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.
A few million years ago, the atmosphere had almost ten times as muchCO2 in it compared to today’s atmosphere. The idea that the atmosphere is half full is something so dumb that only someone completely in thrall to his religion could believe it.
M Courtney says:
January 22, 2014 at 1:40 pm
“Gail Combs, I don’t doubt you when you say “The Climate Change industry has hired Stan Greenburg”.
However, I question the fearsome reputation, effectiveness and even significance of Stan Greenburg.”
The inventor of modern propaganda a.k.a PR, Eddie Bernays, was advisor of Woodrow Wilson on Wilson’s triumphant appearance at Versailles.
The entire 20th century politics of the West have been shaped by Bernays and his successors.
Rational debate is dead and the populace has been dumbed down to a half asleep state; deliberately.
Your side of the political spectrum constantly redefines words and castigates anyone who uses a non-.politically correct term. You are master manipulators, and can thrive only through manipulation.
Find the film “Century Of The Self”.
DirkH says at January 22, 2014 at 2:41 pm…
Yes, I am aware of the work of the Freud family in advertising. I’ve seen that documentary (although the anecdote about liberation philosophy making a convent lesbian seems unsupported outside of that BBC film); it is excellently edited.
Look, we disagree on a lot but I am not claiming that marketing is ineffective; on average it does work and I suspect we agree on that.
I am claiming that the rise in suppression of opposing views in the Guardian, SkS and the rest is ineffective. And that has increased since this Stan Greenburg character has got on the money train.
He doesn’t scare me. He’s the kind of enemy I like to have.
Anthony, do you have the source for the chart at the end of your post showing the temperature response to CO2?
REPLY: See link in the story -A
Not ‘couple orders of magnitude’. Three. Three orders of magnitude.
They out to stop presenting in ppm and use something like percent. I’m not sure the average person knows what a ppm is, or has any appreciation what-so-ever how small it is.
Why is it that they settled on ppm and not ppb : 398,580ppb is even scarier, it feels like more than half, it feels like way more than even the entire atmosphere is filled with CO2!!!! /sarc
not a day goes by without unsubstantiated claims about and in support of CAGW being published by the MSM worldwide, yet Australia’s equivalent of Rush Limbaugh got into trouble TWICE for ridiculously trivial & irrelevant off-the-cuff comments of no consequence whatsoever. more silly was the outrage on each occasion in our CAGW-infested MSM:
Wikipedia: Alan Jones (Australian radio broadcaster)
Climate change commentary
On 15 June 2012, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) found that Jones had breached the commercial radio code of practice in his reporting of environmental issues. This related to his claim that “human beings produce 0.001 per cent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere”. ACMA chairman Chris Chapman said that the watchdog was not penalising the licensee of 2GB, but was working with it to improve procedures. On 18 October 2012 ACMA ordered Jones to undergo factual accuracy training and employ a fact-checker.Jones responded to these claims on 19 October 2012 claiming that he had mistakenly claimed the 0.001 to be of all “carbon dioxide in the atmosphere” where it should have been “all gases in the atmosphere” and that he had repeated the correct and undisputed figure of 3 percent numerous times later that week and offered a correction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Jones_(radio_broadcaster)
Oct 2013: SMH: Alan Jones breaches code with exaggerated climate change broadcast: ACMA
Radio talk back host Alan Jones is in hot water again with the media watchdog after breaching the commercial radio code of practice by making unsubstantiated comments about power station closures and the salaries of climate change bureaucrats.
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/alan-jones-breaches-code-with-exaggerated-climate-change-broadcast-acma-20131023-2w0ui.html
Those glasses are FULL! Half liquid,half air…
1/2 full of carbon dioxide ??
500,000 ppm?
Hmmnn…..
Perhaps Mr Carrington should have read this…
http://www.co2science.org/subject/c/summaries/carbondioxide.php
Three orders of magnitude off. Geeze they’re getting more accurate. How did that happen?
The graph in the head post should be presented to the public in every possible media source as well as to every elected government official (I’m in the USA). The truth about the actual effect that an increase on atmospheric CO2 would/should sink the CAGW ship on the spot.
Provide Spencer’s (hope I attribute this correctly) spaghetti graph of the models vs observed temperatures as an accompanying doc and the whole CAGW scam would/should be over.
The entire scam has been sold as a result of a lack of knowledge presented to the public at large. The two graphs as noted above and sent to every journalist, educator, and politician known would certainly cause upheaval in the ranks. Just think about that for a minute. An eco activist writer continuing to spew out nonsense while walking through the office knowing that everyone from the sports to entertainment writers know his game is up.
Just a thought off the top of my mind.
CS#1 : “the atmosphere is half-full of CO2”.
CS#2: “well that explains the lack of Antarctic sea ice”.
That just makes the stupidity even more appalling than the ignorance: Half of a maximum addition to something is not in general the same as half of the total amount.
contender for Friday Funny, but I don’t think Roston realises just how hilarious this piece is:
23 Jan: Bloomberg: Eric Roston: Is It Hot In Here or Is It Just Me Telling You It’s Hot In Here?
As the mercury drops in the eastern U.S. this week, expect snow, icy driving conditions and ludicrous statements about global warming from Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh…
A new study in a leading peer-reviewed journal, Nature Climate Change, asks why the local warming effect should be so influential. The researchers conducted several experiments to try to overcome participants’ reliance on cues from weather. The work was led by Lisa Zaval of Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions…
A third approach investigated the effect of “priming,” or providing subtle topic cues. Researchers gave subjects hotness or coldness cues before answering questions about climate change. Study participants were asked to make four-word sentences from five-word groups, such as:
potatoes she the roasted it
Or:
the shivers man old of
People who were given “hot” priming sentences tended to believe and be concerned about climate change science more than those given “cold” or neutral sentences…ETC ETC
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-22/is-it-hot-in-here-or-is-it-just-me-telling-you-it-s-hot-in-here-.html
Someone should ask Glenn Greenwald if his leaving related to a sinking ship…
The golden portugeese will migrate…
“The atmosphere right now is half full of carbon dioxide”?!?!
========================================================================
I seem to recall that Apollo 13’s crew had mental challenges when their capsule was way less than “half full of carbon dioxide”.
Maybe these guys just need to open a window or get out of the office from time to time?
Man it is a good idea to flash that CO2/temp curve frequently. By the looks of it, if the earth is at 15 C (288.15K), and we will only be able to get it to 289 with 750ppm. Thereafter we will take forever to get to 290K or 16.85K. No wonder these guys are pressing hard now. 100 years from now emissions would have to be slashed~ 90% to knock it down a meaningful amount (assuming away any possible thermostat control of warming). Talking about boiling seas to come and painting all the anomalies fiery colours over warming so far of less than a degree must have a more powerful word than exaggeration to describe it. Schneider would even blush I would think. Yeah, its good to look again and again at what all the fuss is really about.
Is Barroso’s pose in the photo appropriate?
pat says:
January 22, 2014 at 6:13 pm
expect snow, icy driving conditions and ludicrous statements about global warming from Donald Trump
Is this what you had in mind:
See:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/08/colbert-trump-climate-change_n_4561585.html
This gives the views of Donald Trump on this general topic:
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Follow
This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps,and our GW scientists are stuck in ice
5:39 PM – 1 Jan 2014
It doesn’t add up… says:
January 22, 2014 at 8:00 pm
Is Barroso’s pose in the photo appropriate?
It doesn’t add up…,
Without seeing his boots…. I can’t be sure. };>)
You vill stop exhaling CO2 NOW….Undt you vill LIKE it!
Think I’ve seen this script somewhere before….
Of course they did. More than a half is the most politically useful conclusion so that result was preordained. If they hadn’t been able to get the number to come out like that they wouldn’t have published the study.
Richard, Kevin.
Thanks, but no you have not really explained this to me yet. Or at least I still don’t understand.
We have a graph where increasing CO2 concentrations do not increase temperature. If the CO2 in the atmosphere is no longer increasing in temperature, with increasing CO2concentrations, then it cannot continue to increase the amount of long-wave radiation transmitted back to the ground.
If the amount of long-wave radiation being returned from the atmosphere reaches a plateau, then so must the greenhouse effect of CO2 also reach a plateau. So from here on in, any further increase in CO2 in the atmosphere will have no effect on surface temperatures.
Please tell me where my logic is failing.
And if it is failing, then please could you explain what that graph really means.
Thanks,
ralph
It occured to me that, even when using the twisted logic that the Groaniad uses to determine that the atmosphere is 1/2 full of CO2, that this isn’t that alarming.
For example, my disk drive is half full. This is quite satisfactory. If is was 90% full I might be concerned, and consider cleaning up or expanding capacity, but half full is good.
My car’s fuel tank is half full. That’s fine – I’ll think about refilling when it gets below a quarter.
Les Johnson says: January 22, 2014 at 11:01 am
As the Brits would say, Carrington has “form” when it comes to “communication problems”; and, as others have noted, “sloppiness” in his writings and profound deficiencies in his “investigative” skills.
By way of example, readers might be interested in Carrington’s July 2011 performance vis a vis the IPCC’s “Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources” (SRREN) which was contaminated by the high-level involvement of Greenpeace’s Sven Teske, as I had noted in:
In defence of the IPCC, “journalist” ignores the real scandal
Silver ralph:
Your entire post at January 23, 2014 at 2:02 am says:
For the benefit of others I provide this link to a WUWT article by David Archibald which provides explanations and graphs of what you are questioning.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
I assume you have read the replies in this thread to you from me
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/22/climate-craziness-of-the-week-guardians-damian-carrington-glass-half-full-moment/#comment-1545355
and from Kevin Finnegan
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/22/climate-craziness-of-the-week-guardians-damian-carrington-glass-half-full-moment/#comment-1545511
We each said the subject is too large for a full answer in this thread, and I suggested you read the links obtained by using the WUWT search for climate sensitivity so I suppose you have done that.
And Kevin told you
Simply, atmospheric CO2 concentration is so high that it is near a saturation point but has not reached saturation. But the concentration is so near to saturation that effect of additional CO2 is small.
The direct effect of doubling atmospheric CO2 concentration from its present level would only be ~1°C increase in Global Average Surface Temperature Anomaly (GASTA). This is so small an effect compared to natural climate variability that it would be indiscernible.
However, that brings us to the issue of feedbacks.
The increase to GASTA would alter phenomena in the climate system. And those alterations could also alter GASTA by enhancing the effect of increased CO2 (i.e. positive feedback) or reducing the effect of increased CO2 (i.e. negative feedback).
So,
(a) the climate sensitivity without feedbacks is an insignificant ~1°C increase in GASTA from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent,
and
(b) the climate sensitivity with positive feedbacks would be more (possibly much more) than 1°C increase in GASTA from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent,
And
(c) the climate sensitivity with negative feedbacks is an insignificant less than 1°C increase in GASTA from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent.
I hope that is helpful and makes sufficient sense for you to follow up the matter elsewhere.
Richard