Image Credit – Wood For Trees and Werner Brozek
From the Investor’s Business Daily:
The global warming alarmists repeat the line endlessly. They claim that there is a consensus among scientists that man is causing climate change. Fact is, they’re not even close.
Yes, many climate scientists believe that emissions of greenhouse gases are heating the earth. Of course there are some who don’t.
But when confining the question to geoscientists and engineers, it turns out that only 36% believe that human activities are causing Earth’s climate to warm.
This is the finding of the peer-reviewed paper “Science or Science Fiction? Professionals’ Discursive Construction of Climate Change” and this group is categorized as the “Comply with Kyoto” cohort.
Members of this group, not unexpectedly, “express the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause.”
Academics Lianne M. Lefsrud of the University of Alberta and Renate E. Meyer of Vienna University of Economics and Business, and the Copenhagen Business School, came upon that number through a survey of 1,077 professional engineers and geoscientists. Read More At IBD
The study, Science or Science Fiction? Professionals’ Discursive Construction of Climate Change, by Lianne M. Lefsrud and Renate E. Meyer can be found here.
A couple interesting quotes within:
“Third, we show that the consensus of IPCC experts meets a much larger, and again heterogenous, sceptical group of experts in the relevant industries and organizations (at least in Alberta) than is generally assumed. We find that climate science scepticism is not limited to the scientifically illiterate (per Hoffman, 2011a), but well ensconced within this group of professional experts with scientific training – who work as leaders or advisors to management in governmental, nongovernmental, and corporate organizations.”
…
“The vast majority of these professional experts believe that the climate is changing; it is the cause, the severity and the urgency of the problem, and the need to take action, especially the efficacy of regulation, that is at issue.”
The Investors Business Daily Article goes on to note that:
If the alarmists are getting only limited cooperation from man, they are getting even less from nature itself. Arctic sea ice, which sent the green shirts into a lather when it hit a record low in the summer of 2012, has “with a few weeks of growth still to occur … blown away the previous record for ice gain this winter.”
“This is only the third winter in history,” when more than 10 million square kilometers of new ice has formed in the Arctic, Real Science reported on Tuesday, using data from Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois.
At the same time, the Antarctic “is now approaching 450 days of uninterrupted above normal ice area,” says the skeptical website Watts Up With That, which, also using University of Illinois Arctic Climate Research data, notes that “the last time the Antarctic sea ice was below normal” was Nov. 22, 2011.
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Kajajuk says:
February 17, 2013 at 8:30 pm
“There simply has not been enough . . . ”
“* tree lines on all continents are advancing northwards; hmmmm”
First quote above: There is enough science, physics mostly, that says CO2 in the atmosphere will not cause environmental catastrophes. If you think there is, explain how the mechanisms work.
Second quote above: Please read the linked to paper . . .
http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic29-1-38.pdf
. . . that shows prior warmth and higher latitude tree line in Canada. Then explain why we should be worried? hmmmm
Also, most of your other arguments can be shown to be seriously flawed.
If it was warmer before, and it seems to you to be warmer now, why would you find less ice on the Arctic Ocean in late summer to “seem strange?”
And don’t go back to the Milankovitch cycles – they are too long term for you to claim “the globe should be well on its way to a minor glacial period for the next 10,000 years or so.” That idea and that number are not backed by any explanatory mechanisms – just folks looking and commenting on things they don’t understand. Here is an interesting paper, though:
http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/roe/GerardWeb/Publications_files/Roe_Milankovitch_GRL06.pdf
I wonder if Theo Goodwin’s comment (HERE)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/17/global-warming-consensus-looking-more-like-a-myth/#comment-1227091
could be expanded into a full post?
Hi Jeff,
The citation about the Milutin Milankovitch theory was to suggest the known measure of the cycles within cycles and in particular i was referring to the figure on the last page where the amount of energy from the sun is the addition of each of the contributions . If you start at zero and move to the left, about 10,000 years there is a reinforced minimum with the precessional influence and the obliquity (or wobble) contribution as well as a downward trend from the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit. This suggests a minimum insolation or irradiance from the sun, hence a glacial trend. i.e. This is the trend without human influence. A type of standard, maybe?
hmmm,
David… i was being poetic not condescending and i offered, ad hoc, observations of information that i have come across…the facts are not mine.
We are all intellects.
And thanks for enlightening me on my many misconceptions, especially with regards to the passive part the Sun plays in warming the Earth.
When you are doing the calculations on the change in rotational inertia, please start with ice caps at both poles and remember that Antarctica is the tallest continents even though it is highly squished and covered 98% with ice. The Arctic region is much less dense and much less mass than Antarctica. Please remember that the earth is a spheroid, bulging in the middle…oh and the ocean crust is less dense and thinner that the continents. Then when you do the change in rotational inertia for your second calculation assume all the ice is now liquid from the Arctic and distributed around the equator. Not that much of difference, right, a slight slowing and nothing more.
Try again with a spheroid of 7 large plates around a liquid center, again with ice on both poles…now do it again with all the “top” ice distributed evenly around the bulging equator…of course this is a simplification, damn models…but do you notice the slight spreading of the plates?
Now imagine that the whole system has a slight wobble…do you see the plates moving and the liquid center starting to ooze out? Na it is probably me and the miss use of my integral tables…never mind 🙂
tommoriarty says: February 17, 2013 at 9:36 pm
It is clear to me that the folks at IBD (and the folks here at WUWT who authored this post) either did not actually read “Science or Science Fiction? Professionals’ Discursive Construction of Climate Change” or did not understand it.
Given the two quotes from deep within the paper included in the article above;
one might deduce that I had read some portion of the paper. In terms of understanding the paper, the data in Table 4 on page 1492 and the conclusions are quite clear, well educated professional experts with scientific training/geoscientists are quite skeptical of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) narrative. This is a very similar to this 2011 paper’s finding that:
Why do you think that increased scientific literacy results in increased skepticism of CAGW?
Steven Mosher says: February 17, 2013 at 1:23 pm
The arctic summer volumes, area and extent continue to decline.
Yep, must be getting a bit warmer. Question is, what is the cause?
There may have been times in human history when it was less. Data here is less certainthan data in the past 30 years. So, one should not go around as you have, claiming
with certitude that there has been less ice. That’s a bad as alarmists claiming the loss
is unprecedented.
Nope, there IS evidence, and it would be quite a stretch of the mind (what with ice core data etc) that this was not the case. Whereas the alarmist statement usually directly states or implies the phrase “in the satellite era”. That is just meaningless in the greater scheme of things. When they are more “all encompassing” in their time scales, there is actually no evidence to support the statement, and quite some evidence for the contrary case.
There are many potential causes for this, Among them: changes in SST, changes
in circulation patterns, changes in wind, soot, changes in clouds, salinity, and yes
changes in warming. For example, in the 30s when it was warmer low and behold there
is some evidence (not proof) of less ice. And when it was warmer in the Holocene, you
guessed it.. less ice. Did AGW cause all the loss? Don’t be silly. Does increased warmth
have nothing to do with it? Don’t be silly.
Gotta agree with every point. You don’t sound like an alarmist here, Mosh.
The causes for ice gain and loss in the north pole and south pole are different. For example: you see increased ice in the south. Does soot have anything to do with that? haha. The point is you can’t really compare the north and south without attending to a host of different factors that can drive the metrics in opposite directions over short time scales.
Gotta agree with every point. Don’t get the soot reference, as it seems quite feasible to me that soot effects may be greater in the north, what with China and polar airline routes. But, anyway, you don’t sound like an alarmist here either.
So …. Here I ask a question. What the hell IS Mosh arguing?
That CO2 may contribute some to the current warming? Tick.
That it is very unclear at this stage how serious or not, this is or may be? Tick.
That we really don’t have enough data to date to be sure of what is happening? Tick.
That embarking on worldwide precipitate action on the basis that “…it MAY BE TOO LATE and doing something, anything is better than nothing and besides some of us are going to get very wealthy outta this …” is currently looking like a really dumb idea? Tick
That everyone else is a complete dummy and only Mosh really understands the issues and the science and anyway he’s not going to state anything very clearly or explain himself because you dummies would not understand it anyway? Tick
Please tell me if I have anything wrong.
again..this time with line breaks fixed:
Steven Mosher says: February 17, 2013 at 1:23 pm
The arctic summer volumes, area and extent continue to decline.
Yep, must be getting a bit warmer. Question is, what is the cause?
There may have been times in human history when it was less. Data here is less certain than data in the past 30 years. So, one should not go around as you have, claiming with certitude that there has been less ice. That’s a bad as alarmists claiming the loss is unprecedented.
Nope, there IS evidence, and it would be quite a stretch of the mind (what with ice core data etc) that this was not the case. Whereas the alarmist statement usually directly states or implies the phrase “in the satellite era”. That is just meaningless in the greater scheme of things. When they are more “all encompassing” in their time scales, there is actually no evidence to support the statement, and quite some evidence for the contrary case.
There are many potential causes for this, Among them: changes in SST, changes in circulation patterns, changes in wind, soot, changes in clouds, salinity, and yes changes in warming. For example, in the 30s when it was warmer low and behold there is some evidence (not proof) of less ice. And when it was warmer in the Holocene, you guessed it.. less ice. Did AGW cause all the loss? Don’t be silly. Does increased warmth have nothing to do with it? Don’t be silly.
Gotta agree with every point. You don’t sound like an alarmist here, Mosh.
The causes for ice gain and loss in the north pole and south pole are different. For example: you see increased ice in the south. Does soot have anything to do with that? haha. The point is you can’t really compare the north and south without attending to a host of different factors that can drive the metrics in opposite directions over short time scales.
Gotta agree with every point. Don’t get the soot reference, as it seems quite feasible to me that soot effects may be greater in the north, what with China and polar airline routes. But, anyway, you don’t sound like an alarmist here either.
So …. Here I ask a question. What the hell IS Mosh arguing?
That CO2 may contribute some to the current warming? Tick.
That it is very unclear at this stage how serious or not, this is or may be? Tick.
That we really don’t have enough data to date to be sure of what is happening? Tick.
That embarking on worldwide precipitate action on the basis that “…it MAY BE TOO LATE and doing something, anything is better than nothing and besides some of us are going to get very wealthy outta this …” is currently looking like a really dumb idea? Tick
That everyone else is a complete dummy and only Mosh really understands the issues and the science and anyway he’s not going to state anything very clearly or explain himself because you dummies would not understand it anyway? Tick
Please tell me if I have anything wrong.
Hi John,
I gave a collection of observed information that made me go hmmmm. I am on the fence between the “hand waivers” calling for doom and gloom and the “cool cucumbers” calling for indisputable proof before of causation.
My thesis, for lack of a better word, is that the earth is showing signs of rapid change. Maybe it is a complex of a billion eyes, maybe it is 500 + nuclear bomb tests in the open atmosphere, maybe flash floods in moderate rainfall zones is simple weather variability, maybe “century” storms every couple of years in Australia is just a really bad roll of the dice, maybe the dramatic increase in algae blooms is the result of farming pollution, maybe the millions of dead fish off the coast of North and South Carolina is not from a fungus helped by a warmer winter by my the fish breathing too much oxygen to quickly, maybe the advancing of the tree line is not a sign of a warming trend climatically but the result of blowing seeds in northernly winds, maybe the cyclone that hit Australia in the north and then went the “wrong” way around the continent was just the result of strange heatwave (its happened before), winter storms that dump an unusual amount of snow could be the result of natural variation in the combination of two low pressure systems again,, the seeming increase in wild fires is probably just alarmist propaganda as are the many severe droughts in the US, China, Russia, and Australia, i certainly have not done a study to see if worldwide precipitation is increasing of late. In fact i am sure i could come up with several alternative theories of causation for a multitude of observation or i could simply ignore them…
I do not care if you or anybody is worried, nor am i trying to worry anyone…
I am curious by these times and fascinated by the zeal of both camps and remain on the fence!
And so i appreciate your most excellent debunking of my comments, bravo!
http://www.wsl.ch/staff/niklaus.zimmermann/papers/JVegSci_Gehrig_2007.pdf
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090122162332.htm
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/363/1501/2283.full
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. ~Thomas Jefferson
Water vapour map:
http://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/GlobalMaps/view.php?d1=MYDAL2_M_SKY_WV
Land temperature map:
http://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/GlobalMaps/view.php?d1=MOD11C1_M_LSTDA
Sea surface temperature map:
http://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/GlobalMaps/view.php?d1=MYD28M
Ice cover changes at the poles:
http://www.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/regional-changes-in-arctic-and-antarctic-sea-ice_15da
Hey justthefacts, have you seen these facts?
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png
Ice acts as an insulator. Refrigerator evaporators must be ‘defrosted’ every few hours otherwise the ice that forms on them prevents heat transfer. If ice can prevent the transfer of heat in your freezer then I humbly propose that it can block the transfer of heat between ocean and atmosphere.
Climate change is ongoing. Climates always change, it is what they do, get used to it. Adapt or die.
Kajajuk says: February 18, 2013 at 12:54 am
“…. maybe “century” storms every couple of years in Australia is just a really bad roll of the dice, ….[….]….maybe the cyclone that hit Australia in the north and then went the “wrong” way around the continent was just the result of strange heatwave (its happened before)…..”
Nothing odd happening in Australia …it has all happened before … business as usual…
Here ya go: check out cyclones decade by decade; http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/cyclones.cgi?region=aus&syear=2006&eyear=2006&loc=0
And, it’s all happened before even prior to those records:
Here is an Australian report showing we should expect a super cyclone every 200 to 300 years, not every 1000 as previously suspected;
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v413/n6855/full/413508a0.html
“….. determine the intensity of prehistoric tropical cyclones over the past 5,000 years from ridges of detrital coral and shell deposited above highest tide and terraces that have been eroded into coarse-grained alluvial fan deposits. ………. We infer that the deposits were formed by storms with recurrence intervals of two to three centuries and we show that the cyclones responsible must have been of extreme intensity (central pressures less than 920 hPa). …. Our estimate of the frequency of such ‘super-cyclones’ is an order of magnitude higher than that previously estimated (which was once every several millennia..)….”
Droughts? In Australia? Well, there’s no end of them: Some of the worst droughts on the Australian continent occurred in 1895-1903, 1911-1916, and in 1918-1920. Later, there have been some pretty bad droughts in 1982-1983, 1995-1996, and 2002-2003.
http://home.iprimus.com.au/foo7/droughthistory.html
These guys touting doom and disaster might even turn out to be correct in the long run. But, they sure as hell don’t know that yet, and they know they don’t know. The very fact they lie, exaggerate and propagandize to this extent leads me to doubt their integrity and motives in the most serious way.
MieScatter says: February 18, 2013 at 1:18 am
Hey justthefacts, have you seen these facts?
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png
Hi Mie. Have you read the associated paper? (Levitus 2012)
Do you realize that impressive rise in heat content represents a temperature increase for the top 2000 meters of the world’s oceans of 0.09 degrees C … over approximately a 60 year period.
…and, it is all measured in degrees C, and the starting temps back in the late 50’s were taken from shipboard measures. (Dunno about you, I’m not too confidence they were quite so precise back then…)
What that chart mainly tells us is water has a great capacity to store heat, plus there is one helluva lot of water on this planet. And a whisker of a measure one way or the other can make a very impressive chart.
Steven Mosher says:
February 17, 2013 at 12:02 pm
“….That’s why volume [of ice] in the end is a better metric…”
////////////////////////////////////
But it is area not volume that is material to albedo, and a thin layer of ice is just as effective as a thick layer of ice for preventing heat loss interchange form ocean to atmosphere.
But in the end, since we only have a snapshot of data, the extent of data is woefully inadequate from which to make any meaningful comparisons and extrapolations.
Perhaps a new useful measure to track evolution of ice would be how many days a year that the ‘arctic + antarctic sea ice area’ is above the 30 year mean.
It was above it for a while last year and already for a day or so this.
The theory would go that you would expect this to increase for quite some time now if nature is self-correcting, whereas you would expect it to flunk out completely if the alarmist projections are correct.
Anyone at WUWT want to track it??
Kajajuk says:
February 17, 2013 at 11:45 pm
hmmm,
David… i was being poetic not condescending and i offered, ad hoc, observations of information that i have come across…the facts are not mine.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Condescending is what you were, and not only are the facts not yours, they aren’t even facts. As for trolls who insist they are on the fence while spewing one alarmist line of claptrap after another, let’s just say you’re not the first to try such a strategy.
As for your response to me about ice and inertial mass, your first comment was very specific. It was increase in ice in one part of Antarctica versus decrease in another. When I scoffed at the notion and suggested you produce the math to show this could possibly be significant, you changed the problem. Now you claim to be talking about the entire ice sheet melting and the water somehow gathering mostly in the tropics. Again, lots of arm waving and vague references to integral tables, but no timelines, no mass/inertia calculations, just arm waving.
There is no need for you to cringe at all. The rapid refreeze is a very significant indicator with respect to the question of whether or not global Warming is responsible for the diminished Arctic ice extents. If there really was AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming), the multi-seasonal changes would necessarily result in significantly reduced refreezing of the melted Arctic icee cap and the observed record ice extents in Antarctica could not be occurring. The refreezing of the Arctic ice in parallel with the record ice gains in the Antarctice are important contra-indicators of Global Warming (AGW). Remaining silent about its existence and importance only serves to aid and abet the false propaganda which commits scientific fraud by omitting such contrary evidence.
What does deserve criticism is the deceptive use of the terms “history” and “human history” to describe the known observations of Arctic ice extent, when in fact such ice eextents for nearly 100 percent of human history are unknown due to lack of observation.
davidmhoffer says: February 18, 2013 at 6:00 am
re Kajajuk says: February 17, 2013 at 11:45 pm
“…….. the entire ice sheet melting and the water somehow gathering mostly in the tropics….”
This is an intriguing and recent finding. I have commented on it a few times in WUWT but it has not caught anyone’s interest. It is interesting because it means the effects of warmer seas on Greenland and Antarctica would be lessened as ice caps lost mass (ie, a self limiting mechanism) … apparently the effects on dropping sea levels towards the poles would be very significant. (we are talking perhaps hundreds of metres of sea level fall there).
Here is a video by Jerry Mitrovica, (very much of alarmist bent, but he is a good speaker and it is a very interesting talk) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhdY-ZezK7w
MSM article on global gravitational effects of ice melt here; http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/05/gravity-of-glacial-melt
Technical article here: Evolution of a coupled marine ice sheet–sea level model Gomez etal JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 117, F01013, doi:10.1029/2011JF002128, 2012
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~phuybers/Doc/evolution_ice_sealevel.pdf
(Note, in the video at 5.44 he shows ancient coral structures to demonstrate that sea levels have NOT been rising constantly and smoothly since the start of the Holocene. Fair enough. But what he DOES demonstrate is that about 5000 years ago – ie the Holocene Warm Period, at least in the equatorial pacific, the sea levels were up to 3 meters higher than they are now … not so great for the longer term hockey stick story? The theoretical alarmist take on this is that the sea floor started to sink about 5000 years ago (once the last of the glacial ice melted?) …. but, given Mitrovica’s and Gomez’s work above, it might just have got colder after the Holocene warm period and more polar ice means lower equatorial sea levels..{note, the models had worked out the amount of seafloor fall before this new data was published}. NOAA tells us it was not warmer in the Mid Holocene Warm period, ‘except for summer and in the Northern Hemisphere…..’ http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/holocene.html )
I was referring to wobbles in the completely meaningless metric called “global average temperature”, not rotational or axial wobbles of the Earth.
Re: 3 metre higher sea levels 5000 years ago, theories on falling ocean floors, and NOAA telling us that the Mid Holocene Warm Period was not much hotter than now: This from Wikipedia (yeah, I know … but considering Connolley has trodden all over there it is all the more significant! … and I do include the reference.)
Dansgaard W. Frozen Annals Greenland Ice Sheet Research. Odder, Denmark: Narayana Press. pp. 124. ISBN 87-990078-0-0.
http://www.iceandclimate.nbi.ku.dk/publications/FrozenAnnals.pdf/
****
Kajajuk says:
February 18, 2013 at 12:54 am
My thesis, for lack of a better word, is that the earth is showing signs of rapid change.
****
You apparently have no idea of what rapid-change really is.
well quoted Markx…”Our estimate of the frequency of such ‘super-cyclones’ is an order of magnitude higher than that previously estimated (which was once every several millennia..)”
I do estimate that all is well, sunshine, rainbows, and lollipops everywhere…you know even an out of the ordinary storm system in 2010, 2011, and 2013 does not prove anything really.
So your fanatical nay saying is just as warranted as the alarmist rhetoric which should, i estimate, lead us to the bliss of a conquered divide. On every issue!
Or an apparent lengthening and accelerating frequency of drought from your own post is in my estimation not even worthy of investigation, or further estimation, since we all know what must be true; so why even bother to wonder or question…like a hundred years ago science is done, we have conquered the apple harvest and it is unblemished…amen!
a system as complex as global climate cannot be deduced well from ten years of direct measure, but likely 100 in my humble estimation; the estimations from indirect means can only give us wonder to explore the truth. Not dancing along in our favorite parade.
I am not a doomsayer, just a curious mind perceiving more than a few fascinating trends; least of which is the possibility of a warming planet (when it should be “cooling”). A possibility that is credible, albeit not definitive, by virtue of considering the likely ‘estimation’ of what a warming Earth would entail; then designing experiments and metrics to validate or invalidate…likely learning something in the process, as well as developing technologies…oh my a security guard is approaching, later dude…
“Nothing to see here folks, just move along; and please put your cell phones in your pocket with the GPS on and locked or I may have to detain you on suspicion of being a terrorist.
And check out are page on faceb00k…”
I have to agree that maybe to some extent the reaction to Global Warming could be perceived as alarmist, but I think that’s because people these days don’t seem to listen to information if it doesn’t scare them. Scientists and ecologists have been positing that human lifestyles have been contributing to climate change for decades. And you can’t disagree that technological and population trends have definitely contributed to major changes. On the flip side there are studies that say that cows actually contribute more to Green House Gas levels than humans. But the difference is that we can change our behaviour – cows aren’t going to stop pooping just beacuse its getter hotter or colder. I would never advocate any radical measures, mostly because I personally believe that sustainable change often needs to be slow, otherwise people do not adopt it. And propoganda is a dangerous instrument – that both sides weild! I just think we all need to be a little better, so that there are still resources left on this planet for the generations yet to come. While I don’t agree with what some of these quotes say, I applaud that you’re bringin up the point for debate – at least we’re talking about – and the more you know, the more you grow.
This is only the third winter in history,” when more than 10 million square kilometers of new ice has formed in the Arctic, Real Science reported on Tuesday, using data from Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois.
Henry says
well, we knew this didn’t we?
arctic ice will gain again from 2015-2038
just like it did from 1925-1945
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/