Here is an entertaining and well researched video documentary from my friend John Coleman at KUSI-TV about the history of the Keeling Curve and its founder.
Watch:
From the YouTube description:
A great scientist named Roger Revelle had Al Gore in his class at Harvard and the Global Warming campaign was born. Revelle tried to calm things down years later, but Gore said Revelle was Senile and refused to debate. John Coleman documents the entire story and shows how our tax dollars are perpetuating the Global Warming alarmist campaign even though temperatures have not risen in years.
Pilots Beware (including them wot flyz Bonanzas) !
Units are important. Look up the Gimli Glider – a 767 that ran out of fuel mid Atlantic because the fuel uplift was in lbs when it should have been in kg. Or that Mars mission that went smack because of a difference between mph and kph. Anyway, as others have already pointed out, the ISO standard atmosphere is 1013 millibars (or “hectopascalls” as EASA now requires us to say :-((
So there’s nothing quite so dangerous as an undergrad with half a paradigm… and half a brain.
Coleman does a good job in this video. The Revelle-Gore story is important but it is only one of the factors that contributed to global warming (the social phenomenon).
Anyway, here are two Revelle quotes I dug up, that support Coleman’s position.
Revelle in 1988
And in 1977
Whilst recognizing the potential hazards and the need for technological improvement, Revelle supported nuclear power throughout his life. He died just as the anti-nuclear weapons movement was turning into the more general nuclearophobia scare campaign.
correction, the Bar is an oddball equal to 100,000 Pa or 100 kilo Pa. It is not the sea level value- hence the 1013.25 millibars value is the equivalent of 101,325 Pa which is the nominal sea level pressure. The only real benefit of MKS system of units is the simplification of the system to factors of 10 and the presence of all those prefixes like kilo and milli. The bar is an affront to this and it is not actually a part of the MKS system and evidently considered by NIST (our former National Bureau of Standards) to be unacceptable according to the Wikipedia article on the Bar.
– dcfl51 says:
March 13, 2014 at 11:52 am
Bonanzapilot,
29.92 inches is 76 cm.
If the column of mercury had a base of 1 cm^2 then the volume of mercury would be 76 cm^3.
The density of mercury is 13.534 g/cm^3
So the mercury would have a mass of 1029 g.
Hence 1029 millibars.-
That’s good explanation. Or 76 times 13.534 is 1028.584. Which is rounded to 1029.
Also if replace mercury with water with density of 1.0 g/cm^3 one would have
a column of water 1028.584 cm tall. Which is 10.28584 meter tall.
And 1 atm pressure is roughly equal to 10 meters of water depth.
So pressure of air above your heads at sea level is roughly equal 10 meter of something
with density of 1.0 g/cm^3. Or if liquified earth’s atmosphere the liquid would be a bit deeper
than 10 meters deep [as liquid nitrogen is less than 1.0 g/cm^3.
Liquid nitrogen being, 0.808 g·cm^3 and liquid oxygen is 1.141 g/cm^3.
I can’t help but compare Gore’s dismissal of Revelle’s inconvenient opinions as the product of a “senile” mind with the attempts of Chris Mooney (author of The Republican Brain); Prof. (moon-landing) Lewandowski, etc. to paint all climate skeptics as suffering from some mental condition.
http://aviationandaccessories.tpub.com/TM-55-1510-219-10/css/TM-55-1510-219-10_180.htm
Except at Standard temp of 68F the density might be a little different? And in any case is was established at 1013.25 and 29.92 at 68F at the 1954 convention referenced above?
I can see the confusion. Also, even though the setting window says “MB”, which now seems an obsolete measurement, pilots commonly say “millimeters of mercury”.
Gore may have gotten a D in the class, but the lessons he learned there seem to have been quite valuable to him, probably more so than to the top student!
-So there’s nothing quite so dangerous as an undergrad with half a paradigm… and half a brain.-
That about sums it up. The problem being, Al Gore is speaking to people who are as ill-informed
as Gore is. There a lot people who get D’s in the science classes they forced to take.
And climate science is so watered down, they might scrape by with a C to pass this kind of popularized “science”.
So CO2 emission could problem and over population could problem- city planners should be
somewhat aware of it. But it does not mean we destroy our civilization- outlaw energy production or try to rid of billions of people.
I am curious –
mpaul says:
March 13, 2014 at 11:44 am
While the west has been on a suicide mission to impair its ability to secure its energy future, Russia has been steadily increasing its influence in Western Europe…
I am trying to understand how this so off topic drivel wasn’t snipped by a moderator. Does it serve a purpose that I can’t fathom?
[Reply: you both get to make your comment. Neither one was entirely off-topic. ~mod.]
@ghailkie
And the reason large aircraft use pounds of kg is that a pound of fuel always has the same BTU’s and the volume of a gallon varies with T. Small planes unusually measure in gallons, although most of us still like to fuel in cold weather anyway. Happily, that’s easy to find these days.
Coleman is absolutely correct on his final point: Time and the steady flow of more data will refute the 25 years of model predictions of CAGW.
Still you gotta love the idiots like Billionaire Steyer so anxious and willing to part with truckloads of their money to support the GW jihad, as issued in the Climate Change Fatwa from their Mufti Al “Jazeera” Gore.
And here’s Maggie in 1989 at the UN:
Lest we forget.
Al Gore is not a climate scientist. He is not any kind of scientist. He got a BA with a thesis “The Impact of Television on the Conduct of the Presidency, 1947-1969” and wanted to write novels. Yet people view him as the ‘gatekeeper’ as to what is true or not in climate science? How that happen? Just because he says there is no debate why does that carry any weight?
Tom O getting comments you disagree with censored is a well-worn tactic of the Alarmists, but you’ll find it doesn’t work too well over here.
The topic of this post is given away by its title: “Documentary: How the Global Warming Scare Began”. I am arguing that while Roger Revelle might have gotten the party started, the real fuel for the Alarmism movement has come from a long term campaign initiated by the Soviets and continued by ex-KGB man Putin to manipulate opinion among the hard left in the West.
As the West has grown increasingly reluctant to develop energy resources (due in large part to Global Warming campaigning by the left), Russia has been using the development of its own energy resources to dramatically increase its geo-political influence. We are now in a situation where Russia’s ability to inflict damage to the west by simply cutting off energy supplies far out strips its ability to inflict damage with its nuclear weapon’s capability. While we were fighting the cold war, they were fighting an energy dominance war using the western hard left as their foot soldiers
Putin is using energy to shift geo-politics in his favor. The Western political left, whose tenancy is to “route, route, route for the away team” have been easily manipulated for Putin’s purposes.
mpaul says:
March 13, 2014 at 11:44 am
“The result — Syria uses chemical weapons on its own people and Western Europe says, lets not do anything because we might make Russia made at us;”
Please, not that old NATO story. You probably missed this one. Notice the date.
http://www.therightplanet.com/2013/08/breaking-turkish-police-seize-2-kg-sarin-nerve-gas-en-route-to-syria-from-al-qaeda-linked-al-nusra-terrorists/
inre: Russian Gas
Vaclav Klaus in a speech in Russia remarked: “I would pay a lot of attention to the oil and gas revolution connected with the new technological breakthroughs in shale oil and gas drilling. Many traditional producers continue believing in the paradigm of permanently rising oil and gas prices (as a long-term tendency), and expect that any relevant change will happen on the demand side of the oil and gas equation. That is not true. New technologies to tap shale oil and gas reserves make a revolution on the supply side, which can fundamentally change the oil market with a potential price collapse. The only solution is to diversify the economy as much as possible.
Let me conclude by expressing my belief that the Russian decision-makers are aware of all that. I read with a great interest the recent Valdaj speech made by President Putin which suggests a new approach to many of these problems. I wish you success in realizing the needed changes in your country.”
The anti-fracking activists are truly desperate to keep countries like Britain from developing their own gas. And like everything the progressives want, it comes out well for Russia.
But I would rather, as Vaclav Klaus recommends, see Russia diversify its economy as the new supply technology takes off. The fact is, energy prices do not have to double and triple with nuclear and wind, but could come down by 50% with this resource. That is what scares the greens.
I was VERY pleased that in John Coleman’s letter to “The Scientists and Organizations that Take 4.7 Billion Tax Dollars” said this:
Absolutely.
4.7 billion a year on thorium would charge us ahead of the Chinese, so that they don’t get the patents first. And what is thorium about? A new (actually old) version of nuclear power reactors, that have the following characteristics:
1. Safety – a completely no-explosion, no radioactive release system
2. Is 150 times as efficient for extracting energy from the fuel (99%+ vs 0.7%)
3. Known thorium reserves and in storage is sufficient for thousands of years
4. Will be used to use up (as in clean up, forever) the already existing nuclear waste
5. A ball of thorium the size of a racquetball contains all the energy for one person for their entire lifetime.
6. Reactors can be sized up or down – to small enough to power a small town or a medium-sized company.
7. Reactor construction costs of about $600 million (at current efficiencies) vs $20-40 billion (depending on cost overruns) for light water reactors.
8. Instant shut down – The pilot reactor was shut down on Fridays and turned back on on Monday mornings.
9. Non-proliferation, because of its own physics. The fuel cannot be stored in missiles for any length of time without irradiating and destroying the controls. The fuel also gives off so much radiation that it is impossible to hide the weapons. The military 50 years ago decided thorium was not usable for nukes.
What we are talking about with thorium is REAL nuclear power for civilian use ONLY. No more uranium of plutonium reactors. Damned near free energy. After all, how much can they charger for thorium the size of a racquetball? Especially when that much is probably under your bedroom right now.
And if we get free and unlimited electrical energy from thorium, we can shut down all the gas and coal-fired power plants. And we may be able to realize that THEN we can run cars on electricity, because electricity will be so much cheaper than gasoline. When the economics of it are so much in its favor, the world will change. And when we all have electric cars, not only will our power plants not emit CO2, but neither will our cars.
Even jet aircraft can get their energy from thorium. Not directly. They can use electrolysis to make hydrogen and switch over from jet fuel (kerosene) to hydrogen.
Everything else can be run on electricity from thorium. There are already plans for running water desalination plants from the excess heat from thorium LFTR reactors. Basically, that means fresh water – essentially free – anywhere there is a thorium plant along a coastline.
With thorium reactors in every town, we can get rid of unsightly and wasteful high-tension power lines and perhaps the entire electrical grid. When a new reactor costs about the same as a 30-story building, why can’t towns have backups for maintenance periods? Who needs the grid then? Think of all the copper wire that will come available. Not to mention steel from all the towers we won’t need anymore. Our countryside won’t have those long gashes across them anymore.
The question is: What will be a free energy world be like?
In addition to thorium, 4.7 billion a year could give us graphene that much sooner. And what does graphene do? Well, among MANY other uses, coating electrical terminals with them has been found to make recharging batteries more than ten times faster. It is also the strongest and hardest material by weight ever known. It is also the best non-friction surface treatment ever known – better than teflon.
But just in its battery charging application, graphene will probably reduce electric car battery charges from hours to a few minutes – making electric cars viable much sooner for long distance travel.
Personally, I can see cars getting charged while on the move on highways. I have at least two methods in mind. It might be possible to drive coast to coast without stopping.
Thorium and graphene together will usher in an era of real energy independence for every community on every continent. It may even usher in new modes of rocketry and a potential to get out to the planets very efficiently. When they can take a LFTR reactor with them, say goodbye to solar panels and other energy recycling methods on rockets.
Like how the advent of the car made buggywhips and saddles all but extinct, much of our present ways of doing things will change.
For the better.
By the end of the 21st century, life will be much different, energy-wise. MORE energy use per capita, not less.
For a guy approaching 80, John Coleman has an amazingly forward-looking perspective.
Bravo to Mr. Coleman. This story is the logical view of anyone who looks at the data. The conclusion that time favors the correct answer to a complicated question is spot on. There were a couple of minor mis-statements, such as the thickness of the northern ice sheet, but the important facts are good.
Good to emphasize that the “founder” of the global warming scare was smart enough to follow the data. He would be sad to see what has happened to climatology after the politicians and media started to make money off the issue.
Some day the globe will be falling into another ice age and history will record who was right. Politicians like Gore and Strong will also be remembered for what they are.
Keep up the good work.
Wonderful… and great plug for WUWT!
It’ll be a good talking point if 2014 falls out of the Top Ten at year-end.
March 13, 2014 at 11:44 am | mpaul says:
There is speculation that the Ukraine uprising is being bankrolled by Soros [ http://motls.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/george-soros-quantum-mechanics-and.html ] … maybe to undermine Putin’s gas advantage as he’s not one of the Cause? In which case, Gore is a useful idiot doing the bidding of Soros.
John was a TV weather man many years ago in Omaha, Nebraska. I remember him very well. please give him my warm regards.
Well, who could possibly argue with someone who’s been playing a meteorologist on TV for nearly 60 years?
I also hear Hugh Laurie was on the verge of a cure for cancer just before House was cancelled.
David Ross says:
If this is the evidence that supports his position, I’d hate to see the evidence that undermines it!
The 1977 quote is part of an article that begins “Highly adverse consequences may result from future reliance on fossil fuels, a panel of the National Research Council said Sunday. The council chairman Roger Revelle…” And the part that you’ve cherry-picked emphasizes that “In any case, conversion to other sources would require many decades. Similarly, finding ways to make reliable estimates of the climatic changes that may result from continued use of fossil fuels may very well require decades,” which might be interesting news if Revelle said it in 2014, but is hardly surprising given that he said it almost 40 years ago!
And, your second quote from 1988 says: “My own personal belief is that we should wait for another ten or twenty years to really be convinced that the green house is going to be important for human beings, in both positive and negative ways.” To put that in context, in 1988 we had had what was at that time a record-warm year for global temperature but now it has been 18 years since we had a year that cold! And, in 1988, when James Hansen said that he was confident that AGW was already happening, most other scientists thought such a pronouncement was premature. It was 2 years before the IPCC issued its 1st report and said, “The unequivocal detection of the enhanced greenhouse effect is not likely for a decade or more.” So, Revelle’s opinions in 1988 were well within the mainstream of scientific opinion at the time and there is no evidence whatsoever that if he were alive today, his opinions would now be far outside the mainstream and instead in line with the ardent AGW “skeptics”.
And, as near as I can tell, the YouTube description “Revelle tried to calm things down years later, but Gore said Revelle was Senile and refused to debate” is a deceptive sentence that puts two unrelated facts together to give the false impression that Al Gore refused to debate Revelle.
I can’t understand how you guys can take this video of Coleman’s conspiratorial rantings with any degree of seriousness.