Matt Ridley Replies to His Climate-Change Critics
Jeffrey Sachs blows a gasket, and our contributor cleans up the intellectual mess.Sept. 9, 2014 9:56 a.m. ET THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Editor’s note: Matt Ridley’s Sept. 4 op-ed, “Whatever Happened to Global Warming?,” stirred a strong response, not least among the enforcers of climate-change orthodoxy.
Here is Mr. Ridley’s reply to his critics, adapted from his blog: Post-script. After the article was published, an astonishing tweet was sent by the prominent economist Jeffrey Sachs saying:
Ridley climate ignorance in WSJ today is part of compulsive lying of Murdoch media gang. Ridley totally misrepresents the science.
— Jeffrey D. Sachs (@JeffDSachs) September 5, 2014
Curious to know how I had lied or “totally misrepresented” the science, I asked Sachs to explain. There was a deafening silence.There then appeared at the Huffington Post an article under Sachs’s name. Its style was quite unlike that of Sachs. The piece purported to—in a spin doctor’s words—expose:
The Wall Street Journal Parade of Climate Lies – @JeffDSachs destroys daft @mattwridley article in@WSJ: http://t.co/gCbOThZV81
— Bob Ward (@ret_ward) September 6, 2014
However, it does nothing of the sort. It’s all bluster and careful misdirection, and contradicts nothing in my article, let alone producing evidence of lies. The sheer inaccuracy of the riposte in its descriptions of what I said or what I think are breathtaking, as are its failure to address any of the issues I raise, let alone contradict them. I had respect for Jeffrey Sachs as a scholar before reading this. Here are some key passages:
“Ridley’s “smoking gun” is a paper last week in Science Magazine by two scientists Xianyao Chen and Ka-Kit Tung . . .”
Notice the quote marks around “smoking gun,” implying that I used the phrase. I did not. In any case, the Chen and Tung paper was only one of the pieces of evidence I cited.
“. . . which Ridley somehow believes refutes all previous climate science.”
I said nothing of the sort and I believe nothing of the sort. Chen and Tung is about currents in the Atlantic, not about “all climate science”!
“The Wall Street Journal editors don’t give a hoot about the nonsense they publish if it serves their cause of fighting measures to limit human-induced climate change. If they had simply gone online to read the actual paper, they would have found that the paper’s conclusions are the very opposite of Ridley’s.”
In his writing the real Mr. Sachs does not often use phrases like “don’t give a hoot.”
In any case, he’s plain wrong about the contradiction. The quote I gave from the press release is accurate. And I have read the paper and can assure Mr. “Sachs” that its conclusions are not the opposite of what I have said. As further confirmation, how about asking the paper’s lead author himself? This is what he wrote to Prof. Judith Curry in response to her questions:
“Dear Judy,The argument on the roughly 50-50 attribution of the forced vs unforced warming for the last two and half decades of the 20th century is actually quite simple. If one is blaming internal variability for canceling out the anthropogenically forced warming during the current hiatus, one must admit that the former is not negligible compared to the latter, and the two are probably roughly of the same magnitude. Then when the internal cycle is of the different sign in the latter part of the 20th century, it must have added to the forced response. Assuming the rate of forced warming has not changed during the period concerned, then the two combined must be roughly twice the forced warming during the last two and half decades of the 20th century.”
In other words, as I said, the warming of 1975-2000 was only half caused by man-made emissions and half by natural causes, according to their conclusions, and natural causes were enough to cancel man-made forcing in the years after 2000.
To continue with the “Sachs” article:
“First, the paper makes perfectly clear that the Earth is warming in line with standard climate science, and that the Earth’s warming is unabated in recent years. In the scientific lingo of the paper (it’s very first line, so Ridley didn’t have far to read!), “Increasing anthropogenic greenhouse-gas-emissions perturb Earth’s radiative equilibrium, leading to a persistent imbalance at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) despite some long-wave radiative adjustment.” In short, we humans are filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel use, and we are warming the planet.”
Mr. “Sachs” did not have far to read in my own article to find this is in complete agreement with what I wrote also:
“I’ve long thought that man-made carbon-dioxide emissions will raise global temperatures, but that this effect will not be amplified much by feedbacks from extra water vapor and clouds, so the world will probably be only a bit more than one degree Celsius warmer in 2100 than today.”
Instead of using words like “unabated” why not give numbers? I did.
The warming during 1975-2000, even if you cherry-pick the end points, was about 0.4 degrees C if you average the five main global data sets, and if half of that was natural, then man-made forcing was going at the rate of less than 1 degree per century, rather less than what I said.
“Second, the total warming is distributed between the land and ocean surface on the one hand and the ocean deep water on the other. The total rise of ocean heat content has continued unabated, while the proportion of heat absorbed at the surface and in the deeper ocean varies over time. Again, in the scientific lingo of the paper, “[T]his forced total OHC [ocean heat content] should be increasing monotonically over longer periods even through the current period of slowed warming. In fact, that expectation is verified by observation . . . ” In other words, the ocean has continued to warm in line with predictions of just such a phenomenon seen in climate models.”
This is highly misleading. The quote from the paper does not contradict me at all. In any case, remember, the data on ocean heat content is highly ambiguous. As Judith Curry summarized it recently:
“The main issue of interest is to what extent can ocean heat sequestration explain the hiatus since 1998. The only data set that appears to provide support for ocean sequestration is the ocean reanalysis, with the Palmer and Domingues 0-700 m OHC climatology providing support for continued warming in the upper ocean.All in all, I don’t see a very convincing case for deep ocean sequestration of heat. And even if the heat from surface heating of the ocean did make it into the deep ocean, presumably the only way for this to happen involves mixing (rather than adiabatic processes), so it is very difficult to imagine how this heat could reappear at the surface in light of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.”
Back to the “Sachs” article:
“Third, it is the ‘vertical distribution’ of the warming, between the surface and deep water, which affects the warming observed on land and at the sea surface. The point of the paper is that the allocation of the warming vertically varies over time, sometimes warming the surface rapidly, other times warming the deeper ocean to a great extent and the surface water less rapidly. According to the paper, the period of the late 20th century was a period in which the surface was warmed relative to the deeper ocean. The period since 2000 is the opposite, with more warming of the deeper ocean. How do the scientists know? They measure the ocean temperature at varying depths with a sophisticated system of ‘Argo profiling floats,’ which periodically dive into the ocean depths to take temperature readings and resurface to transmit them to the data centers.”
I have no problem with this paragraph, which merely reiterates what I said about the Chen and Tung paper, with a bit more detail about the Argo floats, etc. It finds no evidence of my misrepresentation, let alone total misrepresentation.
“So, what is Ridley’s ‘smoking gun’ when you strip away his absurd version of the paper? It goes like this. The Earth is continuing to warm just as greenhouse gas theory holds.”
Check, I agree—over the long term and slowly, just as greenhouse gas theory holds. But the atmosphere is not continuing to warm right now.
“The warming heats the land and the ocean. The ocean distributes some of the warming to the surface waters and some to the deeper waters, depending on the complex circulation of ocean waters.”
Check. Could not have said it better myself, though remember this is still speculation and was not predicted.
“The shares of warming of the surface and deeper ocean vary over time, in fluctuations that can last a few years or a few decades.”
Check.Where’s the contradiction with what I wrote? There is none. If Mr. “Sachs” had bothered to read my article properly, he would find that his description of what is happening is pretty well exactly the same as mine. Except that he gives no numbers. What I did was to show that if Chen and Tung are right, and half the warming in the last part of the last century was natural, then the “rapid” warming of those three decades was still too slow for the predictions made by the models. It will if it resumes give us a not very alarming future. And if it does not resume for some time, as Chen and Tung speculate that it might not, then the future is even less alarming.And no, again, I did not use the phrase “smoking gun.” I used several other arguments, all of which Mr. “Sachs” fails to address at all, so presumably he agrees that there has been a “pause,” that it was denied for many years by the climate establishment, that there was general agreement among them that a pause of more than 15 years would invalidate their models, and so on.He goes on:
“If the surface warming is somewhat less in recent years than in the last part of the 20th century, is that reason for complacency? Hardly. The warming is continuing, and the consequences of our current trajectory will be devastating unless greenhouse gas emissions (mainly carbon dioxide) are stopped during this century. As Chen and Tung conclude in their Science paper, ‘When the internal variability [of the ocean] that is responsible for the current hiatus [in warming] switches sign, as it inevitably will, another episode of accelerated global warming should ensue.’ “
I hardly think it was complacent of me to ask world leaders to address the much more urgent issues of war, terror, disease, poverty, habitat loss and the 1.3 billion people with no electricity.
The only disagreement is whether future warming will be “devastating,” and that is a prediction not an empirical fact. I cannot yet be “wrong” about it.
When will Mr. “Sachs” get around to including a number? He surely cannot be under the impression that lukewarmers like me think there is no greenhouse effect? He surely knows that the argument is not about whether there is warming, but how fast.
And where did I lie, or misrepresent? Where did he “destroy” me, pray? He did not.
Mr. “Sachs,” who is usually a careful academic, has published a lot of wild accusations against me and “totally” (his word) failed to stand them up. How did this come about? Perhaps, being a busy man, he asked somebody else to ghost-write much of the piece for him and did not check it very thoroughly. Perhaps he wrote it himself. Either way, no problem, a quick tweet apologising to me and admitting that nothing in his article contradicts anything in mine, that we merely disagree on the predictions of dangerous warming, and I will consider the matter closed.
I published most of this riposte to Mr. Sachs’s article on my blog post on Sunday and drew his attention to it on Twitter.
He ignored it but posted a single tweet as follows:
WSJ ignores science conclusion that another episode of accelerated warming should ensue as ocean variability "inevitably" switches sign.
— Jeffrey D. Sachs (@JeffDSachs) September 7, 2014
Actually, the word the scientists use is “rapid” warming and they use it also to describe the warming of the 1980s and 1990s, which as I showed was not nearly as rapid as predicted by the models. So, even when the Atlantic currents are boosting the man-made warming, it is not as fast as the models predict.
Clearly Mr. Sachs and I disagree about how dangerous man-made global warming is likely to be in the future. I think all the explanations for the pause, including the Chen and Tung one, only make my case stronger that man-made warming is not being enhanced by feedbacks and is proceeding according to the greenhouse effect of CO2 alone. I may of course be wrong. But it is ludicrous, nasty and false to accuse me of lying or “totally misrepresenting the science.” I have asked Mr. Sachs to withdraw the charges more than once now on Twitter. He has refused to do so, though he has been tweeting freely during the time.
Soon after my article was published, another peer-reviewed paper appeared in the Journal Nature Climate Change, about as mainstream a climate science publication as you can find. It is entitled: “Climate model simulations of the observed early-2000s hiatus of global warming.” The respected commentator and academic Roger Pielke Jr. tweeted:
http://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/508712561135464448
Why does Ridley waste his time responding to these buffoons? Getting into spitting matches with people who are in it for politics or money and who don’t believe a word they’re saying is a hopeless venture.
On occasion decent people read the writings of buffoons, and so, in the public arena, Ridley is doing a service. Skeptics (educated) should spend more time posting in MSM outlets. People do change.
Is this the same Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs who said U.S. bombing of ISIS was equivalent to Russia Invading the Ukraine? See http://collegeinsurrection.com/2014/09/columbia-prof-compares-u-s-bombing-of-isis-to-russia-invading-ukraine/
Rupert Murdoch is the cause of climate change. Heat is generated every time his name is mentioned and a lot of hot air swirls around his media empire. Is it just a coincidence that the temperature rise is most extreme where Rupert does his business? I think not!
No, global warming is caused by the desire for more tax money (by the politicians to dole out for influence to: rent-seeking scientists, to subsidized renewable energy interests, to unions hoping to build more public pork projects, etc).
Actually the arithmetic of the two authors noting 50-50 CO2 related forcings and natural variation is more compelling than I had originally thought. If it were exactly 50-50, one should expect the rising temp to level off, indeed, when the equal negative natural variability component is holding sway. Now with a thumb on the scales, as there unequivocally has been, then the forced warming: natural variation mix is likely more like 40:60.
This is a simple model to be sure since there are all kinds of different ups and downs caused by other phenomena with effects big and small (ocean cycles, sun cycles, orbital cycles, magnetic cycles, etc.). Now, unless this is the big one, the sum of the main ones, then we are likely to have a return to warming at some point. If my 40:60 were to be accidentally correct for shorter term variations, then it should go into a cooling downturn instead of maintaining a plateau, which in the insignificantly short period since 2005, it appears to be doing. The return of warming would then begin from a lower temperature than today’s.
This leads me to the thought of looking at the big cycle (purists can suggest a different term if cycle has to be something of unvarying frequency). The glacial minimum and the inter glacial maximum. A 60:40 model would work pretty much like that, with a lesser warming ‘factor’, maybe not from CO2 at all, boosted strongly when in sync and then plunged down into the cold when out of sync. We are, after all talking about only +3 to 4 and -3 to 4 or so C degrees either way. Now what causes the low temperatures to be held in check even in the depths of an ice age with enhanced albedo? Why, it is the amount of sun’s energy entering the system and the circulation of warmed waters from the equatorial region northwards. It seems to me, by taking the southern limit of the Ice Age continental glacier’s advance, known by end moraines and glaciated features of the terrain, physicists should be able to calculate somewhat accurately what the thermal regime of the earth was at the flat bottom of the glacial temperature traces. Interglacial maximums have varied a degree or two but they also are held in check quite well.
The warming factor? I suppose I might as well say it anyway. The sun.
“I had respect for Jeffrey Sachs as a scholar before reading this.”
Isn’t Sachs a Soros mouthpiece at Project Syndicate?
Follow the money
It is sad when science have to have Ridley – someone who still see certainty where there isn’t any – against a political leverager like Sachs who doesn’t care one yota about science.
I presume Ridley’s overall engagement strategy for public dialog about climate science is completely shown in his strategy in both Ridley’s WSJ article “Whatever Happened to Global Warming?” (on Sept 4 ’14) and in his multiple responses to critics of that article in various venues.
The fundamental strategy I see Ridley using is ‘consensus’ has meaning and merit in a scientific process / dialog / assessment.
I do not think his is a viable strategy compared to using corroborated observationally verified positions on science as the rallying point of current scientific thinking.
John
Thank you Matt Ridley. Rational debate on this subject, no matter what position is held, is all most skeptics are seeking. The advancement of knowledge, not the suppression of it.
Sachs gets credit in Eastern Europe for applying a bit of free market economics and seeing improvement over the disastrous effects of socialism, but then you look at his poverty fighting efforts in Africa and they are an epic failure of centrally planned solutions. At his heart he is a command economist, and CAGW is just the most convenient tool at hand to achieve that command. His track record is actually pretty pathetic, but like all good socialists the excuse given is that he just needed more time/money/power. I hope the future someday calls out this modern hybrid of Lysenkoism and Leninism, but for now we live in a world of a dark and vengeful theocracy.
Jeffrey Sachs,
Instead blabbering nonsense, make yourself useful by computing the cost of stopping fossil fuels burning. Tell us if the world’s poor will become richer once we get rid of fossil fuels. Are you not one of the 60 eminent economists who opined that deworming of schoolchildren is a more urgent problem than climate change? Learn from your colleagues.
THE TRUTH ABOUT BOB WARD AND THE GRANTHAM INSTITUTE
The Grantham Institute was established in 2008 by Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham, through their “Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment” and with Judith Rees and Nicholas Stern of the Grantham Research Institute behind them. Lord Stern is now chairman of the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics.
The Grantham Istitute was set up by Grantham to promote ideas that will make him vastly richer than he already is. It is not part of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE); it’s actually a separate legal entity which does no research and no education of its own . Its “task” is to promote the view point of the person paying its bills, in other words it is a marketing company and it is being paid to sell the public on so-called “man-made global warming.”
The LSE took the money and turned a blind eye , while allowing an “iffy marketing” operation to ride on the back of its name, and not for the first time. One day the media may start to call it a marketing company, which is what it actually is, rather than give it the undeserved scientific credit it purports to have.
*****
The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Houghton Street
London
WC2A 2AE
Official Address:
Tower 3
Clements Inn Passage
London
WC2A 2AZ
Enquiries:
Ginny Pavey, Institute Manager
Tel: 020 7107 5433
v.pavey@lse.ac.uk
Media enquiries:
Bob Ward, Policy & Communications Director
Tel: 020 7107 5413
r.e.ward@lse.ac.uk
****
LSE GOVERNANCE
http://www.lse.ac.uk/intranet/LSEServices/governanceAndCommittees/Home.aspx
Governance, Legal and Planning Division
Room TW1 6.01
London School of Economics
Houghton Street
London
WC2A 2AE
Tel: +44 (020) 7955 6866
Fax: +44 (020) 7404 3878
Contact: Jayne Rose
J.Rose2@lse.ac.uk
*****
DIRECTOR OF THE LSE (Who should be ashamed of himself.)
Professor Craig Calhoun
Director of LSE
1st floor, Columbia House
Houghton Street
London
WC2A 2AE
Contact: Hugh Martin
Chief of Staff to Director and President
Tel: +44 (0)20 7852 3601
directorsoffice@lse.ac.uk
*****
Bob Ward
Policy and Communications Director (“Liar in Chief”)
Bob joined the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment in November 2008, shortly after its launch. He also holds the following positions:
Policy and Communications Director for the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy;
Member of the executive committee of the Association of British Science Writers;
Member of the executive committee of the World Conference of Science Journalists 2009;
Member of the board of the UK’s Science Media Centre.
Mainly a eunuch in the whore house: mixing with real scientists and writing about them but completely impotent when called upon to perform any hard science himself.
SCIENTIFIC CREDENTIALS?
Ward joined the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) from Risk Management Solutions, where he was Director of Public Policy. He also worked at the Royal Society, the UK national academy of science, for eight years, until October 2006. His responsibilities there included leading the media relations team. He has also worked as a freelance science writer and journalist. Ward has a first degree in geology and an unfinished PhD thesis on palaeopiezometry.
He is a Fellow of the Geological Society.
WARD’S CONTACT DETAILS
r.e.ward@lse.ac.uk
https://twitter.com/ret_ward
Tel: +44 (0)20 7107 5413
Tel: +44 (0)7811 320346
Fax: +44 (0)20 7106 1241
*****
Here’s a sample of Ward’s work:
September 2013:
Another assault was mounted by Bob Ward, spokesman for the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at the London School of Economics. Mr Ward tweeted that the article was “error-strewn.”
The eminent US expert Professor Judith Curry, who unlike Mr Ward is a climate scientist with a long list of peer-reviewed publications to her name, disagreed. On her blog Climate Etc. she defended The Mail on Sunday, saying the article contained “good material,” and issued a tweet which challenged Mr Ward to say what these errors were.
He has yet to reply.
****
I love the Bob Ward waffle, and his superb ability to hide reality. For instance, his comment that temperature is still rising “albeit at a slower rate of increase than previously” actually translates into between 0.1 and 0.2ºC per century.
Most amazingly, Bob links to the IPCC SREX report claiming that it “found an abundance of scientific evidence for increases in heat waves, droughts and heavy rainfall.” In fact, as anyone can check by reading the report, it says no such thing.
You do not need a “paper” to show nearly 20 years of no global warming, just look at the data sets directly. The following tables show the number of years to present when slope is flat or slightly negative and also for when there is no significant warming:
GISS 12, 17
Hadcrut3 16, 19
Hadcrut4 12, 18
But never mind Ward; one might expect a scientist like Chris Rapley to ask himself whether, if something can’t be found, it might be because it’s not there.
Rapley is into climate and the unconscious. he recently wrote the introduction (and the Amazon review) for a book on psychoanalysis and climate scepticism.
See http://geoffchambers.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/psychoanalysis-and-climate-change-the-doctors-take-over-the-asylum/
Heat which has gone “missing” cannot cause floods plagues and hurricanes, and without floods plagues and hurricanes Bob Ward is out of a job and the rest of us can get on with our lives without being bothered with politicians blathering about “sustainability” and putting our energy prices up. That’s the discussion which Bob Ward (and apparently all the editors sympathetic to the climate hysterics) want to suppress.
Bob Ward declares that there are parts of the media that misrepresent the science. That is certainly what he is trying to say, but he fails lamentably to make his case. There are easily attestable facts about the climate and any reader is free to draw their own conclusions. Ward and others are demanding Parliament intervene and legislate in order to discourage “deniers” from expressing themselves.
By failing to defend his position, Ward demonstrates the weakness of his case. By giving space to Ward to expound his weak and undefended arguments, the broadcasters and publishers demonstrate a contempt for free speech and rational discussion.
Brian Cox has been given several editorials, and a talk at the Television Society in 2012, both of which were largely given over to attacking climate sceptics. Sir Paul Nurse had a whole BBC Horizon programme to himself, largely given over to attacking climate sceptics. If there was a case to be made for dangerous man-made global warming, they could have made it. But they didn’t , because there isn’t. All they’ve got is Bob, the failed palaeopiezometrist, and his call for press censorship.
It is a free country and people are entitled to their opinions. That, however, doesn’t mean that all opinions have the same weight.
Here’s my issue with Ward’s view of how things should work: Scientific papers tend (as one might imagine) to be quite rigorous. This means that it is unlikely that you will find scientific papers with strong, absolute statements about catastrophic global warming. They will tend to be descriptions of models with uncertainties or some analysis of data (again with uncertainties). One can, however, interpret what the evidence is suggesting.
Even if you are not interested in climate science, everyone should be interested in the attempt to close down debate proposed by Bob Ward, the PR man for the Grantham Institute and its hedge fund millionaire backer Jeremy Grantham, and which seems to be supported by the New Statesman, the BBC, the Royal Society, The Independent, all six British parliamentary parties, the Socialist Worker, and just about everyone else on the Left.
Is it the job of the government to pass laws to dissuade “deniers” and the skeptics from writing what they like? This seems to be the opinion on the Left these days. This is not a debate about science, and that’s the point. There are many who claim to want to debate this, but are actually not willing to debate the science. They make claims that do not stand up to scrutiny, and it’s being carried out in a manner that isn’t consistent with good scientific practice.
History will note that not one single IPCC warning has ever said what will happen, only what might happen. They agree that “climate change” is real but have never agreed that it is a real crisis. Look it up yourself.
Bob Ward’s livelihood is dependent on keeping the public fooled and poor. He spends most of his time these days conducting ad hominem campaigns against those who, heaven forbid, question the science and the myth that it is settled or that there is “consensus.” He is paid a great deal at the Grantham Research Institute. He doesn’t feel the slightest bit guilty that his lot are causing so much misery for those who now find it impossible to heat their homes or run their car. Not only is he and his ilk responsible for fuel poverty but he is wrecking our manufacturing industries too. One day, they’ll be no more money and he’ll just have to go and find a real job, that’s if he’s actually capable of doing something honest.
Get lost, Ward. we’ve had enough of your lies and your preaching. Your data is either flawed or totally fake, and you know it.
And by the way, there is no “current warming trend,” and nobody believes anything the IPCC or Grantham Institute say.
Ward does not work for the LSE , he does no research nor teaching for the LSE.
While the Grantham Research Institute, his actual employees, also do no research nor teaching of any form.
What happed is that for a bag of cash the LSE allowed the Grantham Research Institute to use part of ones its buildings and its reputation to give a shine to what otherwise would look like what it is , a private individual looking to use their vast wealth to make them wealthier still line promoting their own ideology regardless of facts . To claim Bob ‘fast fingers ‘ Ward works for the LSE gives him far more credit than he is entailed to . That the LSE sold it sole for cash , and never mind rotting smell of poor academic practice is not usual , they done it plenty of times even at PhD level and will gain.
Bob is the very thing sceptics are repeatedly attacked for being , a paid shrill , given that he is rubbish at it the reason why Grantham still keeps paying him , at it is another good question.
The Irish did not die because they could not grow potatoes. The died because the effort going into such potatoes as they could grow, exceeded the benefit of the potatoes the did grow,. In short they couldn’t grow ENOUGH potatoes to stay alive.
And so it is with Fossil energy. We wont run out of oil, but out of CHEAP oil. And the signs are we already have.
At the power station gate, the cheapest fuel is uranium. The second cheapest is coal, then gas, and then oil.
Regulation and complexity drives the capital cost and running costs of coal and particularly nuclear plant up to push nuclear above coal and gas somewhat in the levelised lifetime cost stakes: Nevertheless long term, oil and gas are both dead economically.
Coal will probably linger on.
But in the end we won’t be emitting industrial CO2. Rather the reverse. We will need it as a feedstock to make hydrocarbon fuel, because for the foreseeable future that’s the only real alternative for portable off grid energy storage.
As far as climate change goes, well its pretty clear that whilst the radiative calculations have merit, there is absolutely no justification for introducing any kind of positive feedback mechanism: In fact the reverse may well be true, that overall the complex nature of the water cycle and clouds may in fact be negative internal feedback, and such climate variation as there is, merely the result of the various delays and feedback paths in a non linear system of high complexity.
.
In short the whole shebang will fizzle out in the mists of history and be forgotten. Except as an example of the strange foibles and superstitions that periodically sweep across the consciousness of civilisations, and occasionally do great damage.
There are two sorts of climate scientists, those that believe in AGW, and those that understand complex non-linear system behaviour.
In future there will be two sorts of civilisations: Those that understand the economics of power generation, and embrace nuclear power, and those that are spoken of in the past tense.
Leo Smith
The Irish did not ‘run out’ of potatoes. A disease destroyed the potatoes.
There is no possibility of us ‘running out’ of oil.
There are no limits to growth provided by finite resources.
All of this has been explained to you repeatedly.
Your peak oil ‘hobby horse’ is not relevant to this thread so please take it elsewhere.
Richard
In regards to the hyperbolic reaction by Sacks’, I think Shakespeare said it best, “the lady doth protest too much me thinks.”
Bob Clark
Actually like many above I am getting sick and tired of the so called “lukewarmers” who pander to the AGW mantra ie “CO2 cause warming ect, but not much ect…” IT DOES NOT in the Earth atmosphere’s scenario (it may in a test tube), and it never has. Co2 has been at 1000’s ppm during ICE AGES.
Frankly, given Sachs’ past performance on Scientific American, I don’t see why anyone would be surprised at his behavior here.
Big head, big mouth, little man.
Of course Sachs is also Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia, and in that role looks like the “boss” of Gavin Schmidt, who is based at the Center for Climate Systems Research which is part of the Earth Institute (see http://ccsr.columbia.edu/about/people/). Perhaps he got advice from Gavin on his comment.
So what’s the point of debating with these folks, just asking. Publish the facts and let them scream into their Huffington Post echo chamber.
In other words, as I said, the warming of 1975-2000 was only half caused by man-made emissions and half by natural causes, according to their conclusions, and natural causes were enough to cancel man-made forcing in the years after 2000.
And if we start to get cooling it will be less than half. And if eventually cooling cancels the warming the effect of CO2 can be assumed near zero.
Good comments by Bart and others.
Sorry but no time to boil this down – a few old thoughts – still current though.
Best to all, Allan
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/02/introducing-the-wuwt-co2-reference-page/#comment-1703549
dbstealey says on August 6, 2014 at 8:23 pm
Hello db:
Thank you for your post and your graph of atmospheric CO2 lagging “global” temperature T by about 800 years over a time scale of several hundred thousand years of recent Earth history.
As you know, CO2 also lags T in the modern data record by about 9 months, on a shorter time cycle.
It appears that CO2 lags T at all measured time scales. This still allows for other significant drivers of atmospheric CO2, such as fossil fuel combustion, land-use changes such as deforestation, ocean outgassing, etc.
There is reluctance of most parties on both sides of the “mainstream” climate debate to discuss the “CO2 lags T” issue. The mainstream climate debate is essentially an argument about the magnitude of equilibrium climate sensitivity or ECS: Warmists say ECS>= 3C or more, which is nonsense; Skeptics say ECS,<= 1C, which is more reasonable but still questionable, in my opinion.
I suspect this general reluctance to discuss “CO2 lags T” is a fear of being ridiculed or marginalized. However I suggest it is at the very core of the “catastrophic humanmade global warming” (CAGW) issue.
For example, the concept of ECS must ASSUME that CO2 drives T, but does ECS really exist is any physical sense?
What are the alternatives:
A) Maybe ECS does not exist at all in physical reality, and we should be discussing the sensitivity of atmospheric CO2 to temperature (let’s call it ECO2S).
B) Maybe ECS co-exists along with ECO2S in physical reality:
B1) In this scenario can we conclude that ECO2S exceeds ECS since that is the only signal we can detect in the modern data record; or
B2) Is it possible that ECS exceeds ECO2S but exists on a fuzzy longer time scale that is difficult to detect in the modern data record?
C) Maybe, as was strongly suggested in 2008, ECO2S is a “spurious correlation”. I suggest this notion is no longer considered valid and the correlation is real and significant.
Comments anyone? [ADDENDUM: MY VOTE IS FOR SOMEWHERE BETWEEN A AND B1]
Regards to all, Allan
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Here is some history compiled over recent years on this subject:
To my knowledge, I initiated in early January 2008 the still-heretical notion that dCO2/dt changed ~contemporaneously with temperature and therefore CO2 lagged temperature by about 9 months, and thus CO2 could not primarily drive temperature.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
I later learned from Richard Courtney that others (Kuo et al 1990, Keeling et al 1995) had noted the lag but apparently not the dCO2/dt relationship with T. Roy Spencer was kind enough to acknowledge my contribution at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/25/double-whammy-friday-roy-spencer-on-how-oceans-are-driving-co2/
I am fairly sure this concept was new because of the very hostile reaction it received from BOTH sides of the CAGW debate. All the warmists and most skeptics completely rejected it.
First I was just plain wrong – the dCO2/dt vs T relationship was merely a “spurious correlation”.
Then I was grudgingly admitted to be correct, but the resulting ~9 month CO2-after-T lag was dismissed as a “feedback effect”. This remains the counter-argument of the global warming alarmists, apparently the best they’ve got – a faith-based “Cargo Cult” rationalization, in my opinion.
Now we are embroiled in the “Mass Balance Argument” as ably debated by Ferdinand Engelbeen and Richard S Courtney, and I frankly think this is quite worthwhile. To me, this is the cutting edge of climate science, and it is interesting.
I also infer that some parties, notably Jan Veizer at the University of Ottawa, had gotten almost this far some time ago.
Intellectually, I think the alleged global warming crisis is dead in the water, although politically it sails on, a ghost ship with the Euros and Obama at the helm. Not to forget our own Dalton McGuinty in Ontario – now a “have-not province” collecting transfer payments , our national welfare scheme for mismanaged economies.
The global warming alarmists have squandered more than a trillion dollars of scarce global resources on foolish “alternative energy” schemes that we condemned in writing in 2002. We said then that “the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels” and this is now proven to be true. The economies of the European countries and their fellow-travellers have been hobbled by green energy nonsense, and millions are suffering and thousands are dying each winter from excessively high energy costs.
I am concerned, I hope incorrectly, about imminent global cooling, which I (we) also predicted in a Calgary Herald article in 2002. I really hope to be wrong about this prediction, because global cooling could cause great suffering. Our society has been so obsessed with the non-existent global warming crisis that we are woefully unprepared for any severe global cooling, like the Maunder or Dalton Minimums circa 1700 and 1800.
Solar activity has crashed in SC24, and although our friend Leif Svalgaard says not to worry, I continue to do so.
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My paper was posted Jan.31/08 with a spreadsheet at
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
The paper is located at
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
The relevant spreadsheet is
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRaeFig5b.xls
There are many correlations calculated in the spreadsheet.
In my Figure 1 and 2, global dCO2/dt closely coincides with global Lower Tropospheric Temperature LT and Surface Temperature ST. I believe that the temperature and CO2 datasets are collected completely independently, and yet there is this clear correlation.
After publishing this paper, I also demonstrated the same correlation with different datasets – using Mauna Loa CO2 and Hadcrut3 ST going back to 1958. Later I examined the close correlation of LT measurements taken by satellite and those taken by radiosonde.
Further, earlier papers by Kuo (1990) and Keeling (1995) discussed the delay of CO2 after temperature, although neither appeared to notice the even closer correlation of dCO2/dt with temperature. This correlation is noted in my Figures 3 and 4.
See also Roy Spencer's (U of Alabama, Huntsville) take on this subject at
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/double-whammy-friday-roy-spencer-on-how-oceans-are-driving-co2/
and
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/spencer-pt2-more-co2-peculiarities-the-c13c12-isotope-ratio/
This subject has generated much discussion among serious scientists, and this discussion continues. Almost no one doubts the dCO2/dt versus LT (and ST) correlation. Some go so far as to say that humankind is not even the primary cause of the current increase in atmospheric CO2 – that it is natural. Others rely on a "material balance argument" to refute this claim – I think these would be in the majority. I am (almost) an agnostic on this question, to date.
The warmist side also has also noted this ~9 month delay, but try to explain it as a "feedback effect" – this argument seems more consistent with CAGW religious dogma than with science ("ASSUMING CAGW is true, then it MUST be feedback"). 🙂
It is interesting to note, however, that the natural seasonal variation in atmospheric CO2 ranges up to ~16ppm in the far North, whereas the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 is only ~2ppm. This reality tends to weaken the "material balance argument", imo. This seasonal 'sawtooth" of CO2 is primarily driven by the Northern Hemisphere landmass, which is much greater in area than that of the Southern Hemisphere. CO2 falls during the NH summer due primarily to land-based photosynthesis, and rises in the late fall, winter and early spring as biomass degrades.
There is also likely to be significant CO2 solution and exsolution from the oceans.
See the excellent animation at http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003562/carbonDioxideSequence2002_2008_at15fps.mp4
It is also interesting to note that the detailed signals we derive from the data show that CO2 lags temperature at all time scales, from the 9 month delay for ~ENSO cycles to the ~800 year delay inferred in the ice core data for much longer cycles.
__________
In this enormous CO2 equation, the only signal that is apparent is that dCO2/dt varies ~contemporaneously with temperature, and CO2 lags global Lower Troposphere temperatures by about 9 months.
CO2 also lags temperature by about 800 years in the ice core record on a longer time scale.
I suggest with some confidence that the future cannot cause the past.
I suggest that temperature drives CO2 more than CO2 drives temperature. This does not preclude other drivers of CO2 such as fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc.
My January 2008 hypo is gaining traction with the recent work of several researchers. We don’t always agree on the fine details, but there is clear agreement in the primary hypothesis.
Here is Murry Salby's address to the Sydney Institute in 2011:
Here is Salby’s address in Hamburg 2013:
See also this January 2013 paper from Norwegian researchers:
The Phase Relation between Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Global Temperature
Global and Planetary Change
Volume 100, January 2013, Pages 51–69
by Ole Humluma, Kjell Stordahlc, Jan-Erik Solheimd
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818112001658
Highlights
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 11–12 months behind changes in global sea surface temperature.
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 9.5–10 months behind changes in global air surface temperature.
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 9 months behind changes in global lower troposphere temperature.
– Changes in ocean temperatures explain a substantial part of the observed changes in atmospheric CO2 since January 1980.
– Changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human emissions.
A paper by a group from three Dutch universities published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics that they have found that only about 3.75% [15 ppm] of the CO2 in the lower atmosphere is man-made from the burning of fossil fuels, and thus, the vast remainder of the 400 ppm atmospheric CO2 is from land-use changes and natural sources such as ocean outgassing and plant respiration.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/14/7273/2014/acp-14-7273-2014.html
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Mr. Ridley — If we are ever to arrest the endless child’s play over comparative cherry picking, and bring this topic into a single focus, both sides of the tug of war and the discussion itself, would benefit from agreeing upon a thermal fiduciary. At a chip fab, the precise photo-etching of billions of components upon a raw silicon disk is initiated by burning four such defining corners with a laser. The “fiduciaries”. Similarly, when Honda conjures up a new model, it begins by permanently designating the center of the front of its steering shaft as the zero, zero, zero co-ordinate. The most comprehensive compendium of land and maritime measurements is the HadCRUT4 trace. A very broad reach, 35 year crawling average of their temperature anomalies declines until, attains equipoise at, and rises ever-after from, the year 1907.
This trace of annual anomalies is quite volatile, or “noisy”. Recent trends can be made far less so via a crawling 5 year average. Thus, the El Nino Grande of 1998 was noisy. The difference in measured temperature between the broad-based fiduciary, and the five year average anomaly straddling that event (i.e., centered upon 1998) was 1.28 Fahrenheit, and across those 91 years yields the annual “signal” of the secular trend at about 1.4 hundredths F. (0.0140 F./yr.) From September of 1997, however, until August of 1998, the Earth warmed due to that noisy El Nino by 0.531 F., for a noise-to-signal ratio of, wait for it: 37.8 year’s worth of observed trend warming across those 12 months.
What happens to the celebrated “pause,” if we simply slide the five year average forward to its most recent completed interval? Well, in the thirteen years between 1998 and 2011, the world warmed by 0.244 F., or at a rate of 1.87 hundredths F. annually. This is fully one-third faster than it warmed across the breadth of the Twentieth Century (0.0047 / 0.0140 = 33.5%). Currently, our world is as warm as Hadley has ever found it, and were one to contrast the “noisy” measurement of the most recent twelve months, to that 1998 five year value, it is 0.366 F. warmer, and has been warming two-thirds faster, since 1998 (0.0094 / 0.0140 = 67.2%).
Dave Peters, I suggest Hadcrut4 is crap.
I also disagree with your analysis thereof.