I’m taking the weekend off, as I need to do some climate unrelated work, which is physical, and always good for the soul, and I need to spend time with my family, who often get neglected due to the amount of time I put into this blog.
Guest posters are welcome to post stories.
Feel free to discuss topics within site policy.
Pragmatic words of wisdom.
Bjorn Lomborg: The Resiliant Environmentalist
Hey, D. R. (at 5pm today) LOL — thanks for sharing the link with the simpleton diagram. Fun post.
I liked this: CMS is clearly not staffed or experienced enough to manage something of this complexity …
… and that is GREAT!
Die, Dopebamacare, die!
Re man made contribution to CO2 to total output, I use http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/eia_co2_contributions_table3.png from IPCC 2001. Gives a figure of 3%, a good number to silence a critic. Not sure if there is a later stat.
You can’t go back, can you ?
Not in Ohio !!
New growing meme among the alarmists – CO2 fertilisation exists, but it makes bushfires worse.
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/the_surprising_role_of_co2_in_changes_on_the_african_savanna/2663/
In another year, they’ll deny they ever suggested CO2 would harm plant growth.
Well if Arnie gets that constitutional change through, you can run your primaries between Arnie and Gillard. You KNOW 47% of you want to!
RE: Global Warming/Climate Change and the effect of aerosols.
Well the effect of the bush fires in Sydney have had an interesting effect here in the Federal Capital, Canberra. Whilst we missed the Lunar Eclipse, we got a wonderful “Blood Moon” thanks to all the smoke in the air. It was supposed to be 29C today, but thanks to all that smoke it has barely made it to 23C. Which sucks, since my excuse to not do the yard work because it is too hot has, as they say “gone up in smoke”.
Lastly, the Greens MP Adam Brandt here coped a boatload of sh*t when Tweeting that thanks to Tony Abbott and his proposed repeal of the Australian Carbon Tax, we will see more bush fires. Love one of the responses: Adam Brandt: The pimple on the arse of a snake. Sweet.
Anyway, back to cutting the hedges…
AussieBear.
[” .. coped a boatload of ..” Typo? Or Aussie-o? 8<) Mod]
getting more blatant by the MSM minute!
17 Oct: Bloomberg:Alan Bjerga: Can’t Make Enough Food? Make Fewer People
Solve the world’s future food needs? That’s easy. Make more food or make fewer people. Pick one.
Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute and author of a new memoir, Breaking New Ground, suggests we think about fewer people…
The key to feeding people, Brown suggests, is by trying to manage population growth. Leaders need to ensure the planet’s capabilities aren’t overwhelmed, he said…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-17/can-t-make-enough-food-make-fewer-people.html
(2 pages) 12 Oct: MarketWatch/WSJ: Paul B. Farrell: World’s top problem is
overpopulation, not climate
Commentary: 2,000 scientists focus on the wrong problem, not world’s biggest
Warning: Mother “Earth didn’t replace the dinosaurs after they died” in the
last great species extinction, reports Nobel physicist Robert Laughlin. She
“just moved on and became something different.” But so what, you say, that
was 65 million years ago. Right?
Wrong. Today humans are the new dinosaurs, the next species slated for
extinction, warn 2,000 United Nations scientists. Soon. We’re also causing
the extinction, even accelerating a new timetable. Signing our own death
warrant. Not millions of years in the future, but this century. Thanks to
our secret love of climate change. Yes, we’re all closet science deniers…
The dinosaurs didn’t even know what hit them in the last great species
extinction. We know what’s ahead. We can make the big, tough decisions …
if only we wake up in time
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/climate-report-proves-humans-are-the-new-dinosaurs-2013-10-12?link=MW_latest_news
VIDEO: 15 Oct: CNN: Alan Weisman: We don’t need another billion people
There’s a direct link between those two hard-to-grasp figures — the more
humans, the more carbon…
Third, we can use incentives such as carbon taxes and moral persuasion to
bring down energy consumption. Again, these help, and must be encouraged.
Although a number of countries and some U.S. states have passed carbon
taxes, consumption is exceedingly hard to control in a world where, for
example, even the world’s poor masses, increasingly living in cities, manage
to get cell phones. Whether the power is pirated or not, they plug in their
chargers nightly…
Last, however, if we can’t control consumption, we can control the number of
consumers. This is technology we already have, and it’s cheap. Every woman,
everywhere, could have contraception…
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/15/opinion/weisman-climate-population/index.html?hpt=hp_mid
BBC had this on radio, but no link online:
(LINKS TO STUDY) 10 Oct: LA Times: Julie Cart: finds link between long-lived humans and
species extinction
The longer humans live, the more likely they are to push other species to
the brink of extinction and, conversely, spur the rise of invasive birds and
mammals species.
That sobering news comes via a new study from UC Davis, published in the
journal Ecology and Society…
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-longevity-species-20131010,0,2439.story
Jimbo says:
October 19, 2013 at 4:36 pm
and continuing:
I may not have lost the thread, but I’ve lost the logic of Eisen’s post. He’s talking about faking a false paper about a subject that any journal editor would know about. Apparently he’s using that to introduce a new fake paper that was known to be wrong but proved acceptable to open access journals. We don’t know about print journals because they weren’t tested, but we sure can cast aspersions on those slimy open access journals.
The thing that threw me for a loop is how unlikely a subject this would be. In December 2010 NASA reported on finding a bacterium at Mono Lake that could live with arsenic replacing phosphorus. The claim was retracted a week later and wound up being a major embarassment over premature claims, bad science and wrong interpretation. See
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6034/1163
http://phys.org/news/2010-12-nasa-discovery-element-life.html
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/07/arsenic-and-post-haste-another-example-of-the-broken-peer-review-process/
@Eric Worrall,
Nice article. Nature does what Nature does, be opportunistic. More CO2 whatever the source gets used. It all balances out. I wonder if the “fertilisation effect” is/will be accounted for in the IPCC models? Maybe it will, however, being a cynic on these sort of things, it will be (re) defined as a “bad thing”.
AussieBear.
18 Oct: ABC Australia: Caroline Winter: Man gets very public snip for World Vasectomy Day
A doctor from Florida has performed a live vasectomy in a bid to lower the planet’s population one snip at a time.
Doug Stein is a tireless campaigner for men to take responsibility for family planning and preventing unintended pregnancies.
His round-the-world journey, which has been captured in a feature-length film, has now taken him to Adelaide where he has performed vasectomies in front of a live audience.
The vasectomist is somewhat of a crusader in his field, encouraging those who are ready to exit the gene pool via a delicate and relatively simple procedure…
Stein: “I just think that people should have only the children that they want because each of us is a fairly significant burden on the planet and competitors with our fellow species.”…
***Dr Stein, who began his quest in his home state of Florida, says it is a viable way to reduce our carbon footprint and it is time for men to step up.
“We’re not really selling vasectomy; we’re selling individual responsibility,” he said…
He travelled to the Philippines and Haiti on vasectomy missions, where he witnessed confronting scenes of poverty and overpopulation…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-18/very-public-cut-made-for-world-vasectomy-day/5031710
——————————————————————————–
I’m also trying to understand: Why does anyone think that CO2 has a warming effect at all? I don’t mean, “What is the mechanism?” (the IR absorption thing.) Here’s what I have:
1) Correlation does not mean causation — but lack of correlation certainly does mean lack of causation (if you had a cause that did not correlate with its effect, how would you know?) A weak cause means weak correlation, to be teased out of “noise”; a strong cause means a stronger correlation. Yes?
1a) A warmist said that one-third of all the CO2 humanity has ever put in the atmosphere was put in in the last 20 years — and the last 17 years has seen a lack of warming; enough that some even argue for cooling (or show cooling in places).
1b) 450 mya, CO2 levels were an order of magnitude greater than today (4400 ppm instead of 400 ppm) — and we were deep in the Andean-Saharan ice age.
1c) Venus — when pressure differences are taken into account, Venus is no warmer than it “should” be just from proximity to the sun, despite 96% CO2. (Albedo? Then it’s a magic albedo that perfectly counterbalances CO2-driven warming; also, Venus is under clouds, not a roof — the effect of albedo should be weaker at higher elevations as less cloud lets in more light — but at the higher altitudes where the atmospheric pressure is 0.5 atm, 0.4 atm, 0.2 atm, Venus is slightly *cooler* than it “should” be.)
So I’m seeing zero correlation between the alleged cause and the alleged effect. Also,
2) CO2 absorbs energy (IR). CO2 is a gas. Energetic (warmed) gases rise. As the excited molecule rises, it is more and more likely to lose its energy to space: 50% likely when the molecule is exactly on the surface, >50% and increasing as it rises. Seems like it ought to have an outright cooling effect, carrying the IR spaceward. If it loses energy to other atmospheric molecules (radiatively or conductively), they, too, will rise and carry that energy closer to space.
I wish I could include a graphic, but the geometry is simple enough: a point on a sphere; any ray extending from it from 0 through 90 to 180 degrees will miss the sphere (the Earth) and any ray from 180 through 270 to 360 degrees will intercept it: half the rays will go into the sphere. But given a point any distance at all from the sphere, more than half the rays will miss it, and more and still more, the farther the radiating point is from the surface.
What am I missing?
mellryn, do you deny the greenhouse effect?
Bill why don’t you just falsify the Null Hypothesis?
Here it is – anthropogenic CO2 emissions are NOT causing catastrophic climate change.
Or – natural variation is causing climate change.
You can choose to falsify either or both of those statements of the null hypothesis.
Simple eh? Now off you go. The floor is yours.
Perhaps Arnie is either rocking the boat for the magic kenyan or working to cover his ass as obummer is likely not qualified under the constitution to be where he is!
This talk about null’s makes my head ache.
Which somehow led to me search the horsepower of a Saturn 5 rocket.
I found:
“between 160 and 175 million horsepower.”
That seems like a lot 🙂
Edohiguma says: October 19, 2013 at 12:05 pm
Heard today that Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to run for POTUS in 2016. He said he’s ready to start lobbying to change the Constitution
Well, why not.
When Barack Obama came to America from Indonesia he showed that a drug-using person of no known accomplishment and odd speech patterns can become President and rewrite the Constitution. Arnold does have accomplishments, and he didn’t need affirmative action.
Anybody signed up for the Affordable Health Care Act yet?
pat says:
October 19, 2013 at 6:52 pm
“getting more blatant by the MSM minute!”
Wait for the study that claims the rise in death of oarfish is being declared as the canary in the coal mine for catastrophic global warming.
geran says:
October 19, 2013 at 1:10 pm
Then T = 360K (87ºC, 188ºF)
Wait, maybe that is kinda funny….
No, actually quite sad, as you don’t seem to know the Earth is spherical…You should have divided the incoming radiation by four.
farmerbraun says:
“Bill why don’t you just falsify the Null Hypothesis?”
Excellent question.
And mellyrn says:
“What am I missing?”
What indeed, Bill? Answer mellyrn’s points.
Take your time, I’m retired. ☺
“Aussiebear says:
October 19, 2013 at 6:41 pm”
Bandt is an inner city, Melbourne, latte sipping alarmist with no scientific background what so ever. He is directly attributing the current bush fires to AGW driven climate change via carbon emissions and Abbotts’ climate policy plans (To repeal the carbon tax – hasn’t happened yet, but still Abbott gets the blame). He has no experience of rural, fire prone, bush regions in Australia. It’s a similar situation in flood prone areas where, the Queensland floods in recent years are a testament to that.
I have seen residents in these areas directly challenge the New South Wales Premier when he visited about policy changes in the Dept. of National Parks. If memory serves, “back burning” policy was changed as well as disallowing animals to roam park lands to, literally, eat ground fuel away in about 1995. An example of city dwellers making rules that apply to residents in rural, fire prone, areas. A former manager of mine is currently fighting the fires here in NSW.
Talking of Kenyans, a Kenyan friend of mine was at the Westgate Mall when the terrorists attacked, she saw the whole thing unfold and lost two of her friends in the attack.
mellyrn;
You’ve got it mostly right. 20 years ago the alarmists were arguing that natural variation was insignificant and the temperature rise was entirely due to CO2. Now, with 17 years of no warming, they are arguing that natural variation is significant after all, and is masking the warming.
Your point 2. however is an over simplification. The amount of energy absorbed by CO2 is negligible in this context. It is the process of repeatedly absorbing and re-radiating energy that makes the difference. Keep in mind that this happens at the speed of light (literally) so while there are secondary effects such as convection, they happen at a snail’s pace by comparison. If you want to get deep into the details, I highly recommend this series by Ira Glickstein:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/20/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-a-physical-analogy/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/28/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-atmospheric-windows/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/10/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-emission-spectra/
farmerbraun says:
October 19, 2013 at 8:21 pm
Bill why don’t you just falsify the Null Hypothesis? Here it is – anthropogenic CO2 emissions are NOT causing catastrophic climate change. Or – natural variation is causing climate change. You can choose to falsify either or both of those statements of the null hypothesis. Simple eh? Now off you go. The floor is yours.
********************
Easy,
“Rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998-2012; 0.05 deg. C/decade”
Since 1998, “7% rise in carbon dioxide (CO2).”
“The transient climate response*** is likely in the range of 1.0 deg. C to 2.5 deg. C … and extremely unlikely greater than 3 deg. C” (SPM-12).
” In setting the top of the range at 3.0 deg. C, the IPCC’s estimate now falls within the range of natural climate variation over the last 6 million years.”
Doh!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/19/scientific-critique-of-ipccs-2013-summary-for-policymakers/
lsvalgaard says:
October 19, 2013 at 9:30 pm
geran says:
October 19, 2013 at 1:10 pm
Then T = 360K (87ºC, 188ºF)
Wait, maybe that is kinda funny….
No, actually quite sad, as you don’t seem to know the Earth is spherical…You should have divided the incoming radiation by four.
>>>>>>
If you would read and try to understand, you would not be such an easy target.
My comment wording was: “If you have an “ideal” absorber….”
Hint: An “ideal” absorber would not be “spherical”.
So, ZERO points for reading comprehension, and MAX points for putting your foot in your mouth.
Mark says:
October 19, 2013 at 2:11 pm
“What exactly is the human contribution to increased atmospheric CO2?”
Good morning Mark (it’s 7.30am here in the UK, very still, dark and damp outside). I do not hail from a scientific background but, like many regular readers of WUWT, are totally obsessed with the full rebellion against any CAGW scaremongering and that for whatever miniscule amount of CO2 is up there, it is not responsible for warming the planet by half a degree during the last century. Having scoured journals, trawled websites, listened to presentations, etc., my own breakdown of atmospheric CO2 (and all the other gases) is this:
(Disclaimer: I apologise in advance if you already know this)
Nitrogen:
78.084% by volume – or 2,498 cubic feet per 3,200 cubic feet of atmosphere.
Oxygen:
20.9476% by volume – or 670 cubic feet per 3,200 cubic feet of atmosphere.
Argon:
0.934% by volume – or 30 cubic feet per 3,200 cubic feet of atmosphere.
Carbon Di-oxide:
0.033912% by volume – or approx 1 cubic foot per 3,200 cubic feet of atmosphere.
This percentage has increased by 8% in the last two decades – a difference of 0.002512% from 0.0314% originally.
The split is not entirely accurate due to CO2 being a dense trace gas, therefore concentrated in the troposphere only, with light atmospheric gas such as Hydrogen, Helium and Methane reaching the stratosphere and mesosphere.
Of the 0.033912% CO2 by volume, 96.775% is naturally occurring (approx 155 parts per 160) and 3.225% is anthropogenic (approx 5 parts per 160). Therefore the human contribution to increased atmospheric CO2 during the last 20 years is 0.0000785% by volume – which is minuscule.
The volume of the remaining six atmospheric gases equal the total volume of CO2 (1 cubic foot per 3,200 cubic feet of atmosphere)
Methane: 0.002% by volume.
Neon: 0.001818% by volume.
Helium: 0.000524% by volume.
Krypton: 0.000114% by volume.
Hydrogen: 0.00005% by volume.
Xenon: 0.0000087% by volume.
If this has not helped you Mark, then maybe it will help other new visitors to Anthony’s site appreciate just how insignificant the amount of anthropogenic CO2 actually is. My apologise to all the regulars who know all of the above already.
GeeJam