate
scientists indicate striking agreement with the primary
conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC): anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible
for “most” of the “unequivocal” warming of the Earth’s average
global temperature over the second half of the 20th century”
Nope, nothing catastrophic there.
“KR says:
October 24, 2012 at 2:25 pm
D Böehm – The OISM petition includes (if I remember correctly) a grand total of 39 people working in climatology.”
Scientific American calculated 200, a respectable number according to them.
” The OISM petition represents a _tiny minority_ of active climate scientists.”
If 200 is a tiny minority, Dorans 75 is even tinier
Besides the 75 were handpicked by Peter Doran, they were sent emails inviting them to participate.
They could have included James Hansen, Phil Jones, Peter Gleick, etc. etc.
They are all anonymous, at least the OISM can be verified.
And the OISM states “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide will, in the forseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere”.
The Doran survey doesn’t state otherwise, it claims 75 scientists believe “human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.”
That’s it, no catastrophe predicted, CO2 isn’t even mentioned.
davidmhoffer says: ”stefanthedenier; Whoa up bud, take a deep breath”
David, you are good to ”rant” but non-existent on facts.. parroting Plimer’s fairy-tales is not knowledge, but proof of ignorance
a] elliptical path… if you know about the ”self-adjusting mechanism” would have known how ridicules you sound. When the atmosphere warms up, for ANY reason -> oxygen & nitrogen (troposphere) expand INSTANTLY -> . as enlarging radiator on vehicle -> releases extra heat and equalizes in a jiffy.
Warmist physics….Warmist don’t use any physics for guidance; otherwise they would have known that real proofs exist; they wouldn’t have even started with the scam. Warmist castle is built on the ”Skeptic’s” fairy-tales.
3]You are molesting the CO2, SAME as the Warmist, here:: ”Over the course of a year, CO2 levels rise several ppm, and then fall again. This is due to the rate at which CO2 is both absorbed”
CO2 has nothing, NOTHING to do with regulation of the global temp!!!” Shame, shame!!! oxygen & nitrogen are 998999ppm, CO2 is only 270-500ppm in the troposphere. Q: if you put an elephant on one side of the scale, and 380 flies on the other side… who regulates / controls?
When is a solar eclipse; the moon prevents lots of sunlight from coming here; but doesn’t get colder, not for one day, not for a millionth of a degree. Because O&N shrink appropriately for the duration -> waste less heat and keep same temp ALL THE TIME.
Same when it gets warmer, for ANY reason! a] atom bomb explosion releases millions of degrees heat – O&N expand instantly -> waste the extra heat and start SHRINKING after 3 minutes. They wouldn’t shrink unless they have cooled!!! You and Richard should go to the post I pointed to him; see how real proofs sound. Your ”believes” are blindly religious, not scientific. Science wouldn’t ignore: a] increasing vertical winds, when gets warmer than normal b] instant expansion of the troposphere. Warmist castle has being built on the pagan fairy-tales that you and Courtney warship. Shame, shame!!! go and read some real proofs, Now it doesn’t make sense to you; because you are comparing my comments against the outdated paganism; whatever I say, I can substantiate with REAL proofs. Cheers!!!
stefanthedenier;
When a ”Skeptic” pretends to know the correct temp 300, 500y ago – even though nobody knows what was last year’s global temp… Warmist know that they have bigger liars than themselves for opponents.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
No one is pretending to know exactly the temperature last year, last decade, last century or last millenium. There are multiple ways to define “global temperature”, and each one has challenges associated with measuring it. That doesn’t mean that the data which results is meaningless.
For example, we commonly accept that the temperature of the human body, as measured by a thermometer placed under the tongue, is 98.6 F. This of course is not true. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that as long as we maintain a consistant method of measurement, this provides us with a usefull standard by which we check for variation from the norm and draw conclusions that are of value as diagnostic criteria. Despite being “not true” the information is of immense value.
Similarly, ice core data by no means provides us with an exact measure of the “global temperature” of earth for any given time period. But it does provide us with excellent data from which we can draw conclusions about global temperatures in general that are sufficiently accurate to be of value. No, we don’t know “exactly” what the temperature was last year or 400 years ago. We do have a high degree of confidence however, that is was, over all, colder then than it is now.
Before you hold yourself one more time to be superior to both warmists and skeptics, you may want to re-examine your belief system which seems to revolve around this one single issue.
stefanthedenier;
a] elliptical path… if you know about the ”self-adjusting mechanism” would have known how ridicules you sound.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Oh my. Just when one thinks that nobody will ever outdo the misguided advtentures of Myrhh into the world of physics…. one discovers that such drawing such conclusions is an error. Stefan, I’m not going to explain Stefan-Boltzmann Law to you in this thread, but I strongly recommend that you obtain an explanation in your native language and become familiar with it.
stefanthedenier;
CO2 has nothing, NOTHING to do with regulation of the global temp!!!”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If you will take the time to read my words again, you will see that I was giving an example of CO2 levels being driven by temperature, not the other way around.
stefanthedenier;
When is a solar eclipse; the moon prevents lots of sunlight from coming here; but doesn’t get colder, not for one day, not for a millionth of a degree. Because O&N shrink appropriately for the duration -> waste less heat and keep same temp ALL THE TIME.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well having witnessed a solar eclipse, I can attest that the local temperature in fact did drop, and noticeably so. I’m not certain where you got your ideas about O&N shrinking and expanding to maintain the temperature, but they evoke that oft quoted quip of Albert Einstein’s: That’s not right, that’s not even wrong.
davidmhoffer says: ”Just when one thinks that nobody will ever outdo the misguided advtentures of Myrhh into the world of physics”
Wrong! Myrrh is closer to the truth than you would like.
2] when the thermometer under the armpit say that is gone up by 2C = the whole body is warmer by that much. If you don’t know that: the rest of the planet’s temp doesn’t go up, or down SIMULTANEOUSLY as body temp. When English or US temp goes up, or down; the rest of the planet’s temp doesn’t = you are more ignorant than a 5y old. b] if you don’t know that: you cannot compare one unknown with another unknown; you are drowning in confusion and lies.
3] ”Well having witnessed a solar eclipse, I can attest that the local temperature in fact did drop”
That’s where the biggest problems you guys have: pretending that localized warmings / coolings are GLOBAL!!! I have being in solar eclipse, but I know the rest of the truth: ”as soon as the shadow from the eclipse starts -> gets windy / air from areas outside the shadow comes, to PREVENT VACUUM. Those ”other places with LESS air -> release / waste LESS heat; overall ALWAYS is same warmth units in the troposphere
4] ”If you will take the time to read my words again, you will see that I was giving an example of CO2 levels being driven by temperature” ======== well David when I read one sentence of yours; I know all the rest you can say – repeating Plimer’s fairy-tales; the most predictable people. In other words: I know what you know, but you don’t know what I know – that’s why I have unfair advantage on you. Be a good sport, be fair to yourself and read the few posts on my homepage; all of it – then we can debate. Your: ” we don’t know, but we believe, but we don’t know but we know” HAS BEING ALL EXPOSED LONG TIME AGO!!!
P.s. you will discover there: why: reading old temp ”in the old ice” is the biggest con since the Homo Erectus invented the language
Russ R. – What I was showing is that even a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation will (if you consider thermal inertia and total forcings) show an expected result quite near observations – with a climate sensitivity of ~3C/doubling of CO2. The last 35 years have shown a roughly linear increase in temperature, which requires a roughly linearly increasing forcing, and the 20-year lag of transient climate sensitivity matches observations; with equilibrium sensitivity being somewhat higher. More complete accounting of the physics shows the same – looking at the climate response against recent forcings indicates that our physical models of the climate are reasonably accurate (http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-5.html).
Re: Trenberth – I cannot see how his complaints about insufficient instrumentation in any way demonstrates any disagreement with human forced climate change. I dare say he would be quite (ahem) put out by such a suggestion. I can only consider such interpretations of that out of context statement to be misinterpretations.
Lastly, I have an objection to your terminology – “catestrophic”. Oddly enough, that’s a term frequently used by skeptics, and only rarely by anyone who agrees with the consensus. I would therefore have to consider that a “strawman” characterization. Personally, I don’t expect any catastrophic tidal waves, or firestorms, or whatever – but I expect that change will induce costs. It always does.
Just two examples of ‘adaptation’ costs:
(1) Agriculture: shifting growth zones and water. The California Central Valley produces ~8% of all USA agricultural output. They expect to lose 20-50% of their mostly snow-pack fed water (for the extensive rice fields) and 50% of the $9B annual fruit and nut crop (just too warm) by 2100. Perhaps we need to move production to Canada? That’s not going to be cheap, and it’s worth pointing out that current permafrost regions, let alone the glacially scrapped northern parts of Canada, don’t have the topsoil required. $$$
(2) Sea level. The Dutch have shown that it’s possible to adapt to sea level changes, but it’s expensive. The Thames Barrier cost ~1.3B pounds (2001 inflation adjusted), and it’s likely that sea level rises over the next 100 years will require a complete rebuild of that structure. Expand those costs to every coastal city, every port? $$$
The cost of adaptation is estimated at 5-10x that of mitigation – mitigation actually spurring innovation, benefiting GDP and jobs (http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc29337/m1/1/, http://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.43084.de/diw_wr_2005-12.pdf, http://policyintegrity.org/documents/OtherSideoftheCoin.pdf, http://www.google.org/energyinnovation/). That makes mitigation, reduction of our CO2 output (think the Montreal Protocol for CFC’s writ large), the economically sensible approach. “Business as usual” will be _far_ more expensive; economically draining.
Mitigation of climate change (because change always costs $$$) is a far more economically sensible policy. Choosing ‘adaptation’ is (IMO) just foolish.
—
But that’s far off topic for this thread. Despite protestations by Heartland, there _is_ a strong consensus of anthropogenic climate change among those who study the climate, with the strength of the consensus directly related to expertise.
KR:
Your post at October 26, 2012 at 5:53 am begins saying
That is so wrong it would require writing a book to detail all its errors. I provide a few refutations.
A wrong result almost always results from conducting a “rough back-of-the-envelope calculation” about the behaviour of a complex and incompletely understood system.
“Observations” do NOT show a “a climate sensitivity of ~3C/doubling of CO2”, but some climate models do.
Empirical – n.b. not model-derived – determinations indicate climate sensitivity is less than 1.0deg.C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent. This is indicated by the studies of Idso from surface measurements
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/Idso_CR_1998.pdf
and Lindzen & Choi from ERBE satelite data
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
and Gregory from balloon radiosonde data
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/OLR&NGF_June2011.pdf
In fact, they each show a climate sensitivity of ~0.4deg.C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent but I am being conservative in my statements.
The models are NOT “reasonably accurate”. They are plain wrong. At most only one (probably none) of them emulates the climate of the real Earth, and none of them projected the lack of warming for the last 16 years. Indeed, as the IPCC AR4 reported they predicted 0.2deg.C rise per decade (~+/-20%) averaged over the first two decades from year 2000. The rise over the next 8 years to achieve that is probably a physical impossibility because of ocean thermal inertia. This rise was predicted (n.b. NOT projected) because of “committed warming” from greenhouse gases already in the system. If the improbable jump of 0.4deg.C in global temperature were to occur in the next 8 years then that would not explain where the “committed warming” has been hiding until now.
You then say
That is silly. Trenberth makes an excuse to hand-wave away why data does not agree with his assertions and you say you cannot see “any disagreement with human forced climate change”. No, you can’t, but you can’t see any evidence for “human forced climate change” either.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of presence.
And you follow that illogicality with this
That ignores the above post from tolo4zero who says at October 25, 2012 at 9:25 pm of SkS (i.e. a group of warmunist fanatics)
You then provide two “examples” of “costs” of adapting to catastrophic climate change effects without recognising your examples refute your claim that “catastrophic” is a “strawman”.
And your examples are silly. What matters is whether the changes would be a net benefit or a cost. Examples selected to show examples of benefit or of cost only indicate a change. And, despite your illustration, more CO2 in the air and longer growing seasons provide a net benefit to agriculture.
You conclude with a claim that there is a consensus of AGW catastrophism among the cognoscenti of climatology. That is plain wrong. The only consensus is that those making a living from the AGW-scare want to keep the scare running as long as possible.
Richard
richardscourtney – As usual, you change the subject. On the claims of the opening post:
* Heartland claimed that there is no consensus on anthropogenic warming – incorrect. The Wikipedia discussion sums that up nicely (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change).
* Heartland claimed that there isn’t funding of skeptic claims – Mashey has documented that to be absurd, there’s lots of industry funding attempting to denigrate the scientific consensus (http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/10/23/fakery-2-more-funny-finances-free-tax and http://www.desmogblog.com/fake-science-fakexperts-funny-finances-free-tax), I can hardly add to that compendium.
—
As to the particular claims in your post:
* I gave the math for back-of-envelope numbers on lagged climate response to forcings – it’s consistent with temperature observations and a climate sensitivity of ~3C/doubling of CO2. More extensive physical models match forcings (inputs) and temperatures (outputs) as well, but only with anthropogenic forcing and sensitivities around 3C – not because they’ve been ‘tuned’, but because the physics don’t add up otherwise. We’re right on track for expected warming if you actually pay attention to the fact that there are multiple forcings in play (http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/pdf/1748-9326_6_4_044022.pdf), that you need to look at a statistically significant period, and that energy continues to accumulate in the oceans (http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/). I don’t see any math on your part…
* I’m not even going to bother with the ongoing out of context misinterpretations of Trenberth’s statement.
* Idso’s 0.1C sensitivity is complete nonsense, single point derivations extrapolated to the globe (if so, we would never have had an ice age), Lindzen’s papers have been widely and repeatedly debunked (having repeated the same claims in 2001, 2009, and 2011, never answering key criticisms – as evidenced by farming out the 2011 paper to a minor journal rather than addressing PNAS reviewer points), and I’m just not going to take a “Friends of Science” (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Friends_of_Science – a lobbying group) opinion piece seriously.
I would suggest reading Knutti and Hegerl 2008 (http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf) for a comprehensive overview of experimental, paleo, model, and physics based estimates of climate sensitivity.
* I don’t believe I (personally) have ever cried “catastrophy” – from what I’ve seen “CAGW” is a ‘skeptic’ strawman argument, raised as a rhetorical target. But climate change will have costs, and those adaptation costs look to be an order of magnitude higher than mitigation costs (I noted multiple examinations of those relative impacts in a previous post). BAU is just economically foolish.
I think I’ve made my points clearly – and outside of Russ R. there haven’t been (IMO) any cogent discussions of those. Adieu
stefanthedenier;
Wrong! Myrrh is closer to the truth than you would like.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
On that note:
set/stefanthedenier=ignore
KR’
I think I’ve made my points clearly –
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You appear to be suffering from delusions of clarity.
KR:
Your reply to me at October 26, 2012 at 9:49 am begins saying
Say what!!?
My post at October 26, 2012 at 7:06 am quoted verbatim from your post at October 26, 2012 at 5:53 and rebutted each of YOUR statements in turn.
And you accuse ME of changing the subject!? Unbelievable!
And the rest of your reply is equally ridiculous. It is complete nonsense in defence (excuse?) of your nonsense which I rebutted.
The undeniable fact is that empirical measurements obtained by three independent analyses from three different data sets each provides a climate sensitivity of ~0.4deg.C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent. And your reply to that is nonsensical rubbishing of two of those analyses together with this
The elegance of a theory and/or how that theory is modeled are not relevant when empirical data indicates the theory is wrong.
And you conclude with an attempt to change the subject from your claim that wamunistas don’t talk about “catastrophe” to a claim that you have not. So you began with a false accusation that I changed the subject and ended by changing a subject you had lost.
Richard
davidmhoffer says: ”set/stefanthedenier=ignore”
So, you don’t have a bit of dignity; to apologize for contradicting me, + for being wrong, but accusing me as being wrong === specifically that: ”planet is not colder even by a millionth of a degree after solar eclipse” I have proven you wrong, step by step, BY REAL PROOFS. Not the fairy-tales you use. David, difficult to argue against real proofs, isn’t it?
davidmhoffer says: ”set/stefanthedenier=ignore”
David, you came with all guns blazing; tracing me and Myrrh; to prove that you can win by using the outdated lies. When you faced real proofs -> David is running for cover. That’s how effective and efficient your lies are…. shame, shame. Did you discover why the MISLEADING about ice core old GLOBAL warmings / coolings is the biggest ever lies === proven WRONG %, by me. verdict: you can only con the selective zombies, full stop. Therefore: David, you are just another trophy on my wall. you are getting embarrassed off your own knowledge. Not having dignity to admit THAT YOU HAVE BEING PROVEN WRONG 100% you are puting yourself down, LOWER THAN THE SNAKE’s BELLY!
It would be good to know what the real percentage of CAGW-believing scientists is.
Does anyone know?
davidmhoffer:
re your post at October 26, 2012 at 10:02 am
Point taken. Will do. Thankyou.
Richard
richardscourtney says: ”davidmhoffer: re your post at October 26, 2012 at 10:02 am Point taken”.
Richard and David are running under their rock; when facing real proofs… same as cockroaches, when you turn the lights on / pooped their diapers. That’s what happen, when they have being harvesting data from thin air, for too long. Anybody else wants to silence them; the real proofs are on my website.
I wish I will be the one, when the time comes; to put them on a witness stand / under oath – Their lies only work on brainwashed zombies. Richard and David are suffering from ”Truth-Phobia”
Friends:
stefanthedenier says at October 27, 2012 at 3:15 pm
Oh how can I control my fear? /sarc off
Myrrh
Eric Grimsrud
Gary Lance
stefanthedenier
etc.
I wonder from whence they come. I suppose it is good they are here so we won’t find them together beside us on a bus.
Richard
richardscourtney says: ”Friends: stefanthedenier Myrrh, Eric Grimsrud, Gary Lance”
Richard, I didn’t know exactly what those guys stand for; but if you are badmouthing and blacklisting them = they must have lots of truth.
You and your mate, as Flatearthers are suffering from Truth-phobia… gives a clear picture. Here is my experience with you guys: DISPUTING that I’m wrong for saying that: ”in solar eclipse .the earth doesn’t cool even for a millionth of a degree / not for one day” ====== you guys found out that: where is the eclipse -> gets colder -> must be the WHOLE planet colder” WRONG! Instead of learning from me; how to use the laws of physics as guidance – you are running for cover and trying to silence ME, the truth.
Here is the truth: when the partial eclipse starts -> winds increase -> by the time of full eclipse; where the shadow from the moon is -> becomes complete darkness – people turn the lights on in town, looks as if is 9pm, even though is close to noon. It gets much COLDER -> the air in the shadow shrinks by 30%, because of becoming much colder -> to avoid vacuum -> lots of air from outside the shade surges in the shadow = outside 30% less air. With less air outside gets much HOTTER, than when is no eclipse in the neighborhood.
Here is why, example: daytime on the moon is much, much hotter than daytime on the earth; because the moon doesn’t have troposphere / no 0&N to spread the heat and waste it === because outside the shadow of the eclipse is 30% less air = starts to resemble ONLY by 30% like on the moon warming. ”EXTRA COLDNESS in the shadow is equal to EXTRA heat created outside the shadow -> when eclipse is over -> winds equalize = the planet doesn’t have enough extra coldness, to cool one beer.
But for the Flatearthers like Richard and his gang of ignorants; is enough to see that is colder, or warmer where they are; to declare colder or warmer the WHOLE planet…? It’s same as: ”planet is warmer at noon by 12C, than before sunrise” ====That’s how all the phony GLOBAL warmings and localized ice ages have being declared as global = the precursor for the Warmist lying that is going to be warmer planet in 88year.
Shonky science doesn’t want public to know the truth. Good people, rely on what is reliable; on the laws of physics – they were same laws 150y ago, 800y ago, 2000, 6000, 15000y ago as today = if they don’t aprove of something = must be a lie. I have all the proof, beyond any reasonable shadow of a doubt; lease help me to expose the scam People like Courtney are the Warmist Fig Leafs = covering up the Warmist shame, for lying that big / small localized climatic changes and the phony GLOBAL are one and the same thing….?! Richard, it’s prudent for you to learn, from me, instead of stacking the truth. Happy insomnia!!!
KR.
Sorry for the delay in responding. We’ll agree to disagree on the context and implications of Trenberth’s off-the-record statements vs. what he and his colleagues say when on-the-record. You might dismiss it as immaterial… I see it as a serious lack of scientific integrity, but it’s fair to put it to rest.
You point to AR4 Figure-9-5 as an demonstration that models are, as you say “reasonably accurate” when “hindcasting” the past, and therefore should be seen as reliable for 1) calculating man-made warming, and 2) projecting future warming. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
Hindcasting with multiple parameters is an exercise in curve-fitting with many degrees of freedom. Imagine the following scenario. Let’s say I devise an economic model with a number of macroeconomic inputs (interest rates, tax rates, government spending, inflation, minimum wages, etc.) and feed them into the model to hindcast historical unemployment rates, which we’ll say rose from 5% in 2006 to 10% in 2010, before falling to 8% in 2012. The model assigns a weight to each parameter to give me a good fit to the historical unemployment record. Then I remove one factor… perhaps holding government spending constant, and run the model again. The new model results show that instead of peaking at 10%, unemployment would have risen above 12%. Can I thus conclude that government spending was responsible for a 2 point decrease in unemployment and millions of jobs “created or saved”? No I can’t, because that 12% unemployment scenario I’d be pointing to as “what would have happened” never actually happened. It isn’t evidence of anything… it’s a figment of my model’s imagination… not an experimental result. It also assumes that the X number of parameters I chose were a full account of all of the relevant factors actually at work… that I didn’t accidentally include irrelevant factors, or exclude other relevant ones.
And in this specific case of climate models, it’s even worse than that. Ask yourself how it is possible that a multitude of models, each of which arrived at different values for climate sensitivity, all managed to hindcast with a high degree of accuracy the same temperature history, while using the same GHG levels as inputs? It’s only possible because the models have other parameters that get dialed-up or dialed-down to come up with a hindcast that matches the past. I could just as easily fit a model with a low climate sensitivity to the historical data by adjusting up or down the other parameters.
Now, let’s turn to costs. (Finance and economics happens to be my professional field).
First, you give a great example of the broken window fallacy. Or in your words: “The cost of adaptation is estimated at 5-10x that of mitigation – mitigation actually spurring innovation, benefiting GDP and jobs”. You’ll have to explain how a dollar spent on adaptation instead of mitigation will not spur innovation, will not be counted toward GDP, and will not create any jobs. If you’re going to count broken window benefits for mitigation, you would have to count those same broken window benefits for adaptation, Economically speaking, it’s a mistake to include them at all, so you should count them for neither case. (See Bastiat or Hazlitt). Try running the math again without broken-window “benefits”.
Second, you make a fundamentally wrong assumption about the effectiveness of abatement policies… you ignore carbon leakage. Let’s particularly look at the paper on Economic Benefits from the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU Law (ironic that you would cite a law school on an economic matter). It begins with an assumed cost of implementing a cap-and-trade program in the US, and compares that cost to assumed benefits, or more specifically to costs not incurred from carbon emissions and global warming. The flawed assumption is that cap-and-trade in the US, which would likely reduce US emissions, would result in a decline in global emissions. This is outright naive. When the cost of emissions in the US is increased, industries respond by relocating to other jurisdictions without carbon constraints (e.g. Mexico, China, Brazil, etc.). This does nothing to reduce global CO2 emissions… it just shuffles them around.
Account for this and you’ll find that an emissions reduction scheme that exempts any country or emitter (e.g. the Kyoto Protocol), is effectively self-defeating if its objective is to reduce global emissions. Proof… the emissions of the Annex I Kyoto countries have declined marginally, but any reduction was more than offset by increased emissions from non-Annex I countries. End result… much higher global GHG emissions today than when Kyoto was implemented. Self-defeating, ineffective policy that was all costs, no benefits (broken windows aside).
In closing, I’ll cite for you a “100% consensus” opposed to the Kyoto Protocol because the economic costs would outweigh the benefits. In 1997, the US Senate voted 95-0 on the Byrd-Hagel Resolution which stated “the United States should not be a signatory” to the Kyoto Protocol as drafted (exempting developing countries) as it “could result in serious harm to the United States economy, including significant job loss, trade disadvantages, increased energy and consumer costs..”. You can read it here: http://www.nationalcenter.org/KyotoSenate.html
I invite you to square that with your broad “consensus” argument.
Regards,
Russ
The sensitivity of about -0.4°C sounds about right.
The lukewarmist position of ceding some warming effect of CO2 and some anthro contribution, “however small” is a temporizing quibble, trivially “true” in the sense of the butterfly wingflap’s potential potency. In reality, it is an attempt to have it both ways, and hide from Warmist attacks.
Pfagh.
Thought I’d bring this back to the topic- “Climate of Doubt”. Some stuff I sent to PBS Front Line:
The climate of doubt is due to the fact that the whole construct is a result of a political framework designed to institute some sort of global control over energy- the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC). Such actions cause a LOT of doubt amongst many people, countries, and industries.
“Dear Sirs:
I watched the 10/22/12 presentation on “Climate of Doubt”. I was deeply disappointed with the shallowness of this show in discussing the evolution of Global Warming/Anthropogenic Global Warming/Catastrophic Global Warming/Climate Change/Catastrophic Climate Change/Climate Disruption.
There was not mention of the genesis of the entire subject. Beyond a few articles in a number of journals over 100 years discussing the possible effects of carbon dioxide on the atmosphere, the genesis was the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Rio de Janeiro in 1991-
“The Parties to this Convention, ~1991
Acknowledging that change in the Earth’s climate and its adverse effects are a common concern of humankind,
Concerned that human activities have been substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, that these increases enhance the natural greenhouse effect, and that this will result on average in an additional warming of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere and may adversely affect natural ecosystems and humankind,
Noting that the largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries, that per capita emissions in developing countries are still relatively low and that the share of global emissions originating in developing countries will grow to meet their social and development needs……….(paragraphs of verbiage)……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
……………..Noting that there are many uncertainties in predictions of climate change, particularly with regard to the timing, magnitude and regional patterns thereof,
Acknowledging that the global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible cooperation by all countries and their participation in an effective and appropriate international response, in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and their social and economic conditions,
Recalling the pertinent provisions of the Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, adopted at Stockholm on 16 June 1972,…………………………………………………………….
……..Recalling also the provisions of General Assembly resolution 44/206 of 22 December 1989 on the possible adverse effects of sea-level rise on islands and coastal areas, particularly low-lying coastal areas and the pertinent provisions of General Assembly resolution 44/172 of 19 December 1989 on the implementation of the Plan of Action to Combat Desertification,…………………….
………….. (g) Promote and cooperate in scientific, technological, technical, socio-economic and other research, systematic observation and development of data archives related to the climate system and intended to further the understanding and to reduce or eliminate the remaining uncertainties regarding the causes, effects, magnitude and timing of climate change and the economic and social consequences of various response strategies;
……………………”
Note the convention refers to an earlier Climate Change Conference in 1989.
Note too, that in August of 1988 Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies(GISS) made a presentation to Congress on their research into global temperatures. On one of the hottest days of that summer, with the airconditioning turned off(on purpose), he presented his findings showing that global temperatures had risen ~ 0,6deg C. since 1880. Later Hansen continued to be a global warming activist. His presentation included projection of future temperatures ranging from minimal to drastic over the next 50 years. Unfortunately, the only one close to reality was based on a UN scenario that assumed all increase in CO2 would cease about the year 2000.
An honest assessment would have indicated that most of the global temperature/climate research in the intervening years was in response to a political document that assumed that carbon dioxide was the primary cause of a global increase in air temperature since 1850.
,
Most of the research was based on air temperatures, but any climate change is caused by the movement of heat, not air, and the biggest sink for heat in the world is the oceans, followed by land, with the air running a distant third.
A little further digging would have exposed the fact that the International Panel of Climate Change, another United Nations organization created to summarize the causes of global warming in order to produce policy recommendations for governments committed many egregious errors over the years. The most famous one is a graph that appeared in the IPCC AR4 report from FAQ 3.1, to be found on page 253 of the WG1 report. They used the “cherry picking” mentioned in the program to purportedly show global warming at faster and faster rates in the 20th century by drawing lines covering different periods. This is nothing but a complete falsehood. The technique is guaranteed to show an increasing rate of change any graph that has cycles in it.”
The UN is still pushing more and more control by the UN over individuals, countries and industries.
ferocious20022002, you state the following…”Most of the research was based on air temperatures, but any climate change is caused by the movement of heat, not air, and the biggest sink for heat in the world is the oceans, followed by land, with the air running a distant third”
Sea Level is Rising
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/indicators/sea-level-rise.gif
Annual averages of global sea level. Red: sea-level since 1870; Blue: tide gauge data; Black: based on satellite observations. The inset shows global mean sea level rise since 1993 – a period over which sea level rise has accelerated. More information: Coastal Sensitivity to Sea Level Rise (USGCRP) and Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.\
Global mean sea level has been rising at an average rate of approximately 1.7 mm/year over the past 100 years (measured from tide gauge observations), which is significantly larger than the rate averaged over the last several thousand years. Since 1993, global sea level has risen at an accelerating rate of around 3.5 mm/year. Much of the sea level rise to date is a result of increasing heat of the ocean causing it to expand. It is expected that melting land ice (e.g. from Greenland and mountain glaciers) will play a more significant role in contributing to future sea level rise.
Global Upper Ocean Heat Content is Rising
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/indicators/ocean-heat-content.gif
Time series of seasonal (red dots) and annual average (black line) of global upper ocean heat content for the 0-700m layer since 1955. More information: BAMS State of the Climate in 2009.
While ocean heat content varies significantly from place to place and from year-to-year (as a result of changing ocean currents and natural variability), there is a strong trend during the period of reliable measurements. Increasing heat content in the ocean is also consistent with sea level rise, which is occurring mostly as a result of thermal expansion of the ocean water as it warms.