By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The Gore Effect has struck again. Al Baby recently visited Canberra accompanied by his usual blizzard to try to convince the tiny band of eccentrics that held the balance of power in the Senate to vote to keep the “carbon” tax that has been pointlessly crippling the Australian economy.
He failed. The Senate upheld the vote in the House to bring the doomed CO2 tax to a timely end. The Australian Labor Party, which had unwisely introduced the hated tax for the sake of clinging on to office for a few more months with the support of the now-decimated Greens, is belatedly trying to whip up support from a skeptical nation for a repeal of the repeal.
Bob Carter, whose measured, eloquent and authoritative lectures all over Australia putting the minuscule global warming of the 20th century into the calming perspective of geological time helped to see off the tax, sends me the following image that the ALP are desperately circulating to their fanatical but dismayed supporters.
The propaganda graphic was accompanied by the usual mawkishly syrupy message from the Labor loonies to useful idiots everywhere:
“Just hours ago, Tony Abbott made Australia the only country in the world to reverse action on climate change.
“Not satisfied with hurting Australians through his cruel Budget, he’s now hurting future generations.
“Labor fought hard to put a price on carbon, and Labor fought hard to move to an emissions trading scheme. Through our climate action policies, investments in renewable energy topped $18 billion and 24,000 jobs in the sector were created. Houses with rooftop solar increased to 2.1 million, and wind-generated energy tripled.
“The Abbott Government and the crossbench in the Senate have taken a wrecking ball to Labor’s action on climate change.
“Let’s show Tony Abbott that we won’t stand for this. We will not give up the fight to securing a clean energy future for our children.”
The Prime Minister’s supporters have not been slow to respond. In no time, they were circulating the following take on the message.
Meanwhile, the tourist postcard industry has not been slow to sense the opportunity for combining celebration of the demise of the tax with some hearty Australian humor. Enjoy!
John Carter, I followed the link to your blog article. You’re barking mad if you really think government imposed CO2 caps and imposition of emission allocations are “free market solutions.” Free markets occur when parties enter a market voluntarily and are not compelled by government. But perhaps you don’t value freedom. Perhaps you think command economies work better than free markets. If so, perhaps you’re incapable of learning from history.
“…the fact that geologically massive amounts of long lived greenhouse gases have been pumped into the air, and of the basic science (and slowly, minor casual observation over time) that says this will lead to geologically significant change in the climate patter)” – John Carter
——————————————————————-
I hope that this doesn’t seem rude because you seem like a fairly reasonable guy by warmist standards.
1. Should we be more worried because you consider anthropogenic CO2 emissions to be “geologically massive” ?
2. Even your climate gurus state CO2 warming isn’t significant enough. That’s why the rube goldberg scheme of positive feedbacks was invented. You seem to gloss over this.
3. You seem to be upset that Australia ditched the carbon tax. You being the logical guy that you are surely realize that Oz’s carbon tax couldn’t have any impact on global climate whatsover?
In their response to the repeal of the carbon tax labor stated:
“Labor fought hard to put a price on carbon, and Labor fought hard to move to an emissions trading scheme.”
Rather contradicts Julia Gillard when she stated “there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead”
In one sense she was right, there is no carbon tax but then again she doesn’t lead the government either.
Congrats to the clear thinking Australians. Don’t worry, someone will think up some other way to save the calculated 0.0038 degrees off the global temperature rise by 2100.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/the-question-is-what-earthly-difference-can-we-make-20110903-1jrom.html#ixzz37pkU67e8
@Patrick Guinness
Your description of the carbon tax redistribution in Australia is interesting. It is the same sort of voter-block influence peddling formula that was proposed in the Waxman-Markey bill in the U.S. The similarity helps demonstrate that the carbon fight is really a grand money bag effort to arrange voter blocks in order to manipulate elections and preserve power. None of that has anything to do with science process, science model validation, environmental adjustment, or rational policy in the good government sense.
Go Australia!!!!
Looks like a big speed bump.
The Australian says that Abbott’s government will refuse to accept the Senate’s amended repeal because it retains the spending that was based on the carbon tax revenues.
It’s all or nothing on mining tax. Premium content, unfortunately, only the beginning is available for free.
Bolt has a longer extract from the article in his post Idiotic: Senate scraps the tax, still spends the money.
I’ve had trouble finding further information on this.
@John Carter – are you paid by the word? In which case you must be pretty well off.
What a load of verbose, unfounded waffle and arm waving.
To everyone else – don’t feed the (wealthy) troll
@tonybr –
It is possible that John Carter made extensive use of this:
http://www.atrixnet.com/bs-generator.html
It definitely helps one synergistically brand world-class initiatives while uniquely embracing installed base “outside the box” thinking.
At least, it does for me.
/grin
Okay, here’s more:
and
and
Senate passes Government’s mining tax repeal legislation with several amendments, bill returns to Lower House
Was that the opposition plan all along? In the US we call it a “poison pill” – a change added to make a legislative bill unacceptable to the bill’s backers. Maybe Al Gore was in on it and wasn’t so stupid to be standing next to Clive Palmer a week or two ago, on the occasion when Palmer announced his support of the carbon tax repeal repeal.
The statement by both the front and back ends of the camel is the translation into camel of the labour party’s press release. The camel is a loyal green party member.
Unfortunately not all climate spending has stopped. We still have the Renewable Energy Target and the Climate Commission and other groups that are spending taxpayer money. Hopefully they go soon.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 17, 2014 at 5:49 pm
Mr Carter is worried about CO2 levels higher than in 800,000 years. In fact, there is some evidence they may be higher than in 20 million years. But the correct response, on the evidence to date, is “So what?”
To trees and plants, CO2 is plant food. Experiment suggests that they would flourish best at concentrations of 2000 ppmv, or five times today’s concentration. Yet at four times today’s concentration we shall run out of affordably recoverable fossil fuels.
If CO2 were a major driver of global temperature, there would have been some global warming in the past couple of decades. There has not been any to speak of.
And CO2 cannot acidify the oceans because they are powerfully buffered by the basalt basis in which they live and slosh and have their being. Besides, the corals evolved when there was 10-20 times today’s CO2 in the air.
So where’s the harm going to come from? Best to wait and spend our scarce resources on dealing with real and far more urgent environmental problems.”
–
Monckton of Brenchley, thanks for the thoughtful response to my comment. I think “so what,” is a great expression. I use it a lot. I also know a person who’s destroyed their life and harmed others with self destructive addictive behavior; and the more logical the point made, the more apt the “so what” response is to be had. I’m not sure that “so what”to climate change isn’t somewhere in the middle?
George Bush in his 2006 State of the Union Address said America, at least, is “addicted” to oil. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/01/world/americas/01iht-state.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Your suggestion why it’s a “so what” issue isn’t accurate:
“if co2 were a major driver of temp, there would ahve been some global warming in the past couple decades.”
The ocean is absorbing heat 1500% faster than at any time in the past 10.000 years. http://www.voanews.com/content/oceans-are-buffers-for-climate-change/1781090.html Even if that is off by a few factors, the relevance doesn’t much change. Oceans ultimately drive climate. A net energy imbalance (solar radiation in > thermal radiation out) would increase retained ocean temperatures. Increased atmospheric trapped heat is not only going to heat the atmosphere a little bit more, but the oceans. And all but assuredly, given global rates of net melting, ice sheets and cover, which are also increasing in energy (warmth).
The atmospheric (non ocean) temperature has also been rising at probably the fastest rate in 11,000 years, or just about. http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0307/Global-temperature-rise-is-fastest-in-at-least-11-000-years-study-says A tendency is to look year to year on this. Year to year or several years of mild oscillations to trends don’t dictate, the trend in total does, huge increases in the 90s followed by moderate to some flatlining but still far above 80s and 70s does not mean a trend stopped, or even yet suggests it. The common conclusion or assertion otherwise isn’t accurate, and just about every non ideological climate scientist on the planet would say the same thing.)
There unequivocally has been warming, and it’s not been completely ho hum. But in terms of what we would consider bad global warming, there has to be a lag. Maybe this is the most confusing part of the issue, and also something a lot of the the media routinely botches. (What else is new.) The earth is a relatively stable system. Those words mean nothing without context. What I mean is relative to our time scale. Ocean temperatures, enormous ice caps and sheets, permafrosts (though less)etc, are extremely stable relative to what we would consider “significant time.”
The major change here is not just the ongoing increase in atmospheric heat trapping, but it is also the increasingly cumulative (and non linear) affects of increasingly self reinforcing changes, in these systems. Changes which of course continue, and thus themselves, start to affect or affect the drivers of climate more and more, which as a matter of basic science has to lag well behind any major increases to begin with. And this process is concurrent along side continuing increases, rather than reductions to, net atmospheric long lived gg levels! (not alarmist ! but an emphasis !).
Even hot temperatures over a week, year or decade or eve more, don’t just melt ice sheets, but start to build up energy as they begin to melt, cracks form, the process slowly continues, all while the earth system is under the same much higher atmospheric heat trapping effect, which continues to drive the process, and in this case, also under a continually increasing atmospheric heat trapping effect.
The facts are real. Calling them otherwise doesn’t change that. And while significant is a relative term, they are what most people would very comfortably consider “significant.”.
It seems there is a desire here to come up with ways, regardless, to help one not find them significant? Rather than actually assess them from all angles?
Again, the most notable one is the oceans. Trying to disprove the idea of rising ocean heat is not trying to find out what is happening. Which means conclusions drawn are not objective, but tailored to fit a goal. That may be good politics, but it leads to and then reinforces mistaken notions on science. Which is what is happening here.
John Carter says (July 18, 2014 at 2:56 pm): “Which means conclusions drawn are not objective, but tailored to fit a goal. That may be good politics, but it leads to and then reinforces mistaken notions on science. Which is what is happening here.”
Wow! A very apt description of climate alarmism! This guy has definitely been to the SkS site!
John Carter,
The article you linked to is alarmist nonsense. But I did take their quiz to see if I could be considered scientifically literate. My score:
50 Correct
0 Wrong
100% You answered 50 of 50 questions correctly for a total score of 100
So I am not writing from ignorance. I doubt if the authors could come close to 100%. BTW, how did you do?
The author ends his article by noting:
Researchers may have to look as far back as the last interglacial period, the Eamian period 125,000 years ago, to find comparable absolute warmth
Therefore, only 125,000 years ago the planet was as warm [actually, warmer] than it is now. That happened naturally, with no human industrial emissions. We are currently in another interglacial period, and it’s happening again. So what?
Even more to the point, the article you posted says
Global temperature rise is fastest in at least 11,000 years…
That means that 16K years ago temperatures were higher than now, no? [That’s wrong, but then so is the premise of the article].
In addition, global T has begun to decline, which contradicts your article’s predictions. You need to do better than using the C.S. Monitor as your authority. And if you ever use SkepticalScience as a resource, no wonder you are so far off-track.
Ed, Mr. Jones says:
July 17, 2014 at 11:02 pm
Folks are missing J. Carter’s message: “It’s time to move the Goalposts, come up with another name for “the Problem”, introduce new language, etc.” Different “problem”, same solution(s).
The Beat must go on.
This is an interesting comment. It’s posted July 17, 11:02 pm (PST?)
Here is what I wrote, 19:44 Australian Time (I don’t know what that is, but was very early A.M. July 17, half a day before Ed, Mr. Jones’ post.
I also strongly think that calling this issue climate change – regardless of possibly setting up fuel for more far right gimmickery that “the AGW crowd” is “changing the name because the facts aren’t working” http://www.skepticalscience.com/rupert-murdoch-doesnt-understand-climate-basics.html#105467
Not a bad call, huh? A little different framing – maybe Jones’ is better – but same essence.
Remainder of the sentence is kinda key: – [CC moniker] “has really added to major confusion on and misunderstanding of the issue. (Remember, most of America for example, and Australia does not have the knowledge of a lot of readers of this site.) It causes people to conflate what is observable right now as climate with the actual problem, when it’s not remotely.”
Phlogiston
Thanks for the added symbol issues on the camels, Didn’t know that, it makes the pic even better (Real methane issues aside)
Patrick says:
July 17, 2014 at 6:01 pm
“John Carter says:
July 17, 2014 at 5:59 pm”
NASA states CH4 is dropping. So “we’re” adding nothing.
Methane’s half life is (~7?)years. So its concentration can vary, quickly. (It also breaks down into CO2, so stays a gg gas, just far less potent.)
Over the past 800,000 years methane has never gone above 700 or so ppb. (Go here http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/ghg/ghg-concentrations.html click on chart right below that says methane.) In 1950 it was around 1100 In 2012 Methane levels reached a new high of 1819, and a 260% rise over pre industrial levels http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_980_en.html
In the early 2000s it was flat (meaning we’re still adding large net amounts, but not enough net to cause it to go up even more) – and maybe if something minorly changes (or camels and cows stop chewin’ tobacca – er, I mean their cud, how most CH4 leaves ruminants), it decreases slightly in 2013. Dunno.
Also, bigger methane problem is in the northern permafrost. That layer is mostly thin. Right now it is helping keep earth’s albedo way up. ( So as it warms, and snow softens – which has a lower albedo – and fully opens – as tundra has a far lower albedo still – that would cause the earth to absorb a lot more heat.)
Point made in above comment to Lord Monckton and in answer to other questions about what the problem is, that atmospheric temperatures are not the main issue, it’s the increased heat retention, or warming, of the earth itself. Oceans, http://theworldofairaboveus.blogspot.com/2014/07/heat-around-and-below.html major ice sheets, land,etc. Permafrost is an example, where the ground is heating up also, and faster than the arctic air temperatures http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20130610.html#.U8mhG_ldUpo
There’s a huge amount of carbon stored in it – more than twice the amount in the entire atmosphere http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6129/183.abstract ) , a good portion of which would not come out as CO2, but methane. If it comes out in huge amounts, even though it won’t stay as methane for too long, the additions would trap a huge additional amount of radiated heat in the atmosphere during that time it was methane (and it is likely to be emitted in ongoing increasing amounts, which would hasten short term acceleration of the same permafrost, and other things.
Two primary drivers of average global temperature have been identified. A simple equation using only those very accurately explains the reported up and down measurements since before 1900. The coefficient of determination, R2>0.9 (correlation coefficient = 0.95). The equation provides credible estimates back to the low temperatures of the Little Ice Age (1610).
R2 = 0.9049 considering only sunspots and ocean cycles.
R2 = 0.9061 considering sunspots, ocean cycles and CO2 change.
The tiny difference in R2, whether considering CO2 or not, demonstrates that CO2 change has no significant effect on climate.
The coefficients of determination are a measure of how accurately the calculated average global temperatures compare with measured. R2 > 0.9 is excellent.
The calculations use data since before 1900 which are official, accepted as valid and are publicly available.
Solar cycle duration or magnitude considered separately fail to correlate but their combination, expressed as the time-integral of solar cycle anomalies, gives excellent correlation. A solar cycle anomaly is the difference between the sunspot number for a year and an average sunspot number for many years.
Everything not explicitly considered (such as the 0.09 K s.d. random uncertainty in reported annual measured temperature anomalies, aerosols, CO2, other non-condensing ghg, volcanoes, ice change, etc.) must find room in the unexplained 9.51%.
The method, equation, data sources, history (hind cast to 1610) and predictions (to 2037) are provided at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com and references.
John Carter;
Again, the most notable one is the oceans.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I see you just skipped right by the very factual explanations by myself and others upthread. Can’t refute the arguments so you just ignore them?
Let’s talk about the oceans though. The heat capacity of the oceans (and I would urge you to find out what “heat capacity” actually means since you keep throwing out terms like “heat trapping” where they are inappropriate and a clear indication that you don’t understand the physics involved) is about 1200 times that of the atmosphere. As you noted in your own comment, the temperature increases we’ve seen in the last few decades are by no means alarming. So, you start talking about lag and ocean heat content. But if the “missing heat” is in fact going into the oceans, the fact that they are warming faster than ever becomes meaningless for the simple fact that the amount they are heating is still minor (regardless of speed), and the fact becomes that the oceans become a gigantic buffer in which it will takes 1200 times as much energy to raise the world’s temperature by one degree as previously thought. Your point means that there is even less reason for alarm than if the oceans were not heating.
But even the argument that they are heating faster than ever before doesn’t hold water (if you’ll pardon the expression). I refer you to one of many threads on this forum that go into excrutiating detail on ocean heat content:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/03/ocean-heat-content-0-to-2000-meters-why-arent-northern-hemisphere-oceans-warming-during-the-argo-era/
And since you seem determined to talk about the physics regarding the greenhouse effect, I suggest also that you read these articles in detail to get a firmer grasp of your own side of the argument:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/07/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-light-and-heat/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/29/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-molecules-and-photons/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/28/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-atmospheric-windows/
John Carter,
You’re scaring yourself, John. There is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening with the global climate. In fact, we have been living in a true “Goldilocks” climate for the past century and a half. In the past 15K years before now, global temperatures have fluctuated by TENS of degrees, within a decade. That is scary. But the 0.7ºC fluctuation over the past century+ is not. It is normal and natural.
Next, methane is not a problem. It never was; that is why it is only mentioned sporadically, and only by the Chicken Little clique. If it was a problem, there would be plenty of papers written, and lots of hand-waving over it. But there’s not. ‘Methane’ is a non-starter: credible people don’t dwell on it, because if they do, they lose their credibility. You would be wise to not go down that road, unless you can produce verifiable global harm due to methane. And if you do, you will be the first to show any substance behind the methane scare.
Also, you are fixated on “carbon” [by which the scientifically illiterate refer to carbon dioxide, a tiny trace gas]. You should know that the “carbon” scare is running out of steam, as we see in the comments under numerous climate articles in the media: skeptical comments outnumber alarmist comments by about 10 – 1. You are on the losing side of the debate.
Finally, disregard SkepticalScience. That is strictly a propaganda blog. Everything written there has an agenda behind it. SS is not credible – see Anthony’s comments on the sidebar. SS is in a class by itself.
I wish California government would take a hint from this move. Unfortunately, they only deal in fantasy. (See Hollywood, who has the only truly acceptable vocations in California except government.)
dbstealey says:
July 18, 2014 at 3:53 pm
John Carter,
The article you linked to is alarmist nonsense. But I did take their quiz to see if I could be considered scientifically literate. My score:
50 Correct
0 Wrong
100% You answered 50 of 50 questions correctly for a total score of 100
So I am not writing from ignorance. I doubt if the authors could come close to 100%.
The author ends his article by noting:
Researchers may have to look as far back as the last interglacial period, the Eamian period 125,000 years ago, to find comparable absolute warmth
Therefore, only 125,000 years ago the planet was as warm [actually, warmer] than it is now. That happened naturally, with no human industrial emissions. We are currently in another interglacial period, and it’s happening again. So what?
In addition, global T has begun to decline, which contradicts your article’s predictions. You need to do better than using the C.S. Monitor as your authority.
At the end of my comment to Lord Monckton I suggested “It seems there is a desire here to come up with ways, regardless, to help one not find them significant? Rather than actually assess them from all angles?
The comment by Dbhealey in response, is a perfect example.
First, my link to the piece about current warming being the fastest in 11,000 years was, and clearly laid out as such, in direct response to L. M.’s suggestion that If CO2 were a major driver of global temperature, there would have been some global warming in the past couple of decades. Not only warming, but possibly to probably (the study authors say it is) the fastest in at least 11,000 years, is definitely some global warming.
That is all that link was provided for. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/17/australia-no-longer-a-carbon-tax-nation/#comment-1689130 And it should have been obvious to any reader – particularly one smart enough to score a perfect 50 out of 50 on the CSM “scientific literacy” test.
Yet the above commenter turned it into something else entirely. Why? The only plausible suggestion is in order to come up with ways to discredit the idea of climate, change, not consider but simply find ways to attack or dismiss any points that don’t serve to discredit the great bulk of climate science, or find what almost non ideological atmospheric and climate scientists find very significant, to yet be insignificant.
As I pointed out in the first comment near the beginning of this thread http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/17/australia-no-longer-a-carbon-tax-nation/#comment-1688378 that is not what science is, and only leads to and reinforces highly erroneous conclusions, and bad science.
Second, the commenter calls the Christian Science Monitor’s article “nonsense,” and then by way of support. proffers his excellent (and impressive) score on their scientific [not climate change] literacy test. Of course calling it nonsense is fine; yet also, coincidentally enough, is another easy way to not consider but attack or dismiss any points that don’t serve to discredit the great bulk of climate science. Then points out from the same article that 125,000 years ago, the earth was as warm if not warmer than today. And uses the same “so what” response the original comment was addressing. First off, 125,000 years is a pretty long time, and having similar warming right now at the same microscopic geologic moment we have and are radically increasing long term concentrations of atmospheric gg gases, is pretty odd.
But again, the point is not the current temperature, but that the current temperature is extraordinarily unlikely to just happen to be a “random fluctuation” but a function of what here it’s a likely reflection of, and incontrovertible. The atmosphere is trapping more radiated heat, because it suddenly has a (LOT) higher long lived gg gases concentration. This hasn’t just warmed the atmosphere a little bit (which is some bit of climactic change), as some sort of random fluctuation that is going to maybe randomly go back down or level out (and again,”ten years = climate” is really bad science), but is changing the net energy balance of the earth, and changing the systems that drive climate. This issue is a function of what is happening to the system due to very basic (again, multi million year) changes over an extraordinarily compressed geologic period. Not the current temperature, And that on top of that, and most critically, the net atmospheric levels of long lived heat trapping gases are still rising, and rapidly – super fast from a geologic perspective.
Lastly, charting through the many temperature charts, to find a random one that supports the largely scientifically discredited notion that temperatures re falling, the commenter found this chart http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2015/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2015/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2015/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2015/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2015/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2015/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2015/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2015/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trend not the ones used by NASA and everyone professionally studying this issue.
An odd chart, because it doesn’t chart the graph, it breaks it up. A neat trick to make an “argument.” And one that – a person who was also Climate Change, not just scientifically literate, would or should know- is extremely misleading, since such short term variations don’t establish anything in terms of the broader trend. So again, why was the largely meaningless (and incorrect, but that’s besides the point) idea that over a couple years temperatures have moderated down from the previous highs even postulated? The same chart, in addition to breaking up the trend line, and to further exaggerate the affect, also only goes back to 1985. Is this chart designed to talk about weather? Or Long term climate? Or designed for the purpose of somewhat conflating the two, and so find ways to not consider but attack or dismiss any relevant points to the issue: Here, being the clear warming trend, and one that has been very rapid in terms of recent geologic time.
John Carter;
but is changing the net energy balance of the earth,
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
At equilibrium, the net energy balance of the earth changes by precisely zero in response to a doubling of CO2. If it doesn’t:
a) you’ve invented perpetual motion, and;
b) you’ll be awarded a Nobel prize for discovering it.
I wouldn’t hold my breath on either.
John Carter;
Here, being the clear warming trend, and one that has been very rapid in terms of recent geologic time.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/noaa_gisp2_icecore_anim_hi-def3.gif
Are you quite certain?
Mr Carter says the world has been warming at a rate faster than in 11,000 years. No: the central England temperature record, a good proxy for global temperature, shows warming from 1694-1733, entirely before the industrial revolution began, at a rate equivalent to 4.33 K/century. The fastest supra-decadal warming rate since 1950, when Man might first have influenced climate, was during the 33 years 1974-2006, at 2.01 K/century equivalent.
Mr Carter also says ocean heat content is increasing. However, the best evidence we have, the Argo bathythermograph buoys, shows warming of the oceans at around one-seventh of the predicted rate. However, since this network has so poor a resolution that it is the equivalent of taking a single measurement to represent the whole of Lake Superior less than once a year, we cannot tell whether the oceans are warming at all, for the change is well within the measurement uncertainties. Nor can we tell why the oceans are warming: there are, for instance, 3.5 million seabed volcanoes, not one of which is properly or routinely monitored.
Mr Carter also says I am trying to minimize the dangers posed by our minuscule influence on the climate. On the contrary: I merely examine the official data and find that air temperaure is warming at half the predicted rate, and the oceans are accumulating heat at one-seventh of the predicted rate. At the measured rates of warming, it is self-evident that we are not causing any significant climatic effect: nor, on the mathematics, are we likely to do so. The scientific literature agrees with both Mr Carter and me that if we add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere some warming will result: but the small quantity of papers considering the only question that matters – how much warming will we cause – are now moving firmly in the direction of 1 K per CO2 doubling, not the 3.3 K that is the IPCC’s central estimate. Best to wait and see, and spend precious resources on real environmental problems.
Similarly, if one were to Google “d e n i e r”, one finds that Wikipedia refers to an old French coin. 😉
Greetings from a Carbon Tax free Australia.
I’d also like to thank Anthony along with other well known Lords, ladies and gentlemen of good common sense who must rightly share in our small victory. Congratulations to you.
Cheers.