Apple and Google Pour Billions Down a Green Drain

Guest essay by Steve Goreham

Originally published in Communities Digital News, republished at WUWt by request of the author.

green-drain-money

Business has been captured by Climatism, the belief that humans are causing dangerous global warming. Leading businesses announce plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, purchase renewable energy, use vehicle biofuels, and buy carbon credits. But there is no evidence that commercial policies to “fight” climate change have any measureable effect on global temperatures.

Apple and Google, the darling companies of the millennial generation, have spent billions trying to halt global warming. Apple has brought us the Mac personal computer, the I-Phone, the I-Pad, and other trend-setting electronic devices, becoming the world’s highest-valued company. Google has been called the most innovative technology company in the world, delivering the Google search engine that revolutionized use of the internet, Google Books, Google Maps, and now developing a self-driving car. But both of these leading companies have swallowed the misguided theory of human-caused climate change, hook, line, and sinker.

Apple’s 2015 Environmental Responsibility Report states, “We don’t want to debate climate change. We want to stop it.” Former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson now heads up Apple’s environmental efforts. The firm boasts that it measures its carbon footprint “rigorously,” estimating it emitted 34 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents in in 2014. But somehow Apple missed the fact that carbon dioxide is a gas emitted in huge volumes by nature. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations, nature puts 25 times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day as all of the world’s industries.

Apple is spending more than two billion dollars on renewable energy to power its data centers. In February, the company announced an investment of $848 million for electricity from the California Flats solar farm from electricity provider First Solar. Apple claims it now purchases 100 percent renewable energy for all of its US operations and 87 percent for worldwide operations. But the firm is paying a sizeable premium for solar electricity over the price of traditional energy.

Last year, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said, “Everyone understands that climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and grandchildren and making the world a much worse place.” Google has reportedly committed more than $1.8 billion to renewable energy projects. But these renewable projects typically provide little actual electricity output at very high prices.

An example is the Ivanpah Solar Facility located in the California Mojave Desert, south of Las Vegas. Google invested $168 million in the Ivanpah project developed by Brightsource Energy, which began operations in January 2014. Ivanpah is a concentrating solar facility that has made headlines for its tendency to ignite birds in flight near its towers.

In addition to scorching more than 1,000 birds a year, Ivanpah is a poor electricity-generating station. During 2014, the Ivanpah facility delivered only about half of the electricity it was designed to deliver, which is only about one-tenth of the output of a typical gas-fired power plant. Ivanpah generates electricity at the whopping price of 16 to 17 cents per kilowatt-hour, four times the California wholesale price of 4 cents per kilowatt-hour. Ivanpah owners NRG and Google have asked for a federal grant of $539 million to pay off much of the $1.6 billion federal loan that was used to build the plant. US taxpayers and California electricity users are paying for the Ivanpah boondoggle.

ivanpah-solar-tower

In their rush to fight climate change, Apple, Google, and other engineering companies don’t seem to realize that the theory of global warming fails the first test of maintenance-of-the-line (MOL) product engineering. Many product engineers spend time in MOL engineering early in their career, handling field calls about the company’s product. When a customer calls to report a product failure, the first question an MOL engineer needs to answer is, “Is the product behaving normally, or is it performing abnormally?”

There is no evidence that Earth’s surface temperatures today are abnormally warm when compared to temperatures of history. Temperature proxy data from many sources shows that Earth’s temperatures have actually been declining for the past 8,000 years. Temperatures have been rising for the last century, but Earth experienced warmer times when the Romans conquered the Mediterranean 2,000 years ago and when the Vikings settled southwest Greenland 1,000 years ago.

global-temperature-last-10000-years

Ever notice how actual climate results are never part of the claimed benefits of green energy? Measures of success are always carbon emissions reduced, houses powered, kilowatts generated, and carbon credits purchased. No one ever talks about actual reductions in temperature or about droughts, floods, or hurricanes to be averted by using renewable energy. Adoption of green policies is as hollow as building a hospital and never curing a patient or raising an army and never taking a hill.

In fact, changes in Earth’s climate are dominated by natural factors. Earth’s greenhouse effect is dominated by water vapor and natural emissions of carbon dioxide. History shows that hurricanes, floods, droughts, and heat waves are neither more numerous nor extreme than those of the past. There is no empirical evidence that human emissions have a measureable influence on Earth’s climate. All of the green measures by global business will have a negligible effect on global temperatures.

If Apple, Google, and other companies want to invest in renewable energy and fight climate change, they should place green initiatives in their public relations budget. Such programs don’t have any other effect.


 

Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.

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Adam Gallon
August 22, 2015 10:22 am

A little bit to pay as far as they’re concerned, just added to the rest of the marketing budget, got to keep the muppets buying the latest I-Whatever!

ferdberple
Reply to  Adam Gallon
August 22, 2015 12:41 pm

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said, “Everyone understands that climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and grandchildren and making the world a much worse place.”
======================
so, by his own words, Schmidt is either pro climate change or he is opposed to climate change as is really hurting our children and grandchildren.

Manfred
Reply to  ferdberple
August 22, 2015 2:31 pm

‘Climate Change’ (the UN definition) may only be fully mitigated by the complete absence of humanity and the ensuing cessation of direct and indirect anthropogenic influence on atmospheric composition and land usage. ‘Climate change’ (COD use of English) is a term that fails the principle of non-contradiction. Whether one opposes it or not, is irrelevant. It is the ‘sine qua non’ of a planet with an atmosphere.
It is therefore uncertain unless we ask Chairman Eric Schmidt, what he means and what indeed he is talking so vacuously about, an observation compounded all the more given his academic credentials. The Google Chairman may have overlooked that his words are ineradicable. His progeny may well have them framed for posterity as postmodern slap-schtick humour.
Whatever future generations encounter, and their challenges will doubtless be different though one hopes far less ideologically ravaged, the progeny of the Google Chairman should remain quite nicely insulated.

Reply to  ferdberple
August 23, 2015 12:21 am

“Everyone understands that climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and grandchildren and making the world a much worse place.”

Or…
Everyone understands that poverty is occurring, and the people who don’t oppose it are really hurting our children and grandchildren and making the world a much worse place right now.
And wasting resources on jam tomorrow is not opposing poverty.

Tom Prendergast
Reply to  Adam Gallon
August 22, 2015 3:00 pm

I think those companies don’t have any choice, they would be castigated by the media if they defied the consensus and that would have a profound effect on the bottom line. As usual you need to follow the money.

Editor
Reply to  Tom Prendergast
August 22, 2015 3:37 pm

I suspect that just one of those two companies breaking ranks and supporting it with the kind of money they are spending on unreliables would be enough to break the media stranglehold and break the scam. If both acted together, bye bye Paris, bye bye IPCC.

M Seward
Reply to  Tom Prendergast
August 22, 2015 3:51 pm

“Business has been captured by Climatism, the belief that humans are causing dangerous global warming. Leading businesses announce plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, purchase renewable energy, use vehicle biofuels, and buy carbon credits.”
Sound like Stockholm Syndrome to me at best or just a commercial gun to the head at worst. Either way, we will pay.

george e. smith
Reply to  Adam Gallon
August 22, 2015 10:17 pm

Well when every new born, after weaning, is taught to waste every waking minute playing with their finger toys, instead of trying to learn how to actually do something themselves.
I don’t know if I’m the only one who has noticed it, but now when I am stopped at a red light, about every one out of four occasions, I end up having to honk my horn, to get the driver at the front of the line to wake up, and get going, on the green.
Even the ladies putting on their makeup, get off the mark faster than these Ipad/ped/pid/pod/pud sters.
Me; I’m waiting till they come out with the I-ring.
I always wanted a 10 mm square bauble on my finger, like a class ring; and maybe when I get an i-ring, I will finally pay to watch Ronda Rousey punch out the Brazillian Bombshell, in 34 seconds flat.
I should be able to sell a whole lot of I-ring accessory add on optical magnifiers, or 12 inch I-ring wireless remote screens.
g

Olaf Koenders
Reply to  Adam Gallon
August 24, 2015 12:47 am

It appears all the muppets that bought an Apple I-Whatever have also contributed to Apple’s green fund, that did nothing to lower temperature but just gave Apple expensive feel-goodery.

August 22, 2015 10:30 am

How is it that Apple and Google claim they are going to be running their facilities on renewables simply because they pay a higher rate than other customers to be plugged into the grid that is overwhelmingly powered by traditional means Without the traditional power their plants would be subject to the brown and black outs that otherwise will come with “renewables”. It’s like some kid standing on the first step to the pool tethered to a life raft wearing water wings saying: “look Ma no hands”

Bubba Cow
Reply to  fossilsage
August 22, 2015 11:28 am

“Ducey said the Apple projects will produce 70 megawatts of clean energy, enough to power more than 14,500 Arizona homes.”
http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-to-convert-failed-arizona-sapphire-plant-into-a-data-center/
Ever notice how they always make an empty analogy rather than promise reliable electricity to precisely 14,500 homeowners 365/24/7 ?? (my bold)

Reply to  Bubba Cow
August 23, 2015 7:45 am

Because, whenever one does the math on a global warming claim, it fails spectacularly.
Not that actual results matter to the global warming faithful.

Reply to  Bubba Cow
August 23, 2015 6:39 pm

I understand that Bubba but the issue is they need to be attached to the grid because “god forbid” the renewables fail their whole program falls apart. It will be interesting to see just how big and what type of back up generating capacity they are planning for the facility.

Dave G
Reply to  fossilsage
August 24, 2015 11:49 pm

As long as they are subsidizing my rates in some way…. more power to them.

Reply to  Dave G
August 25, 2015 11:03 pm

If they are getting subsidized to subsidize you why don’t we cut out the middle man and simply build economical electrical energy sources like nuclear and fossil fuel and reduce the price per kwh?

fretslider
August 22, 2015 10:31 am

“We don’t want to debate climate change. We want to stop it.”
Good luck with that. The climate has been changing as long as there has been an atmosphere and oceans.
My ancestor Cnut could tell them how futile such an effort is.

asybot
Reply to  fretslider
August 22, 2015 10:43 pm

@fret, And here I thought his name was Knut, dang now I have to check out my whole family tree again. (but I do agree with you!).

fretslider
Reply to  asybot
August 22, 2015 11:48 pm

In old Norse… Knútr inn ríki (Cnut The Great)
Either way he got his feet wet

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  asybot
August 25, 2015 2:23 pm

Cnut or Canute in Old English; Knut in Norse.
“Ríki” is cognate with German Reich, so “Knútr inn ríki” doesn’t literally mean Knut the Great or even King Cnut, but something like Knut in Power or of the Kingdom.

August 22, 2015 10:36 am

100% PR. Next.

climanrecon
Reply to  Bruckner8
August 22, 2015 11:25 am

If only, I suspect that many actually believe it, and jobs in that area will attract those that do.

August 22, 2015 10:36 am

Just think, if Google, Apple, etc. had invested the same amount into a Nuclear Power Plant they would have actually reduced CO2 emissions. The only possible benefit can be like Warren Buffett, they get massive tax breaks by spending the money this way. Buffett, at the last shareholders meeting, actually stated that the only reason he was investing in renewables is for the tax rebates.

Tsk Tsk
Reply to  usurbrain
August 22, 2015 10:45 am

What was that about paying their fair share? Nevermind.

Steve Lohr
Reply to  usurbrain
August 22, 2015 12:40 pm

Sure, who wouldn’t. To not take advantage would be like rejecting matching funds on your 401K. You would have to be a fool not to go for it. It’s free money!!!

PiperPaul
Reply to  usurbrain
August 22, 2015 2:23 pm

Isn’t Buffet now buying up coal company shares at 10 cents on the dollar?

Editor
Reply to  PiperPaul
August 22, 2015 3:51 pm

George Soros is. I can find the link if needed. Don’t know whether Warren Buffet is.

asybot
Reply to  PiperPaul
August 22, 2015 10:48 pm

and oil shares!

climatereason
Editor
August 22, 2015 10:37 am

Those are the temperatures on the Greenland ice sheet. The warmest two consecutive decades using the same criteria were 1930 and 1940 according to Phil jones
However, having said that I have never understood why they should be considered a global proxy.
Perhaps someone can explain why.
Tonyb

Gary Pearse
Reply to  climatereason
August 22, 2015 11:33 am

Maybe not a bad proxy if polar amplification gives about 3 times the warming effect (at least in the Arctic). Virtually all of the heat in polar regions comes from the tropics, by air and water. In the admittedly screwed up temperature records you can see that, with a lag of about 5yrs, the Arctic temps follow the global temps. Warming of the 1990s gave warming in the arctic from 1995 to about 2005-6 and then it has been dipping down again:
ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/graphics/tlt/plots/rss_ts_channel_tlt_northern%20polar_land_and_sea_v03_3.png
I noted some months ago the ‘rise’ above 60N was 0.323/decade but is now 0.318/decade (in Antarctic, it was -0.017/decade but is now -0.22/decade). Actually since 2005-6, the Arctic temp in the graphic has fallen (by eyeball estimate) about -0.2 C in the decade. An el nino may cause a stutter, so lets say -0.1 C/decade. Essentially we have both poles now cooling

Joe Prins
Reply to  Gary Pearse
August 22, 2015 1:49 pm

Gary,
Some years ago it was 0.326/decade

Reply to  climatereason
August 22, 2015 12:28 pm

It’s not only a poor global proxy, but it has nothing to say about the modern warm period. The last data point in Alley’s data is 95 years before present, and present means 1950. So it stops in 1855. Willis (and others) explained this long ago. But it won’t die.

Chris Hanley
Reply to  Nick Stokes
August 22, 2015 2:08 pm

Professor Humlum @ climate4you discusses the graph:
‘The …. panel shows the air temperature at the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet, reconstructed by Alley (2000) from GISP2 ice core data. The time scale shows years before modern time. The rapid temperature rise to the left indicate the final part of the even more pronounced temperature increase following the last ice age. The temperature scale at the right hand side of the upper panel suggests a very approximate comparison with the global average temperature (see comment below). The GISP2 record ends around 1854, and the two graphs therefore ends here. There has since been an temperature increase to about the same level as during the Medieval Warm Period ……. The small reddish bar in the lower right indicate the extension of the longest global temperature record (since 1850), based on meteorological observations (HadCRUT3)’.
He also discusses the habit of extending smoothed graphs beyond their formal limits under “Data Smoothing”:
‘As the drawing of smoothed graphs beyond the cut-off points is not dictated by necessity within climate science, this unfortunate habit should consequently be avoided. A frequent, but invalid, argument for extending smoothed graphs beyond their formal limits is that it looks nice’.
http://www.climate4you.com/

Michael Jankowski
Reply to  Nick Stokes
August 22, 2015 2:29 pm

Plenty of proxies have little or nothing to say about the modern warm period. Hence we have things like “hide the decline” and “Mike’s Nature trick.”
Maybe you should join-arms and sound-off with Steve McIntyre on bringing proxies up-to-date?

Gary Pearse
Reply to  Nick Stokes
August 22, 2015 2:58 pm

Nick, are you looking at the TLT above 60N that is shown in the link? This with a lag of about 5 yrs looks pretty much like the global temp – say, HadCRut.

Reply to  Nick Stokes
August 22, 2015 3:27 pm

Chris Hanley
“The GISP2 record ends around 1854, and the two graphs therefore ends here.”
Well, so it should. But the plot shown here has a green strip marked “modern warm period” with the graph ending right in the middle. That is, 1855 is in the middle of the modern period?? Furthermore, the green strip ends at 0BP, which is actually 1950. Some would say that is the start, not the end, of modern warming, at least GHG-based.
Gary Pearse,
I don’t know what link you are referring to, or what relevance it has. As Humlum said, this graph ends in 1855.

Chris Hanley
Reply to  Nick Stokes
August 22, 2015 4:55 pm

‘Some would say that is the start, not the end, of modern warming, at least GHG-based …’ Nick Stokes at 3:27 pm.
======================================
Two proxy reconstructions for the past 2000 years, one through to 2000, which will be familiar:comment image
Ljungqvist 2010 (Black Line), Loehle 2008 (Blue Line)

August 22, 2015 10:48 am

Anyone who believes that carbon dioxide causes global warming should immediately stop breathing and exhaling so much of it. If the liberal communist freedom-hating socialist warmunists were all gone, it would be better for the planet, right?

Gary M
Reply to  IGnatius T Foobar
August 22, 2015 12:42 pm

This makes me curious, has anyone calculated the human emissions of co2 via breathing??

Carbon500
Reply to  Gary M
August 22, 2015 1:14 pm

Gary M: To entertain myself, I performed such a calculation a few years ago. Based on an estimate I found (Population Reference Bureau) of the world’s population as being 6.1 billion in the year 2000, and an average exhalation of 0.85Kg of CO2 per person per day, I estimated that humans exhale 1.89 X 10^9 metric tonnes (1.89 gigatonnes) per annum.
Later, I found in Professor Ian Plimer’s book ‘Heaven and Earth’ a comment that each year 71 gigatonnes of CO2 is exhaled by animals (including humans) – see page 180 if you have the book.

Reply to  Gary M
August 22, 2015 2:08 pm

Except that breathing does only add some CO2 that was captured weeks to months before by plants (or indirectly from plants via meat or fish), out of the same atmosphere where one is breathing in…
The whole biological carbon cycle is even slightly negative: 1 GtC/year more uptake than release. That includes (land and sea) plants, bacteria, molds, insects, animals and that specific animal, humans…
The difference: coal, oil and gas were (mostly) formed out of the atmosphere millions of years ago when that was much higher in CO2 content. Now these add CO2 to the current atmosphere, while the natural biosphere cycle doesn’t, as that is mostly temporarily storage…

AndyG55
Reply to  Gary M
August 22, 2015 3:15 pm

No Ferd, the mining of coal and other fossil fuels RETURNS carbon back into the shorter term carbon cycle…
….WHERE IT BELONGS.
If its a fossil fuel.. then it used to be in the carbon cycle and got accidentally sequestered.
Its release by ‘man’ is slowly bringing the proper carbon balance of 700ppm, or more, atmospheric CO2 back to the carbon cycle

Reply to  IGnatius T Foobar
August 22, 2015 2:23 pm

The firm boasts that it measures its carbon footprint “rigorously,” estimating it emitted 34 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents in in 2014.

So, Apple admits that it’s emitting 34 million metric tons of CO2. If they really cared about reducing emissions, then they should immediately stop all operations. This would reduce global emissions by 34 million metric tons.

Sean
August 22, 2015 10:58 am

When you have the most sophisticated tax avoidance strategy on the planet, I guess you can throw your money away on other things.
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/12/26/how-google-and-apple-make-their-taxes-disappear-291571.html

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  Sean
August 22, 2015 2:15 pm

The US tax system is at fault for that, not those companies. America is the only country in the world that taxes its corporations foreign earnings. Apple and Google would like to repatriate their foreign earnings, but they can’t without paying 35% for the privilege. So instead, they borrow at low rates, which should be unnecessary.

george e. smith
Reply to  Gloria Swansong
August 22, 2015 10:28 pm

Corporations don’t pay taxes to anybody; but they do collect them for governments, from their employees (lower pay), their customers (higher prices) and their shareholders (lower dividends). The corporate tax is a scam to hide from the public what they really are paying in taxes.
g

August 22, 2015 11:02 am

Corporations are simply supporting the government policies and in return the government provides the regulations that inhibit competition. Call it Corporatism, Fascism, whatever, but that is the primary motive of our nations structure.
I doubt that Google, etc., actually believe in Global Warming.

cnxtim
Reply to  kokoda
August 22, 2015 11:52 am

Believe? No one with a fully functioning brain could, But self backslappers and holier-than-thou fruitloops + piggies with their snouts in the trough? Time for the Emperors New Clothes to be accepted by one and all as the fools fraud that is is – sigh……

Mushroom George
August 22, 2015 11:04 am

It has occurred to me that monumental wastes of money are actually good for the long term survival of a culture. Cultures that build monuments have built fat into the system that can be cut when the manure impacts the oscillating air handling device. The Egyptians could stop building pyramids when famine struck. If we run at max efficiency all the time, we are more vulnerable to a B.O.O.B. (bolt out of the blue, not the president). Its the morons on the left that keep the idiots on the right from sinking the boat – or was it the other way around?

MarkG
Reply to  Mushroom George
August 22, 2015 11:10 am

There are staggering amounts of inefficiency in most Western nations. ‘Global Warming’ being just one example.
But most of that inefficiency is in government, and that’s the last thing to be cut when famine strikes. They’ll let the economy burn before they cut pensions to Global Warming Advisors, or lay them off.
Does anyone know if Google and Apple get any tax credits for this nonsense? If so, they may well be making money as a result.

pochas
August 22, 2015 11:05 am

You must understand that business cannot afford enemies. They stock whatever anyone who walks in the door might want. They contribute to all political parties. They say what they think the greenies want to hear as long as they think there are enough greenies listening, and if they have money to waste they’ll put into whatever’s hip at the moment. Good for IPhone sales. That’s Capitalism for ya. I really hate to put this out there because I R one.

DesertYote
Reply to  pochas
August 22, 2015 3:58 pm

Everyone seems miss uses the term “capitalism”. Capitalism is the theory that the economy can be described by analyzing the flow of capital. Socialism is not a theory but a system based on a disproved theorem of capitalism. Socialist have distorted the meaning of the term in a deliberate attempt to confuse.
What you probably mean is free market capitalism. Corporatism//fascism is not capitalism in this sense. Corporatism is a system that absolutely depends on the power of state, and as such is much closer to socialism.

Reply to  pochas
August 23, 2015 3:05 am

Yup, Pochas. . As VP Finance for a mid sized Canadian company sitting with other companies doing government work, we knew where our bread was buttered and we gave accordingly to each and every political party in the provinces and federally in order to have access to support if needed from whatever quarter. Recorded and legally done donations only but recognized nevertheless in the appropriate places. A Rachel Notley type program recenty proposed for Alberta. Her group is excellent at suggesting they don’t take political donations from coporstions, but they do, it’s just that they have had a convuloted way of doing it for the 35 plus years I was aware of it.
I am getting to the edge of dimentia at my age, but one of my most memorable moments as VP was having the bag man for a left wing provincial party in power show up in my office (1982?) after getting off his Harley I the company parking lot and coming into my office in full black stuffed leathers to explain how if I wanted to continue to do work for the government I should donate this much to the Federal Party, this much to Txxxxy Dxxxcs Hxxxe, and this much to the Provincial party through cheques issued from individual employees with a detailef explanation of the process to comply with the law and a timeline for completion of the transaction and deliver of all cheques to his office.
If I had any political idealism left in my 36 year old brain, it died that day. Being the BEST service company in the province meant you still only got work proportionate to your support. So for a while, our local companies’ share of government work declined while big multinationals gained market share. Care to wonder why? No need to. And when the government changed to a right wing version, it didn’t change a lot except local companies got a local preference premium. Some of it actually went into written procurement policy.
There were occasions I had the opportunity to sit and eat at the same dinner table with three provincial party leaders. They all understood the “game” and while they all appeared ready to tear each other’s throats out in the legislature, the evening at the dinner table was very pleasant and full of jocularity. Like duelling lawyers after court in the local bar. No hope for the human race. The politicians may hold certain principals dear, but they are mostly pragmatic and simply looking to the next election so they can carry on in the game.
Now, if only I were King …

August 22, 2015 11:09 am

The last 30 years of weather/climate on this planet have featured the best conditions for life, without question, since the Medieval Warm Period(warmer than this) 1,000 years ago.
http://www.ancientdestructions.com/greenland-once-a-viking-paradise/
Absurd that we are using so much and spending so much to fight “the best”.
We could better spend the resources and money to address the real pollution and wasting of natural resources instead of flushing it down the toilet.

August 22, 2015 11:09 am

Prove to me they are squandering THEIR money and are not squandering OUR tax money via green subsidies, load guarantees and grants.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ivanpah-solar-project-owners-delay-repaying-loans-documents-say-1411488730

James Francisco
August 22, 2015 11:12 am

Apple is spending 2 billion and Google 1.8 billion. Has anyone totaled up the total cost of the global warming fiasco?

Man Bearpig
August 22, 2015 11:21 am

Does anyone have any statistics on how much has been paid in green levies and subsidies so a proper analysis can be done. If it turns out we are spending trillions of $$ and it is having no effect on CO2 levels, then surely it is a complete waste of money ?

NeedleFactory
August 22, 2015 11:22 am

I am curious about the 10,000 year chart purporting to show Icelandic temperature. It is similar to, but different from, another chart shown at WUWT in 2009: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/01/inbetweeners-enjoy-the-warmth-while-it-lasts/.
Today’s chart has a vertical axis expressed in air temperature, the older chart’s vertical axis was in “oxygen isotopes.” Is one chart is derived from the other? Why does the older chart show similar “temperatures” for the Minoan and Roman periods, while the newer chart shows very different “temperatures” for those periods?

Reply to  NeedleFactory
August 22, 2015 2:44 pm

NeedleFactory,
The 18O/16O isotopic ratio in the water molecules of the ice is correlated to the temperature at the place where the precipitation is formed (mostly directly snow from water vapor), that is for the Greenland ice sheet also related to the temperature of the ice sheet. Thus with some theoretical assumptions, it is possible to convert the isotopic ratio in the ice to the temperature at the summit for the year the snow was disposed.
Of course, Greenland is not the whole world, but represents most of the North Atlantic ocean temperatures. One need more proxies of other continents / oceans to have a more complete picture, like similar ice cores in Antarctica…

Chris Hanley
Reply to  NeedleFactory
August 22, 2015 2:53 pm

In Paleoclimatology “… oxygen 18 depletion as a function of temperature …” is explained here:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Paleoclimatology_OxygenBalance/
The source of the graph is shown below:
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/images/Figure4.jpg
The dark line represents the smoothed data, the spikes indicate that the past climate has been highly variable.

Reply to  Chris Hanley
August 22, 2015 8:41 pm

I wonder what the error bars look like?

jim south london
August 22, 2015 11:24 am

Solar Farm in the Desert
Driven past it on my to Vegas ,very impressive.
Small question even with sprinklers and automated wipers where do they get the fresh water from to keep the panels clean.

August 22, 2015 11:28 am

Over any given year in the past several decades, nature has removed more CO2 from the atmosphere than it added. The increase is manmade, because it occurs despite net sinking of CO2 from the atmosphere by nature.
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/global-carbon-budget-2010
The figure of nature adding 25 times as much CO2 as all industry does would mean that nature also removes something like 25.5 times as much as all industry adds.

Gary Pearse
Reply to  Donald L. Klipstein
August 22, 2015 11:55 am

Hey, we are greening the planet, does this not make you happy? And do you trust everything you’ve been told about CO2 in the atmosphere – about its even distribution, for one? The CO2 satellite that was launched with so much promise is collecting data that, for some reason in the run up to Paris they are not releasing. The first one they released showed the highest CO2 emissions to be in the Congo, Amazon and little from the big smokes of Europe and North America. And Hawaii…ermm…it is in one of the lowest CO2 concentrations on the planet.
https://ca.search.yahoo.com/search?fr=mcafee&type=C111CA662D20141029&p=Nasa+images+CO2+globally

Reply to  Gary Pearse
August 22, 2015 2:17 pm

Gary,
Donald is right: human emissions are one-way additions, natural emissions are two-way circulation, where the natural sinks are larger than the natural emissions.
The 1:25 ratio is a bad argument if you are debating the warmistas, as there is little doubt that humans are responsible for almost all of the increase. Better debate the effect of the increase: none in 18+ years…

Reply to  Gary Pearse
August 22, 2015 3:30 pm

CO2 is nicely distributed over the whole planet within 2% of the full scale. As the carbon cycle exchanges about 20% CO2 in and out of the atmosphere over the seasons, I call that well mixed.
The second picture from the OCO-2 satellite CO2 data is available somewhere and already shows a shift to the NH for the higher CO2 levels. Thus simply wait for a full year of data before jumping to conclusions of where the main sources and sinks are…

Reply to  Gary Pearse
August 22, 2015 10:17 pm

The hotspots in the pictures shown months ago were from areas that were seasonally sourcing CO2, and those areas sink CO2 at other times of the year.

spock2009
August 22, 2015 11:59 am

Statement: Apple’s 2015 Environmental Responsibility Report states, “We don’t want to debate climate change. We want to stop it.”
Does Apple want to actually stop climate change? If so, how will they go about changing our entire global history and mechanism of constant (climate) change?
Statement: Last year, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said, “Everyone understands that climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and grandchildren and making the world a much worse place.”
What is Schmidt saying? Are those opposing climate change (do such people really exist?) actually hurting future generations? Can someone help me understand what Schmidt’s statement means.
For a long time I have believed myself to have a reasonable command of the English language but I’m failing here as I can’t seem to find meaning or reason in either of these statements. What have I missed?

ferdberple
Reply to  spock2009
August 22, 2015 12:49 pm

What is Schmidt saying? Are those opposing climate change (do such people really exist?)
==================
if Schmidt pro climate change – in other words, he wants the climate to change, or is he opposed to climate change – he doesn’t want climate to change? and if he opposed to climate change, then he has already given us his answer:
“the people who oppose it (climate change) are really hurting our children and grandchildren”

dmh
August 22, 2015 12:04 pm

If Google and Apple were the good stewards of the planet they purport to be, they would spend those $Billions on bringing clean water, sewage treatment and electricity to 3rd world communities. The number of homes they could power (in fine print, for only part of the day, and for only a certain number of days per year) is a fraction of the lives they could save, if that was their actual goal.

pochas
Reply to  dmh
August 22, 2015 12:47 pm

That requires substantial effort that isn’t within their core competence. The British Commonwealth is a group of nations with some history behind it, and the British have shown competence in administering such relationships. In fact, might the British be willing to serve as a conduit for the support efforts of others such as the US for aid to countries in the British Commonwealth and any other countries that might wish to associate themselves? Just an idea. If they want aid let them talk to the British about membership, and the British can talk to us. I think they would do an excellent job.

trafamadore
August 22, 2015 12:04 pm

Betting against Apple and Google. How has that worked in the past?

Reply to  trafamadore
August 22, 2015 1:03 pm

traf,
For once, we’re in agreement.
I’m going out to buy a lottery ticket…

Another Scott
Reply to  trafamadore
August 22, 2015 2:28 pm

Apple Newton? Apple Maps? Apple in the late 80’s? Google X? Google Video (its failure was the reason they bought YouTube)? Froogle? These companies get things wrong. They just have core businesses that are so solid they can make billion dollar mistakes and still be insanely profitable.

trafamadore
Reply to  Another Scott
August 22, 2015 2:58 pm

They get things wrong and they correct.
Newton evolved into a iPodTouch/iPhone. It was the unprofitable idea that with more led to a huge success. Doing things right means you need to find out how to do things wrong.
Apple Maps is great now, you use it? Use it all the time.
In 10 years will we be in Apple cars or Google cars? Or both? There will be mistakes. They will correct.
On AGW, they will correct when someone shows it wrong. So far, no one has.

Reply to  Another Scott
August 22, 2015 4:10 pm

On AGW, they will correct when someone shows it wrong. So far, no one has.
What has been shown is that AGW is simply too small to detect. No one has ever been able to measure it because its warming effect is so minuscule.
Readers who understand the concept of the climate Null Hypothesis know that if something does not make a measurable change in the system, then for all practical purposes it does not exist.
We have waited more than fifty years for someone to measure AGW. No one has benn able to quantify it. What is “wrong” is wasting any more public money on something that cannot even be measured because it is just too small.
Willis has pointed out that AGW is only a small, 3rd-Order forcing. It is swamped by all the 2nd-Order forcings — which in turn have been swamped by 1st-Order forcings. AGW simply does not matter. It is too tiny.
The climate scare is based on AGW. They were wrong, all of them, because AGW doesn’t matter. At all. So, at what point will you admit that you were wrong about the AGW scare? Or are you incapable of ever admitting it, just like lots of others who have turned the hoax into their own personal eco-religion?

trafamadore
Reply to  Another Scott
August 22, 2015 6:20 pm

“What has been shown is that AGW is simply too small to detect. No one has ever been able to measure it because its warming effect is so minuscule.”
It measurable in the past, it is not “too small to detect”, as you, db, know all too well. And it is predicted to do much more int he future. Unfortunately, the past isn’t the problem.
But…

Reply to  Another Scott
August 22, 2015 6:33 pm

It measurable in the past, it is not “too small to detect”…&blah, blah, etc.
This running argument can be resolved easily. Simply post a verifiable, testable measurement quantifying the fraction of AGW out of total global warming.
If you can produce such a measurement ‘detecting’ AGW, you will be the first, and on the short list for a Nobel Prize. What’s more important, you will have shown for the first time that I was wrong.
But if you cannot produce such a measurement, then what I wrote above is correct, and you can move on to Scientology, astrology, or whatever.
The ball is back in your court…

trafamadore
Reply to  Another Scott
August 22, 2015 7:19 pm

Right, db’er. Why is the ball in my court?
It’s in the world court.
2015 is set to eclipse the last record hot year, which was in 2014.
You must be in your joker mode. Or just desperate…

Reply to  Another Scott
August 22, 2015 7:37 pm

Why is the ball in my court?
Because you made an assertion that you are unable to back up.

Bruce Cobb
August 22, 2015 12:09 pm

The key phrase is “climate change”, which is Greenie-speak for manmade climate change, a phrase so bogosity-filled that they may as well say “ManBearPig”.

PiperPaul
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
August 22, 2015 6:11 pm

Wait, I thought “climate change” was greenie-speak for “ka-ching!”

Segue C
August 22, 2015 12:25 pm

Paul Driessen and Chris Skates wrote:
In 2011, the company decided its RE<C project would not meet its goals. Google shut it down. In their article, Koningstein and Fork admit that the real result of all of their costly research was to reach the following conclusion: “green energy is simply not economically, viable and resources that we as a society waste in trying to make it so would be better used to improve the efficiencies in established energy technologies like coal.”
So are they such slaves to Agenda21 that they pretend "green"energy is a solution to anything?

Power Grab
August 22, 2015 12:27 pm

Do they own the green companies? Are they paying themselves these billions of dollars? (in addition to garnering tax write-offs?)

Tom in Texas
August 22, 2015 12:36 pm

“Ivanpah owners NRG and Google have asked for a federal grant of $539 million to pay off much of the $1.6 billion federal loan that was used to build the plant. ”
Nice. Asking for a federal grant to pay off a federal loan.

indefatigablefrog
August 22, 2015 12:47 pm

Apple and Google both run businesses where their profit margins are high and depend to a considerable extent upon the starry-eyed adoration of their leagues of fans.
From their point-of-view and according to a perfectly rational analysis, they stand to benefit from squandering a few billions on self-glorification in the form of the promotion of high ethical standards which appear to be altruistically motivated.
Even better – if they can then use their influence to help themselves to claw back the costs of their various show-piece schemes. And this they do. Hence, they get the glory and the taxpayer gets the cost.
But, even where they incur loss, it still makes sense, because for them a positive public image is what keeps them doing business.
On top of this – their energy intensity per dollar of profit is low.
A company with high energy intensity and low dependency on public profile, would not see any reason to pursue this strategy.
And that is, I suppose, why it is uncommon to see companies in the aluminum smelting business campaigning for a transition to solar and wind.
From that point of view – none of this nonsense is at all surprising.
Similarly, I turned on the TV last night and the Kremlin TV channel Russia Today was glorifying the activity of tree-dwelling keystone pipeline protesters. Just as they continually perpetuate nonsense about fracking earthquakes and fiery faucets.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why the Kremlin would delight in activities that promote the dependence of the west on Russian fossil fuel exports.
It takes an idiot who lives in a tree to not work that out for themselves!!!
Actually, I now realize that the politics of the world is very easy to explain.
Unfortunately, however, my conclusion is – that it’s all about money and it’s all bullshit.

Gary Pearse
Reply to  indefatigablefrog
August 22, 2015 3:22 pm

And, governments are busy corrupting the education system to create cretins that look to nana government to nurse them for life. These adoring fans also are being turned into adoring big government fans and attack dogs for the rest of us that’ll vote the shackles in. I think their success at this enterprise would be the end game for the human race whose survival mechanism depends primarily on his/her intelligence. Big Gov, who are good at impoverishing the hated real old fashion productive sector to fund all this, of course are too stupid to realize that they eventually fold up. The puffy private sector like Google and other darlings are just big corporate welfare recipients. They make whatever boardroom decisions they like knowing they can get a grant to pay it off.
Please, you guys, somehow vote this bunch out this time. I was sure you were going to do it last time. Or has the education project finally reached critical mass. Or is the establishment at the controls now too big to fail and it doesn’t matter who gets in.

warrenlb
August 22, 2015 12:49 pm

This is getting to be a problem. AGW supporters now include:
. Apple. Google The US Military . Exxon. Chevron
. 197 Institutions of Science, including all the world’s Science Academies & scientific professional societies (see each website)
. All Major Universities
. NASA
. NOAA
. 99.99% of 24,000 Peer-reviewed Science papers ever published on Climate (http://jamespowell.org)
. 97% of Actively Publishing Climate Scientists (climate.nasa.gov)
. Most World Leaders, Most Major Corporations
. Lindsay Graham (Republican)
. Bob Inglis (Republican- South Carolina)
. John McCain (Republican -AZ)
. 52% of Republicans nationwide according to the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication
. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine); Henry Paulson, treasury secretary under Pres George Bush and George P Schultz, secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan warned climate change could cause hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses by 2100 without significant action
It seems that even though WUWT posters are ‘right’ (??), they may be losing the battle.

Louis Hunt
Reply to  warrenlb
August 22, 2015 1:11 pm

John McCain and Lindsey Graham never met a war they didn’t like. So, of course, they relish the thought of waging war on climate change. The rest of your stats have been faked and adjusted even more than the global temperature data.

warrenlb
Reply to  Louis Hunt
August 22, 2015 1:51 pm

Show your data that contradicts.

Louis Hunt
Reply to  Louis Hunt
August 22, 2015 2:07 pm

Warrenlb, besides the many good articles published on WUWT that provided contradicting data to the 97% consensus, you can also checkout the following from regular news sites:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/05/30/global-warming-alarmists-caught-doctoring-97-percent-consensus-claims/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303480304579578462813553136
The second one concludes: “There is no basis for the claim that 97% of scientists believe that man-made climate change is a dangerous problem.” But, of course, you won’t read, let alone accept, these contradictory conclusion.

warrenlb
Reply to  Louis Hunt
August 23, 2015 3:55 am

@Louis Hunt
Scientists vs a schlock journalist, on an issue of Science. Not much of a contest.

wayne
Reply to  warrenlb
August 22, 2015 1:35 pm

The day that they all wish the billions back approaches fast. Call it reality.
They were all betrayed.

Louis Hunt
Reply to  warrenlb
August 22, 2015 1:54 pm

Thanks for the link to the Powell website. I needed a good laugh. Here’s a quote from his conclusion that gives his reason for saying the true consensus on AGW is over 99.9% :
“The only sound and practical way to judge the extent of a scientific consensus is to search for articles that reject the prevailing theory.” — James Lawrence Powell
So, scientists can’t be neutral on a theory while waiting for more evidence. They are either full-out against it, or you have to deem them for it. That ignores the fact that, as Einstein said, it only takes one scientist to disprove a theory. It also ignores the fact that any scientist who comes out against the consensus, like Willie Soon, will be hounded and investigated for it, and will have their funding cut. If you want to receive funding, you have to tow the political line or not express an opinion. So how many scientists have not come out against the prevailing theory simply out of self-preservation?

Steve Goreham
Reply to  warrenlb
August 22, 2015 1:57 pm

Einstein said: Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe.

simon
Reply to  warrenlb
August 22, 2015 1:59 pm

Warren
You forgot Bill Gates. Surely he deserves a mention along side Apple and Google. This is what he has to say
“By the time we see that climate change is really bad, your ability to fix it is extremely limited… The carbon gets up there, but the heating effect is delayed. And then the effect of that heat on the species and ecosystem is delayed. That means that even when you turn virtuous, things are actually going to get worse for quite a while.”
Which is why those who are smart enough don’t accept the “lets wait and see” model often touted here as the best option.

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  simon
August 22, 2015 2:12 pm

Earth has enjoyed the many benefits of higher CO2 levels for about 150 years now with no ill effects whatsoever. Indeed, the effect has been salubrious for plants and the planet. How much longer should we wait before there is any evidence of negative effects? So far there aren’t any.

warrenlb
Reply to  simon
August 22, 2015 2:24 pm

@GloriiaSwansong
Yes, CO2 is good for plants. And it’s also good for weeds, and reduces ocean alkalinity. And in combination with the other GHGs, maintains Earth’s temperature at a comfortable ~60F,avg, vs what it would be without any GHGs in the atmosphere– ~0F.And as its increased 40% since the early 1800s, the total Greenhouse effect has increased — raising Earth’s avg temperature 1.4F. http://climate.nasa.gov
Or did you forget that part?

warrenlb
Reply to  simon
August 22, 2015 2:25 pm

Thank you, Simon.

Chris Hanley
Reply to  simon
August 22, 2015 4:09 pm

‘Greenhouse effect has increased — raising Earth’s avg temperature 1.4F’ (warrenlb at 2:24 pm).
========================
The IPCC is the ‘Climate Change™ Curia’ and they are 95% sure that at least 50% the increase in the global average temperature since ~1950 is due to human CO2 emissions, that is around 300 billion tonnes emitted may have caused the average global temperature to increase from 60F to 60.6F — but next to nothing in the past 18 years.

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  simon
August 22, 2015 4:35 pm

warrenlb
August 22, 2015 at 2:24 pm
Of course I didn’t forget that the earth’s temperature, as imagined by the science fiction writers of HadCRU, GISS & NOAA, has allegedly gained 1.4 degrees F since c. 1850. But even if that imaginary figure be remotely accurate, there is no evidence whatsoever that increased CO2 is responsible for the supposed (beneficial if real) increase.
In fact, all the evidence in the world is against your baseless assertion that CO2 is responsible. In the early 18th century, before the Industrial Revolution, temperature increased more and more rapidly for longer than it supposedly has since WWII. From that time until the late 1970s, despite rapidly rising CO2, GASTA fell. The early 20th century warming was of the same slope and duration as the late 20th century warming.
Thus there is no reason to conclude that rising CO2 during the period c. 1977 to 1996 was responsible for any imagined warming. CO2 has continued rising since 1996 but GASTA has stayed flat and recently headed down.
Thus your hypothesis was born falsified.

Tom J
Reply to  simon
August 22, 2015 6:17 pm

Oh, Simon I cannot express my thanks anywhere near as much as Warrenib for your mention of Bill Gates and Bill’s appreciation of the seriousness of CAGW.
One little problem. (Ok, it’s a big problem.) I would tend to respect Bill Gates concern about CAGW if he were to move into quarters a wee bit smaller than his 66,000 (sixty six thousand – in case you think I accidentally added too many zeroes) square foot mansion. Aw, what the heck, a man’s home is his castle. Or, at least some homes have to be.
So, let’s forget that and confirm his seriousness about CAGW by asking Bill Gates to give up his three Porsches. Aw, heck, let’s not be too hard on the guy. How about if he gives up just one? I dunno’ maybe like the 195 mph 1986 Porsche 959? Now, I know that might be hard because he had to wait 13 years while that car sat at Customs in San Francisco because it didn’t meet Federal automobile standards. Aw, what the heck. He can keep it. After all, we wouldn’t want his efforts, at getting Washington to eventually pass the Show and Display rule so he could drive it, go to waste. How about if he just gives up the other two?

Reply to  simon
August 22, 2015 8:01 pm

Chris Hanley says that…
…Co2 has risen quite a bit, but global temperatures have risen next to nothing in the past 18 years. Therefore, the ‘CO2=measurableAGW’ conjecture is falsified.
It only takes falsifying a conjecture or hypothesis once to debunk it. Thus, the climate alarmist contingent’s narrative is debunked. The claim was that rising CO2 will cause global warming. Planet Earth’s verdict: debunked.
warrenlb asserts that CO2 has “…increased 40% since the early 1800s, the total Greenhouse effect has increased — raising Earth’s avg temperature 1.4F.”
That is a complete non-sequitur. It is nonsense to claim that the rise in global T since the Little Ice Age is all due to human CO2 emissions. There is zero measurable evidence showing that is the reason for global warming, even in part. That is called an “assertion”, and in this case it is a baseless assertion.
Neither NASA, nor warrenlb, nor anyone else has ever produced empirical, testable measurements quantifying AGW. Baseless assertions are all they have, and those assertions take the place of the Scientific Method.
If we subtract warrenlb’s constant appeals to his corrupted authorities, and his baseless, measurement-free assertions, what are we left with?
We are left with warrenlb’s eco-faith. But faith is not science, and despite his constant references to ‘science’, he has no idea what he is talking about.
Science is all about data. Measurements are data. But the alarmist clique has no measurements quantifying AGW. So the proper response is: put up or shut up. Post measurements, or we will know that you’ve got nothing but your eco-beliefs. That makes you no different from Scientiologists or astrologists, and just as scientifically incredible.

trafamadore
Reply to  simon
August 22, 2015 9:10 pm

“So the proper response is: put up or shut up.”
Exactly.
Show GW is not happening. Publish the results in real journals.
Show that 2014 and 2015 are not the hottest years yet. Publish the results in real journals.
Show based on actual physical models that GW is not GOING to get worse. Publish the results in real journals.
Show that there will not be an ecological disaster. Publish the results in real journals.
You make a lot of smoke. But when it gets down to the brass tacks, it’s all mirrors and no published results in real journals.
[big challenges from a person who hasn’t done any of the above and prefers to hurl insults and challenges from the comfort of anonymity, readers, just ignore this clown – Anthony]

warrenlb
Reply to  simon
August 23, 2015 4:01 am

Hanley
Untrue. 9 of 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000. You’re cherry-picking 1998 as a starting point, which was an unusually hot year due to El Niño. http://climate.nasa.gov

warrenlb
Reply to  simon
August 23, 2015 4:56 am

J
Gates has committed to give away his 10s of $billions to charity, and he’s about half way there. Your highliting of a few $million of personal purchases is interesting, but insignificant.

Reply to  warrenlb
August 23, 2015 7:22 am

Please follow this link and read my letter to Bill and Melinda Gates and find the link to the presentation to them. The letter to the Gate’s is clear and self-explanatory. They have the money to fund this science; his patents in traveling wave fission notwithstanding. http://fuelrfuture.com/bmg/

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  warrenlb
August 22, 2015 2:08 pm

The US military is under orders to combat man-made “climate change”. That doesn’t mean its members believe it’s real.
Academies’ positions were not taken after a vote by their members. Rather the usually non-scientist administrators of those bodies jumped on the gravy train without consulting their membership.
To which part of NASA do you refer? NASA GISS, responsible for inventing the science fiction behind its station “data” sets, or NASA UAH, responsible for the satellite and balloon data which show no warming for going on 20 years? Or maybe the 49 retired rocket scientists, astronauts and mission controllers who attacked the agency for its politically motivated embrace of the repeatedly falsified hypothesis of man-made global warming? This is the same agency, mind you, also tasked by the POTUS to sing the praises of Muslim science as its main mission.

warrenlb
Reply to  Gloria Swansong
August 23, 2015 4:03 am

I live in a retirement community with many ex-military. They accept the science of AGW, and think James Inhofe is a goof ball.

dmh
Reply to  warrenlb
August 22, 2015 2:25 pm

warrenlb August 22, 2015 at 12:49 pm
This is getting to be a problem. AGW supporters now include:

Wow, that’s an exhaustive list Warrenlb. It leaves me a bit confused. Perhaps you could explain to me:
If the majority of universities, corporations, scientists, politicians and world leaders are all in agreement, why is it that no substantive action against climate change is being taken by any of them? Why are emissions continuing to rise, and CO2 concentrations with them? How is it that if your side has so much support yet has failed to do anything substantial? The world is going to end and the very people who supposedly have both the science and the authority to prevent it have done so little about it that what they have done is a joke. Could you please explain how, if what you claim is true, so many with so much knowledge and so much authority to act in the face of a world wide calamity, have done next to nothing about it?
Explain, Warrenlb, explain.

Reply to  dmh
August 22, 2015 3:08 pm

Possibly the best post ever!!!

Gary Pearse
Reply to  dmh
August 22, 2015 3:57 pm

I’m half way through reading Mark Steyn’s ”A Disgrace to the Profession” on Man and his hockey stick quoting world scientists on both sides of the debate who share the opinion that this fellow is…well, a disgrace to the profession. This book has given me a lot of hope that it isn’t just monolith out there.
I think the revelations of dissent in the book are going to accelerate a disintegration of the climate cartel. Now that they have been outed in their opinion of the guy that created THE icon for global warming, it will be easier for them and legions of silenced younger scientists to break ranks and bring the Team to an end.
There will be a flood of dissenting papers on all the key issues – hottest schmottest decade/year etc, repairing the temperature record – perhaps re-enshrining the 30s as the no-contest hottest of the last couple of hundred years, recognition (once the de-homogenization of temperature proceeds) that we have been actually cooling for 18yrs+, that natural variability is the big Kahuna, that climate sensitivity is about 1.0 and within a range of temperatures that evolve that there are net negative feedbacks that are induced by temperature changes from whatever source, that CO2 is a boon to the planet’s life forms, that ocean pH is more buffered chemically and biochemically than doomers believe, that resources on earth are bountiful for maintaining a civilization with a population that will be leveling off at about 9billion in 50 years (we are 80% there already and it would be leveling off earlier and at a lower level if we helped bring poor countries out of poverty by giving them cheap energy technology instead of the endless safari that NGOs are preserving for themselves there).
Imagine the beautiful irony if this is the outcome of a book by a gutty free speech campaigner who has taken on the fearful Jabberwock ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky ) of climate science and set the scientists free.

Simon
Reply to  dmh
August 22, 2015 4:31 pm

dmh
“Could you please explain how, if what you claim is true, so many with so much knowledge and so much authority to act in the face of a world wide calamity, have done next to nothing about it?”
Lots of reasons actually:
Because it is a very complex issue some are keen to see that complexity used in a way that clouds the issue…
Because the solution will take an enormous amount of cooperation across the planet. Never been done before on a scale like this…
Because humans being humans want to believe the easy outcome is the best one….
Because people don’t want to sacrifice their slice of the pie in case the other team don’t sacrifice theirs…
Because big business make many of the calls that happen in this world and in general they are only interested in their profit….. which is why I admire so much what Google, Microsoft and Apple are doing. That takes balls.

warrenlb
Reply to  dmh
August 22, 2015 4:47 pm

Good response, Simon, Thanks. I didn’t mention my Fortune 200 employer which has encouraged and supported its employee’s participation in the IPCC for years, and supported policies to address Climate Change. For the cynics who say ‘well it must have been in their financial interest to do so ‘ the answer is no, it was not. Rather, they could see what the Science concluded.

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  dmh
August 22, 2015 5:00 pm

Warren,
There is zero scientific evidence in support of man-made global warming, let alone catastrophic.
There are GIGO computer models, which are designed to show supposed future warming of 2.1 to 4.5 degrees if and when CO2 ever gets to 560 to 570 ppm, based upon assumptions not in evidence, indeed contradicted by actual observations.

warrenlb
Reply to  dmh
August 22, 2015 5:45 pm

@GloriaSwansong
You talk about models and say there is ‘Zero evidence’. Models are mathematical projections used to, well, make projections! They are not evidence, rather DATA from the physical world is evidence, and that is abundant. Yours is not a serious post.

dmh
Reply to  dmh
August 22, 2015 8:50 pm

Simon August 22, 2015 at 4:31 pm
Because it is a very complex issue some are keen to see that complexity used in a way that clouds the issue…

The premise proposed by Warrenlb was that all the scientists, all the universities, all the politicians and all the world leaders are in agreement. That being the case, your statement above is either nonsense or Warrenlb is wrong.
Because the solution will take an enormous amount of cooperation across the planet. Never been done before on a scale like this…
But Warrenlb said all the politicians and all the world leaders are of one mind on this. Are they or aren’t they?
Because humans being humans want to believe the easy outcome is the best one….
Oh… so all the scientists and all the politicians and all the world leaders are of one mind, but they don’t want to believe it so they aren’t doing anything? Can you arrive at a more giant cop out than that?
Because people don’t want to sacrifice their slice of the pie in case the other team don’t sacrifice theirs…
There must be some part of “all the world leaders” that one of us doesn’t understand.
Because big business make many of the calls that happen in this world and in general they are only interested in their profit…..
But Warrenlb just got done telling his long list of people who agree with the scientists and the politicians and the world leaders includes most of the major corporations of the world. Which is it?
which is why I admire so much what Google, Microsoft and Apple are doing. That takes balls.
It takes balls to borrow money from the tax payer, then get grants from the tax payer to pay off the loan, and to burnish your reputation among those very same tax payers as a good corporate citizen, and take actions that are almost purely symbolic with full knowledge that the marketing benefit exceeds what little is left of the cost since the tax payers shouldered most of it in the first place?
You’re right. That takes balls.

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  dmh
August 22, 2015 8:51 pm

warrenlb
August 22, 2015 at 5:45 pm
My comment was in deadly seriousness.
Of course the GIGO models designed to show what their programmers want them to show are not evidence. That was the point of my comment.
Your pretending not to understand the clear statement shows your lack of seriousness. Again.
You have repeatedly been asked to present some actual physical evidence in support of the hypothesis of man-made global warming. No surprise that you still refuse to do so. That’s because you can’t, and neither can anyone else. If you could, there would be Nobel Prize in it for you.
Human activities do indeed affect local temperatures, humidities and other meteorological parameters, but no such measurable effects have been shown on a global scale. People also do things that cool the planet, so science cannot even know the sign of net human effects, but whatever they may be globally, it’s negligible.
The higher CO2 however has been a great boon.

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  dmh
August 22, 2015 9:07 pm

Warren,
Please state what you think are the data that demonstrate AGW. Thanks!

dmh
Reply to  dmh
August 22, 2015 9:13 pm

warrenlb August 22, 2015 at 4:47 pm
Good response, Simon, Thanks. I didn’t mention my Fortune 200 employer which has encouraged and supported its employee’s participation in the IPCC for years

Well by all means Warrenlb, mention them. Who is this paragon of virtue?

dmh
Reply to  dmh
August 22, 2015 9:20 pm

warrenlb August 22, 2015 at 5:45 pm
Models are mathematical projections used to, well, make projections! They are not evidence, rather DATA from the physical world is evidence, and that is abundant.

Quite correct Warrenlb. What is abundant however is that the data DISAGREES with the models, and no less than your vaunted IPCC said so in AR5. They not only admitted that the models run hot, they advised that the models run SO hot that they decided to substitute “expert opinion” on sensitivity for model calculations.
In other words Warrenlb, a whole bunch of the scientists claim their “expert opinion” is not only closer to reality than the models of a whole bunch of other scientists, but that those models (and hence the scientists who develop them) are wrong. So much for your claim that they all agree with one another.

warrenlb
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 4:08 am

@GlriaSwansong
NO Models are scientific evidence in ANY science, nor do climate Scientusts, nor I, claim they are. You have a conceptual problem. DATA is evidence, Gloria. Fir which there is an ample supply, starting with the warming of the planet: http://climate.nasa.gov

warrenlb
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 4:13 am

@Dmh
The DATA that’s evidence is backwards looking, well, data. Models are forward looking, and are projections. Explain to us how projections of the future can disagree with data which is history, please.

warrenlb
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 4:16 am

@Lady Gaiagaia
http://climate.nasa.gov

dmh
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 6:57 am

warrenlb August 23, 2015 at 4:13 am
@Dmh
The DATA that’s evidence is backwards looking, well, data. Models are forward looking, and are projections. Explain to us how projections of the future can disagree with data which is history, please.

Seriously? We’ve got projections that were done in the past that we can compare to observations in the present to determine accuracy of the projection. It has nothing to do with comparison to future data. Your question is either deliberately misleading or hopelessly obtuse,

warrenlb
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 7:41 am

@dmh
You reply: “We’ve got projections that were done in the past that we can compare to observations in the present to determine accuracy of the projection. ”
My response: Yes, we do. And here is that analysis, in section #2: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 8:51 am

warrenlb
August 23, 2015 at 4:08 am
There are no data in your NASA link which support the falsified hypothesis of AGW, let alone warming that would be worrisome. That the world has putatively warmed a little since the end of the Little Ice Age is not evidence that humans are the cause.
AGW fails to reject the null hypothesis. Any warming that has actually happened since 1850 is much less significant than occurred after Greek Dark Ages Cold Period and the Dark Ages Cold Period. The Modern Warm Period is so wimpy that we might well still be in the LIA for all anyone can tell.
Again, please show in your own words the evidence that you imagine exists for AGW.
As for the retired service members in your community who for whatever reason buy into CAGW (presumably because they’ve never studied the subject), I could match them many times over among my acquaintance, heavily military, who recognize it as a global government scam, as of course do the 49 retired NASA personnel, many ex-military.
Check out Burt Rutan’s “An Engineer’s Critique of Global Warming”, for instance.
BTW, the only valid survey of scientific opinion, ie not bogus as conducted by an Australian cartoonist who likes to dress up as a N@zi, finds a consensus against CAGW:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/02/13/peer-reviewed-survey-finds-majority-of-scientists-skeptical-of-global-warming-crisis/
Still waiting for your data in support of AGW.

dmh
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 8:59 am

You reply: “We’ve got projections that were done in the past that we can compare to observations in the present to determine accuracy of the projection. ”
My response: Yes, we do.

FIRST you said that there was no such thing,
NOW you say that there is such a thing.
So were you full of it on your first claim, or on your second claim? They contradict each other, so would you please choose a position and stick to it?
Hilariously, your cited article compares two model outputs to each other and concludes that one with AGW forcing is less wrong than the one without, so must be right. Strike three Warrenlb, they are both wrong, being less wrong isn’t the same as being right.
I point out to you once again that the scientists of the IPCC p*ssed all over the models in AR5. You are citing a spin doctor analysis based on AR4. Sorry, I’ll go with the opinion of the IPCC AR5 scientists (the ones you claim agree with the modeling scientists but clearly don’t). Not because the AR5 scientists have any special credibility with me, but because the model output is public, the observational data is public, I’ve looked at same myself, and the conclusion that the models over estimate sensitivity is obvious.

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 9:30 am

Let us consider the science fiction which Warren calls DATA, assuming the cooked book surface station “record” to be within the reality ball park.
Of the alleged 0.7 degrees C (1.26 F) warming since c. AD 1850, most of it occurred before WWII, when CO2 was rising but not alarmingly (indeed in the 1930s Callendar thought the gain beneficial, as of course it was and is). The gain 1850-1945 may well have resulted just from outgassing from the slightly warmer oceans.
But then CO2 took off after WWII and what happened? The world cooled for over 30 years, so no more warming.
Then, quite by accident, rising CO2 happened to coincide with the world’s supposed warming from c. 1977-96, for the rest of the allegedly observed gain in GASTA. But since the late ’90s, the world has not warmed statistically significantly despite continued monotonous increase in CO2.
If any conclusion can be drawn from this lack of correlation, it is that CO2 cannot be primarily responsible for global warming since the end of the LIA.
Hence, no evidence supporting AGW from the DATA.
QED.

dmh
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 9:31 am

Warrenlb – while we’re at it, we’re still waiting for you to name that Fortune 200 company you were shooting your mouth off about.

Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 9:52 am

In reply to dmh’s questions (8-22 @2:25 above), warrenlb says:
Good response, Simon, Thanks.
warrenlb likes Simon’s reply because it does not answer anything. It’s feel-good pablum. Just because businesses use the word “green” constantly in their advertising means nothing as far as science is concerned. Nothing any of them has done has changed global T by even 0.000001ºC. That includes the government, too. And warrenlb still has not answered dmh’s questions.
RE: warrenlb’s ‘list’, a few thoughts. He says:
Show your data that contradicts.
Data:
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
You lose, warrenlb. Planet Earth is busy falsifying your True Belief.
Also, it is interesting that every link warrenlb posted says essentially exactly the same thing. If I didn’t know better, I would ask, where is the diversity of opinion? It’s almost as if those sources benefit financially or otherwise by repeating the narrative — which, as we see in the WoodForTrees link above, has been falsified by the data.
warrenlb says below:
I live in a retirement community with many ex-military. They accept the science of AGW, and think James Inhofe is a goof ball.
So now warrenlb speaks for the ex-military!
Question: what branch of the service did you serve in, warrenlb? And are you in Oklahoma? That’s the state Sen. Inhofe represents. He certainly has more scientific knowledge than warrenlb. That is clear, because warrenlb’s ‘knowledge’ is faith-based, not science based.

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 10:03 am

DB,
Nice graph.
Looks like cooling of about 0.1 degree since the late ’90s, despite 40 ppm or more increase in CO2, as per Mauna Loa.
Can climate sensitivity be negative?

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 10:08 am

warrenlb
August 23, 2015 at 4:16 am
Thanks, but I find no data in your link showing evidence of AGW.
Please show me the data upon which you rely in a comment of your own. Thanks!

warrenlb
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 11:13 am

We see an amazing assemblage of posts claiming that there’s no data or evidence supporting AGW (when all the evidence does, and none contradicts AGW) and even one, by you know who, resenting a challenge to publish ONE peer reviewed paper ( vs the 24,000+ that conclude or support AGW!). You’d think he, or SOMEONE on WUWT, could scrape up one paper for publication in peer reviewed journals. But then again, it’s hard to find contradictory evidence that doesn’t exist.

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 11:42 am

There may be papers which assume AGW, but there aren’t any which show it to be real. Please present one if you know of it, since you refuse to show us the data which you imagine exists to support the born-falsified hypothesis.

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 11:59 am

warrenlb
August 23, 2015 at 11:13 am
Many here have showed you the evidence contradicting AGW. For instance, warmer temperatures correlated with increases in CO2, but so are cooler temperatures. That’s why scientists in the 1970s were so concerned about global cooling, which is indeed dangerous, despite then 30 years of accelerated CO2 increases.
Please show us the evidence which in your opinion supports AGW.
Thanks!

Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 12:08 pm

dmh says:
Explain, Warrenlb, explain.
warrenlb never credibly explains anything that he asserts. He produces no data quantifying AGW. As Lady Gaiagaia says to warrenlb:
Thanks, but I find no data in your link showing evidence of AGW.
But as always, warrenlb gots nothin’, except for his baseless assertions:
We see an amazing assemblage of posts claiming that there’s no data or evidence supporting AGW (when all the evidence does, and none contradicts AGW)…
Sorry warrenlb, that is only your assertion. And it is wrong.
See, warrenlb is trying to turn the scientific method on its head, by insisting that skeptics must prove a negative — that AGW doesn’t exist. It doesn’t work like that. Anyone claiming that AGW exists to any measurable degree has the onus of producing those measurements. But as always, warrenlb fails. He has no empirical, testable measurements of AGW. He believes in AGW, but he can’t find any.
To cover up his failure to produce any data, warrenlb falls back on his bogus appeal to his corrupted authorities, claiming (without naming them) that “24,000” alarmist scientists have concluded that AGW is gonna getcha.
But as we have shown warrenlb time after time, there are more than thirty thousand scientists who reject the AGW scare — and unlike warrenlb’s nameless claims, every one of those 30,000+ scientists has signed his name.
I really cannot understand why warrenlb continues to spout his pseudo-science here. He has been shown to be flat wrong so many times I’ve lost count. But he continues to proselytize. Maybe he’s never read the parable of Chicken Little, or the little boy who cried “Wolf!”
Unless warrenlb can produce real world measurements quantifying AGW, he loses the argument. Because everything he claims amounts to no more than a baseless assertion. So why should anyone believe warrenlb, who has no data to support his beliefs?

Simon
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 12:19 pm

To gloria, and Lady Gaiagaia and all those who seem comfortable to publicly declare they are unable to find any evidence for AGW, here is a simple to read link from a highly creditable society that focuses on the real science.
https://royalsociety.org/~/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/climate-change-evidence-causes.pdf
But… even if you don’t want to read this. The evidence is simple…..
1. The ice is melting. (And what on earth is happening in Antarctica at the moment? http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/antarctic.sea.ice.interactive.html)
2. Global land and sea temps are roaring up at the moment. Gonna be two years in a row of records.
3. Sea level is rising.
All this at a time when we should be cooling. Gee I wonder what could be doing this?

warrenlb
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 12:59 pm

And what are the comments from GloriaSwansong and dmh about the Royal Society link information provided by Simon?

dmh
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 1:30 pm

warrenlb August 23, 2015 at 12:59 pm
And what are the comments from GloriaSwansong and dmh about the Royal Society link information provided by Simon?

That’s pretty rich coming from someone who has, in this thread:
1. Contradicted himself multiple times.
2. Cited links that do not say what he claims they say.
3. Hasn’t answered direct questions in regard to claims he has made.
4. Carefully avoids dealing with what the IPCC actually says and prefers instead to cite opinion pieces that reference long out of date IPCC reports presented out of context.
In other words, Warrenlb is actually incapable of discussing the science. The papers he cite don’t say what he claims they say. When confronted by what the actual scientists are saying in the actual reports, he just changes the subject.
The sad part is that he seems to believe himself.

warrenlb
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 1:56 pm

And so far, after denying there is any evidence for AGW, and then being presented with ample evidence in the form of links to climate.nasa.gov and the Royal Society UK, we receive no answer from GS, and unrelated gibberish from dmh.
Isn’t their behavior the definition of the D word?

Simon
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 2:07 pm

Warren,
“Isn’t their behavior the definition of the D word?”
You said it. It annoys me you can’t use the “D” word here when it so aptly describes the Gloria’s, dbstealey’s and Lady Gaiagaia’s who repeated sit there with fingers in their ears saying “it’s not true, you can’t prove it, it’s not real” even when spoon fed. What other word can you use that so concisely describes behaviour of this sort so well?

dmh
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 2:19 pm

warrenlb August 23, 2015 at 1:56 pm
And so far, after denying there is any evidence for AGW
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Warren, I will explain one more time using small words and simple sentences.
The direct effects of more CO2 are well known.
That there is evidence in support of AGW is well understood and not in question.
That there is broad agreement among scientists and scientific bodies as to how to quantify the amount is nonsense.
IPCC AR5 (the summation of all the current climate knowledge the world has, including the references Warrenlb keeps harping about) exposes a stark divide between the modeling community and the rest of the science community.
IPCC AR5 states plainly that the best scientists in the world could NOT arrive at a median estimate for sensitivity as they did in previous reports. The issue is THAT hotly contested that they couldn’t even agree on a middle ground. They opted instead for a range, and reduced the bottom end of the range from previous reports. Sound like “agreement” to you?
The range goes from 1.5 deg C per doubling to 4.5 deg C per doubling. THIS IS THE PUBLISHED SCIENCE WARREN! DISAGREEMENT SO STRONG THAT THEY COULDN’T EVEN ARRIVE AT A MEDIAN ESTIMATE.
The impact of any given amount of warming is also hotly contested.
So quote press release type materials from as many science bodies as you wish. If you want to argue that political statements from these bodies are in approximate agreement with one another, fine. If you want to argue that the science published by these very same bodies is in line with their statements, that is utter and complete nonsense, and anyone who has delved into the actual science, read the actual AR reports, knows this to be true.
Learn something, or continue to regurgitate worn out political statements and claim agreement that the merest of scrutiny turns up to be false if you want. The known science from around the world is published by the United Nations, in the IPCC reports, and they are calling bullsh*t on your claims. That you cannot or will not understand this saddens me.

Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 3:42 pm

Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics
The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified. Follow this link for a PDF download of the entire paper: http://fuelrfuture.com/falsification-of-the-atmospheric-co2-greenhouse-effects-within-the-frame-of-physics/

Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 3:08 pm

Simon,
I read your Royal Society propaganda link. Nowhere is there even a single measurement of AGW. Instead, there are assertions such as:
Only when models include human influences on the composition of the atmosphere are the resulting temperature changes consistent with observed changes.
We know that is false, since no climate model has been correct yet. Models can’t even hindcast accurately, much less forecast. Your link also says:
It is now known that the observed pattern of tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling over the past 30 to 40 years is broadly consistent with computer model simulations that include increases in CO2 and decreases in stratospheric ozone, each caused by human activities.
That assertion is broadly consistent with nonsense. Both satellites and thousands of radiosonde balloon measurements have falsified the predicted tropospheric ‘hot spot’ (the “fingerprint of man-made global warming”). Are you that credulous? They made a statement, but they cannot produce even one measurement quantifying what they assert. Only gullible folks believe what they’re preaching.
Next, they predict human-caused global warming of “7º to 9ºF” — by the end of this century! But Planet Earth is falsifying their prediction: there has been no global warming from any cause for almost twenty years now. When a prediction is that wrong, honest scientists will back up, recalculate, and try to find out why their conjecture has failed so spectacularly. Instead, they make self-serving excuses:
A short-term slowdown in the warming of Earth’s surface does not invalidate our understanding of long-term changes in global temperature arising from human-induced changes in greenhouse gases.
Twenty years is not “short term”. And if you believe that the Royal Society has an “understanding” of AGW, please try to explain why they have been totally wrong, and why they cannot measure AGW (hint: it is so tiny that it is unmeasurable).
When someone has been 100.0% WRONG in every alarming prediction they ever made, then rational people will disregard their new predictions. One requirement of a hypothesis (or a conjecture, for that matter) is that it must be capable of making repeated, accurate predictions. But CO2=catastrophic AGW (the prediction in your link) has been so thoroughly debunked so many times that it seems incredible to normal folks that you and warrenlb would still believe what they’re feeding you.
Here are some suggestions for both of you:
• Stop believing predictions that don’t come true. If someone is always wrong in their predictions, then their conjecture has been falsified. It was wrong.
• When you make a prediction, don’t just say something “might” happen. If it doesn’t happen, admit you were wrong. You have no credibility when you make excuses instead.
• Don’t live your life like you don’t believe a word you’re saying. If you believe “carbon” is a bad thing, give up fossil fuels. The world has enough hypocrites.
• Tell your side to stop hiding out from public debates. They refuse to debate any more because they lost every debate, and they lost because their ‘facts’ were shown to be wrong.
• Answer questions. Neither you nor warrenlb ever answer, instead you just change the subject, or deflect, or move the goal posts, or make baseless assertions, or appeal to bought-and-paid-for ‘authorities’. Answer the questions commenters here are asking you.
• Stop enjoying weather catastrophes. They are not caused by CO2.
• Don’t use invalid arguments. Assertions are unconvincing. Post verifiable data.
• When you are wrong, admit it and apologize.
• Stop claiming that 97% of scientists agree that humans are warming the globe significantly. Since AGW has never been quantified, they cannot honestly make that statement.
• Stop lying.  If you think it is okay to lie if it’s for a good cause, you are wrong.
• Correct your fellow Warmists when they act in an unscientific way, as when they disregard the scientific method, and the climate Null Hypothesis, and when they make baseless assertions as fact. That goes for you, too.
• Stop blaming everything on Man-Made Global Warming unless you can quantify it. So far, no one has.
Following those suggestions would make you honest, and we could have a true science-based discussion.

Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 3:26 pm

Simon says:
1. The ice is melting. (And what on earth is happening in Antarctica at the moment? http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/antarctic.sea.ice.interactive.html)
Aside from the fact that Antarctic ice is well within historical norms — as shown in your own link — you are getting all excited because of a minor dip from Day 194 – 230. That’s about a month. Apparently you expect no fluctuations at all, is that it?
Just a few months ago the Antarctic ice set an all time record high. Compare this chart with the one you posted. It covers a much longer time frame. It would be very unusual if Antarctic ice continued to rise at that rate. A month long pullback is normal and natural. It has nothing to do with the MMGW scare.
Next:
2. Global land and sea temps are roaring up at the moment. Gonna be two years in a row of records.
“Roaring”?? “Records”?? Hardly:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997/trend
There is still no global warming. This year and 2014 are not “the hottest evah!” as you have been misled to believe. Satellite data — the most accurate measurements we have — shows clearly that those two years were very ordinary. They were far from any record, and your emo-word “roaring” shows that you’re grasping at straws.
Next:
3. Sea level is rising.
Yes, it is rising at the same rate that it has since the LIA. There is no acceleration in the rate of sea level rise — a requirement if man-made global warming (MMGW) is adding to natural global warming. The lack of any acceleration in sea level rise falsifies the MMGW conjecture.
Don’t take my word for it, Simon. It is Planet Earth that is debunking your sources. So, a question for you:
Who should we believe? The Royal Society? Or Planet Earth?
Because they cannot both be right.

Simon
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 3:34 pm

DB
See, you produce this bland, unsupported, nonsense and I can’t even use the D word to describe you. You use warmist (which is equally offensive) but I have to play nicely. Where is the level playing field

Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 3:44 pm

Simon,
As I pointed out, when you have no facts capable of rebutting the data and evidence I posted, you fall back on the typical alarmists’ tactics of deflection and changing the subject.
I gave you facts, Simon, lots of them. They are not ‘bland, unsupported nonsense’, they are verifiable data-based facts. You just have no credible response. You avoided answering even one fact I posted. Instead, you complained because you cannot label me the equivalent of a Holocaust denier.
No wonder your side has lost the debate.

Simon
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 3:50 pm

DB
No … I am labeling you the equivalent of AGW denier. I never mentioned the holocaust and I think it repugnant you drag such a horrific part in our history into this debate. Cheap shot DB.

Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 3:57 pm

Simon,
You are deflecting and changing the subject again, because you are incapable of refuting the facts I posted. As a result, you lost the science debate.
Regarding your ‘denier’ pejorative, what, exactly, am I “denying”?
Syndicated national columnist Ellen Goodman wrote back in 1997 that the pejorative “denier” is specifically intended to equate “climate deniers” (whatever that is) with Holocaust deniers.
Now that you know what everyone else has known for a long time, so if you label anyone a ‘denier’ again, you are trying to say that people who simply have a different point of view are the same as Holocaust deniers.
So now that you’ve been educated, what, exactly, am I “denying”?

Simon
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 4:12 pm

DB
I couldn’t care what one person gives as a meaning for a word. It’s also a specific term used to describe people who deny things. You are denying the significance of man’s role in the recent warming. Or are you denying that?

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 4:43 pm

Simon
August 23, 2015 at 12:19 pm
Sorry, but I see no actual scientific evidence of AGW in your link.
I appreciate your at least mentioning reasons why you think AGW exists, but none of your three points is valid, IMO.
Ice is not decreasing on earth. Antarctic sea and land ice are growing. Arctic sea ice is in the normal range for the period since 1979, which happened BTW to be at of near the high for the past century. Just four years previously, it was about the same or lower than now.
If global air temperature were the cause of supposed Arctic sea ice melting, then why wouldn’t the Antarctic melt as well? Antarctic sea ice is about five times as important in planetary albedo as Arctic, the effect of which is negligible.
Temperatures are not in reality zooming now. Only in the gatekeepers phony “records” was 2014 the warmest year. In the real record, ie satellites and balloons, it was sixth or seventh since 1979.
Sea level rise has slowed, not accelerated. It’s now below the average pace since the end of the LIA.
Thanks again, but please come back with some real evidence.

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 4:54 pm

dmh
August 23, 2015 at 2:19 pm
I have not yet seen any evidence for actual AGW, as opposed to theoretical, which is why I keep asking politely to be shown some.
I agree that CO2 is a GHG, and that its first 200 ppm are vital in a variety of ways. What I fail to find is any evidence that in the real world climate system the increase from 280 ppm to 400 ppm has had a measurable effect on global temperature.
Earth is self-regulating, within two or three fairly steady states, into and out of which it can switch quite rapidly, so it should come as no surprise if feedback effects operating on the increase in CO2 are in fact net negative, rather than highly positive, as so erroneously assumed by the modelers.
In short, I have observed no detectable human signal in global temperature, to the extent that that can be represented, since the end of the Little Ice Age. It’s possible that the net effect of human activity is to cool the planet, but again, the effect either way is too small to be detected, IMHO.
That is not to say that humans don’t affect local climatic conditions. Surely we do. But a global effect from radiative forcing is not in evidence.

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 5:11 pm

Simon @ August 23, 2015 at 12:19 pm
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that, contrary to actual observations, the world is warming.
Please state what evidence you believe you have supporting the conjecture that this assumed warming is caused by man-made CO2, rather than the same natural processes which have caused warming and cooling previously in the Holocene and other interglacials, plus the much bigger such swings during glacials. And for that matter, during ice free intervals in earth’s history.
Thanks.

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 5:29 pm

Lady Gaiagaia
August 23, 2015 at 4:54 pm
Industrial activity, agricultural and forest practices may well have had a net cooling effect on the planet, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, during the period from around the 1760s to 1980s or so, when clean air projects in the West let in more light. But at the same time, soot and aerosols spread as a haze over China and India. IMO the net effect however was to contribute to whatever warming might have been observed in the 1980s and ’90s.

dmh
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 5:35 pm

Lady Gaiagaia August 23, 2015 at 4:54 pm
I agree that CO2 is a GHG, and that its first 200 ppm are vital in a variety of ways. What I fail to find is any evidence that in the real world climate system the increase from 280 ppm to 400 ppm has had a measurable effect on global temperature.

Yes, the effects of CO2 are logarithmic, a fact that no climate scientist I know of disputes. So given that we are already at 400 ppm, the next doubling will take (at current rates) about 200 years. The notion that we cannot adapt to a few degrees of warming over that period of time flies in the face of history.
As to measuring it, on the one hand, I find it difficult to believe that some amount of warming is not present. It is like throwing a pail full of water into the ocean. At that moment, is there now one more pail full of water in the ocean than there otherwise would have been? Of course there is. Can I detect it by measuring the height of in coming waves? Of course not.
That’s the issue. Since I cannot quantify natural variability with any degree of accuracy, I cannot quantify the AGW signal either. One thing I can say for certain though is that in the early years of the debate, it was asserted by the climate science community that almost all the warming was AGW and that natural variability was no where near large enough to explain the warming signal observed at the time. Fast forward to today, and those very same scientists are claiming that natural variability is big enough to swamp the AGW signal, the exact opposite of their argument just a few years ago.
I am happy to accept that argument. For if indeed natural variability is so large that is swamps the AGW signal, then clearly the AGW signal is too small to get concerned about. It is natural variability that poses a potential threat.

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 5:45 pm

DMH,
Appreciate your comments.
We are not that far apart. I accept that there is a good chance that in the absence of other factors, a doubling of CO2 from 280 to 560 ppm might produce the ~1.2 degrees C gain at equilibrium suggested by radiative physics. However, the complex climate system includes many other factors.
It is possible that under certain conditions even the direct physical effect of more CO2 might be slight cooling, as perhaps in the hottest, moistest tropics. But mainly, IMO the small increase from radiative forcing would be swamped out in most environments by negative feedbacks, rather than augmented as imagined for Planet GIGO, due to assumed increased water vapor.
There are of course skeptics who question the validity of the GHE. I’m not among them. I just don’t think that adding a fourth molecule of CO2 per 10,000 dry air molecules since AD 1850 has had a measurable effect on global climate, nor do I think that adding two more by AD 2100 or whenever will do so either.
But I’d like to see evidence of AGW from those who do think that it’s detectable and will be a problem of some kind.
Thanks!

dmh
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 6:37 pm

But I’d like to see evidence of AGW from those who do think that it’s detectable and will be a problem of some kind.
There was actually a pretty good study over a 10 year period showing that it IS detectable:
http://phys.org/news/2015-02-carbon-dioxide-greenhouse-effect.html
The methodology seems sound, the instrumentation precise. It was featured on WUWT not long after it came out, and to best of my recollection there was the usual complaints from the usual crowd, but no serious flaws in methodology or data that I recall.
Point being that the paper only comes up with 0.2 w/m2 per decade directly attributable to CO2 increases. That’s a number so small as to be meaningless. I’d have pointed it out to Simon and Warrenlb, but that seemed to me to be a waste of time.

Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 7:11 pm

Simon says:
You are denying the significance of man’s role in the recent warming. Or are you denying that?
I’ll be polite and answer that question — while pointing out that neither Simon nor warrenlb ever try to answer skeptics’ questions.
Simon is attempting the usual alarmist tactic of trying to force a skeptic of dangerous man-made global warming (MMGW) to quantify the significance of the effect of human emissions on global warming. That’s about it, right?
The ‘dangerous MMGW’ conjecture is constantly being asserted by the alarmist crowd. Therefore, they have the onus of providing supporting data. But since they have no measurements quantifying MMGW, Simon is trying to turn the scientific method upside down, and make me prove a negative. He wants me to say either that human emissions are significant, or that they aren’t. See the tactic?
Simon, the ‘dangerous MMGW’ conjecture is yours, not mine. Not only do I have no obligation to provide the data that you cannot produce, but you are asking me to, in effect, prove a negative.
Simon, skeptics have nothing to prove. Our job is to try and falsify conjectures and hypotheses if we can. Whatever is left standing after all attempts to falsify it are made, is considered to be the current state of the science.
See, it is your job to produce measurements of something you claim exists. The onus is entirely on the one who puts forth a conjecture or hypothesis:
Ei incumbit probatio, qui dicit, non qui negat; cum per rerum naturam factum negantis probatio nulla sit. – The proof lies upon him who affirms, not upon him who denies; since, by the nature of things, he who denies a fact cannot produce any proof. As to the conjecture that CO2 produced by human emissions is causing dangerous global warming: the onus lies on those who say so. As to the belief that there has been an alarming spike in global temperatures: the onus lies on those who say so.
I deny nothing. I simply ask you to produce verifiable, testable, empirical measurements quantifying the fraction of global warming that you say are caused by human CO2 emissions. The onus is on you, not on skeptics of your dangerous MMGW conjecture.
But you cannot produce any such measurements. You do not have that data. No one does. If we had that measurement, then the question of the climate sensitivity number would be answered, and we would know just how much global warming each quantity of anthropogenic CO2 would produce. Instead, your argument is composed of data-free assertions.
“I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal in Bohemia
That’s what you are doing. You are ‘theorizing’, but your alarming predictions have all been wrong. No exceptions. When your predictions are wrong, your conjecture has been falsified, since conjectures and hypotheses must be capable of making repeated, accurate predictions. And note that a conjecture or hypothesis only has to be falsified once. If it is falsified it is a dead duck, and it’s back to the drawing board.
Finally, the alarmist cult constantly ignores the climate Null Hypothesis, which has never been falsified. ‘Dangerous MMGW’ is the alternative hypothesis. They cannot both be correct. AGW may well exist (I have never said otherwise), but that isn’t the problem. The question is this: is MMGW dangerous? Or is it so minuscule that it can be completely disregarded for policy purposes? The real world supports the latter.
Climatologist Roy Spencer has written: No one has falsified the (null) hypothesis that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability.
Science is nothing without data. Measurements are data. But you have no measurements, and your predictions falsify your conjecture. So tell me again, what am I denying?
Now it’s your turn. Please answer the questions I’ve asked in this thread. If you would like me to repeat them, I will.

Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 7:17 pm

“That’s a number so small as to be meaningless.”
Seems about right to me. The AR5 SPM said CO2 forcing in total since emissions began is 1.68W/ms. That seems consistent with 0.2/decade.

Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 7:24 pm

Nick Stokes,
aside from the computer modelling involved in that 0.2ºC per decade global warming, may I remind you that it’s been almost two decades without any warming?
At this point the planet should be 0.4ºC warmer. It’s not:
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ScreenHunter_9549-Jun.-17-21.12.gif
I’ll sit back and wait for the usual excuses and rationalizing… ☺

dmh
Reply to  dmh
August 23, 2015 8:26 pm

Nick Stokes August 23, 2015 at 7:17 pm
“That’s a number so small as to be meaningless.”
Seems about right to me. The AR5 SPM said CO2 forcing in total since emissions began is 1.68W/ms. That seems consistent with 0.2/decade.

Well I thought it was just a few stalwarts thrashing this thread to death, but it turns out that the illustrious Nick Stokes has been lurking, and chooses now to weigh in. OK Nick, let’s run with it.
You say the paper is about right based on AR5. I accept both the paper and your estimation of AR5, even if it is from the notoriously politicized SPM. Let’s do a little physics, shall we?
Using Stefan-Boltzmann Law, and assuming an average temperature of 15 C or 288K (my reservation here being that averaging degrees which don’t vary linearly with w/m2 is itself misleading, but hey, for a first order cut, good enough) we get:
288.000 = 390.08 w/m2
288.037 = 390.28 w/m2
A difference of…
Over the course of a decade…
From a forcing that is LOGARITHMIC…
Less than 4/100’s of a degree.
In a hundred years, that would be 4 tenths of one degree….
Actually, given the logarithmic nature of CO2, even less….
Even were we to assume a 3:1 boost from positive feedbacks (a notion I find implausible for the simple reason if it were that large we’d have little difficulty separating the signal from natural variability, but hey, again in the interests of a first cut….)
We’d still only warm by a bit over one degree over the course of a CENTURY.
Nothing to get excited about, and the numbers are substantiated by direct measurment, AR5, and Nick Stokes. Sentence billions to poverty and early death for the sake of 1 degree over a CENTURY? Criminal.

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  dmh
August 24, 2015 8:45 am

dmh
August 23, 2015 at 6:37 pm
Thanks!
I forgot about that study, perhaps because its seemed so dubious to me, involving as it does models. I’m OK with calling 0.2 degrees per decade detectable, but the real world shows that feedbacks have to be strongly negative, since actual warming of that magnitude has not been observed in the total system.
In 2014, before they changed their methodology, NASA’s University of Alabama in Huntsville satellite and balloon team found a trend of +0.045 °C/decade. The RSS team for the period ending in Dec 2014 found a trend of +0.078 °C/decade. These were the data upon which I relied to conclude that AGW was not detectable, since so many other factors could account for such negligible warming.
The data from before 1979 are even more strongly against a detectable AGW. The world cooled rather than warmed during the first three decades of the postwar CO2 surge, still ongoing. Then it warmed slightly for 20 years, then flat-lined from about 1996 and is now headed down. So color me unconvinced.
Nevertheless, as your further reply to Nick shows, even if there are no net feedbacks, the small, allegedly observed GHG warming in the study you cite is not in the least bit alarming.

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  dmh
August 24, 2015 9:46 am

DMH
IMO valid objections to the study were raised in WUWT comments, such as that CERES observations contradict its model-based findings:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/25/almost-30-years-after-hansens-1988-alarm-on-global-warming-a-claim-of-confirmation-on-co2-forcing/#comment-1869015

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  dmh
August 24, 2015 4:10 pm

Re. the AK and OK study of GHE, I find it amusing that Barrow was the only station in AK that showed warming during the period of observation. The rest of the state cooled from 2000 to 2010.
Didn’t check local warming or cooling at the Southern Great Plains CO2 observatory.

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  dmh
August 24, 2015 4:10 pm
Gloria Swansong
Reply to  dmh
August 24, 2015 4:25 pm

East of Lamont, home of the SGP Climate Observatory, lies Nowata, which set the cold record for OK in 2011:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/10/coldest-temperature-ever-recorded-in-oklahoma-31f-today/

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  dmh
August 25, 2015 2:13 pm
Reply to  dmh
August 25, 2015 7:12 pm

Gloria Swansong and Lady G,
Your comments are a pleasure to read. I sincerely hope you continue to post here.

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  dmh
August 27, 2015 9:29 am

Will do.
Great to be appreciated.
Thanks for the encouragement!

PiperPaul
Reply to  warrenlb
August 22, 2015 6:21 pm

How many of these entities make money from the taxpayer-funded, bottomless money pit of AGW?

Reply to  warrenlb
August 22, 2015 6:56 pm

We need to add al gore to the list. And such a list wouldn’t be representative without Suzuki.
You can thank me later Warren

August 22, 2015 12:50 pm

This is a presentation we did for Tim Cook at Apple which is where they should invest their money if they want to solve energy and take global warming caused by man off the serious discussion table. Follow this link and see my letter to Mr. Cook and follow the link to the Apple presentation: http://fuelrfuture.com/apple-invitation/
This is a presentation we did for Larry Page & Sergey Brin at Google which is where they should invest their money if they want to solve energy and take global warming caused by man off the serious discussion table. Follow this link and see my letter to Larry Page & Sergey Brin and follow the link to the Google presentation: http://fuelrfuture.com/google-invitation/

Louis Hunt
August 22, 2015 1:06 pm

Easy come, easy go. If the executives making these ‘green’ decisions had to actually work for their pay, they wouldn’t be so cavalier about flushing profits down the toilet.

Gary Hladik
Reply to  Louis Hunt
August 22, 2015 1:36 pm

I wouldn’t say they’re not earning their pay. I bet they’re working very hard on new and exciting ways to seduce their customers and milk the taxpayers.

Gamecock
August 22, 2015 1:17 pm

“Apple claims it now purchases 100 percent renewable energy for all of its US operations”
It’s a trick. They get their electricity off the grid, like everyone else. They get their supplying utility to sell them “renewable energy.” The utility is happy to oblige, and charges them a few cents more per kwh. The utility may or may not be supplying “renewable energy,” but it is out of Apple’s control.
Apple’s data center at Maiden, NC, has a big solar farm next to it. Oooo, renewable. But the center runs after the sun goes down. You can’t run a data center off solar, but it’s fun to pretend. Apple entered into a deal with Duke Energy over the electrical supply and solar farm, the terms of which are secret. Duke is subject to North Carolina’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS), so the contract may be goofy. At any rate, unless Apple/Duke reveal terms of their agreement, the claim of “100 percent renewable energy for all of its US operations” is bogus.

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  Gamecock
August 23, 2015 9:55 am

Both Google and Apple have huge centers in Oregon and Washington, making use of cheap Columbia River hydro power. They count this as renewable, which it is, but other Green Meanies don’t consider hydro renewable.
There are also vast wind farms in those states, but they are more of a hindrance to management of hydro than a help and of course rely on coal-fired back up power. Besides massacring beneficial birds and bats.

papiertigre
August 22, 2015 1:21 pm

How is co2 extracted from the air for the purpose of compressing it in soft drinks, air gun canisters, fire extinguishers?
Someone have a link describing the general process?

Gary Hladik
Reply to  papiertigre
August 22, 2015 1:49 pm

According to this link, the CO2 is captured and purified from fossil fuel power plant exhaust.
http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1730759_1731383_1731989,00.html

PiperPaul
Reply to  Gary Hladik
August 22, 2015 7:58 pm

Natural gas and biogas were some of our sources at Liquid Carbonic many years ago. We built and operated many, many CO2 purification and liquefaction plants, mostly for North America. The company no longer exists, having been absorbed into Praxair in 1996.

fretslider
Reply to  papiertigre
August 22, 2015 2:34 pm

The concentration of CO2 in air and in stack gases from simple combustion sources (heaters, boilers, furnaces) is not high enough to make carbon dioxide recovery commercially feasible.
Producing carbon dioxide as a commercial product requires that it be recovered and purified from a relatively high-volume, CO2-rich gas stream, generally a stream which is created as an unavoidable byproduct of a large-scale chemical production process.
Eg thermal decomposition of CaCO3 by(calcining) or reaction with HCl.

Catcracking
Reply to  fretslider
August 23, 2015 11:27 am

I know for a fact that CO 2 a byproduct of making methanol is captured to use for soda et. al. I don’t recall the chemistry but it is a CO 2 rich stream and would not require the costly separation that would be required from a power plant effluent where there is an abundance of Nitrogen in the gas stream. The article is talking about a plant that has not yet been built and CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) is very expensive for a power plant and is not economically viable without tax subsidies. The Bush administration learned this the hard way as the project in Illinois had huge over runs and it was cancelled. The current administration does not care about over runs and brought it back to life. The article also talks about removing the nitrogen from the oxygen before the combustion but this is very expensive and must be achieved via liquefaction which is very expensive.
Another big cost of sequestration is that the gas must be compressed to very high pressures before being injected deep below the surface of the earth. This requires lots of energy which means more coal must be burned to run the compressors. As I recall about 1/3 of the energy is wasted in the CCS process, thus killing the economics.
It’s a bad idea

papiertigre
Reply to  papiertigre
August 22, 2015 2:45 pm

Thank you both for the leg up. At least some new search terms to unclog the google.

Editor
Reply to  papiertigre
August 22, 2015 9:03 pm

I think it also comes from natural gas wells that produce a lot of CO2 also.

Reply to  papiertigre
August 23, 2015 12:44 am

In the book on Colorado geology I am reading it says that CO2 (along with methane) is eternally seeping from the underlying rocks, is being trapped in geological faults all around us, and released into the atmosphere naturally. The same phenomenon is observed all over the world. Similar processes are known to exist on the ocean floor but nobody has reliable quantitative data about those. Given the area of the ocean bottom, I think that the 1:25 proportion of human-produced CO2 is much larger than factual.

peter
August 22, 2015 1:36 pm

I have no problem with private companies flushing their profits down the toilet. Sooner or later their stockholders will toss the executives under the bus if they hurt the bottom line. Unlike the Government who are pretty much unaccountable.
Isn’t Apple stock already plummeting?
It would not surprise me terribly if both these companies ended up being bought up by competition that was more fiscally responsible a decade or so down the road.

Gloria Swansong
Reply to  peter
August 22, 2015 2:10 pm

Yes. I guess a lot of big holders took the CEO at his word when he said to sell Apple if you don’t believe in catastrophic anthropogenic climate alarmism.

August 22, 2015 1:42 pm

Reblogged this on Mbafn's Blog and commented:
Good Marketing?? i think so, the want all the “trendies” to buy their products, no other reason!!

simon
August 22, 2015 2:06 pm

Peter.
I’m assuming you vote? Doesn’t that hold politicians accountable?

peter
Reply to  simon
August 22, 2015 2:39 pm

Maybe, but the government is run by faceless masses like the ones at the EPA, and we get no say in who they are. And unless they mess up spectacularly in a public way they are pretty much untouchable.

Winblood
August 22, 2015 2:07 pm

Global warming caused by humans is not a belief, it’s a fact. So much bullsh*t.

Gamecock
Reply to  Winblood
August 22, 2015 3:37 pm

That is so 20th century, Winblood. Try to keep up.

Reply to  Winblood
August 22, 2015 6:59 pm

But, but, but… we stopped causing it 18 years ago. So stop blaming me.

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  Winblood
August 22, 2015 9:14 pm

Winblood,
Please state why you believe that global warming caused by humans is a fact. Thanks!

August 22, 2015 2:12 pm

“According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations, nature puts 25 times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day as all of the world’s industries.”
if you want to address this volatile issue you should comment on the whole of the ipcc carbon budget. argument citing the specific ipcc report from which you got the numbers.

Tom J
August 22, 2015 2:28 pm

This might sound like a weird question concerning the above post; but are s..x change operations reversible? The reason I’m asking is that my understanding is that Lisa Jackson used the name Richard Windsor during her time at the EPA. We know that the scruples of public servants is above reproach so I must assume that she assumed the name Richard, not in an attempt to deceive, no, but instead due to a medical transformation of a piece of equipment in her lower anatomy in much the same way that a Bruce became a Caitlyn. The Windsor part, however, I’ll leave to anybody’s imagination.
Upon learning that a Lisa Jackson from the EPA is in the employment of Apple (an apple a day keeps the Feds away) the only thing I can assume is that a reversal operation has been performed on Richard so that he is now back to being a she. Otherwise, we’d have to assume that a Richard Windsor is using the false identity of a Lisa Jackson in his employment at Apple. If so I would expect that would be grounds for termination at such a prestigious company as Apple. But then again perhaps the standards in the private sector are so much lower than in Washington since the Obama administration would never have let a public employee get away with using a false identity.

Leonard Lane
Reply to  Tom J
August 22, 2015 3:21 pm

No Tom “… the Obama administration would never have let a public employee get away with using a false identity.” This simply could never happen. You know that Obama and all his appointees, political advisers, business cronies could never use a false identity, or false birth certificates, or false school records. People responsible for lethal drone strikes must be above suspicion. After all, they must get on with fundamentally debasing and ruining America.

August 22, 2015 2:31 pm

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations, nature puts 25 times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day as all of the world’s industries.

This is trivially true, but taken out of its context it is highly misleading.
The fact is that this flow is matched by a somewhat larger amount in the other direction. The net natural flow is therefore out of the atmosphere and it is smaller than the human emissions.
That is the reason why the CO2 level in the atmosphere is increasing.
/Jan

August 22, 2015 2:52 pm

Isn’t it counter intuitive to heat up the atmosphere to 2000º in order to cool down the atmosphere?

August 22, 2015 3:20 pm

“Apple and Google Pour Billions Down a Green Drain”. If it was just their money, it would be O.K., but a fair amount of this subsidised wastage is actually our money!

Leonard Lane
Reply to  ntesdorf
August 22, 2015 3:26 pm

I would guess all of this money, from federal contracts, federal grants, federal tax exemptions, environmental fine exemptions, federal exemptions for restraint of trade by monopolies, and other nefarious schemes means that the taxpayers are on the hook for all this money and much more.

Gamecock
Reply to  Leonard Lane
August 22, 2015 4:13 pm

And rate payers. In the case of the deal I mentioned with Duke Energy and Apple, and NC’s renewable portfolio standard, Duke is a regulated, monopolistic utility, with a guaranteed rate of return. Regardless of how stupid RPS is, or how good or bad their deal with Apple is, it is the rate payers who will pay for it; Duke won’t lose anything.

August 22, 2015 3:21 pm

Whether it’s coal or Apple that’s in the toilet, there’ll be someone like Soros to snap up a bargain.
Preach high, buy low, preach less, sell high.

Scientist turned skeptic
August 22, 2015 3:28 pm

It’s a pity Google doesn’t use itself for research. None of you will correctly understand what is really happening with energy transfers in planetary tropospheres until you understand the cutting-edge 21st century thermodynamics involving maximum entropy production that has been explained this month in a comprehensive 43 minute video recording here now viewed by about 500 in its first two weeks. It will blow your mind and you will learn what you don’t yet understand and will not learn from any other source. It is correct physics based on the laws of thermodynamics.
 
 

Robdel
August 22, 2015 3:37 pm

Can someone knowledgeable please explain in simple terms how the temperature on Greenland can be ascertained accurately 10000 years ago?

Gary Pearse
Reply to  Robdel
August 22, 2015 6:00 pm

Robdel, oxygen is made up 3 isotopes, O^16, O^17 and O^18 and it, of course is the ‘O’ part of H2O, water. The light isotope- 16 is the most abundant at 99.76% and isotope-18, the heaviest makes up 0.20%. Water evaporates from the ocean to form water vapor that becomes snow that falls on the surface of the Greenland glacier. When snow forms, it leaves some water vapor behind. In colder air the percentage of O^18 in the snow is lower, in warmer air, the percentage of O^18 in snow is higher relative to O^16. The temperatures can be calculated from the ratios of these isotopes in the snow. The snow ends up being compressed forming layers of ice, one for each year. The oxygen isotope ratios and therefore the temperature at which they formed are preserved in the layers. You count the layers in ice core to get to a date. I’ve left out more than a few complications.

Reply to  Gary Pearse
August 22, 2015 7:08 pm

How do we measure summer temperatures in Greenland?
And, a serious question: Would an anomalous large scale summer melt from 3,000 years ago be obvious from the core samples?

Robdel
Reply to  Gary Pearse
August 23, 2015 1:39 am

Thank you very much for the explanation. So it is basically the O16 to O18 ratio which determines the temperature at the time.

Neville
August 22, 2015 3:51 pm

Who to believe, because the Royal Society and NAS tells us there is zero we can do to change temp or co2 levels for thousands of years. Here’s their point 20. Why do these scientists deliver such a different message?
And the authors of the report comprise 5 lead authors from the IPCC. Here’s the link.
https://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/contributors/
20. If emissions of greenhouse gases were stopped, would the climate return to the conditions of 200 years ago?
No. Even if emissions of greenhouse gases were to suddenly stop, Earth’s surface temperature would not cool and return to the level in the pre-industrial era for thousands of years.
fig9-smallFigure 9. If global emissions were to suddenly stop, it would take a long time for surface air temperatures and the ocean to begin to cool, because the excess CO2 in the atmosphere would remain there for a long time and would continue to exert a warming effect. Model projections show how atmospheric CO2 concentration (a), surface air temperature (b), and ocean thermal expansion (c) would respond following a scenario of business-as-usual emissions ceasing in 2300 (red), a scenario of aggressive emission reductions, falling close to zero 50 years from now (orange), and two intermediate emissions scenarios (green and blue). The small downward tick in temperature at 2300 is caused by the elimination of emissions of short-lived greenhouse gases, including methane. Source: Zickfeld et al., 2013 (larger version)
If emissions of CO2 stopped altogether, it would take many thousands of years for atmospheric CO2 to return to ‘pre-industrial’ levels due to its very slow transfer to the deep ocean and ultimate burial in ocean sediments. Surface temperatures would stay elevated for at least a thousand years, implying extremely long-term commitment to a warmer planet due to past and current emissions, and sea level would likely continue to rise for many centuries even after temperature stopped increasing (see Figure 9). Significant cooling would be required to reverse melting of glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet, which formed during past cold climates. The current CO2-induced warming of Earth is therefore essentially irreversible on human timescales. The amount and rate of further warming will depend almost entirely on how much more CO2 humankind emits.

JPinBalt
August 22, 2015 4:16 pm

Great article. Unproven theory of Climate Change and GHG has always been about being “green” being money and where that goes, it is an excuse for massive corporate subsidies and tax breaks, or for increasing budgets of gov. agencies, $21 billion a year now wasted in US alone with the only effect being higher energy bills and making people like Elon Mush billionaires miking the handouts. If we really wanted to have a greener environment, we would let things alone since CO2 is beneficial even in trace gas quantities making plants grow adding to the biomass.

D.I.
August 22, 2015 4:20 pm

Don’t be suckered in by Windows 10
http://tass.ru/en/russia/815837

NW sage
August 22, 2015 5:09 pm

Its really too bad that Apple and Google do not have any effective competition in the areas in which they are so successful. If they did the billions of $ spent on AGW and ecology projects would dry up and instead products would be improved to try to meet the competitor’s products.

Gary Pearse
Reply to  NW sage
August 22, 2015 6:09 pm

They are good at PR for their fans, but don’t seem to consider what would happen to there business if all this BS ends up impoverishing their customer base. All companies tend to take the short view. They would be better off using their cash to influence the politics in favor of free enterprise. Why is that people think that Apple and Google are fuzzy cuddly soshulist enterprises that they are fawning over? Is there a professor or government agency that DOESN’T use Apple? They are dog eat dog as they come and bullying dogs to boot.

kenw
August 22, 2015 5:12 pm

What we are dealing with is the logical extension of the Precautionary Principle, where dosage is ignored in the call for a pristine (ie; sterile) environment. We saw this with Alar, azodicarbonamide, and BPA. The emotional mantra of “none whatsoever” is very powerful and persuasive for the technologically incompetent (“Food Babe”). The AGW extension being that even when presented with actual data, the response is usually, “Well, we need to do whatever we can.” It’s impossible to counter because it is a purely emotional issue that all the facts in the world can’t dissuade and any reduction in CO2 is seen as a “good thing” as if it has a cumulative impact, like litter. It’s very frustrating when I present actual data and the person just throws up their hands and says, “Well, we need to do something.”
The insidious Precautionary Principle is truly the root of all evil.

August 22, 2015 6:07 pm

All, good, except for the very end. We do not have a natural Greenhouse Effect. We have a natural Atmosphere Effect. Atmospheric mass acted upon by gravity is a much simpler and consistent explanation, which fits known physical laws, with accurate mathematics and can be observed throughout the solar system as well as on our planet

warrenlb
Reply to  wickedwenchfan
August 23, 2015 9:10 am

In other words, after Newton, Scientists made no further discoveries.

August 22, 2015 10:23 pm

The graph of temperature over the last 10,000 years seems to stop around 1950-1960. Since then, global temperature rose by .5 degree C, according to HadCRUT3.

August 23, 2015 12:54 am

Although an expensive one, it’s only a game played between climate catastrophist crusaders and reasoned thinking. Who’s going to win is anyone’s guess, it depends on how many youngsters are fatally indoctrinated before the truth is exposed.

waterside4
August 23, 2015 5:11 am

Excuse me if this has been mentioned previously, but what about a boycott?
I mean NOT use Google, PayPal, Apple, Wal-Mart(Asda), Marks and Spencer, Tesco and all the other high profile organisations who rely on our custom in their bids to rule the world.
The Boycott is a wonderful old Irish invention which historically has more than proven its worth.
When a site like WUWT can garner an erudite readership which the msm can only have wet dreams about, then we should be able to pack a powerful punch in the retail side.
Just a thought.

Gamecock
August 23, 2015 10:18 am

This just in:
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2015/08/20/india-is-now-home-to-world-first-airport-that-runs-entirely-on-solar-power/?intcmp=hphz04
“It’s worth noting, however, that Cochin is still connected to the grid — just in case the normally sun-drenched area gets a streak of overcast days.”
Or in case they get “night.”

August 23, 2015 11:29 am

WEATHER WARS CONTINUE!!!!
Climate Engineering, El Niño And The Bizarre “Scheduled Weather” For The Coming Winter In The US
Dane Wigington geoengineeringwatch.org “Forecasters” are now trumpeting the arrival of a “Godzilla” El Niño event, but somehow they seem to already know that there will be no relief
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/

co2islife
August 23, 2015 4:04 pm

Lisa Jackson? Is that a bad joke?

On December 13, 2012, the Assistant Inspector General notified the EPA they would be conducting an audit into record keeping practices associated with the use of private email accounts by Lisa Jackson under the name of “Richard Windsor.” The Justice Department has agreed to release 12,000 emails at a rate of 3000 per week from this account beginning January 14, 2013 in response to a lawsuit brought by a Washington attorney.[51][52][53]
On December 27, 2012, Jackson announced that she would be stepping down from her position as EPA Administrator

The lack of moral and ethical standards on the left is breathtaking. I guess as long as you are on their side when you break the law it doesn’t matter. They will even support you running for president, they just want the power.

SAMURAI
August 23, 2015 7:20 pm

Google and Apple have been doing a great disservice to their customers and shareholders by wasting so much money on failed Glooobal Waaaarming initiatives.
It borders on a criminal lack of fiduciary duty, and opens them up to lawsuits from shareholders.
If the $billions they wasted on Glooooobal Waaaarming initiatives had been spent on R&D, who knows what new and innovative products and services could have been developed with that money and the $100’s of billions of sales and the 10’s of thousands of jobs that were never realized….
Apple and Google executives should read Bastiat’s Broken Window Fallacy to better understand the long-term effects wasted money has on their corporate equity and bottom line.
Google has also skewed their search engine algorithms to push the failed CAGW narrative, which has helped skew public opinion on the efficacy of CAGW, which has facilitated governments around the world to waste even more taxpayer money on Global Warming initiatives.
Google’s corporate slogan is “Do No Evil”. It’s high time Google lives up to that mission statement.
We live in such a convoluted world where “doing good” is often actually doing immense evil.
And so it goes.

co2islife
August 25, 2015 3:42 am

In addition to scorching more than 1,000 birds a year, Ivanpah is a poor electricity-generating station. During 2014, the Ivanpah facility delivered only about half of the electricity it was designed to deliver, which is only about one-tenth of the output of a typical gas-fired power plant. Ivanpah generates electricity at the whopping price of 16 to 17 cents per kilowatt-hour, four times the California wholesale price of 4 cents per kilowatt-hour. Ivanpah owners NRG and Google have asked for a federal grant of $539 million to pay off much of the $1.6 billion federal loan that was used to build the plant. US taxpayers and California electricity users are paying for the Ivanpah boondoggle.

What I love about this story is that Google poured all this money into this project based upon projections. What wasn’t built into the theoretical calculations is that desert sand dust greatly reduces the amount of radiation reflected off the mirrors. Given California is short of water to begin with, sending out cleaning trucks to remove the dust from the fragile and optically ground mirrors isn’t an option. Also, scratching the surface of the optical lens will also reduce the amount of light reflected, at least in the right direction. In a way, Apple and Google pouring all this money down a rat hole may be a good thing. Sometime you need reality to come up and punch you in the face to make you wake up and accept that you are wrong on an epic scale. As long as Liberal can bill the tax payer, they have no incentive to stop wasting other people’s money. Once they have to pay for their own failures they may change their tune.
Bill Gates seems to have a bit more common sense as to the energy sources he supports.
Bill Gates is doubling his billion-dollar bet on renewables
http://fortune.com/2015/06/26/bill-gates-renewables-investment-solar-depleted-uranium-battery-storage/
Obama’s Renewable-Energy Fantasy
Bill Gates recently noted that the cost of decarbonization using today’s technology is ‘beyond astronomical.’
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-renewable-energy-fantasy-1436104555

Mervyn
August 25, 2015 9:23 pm

Steve Jobs would rather have returned over US$2 billion to Apple’s dedicated investors rather than spending it on renewable energy to power Apple’s data centres. Steve Jobs was all about focusing on the core business of Apple. He would be furious, after building up Apple to what it is today, to see money being unnecessarily frittered away on ridiculous extravagances

August 26, 2015 11:22 am

When yoiu combine this with their political manipulation, its scary. http://humanevents.com/2015/08/24/how-google-can-rig-everything-in-washington-d-c-and-around-the-world/