Guest Post by Ira Glickstein
“Trump’s Meeting With Al Gore Gives Environmental Activists Hope” according to the New York Times, reporting on the Global Warming activist and former VP’s visit to Trump Tower last week. Gore is quoted by the Washington Post as saying:
I had a lengthy and very productive session with the president-elect. It was a sincere search for areas of common ground … I had a meeting beforehand with Ivanka Trump. The bulk of the time was with the president-elect, Donald Trump. I found it an extremely interesting conversation, and to be continued, and I’m just going to leave it at that. [Emphasis mine]
What “common ground”?
- Donald Trump has repeatedly called human-caused catastrophic climate change a “hoax”.
- President-Elect Trump, less than a week after meeting with Gore, picked a hard-line climate skeptic (who the New York Times called “a fossil-fuel advocate and climate-change denier”) to head the Environmental Protection Agency!
- Al Gore’s 2006 An Inconvenient Truth movie is largely responsible for alarming the media and the general public on this issue, and he plans to release another alarmist movie next month!
The figure is a frame-grab of the most dramatic moment from the movie, where Gore notes the remarkable correlation between Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Temperatures over the past six Ice Ages. Gore then goes on to misrepresent the meaning of that data (click here to view a short excerpt from his movie). I’ve annotated the image with Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Temperature values, which are hard to see in the movie clip.
ISSUES I HOPE TRUMP RAISED WITH GORE (OR WILL RAISE IN FUTURE MEETINGS)
Issue #1. Correlation between CO2 and Temperature:
Gore correctly notes the fact that both CO2 and Temperatures go up and down together over the 650,000 year record, and says:
The relationship is very complicated. But there is one relationship that is more powerful than all the others and it is this. When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer, because it traps more heat from the sun inside. …[Emphasis mine]
Misrepresentation #1: The the CO2 warming effect is NOT more powerful than the others.
Look at the Ice Core record! Temperatures begin their rise precisely when CO2 levels are at their lowest. Temperatures begin their fall precisely when CO2 is at its highest.
Thus, Gore’s claim that CO2-caused warming is the “one relationship that is more powerful than all the others” is false!
Even when at its highest Ice Core levels, CO2-caused warming is powerless compared to something else that causes Temperatures to drop! We know that something else has nothing to do with Human activities, because virtually all of the Ice Core record is before the advent of Humans on Earth.
Of course climate Skeptics accept the reality of the Atmospheric “Greenhouse” Effect and that CO2 is a “Greenhouse” gas. Along with water vapor (H2O) which is by far the primary “Greenhouse” gas, CO2 is partially responsible for the Earth’s surface being dozens of degrees warmer than it would be if the Atmosphere was pure nitrogen. [See my WUWT series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. By the way, I also accept that the majority of recent CO2 increase is due to human activities, mainly burning of unprecedented quantities of fossil fuels, and that some small fraction of recent global warming is due to human activities. ]
Bottom Line #1: The Ice Core record has NOTHING to do with CO2-induced warming. The Ice Ages prove that CO2-induced warming is weak compared to Natural cycles that determine the ups and downs of Temperature.
Issue #2. Current CO2 levels exceed those in the Ice Core record, and continue to rise:
Gore points to the Ice Core Temperature range, which is about 10⁰C (18⁰F), and correctly says:
In the parts of the United States that contain the modern cities of Cleveland, Detroit, New York in the northern tier. This is the difference between a nice day and having a mile of ice above your head. Keep that in mind when you look at this fact.
He then, again correctly, extends the CO2 graph upwards to show that the CO2 level in 2006 is above the highest levels recorded in the Ice Core data, and says:
Carbon dioxide having never gone above 300 PPM, here is where CO2 is now. We give off where it has never been as far back as this record will measure. If you will bear with me I would like to emphasize this point. It’s already right here. Look how far above the natural cycle this is, and we’ve done that.
Gore then mounts a platform and ascends high above the stage (see my graphic) and further extends the CO2 graph upwards to a projection of the likely level in 50 years, which is nearly 600 ppm. He says:
But ladies and gentleman, in less than 50 years it’s going to continue to go up. When some of these children who are here are my age, here’s where it’s going to be in less than 50 years. You’ve heard of off the chart. Within less than 50 years it’ll be here.
There’s not a single fact or day or number that’s been used to make this up that is in any controversy. The so-called skeptics look at this and say, “So, that looks seems perfectly okay.” On the temperature side: If this much on the cold side is a mile of ice over our heads, what would that much on the warmer side be? [Emphasis mine]
Misrepresentation #2: Even if CO2 does rise to nearly 600 ppm in 50 years, the resultant Temperature increase will be a small fraction of what Gore implies. The CO2-induced warming effect is NOT linear.
Let us look at the numbers. The range of CO2 in the Ice Core record is roughly 200 to 300 ppm, a difference of 100 ppm. The corresponding Temperature range, from -8⁰C to +2⁰C, is a difference of 10⁰C. Gore implies that CO2-induced warming is in that fixed proportion, i.e., a 100 ppm CO2 rise CAUSES a 10⁰C Temperature rise. This is a total falsehood, and his scientific advisers knew it, which is why Gore never specifically makes the claim. Instead, he subtly implies that relationship and guides his audience to come to that wrong conclusion on their own.
Gore points out that CO2 levels 50 years in the future will approach 600 ppm, and asks:
If this much on the cold side is a mile of ice over our heads, what would that much on the warmer side be?
He knows that his audience will assume, incorrectly, that Temperatures will rise in proportion, by about 25⁰C (45⁰F).
Again, his scientific advisers did not allow him to project the implied future Temperature rise (the White dashed line in my graphic), because they knew it is a total falsehood.
Bottom Line #2: So, how much might temperatures rise if CO2 doubles in 50 years, from 300 ppm to 600 ppm? Temperature rise due to a doubling of CO2 is called “Climate Sensitivity” and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates it is between 1.5⁰C to 4.5⁰C. Thus, Temperatures would rise far, far less than the 25⁰C implied by Gore. (Based on the failure of the IPCC’s Climate Model projections to match the Temperature record during the current, roughly 20-year, statistical “pause”, I personally think the actual value is closer to 1⁰C than the center of the IPCC’s estimated range.)
Issue #3: Proper interpretation of the Ice Core data. CO2 rise and fall LAGS behind Temperature rise and fall by HUNDREDS of years.
The graphic expands a 50,000-year portion of the Vostok Ice Core record to reveal a simple fact about what Gore called the “very complicated” relationship between Temperature and CO2.
Temperatures rise and fall BEFORE the rise and fall of CO2! This occurs for each and every Ice Age. (Thanks to Joannenova.com.au for the expanded graph.)
Even the Warmist website, RealClimate, run by scientists from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, agree on this quite obvious fact. They try to explain it away:
…At least three careful ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000 years) after Antarctic temperature during glacial terminations. These terminations are pronounced warming periods that mark the ends of the ice ages that happen every 100,000 years or so.
Does this prove that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming? The answer is no.
The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend.
The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.
The 4200 years of warming make up about 5/6 of the total warming. So CO2 could have caused the last 5/6 of the warming, but could not have caused the first 1/6 of the warming.
OK, at least RealClimate recognizes that “CO2 … could not have caused the first 1/6 of the warming.”
So, what happened after that first 1/6th of the warming in each cycle? Did the Laws of Nature suddenly change and make CO2-induced warming more powerful than the Natural cycles that initiated the warming?
If so, how to explain the fact that the Ice Core record shows that CO2 is at its highest levels when the cooling cycle is initiated! So, CO2 suddenly loses its power when there is too much of it?
They also say “The lag is only 800 years.” Don’t they recognize that CAUSE must come before EFFECT (unless they have some magical view of science)? Any lag at all disqualifies the second item from being the CAUSE.
In 2013, Scientific American reported a paper, Published in Science [Abstract only, paper is pay-walled], [ADDED 18 Dec 2016 – A version of this paper is available free without need to register: http://epic.awi.de/32547/1/parrenin2013s_accepted_all.pdf ] where a French team “show CO2 lagged temperature by less than 200 years, drastically decreasing the amount of uncertainty in previous estimates.” OK, perhaps if analysts torture the data with sufficient vigor they can reduce the lag to less than 200 years, and perhaps they may even be correct. However, repeating myself, don’t they recognize that CAUSE must come before EFFECT (unless they have some magical view of science)? Any lag at all disqualifies the second item from being the CAUSE.
Bottom Line #3: CAUSE must come before EFFECT. Al Gore’s misuse of the Ice Core data to push his activist, catastrophic human-caused global warming arguments have no basis in Science.
I have two questions that I think are good.
According to the IPCC, and embodied in most if not all of the 100+ GCMs, their preferred mechanism is a two-stage process. First, a modest warming 1-2C provided by CO2-greenhouse and, second, a resulting H2O-greenhouse fuelled thermal runaway.
The diagnostic evidence for the first stage is a equatorial, tropospheric hot spot. Why have the satellites not found this heat?
Regarding the second stage, the temperature conditions alledged necessary to trigger thermal runaway have occurred many times. Why has it never happened?
Look at the Ice Core record! Temperatures begin their rise precisely when CO2 levels are at their lowest. Temperatures begin their fall precisely when CO2 is at its highest.
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this is VERY STRONG evidence that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause temperatures to fall.
It is also VERY STRONG evidence that the GHG theory of surface warming is incorrect. Rather the surface warming is a result of the convection driven lapse rate warming the lower troposphere and cooling the upper troposphere. It is convection that controls the temperature of real greenhouses, and it is convection, not CO2, that controls the atmospheric greenhouse effect.
The effects of CO2 are transitory. Adding CO2 increases surface temperatures, which increases convection, which restores the surface temperatures.
There is no “very strong evidence” of any causal effect of CO2 on temperature; there is tentative support for the theory that warming oceans release CO2 into the atmosphere and cooling oceans remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Nothing else.
Ferdberple: Sorry, but I accept the Atmospheric “Greenhouse” Effect as scientifically correct. Additional Atmospheric CO2, all else being equal, causes general warming, and the majority of Atmospheric CO2 increase over the past 100 years is due to Human activities. I differ with the official Climate Change (aka Global Warming) activists in that I am convinced their estimates of Climate Sensitivity to CO2 doubling are over-stated by a factor of two or three, and, therefore, fears of “runaway warming” and a “tipping point” are wrong.
Your theory that adding CO2 to the Atmosphere will, at some point, cause cooling, is also wrong, and lacks any scientific basis.
Love, Ira
skorrent: Sorry, but I accept the Atmospheric “Greenhouse” Effect as scientifically correct. Additional Atmospheric CO2, all else being equal, causes general warming, and the majority of Atmospheric CO2 increase over the past 100 years is due to Human activities. I differ with the official Climate Change (aka Global Warming) activists in that I am convinced their estimates of Climate Sensitivity to CO2 doubling are over-stated by a factor of two or three, and, therefore, fears of “runaway warming” and a “tipping point” are wrong.
Your theory that CO2 has absolutely NO effect on warming or cooling lacks any scientific basis, IMHO.
Love, Ira
Ira, “Additional Atmospheric CO2, all else being equal, causes general warming…”
But that’s the rub, isn’t it. All else is not equal.
There’s no basis whatever to suppose that human CO2 emissions have, or will, cause any atmospheric warming.
Adding CO2 does not increase surface temps. To do so would violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Ira, you must have that PHd in climate science because you can’t read. “Your theory that adding CO2 to the Atmosphere will, at some point, cause cooling, is also wrong, and lacks any scientific basis.” He didn’t state that anywhere in the post.
johnmarshall: You wrote “Adding CO2 does not increase surface temps. To do so would violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics.” CALL THE PHYSICS POLICE! Better yet, read my five part WUWT series on visualizing the Atmospheric “Greenhouse” Effect, starting HERE. Love,Ira
Cube: You wrote: “Ira, you must have that PHd in climate science because you can’t read. ‘Your theory that adding CO2 to the Atmosphere will, at some point, cause cooling, is also wrong, and lacks any scientific basis.’ He didn’t state that anywhere in the post.”
GET BETTER READING GLASSES! “He”, ferdberple, wrote:
“Look at the Ice Core record! Temperatures begin their rise precisely when CO2 levels are at their lowest. Temperatures begin their fall precisely when CO2 is at its highest.
=================
this is VERY STRONG evidence that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause temperatures to fall.”
For the record, my PhD is in System Science. Love, Ira
The federal “scientific” community has been behaving badly, spreading PC propaganda favoring carbon taxes instead of scientific truths. For the first time in DECADES I am reading “news” facts that are somewhere near truth; that energy STORAGE mechanisms (Gulfstream, El Nino et al) are responsible for the average global temperature. Sunlight is the huge energy source gorilla in the room. We generally loose by infrared radiation back into cold space as much as we gain every day, except for a few scraps being sqirreled away in ocean waters. Said oceans meandering and cloud cover modulate the retained energy from month to month which air circulation carries over lands. Follow the oceans and air mass movements! Trash Gore & Co.
The emphasis on atmos co2 and the relationship between atmos co2 and warming is misplaced. If the idea is to cut fossil fuel emissions it must be shown that warming is related to fossil fuel emissions.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2845972
See also
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2853163
Wonderful post Mr. Glickstein. You really take it to the charlatan Al Gore AKA Man Bear Pig.
but, but, but….come on guys he’s cereal.
whats the burn heat of dvds?
we could have an updated version of Farenheit 451
starring gores work;-)
451F is the temperature at which paper spontaneously ignites, not the burn temperature, I believe.
Good idea, except that many here who actually care about the environment, (as opposed to being merely Green,) wouldn’t like the idea of actual air pollution caused by burning DVDs.
There must be some “clean”, yet ignoble method to rid the planet of Gore’s latest BS.
… Snap …
Make greenies eat them along with their hats. 😉
I’m scared. We do not know for sure why Trump is against global warming. Gore is for it, because that has made him immensely rich. It is a source of deep concern that he has not understood that his movie is zero, although he has had a decade to realize that.
johan – December 12, 2016 at 4:06 am
Johan, …. no one in their right mind should be “against (interglacial) global warming”, ….. simply because it has been “in-process” for the past 22,000 years and it is the primary reason that humanity has survived and progressed into the 21st Century of the CE.
And likewise, …. no one in their right mind should be “claiming a belief in/of (anthropogenic) global warming”, …. simply because it has un-questionably been proven to be nothing more than “junk science” agitprop.
I’m scared. We do not know for sure why Trump is against global warming.
===
johan, Trump said this yesterday…this is after meeting with Gore and DiCaprio
“I’m still open-minded. Nobody really knows. Look, I’m somebody that gets it, and nobody really knows. It’s not something that’s so hard and fast,” Trump said.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/trump-nobody-really-knows-if-climate-change-is-real-but-hes-open-minded/
Gore and DiCaprio within successive days at president-elect HQ? Mann, we can’t even get the psientists to discuss reality. They’re out on a rope and they know it so that’s why they were first in the queue.
Trump understands the problem of man-made-warming deeply adn for a long time. Not that Chinese joke. Just check his long interview with te New York Times
From the article:
“Along with water vapor (H2O) which is by far the primary “Greenhouse” gas, CO2 is partially responsible for the Earth’s surface being dozens of degrees warmer than it would be if the Atmosphere was pure nitrogen.”
It’s time to defend this claim. A similar claim was made about Mars, in that it would be colder if the atmosphere were an equal mass of nitrogen rather than the 95% CO2 it is now. Show us the current daily temperature curve recorded by the Mars’ Rover and then apply your claim and show how that temperature curve would vary with an all nitrogen atmosphere. Clearly show when, how much, and how long any “heat is trapped”.
It has to be so – doesn’t it? If you heat object to a temperature above its ambient surroundings and then cover it with some medium which decreases the rate of energy leaving the heated object then the equilibrium temperature between body and surroundings will be higher than it otherwise would be for the uninsulated body. If not there would be little point in insulating anything.
cephus0 – I believe your defense is an actual ‘begging the question’ fallacy.
But your question: “It has to be so – doesn’t it?” – that’s the reason for my request to defend the claim with Mars as an example, since if their claim is valid then it needs to hold true on Mars.
I understand the difficulties of defending this claim, that’s why I’m requesting it.
We should be able to see this “trapped” heat at sundown. What difference should we expect to see between the current 95% CO2 atmosphere, call it ‘A’, and a hypothetical atmosphere with nitrogen swapped out for the CO2 in equal mass, call it ‘B’? I expect that each A and B will reach the same low temperature overnight*, so it’s just a matter of how the curve differs while Mars sheds heat. There will be a shaded area between these two curves and that’s what I want to see. I expect the result to be on the same order of magnitude as the length of time a room full of mirrors stays lit after the lights are turned off.
* – unless the claim is that Mars is continually storing residual heat because of the CO2 atmosphere. If this is part of the claim, then I have other questions.
Doesn’t pressure change temperature ?
agreed. CO2 will warm the surface ALL THINGS REMAINING EQUAL. But the simple fact is that all things will not remain equal. If you warm the surface the energy must come from somewhere, and the somewhere is the upper troposphere above 5km. CO2 warms the surface (and lower troposphere) at the expense of cooling the upper troposphere.
And what happens when you warm the surface and cool the upper troposphere? You create convection. And what is the effect of convection? convection removes heat from the surface and carries it back to the upper troposphere, restoring the surface temperature.
Until and unless CO2 can reduce convection, it cannot have any more than a minimal, transitory effect on surface temperatures.
Contrast this with the effect of water. Unlike CO2, water is a condensing gas in the atmosphere. As water rises, it condenses, which alters the tropospheric lapse rate. Normally the lapse rate is 9.8 C/km, due to the conversion between PE and KE due to gravity. Thus the lapse rate is equal to the 9.8 m/s acceleration of a falling body on earth due to gravity.
However, when you add water to the atmosphere this alters the lapse rate from 9.8C/km to on average 6.5C/km. It is this change in the lapse rate that changes the ratio in temperature between the lower and upper troposphere, which alters the vertical convection of the troposphere, which alters the surface temperature, exactly as happens in real greenhouses.
Real greenhouses warm by controlling convection, not by controlling radiation. The condenwsation of waters alters the rate of convection in earth’s atmosphere, by altering the lapse rate of the atmosphere, which gives rise to the GHG effect.
CO2 cannot do this because it is non-condensing in Eath’s troposphere. Thus the effect of CO2 on temperature is transitory, while the effects of water are persistent. Adding water to the atmosphere alters the lapse rate, which alters convection, which alters temperatures. Just like real greenhouses it is the control of convection, not the control of CO2 that alters temperature.
All this is central to my presentation on Capitol Hill today before people who will implement the new Trump climate policy.
Go Dr. Ball! Knock ’em dead.
Best of luck today Dr. Ball.
Drain the swamp!
Sic ’em.
Yes please knock em dead with the truth for a change. If nothing else try to get them to fund studies to debunk the (fraudulent) presently promoted “truth”.
God speed, Tim Ball.
So exciting!
Please let us know how it went Dr. Ball.
Dr.Tim Ball’s many expositions on the f r a u d are still currently easily accessible online. It’s any money they’ll still be around within common access in ten years time.
Yay Dr Tim.
I am so glad you are part of all this, I am sick of the nonsense the hobgoblins put out.
I liked this Realclimate quote:
“Does this prove that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming? The answer is no.”
Wrong – is YOUR duty to prove that CO2 DOES cause global warming, NOT our job to prove CO2 DOES NOT cause warming
Is it just me? I cannot see how CO2 rises after temperature rises from these graphs. Can anyone explain this please?
The pic cleverly hides it. The movie clip makes it clearer, but still, you need to pause and use a rule on the screen to see it. Artful misdirection.
The data gatherers have confirmed it, hence the weasel explanation.
littleoil, I have the same question … but, for now, I suspect that my challenge is that I cannot discern these changes largely because of the display scale. For this reason, I must admit: I need to find the actual numerical data and insert same into a spreadsheet where I can then adjust the scales to my heart’s content.
So, my related question is: from where may I get the actual numerical data?
Will be most thankful if someone can provide a reliable link for the true CO2 and temp time series.
@ Johnny Cuyana – December 12, 2016 at 4:47 am
Here ya go, Johnny, …… NOAA’s complete monthly average Mona Loa CO2 ppm data with the recorded “monthly max & min” quantities, to wit:
ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_mm_mlo.txt
And here is a temperature graph with the above noted “yearly max” atmospheric CO2 ppm quantity plotted thereon, to wit:
1979-2013 UAH satellite global lower atmosphere temperatures & CO2 ppm data
http://i1019.photobucket.com/albums/af315/SamC_40/1979-2013UAHsatelliteglobalaveragetemperatures.png
You need to put the CO2 and temperature record into the same spreadsheet and you can see that CO2 always lags behind the temperature on all timescales. They are often going in opposite directions due to this lag.
Antarctic temperature composite from Epica DomeC going back back 800,000 years. The best record. Years before 1950.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/epica_domec/edc3deuttemp2007.txt
The latest CO2 composite from many ice cores going back 800,000 years is here. I think the proper age is years before 1935 although it doesn’t say.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/antarctica2015co2composite.txt
So sayith: Bill Illis – December 12, 2016 at 5:42 am
CORRECT, …… and it is the temperature of the near-surface ocean waters, …… NOT the temperatures of the near-surface air (atmosphere).
The temperature of the near-surface ocean waters do not begin to “warm-up” …… until several weeks after the temperatures of the near-surface air has started to warm up ……. and whenever there is a “temperature difference” between the water and the air, …… the CO2 will migrate from the “colder” to the ”warmer” …… and therein is the afore noted CO2 “lag”.
littleoil: Please LOOK carefully at the upper panel of my second graphic above. Time runs from left to right, with the most distant past furthest to the left. Now, look at the BLUE curve that represents TEMPERATURE, and the ORANGE curve that represents CO2. For nearly all of the Ice Core record, the BLUE curve goes up before the ORANGE curve, and the BLUE curve goes down before the ORANGE curve. The LAG of CO2 behind Temperature is several HUNDREDS of years. Love, Ira
Thank you Jer0me, Johnny Cuyanna, Samuel C Cogan, Ira and Bill Illis for taking the trouble to try and help me out.
I still cannot see the temperature leading CO2 on these graphs. However, I am most impressed by the graph of 1979-2013 UAH satellite global lower atmosphere temperatures & CO2 ppm data posted by Samuel C Cogar which clearly demonstrates the lack of correlation between these 2 variables.
I look forward with interest to developments in the USA after January next year. Hopefully, you will lead the world to freedom, again. God bless America.
When I first saw this weasel explanation of the CO2 lagging temperature on rc a few years back, I became 100% convinced that CAGW was rubbish. That intelligent and educated people can actually believe this, let alone make it up, is the biggest mystery to me. It may take decades of research to work out how that is possible.
Jer0me
Are you – by any chance – seeking funds?
/Snarko
Auto.
Knowing there is no simple solution to greed, stupidity, cupidity and arrogance; and I am much the humblest being in the observable universe.
I know that!
It looks like President-elect Trump is not going to ” eat the lunch ” of activist climate scientists. He is simply going to close the cafeteria!
The whole CO2 thing is just a ploy to create justification to tax the air we breath, plain and simple. It’s always about money.
” It’s always about money.” ……… and control.
The reason the climate change belief system has been so dramatically successful is because it fulfils needs of one sort or another for a very large number of people.
1. Money – approx. $3 trillion has been spent on renewable energy, mainly wind and solar, since 2000, and considerably more than this is planned for the next two or three decades. None of this would have been spent if the terms ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ had never entered our minds. With all this money sloshing around, CAGW is probably the best funded belief system in the history of the world.
2. Political power – one of the best ways to gain political power is to convince people of a threat, then claim to be the only party capable of shielding them from that threat. “Vote for us, otherwise your children will inherit a devastated wasteland!”
3. Academia realized a long time ago that being the handmaiden of the politicians and the money-makers could be very lucrative. If you challenge academics on their CAGW beliefs, as I have done, you will receive a ferocious pushback because you are threatening the research funding on which their livelihood depends.
4. We live in an intensely materialistic society (shop till you drop!), and many people have this unacknowledged spiritual void inside themselves (what’s it all about, then?). Belief in man’s wickedness and in the possibility of spiritual redemption by buying a Prius or protesting against pipelines helps to fill this void. (“Oh holy Al Gore and blessed Saint Suzuki, be with us now and in our hour of need”.)
I have a nasty feeling that we are stuck with the CAGW belief system until someone comes up with an alternative and equally successful belief system. How about telling people we live in a CO2-impoverished atmosphere, and unless we do something about it, the next ice age will wipe out the human race. How about 1000.org instead of 350.org?
@roger Graves
The reason sceptics have not done as well as they should have, IMHO, is for the very reason they have uncovered the scam.
Whilst this, and many other forums prove the CAGW is a hoax, they do it by scientific fact, which most laymen, including me, barely understand.
As distasteful as it may seem, I believe the means to deliver a cohesive message to the public on the positive future the planet has, is by marketing.
It took me almost a year to get my head around WUWT, notmanypeopleknowthat, and, of course, Judith Curry’s Climate etc.
The general public won’t waste that amount of time on figuring out what’s happening, they need to have it explained in no more than, I would guess, 4 or 5 simple graphics, which absolutely can’t include technicalities.
My suggestion is for WUWT and every other site to present a simple, common frontpage with some easy to understand infographics that start at ground zero.e.g 1. atmospheric composition. 2. GHG composition 3. Geological timescale 4. Satellite temperature records for the last 30 years 5. CO2 records for the same period.
These are easy to understand and can be ‘clickthrough’ for more data and evidence.
The point is to sell the concept that AGW is a crock, GW is safe and natural, global cooling is the real scary event and to emphasise just how small 2ppm CO2 is.
Then there is social media, where the same, but adapted message must be offered so sceptics with little knowledge of the subject can simply call up data and pass it onto their Facebook or Twitter feed. Both of which are subject to peer pressure and perceptive knowledge. A single interested and seemingly knowledgeable individual can influence innumerable friends and relatives.
The website only acts as a source, the message is delivered via social media.
As it is, even with Trump’s influence, the changing of wills will take years. Do it using the tools to hand, from multiple sources, and that can be reduced to 18 – 24 months before a critical mass is reached where the alarmist voice is reduced to inconsequential.
In my belief.
Roger Graves – December 12, 2016 at 6:51 am
Roger G, the US will be stuck with the CAGW belief system for at least another 40 years or so …… simply because we can not “re-educate” the past three (3) generations of previously graduated Public School and College students, …… or immediately begin the “re-education” of the currently enrolled Public School and College students, …… or immediately begin the “re-education” of the currently employed Public School Teachers & Administrators and College Instructors & Professors.
The lefty-liberal socialists now have pretty much complete control of America’s Education System ….. and there will be “hell-to-pay” to root them all out.
So if Trump dismantles the climate change ‘industry’ the US will be getting less in taxes?
So I guess he’ll need to cut spending or put the taxes on something else?
What will you and yours do when you run out of other people’s money?
@Griff: Do you now understand my previous comment,where you claimed you could not see it, that we re-glaciate when CO2 is at its highest. Look at the ice core records, it as stated above, and further, CO2 changes lag temperature by 800-1000 years.
Halting the pissing away of billions a year on a non-existent problem requires less taxes, not the same amount.
Steve
I don’t see that CO2 could be the cause of reglaciation…
There would need to be some other factor, orbital, solar, major ocean circulation change, driving such an event.
And the billions wasted in a wild goose chase can be invested in business. When people are earning, they don’t mind paying tax, when they are broke, they resent it especially when the taxes are directed at one of the essentials for life, energy. No one avoids it, even the poor who suffer most.
No because less taxpayers’ money will be wasted on dumb renewable energy. Removing costs from industry will raise profits which will result in more tax income. With cheaper energy more work will return to the US bringing more jobs and so more tax revenue. And all those wasting their time in the green world can do something that is useful and of benefit.
Griff: “I don’t see that CO2 could be the cause of reglaciation…I don’t see that CO2 could be the cause of reglaciation…”
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
Upton Sinclair
So claimith the author, ….. Ira Glickstein, PhD
Ira Glickstein, …… I am mighty curious as to exactly why you posted the above “weazelworded” CYA statement?
Why is it that “you accept” what you claim that you have accepted …… even though you are devoid of any actual, factual observational or scientific proofs or evidence that supports your claimed “acceoptance”?
A curious mind would like to know.
Sam C, ….. AB Degrees in the Physical and Biological Sciences, ….. GSC 1963
Its not clear in the article “who” is even doing the commenting on Ira’s words. I am even unclear what wording is actually that of Ira Glickstein. Am I the only one with this problem?
Samuel C Cogar: The quoted part does contain my actual science-based beliefs (and not what you called a “‘weazelworded’ CYA statement” :^). Several well-respected Guest Contributors here at WUWT share my belief that most of the recent increase in Atmospheric CO2 (from about 300 to the current 400 ppmv) is due to our unprecedented burning of fossil fuels.
While I do NOT think the global surface thermometer record is very reliable (especially after the raw data has been tortured by the Warmists at GISSTEMP), I do accept the global satellite temperature record (RSS and UAH) that clearly show net warming since 1979. The IPCC claims that the majority (over 50%) of warming since 1880 is human-caused. They are wrong about the portion of recent warming that is due to human activities, but I sincerely believe about 10% to 20% is human-caused. Love, Ira
Ira wrote: “I do accept the global satellite temperature record (RSS and UAH) that clearly show net warming since 1979.”
Ira, the period from about 1910 to 1940 shows about the same amount of warming as from 1979 to 2016. The 1910-1940 warming wasn’t caused by CO2 put into the atmosphere by humans.
So far, there is nothing unusual in how the climate is acting. It’s acting the same way today as it acted from 1910 to 1940, including low arctic sea ice and glaciers melting all over the place.
See the *real* historic temperature profile below:
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Screen-Shot-2016-12-05-at-2.13.20-AM.png“
Oopps, I included one extra character on the chart.
Here it is:
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Screen-Shot-2016-12-05-at-2.13.20-AM.png
TA, you have a big jump from the NAS graph to RSS.
Even GISS only shows about 0.2C in that period.
So your graph should look something like this (I’m using the 1974 NCAR graph instead)
Ira
Very important to understand. They say the majority of warning since 1880 is human caused. Theg also have said that since 1979 110% has been caused by humans (Gavin). However since 1880-1945 the amount of co2 Put into the atmosphere was 15ppm or so which is apparently the cause of over half the total warming by man whereas the 100ppm put in since 1945 has raised tenperaturss only 0.3C.
This leads me to believe that the temps from 1880/-1945 didn’t rise only because of man but almost certainly mainly be whatever was causeing the rise in temperatures since the “little ice age”. Since they can’t explain the LIA it is hard to understand how they infer they know the majority heat during this early period is due to man. In fact since 1945 is the only period they can speak about with any reliability.
Since 1945 we have poured in 90% of all the co2 but apparently gotten only 30% of the heating from 1880. How bizarre. Also perplexing is how during the period 1945 – 1975 when we were pouring in >3 times as much co2 before 1945 that 30 year period saw temperatures declining over the whole period. Also from 1995-2015 we saw temperatures flat even though we poured in 40ppm or 1/3 of all the co2 ever poured into the atmosphere. Yet nothing. They try recently to claim victory with the recent warm year but this is simply an El Niño event which is proven pretty solidly by the record rapid decrease in temperatures for the latter half of this year.
These bizarre periods where we have rapidly poured in co2 and temps have been flat or decline are explained by aerosols supposedly. Although a peer reviewed paper recently showed aerosol adjustments are extremely overestimated by at least a factor of two and may be even 0. if this paper is correct which actually has been known for decades that aerosols were overrated then there is no explanation for why temps fell or were flat in these other periods unless co2 sensitivity is much much lower than they guess.
On and on the science has failed to show that it is settled or that the previous assumptions and predictions are all wrong. I have a blog at https://logiclogiclogic.wordpress.com/ and select climate topics you will see documentation and elucidation of all my points made in this point as welll as others.
[Excellent points! THANKS for adding far more “logic” than “heat” to this discussion. I briefly looked at your Blog (https://logiclogiclogic.wordpress.com/) and your interests seem to intersect mine in many ways. I plan to look at your Blog more in the future. You may wish to contact Anthony and volunteer as a Guest Contributor here at WUWT. Good luck. Love, Ira]
AndyG55, the main points of a chart that represents the true temperature profile should be that the 1930’s, 1998, and 2016 should be approximately on the same horizontal line. The 1930’s were 0.5C hotter than 1998, and 2016 was 0.1C hotter than 1998, so the profile should show a slight downtrend in temperatures from the 1930’s to the present. Figuring out how to join those two charts properly and show those three high points where they belong, and everything in between, is a little bit beyond my skills. Perhaps we should ask Gavin to give a try at creating us a nice chart. He has demonstrated he’s good at manipulating charts and making them look any way he wants them to look.
Btw, I appreciate all the charts and info you provide in your posts, AndyG55. Good stuff.
If we are talking belief, I join you in wanting to believe that a lot of atmospheric CO2 increase is human and that some modest amount of surface warming results; it is just sooo reasonable.
But the data does not cooperate. Soils currently produce six times as much CO2 as humans. What happens if your 80 to 90% natural 1C warming causes a 10% increase in soil production? Six GtC; humans currently produce about 9 GtC. A big if, but not unreasonable.
“The lag is only 800 years.” ONLY? That’s a long time for a well mixing gas to do its thing; which it obviously doesn’t, even in our almighty 40 year satellite record or our 400 year glass thermometer record.. The ocean core benthic record extends back 5 million years, back before the planet went ice happy. The parts of the 800kyr ice core and 5myr benthic records that overlap show the same lag between CO2 and temperature.
What is an unwashed scientist to do? Suspend belief.
@ Ira Glickstein, PhD – December 12, 2016 at 8:46 am
Ira G, read my writin, ….. AGAIN, …… your actual beliefs are NOT science-based, simply because, as I told you above, ……. “your beliefs are devoid of any actual, factual observational or scientific proofs or evidence that supports your claimed “acceptance””.
And iffen your “claim” is devoid of any proofs or evidence ….. then your “claim” is little more than a “‘weazelworded’ CYA statement to justify your touted beliefs to those you are speaking to.
Ira Glickstein, if in fact that you do possess a PhD then you should damn well know that ……. associations, correlations, insinuations, estimations, guesstimations, potentialations, percentagiations, iffinations or computer modelling results are not, ….. and I repeat, ARE NOT, actual, factual observational or scientific proofs or evidence that supports one’s beliefs about the natural world.
@ Ira Glickstein, PhD
Ira G, it matters not a twit to me who all “shares your CAGW belief with you” …… any more than it matters how many Bible believing Creationists believe in the “literal truth of the Bible”.
“DUH”, science is not determined by a “consensus of opinions” and the sooner you accept that fact the more intelligent you will become.
Now Mr. PhD, here is the url link to NOAA’s complete monthly average Mona Loa CO2 ppm data from 1958 to 2016, …. 58 continuous years, … or 696 continuous months, to wit:
ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_mm_mlo.txt
And Mr. PhD, here is a copy of the Keeling Curve Graph (w/equinox lines) whereon the aforesaid 600+ continuous months of the Mauna Loa CO2 data has been plotted, to wit:
http://i1019.photobucket.com/albums/af315/SamC_40/keelingcurve.gif
And Mr. PhD, it doesn’t matter which one of those two “records” you choose to study or investigate, ….. you can not and will not find a “human signature” on/in either one of them …… and if there is no “human signature” in the data …… then humans are not responsible for the increase in atmospheric CO2.
The temperature of the ocean waters in the Southern Hemisphere are in control of the changes in atmospheric CO2 ppm ….. as per Henry’s Law dictates.
[Samuel C Cogar: Please COOL DOWN!
The “Human signature” is the fact that the Ice Core record shows CO2 maximum of around 300 ppm over 650,000 years prior to the industrial age, while the Moana Loa data shows an increase from 315 to the current 400 ppm since 1979. Some of the increase in CO2 is due to outgassing from the slightly warmer oceans, but most of it is due to human activities.
Also, I DO NOT share any “CAGW belief” at all. Quite the contrary, despite the increase in Atmospheric CO2 during the period when we are burning unprecedented quantities of fossil fuels, global temperatures have gone up less than about a third what the IPCC C(Catastrophic)AGW activists projected. They are wrong about any kind of “tipping point” or “runaway warming”. I am a reasonable, responsible science-based Skeptic on CATASTROPHIC Global Warming. Global Warming is REAL but NOT a big DEAL, as I wrote here on WUWT.
Love, Ira]
So claimith Ira Glickstein, ….. who me thinks is a “WANNA-BE” climate scientist and who is touting a PhD in “who knows what”, …… Classical Music maybe?
Ira G, your above comment, ….. proves without a doubt, ….. that you don’t have a frigging clue what you have been “mimicking” in your posted verbiage.
You need to find a less-educated audience to impress with your bs.
Cheers, Sam C
How about “Global warming has been an extremely lucrative scam for you, Mr. Vice President. Can you tell me how I might get in on some of this action?”
Just what atmosphere does the IPCC refer to when it mentions the temperature increase? Using MODTRAN you can double the CO2 level and the lower atmosphere doesn’t change at all. The only atmosphere that shows a change in temperature due to changing CO2 is above 10km where there is no water vapor. Measurements near the surface, ie The South Pole show no sensitivity to CO2 over the past 50+ years.
Yes! A vital point.
This is one of the best clips from the documentary where Al Gore claims CO2 can both lead and lag Temperature. Go Figure. Everyone should forward a link of this Documentary to Donald Trump.
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=17m1s
Trump is trolling Gore, Di Caprio, and environmentalists by pretending meeting with them in high profile for publicity purposes then doing the opposite. He’s the master of the craft of using people, and it’s nice seeing it done to the left.
@Ira Glickstein, PhD, you missed one of the greatest mistakes/outright lies in Al Gore’s Documentary. If you ever write a follow-up to this article be sure to include the falsehood highlighted in this video clip. The flaw/lie was discovered in the Climate-Gate Emails. The Video Clip stars 53min 55sec into the documentary. Also, its been 10 years and there is still a glacier on the top of Mt Kilimanjaro.
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=53m55s
Believing that 0.04% of the atmosphere influences weather and dominates the climate takes a real sci fi flight of fantasy.
The upwelling/down welling/”back” radiation of greenhouse theory is comic book science, Saturday morning cartoon science, cinematic shape-shifting, mutant super hero science.
Believing in the GHG/GHE theory is like believing in the X-men. Not surprising since they share a common fan base.
There is common god: Hansen (Gore’s main advisor on climate change) is strongly in favor of nuclear power as the only way to go, not “renewables.” He has also said recently the we have time (many years) to move away from fossil fuels. It would take five years, probably, to get advanced nuclear plants built, so his position is consistent with an emphasis by Trump on nuclear.
It would be smart politics for Trump to propose an emphasis on nuclear because it would peel off the reasonable warmists from the purist fanatics. Divide to rule!
common ground, not common god!
“It would be smart politics for Trump to propose an emphasis on nuclear because it would peel off the reasonable warmists from the purist fanatics. Divide to rule!”
Roger, good news, Trump is supporting nuclear power.
http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/Markets/donald-trump-nuclear-energy-power/2016/12/10/id/763270/
Trump Team’s Asking for Ways to Keep Nuclear Power Alive
And here’s a good article on why we should help the nuclear industry
http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/10/new-report-makes-the-case-for-why-we-shouldnt-let-nuclear-plants-shut-down/
New Report Makes The Case For Why We Shouldn’t Let Nuclear Plants Shut Down
For gore: 1) you show 25C as you should if your theory is correct. Unfortunately we have only seen 0.3C in 70 years from 100PPM. That’s 1% of your expected temp change. Isn’t that disproof of your theory. You are off by 99%. Even if you say 400 isn’t 600ppm the temperature change is a small fraction of what the IPCC says. Given your logic of linear impact of co2 which isn’t accurate as co2 is logarithmic the most we could expect from 200ppm is 0.6C and we probably won’t get 200ppm wnd we won’t get 0.6C therefore. So how much impact is that? How long will that impact stay with us before co2 levels decline from non-fossil fuel use? Isn’t this at most a temporary problem for 20 or 50 years and then we have major cooling which is potentially much worse?
2) you mention 600ppm but that is 200ppm over what we are today. It has taken 70 years to raise co2 by 100ppm. Do you think we will ever reach 600ppm given the rate of technical change in energy production technologies. Isn’t it inevitable we will replace fossil fuels eventually anyway without any subsidies ? So we will never reach 600ppm let alone the 1400ppm that is used in computer models which implies an unrealistic indtewse of 10x out cutrent co2 output. Isn’t this a red herring prediction based on unrealistic assumptions especially given the reduced impact of any level of co2 found in 1)
3) aren’t the effects of co2 on the environment wildly overestimated. None of the effects you predicted we would see have actually come to pass. There is no increase in storm frequency. The Arctic ice has not melted. No polar bears or other creatures have gone extinct as predicted or are even suffering. There is no increase in floods or any effects. We don’t even see sea levels accelerating. There was 30000km of increased coastline created in the last 30 years and most islands are growing in size not decreasing. Everything you said appears to be a wild prediction and none of them have even come close to true. Most are not even in the right direction.
4) will you admit that the 100ppm we have put in the atmosphere over the last 70 years has increased food productivity by 20-39% thereby saving a billion lives and more co2 is more likely to save lives than hurt anyone especially as almost all the effects predicted are actually going the opposite direction than you predicted?
[Excellent points! THANKS, Ira]
As far as I know, no one can yet say how much of the “extra” 120 ppm (from ~280 ppm to ~400 ppm) of increased CO2 in the atmosphere added over the past 150 years can be directly attached to human fossil fuel burning. Humans burned a lot of coal in the 1800s, and that doesn’t seem to have added much to the atmospheric total. Maybe we don’t understand the CO2 cycle very well, yet.
Of course some would say (and Ira G. seems to think) that ALL the extra CO2 is from human fossil fuel burning. If we just presume this to be true, we’re promoting an unfounded assumption (or a hypothesis) to a fact. But what about the fact that we’re in a warm period and during warm periods, ocean outgassing of CO2 occurs? How much of the added CO2 is coming from the ocean? And how much comes from other human activity other than direct burning of fossil fuels, like logging and agriculture and land clearing?
I haven’t seen the math. I won’t accept anyone pulling a ratio of potential major sources out of thin air and then claiming it was done scientifically.
Climate Scientists produce results like Lung Cancer Causes Smoking, and they can get published and given Nobel Prizes.
Mickey Reno: You write:
“Of course some would say (and Ira G. seems to think) that ALL the extra CO2 is from human fossil fuel burning. If we just presume this to be true, we’re promoting an unfounded assumption (or a hypothesis) to a fact. But what about the fact that we’re in a warm period and during warm periods, ocean outgassing of CO2 occurs? How much of the added CO2 is coming from the ocean?”
I DO NOT think nor say that “ALL the extra CO2” is due to Human activities, only the MAJORITY (>50%) of it.
Some of the added CO2 above 300 ppm must come from outgassing from the oceans, etc., due to general net warming over the past century. However, similar outgassing obviously occurred during the warmest periods of the Ice Ages, where, according to the Ice Core data, CO2 peaked around 300 ppm.
Love, Ira
In this chart Al Gore is debunking the IPCC, you just gotta love it. Either Al Gore is wrong, the IPCC is wrong, or they both are wrong. No option is good. This chart alone should be enough Ammo for Trump to expose the Fravd.
?w=720
Ten years on we now perceive clearly that it was not an inconvenient truth – it was a convenient lie.
Ira: So, what happened after that first 1/6th of the warming in each cycle?
It’s kind of amateurish to just ignore the hypothesized mechanisms of positive feedbacks and pretend like this is some big mystery. On the other hand punditry is a lot easier to do than science, but you used to be good at the latter.
If it’s all about positive feedbacks, how do temperatures start to come down while CO2 is still on the way UP? Inquiring minds want to know.
The postulated positive feedback combined with the lag poses an enormous problem for explaining the effect of co2 as being dominant. There is also a lot of cherry picking of the data where many periods show temperatures rising and falling very large amounts without concomitant co2 changes. The record is a little sketchy on that. The effect of co2 &: extremely variable depending on the ice age selected. I have a better explanation as do other scientists for the majority of ice ages temperatures movement.
We have discovered ( please read the article https://logiclogiclogic.wordpress.com/ Called another massive failure) that the earth is affected in milankovic cycles by deformations that release undersea thermal vents. This has been proved. Y examination of releases from undersea vents today and motion of the moon. So these deformations of the earth combined with a cyclic melting and jnmelting of the polar regions creates deformations which augment heating. This explains the onset and magnitude much better than co2
Another thing I cannot accept as established science is the idea that the H20 cycle is a feedback of the CO2 cycle. This is just plain stupid. Both gasses operate the way they do, and water vapor is always found in the atmosphere. Water vapor feedbacks are based on sunlight, air, sea and land temperatures, soil moisture, evaporation, and evapo-transpiration, wind, sublimation, with some tiny contribution from scattered IR radiation, MOST of which comes from water vapor itself. The tiny bit of extra water vapor in the atmosphere caused ONLY by IR scattered by EXTRA human caused CO2 in the atmosphere could not even be measured. Stop caving in to this clever bit of semantic infiltration, this alarmist propaganda that claims water vapor as a CO2 feedback.
Gore is a snake oil salesman that does not have the acumen to understand the basic issues. But that is not his purpose. He has found his snake oil and made himself rich off of it. And that is his purpose.
“Temperatures rise and fall BEFORE the rise and fall of CO2! This occurs for each and every Ice Age.”
That isprecisely why that duplicitous so’n’so separated the two graphs, other waise he couldn’t have made the claim that he did! Lying b!%&!*d!
Politicians and most of the press and public are probably artistically oriented.
Artistic people are probably heavily influenced, even blinded, by a beautiful black-backgrounded pictures with bright red and blue and yellow lines. It shows a scary situation, and they were frightened, and now cannot see anything except that.
We cannot expect to win with logic alone.
We need advertising experts.
“We need advertising experts.”
That’s right! We have to compete on their level.
I am curious.
If CO2 ends an ice age (it has happened several times according to Al Gore) — where does this CO2 come from? Oceans must warm before they release stored CO2. Aren’t the glaciers melting and pouring cold water into the oceans? And atmospheric temperature rise has only a small effect on water temperature?
Do the melting glacier waters sink down to the bottom of the oceans and force warmer water that has been sitting on the seabeds (being warmed by the earth’s core) to rise to the surface releasing CO2?
Do ice ages impair the cycle of cold water sinking and bottom water rising thus allowing seabed water to heat to higher temperatures while the ice age is in progress? Then something else causes the glaciers to melt sending cold water down and driving warmer water up?
So do ice ages impair the cycle of cold water down and warmer water up? Considering that ice ages last so long maybe no circulation of cold water down and warmer water up is the actual norm.
What if all the glaciers melt and there is no cold water to be sent down? In our present time cold water is created at the poles and sinks down and sends warmer waters up. But that bottom water never really warms much due to the constant circulation.
So am I full of shiit or does this have possibilities? I believe in the sun (and earth tilts etc.) but also think the earth’s hot core has to have something to do with this.
Take my word for the correctness of all above. After all I am a poet and who is more credible than a poet?
Eugene WR Gallun
Dammn! Somewhere above I wanted to throw in that Al Gore says the temperature of the earth’s core is several million degrees. Well, maybe it is better i forgot and left it out.
Eugene WR Gallun
Al who?
Gore’s film reminded me of [DELETED – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law Ira]
Not even intelligent propaganda.
“the lag is only 800 years”. It’s been roughly 800 years since the MWP. So, how much of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 levels can be attributed to the MWP?
The lag is 800 years for longer cycles. Consider a 1st order lowpass filter and a variable frequency sinewave – the lag will not exceed a 1/4 cycle of the sinewave.
Also with CO2 change due to temperature change being 10 PPM per degree C, not much of the 120-plus PPM increase from pre-industrial to now is from warming of the world. CO2 now is at least 110 PPM more than it was during or 800 years after the holocene thermal maximum.
The questions Trump should direct to Al Gore are:
1) Why did it take from 1958 to 1988 before anyone panicked about atmospheric CO2 levels, aka The Keeling Curve?
[I DELETED the rest of your questions because they have nothing to do with Climate Science. Sorry, Ira]
CO2 has NOTHING to do with climate change, as others have previously noted, the climate change happened ie. temps went up then did the CO2 went up later (some 7-8 centuries later)…please let us stop using terms like GREENHOUSE GASES as it is specious – it is an ATMOSPHERE and it is doing its job just fine as it always has for us humans
“Temperatures rise and fall BEFORE the rise and fall of CO2! This occurs for each and every Ice Age. (Thanks to Joannenova.com.au for the expanded graph.)”
“They also say “The lag is only 800 years.” Don’t they recognize that CAUSE must come before EFFECT (unless they have some magical view of science)? Any lag at all disqualifies the second item from being the CAUSE.”
The natural driver of Earth’s climate on scales of millenia is the Earth’s orbital eccentricity.
Explained by the Milankovitch cycles….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
The most important one seemingly being obliquity.
This leads to most change in the energy of the sun impacting the latitude of greatest sensitivity – 65 deg N.
The weaker the insolation there then the less likely it is that winter snows will thaw over the higher latitudes of the NH landmass. Over millenia this builds with feed-back from albedo, and then into temp, which feed into atmospheric WV (GHG).
What this does is to regulate the Earth’s carbon cycle such that when cooling more CO2 is absorbed by the oceans and when warming more is free to stay in the atmosphere with the oceans less able to absorb.
That is why there is a lag in the Vostock ice-cores proxy temp vs atmospheric CO2.
CO2 is a FEED-BACK and not the DRIVER of long-term climatic change.
Becasue CO2 is a GHG it can both drive a change and feed-back into a change.
It only depends on which comes first.
The natural state of affairs is for the Earth’s reception of solar energy to be reguated by it’s orbital characteristics and then CO2 increases/decreases to feed-back into the change.
The current warming is not due to changes orbital characteristics.
http://www.climatedata.info/forcing/milankovitch-cycles/files/stacks_image_6997.png
Yes, but the current warming period is both longer and more stable than the previous warming periods.
? Previous interglacials? What periods do you mean.
Q1. What is the CORRECT temperature for the planet?
Q2. Where did humanity arise from – equatorial (warm) or polar (cold) places and which is preferable?
Q3. If man ‘had’ to alter the planets temperature, up or down, what precisely could they do to achieve this and how long would it take?
Q4. What other beneficial projects could the already-spend (wasted) $trillions have been used for?
Q5. How many MORE $trillions are we going to throw at this ‘problem’?
Years ago, my wife and I watched An Inconvenient Truth together. I found it hilarious, she found it terrifying. You need not be a scientist to see that CAGW is mostly speculation, you merely need to be thoughtful and understand what constitutes evidence.
For instance, regarding point #3, my wife found the graph totally convincing. I went back later and paused the DVD to take a look at these two lines. As someone who plays around with charting in the stock market, I’m aware of the difference between a leading indicator and a lagging indicator.
Gore didn’t superimpose his two lines because if he did, it would be obvious CO2 is a lagging indicator (temperature goes up first, then CO2 follows it up). Gore’s whole argument depends on it being a leading indicator. So he separated them and let your imagination do what his “data” couldn’t.
The movie is full of dishonest manipulations like that.
I’ve always wanted to ask Al Gore:
With that fact in mind, when would you rather live — the high carbon dioxide periods or the low ones?
I guess Al Gore is just a glutton for punishment. He got officially dressed down over his first propaganda effort, An Inconvenient Truth, and now he is going to do it all over again. Where’s that judge? Clear your calendar.
As for cause/effect of CO2 change and temperature change: From 400,000-plus to 200 years ago when the sum of carbon in the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere was essentially constant, CO2 variation in the atmosphere was a positive feedback mechanism that applied to temperature changes from other causes such as the Milankovitch cycles. Now, we are transferring lots of carbon from the lithosphere to the atmosphere and atmospheric CO2 increasing from that and causing/contributing to the increase of temperature.
The Gore tip-off is best illustrated by his rogue’s gallery of prematurely extinct species…among which he included a coelacanth (look it up). When I saw that, I guffawed out loud. It is distinctive in appearance and was thought to be extinct since the Late Cretaceous (66 milllion years ago). However, the reason why its image is familiar is because it was discovered in 1938 as a living species, a notorious SURVIVAL–not an extinction. It would be on a level of Gore showing a panel of famous dead men, and including Donald Trump (wishes don’t count). Well, once you catch him red-handed in a lie, how much else can you believe?
I will again bring up the point that there is an equilibrium vapor pressure (atmospheric concentration) of carbon dioxide above seawater, fixed by seawater temperature and chemistry. There will be rates of CO2 going into the water AND coming out of the water…as well as rates of it coming and going from and to other repositories. The main point is that Le Chatlier’s principle (homeostatic maintenance of equilibrium) will cause any seawater rates to adjust in order to maintain the equilibrium vapor pressure. If there is more CO2 than equilibrium, it will go into solution. If there is less, it will come out of solution. All that the seawater “sees” is the vapor pressure. It doesn’t care if there are other sources in the world; it will adjust as necessary to maintain equilibrium. So, it seems obvious that the increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere means that the equilibrium condition is shifting, not that any particular source or sink is overpowering the others. If this is true, it also means that it doesn’t matter what the human contribution is to the sources; the ocean will adjust its rates to meet the equilibrium condition, regardless. The question is: Why is the equilibrium changing? (Speculation for chemists: maybe the solubility of carbonates is affected by the pH of seawater, and we are witnessing a subtle interaction of chemistry and temperature–which drives the CO2 concentration in the air.)
Lastly, I spent a good chunk of my professional life designing laser weapons to shoot through the atmosphere at targets, mostly in the 5 to 10 micron wavelength bands. And the answer always was that our main problem with distance propagation was absorption by (1) water vapor, and (2) carbon dioxide. So, there really is no denial possible that these molecules will absorb AND RE-RADIATE long-wave infrared radiation when they are in thermal equilibrium with the radiation. There is no better barrier to an infrared laser than a simple cloud. As good as a foot of steel (maybe better). So, the “greenhouse effect” metaphor is a real effect. You can count on it. Clear skies at night, cold night. Cloudy skies, not so cold. I’ve lived by that fact in my neck of the woods for my entire life. But the effect does not rely on the atmosphere doing any heating from its own heat; it relies on the heat from the Earth surface being effectively scattered into upward and downward components. (Yes, a photon emission will make a molecule “colder” and an absorption will make it “warmer.” But the air is already a mixture of warmer and colder molecules–the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution–and the “warmer” ones will cause spontaneous IR emissions, too.) It is more accurate to think of these gases in the atmosphere functioning as a beam splitter or partially reflective mirror. The molecules are not getting any warmer or cooler from the radiation. Their conductive contact with the Earth will make them warmer or cooler, as it always does.
Is it true that CO2 has never exceeded 300ppm before now?
RoHa: Great question! When Al Gore says in his movie that CO2 has NEVER been above 300 ppm, he is referring ONLY to the Ice Core data as compiled and currently understood. The Ice Core record is smoothed, so, if there were short periods of several years where CO2 was substantially above 300 ppm, that would not be detectable. There were most certainly periods millions of years ago (well prior to the 650,000 years of the Ice Core record) when CO2 was well above 300 ppm, perhaps 4000 ppmv or even higher. There may also be relatively short periods during the historical era (say the past 6,000 years) when CO2 was substantially higher than 300 ppmv. If any WUWT reader can shed more light on this issue, please post a comment. advTHANKSance. Ira
Ira,
I agree, the ‘300 ppm’ is cherry-picked. Here’s a chart based on NOAA and IPCC data:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cHhMa7ARDDg/SoxiDu0taDI/AAAAAAAABFI/Z2yuZCWtzvc/s1600/Geocarb%2BIII-Mine-03.jpg
Thanks for that chart, db.
TA, you’re mighty welcome. (As usual, click in the charts to embiggen.)
Great post, but all of the detail is unimportant. Algore said it best, he and The Donald had a “sincere search for common ground”, and they found it. They both agree that human caused catastrophic climate change is a hoax. Al was probably explaining to TD how to make money from the scam.
Ira Glickstein,
Thanks for a good compilation, condensed to 3 points.
However, when
“They also say “The lag is only 800 years.” Don’t they recognize that CAUSE must come before EFFECT (unless they have some magical view of science)? Any lag at all disqualifies the second item from being the CAUSE.” –
They go from one fallacy to another.
Cheers – Hans