(Photo credits: NOAA)
By WUWT regular “Just The Facts”
We are pleased to introduce WUWT’s newest addition, the WUWT “Extreme Weather” Reference Page.
Realizing the difficulty in selling “Global Warming” when the globe hasn’t warmed in the last 16 years, the Warmists are now attempting to convince the public that CO2 has somehow caused “Extreme Weather”. This “Extreme Weather” meme follows a number of other ill-fated Warmist narratives including “Climate Change“, “Ocean Acidification”, “Global Weirding” and “Climate Disruption”.
Being the skeptical sort I looked at the Big Picture and noted that “There is no evidence of a recent increase in “Earth’s Temperature” due to “Climate Change,” which could have caused “Extreme Weather” to arrive and become the “new normal”. However, this observation got me labeled an “Extreme Denier” and “Tamino seemed disappointed that I had not attempted to debunk claims that there’s been a ‘dramatic increase in weather-related catastrophes.'” As such, with the help of an array of WUWT readers and articles, we crowdsourced the WUWT “Extreme Weather” Reference Page. I leave it to you to review and decide for yourself whether you think there has been dramatic increase in “Extreme Weather”.
As in the crowdsourcing thread, if you have any suggestions for additional credible 3rd party data on weather extremes, please post them in comments below and we will review them for inclusion. It is interesting to note that I provided Bill McKibben with an opportunity to submit non-anecdotal empirical evidence in support of the “Extreme Weather” meme and he apparently had none to offer.
In addition to our “Extreme Weather” Page if you have not had the opportunity to look through some our other Reference Pages it is highly recommended:
- Atmosphere Page
- Atmospheric Oscillation Page
- ENSO (El Nino/La Nina Southern Oscillation) Page
- “Extreme Weather” Page
- Geomagnetism Page
- Global Climatic History Page
- Global Temperature Page
- Ocean Page
- Oceanic Oscillation Page
- Polar Vortex Page
- Potential Climatic Variables Page
- Scafetta’s Solar-Lunar Cycle Forecast -vs- Global Temperature
- Sea Ice Page
- Solar Page
- Spencer and Braswell Papers
- Tropical Cyclone Page
- US Climatic History Page
- US Weather Page
Please note that WUWT cannot vouch for the accuracy of the data within the Reference Pages, as WUWT is simply an aggregator. All of the data is linked from third party sources. If you have doubts about the accuracy of any of the graphs on the WUWT Reference Pages, or have any suggested additions or improvements to any of the pages, please let us know in comments below.
Nice job. Thanks for all the effort, it’s appreciated.
My question remains: What is motivating this intensive, daily effort by you and your supporters to deny that there is environmental damage done to our ecosystem by our use of fossil fuels? Could it be that you are affiliated with and supported by the Heartland Institute, a major supporter of the fossil fuel industry? If not, please explain what you have to gain by continuing to deny that there are environmental problems that could be solved by a reduction in the use of fossil fuels? Can you justify that the continued and increasing use of fossil fuels is a good thing for our planet? If you are fueled by anything other than greed and an interest in advancing your own interests, could you please state what your motivation is, so that those of us with open minds might begin to understand? Read more about my questions and concerns, if you like at http://www.buckyworld.me.
Yes, Pat.
The continued use of fossil fuels, the lowered priced of energy, and the improved lifestyles of billions under moral guidelines, intelligent unrestricted use, and free economic systems WILL save billions of lives.
Your enforced poverty of the CAGW theist dogma and its artificial fuel restrictions based on groundless fears and hatred of the current economic systems WILL (deliberately) kill millions, and harm billions.
Pat, I’ve gotten the same kind of question aimed at me *many* times over the years because I criticize the science behind the smoking bans. The attacks from that front in that area of contention were so single-minded and extreme in the 1990s that I felt I specifically had to address them in the first two lines of my book published in 2004:
“I am not now, nor have I ever, been a member of the Communist Party. I am also not now, nor have I ever, been affiliated with Big Tobacco or their stocks, nor do I have any plans to be.”
Your question is legitimate, just as similar questions of Free Choice advocates are legitimate. BUT… the legitimacy fails when you would use any admissions of such connections as grounds for discrediting their science and arguments while at the same time refusing to apply such grounds to those on the other side of the issue. The legitimacy also fails when you DEPEND on such grounds for discrediting your opponents rather than merely using the information as a warning flag that their science and arguments might merit a bit of extra scrutiny because of their motivations.
Pat, I notice you don’t seem to have a comments area on your site (unless I simply need new glasses.) While that’s far better than having a comments area that’s censored against legitimate opposing writers it still leaves you in a weaker position than if you presented a board similar to WUWT’s (unless you want to submit some sound evidence that Anthony et al censor legitimate ideas and arguments here… something I haven’t seen any evidence of.)
– MJM
I do have a comments area, and I accept all comments. Also, the fact that you have previously supported the tobacco companies is right in line with my concern, that you are all supporters of Heartland Institute causes. Can someone please address what the Heartland Institute is, and why reasonable people should believe it is anything other than a shill for corporate “persons” who wish to profit at the expense of the public good? I’m getting alot of kick back, but still no one who expresses any true heart for a cause that clicks with me as legitimate.
Pat Ravasio says: December 8, 2012 at 5:41 pm
My question remains: What is motivating this intensive, daily effort by you and your supporters to deny that there is environmental damage done to our ecosystem by our use of fossil fuels?
Can present any evidence to support your viewpoint?
Could it be that you are affiliated with and supported by the Heartland Institute, a major supporter of the fossil fuel industry?
I’ve never received a dime from anyone for any of the work I’ve done on WUWT.
If not, please explain what you have to gain
Fulfillment from helping prevent the world from wasting billions of dollars in additional resources on problems that don’t exist, e.g. “Extreme Weather”.
by continuing to deny that there are environmental problems that could be solved by a reduction in the use of fossil fuels?
Can you please present evidence of these “environmental problems” and explain how they “could be solved by a reduction in the use of fossil fuels?”
If you are fueled by anything other than greed and an interest in advancing your own interests, could you please state what your motivation is, so that those of us with open minds might begin to understand?
I’ve researched the facts thoroughly and have not found any evidence in support of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming narrative, I thus feel compelled to share these facts with others. Have you had an opportunity to review our reference pages?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/
I can’t find any data on your site. If the evidence for Global Warming is so clear that it cannot be denied, why don’t you display it prominently on your site?
Re: “the Warmists are now attempting to convince the public that CO2 has somehow caused “Extreme Weather”. ”
I believe Michael Crichton first pointed this out as an evolution of the Warmists’ failing arguments in his excellent “State Of Fear” novel of 2004. Actually Crichton’s book was the trigger for my first questioning in the AGW area. It wasn’t one I’d really looked into in the past, and, just as in many folks I’ve criticized politically in other areas over the years, I’d simply accepted the “general knowledge” and “opinion of the experts” in the area as being unquestioned fact except by those with an axe to grind for “the industry.” Great stocking stuffer for any readers you know who might have a crack in their mind widened a bit by seeing his treatment of it.
– MJM
Pat Ravisio,
Did you go read the material in this article, or do any of the back-reading of this blog that has been suggested for you to do in the past? If you REALLY wanted to understand what motivates us, you’d’ve done that by now.
Since you haven’t, you’re just acting the part of the worst kind of troll…the kind that doesn’t actually know anything, and therefore can only hope to derail the conversation by bringing in nonsense like conspiracy theories in the hopes of making people angry.
My answer to you, and I hope everyone else’s answer to you, until you bring something substantive to the table is…go do your homework.
When you appear knowledgeable enough to take seriously, then maybe you can even make a difference by providing something of value, but until then you only hurt your own side by providing an example of warmist ignorance. Back-read this blog. Actually read the articles you want to reply to, so that there’s a vague chance that you can provide something useful ON TOPIC.
Go do your homework.
BTW, RACookPE1978, your statement of one of the most important skeptical motivations was perfect. Just don’t expect Pat to read it or understand it. Although he seems to be asking questions, he’s not here to learn, or he’d’ve done his homework.
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
This is fine but maybe you also need a permanent reference page for “average weather”, as nobody seems to be bothered with that these days.
If global temperatures had simply behaved as predicted and steadily increased in unison with CO2 levels, there would be no need to hype normal extreme weather events as evidence for global warming. There would also be no need to play this shell game of trying to guess where the grant-money pea is located. (Is it under the “global weirding” cup, the “ocean acidification” cup, or the “climate disruption” cup?) Decades of steady warming would not be “proof”, but it would be solid evidence, and everyone would understand what was meant by “global warming.” But because global temperatures have been flat for 16 years, they have to play these games to keep people from forgetting about their cause, which to them is a higher priority than science.
Pat, some people are motivated by the search for truth and can see when they are being deceived. Others buy into propaganda, tolerate it or even promote it for their own gain. I’m a scientist and skeptic not motivated by politics or greed.
This revised AGW position involves the abandonment of science. “CO2 causes weird weather” is not a falsifiable hypothesis. There is no known mechanism that explains how CO2 causes both rain and drought, heat and cold, let alone wind and calm. The perverse moods of a Rain God would serve as a far more likely explanation for all these phenomena and is consistent with Occam’s Razor.
Thank you, all of you, for ten replies in ten minutes! The dedication and fortitude of your team is indeed impressive. Please, if you can, check out the NASA photographs and explain to me why they are not a concern for the human race on planet earth? I do confess that I am not a scientist. I am only seeking the truth, and remain open to your input. Thank you so much!
Pat Ravasio, and your conviction against fossil fuel lends you to claim not to own a gas powered vehicle or enjoy any of the other comforts of fossil fuels. Your hypocrisy is beyond self righteous condemnation of others while you prosper on the back of a common adherence to energy, fossil or otherwise. No response necessary, as my courtesy bag is already over flowing.
Pat Ravasio effectively says: December 8, 2012 at 5:41 pm: Have you stopped beating your wife ? Google it Pat.
Please provide references to any measurable environmental problems caused by CO2 at 394ppm that were not present when CO2 levels were at 280ppm. Windfarms and other examples of environmental destruction caused by the purported solutions don’t count.
If you can’t, then please STFU.
You get to see some interesting, although not easily interpretable, results if you use Google’s NGram tool on the phrases
carbon dioxide, global warming, climate change, extreme weather
Try all four at the default setting of 1800 to 2008 (smoothing 3) and you’ll find that CO2 was way up there until 1960 or so at which point, for some unknown reason (maybe everyone got more worried about H-Bombs?) it drops significantly. Then try removing CO2 and you’ll see a bit more information about the other three, and then, if you change the time scale to starting at 1960 or 1975 you’ll see even more. The switchover from global warming to climate change in terms of mention-frequency occurs around 2002, about the time when Crichton probably started writing his State of Fear.
For further comparison, try adding the phrase Star Trek (capitalization matters) and you’ll see interest switch over right around 1999.
http://books.google.com/ngrams
– MJM
…WUWT Extreme Weather page is another tool to search out the curiosities we find interesting about climate. I could quote our friend Joe Bastardi in enjoying our weather. 🙂
Out of interest, I did a bit of a search for the image of the train station. On the NOAA web site it is named floodingAug and dated March 2008. I found it on a blog (http://jewishmuzic.blogspot.com.au/2007/07/jewish-blogmiester-exclusive-pictures.html), dated Thursday, July 19, 2007, identified as Great Neck Train Station (with the flooding occurring July 18)
Pat Ravasio says:
December 8, 2012 at 5:41 pm
============
Due to the “carbon” intensive nature of the energy sources that enable us to even have this conversation, i’ll be short.
I’m sure you will reciprocate.
@ Rat Pavisio, Still waiting for my check, would yah loan me a few thou until it comes in.
I ridicule nonsense from all religious cults that attempt to steal from, control and or interfere with me and mine.
Public hysteria comes in waves, its our nature.
But lying to exploit the foolish, hiding the data, exaggerating your claims through falsehoods and attempting to seize power is contemptible behaviour. Is this something you will defend?
Are the practises of climatology, as practised by the UN- IPCC, ethical enough for you?
Now wetting ones-self about the weather is an age old tradition and you are welcome to do so,
but insisting I behave like you, will of course end badly.
Pat, you wrote, “Also, the fact that you have previously supported the tobacco companies is right in line with my concern, that you are all supporters of Heartland Institute causes.”
1) WUWT in no way “supports the tobacco companies.” The tobacco situation is purely a personal concern of mine, with the science problems involved in it predating but roughly paralleling the global warming fiasco. I don’t actually know when Heartland was founded, but I’ve been in the smoking ban fight since the mid-1970s and have no more connection to them than I do to BigT. You seem to be critical of Heartland, but is that because you have actual criticisms of their scientific positions or simply because of some funding connections they may have? Are you similarly critical of the global warming folks who support or are supported by well-funded warmer organizations? Would that then make you critical of yourself?
2) And where did you happen to notice any support of mine for the tobacco companies? Or is that something you just made up? I was and am vigorously opposed to their support for the MSA Master Settlement Agreement and PM’s support for the FDA agreement, and for opposition most of Big Tobacco seems to be taking against the E-cigarettes. I think your confusion in that area may simply reflect your confusion in the climate area.
3) I apologize for my oversight on missing your Comments area: the bubble with the number in it simply slipped by me as I looked beneath the postings for “Comments” tabs — purely my fault.
– MJM
P.S. In case my sentence structure was unclear: I’d also like to make clear that I myself have no relation to WUWT other than as a reader and occasional somewhat-newbie poster. I *have* however become very favorably impressed with the seemingly sound knowledge and argument of the major writers and posters here. You should read the archives and compare them with the archives you’ll find on blogs from the other side… THEN you might have firmer ground to stand upon.
– MJM
Pat Ravasio says: December 8, 2012 at 7:16 pm
Please, if you can, check out the NASA photographs here, www,buckyworld.me and explain to me why they are not a concern for the human race on planet earth?
I looked around your site and don’t see the NASA photographs you reference. Can you please provide links here so that we can see them?
In your article you state that:
If it’s relatively easy to do, why can’t you provide “charts and graphs and numbers” to support your position?
I do confess that I am not a scientist.
You don’t have to be a scientist to have an informed position, just look at the data:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/global-weather-climate/global-temperature/
I am only seeking the truth
That’s two of us.
and remain open to your input.
You have a funny way of showing it, e.g.:
It seems like you have seen “very good” “substantiating” evidence supporting skeptical viewpoints, but still refer to those who present the evidence as deniers. Why?
I wonder what happened to ‘NINO 3.4 Ensemble Forecast’ (the second graph on the ENSO page)? It hasn’t been updated for months. I used to follow that graph practically every day and it was being updated every day. The current one is dated to September 24 and predicts El Nino conditions from December all the way to July. 🙂
I discovered this page recently but in there too ENSO predictions is updated once a month. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/CDB/Forecast/figf4.shtml
The Bureau of Meteorology has a similar page as well but I believe that is updated once a fortnight.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
Please, JustTheFactsWUWT, can you fix that up for us with decent graph that is updated everyday like the good old times. 🙂
Even if it’s not fixable, we still owe you a million thanks for putting together WUWT climate reference pages.
michaeljmcfadden says:
December 8, 2012 at 8:16 pm
================
Dis-information.
Is just slimy, and ain’t fooling anybody.
Pat Ravasio;
Well, you’re simply restating the same accusations and assertions as you did in at least one previous thread, and pretending that you didn’t get any credible answers. We are left to assume that you are being deliberately obtuse, though we cannot dismiss the possibility that that you are suffering from natural causes of the condition. But since you continue to take same line of attack, let me this time dumb it down for you:
Population of Earth: 6 billion
Population of Earth with no fossil fuels: 1 billion
My motivation? To keep uninformed idiots from making the most horrendous error in human history and sentencing billions to death.
As for cleaning up the environment, apparently you are too young and/or naive to remember when our major cities had smog so bad that the downtown cores had to be shut down, when there were no emissions standards on automobiles, when coal burning power plants and chemical plants simply belched untreated and unscrubbed poisons into the air, when lumber companies simply cut down the forests and didn’t bother to replant them, when smokers were allowed to poison the air of their coworkers, when our roadsides were filthy with litter because nobody thought twice about tossing their garbage out the car window…. I remember all of those things, and am proud to be part of the generation that cleaned all that up. We’ve taken gigantic strides in cleaning up our environment compared to just a few decades ago.
And while we did all that cleaning up, we increased the food supply to the point that only countries suffering under dictatorships like North Korea are suffering actual starvation, we’ve increased life expectancy by 30 years or more, we are bigger, stronger, and healthier today than we have ever been in the past, and we owe it to a combination of fossil fuels and environmental stewardship. While your generation wants to wail away about all the “harm” we’re doing, my generation has been cleaning the environment up to the point that it is better than it has been in generations and lifting billions out of poverty, starvation, disease and illiteracy in the process. You want us to go back, I want us to go forward.
That, little troll, is what my generation has done for yours. You might say thank you instead of p*ssing on us at every opportunity and making false and ignorant accusations.
Pat(tricia): You seem to think this website is Heartland’s evil creation and we can speak for them. Why not go to Heartland, read their pages, read their blog, you can even email them. You could also call them on the telephone but please read up on the Glieck affair first.
Last time I looked at Heartland, they weren’t that hard to figure out. Their financial filings with the Fed government are available if you look (ignore the Glieck fake document). It’s really all out their for you to discover and they are quite capable of explaining what they do if you ask them.
No ball lightning distribution?
Pat Ravasio is a bot.
sHx says: December 8, 2012 at 8:35 pm
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – Climate Prediction Center – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – Climate Prediction Center – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
I wonder what happened to ‘NINO 3.4 Ensemble Forecast’ (the second graph on the ENSO page)? It hasn’t been updated for months. I used to follow that graph practically every day and it was being updated every day. The current one is dated to September 24 and predicts El Nino conditions from December all the way to July. 🙂
The NINO 3.4 Ensemble Forecast;
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="632"]
was discontinued, per this NOAA update; “(Updated: Mon Sep 24 12:04:09 EDT 2012) CFS version 1 will be discontinued after October 2012.”
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/ensoforecast.shtml
can you fix that up for us with decent graph that is updated everyday like the good old times. 🙂
Fortunately, CFSv2 is now available;
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/CFSv2/CFSv2seasonal.shtml
so added the new v2 graph to the ENSO page, i.e. NINO 3.4 SST Anomalies Forecast:
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="632"]
It is interesting to see how much the predictions have changed over a few months…
Why not go to Heartland, read their pages, . . . ”
One could start with this:
http://heartland.org/reply-to-critics
Justthefacts, sir, it is fixed! Thanks another million.
Here is another question: is it possible to get the daily graph collection for the last several years? Is there an archive for that that’s accesible by the public?
A collection of 600 daily consecutive graphs would make a 30 second video at 20 frames per second. It would make a great animation, I reckon, just to illustrate again what was predicted and what actually turned out to be. 600 days in a 30 second burst, like one of those fast NASA animations.
An animation of ENSO 3.4 graphs could further be enhanced by additional features. That would require video editing skills beyond what I have now. I am hoping if I could get my hands on the archive I might just be able to create my first ever video animation. 😀
In my case, the intensive, daily effort by you and your supporters to destroy western advanced lifestyles and economies in the service of some broken and ill founded dogma. Oh, and the constant pressure by ‘your side’ to rope everyone into an un-representative Central Planning government via the UN that destroys liberty and hates freedom.
So make you a deal: Your side stop, and I’ll stop.
I never wanted to do any of this anyway. I was happily and peacefully living an ordinary full life when “your side” came along and started telling me I had to have toilets that don’t flush, light bulbs that make a ‘hazardous waste zone’ WHEN they break AND turn “green eggs and ham” from a kids story into a morning reality. (Bad CRI Color Rendering Index on those CFL bulbs) and now want me to just freeze and die.
Well, I attended one of their events once in Chicago. Does that make me affiliated? I also did some work for a guy who I think might have gotten money from Heartland. ( I have been paid all of $1,000 for computer work involving analysis of a GHCN data set that I happened to have on hand, having saved several iterations. Then again, I’ve been doing contract computer work for about 20 years now, and accept any client that pays, so it’s not unusual. I’ve also done work for The State Of California and The Federal Reserve Bank. Does that make me a government paid lackey?)
But, on fossil fuels:
Turns out that they are THE major reason for folks living longer lives, healthy lives, and reducing the amount of damage done to the planet. This isn’t the place to go into it, but just as a fun little ‘though experiment’, figure out how many more acres of forest would need to be cut down and put under the plough to feed 300,000,000 horses in the USA alone. Here’s a hint: It takes about one acre per horse for decent pasture. After that, you can work out what to do with all the horse pucky. (You impress me as being experienced with horse pucky.)
Not to mention all the trees saved by using plastics to make things instead of wood and all the land that need not be farmed to grow cotton. And on and on and on…
So my relationship with “Big Oil” is that of “Satisfied Customer”, and I just want to keep it that way…
Why use fossil fuels instead of ‘alternatives’? Well, the environmental benefits include (but are not limited to):
Well, just for starters, and skipping past the already mentioned savings on pasture and waste disposal and synthetic materials…
We’ll start with all the mega tons of metals and especially lead that would be needed for batteries for electrical storage. Fuels are a heck of a lot better and much higher density energy storage system than batteries. By far. A lot less toxic than lead, too. Then there is all the land degradation for mining mega tons of copper to make electric motors…
Silicon fab facilities use such wonderfully toxic materials as Arsine Gas and Phosgene. ( I know, as I live in Silicon Valley and looked up the hazard map before buying my home. At National Semi when I worked there we had “interesting tanks” with interesting placards on them…) Then there are the more exotic ones that use things like Cadmium. One of THE most hideous toxins on the planet. So much so that the EU essentially bans it outright (other than in NiCd batteries as it can’t figure a replacement, and one or two other exceptions). Seems it substitutes for Zinc in many enzyme systems and basically causes your bones to dissolve as you writhe in agony and die. (There was a ‘spill’ from a battery plant in Japan once that kind of made that point…) So the idea of covering the earth in Nickel CADMIUM batteries or LEAD Acid batteries or, well, you get the idea… It’s just not that attractive to me. I’ll take the much less toxic gasoline, thanks. (YES, much less toxic. Look up the LD-50 of hexane and Cadmium…)
Then there’s plastics. When you go into the hospital, you can’t survive the trip without thanking plastic. From the syringe to the ‘bag’ of fluid they hang to the plastic sheets and such that helps prevent spread of infection. No oil and no plastics, kiss off modern medicine. (You will also have a heck of a time figuring out how to sterilize all the replacement non-plastic things that will now need autoclave time. Especially without any coal or natural gas derived electricity. Can’t just decide to have treatment when the wind blows…) But “moving on”, there’s all the plastics in use for things like furniture. How many forests would need to be cut to replace the oil derived fibers with rayon (from cellulose) instead? Frankly, the “Green” push to replace oil derived plastics with “natural” source materials is just as daft as the push to replace “fossil fuels” with bio-fuels. Farming is incredibly damaging to wild natural places (and you will not replace all those fossil fuel based materials without NEW and ADDED farm land). So yes, you can replace natural gas derived plastics, just cut down ALL of the global wild lands and plant them… No Amazon. No Congo. No Canadian Forests. Heck likely have to cut all of Siberia eventually.
Then there is electricity. God I love the stuff. Yes, I’ve got a fireplace (that I have been informed is now politically incorrect to use) but the electric heat is just SO much cleaner. (Can’t use that natural gas heater if fossil fuels are to be banned…) Where does that electricity come from? The bulk of it comes from coal here in the USA. Then there’s a decent chunk of nuclear (we’ve got a couple of them here in California, but now get a fair amount from out of State nukes). I’d love to see the USA follow France into a much higher use of nukes, but that’s not going to happen. So cut off the fossil fuels, kiss of electricity.
That means an incredible loss of life (no traffic lights for example, and no electric medical devices after the accidents) and it means living ‘sun up to sun set’ and without TV, computers, radio, the internet, and on and on.
Now maybe you want to be cold, hungry (no stove or refrigerator after all) and sitting around a camp fire made by burning whatever furniture you have left, but I’d rather have a bit of coal burned to run the lights, cook my dinner, and keep the place warm.
I can hear you getting ready to spout about ‘renewables’… Yes, you COULD convert to all renewables. Heck, I even tout them on a posting I did that points out just how much energy is available from them:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
There’s only two (unfortunately ‘killer’) problems.
1) The costs are way higher. No, not enough to be too much of an “issue” in the industrial west. We can likely survive (if not thrive) on 50 cent / kW-hr electricity. (California is headed that way at present due to “renewable mandates”, so we’ll know soon enough. Then again, the consequences of that may not be as ‘eco-friendly’ as expected:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/camping-at-home-is-cheaper/
I’ve started cooking some meals over the gasoline camp stove… not as clean as the All Electric Kitchen, but cheaper… I’m building a trash powered stove for next summer, then I’ll start cooking over ‘yard waste’. I’m sure 4 Million people doing that in the S.F. Bay Area won’t be as clean as a nuke in Arizona, but hey, that’s what happens with 50 cent / kW-hr electricity)
2) Have you ‘done the math’ on what it takes to convert? There is just no way on God’s Earth that it can be done in anything approaching the time scale proposed. One SMALL example. Cars have an average life now of about 12 years. Even if we were buying 100% all electric cars today, it would take at least 12 years to replace most of them. And we’re not anywhere near that sales percentage. Trains and planes and boats have even longer lifespans. You are talking about a 100% “fleet change”. That fleet change problem makes the National Debt look like small potatoes. Now add to that changing the established infrastructure of electric power generation (that typically has a 50 year lifespan). Even IF we were doing a changeover 100% starting now, it would not be done in my life time, nor that of most of the folks reading this. Now think of just how much destruction and waste of resources are involved in all that throwing away of working established machinery. “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” does not include “wantonly destroy working capital stock”.
But even given all that: I’m no fan of Bird Chopper windmills. The number of birds killed per site would have any nuclear or coal plant shut down overnight. Why they get a pass is beyond me. I’m also not fond of the idea of covering 100 x 100 square miles of pristine desert habitat with industrial scale solar facilities. Any way you look at it, the embodied environmental destruction from all the materials mining and fabrication and the excess land use is just horrific when compared with the fossil fuel or nuclear alternatives. (BTW, that’s a large part of why the wind and solar cost more. Economics works that way. Things that take a subsidy to work are things that consume more resources… that come from mines and land and labor and capital stock…)
And that barely scratches the surface of the damage to the environment that would be done by dumping fossil fuels wholesale and fast for subsidized ‘alternatives’.
Yes. See above. They are the cheapest alternative to a healthy modern economy of any available and they have the least damage to the land.
Well, since I’m unemployed and have zero income from any company at all, I can’t see how “greed” comes into it. Heck, I don’t even own any oil company stock. (Mostly in cash and Birkshire Hathaway right now. You know, Warren Buffet. Obama’s buddy.)
What I’m “fueled by” is a passionate hatred of stupidity and waste. I hate to be that blunt about it, but you asked the question. Life long habit of mine. Just can’t stand broken non-solutions that line the pockets of the well connected at the expense of the average folks (as I am just an ‘average folk’). Now look at all the folks sucking on that Government Teat at all those UN and NGO funded agencies. Now look at Al Gore and his buddies getting bail out money and other government derived funding. Now look at me. My income last month was exactly zero. (The spouse made some as a teacher at a local grammar school… yes, we live on a ‘Government paycheck’ too…) So exactly which of us is more “driven by greed”? Me as an unemployed spouse of a school teacher? Or AlGore sucking down the $Millions? Hmmm?
No doubt about it. I am strongly driven by ‘my own interests’. Frankly, don’t know how it could be otherwise.
I think I covered the basics already. Mostly just can’t stand politically driven organized theft of my money via government driven boondogles and croney “capitalism” (like GE getting a big fat wet kiss from the incandescent lightbulb ban. As of now in California they pretty much own the market and prices are up from 19 cents / bulb to about $5- $8+. Long gone are Phillips and Sylvania and house brands from most places – though you can find them in limited quantities in some stores at very high prices. You do know that the head of GE is a Buddy Of Obama don’t you? GE is getting loads of money out of this.) and I’m not fond of dishonorable behaviour.
Things like, oh, making up data after you lost yours. Refusing to follow the law (like FOIA requests). Flat out breaking the law (Hansen has been arrested how many times now?) And Lord Knows how much hidden defrauding of the taxpayer. Then there’s the line of “Crony Capitalists” lined up for “The Largess of the Public Purse”. Look at who benefited from the Solyndra bailout (and related). Fair number of folks with large political donations and large wallet and large government connections.
Frankly, I first started looking into “Global Warming” when I thought “This could be bad. I think I need to learn more about it.” After visiting a few “Warmers” sites and asking a few innocent questions, it became very clear very fast that saying “But that doesn’t add up. Please explain.” was cursing in church. I was asking about that ‘man behind the curtain’. (One of the faults of an Aspe brain… things have to ‘fit’, and when they don’t, no amount of PC or peer pressure can fix it…) Then I ran into this site (after someone, in a “put down” at a ‘warmers’ site said something like “Are you one of those fools who reads WUWT?” One web search later, I was here.) It was a great breath of fresh air.
Yes, I asked some stupid questions at first, but folks were patient enough and explained. I also found out that many of my “But that doesn’t add up?” questions were already deeply explored, and things really didn’t add up. Basically, I found honest folks motivated by a search for the truth and a strong adherence to the scientific method and NOT a party orthodoxy. ( Leif, in particular, was extraordinarily patient with me when I was going through my “Sun Phase” 😉
So, you see, I started from thinking “Global Warming Looks BAD!”, as that was what was in the news. Then started to learn the “Science” behind it and ran smack dab into a batch of BS. The more I dug, the worse it got. Eventually finding more folks “like me” here.
So what IS that motivation? A simple insistence on the TRUTH. Whatever it may be. The same thing that’s gotten me into lots of trouble over the years. ( I’ve told the wrong people the truth too many times… Think of asking Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory if your dress makes you look fat…) So much as I’d love to be a gung-ho Warmer doing fun computer work on a fat government grant bit of stuff-and-nonsense Global Warming Hype; I just can’t. I can’t stand waste and dishonesty… especially to myself.
No, thank you. I’ve seen way too much of The Team Talking Points. (Both directly and by proxy ‘true believers’).
It mostly just comes down to either a misplaced sense of “do gooder syndrome” (that I think is formally called “Noble Cause Corruption”) or “science” of the form “Given this conclusion what assumptions can I draw?” Things like ignoring all of evaporation, convection, condensation, and entropy and then saying that if you hold all other things constant, it has to be CO2; so send lots of money and remake all of the industrial world (spending more money with my friends). Oh, and no ‘please’ needed as we are going to mandate it at the point of a gun (government force is enforced by “men with guns”…) Such as described here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/broken-reasoning-and-hot-air/
and explored in painful detail for GIStemp here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/gistemp/
John F. Hultquist says:
December 8, 2012 at 9:51 pm
One could start with this:
http://heartland.org/reply-to-critics
=======
John, No one reads the FAQs! That one is recommended reading. I haven’t donated money to support anything or anyone since the Ross Perot candidacy.
Thanks to Pat’s unintended recruitment campaign and the FAQ, I know where my next gift will go. Thanks Pat.
JustTheFacts… What I find particularly interesting about your two graphs is that the second one seems to show the “reality” of just before and after October was pretty much on track with the earlier prediction. What brought about the radical change in prediction from that point onward?
And, in general, looking back over their history, are their graphs usually like that? I.E. being pretty good for two months or so in the future and then skittering wildly?
😕
MJM
1. There are some “no regrets” measure that most WUWTers would not object to much: incentives for installing a heat pump, for adding insulation, for trucks to use natural gas, for converting from oil to gas for heating, for adding smart thermostats, for building hydro-electric dams and mini-dams, etc.
2. There are environmental problems with all energy sources, including solar and wind (dirty and energy intensive mining and fabrication, especially in China; lots of rubbish to deal with when they wear out; dead birds and bats).
3. Solar and wind have proved their costliness (including unanticipated hidden costs) and unreliability in the countries that have gone heavily into them, such as Spain and Germany, which have been forced to eliminate or cut the subsidies they were providing. Spain is in a depression and teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, partly as a result of the cost of the subsidies and the increased cost of electricity. Germany is planning to add 23 coal-fired generating plants, because renewables can’t do the job, and is faced with threats by industry to move abroad to a place where electricity is cheaper. Current rates are making them uncompetitive. The countries in the West are all in dire financial straits and don’the have money to spare on much costlier electricity and plant shutdowns.
4. The EU’s cutting down on fossil fuel use has had no significant effect on the rising level of CO2 in the atmosphere, nor has it induced China and India to cut back on their headlong dive into fossil fuel use. If the leaders of those countries attempted to switch to power sources that are unaffordable, their populations would dismiss them–perhaps “with prejudice.” The only result of reductions and regulations on CO2 in the West will be a shift of manufacturing to the East, where it will occur in a more CO2-intensive way. Oh, and maybe our reduction will delay the time at which CO2 will reach the 600 level by a couple of years–big deal.
5. Nuclear would produce no CO2–and its downsides can be coped with, especially in new designs. Stewart Brand, James Lovelock, and Wired magazine have endorsed nuclear as the only realistic alternative to fossil fuel. France has given us a taste of it. But purist, holier-than-thou enviro-nuts won’t hear of it. They want a greenie/sustainable/renewable utopia, not just the reduction of CO2. Their stance is liable to leave them with neither.
Thank you, Roger. That was the most intelligent reply I received all evening. I’ll read up on your points. I am on the fence about nuclear. Some former energy purists, like Stewart Brand have come to this way of thinking because they know it is the easiest path to a manageable C02 level, and they believe there isn’t enough time to fully shift to renewables. They may be right. It is refreshing to read a rational, clear viewpoint from a skeptic — without any insults, name calling or childish bullying behavior. You give me hope!
sHx says: December 8, 2012 at 10:25 pm
Here is another question: is it possible to get the daily graph collection for the last several years? Is there an archive for that that’s accesible by the public?
Here’s seasonal forecasts. archived monthly;
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfs_fcst_history/
and this page may be helpful;
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/forecasts.html
but I have not seen a daily archive.
Pat Ravasio says:
December 8, 2012 at 5:41 pm
The world is full of potential risks – it could be hit by a large asteroid as I am typing this – there is actually more chance of that than winning a lottery. There could be a repeat of a global pandemic. There could be an eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera. Lots of risks. So science has been used to quantify risks based on empirical data not feelings and emotions.
So there is a ‘anthropogenic global warming hypothesis’ that the amount of CO2 in the air will increase atmospheric warming and by increasing evaporation of water (the main ‘green house gas’) the atmosphere will warm a lot more and then there will be more water vapor leading to more warming – and hence catastrophe. The only problem with this hypothesis is that none (read that again) NONE of its forecasts have come true. There is no empirical evidence that increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is causing the Earth to warm. Yes we all know that it absorbs and re-emits infra-red in 3 narrow bands, But the other natural systems in the atmosphere rather than spiraling out of control with positive feedbacks tend to a negative feedback. There has been a challenge out for years now on Jo Nova’s site for someone to provide empirical evidence of global warming caused by CO2 – not models you understand real world evidence. People have looked – at great expense satellites have been launched CERES and AQUA – you won’t hear a lot about them as they haven’t found evidence for CO2 causing global warming (some would say they have found the opposite). Similarly, at more huge expense ARGO floats and buoys have been spread around the oceans and they also do not show any warming – so they are not heard of in the main stream media or the Internet sites like yours. Note though HUGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY being spent – in subsidies for ‘green power’, bankers and accountancy firms making vast sums from carbon taxes, academics getting millions in research grants – Hansen is now a millionaire thanks to his proselytizing of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
In my first paragraph I talked of ‘potential risks’ – there are of course actual events that are no longer just potential risks they are happening right now as you read this. One is people dying from starvation, poor sanitation and untreated water leading to disease. While you have read this around 12 children have died from hunger ( http://www.bread.org/hunger/global/ ) a child dying on average every 5 seconds. Yet it is also said in many places that “a dollar can save a life” http://redcrossggr.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/one-dollar-can-save-a-life/
Yet instead of saving the lives of these people that ARE dying – you Pat would rather spend huge sums of money on protecting against a risk that is purported to exist based on a repeatedly falsified hypothesis by people that are making millions peddling the scare. I feel that you should justify why you think that should happen.
Pat, you seem overly concerned by the use of fossil fuels. Just what are they , a term made up 150 years ago and refuted 100 years ago. You have(not) asked for sources so that you can ‘ do some homework’. I found this informative. http://www.gasresources.net/ Chances are that the only reason you are alive is because of the better standard of living ‘fossil’ fuels have allowed us to enjoy.
No point in feeding trolls … “Pat’s” agenda is very clear:
“And just to cover all sides, here’s a link to one of the most popular climate change denial blogs, http://www.wattsupwiththat.com (where you can find several very lively attacks on me!)”
If “Pat” wanted to engage in legitimate, intelligent discussion he would take the time to use the many resources here and elsewhere and educate himself first.
@michaeljmcfadden:
This site does not censor on content other than the list of forbidden topics on the “policy” page. ( so no questioning birth certificates or what happened on 9/11, for example)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/about-wuwt/policy/
and near as I can tell, those topics are only off limits as they lead to mindless flame wars are are just not very interesting the thousandth time warmed over.
There is “snipping” for offensive language and insult / slander type commentary (but the word “snip” is inserted to mark the spot and often a comment about what on the policy list was violated in particular). Some individuals with excessive violations of policy get put in the ‘junk’ list, but it’s not clear to me who all they are, and even then they sometimes come back. (I’ve seen Anthony announce a ‘time out’ for some period of time on someone, then they returned after it expired).
I’ve never seen anyone tossed for holding a contrary opinion on science, data, or reasoning. Nor for political orientation or beliefs. Just violations of the policy page.
@Louis:
IMHO, it’s worse than that. The weather now is almost exactly like it was in the 1950s (which I remember… another aspect of the Aspe brain. I can simply “be” back in 1958 on a summer day and remember it, or that winter in 1958 when we drove a blue / white 56 Chevy up to the Sierra Nevada to see the ‘extreme’ 18 foot snow next to highway 80). The reason is pretty simple. The PDO is once again doing a ‘warm to cool’ transition. (So expect some strong rains, as we had then in California, too).
Looking into the land temperature data, it is essentially adjusted to have a false warming signal in the data. That 16 years without warming just happens to have come right at the same time the the adjusting game has been ‘caught out’ and they can’t change equipment (as in the Stevenson Screen to MMTS conversion that locked in about 1/2 degree of warming from aged paint on the S.Screens as a ‘cool bias adjustment’ of the MMTS) nor do much to rewrite the latest data due to satellite records. Basically, they got everyone to start looking closely about 1990, and now they’re pretty much stuck under a spotlight.
So I look at the world now and it just ISN’T warmer. Not just the last 16 years, but the whole thing. The 1930s were warmer than the ‘warm’ 1990s. (Heck, even the 1800s had a warm spike about as high, though not as long). If you take out the ‘step up’ from when the data were adjusted, it’s just pretty much flat with a 60 ish year cycle after a rise out of the Little Ice Age (modulo a dip when Tambora blew up and caused The Year Without A Summer). Take a look at about 1780 and 1822 on this graph:
Use the Version 1 line as it is prior to the latest round of ‘adjustments’ to make the past colder. (The repeated cooling of the past via ‘adjustments’ was one of the first things to rankle me.. so was the data and all the papers based on it BOGUS when V1 was the Peer Reviewed data set? If so, start retracting those papers now… )
The graph is from:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/summary-report-on-v1-vs-v3-ghcn/
with a large number of sub regions and more detail in reports listed here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/v1vsv3/
So it looks to me like the “warmed and then stopped for 16 years” is more correctly described as “warmed on the warm half of the PDO, but not more than the past, and is now starting the turn to cold; but the oldest data has been adjusted to lock in what looks like warming via making the old data colder”.
When I look around at the weather it is not warmer than in the past. When I look back at very old reports of the weather, it is not warmer than the past. When I look back at very very old records of weather related events from ancient history, it is now cooler than the past. When I look at individual very long lived station data, unadjusted, it is not warmer now than in the past. It’s just that most folks don’t take a 300 year view of things. Most folks look at 30 years or less. And that’s just going to give false trends that don’t exist.
@Patrick Guinness:
Got down to your Tobacco “bait and switch”. Nice trolling…
Per Heartland: Much as you might like to do a ‘Thread Hijack’ for your Pet Peeve, this site is not driven by Heartland and the folks here have little / nothing to do with Tobacco.
Though it is ‘feeding the troll’, just two bits of information you might want to consider before casting that Tobacco Red Herring line again:
1) Your host, Anthony, is deaf due to a tobacco related illness. (IIRC it had something to do with his parents smoking). Not going to get a lot of traction with the Tobacco Troll Line when he’s had a lifetime of grief from the product.
2) I have strong allergies to tobacco smoke. (Dad smoked, Mom didn’t. That combination has a much higher level of kids with allergic response.) So accusing ‘folks like me’ of supporting Big Tobacco is just stupid. At one time I was rabidly anti-tobacco. Since then (and likely due to the laws in California now making it essentially a sin-crime to smoke where visible) I’ve softened a bit. I now say “Smokers have every right to smoke all they want… just away from my nose or anywhere I have to be or pass through.”
So, you see, with a semi-random sample of two, you have a 100% FAIL.
The simple fact is that Tobacco has nothing to do with AGW. Nothing at all. Please stop looking so foolish by trying to make such a bogus connection. (Frankly, it pains me to have to re-visit the tobacco thing. My Father died of tobacco caused lung cancer and my Mother followed about a decade later of what was likely second hand smoke caused lung cancer – she worked as a waitress in a restaurant full of smoke when not at home where Dad smoked.) So do us all a favor and let go of that particular Troll Line.
So can you get back “on topic”? That’s the fact that the ‘extreme weather’ of today is still mild compared to the extreme weather of the past.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/california-extreme-super-flood/
that happened in 1861 …
Per the “Shill for corporate persons”: Would that be AlGore? Or the places like NCAR?
http://www2.ucar.edu/about-us/governance-planning-documents
http://www.ucar.edu/ucar/Articles%20of%20Incorporation.pdf
You might want to be careful with that Evil Corporations Troll Line too. You may not realize it, but all those NGOs that suck up $Millions (or is it $Billions now?) and want another $100 Billion via the UN… they all have “Articles of Incorporation” and are Corporations.
Just like the Corporation For Public Broadcasting…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_for_Public_Broadcasting
Or are some corporations “more equal than others”? Hmmm?
Oh, and there is no ‘Team’ here. We are a self organizing Anarchy Of Individuals. You can learn more about how it works at the links listed here:
http://duckduckgo.com/?t=ous&q=self+organizing+systems
It is the foundation of life, ecology, and even capitalism. It is why capitalism is superior to Central Planning (of any / all of the types. Communism, Socialism, Fascism, National State Socialism), or even the “Managed Market” that’s become popular lately as the others have been shown to be dismal failures by history…
@jorge says:
December 8, 2012 at 7:14 pm
Very well put sir. Very well indeed.
@michaeljmcfadden :
The “tobacco connection” is just something they make up and keep trying to fish.
See, they don’t understand Self Organizing Systems. (That’s part of why they can’t stand capitalism and liberty… too ‘messy’…) So they see that Heartland is ‘against them’ and immediately think that Heartland must act the same way they do. ( Parasitize other organizations and government bodies, have meetings and issue funding ONLY to folks who agree with the whole agenda, use social means of control to enforce topic discipline, issue ‘talking points’, create ‘front organizations’, etc etc ad nausium…)
By that reasoning, A.Watts can’t have just started this up on his own. HE must be funded and a sock-puppet of some Bigger Organization. Like Heartland. Similarly, I can’t possibly just be some unemployed guy who’s interested in the topic while trying to find a job in a broken economy (thank you Obama for continuing the broken state originally caused by Bush not fixing the damage done under Clinton with causing the Housing Bubble…) So I, too, must be funded somehow. Thus they constantly “phish” for Oil Money and Heartland.
The Tobacco Line comes out of a desire to do a Knight Fork. Place a piece where they are attacking from two directions, so ‘we’ must lose something. So say “you support tobacco too!”… Now, in their eyes, you either have to repudiate Big Tobacco (thus pissing off one of your / Heartland ‘sponsors’) or endorse “Evil Tobacco” (and be tarnished by that).
What makes it all so silly is that they simply can’t grasp the reality. It doesn’t harm me at all to say I despise tobacco smoke. I simply can’t stay in the room with it. I can’t help it if my body makes igE that’s reactive to tobacco smoke. I just get puffy red eyes and start wheezing and have to leave the room. Anthony can’t help it that he’s partially deaf due to tobacco. He just had to deal with it. Since we are not supporters of Big Tobacco, nor have any funding to be threatened by the Knight Fork, it’s just a big silly waste of trolling effort.
But despite repeatedly having those facts put in front of them, every couple of months the Newbie (or sometimes the more boring been around a long time already ones) trot it out again. They just are not capable of learning facts that contradict their preconceived notion of things. I probably wouldn’t mind so much except that they are just so mindlessly wrong…
So anyway, don’t worry about it. It’s just a stock Troll Line.
BTW, the most likely cause of smoking induced cancers is the Polonium that gets deposited in the lungs. Since the tobacco paralyzes the cilia that clean out the lungs, it builds up. The added radiation dose directly to the lung tissue is the likely cause. This implies that ‘the patch’ is a better way to get your nicotine, or even the ‘electric cigarettes’. Near as I can tell, the other components of the smoke don’t do as much (though there are some ‘rough’ chemicals made in the burning process).
As I AM very reactive to smoke, I set out to find out some things about tobacco (mostly out of self preservation and partly to see if I could offer an alternative to smokers… so I could breath freely 😉 Along the way I found that some of the alkaloids look like they have a decent analgesic effect and may help with arthritis. There’s a company now marketing a drug based on them (not nicotine, so no ‘buzz’). I’ve also got some growing in my back yard. They make a great natural insecticide and I’ve not had a leaf miner problem since planting them around the edge of the garden. Along the way I proved to myself that it’s not the plant itself that causes me problems. Nor the nicotine. (Water extract for pesticide use doesn’t bother my skin). So I’ve softened my prior position on Tobacco from “It is just evil and ought to be destroyed in all places and at all times” to “It is just a plant, with some useful properties, that when burned causes me problems, so please don’t burn it near me.” Why use it for pesticide? Because I run a garden free of chemical pesticides and GMO plants. Yeah, another stereotype broken…
That NONE of that has anything to do with Weather, AGW, Anthony, WUWT, Skeptics, etc. etc. is something that the Warmers just can’t quite accept…
So expect it to come around. Again and again and again…
@davidmhoffer:
Ah, you bring back memories… Like when I was about 5? and we went to Disneyland for the first time (just opened a couple of years before). Stayed with a ‘friend of Dad’ in Anaheim.
Topping the GrapeVine to descend into the L.A. Basin, you could not see anything but a brown / grey soup bowl of smog. In Anaheim from one end of the block, you could not see the other clearly.
Now we have “spare the air days” called when there is so little ‘crap’ in the air that the mountains in the distance are clearly visible and the air smells clean. There’s simply ‘no there there’. They measure ozone levels (ignoring that ozone is caused by UV and UV levels have been higher) so we get ‘spare the air days’ on clear clean days when there’s a lot of sun… Go figure… Come to think of it, not remembering a lot of alert days since the sun when sleepy and the UV plunged… Hmmm…
But yes, the degree of clean up is really amazing if you lived through it.
@justthefactswuwt :
Wow! Look at how SST plunges in the new one… then they have what looks like a nearly compulsory upward tilt to the ‘bottle brush’ end… Almost like they can’t tolerate the idea of a negative SST anomaly for long. Going to be really interesting to see how they cope with extended cool from low UV penetration into the ocean and thus low ocean heat. Got 30 years or so for it to ‘build down’… (hey, if heat ‘builds up’ then the opposite must be ‘build down’ 😉
A lot of responses to Pat here, so I will add my ten cents:
1. The Global Warming Industry receives at least one thousand times the annual amount of funding that the sceptics do.
2. The amount of statistics’ manipulation routinely applied by the ‘climate scientists’ is incredible and would not be allowable in any field of real science.
3. The global warming scare is based on the extremely dodgy predictions of computer models, which: i) can rarely hindcast accurately, ii) usually have pre-programmed results, and iii) cannot hope to come anywhere close to reality, due to the huge number of factors (known, unknown, understood and misunderstood) which impact on climate.
4. Part of the ‘cure’ for global warming proposed by alarmists is the extensive use of highly unreliable and expensive renewable energy (wind and solar), where the only economic benefit is enjoyed by Chinese manufacturers.
5. Rising carbon dioxide levels probably accounted for part of the 0.7-1.0 degrees C increase in global temperatures experienced over the past century, the rest was caused by natural climate cycles, the arch-heresy of alarmists.
6. There has been no measurable increase in global temperatures over the past 16 years – doubtless revisions of official statistics will change this shortly – despite continued rises in CO2 levels.
7. Rising carbon dioxide levels are mostly beneficial – e.g plants grow faster – so lie back and enjoy it.
I am just one of the hundreds of thousands of scientists, (apparently 3% of the total – sarc) who recognise CAGW as being a crock, a non-problem and just an excuse to keep the Global Warming Industry’s bloated gravy train well funded.
Channel 4 TV in the UK is broadcasting on Tuesday;
‘Is Our Weather Getting Worse?’
“From drought to violent storms and floods, 2012’s weather has given us a lot to talk about. Has it been a freak year or should we prepare for more extreme weather like this in the future?”
Doesn’t that storm pic at the top look like Lord Moncton’s right eye ?
Hello again Pat Ravasio.
The first point is that you have missed the point and didn’t bother reading the article. It’s about Co2 and other greenhouse gases being accused by Warmists of causing extreme weather. It’s not about whether we should adopt cleaner energy or not. WUWT has provided evidence to the contrary on extreme weather. It is now up to you to provide evidence of an increasing trend in extreme weather. Can you do this???? This is my challenge to you. It should be easy from the ‘mountains of peer reviewed research’ I often hear about.
Please note the following very carefully. Anthony Watts was a Warmist just like you until he started looking deeper into the matter. I used to be a Warmist until I started looking into the matter. My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that over 1/3 of the sceptics on this blog used to be Warmists.
Out of interest do you drive an electric car, have solar or are into energy efficiency? Anthony Watts is into those things.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/about-wuwt/about2/
N.B.
1) I am not affiliated to the fossil fuel industry. I have never received a single dime from any energy company whatsoever. However, I wish they would send me money. (Why do Warmists always assume all skeptics have some kind of financial interest in presenting opposing views.)
2) My motivation is to to simply try to get to the ‘truth’ of the matter concerning CAGW. I don’t like being manipulated, deliberately misinformed or lied to.
3) Almost everything I enjoy today has been brought about directly and indirectly by energy provided by fossil fuels. I am not going to bite that hand though I am prepared to tell them to keep it as clean as possible as possible. Who wants their kids to breath in smog? Look at London today or San Francisco Part. Something has changed.
4) I don’t want to see unnecessary deaths. Look at the excess winter deaths in the UK over the years. Much could have been avoided if the Met Office was not so damn sure about co2 warming. The UK was ill prepared with gritters, many old people died, young people became stranded in cars and on foot and died. More deaths will occur if we close down our fossil fuel plants and replace them with wind and solar. Think about an overcast day in the UK in the middle of January when there is very little wind. Add to that an average temperature on -5C and wind power / solar only. You will have disaster. Can we then hold you responsible for the deaths of thousands of people?
On your website I informed you that your other comment had been replied to by the physicist rgbatduke . Why didn’t you reply? Did you read it?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/01/18-annual-climate-gabfests-16-years-without-warming/#comment-1162124
http://buckyworld.me/2012/12/02/ask-climate-deniers-whats-the-downside/#comment-54
This ravasio sounds like a narcissist. Everything is about him. Everyone’s responses- especially Chiefio’s (no offense to everyone else, but he tried hardest), is meaningless, in the face of this person’s need to be the Center of the Universe. Everything anyone said, only goes to prove his point. Of course, Ignoring him or blocking him would only serve to prove his point, also.
Another angle that would benefit from good factual input would be a page that takes an actuarial view of trends in the costs of damage caused by weather events like hurricanes and coastal flooding that may be laid at the doors of climate change / sea level rise.
Often one sees articles like http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/opinion/sunday/climate-change-lessons-from-ronald-reagan.html
These need to be debunked when appropriate in the same way that the straight linking of weather events to climate change need to be debunked when appropriate.
@ Pat:
You ask what motivates to “deny” the “consensus” on CAGW. Well here’s my motivation:
1. No increase in land temperatures in 16 years. That’s 30% of the World.
2. No increase in Pacific Ocean sea temperatures in 18 years. That’s another 30% of the World.
3. Bob Tisdale has a fantastic explanation of how the last 30 years of positive ENSO natural cycle charged up hot water by absorbing incoming solar energy, sent it shooting across the Indian, up the Atlantic to the Arctic Ocean where it disperses heat into the atmosphere during winter. Note: that’s a one sentence summary of thousands of pages of research.
So 60% of the planet’s surface has seen no increase in temperatures during the same period that a third of all atmospheric CO2 was produced (IPCC numbers would say that that amount of CO2 should have caused 1.5C increase in that period). The Arctic temperature increase is easily explained by the natural ENSO cycle (which also explains why the ice melted) as explained by Bob Tisdale.
I can prove man-caused global warming is false over 70% of the planet. I challenge you to prove man-caused global warming is true over 70% of the planet. If you can, I will convert and become a CAGW worshiper.
So, someone explain the “greenhouse effect” again????????????????????????????????
E.M.Smith says:
December 8, 2012 at 11:02 pm (Edit)
——————————————————————-
Great response Chiefio , bazinga one might say.
Whenever that little trope of “well imagine if it wasn’t true we would only have improved the planet” I respond in three ways . . .
1. Improved how, improved for who? All of those “little people” yearning for cheap, safe and ubiquitous energy. Surely all those idiot windmills and solar panels have consequences and down sides, they just aren’t identified. We live on an increasingly clean planet while our energy consumption and population rise. You will note that wherever energy consumption is low the environment is pretty crappy because people are too busy with chopping down the biosphere to burn for cooking and warmth, to have time left over for protecting anything but themselves.
2. Defining improving the environment in terms of reducing CO2 is just perverse. The only effect will be to reduce the lifestyles of things that photosynthesise. Which will call for an increase in cultivated areas and more environmental destruction.
Pat is a simple believer who, unlike many of us here, hasn’t evolved into a questioning person. It is sad but not permanent and one day he will encounter that “State of Fear” moment and realise he has been lied to. Then , like me, he will realise that . .
3. You can’t build something good on a lie.
@Mwhite:
Why? There are plenty of other places out there that already cover it. I give a short introduction to it here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/broken-reasoning-and-hot-air/
then proceed to talk about why it’s a broken idea.
The ‘short form’ is the notion that full spectrum light hits the earth and warms the dirt and land. This, then, radiates Infrared light upward, that whacks into CO2, water vapor, methane and other “greenhouse gases” and is absorbed. Those, then, reradiate that IR both up and down. The “down” part causes the surface below to warm more than otherwise. This causes more water to evaporate that acts as even more GHG. Repeat and do recursion until dead in a boiling sea of steam…
The ‘short form’ of the problems with it are (strongly edited in number and length):
1) We’ve had warmer times before and there was no increased water vapor runaway tipping point. We didn’t have death and destruction. Life was good and it looks like there is a negative feedback that stops warming just a degree or two warmer than now.
2) We’ve had LOADS more CO2 in the past. Yes, prehistoric times. Still, it was there. No evidence for ‘greenhouse warming’ from it. Heck, even had ice ages with about 10x the present CO2 level in the air.
3) The AGW idea ignores that evaporation is followed by condensation at altitude and precipitation. That ‘added water vapor’, being lighter than air, promptly rises to the base of the stratosphere, condenses (radiating heat off to space) and falls as rain. Far from being a ‘green house gas’ and causing a ‘tipping point’, increased evaporation is the working fluid in a cooling system with negative feedback on the warmth of the planet. See any thunderstorm for an example.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/spherical-heat-pipe-earth/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/what-does-precipitation-say-about-heat-flow/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/gives-us-this-day-our-daily-enthalpy/
4) The AGW idea ignores that surface warming increases convection and physical transfer moves heat to the top of the atmosphere (where it can be dumped to space) very quickly. On the order of hours. This is easily observed on any single day as the sun rises, thermals start, then the sun sets, and thermals end. It has been measure in peer reviewed papers and the heat moves on the order of hours. It simply isn’t ‘stored’. Any increase in ‘back radiation’ can, at most, cause the convective engine to run a bit longer during the warmer part of the day.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/ignore-the-day-at-your-peril/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/does-convection-dominate/
paper that does the measuring:
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/31/68/93/PDF/angeo-19-1001-2001.pdf
Remember, this is just a sample of why the GHG thesis is terribly broken. If any ONE of them exists, the thesis is toast. But there isn’t just one, there are dozens.
So tell me again why we ought to explain something that doesn’t work?
Remember folks, they used to call it Catastrophic Anthropogenic Runaway Global Warming. Then they dropped the ‘runaway’, then the ‘catastrophic’, then the ‘global warming’. Then they picked up on ‘Climate Change’ which is slowly being replaced by ‘Extreme Weather’. It’s like a game of soccer where they have people hanging onto the goalposts which they constantly shift, just to win the game.
Compare and contrast this shift from George Monbiot.
How can you take someone like this seriously folks.
Pat Ravasio says:
December 9, 2012 at 12:20 am
“like Stewart Brand have come to this way of thinking because they know it is the easiest path to a manageable C02 level, and they believe there isn’t enough time to fully shift to renewables. They may be right.”
Now first of all, we don’t have to do anything to “manage” the CO2 level, plants are doing the managaing much better.
(Sahara, Sahel, greening, video
http://notrickszone.com/2012/01/03/der-spiegel-the-ground-zero-of-climate-change-is-becoming-green-expanding-sahara-is-a-myth/
Booming biosphere part 2; CO2 the cause
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/
)
Second, re renewables, two problems:
a) no economic mass storage. It’s snowing outside my window, we can have 40 days of no wind energy production during winter during a blocking high here in Germany, we would be dead without said storage.
b) Renewables are uneconomic.
“Only stupid ideas need the help of government.” (Thomas Jefferson)
HOW uneconomic? Currently renewables (wind solar biomass) cost the German ratepayer 20bn EUR subsidies a year, that’s 0.66 % of GDP, and deliver about 1.5 % of our energy needs (electricity is 1/7th of our total energy needs)
So, ignoring the storage problem, we could get to 100% by spending about 50% of our GDP.
We can’t produce enough GDP surplus to pay that, meaning our civilization would collapse and we would be back to a hunter-gatherer existence. (High cultures collapsed when they had to expend more than one calory to harvest three calories. That’s the threshold under which a statist organized culture is no more possible.)
Remember, this ignores the storage problem. My estimate would be that deploying a mass storage solution like Methane synthesis would drive up the losses in energy conversion to another 50% so that would double the cost; we would spend 100% of GDP for the energy needed to produce the GDP, leaving exactly nothing for food, housing, etc.
Economy is not always that nice and cosy “spend ourselves to prosperity” (c) Krugman. Economy is about survival.
E.M.Smith says:
December 9, 2012 at 3:20 am
If I may play Devil’s advocate, there are weaknesses in your arguments. Points 1 and 2 are quite good, this is the sort of thing I say myself. But the rebuttals I face are – Yes, C02 was higher in geological times but then so were temperatures (about 10 deg.C higher). As for the ice age at the end of the Ordovician, I get the response ‘weak sun’. The latter argument is easily refuted because just before that ice age (when the sun was weaker still) temperatures were much higher and when C02 levels fell at the start of the Silurian the Earth pulled out of the ice age.
However, your remaining points are not sound. Water vapour does not rise to the Top of the Atmosphere (TOA). It rises and as the air cools it condenses. It gives up its latent heat and warms the atmosphere. The atmosphere then re-radiates back to the surface of the Earth. It can only radiate because of the greenhouse gases. The net result is that the surface of the Earth is warmer than it would otherwise be without the greenhouse gases. Furthermore, it doesn’t matter how the thermosphere is heated, evaporation, thermals or whatever, when heated it will radiate back to Earth making it warmer.
At some altitude, a point will be reached where greenhouse gases can radiate directly to space., as you say. This will cool the upper atmosphere. At this ‘effective radiating height’ a radiation balance is achieved between the incoming solar insolation and the outgoing infrared. Thus the ‘effective temperature’ at this ‘effective radiating height’ will be about 255K. This sets the top of the lapse rate gradient. As you descend from that height the atmosphere becomes warmer according to the lapse rate until the surface of the earth is reached. The surface of the Earth is thus warmer than 255K. The more greenhouse gas, the more ‘back-radiation’ and the more greenhouse gas, the higher the ‘effective radiating height’.
Chiefio, it very unlikely that AGW theory has developed without anyone else being aware of the existence of thermals or evaporation. Isn’t it? But this is the sort of thing you see all time.
You seem to be saying that atmospheric CO2 makes the Earth more efficient in how it uses the suns energy. I truly fail to understand why man should find advancement by making the rock he lives on less efficient.
I am sure you see the same thing and understand the relevance when contemplating the distant, and frozen, past.
MikeB says:
December 9, 2012 at 4:23 am
“Chiefio, it very unlikely that AGW theory has developed without anyone else being aware of the existence of thermals or evaporation. Isn’t it? But this is the sort of thing you see all time.”
One of the biggest weaknesses in climate models is modeling convective fronts. Why? Because they come in any scale. The description in a climate model is a STATISTICAL one – in one box of the simulation MANY instances of the same process are supposed to happen so a statistical description can be valid. (Like the ideal gas law does not describe SINGLE molecules correctly it describes the behaviour of huge amounts of molecules very well)
Now, when you have ONE convective front a thousand km long and your simulation box is only 100km on each side (and a 100m thick) the statistical approach breaks down. The simulation does not describe reality anymore.
And that’s what happens, and that’s why the GCM’s CAN’T reduce the box size ever more even though the computing power is available now. That’s also the reason why they now have every student run a simulation up to the year 5000 – they don’t have any other use for the computing power they can buy and no other way to waste all the taxpayer dough they sit on.
So in short, they are aware of thermals, but they can’t simulate them very well. Another reason why their models fail so hard.
MikeB~ in your devil’s advocate piece to Chiefio, you keep using the line ‘radiating’ or ‘re-radiating’ back to the Earth. Is there NO % that radiates upwards? Why does it All go back into the lower atmosphere, and what is available to take it up?
“My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that over 1/3 of the sceptics on this blog used to be Warmists.”
…yep, 1/3 plus 1.
Otter says:
December 9, 2012 at 2:03 am
You have PR correctly pegged. It’s a broken record that just keeps going in circles with no resolution, but plenty of repetition.
mwhite says:
December 9, 2012 at 2:31 am
So, someone explain the “greenhouse effect” again????????????????????????????????
————————————
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Come on folks! Stop feeding the troll! she did this on another thread and we were all quite pleasant – but this is a repeat trolling and needs sorting………(c’mon mods!)
[sure . . but you can ignore her or put her right, that is your right here too . . mod]
Has anyone compared the “environmental damage” of 1Billion people razing the forests for soot-heavy fuels, vice 6Billion using clean fossil fuels in efficient machines and centralized, managed facilities?
Pat,
Have a look around your room can you see anything plastic there? your computer monitor? perhaps a laptop? an LCD/LED screen, your TV, your wallpaper, paint, your shoes and very likely some of the clothes on your back. Now walk up and down your town’s high street, during the day. Count everything made from plastic.
Next time you type stuff on your computer, look at those keys .. Are they wood? Glass ? No, they are PLASTIC .. Plastic is made from O I L – Oil. If was not for the research done by Big Oil and Petro-Chem you would still be using pen and paper. So there is nothing wrong with Big oil, they have done a lot for the economics of the world.
Now, your website. You know? I agree with some of that stuff.. We should spend more cleaning up the environment – nothing wrong with that, I support that. Someone else mentioned that we hve been clearing the environment up for years, I remember the London smogs – they were really scary. I wonder if anyone has researched if cleaning up the environment has anything to do with warming – if black soot reflects sunlight cooling the planet, then removal of it from the atmosphere would have the opposite effect, no ?
If the money spent on AGW was redirected to cleaning up the rivers, air and land then we would be even cleaner – and probably warmer still.
@Patricia: This is a tangent, but it may amuse you. In my “Notes From Skull Island” I list nearly 20 things that we climate contrarians (“skeptic” is too mild a term) would be doing differently if we were in fact well organized and well funded, as we are sometimes accused of being:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/05/out-manned-but-what-happened-to-the-science/#comment-760039
Another (very incomplete) list I assembled is a Denier’s Credo–40 items we deny–starting at this comment and continuing thru several more downthread:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/23/climate-ugliness-goes-nuclear/#comment-1155993
Here is a highly concentrated list of contrarian arguments by Lucy Skywalker:
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Curious.htm
Jimbo assembled this amusing list of six contradictory threats from GW:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/24/another-mankind-as-evil-carbonator-even-way-back-then-study/#comment-581958
God bless E.M.Smith, Anthony Watts and all those who contribute to the making of WUWT. And a special thanks to trolls like Pat Ravasio who really get the comments going, too bad though that the trolls do not add anything substantive to the discussion.
I decided to Google the name Pat Ravasio; I found this on Twitter:
“Working to end #climatechange denial. Hoping American leaders will face the clearly evident fossil fuel induced environmental crisis threatening life on earth.”
So just another typical econut with little idea of reality and no idea of the science.
Kev-in-UK is right to say: “Stop feeding the troll.”
My apologies for doing just that.
DirkH says:
December 9, 2012 at 4:01 am
Whenever I mention blocking highs the greenoids seem to think we’ll be able to get greenoid power through the interconnects. Non of them seem to know that a blocking high can cover the whole of Europe for weeks on end, and it’s not just in Winter. Heatwaves do the same.
DaveE.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
More resources over at the world’s most viewed web site on climate and global warming.
Remember, cold kills; warmer is better.
Pat Ravasio says:
December 8, 2012 at 7:07 pm
“I’m getting alot of kick back, but still no one who expresses any true heart for a cause that clicks with me as legitimate.”
Well, I’m against cronyism (this might annoy you as you are probably an Obama voter) and I see the renewables subsidies (which, as I mentioned, cost every member of the German public 250 EUR a year) and all the rest (cap & trade, carbon taxes, Kyoto) as the biggest con of history; and the science of CO2AGW as a politication of science with the purpose of enabling this supermassive fraud.
If that leaves you cold, you are surely very much in favor of James Hansen rewriting the temperature history of the planet and of falsification of the science that we used to have.
As liberals often proclaim that there is no objective reality I wouldn’t be too surprised by that. I’m an objectivist and I will have nothing of that; exactly nothing.
James Hansen’s rewriting of temperature history enables NASA to collect 1.2 bn USD a year, BTW:
http://notrickszone.com/2012/04/12/nasa-abdalatis-response-to-50-esteemed-professionals-is-managerial-negligence-an-embarrassment/#comment-92515
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/FY12-climate-fs.pdf
That’s why his superiors don’t reprimand him for his scientific malfeasance. A small facet of the worldwide con.
I think useful “proxies” for snow and rain in the southwest would be the water levels of Lake Mead and Lake Powell. This data seems to have emotional traction with the CAGW crowd.
Pat,
If you want to stop using fossil-fuel-based power, no one will stop you. The rest of us are content to live with our central AC and heating and internal combustion engines. You are free to return to the days of the horse and buggy, ice boxes and wood stoves. I’m sure the Amish will welcome you with open arms.
CO2 is an essential plant nutrient that supports all animal life on our planet. Larger amounts in the atmosphere boost food production and are good for humanity. We should give financial incentives and other rewards to those companies that emit the most.
P.S.: There is not a shred of empirical or experimental evidence to support the theory of runaway anthropogenic global warming. The science is all on the side of the “skeptics” (i.e. climate realists).
You guys are doing nothing but encouraging Pat Ravasio to continue hijacking threads on this blog. You have given her more responses to her two posts on this blog than she has received from a year of postings on her own blog. Likewise, we have probably given her site more traffic in the past week than it has seen in a year. If she continues to troll for attention, ignore her.
MikeB says:
December 9, 2012 at 4:23 am
If I may play Devil’s advocate, … Water vapour does not rise to the Top of the Atmosphere”
————————————
No one believes that, Mike.
No one believes the water vapor emits at top of atmosphere.
People who try to get you to agree to the infrared-opaque particles – gas particles – warming us,
have to get you to claim that these gas molecules in blocking a significant portion of the sun’s out-bound energy – that’s inbound to us –
these molecules are only a sparse population of infrared interactive actors, in the first place.
And, the sun’s wall of incoming infrared is a flood of incoming light. Every time there’s an impingement on an individual gas molecule in the lower atmosphere where the refrigerative cycle goes on, there’s a whole lot more infrared light impinging on it from above, than from below.
The sun’s input, in total energy, from it’s side, is far, far greater. So, each time a molecule of gas deflects an energy charge from below, back downward
it deflects many more, before they ever get to earth. So the net effect is cooling.
Let me put it to you in terms that might be more simple.
I’m in a video game. I have a gun, which fires rounds at many zombies coming at me from one direction, and I have teammates beside me who occasionally walk in front of me as I shoot zombies. Ok? So, sometimes I shoot a teammate, but I shoot many more zombies than teamates, and ostensibly this killing more zombies than teamates, is winning. Ok? the object is to make sure that you don’t lose as many teammates as zombies do, and none of your teammates is killed by zombies, only you kill them, because well, you’re watching tv and the teammates are generated by the game so they don’t mind if they’re killed off because they’re just artificial
At the end of the game, I look at the scoreboard. Now, whichever side has the most losses, loses, side with the least losses, wins. I find I killed 250 zombies, but that I accidentally shot 6 of the computer generated teammates as they got in the way.
Most kills is winning,
Least kills is losing,
The course of the game led to 250 of the zombies dying,
the course of the game led to 25 of my side dying,
Who won?
We KNOW we have each, individual gas molecule, where EVER it is, high or low – rejecting more from the sun side, than from the earth side, simply because there are a lot more light charges coming from the sun’s side, than earth’s.
Now each time, I put up, one more gas molecule,
it’s true I block one more earth-generated energy charge,
back toward myself,
but the total number of energy charges I reject, is from much more concentrated stream from the sun’s side, t. Therefore,
I wind up blocking, many more from, the sun’s side.
To a global warmer, blocking more energy from the sun side, than from the earth side,
is called heating
the planet.
And if I put up more gas, and block 35% of the sun’s incoming radiation, instead of the 30% it’s blocking now, that’s called WARMING.
Yes it is. To Green-House Gassy-Odies
that’s called ‘Heating.’
Greenhouse Gassers,
want you to look at them and tell them that,
if you have a shoe box in space, with a 5 watt light bulb in it,
that if you slowly turn it,
having put a thermal sensor on the surface of that box then spray paint over it, black,
wrapping the shoe box in light screen material that blocks ten percent of the energy from the sun, makes the surface of that box, get hot.
And that by taking an additional piece of screen, which blocks another 10% of sunlight energy
and wrap it around the box too, thus blocking 20% of the sun’s energy,
the surface of the box is going to now get hotter.
And that if I took yet another piece of screening material and blocked a total of 30% of the sun’s light from striking my shoe box,
GoofyGas Groupies want you to believe them and answer on a test question at school,
that the surface of the box, is now hotter, than before,
when you were allowing 100% impingement of energy.
No?
Let’s see…
Oh I know –
The claim is,
” the earth might be putting out more heat than the sun from inside the amosphere. So if it blocks equally both ways, maybe it really IS warming, by this time.”
Well, there’s a way to check on this Hansen-Odie-Ology.
Take a thermal sensor, lay it on a rock. Paint it black.
Take another thermal sensor, lay it on the other side of the rock, paint it black.
Lay it in the sun with the top exposed to sunlight, the bottom exposed to radiation from the earth into the rock’s surface.
After several days, return and check the total average energy into the top of the rock (sun side) AFTER the sun’s energy has made it all the way through the atmosphere
and total average energy from the earth, into the bottom of the rock.
Do you think there is anywhere near as much energy pinging off the earth side of your rock, or local gas molecule, as pinging off the sun’s side?
In the video game you had a simple equation: to win you must kill more zombies.
In the Greenhouse Gas Fantasy you have a simple question. Do you add more heat if you add more gas?
In the video game you have a simple question: if you fire twice as many bullets next game and kill 500 zombies,
but you kill 50 teammates,
are you going to lose that game?
Greenhouse Gas Fantasizers believe that if you reject 10 but cause yourself to retain one,
you don’t have a 9 to 1 ratio rejected/kept.
Kev-in-Uk says:
December 9, 2012 at 6:44 am
..[sure . . but you can ignore her or put her right, that is your right here too . . mod]..
I and others have tried that elsewhere – in a pleasant manner, but for some reason this doesn’t seem to matter?.
Now, I may not be the sharpest, wittiest or most educated commenter on WUWT, but I can certainly spot a troll, especially ehen they are repeating the same basic questions on different threads in an OBVIOUS flaming or disruptive type manner. I have no desire to fall out with any mods, but to be honest, I would have thought it was your job to try and reduce trolling? I was just making an observation that I thought you guys would have made for yourselves!
see Peter Millars comment above too……
I certainly don’t have the time, desire or inclination to ‘put her right’ when it is clear she is simply flaming the thread.
regards
Kev
Pat Ravasio says:
December 8, 2012 at 5:41 pm
If not, please explain what you have to gain by continuing to deny that there are environmental problems that could be solved by a reduction in the use of fossil fuels? Can you justify that the continued and increasing use of fossil fuels is a good thing for our planet?
=======
No one is denying that “there are environmental problems that could be solved by a reduction in the use of fossil fuels”.
The real question is “what is the alternative”? What measures do you propose to replace fossil fuels? The problem is that our economies are reliant on fossil fuels and without a cost effective alternative we end up trading away our prosperity in an attempt to change the weather decades in the future.
Simply asking the poor people of the world to do without, such as is proposed in the Kyoto Treaty and similar “Cap and Trade” schemes are no solution. This simply gives the rich a license to pollute, while holding back billions of people on the planet from enjoying the benefits enjoyed by the rich.
While it could be argued that a tax on pollution is a better solution than “Cap and Trade”, we already have enormous taxes on fuel. Check for yourself how much of the price of a gallon of gasoline is taxes. This has not stopped the use of fossil fuel. Instead it raises the cost of everything, driving manufacturing and jobs offshore to places such as China and India.
High taxes force companies to relocate to places with lower taxes so that they can be competitive on today’s global economy. How can a company pay high taxes and compete with a company that pays low taxes. The problem is that by driving companies to relocate in China and India to remain competitive, this reduces the jobs at home and reduces the tax base.
This leads to deficit spending as we see in the US, with enormous debt burden placed on future generations. With this debt comes great risk to the future prosperity of the US, as more and more of the taxes paid go to servicing the interest on the debt, until the country is bankrupt.
While at the same time, the pollution that is no longer created in the US, but rather is now being created in China and India, that pollution does not remain offshore. It is carried by the wind back to the US. So in the end, these policies have not reduced pollution, they have simply sacrificed the financial well being of the citizens of the US.
Kev-in-UK,
Judging from the fact that ‘What did I tell you’ was able to post his gibberish, it is apparent that the moderators will allow just about any post to stand as long as it doen not violate a few simple rules.
There is probably no way to ‘put her (Pat) right’ since she, like most trolls, is only posting to get the attention here that she fails to attract on her own blog. As I suggested earlier, to ignore her and therefore deny her the attention she wants is the best way to get rid of her.
kirkmyers says:
December 9, 2012 at 8:22 am
Pat,
You are free to return to the days of the horse and buggy, ice boxes and wood stoves.
===========
The Great Horse Manure Crisis of the late 1800’s points out the problem in trying to return to the horse and buggy age. Before fossil fuel became widespread, cities we quite literally being buried in horse manure. With this manure came flies, with the flies came disease.
The pollution from wood stoves is much worse than the pollution from fossil fuel. In many cities you are banned from using wood stoves to heat your house because of the air quality problems it creates. That doesn’t begin to consider the number of forests that would need to be cut down to replace fossil fuels.
When someone says they want to get rid of fossil fuel, the question to be asked is what do you propose to use in its place? How do you know the alternative will not cause worse problems?
What people forget is that nothing is completely good or completely bad. Every solution you can propose to reduce fossil fuels will in itself has its own problems. When you eliminate one problem you create new problems in its place, always.
For example, when you go to the doctor to cure an ailment, you may have solve the problem of the illness, but have created a new problem of paying the doctor’s bill. What you hope is the doctor’s bill is less of a problem than the ailment. If its is not you don’t go to the doctor.
Equally, if you go to the doctor with an infected finger, you don’t want the doctor to cut off the hand as a cure. The hand comes with a lot of benefits that will be next to impossible to replace once it is gone.
Pat Ravasio
It is refreshing to read a rational, clear viewpoint from a skeptic — without any insults, name calling or childish bullying behavior. You give me hope!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Excuse me? Did you read your own first comment in this thread? The one where you made any number of ugly insinuations, accusations, and asked questions on the assumption of facts not in evidence? Then you complain about childish bullying behaviour?
Your inability to actually discuss in any meaningful manner the substance of the points made to you says more about you than all the words on your blog.
Confronted with facts the falsify their position, an adult admits and learns from their mistakes.
A coward runs away in silence.
A fool continues to argue anyway.
A child whines that things just aren’t fair.
[snip – your angry diatribes about “dope smoking hippies and other trailer trash talk really isn’t appropriate here, and adds nothing to the conversation, and you’ve been warned previously. Take a hike, permanently – Anthony]
ferd berple says:
December 9, 2012 at 8:36 am
“No one is denying that “there are environmental problems that could be solved by a reduction in the use of fossil fuels”.”
Arguable. With car catalysts, that Urea injection into Diesel engines, soot filters for Diesel cars and flue gas scrubbers in coal power plants we’re pretty much done with it in my opinion. Entering the area of dimishing returns / negligible impact fast from there.
MikeB says:
December 9, 2012 at 4:23 am
“Water vapour does not rise to the Top of the Atmosphere (TOA). It rises and as the air cools it condenses. It gives up its latent heat and warms the atmosphere. The atmosphere then re-radiates back to the surface of the Earth. ”
It does not have to. Before it condenses it is a greenhouse gas with a broad absorption spectrum up to wavenumber 4000 where there is no competition from other gases. That means where it is at its highest it can radiate to space unhindered. Kirchhoff’s law applies, absorption and emission happen to equal amounts, thermalization and dethermalization happen to equal amounts (assuming local thermal equilibrium).
Thanks to EM Smith and others for your great responses. I may very well point to them when trying to educate a “true believer” as so many of them (like Pat) still wander around in total ignorance of the facts.
Thanks also to JTF for another great reference page. You have done some great work and it truly is appreciated.
I’ll also second the notion that many of us accepted AGW at one time. I did as well until I studied the issue about 5 years ago. We can only hope Pat does the same.
Finally, I don’t believe EM Smith was denying the existence of downward radiation. I believe it exists and that the GHE is real (as I believe Mr. Smith does) … it’s just part of the full story. Here’s a couple of facts to keep in mind:
1) Radiation goes in a random direction. However, when it goes downward it is usually reabsorbed sooner that when it goes upward. The typical path length of always longer heading toward space due to reduced density. Hence, the net result of radiation is an average movement of energy towards space.
2) Re-radiation is not always in the same frequency as absorbed radiation. For example, CO2 may not be able to absorb radiation coming from another CO2 molecule. Some re-radiation is generated in frequencies that are absorbed very poorly in the atmosphere.
3) Increases in CO2 have a separate cooling effect. After all it is GHGs that radiate most of the energy away from the planet. Increasing the concentration of a cooling gas must produce some additional cooling. At some point in the atmosphere CO2 changes from having a net warming effect to a net cooling effect. Since the lower altitudes are dominated by H2O it’s very possible the the overall effect of CO2 increases is net cooling (at today’s concentrations).
Kev-in-Uk says:
December 9, 2012 at 8:32 am
I think you will find replies to trolls follow an exponential decay function following the first appearance. First, notice. Second, reply. Third, the fall-off begins. Rapid descent.
So, Kev, relax and enjoy the balmy MET-office induced weather.
Great addition to the Reference Pages Just The Facts. Thanks!
I know that everything said when blogging can make one seem pretentious, but in ALL SERIOUSNESS, I REALLY APOLOGIZE for saying all that.
In truth, I forgot I’m on a public forum and simply dredged up every bombastic, absolutist term I could for people who believe in global warming, while literally, leaning over laughing, in my chair, at my Archie Bunker (an old-time WAY right-wing situation comedy ogre) imitation.
Very sorry and Merry United Democratic Mobocracy Season,
and may everyone have a very happy
Respiration Stamp Renewal Holiday !
ferd berple says:
December 9, 2012 at 9:03 am
The Great Horse Manure Crisis
Here you go:
http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/578.html
“The following is an extended excerpt from “The Centrality of the Horse to the Nineteenth-Century American City,” . . . “The normal city horse produced between fifteen and thirty-five pounds of manure a day and about a quart of urine, usually distributed along the course of its route or deposited in the stable.”
Pat Ravasio opines:
December 8, 2012 at 7:16 pm
I am only seeking the truth, and remain open to your input.
Sorry Pat, but the overwhelming preponderance of evidence shows otherwise. Truth is obviously the furthest thing from your mind. Your own trollish behavior has outed you.
Here’s a light-hearted, light-shedding list of mine:
If Global Warming Didn’t Exist, It Would Be Necessary to Invent It:
… To lift climatology out of its backwater status …
… To increase research funding for Academia …
… To move environmentalism from the fringes to the center of social concern …
… To justify increased media coverage of environmental issues …
… To give enviro-groups a powerful fund-raising and consciousness-raising tool …
… and allow them access to the levers of national and international power …
… To fund alternative energy developers and researchers …
… To justify & refresh the raison d’être of the EPA & UN …
… To give activist & green parties a vote-getting wedge issue …
… and a case-study justification for their habitual “hammer” (increased regulation and taxation) …
… To provide at-a-loss “engagé/enragé” types with a new stick with which to bash the beastly bourgeoise…
… To transfer wealth from the West to the South …
… To justify the de facto political empowerment of a sector of the scientific / academic elite, setting a precedent for the subsequent empowerment of other sectors of that elite.*
(* See Pareto on “the circulation of the elites.”)
So why not “warm” to global warming, if you’re:
… a climatologist?
… a university administrator?
… an environmentalist?
… an environmental reporter?
… an official of an environmental organization?
… a worker or investor in an alternative energy company?
… an environmental regulator?
… a UN official?
… a socialist?
… a would-be true believer?
… a country in the global South?
… a bigshot in a boffins’ brigade?
For such as those, what’s not to like about “climatism”? It’s all upside—a gravy train that’s glory-bound. It would be tempting to get aboard, wouldn’t it? (Especially after others did so, threatening to leave you on The Wrong Side.)
The problem of extreme weather, is that the concept is moronic.
Whats the extremes? Are volcanoes weather? Then Krakatoa would be an extreme.(yet a baby by geologic standards)
Typhoon, hurricanes, tornadoes, any kind of storm, these are weather not extremes. There has been worse and there will be worse. So “Extreme Weather” listing will be very short.
Now if the intention is to mock the faithful well I’m up for that.
I am nauseated by the Weather Channel here in Canada, announcing “Active Weather” and “Extreme weather”.
Their way of insulting their viewers I guess. I leave the sound off when I flick thro.
Now the beauty of the alarmed ones choosing this meme, is it alienates the public who have been ignoring the dubious science of CAGW/CC.
Every-one can recognize the traditional symptoms of, irrational fear of the weather, this is part of our history and has a rich folklore.
Equating everyday storms to extremes is buying into the zealots faith, of wetting one-self about the weather, perhaps we should encourage the alarmists as this is going to help them score a series of spectacular own goals.
These are the people who brought us climate change and active weather after all.
As for feeding the troll, why are there so few coming out to play?
I used to read for hours, too much time at times, just for the smack down comments replying to the wailings of the touchy-feely save the ………(fad of choice) trolls.
What can I do to encourage a better quality of troll?
Posting like Tom Fuller’s do seem to bring ’em forth.
@DirkH December 9, 2012 at 9:40 am
Dirk, I’m not sure what your point is. Of course water vapour is a strong greenhouse gas, and as such it will radiate back to the surface of the Earth and keep it warmer.
At high altitude the effect of the greenhouse gases is to cool the atmosphere by radiating to space. But we don’t live at high altitude. We live on the surface and it is the warming there which is important. Greenhouse gases make the surface warmer.
Richard M December 9, 2012 at 9:42 am
Your point 2 is not correct. When a C02 molecule, for example, absorbs radiation at 15 micron, it moves temporarily to a higher energy state. When it reverts to ground state the wavelength of the emitted radiation must be the same as that of the absorbed radiation (aside from Doppler effects etc.). At low altitude the re-emitted radiation will most likely be re-absorbed by another C02 molecule within a distance of 1 metre (95%).
“These amazing birds’ eye views of incredible properties made me feel just a bit green with envy. I am trying to be thankful that I don’t have to clean or pay for upkeep on any of these!”
Patricia and Bob Ravasio on facebook writing about the houses of celebrities.
Patricia Ravasio sells houses. To be true to her principles she must be selling ‘eco-houses’, powered entirely by wind and solar containing nothing made from petroleum and manufactured entirely by craftsmen using their hands and basic materials, such as wood and cow dung. Viewings must be by horse and cart. Or are we being exposed to another example of eco-hypocracy: “Do as I say not as I do….”
And just to help Pat get to grips with her desired goal of saving spaceship earth, here is a partial list of things she must never ever use because they are made from……oil:
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/classroom/wwo/petroleum.pdf
John F. Hultquist says:
December 9, 2012 at 9:49 am
You’re absolutely right of course – the ‘ignore’ function of the brain is fairly easy to use!
john robertson says:
December 9, 2012 at 10:23 am
You are right too – at least to a degree. The extreme weather meme has been entirely promoted by the alarmists as it fits their agenda; when in reality the term unusual weather may be far more appropriate for a large number of so called ‘events’ (as in, ‘its mild for December’ or ‘it’s a wet summer this year’, etc). On the other hand, the extreme weather meme does kind of shoot the alarmists in the foot too, as, generally speaking, there is always a previous ‘worse’ event recorded before the rise of CO2 and AGW !! – making a mockery of their AGW alarmism.
Pat Ravasio says: “If you are fueled by anything other than greed and an interest in advancing your own interests, could you please state what your motivation is, so that those of us with open minds might begin to understand?”
Being environmentally conscious is extremely important, but in my opinion the “health” of the planet is secondary to the “health” of humanity. Clearly the two are interrelated, but the planet is going to be fine for quite some time. I remain uncertain about the health of the human race.
There is a great deal of science related to mass extinctions on earth and none of the theories involve man-made C02 or even similar naturally occurring levels of CO2. From my perspective far greater threats to humanity exist such as: impacts from space, gamma-ray bursts, massive volcanism, glaciation and so on.
I believe establishing a human presence in space increases our chance of survival. To establish that presence we must adequately address nearly every environmental challenge we currently face on this planet, but we can’t do so if we squander our limited resources.
When I see us wasting those limited resources on “bad” or “politicized” environmental science it bothers me. I think it should bother everyone and that we need to focus our efforts on science that can truly serve and protect humanity in the long run. Establishing a presence off earth will allow us to conquer the environmental challenges we face here, as well as protect humanity.
Now since you asked a series of highly biased questions, here’s one back at you… Why do you favor squandering our limited resources and placing the long term survival of the human race at risk?
I look forward to hearing your answer, or possibly your acknowledgement that they way you characterized your questions was pointless. Either will do.
With regard to the reference pages, I am fascinated by the work of Scafetta and Seifert on cosmic cycles and their influence on the climate.
MikeB says:
December 9, 2012 at 10:46 am
“Dirk, I’m not sure what your point is. Of course water vapour is a strong greenhouse gas, and as such it will radiate back to the surface of the Earth and keep it warmer.
At high altitude the effect of the greenhouse gases is to cool the atmosphere by radiating to space. But we don’t live at high altitude. We live on the surface and it is the warming there which is important. Greenhouse gases make the surface warmer. ”
My point was to explain that water vapor can radiate directly to space without having to rise to the top of the atmosphere.
As for your insistence that there’s a problem because we’re living at the surface and radiating away high up in the atmosphere doesn’t help us: This is nonsense. For 30 years the warmists tell us that heat accumulates through cumulative radiative imbalance and now you tell me that that’s not the problem at all?
How fast does it get cold at night where you live when there are no clouds? And why? Guess what – radiative cooling. Takes a few hours and reaches minimum temperatures before sunrise.
No accumulation.
What happens is that the mean free path length of an IR photon say in the CO2 absorption/emission band is about 23 m at ground level and obviously gets longer the thinner air gets; so you can compute the number of absorptions and re-emissions until such a photon reaches space. As an excited molecule quickly re-releases its excitation via a photon of the same wavelength (Ignoring thermalizations and dethermalizations here as they happen to equal amounts anyway) – quickly meaning within milliseconds – it doesn’t take long and that’s the reason why radiative cooling at night works in the first place.
MikeB says:
December 9, 2012 at 10:46 am
” At low altitude the re-emitted radiation will most likely be re-absorbed by another C02 molecule within a distance of 1 metre (95%).”
Ok, I said 23m.. who’s right…
Nasif Nahle has some computations saying 33m:
http://www.biocab.org/Mean_Free_Path_Length_Photons.html
mfo says:
December 9, 2012 at 10:48 am
““These amazing birds’ eye views of incredible properties made me feel just a bit green with envy. I am trying to be thankful that I don’t have to clean or pay for upkeep on any of these!”
Patricia and Bob Ravasio on facebook writing about the houses of celebrities.
Patricia Ravasio sells houses. ”
Ah, so she’s a guilt-ridden limousine liberal.
Ray says:
December 9, 2012 at 8:28 am
Have a heart! I wouldn’t want to drive her to physical prostitution!
We’ve all got to make a buck.
DaveE.
Maybe what we need is a resource page called “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions”?
Q: Why don’t you listen to the climate scientists? If you had a bad cough, would you ask the advice of a plumber? Or a doctor?
A; I’d ask a doctor. If he told me that the only cure was to cut off all my arms and legs, I’d seek another opinion. If every doctor in the world said the same thing, I’d still do a helluva lot of my own research before telling them to go ahead.
Q; Why don’t you support cleaning up the environment?
A; I do. What I don’t support is strangling the means by which billions of people are clothed, sheltered and fed every day. Why do you support impoverishment and starvation of billions of people?
Q; Why do you support the evil oil industry?
A: I don’t. I support the regular oil industry, the one that allows me to heat my home and buy food at a reasonable cost, which delivers good and services from anywhere in the world they are to anywhere in the world they are needed, and which has lifted billions out of poverty and starvation. Which one do you support?
Q: Why don’t you explain your reasons for supporting the Heritage Foundation?
A; Why don’t you explain your reasons for supporting eugenics?
Q: Why are skeptics so unreasonable?
A; Because the earth isn’t warming up, severe weather is becoming neither more severe nor more frequent, seal level rise isn’t accelerating, Antarctic ice is growing almost as fast as Arctic ice is receding, and the net effect of warming appears to be beneficial in any event. What’s the unreasonable part?
…and so on…
I like to be a contrarian, Pat, to make people like you think.
Has it worked?
I hope so. (On some, it works, on others, it doesn’t. Don’t disappoint us, ok?)
DirkH says:
December 9, 2012 at 11:50 am:
Nasif Nahle has some computations saying 33m:
http://www.biocab.org/Mean_Free_Path_Length_Photons.html
That is an interesting paper. Note the conclusion:
(quote)
“Conclusions
The results obtained by experimentation coincide with the results obtained by applying astrophysics formulas. Therefore, both methodologies are reliable to calculate the total emissivity/absorptivity of any gas of any planetary atmosphere.
At an average density, the atmospheric water vapor allows quantum/waves to cross the troposphere to the tropopause in 0.0245 s, i.e. 2.45 cs (centiseconds). By comparing the ability of water vapor to avoid that quantum/waves escape towards the outer space (0.5831 s) with the ability of CO2 (0.0049 s), I can affirm that the role of CO2 on warming the atmosphere or the surface is not possible according to Physics Laws.
The water vapor is five times more efficient on intercepting quantum/waves than the carbon dioxide. Therefore, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere works like a coolant of the atmospheric water vapor.
By considering also that the carbon dioxide has by far a lower total emissivity than the water vapor I conclude that the carbon dioxide has not an effect on climate changes or warming periods on the Earth.
The low thermal diffusivity of carbon dioxide makes of it to be an inefficient substance to adjust its temperature to the temperature of its surroundings. Consequently, the carbon dioxide can never reach the thermal equilibrium with respect to the remainder molecules of the air.”
(end quote)
For those who have called for proof that CO2 is not warming the atmosphere, this paper seems to offer that proof. Don;t take my word for it, see for yourself. The paper is quite short so it is an easy read.
David A. Evans says:
December 9, 2012 at 12:15 pm :
Have a heart! I wouldn’t want to drive her to physical prostitution!
We’ve all got to make a buck.
LOL!
Here are the full 33 threats. It has to be said not all are contradictory, maybe half. It’s worth a laugh anyway. This is what global warming funding has led to.
E.M.Smith says:
December 8, 2012 at 11:02 pm
Pat Ravasio says:
*
E.M. Smith, thank you so much for what you wrote there.
Anthony? I was glued to E.M. Smith’s response to Pat. Any chance of making it a featured post? Well worth the read and shouldn’t be lost in all the chatter. Certainly sums it up for me and SO explains the situation – a good strong focus of bright BRIGHT light shining into the darkness of AGW.
Pat Ravasio says:
December 8, 2012 at 5:41 pm
My question remains: What is motivating this intensive, daily effort by you and your supporters to deny that there is environmental damage done to our ecosystem by our use of fossil fuels?
=================================================================
I’m sure you’ve already been responded to, but…..
Extreme Weather! Burning Fossil Fuels! The Planet is in danger!
Such claims are aimed at naive children who haven’t lived long. The claims are made by not-so-naive oldsters who see a way to make a buck or, most likely, gain control over others.
When have there ever not been storms? History is full of records of “extreme” weather events. Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow? Hitler’s attack on Moscow? The Battle of the Bulge? The Great Dust Bowl? Galveston? The winter hurricane that hit New York? (I forget what it was called.) I’m sure that others could add to the list of “extreme” weather events. (The “Divine Wind? The Spanish Armada?) Some of them changed history.
All of these have two things in common: Man had nothing to do with them occurring and the only thing Man could do was deal with them.
Today, the former is still true but some figured out a way to convince some that Man can actually win a war against weather. How deceitfully arrogant can someone be? Deceitful if they know better. Arrogant if they think that Man has the ability to control the Global Climate.
Dirk and Ray,
Gentlemen, when I read anything by Nasif Nahle ( or any of the sky dragons for that matter ) I immediately become aware that I am reading total garbage.
If you don’t, then I can’t help you.
Pat Ravasio says:
December 8, 2012 at 5:41 pm
“If not, please explain what you have to gain by continuing to deny that there are environmental problems that could be solved by a reduction in the use of fossil fuels?”
You changed the topic. The topic was extreme weather events. If you care to rephrase your question and return to the topic I will be happy to answer it for you. In general, the answer will be that I am dedicated to ensuring that future generations understand scientific method so that they can use it to criticize bogus science. Given the behavior of pro-AGW scientists, I do not have the means to ensure that future generations have the same respect for scientists that my generation once had.
There are environmental problems that could be solved by a reduction in the use of fossil fuels. There is too much asphalt near the beach on the east coast of Florida. Driving gasoline to $10 a gallon would solve that problem in a decade or two.
MikeB,
Thanx for your opinion. But I can’t help you there. Comments are either factual, or they are not. It doesn’t matter who made the comment, as you presume.
•
Pat Ravasio: How does it feel to be a total hypocrite? To sell houses requires a lot of driving. I know, I was a real estate broker for many years. Houses, and all they contain, are products of fossil fuels. By selling houses you are causing much more fossil fuel use than the average person. So really, how does it feel to be one of the world’s biggest hypocrites?
Go ahead, try to justify your hypocrisy. I need a laugh.
MikeB says:
Your point 2 is not correct. When a C02 molecule, for example, absorbs radiation at 15 micron, it moves temporarily to a higher energy state. When it reverts to ground state the wavelength of the emitted radiation must be the same as that of the absorbed radiation (aside from Doppler effects etc.). At low altitude the re-emitted radiation will most likely be re-absorbed by another C02 molecule within a distance of 1 metre (95%).
My wording was poor as I was trying to encompass all types of radiation. Your point is true for immediate re-radiation of absorbed radiation. Not true for radiation created by kinetic collisions which can be at many frequencies. And, interestingly enough, there are more collisions at the warmer, denser low altitudes than at higher altitudes.
Do you know the % of radiation absorption events that end up as re-radiation vs. thermalization? Seems like it would be an important number to know for anyone studying our atmosphere. Also, what is the range of frequencies as that would also figure in the ability of the atmosphere to contain the energy. Must be documented somewhere.
Mike B,
I would like to think that I am not beyond help. Perhaps I just need a little enlightenment. Would you please laborate on the meaning of “sky dragons” and why you so readily dismiss Nahle’s paper? I’m not being critical of your position, I would simply like to understand where you are coming from. Thank you in advance.
Well, I confess to being motivated by self interest, as are many others here, I think, My self interests include reliable affordable electricity, reliable access to clean burning gasoline, affordable food supplies, and access to affordable consumer goods. I like being able to log onto the internet, watch television, visit people who live more than a mile away in an afternoon, eat foods when they are out of season, and buy products that are made outside my town. I do not like the idea of growing all my own food or having to “process” it myself, or growing the fibers to weave cloth to make my own clothes. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Affordable reliable energy is not inconsistent with a clean environment, but lack of affordable reliable energy is usually inconsistent with a clean environment. Look at third world countries.
Correction to my typing: Mike, would you please elaborate…?
Ray says:
December 9, 2012 at 1:43 pm
Mike B,
I would like to think that I am not beyond help. Perhaps I just need a little enlightenment. Would you please laborate on the meaning of “sky dragons” and why you so readily dismiss Nahle’s paper? I’m not being critical of your position, I would simply like to understand where you are coming from. Thank you in advance.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
The “sky dragons” are a group of pretend scientists including Nahle, Cotton, Postma, who contend that co2 can’t cause warming of the surface. They go through all sorts of gymnastics to “prove” their position, and this paper is a case in point. A bunch of math based on no supporting observational data followed by conclusions that are not supported by the math. I could as easily count all the trucks and cars on a highway, prove that there are way more trucks than cars, prove that the average speed of trucks is slower than that of cars, and say that this proves that trucks slow down the delivery of goods. Garbage from one end to the other.
Peter Miller says:
December 9, 2012 at 7:59 am
I decided to Google the name Pat Ravasio; I found this on Twitter:
“Working to end #climatechange denial. Hoping American leaders will face the clearly evident fossil fuel induced environmental crisis threatening life on earth.”
So just another typical econut with little idea of reality and no idea of the science.
Kev-in-UK is right to say: “Stop feeding the troll.”
My apologies for doing just that.
*
Actually, I have found this whole thread to be hugely enjoyable. I think Pat has done us a service in opening up the opportunity for so many wonderful responses. Given that Pat is a troll and, clearly by her own words (I’m assuming they are her own words) on Twitter (quoted by Peter Miller above), far from “open-minded”, the considered replies have been incredibly patient and polite. Anyone new here would learn the ropes and be indulged with all the science they ever needed, all in one thread. I love it!
The thing that secured me as a devoted fan to WUWT is not only rational debate but data on the table. Tons of it. The Warmists, on the other hand, SPEAK of their data but cannot SHOW any. Try asking! The closer you look, the more tightly they squirrel it away and tell you (in effect) “No, it’s holy data, only the most Blessed of the Blessed can gaze upon its magnificence,” – that’s if you don’t get the “HOW DARE YOU ASK?!” blast first.
I want to add that E.M. Smith is in top form today, but so many of you are hitting the nail on the head, it is a complete pleasure to read all this. I’m supposed to be getting stuff done, but I am glued to the computer and loving every second of it.
Group hug to the lot of you. 🙂 And thanks, Anthony, I know this thread has gone a bit astray, but it is hugely interesting.
Richard, it is true that a molecule such as C02 can acquire an ‘excited’ state through collisions with other air molecules, but on reverting from that state back to its ground state it will still emit radiation exclusively at around 15 microns. It doesn’t ‘know’ what put it in the ‘excited’ state in the first place, whether it was from a kinetic collision or from absorbing a 15 micron photon.
It is precisely because of the ability of greenhouse gases to acquire energy from non-active molecules such as nitrogen and oxygen that they serve to cool the atmosphere at high altitudes.
If you look at a plot of C02 absorption you will see it has an absorptivity (and thus emissivity) of zero for most of the mid-infrared spectrum. The exceptions being line spectra at 2.7 micron, 4.3 micron and a band between 14 and 16 microns. CO2 also has weak absorption lines around 2 micron which attenuate the incoming solar radiation slightly. C02 can emit only at these wavelengths, irrespective of whether it acquired energy through absorption or via collisions.
Ray,
I think davidmhoffer has answered your question better than I could.
A.D. Everard says:
December 9, 2012 at 2:17 pm
Actually, I have found this whole thread to be hugely enjoyable. I think Pat has done us a service in opening up the opportunity for so many wonderful responses.
——————————-
Spot on A.D., to the point where I’m considering asking her if she is actually funded by the Heartland Institute.
Pat Ravasio says: December 9, 2012 at 12:20 am
Thank you, Roger. That was the most intelligent reply I received all evening. I’ll read up on your points. I am on the fence about nuclear. Some former energy purists, like Stewart Brand have come to this way of thinking because they know it is the easiest path to a manageable C02 level, and they believe there isn’t enough time to fully shift to renewables. They may be right. It is refreshing to read a rational, clear viewpoint from a skeptic — without any insults, name calling or childish bullying behavior. You give me hope!
Shall we take this as confirmation that you cannot provide any “relatively easily to find charts and graphs and numbers to support” your position?
Wow, most of you are so juvenile in your responses, it is obvious you suffer the stress of knowing you hold a losing hand. To be pitched against the prevailing views of 99% of all scientists must be difficult. While I really don’t think most of your responses justify a reply, as some are such transparent obsfuscations (not a oxymoron!) as to be embarrassing for rational thinking adults (who aren’t even scientists) I will consolidate my thoughts here.
The reason why the big oil companies have not switched to the readily tappable energy resources that are clearly available is that they have not figured out a way to meter that energy from the sun, wind, waves, etc. If they could only stick solar power into a pipe and put a meter on it before it reached our homes you can bet we’d have more solar power. Same goes for wind and water. They and you oppose development of such renewable, non polluting alternatives because you know you can’t make the same kind of money you can when you own the pipelines. And money is all that matters. Many of you point to the cost of developing alternative energies. Not one of you has talked about the costs to human health of continuing our enslavement by fossil fuels. Not one of you can justify fracking — you don’t even mention it. Not one of you can explain why the Tar Sands are a good idea. Not one of you has even ventured to talk about how deep water drilling can be made safe. I have not read one reply about the increasing temperature or acidity of our oceans. Not one explanation for why the massive methane releases from the perma frost melt is something to feel good about. You parse it all, by addressing one small sliver at a time (global warming vs climate change, for example) without ever really addressing the big picture.
Since Pat “Patricia” Ravisio has left an ugly comment, and earlier said “I’m open to your input” I thought it worth repeating what she posts on her twitter page (which she provided a link to in comments entered as “Patricia”)
http://twitter.com/patravasio
I think when one “works to end #climatechange denial” it is impossible to have an open mind. She seem like just another zealot spewing talking points who is incapable of looking past headlines. IMHO Folks, I wouldn’t waste a lot of time on her issues as she’s not able to assimilate new information.
philincalifornia says:
December 9, 2012 at 3:04 pm
A.D. Everard says:
December 9, 2012 at 2:17 pm
Actually, I have found this whole thread to be hugely enjoyable. I think Pat has done us a service in opening up the opportunity for so many wonderful responses.
——————————-
Spot on A.D., to the point where I’m considering asking her if she is actually funded by the Heartland Institute.
*
LOL. I wonder if she knows how much she is doing for rational debate, even if not directly joining in?
By the way, Anthony, great idea with the new page. This site is THE place to go for facts on climate and weather.
I keep wanting to tell you: “Power to your pen,” but in this modern era, that’s a bit behind the times, and “Power to your keyboard,” doesn’t have the same ring. But you know what I mean. 🙂
Pat Ravasio says: December 9, 2012 at 12:20 am
“I am on the fence about nuclear. Some former energy purists, like Stewart Brand have come to this way of thinking because they know it is the easiest path to a manageable C02 level, and they believe there isn’t enough time to fully shift to renewables.”
I see, Pat. You require one of your purists to change his mind before you do. Suggests that you cow to “authority”. Actually, from your contributions so far, you seem like a decent type. Why don’t you challenge yourself and do a review of the simple evidence on both sides and see if you are not left wondering about the importance of CO2. I took CAGW for granted not so long ago because it seemed like a reasonable proposition and a cursory look at the data did show that the earth had warmed over the past century by about 0.6C. No thinking sceptic disagrees that it has warmed this amount. However, once you delve into the geological evidence over long periods and historical records over the past few millennia, you come to see that, despite the lack of human industrial activity in the past, there have been extended periods of warmer climate (Scotland even grew wine grapes, the Vikings colonized and farmed in GREENland, etc. etc.) colder climate (the Little Ice Age [LIA] which bottomed in 1700s and began to then slowly warm up over the next couple of centuries (did you know the Thames froze up for a number of winters and they held “Frost Faires” on the ice, painting of children jumping off ledges of ice several feet thick and landing on floes; New York harbour froze up and NYorkers walked across the ice to Staten Island in the early 1800s; the Bosphorus froze over; the Greenlanders had to escape the advancing ice and today, the melting ice is just beginning to reveal ice covered farmsteads; mountain glaciers in Switzerland advanced into the valleys and crushed villages that were many centuries old….). Could it then be that much of the warming of the past Century or so was just natural recovery from the ice age? And what of the past major Ice age that put Canada and the northern US and Europe under 2-3 kilometres of ice? What melted the 50 million cubic kilometres of ice and raised the ocean levels by 120 meters to usher in the Holocene when our race developed and fluorished? Surely it wasn’t the CO2 from the campfires of a population of a few million people.
Pat, have I shaken your faith just a little? Be honest and brave. My next installement will talk about how the coral islands and the river deltas coped with the 120 metres of sea level rise that is unnecessarily worrying thel delta and island folk. Or google the nature and development of deltas and investigate the coral islands and how they can even be there after a 120m rise in sea level.
A.D. Everard says:
December 9, 2012 at 3:50 pm
You could say “Power to your IP” and that would be both clever and sufficient.
I note that Ravisio has declined to respond to my charge of gross hypocrisy. People do not appreciate being scolded by someone who is doing exactly the same thing they are telling others is evil.
Give up all fossil fuel use, Ravisio. Then at least you wan’t be a flaming hypocrite. You will be self-righteous, and freezing cold.☺
Self congratulation is in high order at Yahoo Live Science… agitprop.
http://news.yahoo.com/20-old-report-successfully-predicted-warming-scientists-200858337.html
“The 1990 prediction did require an adjustment, since it did not take into account natural variability — which includes the chaotic nature of weather as well as longer-term natural patterns, such as the El Niño/La Niña cycle.
When Frame and Stone took natural variability into account, they found that the observed warming was consistent with the IPCC’s best estimate for warming.”
Fudge anyone?
davidmhoffer,
Thanks for the reply. I admit that I skimmed past Nahle’s calculations to the conclusions and I posted, foot in mouth, from there. I thought that since the link claimed that the work was “peer reviewed” by the Physics department at his university then it must be correct. After all, you can’t post it on the internet if it isn’t true. (/sarc)
Of course, at the time a little nagging “voice of doubt” in the back of my mind wondered why I had not seen reference to Nahle’s conclusions before now, especially since they would support the arguments needed here to contend with the CAGW crowd. However, he was telling me what I wanted to hear so I ignored the “voice of doubt” and ran with it. I guess I was mislead, and I mislead myself, into believing in much the same way as the CAGW crowd is eager to be mislead into their beliefs. In hindsight, it makes sense now that I hadn’t seen his work referenced here before now because it is false.
So, I’m making a note to myself, again!, that the little “voice of doubt” that I sometimes hear in the back of my mind is trying to tell me that something is wrong with the situation at hand and that, to date, it has a pretty good record of being right. Perhaps if the “voice of doubt” was smacking me in the forehead instead of just whispering in the back of my mind then I would one day learn to listen. Until then…duh!, another embarrassing faux pax on my part!
Once again, thanks for having the patience and for taking the time to set me straight.
Also, to the moderators, thanks for helping with my posting problem. 🙂
Pat Ravasio says:
December 9, 2012 at 3:44 pm
That’s it, Pat. I’m through being accommodating. You have worn out your welcome and have spat in the face of many decent people that have provided responses to you that are far, far more helpful and germane than your positions will ever be. Remember the topic of your original post? It didn’t include all the other topics you’ve asserted we’ve ignored because you never asked about it. You DID, however, hijack this thread from the very beginning.
Therefore, I recommend to the moderators that you be banned for hijacking threads.
I vote no more Pat Ravasio!
It was fun, Pat. You’ve proven yourself to be less than honest. Far, far less. You’ve repeatedly demonstrated behavior that shows YOU are the juvenile one; YOU are the one holding the losing hand. Saul Alinsky tactics don’t work on a world now fully aware of Saul Alinsky.
Go back to your eco cave and survive without fossil fuels (your first rant) and consider your latest rant about evil profits and a lot more as completely bogus: Were “renewable energy” as good as you say, it wouldn’t need the substantial subsidies it currently enjoys. And you lie when stating nobody has considered health issues for I’ve seen it addressed several times above–our current state of medical practice is a function of a civilization built on cheap, abundant fuels and you’ll never see such benefit from windmills and solar. You either don’t take the time to read or your level of comprehension is deplorable.
And you obviously aren’t an engineer or you’d know how duplicitous your arguments have become. Besides, our responsibility is not to educate you, especially when you’ve taken no time or effort to become educated yourself.
So be gone with you. And have a nice day.
Incidentally, the prediction of extremes was part of the scam from the start. Stephen Schneider wrote in the 1974 Margaret Mead book that began the crime:
“There is a further fear that mankind’s industrial and energy production activities may affect the climate and lead to enhanced probabilities of extreme variability. Thus the food-climate crisis could be very near-term and of major significance.”
In the same article he also blamed the then-current cooling trend for extreme droughts in Russia, so he seems to have been hedging his bets on cooling vs warming as the bearer of apocalypse.
Pat Ravasio;
Not one of you has talked about the costs to human health of continuing our enslavement by fossil fuels.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I did and so did others. In addition to failing to present a single fact or reference to support your assertions (and saying over and over again the same thing is just an assertion) you apparently lack reading comprehension skills.
lts looking like the jet stream is setting up some extreme winter weather for northern asia from around Dec15th onwards.
A strong Polar jet looks like pushimg up from the Atlantic, up across Greenland and the pole and then flood lots of cold air down across northern asia. lts looking like a big cold weather event is
on the way.
l think climate science is going to have its work cut out trying to hide this decline. 🙂
Pat Ravasio says:
December 9, 2012 at 3:44 pm
“Wow, most of you are so juvenile in your responses……..”
“…….without ever really addressing the big picture.”
===================
So, paint me a picture !!
Pat Ravasio says: December 9, 2012 at 3:44 pm
Wow, most of you are so juvenile in your responses, it is obvious you suffer the stress of knowing you hold a losing hand. To be pitched against the prevailing views of 99% of all scientists must be difficult.
Still waiting for a cogent response from you. Can you provide any empirical evidence to support your position?
RockyRoad says:
December 9, 2012 at 4:50 pm
A.D. Everard says:
December 9, 2012 at 3:50 pm
…
I keep wanting to tell you: “Power to your pen,” but in this modern era, that’s a bit behind the times, and “Power to your keyboard,” doesn’t have the same ring. But you know what I mean. 🙂
You could say “Power to your IP” and that would be both clever and sufficient.
*
PERFECT. Thank you, Rocky! 🙂
And to Pat – I don’t think you’re actually reading any of the responses. I don’t think you’re looking at any of the evidence. I took you at your word when you said (or implied) that you were “open-minded”. My mistake. Nevertheless, I have thoroughly enjoyed the discussion in here today. You might have been expecting angry responses, or perhaps wished to trigger “flaming” which has not occurred. Only you know what you hoped to achieve. You certainly sound more upset at this end of the thread than you did at the beginning, so I take it you are not pleased with the wonderful debate and sharing of science here. That’s a shame. Seriously, that is a shame. I hope one day you dare to consider that the world is safe enough from humankind, and always was. We really are very small in the scheme of things, the world is really huge – we just think of it as “smaller” because we traverse it so easily now, and we have forgotten the true resilience of nature.
I look forward to hearing from any and all of you when you are willing to answer my specific questions. Your dancing around the subject does not amuse me. This issue is too important. Please see my last post and answer my specific questions? Thank you.
Pat Ravasio,
At various times in history, 99% of “scientists” supposedly believed the earth was flat, that the sun circled the earth, that bumps on your head could be used to diagnose mental conditions, that letting the blood out of you in just the right amount could cure all manner of diseases… if you were to study history, you’d discover that while it was the official position of the scientific community who would, in defense of their position, role out the same tired arguments that there was a “consensus”, it turned out afterward that the bulk of actual scientists knew the truth. They were silenced by the community in power for whom blood letting and diagnosing of disease was very profitable. Astrology was once consensus science, as was alchemy, they survived for as long as they did because the “consensus” was a fiction from which the practitioners profited.
So who exactly are you, who clearly have no science background at all, to tell us, whose background is science, what scientists believe? We’re trying to explain to you that we have looked at the science, that dozens upon dozens of the commenters on this forum aren’t just scientists, they are frequently climate scientists. You’ve been duped into believing in a consensus which doesn’t exist, and is being challenged by actual scientists, but you, who have no science background at all, sit in judgment over us.
You may be right, we may be playing a losing hand. Not because we’ve got the science wrong, but because people like you are so secure in your “knowledge” that you haven’t bothered to question it, can’t be bothered to educate yourself to the point where you can question it, but in pompous certainty rain your condescension down upon those of us who have. If there are enough of you who buy the story line without question, can’t be bothered to look at a single temperature graph and ask why the global temperature has been flat or falling for 16 years, why it is that drought on a global basis is in decline, why it is that frequency and severity of extreme weather are in decline, why it is that antarctic ice and many glaciers are growing, not shrinking….
If you can’t be bothered to look at this information yourself and ask those questions, and there are enough people like you who do the same…. then yes, we’re playing a losing hand.
All of humanity shall suffer for your folly.
Anthony – while I agree with your comment, there is another aspect to a person trying to teach a pig to sing. While it may waste the person’s time, a careful observer watching the effort can learn much about both singing and pigs.
“The reason why the big oil companies have not switched to the readily tappable energy resources that are clearly available is that they have not figured out a way to meter that energy from the sun, wind, waves, etc. If they could only stick solar power into a pipe and put a meter on it before it reached our homes you can bet we’d have more solar power”
Odd. You mean those brochures I get stuck in my door telling me I can switch my power generation to one that’s based on those forms at XX/kwh are all lies? And that all those folks in California getting energy from companies based on those sources are getting it for FREE? Amazing.
Pat, you *do* seem to live in an alternate universe. We should compare carbon footprints sometime: I generally ride a bicycle and have never driven a car (largely, believe it or not, for ideological reasons), have flown less than 20 times, haven’t bothered with a working TV for a number of years, and spend less than $1500/year heating/cooling a very well-insulated home which I’ve lived in and maintained for 30 years. Think we’re shipmates … or are you on a yacht of a different color?
– MJM
Pat Ravasio says:
December 9, 2012 at 6:03 pm
You and I both know your request is a complete waste of time and effort, Pat. Are you so conceited that you feel it is our obligation to teach someone as close minded as you? But I’m glad you admit to being not “amused”–it means we are effective in our arguments and you are not. You are simply making a fool of yourself, and on the most viewed blog in the world for the issues you find “important”, no less.
But that’s where you’ve made a grave error, Pat, and have helped the “skeptical” argument big time. We also find these issues to be of great importance and I’m glad you recognize this group as the best source of information or you wouldn’t have come along. And that should make you even less amused.
In the meantime, I shall simply post the well-regarded TROLL ALERT Pat Ravasio is a troll! She is not sincere; she is not teachable; she’s a waste of time except, as davidmhoffer points out, there are many people reading this that will see how futile her arguments have become.
Actually, there *is* another alternative to extremely long, multi-posted discussions like these where the “troll” is simply able to ignore a wealth of good points and argumentation simply because there is so much of it. About eight years ago I got tired of the same tactic being used in the smoking ban debates, so I developed a short, quick-reading, Tom Paine style .pdf booklet titled “The Lies Behind The Smoking Bans” that I could simply refer folks like Pat to along with a simple request for “specific substantive criticisms” of any of the material in it. The booklet is pretty superficial, but I worked carefully on it so that I could feel confident in defending anything inside. I’d guess I’ve offered that “challenge” at least several hundred times over the last eight years (Google the phrase “Specific substantive criticisms” and you’ll see the challenges, with occasional off topic hits from others using the phrase, but not too often.) and I think only TWICE has anyone actually attempted and tried to defend serious specific substantive criticisms.
It’s amazing how often the “Pats” out there simply run away when pinned down to a specific, clear challenge that they can’t meet. WUWT could offer a page/booklet like that perhaps: just outlining a few of the most basic arguments, exposing a few of the most basic lies, and doing it in such a way that you leave no avenues open for attack. If you indeed have “the truth” in an area, you can put such a thing together… while the other side can’t. And the “passersbys” — the folks you’re largely trying to reach out to and communicate with — can see the simple gauntlet being thrown, will be interested enough to take a quick trip to see the substance of the challenge and hopefully learn something in the process, and then will learn even more when they see the opposition run away. Meanwhile all the tired typing fingers get a break. :>
– MJM
ROFLMAO!!!
I see that Pat Ravasio has crashed another thread and turned it into another trolling fest about his superficial environmentalist concerns which are comically shallow and bereft of logical and rational thinking as clearly shown in these words he started with in this thread at comment #2 where he write a completely off topic rant:
“My question remains: What is motivating this intensive, daily effort by you and your supporters to deny that there is environmental damage done to our ecosystem by our use of fossil fuels? Could it be that you are affiliated with and supported by the Heartland Institute, a major supporter of the fossil fuel industry?”
This is gobsmacking because hardly anyone in the world is affiliated with The Heatland Institute and getting $$$ from Oil companies.It is the usual low IQ thinking that has nothing to do with the AGW conjecture that Pat has yet to discuss not only that Pat your precious unreliable LOW MASS wind and solar power INCREASES damage to the environment with toxic plastic and rare earths materials and degrades the landscape with roads and power lines in wilderness and open areas all the while the Fossil Fuel,Nuclear and Hydroelectric power continues to stay on and running the ENTIRE TIME since wind and solar are so gosh darn unreliable for CONTINOUS power generation.
Strike one.
More of his completely off topic ranting:
“If not, please explain what you have to gain by continuing to deny that there are environmental problems that could be solved by a reduction in the use of fossil fuels? Can you justify that the continued and increasing use of fossil fuels is a good thing for our planet?”
You have yet to show that anyone here is denying alleged or observed environmental problems but you really don’t care because you are a full bore greenie weenie who slyly ask these questions with a purpose of getting onto what YOU really want is a world built on socialist environmentalist utopianism that only deficient humans like you can dream of.
Strike two.
Then you get uppity with the following that shows to me that you are a typical eco jerk:
“If you are fueled by anything other than greed and an interest in advancing your own interests, could you please state what your motivation is, so that those of us with open minds might begin to understand?”
Why should I tell to jerks like you who is openly LYING your ass off in claiming you want to understand people whom you are clearly implying that skeptics/deniers are in it for selfish reasons.A quick visit to your sorry blog make it clear that you have made up your shallow mind about skeptics and that you are in war with them as you make clear in your soggy little blog.
Pat says,
“Some of the deniers I’ve been chatting with really don’t like this Buckyworld blog at all. That’s okay. If you would like, as some of you requested, to read a more in-depth story, here’s a great little piece on climate deniers from Truthout. Some of you will get to see your name in lights! And if you scroll down here, you can also find many links to recent climate change new stories. And just to cover all sides, here’s a link to one of the most popular climate change denial blogs, http://www.wattsupwiththat.com (where you can find several very lively attacks on me!)”
LOL,
yeah suuuure you are interested in chatting skeptics with your open mind……,as shown vividly in your silly blog.
Liar!
Snicker.
Strike three.
I despise you for your condescending attitude and your upfront assumption that skeptics are selfish and want to advance their own interests regardless what the cost is.
Why is it you like so many environmentalists for years have been full stupid in fighting Thorium and Nuclear power,Coal,Natural Gas and anything else that does not fit YOUR version of Gian Utopianism which also happen to be the only reliable venues for continous power generation in todays world.Solar and Wind power are at best a NICHE power supplier as they are profoundly unreliable for continous power generation and require a huge amount of land surface to construct these stupid things for at best small amount of megawatt generation capability.
Solar and Wind power are DIRTY low mass power producers that damage a significant part of the environment and kill a lot of birds but hell you care less because it does not fit your eco bullshit paradigm.
The rest of your babble:
“Read more about my questions and concerns, if you like at…”
No!
I will pass on another typical LOW IQ warmist blog that has built on a unfounded and stupid premise that we are in dire straits over a small increase in atmospheric CO2 and that it is the fault of the skeptics who needs to be told what to do and believe to repair the perceived environmental damage.
Only eco retards think CO2 is a pollutant and that after it is shown to be only .0395% of the atmosphere with a small radiative absorption range that amounts to very little in any future temperature increases they still fear it with their silly proclamations such as getting it below 350 PPM as it was in ….. he he 1988.It must mean the worlds climate was safe and benign before then as your fellow eco moron McKibben seem to think as he is the nut who runs such a blog about this magical CO2 world is now safe at and below the magic 350 level.
I have put up with people like you for decades now and I am amazed that you eco poodle dogs never seem to realize that Fossil Fuels consumption over the years have been getting cleaner and cleaner something that you ueducated eco warriors never seem to know about because you are so busy being a superficial thinker and in love with socialist environmentalism.
It is clear that this eco dweeb will not answer questions and address rational scientific statements here in the thread because he is not interested in them as he is busy being a little socialist with his superficial environmental concerns as shown in subsequent replies.
But hey you CAN prove me wrong if you just answer E.M. Smith point by point who wrote a specfic reply to YOU here in this thread:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/08/introducing-the-new-wuwt-extreme-weather-reference-page/#comment-1168486
But you will not do it because you are too busy being that little ignorant envoronmentalist that you are being pegged to be.
Just when I was going to say, enough beating the troll, it turns up again.
Hey Pat, no-one is more strident, than a true believer loosing their belief. You have my deepest sympathy, honest.
And you blithering dimwit, the Athabasca Tar Sands are the biggest natural oil spill in the world. What, you don’t feel we should clean it up?
There is a river running through all that oil saturated sand, every flood contaminates the watershed north, all the way to the Arctic Ocean.
And let me finish on a note of sweet reason, I did not attempt to deprive you and your ilk of your freedom, property and wealth.
Having realized that this is the aim of your great cause, I now regard you as the enemy.
Whether your actions are due to ignorance or malice, I care not.
Well thanks for an highly entertaining post, the reference posts are invaluable I must remember to use these more often, thanks again Mr Watts & volunteers.
Pat,
You make this too easy…
– 99% of climate scientist support the theory of CAGW: False Actually, the original claim, based on the Doran paper, was that 97% of “expert” climate scientist support the theory of CAGW. Of course, the 75 out of 77 (97%) of responses that they culled out of thousands of responses do not form a concensus of scientist.
For more info:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/
Next:
– Big Oil has not switched to solar, wind, or water power because they cannot make money from it.: False First, Big Oil is so “old school”. Nobody uses oil to generate electricity any more. Since you mention solar, wind, and water, I assume that you are referring to electricity because none of those energy sources apply to vehicles, the primary use of oil today. So, I’ll let you slide and switch to talk of “Big Energy”.
Photovoltaic solar power has been around for what, 40-50 years or so and the units are readily available on the commercial market. Don’t you think that if solar energy was cost effective that we would have all bought them for our homes and cut ourselves free from the grid, ie free from “Big Energy”, by now? How is “Big Energy” preventing that? As well, don’t you think that some enterprising individuals outside of “Big Energy” would be filling WalMart with cheap and effective solar power units if such a thing was possible. Why don’t we have massive solar generating stations already tapped into the grid and operating (without huge government subsidies) to reap huge profits on the free energy? There are investors that would line up like shoppers on Black Friday for that if it was possible. How is “Big Energy” preventing that? In fact, our governements are throwing billions of dollars of subsidies at solar energy companies that can’t seem to do anything but go bankrupt. Is that caused by “Big Energy”?
Wind power technology is even older than solar, going back centuries, if not thousands of years. With respect to electricity, wind power technology has been there ever since electricity was invented. Why do we all not have windmills in our yards so that we can cut ourselves free from “Big Energy”? Heck, why did we even bother trying to dig coal out of the ground or drill for oil in the first place if all we had to do is throw up an old fashion wind mill? Is it because the wind, in most places, often does not blow enough to raise a flag, much less turn a windmill or is it because nasty, mean, “Big Energy” stopped us? Why is it that the poor people in Britain, Germany, and Spain are are having power shortages based on their reliance on wind power? Is it because it does not work or is it because of “Big Energy” sucking the juice out of the grid? Why is it that the only way that wind power can be implemented is through massive goverment subsidies and, why is it that every wind power resource has to be backed up by a fossil or nuclear energy source? Is that because it is unreliable or is “Big Energy” the cause?
Water power is a great thing of you have a large source of running water, a gradient (ie. water running downhill), and a valley that can fill up when dammed to give enough water pressure to make electric power. In fact, I have worked at several hydro-electric plants and I think that they are the best thing since sliced bread. However, based on the above requirements, it goes without saying why we all don’t have dams in our yards or why many states or countries cannot take advantage of this technolgy. Of course, it also goes without saying that if the funky thing that your beloved Fuller patented could actually generate power from the tides, some enterprising individual would have built it by now and be reaping big profits from the “free” energy. How is “Big Energy” preventing that?
Next:
Actually, I’ll stop the detailed response here because my post is getting rather long. Our enslavement to “Big Oil”? You can cut yourself free from “Big Oil” and the electric grid anytime you want. Nobody is forcing you to continue. Also, suffice it to say that we have not discussed the benefits of fracking or tar sands on this thread because it was not a part of the topic that you hijacked. That being said, the benefits of both are releasing massive quanities of oil and natural gas for our use. I’m not sure what other answer you were looking for. Finally, methane gas release from melting permafrost? I have not seen any true research to support that this is taking place. When and if it comes, I’m sure it will be addressed in this forum.
If I missed anything else, I’m sure on of the others on this forum will pick up where I left off and probably do a better job than I have in continuing to pick apart your rant.
By the way, I presume that you only sell houses that are bucky-domes made from pure recyclables that are manufactured and powered only by wind, solar, and water energy sources. Anything else, like for example envying the large, massively energy consuming, estates of celebrities, would be somewhat hypocritical.
I spent some time on a response to Patricia that did not go through, obviously due to some error on my part. In any case, I am not disappointed since DavidMHoffer said it much better than I could.
Nice job David!!
Well, my post was delayed but it did go through at 12/9/12, 7:29pm. I still think David did a better job. In fact, his later comment about teaching a pig to sing was hilarious while, at the same time, being a very appropriate analogy to the situation at hand.
Singing pigs would be considerably more entertaining than Pat’s writings though — and probably more educational to boot.
;>
MJM
If you were actually serious scientists, you would surely be more mature than to refer to a genuinely interested blogger as a “troll” a “pig” a “singing pig” and a “prostitute”. Can’t we keep the discourse civil?
Believe me, I wish you were all right, that we could all just sit back, ride our bikes and relax and trust that the world is safe in the hands of Exxon, Chevron, BP and the other fossil fuel giants.
Maybe a simpler way to look at this, together, is to to evaluate the risks involved with either direction. Ok? So. what are the worse case scenarios of both?
1) (Cautiously belief in 99% of all scientists): We encourage the world to pursue cleaner, affordable, renewable energies, while we phase out, or at least substantially reduce the use of fossil fuels. Worse case: some pursuits fail, some just don’t work, the oil industry has to re-adjust its priorities and strategies, the economy may continue to stagnate for a time
2) (Go along with those who say they know more than 99% of all scientists): We stay the present course, relying almost exclusively on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels continue to be depleted; we resort to more and more dangerous and hazardous ways to release them from the earth, more people are sickened, prices rise, conflicts and wars over oil continue, the environment worsens. Worst case: We release enough carbon (and resulting methane) into the atmosphere that the thin layer protecting us from the sun is eventually depleted beyond repair and is unable to sustain life on the third rock from the sun.
So which is worse? Even if you had 50% of all scientists in your corner, of even if you had the 99%, if we seriously look at the maximum risk involved with either approach, the smart money would be on the side of doing the right thing for the environment, and the life that resides within it.
Pat says 99% of scientists…
Wow, 1% of scientists, or in other words hundreds of thousands of scientists throughout the world don’t believe in catastrophic anthropological global warming. I find that very disturbing because that is a very large number. For example, 100% of scientists believe in gravity and 100% of scientists believe in the existence of the atom. To have such a large number of scientists find something wrong with the “consensus“ view means that there must be something seriously wrong with the reasoning that went into that “consensus“ and one should look into what these other scientists have to say to find out why there are so many scientists who do not accept the so called consensus.
😉
There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
What you gonna do, believe your lying eyes, or follow the wisdom of your purists, who are the immaculate authorities, no?
You encourage the world…. Eh. Baloney; act on your beliefs, show us all this new way of righteous living.
If you are so deeply concerned, why are you here, trolling for traffic for your pathetic little blog?
Check out the psychology of true believers or go look in a mirror.
What was that Nina Hagen song? 99 lead balloons?
Note to self stop feeding the concern troll. Pat you are a gas, thank you for a fine afternoons entertainment. Like the CRU emails you are a gift that just keeps on giving.
If your 99% had science backed evidence of the evils you fear, it would be available in every archive of the world, plastered all over WUWT and proclaimed at every climatism blog site.
So post it on up or next post I will explain the proper use of the precautionary principle just for you.
Ravasio says:
“…belief in 99% of all scientists…”
Wrong.
The ‘consensus’ — the real majority of scientists — agrees that the rise in CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. There is no downside to more CO2.
The 31,400+ co-signers to the OISM Petition have clearly stated that CO2 is “harmless” and “beneficial”. More CO2 is better. Those thousands of co-signers were all vetted professionals in the hard sciences, and they include more than 9,000 PhD’s. No group of climate alarmist scientists has come anywhere close to those numbers. The truth is that the climate alarmist clique is quite small.
Ravasio — an admitted non-scientist — is posting emotional, unscientific horse manure. The nonsense spouted by Ravasio’s ilk is refuted by tens of thousands of degreed professionals who understand the science. Ravasio does not understand the science. She is only a friggin’ Real Estate agent! The emotional scare stories have gotten to her, and she has swallowed them hook, line, and sinker.
We would be happy to help an uneducated person like Ravasio. But she makes it impossible with her wild-eyed, emotional attitude. About two years of studying of the WUWT articles and archives every day would bring Ravasio up to the minimum of understanding necessary. As of now, she is merely parroting debunked alarmist talking points. Readers here have moved on well beyond her scientific illiteracy a long time ago. We need facts and scientific evidence, not emotional scare stories and alarmist nonsense. That is witch doctor territory, not science. Give us facts, supported by the scientific method. Everything else is baseless opinion.
Pat says
“The reason why the big oil companies have not switched to the readily tappable energy resources that are clearly available is that they have not figured out a way to meter that energy from the sun, wind, waves, etc. If they could only stick solar power into a pipe and put a meter on it before it reached our homes you can bet we’d have more solar power. Same goes for wind and water. They and you oppose development of such renewable, non polluting alternatives because you know you can’t make the same kind of money you can when you own the pipelines”
Pat do you have a clue as to how foolish this post sounds to anyone who understands how the legitimate business community operates and is aware the numerous failures that the taxpayers are subsidizing in the green energy sector. By the way very few oil companies are in the electricity generating business so your comment does not make much sense. I assume you know that buddies of the administration are doing very well getting grants and loans for fabricating plants to produce clean energy knowing they will fail and they walk away much richer except for the kickback they make via bundling. Rememnber Solyndra, Fisker, First Solar, Shut down battery companies, Numerous celullosic enterprises, Range fuels, etc, etc.
Most of the established energy companies are too ethical to take government funding for an enterprise for which the fundamentals are non existent. The leaders would likkely go to jail for such unethical business practice.
Pat Ravasio says:
December 9, 2012 at 8:38 pm
You’re right, Pat–I wish that comparison with the pig had not been made because it denigrates pigs which, as you know, are useful by comparison.
You claim to be a “genuinely interested blogger” but you are no more interested in becoming educated in any of these topics than a pig is able to fly (again, my apology to pigs). So no, the discourse won’t be civil to someone who is as duplicitous as you are.
If it bothers you to be in the hands of evil Exxon, Chevron, BP et al, here’s your solution: Don’t drive. Don’t take the bus or the plane or even your bike. Invest in a bicycle or lots of shoes. Quit using fossil fuels or anything made from fossil fuels (that should leave you as one hungry puppy*, but at least you won’t be one big hypocrite although using a bike will).
It tickles me that you keep coming back complaining we’re the problem, when you offer no viable solutions–only scary what-if’s. Your “99% of the scientists” meme is a joke (but on you) while your claim that the thin layer above us will be destroyed is another “pie in the sky” claim you can’t substantiate. Plants are growing better and faster now than in the past 200 years, and rather than look at all of the benefits, you go running around like a chicken** with her head cut off screaming that we’re all going to die when it your arguments that are dead.
Face it–if we followed your recommendations, death would come quickly to 5/6 of the earth’s population. That’s where your “smart money” is, Pat. That’s why you are the problem, not the solution. That’s your maximum risk and I’m seriously looking at it–as a scientist and an engineer.
Now please, go troll elsewhwere. You’re making a complete fool of yourself.
*(My apologies to puppies)).
**(Now I must apologize to chickens, too.)
Here’s something I just posted on Tips and Notes:
————–
I suggest the addition of a “Reading List” resource page. It would contain material that visitors should read to “get up to speed.” There would be several divisions:
Online (with links) vs. Not online
Basic vs. advanced
General vs. topic-specific
Highly recommended (top 25%) vs. The Rest
Each item would have a little annotation to describe its contents, slant, etc. Initially, the page could be nearly empty, with an invitation for WUWTers to submit nominations for additions or modifications in comments. Periodically, the List would be updated with selections from those nominations, and the comments list would be purged.
With this “Reading List” in place, visitors who demanded on-the-spot explanations of our positions could be pointed to it and told to come back later. (For testing?!)
(In addition, and for the same reason, I’ve recently suggested that WUWT’s easuky overlooked “Category” drop-down list be moved from the sidebar to the Resource tab.)
Pat Ravasio says:
December 9, 2012 at 8:38 pm
Maybe a simpler way to look at this, together, is to to evaluate the risks involved with either direction. Ok? So. what are the worse case scenarios of both?
1) (Cautiously belief in 99% of all scientists):…
Attn, Pat, apart from your unscientific appeal to a 99% “consensus” – which actually highlights the lack of truly scientific proof for the CO2=CAGW hypotheses and even their effective falsification as compared to empirical reality – China is currently building just about as many coal-fired electricity plants as it can, India is constructing many such plants as well, and Russia doesn’t go along with the CO2CAGW “science” either…etc., etc.. Therefore, you can probably see that your supposition above is false?
Essentially, your real problem is that you are lost in a delusional “perception is reality” virtual world of pure, untethered verbiage – along with a lot of other people who don’t think to check what they ‘believe’ against well known facts and instead only repeat what ‘everyone they know’ and the massive CO2CAGW Propaganda Machine says, in this case, “There is a consensus.”
It’s going to take a lot of effort on your part, but don’t you think you at least owe it to yourself to try to get in contact with reality?
So let’s consider this 99% thing and run some back of the envelope numbers.
Here’s a recent letter from 125 people to Ban Ki Moon. Note that almost ALL the signatories are not only climate scientists, but world leaders in their various specialties:
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/11/29/open-climate-letter-to-un-secretary-general-current-scientific-knowledge-does-not-substantiate-ban-ki-moon-assertions-on-weather-and-climate-say-125-scientists/
Now they are by no means an exhaustive list of all the climate scientists who are skeptical of CAGW, I know a half dozen personally who didn’t sign that letter, but let’s for a moment assume this is the list. That would mean there are over 10,000 climate scientists who are part of the consensus. There are only a few hundred climate scientists involved in the IPCC WG1 reports! A concerted effort to come up with a letter to the opposite effect by (I think? don’t recall for certain) SkS only came up with a couple of hundred signatories.
Well, let’s focus on the scientists who contributed to the last major IPCC report, AR4 WG1, because they, arguably, represent the consensus. OK, what do they say about our understanding of the science?
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-9-1.html
Ooops…. turns out that the scientists who form the consensus are stating that of 14 categories of science related to radiative forcing, our understanding of 9 of them is either “low” or “very low”. So, the consensus is actually that we don’t know nearly enough to make any determinations. In fact, they go out of their way to say that the calculated values for radiative forcing from CO2 cannot (repeat CANNOT) be directly translated into surface temperatures, and propose no less than FOUR different physical models that may be correct:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-2.html
So, if 99% of scientists agree, what the heck do they agree upon? That they don’t know much about radiative forcing at all! That’s what they agree upon! And there certainly aren’t 10,000 of them in any event. Now these same scientists did put out a “consensus projection” that said we’d see 0.2 to 0.4 degrees of warming between their last report and now, and that if we didn’t see any significant warming for 15 years, well, then their models were wrong. Hey, that’s their consensus, not mine! So what have we seen? Well here’s the last 15 years as measured by satellite:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2012
Oooops…. the trend is actually not only not statistically significant, it is slightly negative!
But hey, maybe she meant 99% of scientists in general? Couldn’t be the 99% of climate scientists since they agreed that they don’t have a very good understanding of radiative energy balance could it? The ones that said 15 years with no warming mean their models were wrong? Yes, she must have meant scientists in general, who, not being as familiar with the details, and not having actually looked at the satellite data, might not be aware that the published science and the actual data don’t agree with the “consensus”. So it must be all scientists that she meant.
Well, here’s the Oregon Petition, signed by over 30,000 scientists:
http://www.petitionproject.org/
If that represents only 1% of the scientists out there, then there must be 3 MILLION scientists in the 99%, right? Well wait. That petition is for citizens of the United States only! Are 1 in 300 people in the United States scientists? LOL. Not even close, certainly not in the hard sciences. But of course, that’s only the United States. Now true, the USA is education heavy compared to a lot of the world, but they’re still just 5% of the world population. So, let’s figure 10X for the world as a whole. That would be 30,000,000 scientists in the world who agree that CAGW is upon us.
30 MILLION. And all SkS could muster up for their petition was a few hundred?
What’s with these 30 million scientists? Are they cowards? Afraid to sign up? Maybe they just don’t care?
Yes, that’s the most likely explanation. There are 30 million scientists in the world who believe firmly that the earth is in mortal danger from CO2, but only a teeny weeny fraction of them bothered to step up and say so, and of the ones that did….they said if there’s no warming for 15 years, we should consider them to be wrong.
Done!
Pat Ravasio says:
December 9, 2012 at 8:38 pm
After seeing you ask a question, have it answered, you come back asking why your question hasn’t been answered ad infinitum…
Perhaps it’s escaped your attention that serious scientists and engineers have a sense of humour.
What was it Einstein said? something about only two things being infinite, I know one was the Universe, the other escapes me for now. I do know he wasn’t sure about one of them.
DaveE.
8.20am in the morning here – just spent a few mins glancing the recent posts!
PR is deluded and also deliberate in her intent to disrupt skeptics – so be it – it is quite satisfying to know that her fanatical actions will be seen by so many! She also reminds me of exactly why I would never give a single penny to any eco/enviro type organisation.
Zealots and Idiots – always a terrible mixture IMHO!
It is apparent that Pat Ravasio is a concern troll, exhibiting the same behaviour she exhibited in an earlier thread. Whatever sense and science you say, her intention is not to read it and understand it. She will come with some other total nonsense statement which everybody else will then again spend time debunk in detail here. And the game goes on. She’s basically a wind up merchant trying to drive some traffic to her crap blog which no one visits and which is pure unadulterated bullshit.
So please stop feeding the troll and ignore her comments.
Guys, let’s look at this from another direction. Consider the scenario where the main stream media has been very “humans are causing catastrophic change” for years, and through in environmental propaganda programs such as those seen on BBC, Discovery and Nat Geo. What sort of person would result from that bombardment of a single message.
Yep, Pat is the sort of person that would result from that sort of propaganda machine.
So what can we do to help these types of people gain access to the truth? Well, for starters we could address the most common claims in the main stream media with the true science. Let’s start with some basics. If Pat is serious about wanting to learn about climate change, then I hope she reads this and follows it through.
Pat, I hope you’re reading this. Let’s firstly look at land surface temperatures. Here’s a link to the Berkeley land surface temperature since ~1750. http://berkeleyearth.org/images/annual-comparison-small.png
As you can see, the world has warmed up in the last 250 years. What you should also notice, is that at least half that warming occurred before 1940, well before human emissions are supposed to have made an impact. So what drove pre-1940 temperature rise? Well for one thing, Earth had the Little Ice Age to get out of. You can see the last 100 years of the LIA in the BEST graph, up to 1850. From 1850 to 1940 the Earth returned from the cold temps of the LIA.
Next we look at the warming that occurred post-1960 to present. This is where humans are supposed to have driven the heat according to what you hear on the TV, read in the newspapers, and get in those environmental group pamphlets in your letterbox. But let’s look at the alternatives. Is there anything else that COULD have driven this warming up? Let’s look at our primary heat source, the Sun. Here’s solar output for the last few hundred years. Take note of the high solar cycles in recent times, commonly called the Modern Grand Maximum. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Sunspot_Numbers.png/400px-Sunspot_Numbers.png
Looking at these numbers, it’s obvious to anyone that since 1950 solar output has been high. Now some people will tell you that “only increasing solar output can cause increasing temps”. Here’s a simple experiment for you. Put a pot of cold water on the stove. Put the gas on LOW. Wait for it to warm up, and you’ll get a very slow simmer. Then crank the gas to HIGH and leave it there. Observe what happens. Even though the gas is on a constant amount, the pot of water continues to heat up, getting hotter and hotter. So a simple scientific experiment has proven that if a heat source is a constant high, the temperature will continue to rise (as opposed to what some people will tell you). Thus it’s possible the Modern Solar Grand Maximum caused the warming since 1950 (or at least some).
There’s also another major warming influence on the Earth. The Pacific Ocean. The Pacific acts like a heat regulator for Earth. I highly recommend reading Bob Tisdale’s blog and learning what you can about this fascinating region of our planet. Note that the Pacific Ocean is actually larger in size than all the world’s land area combined. Anyways, one of the Pacific’s cycles is called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO for short). Fancy name, but what’s it do? Well in a way, it’s one of the main temperature control knobs of the planet. Take a look at the following graph of the PDO since 1900. http://www.drroyspencer.com/library/pics/PDO-index-since-1900.jpg Notice how when temperatures rise, the PDO is in a positive cycle. And when temps fall (ie: 1940-1970) the PDO is in a negative phase.
So let’s recap:
– Temps were cold using the BEST graph from 1750-1850. This is the Little Ice Age.
– Temps rose from 1850-1940 as Earth warmed after the Little Ice Age.
– Temps fell from 1940-1970 during a solar lull (weak sun) and cold phased PDO.
– Temps rose from 1970 to 2000 during the Modern Solar Grand Maximum and warm phased PDO.
So how much (if any) did human emissions rise temps during the focus period of 1980 to now? Can you guess? According to the main stream media, humans were responsible for all of it. Please note, that I’ve only highlighted two natural cycles. There are so many natural cycles, and scientists are only scratching the surface of their effects on climate. Another Pacific cycle is ENSO, which also has a major influence on the global climate.
But that’s enough for lesson 1. Please respond when you’ve read this, done whatever followup research you want to, and are ready for the next lesson. I think we’ll cover what the climate has done since 2000 in the next lesson. 🙂
Alarmists fascinate me. They fall into 6 catagories :-
1. Empire building academics seeking government funding using evermore alarming predictions of disaster.
2. Bureaucrats with supranational ambitions eagerly cooperating with the above.
3. Hard wired anticapitalists who, since the implosion of the U.S.S.R. have been looking for other ways to strangle the capitalist beast. How better than to artficially inflate the cost of energy by government fiat (carbon taxes,etc.)
4. Snake oil salesmen pedalling widmills, solar panels and so on ,none of which can meet the energy needs of a modern economy and all of which are again dependant on huge government subsidies.
5. Merchant bankers who can see a dollar or two being made out of trading carbon credits (shorting carbon, anyone?).
6. Finally, misguided idealists intent on saving the rest of the world.
Mr. Ravisio, where do you fit in?
D.B.C.
Dale,
great rebuffal, I am not a scientist – just an interested reader.
I believe the comment about the boiling pot is wrong . Once water starts to boils, whether it simmers or boils vigoriously the temp never goes above 100 deg C. All that happens is that the extra heat is released as steam quicker to maintain a constant temperature.
I have also read that the temps of the oceans will never go above 30 deg C for the same reason. All that happens is that storms, cyclones etc become more vigorous to spread the heat around.
The opposite may also be true – ie as world temps drop , tropical storms decrease. This sounds a bit like now.
I also believe that it is time to close this post and stop wasting time with Pat. If she got hit by a truck she would say she tripped over the curb. Never admit she might be wrong.
Help !! – my post has dissapeared ?
[not round these parts . . mod]
Pat:
I know what you’ve done here… you’ve come across what you think is a bunch of ignorant people, and you’re trying to educate them.
The truth is somewhat the opposite.
Probably EVERYONE here used to believe as you did at one point (regular posters, feel free to correct me if this is wrong).
Then we started asking questions, and seeing things that didn’t make sense. Like “climate scientists” adjusting temperature records DOWN in the past to make today seem warmer. Like wealthy, conspicuously consumptive people telling us to stop consuming. Like dire predictions that simply refuse to materialize. So we started investigating on our own.
It’s extremely unlikely that ANYONE here is “spreading doubt” for pay. What we’re doing is countering an extremely well financed misinformation campaign with legitimate information. All you need to do is look at the evidence with the “open mind” you think you have, and it will become obvious.
All of the answers have been pointed out to you, and links to credible resources, often from the same sources that are raising the alarm. The difference is in the analysis of the facts.
ANY information you encounter, whether it’s from a trusted teacher or professor, a scientific source, a TV channel, a friend, or your own research is subject to your own internal “filtering”. The human brain does tend to filter out things that are contrary to previously held belief. And, unfortunately, we tend to believe things we hear from people we believe.
Eventually you’ll realize that your position is untenable, that there is no danger or catastrophe, and that the world doesn’t need saving. It’ll still be here, with a healthy biosphere, long after our civilization is gone.
Sorry
Since this has evolved into a more general discussion I thought I’d add my two cents…or two pence as I’m English. Pat seems to think that everyone posting comments on here is a scientist. Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know I’m not! I studied Marine Biology at the University of Wales, Bangor, about ten years ago now, and have always had an interest in science, but never pursued it as a career.
Some time after that I watched an Inconvenient Truth, at the recommendation of some friends who were concerned about it all. It seemed weird to me that a politician had made this film, but I thought what the hey, I won’t judge it just from that, what has he got to say? I came away from it pretty horrified, but not by the dire predictions. About 95% of the information presented in the film is all about the observed global warming, and then there’s about five minutes of the film (pretty much literally as far as I can remember) dealing with the actual connection between “mankind” and the observed warming. This section of the film showed a graph linking CO2 concentrations to temperature, to which he made some sarcastic crack about “do you think there’s a connection!?” since there was an obvious correlation – to which everyone in the audience laughed. With what I’d learned about science and logic, I was pretty disgusted by the ignorance displayed – correlation does not equal causation. Could be that CO2 was effecting temperature, could be that temperature was effecting CO2, could be that additional variables not plotted on the graph were influencing both factors.
Anyway, after being entirely unconvinced by a film that somehow managed to sway the opinion of my friends and millions of others, and which remains a highly rated film on IMDB even to this day, I started looking into it more and more. That’s my reason for being here, and writing this post. Nothing to do with my being (or rather not being) a scientist, and certainly nothing to do with funding from Big Oil. Just a subject that interests me.
I initially read a lot on Skeptical Science. They seemed to have a lot of information there, as far as I knew at the time, and it seemed like a good place to start…since I appeared to have a bit of a “skeptical bias” already (not skeptical in the sense Skeptical Science means it, which I still can’t work out, but skeptical in the actual sense of the word), I thought it might “balance” my thinking a bit to read a pro-AGW blog. The trouble was that a lot of the arguments presented weren’t very logical. The one presented as their rebuttal to the claim that there is no empirical evidence linking manmade CO2 to climate change is particularly impressive…in its failure to convince an open, rational mind. I thoroughly encourage Pat to read that, if she or he hasn’t already, actually think through what’s being said (including all the comments), and draw your own conclusion. I still can’t get over their statement that there’s “a line of” empirical evidence linking CO2 to temperature. A LINE OF…nope, not going to do it. There’s either empirical evidence or there isn’t.
Anyway I could ramble on all day but I’ll leave it there for now.
Reblogged this on Jericho777's Blog.
That’s my take too. She’s been marinated in alarmism, perhaps from reading the stereotypes about us put out by environmental organizations, and she naturally thought we are close relatives of satan and couldn’t have any rejoinders to what she’d been reading. I don’t think she’s a troll, etc. She probably represents a large slice of the warmist rank and file.
Regarding that 97%, see my comment here a week or so ago–and also the nearby comments from rgbatduke:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/03/on-certainty-truth-is-the-daughter-of-time/#comment-1163387
Pat Ravasio, we have cleaned things up. How old are you????
LONDON SMOG
Pat Ravasio reminds me of Peter Gleick – they are / were utterly convinced that there is a well funded ‘denialist machine’. So much so that Peter Gleick was prepared to commit wire fraud and lies. Yet all he managed to do was to expose the David V the well funded Warmist machine.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/28/the-fakegate-timeline-from-soup-to-nuts/
Pat, you really do need to work harder and look deeper before hitting the send button. You really are out of your depth on WUWT. It’s like taking on Gladiator with a pen knife.
E.M.Smith,
Thank you and bravo. Now I await Pat to reply.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/08/introducing-the-new-wuwt-extreme-weather-reference-page/#comment-1168486
re Extreme Weather: ENSO Meter (sidebar) now neutral–and heading down.
“Paulc says:
December 10, 2012 at 2:22 am
Dale,
great rebuffal, I am not a scientist – just an interested reader.
I believe the comment about the boiling pot is wrong . Once water starts to boils, whether it simmers or boils vigoriously the temp never goes above 100 deg C. All that happens is that the extra heat is released as steam quicker to maintain a constant temperature.
I have also read that the temps of the oceans will never go above 30 deg C for the same reason.”
————————————
You are right of course. But the water does rise to that temp. Mental note: don’t use the pot on the gas analogy for temp simulating under constant high forcing in the future. 🙂
Though thinking about it, the pot on the gas is a good analogue for what happens on Earth. As it warms up the hydro cycle becomes more vigorous. This results in more heat being moved from the surface to the atmosphere and the temps stabilizing on the surface.
Well, the evidence is in: you can, perhaps teach a pig to sing, through many hours of patience and perseverance, but you can’t teach a Warmist troll anything about climate. Plus, teaching a pig is a lot more fun; they will at least listen.
Pat Ravasio says:
December 8, 2012 at 5:41 pm
“What is motivating this intensive, daily effort by you and your supporters to deny that there is environmental damage done to our ecosystem by our use of fossil fuels?”
I have never denied that environmental damage done to our ecosystem by our use of fossil fuels.
“If not, please explain what you have to gain by continuing to deny that there are environmental problems that could be solved by a reduction in the use of fossil fuels?”
I repeat I have never denied this but the damage is not too bad and is being minimized in the developed world.
” Can you justify that the continued and increasing use of fossil fuels is a good thing for our planet?”
Our planet is an inert, object in space, it has no mind, it has no feelings so there can be no good or bad for the planet.
“If you are fueled by anything other than greed and an interest in advancing your own interests, could you please state what your motivation is, so that those of us with open minds might begin to understand?”
The planet is inhabited by sentient beings, I have drawn the conclusion that the best path for humankind is to utilise the resources of the planet to maximise quality of life through material and intellectual progress to enable an eventual state of sustainability for all. The Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution has all happened in the last 500 years. That is a fleeting moment in the past and future of humanity, if there are issues then they get dealt with, if it stinks we build sewers, if there’s a smog we have clean air acts…etc. We invent, we invent, we invent.
This will not happen through some pseudo-scientific scam to con people through the threat of climate armageddon into under achieving, to inflict even more pain on the poor of the earth. To enable a cadre of green shysters to rip off ordinary folk is abhorrent to me.
In the end it’s a matter of getting the timescale of action right for all the right reasons not on the basis of a con.
Where is your evidence for the 99% of all scientists????? Why are you so empty of evidence and full of hot air? You have been challenged a couple of times to come up with EVIDENCE for your claims but you keep failing to do so. What is juvenile about asking you to provide evidence? If you keep this up then I will no longer feed the troll.
Pat Ravasio says:
December 8, 2012 at 5:41 pm
My question remains: What is motivating this intensive, daily effort by you and your supporters to deny that there is environmental damage done to our ecosystem by our use of fossil fuels? …
___________________________________
I am old, semi-retired with no children and only one brother, who is in the 1% and completely amoral. In short I have no Dog in this Fight.
My only reason for being here is a sense of obligation toward the exploited and a fear that civilization will be so weakened by this maddness that when, not if the climate goes very cold we will be in no shape to survive.
I started out in the ‘Farm Wars’ and migrated to here. I suggest you read Mother Jones and the background link 1 and link 2
And then think about Henry Kissinger’s quote:
“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls energy can control whole continents; who controls money controls the world.”
For money see:
link 1
link 2
Primer on Money: COMMITTEE ON BANKING AND CURRENCY. WRIGHT PATMAN, Texas, Chairman
Given the moves to control money and food why ever would anyone think there is not a move to control energy especially since the World Bank has been prominent in the scam from the beginning?
Maurice Strong – Oil Mogul and Senior Advisor to the World Bank was chair of the 1972 First Earth Summit AND Kyoto.
Robert Watson was Chief Scientist and Director for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (ESSD) at the World Bank when he was IPPC chair
The Copenhagen talks broke down the after ‘Danish text’ leak… The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank. Third world countries have absolutely no love for the World Bank for a very good reason, previous experience.
This year the IPCC wasn’t even present instead a report from the World Bank was used.
CAGW is dirty politics and has been from the start.
So what is actually happening in climate?
The Abstract for the quoted paper (It is even worse than we thought!)
This paper agrees that we are at the point in the earth’s Milankovitch cycle that could usher in an ice age.
Do I think we are headed into glaciation soon? No. But the data shows that the tail end of an interglacial is a bumpy ride and that plays havoc on growing crops.
Having dealt with scientific illiterates before I feel right at home listening to Pat’s responses. She is completely uneducated in any of the relevant fields. While folks have provided her with vast stores of information it will all fall on deaf ears. She is completely unable to understand what has been written. She is a scientific moron.
She has been properly brainwashed and nothing any of us does will undo it. She reads the propaganda and as long as it comes from what she considers to be a trusted source she latches on to it like a alligator snatching it’s next meal. She never considers that these people may be just as uneducated as she is. She never considers that some of them have an agenda. And, she never will.
Give it up, she is a hopeless case.
PS. Although many comments have gone right over Pat’s head, I’ll have to admit I’ve had a number of good laughs. Thanks folks.
Harry S. Truman said: “I don’t give ’em hell, I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.
RockyRoad – this site needs a ‘like’ button.
Great quote
Pat, we do not live in a perfect world. I am no scientist either but recently I did a search on the motivational drive of others. Tansley was a eugenics advocate. In my home state in Australia in my home area over 300,000 acres have been put into National Parks in the past 15 or so years. That is food producing country. That means a massive reduction in food in one small area.
There is more behind the scenes than just ‘Climate Changes.’ If you search for truth and facts you will be the one who will be shocked.
I doubt whether anyone on this site is not in favour of a healther environment.
Just because people take the opposite view to you doesn’t mean they are wrong!
RockyRoad says:
December 10, 2012 at 7:03 pm
Harry S. Truman said: “I don’t give ‘em hell, I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.
I think it would be more appropriate as :
“I don’t give ‘em hell, I just tell the truth and they REALISE it’s hell.