This, is really quite something. We know the Guardian has lost just about all journalistic standards, but this one really takes the cake, especially from somebody who should know better. See the screen cap below.
“The atmosphere right now is half-full of carbon dioxide”.
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2014/jan/22/eu-2030-climate-change-energy-emissions-targets
Erm, riiiggght.
Let see, Mauna Loa/ Scripps says:
398.58 parts per million (ppm) CO2 in air 20-Jan-2014 http://t.co/5Q2FLbb4ix
— Keeling_Curve (@Keeling_curve) January 21, 2014
Maybe Damian doesn’t understand that whole “parts per million” thing, if he did, he’s certainly know that 398.58 is nowhere close to “half full”. The value of 500,000 parts per million is what would be considered “half-full”. He’s only off be a couple orders of magnitude.
If indeed CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere was 500,000 parts per million, we’d have a big problem: we’d all be dead.
Maybe he was thinking in terms of saturation of the CO2 effect in the atmosphere on temperature? In that case, we are closer to 90%, and additional CO2 won’t make much difference.
This graph showing CO2′s temperature response to supplement the one Doug Hoffman cites from IPCC AR4. here we see that we are indeed pretty close to saturation of the response.
click for larger image
The “blue fuzz” represents measured global CO2 increases in our modern times.
“half-full.”
What kills me is the almost unbelievable carelessness. I mean that literally, in the “they don’t seem to care” sense.
I mourn for our culture. People can literally say anything…that is to say simply make things up without fear of penalty. The stunning lack of integrity evinced by the MSM is a much bigger problem than any largely beneficial global warming we might get. A society in which lies are not only tolerated by encouraged is on the road to unravelling.
I believe that by 1/2 full, he meant that we are 1/2 way to a ‘safe’ level of CO2. From pre-industrial levels of 260, that would mean we are at 390 (we are), and must go no further than 520.
Just a guess. But you would think a journalist would be able to communicate the concept better. Warmist wonder they have communication problems…
I have to agree w/ Les, I think this is the author continuing w/ his half full metaphor.
But it is sloppy writing, and it’s a sloppy metaphor.
Still, journalists are pretty well guaranteed to be the dullest bulb in the room, so my expectations were pretty well met.
Climate change “expert” Asher Minns, communications manager at the University of East Anglia-based Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research is quoted this week:-
“Of the 36bn tonnes of carbon released in the Earth’s atmosphere, 12bn tonnes had been emitted globally in the last year….”
http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/east_anglia_dice_is_loaded_against_region_in_fight_against_impact_of_climate_change_1_3224536
I sure it shocked all three people that read it….even the Economist doesn’t talk about GW any more
Sadly it isn’t just this guy off his rocker – it is the EU mass insanity driving themselves into poverty led by an even crazier class of leaders without a gain of common sense between the entire lot. Genuine science has ceased to exist in the entirety of the EU – replaced by a self imposed dark ages eagerly followed by the masses.
I’m somewhat pleased that they’ve recognized the impact of wasting money on climate nonsense at a time when the citizens are trapped in a moribund economy.
The watermelons-vs-reality fight isn’t truly over in the EU any more than it is in the US.
When California ditches AB32 we’ll know that the Eye of Caurbon is no longer upon Middle Earth.
That may take a very long time…
Maybe if the author of this article followed the link under his highlighted Guardian article text, he’d find the answer staring him in the face. But then again, WUWT has journalism standards to uphold…
Perhaps he was advised by Michael Mann!
Clearly Damian is not a man who understands anything about climate but why expect anything else from the Guardian.
No matter how wrong the AGW promoters are proven to be, and no matter how correct the skeptical critique of AGw has proven to be, the AGW believers keep on banging the same drum.
climateismydj – So what you’re referring to is Fiona Harvey’s breathlessly-parroted report on the IPCC’s “carbon budget”?
Yeah, ever heard of the game ‘telephone line’? You line up a bunch of second-graders, the first one tells the next one “My shoelace is untied” and each repeats what they’re told to the next one and by the end the story is “I strangled my mom with the computer cord last night.”
Carrington’s engaging in a little bit of telephone-line journalism here.
JEM says:
January 22, 2014 at 11:25 am
“When California ditches AB32 we’ll know that the Eye of Caurbon is no longer upon Middle Earth.”
LOL. If only the solution were as simple as dropping a trinket in some volcano.
Given the atomic weights of carbon and oxygen, isn’t the total carbon in the atmosphere actually closer to 0.015%?
To Les Johnson: you may be right, but language is what journalists are trained in. And the MSM is supposed to have fact checkers. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the cause of this major blooper may be declining revenues in the MSM so that they can’t hire enough, or good enough, fact checkers, and possibly — possibly — that the writer actually didn’t understand what he was saying.
climateismydj:
At January 22, 2014 at 11:26 am
OK, O Wise One, I followed the link and the “answer” to why such nonsense was published was “not staring [me] in the face”. In fact, I could not find it.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to quote it.
Richard
richardscourtney – in the Guardian piece Carrington links his “half full” comment to a piece from November of last year wherein Fiona Harvey plays climate-apostle and reports on an IPCC press release about a “carbon budget” and mankind having already burned half the carbon-laden substance that our minders believe we’re entitled to, complete with quotes from the usual miscreants like Stocker.
richardscourtney, FYI:
The world’s leading climate scientists have set out in detail for the first time how much more carbon dioxide humans can pour into the atmosphere without triggering dangerous levels of climate change – and concluded that more than half of that global allowance has been used up…
But the most controversial finding of the report was its “carbon budget”. Participants told the Guardian this was the last part of the summary to be decided, and the subject of hours of heated discussions in the early hours of Friday morning. Some countries were concerned that including the numbers would have political repercussions.
The scientists found that to hold warming to 2C, total emissions cannot exceed 1,000 gigatons of carbon. Yet by 2011, more than half of that total “allowance” – 531 gigatons – had already been emitted.
From here: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/27/ipcc-world-dangerous-climate-change
I thought it was 350 as in 350.org, I also thought it was 400 or 450 but not 500ppm.
He thought it’s 398 percent, not ppm. And 398 percent is about half full.
Quite a good one from the Guardian.
Can someone explain the CO2′s temperature response graph again.
I said in a recent post that increasing CO2 concentrations will have very little effect on world temperature, because CO2 was approaching saturation anyway. But I was told I was wrong.
So could someone explain that CO2 temperature response graph really means.
Thanks,
Ralph
JEM:
Thankyou for your answer on behalf of climateismydj which is addressed to me at January 22, 2014 at 11:42 am and says
Yes, he does but I wanted climateismydj to explain how
“the atmosphere right now is half full of carbon dioxide”
equates to
a political allocation of a “carbon budget”.
Clearly, that equation is not obvious.
The daft claim that the atmosphere is “half half full of carbon dioxide” is laughable, and I thought an attempt by climateismydj to explain the equation would be side-splittingly funny.
Richard
If you take the “Source” link through to the actual article, the second paragraph (under Barroso’s photo) says “For those focusing on climate change – the atmosphere right now is half full of carbon dioxide”, with another link to:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/27/ipcc-world-dangerous-climate-change
There it says: “The world’s leading climate scientists have set out in detail for the first time how much more carbon dioxide humans can pour into the atmosphere without triggering dangerous levels of climate change – and concluded that more than half of that global allowance has been used up.”
This is poor journalism, but I don’t believe Carrington really meant to say that the atmosphere is actually 50% CO2; he in fact meant that it had reached “50% of the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere [which] could mean [according to the IPCC, he says] that within as little as two to three decades the world will face nearly inevitable warming of more than 2C, resulting in rising sea levels, heatwaves, droughts and more extreme weather.”
That said, it will be interesting to see how the Grauniad now handles the error.
climateismydj:
Thankyou for your post to me at January 22, 2014 at 11:49 am.
Yes, I read that in the link.
But it does NOT say “the atmosphere right now is half full of carbon dioxide”.
It describes a political allocation of a “carbon budget”.
Please quote the part which explains how “the atmosphere right now is half full of carbon dioxide”. You said that would stare me in the face, but I still do not see that bit of what you quote.
Thanking you in anticipation.
Richard
“The planet’s atmosphere is half full of carbon…”
I have this picture stuck in my head of a person covered with soot and a mouth chuck full of black carbon – shades of Oliver Twist.
I have no doubt that this is the image that the alarmist want in my head. That first line was no mistake but a skillful bit of manipulation.