Guest essay by Steve Goreham
Originally published in Communities Digital News, republished at WUWt by request of the author.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Show your data that contradicts.
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.
@Louis Hunt
Scientists vs a schlock journalist, on an issue of Science. Not much of a contest.
The day that they all wish the billions back approaches fast. Call it reality.
They were all betrayed.
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?
Einstein said: Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe.
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.
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.
@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?
Thank you, Simon.
‘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.
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.
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?
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.
“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]
@chris 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
@Tom 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.
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/
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.
I live in a retirement community with many ex-military. They accept the science of AGW, and think James Inhofe is a goof ball.
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.
Possibly the best post ever!!!
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.
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.
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.
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.
@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.
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.
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.
Warren,
Please state what you think are the data that demonstrate AGW. Thanks!
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?
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.
@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
@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.
@Lady Gaiagaia
http://climate.nasa.gov
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,
@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/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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!
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.
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.
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!
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?
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?
And what are the comments from GloriaSwansong and dmh about the Royal Society link information provided by Simon?
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.
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?
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?
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.
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/
Simon,
I read your Royal Society
propagandalink. 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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”?
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?
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.
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.
Simon @ur momisugly 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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
“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.
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… ☺
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.
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.
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
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.
http://www.adn.com/article/20130105/study-shows-alaska-got-colder-2000-2010
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/
Greenpeace co-founder Moore also sees no evidence for AGW:
http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/25/greenpeace-co-founder-no-scientific-evidence-of-man-made-global-warming/
Gloria Swansong and Lady G,
Your comments are a pleasure to read. I sincerely hope you continue to post here.
Will do.
Great to be appreciated.
Thanks for the encouragement!
How many of these entities make money from the taxpayer-funded, bottomless money pit of AGW?
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
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/
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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
Thank you both for the leg up. At least some new search terms to unclog the google.
I think it also comes from natural gas wells that produce a lot of CO2 also.
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.
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.
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.
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!!
Peter.
I’m assuming you vote? Doesn’t that hold politicians accountable?
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.
Global warming caused by humans is not a belief, it’s a fact. So much bullsh*t.
That is so 20th century, Winblood. Try to keep up.
But, but, but… we stopped causing it 18 years ago. So stop blaming me.
Winblood,
Please state why you believe that global warming caused by humans is a fact. Thanks!
“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.
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.
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.
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
Isn’t it counter intuitive to heat up the atmosphere to 2000º in order to cool down the atmosphere?
“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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Can someone knowledgeable please explain in simple terms how the temperature on Greenland can be ascertained accurately 10000 years ago?
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.
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?
Thank you very much for the explanation. So it is basically the O16 to O18 ratio which determines the temperature at the time.
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.
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.
Don’t be suckered in by Windows 10
http://tass.ru/en/russia/815837
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.
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.
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.
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
In other words, after Newton, Scientists made no further discoveries.
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.