Guest essay by Dr. Tim Ball
Elaine Dewar spent several days with Maurice Strong at the UN and concluded in her book The Cloak of Green that, “Strong was using the U.N. as a platform to sell a global environment crisis and the Global Governance Agenda.” Strong conjectured about a small group of world leaders who decided the rich countries were “the principle risk to the world.” These countries refused to reduce their environmental impact. The leaders decided the only hope for the planet was for collapse of the industrialized nations and it was their responsibility to bring that about. Strong knew what to do. Create a false problem with false science and use bureaucrats to bypass politicians to close industry down and make developed countries pay.
Compare the industrialized nation to an internal combustion engine running on fossil fuel. You can stop the engine in two ways; cut off the fuel supply or plug the exhaust. Cutting off fuel supply is a political minefield. People quickly notice as all prices, especially food, increase. It’s easier to show the exhaust is causing irreparable environmental damage. This is why CO2 became the exclusive focus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Process and method were orchestrated to single out CO2 and show it was causing runaway global warming.
In the 1980s I warned Environment Canada employee Henry Hengeveld that convincing a politician of an idea is a problem. Henry’s career involved promoting CO2 as a problem. I explained the bigger problem comes if you convince them and the claim is proved wrong. You either admit your error or hide the truth. Environment Canada and member nations of the IPCC chose to hide or obfuscate the truth.
1. IPCC Definition of Climate Change Was First Major Deception
People were deceived when the IPCC was created. Most believe it’s a government commission of inquiry studying all climate change. The actual definition from the United Nations Environment Program (article 1) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) limits them to only human causes.
“a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over considerable time periods.”
In another deception, they changed the definition used in the first three Reports (1990, 1995, 2001) in the 2007 Report. It’s a footnote in the Summary for Policymakers (SPM).
“Climate change in IPCC usage refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity. This usage differs from that in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, where climate change refers to a change of climate that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and that is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.”
It was not used because Reports are cumulative and to include natural variability required starting over completely.
It is impossible to determine the human contribution to climate change if you don’t know or understand natural (non-human) climate change. Professor Murray Salby showed how the human CO2 portion is of no consequence, that variation in natural sources of CO2 explains almost all annual changes. He showed that a 5% variation in these sources is more than the total annual human production.
2. IPCC Infer And Prove Rather than Disprove a Hypothesis
To make the process appear scientific a hypothesis was inferred based on the assumptions that,
• CO2 was a greenhouse gas (GHG) that slowed the escape of heat from the Earth.
• the heat was back-radiated to raise the global temperature.
• if CO2 increased global temperature would rise.
• CO2 would increase because of expanding industrial activity.
• the global temperature rise was inevitable.
To further assure the predetermined outcome the IPCC set out to prove rather than disprove the hypothesis as scientific methodology requires. As Karl Popper said,
It is the rule which says that the other rules of scientific procedure must be designed in such a way that they do not protect any statement in science against falsification.
The consistent and overwhelming pattern of the IPCC reveal misrepresentations of CO2. When an issue was raised by scientists performing their role as skeptics, instead of considering and testing its validity and efficacy the IPCC worked to divert, even creating some false explanations. False answers succeeded because most people didn’t know they were false.
3. CO2 Facts Unknown to Most But Problematic to IPCC.
Some basic facts about CO2 are unknown to most people and illustrate the discrepancies and differences between IPCC claims and what science knows.
• Natural levels of Carbon dioxide (CO2) are less than 0.04% of the total atmosphere and 0.4% of the total GHG. It is not the most important greenhouse gas.
• Water vapour is 95 percent of the GHG by volume. It is the most important greenhouse gas by far.
• Methane (CH4) is the other natural GHG demonized by the IPCC. It is only 0.000175 percent of atmospheric gases and 0.036 percent of GHG.
• Figure 1 from ABC news shows the false information. It’s achieved by considering a dry atmosphere.
Figure 1
• The percentages troubled the IPCC so they amplified the importance of CO2 by estimating the “contribution” per unit (Figure 2). The range of estimates effectively makes the measures meaningless, unless you have a political agenda. Wikipedia acknowledges “It is not possible to state that a certain gas causes an exact percentage of the greenhouse effect.”
Figure 2 (Source Wikipedia)
4. Human CO2 production critical to IPCC objective so they control production of the information.
Here is their explanation.
What is the role of the IPCC in Greenhouse Gas inventories and reporting to the UNFCCC?
A: The IPCC has generated a number of methodology reports on national greenhouse gas inventories with a view to providing internationally acceptable inventory methodologies. The IPCC accepts the responsibility to provide scientific and technical advice on specific questions related to those inventory methods and practices that are contained in these reports, or at the request of the UNFCCC in accordance with established IPCC procedures. The IPCC has set up the Task Force on Inventories (TFI) to run the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Programme (NGGIP) to produce this methodological advice. Parties to the UNFCCC have agreed to use the IPCC Guidelines in reporting to the convention.
How does the IPCC produce its inventory Guidelines? Utilising IPCC procedures, nominated experts from around the world draft the reports that are then extensively reviewed twice before approval by the IPCC. This process ensures that the widest possible range of views are incorporated into the documents.
They control the entire process from methodology, designation of technical advice, establishment of task forces, guidelines for reporting, nomination of experts to produce the reports, to final report approval. The figure they produce is a gross calculation, but it is estimated humans remove 50% of that amount.
Regardless, if you don’t know natural sources and variabilities of CO2 you cannot know the human portion. It was claimed the portion in the atmosphere from combustion of fossil fuels was known from the ratio of carbon isotopes C13/C12. Roy Spencer showed this was not the case. In addition, they ignore natural burning of fossil fuels including forest fires, long-burning coal seams and peat; as Hans Erren noted, fossil coal is buried wood. Spencer concluded,
If the C13/C12 relationship during NATURAL inter-annual variability is the same as that found for the trends, how can people claim that the trend signal is MANMADE??
The answer is, it was done to prove the hypothesis and further the deception.
5. Pressure For Urgent Political Action
Early IPCC Reports claimed the length of time CO2 remains in the atmosphere as very long. This implied it would continue as a problem even with immediate cessation of CO2 production. However as Segalstad wrote,
Essenhigh (2009) points out that the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in their first report (Houghton et al., 1990) gives an atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) of 50-200 years [as a “rough estimate”]. This estimate is confusingly given as an adjustment time for a scenario with a given anthropogenic CO2 input, and ignores natural (sea and vegetation) CO2 flux rates. Such estimates are analytically invalid; and they are in conflict with the more correct explanation given elsewhere in the same IPCC report: “This means that on average it takes only a few years before a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere is taken up by plants or dissolved in the ocean”.
6. Procedures to Hide Problems with IPCC Science And Heighten Alarmism.
IPCC procedures and mechanisms were established to deceive. IPCC has three Working Groups (WG). WGI produces the Physical Science Basis Report, which proves CO2 is the cause. WGII produces the Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability Report that is based on the result of WGI. WGIII produces the Mitigation of Climate Change Report. WGI and WGII accept WGI’s claim that warming is inevitable. They state,
Five criteria that should be met by climate scenarios if they are to be useful for impact researchers and policy makers are suggested: Criterion 1: Consistency with global projections. They should be consistent with a broad range of global warming projections based on increased concentrations of greenhouse gases. This range is variously cited as 1.4°C to 5.8°C by 2100, or 1.5°C to 4.5°C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration (otherwise known as the “equilibrium climate sensitivity”).
They knew few would read or understand the Science Report with its admission of serious limitations. They deliberately delayed its release until after the Summary for Policymakers (SPM). As David Wojick explained,
Glaring omissions are only glaring to experts, so the “policymakers”—including the press and the public—who read the SPM will not realize they are being told only one side of a story. But the scientists who drafted the SPM know the truth, as revealed by the sometimes artful way they conceal it.
…
What is systematically omitted from the SPM are precisely the uncertainties and positive counter evidence that might negate the human interference theory. Instead of assessing these objections, the Summary confidently asserts just those findings that support its case. In short, this is advocacy, not assessment.
An example of this SPM deception occurred with the 1995 Report. The 1990 Report and the drafted 1995 Science Report said there was no evidence of a human effect. Benjamin Santer, as lead author of Chapter 8, changed the 1995 SPM for Chapter 8 drafted by his fellow authors that said,
“While some of the pattern-base discussed here have claimed detection of a significant climate change, no study to date has positively attributed all or part of climate change observed to man-made causes.”
to read,
“The body of statistical evidence in chapter 8, when examined in the context of our physical understanding of the climate system, now points to a discernible human influence on the global climate.”
The phrase “discernible human influence” became the headline as planned.
With AR5 (2013) they compounded the deception by releasing the SPM then releasing a correction. They got the headline they wanted. It is the same game as the difference between the exposure of problems in the WGI Science Report and the SPM. Media did not report the corrections, but the IPCC could now claim they detailed the inadequacy of their work. It’s not their fault that people don’t understand.
7. Climate Sensitivity
Initially it was assumed that constantly increasing atmospheric CO2 created constantly increasing temperature. Then it was determined that the first few parts per million achieved the greenhouse capacity of CO2. Eschenbach graphed the reality
 |
(Figure 3).
Figure 3
It is like black paint on a window. To block sunlight coming through a window the first coat of black paint achieves most of the reduction. Subsequent coats reduce fractionally less light.
There was immediate disagreement about the amount of climate sensitivity from double and triple atmospheric CO2. Milloy produced a graph comparing three different sensitivity estimates (Figure 4).
 |
Figure 4.
The IPCC created a positive feedback to keep temperatures rising. It claims CO2 causes temperature increase that increases evaporation and water vapour amplifies the temperature trend. Lindzen and Choi, discredited this in their 2011 paper which concluded “The results imply that the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity.”
Climate sensitivity has declined since and gradually approaches zero. A recent paper by Spencer claims “…climate system is only about half as sensitive to increasing CO2 as previously believed.”
8. The Ice Cores Were Critical, But Seriously Flawed.
The major assumption of the inferred IPCC hypothesis says a CO2 increase causes a temperature increase. After publication in 1999 of Petit et al., the Antarctic ice core records appeared as evidence in the 2001 Report (Figure 5).
Figure 5. Antarctic core core record
Four years later research showed the reverse – temperature increase preceded CO2 increase contradicting the hypothesis. It was sidelined with the diversionary claim that the lag was between 80 and 800 years and insignificant. It was so troubling that Al Gore created a deceptive imagery in his movie. Only a few experts noticed.
Actually, temperature changes before CO2 change in every record for any period or duration. Figure 6 shows a shorter record (1958-2009) of the relationship. If CO2 change follows temperature change in every record, why are all computer models programmed with the opposite relationship?
Figure 6; Lag time for short record, 1958 to 2009.
IPCC Needed Low Pre-Industrial CO2 Levels
A pre-industrial CO2 level lower than today was critical to the IPCC hypothesis. It was like the need to eliminate the Medieval Warm Period because it showed the world was not warmer today than ever before.
Ice cores are not the only source of pre-industrial CO2 levels. There are thousands of 19th Century direct measures of atmospheric CO2 that began in 1812. Scientists took precise measurements with calibrated instruments as Ernst Beck thoroughly documented.
In a paper submitted to the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Hearing Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski stated,
“The basis of most of the IPCC conclusions on anthropogenic causes and on projections of climatic change is the assumption of low level of CO2 in the pre-industrial atmosphere. This assumption, based on glaciological studies, is false.”[1]
Of equal importance Jaworowski states,
The notion of low pre-industrial CO2 atmospheric level, based on such poor knowledge, became a widely accepted Holy Grail of climate warming models. The modelers ignored the evidence from direct measurements of CO2 in atmospheric air indicating that in 19th century its average concentration was 335 ppmv[11] (Figure 2). In Figure 2 encircled values show a biased selection of data used to demonstrate that in 19th century atmosphere the CO2 level was 292 ppmv[12]. A study of stomatal frequency in fossil leaves from Holocene lake deposits in Denmark, showing that 9400 years ago CO2 atmospheric level was 333 ppmv, and 9600 years ago 348 ppmv, falsify the concept of stabilized and low CO2 air concentration until the advent of industrial revolution [13].
There are other problems with the ice core record. It takes years for air to be trapped in the ice, so what is actually trapped and measured? Meltwater moving through the ice especially when the ice is close to the surface can contaminate the bubble. Bacteria form in the ice, releasing gases even in 500,000-year-old ice at considerable depth. (“Detection, Recovery, Isolation and Characterization of Bacteria in Glacial Ice and Lake Vostok Accretion Ice.” Brent C. Christner, 2002 Dissertation. Ohio State University). Pressure of overlying ice, causes a change below 50m and brittle ice becomes plastic and begins to flow. The layers formed with each year of snowfall gradually disappear with increasing compression. It requires a considerable depth of ice over a long period to obtain a single reading at depth. Jaworowski identified the problems with contamination and losses during drilling and core recovery process.
Jaworowski’s claim that the modellers ignored the 19th century readings is incorrect. They knew about it because T.R.Wigley introduced information about the 19th century readings to the climate science community in 1983. (Wigley, T.M.L., 1983 “The pre-industrial carbon dioxide level.” Climatic Change 5, 315-320). However, he cherry-picked from a wide range, eliminating only high readings and ‘creating’ the pre-industrial level as approximately 270 ppm. I suggest this is what influenced the modellers because Wigley was working with them as Director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia. He preceded Phil Jones as Director and was the key person directing the machinations revealed by the leaked emails from the CRU.
Wigley was not the first to misuse the 19th century data, but he did reintroduce it to the climate community. Guy Stewart Callendar, a British Steam engineer, pushed the thesis that increasing CO2 was causing warming. He did what Wigley did by selecting only those readings that supported the hypothesis.
There are 90,000 samples from the 19th century and the graph shows those carefully selected by G. S. Callendar to achieve his estimate. It is clear he chose only low readings.
Figure 7. (After Jawaorowski Trend Lines added)
You can see changes that occur in the slope and trend by the selected data compared to the entire record.
Ernst-Georg Beck confirmed Jaworowski’s research. An article in Energy and Environment examined the readings in great detail and validated their findings. In his conclusion Beck states
Modern greenhouse hypothesis is based on the work of G.S. Callendar and C.D. Keeling, following S. Arrhenius, as latterly popularized by the IPCC. Review of available literature raise the question if these authors have systematically discarded a large number of valid technical papers and older atmospheric CO2 determinations because they did not fit their hypothesis? Obviously they use only a few carefully selected values from the older literature, invariably choosing results that are consistent with the hypothesis of an induced rise of CO2 in air caused by the burning of fossil fuel.
The pre-industrial level is some 50 ppm higher than the level claimed.
Beck found,
“Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942 the latter showing more than 400 ppm.”
The challenge for the IPCC was to create a smooth transition from the ice core CO2 levels to the Mauna Loa levels. Beck shows how this was done but also shows how the 19th century readings had to be cherry-picked to fit with ice core and Mauna Loa data (Figure 8).
Figure 8
Variability is extremely important because the ice core record shows an exceptionally smooth curve achieved by applying a 70-year smoothing average. Selecting and smoothing is also applied to the Mauna Loa data and all current atmospheric readings, which naturally vary up to 600 ppm in the course of a day. Smoothing done on the scale of the ice core record eliminates a great deal of information. Consider the variability of temperature data for the last 70 years. Statistician William Brigg’s says you never, ever, smooth a time-series. Elimination of high readings prior to the smoothing make the losses greater. Beck explains how Charles Keeling established the Mauna Loa readings by using the lowest readings of the afternoon and ignored natural sources. Beck presumes Keeling decided to avoid these low level natural sources by establishing the station at 4000 m up the volcano. As Beck notes
“Mauna Loa does not represent the typical atmospheric CO2on different global locations but is typical only for this volcano at a maritime location in about 4000 m altitude at that latitude. (Beck, 2008, “50 Years of Continuous Measurement of CO2on Mauna Loa” Energy and Environment, Vol. 19, No.7.)
Keeling’s son operates Mauna Loa and as Beck notes, “owns the global monopoly of calibration of all CO2measurements.” He is a co-author of the IPCC reports, that accept Mauna Loa and all other readings as representative of global levels.
As a climatologist I know it is necessary to obtain as many independent verifications of data as possible. Stomata are small openings on leaves, which vary in size directly with the amount of atmospheric CO2. They underscore effects of smoothing and the artificially low readings of the ice cores. A comparison of a stomata record with the ice core record for a 2000-year period (9000 – 7000 BP) illustrates the issue (Figure 9).
Figure 9.
Stomata data show higher readings and variability than the excessively smoothed ice core record. They align quantitatively with the 19th century measurements as Jaworowski and Beck assert. The average level for the ice core record shown is approximately 265 ppm while it is approximately 300 ppm for the stomata record.
The pre-industrial CO2 level was marginally lower than current levels and likely within the error factor. Neither they, nor the present IPCC claims of 400 ppm are high relative to the geologic record. The entire output of computer climate models begins with the assumption that pre-industrial levels were measurably lower. Elimination of this assumption further undermines the claim that the warming in the industrial era period was due to human addition of CO2 to the atmosphere. Combine this with their assumption that CO2 causes temperature increase, when all records show the opposite, it is not surprising IPCC predictions of temperature increase are consistently wrong.
The IPCC deception was premeditated under Maurice Strong’s guidance to prove CO2 was causing global warming as pretext for shutting down industrialized nations. They partially achieved their goal as alternate energies and green job economies attest. All this occurred as contradictory evidence mounts because Nature refused to play. CO2 increases as temperatures decline, which according to IPCC science cannot happen. Politicians must deal with facts and abandon all policies based on claims that CO2 is a problem, especially those already causing damage.
Source: The Global Warming Policy Foundation: CCNet 14/10/13
1. [1] “Climate Change: Incorrect information on pre-industrial CO2” Statement written for the Hearing before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation by Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski March 19, 2004
Related articles
- IPCC ‘s Bogus Evidence for Global Warming (americanthinker.com)
- 2013 On Track to be Seventh Warmest Year Since 1850 (climatecentral.org)
- Another Reason Why IPCC Predictions (Projections) Fail. AR5 Continues to Let The End Justify the Unscrupulous Means (wattsupwiththat.com)
- UN climate panel corrects carbon numbers in influential report (trust.org)
- The IPCC’s muddled definitions of climate change (ipccreport.wordpress.com)
Great article on the orwellian rewriting of science and CO2. We do live in a dark age of superstition and ignorance. Where stupid now means science (see evolution).
“the principle [sic] risk to the world.”
Can’t spell, can’t reason.
Waitwaitwait. We calibrate our CO2 instruments from a sensor parked on the side of an active volcano? Which pencil neck thought this was a good idea? I’d always figured it was the other way around and never gave much thought to the Mauna Loa readings because: Hey, as the CO2 climbs as the mountain gets ready to pop again? Who. Cares. Because we’re measuring and calibrating elsewhere.
But, really? The gold standard of all measurements and the sense we calibrate the universe by is parked in a place that is *guaranteed* to have its own completely natural CO2 escalation as it propels itself towards another eruption?
Dr. Ball, if that’s at all right as you say, then someone needs to puts these braying donkey’s seriously out to pasture. Because who cares about putting instruments next to an air conditioner when the whole thesis is based on: Pretend this isn’t an active volcano. Now calibrate things.
So what’s in it for Maurice Strong? Does he figure the world will elect him to be King of the World, after he plunges the world into chaos and destroys the world’s economy?
He’s as clueless as he is evil. I wish he’d quickly “age out”.
This sounds remarkably like what has happened though I’m not prone to conspiracy theories. I’m inclined not to believe this was consciously made up. However I am inclined to believe that some activists flew a kite that for some odd reason got traction, socialism has been riding that traction ever since. It’s so hard to dislodge because the Greens / Socialists don’t want to give up the power it delivers them… It’s become a theology to them, much like the “Bosses are all evil” theology that pervades the union movement while all the while it’s the union officials caught with their snouts in the trough.
Science is just the innocent casualty of an accident of politics
CAGW is just a goof up, bit like Y2k
Is Maurice Strong still alive? Haven’t seen him on the MSM or even MSNBC.
Whoa – I have to re-read this when I have time. If you are all piqued by this great piece, you should also read The Age of Global Warming: A History, by Rupert Darwal. Really dense but an eye opener
Reblogged this on Power To The People and commented:
Climate Change Is Not The Problem – Fuel Poverty Is
Thank you Dr. Tim Ball for concisely enumerating the obvious flaws in the IPCC reports and the likely basic motivation of the authors.
Jquip 7:13pm: “Pretend (Mauna Loa) isn’t an active volcano.”
Can’t pretend Mauna Loa isn’t an active volcano because it really is. NOAA does know it. Here’s how they control for its CO2 emissions: “How do scientists know that Mauna Loa’s volcanic emissions don’t affect the carbon dioxide data collected there?”
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/mauna-loa-co2-record/
Note NOAA reports their volcano CO2 measurement data is valuable to volcanologists.
The story about the two definitions of climate change are interesting. The IPCC presumed in its work that it meant natural and man made. It was the FCCC that used the definition of manmade only. The FCCC came into existence after the first assessment. The Australian delegation on the 2nd Assessment raised concerns that this would lead to confussion made a fuss about this at the Madrid Plenary of WG1 in Madrid in 1995. It was due to this that the footnote was inserted. Credit goes to John Zillman.
Thanks, Dr. Ball.
You show a deeper root for our problem; According to some people, the rest of the people are like a cancer to the Earth. We must be reduced in numbers; just enough to sustain the elite in their proper place: As (mostly) benign world dictators, saving the Earth from humans.
Great article. Completely true. What we need is some way of sending this out world
Wide. O T …. a reply to an article attacking Willie soon in the boston globe…”thank you
for the entertainment provided by your article on Willie Soon. It was fun to watch the
virtual spit flying from the globes mouth throughout the article.
Rarely have I read a more biased diatribe posing as news.
As for the ipcc being awarded the Nobel peace prize? Pardon me if i’m not as impressed by
That award as I used to be”…..
re: Maurice Strong
He seems to be hiding in the PRC….. he fled to Beijing during the investigations of the “oil for food” scandal wrt Iraq and the UN sanctions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Strong
Trick: “Note NOAA reports their volcano CO2 measurement data is valuable to volcanologists.”
And that’s absolutely correct. The problem is calibrating other instruments from Mauna Loa. I don’t mean to call Dr. Ball into question, but the idea that this is the case is beyond absurd.
“Actually, temperature changes before CO2 change in every record for any period or duration. Figure 6 shows a shorter record (1958-2009) of the relationship. If CO2 change follows temperature change in every record, why are all computer models programmed with the opposite relationship?”
Now there’s the question of the hour that I would love to get a answer to from the climate alarmists! In my view, that issue has to be the biggest flaw of all in the GCMs.
The problem is that the alarmists probably don’t have an answer to that question. Too bad, because I would love to hear them stumbling through an explanation.
Warmists reply to co2 not causing global warming…..it’s pollution . Until the public is educated
On co2 the train will keep on rolling..
Fenbeagle draws a hilarious rendering of Maurice Strong as an Ernest Stavro Bloefeld style super villain. Just scroll down to see his likeness.
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/hanging-up-by-the-constables/
Another very good article Dr. Ball, – keep them coming!
That the IPCC demonized CO2 with manufactured information is beyond doubt. This conclusion follows from the facts that: a) the IPCC climate models convey no information to makers of policy on CO2 emissions on the outcomes from their policy decisions and b) as they made policies, the makers of these policies must have thought they had information. The lack of information is a consequence from the nonexistence of events underlying the IPCC models. I’d be pleased to elaborate if anyone is interested.
Thank you Dr Ball – we need to get a copy of this to every politician. It is sickening that this evilness has come as far as it has.
So, a bunch of world leaders decided that rich countries are the principal risk to the world in order to destroy them through de-industrialization. Jealous at all, do you think? Presumably it didn’t occur to them to try capitalism – which worked splendidly for the rest of us – it would have been a heck of a lot simpler and hugely productive.
These people could have been admired for doing wonderful things for their countries, their people. They could have been looked up to and gone into the history books as heroes. Instead, these miserable, cowardly, evil sods opted to tear down what they did not have themselves, but could have had they just tried to use a brain cell or two.
They just couldn’t get the idea that freedom produces riches. The solution was staring them right in the face by way of example, and all they could think of was to destroy it and any happiness or hope in the world.
We are looking at the worst crime in human history. I sincerely hope they burn for it. Every last one of them, and their cohorts and minions too. The world would turn on them all if people knew.
I don’t think Mauna Loa is an active volcano.
Christopher Korvin says:
November 13, 2013 at 8:55 pm
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/maunaloa/
“Rising gradually to more than 4 km above sea level, Mauna Loa is the largest volcano on our planet. Its long submarine flanks descend to the sea floor an additional 5 km, and the sea floor in turn is depressed by Mauna Loa’s great mass another 8 km. This makes the volcano’s summit about 17 km (56,000 ft) above its base! The enormous volcano covers half of the Island of Hawai`i and by itself amounts to about 85 percent of all the other Hawaiian Islands combined.
“Mauna Loa is among Earth’s most active volcanoes, having erupted 33 times since its first well-documented historical eruption in 1843. Its most recent eruption was in 1984. Mauna Loa is certain to erupt again, and we carefully monitor the volcano for signs of unrest.”
But wait, there’s more!
The CO2 sensors are also down the prevailing winds from Kilauea, which has been actively erupting since 1983:
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/kilauea/
“Kīlauea is the youngest and southeastern most volcano on the Big Island of Hawai`i. Topographically Kīlauea appears as only a bulge on the southeastern flank of Mauna Loa, and so for many years Kīlauea was thought to be a mere satellite of its giant neighbor, not a separate volcano. However, research over the past few decades shows clearly that Kīlauea has its own magma-plumbing system, extending to the surface from more than 60 km deep in the earth.
“In fact, the summit of Kīlauea lies on a curving line of volcanoes that includes Mauna Kea and Kohala and excludes Mauna Loa. In other words, Kīlauea is to Mauna Kea as Lo`ihi is to Mauna Loa. Hawaiians used the word Kīlauea only for the summit caldera, but earth scientists and, over time, popular usage have extended the name to include the entire volcano.
“The eruption of Kīlauea Volcano that began in 1983 continues at the cinder-and-spatter cone of Pu`u `Ō `ō. Lava erupting from the cone flows through a tube system down Pulama pali about 11 km to the sea.”
Correction ! ! I read that Mauna Loa is technically classified as active. It last erupted, I read, in 1984..So not very active just now, for 30 years. I didn’t see anything resembling an eruption when I was there recently .But as CO2 is invisible, colorless, and odorless it could have been gently seeping out of the ground without me observing it. So, perhaps someone who is more informed than me could tell us authoritatively whether this ongoing Co2 seepage. It seems unlikely.
Getting worse by the minute ! “There is” for “this”
Jquip-
It’s true, though not a lot of people know it.
“The laboratory of Charles Keeling owns the global monopoly of calibration of all CO2
measurements (WMO 2001/2003). ”
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/08_Beck-2.pdf
Christopher Korvin says:
November 13, 2013 at 9:04 pm
Monitoring CO2 production on Mauna Loa since the 1984 eruption:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/programs/esrl/volcanicco2/volcanicco2.html
You can also read about the CO2 produced locally on Mauna Loa in a number of posts on this blog. It really is a very much active volcano. By contrast, the last major eruption of the still active Mt. Hood, Oregon’s tallest mountain, was in the 1790s.
Then there is, as I noted, the continuous emission from Kilauea, & the undersea baby volcanoes nearby.
Above Figure 3 there is “Eschenbach graphed the reality ” . . .
and this may be true. However, I think I first saw this in a post by David Archibald and it was there attributed to a run on MODTRAN. It was suggested, but not quite clear, that David did this simulation or arranged for it. See this 22 October 2007 paper:
http://www.davidarchibald.info/papers/Failure%20To%20Warm.pdf
My only concern here is that I do not know how accurate this chart is nor where it came from but I would be reluctant to use it with only the knowledge that “Eschenbach graphed” it. I have seen other presentations of this idea, including here on WUWT, and so I am not questioning the concept. As there is no link here to which of Willis’ work this graph comes from I do not think this use meets the standard for a serious article.
John F. Hultquist says:
November 13, 2013 at 9:21 pm
Thanks very much for the link to Archibald 2007.
Thanks Dr. Ball for a great summary of IPCC incompetence
Some reinforcing points:
1. Fig 2 above from the IPCC says CO2 comprises 9-26% of the greenhouse effect
That’s quite a spread for the alleged 33K greenhouse effect ranging from a total CO2 greenhouse effect of 3C to 9C; remarkable in and of itself given the huge implications for climate sensitivity.
But since Andy Lacis, Gavin Schmidt, Chris Colose, James Hansen et al claim that CO2 comprises 20% of the alleged 33C greenhouse effect, lets assume 20%:
Thus, that would imply CO2 was responsible for 6.44°C warming in 1850 [32.2*.2] and 6.6°C now [33*.2], a warming effect of 0.16°C after all feedbacks despite a 40% increase in CO2 levels. This would thus imply a climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 of 0.33C = ln(2)*[.16/ln(1.4)], 9 times less than claimed by the IPCC.
2. Segalstad: “This [CO2 lifetime] estimate is confusingly given as an adjustment time for a scenario with a given anthropogenic CO2 input, and ignores natural (sea and vegetation) CO2 flux rates. Such estimates are analytically invalid…”
Quite right as shown by many peer-reviewed papers, including a new paper published today:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/11/new-paper-finds-another-erroneous.html
3. Lindzen & Choi 2010, in addition to finding “The results imply that the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity.” find the net climate feedbacks from water vapor, clouds, etc. are negative
line 39: http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/05/dr-lindzens-new-paper-07c-temperature.html
4. Re ice cores: “It was sidelined with the diversionary claim that the lag was between 80 and 800 years and insignificant.”
A new paper finds from high-resolution ice core analysis that CO2 lags temperature by 500-5000 years:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/11/new-paper-finds-ice-core-co2-levels-lag.html
5. “Actually, temperature changes before CO2 change in every record for any period or duration. Figure 6 shows a shorter record (1958-2009) of the relationship. If CO2 change follows temperature change in every record, why are all computer models programmed with the opposite relationship?”
Mathematical & observational proof that CO2 has no significant effect on climate
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/09/mathematical-observational-proof-that.html.
In public policy making it is important to analyze carefully where you and your opposition stand in the social construction board. Big oil, big tobacco and any big business for that matter, is on the highly advantaged ( with its financial and social muscle) but negative perception such that any losing player could still win the public policy debate by painting his opponent as being paid, part or sympathetic of big oil. ( This is a generalization of the social phenomena where debates degenerate to Nazi calling). I dont have to enumerate how alarmist when losing the debate will ultimately protect his position by claiming the skeptics are paid or in cahoots with big oil. On the other hand the ascendancy and career low of Maurice Strong has always been defined by BIG OIL. He was a major player in BIG OIL up to the very end of his public appearance in the west. Nevertheless, nobody would like to paint Maurice Strong creations such as climate change, UNEP, etc as tainted by big oil. Maurice Strong played his card very well in the public policy game, insulating his creations from the stigma of big oil by moving his position to disadvantage positive under the cover of fear and ignorance creating an effective impenetrable wall in the center. The last that was heard of him was self exile in Beijing. While nothing is heard about Maurice Strong publicly in recent years, he could potentially be behind a lot of surprises in the next few years in the UNFCCC negotiations for a post-Kyoto Protocol implementing mechanism.
Fig 2 gives the direct contribution to the greenhouse effect by each of the 4 main GHG’s:
H2O – 36-72 %, CO2 – 9-26%, CH4 – 4-9%, O3 – 3-7%, Per Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas , which further explains that
“The higher ends of the ranges quoted are for each gas alone; the lower ends account for overlaps with the other gases.”
Since the contributions of CO2, CH4 and O2 in situ total 16%, either there is a very large number of other GHG’s which, while individually of little effect, when taken together contribute 48% of total GHG effect (then why aren’t they counted), or the greenhouse contribution of H2O in situ (36%) has been tremendously understated.
SR
An exposé on Maurice Strong could inform the general public on just about everything they’d need to know about the true characters behind the CAGW meme, and thus its legitimacy.
It’s generally claimed that our dear billionaire Maurice got his start in the Canadian oil industry but his real start, in his youth, was actually right from where he’d end his career; the UN. I’ve always found it curious how all these benevolent public servant types always seem to wind up being million or billionaires. And the fortunes always seem to follow those career choices. Thus one is left to wonder just how much of an anomaly the UN Oil for Food Scandal really is in the strata these parasites occupy. It’s no secret that Tariq Aziz offered million dollar plus bribes to UN officials so is it coincidence that one of these checks found its way into Maurice’s wrinkly old hands? And is it a coincidence that after that ‘inconvenient’ exposure of a one million dollar check from Iraq that our dear Maurice decided to scoot his sorry behind to his penthouse apartment in Beijing: a building that he shares with a few embassies.
Canadian Maurice Strong’s long overdue retirement in Beijing also paints a picture of his true sensitivities. His current safe haven is the result of a 40 year relationship with China which would seem to indicate it predates the reforms of Deng Xiaopeng and harks all the way back to Chairman Mao.
This is only a brief history of one of the individuals formerly entrusted with being 2nd in command at the UN. Who has called for the destruction of industrial society. Who has engineered this destruction through the control of energy sources falsely justified through a scientific scam of epic proportions. Society needs to put aside these leeches and reread the warnings we were given almost 250 years ago by Thomas Paine: a man who did not die a multi-billionaire with a beak in a public watering trough.
BBC article suggesting seas are already becoming acidic from CO2 and will lead to loss of 30% of marine species by 2100. This is so far from any reality I wonder how they expect to get away with it!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24904143
Maurice Strong is alive and well. Strong links to the Liberals -family ties with Chretien, working relation with Bob Rae etc…- are well known.
So when his friends at the Anglo-Canadian group Thomson Reuters offered him in April 2013 an Op-ed in the Globe & Mail in which he attacked the present Canadian government for not caving to the pressure -others would say blackmail- of the US Foundation backed green movement and their bankers, he meant business.
At the same time Strong was front page in Canada, Thomas Homer-Dixon a regular green monger in the Globe, director of CIGI, a Balsillie, Rockefeller Brothers and Soros funded green institute was backstabbing the Canadian government and its support for pipelines in a New York Times editorial.
Recently Liberal leader Justin Trudeau called for a carbon tax in Calgary. First Nations activists are being used to oppose developments in Alberta, BC, Ontario or New Brunswick by organisations funded by US billionaires and benefiting from a so called charitable status in Canada. Liberal linked mayors in Vancouver, Calgary are working hand in hand with some of those “charities” such as the Sierra Club. The David Suzuki Foundation whose chairman is Desmogblog’s founder has been hired by the UK to help “explain” the advantages of carbon markets in BC.
Powerful interests have installed their puppets at every level of government -municipal, provincial and federal opposition-, in academia and in the media in order to manipulate public opinion through alarming climate stories in order to condition masses to demand and welcome policies these financiers seek to impose on a captive audience and that will make them richer. Meanwhile, the same Globe & Mail keeps running regular articles about income inequality, managing the “tour-de-force” of having their most leftish readers supporting the richest family in Canada through demonisation of the “bad rich”, that is those who do not foster the green diktat.
Graham of Sydney says:
November 13, 2013 at 7:08 pm
“the principle [sic] risk to the world.”
Can’t spell, can’t reason.
_____________________________________________________________
Can’t fault the substance of the essay but only find a piddling spelling error. Looks to me you agree with Balls presentation.!
While it is unclear to me exactly who made the spelling error ( Dr. Ball, Dewar, or Strong?), your ad hominem seems a bit out of place for such a mistake.
On the whole I thought the article was very interesting and well presented.
Thank you Tim for an excellent article. It is frightening that corrupt, self-serving organisations like the IPCC can not only survive, but thrive using money they obtain by deception from the countries and taxpayers they clearly despise.
The BBC can be tarred with the same brush, their propaganda machine is back on track because over the last few days they have been “informing” us in their news items about ocean acidification, increased global temperatures and all the other warmist c**p that they shove down our collective throats whenever we have an autumnal mild spell of weather.
If anyone on WUWT wants to hear how nauseatingly bigoted the BBC can be, go to the BBC Radio 2 website and listen to Jeremy Vine’s programme from 12:00 noon (GMT) yesterday (13 November). The “debate” was cynically about whether AGW caused the typhoon that hit the Phillipines. I have parathesised debate because the only “expert” was George Monbiot, there was no-one else present to provide an opposing view.
The sooner all of these lies and deceit are exposed, the better!
“anticlimactic says:
November 13, 2013 at 10:32 pm”
From a linked article in the article you link to;
“At the end of last year, Dr Hall-Spencer published his findings on one volcanic vent site off Ischia Island near Vesuvius. But at this meeting, he reported soon-to-be-published data gathered at other volcanic vents in Europe, Baja California and Papua New Guinea. They all show the same outcomes as at Ischia.”
Acidity at one submerged volcanic vent site is “evidence” the global oceans by 2100 will be 170% more acidic and they expect 30% of ocean sea life not to survive? That’s one hell of a claim! I agree, it was a ridiculous article but the BBC let themselves off by publishing a disclaimer about articles they link to.
I saw a documentary about a similar site in Papua New Guinea. The reefs were discovered about 10 years ago. Where CO2 bubbles up (Concentration not specified) the reef was in poor condition, but reefs around it were fine. Of course, no-one outside the study can corroborate that. So if CO2 was making the sea acidic and killing the reef, why isn’t the CO2 being mixed by sea currents and “killing off” the surrounding reefs?
More Orwellian work at today’s RC. Simply astounding.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/11/global-warming-since-1997-underestimated-by-half/
Very interesting! Useful to have this information pulled together in one place.
Regarding CO2 lag in the ice-core record, I’ve had it explained to me that in the past this was indeed the case but human influence is now driving temperature, so once the natural process kicks in as well the temperature will rise even more.
I note that some AGW people are now not focusing on the temperature so much as the rate of increase of temperature, saying that it is (was?!) the rate which is “unprecedented” rather than the temperature itself. As Anthony says, you have to keep watching the pea.
A proposed test for CO2 greenhouse effect.
I obviously don’t have the wherewithal to do this test, but there must be some way of doing it.
It uses two identical disused power station cooling towers next to each other.
Temperature sensors are set up at close, regular height intervals inside each towers.
“Atmosphere” is pumped slowly into the base of each tower after regulating to the same ambient temperature.
Into one tower, the CO2 concentration pumped in is, say 700ppm, and in the other tower the CO2 concentration is 350ppm. This CO2 level in also monitored at several height points.
The same humidity is controlled for each tower. (Tests could be run using several different humidity percentages.)
A series of tests is run, each for a whole day, where the temperature at each set height is recorded against time.
Since the AGW brethren are the only ones likely to have access to the funds to do such testing, I DARE them to arrange this test, with suitable scientific monitoring, of course.
I really want to know… does raised atmospheric CO2 levels cause any atmospheric warming..
I doubt it very much
ps.. this is only a first run of this testing idea. It would obviously need to be much better planned.
None of this is news. When my personal lib-green bubble first burst around 2000, I began reading more widely, and all of this was known and available, as time went on. Good summary, though.
Yes and a neglected side of global warming on this site, is of course the Bernaysian manipulation going on 24/7. This at least brings it into focus. Check out Strong’s connectios to Gore and John Holdren and Club of Rome.
Great summary of the fraud and deception. Needs to be nailed firmly to the CAGW church doors.
Good article……… And a Fen Beagle Illustration (Green isn’t working)….It isn’t.
Another test for atmospheric CO2 effect.
Relocate the emission point of a coal fired power station to a pristine area (offshore, desert, forest…) to create an artificial CO2 dome in the air, with higher CO2 concentrations closer to the emission point. The flue gas can be additionally filtered from ash and soot particles, and cooled to the ambient temperatures. This shouldn’t be very expensive.
Now, one can measure all kinds of parameters, like CO2 concentrations, temperatures, wind, humidity, surface heat fluxes etc, and see the influence of CO2 on these parameters.
Huh? Assumed by whom? Arrhenius’s law is logarithmic, so I guess you are refering the some assumption that predates his law.
I found this entire article to be hard to accept, from the conspiracy thoeries in the first paragraph onwards. “Strong conjectured about a small group of world leaders …”. Seriously? Exactly who were these “world leaders” who decided to destroy the industrialised world? And why would Strong, an entrepreneur with major fossil fuel interests, go along with it?
Thank you Dr. Ball for a great and very important article that all should read in detail. Have no idea who Elaine Dewar is off hand but her shedding light on her few days of interaction with Strong and the U.N., says what has been rather hidden. Thanks, this is a good reference!
Tim Ball:
Many thanks for your fine overview. It provides a useful reference for people ‘new’ to the subject.
Much of what you say is subject to existing debate here on WUWT and elsewhere. For example, at November 11, 2013 at 12:15 pm in a still active WUWT thread, I concluded a post comparing ice core and stomata CO2 indications saying
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/10/towards-a-theory-of-climate/#comment-1472397
An immediate response to this was a reply which championed the ice core data and tried to rubbish the stomata data! This is typical of how all data is ‘used’ in so-called climate science.
And you touch on my strongest objection to IPCC so-called science when you write
Indeed, empirical – n.b. not model-derived – determinations each indicate climate sensitivity is ~0.6°C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent. This value is indicated by the studies of
Idso from surface measurements
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/Idso_CR_1998.pdf
and Lindzen & Choi from ERBE satellite data
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
and Gregory from balloon radiosonde data
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/OLR&NGF_June2011.pdf
Idso published his eight “natural experiments” in Climate Research in April 1998. The IPCC has not mentioned, not reported and not referenced his work. My above link goes to his paper which has this as its Abstract
The IPCC has studiously ignored empirical information which indicates climate sensitivity (CS) is less than 1.0°C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration and has only reported high values of CS produced from model studies (i.e. climate ‘understandings’ programmed into computers).
The empirical determinations of CS indicate that effects of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration above present levels would not be possible to discern natural climate variability is much larger. Therefore, any effect on global temperature of increase to atmospheric CO2 concentration only has an abstract existence; it does not have a discernible existence that has observable effects (observation of its effects would be its detection).
Richard
One presumes that Ban ki-Moon is complicit in the aims of Maurice Strong. If he isn’t, then he should show he isn’t by sacking Strong forthwith.
I’ve read that the concentration of stomata on leaves varies with BOTH CO2 and humidity.
But cannot now remember where!.
On Maurice Strong: Why is it that so many hypocrites who got rich from fossil fuels suddenly turn against it without giving back their fossil fuel powered money? Al Gore also comes to mind.
Who is Maurice Strong?. Is he suffering from the Messiah Syndrome?
• In the 1950s he acquired a small natural gas company called Ajax Petroleum & renamed it Canadian Industrial Gas & Oil Co.
• He is a former businessman engaged in the ‘Alberta Oil Patch‘ under M.F. Strong Management.
• Until 1966 he was president of Power Corporation of Canada.
• He was chief executive officer of Petro-Canada from 1976 to 1978.
Give back all the money Maurice if you are sincere. Then ask yourself about the immense damage you have caused to humanity itself.
“The tin foil hat is strong in this one.”
bobl says:
November 13, 2013 at 7:29 pm
“This sounds remarkably like what has happened though I’m not prone to conspiracy theories. I’m inclined not to believe this was consciously made up. ”
So I guess the 1972 Stockholm summit on the environment where Maurice Strong got all the paid Green NGO stooges carted there to protest for more environmental protection happened by pure chance; just one of those weird molecule configurations the Schrödinger equation is known to produce.
Brian H says:
November 14, 2013 at 12:18 am
“None of this is news. When my personal lib-green bubble first burst around 2000, I began reading more widely, and all of this was known and available, as time went on. Good summary, though.”
It must be repeated over and over again. The average person getting his info from MSM / state media knows NOTHING of this story to this day. They all believe in the official legend of idealistic Greenpeace heroes fighting the system.
SanityP says:
November 14, 2013 at 2:13 am
“The tin foil hat is strong in this one.”
Yet you can’t refute one bit of it, because all of this is documented not least in the writings of UNEP, UNIPCC and Club Of Rome itself.
Here is the former Big Oil man in an interview with the Guardian in June 2010
Then give back the oil cash. It really is as simple as that.
TFN Johnson:
re your comment at November 14, 2013 at 2:03 am.
I mention the values of ice core and stomata data in my post at November 14, 2013 at 1:33 am. However, it is stuck in moderation (probably because it includes several links) so you may not notice it when it appears at some future time (which is why I am writing this post).
If my post does appear then I think this will then be a link to it
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/13/why-and-how-the-ipcc-demonized-co2-with-manufactured-information/#comment-1474908
Richard
In his exploration of “why”, Dr. Tim Ball misses an important point, money. More precisely money for the UN.
No matter what you set up a bureaucracy for, within one employment/promotion cycle it’s primary goals always default to survival and expansion.
The collectivist kleptocrats of the UN desperately want a guaranteed income, yet they are forced to survive on the contributions of the very first world nations they wish to subjugate and they hate it, they absolutely hate it. They have tried before to get agreement on extra-sovereign taxes on all international shipping and failed. Carbon taxes are just their next attempt.
If the UN managed to con the first world into paying extra-sovereign carbon taxes, they could pretend to redistribute money to developing nations, ensuring support and power.
The good news is that in overreaching on AGW the UN have utterly destroyed their credibility. They can never be trusted again. The great news is that they have done it in the age of the Internet and their shame will burn forever.
It does not matter what they try next, bio-crisis, sustainability or water-crisis, it won’t work in the post AGW hoax age. Years of work on the Fabian long march through the institutions has been undone by the Professional Left’s own inanity. They thought they had the compliance of the lame stream media and they did. But it was all for naught. No amount of William Connolleys can destroy the democracy of the Internet, but the democracy of the Internet can destroy every last one of the Professional Left.
And this just in:
Prairies vanish in the US push for green energy
http://sync.democraticunderground.com/112757353
And let me add: http://classicalvalues.com/2013/11/green-failure/
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/clip_image0027.jpg
Now show a pie chart with CO2 v the rest of the atmospheric gasses.
Oh dear the CO2 doesn’t show up in Excel.
“Natural levels of Carbon dioxide (CO2) are less than 0.04% of the total atmosphere and 0.4% of the total GHG.”
That would be a little over 20 grams of HCN for every 70 kg of body weight. Small concentrations can’t matter, you are invited to try it 🙂
“Then there is, as I noted, the continuous emission from Kilauea, & the undersea baby volcanoes nearby.” – getting more active all the time 🙂
@ Pat November 13, 2013 at 11:11 pm, concerning volcanic vents – reefs around PNG etc.
Here’s some examples:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/28/the-fishes-and-the-coral-live-happily-in-the-co2-bubble-plume/
and
http://goo.gl/k6qpZ
[jennifer marohasy’s web page on CO2 and Dobu Island]
Thanks for the info and responses. To those that don’t understand the calibration problem:
Let’s say Mr. Plumb True runs a level business. He doesn’t just make levels used in carpentry and construction, but calibrates and re-trues levels for everyone. In fact, he’s the only one that does so. The procedure that Mr. Plumb True uses is to compare your level to his, and then adjust your level so that it reads the same. Now back on about the mid 50’s accuracy wasn’t a big deal and a 1/2 bubble to either side in reality was good enough for a center bubble reading. And Mr. Plumb True did this by placing both levels on his shop floor. But Mr. Plumb True is a professional, a craftsman of the finest quality, and so when he moved his shop to a new location, he wanted to do something better.
So he explicitly chose a new shop in a location suitable for his calibration services. A shop built with a single slab floor, with half-the slab over bentonite, It’s an exquisitely laid bit of concrete and is guaranteed to be straight as a whistle. The only problem is that the level of the floor changes with moisture in the air, due eh bentonite, as well as all the other issues of foundations settling, shifting, and so on. So Mr. Plumb True created an adjustable table in his shop. The angle of the tables surface has an adjustable angle so that he can offset the changes in the shop floor.
Only thing is, he’s the only one truing levels. So he either needs to true his table with his own uncalibrated level. Or calculate a guess as to how the floor has changed since the last time he trued his own level. And he know it is out of true as he explicitly chose the place with bentonite under the foundation. But by his calculated guesses, so long as they aren’t too out of line with his own level, which he also knows has come out of true, he sets the angle of the table and then proceeds to retrue his own level. But as a value add service he longer requires you to send your level in to be trued. He produces a set of calibrated reference levels on his cock-eyed table on his cock-eyed floor and sends them out to everyone else, so they can make their levels match his.
Now who has a true level?
The problem with such a condition is that you are not calibrating per se. You are not setting each level in a standard way to as fixed and unchanging a quantity as possible. You are synchronizing, much like you do with clocks. Pick one clock in your house and set all other clocks to the same value. What time is it? If the only thing that matters is that every clock reads the same as your preferred clock then you don’t know, and don’t care. If all your clocks read 4 in the morning at solar noon, it makes no difference to you. But if you’re interested in solar noon at all, then this is not how you get it done. For while they’re synchronized, to a reference; the reference isn’t calibrated itself.
[Snip.]
Another omission of “Figure 2” is that clouds are also a significant GHE contributor.
http://www.asterism.org/tutorials/tut37%20Radiative%20Cooling.pdf
What? All that and no Mann? No Hockey Stick?
I’ve wondered for a while if he is rightly advising or being advised of his rights.
===========
Dr Ball, the information you have on methane is wrong. Methane is an insignificant absorber of radiant energy, Have a look in Chapter 5 of Perry’s Chemical Engineering Handbook (Heat and Mass transfer) sub-section Heat Transfer by Radiation (written by the great Prof Hoyt Hottel -I think he also wrote a similar section in Marks Mechanical Engineering Handbook). The 21 times CO2 comes from the burning of methane (CH4) to CO2 +2H2O taking into account the radiation absorption of water vapor (which according to IPCC does not count as a green house gas). However, methane does not burn in the atmosphere because, there, it is below the ignition temperature of 650C and at 1.7ppm it is below the flamability lower limit of 5%.
The assumptions on Methane by the IPCC is just another lie.
It was Maurice Strong who tried to get Ontario Hydro to set up an offshore (tax-free) company to buy rights to a Costa Rican rain-forest in the form of an environmental credit for the pollution it was causing in Ontario back in 1994. My first thought was “who owns that land and what would they do with all that money – $34 billion?”. My second thought was “shouldn’t we be spending that money making our own energy production more efficient?”. Third thought was “it must be a scam”.
I’ve brought up this issue previously on WUWT, but it bears repeating. I can say many good things about this article, but I cannot say that the figures are good. They are dreadful, and the reason they are dreadful is because a low-Q jpeg format is used. Please, please, when showing line drawings, use PNG format! Looking at these horrible images is painful.
jpeg is [for] photographs: use it for photos.
Oil and food together are like birds of a feather. Maurice Strong just could [not] get oil out of his friggin mind. Money also for that matter. Here are a few links into his embroilment in the bribery and corruption scandal of the UN oil for food. Hey maaan, we all sometimes accidentally POCKET $1,000,000 and don’t ask whether it’s laundered money from a man later convicted of bribing UN officials. We just trust those who give it to us then dash of to China by mere coincidence.
I once sat in on an informal meeting with some UN folks outside the USA. One of the first things they talked about was their ‘cut’ from a public project. Great stuff! They are corrupt to the core, it’s about the money. The rooooooot of all evil.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB122368007369524679
http://www.canadafreepress.com/oil-for-food.htm
Brilliant essay by Tim Ball…
Er – why isn’t it on every politician’s Christmas present list..?
It might be helpful to remember the omissions too, like the warming was supposed to accelerate, the warming was supposed to create more CO2, the warming was supposed to create worse weather, the warming was supposed to accelerate the rising seas, etc. It is all about the acceleration.
The whole AGW charade now beggars belief. Look at the scoreboard as things stand:
Long-held ice core data that flatly contradicts claimed cause and effect.
Pitiful CO2 sensitivity – with vast margins of error for good measure.
Completely failed computer models with zero predictive skills.
Missing heat.
No ‘pause’ predicted.
Etc etc…
And now the latest of a string of humiliations – an absolutely feeble attempts to re-write history to explain away the most humiliating failure of all – a totally unpredicted standstill.
‘Pathetic’ is too kind a word to explain this garbage.
So, the warmunist’s strategy boils down to sticking a potato in the exhaust pipe…
RockyRoad says:
November 13, 2013 at 7:17 pm
So what’s in it for Maurice Strong?
==============
Kyoto, Molten metals, IPCC, Oil for Food, CCX. Same names, over and over.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2005/cover120905.htm
http://old.nationalreview.com/rosett/rosett200601102128.asp
http://old.nationalreview.com/pdf/strong.pdf
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2005/strong-cheque.htm
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/9629
Not everyone is familiar with Maurice Strong. An introductory sentence or two would improve the article.
For much more on the politics of the UN and the IPCC and some more background on Maurice Strong’s nurturing of the “Environmental Movement” and its NGO’s, check out:
“United Socialist Nations – Progress on Global Governance via Climate Change, Sustainable Development and Bio-Diversity”
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/un_progress_governance_via_climate_change.html
Strong was responsible for the first Earth Summit in Stockholm, in 1972, The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, (UNCHE), as its Secretary-General. He initiated and was a member of the Brundtland Report which led to Agenda 21.
“….in 1994, Maurice Strong, (Earth Council) and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, (Green Cross International) relaunched the Earth Charter as a “civil society” initiative. As the architect of the United Nations Environment Program and the United Nations Development Program, (UNEP-UNDP), Strong had for many years co-ordinated and strengthened the integration of Non-Governmental Organisations, (NGO’s) into the UN environmental bodies.
In Geneva in 1973, he launched the “World Assembly of NGO’s concerned with the Global Environment”. He realised that for his ambitions of a UN world government to become reality he needed the vast networking opportunities offered by the NGO’s, now referred to as “Civil Society”.
By offering them involvement and a perception of power he brought them on board and certainly the UN could not have developed as far as it has without them. NGO’s are now involved in all UN bodies and are major contributors to the IPCC reports. They have helped to build this all-encompassing bureaucracy into the behemoth that it now is.”
COMMISSION ON GLOBAL GOVERNANCE, (CGG)
“The CGG was established in 1992, after Rio, at the suggestion of Willy Brandt, former West German chancellor and President of the Socialist International.
It recommended that “user fees” should be imposed on companies operating in the “global commons.” Such fees could be collected on international airline tickets, ocean shipping, deep-sea fishing, activities in Antarctica, geostationary satellite orbits, and electromagnetic spectrum. The main revenue stream would be carbon taxes, to be levied on all fossil fuels. “A carbon tax,” the report said, would yield very large revenues indeed.”
Sound familiar? Conspiracy theory? These things are all part of a Vast Nexus of Influence, http://eureferendum.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/vast-nexus-of-influence.html
They seek global laws and global punishment:
http://www.inece.org/principles/PrinciplesHandbook_23sept09.pdf
“The International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement (INECE) is a
partnership of more than 3,000 government and non-government enforcement and compliance
practitioners from more than 150 countries.”
Convention on Bio-Diversity – Nagoya Declaration
http://www.cbd.int/nagoya/outcomes/other/
Nagoya Declaration on Local Authorities and Biodiversity
From 24 to 26 October, 2010, parallel to COP 10, 679 participants including more than 240 mayors, governors and top local government executives met at the City Biodiversity Summit 2010 to exchange experiences on local biodiversity management and support the endorsement, by Parties, of a plan of action on sub-national and local governments.
Nagoya Declaration on Parliamentarians and Biodiversity
120 legislators from 38 Parties to the Convention participated in the Parliamentarians and Biodiversity Forum on October 25 and 26, 2010, co-organized by GLOBE International and its Japan chapter, and the Secretariat of the CBD
Just last week, this conference was held: http://biodiversity-l.iisd.org/events/interpol-unep-international-environmental-compliance-and-enforcement-conference/
Climate Change is simply the diversion.
Pat says:
November 13, 2013 at 11:11 pm
So if CO2 was making the sea acidic and killing the reef, why isn’t the CO2 being mixed by sea currents and “killing off” the surrounding reefs?
===============
because climate science doesn’t bother to study chemistry. the salt dissolved in the oceans is formally known in chemistry as a buffer. You cannot change a base (the oceans are a base, not an acid) to an acid without also driving the buffer out of solution. As you add CO2 to the oceans, salt rich rocks will form on the bottom of the oceans, which neutralizes the acid. This process will continue until you either run out of CO2 or run out of salt in the ocean. the enormous volume of dissolved salts makes the latter physically impossible.
Jan P Perlwitz says:
November 14, 2013 at 5:02 am
What a ridiculous nonsense by Ball.
Care to elaborate? Or are we supposed to take your word for it? Can you at least give us a hint as to why we should take your claim as expert opinion?
The enormous deposits of marine limestone worldwide are evidence of the physical process by which the oceans turn CO2 into rock, and thereby neutralize the ability of CO2 to acidify the oceans. limestone is fossilized CO2.
climate science observes that acid dissolves limestone, so they propose that adding CO2 to the oceans will dissolve limestone. Nothing could be further from the truth. Limestone contains CO2. Adding CO2 to the oceans must increase the precipitation of limestone, until such time as the oceans run out of calcium salts. Over billions of years, with CO2 levels much higher than present, that has never happened.
Jan P Perlwitz says:
November 14, 2013 at 5:02 am
Can you at least give us a hint as to why we should take your claim as expert opinion?
==========
Isn’t there a Perlwitz is paid by NASA GISS? Isn’t NASA GISS the are the ones that used billions in taxpayer dollars to invent the rocket ship that has taken generations of space traveler to visit the exotic planet called “earth”? Only to find that it was already inhabited by “earthlings”
Didn’t this allow those pesky rocket scientists, with their oh so annoying attention to facts and detail, to be replaced by the much more reliable politically correct scientists? Didn’t a bunch of the ex-NASA rocket scientists write a letter to this effect?
Jquip: “The problem with such a condition is that you are not calibrating per se. You are not setting each level in a standard way to as fixed and unchanging a quantity as possible. You are synchronizing, much like you do with clocks. Pick one clock in your house and set all other clocks to the same value. “
So what you seem to be saying is Keeling is synchronizing all of the co2 measuring stations about our globe and not giving them necessarily a perfect co2 calibrating sample of a known accurate concentration so if every station is off they can correct after the fact at Mauna Loa who determines how far off everyone is from a fixed concentration they determine, that they “know” is correct, just like your example of all clocks being off by the same amount, but it doesn’t matter as long as they are all off by the same amount, the mother station determines the accurate point and adjusts accordingly.
Interesting, I always thought Keeling sent out a calibration gas sample of a known and accurate concentration which has its own set of problems. In that case if the calibration samples are off, everyone is off but since the calibration was deemed accurate no mother station adjustments would ever be made after the fact as they are assimilated each month.
I guess since they know from energy records how much co2 rises each month it becomes quite easy to determine who is correct and accurate. 😉
Now I wonder which it is, synchronization or calibaration?
Nice story, pity that you still cling to wrong CO2 diffusion physics.
Dr Ball you say of the ice cores:
“It was sidelined with the diversionary claim that the lag was between 80 and 800 years and insignificant”
then you also say of CO2vs temp record
“The temperature can be seen to lead by 6 months”
How can it lead by 6months and also by 80 to 800 years.
If temp changes (looking at yearly data) can initiate a change in CO2 within 6months then why a few 100k years ago was it so much more sluggish.
Perhaps the ocean “plankton” is the cause of your annual changes as the phytoplankton change from using CO2 and producing O2 (during summer days) and using 02 and producing CO2 during the long winter nights?
Dr. Ball – you have performed a most excellent autopsy. However the cadaver is still walking about, and doesn’t seem to know it is a zombie. GK
Jan P Perlwitz says:
November 14, 2013 at 5:02 am
What a ridiculous nonsense by Ball.
Which part threatened your demented CAGW worldview most? Inquiring minds wish to know.
If the ipcc was Pinnoccio its nose would stretch from here to the moon and back. Then we could
Cut it off and use as biomass and send it to drax.
What great timing Dr. Ball,
I was just having a go round on this subject at Towards a theory of climate By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
And I referenced Dr. Jaworowski. I was told his “paper’ linked to the Hearing before the US Senate Committee was not peer -reviewed It was ” …a 1997 rant from Jaworowski” link
And:
“…Gail, please let the late Jaworowski rest in peace, together with his ideas about ice cores. All of his objections were already refuted in 1996 by the drilling of 3 cores at Law Dome by Etheridge e.a. link
And:
in Response to someone else’s comment: “We know the method by which they were spliced together is also questionable.”
Came this comment:
“That is pure nonsense: the late Jaworowski from who is this story did look at the wrong column in Neftel’s Siple Dome ice core table: he used the column of the age of the ice instead of the average gas age to compare with the Mauna Loa data. But as far as I know most of the CO2 is in the gas phase, which is much younger than the ice at the same depth” link
(The adjusting of the age of the gas to match up with the Mauna Loa data was of course what Dr Jaworowski was objecting to so that is a real whopper.)
Boy do they dislike Dr. Jaworowski’s work and the poor man is no longer here to defend himself. So I am glad someone who is much more familiar with Dr. Jaworowski and with Mr. Beck is around to defend their work. So thank you Dr. Ball for this article.
wayne: “Interesting, I always thought Keeling sent out a calibration gas sample of a known and accurate concentration which has its own set of problems. In that case if the calibration samples are off, everyone is off but since the calibration was deemed accurate no mother station adjustments would ever be made after the fact as they are assimilated each month.”
Yes, exactly. And assuming all the best integrity of Keeling, Keeling is calibrating the gas samples with his own equipment. But as he’s the only calibrator, he can only calibrate his equipment with his gas samples. For if it were in any other condition, everyone would be able to calibrate to an independent mechanism. eg. It’s synchronization in this case, and purely. Which means that we cannot state any absolute value with certainty, or anomalistic value with certainty, and whatever the trend over time does is a reflection not of ‘reality’ outside Mauna Loa or even at Mauna Loa, but a direct reflection of the speed and direction at which the equipment there comes out of calibration.
In the absolute best case, with the most dilligent and trustworthy actors: We are only measuring how the equipment is aging.
He is James Hansen, Peter Glieck, Michael Mann, Al Gore, WWF, Greenpeace, KOCH BROTHERS all rolled into one. He has been on of the main architects of the CAGW fraud from the start. His career has included a couple of stints at Big Oil.
Ooops!
He has been one of the main
– As ever what Tim Ball says makes a lot of sense & it’s consistent with the last 30 year temperature vs CO2 pattern. However why doesn’t everyone believe this already ?
OK the outside world is controlled by the Green Fundamentalist Five percent so the media is censored and you don’t keep your job and your research institute get it grants unless you keep the IPCC party line. But you’d expect more scientists to be stepping through cracks in the woodwork. Where are the rest of the informed dissenters ?
How can anyone deny the existence of a Great CO2 Causing Anthropogenic Global Warming conspiracy after reading the above essay by Dr. Tim Ball?
Anyway, being the Devil’s Advocate that i am …. and even with my limited knowledge of the physics involved, … I still feel compelled to question the author’s commentary in Section – 7. Climate Sensitivity
[quoting article] “Initially it was assumed that constantly increasing atmospheric CO2 created constantly increasing temperature. Then it was determined that the first few parts per million achieved the greenhouse capacity of CO2. Eschenbach graphed the reality (Figure 3)”
How is it possible for “more to equal less” when the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere has nothing to do with the quantity of thermal energy that is radiating through the atmosphere and given the fact that all CO2 molecules have the same physical attributes how does one molecule limit another like molecule’s ability to absorb said energy?
Now if there were only a specific or limited amount of energy available for absorption then I could agree with the above statement. But there is no such limit other than the number of hours of daylight.
[quoting article] “It (CO2) is like black paint on a window. To block sunlight coming through a window the first coat of black paint achieves most of the reduction. Subsequent coats reduce fractionally less light.”
IMHO, that was a really bad example about CO2 because H2O vapor will not block the sunlight even at 40,000 ppm (4%). If one wants to compare cloud cover to black paint, then fine. But typically in reverse order to the above stated. In actuality, at 400 ppm the CO2 molecules are so far n’ few inbetween that one molecule of CO2 seldom ever “bumps” into another one.
And I also have a problem with Milloy’s graph in Figure 4 …. as well as the cited commentary of Lindzen and Choi in their attempt to discredit the IPCC’s claims about CO2 …. but no problem with their conclusion of: “The results imply that the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity.”
But I’ll save that problem for another day.
And ps: One can actually trust the “fossilized stomata record” because those plants were actually there at the time ….. and were “measuring” the CO2 ppm that was available for their use.
Calibration is a major issue. Unfortunately the JAXA GOSAT satellite carbon dioxide measurements are also calibrated to ground-based measurements
Very good paper summary of the state of the ‘art.’ A lot of it, as we used to say on the field, is obvious to the casual observer. I checked out Al’s DVD on truth a few years back and wondered why the thing passed the smell test. Evidence of the state of math and science education in the US, I suppose.
What I wonder now is why we allow geologists and biologists, much less politicians, to represent interpretation of climate data and modeling when it’s clearly a physics issue. Opinions are fine but comparing a guy who’s expert on rocks with a radiation physicist should be noted at the end of the paper.
Jquip says: @ November 13, 2013 at 7:13 pm
Waitwaitwait. We calibrate our CO2 instruments from a sensor parked on the side of an active volcano? Which pencil neck thought this was a good idea? …
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Oh it is worse that that. Remember they had a large sink, the ocean also to hand. It made cherry picking very easy.
And then from Mauna Loa step 4 of how they take measurements:
This step is why I have major problems with the Assumption that CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere.
Graph of raw data link
Graph after climatologists get through with the data manipulating: link
J. Philip Peterson says:
November 13, 2013 at 7:30 pm
Is Maurice Strong still alive?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
He got caught with his hand in the cookie jar in the Food for Oil scandal and had to hightail it to China. Last I heard he was in Beijing China as an advisor to the Chinese government and on the board of a U.S.-based engineering and construction firm CH2M Hill.
He has a website that is active.
Jquip says: @ November 13, 2013 at 8:27 pm
… The problem is calibrating other instruments from Mauna Loa. I don’t mean to call Dr. Ball into question, but the idea that this is the case is beyond absurd.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Why would you say that?
Round Robins and “matching” using a ‘standard’ is often done among labs owned by one corporation. Also this is not the first I hear of Mauna Loa controlling the calibration. After all it was the first lab and would be consider the ‘expert’
A.D. Everard says:
>>>>>>>>>>>
Unfortunately the traitors are from within. Strong is a Canadian. He is aided by Al Gore and Bill Clinton, Americans, Tony Blair, UK Prime Minster, and Pascal Lamy, French…..
Lamy (Director-General of WTO) made clear what the true goal is Global Governance and that the goal was agreed on back in the 1930s after WWI and the Great Depression. Strong served on the Commission on Global Governance.
Dr. Ball,
Thank You for this excellent summary! There is too much here to digest on my lunch break so I’ll have to return later for a more thorough ‘read’. You have written it beautifully though, in terms that most laymen with out the benefit of science or engineering degrees can understand.
I think this is a ‘bookmark and distribute widely’ summary!
MtK
Konrad says:
November 14, 2013 at 2:32 am
In his exploration of “why”, Dr. Tim Ball misses an important point, money. More precisely money for the UN.
Konrad,
I agree. A news story is just breaking now about UN-IPCC feigning poverty while concealing fat slush funds.
MtK
UN carbon emissions reduction system awash in cash as it claims to face hard times.
EXCLUSIVE: The United Nations-administered cap-and-trade system for reducing greenhouse gases is sitting on a cash hoard of close to $200 million, even as it warns of hard times ahead that could impede its mission.
The cash cushion for the Geneva-based organization known as the Clean Development Mechanism, or CDM, amounts to more than 400 percent of the $45 million reserve that it considers a normal set-aside for rainy days, according to its recently published business plan for 2014-2015.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/11/14/un-carbon-emissions-reduction-system-awash-in-cash-as-it-claims-to-face-hard/?intcmp=latestnews
Jquip says:
November 14, 2013 at 10:01 am
wayne: “Interesting, I always thought Keeling sent out a calibration gas sample of a known and accurate concentration which has its own set of problems. In that case if the calibration samples are off, everyone is off but since the calibration was deemed accurate no mother station adjustments would ever be made after the fact as they are assimilated each month.”
Yes, exactly. And assuming all the best integrity of Keeling, Keeling is calibrating the gas samples with his own equipment….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Normally the calibration sample for a Gas Chromatograph or an IR is done by taking pure samples and making up standards of various percents covering the range of interest. You would take a pure samples of CO2 and dilute it with dry nitrogen to 300 ppm, 325 ppm, 350 ppm, 375 ppm 400 ppm, 425 ppm, 450 ppm ,475 ppm and 500 ppm for example.
(You then hope like heck you didn’t screw-up)
“Strong was using the U.N. as a platform to sell a global environment crisis and the Global Governance Agenda.”
<<<
"In the early 1990's, shortly after the IPCC was organised, President Clinton's chief environmental scientist, Dr Robert Watson, told me that after he had helped get the production of Freon banned by the international community with the Montreal protocol, next on the list to be regulated was carbon dioxide. There was no mention of investigating the science behind the claim that global warming was man-made – only a specific policy outcome that the IPCC was going to support.
Dr Watson later became one of the IPCC's directors, from 1997 to 2002."
Roy Spencer
Gail Combs: “(You then hope like heck you didn’t screw-up)”
Yep. And this is the whole crux of it. For to know whether you did or didn’t screw up, you need calibrated equipment. Remember: We have only one site for this. If we had numerous people doing numerous calibrations then it reduces to a byzantine general problem and you crack open the statistics book.
But one source, one site, doesn’t get you that. There are a multitude or problems in this. But it remains: It’s measuring the aging process of Keeling’s equipment. The only way for this to not be the case is to be producing samples, and calibrations, from multiple sources.
– – – – – – – –
In his guest essay Tim Ball is saying that Maurice Strong is the sufficient and necessary reason for what Ball describes as the ‘why and how the IPCC demonized CO2 with manufactured Information’.
I am not convinced by Tim Ball’s essay. In his finding that it was Maurice Strong, what does it explain about the past approximately half century of Western Civilization? I think it explains nothing about it. I think Tim Ball’s essay does not even try to explain it, he instead gives us a stereotyped villainous scapegoat (Maurice Strong) as merely necessary and sufficient.
Insufficient and unnecessary is my evaluation.
John
Gail Combs: Most gas standards are started with gravimetric methods, which are more accurate than volumetric dilutions. Of course, getting it down to a few hundred ppm would be volumetric.
Wow! what a story!
Who need enemies if your friends tell such stories… Seems that Lewandowsky may be somewhere right about conspiracy theories amongst sceptics?
To start with:
Keeling’s son operates Mauna Loa and as Beck notes, “owns the global monopoly of calibration of all CO2measurements.” He is a co-author of the IPCC reports, that accept Mauna Loa and all other readings as representative of global levels.
The calibration of CO2 levels in nitrogen (later in air) used to calibrate all equipment on all stations was first done by C.D. Keeling end 1950’s with a self made manometric apparatus (he knew glassblowing) with an accuracy of 1:40,000 for the simple reason that the available equipment used for CO2 measurements at that time was not beter than +/-3% of full scale or +/-10 ppmv CO2. With the procedures of calibration of the new NDIR equipment it was possible to reach +/- 0.1 ppmv in continuous measurements without much maintenance, reagens or manpower.
See the fascinating autobiography of C.D. Keeling to maintain the funding of the measurements and his struggle with the different administrations:
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/publications/keeling_autobiography.pdf
The manometric calibrator was still in service at the Scripps institute until a few years ago and did retire after 50 years of service.
Meanwhile NOAA is now in charge of providing the necessary calibration gases to all laboratories which need them. These calibration gases are tested in several other laboratories, while others organisations use their own calibration gases, including Scripps who wasn’t happy to give their monopoly away. NOAA also maintains the 10 “baseline” stations for CO2 and a lot of other gases, including Mauna Loa, besides some 70 other “background” stations maintained by other groups from other countries.
The shift from Scripps to NOAA [means] that Scripps still takes their own samples at Mauna Loa, measure with their own calibration gases and surely will be happy to catch the NOAA on any fault. Despite that, their results don’t differ more than 0.2 ppm from those of NOAA.
Thus while there is only one official organisation which delivers the calibration gases, these are crossvalidated by several other laboratories of other organisations.
See further the calibration proceduresas used at Mauna Loa and other stations:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.html
Then, Mauna Loa is not the official “global” CO2 level or trend. The “global” CO2 level is the average of several ground level stations, Mauna Loa not included, but that hardly makes any difference for the trend:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_trends.jpg
But the Mauna Loa trend is often used, as it is the longest continuous record of CO2 (the South Pole started earlier, but has a gap of a few years).
So that is already a start…
Excellent article. Comment on Strong is spot on. World control! Terrible consideration when we have witnesed such corruption in attempt to uphold ‘climate change.’
Good article, Dr. Ball.
I’ve always been impressed by the thought that the global atmospheric concentration is based on one measuring station on an active volcano on instruments that are not subject to any other calibration checks except that stations. That certainly solves the age old problem of getting two instruments to produce exactly the same values and having some referee checks for accuracy and precision. Dadgum, I sure do wish I had that luxury when I was running a QC lab. On second thought I don’t, because I wanted some assurance that the numbers we put out were correct and reproducible within statistical error.
Now on to the amazing CO2 transport phenomena in which the global atmospheric CO2 concentration is the same today as the measurement in Hawaii. Seems to go against my experience with mixing anything.
Now if there were only a specific or limited amount of energy available for absorption then I could agree with the above statement……
Sam, there is for CO2.B
etter do some homework on wavelengths.
Sherlock1 says:
November 14, 2013 at 6:32 am
Brilliant essay by Tim Ball…
Er – why isn’t it on every politician’s Christmas present list..?
######
Could send it to UK Climate Change / Energy Minister daveye@parliament.uk
Just in the interests of balance & education of coarse
Gail Combs says:
November 14, 2013 at 11:19 am
This step is why I have major problems with the Assumption that CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere.
Graph of raw data link
Graph after climatologists get through with the data manipulating: link
Gail, you tell outright lies. I have shown you different times that the two links you provide are from different stations the noisy one is from Neuglobsow (as can be seen above the graph) near Berlin, Germany, midst of a forest and completely unsuitable for “background” measurements as too close to huge sinks and sources. The other is from Mace Head, coastal, Ireland, an actual “background” measuring station. Still the raw data in the latter.
One time you can make a mistake, a second time you may have it forgotten, but three times is deliberately.
For those interested the raw hourly aveaged data + stdv of Barrow, Mauna Loa, Samoa and the South Pole still are available at:
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/in-situ/
You can compare them with the published “cleaned” data for the same stations:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_mlo_spo_raw_select_2008.jpg
Look at the scale of the outliers: +4 ppmv for downslope winds from volcanic vents and -4 ppmv for upslope winds, slightly depleted by vegetation in the valley.
For the yearly trend and average that makes no difference if you include or exclude the local disturbances. But as we are interested in “background” CO2, throw out the data which are clearly contaminated by local disturbances.
I have more confidence in Fred Singer than in Tim Ball who has no background in climate science other than as a promoter of “pseudo-skepticism” including conspiracy theories.
Here is what Singer has to say in an article, Tale of two Climate Hockeysticks, in American Thinker:
“A more detailed interpretation of the CO2 curve leads to these additional conclusions:
2. Various skeptics have suggested that CO2 levels were higher during the 19th century than they are today. There is nothing wrong per se with these old measurements — though they were performed by old-fashioned chemical methods rather than current infrared techniques. It just means that the data obtained were contaminated and were not representative of global concentrations of free-atmosphere CO2. Antarctic is reasonably free of contamination.
3. It is often claimed by skeptics that the human contribution to atmospheric CO2 (from fossil-fuel burning) is tiny — less than a percent. The data clearly show that the contribution is 400 minus 280 parts per million (ppm) — roughly 30% of the current concentration.
4. Extreme skeptics have often claimed that George Callender, the British pioneer of the global-warming story during the early 20th century, was hiding some higher CO2 values from ice cores that approached present values. This does not seem to be the case.
5. From time to time, skeptics have claimed that the CO2 increase was mainly due to global warming, which caused the release of dissolved CO2 from the ocean surface into the atmosphere. (A recent adherent of this hypothesis is Prof. Murry Salby in Australia.) However, the evidence appears to go against such an inverted causal relation. While this process may have been true during the ice ages, the isotope evidence seems to indicate that the human contribution from fossil-fuel burning clearly dominates during the last 100 years.
6. Finally, note that the temperature ‘blade’ starts around 1910, while CO2 starts its sharp upward climb around 1780AD.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/a_tale_of_two_climate_hockeysticks.html#ixzz2h7ZyRVmo
You can very well stick to the facts and still be a skeptic.
Mauna Loa is considered an active volcano (http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/what-are-active-volcanoes-hawaii-and-what-their-status). “Active” does not mean it’s currently erupting like Kilauea.
“…You can stop the engine in two ways; cut off the fuel supply or plug the exhaust…”
Well no, actually you can stop the engine 4 ways, the other two are “stop the air supply” and “apply an overload”.
A bit pedantic, I suppose, but a rotten analogy sort of seriously weakens the argument.
Ferdinand Engelbeen: “But as we are interested in “background” CO2, throw out the data which are clearly contaminated by local disturbances.”
Unfortunately, we don’t have any reliable calibration of the instruments that measure that. So if we’re throwing out unreliable data, so go — apparently — every CO2 station.
I don’t understand why the push from the Nuclear Industry is overlooked. A very influential group of scientists (I believe that one was a director of Central Intelligence for a year and is a chemistry professor now) jumped on the band wagon in 1980 if not earlier. They were founded by nuclear physicists in the 50s.
The move to electric cars was pushed in the 90s and a 2006 tried to convince us that Big Oil stopped the development of the electric car when battery technology was always the issue. Why do it when the sudden surge in demand for electricity would not be met by renewable energy sources. A sudden shift to electric cars would only mean more nuclear power plants would be needed.
And Graham from Sydney, Shakespeare couldn’t spell his own name. Biggest imbecile that there ever was?
About the late Ernst Beck.
Please don’t take it against me that i don’t agree to a large extent with the results of the late Ernst Beck. I had years of correct discussions with him before his untimely death. So, while he can’t defend his work anymore, I can’t let it pass without comment.
The problem of most of the historical measurements is not the equipment (with a few exceptions) which in general was accurate to +/- 10 ppmv. The main poblem was where was measured: in the middle of towns (Paris, Boston,…), forests (diurnal variation of hunderds of ppm’s), under and inbetween leaves of growing crops,…
Ernst Beck lumped all data together: the good, the bad and the ugly, thus his results were the average of 200 ppmv near leaves in the US and 600 ppmv at a mountain slope in Austria without much quality control (some data were from equipment accurate to +/- 150 ppmv)… Here a few days from modern data measured at Linden/Giessen were a long series of historical data were taken around 1942:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/giessen_background.jpg
All data are raw data, thus including all the outliers at Mauna Loa like volcanic vents etc.
The historical samples were taken three times a day, which that alone already did give a bias of +40 ppmv. See further:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html
A similar problem occurs with stomata data: stomata index data are measured on land plants which reflect the average CO2 level of the previous growing season. Thus with a local bias in CO2 level. The SI is calibrated against direct measurements, firn and ice cores over the past century. But nobody knows how the local bias changed over the pevious centuries from land changes in the main wind direction. Even the main wind direction may have changed (MWP-LIA…). Thus if there is a discrepancy between ice core and stomata CO2 data, I prefer the ice core data for the most accurate average, while the stomata data may better reflect the variability over short term.
John Whitman says: @ November 14, 2013 at 1:04 pm
In his guest essay Tim Ball is saying that Maurice Strong is the sufficient and necessary reason for what Ball describes as the ‘why and how the IPCC demonized CO2 with manufactured Information’.
I am not convinced by Tim Ball’s essay. In his finding that it was Maurice Strong….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Maurice Strong was a key player but he certainly was not the ‘King Pin’ He was just a well rewarded intelligent go-for.
The following three excerpts are not from ‘Conspiracy Theorists’ but from well known and respected men…
The two time Director-General of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy stated in an article:
So there is the goal stated plainly.
From a book by President Woodrow Wilson
I watched this happen to the corporation I was working for that was headed by a ‘Maverick.’ All of a sudden out of nowhere a nationwide front page environmental campaign against his company blew-up in his face and just about bankrupted his company. This was less than a month before the TV ads were to be aired on a joint venture between McDonald’s, Sweetheart Plastic and Polysar announcing a new plant for recycling McDonald’s post consumer polystyrene dinnerware. It was even designed to use handicapped labor. In Massachusetts alone, five plants were closed as the result of a NH grade school teacher’s campaign against Polystyrene. Now consider the trouble we have to get a word in edge wise about CAGW. Yeah, Right and I am going to believe some New Hampshire teacher has this much power? (Story was later changed to some teenager as the heroine.)
Finally President Bill Clinton’s mentor Carroll Quigley wrote a book:
Tough to call these men tin foil hat ‘Conspiracy Theorists’
Bob Greene says:
November 14, 2013 at 1:34 pm
“I’ve always been impressed by the thought that the global atmospheric concentration is based on one measuring station on an active volcano on instruments that are not subject to any other calibration checks except that stations.”
There are more than one measuring station and all of them show the same data. Please read:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/insitu.html
Jquip says:
November 14, 2013 at 2:39 pm
Unfortunately, we don’t have any reliable calibration of the instruments that measure that. So if we’re throwing out unreliable data, so go — apparently — every CO2 station.
Sorry, but that is what the story want to believe you, but in reality calibration mixtures are centrally made by NOAA, crossvalidated by different labs of different organisations and then used by all stations. Three calibration gases are injected each hour, spanning the expected range of CO2. A fourth calibration gas outside the range is injected every 25 hours and compared to the three others.
Each station works on it own, there is no synchronizing between Mauna Loa and other stations, as that would be impossible: there is a lag in CO2 increase between the NH and the SH and there is a lag with altitude and there is a much larger seasonal variation at ground level than at altitude in the NH and much less in the SH:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/month_2002_2004_4s.jpg
So there is no problem to throw out outliers, which are specific for a station: volcanic vents are only with downwind conditions from certain directions and cause a huge variability in CO2 within an hour and are excluded for averaging, measurements with wind from land side for coastal stations are excluded, etc…
In fact it is a luxury problem: even throwing out 99% of the data stil yields so many left that one can plot the trend (even from biweekly flask samples). Compare that to the 3 samples per day of the historical measurements.
Fedinand: “Sorry, but that is what the story want to believe you, but in reality calibration mixtures are centrally made by NOAA, crossvalidated by different labs of different organisations and then used by all stations.”
So your claim is that it is false that Mauna Loa is the sole calibration souce. And that there are no worries because NOAA is the sole calibration source. Then there’s still two problems. The first is that Mauna Loa is under the NOAA umbrella: “NOAA doesn’t do it, NOAA does.” The second is that it’s still a single calibration souce.
Ferdinand Engelbeen, you accuse Gail Combs of lying.-well I accuse you of putting forward false information (is that lying also ?). It is clear that you have never measured CO2 with a instrument based on chemical means. They work by absorbing or adsorbing CO2 passed through a chemical, such as KOH, in solution or through a column solid granules. The absorbing or adsorbing medium can be analysed for the quantity CO2 removed from the gas. The accuracy depends on the care of measurements of the volume of gas and the analyses. The absolute reading depends on the volume of gas passed through. It is possible to detect 1ppm by passing through enough volume.
I have corresponded with E-G Beck while he was alive. I have a lot of respect for his Germanic thoroughness and integrity. I respect his daughter for maintaining his web site http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/realCO2-1.htm . There you will find details of the many scientists (some awarded Noble prizes at a time when these had some meaning) who measured CO2 in the atmosphere. I am a humble chemical engineer with experience in heat transfer. I can say I have made many measurements of CO2 including in the atmosphere and at a higher level than presently claimed for the average background level.
RE: Elaine Dewar spent several days with Maurice Strong at the UN and concluded in her book The Cloak of Green that, “Strong,the Father of Global Warming was using the U.N. as a platform to sell a global environment crisis and the Global Governance Agenda.”
Strong, your ordinary billionaire socialist, once tried to steal the sell the people of Colorado back their own water (he bought land on the state’s biggest aquifer and tried to claim ownership but was stopped, so he has moved on to selling air he doesn’t own. He is in China now that his daughter stole $20 million from the UN’s Food for Peace.
– – – – – – – –
Due to serious problems found in his earlier work, Popper revealed in a much later major work a support of logical positivist philosophy’s view of the basis of science.
Therefore in another work, years later than his work that the quote above was taken from, Popper also said (‘Conjectures and Refutations {London: 1963} page 48),
Does that look like Feynmanian observation based science or does it look like ‘thinking makes the observation support it’? I think it is the latter and I think it is the essence of the science that is being promoted in the AR5 (and in previous ARs) by the intellects of the IPCC Bureau.
John
Personal Note => I remind everyone that Kant is fundamentally a dual reality / dual epistemological philosophy supporter; namely there exists a true reality/knowledge that we cannot know and another reality/knowledge we experience which isn’t true reality/knowledge.
> The percentages troubled the IPCC so they amplified the importance of CO2 by estimating the “contribution” per unit (Figure 2). The range of estimates effectively makes the measures meaningless, unless you have a political agenda.
Tim Ball doesn’t understand the chart.
Those aren’t ranges, Darl. The bottom value is the proportion of the warming that would drop if you removed the greenhouse gas, the top is the proportion of the warming that would remain if you removed all the other greenhouse gasses. The difference is the overlap between greenhouse gasses.
You’re welcome.
For the entire picture of the Maurice Strong’s Agenda 21 Crap and the realization that the UN including our political establishment is waging a war on our civilization (yes, that includes you) while we are expected to make polite and civil conversation with warmista’s.
I think we’re wasting our time debunking their crap and start stocking up on “Tar & Feathers”
(and rope, the kind of rope that is thin enough to make a knot and thick enough not to damage the trunks of the trees). We all love trees don’t we.
http//green-agenda.com
John Whitman: “Does that look like Feynmanian observation based science or does it look like ‘thinking makes the observation support it’? ”
” But in thinking that … we necessarily succeed in imposing them upon nature, he was wrong.”
Other way around. Popper is stating that we can impose our intellect on nature in the same way we impose ourselves on a girl we want to date. In both we’re hopeful, perhaps mad, but that doesn’t mean she’ll agree to it.
Jquip says:
November 14, 2013 at 4:04 pm
So your claim is that it is false that Mauna Loa is the sole calibration souce. And that there are no worries because NOAA is the sole calibration source. Then there’s still two problems. The first is that Mauna Loa is under the NOAA umbrella: “NOAA doesn’t do it, NOAA does.” The second is that it’s still a single calibration souce.
Somebody must prepare the calibration mixtures. That is as good the case for CO2 mixtures as for blood sugar tests or anything measurable in any lab. The CO2 mixtures then are crossvalidated against mixtures prepared by other labs to be sure that the calibration gases are as accurate as claimed.
Even so, other laboratories prepare their own calibration gases and measure CO2 at a lot of other places. Scripps still makes its own calibration gases and takes its own (flask) samples at Mauno Loa, independent of NOAA. So there is a cross validation of the main calibration source with other calibration sources and for Mauna Loa a crossvalidation of the values found with a different set of calibration gases…
cementafriend says:
November 14, 2013 at 5:39 pm
Ferdinand Engelbeen, you accuse Gail Combs of lying.-well I accuse you of putting forward false information (is that lying also ?).
Lying is when you provide wrong information while have been warned that it is wrong. It is a word that I very seldom use, as many, myself included, make mistakes. But if one repeat the same wrong information, as Gail did after three times warned that the information is wrong, then it is clearly lying. Except if Gail has a serious loss of memory (as I have sometimes…).
About Ernst Beck’s data: I had about three years discussion with him and even once a full day together at the home of Arthur Rörsch in Leiden (Netherlands) to discuss things out. I studied about everything he published on his website, especially the sources he quoted for the 1935-1945 period, the most recent CO2 “peak” according to his compilation.
Indeed some historical methods were quite accurate. But most analyses were not better than 3% of the measured value, thus not better than +/- 10 ppmv. Besides that there is not the slightest information about the calibration of the real life series, the preparation of the samples and reagens, the aging of the reagens, the skill of the people doing the analyses, etc…
But that all is not the main problem of the historical data. The main problem is where was measured. You can’t have any reliable CO2 data from places in the middle of Paris, in the middle of a forest, inbetween growing agricultural crops, etc. with one or even with three samples a day.
Beck used all of them and then declared that there was a “peak” of some 80 ppmv around 1942.
It is possible (but largely improbable) to have an outburst of CO2 from the oceans, equivalent to burning down 1/3rd of all land vegetation in seven years time. But it is impossible to absorb that again in 7 years time.
Further, there is not the slightest peak seen in other direct measurements (ice cores) or proxies (stomata data, coralline sponges) with sufficient resolution around 1942.
Thus while I do admire the tremendous amount of work done by the late Ernst Beck, I only can disagree with the results of his compilation.
Then about the late Jaworowski:
In a paper submitted to the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Hearing Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski stated,
“The basis of most of the IPCC conclusions on anthropogenic causes and on projections of climatic change is the assumption of low level of CO2 in the pre-industrial atmosphere. This assumption, based on glaciological studies, is false.”
Take a look at the paper by Jaworowski (no matter if it was really sent to the Senate Committee):
http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
There are two graphs which show that the CO2 data from the Siple Dome ice core were shifted an “arbitrary” 83 years to match the Mauna Loa CO2 data.
But there is nothing arbitary about the shift: the average age of the gas bubbles is much younger than the age of the surrounding ice, for the simple reason that the pores of the snow/firn still are open many years after the snow did fall. That makes that air exchanges/migration continues until the density of the firn is high enough to sufficiently reduce the pores and prevent further migration. A nice overview of that process is given at:
http://courses.washington.edu/proxies/GHG.pdf
Neftel calculated the (at that time rough) average age of the gas bubbles from the pore diameters and also saw that there was a remelt layer at near 70 m depth. Remelt layers prevent further vertical migration and thus the average gas age doesn’t get younger anymore compared to the ice age at the same depth. According to Neftel:
Based on porosity measurements the time lag between the mean age of the gas and the age of the ice was determined to be 95 yr and the duration of the close-off process to be 22 yr. These values are, of course, evaluated for one particular core representing the present situation (1983), assuming a homogeneous enclosure process and not taking into account the sealing effect of observed impermeable layers.
Further:
Because of the layers between 68 and 69 m.b.s., the air below is already completely isolated, about 7 m above the debt obtained assuming a homogeneous enclosure. Consequently, for this core, the difference between ice and mean gas age is only 80-85 yr instead of 95 yr as estimated previously.
I asked Jaworowski in a personal mail why he insisted on this “arbitrary” shift. According to him, there is no difference in age between the gas phase and ice phase in ice cores, as all ice remelts and closes the pores from the beginning.
Even if that only happened once in 83 years in the Siple Dome ice core…
Further, he says that one finds too low values in ice cores, because CO2 (by preference?) escapes through cracks in the ice after drilling, relaxation and transport. I asked him how one can have migration from 180-300 ppmv inside the ice to 360-400 ppmv in outside air.
Never had an answer.
That closed the door for me…
Let him rest in peace, together with his ideas about ice cores…
See further:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html
A slight deviation from the discussion however, I am trying to find concrete information to support the claim there is a “lag” between changes in CO2 concentration and temperatures of some ~800 years. I used to have links but I rebuild my laptop recently and lost it all. Does anyone have any reliable information on this?
John Tiller says:
November 14, 2013 at 6:23 pm
“Strong, your ordinary billionaire socialist, once tried to steal the sell the people of Colorado back their own water (he bought land on the state’s biggest aquifer and tried to claim ownership but was stopped, so he has moved on to selling air he doesn’t own. He is in China now that his daughter stole $20 million from the UN’s Food for Peace”
These seem to be very serious accusations, especially the last sentence. Can you enlarge on your statement so that the.facts can be brought out into the open in an endeavour to shame these people, if that is ever possible?.
Ferdinand Engelbeen – thankyou for putting so much effort into countering Tim Ball’s points. I would welcome WUWT granting you space to put your own essay, so that we can clearly read your points.
Tim Clark says:
November 14, 2013 at 1:43 pm
[quoting Sam] “Now if there were only a specific or limited amount of energy available for absorption then I could agree with the above statement……”
“Sam, there is for CO2. Better do some homework on wavelengths.”
———————–
Are you now asserting that the wavelengths (energy) that CO2 is subject to …. cease to be emitted from their sources after the first 20+- ppm of CO2 achieves their maximum Specific Heat Capacity?
Tim C, ….. I did my homework, and for two reasons. First, to verify my comments before posting, …. and secondly, in anticipation that my comments would likely be questioned.
CO2 is not a singularity, but is only one of the many “players” upon the field of play (atmosphere), all of which are capable of absorbing and emitting thermal energy to one another, but with specific individual Rules that govern their aforesaid actions.
Anyway, Lindzen and Choi et el states in the cited reference noted by the author that, to wit, with emphasis on the “boldfaced text”:
—————————
“Within all current climate models, water vapor increases with increasing temperature so as to further inhibit infrared cooling. Clouds also change so that their visible reflectivity decreases, causing increased solar absorption and warming of the earth.”
“However, with the annual time scale, the signal of short-term feedback associated with water vapor and clouds can be contaminated by unknown timevarying radiative forcing in nature, and the feedbacks cannot be accurately diagnosed (Spencer, 2010).”
————————
Thus said. the way I see it is, …… “what is good for the goose (H2O vapor) …. is also good for the gander (CO2)”.
Any increase in ppm has the potential of causing an increase in warming of the atmosphere.
And if the feedback (energy emissions) associated with water vapor cannot be accurately diagnosed because of the unknown timevarying radiative forcing in nature, ….. then the feedback (energy emissions) associated with CO2 cannot be accurately diagnosed because of the unknown timevarying radiative forcing in nature, ….. simply because they are both subject to the same explicit Rules
And the following are statements which I copied from said “explicit Rules”, to wit:
—————————————————
Lecture 7
Absorption/emission by atmospheric gases. Solar, IR and microwave spectra of main atmospheric gases . Ref: http://www.heliosat3.de/e-learning/remote-sensing/Lec7.pdf
Review of main underlying physical principles of molecular absorption/emission:
1) The origins of absorption/emission lie in exchanges of energy between gas molecules and electromagnetic field.
2) In general, total energy of a molecule can be given as: E = Erot+ Evib+ Eel + Etr
[snip]
NOTE: The above dependence on pressure is very important because atmospheric pressure varies by an order of 3 from the surface to about 40 km.
• The Lorentz profile is fundamental in the radiative transfer in the lower atmosphere where the pressure is high.
• The collisions between like molecules (self-broadening) produces the large linewidths than do collisions between unlike molecules (foreign broadening). Because radiatively active gases have low concentrations, the foreign broadening often dominates in infrared radiative transfer.
————————————
I do not believe it is humanly possible for anyone to measure the warming effect of the lesser quantity (398 ppm) of gas (CO2) in a mixture of two different gases when the quantity of the greater volume of gas (H2O vapor) is constantly changing (10,000 ppm to 40,000 ppm) from hour to hour, day to day and week to week.
Especially when said greater volume of gas (H2O vapor) has a potentially 239.2 greater “warming” potential for said mixture than does the lesser volume of said gas (CO2) in said mixture.
Cheers
Folks, the entire edifice of CAGW is based on the one assumption that CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere and therefore a single measurement at Manua Loa or the poles is an accurate representation of global CO2. That is why Ferdinand defends this position at all costs. Without the acceptance of “CO2 is Well-Mixed” all the CO2 measurements are meaningless in showing there has been a global increase. This is why the work of Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski and Ernst Beck has to be trashed. Their work refutes the leg the Hoax stands on.
…………….
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 15, 2013 at 2:31 am
……..Lying is when you provide wrong information while have been warned that it is wrong. …….But if one repeat the same wrong information, as Gail did after three times warned that the information is wrong, then it is clearly lying. Except if Gail has a serious loss of memory (as I have sometimes…).
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Ferdinand
WHO made YOU GOD? who pronounces from on high who is and is not telling the truth?
You are an unknown on the internet who also claims someone like Zbigniew Jaworowski is wrong and should be buried along with all he has said. See link
You are also contradicting yourself. You are constantly say that CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere and then you say:
” I have shown you different times that the two links you provide are from different stations the noisy one is from Neuglobsow (as can be seen above the graph) near Berlin, Germany, midst of a forest and completely unsuitable for “background” measurements as too close to huge sinks and sources. The other is from Mace Head, coastal, Ireland, an actual “background” measuring station. “
Well if CO2 is “Well Mix” it should not matter WHERE the data was from because WELL MIXED means uniform and if it is NOT uniform it is NOT well mixed.
You really need to get your story straight. Personally I quit reading what you say a year or so ago and you are just about the only one here at WUWT I do not bother to waste my time reading.
Gail Combs says:
November 14, 2013 at 11:19 am
Graph of raw data
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/gmd/wdcgg/cgi-bin/wdcgg/quick_plot.cgi?imagetype=png&dataid=200702142827
Graph after climatologists get through with the data manipulating:
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/gmd/wdcgg/cgi-bin/wdcgg/quick_plot.cgi?imagetype=png&dataid=200906040013
=============
looking at the two graphs it appears CO2 measurements are not nearly as simple or as reliable as we are led to believe.
I’m always surprised when people dismiss other peoples points of view as “conspiracy theories”.
people get together all the time and reach agreements that are in their best interests. this is what people do. when these agreements go against other people’s interests, as they often are, they are rarely publicized. this is simply being prudent.
this goes on all over the world, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. People making agreements to benefit themselves at other peoples expense. agreements that rarely reach the light of day because if they did, it would harm the interests of the people that made the agreement. so they don’t talk about it, except on occasion, behind closed doors.
there is no conspiracy theory required in any of this. it is simply what people do. make deals to further their own interests at the expense of “others”. these agreements are necessarily kept secret, lest the “others” take action against the agreement.
Gail Combs says:
November 15, 2013 at 5:36 am
Gail, I have repeatedly told you that the data you compared are from two different stations, one in the middle of a forest, the other coastal with winds mostly from the SW over the ocean. Thus nothing to do with “cleaning” the data and thus not comparable, and as bad for the forest based station as for 90% of the historical data collected by the late Ernst Beck.
I have repeatedly told you that one can find background data in over 95% of the atmosphere: over the oceans from sea level up to the stratosphere and over land above the first few hundred meters: all within +/- 2% of full scale, despite a 20% exchange of all CO2 in the atmosphere over the seasons within a year.
Below a few hundred meters, there are huge diurnal changes in sources and sinks over a day over land, which are not leveled off if there is no sufficient wind speed. Thus measuring CO2 near ground over land is as problematic as measuring the air temperature over an asphalted parking lot or near a barbeque or an AC unit outlet. All skeptics know that that is wrong, but some skeptics insist that one should include CO2 measurements of similar problematic places. A little more consequence in skepticism would make skeptics a more reliable source of information in the eye of the public (never mind the “warmers”)…
But if you don’t read what I wrote, then you can repeat whatever you want without lying: simply by ignoring what you don’t like to read…
ferd berple says:
November 15, 2013 at 5:39 am
Ferd, the data are not manipulated, the data are from two different stations, one in a forest (the noisy one), the other coastal with wind mostly coming in from the Atlantic Ocean. Both datasets are the raw data.
That is what Gail didn’t tell you and why I am quite angry about her manipulation…
So, which one would you choose to tell you what the “background” CO2 levels are?
stewgreen says:
November 15, 2013 at 4:18 am
Ferdinand Engelbeen – thank you for putting so much effort into countering Tim Ball’s points. I would welcome WUWT granting you space to put your own essay, so that we can clearly read your points.
I already had that honor three years ago:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/05/why-the-co2-increase-is-man-made-part-1/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/20/engelbeen-on-why-he-thinks-the-co2-increase-is-man-made-part-2/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/16/engelbeen-on-why-he-thinks-the-co2-increase-is-man-made-part-3/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/24/engelbeen-on-why-he-thinks-the-co2-increase-is-man-made-part-4/
It triggered hundreds of comments and the discussions still go on between a few diehards (myself included) up to today…
Is CO2 well mixed? What is the definition of well mixed?
Richard Sharpe says:
November 15, 2013 at 6:50 am
Is CO2 well mixed? What is the definition of well mixed?
More or less:
If a huge change in a gas or liquid at some point is rapidely dispersed in the rest of the gas or liquid.
In the case of ozone: that is not well mixed, as its destruction is faster than its equatorial topolar distribution over the stratosphere.
In the case of methane: that is well mixed for most of the troposphere, but not for near and in the stratosphere.
In the case of CO2: that is well mixed in most of the atmosphere as huge (seasonal) changes are leveled off to 10% of the change in a a few months.
– – – – – – – – –
Gail Combs,
Thanks for engaging with my comment. A pleasure.
As you can read in my comment (quoted above in full for convenience) I do not think Tim Ball is (using your terminology from your comment ) a “tin foil hat ‘¢on$piracy Theorist’”. Regarding Elaine Dewar (the reporter who Tim Ball quotes regarding Maurice Strong’s global aspirations), I do not know if she has tendencies toward being a “tin foil hat ‘¢on$piracy Theorist’” and likewise I do not know that about the men you discussed in your comment.
I think Tim Ball sees certain people with certain world views (philosophies) as inimical to his world view and inimical to the world view informing the basis of Western Culture / Civilization / Science. As most intellects do. As I do, although we essentially disagree on: who they are; and our assessments of what their world views are; assigning significance of risk; his world views versus mine.
My criticism of Tim Ball’s essay (that emphasizes Maurice Strong) is it does not contain necessary or sufficient discussion to explain the phenomena we see in the philosophy of science. Philosophy of Science phenomena seen for at least the last ~50 years (and probably for the last ~150+ years) as now practiced by the various bodies / institutions / academies in support of ideologies surrounding CAGW / AGW / GW.
I do greatly appreciate Tim Ball’s efforts to keep so many people so intensely focused on the problematic scientific processes and philosophies that have culminated in the IPCC. It is an immensely important topic. Thank you Tim Ball.
John
What the CO2 current debate from the Al Gore fraud side is a “rear guard” action.
A head fake deal to cover the retreat and movement of the “lie base” to a new attack method.
None of what they do is fact based, it is all media cover stories to keep the truth from seeing the light of day.
All the political contributions to get the liar Democrats elected is spent also to cover the truth with gold covered lies and fraud.
November of 2014 is the most important date in recent times to over throw the lie based crime operation in our U.S. Senate and House.
Take Action Now.
I do not have much time today but I wanted to say something more about my major objection to the party line on CO2.
The basic message from the IPCC is that the climate was constant until mankind and the industrial age mucked it up. To support this they needed two pieces of evidence. A study showing constant temperature with a sharp rise during the modern age (Enter Mann and his hockey stitck) and a similar CO2 hockey stick.
Mann was able for a short time to erase the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. With CO2 it was a bit more of a problem because as Beck showed there was plenty of date from the 19th century.
Also Jaworowski and Segalstad’s information showed there were different methods of analyzing ice core CO2 and the high readings were found if you use the entire sample instead of just the bubble. See Segalstad’s site http://www.co2web.info/ for the actual information.
Lucy Skywalker covers some of this in a simpler form:
WELL MIXED ASSUMPTION
If any data that is not within 2 standard deviations is rejected then of course you will never see large swings in the CO2 data, it has already been edited out of the final “product”
So there is the ‘Well Mixed’ assumption “the requirement that CO2 in background air should be steady” This is what sets off my B.S. meter. Also notice that Mauna Loa is ground based with sinks and sources as all ground based stations would have unless you are sitting in the mountains well above the tree line and still there is the question of volcanic sources because high mountains are ‘Young’ and more likely to be tectonically active.
So is this assumption, made close to a hundred years ago, valid?
Here is what AIRS itself is saying:
The other information from AIRS is that the Airs data shows CO2 is not ‘Well Mixed” despite the fact AIRS measures the distribution of carbon dioxide in the mid troposphere at a nadir resolution of 90 km x 90 km. Not exactly a ‘small’ sample is it?
Without the ‘Well Mixed’ assumption that Englebeen is so arduously guarding, the high reading from the past unearthed by Beck, Jaworowski and Segalstad can not be tossed out and the CO2 hockey stick will crumble just like the Mann Hockey Stick.
Unfortunately this important point is not addressed with the same vigor as the temperature shenanigans.
On calibration
I only mentioned how the labs I worked for made standards up in house from pure materials and that we also used “Round Robins” to make sure the labs were all in agreement.
Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD has this to say about CO2 measurement calibration:
Gail Combs says:
November 15, 2013 at 11:18 am
As Gail doesn’t read my comments, here some comment that I have repeadetly told here to no avail:
Greenland ice cores sometimes show higher CO2 levels than Antarctic ice cores, even increasing over time, if you melt all the ice during measurement, instead of crushing the ice still frozen and measuring only the CO2 in air from the bubles.
The simple reason: In ice there may be contamination with seasalts, including carbonates. Normally that is not a problem for the CO2 measurements. But as Greenland is not so far from Iceland, the frequent volcanic eruptions there sometimes deposit highly acidic dust on the ice. If you then measure in solution, CO2 is set free from the carbonates, the more over time. But even in-situ a lot of CO2 can have been formed over time with such a contamination.
That is the reason that the “melt” method still is used for methane, but completely abandoned for CO2. And also the reason that the CO2 levels from Greenland ice cores are not used for CO2 trends, because of unreliable. Antarctic cores, especially the deep inland cores have far less deposit and there are no active volcanoes in the wide neighborhood of the main drilling places.
WELL MIXED ASSUMPTION
If Gail would do the effort to investigate how much the thrown out data differ from the “background” data, then she would have noticed that it doesn’t make one damn difference in the calculation of the average or trend over a year if you include or exclude the outliers.
If you interested in CO2 from volcanic vents, then measure CO2 near volcanic vents. If you are interested in the uptake and release of CO2 by vegetation, then measure within vegetation (both are BTW done). We are interested in “background” CO2 data, thus throw out the data which are clearly contaminated by the other sources.
See the difference between the raw, hourly data and the “cleaned” daily and monthly averages of Mauna Loa and the South Pole:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_mlo_spo_raw_select_2008.jpg
Look at the scale: the outliers are at +/- 4 ppmv around the seasonal trend. Big deal to throw them out, it doesn’t change the yearly average or trend.
The AIRS measurements show that CO2 is within +/- 2% of full scale,including the seasonal variation. There is more variability than they expected in the mid-troposphere, but in my definition still very well mixed, if about 20% of all CO2 in the atmosphere gets in and out over the seasons…
And far from the +80 ppmv from the late Beck’s 1942 “peak” in CO2, which doesn’t exist in any other measurement or proxy.
On calibration
I only mentioned how the labs I worked for made standards up in house from pure materials and that we also used “Round Robins” to make sure the labs were all in agreement.
That is exactly what is done by NOAA for CO2 mixtures which then are crossvalidated by other labs and upon agreement are used for continuous calibration of the instruments.
So what the Consensus has done is to “calibrate” the various records into agreement.
Glassman is a master in misinterpretation of what is written by others and it is impossible to argue with him, because he overwhelms you with irrelevant citations…
Of course there is intercalibration of the calibration mixtures which are used to calibrate the instruments. There is no way that the data can be calibrated into agreement as that needs subtile adjustments of 0.005 ppmv/day of the calibration gases and/or subtile differences (without any mistakes…) in calibration gases made for different stations… In reality, there are a lot of differences between the stations in amplitude and lag:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/month_2002_2004_4s.jpg
The New York Best Seller, “Report from Iron Mountain,” proposes that people would be willing to accept a lower standard of living, higher taxes, and increased governmental intrusion in order to “save Mother Earth.” The Report sought to find a credible substitute for war and considered several ideas such as an alien invasion. However, aliens were ultimately discarded for an “environmental-pollution model.”
Although many will respond to any suggestion of Maurice Strong or the IPCC being part of a huge conspiracy, as ludicrous, don’t forget we are coming up on 50 years of the Warren Commission lies. Honorable men do evil things when they think they are right.
Right on, high five to John Tiller, R. de Haan, and especially, Dennis Ambler in these comments.
Thank you Dr Ball for this article. Reading recently about the ‘runaway greenhouse event’ and the end of humanity by 2040 propelled me into a state of utter despair, which I hope is understandable for the mother of a 2 year old who has just been told her beautiful son doesn’t have a chance of making it to 30. I could not work, I could hardly eat, I wanted everything to shut down, so that my son at least had a chance to survive. I’m not a scientist, so I’m not in a very strong position to judge the validity of the scientific arguments you or any other scientist put forward for or against the global warming hypothesis. But at least your article has thrown some ambiguity on the matter for me, which has allowed me to come out of my panic-stricken state.
I do have some problems with your more general conclusions, however. It seems to me that despite your claim to be on the side of science, there is some flag-waving here that is not necessarily justified by the science you present. Your main scientific argument, I think, is that human-caused climate change primarily through CO2 emissions by the burning of fossil fuels is not occurring. I’m not in a position to challenge this assertion. But you use this argument to come to the conclusion that ‘green isn’t working’, and is actually a threat to industrialised nations (depicted by your wind-turbine/barbed-wire graphic at the end – scare-mongering like the end-of-the-world global-warmists, although admittedly not to the same extent). My contention here is this: regardless of whether CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels is a problem, the fact remains that the world’s resources are finite. One day we will not be able to continue running our societies on coal, oil and gas. It may be that the earth still has a lot of fossil fuels to offer, I don’t know (I’m sure you and other readers here have a much better knowledge than me). But one day we will have to find a way to do without fossil fuels. As the world industrialises, and the global population increases, more and more people become dependent on fossil fuels, so surely we need to move our global economy onto sources of energy that are not dependent on the resources we can mine from the ground. What am I missing here? It may be that there isn’t such urgency to shift our primary source of energy as is being presented under the global warming banner, but surely a gradual shift to non-fossil-fuel energy is sensible for any industrialised society?
A related point here is that the ownership of fossil fuels is hugely political and is causing great tension. Surely it is sensible from a politico-economic perspective for a society that has very little potential to produce its own fossil fuels to find other means of producing energy, so that its population is less vulnerable?
Another consideration I think you don’t cover is the other human-health implications of burning fossil fuels. I don’t know the science on this, so feel free to enlighten me, but my understanding was that the burning of fossil fuels was damaging to human health, e.g. causes cancer. Not to mention the risk of oil spillages. So why would we not want to find other ways of producing energy, that don’t have the same health implications?
I understand that you probably don’t want to go into all these issues in this article. But I do suggest you should at least acknowledge that the scientific argument that you have presented does not necessarily entail that we should not reconsider our reliance on fossil fuels, and that there are other points to consider. By not at least acknowledging these further issues and yet depicting ‘green’ energy as a threat you are presenting a skewed argument, regardless of the science. It is not a problem with your science, but with your rhetoric. If you are right in your debunking of human-caused global warming, it does not necessarily entail that green energy per say is a threat. The threat appears to come from those who would have us believe we need to shut down our societies now in order that our children have a miniscule chance of survival (and here you argument relies primarily on Elaine Dewar’s work). *Perhaps* in the long run there is an argument for other energy sources, and *perhaps* industrialised societies can benefit from them.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 15, 2013 at 6:16 am
“I have repeatedly told you that one can find background data in over 95% of the atmosphere: over the oceans from sea level up to the stratosphere and over land above the first few hundred meters: all within +/- 2% of full scale, despite a 20% exchange of all CO2 in the atmosphere over the seasons within a year.”
——————————–
Ferdinand, given the fact that the measured atmospheric CO2 ppm data is by far the most accurate of any of the data available to climate science ….. it makes one wonder why anyone would want to question the validity of it. None of the CO2 proxy data is as accurate.
Especially given the fact that most any discussion involving CO2 also involves the “warming” effect of the CO2 which is the result of solar irradiance …… and solar irradiance is one of the most inaccurate of the data available to climate science.
One sure can’t be claiming that all calculations involving W/m2 of solar irradiance are all within +/- 2% of full scale, when one is forced to use one (1) of the three (3) different scales for their calculations, to wit:
Scale 1. average solar radiation at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere = 1,366 W/m2
Scale 2. average solar radiation at the Earth’s surface = 1,000 W/m2 (for a surface perpendicular to the Sun’s rays at sea level on a clear day)
Scale 3. average daily solar irradiance for the Earth’s surface = 250 W/m2
Elen;
Economic substitution occurs by making old resources more expensive than new ones, and people switch from burning whale oil lamps to kerosene ones, etc. It is not necessary, productive, or viable to try and force the process by “demonizing” CO2.
Here’s a pair of posts you might like to take on board:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
These two articles you site, Brian, are EXCELLENT!!!!!! I’ve not found articles before that so completely explain the wrong thinking of current belief about ‘shortages’ and limits to growth. Thank-you.
Brian, I read your articles. Here’s a quote about water: “Fresh water is unlimited, thanks to advances in desalinization. There is no shortage of fresh water.” While the cost of desalination has come down, it is still far more expensive then well, river, or watershed supplied water. How do you propose that the poorer countries pay for this? And of course this doesn’t solve the problem of water for interior regions, nor for high elevation sites.
Somehow cost REALLY matters when green energy technologies are considered – wind, solar, geothermal – so those technologies are viewed as economically harmful. But somehow cost doesn’t matter for desalination? There’s also lots of other hand waving in the article, such as saying limestone is created in the sea, so therefore the supply is unlimited – once again, no consideration given to cost/viability of recovering that.
Chris, we get oil from half way around the world, certainly cost matters but it’s economically good if oil next door is more expensive. People will spend more on desalinated water the same way they spend money on oil now from half way around the world.
And I’m not sure your point concerning green energy but if I get your meaning, I’d say, spending money on green energy at this point in our energy inventory is like getting oil from half way around the world when there is cheap oil right next door. Or, spending money on desalinization plants, while we still have hundreds of years of well water. In these cases the cost of getting oil from so far away or water from desalinization is economically harmful.
We are NOT short on energy sources so why waste money on technology that will be out dated by hundreds of years by the time it’s needed? The fact that we are spending that money now is economically harmful.
Elen says:
November 16, 2013 at 3:47 am
Thank you Dr Ball for this article. Reading recently about the ‘runaway greenhouse event’ and the end of humanity by 2040 propelled me into a state of utter despair, which I hope is understandable for the mother of a 2 year old who has just been told her beautiful son doesn’t have a chance of making it to 30. I could not work, I could hardly eat, I wanted everything to shut down, so that my son at least had a chance to survive. I’m not a scientist, so I’m not in a very strong position to judge the validity of the scientific arguments you or any other scientist put forward for or against the global warming hypothesis. But at least your article has thrown some ambiguity on the matter for me, which has allowed me to come out of my panic-stricken state. …
================
Elen,
Your reasonable insights were like a breath of fresh air. Thank you. I’m sorry to hear about your panic and despair. I’ve been there. Here’s some good news and some bad news.
The good news: mainstream science doesn’t project a ‘runaway greenhouse event’ or the end of humanity by 2040. The Earth’s oceans and vegetation are still absorbing about half of our CO2 emissions, so it’s unlikely that they’ll rapidly switch to emitting greenhouse gases (necessary for a runaway event).
The bad news… (continued in next comment)
(I think a spam filter bit me, so I’m splitting this comment into pieces.)
The bad news:
===============
Elen says:
November 16, 2013 at 3:47 am
… at least your article has thrown some ambiguity on the matter for me, which has allowed me to come out of my panic-stricken state.
===============
When you realize how confused Dr. Ball’s accusations are, I don’t want you to fall back into despair. The last time Dr. Ball accused scientists of deception, I tried fruitlessly to engage with his fans:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/06/public-relations-spin-doctors-deliberately-deceived-public-about-global-warming-and-climate-change/#comment-1467978
Dr. Ball links to Dr. Murray Salby’s claim that the ~30% increase in CO2 since the Industrial Revolution isn’t being driven by our emissions. Short version, this is ridiculous:
https://twitter.com/DumbSci/status/364038786805547008
Longer version, Salby’s claim implies negative CO2 concentrations during ice ages:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Murry-Salby-CO2-rise-natural.htm
In reality, scientists know that our CO2 emissions are increasing atmospheric CO2 using at least ten independent methods:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/anthrocarbon-brief.html
Dr. Ball also links to Ernst Beck’s unphysical “reconstruction” of ancient CO2 levels:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/beck-to-the-future/
Dr. Ball also links to a typically flawed WUWT article by Dr. Roy Spencer:
http://web.archive.org/web/20090321210824/http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/a-bag-of-hammers/
Anyone who’s genuinely interested in climate science should skip WUWT and go straight to the National Academy of Sciences. Their informative booklet can be freely downloaded, along with a companion video:
http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/more-resources-on-climate-change/climate-change-lines-of-evidence-booklet/
NASA’s climate website is also very informative:
http://climate.nasa.gov/
================
Elen says:
November 16, 2013 at 3:47 am
The threat appears to come from those who would have us believe we need to shut down our societies now in order that our children have a miniscule chance of survival
================
I’ve never seen anyone credible suggest we shoot ourselves in the foot like that. While this isn’t about science, maybe you’ll avoid despair and panic easier if I describe my preferred solution. I and the Citizens Climate Lobby think we should charge big carbon polluters a fee to Americans to cover the costs of dumping their waste into our atmosphere and oceans:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/CCL-pushing-for-US-fee-and-dividend.html
As you can tell from the videos in that article, several other scientists also favor this approach. Also, Reagan’s economics advisor has endorsed a similar approach:
http://energyandenterprise.com/
There’s no reason to panic or fall into despair. A revenue-neutral carbon fee can reduce emissions without shutting down our societies. In fact, it will help jumpstart a new industrial revolution based on clean energy.
Elen says:
November 16, 2013 at 3:47 am
Reading recently about the ‘runaway greenhouse event’ and the end of humanity by 2040 propelled me into a state of utter despair, …………….. I’m not a scientist, so I’m not in a very strong position to judge the validity of the scientific arguments you or any other scientist put forward for or against the global warming hypothesis. But at least your article has thrown some ambiguity on the matter for me, which has allowed me to come out of my panic-stricken state.
——————–
Elen, your previous mindset was exactly what the “fear monglers” were hoping to achieve with all of their “junk science” CAGW claims (CO2 causing Anthropogenic Global Warming).
The earth has been subjected to an Interglacial Period of warming for the past 22,000 years. And several times during those past years the surface temperatures have been a LOT, LOT WARMER than they currently are ….. and for several hundred to several thousand years in duration. The Medieval Warm Period (950 to 1250) lasted for 300 years and t’was the age of Knights and Castle building in England, etc.
Anyway, CAGW is junk science simply because, to wit:
1. mathematics disproves claims of CO2 caused AGW
2.the Keeling Curve disproves claims of CO2 caused AGW
3. the geologic record disproves claims of CO2 caused AGW
4.the highly questionable 100+ years of temperature records disproves claims of CO2 caused AGW
5. the “fuzzy” math used for calculating and claiming Average Temperature Increases disproves claims of CO2 caused AGW
6. assuming that Interglacial “warming” (IGW) abruptly stopped when their claimed “CO2 causing anthropogenic “warming” (CAGW) started disproves claims of CO2 caused AGW
7. the intentional ignoring and omission of the effects of atmospheric water vapor on surface temperatures disproves claims of CO2 caused AGW
8. the intentional ignoring and omission of the effects of “heat island” infrastructure on surface temperatures disproves claims of CO2 caused AGW
9. data from various fossil plant stomata studies disproves claims of CO2 caused AGW
10. the highly questionable atmospheric CO2 ppm extropolated from glacial ice proxies disproves claims of CO2 caused AGW
11. measuring the percentage of C12 isotope of Carbon in the atmosphere does not prove claims of CO2 caused AGW
12. the extremely quick increases/decreases of temperatures in desert areas of extremely low humidity disproves claims of CO2 caused AGW
13. the absolute lack of any direct association or correlation between Average Global Temperature increases, world population increases and/or atmospheric CO2 increases disproves claims of CO2 caused AGW
14. the INTENTIONAL exclusion of the “degree increase” due to the Holocene Interglacial “warming” of the climate from all of their calculated Average Temperature “increases” disproves claims of CO2 caused AGW
15. the impossibility for anyone to measure the warming effect of the lesser quantity of gas (CO2) in a mixture of two different gases when the quantity of the greater volume of gas (H2O) is constantly changing from hour to hour and/or day to day disproves claims of CO2 caused AGW
16. claiming that atmospheric H2O vapor is the “forcing” backfeeder of thermal (IR) energy to the atmospheric CO2 which is the “backfeeding” forcer of increases in surface temperatures is silly and asinine
17. claiming that 396 ppm of CO2 is directly causing greater “warming” of the near-earth atmosphere than 20,000 ppm to 40,000 ppm of H2O vapor does, is silly and asinine
18. claiming that the bi-yearly increase of 6 to 8 ppm in atmospheric CO2 is the result of the rotting and/or decaying of biomass is silly, asinine and idiotic
The proponents of CAGW can not discredit the above claims with factual evidence thus their only recourse is to claim that a “consensus of opinions” disagrees with them.
Dumb Scientist says:
November 17, 2013 at 8:10 pm
A revenue-neutral carbon fee can reduce emissions without shutting down our societies. In fact, it will help jumpstart a new industrial revolution based on clean energy.
Well, while I agree with your critique on Dr. Ball and Salby, here you go a bridge too far. There is no proof that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will do more harm than good. To the contrary. The dire consequences were exaggerated by climate models that all fail to show the non-increase in temperature over the past 17 years.
And about shutting down our societies: that is just underway: Energy intensive factories in Europe are moving out to the USA, as the energy (gas) price there is much lower. And the number of comsumers here who can’t pay their energy bills is increasing exponentially. Simply compare the electricity bill in Denmark (world champion in wind energy) and Germany (thanks to the “Energiewende”, now starting to get completely out of control) with that of France (still 70% nuclear) or the US for the same kWh…
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 18, 2013 at 11:05 am
There is no proof that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will do more harm than good. To the contrary. The dire consequences were exaggerated by climate models that all fail to show the non-increase in temperature over the past 17 years.
==================
You might want to call the National Academies, because they claim that “The need for urgent action to address climate change is now indisputable.”
http://www.nationalacademies.org/includes/G8+5energy-climate09.pdf
The links in the first paragraph of this article confirm that Earth continues to gain heat, even over the last 17 years:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/schmitt-happer-wsj.html
It’s also important to remember that scientists don’t draw conclusions solely from climate models. The climate changes naturally, but extinction rates increase if it changes too quickly for species to adapt by migrating or evolving. For example, atmospheric CO2 increased rapidly during the end-Permian extinction and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. In both cases, the ensuing rapid warming stressed ecosystems and caused extinctions.
In the fifth paragraph of the above article, I linked to Honisch et al. 2012 which shows that we’re dumping CO2 into the atmosphere ten times faster than before the end-Permian extinction. That’s why scientists are concerned about our skyrocketing CO2 emissions.
==================
And about shutting down our societies: that is just underway: Energy intensive factories in Europe are moving out to the USA, as the energy (gas) price there is much lower. And the number of comsumers here who can’t pay their energy bills is increasing exponentially. Simply compare the electricity bill in Denmark (world champion in wind energy) and Germany (thanks to the “Energiewende”, now starting to get completely out of control) with that of France (still 70% nuclear) or the US for the same kWh…
==================
In the comments of the CCL article I linked, I explained that a border tariff will protect domestic industries. Since the fee is returned to Americans, it compensates for increased energy bills. The lower ~60% of income brackets actually get slightly more back in dividends than the increase in their electrical bills.
I agree with President Reagan’s economics adviser: “Reduce taxes on something we want more of–income–and tax something we arguably want less of–carbon pollution. It’s a win-win.”
Dumb Scientist says:
“Anyone who’s genuinely interested in climate science should skip WUWT and go straight to the National Academy of Sciences.”
Why? The NAS is as corrupt as NASA. They have a climate alarmist agenda which is being falsified by Planet Earth. And Dummy keeps linking to the Pseudo-skeptical Pseudo-science blog. Note that SkS has its own special listing on the sidebar as being “Unreliable”. That is a polite way of saying they are dishonest. Anyone who uses them as their ‘authority’ lacks credibility.
As Dr Ball shows here, ∆T is the cause of ∆CO2 — not vice versa. That same T/CO2 relationship holds from years to hundreds of millennia. When temperature rises, CO2 follows. That debunks the CO2=cAGW nonsense.
You can believe in always-inaccurate computer models, or you can accept empirical evidence. One or the other. But not both; they are mutually exclusive.
Dumb Scientist says:
November 18, 2013 at 12:49 pm
What National Academies wrote still is mainly based on failed climate models. Which doesn’t mean that one must not look at alternatives for fossil fuels. But the problem is the speed with which it is introduced, without looking at the consequences. Wind and solar are very unreliable sources of energy, they disturb the grid and as there is little possibility for large scale storage (hydro is the only limited possibility), one need as much (fossil) backup as installed in green energy. Which makes green energy far more expensive.
Besides that, there is an increased risk of blackouts, which costs enormous sums if you need to restart a whole industrial area (refinaries, chemical plants, etc…)
Your article may have merit in some parts, but that web site is about banned here as completely unreliable, see the sideline above:
Unreliable*
■Skeptical Science – John Cook
* Due to (1) deletion, extension and amending of user comments, and (2) undated post-publication revisions of article contents after significant user commenting.
Further:
The climate changes naturally, but extinction rates increase if it changes too quickly for species to adapt by migrating or evolving.
You mix up the rapid increase of CO2 with a rapid increase in temperature. In the past, in general temperature did go up first and CO2 followed. Now we have an experiment where we have increased CO2 first, but there is little evidence for a catastrophical warming… A doubling of CO2 gives 0.9 K increase in temperature increase, based on absorption characteristics of CO2. That is all. The rest is models… The latest published estimates all reduce the sensitivity for 2xCO2.
For the rest, there are too many questionable items in your article to react on all of them here…
dbstealey says:
November 18, 2013 at 2:25 pm
The NAS is as corrupt as NASA. They have a climate alarmist agenda which is being falsified by Planet Earth. And Dummy keeps linking to the Pseudo-skeptical Pseudo-science blog… they are dishonest.
====================
If the NAS and NASA are corrupt and I’m dishonest, what about these scientific organizations?
The National Academy of Sciences,
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
the National Center for Atmospheric Research,
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
the American Geophysical Union,
the American Institute of Physics,
the American Physical Society,
the American Meteorological Society,
the American Statistical Association,
the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
the Federation of American Scientists,
the American Quaternary Association,
the American Society of Agronomy,
the Crop Science Society of America,
the Soil Science Society of America,
the American Astronomical Society,
the American Chemical Society,
the Geological Society of America,
the American Institute of Biological Sciences,
the American Society for Microbiology,
the Society of American Foresters,
the Australian Institute of Physics,
the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society,
the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO,
the Geological Society of Australia,
the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies,
the Australian Coral Reef Society,
the Royal Society of the UK,
the Royal Meteorological Society,
the British Antarctic Survey,
the Geological Society of London,
the Society of Biology (UK),
the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences,
the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society,
the Royal Society of New Zealand,
the Polish Academy of Sciences,
the European Science Foundation,
the European Geosciences Union,
the European Physical Society,
the European Federation of Geologists,
the Network of African Science Academies,
the International Union for Quaternary Research,
the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics,
the Wildlife Society (International),
and the World Meteorological Organization.
Have any of these scientific organizations been cleared of corruption by WUWT and dbstealey?
====================
As Dr Ball shows here, ∆T is the cause of ∆CO2 — not vice versa. That same T/CO2 relationship holds from years to hundreds of millennia. When temperature rises, CO2 follows.
====================
Use Henry’s Law to calculate the ∆CO2 due to the ~0.8C ∆T since the Industrial Revolution. You’ll find that only ~20ppm of the actual ~100ppm rise could even hypothetically be explained by the ocean outgassing that dominated CO2 variations in the Vostok ice core record you linked. Plus, if that were the case, why would CO2 in the oceans be increasing if the CO2 in the air is supposedly coming from the oceans? Why would atmospheric O2 be decreasing if the CO2 building up in the atmosphere isn’t the result of combustion? Where’s the wormhole that’s hiding the 30 billion metric tons of CO2 pollution we emit each year?
====================
What National Academies wrote still is mainly based on failed climate models. … Your article may have merit in some parts, but that web site is about banned here as completely unreliable … You mix up the rapid increase of CO2 with a rapid increase in temperature. In the past, in general temperature did go up first and CO2 followed. Now we have an experiment where we have increased CO2 first, but there is little evidence for a catastrophical warming…
====================
The experiment where CO2 increased first has already been done during the end-Permian extinction and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). The results weren’t pretty:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534703000934
The end-Permian extinction is a complicated story that involves more than CO2, but the ocean extinctions and apparent explosion of insects during the PETM really concern me. Please note that these events actually happened. They’re not figments of some “failed climate model”, but if you really think the NAS is that corrupt or incompetent then I doubt I could say anything to change your mind.
====================
A doubling of CO2 gives 0.9 K increase in temperature increase, based on absorption characteristics of CO2. That is all. The rest is models… The latest published estimates all reduce the sensitivity for 2xCO2.
====================
No, the rest isn’t models. It’s evidence from the ancient climate and fundamental physics. For instance, over at least the past 420 million years, CO2 has acted as a greenhouse gas which warmed the long-term climate by 1.5C to 6.2C per doubling of CO2:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7135/full/nature05699.html
Ironically, the only way to determine the ~0.9K bare no-feedbacks sensitivity is to use a model. The only climate sensitivity that ancient climate data can tell us about is the sensitivity in the real world.
====================
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 18, 2013 at 2:33 pm
… Wind and solar are very unreliable sources of energy, they disturb the grid and as there is little possibility for large scale storage (hydro is the only limited possibility), one need as much (fossil) backup as installed in green energy. Which makes green energy far more expensive. Besides that, there is an increased risk of blackouts, which costs enormous sums if you need to restart a whole industrial area (refinaries, chemical plants, etc…)
====================
That’s one of the reason why I support building a new generation of safe nuclear power plants.
Dumb Scientist says:
November 18, 2013 at 3:45 pm
Your link for the PETM is actually for the Permian.
Please show your evidence that in the PETM CO2 increase preceded warmth. It was already very balmy in the Eocene, which warmth of course had lasted tens of millions of years at that time, causing elevated CO2 levels.
Some CACA advocates have asserted that CO2 or CH4 caused the PETM, but haven’t been able to make a convincing case. Plenty of better explanations exist. CO2 did reach its Cenozoic high then, but which came first, the gas or the heat?
Dumb Scientist,
Thanx for all the appeals to authority. But as Einstein said, it doesn’t ake a lot of experts to prove that cAGW is wrong; all it takes is one fact. And we have produced numerous facts proving that cAGW is wrong. The only really valid Authority is Planet Earth, which is busy debunking all the cAGW nonsense.
Dumb Scientist quotes the incredible NAS:
“The need for urgent action to address climate change is now indisputable.”
That is baseless scare-mongering and alarmist nonsense. Nothing in science is “indisputable”. The NAS obviously has no understanding of the climate Null Hypothesis: there is nothing either unprecedented or unusual happening. Nothing. Current climate parameters have all been exceeded in the past. The so-called Tropospheric Hot Spot never did appear, as was incessantly predicted. And global humidity continues its decades-long decline, despite endless predictions to the contrary. And the endless predictions of runaway global warming have all failed. And despite the steady rise in [harmless, beneficial] CO2, global T has not risen — as predicted by folks who now refuse to admit they were wrong. You know: like Dumb Scientist, among many others.
Instead, we are fortunate to be living in a “Goldilocks” climate: not too hot, not too cold, but just right.
Given the mountains of empirical evidence debunking the climate alarmism expressed by Dumb Scientist, he should follow the Scientific Method, and honestly admit that his wild-eyed Chicken Little position is untenable. But he won’t, because based on his refusal to acknowledge clear empirical evidence, I suspect he is riding the climate gravy train. Because as Upton Sinclair wrote, It is difficult to make a man understand something when his livelihood depends on not understanding it.
But other readers can see, as Einstein and Feynman pointed out, that all it takes is one fact that debunks the alarmist conjecture. WUWT skeptics have provided numerous facts that debunk the CO2=cAGW conjecture. Honest scientists will retrace their CO2=cAGW conjecture, and try to understand why they were so wrong.
Only those with an ulterior motive will dig in their heels, and appeal to all the corrupt ‘authorities’ that trade their name and status for government payola. It is sad. But it is the way of the modern world.
milodonharlani says:
November 18, 2013 at 4:02 pm
Your link for the PETM is actually for the Permian. Please show your evidence that in the PETM CO2 increase preceded warmth.
========================
That actually was the Permian link. The link to the PETM insect explosion was on my untouchable SkS article, but here’s a direct link:
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/6/1960.full.pdf
========================
It was already very balmy in the Eocene, which warmth of course had lasted tens of millions of years at that time, causing elevated CO2 levels. Some CACA advocates have asserted that CO2 or CH4 caused the PETM, but haven’t been able to make a convincing case. Plenty of better explanations exist. CO2 did reach its Cenozoic high then, but which came first, the gas or the heat?
========================
The PETM happened ~55 million years ago, and was a rapid spike of about 5C warming over about 200,000 years. It’s not clear if CO2 or CH4 caused the distinct warming and carbon isotope excursion spikes, but it’s clear that ocean outgassing can’t explain the carbon isotope excursion spike:
“Atmospheric pCO2 increases from 834 ppm to either 1,500 ppm (CH4 scenario) or 4,200 ppm (Corg scenario) during the main phase of the PETM (Fig. 4d). The corresponding global ocean surface temperature increase during the peak PETM is 2.1C (CH4 scenario) and 6.5C (Corg scenario) respectively. (Fig. 4e).”
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v4/n7/abs/ngeo1179.html
As before, Henry’s Law just won’t allow 5C of warming to release that much CO2 or CH4.
dbstealey says:
November 18, 2013 at 4:37 pm
Given the mountains of empirical evidence debunking the climate alarmism expressed by Dumb Scientist, he should follow the Scientific Method, and honestly admit that his wild-eyed Chicken Little position is untenable. … I suspect he is riding the climate gravy train. … Honest scientists will retrace their CO2=cAGW conjecture, and try to understand why they were so wrong. Only those with an ulterior motive will dig in their heels, and appeal to all the corrupt ‘authorities’ that trade their name and status for government payola. It is sad. But it is the way of the modern world.
=================
So, all those organizations are corrupt and riding the climate gravy train next to me? Really? As I’ve shown, every one of them has acknowledged basic physics:
http://dumbscientist.com/archives/crash-course-on-climate-change#comment-17977
Dumb Scientist says:
November 18, 2013 at 4:48 pm
There is essentially zero chance of human activity raising global temperature four degrees C in this century, however thanks for your paper. The lead author’s association with PSU doesn’t inspire confidence, but I enjoyed the angle of insect herbivory.
However valuable this contribution to Eocene climate studies, it can’t resolve the cause or causes of the apparent warming at that time. As you must be aware GCMs show the same lack of skill for the Eocene as for the Cretaceous, I suspect for much the same reason. The equable warmth of these periods or epochs derive from the positions of the continents & heating of the oceans by volcanic activity, not from the gases incidentally injected into the air by these processes.
The PETM impact hypothesis as you also may know has recently received new support:
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/2/425
Dumb Scientyist says:
“So, all those organizations are corrupt and riding the climate gravy train…”
Yes, as prof Richard Lindzen has shown. The rank-and-file is not corrupt; but the few individuals on the governing boards are bought and paid for activists.
We have been over this time and time again here. It gets tedious educating every newbie who comes along. Do an archive search, and get up to speed.
milodonharlani says:
November 18, 2013 at 5:29 pm
The equable warmth of these periods or epochs derive from the positions of the continents & heating of the oceans by volcanic activity, not from the gases incidentally injected into the air by these processes.
================
I agree that the positions of the continents over very long timescales (longer than a million years) have significant effects on ocean circulation and thus on the climate. But could you please link to a paper showing that direct oceanic heating by volcanic activity significantly affects climate during the epochs in question?
Note that the PETM was much too rapid to be explained by continental drift. It was a geologically brief spike of only ~200,000 years:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png
================
The PETM impact hypothesis as you also may know has recently received new support:
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/2/425
================
Thanks, I hadn’t heard of that paper. I don’t yet see the connection to the impact hypothesis, but I did notice that it was cited by another recent paper which suggests the PETM CO2 excursion happened in just a few decades:
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/40/15908.short
Dumb Scientist says:
November 18, 2013 at 6:50 pm
Re tectonics, the PETM occurred during a period of more rapid than normal seafloor spreading, as during the Cretaceous, leading to ocean heating. A 200,000 year increase in volcanism could have caused the observed deep sea T increase. Also, the positions of the continents then could have amplified any such event, since the Southern Ocean now important in deep oceanic circulation & continental climates hadn’t yet developed.
At the very least, it’s far too soon to conclude that some increase in GHGs explain the PETM, let alone draw conclusions therefrom to justify dismantling the energy economy upon which seven billion people rely.
Re relevance to impact hypothesis of cited paper, the inclusions it found have mysterious provenance, arguable extra-terrestrial.
milodonharlani says:
November 18, 2013 at 6:58 pm
Re tectonics, the PETM occurred during a period of more rapid than normal seafloor spreading, as during the Cretaceous, leading to ocean heating. A 200,000 year increase in volcanism could have caused the observed deep sea T increase. Also, the positions of the continents then could have amplified any such event, since the Southern Ocean now important in deep oceanic circulation & continental climates hadn’t yet developed.
=========================
Citation?
=========================
At the very least, it’s far too soon to conclude that some increase in GHGs explain the PETM, let alone draw conclusions therefrom to justify dismantling the energy economy upon which seven billion people rely.
=========================
The two papers I linked (and many others) concluded that the PETM was caused by an increase in GHGs. I’ve explained starting on November 17, 2013 at 8:10 pm that I’m not trying to dismantle the energy economy. I’m trying to keep the fossil fuel industry from dismantling every other part of the economy by charging them for their pollution the same way all other businesses pay for waste disposal.
Dumb Scientist says:
November 18, 2013 at 7:15 pm
You’re most welcome on the linked paper.
Citation? Any paleogeographic map showing that Antarctica wasn’t yet separated by deep ocean channels from South America & Australia. I could link to many, as you must know. Ditto the level of submarine volcanism, as seafloor spreading was higher then than now, although less than during the Cretaceous, when thermal expansion of the oceans was probably at a Phanerozoic high. I suspect you could find papers on deep ocean heating at the PETM as easily as I could. Some obligatorily genuflect toward the One True Gas, but others allow for alternative explanations. But in any case, the oceans weren’t as hot at the PETM as during the steamiest interval of the Cretaceous, at which time they were almost literally scalding in the tropics, leading to fewer biological cloud condensation nuclei, a positive feedback. No magic gas need apply.
CO2 is not pollution. It is beneficial plant food, the salubrious effects of which are evident in the greening of the planet & great increase in yields of food & fiber crops since WWII.
Your citations show no such thing. There is zero evidence that a major CO2 increase from already high (by Cenozoic standards) levels preceded the PETM, let alone cause it. Indeed, if you want to talk physics, Arrhenius showed that the warming effect of CO2 even in the lab, let alone the atmosphere, is logarithmic, so the supposed five degree C rapid increase could not have been due to CO2. Nor is there evidence to support CH4 or any other GHG, except possibly H2O. Just supposition, ie WAG motivated by ideology, not science.
milodonharlani says:
November 18, 2013 at 7:34 pm
Citation? Any paleogeographic map…
============================
Citation? For the claim that direct oceanic heating by volcanic activity significantly affects climate during the epochs in question? To the extent that it could explain a 5C global warming spike in only ~200,000 years? And a carbon isotope excursion that indicates organic carbon far in excess of what can be explained by ocean outgassing using Henry’s Law?
============================
CO2 is not pollution. It is beneficial plant food, the salubrious effects of which are evident in the greening of the planet & great increase in yields of food & fiber crops since WWII.
============================
Farming practices and technology have also improved greatly since WWII. As I explained in my untouchable article, CO2 fertilization is a real beneficial effect. But it’s just overwhelmed by negative effects like more droughts and wildfires. For instance, Rice grows 10% less with every 1.8°F of night-time warming:
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/27/9971.full
============================
Arrhenius showed that the warming effect of CO2 even in the lab, let alone the atmosphere, is logarithmic, so the supposed five degree C rapid increase could not have been due to CO2.
============================
As you say, for over a century scientists have understood that GHG surface warming on Earth depends approximately on the logarithm of GHG concentrations. Here’s a review of multiple studies over the last 65 Myrs (including the PETM) which reveals a climate sensitivity of 2.2K – 4.8K per doubling of atmospheric CO2:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7426/full/nature11574.html
============================
… the supposed five degree C rapid increase could not have been due to CO2. Nor is there evidence to support CH4 or any other GHG, except possibly H2O. Just supposition, ie WAG motivated by ideology, not science.
============================
The papers I linked seem to agree that scientists don’t know if the GHG was CO2 or CH4 (methane), and the exact source, quantities and release rates are still being disputed. But it’s certainly not due to H2O. That’s impossible. A significant fraction of emitted CO2 stays in the atmosphere for centuries, and methane takes about ten years to oxidize into CO2.
Increasing the concentration of CO2 or methane can and has warmed the climate.
But H2O quickly rains out of the atmosphere in just a few weeks if its concentration gets too high, or evaporates from the oceans if its concentration gets too low.
Increasing the concentration of H2O by itself can’t warm the climate because the equilibrium concentration of H2O is essentially predetermined by all the other factors which determine sea surface temperatures. Water vapor is a feedback, not a forcing, so it can’t possibly have caused the PETM.
Dumb Scientist:
The equilibrium climate sensitivity is not a scientifc or logical concept as the equilibrium temperature is not an observable feature of the real world..
Dumb Scientist says:
November 18, 2013 at 9:38 pm
Actually, sir, no one knows how long CO2 molecules stay in the atmosphere. It’s an important area of investigation. But we’re pretty sure it isn’t centuries.
milodonharlani says:
November 18, 2013 at 9:50 pm
Actually, sir, no one knows how long CO2 molecules stay in the atmosphere. It’s an important area of investigation. But we’re pretty sure it isn’t centuries.
======================
“[19] The carbon cycle of the biosphere will take a long time to completely neutralize and sequester anthropogenic CO2. We show a wide range of model forecasts of this effect. For the best guess cases, which include air/seawater, CaCO3, and silicate weathering equilibria as affected by an ocean temperature feedback, we expect that 17– 33% of the fossil fuel carbon will still reside in the atmosphere 1 kyr from now, decreasing to 10– 15% at 10 kyr, and 7% at 100 kyr. The mean lifetime of fossil fuel CO2 is about 30– 35 kyr.”
“[20] A mean atmospheric lifetime of order 104 years is in start contrast with the ‘‘popular’’ perception of several hundred year lifetime for atmospheric CO2. In fairness, if the fate of anthropogenic carbon must be boiled down into a single number for popular discussion, then 300 years is a sensible number to choose, because it captures the behavior of the majority of the carbon. A single exponential decay of 300 years is arguably a better approximation than a single exponential decay of 30,000 years, if one is forced to choose. However, the 300 year simplification misses the immense longevity of the tail on the CO2 lifetime, and hence its interaction with major ice sheets, ocean methane clathrate deposits, and future glacial/interglacial cycles. …”
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2005.fate_co2.pdf
Dumb Scientist says:
November 18, 2013 at 3:45 pm
No, the rest isn’t models. It’s evidence from the ancient climate and fundamental physics. For instance, over at least the past 420 million years, CO2 has acted as a greenhouse gas which warmed the long-term climate by 1.5C to 6.2C per doubling of CO2:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7135/full/nature05699.html
It is near impossible to separate the warming influence on CO2 levels from the influence of increasing CO2 levels on temperature during a glacial-interglacial transition, as there is a huge overlap between the two. But the detailed measurements at Epica Dome C for the last tranistion already give a clue:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/epica5.gif
be it that the error margin is still too huge to be certain.
Further, there is a huge shift in timing of CO2 vs. T and CH4 at the end of the previous interglacial: T and CH4 where already at a new minimum (and ice sheets at a new maximum), when CO2 levels start to drop, without a measurable effect on T or ice sheets:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/eemian.gif
which points to little effect of CO2 on T.
d18O measured in N2O is a reverse measure for ice sheet formation, here reversed to show ice sheet extent.
Ironically, the only way to determine the ~0.9K bare no-feedbacks sensitivity is to use a model. The only climate sensitivity that ancient climate data can tell us about is the sensitivity in the real world.
Sorry, the “model” used to estimate the temperature effect of 2xCO2 is based on the direct absorbance of CO2 over the complete column of air (70 km) as calculated by Hitran and Modtran, based on the line by line spectrum of CO2 and other GHGs in the atmosphere at different pressures (as measured in laboratories). Nothing to do with the speculation by GCM’s…
Dumb Scientist says:
November 18, 2013 at 10:46 pm
we expect that 17– 33% of the fossil fuel carbon will still reside in the atmosphere 1 kyr from now, decreasing to 10– 15% at 10 kyr, and 7% at 100 kyr.
That is the Bern model. But the Bern model only may have merit if 3000-5000 GtC is released by humans: all available oil and gas and lots of coal. Then we have a saturation of the deep oceans and other much slower mechanisms are needed to remove the excess CO2.
Meanwhile, the deep oceans are far from saturated and still absorb a large part of human emissions. Of the ~9 GtC/yr emitted by humans (as mass, not individual molecules):
~0.5 GtC/yr goes into the ocean surface with a decay rate of 1-3 years (which saturates the ocean surface – the buffer/Revelle factor)
~1 GtC/yr goes into more permanent storage by vegetation, where no saturation is in sight.
~3 GtC/yr goes into the deep oceans, where no saturation is in sight.
The latter now has ~300 GtC human emissions stored, or less than 1% of the deep ocean carbon content. If that all gets into equilibrium with the atmosphere after thousands of years, that means a very long term increase of 3 ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere. That is all.
The error the Bern model makes is translating an enormous emission of CO2 in the far future to the current emissions. There is no reason to expect a saturation of the deep oceans for the next centuries and no saturation at all of the storage in vegetation, which is in fact unlimited for CO2 (but limited for other necessities).
That makes that besides the ocean surface, which is readily saturated, the deep oceans and vegetation are the current (near) unlimited sinks and the slower sinks play no significant role at all.
The current sink rate is ~4.5 GtC/yr with an atmospheric pressure in the atmosphere of ~230 GtC (110 ppmv) above equilibrium, the e-fold decay rate is 230/4.5 or ~51 years or a half life time of ~40 years.
That there is no reduction in sink rate over time is clear from the “airborne fraction” over time:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2.jpg
or recent:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1960_cur.jpg
Dumb Scientist says:
November 18, 2013 at 3:45 pm
“No, the rest isn’t models. It’s evidence from the ancient climate and fundamental physics. For instance, over at least the past 420 million years, CO2 has acted as a greenhouse gas which warmed the long-term climate by 1.5C to 6.2C per doubling of CO2: “
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7135/full/nature05699.html
——————–
Dumb Scientist, your cited reference explicitly states, to wit:
“Here we estimate long-term equilibrium climate sensitivity by modelling carbon dioxide concentrations over the past 420 million years and comparing our calculations with a proxy record. Our estimates are broadly consistent with estimates based on short-term climate records, and indicate that a weak radiative forcing by carbon dioxide is highly unlikely on multi-million-year timescales. We conclude that a climate sensitivity greater than 1.5 °C has probably been a robust feature of the Earth’s climate system over the past 420 million years, regardless of temporal scaling.”
Dumb Scientist, ….. DUH, ….. “…..we estimate ….by modeling ….comparing our calculations …Our estimates are broadly consistent with …and indicate that ….is highly unlikely ….We conclude that …has probably been a robust feature …”
What you have therein, Dumb Scientist, is nothing more than “weazelworded” rhetoric being touted as a means of justifying the author’s “junk science” CAGW agenda.
Dumb Scientist, … here is the “proxy record” graph the author made reference to, to wit:
Paleo historic graph of atmospheric CO2 and temperatures
http://www.biocab.org/Geological_Timescale.jpg
And here is the abstract source for the above graph, to wit:
http://www.biocab.org/carbon_dioxide_geological_timescale.html
And Dumb Scientist, … for your quest of general knowledge on paleoclimate I suggest you start by reading the follow article, to wit:
Climate and the Carboniferous Period
“Late Carboniferous to Early Permian time (315 mya — 270 mya) is the only time period in the last 600 million years when both atmospheric CO2 and temperatures were as low as they are today (Quaternary Period ).” http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
==============
Dumb Scientist says:
November 18, 2013 at 4:48 pm
“As before, Henry’s Law just won’t allow 5C of warming to release that much CO2”
OH WOW, …. have you told Budweiser and Coors about that ….. because they have a really big problem trying to keep the CO2 “bottled up” until a person is ready to drink their beer?
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 19, 2013 at 2:31 am
It is near impossible to separate the warming influence on CO2 levels from the influence of increasing CO2 levels on temperature during a glacial-interglacial transition, as there is a huge overlap between the two. But the detailed measurements at Epica Dome C for the last tranistion already give a clue:
=======================
Your interesting claims conflict with the available peer-reviewed literature, which have studied glacial-interglacial transitions and concluded that CO2 has acted as a greenhouse gas with a climate sensitivity of 2.2K – 4.8K per doubling of atmospheric CO2:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7426/full/nature11574.html
=======================
Ironically, the only way to determine the ~0.9K bare no-feedbacks sensitivity is to use a model. The only climate sensitivity that ancient climate data can tell us about is the sensitivity in the real world.
Sorry, the “model” used to estimate the temperature effect of 2xCO2 is based on the direct absorbance of CO2 over the complete column of air (70 km) as calculated by Hitran and Modtran, based on the line by line spectrum of CO2 and other GHGs in the atmosphere at different pressures (as measured in laboratories). Nothing to do with the speculation by GCM’s…
=======================
Hitran and Modtran are models which calculate the temperature effect of 2xCO2 while pretending that everything else stays constant. As the planet warms, water vapor doesn’t evaporate, ice sheets don’t melt, the permafrost doesn’t decompose. The bare no-feedbacks sensitivity only exists in models.
On the other hand, paleoclimate data tell us about the real-world “Earth system sensitivity” which includes all these real feedbacks.
=======================
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 19, 2013 at 3:09 am
That is the Bern model. But the Bern model only may have merit if 3000-5000 GtC is released by humans…
=======================
Feel free to link to a peer-reviewed paper giving a CO2 lifetime significantly lower than the one I linked.
Dumb Scientist:
The equilibrium climate sensitivity (TECS) is backed out of paleoclimate data through Bayesian parameter estimation. Required for this process is a prior probability density function. This function suffers from a lack of uniqueness with consequential violation of the law of non-contradiction.
The posterior probability density function that is generated from an arbitrarily selected prior probability density function is not necessarily a true proposition and the claim that is stated by it is insusceptible to being statistically validated in view of the nonobservability of the equilibrium temperature. Thus, TECS is not a scientifically or logically viable concept.
The alternative to TECS is to build climatological models upon a foundation of independent events, some of them observed. This alternative has yet to be taken by the climatological establishment. While it remains untaken, we will lack a scientific or logical basis for attempting to regulate the climate through controls on carbon dioxide emissions.
Samuel C Cogar says:
November 19, 2013 at 7:54 am
Dumb Scientist, your cited reference explicitly states, to wit: … “…..we estimate ….by modeling ….comparing our calculations …Our estimates are broadly consistent with …and indicate that ….is highly unlikely ….We conclude that …has probably been a robust feature …” What you have therein, Dumb Scientist, is nothing more than “weazelworded” rhetoric being touted as a means of justifying the author’s “junk science” CAGW agenda.
=======================
On November 14, you said “One can actually trust the “fossilized stomata record” because those plants were actually there at the time ….. and were “measuring” the CO2 ppm that was available for their use.”
So we have observations of CO2 concentrations over time, from fossilized stomata and ice cores, etc. More recently, we have observations of solar/volcanic/etc. forcing, and observations of surface temperatures and observations of ocean heat content.
1. Can these observations be used to learn about the climate?
If you don’t think so, then science is impossible.
2. Is there any way to use these observations to learn about the climate without using equations or physics (i.e. a model)?
No. Science = models. Anyone who doesn’t like models doesn’t like science. The observations we have are useless without physics.
Terry Oldberg says:
November 19, 2013 at 8:56 am
The equilibrium climate sensitivity (TECS) is backed out of paleoclimate data through Bayesian parameter estimation. Required for this process is a prior probability density function. This function suffers from a lack of uniqueness with consequential violation of the law of non-contradiction.
==================
The default prior is uniform for all climate sensitivities. I wish you luck in publishing your new climate model.
Dumb Scientist:
Thanks for authoring the stimulating talking points and for taking the time to respond to my message. According to AR4, two prior PDFs are in common use by global warming climatologists. One is uniform. As I recall, the other is normally distributed. Neither function is logically or scientifically justified.
As the uniform distribution function is non-informative, in the circumstance in which it is also unique it is logically justified. In the situation in which it is not unique there is a logically objectionable violation of the law of non-contradiction. In relation to question of the posterior PDF of the equilibrium climate sensitivity, the uniform prior lacks uniqueness.
By the way, while I favor a logically justified and scientific method of construction for those climatological models that are used in regulating greenhouse gas emissions and though we lack such models, currently there is not a market for such a model. Thus, I am not about to build one. In climatology a variant of Gresham’s law is operative in which bad models drive out good ones.
I see that the Dumb Scientist is getting a much-needed education. Maybe some of the nonsense he’s picked up from SkS and similar blogs will be deconstructed by the knowledge available here.
Dumb Scientist says:
November 18, 2013 at 3:45 pm
“Where’s the wormhole that’s hiding the 30 billion metric tons of CO2 pollution we emit each year?”
————————
Now we can assume the above figure is correct in that humans are CURRENTLY emitting 30 billion metric tons of CO2 pollution into the atmospheres each year …… but it would be foolish and/or asinine to assume they have been doing the same for the past 55 years, since 1958, which “marks” the start of the Mona Loa ‘Keeling Curve’ atmospheric CO2 record.
Now the Mona Loa data that is plotted on the Keeling Curve graph shows a STEADY and CONSISTENT ….. 1 ppm to 2 ppm yearly increase in atmospheric CO2 for each of said 55 years. Which by the way, was many years before anyone decided to calculate human emissions of CO2 from their burning of fossil fuels.
=========
Then: Dumb Scientist says:
November 18, 2013 at 10:46 pm
“…… we expect that 17– 33% of the fossil fuel carbon will still reside in the atmosphere 1 kyr from now, decreasing to 10– 15% at 10 kyr, and 7% at 100 kyr. The mean lifetime of fossil fuel CO2 is about 30– 35 kyr.”
———————-
SO, they EXPECT that much (17– 33%) to remain resident in the atmosphere …. year after year, HUH?
If we do the math ….. then 17% to 33% of 30 billion metric tons is equal to 5.1 to 9.9 billion tons of CO2 that is remaining resident in the atmosphere …. year after year.
And if we also do the math, given the average mass of the atmosphere and the current CO2 @ 396 ppm ….. then each one (1) ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere is equal to about 5 billion metric tons of CO2.
OH MY, MY, …. what a coincidence that is, …. that 1 ppm to 2 ppm yearly increase of CO2 on the KC graph …… is equivalent to …… the aforesaid EXPECTED 17% to 33% of human emissions that is remaining resident in the atmosphere …. year after year. And Mother Nature doesn’t like coincidences, ya know.,
The maximum CO2 ppm in 1960 was 320.03 which was an increase of 1.74 ppm from 1959.
And a 1.74 ppm increase in CO2 in 1959 is equal to 8.7 billion tons of CO2, …. or 29% of the 30 billion tons of human emissions.
Only one problem, humans were not emitting 30 billion metric tons of CO2 each year during the 1950’s and 1960’s due to their burning of fossil fuels.
cheers
Samuel C Cogar says:
November 19, 2013 at 11:19 am
“…… we expect that 17– 33% of the fossil fuel carbon will still reside in the atmosphere 1 kyr from now, decreasing to 10– 15% at 10 kyr, and 7% at 100 kyr. The mean lifetime of fossil fuel CO2 is about 30– 35 kyr.”
———————-
SO, they EXPECT that much (17– 33%) to remain resident in the atmosphere …. year after year, HUH? …. what a coincidence that is, …. that 1 ppm to 2 ppm yearly increase of CO2 on the KC graph …… is equivalent to …… the aforesaid EXPECTED 17% to 33% of human emissions that is remaining resident in the atmosphere …. year after year. And Mother Nature doesn’t like coincidences, ya know.,
==============================
To repeat, “17– 33% of the fossil fuel carbon will still reside in the atmosphere 1 kyr from now“. Around the year 3000, in other words. Applying this fraction to the 1900s implies that you’re referring to a hypothetical CO2 pulse in the year ~900. Is that the case?
==============================
The maximum CO2 ppm in 1960 was 320.03 which was an increase of 1.74 ppm from 1959. And a 1.74 ppm increase in CO2 in 1959 is equal to 8.7 billion tons of CO2, …. or 29% of the 30 billion tons of human emissions. Only one problem, humans were not emitting 30 billion metric tons of CO2 each year during the 1950’s and 1960’s due to their burning of fossil fuels.
==============================
NOAA calculates the CO2 growth rate from 1959-1960 at 0.94 ppm/year, not 1.74.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
Dumb Scientist says:
“Science = models.”
And that, folks, is why ‘Dumb Scientist’ is so deluded. He believes computer models over empirical observations.
Correction:
Science = testable, empirical [real world] evidence.
The IPCC’s models are always wrong. GISS models are always wrong: GISS dishonestly alters the historical record.
So who should we believe? The real world? Or those always-wrong models, and the NASA/GISS-diddled temperature record?
Dumb Scientist says:
November 19, 2013 at 8:41 am
“So we have observations of CO2 concentrations over time, from fossilized stomata … ”
————————
Absolutely NOT, … those were not “observations over time”. They are/were direct measurements of “date and atmospheric CO2 ppm” at the time said fossilized plants were experiencing new growth of their foliage.
Dumb Scientist, the fossil record of plants and their evolutionary taxonomy is probably 20 times more extensive than the fossil record of animals.
And that is what makes it possible to use “pollen grains” to date archeological sites and animal fossils.
“No. Science = models. Anyone who doesn’t like models doesn’t like science. The observations we have are useless without physics.”
Dumb Scientist, cease with your obfuscations. And don’t be lecturing me on what is or isn’t science, I’m from the old school when actual, factual science was being taught. Iffen you require a model to “learn science” …. then you best give it up and select another profession.
And “HA”, Charles Goodyear and Thomas Edison were both “without physics” and they managed to do OK.
Samuel C Cogar says:
November 19, 2013 at 12:29 pm
“So we have observations of CO2 concentrations over time, from fossilized stomata … ”
————————
Absolutely NOT, … those were not “observations over time”. They are/were direct measurements of “date and atmospheric CO2 ppm” at the time said fossilized plants were experiencing new growth of their foliage.
=======================
That’s what I meant. Fossilized stomata directly measured CO2 concentration, and there are many fossilized stomata at different times. So they can tell us what the CO2 concentration was at different points in time. If that’s not what you meant then perhaps we’re talking about different things.
Dumb Scientist says:
November 19, 2013 at 8:33 am
which have studied glacial-interglacial transitions and concluded that CO2 has acted as a greenhouse gas with a climate sensitivity of 2.2K – 4.8K per doubling of atmospheric CO2
and
On the other hand, paleoclimate data tell us about the real-world “Earth system sensitivity” which includes all these real feedbacks.
Yes, I have read the initial report by J. Hansen about the models that can’t go out of an ice age without the help of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
But what do we know about one of the most important feedbacks: clouds? Hardly anything. 2% change in cloud cover is equivalent to a CO2 doubling… What was the change in cloud cover during a glacial-interglacial transition?
And the feedback of water vapour? Completely absent in current times in the higher troposphere: it is going down, not up. Again cloud feedback is positive in the models, negative in reality.
And last but not least, the several last years sensitivity studies all push climate sensitivity down to 1.5 K / 2xCO2, so that even the IPCC did lower its range at the lowe side.
Feel free to link to a peer-reviewed paper giving a CO2 lifetime significantly lower than the one I linked.
No link necessary: a little process knowledge is sufficient:
The calculation of an e-fold time for a near linear system (which the CO2 budget is) is quite easy: divide the height of the disturbance from the equilibrium by the observed reaction to that disturbance. Which in this case is 230 GtC/yr / 4.5 GtC/yr or about 51 years.
That is the real world, not the modelled world.
The reaction speed didn’t change over 160 years of time and there is no sign of saturation (it even seems to accellerate…), except for the ocean surface, which is already saturated at 10% of the change in the atmosphere (the Revelle factor).
The Bern model gives many parallel decay rates in different reservoirs, including a part that stays in the atmosphere forever. The real world shows no sign of saturation for the decay rate in the deep oceans and vegetation. The latter even has no saturation bound (as we still use coal as result of ancient CO2 levels…) and goes on forever, as long as CO2 levels are above equilibrium…
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 19, 2013 at 3:07 pm
… what do we know about one of the most important feedbacks: clouds? Hardly anything. 2% change in cloud cover is equivalent to a CO2 doubling… What was the change in cloud cover during a glacial-interglacial transition? And the feedback of water vapour? Completely absent in current times in the higher troposphere: it is going down, not up. Again cloud feedback is positive in the models, negative in reality.
=======================
Estimating feedbacks using climate models requires very detailed, high-resolution models. In that case, one needs to ask all the questions you’re asking.
But estimating feedbacks by comparing ancient temperatures to ancient CO2 levels and orbital forcings already has all those feedbacks built into the ancient temperature record. However cloud cover changed during glacial-interglacial transitions, the orbital forcing, CO2 amplification, cloud feedback, water vapor feedback, sea-ice albedo feedback, ice sheet feedback, carbon cycle/permafrost feedback, etc… all added together to produce the ancient temperature record.
That’s why I consider paleoclimate data very informative. All those feedbacks are already in the ancient temperature record. In fact, the PALAEOSENS paper I linked earlier compared the climate sensitivities from climate models to those from paleoclimate data. In order to produce an apples-to-apples comparison, they had to remove feedbacks that were present in the paleodata but weren’t being simulated by the climate models.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7426/full/nature11574.html
=======================
And last but not least, the several last years sensitivity studies all push climate sensitivity down to 1.5 K / 2xCO2, so that even the IPCC did lower its range at the lowe side.
=======================
The lower limit for the Charney sensitivity has been 1.5 K / 2xCO2 since the 1979 Charney report:
http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~brianpm/download/charney_report.pdf
If we can agree that the lower limit scientists have been using for over 30 years is reasonable, that’s great news.
Made an error:
230 GtC/yr / 4.5 GtC/yr
is of course
230 GtC / 4.5 GtC/yr which gives the e-fold decay rate of an excess amount of CO2 in years, if no further disturbance occurs.
Dumb Scientist says:
November 19, 2013 at 3:51 pm
The lower limit for the Charney sensitivity has been 1.5 K / 2xCO2 since the 1979 Charney report:
The lower limit of the Charney report and of the IPCC was 1.5 K / 2xCO2 (2 K in the FAR), but with a “best estimate” of 3 K / 2xCO2. The recent empirical evidence is at ~1.8 K “best estimate” with an upper limit of ~3 K and the IPCC doesn’t give a “best estimate” in their latest report.
http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/4/785/2013/esdd-4-785-2013.html
That’s why I consider paleoclimate data very informative. All those feedbacks are already in the ancient temperature record.
I do too find them very informative too. Therefore the end of the Eemian is very interesting, as that shows the impact of CO2 alone, whithout overlap of temperature and CH4. Which shows that sensitivity for CO2 is very low.
Moreover, it is also a matter of attribution: all models attribute a lot of power to CO2 (including feedbacks), depending of the (human) aerosols – CO2 balance. If the impact of human aerosols is huge, then the sensitivity of temperature for CO2 (including feedbacks) is huge and vv. Models with high and low sensitivity both can reproduce the 1945-1975 stop in warming, but the models with the highest sensitivity are those with the highest deviation from reality today. But even the models with the lowest sensitivity now are out of the 95% range. Which means that the sensitivity anyway is below 2 K / 2xCO2. How much will be clear from the length of the “pauze”…
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 20, 2013 at 12:15 am
The recent empirical evidence is at ~1.8 K “best estimate” with an upper limit of ~3 K and the IPCC doesn’t give a “best estimate” in their latest report.
========================================
Again, if we can agree that the 1.5 K / 2xCO2 lower limit scientists have been using for over 30 years is reasonable, that’s great news.
========================================
I do too find them very informative too. Therefore the end of the Eemian is very interesting, as that shows the impact of CO2 alone, whithout overlap of temperature and CH4. Which shows that sensitivity for CO2 is very low.
========================================
Citation?
“Glacial-to-interglacial climate change leading to the prior (Eemian) interglacial is less ambiguous and implies a sensitivity in the upper part of the above range, i.e. 3–4°C for a 4 W m−2 CO2 forcing.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3785813/
That link is for the transition into the Eemian, but I’d be interested in seeing a paper that calculates a “very low” sensitivity for the end of the Eemian.
Dumb Scientist says:
November 20, 2013 at 12:47 am
Again, if we can agree that the 1.5 K / 2xCO2 lower limit scientists have been using for over 30 years is reasonable, that’s great news.
The 1.5 K / 2xCO2 is the new best guess found, their lower limit is 0.9 K. Seems that there is not much positive feedback left to help CO2 to do what was predicted in previous IPCC reports…
My best guess is around 1 K / 2xCO2, as good as anyone elses…
Citation?
The only model I know of that did an attempt to simulate the end of the Eemian is the ECHAM-G model (climate sensitivity at the low side ~2 K/2xCO2) for the situation at 125 kyear BP and 115 kyear BP. That is just before the drop in CO2:
http://www.mad.zmaw.de/fileadmin/extern/Publications/simulation.pdf
The next step would be a model that tries to simulate the situation at 107 kyear BP, but as far as I know, no climate model did perform that…Too risky for high-sensitivity models?
Dumb Scientist says:
November 19, 2013 at 12:14 pm
“NOAA calculates the CO2 growth rate from 1959-1960 at 0.94 ppm/year, not 1.74.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ ”
————————
Dumb Scientist, quit proving to the world that your “screen name” was chosen for a damn good reason.
Now let’s see iffen you can do “simple” math subtraction using actual NOAA data, to wit:
Copied from: NOAA’s complete 1958-2013 monthly average Mona Loa CO2 ppm data
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
1959 1 1959.042 315.62 315.62 315.70 -1
1959 2 1959.125 316.38 316.38 315.88 -1
1959 3 1959.208 316.71 316.71 315.62 -1
1959 4 1959.292 317.72 317.72 315.56 -1
1959 5 1959.375 318.29 318.29 315.50 -1
1959 6 1959.458 318.15 318.15 315.92 -1
1959 7 1959.542 316.54 316.54 315.66 -1
1959 8 1959.625 314.80 314.80 315.81 -1
1959 9 1959.708 313.84 313.84 316.55 -1
1959 10 1959.792 313.26 313.26 316.19 -1
1959 11 1959.875 314.80 314.80 316.78 -1
1959 12 1959.958 315.58 315.58 316.52 -1
1960 1 1960.042 316.43 316.43 316.51 -1
1960 2 1960.125 316.97 316.97 316.47 -1
1960 3 1960.208 317.58 317.58 316.49 -1
1960 4 1960.292 319.02 319.02 316.86 -1
1960 5 1960.375 320.03 320.03 317.24 -1
1960 6 1960.458 319.59 319.59 317.36 -1
1960 7 1960.542 318.18 318.18 317.30 -1
1960 8 1960.625 315.91 315.91 316.92 -1
1960 9 1960.708 314.16 314.16 316.87 -1
1960 10 1960.792 313.83 313.83 316.76 -1
1960 11 1960.875 315.00 315.00 316.98 -1
1960 12 1960.958 316.19 316.19 317.13 -1
=================================================
To help you out, …. 320.03 – 318.29 = 1.74 ppm
Samuel C Cogar says:
November 20, 2013 at 3:28 am
Copied from: NOAA’s complete 1958-2013 monthly average Mona Loa CO2 ppm data … To help you out, …. 320.03 – 318.29 = 1.74 ppm
==========================
NOAA calculates trends using more than just two data points. Please look at the table I linked earlier:
year ppm/yr
1959 0.94
1960 0.54
1961 0.95
1962 0.64
1963 0.71
1964 0.28
1965 1.02
1966 1.24
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 20, 2013 at 3:08 am
The 1.5 K / 2xCO2 is the new best guess found, their lower limit is 0.9 K. Seems that there is not much positive feedback left to help CO2 to do what was predicted in previous IPCC reports…
My best guess is around 1 K / 2xCO2, as good as anyone elses…
============================
Again, feedbacks are already present in paleoclimate data, so the PALAEOSENS paper and Royer et al. 2007 (linked earlier, uses 420 million years of paleodata) both show that the real world climate sensitivity is very unlikely to be as low as 1 K / 2xCO2.
By coincidence, Figure 3a in both the PALAEOSENS paper and Knutti and Hegerl 2008 summarize dozens of sensitivity studies:
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf
Please note that some individual studies show high sensitivities and some show lower sensitivities. It’s important to avoid “single study syndrome” by considering all the evidence available, and review papers like these are an easy way to do that.
============================
The only model I know of that did an attempt to simulate the end of the Eemian is the ECHAM-G model (climate sensitivity at the low side ~2 K/2xCO2)
============================
You originally called that a “very low” climate sensitivity, but isn’t it actually above the lower limit that scientists have been using since 1979?
“You originally called that a ‘very low’ climate sensitivity, but isn’t it actually above the lower limit that scientists have been using since 1979?”
Chalk up one more nitpick by the dumb one.
So what if it’s above or below the lower limit? The alarmist crowd in general routinely uses the scariest, highest sensitivity number they can get away with.
BTW, where does Dumb Scientist work? Retired? Or using his work time to emit alarmist propaganda?
In any case it isn’t working. Despite all the reliance on models, Planet Earth is still the only real Authority, and Planet Earth is clearly telling us that CO2=cAGW is nonsense.
So who should we believe? Planet Earth? Or a dumb scientist, who doesn’t understand either the Scientific Method or the Null Hypothesis?
dbstealey says:
November 20, 2013 at 10:40 am
So what if it’s above or below the lower limit?
==============================
Since Ferdinand Engelbeen seemed to say that study is reasonable and provides a “very small” sensitivity of 2K / 2xCO2, I think it’s worth pointing out that scientists have been using a lower limit of 1.5K / 2xCO2 since 1979.
So I guess dumb believes that the IPCC is not composed of scientists…
…but you know, he may be right. As the article says, “Create a false problem with false science and use bureaucrats to bypass politicians to close industry down and make developed countries pay.”
A big part of the IPCC consists of NGOs and QUANGOs, not scientists.
dbstealey says:
November 20, 2013 at 11:02 am
So I guess dumb believes that the IPCC is not composed of scientists…
=======================
Obviously I’ve failed to communicate once again. Have a nice day.
Dumb Scientist says:
November 19, 2013 at 3:51 pm
“But estimating feedbacks by comparing ancient temperatures to ancient CO2 levels and orbital forcings already has all those feedbacks built into the ancient temperature record.”
————————
And therein is the reason that all output data generated by climate modeling programs are utterly FUBAR. They have the “wagon driving the horse” by assuming that CO2 is driving the temperature and thus they include it in the input data. That is bass-ackward to what it should be.
And, concerning the calculations of “temperature feedbacks” and/or “climate sensitivity”, me thinks that anyone who attempts to do said ….. is stuck in a deep rut and fiercely spinning their wheels and accomplishing nothing except for generating tons of paperwork.
And my above brash statement was prompted in response to the following:
Ferdinand Engelbeen asks: “… what do we know about one (1) of the most important feedbacks: clouds? Hardly anything.”
Dumb Scientist offers an excuse for not knowing much of anything about clouds: “Estimating feedbacks using climate models requires very detailed, high-resolution models.”
And to that, Sam C is obligated to ask: “What do we actually know about any of the “FORCERS” and ”BACKFEEDERS” of thermal energy that directly affect earth’s climate?” …… IMHO, we know a lot about them in a “closed” environment (laboratory) ….. but hardly anything about their active role when in an “open” environment (earth’s atmosphere).
The earth’s atmosphere ITSELF is an extremely dynamic “very detailed, high-resolution model” and if you can not measure the effects therein of the individual components ….. then it is impossible to create a computer modeling program that would simulate said measurements for you. Even if you could create said model then it would only be capable of a generating a single “snap-shot” of what was …… and/or a zillion “snap-shots” of what might be. Computer modeling software can not foresee the effects of individual entities in a dynamically ever-changing environment.
And Dumb Scientist also stated: “However cloud cover changed during glacial-interglacial transitions, the orbital forcing, CO2 amplification, cloud feedback, water vapor feedback, sea-ice albedo feedback, ice sheet feedback, carbon cycle/permafrost feedback, etc… all added together to produce the ancient temperature record.”
And he was almost correct about that, …. and I might add, … they were ALL changing and they will also all be added together to produce future temperature records. And given the fact he noted the difference between clouds and water vapor (humidity) then he neglected to mention another highly important entity, fog. The thermal energy “forcing” and/or ”backfeeding” properties of fog is most probably equal to or even greaten than clouds, especially in the Temperate Zones. Fog acts as a “bi-directional” buffer of thermal energy exactly the same way as clouds do.
Mountain fog, valley fog, lowland fog, river fog, lake fog, ocean fog, seashore fog, after rain event fog, during rain event fog, London fog, etc., …. they all add up by the end of each year.
And IMHO, I think it is hilariously funny for an