By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
» Several members of the American Physical Society have contacted me to ask how they should respond to a tokenistic “consultation” by the Society’s “Panel on Public Affairs” about its proposed amendment to its existing daft “Statement on Climate Change”. They invited me to submit this to WattsUpWithThat for publication as a message to our American cousins. APS members, please send comments on the draft statement to APS before the May 6 deadline. Please copy them to Judith Curry’s website, Climate Etc., which has a thread devoted to the draft statement: http://judithcurry.com/2015/04/20/aps-discussion-thread/.
Climate change is now a political issue. It is not the business of the American Physical Society to take sides and make what amount to partisan political statements, particularly when the activists promoting the APS’ revised “statement on climate change” have taken care to restrict members to one comment each on the draft. That restriction, for which your rules do not provide, prevents the development of a proper debate between the nest of activists behind the statement and the membership as a whole.
Onlookers have begun to notice how willing climate skeptics are to debate, and how unwilling the profiteers of doom. Shutting off debate by limiting comments confirms the growing impression among impartial observers that those who profit from the climate story are now nakedly fearful and intellectually incapable of defending a scientific position that becomes less tenable month by month:
Your note to APS members (which, incidentally, has not been sent to every member, as your rules require) does not even indicate that members who comment will get a reply. Again, the intention seems to be to stifle debate and keep control in the hands of a politically-correct gaggle of militants.
Worst of all, there will be no ballot of the membership on whether the statement in its final form should be promulgated as an APS statement. Your rules do not require a ballot but they do not forbid one either. It would be sensible if you were to give all members a free vote on the statement so that, for once, it will be reflect the scientific opinion not of a clique miscalling itself a consensus but of many.
Otherwise, the draft will not be a statement of or by or on behalf of the Society as a whole, and must not be presented as though it were. Instead, the document, if there is one, must state explicitly that your “APS statement” is the view of a single group of activists at the Society, and not a statement by the APS as a whole.
So to science. There is now a statable case that undue concern about our effect on the climate is misplaced. The original wild predictions on which that concern was built have proven much exaggerated. Even the IPCC has implicitly accepted this fact by substituting what it ambitiously describes as its “expert judgment” for the meaningless output of the computer models on which the excessive predictions of doom that originally fueled the climate scare were based. It has slashed its near-term projections of global warming by getting on for half, though your statement somehow fails to take note of this significant retreat:
Furthermore, the economic literature is near-unanimous in concluding that the cost of attempted mitigation today outweighs that of focused adaptation the day after tomorrow, though, again, your statement is culpably silent on this fact:
Accordingly, the American Physical Society runs the real risk of jeopardizing not only its own reputation but also the standing of science itself in the public mind if your activists’ superfluous, “me-too” climate statement eventually turns out to have been predicated far more on politics and peculation than on sound science and effective economics.
It would be preferable if the American Physical Society were either quietly to withdraw its current embarrassing statement without replacing it at all, or to scrap the present unacceptable redraft and replace it with the more sensible, more scientific and less politically prejudiced draft that now follows.
The new version corrects the many scientific errors in your draft, and takes a balanced position on the climate question, based not on politics nor on prejudice nor on profit but on evidence.
Climate change: risks and rewards, benefits and costs
Either: The following statement has not been voted on by the members of the American Physical Society. Accordingly, it may not represent their opinions.
Or: The following statement was approved by a two-thirds majority in a ballot of the members of the American Physical Society on [date of ballot].
Climate change is not new. The climate has been changing for millenia:
Above: Global temperature relative to peak Holocene temperature, based on ocean cores Source: Hansen, NASA GISS
Disruption has often resulted. It can be expected to continue to occur in future. Therefore, as even the IPCC concedes, it is not appropriate to attribute each individual extreme-weather event to manmade global warming. We call upon the scientific community and the news media to take a more balanced and responsible and less exploitative attitude to the aetiology of extreme-weather events in future.
It is not clear whether natural or anthropogenic forcings currently dominate. Of the abstracts of 11,944 climate-related papers published in the reviewed journals over the 21 years 1991-2011, only 41 (0.3%) were found to have stated explicitly that most warming since 1950 was manmade (Legates et al., 2013). This is not a “97% consensus” and we express our dismay at the attempts in some scientific journals and in much of the news media to suggest near-unanimity on a scientific question that very much remains open.
No survey of scientists in climate and related fields has ever asked more than a statistically-inadequate handful of climatologists whether they consider our influence on the weather potentially dangerous. What is clear is that, though the concentration of CO2 is growing at a rate consistent with the IPCC’s 1990 “business-as-usual” scenario A (Le Quéré et al., 2014), the IPCC’s then-predicted consequential short-run central rate of global warming in the quarter-century since 1990 has proven to be double the observed trend on the mean of the monthly anomalies in the three longest-standing terrestrial datasets with the two satellite lower-troposphere datasets. The models have failed.
Near-term projections of global 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), are all well above the 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.
One satellite dataset (RSS, 2015) shows no global warming for 18 years 4 months:
The influence of each additional CO2 molecule is less than that of each of its predecessors (Myhre et al., 1998). Affordably-recoverable fossil-fuel reserves are finite and may be largely exhausted by the end of the century in any event.
Until then, no significant reductions in CO2 emissions are foreseeable because China, which now burns half the world’s coal and is its largest CO2 emitter, has been effectively exempted from any requirement to curb emissions:
Furthermore, the mean atmospheric residence time of an individual CO2 molecule is 5-10 years. After allowing for biosphere exchanges, the mean persistence time of our added CO2 is 30-50 years, not the “thousands of years” your draft ludicrously suggests. The influence of our emissions will be short-lived once they cease, whether through regulation or through exhaustion.
Intergovernmental climate science has injected politics into the climate question in a manner often incompatible with independent scientific enquiry. The IPCC’s documents are not peer-reviewed: instead, the authors have – and use – the power to override the reviewers.
Worse, the IPCC has not always been honest. For instance, its persistence in insisting that the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 20 years hence in the face of objections from its own reviewers is a case in point.
Also, the IPCC’s statistical manipulation of the global temperature data by a technique that enabled it falsely to maintain that the rate of global warming is accelerating (a technique that would just as falsely show a sine-wave as having a rising trend when the trend on a sine-wave is by definition zero) and its refusal to correct the resulting error in its Fourth Assessment Report upon a request from an expert reviewer that it should remove that now-discredited artifice demonstrate its self-serving and partisan intent and its panicky and now-flagrant disregard of the scientific method:
We call upon the IPCC and all others who profit from magnifying global warming to cease and desist from the corruption of science.
The IPCC’s predictions have not been skillful. The underlying warming rate is small: the models did not predict the current near-stasis in global temperatures, and the oceans – ignoring the very poor resolution of the measurements – appear to be warming at a rate equivalent to only 0.2 Cº/century.
The ARGO network of bathythermograph buoys does not provide much comfort for those who have tried to maintain that the “missing heat” predicted by the failed models has gone into hiding in the oceans:
An increasing body of reviewed research indicates that climate sensitivity is one-half to one-fifth of the IPCC’s estimates. On the evidence, there should be less climate research: other research fields in the physical sciences are suffering from the undue concentration of public funds on what now seems a non-problem:
At present, therefore, there is no scientific and still less economic case for any policy that would in any way regulate or control emissions of greenhouse gases. Indeed, there are benefits as well as risks in rising CO2 concentration: CO2 fertilization, for instance. The climate is currently undergoing no change that would – whether or not the change is anthropogenic – take the world beyond natural variability:
It is, in any event, not the role of scientific societies to make political recommendations. It is the APS’ role to be honest about science, not partisan about politics. To be honest, on the evidence now before us the certainty about the rightness of the IPCC’s profitably alarmist stance that the APS’ activists expressed in their previous statement on climate change was inappropriate.
No Chance.
Scientist of such ilk think they know the best.
Since September 2012 (first publication of hypothesis) I’ve been trying to tell people that Sunspot Cycles and the Earth rotation are synchronised
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01071375v2/document
(version 2, -v2/document)
Now, couple of years later, Chinese scientist Lihua Ma from no less than Chinese Academy of Sciences has come up with a ‘brilliant’ brand new hypothesis:
“Possible influence of the 11-year solar cycle on length-of-day change”
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11200-014-1040-x
Both driven by the same underlying force, magnetic fields perhaps.
That is correct. Sunspot cycles are driven by toroidal magnetic field, and the LOD data are closely related to the outer core boundary field. Neither of two can affect the other, thus a common external cause could be postulated
I read the APS ‘position statement’ over at J. Curry’s blog.
It is pure political advocacy, authored by a select group of physics community activists.
Ugh…..
Thank You (!) Christopher Monckton, for yet another succinctly stated rebuttal of the alarmist mash!
May APS yet recover their wits and heed your words.
“May APS yet recover their wits and heed your words”
As has been pointed out, various groups and individuals have long been busily painting themselves deep into a corner from which it may already be impossible to extract themselves.
Many have staked every ounce of their credibility on their pro warming, settled science, skeptics-are-scoundrels stance.
Always a bad idea to leave ones self no recourse from an untenable position, it is truly astounding that so many have nonetheless done just that.
This is why we hear many of them doubling down (Antarctica melting within a decade) , becoming ever more shrill (No greater threat to our planet), and making increasingly stern admonitions ( Jail for deniers) towards those who would bring down their house of cards.
Being proved wrong will mean loss of jobs for some, possible charges of malfeasance and fraud for others, and being discredited and career-less for many more.
Thank you again Lord Monckton.
Do you think you could disguise yourself as a cardinal and slip into the papal summit on climate climate? Somebody has to give those guys hell. You could do it.
[Snipped. If you keep referring to non-science issues regarding C. Monckton you will be invited to leave. ~mod.]
Let me guess.
” He’s not really a Lord”
This ad hominem attack always shows up when MISTER Moncton writes a post.
Do-it-yourself climate science:
This can:
Prove Al Gore and the consensus are wrong.
Prove AGW is a mistake.
Prove the ‘war on coal’ is misguided.
Prove CO2 has no significant effect on climate.
Prove climate sensitivity (the increase in AGT due to doubling of CO2) is not significantly different from zero
Right here. Right now.
Only existing temperature and CO2 data are used. Fundamental understanding of math and its relation to the physical world are assumed.
The CO2 level (or some math function thereof) has been suspected of being a forcing. The fundamental math is that temperature changes with the time-integral of a forcing (not the forcing itself). For example, a bloc of metal over a burner heats up slowly, responding to the time-integral of the net forcing (heat from the burner minus the heat loss from convection and radiation). Add a blanket over the block (a ‘step change’ to the loss) and the block temperature increases to a new steady state temperature but the temperature increases slowly (in response to the time-integral).
Existing data includes temperature and CO2 determined from Vostok, Antarctica (or any other) ice cores for at least a full glacial or inter-glacial period. If CO2 is a forcing, the temperature should change as a transient following CO2 level change instead of temperature and CO2 level going up and down in ‘lock step’ as has been determined from measurements and is widely reported.
Existing temperature and CO2 (Berner, 2001) assessments for the entire Phanerozoic eon (about 542 million years) are graphed at http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
Pick any two points separated in time that have the same average global temperature (AGT) anomaly. The cumulative forcing is the time-integral of the forcing (or a function thereof) times a scale factor. Because the AGT at the beginning and end of the time period are the same and the time-integral of the forcing is not zero, the scale factor must be zero. As a consequence, the effect of the forcing is zero.
Granted that if the math function consists of an anomaly with respect to a ‘break-even’ CO2 level, a ‘break-even level could be determined to make the beginning and ending temperatures equal, but pick another time period with equal beginning and ending temperatures but different from the first pick and a different ‘break-even’ level might be calculated. Since the possibility of many different ‘break-even’ levels is ludicrous, the conclusion that CO2 has no significant effect on AGT prevails and something else is causing the temperature change.
A somewhat different approach to the proof showing that CO2 has no significant effect on climate and also identification of the two main factors that do (95% correlation since before 1900) are disclosed at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com
Identification of the two main factors that do cause climate change are also disclosed in a peer reviewed paper published in Energy and Environment, vol. 25, No. 8, 1455-1471.
So Dan, Just what are the SI units of a “forcing” ??
For one thing, Temperature is a macro property of thermodynamic systems, and usually is related to energy in the form of “heat” (noun) which requires the presence of physical real matter (interacting particles).
On the other hand, the process in which CO2 (or other GHG) becomes involved, is a matter of electro-magnetic radiation energy, which is different from “heat” and which is not necessarily totally converted into “heat” energy in our environment, so presumably the two are not directly related when it comes to treating them as “forcings”.
So I wish climatologists would get things straight. Not ALL EM radiant energy gets immediately converted to heat energy to become part of the thermodynamic system. Much of it becomes a part of the biological systems (or some other) of earth instead.
Well ultimately the end product is waste “heat”, the lowest form of energy life; but the delay in getting there can have significant consequences.
Evidently, Dr Kevin Trenberth seems unaware that not ALL EM energy is immediately wasted as heat in earths thermodynamic processes; and he thinks that is a travesty.
I would say so too.
Forcing units are W/m^2 = J/sec/m^2
The time-integral of net forcing gets to energy change which has units J/sec/m^2
Dividing by the effective thermal capacitance gets to temperature change.
Plants only store about 2% of incident energy as chemical energy and much of this eventually shows up as heat. IMO less than 1% doesn’t show up as heat (until the fossil fuels are burned) and is an insignificant effect, especially in light of other uncertainties.
Well I can see measuring an incoming solar radiation field in Wm^-2 or a surface emitted LWIR Lambertian source of EMR.
But once the CO2 does its capture thing, that is promptly followed by an almost immediate (collision caused) re-radiation but now in an isotropic scattered radiation pattern that fills the sky with isotropic LWIR radiation, only about half of which can reach the surface to get absorbed by some non radiative process.
I don’t see much of any radiation to thermal energy conversion going on in the atmosphere.
GHG molecular absorptions are resonance processes that happen at specific molecular species based line frequencies (in bands).
And how many times a day are we told that gases do not absorb or radiate thermal IR spectra ??
Well it isn’t BB radiation (nothing is) but it certainly does happen as a result of radiating antennae that come into play during the molecular distortion during collisions between molecules of the atmosphere.
Since the molecular density is low in gases compared to the liquid and solid phases, ordinary gases are nearly transparent in earth available quantities so they are nothing like total absorbers that characterize the BB radiation.
Absolutely nothing in the universe absorbs 100.0 % of even a single EM wavelength, let alone all wavelengths from zero to infinity; so BB radiation does not actually exist. But there is a theory of what it would do if it did exist.
To get zero reflectance from any physical body, the material would have to have the same permeability and permittivity (munought and epsilonnought) as free space, and then such a material would be perfectly transmissive, instead of perfectly absorptive.
The required physical properties of a black body absorber are as absurd and mythical as were the required physical properties of “the ether” required to transmit waves at the speed of light.
Yes I know that some thermally heated bodies do emit a thermal spectrum that over a very limited frequency range does track quite closely to the prediction of Planck’s BB theory. One of the miracles of modern physics.
george e – You appear to be ignoring that non-ghg molecules in the atmosphere outnumber ghg molecules by about 500 to 1 so most collisions would be with non-ghg molecules. If the collision happens before the ghg molecule that absorbed a photon emits a photon, some or all of the energy is transferred to the non-ghg molecule in a process called thermalization, the ghg molecule is no longer able to emit a photon, and all of the energy in the absorbed photon appears as thermal energy, i.e. the atmosphere is warmed. A common demonstration of this is humid nights cool off slower than dry nights.
Energy gets transferred back to ghg molecules via reverse-thermalization. The back and forth goes on continuously until the energy from all gas molecules gets radiated to space by ghg molecules at high altitude.
I have been unable to find anything on the amount of time that passes between a molecule absorbing and emitting a photon but suspect it to average less than a microsecond. Any suggestions?
Dan says, “IMO less than 1% doesn’t show up as heat (until the fossil fuels are burned) and is an insignificant effect, especially in light of other uncertainties.”
Hum? How mush heat energy is required to accelerate earth’s hydrological cycle, thus heat is then used as work instead of remaining heat?
Also, In determining the capacity of any given input to warm, one must know the residence time that energy will exist in earths atmosphere, land and oceans. If said energy enters the oceans, it can be lost to the atmosphere for centuries. if said energy accelerates the earth’s hydrological cycle, including winds convecting both vertically and horizontally, then disparate aspects of TSI residence time is shortened, thus cooling, not warming, or at the least a negative feedback to increased insolation.
Dan Pangburn April 21, 2015 at 12:07 am
I have been unable to find anything on the amount of time that passes between a molecule absorbing and emitting a photon but suspect it to average less than a microsecond. Any suggestions?
For CO2 absorbing at 15 microns it’s much more than a millisec, whereas collisions are taking place at ~0.1 nanosec.
Dan,
Why do you assume I ignore things, simply because I don’t mention them.
So tell me more about this “thermalization and “reverse thermalization” process.
As I understand how you just explained “reverse thermalization” process, since “heat” (noun) cannot leave earth without any material to conduct or convect it, then you are suggesting to us that 100% of the thermal energy in the atmosphere, most of which is non GHG and non IR active gases, must transfer their “thermal energy” to the GHG molecules, and they will then magically radiate all of that energy as 15 micron (in the case of CO2) radiation (or other higher photon energy bands).
So in that case, I would expect that the extra-terrestrial spectrum of earth thermal radiation, would consist of ONLY GHG spectral lines, which are largely Temperature independent as to wavelength.
But the published graphs I see of earth radiation from outer space, all appear to be earth surface Temperature BB like spectra, with big GHG (notably ozone and CO2 ) dips.
I don’t see any big 15 micron peak spectra, from CO2 channeling everybody elses thermal energy through their line spectra emissions.
My standard Infra-red handbook, doesn’t say word one about earth cooling solely by GHG resonance spectra EM radiation.
And remember according to Kevin Trenberth, only 10% of the earth surface emitted thermal spectrum radiant energy (40 Wm^-2 out of 390 Wm^-2) escapes directly to outer space, so 90% of it has to be emitted as CO2 or other GHG lines, if your thermalization scenario is correct.
Now I certainly appreciate that GHG molecules and non GHG molecules pass KE back and forth among themselves in collisions; and that is the thermal energy that is manifested in the gas Temperature. Exactly how a CO2 molecule in free flight, busily doing it’s elbow bend oscillations after having captured a 15 micron photon, which is a 20 THz photon, can exit from that entirely internal (to the molecule) excited state, without emitting a 20 THz photon is beyond me.
But I am not a quantum mechanic, so I don’t know. Phil says below the state may be collision terminated in maybe a nsec.
That is all day, if you are a captive 20THz photon.
I’m totally puzzled that such a fundamental basic process, as the LWIR removal of energy from the earth, does not have its own chapter in every physics text book.
I have yet to encounter ANY description of exactly how this “thermalization” and reverse thermalization works. It sounds like hand waving to me.
But I’m always anxious to learn
And it begs the question. Why is it that on the sun’s surface ALL of the emitted solar radiant energy is not emitted at ONLY the specific wavelengths that are those well known wavelengths of the hydrogen spectrum. Why is not all the solar atmosphere thermal energy converted to hydrogen spectral lines in order to escape from the sun ??
And I see I misread Phil’s post. I think he says a CO2 molecule hits something else in about 100 ps but it remains in its excited state for more than a millisecond. So it can endure 10^7 collisions and not miss a beat in its elbow bending.
Now I am thoroughly confused.
g
[“100 ps”? .mod]
Phil – Can you point me to a source or basis?
George e – I’m looking at a TOA radiation graph at David Appell’s Jan 8, 2015 3:58 PM post on http://judithcurry.com/2015/01/08/miskolczi-discussion-thread (You can also find it with a search for “top of atmosphere” radiation spectrum). This is fairly high resolution so it shows the ‘hash’ of the hundreds of spectral lines from water vapor and also the spikes at the centers of the CO2 and O3 dips (which result from reverse-thermalization at high altitude). Except for cloud radiation and the terrestrial radiation through the window, its all spectral ‘lines’ from ghg molecules which includes water vapor. The broad ‘dips’ result mostly from low altitude pressure broadening of absorption.
Most of the ghg radiation is from the hundreds of spectral lines from water vapor molecules. Only a small part is radiated from CO2 molecules (15 micron line).
A lot of full spectrum (close enough) radiation comes from clouds which consist of solid or liquid particles of water, each containing millions of atoms. Clouds cover about half the planet, have an average emissivity of about 0.5 and an average temperature of about 258 K.
My guess (and its only a guess) about the sun is that there are lots of different elements involved and each gas molecule has lots of emission lines at the extremely high temperature and, what with broadening, it looks a lot like BB radiation to us.
If the time from absorption to emission was as long as 1 ms, nearly all absorbed radiation would be immediately thermalized and would be very resistant to reverse-thermalization. My calcs don’t point in that direction
Realize that non of this is needed for the proof that CO2 has no.significant effect on climate change.
If the American Physicalists can have a society, why not the unBought ?
I propose the MUSS
The Monkton Unbought Society of Scientists
producing papers, reviews and rebuttals. Condition of membership – all interests must be declared
all work and comment in favour of a declared interest will be foregone.
this all seems a bit like when the militant tendency tried to take over the Unions and hence the Labour party in the UK
It would be better if the letter did not contain such an obviously altered graph as the one claiming to be ‘based on Petit(1999)’.
Phil. Should stop whining. There is nothing wrong with the reproduction of Petit’s graph.
Someone should tell the American Geophyscal Union this as well. It disgusts me that professional bodies which we sometimes have to be a member of, put out these statements, geneally supporting catastrophic climate change, and the members have not had a chance to vote on it. I completely agree that for any society, professional body etc in the realm of science should put such a statement to vote of the entire membership and include that it was endorsed by X% of the membership. To not do so just plays into the hands of alarmists who then take the entire number of people who are a member of that ‘body’ and assume they all agree. When in reality, many don’t.
travelblips,
The AGU knows exactly what it is doing. The small clique running the organization deliberatelly censors views they don’t want their membership to see, or to vote on. They refuse to allow anyone but themselves to have access to the membership contact list.
The AGU (and many similar organizations) don’t just “play into the hands of the alarmists”, they are the alarmists. I would be willing to bet that if the OISM Petition language was presented to their membership verbatim, it would be adopted by a very large percentage.
The AGU is engaging in climate alarmist propaganda, nothing less. They control the message, and they refuse to relinquish control in the slightest. Their members are expected to send in their dues, and shut up.
Prof. Richard Lindzen wrote about how only one or two activists on a Board can radically alter the oeganization’s message. Lindzen isn’t speculating; he names names (see Sec. 2).
There has been a concerted, deliberate effort to co-opt professional organizations and turn them into climate alarmist mouthpieces. They know there will be lots of ignorant people who will turn into head-nodders when they issue opinions, no matter how baseless those opinions are. We often see some of the mouth-breathers right here, constantly pushing their Appeal to Authority logical fallacies. So the tactic works.
The basic facts are that almost all of the very slight warming from CO2 has already happened; and that the tiny 0.7º of global warming is an unmitigated benefit; and that the rise in CO2 is likewise entirely beneficial, with no downside whatever; and that every alarming climate prediction made over the past thirty years has failed miserably.
The incessant commentary and scare stories by the same small handful of climate alarmists posting here every day completely ignores those facts. There is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening to the global climate. They try to hijack the conversation by always appealing to corrupted ‘authorities’ like the AGU.
Fortunately, they never change anyone’s mind here, because WUWT attracts intelligent, educated readers who know better. It is the general public that is being scammed by their man-made global warming hoax. The few commenters here who promote that hoax probably know better. But they never give up. They’re genuine cranks, and the climate scam appears to be their mission in life.
For what it’s worth: I call on the AGU to present the language of the OISM Petition Project to its membership, asking for an up/down vote of approval or disapproval. With Kyoto II coming up, that would be a very timely survey.
Of course, they won’t do it. Propagandists always censor different views.
Intelligent people know better than to use the word “hoax”
[Note: This poster has been banned for repeated unethical behavior, such as stealing the identity of legitimate commenters. ~mod.]
Sam Varian,
It fits the definition. But if you have a better word, by all means, post it here.
Sam Varian,
A “hoax” is a deception. Why would intelligent people never use the word “deception”?
[Reply: “Sam Varian” is a hoax and a deception. He is a banned commenter who has stolen the identity of other legitimate commenters. Say goodbye to ‘Sam’, he won’t be commenting for long here. ~mod.]
Sam,
So on your planet Hal Lewis, who called man-made global warming a “scam”, was unintelligent:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lewis
On another forum, we have several commenters who when challenged on their AGW claims fall back on the statement that since the AGU, APS and others agree with them, they must be right.
“Onlookers have begun to notice…..” That’s a good quote. Think I’ll save it for future use. Attributed, of course.
vukcevic,
If you look closely, you can see that temperature changed first, followed by CO2. Not vice-versa. Thus, their “evidence” deconstructs their narrative.
Thanks. Yes I am aware of the fact, some put that difference to as much as 800 years. I am not sure about the accuracy the ice cores data, even the most recent ones going back just few hundreds of years have notable problems.
A big deal is made out of the CO2 high levels during interglacial periods
This graph from NCDC, NOAA is suppose to provide the evidence
I would suggest following:
Rise of CO2 is due to release from the Earth’s interior. Gravitational anomaly map of the ocean floor clearly show bands of large magma releases possibly triggered by the Milankovic cycles.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/IG.jpg
If so the current interglacial is marked by the black line
What are we looking at, Vuk, where interglacial = black line?
Yes, if I am correct, the black line is there to‘mark’ the current (Holocene)
I am coming to the view that the TSI changes alone, either from solar or Milankovic (I am supporter of his orbital hypothesis) cycles is not large enough to account for the climate variability either during the Holocene or the glacial periods. Slow glaciation is likely (alarming even terrifying) process of returning the Earth’s climate to its long term natural climate balance.
However, we had about 20 (?)or so interglacial periods, when temperatures rose extremely rapidly. Northern hemisphere’s multi-millennial temperature oscillations are most likely, in the manner of multi-decadal oscillations, determined by the North Atlantics currents efficiency to move equatorial heat towards Arctic. There are two or three areas of the currents flow constraint subjected to strong geological activity, which in turn may be modulated by Milankovic cycles.
They’re too far gone to back down now. Just having alphabet soup after your last name doesn’t mean you are able to separate your politics from your work, and academia is overwhelmingly leftist. It’s even worse for political academics, like the ones who get put in charge of institutions and committees. So APS says what it says because that’s what the people in charge of issuing the opinion believe with religious fervor, the same as they believe in the aggregation of power in the hands of an enlightened technocracy.
Also, there’s an enormous pile of money being given to CAGW research. If APS denies CAGW is real, and the funding dries up, they’re eschewing a lot of money and putting many of their members on the street. It is, frankly, in the economic and political self-interest of the APS’ membership and leadership to further the global warming scare.
Exactly, they can’t focus on the physics as they would lose in any reasonable professional debate. So they practice school yard bullying instead so they can keep stealing our tax money. Because of the major loss in monetary outcome, there can be no serious mutual discussion but only verbal warfare, that warfare being the evidence against deception and denigration. Anytime a “professional” practices these tactics he has reduced himself to the level of a thug and it should be obvious that he has logically lost all credibility because he is no longer capable of professionally defending his position. Unfortunately the MSM has lost so much scientific intellect that it is unable to discern the difference.
Could some-one please clarify for me the 2nd graph in this article( IPCC Medium term warming predictions) which shows a steady observed rate of temp increase at 0.14degree Centigrade/decade versus the oft made statement that the earth has not warmed at all in the last 18+ years. I got caught out on this whilst trying to explain the issue to my daughter.
Dark blue arrow should have stopped at early 2015. It represent ( I assume) linear up-trend since 1990, clearly there are no observed temperatures beyond the early 2015.
p.s. my daughter homework is responsible for my ‘solar science’ deliberations.
Harrowsceptic,
Perhaps this graph might help:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/trend
It shows satellite temperature data, with an overlay of rising CO2 (the sawtooth).
There are lots of graphs available, some from different sources; some accurate within error bands, and some fabricated for propaganda purposes. However, your daughter might be interested in the comment from Dr. Pachauri, recent head of the IPCC, acknowledging that global warming has stopped.
One thing is certain: if global warming was rising along with CO2 as predicted all through the 1990’s, there would be no debate. We would have to take action. But since those predictions have been falsified, the only thing keeping the man-made global warming scare alive is money, and lots of it.
[Snip. This commenter has been repeatedly banned. ~mod.]
[snip – latest sockpuppet of Wong and H. Grouse et al. permanently delegated to the bit bucket – Anthony]
Harrowsmith, there are 4 major temperature data sets, plus a couple more that are not major.
2 of them are surface-based and calculated by warmists. GISS & HadCRUT. The IPCC uses HadCrut. That’s where the data from the 2nd graph is likely plotted from.
The other two majors, UAH & RSS, are satellite-based and calculated by skeptics.
One of the skeptics temp set and one of the warmers sets show no warming since 1998, in fact the RSS show a tiny bit of cooling.
The same goes that one of the skeptics and one of the warmers set show a bit of warming since 1998. A very little bit, about the same amount of temp rise as occurs while my morning coffee brews.
It can be tough to argue this stuff with people, because they don’t understand that there are a handful of different data sets, placing a number on something which is essentially impossible to measure except in a rough sort of way. And we know the surface base temp is regularly adjusted to make the past cooler and the warming trend look greater than it is. We know this, because they openly admit it.
“All of This” is simple poppycock. It impossible for the common man to believe that there could be such an amount of corruption, and ignorance too!, at the highest levels of science. But a deep study of this issue reveals no other conclusion.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1998/mean:6/plot/rss/from:1998/mean:6/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/mean:6/plot/gistemp/from:1998/mean:6/plot/uah/from:1998/trend/plot/rss/from:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1998/trend
glenncz,
Here is a chart showing several different temperature datasets. Note that they have all turned down. Global warming has turned into global cooling.
I hate to say this, but the only active set going down since 2002 at the present time is RSS. All of the others are either obsolete or have not been updated by WFT unfortunately. To verify this, try to find the January 2015 anomaly for anything except RSS using WFT.
Many thanks for the feedback and clarification
In answer to harrow skeptic, the blue line is the linear trend on the data since 1990.
Engineers and scientists should be voting with their feet. I have quit the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning, Engineers (ASHRAE) over their support of bogus climate science and energy awards for buildings that are actually energy hogs but have “energy saving” features. I have quit the National Society of Professional Engineers over their lack of ethics. Don’t forget to send them a letter telling them why you quit!
Dear Mr. Monckton, though I generally enjoy reading your work, I have some sincere issues with this text.
1. “Of the abstracts of 11,944 climate-related papers published in the reviewed journals over the 21 years 1991-2011, only 41 (0.3%) were found to have stated explicitly that most warming since 1950 was manmade (Legates et al., 2013).”
Phrasing it like this leaves me with more questions than answers. Firstly stating that only 0.3% explicitly state something in an abstract doesn’t mean the others disagree. I can imagine that e.g. of all recent papers on evolution only a very small amount state in their abstract that they agree with Darwin’s theory. Secondly “climate-related papers” is a broad term. I would not expect a paper researching prehistoric climate to have anything to say about warming since 1950, in the abstract or elsewhere.
2. You claim to want to stay away from political issues, but I see no reason why the American Physical Society would want to make statements based on economical or geopolitical issues (the China graph). I believe that any text by the APS should focus on the physical sciences, since that is their area of expertise. The other parts just distract from that.
3. Comparing heat in the ocean with heat in the atmosphere by comparing temperatures is scientifically incorrect since they have vastly different heat capacities.
4. Focusing only on a selected part of the data at hand (first graph and statement regarding RSS) runs the risk of being dismissed as cherry picking.
Note: I have not read the APS draft. I am sure there are issues with that. I am judging your text by its own merits.
+1
Aran should understand that if only 0.3 per cent of scientific papers related to climate say most of the warming since 1950 is manmade there is no scientific basis for claiming a 97 per cent consensus on that point.
He should also understand that before long China will emit half the world’s CO2. That is a relevant fact when considering whether we can do anything to reduce global CO2 concentration.
Also, if the ocean has a heat capacity 2-3 orders of magnitude greater than the atmosphere, the warming rate of the ocean is likely to be the best guide to how atmospheric temorperature will change.
Aran then contradicts himself by saying I had cherry-picked a temperature dataset. No, I had used an ocean as well as an atmospheric dataset. It doesn’t much matter which dataset one uses. The rate of global warming is about half what the IPCC had predicted in 1990. Get over it.
“Aran should understand that if only 0.3 per cent of scientific papers related to climate say most of the warming since 1950 is manmade there is no scientific basis for claiming a 97 per cent consensus on that point.”
No, this is an incorrect statement. First of all, one cannot make that claim, just from the whether or not something is explicitly stated in the abstracts. Again, I am sure one could make similar statement about other theories such as the theory of gravity. The percentage of abstracts explicitly stating agreement with this theory will be very low, but this says nothing about whether or not there is consensus. The numbers you show don’t support the 97% claim, but they do not disprove it either.
“He should also understand that before long China will emit half the world’s CO2. That is a relevant fact when considering whether we can do anything to reduce global CO2 concentration.”
I understand that and my point was that such an argument is completely irrelevant when determining the physical scientific basis for global warming.
“Also, if the ocean has a heat capacity 2-3 orders of magnitude greater than the atmosphere, the warming rate of the ocean is likely to be the best guide to how atmospheric temperature will change.”
I would say this is a crude simplification of the complex interactions between ocean and atmosphere. But if accept it for arguments sake, does the warming of the ocean – which you clearly show – then indicates the atmosphere is going to warm as well?
“Aran then contradicts himself by saying I had cherry-picked a temperature dataset. No, I had used an ocean as well as an atmospheric dataset. It doesn’t much matter which dataset one uses. The rate of global warming is about half what the IPCC had predicted in 1990. Get over it.”
I am disappointed you did not seem to read my post carefully. I claimed that the explicit showing of RSS and not the other data sets can make you vulnerable to accusations of cherry-picking, which can distract any discussion from the actual science. I am fully aware that the predictions from 1990 were too high. No argument there. You don’t need RSS to prove that.
The ‘no global warming’ charts are laying the anthropogenic doomsday scare to rest slowly but surely and, thus, are likely to remain in history. I haven’t found another way to express my sincerest gratitude to you Christopher.
This article is also on the right track. Great entertainment too. If I may, the alarmists’ diencephalons seem stimulated. Less adjectives at this stage might enhance their cortical processing.
Goldminer:
I have done the same thing for a number of Canadian locations from the 49th parallel to Eureka,Nunavut. Always similar results. It is getting less cold. I suspect increasing GHG s may do that. Or more likely, clouds. A number of sites show convergence. The highs are decreasing; the lows are less cold. Wouldn’t more cloudiness explain that?
Wayne…I haven’t had any thoughts as to the why. Although now that you have got my thoughts in that direction, my first answer would be ocean release and increased clouds, the overly warm sst,s. I noticed an increase in clouds last year where I live, and that did lead to a slightly cooler summer last year, which was appreciated. The several years prior the summers were hot. Although the hottest summer I ever felt in these mountains was back in 1957, when my father first took me on a fishing trip for steelhead up north to Humboldt/Trinity counties in California. The entire trip was triple digits over 110 F. We left a bit early to head back to SF as my mother couldn’t take it.
Judith Curry pointed out that the APS’s most-expert scientists weren’t consulted. How about the American Geophysical Union’s CEO Christine McEntee, BSN N = Nursing; MHA, HA = Health Administration. A nurse should be able to stand in the streets carrying a sign. But should she be able to speak for geophysical scientists, and give the AGU her personal stamp? She used to lead the American Association of Retired Persons, and the American Institute of Architects. These positions, and brilliant experience as a nursing student and nurse make her an expert in world weather and climate, capable of making scientific statements for the AGU? If she is so authoritative, why didn’t the American Medical Association name her their CEO?
None of the bodies who have come out in favour of CAGW have consulted their members on this.
Instead we seen reports , claims and marketing come from a very small but influence groups of people who head up the boring but important side of these organisations.
Simply put the actual members have never even been asked about their views.
The one thing I agree with here is that I would love to see the results of a vote on including this post.
or not.
trafamadore,
Including this post? There has been a vote on all posts collectively, every year since 2008. WUWT has won every one of them. So truly, you are the misfit here.
Thanks, Christopher, Lord Monckton.
Yes, I agree that the APS would be better served by keeping to fostering scientific debate rather than stifling it.
The physical reality should come forth from that debate.
But that is precisely what they appear to fear, after years of playing a scaremongering part in this climate blunder-turned-scam. They should try to regain the public trust.
dbs, What are you talking about? Read the post above: “It would be sensible if you were to give all members a free vote on the statement so that, for once, it will be reflect the scientific opinion not of a clique miscalling itself a consensus but of many.”
I would like to see the results of that vote.
trafamadore,
My apologies if I didn’t understand what you meant. It wasn’t clear, and your “or not” confused matters further. What language do you propose voting on?
Read………post………above……. Understanding……will…….come……your…….way.
Your….. cryptic….. comment….. sounds….. like….. Mosher’s….
It’s very simple. Since we have started putting out co2 in significant quantities which is after ww2 the temperature has risen between 0.4 and 0.5C at most. We have put 130ppm or about a 50% increase in co2. The tcs is therefore clearly < 0.7C.
There is great uncertainty in the estimate because there is great unknown about the oceans sun and other factors. However the data speak for themselves. Unless the ipcc can suggest why the temperature has been held back the response of the climate has been seen for a 50% rise of co2 or about 70% of the expected temperature rise for a doubling of co2. Tcs <0.7. That's the scientific result. I don't see how anybody can argue with the data. We are using the data put out and adjusted by the climate extremists and it shows that a doubling can produce no more than 0.7C. It's simple. Climate models have to be wrong because tcs clearly is not 2.5 or 3 or 4 or 6. It's < 1. Way less than 1.
Don’t we have to see water vapor increases before the temperature increases to attribute even a portion of the 0.7C rise to CO2?
Not really. Water vapor is an independent greenhouse gas. Water vapor is 20 times more powerful greenhouse gas than co2. They predict that co2 triggers some temperature increase which increases the water vapor in the atmosphere from evaporation. The increased water vapor instantly doubles the 0.6C TCS of Co2 to 1.2 to 1.8 just by itself theoretically. Unfortunately for the theory this has never actually been proven to happen. It’s just theory. In fact measurements of water vapor as I showed in my article have shown surprisingly been in a decline for decades. Why? No idea and neither do they. This is why I say that the formulas in the models are all theory. If water vapor did go up we don’t know if temps would go up because we don’t know if other things would counteract. We don’t know really very much about all this. They just guess at the numbers and then see if it matches their historical record. When the curves line up they think they’ve discovered science. All they’ve really done is come up with a curve fit. Mathematicians can curve fit all day with all kinds of fancy stuff that works way better than their clumsy expensive models. However in neither the case does a fit to the existing data imply it will match future data. That requires data to prove the fit is sticking. Unfortunately after they did their fit the very next data points pretty much proved their fit was wrong. We now know how. Their fit increased sensitivity to albedo changes very high to account for the decline in temps from 1940-1970. However that causes other problems and now that we know a good part of the reason temps fell 1940-1970 was not albedo but El Niño declines it means they were wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Yet they continue to act like they were right like their models have a shred of factual basis when the data and our knowledge show they can’t possibly be correct. Pathetic really.
The above statement from the APS is meaningless. There is a connection between atmospheric greenhouse gases and increased warming, however what the connection is; how it it works and what the magnitude of the effect is not known. The implication that greenhouse gases is “the” discrete driver of warming is not appropriate or acceptable.
There are many factors that work in complex relationships that influence warming. What makes climate science so inept is the minimal effort in understanding cooling factors. It is only a concern when backs are against the wall and a reason is needed to explain inadequate models. To understand the global climate system requires investigating warming and cooling factors with equal intensity. Anything less than that is junk science.
The connection is that rising temperature causes an increase in CO2. A further increase in CO2 may or may not cause the temperature to rise, but above 200 ppmv or less, the heating effect is minimal at best. And humans also do things that cool the planet, so the net effect of our activities may be slight warming, slight cooling or effectively none.
But in any case more CO2 is a good thing, up to the 800 to 1300 ppmv levels optimal for trees and most other plants.
The CAGW hypothesis is now completely untenable under the rules of the Scientific Method.
Observed satellite global temps now exceed CAGW model projections by 2 standard deviations, and in 5~7 years, they’ll likely be off by 3+ standard deviations, at which time, the CAGW hypothesis will have to be abandoned under the rules of the Scientific method.
The empirical evidence and physics now overwhelming show CO2’s climate sensitivity will be somewhere between 0.5C~1.5C, and will very likely be at or below 1.0C.
CAGW is a political phenomenon rather than a physical one. It’s only a matter of time before spiking energy prices and rolling brownouts/blackouts caused by draconian Leftist political energy policies generate such strong voter opposition, that politicians will be forced to abandon their contrived support of the CAGW hypothesis.
Already, 83% of US conservatives don’t think CAGW is a problem. Amazingly, 56% of US Leftists still think CAGW is an existential threat, which is further proof CAGW is a political phenomenon rather than a scientific reality.
It’s only been through: raw-data manipulation, censorship, obfuscation, deceit and propaganda that the CAGW hypothesis has managed to survive as long as it has. CAGW advocates have now run out of viable options and, more importantly, time, to keep this farce alive.
The 2005 PDO 30-yr Cool cycle, the 2020 AMO 30-yr Cool cycle, the weakest solar cycle since 1906, the coming 2022 solar cycle expected to be the weakest since 1715, the recovering Arctic Ice Extents, the record Antarctic Ice Extents, the cooling ENSO, etc. will all conspire to destroy the CAGW hypothesis.
The CAGW hypothesis is dead.
SAMURAI,
Excellent comment. For the alarmist crowd’s response, see Daniel Kuhn’s faulty ‘reasoning’ below.
Thankfully, Mother Earth has decided not to warm.
Imagine where we’d be politically if our climate continued to warm as it recently has via natural variation. (Non-Anthropologically)
I am an Australian geoscientist who, like most of my colleagues, is dissmissive of atmospheric CO2 as a driver of climate change. Initially the GSA (Geological Society of Australia) was politically motivated to support the AGW hypothesis, as favoured by the IPCC, but later reversed this position due to strong protest from its membership.
“AUSTRALIA’S peak body of earth scientists has declared itself unable to publish a position statement on climate change due to the deep divisions within its membership on the issue.
After more than five years of debate and two false starts, Geological Society of Australia president Laurie Hutton said a statement on climate change was too difficult to achieve.
Mr Hutton said the issue “had the potential to be too divisive and would not serve the best interests of the society as a whole.””
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/earth-scientists-split-on-climate-change-statement/story-e6frg8y6-1226942126322
Sorry mistyped……… dismissive… 🙁
What’s a misty ped?
At 9:36 pm on 20 April, John of Cloverdale, WA. Australia. posted:
The sea level graphic at the end misrepresents sea level as the time period is short. It needs to be dropped or time period extended if this isn’t done then you commit the sin of the IPCC you criticise previously in your response.
Mr Hearle asks for a longer sea level record. The entire Envisat record shows sea level rising at a rate equivalent to 1.3 inches per century. The GRACE record showed sea level falling. The graph I used was primarily intended to show the very large adjustments which are the only way They can pretend sea level is rising fast.