By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
“What Evidence,” asks Ronald Bailey’s headline (www.reason.com, April 3, 2015), “Would Convince You That Man-Made Climate Change Is Real?”
The answer: a rational, scientific case rooted in established theory and data would convince me that manmade climate change is a problem. That it is real is not in doubt, for every creature that breathes out emits CO2 and thus affects the climate.
The true scientific question, then, is not the fatuous question whether “Man-Made Climate Change Is Real” but how much global warming our sins of emission may cause, and whether that warming might be more a bad thing than a good thing.
However, Mr Bailey advances no rational case. What, then, are the elements of a rational, scientific case that our influence on the climate will prove dangerous unless the West completes its current self-shutdown?
Here is the mountain the tax-gobbling classes who tend to favor profitable alarmism must climb before they can make out a rational, scientific case for doing anything about our greenhouse-gas emissions.
The tax-gobblers’ mighty mountain
| Step 10. Would the benefit outweigh the cost? |
| Step 9. Can we afford the cost of CO2 mitigation? |
| Step 8. Will any realistic measures avert the danger? |
| Step 7. Will warmer worldwide weather be dangerous? |
| Step 6. Will temperature feedbacks amplify that warming? |
| Step 5. Will greenhouse-gas emissions cause much warming? |
| Step 4. Are humankind raising CO2 concentration substantially? |
| Step 3. Are humankind increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration? |
| Step 2. Is a consensus among climate experts compatible with science? |
| Step 1. Has any climate warming beyond natural variability taken place? |
If the answer to the question at any Step from 1 to 10 on the stony path up the tax-gobblers’ mighty mountain is “No”, there is no rational, scientific basis for climbing any further. Unless one can legitimately reach the top by answering Yes to all ten questions, there is no credible justification for any investment of taxpayers’ funds in trying to make global warming go away.
The mountain that the tax-gobblers have to climb is tall, steep, and difficult. Every policy-maker must climb that mighty mountain, and none can justify shelling out a single red cent on thwarting Thermageddon until he shall have demonstrated, at each step, that there is rational, scientific justification for climbing above that step. Gird your loins, sharpen your crampons, and grip your cromach. Let us climb.
Step 1. Is global warming exceeding natural climate variability?
No.
Step 2. Is consensus among climate experts scientific?
No. And there isn’t one anyway. A recent paper by paid propagandists trying to prove that there was a consensus inadvertently proved that there was not. Cook et al. (2013) claimed that 97.1% of 11,944 papers on “global climate change” endorsed the consensus, which they defined in their introduction as the “scientific consensus” that “most current warming” is anthropogenic. However, setting aside the fact that there has been no “current warming” for getting on for two embarrassing decades, the authors’ own data file shows that they had marked only 64 papers out of 11,944, a dizzying 0.5%, as endorsing the “consensus”.
Step 3. Are we all guilty of increasing CO2 concentration?
No, not necessarily. True, our emissions of CO2 and its atmospheric concentration are rising, but anthropogenic CO2 represents only 3% of the total free CO2 in the Earth-atmosphere system. But in logic – it cannot be repeated often enough – mere correlation does not necessary imply causation.
Professor Murry Salby, late of Macquarie University, Australia, has established that it is the time-integral of temperature changes that causes changes in CO2 concentration, leaving little or no room for any detectable anthropogenic contribution. He is not alone in his findings. If he is right, there is no need to posit any role for CO2 or other anthropogenic influences. On that analysis, climate sensitivity may well be zero.
Cross-correlations by Professor Salby between CO2 change and temperature change. He has found by detailed inspection that the observed record shows CO2 concentration change lagging temperature change by about 8-10 months, approximately the lag that would be expected on the basis of an atmospheric residence time of about 5 years. It is a settled principle of logic that that which occurs second cannot have caused that which occurred first.
Step 4. Is CO2 concentration rising to dangerous new levels?
No. Mr Bailey says CO2 concentration is 30% higher than the 800,000-year peak. So what?
Step 5. Will greenhouse-gas emissions cause much warming?
No – and, on the evidence to date, certainly not as much as the IPCC predicted.
Near-term projections of warming at a rate equivalent to 2.8 [1.9, 4.2] K/century, made with “substantial confidence” in IPCC (1990), for the 303 months January 1990 to March 2015 (orange region and red trend line), vs. observed anomalies (dark blue) and trend (bright blue) at less than 1.4 K/century equivalent, taken as the mean of the RSS and UAH satellite monthly mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.
Step 6. Do temperature feedbacks amplify direct CO2 warming?
No. Measurements suggest feedbacks are negative, attenuating direct CO2 warming.
Furthermore, the range of mean global surface temperature change over the past 810,000 years was just 3.5 Cº either side of the long-run average – about the same as the range of temperatures permitted by an ordinary household thermostat. It is difficult to alter the Earth’s temperature, because the atmosphere is sandwiched between two vast heat-sinks: the oceans below and outer space above.
Global surface temperature change over the past 810,000 years, obtained by halving (to correct the result for polar amplification) the temperature anomalies inferred from atmospheric δ18O ratios in ice cores from Vostok station, Antarctica. Absolute global temperature has varied by little more than ±1%.
Step 7. Will warmer worldwide weather be dangerous?
No. A growing body of papers in the literature finds climate sensitivity low – about 1 Cº per CO2 doubling. That is not enough to be harmful.
Steps 8-10. Will any realistic measures avert the danger?
No. Whether mitigation measures should be attempted in any event is an economic question, answered by investment appraisal. The UK’s $8333-per-auto subsidy for electric cars will serve as an example. The two initial conditions for the appraisal are the fraction of global CO2 emissions a mitigation measure is intended to abate, and the cost of the measure.
Going nowhere slowly: The Chevrolet Volt
Typical gasoline-powered auto engines are approximately 27% efficient. Typical fossil-fueled generating stations are 50% efficient, transmission to end user is 67% efficient, battery charging is 90% efficient and the auto’s electric motor is 90% efficient, so that the fuel efficiency of an electric car is also 27%. However, the electric car requires 30% more power per mile traveled to move the mass of its batteries.
CO2 emissions from domestic transport account for 24% of UK CO2 emissions, and cars, vans, and taxis represent 90% of road transport (DfT, 2013). Assuming 80% of fuel use is by these autos, they account for 19.2% of UK CO2 emissions. Conversion to electric power, 61% of which is generated by fossil fuels in the UK, would abate 39% of 19.2% (i.e. 7.5%) of UK CO2 emissions.
However, the battery-weight penalty would be 30% of 19.2% of 61%: i.e. 3.5% of UK CO2 emissions. The net saving from converting all UK cars, vans, and taxis to electricity, therefore, would be 4% of UK CO2 emissions, which are 1.72% of global CO2 emissions, abating 0.07% of global CO2 emissions of 2 μatm yr–1, or 0.00138 μatm. From eqn. (2), assuming 400 μatm concentration at year end on business as usual, forcing abated by the subsidy for converting all UK cars to electricity would be 5.35 ln[400/(400-0.00138)], or 0.00002 W m–2, which, multiplied by the Planck parameter λ0, gives 0.000006 K warming abated by the subsidy.
The cost to the UK taxpayer of subsidizing the 30,000 electric cars, vans, and taxis bought in 2012 was a flat-rate subsidy of $8333 (£5000) for each vehicle and a further subsidy of about $350 (£210) per year in vehicle excise tax remitted, a total of $260.5 million. On that basis, the cost of subsidizing all 2,250,000 new autos sold each year (SMMT, 2013), would be $19.54 bn.
Though the longevity of electric autos is 50% greater than that of internal-combustion autos, the advantage is more than canceled by the very large cost of total battery replacement every few years. No allowance for this extra cost is made. Likewise, the considerable cost of using renewable energy to bring down the UK’s fossil-fueled generation fraction from the global mean 67% to 61% is not taken into account, though, strictly speaking, an appropriate share of the cost of “renewable” electricity generation should be assigned to electric vehicles.
Dividing the $19 bn annual cost by the warming abated gives a unit abatement cost of $3400 tn K–1. Abating the 0.013 K projected warming by global methods of equivalent unit cost would thus cost $45 tn, or approaching $6500 a year per head of global population, or almost two-thirds of $71 tn global GDP.
Stern (2006) wrote that the cost of allowing the then-projected 3 K warming to occur over the 21st century would be 0-3% of global GDP. IPCC (2013, WGII) puts the cost at 0.2-2% of GDP. Assuming that 1 K 20th-century global warming would cost as much as 0.5% of GDP (in fact so small a warming would cost nothing), global mitigation by methods of equivalent unit cost to the UK’s subsidy program for electric vehicles would be 128 times costlier than adaptation.
In general, the cost of mitigation is 1-2 orders of magnitude greater than that of adaptation (Monckton of Brenchley, 2012). Affordable measures are ineffective: effective measures are unaffordable. Too little mitigation is achieved at far too great a cost. Since the premium is 10-100 times the cost of the risk insured, the precaution of insurance is not recommended.
Mr Bailey’s evidence
With that background, let us look at the evidence Mr Bailey adduces. He concedes that the warming rate since 1979 is 0.12-0.16 Cº decade (RSS and UAH respectively). But that is half of the rate predicted by the IPCC in 1990. He asks how we can be sure that the rise in greenhouse-gas concentration just happens to coincide with an entirely natural increase in mean temperature. But that is not what skeptics say. For it is possible that CO2 has contributed to the slight warming of the past 260 years, but it is not likely that CO2 is the major cause of the warming. Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation, and the mismatch between the fluctuations in CO2 concentration change and temperature change demonstrates absence of correlation and hence of causation, at least in respect of the fluctuations.
Mr Bailey asks, “What about converging daytime and night-time temperatures?” That indicates two things: first, that there has been some warming, which is not denied; secondly, that the likelihood of severe storms outside the tropics is diminished, for it is temperature differentials, not absolute temperatures, that drive the intensity of storms. Sure enough, the IPCC admits in its 2013 report that there has been no increase in extra-tropical storminess (and none in tropical storminess, either).
Next, Mr Bailey cherry-picks a couple of months of the year and says that in those months northern-hemisphere snow cover is less by about a tenth than it was in the 1970s. Well, we had no means of measuring snow cover reliably till right at the end of the 70s; and besides, in the rest of the year there has been little, if any, decline in snow cover. Northern-hemisphere snow cover shows little change in the satellite era.
Next, Mr Bailey – who has certainly picked up all the talking-points – talks about Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, but without noticing that neither the extent nor the trend of global sea ice has changed much in the entire 35-year satellite record.
Next talking-point: Greenland, where Mr Bailey excitedly tells us the ice mass has been melting at 215 billion tons a year. However, he somehow fails to point out that the summit of the Greenland ice sheet was 2.5 Cº warmer than today a few thousand years ago, and the ice did not melt; and that from 1992-2003 a vast study area on the Greenland ice-sheet showed the ice growing at a rate of 2 feet per decade; and that even if we could measure accurately how much Greenland is gaining or losing ice 215 billion tons a year would cause an annual increase in sea level 0f – wait for drum-roll – half a millimeter.
Next, Mr Bailey, still on message – just the wrong one – says “most of the world’s 130,000 mountain glaciers are also disappearing”. No, they’re not. Actually there are more than 160,000 of them and nearly all of them are in Antarctica, which has not warmed in the satellite era, so there is no particular reason for the glaciers to vanish, and they haven’t vanished. One of them is 40 miles wide and 250 miles long.
In those parts of the world where there has been some recession of mountain glaciers, such as the Alps, researchers are finding long-lost medieval forests, mountain passes and even an entire silver mine. Besides, the retreat of the mountain glaciers began in many places in 1880, long before we could have had any influence.
And there is evidence that all but the very highest peaks of the Cordillera de Merida in the Andes were ice-free thoughout most of the Holocene. They are not ice-free now.
Next, water vapor. Mr Bailey cites a couple of studies that say there has been some increase in column water vapor in the atmosphere since 1982. However, the ISCCP satellite data, probably the most accurate way of determining this tricky variable, do not show column water vapor increasing.
Mr Bailey has his science wrong here. He says, “As temperatures increase by 1 Celsius degree, global average water vapor in the atmosphere is expected to increase by around 7%. No, the carrying capacity of the space occupied by the atmosphere for water vapour is expected to increase by 7% per Celsius degree, in accordance with the Clausius-Clapeyron relation. Just because the atmosphere can carry more water vapor, that does not mean it will. The atmosphere is not 100% saturated.
Then we are told precipitation is increasing. Well, the IPCC did not quite say that in its latest assessment report. It said confidence was high that precipitation had increased over northern-Hemisphere land areas since 1901, but that confidence in rainfall gains or losses elsewhere was low.
So let us look at the longest northern-Hemisphere mid-latitude rainfall record we have, to get some idea of how much the change in precipitation has been. Here goes.
Less than two inches more rain per year after a quarter of a millennium. Not at all easy to distinguish that from natural variability.
Mr Bailey is no Pause Denier. He admits there has been little or no warming recently, and cites Roy Spencer’s analysis of 102 models that found they had all exaggerated the warming trend by a factor of 2-5. Yet he trots out the ClimComm talking-point about the “missing heat” having gone into hiding in the ocean.
So let us look at the rate of ocean warming, measured by the 3600+ ARGO automated bathythermograph buoys.
Much of Mr Bailey’s reasoning is based not on the observed data nor on theory but on predictions. For instance, he cites an article in Nature Climate Change, a less than reliable rent-seekers’ rag, predicting that the warming rate will rise to 0.25 Cº per decade by 2020. But the IPCC predicted short-term warming at 0.28 Cº per decade as far back as 1990, and the warming rate since then has been half what it predicted. Why should we now believe predictions that have proven exaggerated by double?
Mr Bailey says the main reason for his conversion to the Temple of Thermageddon is that some researchers think climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 concentration might be as high as 6 Celsius degrees. But the main reason for these high-sensitivity estimates was the belief that the Bode feedback-amplification equation would apply unmodified to the climate, and that in particular no homeostatic asymptote would bound the output temperature.
The graph of the Bode equation shows that if feedbacks are strongly net-positive the equation would lead us to expect rapidly increasing climate sensitivity. But it does not apply to the climate. Researchers had wandered into a field with which they were not familiar, and had made the huge mistake of assuming that an equation that represents the behavior of dynamical systems such as an electronic circuit is applicable unmodified and undamped to dynamical systems such as the climate. Well, it isn’t. And without it, high sensitivity vanishes.
Mr Bailey concludes by asking:
“If generally rising temperatures, decreasing diurnal temperature differences, melting glacial and sea ice, smaller snow extent, stronger rainstorms, and warming oceans are not enough to persuade you that man-made climate is occurring, what evidence would be?”
Well, if Mr Bailey does me the courtesy of reading the above, he will realize that temperatures are not rising by much, glacial ice-melt (if occurring) is on too small a scale to raise sea level by much, global sea ice extent shows little change in two generations, ditto northern-hemisphere snow cover, there has been little increase in rainfall and (according to the IPCC) little evidence for “stronger rainstorms”, and the ocean warming is so small that it falls within the considerable measurement error.
The evidence he adduces is questionable at best on every count. The Temple of Thermageddon will have to do better than that if it wants to convince us in the teeth of the evidence.
I have presented much of the evidence in the form of simple graphs. Do readers like the way the graphs are presented, many of them with a small “Post-It note” highlighting the main point?
Conclusion
Back we go, down the tax-gobblers’ mighty mountain to base camp. Our attempt to climb it has failed at every single step. Even with the aid of CO2-emitting helicopters to lift us and our equipment to each new step as we fail to climb the one below it, no rational scientific or economic case can be made for taking any action whatsoever today in a probably futile and certainly cost-ineffective attempt to make global warming that is not happening as predicted today go away the day after tomorrow.
The correct policy to address what is likely to prove a non-problem – and what, even if it were every bit as much of a problem as the tax-gobblers would wish, could not by even their most creative quantitative easing be cost-effectively solved by any attempt at mitigation – is to have the courage to do nothing now and adapt later if necessary.
The question is why, in the teeth of the scientific and economic evidence, nearly all of the global governing class were so easily taken in or bought out or both by the strange coalescence of powerful vested interests who have, until now, profited so monstrously by the biggest fraud in history at such crippling expense in lives and treasure to the rest of us, and at such mortal threat to the integrity and trustworthiness of science itself.
Mildly amusing, but the [trimmed] stuff was funnier.
Never mind, it makes me laugh every time I think of [trimmed] and tartan slippers.
Do either of you (Gub and Gav) have anything to say that actually contributes to the discussion?
Mods, Great Uncle Bulgaria is a character in the children’s Wombles books. A brief search of the internet will show multiple images from the animated TV version and confirm that he does indeed have a furry little head and (usually) tartan slippers.
Brian – No. Are you that snail from ‘The Magic Roundabout’?
Your comment is very amusing and laughable Guba – but I could not find any homophobia in Chris Monckton’s post. On the contrary his post is a very good summary of the skeptic points of view.
facts and logic = [trimmed] = [trimmed]
Wow the trolls are going lower in their posts. Next time are they going to say, but my daddy can beat your daddy.
guburomania, first again I see, get another bonus for that?
They are doing everything they can to disrupt the conversation. In the last few days it has struck me that this is also the reason for some of the mindless proclamations and pronouncements pushed by the media in recent months, such as the asthma story from the other day. The proverbial blind man should be able to see that the story was illogical, yet there it is on mainstream news sites. This is all diversion tactics.
This post by Gubulgaria should be removed, or have a moderator reply to it. There is nothing Homophobic in the the head post. Nothing.
Useful idiot Gulliblebulgaria has posted something (first!) that is factually incorrect, It might be the only response some people see, and might play into the minds of people who did not read the whole post. If he is getting paid for his propaganda you should not leave it as first post, to the delight of his/her Pay Masters
If you dont want to delete, maybe demote it down the replies.
Only my 2c.
[That comment was trimmed. .mod]
Gubulgaria,
Looking forward to seeing your scientific refutation of all of Lord Moncktons post.
When you have it ready, please let me know by leaving a comment directing me where to read it at http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com.
Cheers
Roger
YAWN.
Refutation please 🙂
This is what I’ve been looking for.
ALL of the important points in one easy-to-reference location.
And this question has been asked on almost every “climate change” related article and forum I’ve been to lately, so I know it’s been programmed into the warmist bots. And here’s your answer.
By the way – Thank you Lord Monckton for this. Expect a lot of whiny angry posts claiming it’s all “wrong” from the butt-hurt alarmist defenders.
You are right. I think this article, plus the one from Bishop Hill a few years back are 2 very strong ones for making things clear. http://www.bishop-hill.net/storage/ScientificHeresy.pdf
The only thing I would add to this is that it is a fact that given only natural forces the world is certain to reenter a glacial period. Sea level would lower several hundred feet stranding most major ports, glaciers would grow and destroy millions of acres of arable and pleasantly habitable areas including northern Europe and eastern North America, the global climate would be much drier over all with forests drying up burning away and changing into grasslands with grasslands drying up and turning into semi-arid or deserts.
These are facts recorded in 3 million years of geologic data. Now compare these facts to the worse-case scenario hyperbole on the CAGW side. It’s a no brainer on which scenario is worse.
RWturner,
I could not agree more. The current interglacial has already lasted longer than most. The turn towards colder and drier conditions and shorter growing seasons in the major food producing regions of the world would/will be a truly frightening and epic disaster, playing out over centuries of time, and causing misery and death on a scale that humanity has never witnessed.
Perhaps the only thing which could be worse would be to couple such an eventuality with the simultaneous dismantling of the technology and infrastructure that would/will allow us to perhaps ameliorate these grave consequences.
The AGW industry is not about saving the planet, most of its participants know there is no achievable “solution”, even when framed in their own terms. It is a new religion, exploiting irrational fears just like the old ones did/do. There is much gold and prestige for the priesthood, and satisfaction for some in persecuting the heretics.
“The AGW industry is not about saving the planet,” nope, its about “Profits of Doom”.
Climanrecon, yes you are at least partly right, But it wasn’t until the global government crowd latched onto the global warming issue that the science became corrupted. Before that the [anti-capitalist], global socialist government crowd had been spinning their wheels without getting any traction with the “Population Bomb” concept.
These guys saw AGW as the perfect means to their ends. It wrapped up original sin, white guilt, and global redistribution of wealth all into one neat package.
Again the AGW initiative is merely the means to the ends. If we counter the scientific points with facts and logic, they will only come up with another means to their ends. To truly kill this hydra we must expose these peoples intent to the light of day. If they came out and were honest with their intentions most people would reject this concept of dissolving all countries and creating a global government and redistribute the world wealth.
The only way to attack this hydra is to go for the heart, (expose it to the light of day). Read about the UN Agenda 21 initiative, step one in this agenda, is to disarm the population. This has been done in many places already, but the US 2nd amendment stands in their way. Many things that are happening today are all linked to the same objective. AGW, 2nd amendment rights, Political Correctness, Class warfare, racial divides, it all ties together
(From Warren in England).
I read your four paragraphs and I am in COMPLETE AGREEMENT with you, Many thanks.
I agree with everything you said, except: “…global government crowd latched onto the global warming issue ”
The global government crowd invented the global warming issue.
A true “one world government” is unattainable in the long term. It’s a nice thought in that there would be no more nuclear threats or (non government sanctioned) mass starvation. The problem is: When there are no outside challenges to face, the attention of society turns inward upon itself (human nature) and internal struggles follow which invariably tear the society apart.
Anybody that thinks Agenda 21 is feasible, has never lived in the real world.
Tom, the problem with your conspiracy theory is that the US Supreme Court has already said that the constitution guarantees US citizens not convicted of a felony the right to own guns. Unless they can get control of congress and push through changes to the constitution, there is simply no way to disarm the population.
It is a serious problem, for those advocating expensive policies, that the largest number of sceptics about newsworthy AGW happen to be thermometers.
Being inanimate they tend not to be swayed by alarmist rhetoric and instead just report the fact that the models are out of touch with reality.
How can they persuade measurement devices that they are wrong?
Since those measurement devices show the earth — land, lower troposphere, and oceans — warmed at the fastest rate in recorded history beginning in the late 1800s, who is it that should be reading their thermometers more carefully?
Moderator: Please ban DBStealey from this forum for his personal attacks on me, and on many others.
[No. .mod]
warrenlb-
Your “recorded history” began in the 1800’s with the invention of thermometers and physics tells us that no warming from man’s added CO2 was possible before 1950, so what does that tell us about your screed?
You are another who uses “facts” as if they were truth. The truth is, mankind has gone through several periods in recorded human history where the climate was much warmer than today and at least, part (most) of the warming which has occurred since the 1800’s is natural variation.
Are you kidding? dbstealey is what keeps me coming back.
warrenlb says:
Please ban DBStealey from this forum
warren, giving my opinion [‘he’s nuts’] is nothing compared with labeling scientific skeptics as being the same as Holocaust deniers. But I never see you complaining about that.
What you really want is censorship of those you don’t agree with. But as we see, you have no moral standing to demand it, and it isn’t going to happen anyway. (I do not know the identity of the moderator who said “No”, and I didn’t ask for that support. Even though I appreciate it.)
Everyone is different. I don’t cry about it when someone like ‘Sou’ makes really vicious comments about me, by name, on her blog — referencing opinions I made here, not there (I almost never click on her blog). So, I apologize for hurting your feelings. And I’m glad I only said ‘nuts’. This is the internet. I’ve seen far worse. And so have you.
Now, regarding your opinion that the planet…
…warmed at the fastest rate in recorded history beginning in the late 1800s
Which is it? Recorded history? Or the late 1800’s? Because the ice core records show that temperatures fluctuated by many whole degrees just prior to the Holocene, and even more before that — when CO2 remained steady, and low.
The alarmist crowd is trying to make a big deal out of the almost flat temperatures over the past century. A change of 0.7ºC is extremely small. That very tiny fluctuation makes the wild-eyed Chicken Little ravings (Oops!) of your side look ridiculous. In reality, we would all be better off if global T remained within a ± 1º range — which it appears to be doing. So what’s the problem?
Yeah kind of too bad we weren’t starting a cooling trend when thermometers were invented, than we could have “cooled at the fastest rate in recorded history beginning in the late 1800s.”
It would have been so much cooler (so to speak) in making assertions based on a version of global geology, evolutionary biology/ecology, and climate history truncated down to 160 years.
Creationists beliefs need to assert the earth is 6,000 years old in order to support their claims. This is at least better than “humans are burning up the earth” alarmists who need to assert the earth 160 years old in order to support their claims.
warrenlb
Please state the “attacks” on you which you assert have been made by dbstealey because I have seen none.
He has stated that you are “nuts”. That is not an “attack”: it is a mild understatement pertaining to the irrational ravings which you post on WUWT. For example, in this thread you wrote
Recorded history began long before 1800 and it is “nuts” to pretend otherwise. Importantly, the temperature rise began before the human emissions could have started to have observable effect (i.e. ~1950) so the thermometers indicate the opposite of what you assert.
“Nuts” is an attack of you? NO! Don’t be silly.
Richard
MCourtney:
One person who is completely unteachable is warrenlb. His mind is closed tight to any facts that contradict his eco-religion. Put simply: he’s nuts.
dbstealey,
Given that you stated this, I would assume that you are open to facts or points that differ from your positions. Can you give any examples of this occurring?
Chris
Your demand of dbstealey is pure trolling.
warrenlb made a false and untrue assertion that dbstealey made “attacks” on him and others. Furthermore, warrenlb claimed dbstealey should be banned saying
dbstealy defended himself by refuting those falsehoods and he suggested they had been made because
Thus, dbstealey made a reasoned and reasonable rebuttal of the untrue attacks of him by warrenlb.
Your response is to ‘pile in’ on dbstealey by writing
He does NOT need to do that! An accused has a right to defend himself and is assumed to be innocent until shown otherwise.
Your addition to the attack of dbstealey is even more egregious than that of warrenlb because warrenlb had the courage to attack using his own name but you have ‘piled in’ from behind the coward’s shield of anonymity.
Richard
Chris,
Just yesterday I was labeled as being “silly”, and I was told that I was “stupid”. That’s normal online conversation, and I don’t let it get to me. Most people would disregard it.
But since warrenlb is such a delicate flower, I apologized to him for saying I thought he was nuts. The poor thing couldn’t handle it, so I backed off.
Now, what was your problem again?
Richard Courtney,
Ahhh, the self appointed policeman is on the beat! Is this an appointment by Anthony Watts, or did you just just take this upon yourself? Gosh, the last time I checked, dbtstealey is capable of defending himself. But no matter. Richard, perhaps you could familiarize yourself with the concept of structured blogging. If you do so, you will note that my post was entered under dbstealey’s comment: “One person who is completely unteachable is warrenlb. His mind is closed tight to any facts that contradict his eco-religion.”
Further analysis will that my comments do not fall under the comments you referenced, so those are irrelevant to my comments and your retorts. Thus, sadly, your rant must go into the trash heap of unjustified attacks. But no matter, hope springs eternal! Keep up the good efforts, sir, and eventually your random attacks will strike home.
dbstealey,
Does my point really require further clarification? I do not know how to reduce it further beyond two sentences. Do you require further simplification? To refresh your memory, here is what I said;
“I would assume that you are open to facts or points that differ from your positions. Can you give any examples of this occurring?”
Chris (quoting himself)
Well, there are no facts nor measurements that are contrary to the general skeptical position on man-made climate change/CAGW: Mankind is responsible for the measurable parts of the recent, and very beneficial, CO2 increase in the earth’s atmosphere. The recent increase in CO2 is likely, though not conclusively, responsible for some part (perhaps 1/10 and 1/4 of the warming that occurred between 1975 and 1996); however CO2 cannot be held the cause of the earlier warming between 1500 BC and 400 BC, between 450 and 900 AD, nor between 1650 and 1850; between 1850 and 1880, between 1910 and 1945; nor the minor cooling between 1880 and 1910, the cooling between 1945 and 1975, nor the recent plateau between 1996 and 2015.
ALL measurements and “evidence” of man-caused global warming are evidence of previous climate events and occurrences such as last-year’s all-time record Antarctic sea ice extents, the minor 7% reduction in Arctic sea ice, loss of glacier ice, land and sea-based temperature increases, etc. To repeat, NO FACTS REFUTE THE GENERAL SKEPTIC POSITION. Then again, NO FACTS support the climate alarmism and political positions of the CAGW religion.
Chris says:
“I would assume that you are open to facts or points that differ from your positions. Can you give any examples of this occurring?”
Examples are everywhere. Since I won’t go look them up gratis, feel free to corroborate them. But put simply, it’s this:
warrenlb is a dyed in the wool climate alarmist. He believes that man-made global warming is occurring, and that it is a big part of overall global warming. He probably believes that almost all global warming is MMGW. But that is only his Belief.
On the other hand, as a skeptic I simply say: prove it. Or at least, produce solid, convincing evidence showing that to be the case.
But warrenlb has never accepted my challenge to produce empirical measurements quantifying the fraction of global warming (out of all global warming, both natural and man-made) that is caused by human CO2 emissions.
I keep asking warrenlb and others to produce verifiable, empirical, testable measurements of MMGW. But in every case, warrenlb and his cronies deflect. They have NEVER posted any such measurements.
Without measurements, we can conclude a couple of possibilities:
One is that MMGW is so minuscule that it is impossible to measure. Despite searching for such measurements for many decades now, by thousands of well paid scientists using the latest equipment, not one of them has produced such a measurement. So it is extremely likely that the fraction of global warming due to human CO2 is below the background noise. It is just too small to measure.
The other possibility is that MMGW doesn’t exist. Personally, I think it does, but that any warming due to human emissions is extremely tiny; on the order of ≈0.5ºC per doubling of CO2. Maybe even less.
If either of those is the case, we have absolutely nothing to worry about from the rise in CO2, which is completely harmless, and very beneficial to the biosphere.
But that conflicts with warrenlb’s catechism, so he will never agree. But then, I note that he has no measurements, either. Science without measurements is merely a conjecture; an opinion.
I’ll be happy to answer any additional, sincere questions you may have.
dbstealey said: “Chris says:“I would assume that you are open to facts or points that differ from your positions. Can you give any examples of this occurring?”
Examples are everywhere. Since I won’t go look them up gratis, feel free to corroborate them.”
No, I shan’t do through your thousands of posts to find the possible one (or more) that responds to my question. They are your posts, not mine, so those fall under your purview. Once again, you are quick to the task of asking people to defend their positions, but sadly lacking in willingness to defend yours.
What evidence leads you to this conclusion?
Glad you asked. Of course, you will learn nothing from the answer. But for open minded readers, I’m happy to reply:
Prof Richard Lindzen has written that a doubling of CO2 will result in between 0.5ºC and 0.66ºC of global warming. That is nothing. what’s more, there are not enough fossil fuels left to double atmospheric CO2, so the effect will be less than that.
I agree with Prof. Lindzen. He is not the only one who thinks that the sensitivity number is very low. Estimates from well known climatologists range from just over 1ºC, to zero (Dr. Ferenc Miscolczi). Based on empirical evidence and real world observations, the sensitivity number must be below 1ºC.
For those interested in the subject, here is Lindzen’s CV. I’ve read close to half of his twenty dozen papers. I doubt very much that he has read a single one, so it’s no wonder that he doesn’t have a clue.
Chris says:
No, I shan’t do through your thousands of posts to find the possible one
That is exactly what you want me to do, for free. But you are not willing. How about if I assign you some homework? Will you do it for me? Didn’t think so.
So my comment stands. If you want to try and falsify it, you have plenty of reading to do. Have fun.
dbstealey said:” Chris says:
No, I shan’t do through your thousands of posts to find the possible one
That is exactly what you want me to do, for free. But you are not willing. How about if I assign you some homework? Will you do it for me? Didn’t think so.
So my comment stands. If you want to try and falsify it, you have plenty of reading to do. Have fun.”
Actually, if you asked me something about the posts I had made, I’d be happy to defend that. But that’s me – clearly you are different. And of course my posts total 100-200, not the 1000s, or perhaps 10s of thousands, that you have posted. So your task clearly would be more challenging. I’m willing to back up my posts, you are not – thanks for clearing that up!
@dbstealey.
You made a claim “any warming due to human emissions is extremely tiny; on the order of ≈0.5ºC per doubling of CO2. Maybe even less.”
Now its your turn in the box. Back it up.
@warrenbot,
Pay attention, boy. I already did at 2:21 pm above. What were you doing, playing with yourself? No wonder you’re going blind! ☺
====================
Chris,
Wake up, and pay attention. Based on your own rationale, it would be a lot harder for me than for you. It would only be easy if I kept a copy of my comments, in order and by subject. I don’t, and I suspect most other folks don’t, either.
So go find whatever you’re looking for. It amuses me to think of you furiously searching my comments, just so you can say, “I found it! A comment that, if I read it just the way I want to, it will support my stupid argument!”
I don’t even recall what you wanted in the first place. All I know is that the alarmist crowd has lost the debate: even if some minuscule warming has resulted from the rise in CO2, it is completely harmless, and CO2 is beneficial to the biosphere. What’s your problem with THAT?
See, you’re supposed to be convincing me that I’m wrong about MMGW. But all you’re doing is amusing me with your silly comments.
Chris
I notice that you avoid answering my rebuttal of your egregious attack of dbstealey by using ad hom. and irrelevance.
I have no intention of assisting your attempt at deflection although I do answer it
I am very familar with it, as I am also familiar with – and grossly offended by – nasty trolls such as your self who attempt to deflect threads by attacking people from behind your coward’s shield of anonymity.
I repeat the substance of my post which you responded
Now, withdraw your unsolicited and untrue attack of dbstealey which is your demand for him to provide information to prove his innosence, and then slither back under your bridge.
Richard
It seems that there is a belief that the thermometers are wrong, why else would there be monthly adjustments? Maybe the thermometers just need more convincing that they are wrong.
Isn’t that a job for those who specialize in ‘communicating the science’ ? ( or should that be in projecting the propaganda ? )
Richard Courtney:
You say: “Recorded history began long before 1800 and it is “nuts” to pretend otherwise. Importantly, the temperature rise began before the human emissions could have started to have observable effect (i.e. ~1950) so the thermometers indicate the opposite of what you assert.”
My post never claimed recorded history began before 1800; it said that the RATE of temperature rise SINCE 1800 was the fastest in recorded history. RATE of RISE. Steepness of the temperature curve. AFTER 1800. Got it now? Or are you still struggling to read?
And then you post nonsense: “The temperature rise began BEFORE [my emphasis] human emissions could have started to have observable effect (ie ~1950). Human emissions thru the burning of fossil fuels started to ramp up during the industrial age, which was well underway by the late 19th century. Last time anyone checked, 1950 was well AFTER the end of the 19th century. not BEFORE.
Whose nuts?
Warrenlb (replying critically to dbstealey)
OK. SO, why did the global average temperatures rise so “rapidly” BEFORE man-released CO2 was significantly increasing total CO2 levels – that is, why did a very small increase in CO2 cause your claimed increase in global average temperatures between 1800 and 1950;
AND, why did NO measurable increase in CO2 cause a rise in global average temperatures between 1650 and 1800;
AND, why did global averages temperatures decline between 1950 and 1975 while man-released CO2 DID increase;
AND, why did global average temperatures NOT increase while man-released CO2 increased about 34% over an 18 years period between 1996 and 2015 when measured atmospheric clarity remained steady?
In all the 4 billion-year history of the world, there is only one 21 year period between 1975 and 1996 that both CO2 levels and global average temperatures increased as predicted by the global circulation models.
@RACookPE1978.
You ask: “why did the global average temperatures rise so “rapidly” BEFORE man-released CO2 was significantly increasing total CO2 levels”.
My response: No, while the rise began about 1880, Global average temperatures didn’t rise ‘so rapidly’ until after 1950.
You ask: “Why did NO measurable increase in CO2 cause a rise in global average temperatures between 1650 and 1800;”
My response: Global average Temperatures were on a slow downtrend over the last 5000 years, until the industrial age rise. Any upward or downward variations about this 5000 year downward trend line are due to natural causes, not man-caused.
You ask: “why did global averages temperatures decline between 1950 and 1975 while man-released CO2 DID increase?”
My response. W.M.O. (The World Meteorological Organization) defines 30 years as the minimum time frame for a climate trend to emerge from short and intermediate term weather cycles.
You ask: “why did global average temperatures NOT increase while man-released CO2 increased about 34% over an 18 years period between 1996 and 2015 when measured atmospheric clarity remained steady? ”
Same answer.
I note that warrenlb cannot answer RACook’s post.
[And: “Whose nuts?” I don’t know. Whose?]
So I answer Courtney’s challenge to my post, but Courtney doesn’t respond while RACook does. So I answer RA Cook’s challenge, and Stealey posts a non-answer to my response to RACook.
Where is Courtney’s response to my original answer to his challenge?
warrenlib, get off your high horse, sonny. No one owes you anything, and what you’re complaining about (someone else answering) is done all the time — more by folks like House than anyone. And you do your own share of it, too.
[Snip. No more ad hominem attacks. ~mod.]
warrenlb,
You never answered my question: whose nuts?
warrenlb
You say an ask
I answer here.
It is the astonished reply of RACookPE1978 to your infantile drivel.
I do not need to repeat the words of RACookPE1978. Indeed, my so doing could be interpreted as trying to steel his thunder. And there is nothing special about my words compared to those of RACookPE1978.
You posted nonsense. I and others pointed out that it is nonsense. It is time for you to conclude this sub-thread by admitting that you posted nonsense.
Richard
Hi Richard,
warrenlb is so fixated on his repeatedly falsified MMGW nonsense that he can’t think straight. I doubt if he ever could.
Now warrenlb will probably whine for a moderator to have me banned, because I hurt the delicate little pansy’s feelings. But of course he won’t reply to this, because he criticized me for answering him “uninvited”. So he isn’t invited to respond here.
And I agree with you that warrenlb posts infantile drivel. That’s about the only kind of argument he uses.
@RichardCourtney
Do you have an answer yet to my response to your challenge?:
Richard Courtney:
You say: “Recorded history began long before 1800 and it is “nuts” to pretend otherwise. Importantly, the temperature rise began before the human emissions could have started to have observable effect (i.e. ~1950) so the thermometers indicate the opposite of what you assert.”
My post never claimed recorded history began before 1800; it said that the RATE of temperature rise SINCE 1800 was the fastest in recorded history. RATE of RISE. Steepness of the temperature curve. AFTER 1800. Got it now? Or are you still struggling to read?
And then you post nonsense: “The temperature rise began BEFORE [my emphasis] human emissions could have started to have observable effect (ie ~1950). Human emissions thru the burning of fossil fuels started to ramp up during the industrial age, which was well underway by the late 19th century. Last time anyone checked, 1950 was well AFTER the end of the 19th century. not BEFORE
warrenlb:
Repeating nonsense does not convert it into sense.
I iterate my suggestion to you that you have ignored while repeating your already repeatedly refuted nonsense.
Richard
It should be easy to convince me, you just need to show me the workings of how human CO2 travels backwards in time to produce warming before we produce CO2!
RobJM your comment indicates a misunderstanding. The evidence indicates that naturally occurring CO2 over long term time periods from ice cores follows temperature increase and decrease by about 800 years.
But what the post is alluding to is the view of Professor Salby that the majority of CO2 (‘we’ only produce 3% of the 100% CO2 in the atmosphere – the remaining 97% is natural due to ocean degassing and humidity) also follows temperature increase (and vice-versa for a decrease) at a much shorter time scale. He is of the view that our CO2 contribution could only amount to a few tenths of a degree C in global temperature increase in time. See: http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/a-recent-seminar-presentation-by.html
Human CO2 obviously does not “travel back in time”. Human as well as natural occurring CO2 tends to dissipate in the atmosphere due to predominately vegetation uptake but also colder ocean water in the polar regions and according to a number of climate scientists within a time period ranging between 4 to 40 years. (Salby says 4 to 7 years; the IPCC erroneously conclude it does so within hundreds of years and warming activists a ridiculous 1000 years plus!!). I hope that helps.
Except that there is little doubt that humans are the cause of the increase: The natural cycle was quite stable with only 8 ppmv/°C change over thousands of years in the past 800,000 years. The current increase is 110 ppmv over 160 years, where humans have emitted over 200 ppmv CO2 extra above the natural cycle…
The 3%/97% emissions is a false comparison, as the natural sinks are 98.5 of total emissions with near zero human sinks: nature is more sink than source and humans are fully responsible for the increase.
Further, the 4-7 years is the residence time, that is the average time any individual CO2 molecule (whatever its origin) resides in the atmosphere before being exchanged by CO2 from the oceans or vegetation. That has nothing to do with the time needed to remove an extra amount of CO2 above equilibrium which has an e-fold decay rate of ~50 years. The IPCC uses the Bern model, which assumes rapid saturation of the deep oceans, for which is no sign. Thus both Salby and the IPCC are wrong.
Where I can agree with Dr. Salby is that the effect of more CO2 is far less than the climate models show and mostly beneficial…
Thanks Ferdy. But of course this is just your opinion which you are entitled to but you do not provide any links except for the part you agree with.
Ferdinand, if the warming over the last 180 years did cause the oceans to warm, then the oceans would have released a lot of CO2. You are assuming that simply because it changed, that it must be caused by man.
Frank and Mark,
The solubility of CO2 in seawater was established some 70 years ago. The equilibrium between seawater CO2 pressure (pCO2) and atmosphere changes with about 8 ppmv/°C. That is all.
If we may assume that the drop in temperature between the warm MWP and the cold LIA was about 0.8°C (according to the reconstructions of Moberg and Esper), that shows a drop of ~6 ppmv in high resolution (~20 years) ice cores. Or about 8 ppmv/°C…
If we may assume that the MWP was as warm or warmer than today, the warming since the LIA thus is good for an increase of 6 ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere.
Humans on the other side emitted and emit twice the amount of CO2 which remained and remains in the atmosphere, currently 110 ppmv above the equilibrium (~290 ppmv) for the current temperature.
About more proof that humans are the cause of the increase plus more pictures and links:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
@Ferdinand Engelbeen
What I think you are arguing is that the rate of increases were slower over the last 800,000 years. I find it hard to believe we can claim with reasonable certainty that a global 150 year spike in CO2 never ever occurred in the last 800,00 years. Even if we had conclusive evidence that in 800,000 years there was never a period where CO2 increased at a rate equal to the last 160 years, so what?
The crisis argument contains the notion of “too high” levels of CO2, If natural cycles get to this “too high” level in 1000 years or 200 it is irrelevant if the issue is amount of CO2.
Alx,
The traceability of a 160 ppmv spike in an ice core is a matter of resolution, which depends of the snow accumulation rate of where the ice core originates. For coastal ice cores, that starts with a resolution of 10 years over the past 150 years, before reaching rock bottom, for the deep inland cores with a few mm per year precipitation, the resolution is 560 years over the past 800,000 years.
The repeatability of ice core CO2 for the same part of the core is 1.2 ppmv (1 sigma). That makes that the current increase of average 55 ppmv over the past 160 years would be visible as a peak of ~15 ppmv even in the oldest ice or over 80 ppmv for more recent times and high resolution.
Thus simply said: there was no such peak of 110 ppmv as seen today over the past 800,000 years.
But I doubt that the current peak or even a CO2 doubling will have much impact and if so, mostly positive.
Ferdinand says:
Where I can agree with Dr. Salby is that the effect of more CO2 is far less than the climate models show and mostly beneficial.
And:
I doubt that the current peak or even a CO2 doubling will have much impact and if so, mostly positive.
Climate alarmists, sit up straight and pay attention to that. The rise in CO2 is not a problem.
So what are you gonna do now, complain about methane? ☺
dbstealey, Ferdinand is a lukewarme like me. but even methane is not a problem, as catastrophists recently admitted
Hi Hans Erren,
I don’t personally go by lukewarmers, etc. All I go by is whether someone believes that man-made global warming (MMGW) is any kind of a problem or not.
I don’t think there is any measurable MMGW myself. But if someone believes otherwise, I say to them: post your measurements quantifying the specific fraction of global warming since the LIA, which you believe is caused by MMGW.
Is it 90%?
Is it 50%?
Is it 3%?
Is it 0.002%?
No one has ever answered that question, and I’ve asked it many, many times. My feeling is that after a century of searching by thousands of scientists, using the latest equipment available to them, if human CO2 emissions were a problem then we would have measurements acceptable by most everyone. But there are no such measurements. And we would have had evidence of global harm from CO2. But there is no such evidence; CO2 is completely harmless at current levels, as far as we know.
Based on the physics of radiation, I personally think that the rise in CO2 probably has had some minor warming effect. But as Willis points out, CO2 is a 3rd-order forcing, which is swamped by second-order forcings. Those are swamped by 1st-order forcings, so any warming from human emissions is probably far too small to measure.
We can see that even a large rise in CO2 will not cause any noticeable global warming by looking at this chart. Find the rise in global T from a 10% or 20% rise in CO2:
So we need empirical, testable (verifiable), accurate measurements to know whether MMGW exists, and if so, if it is any kind of problem or not. But as far as I know, no one has any such measurements. Every guesstimate up to now has been no more than a personal opinion.
Without real world measurements, MMGW must be extremely small and insignificant. Maybe it does not exist at all; no one knows. So I am happy when someone like Ferdinand states that CO2 is not a problem, and that on net balance it is beneficial. If that is the case, it destroys the alarmists’ conjecture, and their entire ‘carbon’ scare is debunked.
[BTW, I was kidding about methane.]
Hi dbstealey,
I can reassure you, even for lukewarmers MMGW is not a problem! Au contraire: it is a blessing. But I am still convinced that Mockton has the physics wrong wrt the CO2 cycle. If we go with the latest number of 1.3 degrees per CO2 doubling, then the warming since LIA is 1.3*ln(400/280)/ln(2) or 0.68 degrees C. This temperature rise has been beneficial. If we consider a likely future constant airborne CO2 fraction, then under a business as usual scenario the total warming since LIA will be a benign1.7 degrees C.
Hi Hans Erren,
You’re a true scientist, one whom I have always listened to. I very much appreciate your thoughts, and the fact that you comment here.
WRT your 0.68º rise in temperature, that seems to be in line with Prof. Lindzen’s assumed 0.66ºC warming from the rise in CO2. I agree that one and a fraction degrees more warming would be a net benefit to the biosphere. But based on the way the global climate is acting, I would be very surprised if that much warming actually occurs. Of course, no one knows at this point. Bragging rights go to the person who makes the most accurate guesstimate.
You also say, “If we consider a likely future constant…”. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that as atmospheric CO2 rises, more is required to cause the same amount of warming. Could you please explain what constant you were referring to? Thanks in advance.
Hi dbstealey,
The logarithmic relationship of climate sensitivity already incorporates diminishing returns. The pea under the scaremongerers thimble is the theory of “saturating sinks”. Normal diffusion works the other way: the higher the level the faster the sink speed. Imagine a leaking pool: the higher the water lever the faster the leak. The scary Bern CO2 model works the other way round: the higher the CO2 level, the slower the leak.
In a standard diffusion case the airborne fraction remains constant in an increasing emission scenario This has been observed the last 70 years: more CO2 is entering the system, but still 50% enters into the sinks, So the sinks are increasing, and not decreasing as the Bern model prescribes. So I am fairly confident that with evermore increasing emissions the sinks will increase too.
Hi Hans,
I agree completely, and apparently so does the biosphere. Agricultural productivity has risen in lockstep with the rise in CO2. I know that is not absolute proof, but it is extremely strong evidence that CO2 is beneficial.
Also, I keep asking if anyone can show any global harm due to the rise in CO2. To this day I have never gotten an answer. Therefore, it seems clear that CO2 is “harmless”.
The central tenet of the climate alarmists’ argument is the demonization of “carbon” (CO2). All facts and evidence indicate that they were wrong about that. When a skeptic is wrong about a conjecture or hypothesis, he will acknowledge it, and try to understand why he was wrong.
That is the difference between skeptics (including lukewarmers) and alarmists. When the alarmists are proven to be wrong, rather than trying to understand how to fix their conjecture, they dig in their heels and fight to rescue their argument. Usually by confirmation bias: cherry-picking only those factoids that support their conjecture.
So that is the problem we’re dealing with. Skeptics (the only honest kind of scientists) have won the MMGW debate (if by winning we mean that AGW is at most a very minor effect). That is why the debate has drifted into the political arena. In politics, facts and evidence are not necessary.
I prefer rigorous science. I’m skeptical of any conjecture that does not have the support of verifiable, quantifiable measurements. I think you view it the same way. So if actual, testable measurements quantifying AGW are found, measurements that withstand falsification and scrutiny by the scientific community, I will accept them and alter my understanding if necessary.
But so far, there are no meassurements. So the debate devolves into a narrative by the alarmist side, and by framing the debate their way, they have an advantage. But Albert Einstein didn’t let that stop him, and we should not let their scientifically weak arguments stop us. It often seems fruitless and frustrating to refute each argument as it appears. But in the long run, I think the truth will remain, and will be eventually accepted.
Again, I always appreciate your views on the subject. For quite a while I argued with Ferdinand Engelbeen over the source of the rise in CO2. I believed it was mainly due to the 800 ±200 year lag in ocean outgassing from the MWP. But with patience and plenty of facts, Ferdinand convinced me that it is due almost entirely to human emissions. I’ve encorporated that into my thinking, and I very much appreciate his taking the time to explain repeatedly, until it sunk into my hard head. Now I regard Ferdinand as one of our resident experts here. You too, I might add. So thanks to you both. You are real assets to Anthony’s “Best Science” site.
Yeah, that human CO2 is smarter than the natural CO2. It causes droughts, floods, snow, no snow, rain famine, fuzzy little animals to move higher on a mountain, you name it. And now time travel. What will it think of next?
No, it’s more a case of “Natural” CO2 being elitist in its “Organic Nature” and snubbing the unnatural, destructive Man-Made CO2. That, and plants prefer Natural to Human-synthesized gas, don’t you know?
/s
/sarc on:
And it is dirty, that CO2. Best to call it carbon, which helps to see it as the filthy pollution is truly is.
And not just physically dirty either, but morally dirty. Filthy. Repugnant even. How so?
It is now about to cause whoring on a massive scale:
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/296679-dems-warn-climate-change-could-drive-women-to-transactional-sex
/sarc off
I wonder though…do the people who think of CO2 as “carbon” worry about getting too much chlorine in their diet when they put salt on their food?
A superb piece of scientific writing by Lord Monckton once again: he is like no-one else on this earth and I shall always continue to publicly advertise his wise words. If I was able to donate the £1,300,000- to assist in the making of his film (which will smash the gravy train of Albert Gore et al) then I would do so gladly. If anyone is willing to donate to that purpose then please do so straight away, thank you.
Thank you Lord Monckton once again ! SUPERB … absolutely SUPERB !
Isn’t algore riding a gravy boat?
This is great to have all this info at one location. Thanks for that!!!
Unless I missed it, I didn’t see a global drought graph:
Maybe there is a better one. This one only goes up to June 2012 – is there an update to this graph?
To answer your question about updates, J. Philip Peterson, we’d need to know the source of your graph.
here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/22/interesting-graph-fraction-of-the-globe-in-drought-1982-2012/
There appears to be an update for North America from Jan 2004 – Feb 2015 on this page:
http://www.drought.gov/nadm/content/map/2015/02
I suspect the global drought graph is lurking somewhere else on the site…
The graph shown by J. Philip Peterson is from Hao et al. (2014). it shows a slight decline in the fraction of the global land area under drought conditions. I don’t know that anyone has updated it.
Lord Monckton,
I have never been able to grasp how it might be possible for there to be a positive temperature feedback from increased CO2. I should think that the climate system does not care from where an increase in heat comes from, be it CO2, sunrise, a volcano, or an alien spaceship. If increased heat causes more increased heat, should we not be boiling by perhaps 10AM each morning? Do you have an explanation for a positive-feedback concept that somehow leads to a stable climate such as we have?
Well said DHR. As an engineer who has studied the effects of positive and negative feedback in systems, I have often wondered why the climate hadn’t screamed off to infinity years ago if it had all that postulated positive feedback.
Positive feedback, combined with a time delay leads to oscillation. In fact, if you look at the long-term temperature history, you can’t go past the conclusion that the Earth is a bistable oscillator. It goes warm, it goes cold. Both states are partially stable, so the Earth pauses in each state for a while before it changes.
At the moment, we are in a warm state. It will change into a cold state presently, it is just a question of how long it takes:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/EPICA_temperature_plot.svg/600px-EPICA_temperature_plot.svg.png
Read the novel “Fallen Angels” by Larry Niven, et al to see how the “green” movement will handle the proof that climate change is an elaborate fraud.
er, no. Positive feedback with (or without) a time delay leads to slamming into the limits on one side or the other.
*negative* feedback with a time delay can cause oscillation.
Assuming of course that only one feedback mechanism is happening. Which is unlikely.
I’m no advocate of the positive-feedback theory, but it is not inconceivable.
is fed back to result in 
of additional warming, then knock-on effects of a, say, CO2-caused increase of 1 K would then be an additional 1/2 K + 1/4 K + 1/8 K + . . . , continuing “forever” but nonetheless approaching a limit of 2 K. The infinite number of terms adds up to a finite sum.
If each temperature increase
1/2 K + 1/4 K + 1/8 K + .
===========
The presentation is very good, except it does not label the graphs sequentially. If one looks at the feedback graph labelled “Bode Feedback”, the effect of infinite series is plain. Convergence for the series sum(X^n) only converges where X<1.
In other words, any feedback greater than 1 gives an infinite response. The system will slam against the rails (power supply limited) either negative or positive, and may well oscillate depending on lags, without the slightest change in the forcings.
In other words, if we actually do have a climate system with high positive feedback (Climate Science assumes a feedback of 3), then the ice ages and climate in general does not depending upon the forcings. Instead it is an oscillation driving by the lags in the system and the high positive feedback, and nothing we can do regarding CO2 will have any measurable effect.
Trying to change the oscillation of a high positive closed loop feedback oscillator (Climate) by a minute adjustment to the open loop gain (CO2 levels) is a meaningless exercise because the limits and the frequency are not a function of the gain. They are a result of the power supply limits and the lag.
Joe –
DHR’s point is surely a bit different.
Isn’t your original delta T potentially there all the time, from that near-infinite supply of H20? In what way does adding CO2, greenhouse gas though it is, change that situation? If there are temperature-induced feedbacks, aren’t they already there? This is something I have posted often, and no one seems to want to tell me what’s different about CO2 warming. What’s the argument? Is it the spatial mixing of CO2, relative to the lumpiness of H20 distribution? How does it work?
ferdberple: “In other words, any feedback greater than 1 gives an infinite response.”
was “fed back” to result in 
of warming, but the 1/2 factor there is more properly termed “loop gain”.than “feedback,” and it is the greater-than-unity loop gain, not feedback, that causes things to blow up. (This is without lags; I’m not going to go there.) Loop gain is the product of feedback and open-loop gain, i.e., what the gain would be if there were no feedback.
Just in case our seemingly inconsistent responses are confusing, it might not be amiss for me to let DHR know that I largely agree with what ferdberple said, except that we have used terms inconsistently.
I said that the
Although I’m not sure of how the IPCC does things, it seems unlikely to me that he IPCC assumes a loop gain of 3, so, if the open-loop gain is, say, 1 / 3.2 and the feedback is 3, then the loop gain would be 3 / 3.2 < 1, and theoretically it wouldn't blow up. As a practical matter, though, that much loop gain seems implausible.
As to Lord Monckton's position on the "Bode equation," who knows what he means? But a problem is that the power series 1 + r + r^2 + r^3 + . . . adds to the 1 / (1 – r) he likes to plot–except that the equation really works only for r <= 1, and that's true whether you're talking about circuits, bank accounts, or climate. The math is the same. No doubt there's something else he's heard that could be made to make sense about how the "Bode equation" is applied incorrectly to climate, but I've seen him write about this numerous times, and I've never been able to understand what he thinks the problem is.
mothcatcher: “This is something I have posted often, and no one seems to want to tell me what’s different about CO2 warming.”
I don’t think anything is. (Oh, different forcings have different spatial distributions, etc., but I’m ignoring that.)
If you assume (for the sake of argument only) a state of equilibrium, then the power series have all aready finished adding up; the feedbacks, as you say, are there. Then you add a forcing, the temperature responds, the feedbacks respond, and so on. Nothing in that scenario distinguishes CO2 from anything else.
Of course, we’ve greatly simplified things and assumed linearity, which is wildly incorrect, but I think those are the assumptions we’ve tacitly been assuming in this discussion.
@ferdberple: It is in fact possible to pretrigger an oscillator by applying a small pulse just before the direction of change would normally reverse. This can increase but not decrease the frequency, That is how sync worked on early TV sets, before the phase-locked loop was invented.
It is interesting though that the ice age cycle is almost a sawtooth, whereas the Milankovich inputs are mostly sinusoidal. That suggests there is possibly some ‘relaxation oscillator’ effect involved.
Some alarmists have claimed that our activities might in fact pretrigger the next ice age early through exactly that mechanism. I somehow doubt that though, because the more rapid change is the warming side of the ice age cycle, sugesting the pos f/b trigger event occurs at the coldest, not warmest, point. The warmest point being that at which the pos f/b runs out of resources.
Joe –
Thanks for your reply, but in the context of these remarks, isn’t your distinction between feedbacks and forcings rather artificial? If there is not, as you seem to say, any fundamental difference between the response of the system to warming from CO2, or warming from H20, then it seems to me that it becomes rather a lot harder to make the case for a CO2-mediated temperature response. I’ve asked repeatedly about this, and gotten no substantive reply in several forums, which seems to me to indicate two possibilities-
(1) that I’ve not understood something quite obvious to smarter people, so they have thought it not worth explaining to me, in which case I apologise, or
(2) that maybe this sort of thinking is novel to the followers of the radiation physics. I’d be surprised if that were the case, but I am in need of enlightenment.
mothcatcher:
I think we did miscommnicate. The question I thought you were posing concentrated on temperature feedback. That is, the temperature increases in response to some kind of forcing, be it CO2, aerosol decrease, whatever, result in some knock-on increases. The knock-on response to that temperature change shouldn’t deoend on what caused it (again, modulo the different temperature distributions, etc.), and I thought that was your comment.
However–and I guess this means I’ve wasted your time–I wouldn’t want to say anything about the differences between the forcings caused by CO2 and those by H20, because I am not knowledgeable enough about what they are. As just the guy on the next bar stool, I’d speculate that their vastly different distributions make them quite different, but I really have no clue about what the differences are.
Not much help, huh?
Ian, when you are speaking about positive trigger when temperature is at lowest, there is only one thing popping up in my mind. Another star passing near solar system. Energy trigger pulling earth from ice age immediately. Then letting our system on its own, cooling slowly.
“Ian, when you are speaking about positive trigger when temperature is at lowest, there is only one thing popping up in my mind. Another star passing near solar system. Energy trigger pulling earth from ice age immediately. Then letting our system on its own, cooling slowly.”
Sir, are you speaking seriously about the possibility of the Sun having a companion which is unseen and unknown to astronomers, is in an eccentric orbit which periodically brings it close enough to the solar systems to affect the radiative balance of the earth, is nevertheless too dim to be visible, and manages to come close enough to warm the earth without disrupting the orbits of our planetary system?
Oh, and is also of an orbital period that mimics the variations thought to be caused by the Milankovich cycles?
Not being sarcastic, but wondering if this is a serious proposition, or if I have somehow misconstrued what you are suggesting?
–Some alarmists have claimed that our activities might in fact pretrigger the next ice age early through exactly that mechanism. I somehow doubt that though, because the more rapid change is the warming side of the ice age cycle, sugesting the pos f/b trigger event occurs at the coldest, not warmest, point. The warmest point being that at which the pos f/b runs out of resources.–
It seems the warmer conditions of the Holocene Maximum indicate this,
and also the gradually cooling over last 8000 years.
One thing different about our present interglacial period is the apparent interruption of the Younger Dryas. And long terms consequence of it, and what caused it, is interesting question.
But general the sudden warming that *lead* to Holocene Maximum and I believe this had to some kind of very large effect- and makes me suspect large amount of ocean warming over a long time [+century]. And perhaps oddly, I think it was caused by large amount cool conditions in the tropics, which reduced the troposphere and reduce the amount cloud formation in the tropics.
I have no evidence of this but I believe it has be a big effect of some sort and most Earth surface is ocean [and large part the tropical ocean].
Or something like massive El Nino that basically removes the warm surface water in the tropics and replaced with colder deep water [which would dramatically cool the tropical air temperature].
An easy answer would be ocean impactor which caused 1/2 km high wave going at supersonic speed- so around 500 meter diameter impactor. But it’s not climatic mechanism. Nor would be finding evidence of it be easy.
One thing I wondering about if large waves are traveling really fast, it seems
it doesn’t allow enough time for coast water to recede prior to the waves arrival. Another aspect is there is no doubt such events have occurred in Earth history. hmm:
“The tidal wave height in meters =10.9 × (distance from impact in kilometers)-0.717 × (energy of impact in megatons TNT)0.495. What this means is that a 10-km asteroid hitting any deep point in the Pacific (the largest ocean) produces a megatsunami along the entire Pacific Rim. ”
http://www.astronomynotes.com/solfluf/s5.htm
Of course a 10 km diameter impactor is on much longer timescales, anyway according even 1 km diameter doesn’t make as big of wave as I thought.
Or:
“Studies of Earth’s history indicate that about once every 5,000 years or so on average an object the size of a football field hits Earth and causes significant damage. Once every few million years on average an object large enough to cause regional or global disaster impacts Earth.”
So thinking something between a football field and the larger size which occurring every few million years.
So probably not related, but where the evidence in terms of effects upon the shoreline of these hitting every few million years.
One thing about it, is the chances are the sea level was 100 meter lower than present, because most of the time in last few million years, has been glacial period with it’s lower sea level.
Another thing is corral islands have been rising with sea level, so core samples of corral islands should give some evidence of it.
Anyways seems like there would some sort climate mechanism which caused this.
There can be positive feedback in any electronic or mechanical system, including the Climate, but such positive feedback can be either stable or unstable, depending on the amplification of that feedback. Venus’s planetary response to increasing atmospheric water vapor due to evaporation from primordial oceans was unstable and led to runaway warming,the driving of CO2 from the planet, and now with an atmosphere that is 95% CO2. None of the Science concludes Earth’s system is in danger or reaching such a tipping point, as the positive feebacks –albedo, CO2 release, water vapor– are not sufficiently large.
I don’t see how a comparison of a nearly pure CO2 atmosphere as thick as water on surface level with Earth’s atmosphere is useful.
You could just as well compare our climate with the moon’s – as the moon does have an atmosphere, it’s just very thin.
Very good point. When I first got interested in global warming in the early 90s, I was concerned. That is until I learned about the positive feedbacks incorporated into the general circulation models used to project future climate. You see, I too am a controls engineer. I like your take on it though…anything causing a temperature increase, in the case of positive feedback, would cause our relatively benign climate to oscillate out of control. That is, after all, exactly what the GCMs do…the extra heat from manmade CO2 causes an increase in water vapor, which leads to increased temperature, etc.
Well said!
Servomechanisms are unstable not just because of excessive gain in the feedback, but latency. If the control mechanism is slower than the process it will swing back and forth with greater swings until something bad happens.
In the case of Earth, the ocean process is extremely slow relative to the control mechanism, namely clouds and atmosphere or even human contribution.
Op amps have extremely high gain and are perfectly stable provided you don’t have positive feedback and such feedback as you do have is not phase shifted. An op amp that has positive feedback will simply clamp to one state or the other (flip-flop in other words).
Never mind – if, and that is a big if, there were a positive feedback, where increased heat caused additional heat, iIhave yet to see anyone explain where that additional energy comes from, over and above of the initial energy.
I genuinely interested, as such a physical phenomenon could be used for clean energy production, as it would be over-unity.
Its not a matter of ‘additional heat’ entering earth’s system –its a matter of heat energy trying to escape earth and being restricted from doing so by the Greenhouse gases in the upper troposphere absorbing and re-radiating IR thermal radiation back to the planet.
Positive feedback #1) A reduction in snow and ice cover due to a warming planet reduces the reflection of heat energy to space, which means less heat energy leaves the planet.
Positive feedback #2) A warming planet drives CO2 from the oceans and land, increasing the greenhouse effect, and further warming the planet.
Positive feedback #3) A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture (per the Clapeyron-Clausius relationship), and as more water vapor is held in the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect is further increased, warming the planet further.
I guess the real question is “What evidence would convince you that climate change is not man made”?
Then you will find out that evidence has nothing to do with it.
What evidence would you require to prove that the Rocky Mountains and Himalayas are not man made?
Man made?
Did our CO2 make them too?
I did not know that.
You have data, of course?
“Did our CO2 make them too?”
Not sure, but it definitely put a very pleasing fizz into my soda pop drink.
When they come for my Diet Coke, there is gonna be trouble.
“What evidence would you require to prove that the Rocky Mountains and Himalayas are not man made?”
The usual procedure is to demonstrate the procedure. That would be proof that the mountains could be man made. I doubt proof exists that these mountains were not man made; of course, it would be a very big man.
Geologic evidence that shows they predate man’s arrival, perhaps?
Since you cannot prove a negative – only disprove – the question as you pose it is not addressable through logic (except to point out the hostility it exhibits to proof), or mathematics, or science. As Monckton points out, there is no scientific question about whether humanity has an effect on climate. There never has been. We do. There are various acknowledged effects in the micro and meso scales that we can be quite confident are anthropic. The Urban Heat Island effect is an easy example. Another is the effect of large scale agricultural modifications to landscapes, which also have climate effects. Timber clear cuts are yet another. What has not been answered is the effect we have on global climate and whether that effect is a “harmful” or “beneficial” effect. There should be some effect, but how can it be isolated from “natural” climate. One really terrible answer from the AGW view point would be that it cannot be separated. Humanity is as natural as buffalo, so our “effects” are as natural as any other influence on climate from the rest of nature.
The issue of whether the effect that ought to be there a positive of negative, good or bad effect, is not scientific in any sense. It can be shown with very little effort that just about any change in a habitat benefits some occupants and disadvantages others. In cities, we see squirrels, rats, mice, racoons and opossums happily adapting and engaging in life free from their major predators in the “wild.” Anyone who bothers study real paleoclimatic change knows that biotic zones migrate with large scale climate changes and that along Pacific coast of North America for example, life zones have moved about 1,200 km poleward since the end of the last glacial advance. “Positive” and “negative” effects are relative.
Drat: “…The issue of whether the effect that ought to be there a positive or negative, …
“In cities, we see squirrels, rats, mice, racoons and opossums happily adapting and engaging in life”
And in suburbia, my bird feeders and those of my neighbors are filling the belly of many a songbird. More than Fluffy can catch, even on a good day.
Getting to be quite a few ducks here and there, too!
“Menicholas”
Well, yes. But urban environments are so much farther from “natural.” My wife has attracted so many birds with her feeders that I am trying discover a camo paint scheme for my truck that will disguise the bird “paint.” It’s a drought here, so we are according to Jerry to conserve water.
I’m wondering if Monckton is familiar with Leckner’s work. It is the seminal source for engineers who must estimate radiant energy effects of CO2. I discussed it at scienceofdoom and he agrees that it shows saturation. Leckner looked at very high temperatures. His lowest limit is 0C and at a standard atmosphere (101 kPa).
I couldn’t find your conclusion in the peer-reviewed literature. Could you please cite such a peer-reviewed paper, either by Leckner or another author? Thanks.
Warrenlb-
You didn’t find his conclusion because you didn’t look, which makes your contention less than truthful. Your request for a citation is a well- known diversionary trick employed by people who are known as TROLLS. You have self- identified…
As another stated, not finding it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I am out of the country right now. so don’t have access to my text books. Try this text book for reference to the original paper. Bejan, Adrian; Kraus, Allan D. Heat Transfer Handbook. John Wiley & Sons., 2003 Page 618 (Leckner’s curves, available in electronic form from http://www.knovel.com). The curves Leckner derived for emissivity (a measure of how much radiant energy will be absorbed), detailed in peer reviewed literature used by engineers world wide to design things that work, are on my (near moribund) blog. They show saturation.
@Alan Robertson. I was holding out hope –apparently unjustified– that someone on this forum actually makes peer-reviewed citations. Still unjustified, it seems.
warrenlib
Why cite a pal-reviewed, incorrect, government-paid source written WITH government grants BY government-paid grant writers FOR government-paid institutions paid for BY government-paid bureaucrats FOR the purposes of government-paid politicians … when that which is written is incorrect?
@RACookPE1978.
It wasn’t my citation of peer -reviewed literature. John Eggert alluded to what he claimed was a peer-reviewed reference to support Monckton. You should tell John how bad peer-reviewed references are so he doesn’t use one again.
Warrenlb:
Wow. Every assertion you make is false. An indication of intentional misdirection, or intellectual vacuity. Let’s illustrate.
@RACookPE1978.
–It wasn’t my citation of peer -reviewed literature.
Uhm. Yes. You did indeed make the first reference to peer review. You asked for it. When given you now seem to be claiming that it is “bad” without any basis for that assertion.
–John Eggert alluded to what he claimed was a peer-reviewed reference to support Monckton.
No. I asked Monkton if he was familiar with the research of a particular person. I noted in response to you that this person’s research can be found in peer reviewed literature. Also, at no time did I support or not support Monckton.
–You should tell John how bad peer-reviewed references are so he doesn’t use one again.
To call university text books otherwise known as references used by engineers to successfully build things that work otherwise known as peer review “bad” is . . . actionable.
To determine if you are a troll, I shall leave the last word to you.
Perhaps the should be a step 11: Is this the best use of tax payer money?
My question is why Ronald Bailey is writing for Reason, a libertarian periodical with the motto “Free Minds in Free Markets.”
One would think that the editors of this magazine would’ve filtered out Bailey’s warmulist folly..
They don’t because Reason follows the Science.
Sadly that is the correct order for climate science.
We know the truth – then we apply reason. As demanded by the UNFCCC.
In real science we use reason to try and discern what is science and what is faith.
Interestingly, we do the same in real theology.
warrenlb says:
“They don’t because Reason follows
theScience.”There. Fixed.
“They don’t because Reason follows the Science.”
Hardly. Modern warmunist science is based on iterative computer modeling. I have never found a iot of evidence that Reason knows anything about modeling, or technology in general. They are not in a position to judge the quackery that is warmunism.
Writes DirkH:
Agreed. But the editorial staff of Reason magazine (headed by two Editors-in-Chief, Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch) have ready access to fact-checking resources other than the periodical’s Science Correspondent, Mr. Bailey (who, in 2002, had edited Global Warming and Other Eco Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death, so to see him coming on board with the climate catastrophe quacks hit me as something of an elaborate April Fools’ Day prank).
If Mr. Bailey’s 3 April article was not a jape, and was intended as a genuine reflection of the man’s present take (after the initial Climategate tranche hit the ‘Net on 17 November 2009, mind you!) on the ‘viro quacks’ effort “…to Scare Us to Death,” then Mr. Gillespie and Mr. Welch and their editorial subordinates had a helluva responsibility to run Mr. Bailey’s recent “road-to-Damascus” conversion to warmulism through other well-identified critics of this preposterous bogosity (in the Reason readership alone, if they might choose from their subscriber files) so as to vet this goddam strange transformation on Mr. Bailey’s part.
A genuine libertarian would let him have all the rope he needs. Libertarian philosophy doesn’t support censorship.
In response to my question about
….Duster posts:
Well, a libertarian publication (ceteris paribus) doesn’t publish the propaganda advanced by the “tax-gobblers” to put across the most gaudy and predatory fraud in modern history.
I could see Mr. Bailey’s article in some other venue, but in Reason magazine?
The editors have a responsibility to their subscribers and other readers to do some fact-checking before they publish something like this, and it beggars belief to assume that they got so blatantly suckered by what is undeniably pure statist bilge.
Tucci78
April 9, 2015 at 1:56 pm
You may be confusing “fact checking” with publishing “truth” a phenomenon unknown in the anals of writing. The former is useful but an indifferent guide to anything of use. “Fact checking” generally means that you checked the sources provided and concluded that the writer did not misrepresent them. The editors are unlikely to be in a position to be able to evaluate the science available in any sensible manner. In fact, my own observation is that no one can at present. Luke warmers are merely the sanest of the insane. As it is, Mr. Monckton has effectively rebutted Bailey’s view well beyond anything the editors could have achieved by suppressing the article. Open discussion is a far superior means of debate. Just look at the “well rounded” discussions on Real Climate if you doubt this (and yes that is irony and should be understood to be set off with /sacr tags).
Writes Duster regarding the editors of Reason magazine and their duty to the subscribers to make sure that their periodical isn’t being employed to sell fraud:
In the wake of Climategate and the more recent demonstrations of the “consensus” quacks’ rent-seeking mendacities? Jeez, to what extent are you familiar with Reason magazine and its track record of skeptical regard for anything so redolent of government thuggery?
That’s supposed to be an excuse? The information sources available online are broad and deep, not least of which are the materials accessible through links maintained by Mr. Watts on this Web site.
The ex-Journalism majors at Reason aren’t expected to invest the time or effort to become literate on these matters particularly, or even on scientific method generally. But they have to be able to undertake the sort of simple sniff test that any libertarian exercises whenever he hears any government employee make any sort of claim against the rights of the individual human being.
They’re merely compensated delusional psychotics? Well, I might give you that. Calls for some cognitive restructuring therapy, though, don’t it?
Did I call for suppression of Mr. Bailey’s 2005 “come-to-Jesus” adherence to the religion of anthropogenic global warmulism? Heck, no.
But what Bailey’s submission should have evoked from the editors of Reason was simply something along the lines of “This reeks. You trust the tax-gobbling government goons who’ve been shown recently to have ‘adjusted’ the temperature records to their advantage? That alone needs some explaining. Gotta have a do-over here, and we’re not desperate enough for filler this month to give your manuscript houseroom the way you’ve handed it in.”
Sheesh – /sacr -> /sarc
But the biggest con and fraud is the so called mitigation of AGW. The EIA clearly shows that over 90% of new emissions of co2 until 2040 will come from India, China etc and the OECD countries will almost flat-line over that period.
The OECD countries could cease all emissions of co2 and it still wouldn’t make a scrap of difference to the temp or climate at all.
In the meantime western countries are quite happy to export as much gas, coal and iron ore as they can to every country that wants to buy. Once again this just proves that they couldn’t care less about increased co2 emissions, but they don’t western countries to benefit any more from the new jobs and industries that will be created from the future use of fossil fuels.
This has to be the most easily understood ponzi scheme and fraud in history and yet nobody seems to get it? Why is that?
“This has to be the most easily understood ponzi scheme and fraud in history and yet nobody seems to get it? Why is that?”
——————————–
? Gruber?
Why David? Well, that’s easy to answer. Too many organisations profit from it. Politicians just love to be seen ‘saving’ the world and engaging in ‘important’ global discussions. Government loves it because it really, really demands more government and more regulation. Big business and wide boys love it for the guarantees, subsidies and beneficial (to many of them) regulation it brings. Science academia loves it because it brings grants and work and a higher public profile. The media love it because doom and gloom sells. Organised religion loves it because they can claim it is your sins to blame. Establishments love it because it generates fear in the common man they can use to tighten their grip. The Green movement loves it because it gives them the fuel to drive their vision of the world forward. Progressives and One World Government advocates (to which the majority of Western, developed political classes are fully signed up) love it because it just calls out for wealth redistribution and global regulation/governance.
Is it even slightly surprising all these will cling to their faith even in the face of incontrovertible evidence? How many of those can you ever recall admitting they were wrong?
Spot on Peter ! Absolutely spot on !
Why is that?
The masses unfortunately don’t have the time, knowledge or education to understand the science. Advertising / PR campaigns with purely emotional content (think Polar Bears, rising tides, etc) performed about twice as well (31% vs. 16%) compared with those with only rational content, and those that were purely emotional did a little better (31% vs 26%) compared with those that mixed emotional and rational content.
http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/emotional-ads-work-best.htm
Heck, they “get it” all right. Making their careers as popularity contest participants, however, they respond to perverse incentives.
Take note of the renewable fuel standard (RFS), which “…started off with the best of intentions: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote American energy independence,” and which has subsequently made it all but impossible for a presidential candidate to speak against the insanity of the food-to-fuel mandate.
This isn’t rocket science, and everyone who’s looked at this subject appreciates precisely how unspeakably cruel and stupid this ‘viro-fellating “policy porn” really is.
Even the ‘viros.
But, then, there’s them first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucuses every presidential election cycle, and there’s nothing halfway about the Iowa way to greet you if you threaten their extremely profitable corn-to-motor-fuel boondoggle.
Any state with a non-trivial agricultural sector is supportive of these policies. As you mentioned, barley and wheat fields are being converted to corn, which increases the price of barley and wheat. (And the list doesn’t stop with barley and wheat)
Don’t blame Iowa, it’s a nationwide phenomena. Just about any state would have the same dynamic.
Says MarkW regarding the effect had on presidential politics by the Iowa Caucuses as a defense of the renewable fuel standard (RFS) corn-fed fuel ethanol boondoggle:
The people and government of what other state have mandated by statute law that their role in the presidential nominations process must precede all other states’ primary elections?
Sure, neither Iowa’s role in the popular vote nor in the Electoral College matters as much as do most of the other states with “non-trivial agricultural sector” participation. Their position in terms of electoral “momentum,” however, is critical, and gives the graft-seeking caucus participants political clout far out of proportion to their unalienable rights as human beings. The Iowa Caucuses thereby entail a violation of the property rights of people elsewhere in the republic, who labor under the increased material costs of the RFS upon which the Iowa ag sector battens like a flock of buzzards on a corpse that hasn’t quite quit moving yet.
Try to excuse the people of Iowa in any way you like, but bear in mind the fact that it takes only a single ear of corn rammed into a man’s trachea to choke him to death.
>>so that the fuel efficiency of an electric car is also 27%.
>>However, the electric car requires 30% more power per
>>mile traveled to move the mass of its batteries.
And this does not take winter into account. The ‘waste’ heat from a fossil-car warms the screen and the cabin when it is -15ºc outside, so it is not wasted at all. In fact, my normal radiator barely gets warm, when it is -10ºc outside.
But the electric car has to take all of that heat from the battery, because the electric ‘engine’ produces no ‘waste’ heat. So what does that do for the range and efficiency? I did try to get information on the range reductions when using the cabin heater on the Volt and Tesla, but was unsuccessful.
R
“because the electric ‘engine’ produces no ‘waste’ heat.”
Because they are much more efficient than ICE, and the waste heat is of low quality (cooler).
The low delta T is also why electric drives have large radiators. IF cars didn’t leak air, and have an R value of 1, it wouldn’t take as much to heat/cool them. Since ICEs have tons of high quality waste heat, there is no need for insulated glass, air leak prevention, and thermal insulation. The addition of solar glass would cut down on the A/C requirements too. Most vehicles has A/C units that could cool a small house. (20K -30K BTU, ~2-3 tons).
There might be options to pre-heat/pre-cool the cabin while on charge, and most are garage kept anyway.
The EV energy figures I see are less than 0,5 kWhrs per mile. BEVs aren’t the end-all, but they do seem to be good commuter vehicles. I don’t have an EV car, but I do have an all electric pontoon boat. It doesn’t scare the loons (the birds or the people) like a gas engine does. It’s not fast, but going fast would just spill your adult beverage, and blow away your snacks.
Yeah, we all know why electric motors run cooler, Paul. You don’t need to post like a school mistress with her glasses perched on the end of her nose.
The point is, as Kakatoa below says, that the range of an EV drops by half if it is 10ºc below zero ambient. But if range is halved, then the efficiency is also halved. So this wonderful electric car, that is supposed to be sooo efficient, is now chewing up the coal and gas at twice the rate of my turbo-diesel. See my post below, for some mpg and khw figures.
@ralfellis, thanks for the rude reply.
Is your diesel certified for US roads?
If cars didn’t leak air, the passengers would suffocate.
Additionally, insulation takes up space, so your car would have to be bigger, reducing it’s efficiency even further.
>>Is your diesel certified for US roads?
I doubt it. The US doesn’t do efficiency.
In fact, when I sent a US lady to drive my car she came running back in screaming, because the car was moving up and down all by itself (hydraulic suspension). So no, I don’t suppose you see too many Citroens in the US.
“I doubt it. The US doesn’t do efficiency.”
You must mean the US is concerned with diesel emissions, which affect efficiency?
Adding a DPF & SCR to meet Euro 7 might change your smugness.
BTW, most every engine I have is diesel but only my truck has a DPF. I get relatively great fuel economy until it dumps fuel in to do filter regeneration. An added benefit is the extra fuel in the crankcase oil too.
Paul
Please say why snake oil salesmen always claim refutation of their assertions is “rude”.
You replied to an accurate comment by ralfellis, and he politely pointed out that your reply was both patronising and misleading. Your complete response to that says
That response is a typical response of all the other promoters of scams to reap excessive subsidies (e.g. electric cars, windfarms, solar farms); i.e. when refuted you responded by making a false accusation of rudeness and tried to change the subject. Why?
Richard
You must leave an electric car plugged in when not in use, so that it is warm enough to be operated in winter. In effect you must heat the car whenever it is not in use, so that you don’t need to heat it when it is in use. Because the range of the car is limited, you typically can plan on arriving at your destination before the car cools too much, so that you can plug in once more.
Once you factor in the cost of keeping the electric car warm in winter, on the off chance it might be needed, you suddenly realize either the car needs to be built differently, like a well insulated home, or you need to keep the car inside in a heated, insulated garage during the winter.
ferdberple, it’s not hard to anticipate that I drive to work at the same time each morning, so any pre-conditioning wouldn’t need to be continuous. An enclosed garage isn’t too uncommon either. Like I said, changes to the thermal envelope of the car would make a huge difference in any type of driveline.
The early Chevy Lumina vans had that pinky tinted windshield. (by PPG?) you could lay your hand on it during the summer, a feat almost impossible with a standard glass windshield. Automotive solar gain is huge, and that peak drives the A/C size requirements.
My current garage is well insulated and I keep the slab set to 55F.. It’s not worth a retrofit, but fairly inexpensive during new construction. Plenty of proper well installed insulation and attention to air leaks keep the operating costs low. And fiberglass insulation’s quoted R values are a fairy tale. Any poor installation or airflow, and the R value plummets to worthless.
“Paul” wants to build a house around an electric car just to make the electric car feasible?
“wants to build a house around an electric car just to make the electric car feasible?”
No, it’s just that any modern house already has the capability to offset some of the shortcomings of an EV, so is that “wrong” in your eyes?
Partially offset.
Garages still get a lot colder than the rest of the house during the winter and any cooling of the batteries hurts EV performance.
Paul,
Have you considered the heat required by your garage to bring a 2500 lb or greater car up to your garage temp setting when coming in off the road at sub freezing temps. Let’s see 2500 lbs or more of steel and lead at say 0F to 55F. You make no mention of having considered this.
@eyesonu “Have you considered the heat required by your garage to bring a 2500 lb or greater car up to your garage temp setting when coming in off the road at sub freezing temps.”
No, I only considered the heat load from exposed surface area. Trying to chase a transient load seemed unnecessary. I can tell you from experience that a driven vehicle warms the air rather than cooling it. Although it does nothing to the slab temperature, and that’s what I heat.
It would appear that the thermal mass of the warm concrete floor swamps the vehicle’s mass. The frost walls are insulated to 4 feet below grade, and that volume of tempered earth buffers the floor.
Paul,
My comment was made with regards to your support of the great benefit/efficiency of driving an electric car. You noted that you keep yours in a heated garage so less battery power is lost in heating (the car).
Assume a sub freezing cold temp outdoor. First you open the garage door to get your electric car in. Cold outside air will fill your garage. The thermal mass of the car is going to be very cold. You heat the floor/slab. Equilibrium temps are going to have an energy cost. Then you claim from experience that your driven electric car will warm the air?
I’m not buying it. You are making a weak argument to try to support the use of an electric vehicle.
@eyesonu “You noted that you keep yours in a heated garage…”
I don’t own a BEV, my wife keep her ICE Taurus in the heated garage. I’m investigating the cost benefits of a BEV for a future vehicle. I live close to work, I have a garage, I ran a 30A circuit before the drywall went up, so it MIGHT just be a good fit for me? Why all of the hate?
“Then you claim from experience that your driven electric car will warm the air?”
Those are your words, not mine.
My words are; “I don’t have an EV car, but I do have an all electric pontoon boat…a driven vehicle warms the air…”.
“The thermal mass of the car is going to be very cold. You heat the floor/slab. Equilibrium temps are going to have an energy cost. ”
I estimate the slab weighs around 40K lbs and it’s always set to hold 55F. We could make some estimates of the cold vs. hot mass, and the delta T of each, but I can tell you from experience that it’s not energy intensive to keep the garage warm for a few winter months.
You must leave an electric car plugged in when not in use, so that it is warm enough to be operated in winter.
That’s news to me. I’ve owned an EV through three winters, and couldn’t keep it plugged in if I wanted to. Mine doesn’t do what you suggest, i.e., keep the battery warm if you plug it in. Teslas do that, but I don’t know of any others that do.
Right on….
AND, add in the energy for heated seats; rear and front window defoggers/deicers, on top of the regular heater. Up here in northern Canada at -40C the battery may not get you to the mall and back.
I don’t think any current EV would make much sense anywhere in Canada except west of the Cascades.
“…The AAA tests revealed that while the average battery range for all three EVs was 105 miles at 75 degrees Fahrenheit, this dropped to 43 miles when the outside temperature was 20 degrees. AAA found that a warmer temperature has less effect on battery range, but still lowered it to an average of 69 miles on a full charge at 95 degrees Fahrenheit.”…
http://editorial.autos.msn.com/blogs/post–aaa-ev-battery-range-but-by-more-than-half-in-cold-weather
I wonder what the mileage is in Fairbanks art 30 below.
Krakatoa – can it really do all that on AAA batteries? (12 for GBP1,00 in my local discount store)
Yeah, but EVs are awesome. And they do reduce real pollution where people live. Large point sources of pollution (coal plants) are very easy to monitor and control. Hundreds of millions of small ones (cars) – not so much. Ground level pollution in most cities is abysmal and caused mostly by ICEs.
For people who care about real pollution at locations that really impact people, EVs are a solution.
But yeah, winter range sucks. Leaf summer range – 88 miles. Range at -10C with all the heaters on and driving through snow – about 40. I do like the pre-heating/pre-cooling, though. Especially when it is a free charge port.
Vboring,
It sounds like you like your EV. Have you experienced a drop off in miles per kWh of driving in a hilly environment?
An associate, who owns a Tesla S85, experienced a drop off in his miles/kWh going up and down the hills when he visited us in the Sierras last summer. It was very hot ( high’s around 105F the weekend they visited). I forgot to ask how big the effect was. The only info I could find on the subject was located here- http://my.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/miles-kwh – “3 miles per kWh (DC) Note: The hill data is pretty ugly”
As it was so hot out our HVAC needs were rather high. Once my friend learned that we were paying over $.30 kWh for our marginal electrical energy usage on the weekend he decided to charge his car up down at the public station a few miles away as it was free. It did seem a bit odd that I was paying over $.30 kWh to cool the house while he was visiting, but he didn’t have to pay anything for his kWh usage from the grid. My wife had to wait a few hours to do the laundry after his visit as our weekday TOU peak time kWh costs for a kWh of electricity are closer to $.50 kWh.
As LA has found out, most pollution is caused people going about their day to day lives.
Cooking, cleaning, all of these are sources of pollution as larger or larger than the pollution put out by cars.
Denver had to mandate catalytic converters for fire places and LA has mandated them for industrial bakers.
Vboring, a modern vehicle puts out very little “pollution” in the sense of genuine toxins. Most modern well maintained cars are so efficient in combustion that they present effectively no hazard of CO. The principle output is water vapor and CO2. Where I live there are many times more vehicles on the roads now than there were in the ’50s and ’60s. The air is cleaner now than it was when I graduated high school in ’69. If we could only persuade the easterners to move back east, things would be wonderful.
Back in the 80’s I read a study that found that modern cars with all the pollution control equipment, when driven in cities such as LA, the air out the tail pipe was cleaner than the air being sucked in at the air filter.
Cars have gotten even cleaner since then, but so has LA’s air.
To be perfectly honest I don’t think the primary problem with EVs is range or efficiency. Tesla has proven that you can make a completely feasible daily driver out of an EV…for an extremely high price. That’s the problem, price. Sure, EVs are marginally affordable, but that’s mainly due to the many subsidies, tax credits (both for manufacturers and consumers), etc that are provided for them. That money has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere certainly won’t be the deep pockets of politicians.
If usage of EVs increase, the overall tax burden will also have to increase. This is coupled with the hideous cost of producing infrastructure, like battery swap stations, that would allow EVs to travel as far as gas/diesel cars do. Who would you tax? Obviously not the EV drivers, that would defeat the purpose. Gas/diesel drivers? Sure, until they switch to EVs to escape those extra costs. Truck drivers? They’d just get hybrid rigs. Companies that use diesel-electric trains? Yeah, that’ll last right up until they switch to full electric. Anyone who uses gas/diesel at all, even for backup generators? People will do without to save money, possibly even if it’s lethal (as the elderly are doing in the UK as a response to high power prices). We’d end up running full circle and ending up far worse than when we started out.
vboring…
“Especially when it is a free charge port.”
Are you really under the misconception that there are free things or was that sarcasm?
I’ll offer some Economics 101 in either case.
You are essentially stealing the money to pay for that “free” energy from all your neighbors (okay maybe I’ll settle for the less incendiary substitute: you have neighbors that have been coerced into very heavily subsidizing costs you should be paying). Sorry, it’s not free. If we can afford an EV, shouldn’t we pony up and pay for our own energy so our less effluent neighbors don’t have to?
While I’m not ascribing this thinking to you in particular, my general observation is that this seems to me like a consistent theme in the progressive movement. That is, let’s hide the true costs of benefits that affluent liberals receive from those less-affluent, uneducated, unwashed masses who are needed to finance those benefits. Green energy comes to mind (where benefits are swamped by the ills; like huge rate increases, grid destabilization, massive wildlife impacts, etc.).
However, on one point we agree. EVs reduce a local problem (the brown cloud) and put the particulate air pollution in a place where it is less of a health concern.
Bruce
vboring
April 9, 2015 at 8:18 am
“But yeah, winter range sucks. Leaf summer range – 88 miles. Range at -10C with all the heaters on and driving through snow – about 40.”
You must be a rich man if you can afford to run the heater with electricity from a Li-Ion battery (one kWh costs you a Dollar when you factor in battery lifetime).
NEVER use the heater in an EV! Rather, install a fireplace.
@richardscourtney “your reply was both patronising and misleading”
Willis Rule, please point out where you think I was misleading.
My response to ralfellis was to point out the fact that we in the US are bound by EPA regulations. So it’s unfair to directly compare fuel economy between US and Euro diesel vehicles.
Also, it appears several commenters have question the author’s statement “…transmission to end user is 67% efficient…” A cursory search returns a number closer to 6%? So IF the author’s number is incorrect, it would certainly changes the equation.
Is it your stance that: “You don’t need to post like a school mistress..The US doesn’t do efficiency” are NOT rude things to post?
Paul
Paul
I refuse to support your trolling by deflecting this thread onto your behaviour.
Anybody can see your accusation of rudeness was an unfounded smear of ralfellis, and this thread is not about differences between US and UK fuel regulations.
I asked you
You have evaded that question.
Richard
@richardscourtney
“I refuse to support your trolling by deflecting this thread onto your behaviour.”
Fine with me,
“this thread is not about differences between US and UK fuel regulations”
Richard, to put it in context, ralfellis said: “So this wonderful electric car, that is supposed to be sooo efficient, is now chewing up the coal and gas at twice the rate of my turbo-diesel.”, then further on he states: “my large European Citroen 5-door turbo diesel does 50 mpg in mixed driving”
My response was that diesel engines in the US are less efficient than Euro diesels because of EPA regulations, so it IS relevant. It’s only proper to compare US diesels to US BEVs, no? And further, the author’s statement: “transmission to end user is 67% efficient” MIGHT be in error, which could affects ralfellis’s claim above.
“I asked you…That response is a typical response of all the other promoters of scams to reap excessive subsidies (e.g. electric cars, windfarms, solar farms); i.e. when refuted you responded by making a false accusation of rudeness and tried to change the subject. Why?”
Richard, it appears that you stated YOUR opinion, then asked ME why your opinion is true? Why is it up to me to answer that? If you have a question about something I have stated, I’m prepared to answer it.
BTW, please point out where you think I was misleading anyone in my posts. I consider that a serious accusation, and I’d like to clarify the situation.
Thanks,
Paul:
OK. I see you will not answer my reasonable question; viz.
In hope of obtaining an answer from you, I state my opinion of “why”; n.b. unlike you I know the difference between an opinion and an observation.
Promoters of subsidy farming know they are promoting scams that cannot be justified so they try to avoid answering criticisms of their untrue claims.
Richard
@richardscourtney “OK. I see you will not answer my reasonable question…In hope of obtaining an answer from you, I state my opinion of “why””
Richard, you’re totally off base and in the weeds building a strawman. But if you must, why not come out and ask the question directly? Stop beating around the bush with your statement/opinion pseudo question. Do ask a real question, and I’ll be glad to answer to the best of my ability.
While we’re on that topic. Again, please point out where you think I was “misleading” anyone in any of my posts. I take pride in being factual, and consider yours to be a serious accusation. You leveled that charge, now either back it up with fact(s), or retract your statement.
Also, has anyone confirmed Lord Monckton statement “transmission to end user is 67% efficient“?
The source for that number was not provided, and has come under question by several other too.
Thanks again,
Paul:
I am not “beating about the bush”. I am asking you a clear and simple question.
Your evasion of the question induced me – as I said, in attempt to obtain an answer from you – to provide my answer to the question. But you continue to evade the question now by pretending you don’t understand it.
I remind that my clear, unambiguous and straightforward question is
And your pretense that you don’t understand that simple question convinces me of the correctness of my stated opinion of the answer; i.e.
Richard
@richardscourtney
Let’s dissect; “That response is a typical response of all the other promoters of scams to reap excessive subsidies (e.g. electric cars, windfarms, solar farms)…”
I see that as a statement, YOUR opinion, your observation. Is there a question hidden in there?
“when refuted you responded by making a false accusation of rudeness and tried to change the subject.”
First off, I wasn’t “refuted”. Second, that accusation of rudeness is mine to make. You can agree, or disagree with it, but it IS my right to point out rudeness toward me. And third, just where did I change the subject? The subject all along was the cost & viability of battery electric vehicles BEV. So again, another opinion from you.
“Why?”
Is that your question? Why What? Just what are you looking for? I invalidated your “question” statement, what more do you want? Just between you and me, I think you butted into a debate without reading the full line of posts, came out swinging, and whiffed.
BTW, what “scam” do you feel I’m “promoting”? Can you provide proof that I’m promoting a scam, or is that just your holy opinion again? You’re good at throwing out accusations, but so far you haven’t proven a single one, not ONE. I find that quite ironic, don’t you?. And just who deemed you the arbiter of “excessive subsidies” anyway? Maybe you need to play the ball and not the man, hmm?
Okay Richard, lets see what you’re made of. What’s your take on my two, clear, concise questions I asked of you in previous posts? Are you going to lead by example and answer, or just restate you opinion Ad nauseam? Your ball…
Thanks,
Paul:
Everybody can see that you continue to evade my clear and reasonable question, and they can each make their own opinion of why you are doing that.
As I said, I think it is because
Richard
@richardscourtney “Everybody can see that you continue to evade my clear and reasonable question”
Richard, your “question” is far from reasonable, more akin to asking me when I stopped beating my wife. You continually post that asinine “question”, making charges of scams, yet not one shred of evidence to make your case. You directly charged me with posting misleading information, but not a single word toward validating your hollow claim.
And speaking of evasion Richard, I see you failed to address any of the questions I asked. So while you’re barking at the fence with claims of evasion, you’re guilty of the same exact thing.
You’re a junkyard dog, all bark and no bite.
Thanks,
Paul
Thankyou for your concluding ad hom which demonstrates to all unbiased observers that you cannot justify your response to questioning of your snake oil salesmanship, and you only provide evasions and childish insults when questioned on it.
Richard
@richardscourtney “Thankyou for your concluding ad hom…”
Richard, your first post inferring that I’m a “snake oil salesman”, and every subsequent post called me out as a; “promoters of scams” without basis. So is that NOT ad hom in your world Richard, or are you above double standards?
“you only provide evasions and childish insults when questioned on it.”
I asked several times for you to better define your petty loaded “question”, and you couldn’t. I asked several times for you to back up your statements made toward me, yet you continue to ignore those requests and instead post that I won’t answer your loaded question. Evasion and childish insults, that’s really you Richard.
You accuse me of posting misleading information but you refuse to cite one shred of evidence to valid your claim, and you call ME childish? Is that how you roll now? Doing drive-by hit & run insults with no backing? I expected a little substance from you Richard, but so far it’s been a disappointment.
I take being called a liar seriously and I’m fully prepared to backup any claims I’ve made in any of my posts. If you, or anyone, can find anything that I’ve posted that is not factual, I’ll be the first to admit it and make corrections to remedy any wrong. The same can not be said of you Richard.
You have failed to back up your claims with evidence or facts. You have failed to make your case. Yet you are adamant that you are correct, and everyone will see your position as truth. Hey, sounds just like AGW, no?
Have a good day Richard,
OK, let’s try this:
Justify economically and by actual efficiency (more energy delivered at lower prices more reliably to more people over the lifetime of the power plant) by REQUIRING and SUBSIDIZING today’s failed “green energy” and MANDATED “renewable” energy schemes.
You cannot.
These “green energy” schemes are used by the “friends of the politicians” to get rich using their Big Government and Big Finance influence with the Big Media liberals to require taxpayers to hand them billions in subsidies and exemptions and direct payments for the short-term “benefit” of building, promoting, and “studying” these schemes.
@RACookPE1978 If you’re replying to me, I’ll take a swing.
“Justify economically and by actual efficiency…REQUIRING and SUBSIDIZING today’s failed “green energy” and MANDATED “renewable” energy schemes.
Maybe we’re discussing two different topics here. If you’re saying that REQUIRING and SUBSIDIZING green energy is a failed course, I’d have to agree with you. If you’re saying that anyone that takes advantage of those existing green requirements and subsidy is a promoters of scams, a friends of the politicians, or getting rich, I’d have to respectfully disagree. If you don’t like a subsidy, do something to change them. Don’t vilify people that take advantage of a lawful subsidy, i.e. play the ball, not the man. Do you disagree?
Let’s not forget the host of this very website has taken advantage of subsidies for his PV system. Do you view him as a freeloader, promoters of scams, or snake oil salesman? For the record, I do not, and even plan to follow his lead on PV.
I’ve worked around the development and research of alternative fueled vehicles & devices for most of my career, and I happen to love electrons too. I’m interested in all forms of BEVs, mainly for the geek factor, but I do think they may well provide lower costs in certain situations.
“You cannot.”
Maybe I can? Look, we can argue the nuances of efficiency numbers until we’re blue in the face, but the bottom line to most is cost. I don’t care if a vehicle is 2% or 99% efficient, it’s the cost to drive that matters to most people. The price the consumer pays for a unit of energy should have the cost of all profit and losses baked in. There is no need to go back to the well head or generator with assumptions of efficiency, when the least common denominator is cost per mile to drive, right?
My current daily driver is coming of age prompting a replacement. That got me started doing the research to see if a BEV might suit my needs AND makes economic sense. Is that so wrong in your eyes?
From what I’ve read, the Volt averages around 3.7 miles per kW/hr. If I understand it correctly, that is input energy into the charger. Fortunately, my current rate per kWhr is ~$0.14, and my commute is 18 miles round trip. Given that, it might only cost me ~$0.70 per day in electrons, round trip. That is currently the same cost to me as ~0.3 gallons of gasoline, or ~0.18 gallons of diesel. Most conventional US cars can’t touch those numbers.
So at first blush it appears my drive energy costs could be much less by using electric, than either liquid fuel. The cost & maintenance of the vehicle is another matter, and I haven’t gotten too deep into that until target vehicles are identified. Does that satisfy your “Justify economically” request?
BTW, I can’t tell if you defending Richard’s position, trying to clarify mine, or some other?
Thanks,
Paul and RA Cook..
In case you want to determine electricity costs (when charging at home) to travel 100 miles with an EV in PG&E;s territory:
In CA we, make that PG&E and the CPUC, have figured out how to encourage EV charging when the costs to provide service is lowest (midnight to 7am). We had some experimental EV charging rates E-9A and E9B for a few years that allowed for charging at a rate of as low as .04kWh. For various reasons these experimental rates have been abandoned in favor of a fixed TOU rate schedule with three prices depending on the time charging takes place- Example summer rates for E9A: off peak ($.09829 kWh), part peak ($.21152 kWh) and peak ($.39653 kWh).
http://www.pge.com/tariffs/ResTOUCurrent.xls
@kakatoa “…and peak ($.39653 kWh)”
Yikes! You can thank smart meter technology for enabling that ability. One other proposed scheme was to have EV chargers report data, so road taxes could be levied.
Thanks,
http://reason.com/archives/2015/04/03/what-evidence-would-persuade-you-that-ma/1
Here is the direct link.
Michael,
Thanks for that. From reading many of the comments, it appears that only a few of them support the article’s premise.
The public seems to be coming around to the skeptical view of MMGW.
I believe it is important to separate the “evidence” that the global atmosphere has been warming from the “evidence” that the cause of that warming is human CO2 emissions.
“…it is important to separate the “evidence” that the global atmosphere has been warming… ”
No, you need to look at the evidence that lots of global warming promoters, I can’t bring myself to call them scientists, are getting paid a lot of money to “prove” global warming. Why else would outright fraud (doctoring of the temperature records of Paraguay and Iceland, for instance) not be outed in the scientific community.
A far better question is the one that none of the alarmists seem able to answer , given they claimed that even cooling is proof of warming and that anything and everything has been blamed on ‘evil CO2’ , what would disprove CAGW?
If you did not know betters you would suggest that this is because they know their case is so weak that to defend it they have to resort to a ‘religions style stance ‘ of being a unquestionable and unchallengeable truth where strength of faith is much more important that strength of data .
How to convince me I’m wrong:
Astrophysicists have determined that the Sun was only about 70% as luminous as it is now when it started out around 5 billion years ago, and has been increasing in luminosity ever since. Geologists have determined that there were liquid oceans and life on Earth going back at least 4 billion years. The only way to avoid frozen solid dead oceans 4 billion years ago, or a Venus style runaway greenhouse before now is with strong NEGATIVE feedbacks.
When Astrophysicists have demonstrated that their models are wrong, and that stars DON”T get brighter as they convert Hydrogen to Helium in their cores, and Geologists have demonstrated that their prior theory was wrong, and life has existed on this planet for only a short time, I’ll believe I was wrong.
I have been relying on information and experience I’ve acquired over a lifetime to form my skeptical attitude. It occurs to me that Ronald Bailey could have asked a similar question, “What would convince you that the god THOR exists? my answer is, nothing! Even if some big blond guy with a full beard
started riding through the sky in a chariot, flinging his hammer, I’d assume it was some trick photography, a mortal with some nifty new unheard of scientific gadgets, or hallucination on my part before I’d believe in the Norse God Thor.
Ya, well I do have a picture…
http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130617021306/ironman/images/6/64/Thor-Avengers.jpg
If I DID believe in Thor, I’d believe the world will end in a three year “Fimbul Winter” preceeding Ragnarok. That three year Fimbul Winter and CAGW are mutually exclusive. Of course, during Ragnarok Surt wil burn everything, but that’s not ANTHROPOLOGICAL global warming.
I’m not COMPLETELY impervious to logical arguments. I used to believe, like the Sky Dragons, that the
temperature lapse rate was a result of earth’s gravitational field.
This “Watts UpWth That” post by Robert Brown convinced me I was wrong.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/24/refutation-of-stable-thermal-equilibrium-lapse-rates/
Of course, it might be one of Tony Stark’s creations. 😉
Seriously though, the ancient peoples liked to give human personas to natural forces. When you look at it like that, Thor makes perfect sense. We still even do the same today in some cases.
The one that makes no sense at all to me is the notion that nailing a man to a lump of wood 2,000 years ago will atone for sins I’m going to commit sometime in the present era. That predisposes that God knew what sins I was going to commit long ago, in order to determine how much his son was to suffer. In which case I have no freedom of action, If my actions are preordained then I cannot by definition be a sinner. So, there was no need for his son to suffer.
If you accept that as plausible, then I guess there is no problem with the concept of CO2 causing warming before its release, which warming then causes its release. Religions are full of paradoxes of that kind. The only way they can persist is if they require the faithful to avoid thinking too critically about the creed’s tenets.
Ian Macdonald
There are many web sites for discussing religion: this is not one of them.
Please go to an appropriate site if you want to further display your ignorance of the subject. And, for your benefit, I strongly suggest you at least learn what “sin” is before making more of a fool of yourself.
Richard
There is peer reviewed papers that support your comment.
There must be negative feedback (planet resists rather than amplifies forcing changes) to explain the faint sun paradox and to explain the cycle ice epochs. The mechanism by which the planet regulates planet temperature is cloud cover. When the solar wind speed is higher the solar heliosphere extent and magnetic flux content is greater so there is more blockage of high speed particles (called for historical reasons cosmic rays CR or cosmic ray flux CRF or galactic cosmic rays GCR which is confusing as they are mostly high speed protons not ‘rays’). The high speed cosmic particles strike the earth and create cloud forming ions. More ions more low level clouds.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0306477
It should be noted that there are periods in the geological record of millions of years when atmospheric CO2 has high and the planet was cold and periods when atmospheric CO2 was low and the planet was warm. An explanation for the multiple periods of millions of years when planetary temperature does not correlate with CO2 levels is that the planet strongly resists temperature changes by an increase or decrease in planetary cloud cover. The ice epochs are caused when the solar system passes through the spiral arms of the galaxy at which time the number of high speed cosmic protons (called GCR or CRF) striking the earth increases by a factor 5 which causes an increase in cloud cover causing the planet to cool.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif
http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/Ice-ages/GSAToday.pdf
Regarding clouds, I came to a similar conclusion myself after a little thought and prompting from other papers.
Currently, clouds reflect 30% of the sun’s radiation. With no clouds, a sun radiating at 70% would just about exactly equal current levels. Clouds come from evaporated water. With a dimmer sun, less water would have evaporated and there would have been fewer clouds. Of course the earh surface would still reflect some of the sun’s radiation, so there might be other factors involved, like a faster spinning earth, maybe no continents originally, a wamer earth core because all that extra Uranium which hadn’t broken down in fission reactions yet, more energy from tides from a closer moon, etc.
I tell the alarmist people I know that I have a few requirements before I believe in CAGW: (1) All those that preach global warming must first live the way they tell me I have to live; lead by example. (2) All those that preach global warming must first have an honest, open debate with someone who disagrees with them. (3) All papers on global warming must make their raw data available to everyone without exception as required by the scientific method.
The preachers of doom will never satisfy all 3 requirements. Some may satisfy all 3 but most will not. In fact, most will not satisfy even one of my requirements. I like point #1 best. If CAGW is a real problem, then everyone has to act including you. Why do you need to fly to Paris for a climate summit if you can videoconference for much less money and much less pollution?
Very nicely done. The AGW contingent are like children cringing in fear of monsters under the bed. There are no monsters under the bed. The campaign of fear fails on every count:
1) We are not the driving force of CO2 in the atmosphere
2) Even if we were, there is no evidence of significant surface temperature sensitivity to it
3) Even if there were significant temperature sensitivity, warmth is good
Warmth is good for life on this planet, and for us in particular. CO2 is the very stuff of life. Without it, everything dies. It is undoubtedly true that, all things being equal, rising CO2 in the atmosphere should cause surface warming. But, all things are not equal. This evidently is a homeostatic system, and the data indicate that, in the aggregate, the response to rising CO2 is essentially nil.
Particularly caught by the terminating reference of danger to “science itself”. All of CAGW is a good fit with the antics witnessed by Gulliver at the Academy of Laputa.
but, but . . .
isn’t Obama’s family dying from climate change induced asthma while he is visiting Bahamas?
Exactly. If climate change is such a worry, why do people vacation in place with a different climate than where they live? Shouldn’t people stay at home for their vacations, and thus avoid the risk of climate change that results from travel?
And just think of the CO2 produced by jet planes. Shouldn’t the first step in combating Climate Change be to stop all jet travel? Thus reducing CO2 and eliminating the self-induced harm of climate change that result from people travelling.
Step 1 in stopping climate change. Ban all travel to places with different climates. Surely we owe it to people to stop them from travelling and thereby harming themselves by changing their climate.
isn’t Obama’s family dying from climate change induced asthma while he is visiting Bahamas?
===========
shouldn’t the Obama’s be put in jail for exposing their children to dangerous climate change?
isn’t this what is being proposed? putting people in jail for climate change? Surely exposing your children to a rapid change of climate is the climate equivalent of high crimes and misdemeanors?
Lord Moncton says: “But in logic – it cannot be repeated often enough – mere correlation does not necessary imply causation.”
=====
Logic also says that CO2 is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause the global temperature to rise. So blaming this all on CO2 is illogical as Spock would say.
You’ve got a point there. Even measured increases in CO2 and measured increases in temperature do not prove, or even necessarily IMPLY, that the added CO2 caused the warming. I’m reminded of a paper by
McKittrick showing a correlation between increased INDUSTRIALIZATON and increased temperatures, implying that it might be the waste heat put out by our industrial society that is being measured rather than any effect from CO2.
I am not sure where the 67% electrical transmission and distribution efficiency figure comes from, but that figure seems a bit low, to me. Quoting from
https://www.nema.org/Products/Document/TDEnergyEff.pdf
“Generally speaking, T&D losses between 6% and 8% are considered normal.”
I don’t know if their estimate is better than the source for your figure, but my experience in the electrical power industry supports the higher transmission efficiency number.
The analysis will suffer little from the corrected figures; there is still the fact that most energy is lost in the conversion of raw potential into useful work, no matter what fuel is employed. Nuclear plants, for example, which are favored for large scale replacement of fossil power, are limited to less than 35% thermal efficiency by peak temperature limits of the reactor core.
BillR
Corrected link:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nema.org%2FProducts%2FDocuments%2FTDEnergyEff.pdf&ei=WHImVYKfLMjisAXT84G4Dw&usg=AFQjCNHj_xnhlKj4uhzGH2v-ZI4RSiwWjA&bvm=bv.90237346,d.eXY
Reblogged this on Wolsten and commented:
An excellent summary of the key points underpinning the skeptical viewpoint.
Sorry, you missed Step 0: Prove that your measurements of “global” temperature and CO2 sources and levels are accurate to a degree (i.e. with proper error analysis) that allows you to make any scientific statement about either. Without proof that the measurements are accurate, the rest is so much garbage.
In regard to #1, what do you do if the person you trying to convince knows that you have cherry picked the only temp record that hasn’t shown recent warming, and that one is not even surface temps? Like you say, the rest of your pyramid comes tumbling down…
trafamadore:
Satellite data is far more accurate than surface data when looking at global T. So you are the one doing the cherry-picking. As usual.
No, recent refinements in the Satellite data calibration now show its in alignment with the conclusions of land based data — there’ no longer enough difference to be worthy of controversy.
dbstealey said “Satellite data is far more accurate than surface data when looking at global T.”
What is your proof of that?
Surface is surface. Troposphere is troposphere. We don’t live in the “average” troposphere, we live on the surface. The models don’t model the troposphere, they model the surface. There is no way a satellite is “more accurate” than the surface record and the satellite people have said as much. I mean, what are you thinking, the satellite calibration needs to be constantly recalibrated with thermometers in balloons. Sheesh. I mean, really, what are you thinking?
So db, you are being sort of silly. Or stupid. Whatever.
Chris says:
What is your proof of that?
“Proof” is pretty strong. I prefer reason: the U.S. government spends hundreds of millions of dollars launching and maintaining satellites that measure global temperature. Their data is accepted by scientists everywhere. Why would the government throw away money on inaccurate data?
=========================
trafamaore! You called me names! WAH!!
I’m going to tell on you to a moderator and get you banned!
dbstealey “trafamaore! You called me names! WAH!! I’m going to tell on you to a moderator and get you banned!”
I already am semi banned. Why do you think my “thoughts” come up 12 hours after I post?
[Reply: you are either banned or you’re not. ~mod.]
dbstealey said: ““Proof” is pretty strong. I prefer reason: the U.S. government spends hundreds of millions of dollars launching and maintaining satellites that measure global temperature. Their data is accepted by scientists everywhere. Why would the government throw away money on inaccurate data?”
The US government also spends hundreds of millions of dollars on ground based instruments to measure temperature, humidity, etc. I can apply the exact same reasoning you used for satellites for ground based instruments. Once again, what is your proof/evidence/reason for stating that satellite data is far more accurate than surface data when looking at global T?
[SNIP dragon slayers prose- way off topic – Anthony]
“That’s being cooled from 312K to 288K by our radiative atmosphere not warmed from 255K to 288 K by our radiatively cooled atmosphere.”
If the oceans are being cooled, why do the measurements show they are warming?
The oceans are NOT warming!
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/06oct_abyss/
You’re confusing THEORY, saying the “missing heat” must be hiding in the oceans, with actual measurements.
Alan said “The oceans are NOT warming.”
From the link you posted (http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/06oct_abyss/) I quote: “Coauthor Felix Landerer of JPL noted that during the same period warming in the top half of the ocean continued unabated, an unequivocal sign that our planet is heating up. “
@Alan McIntire.
I’d also like to hear from you about the ‘lack of ocean warming’ citation that shows ocean warming. What do you say?
[SNIP by snipping Konrad for his failure to heed site policy, so must I snip this response – Anthony]
Lord Monckton,
It is unfortunate that I was at a conference three days this week and missed your reply before it was taken down. If you have a copy of it or if you have a copy of a similar response to someone else I would love to read it. You could send it to mark.stoval AT gmail.com if you would be so very kind.
I have been interested in this back and forth since the Scottish Sceptic wrote a series on climate and the positions of the various groups. In that series he had an interesting post called “Skydragons: good physics – appalling PR.” and I have wondered what your take would be on that ever since. Of course it is against this site’s policy to openly discuss any the theory that the greenhouse effect, on net, cools the earth rather than warms it so I despair of ever seeing your debating skills take on that issue. (and I don’t even know exactly where you would be on that)
Anyway, if you see this but don’t want to take the time to e-mail a note I’ll understand. I imagine your time is a limited and valuable resource.
Regards, Mark S.
“This is science. Black or white. Right or wrong.” If you are serious I have to ask when science became as simple as black or white, or right or wrong?
Konrad,
I think the temperatures measured on the moon’s surface provide ample evidence that the earth is cooler than it would be without the atmosphere to help move the heat towards the poles and upwards towards space. But the idea that CO2 does not do what James Hansen’s theory says it does is not something that either side wants to consider at this juncture in time. Perhaps in a decade or so.
”[SNIP dragon slayers prose- way off topic – Anthony]”
Anthony, it is your site and you have the right to snip, but do try to think. This is the age of the Internet, the act of censorship, just as the act of comment leaves a permanent record.
In snipping me, you are leaving a permanent record of censoring the guy who was right. I don’t want you to do that. The reason is this – you are an empiricist just like me. You didn’t trust that computer algorithms could adjust for micro site degeneration. You ran an experiment using hundreds of volunteers. And you were right. The stations most contributing to the “warming signal” were those with the most problems.
Do you like being called a “Holocaust Denier” Anthony? Can you guess how I feel about the “Slayer” smear? As I have pointed out multiple times, I have no association with that false flag operation. I present all my work as empirical experiments designed so that others can replicate. I don’t lie, I have the courage to give others clear instruction as to how to test my claims. I don’t stand on my own two feet, I stand in one steel capped boot and use the other to kick ass.
My message is simple. There can be no “lukewarmer” Realpolitik ending to this farce. AGW due to CO2 is a physical impossibility. A “soft landing” cannot be engineered, so stop trying.
Have you ever seen Monckton, Willis or Dr. Brown win a round against me without censorship? No. And many others have now seen the same thing. If those gate-keepers of opinion at WUWT were truly better than me at radiative physics, FEA and CFD, they wouldn’t need censorship to defend themselves.
Only the hard sceptics can win this. Time to open your ocular organs and turn your olfactory attentions to nearby caffeinated beverages Anthony. It’s not “warming but less than we thought”, It’s “AGW due to CO2 is a physical impossibility”.
As I said in my censored comment, It’s not good enough for sceptics to be “less wrong”. We need to be RIGHT.
[Reply: WUWT does not censor. If a comment was snipped it is because site policy makes it clear that sky dragon comments are not wanted. ~mod.]
“[Reply: WUWT does not censor. If a comment was snipped it is because site policy makes it clear that sky dragon comments are not wanted. ~mod.]”
I have seen Konrad say at JoNova’s site that the Sl*yers were not correct. He is not one of them. They do share some views, but then this site shares views with Dr. Mann and James Hansen. I would not call every post here “that Hansen crap” or anything like that.
What we have here is the censorship of a solid point of view —- the scientific point of view I was taught in college in the 70s. I was told in the 70s that the sun, our gravity, mass of the atmosphere, conduction, convection, and radiation all play various parts as do many other things. We were never told anything like the James Hansen myth that many are beholden to today.
We might be wrong, but saying that anyone who thinks CO2, on net, cools the atmosphere and does not heat it is not welcome here does look like censorship to me.
~Mark
[Reply: Thanks for the info. ~mod]