Guest essay by David Archibald
Even people who are logical enough to write software, and gifted enough to work on research projects at NASA, feel the need to believe in something beyond themselves. Otherwise their meaningless lives would feel shallow, hollow, depressing and purposeless. Some have chucked over the Bible but still cling to a fragment of it, the bit at the beginning talking about how perfect the Earth was before it was despoiled by the hand of Man. It therefore follows that Man should be punished by wearing sackcloth and ashes, or paying carbon taxes. As a religion, belief in global warming is well short of being complicated enough to do some actual good, such as building orhpanages, retirement homes or hospitals for the importune. Relative to a religion that actually does some good, belief in global warming is like a prion relative to the human genome, a little poisonous fragment even simpler than a virus.
Thus XKCD has promoted his simple faith which satisfies a basic need. Firstly it was this cartoon:
Followed by a longer one that starts 20,000 years ago:
That cartoon inspired Javier and Josh to do their own cartoon representations of climate history, both of which are more factually correct than XKCD’s. From that cartoon at about 15,500 BC, this is the setup for the punchline at the end:
XKCD is well-read but perhaps he has missed all the papers that show how the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration slavishly follows temperature with a lag of 800 years, which happens to be the time it takes the oceans to turnover. That is explained by the high solubility of carbon dioxide in water as shown by these graphs of solubility of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and oxygen:
The graphs look similar and all have an inflection point at about 20°C but the scales are somewhat different. Carbon dioxide is 100x more soluble than nitrogen and 50x more soluble than oxygen. If XKCD flagged rising carbon dioxide as a bad thing, it is likely that he has missed another important paper from 2005 entitled Carbon starvation in glacial trees recovered from the L Brea tar pits, southern California. From that paper, “As a result, glacial trees were operating at c i values much closer to the CO2-compensation point for C3 photosynthesis than modern trees, indicating that glacial trees were undergoing carbon starvation.” and this graph which shows that plant starvation was worst at about the time that XKCD flagged the entry of carbon dioxide in his cartoon:
Plant growth shuts down completely at 150 ppm of carbon dioxide. From the glacial low of 180 ppm, it would have only been a fall of another 30 ppm to wipe out all life above sealevel. We didn’t get to that point in the last glacial period but as more and more carbon gets locked up in sedimentary rocks, we might in one of the glaciations to come as we are only 3 million years into what could be a 30 million year long ice age. I think XKCD has his priorities around the wrong way, and we revisit that.
In the meantime let’s examine what is wrong with the end of his graphic which relies upon runaway warming from water vapor compounding upon itself. This is a graphic I popularised 10 years ago:
What that graph demonstrates is the logarithmic heating effect of carbon dioxide. Half of the heating is from the first 20 ppm. By the time we get to the atmospheric concentration in 2017 of 406 ppm, each additional 100 ppm only adds 0.1°C. Everyone knows this to be true. How the global warmers get the heating they need for their belief system is by saying that the little bit of warming from carbon dioxide will cause more water vapor to be held in the atmosphere. Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas which will cause more warming which cause more water vapor and so on ad infinitum, or until they get a graph that can scare them.
This great leap of faith requires a commensurate abandonment of logic and reason, as shown by this graph:
This graph shows the values from the previous graph cumulatively. Almost all the heating effect of carbon dioxide is reached at the level that was causing carbon starvation in the La Brea juniper trees. On top of that in the blue part of the bars is shown the compounding effect of water vapor warming, as required by global warming to reach their targets, with the warming starting at the pre-industrial level of carbon dioxide. Not before, not after, but exactly from the pre-industrial level. Just how could that be?
Of that warming, we should have experienced 1°C to date to stay on schedule. That value remains aspirational as we haven’t seen it in the climate records. Some have said that the heating remains hidden in the deep oceans and will emerge at a time of its choosing. But the oceanic lead indicator is showing rapid cooling. It is safe to say that global warming is wishful thinking – it cannot occur in practise and there is no evidence for it. There was a mild, pleasant and much appreciated warming in the second half of the 20th century. All things have a cause so what was that? Well there is another important paper that XKCD may have missed – Solanki et al’s 2004 paper entitled Unusual activity of the Sun duringrecent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years. From that paper, their figure 3 shows what they mean:
The Sun was more active in the second half of the 20th century than it had been for the previous 10,000 years. As energy from the Sun is what stops the Earth from looking like Pluto, this increase in energy is enough for probable cause for the pleasant warming many of us experienced during our lifetimes. The warming and the rise of carbon dioxide concentration was mere coincidence; correlation does not mean causation, as they say.
The reality of the science has been sorted but leaves the problem that XKDC needs to believe in something. The clock is ticking down in that Scott Pruitt will soon be running the EPA. One thing he is likely to do in the near future is commission a report into climate science. A large number of people would be qualified to write such a report. The one chosen may very well be William Happer, a man of principle much-persecuted by the EPA and recently summoned to the President-elect’s presence. Then, after the report is released, the mantra of “Are you denying the science?” will be turned on its head. Global warming has been a state-sponsored religion with its priesthood funded from the public purse to the tune of $2.5 billion a year in the US alone. The priests of that cult will be plucked off the public teat and the memory of what they preached will fade.
That will start a new problem because Nature abhors a vacuum and some sort of nonsense will enter leftie brains to fill the space currently occupied by global warming. As the Sun caused the pleasant warming of the 20th century perhaps XKCD and his coreligionists could try some Sun worship. That has not always ended well. One of the pharaohs, Akhenaten in 1,353 B.C, switched the ancient Egyptians over to Sun worship. Within a few years of the death of his son Tutankhaman in 1,336 B.C, Akhenaten’s enemies “soon smashed his statues, dismantled his temples, and set out to expunge all memory of him and Nefertiti from Egypt’s historical record” and went back to what they were doing before.
To provide what the lefties need, we may have to go back to some basic animist practices. As a matter of urgency we need something like another Council of Nicaea to formulate a new religion for the lefties to believe in. I have not been idle to that end and bought a copy of The Golden Bough to gain insight on what sort of rituals a new animist belief system might have. The Golden Bough is gruesome reading though with a lot of human and animal sacrifice to ensure good harvests. This is no laughing matter with animal sacrifice recently resurgent in New York City, at least in rap artist Azalia Banks’ apartment.
Finally, XKCD, in the words of Luke Skywalker,‘I know there is good in you.’ Can’t promise when there will be a new belief system made up for you though. In the meantime I would appreciate it if you would not try to force your failed belief system on me and my friends.
David Archibald is the author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare.
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Positive Feedback loop is still missing,…….
crickets……………..
Somewhere along the way, cause and effect got reversed.
The Industrial Revolution didn’t cause global warming.
Global warming (coming out of the Little Ice Age) allowed the Industrial Revolution to happen.
Heh, Never thought of it that way. I like it.
“Global warming (coming out of the Little Ice Age) allowed the Industrial Revolution to happen.”
Not sure I follow the logic here. The Industrial Revolution started long before the Little Ice Age ended.
but when did it (industrial revolution) become a prolific force?
Without Global Warming there would’ve been enough food to feed the growing population.
“but when did it (industrial revolution) become a prolific force?”
Maybe I was being too literal, but the Industrial Revolution started in the 18th century and ended in the 19th century. If the question is when did we start ramping up CO2 emissions, I’d say that really started in the second half of the 20th century.
Source
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data#Trends
I’m not sure how much this can be attributed to coming out of the LIA.
Without enough food, the population would not have been growing.
Not just food – the difference in supply lines for large projects was much, much harder in the coldest winters. Even something as simple as road building used to be a “three months of the year, maybe” proposal in the depths of the cold years.
The Industrial Revolution, while often considered to start in the mid-18th century, didn’t really kick in until the 1860s or so. Lots of interesting statistics started to climb about then. The basic one is coal consumption, which was trivial before 1850, and really started to explode in 1870 or so.
In Great Britain and Europe.
For the USA it didn’t really start until 1824 or a few years before. It was precipitated by the animosity we felt towards the British after we lost the War of 1812.
“For the USA it didn’t really start until 1824 or a few years before. It was precipitated by the animosity we felt towards the British after we lost the War of 1812.”
Still long before the end of the little ice age.
The agricultural revolution was throughout the C17th as climate in the UK improved and the increased yields helped finance and feed the industrial revolution
that should say C18th !
The LIA …
when your arse is freezing, your children are freezing, your neighbors are freezing…
There is a lot of incentive to find, dig, and burn fossil fuels.
I agree, however it was in fact the green revolution – agriculture, that allowed an increased population as we were able to feed more mouths. The warmer temperatures coming out of the last glacial period 10,000ya meant crops/livestock were more likely to survive and grow in more places on the planet.
As the world became more populated, it put a strain on resources – space, transport, trees for firewood etc. which necessitated more heavy industry, steam trains, cars, factories, mining of fossil fuels. As the climate has warmed since the little ice age, the earth has experienced unprecedented population growth.
So of course, anthropogenic emissions will naturally accelerate at times of rapid warming, simply because there are more of us, doing more things. I assume similarly a sudden deep freeze into the next ice age would prevent quite a lot of anthropogenic CO2 emissions from occuring (as people would all be dead).
Also, as the sun warmed up the oceans, more CO2 was released into the atmosphere.
Really? Most would say the IR started around 1750 and ended around 1820, perhaps 1840.
The LIA in Northern Europe (where the IR began) was from perhaps 1300 to 1850. The last Frost Fair on the Thames was 1814.
So the beginning of the IR in the UK was well before the end of the LIA, and it had largely finished (as a revolution) before the LIA ended..
Liberals get their news from comedians, Constitutional law from Broadway plays and climate science from internet cartoonists.
And instructions on which politicians to elect from Hollywood.
will cause more water vapor to be held in the atmosphere.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/28/new-study-claims-to-confirms-water-vapor-as-global-warming-amplifier-but-other-data-says-no/
Rud, help me out here!…….. 😉
Except Rel Humidity is going down, dew point are not rising compared to max daily temp.
There’s nothing unusual with the Sun during the second half of the 20th century. It had an above average level of activity, but not unusual, and certainly not higher than the previous 10,000 years. Solanki was wrong on that.
Javier, where did solanki go wrong? and how far off was he? Thanx…
Solanki went wrong by appending the [faulty] Hoyt & Schatten Group Sunspot Number to the cosmogenic isotope record. Reserach since 2004 by many people have shown that solar activity the past century has nor been extraordinarily high. See e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/The-July-Seminars-2015.pdf and https://www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau1508/
http://lasp.colorado.edu/lisird/tsi/historical_tsi.html
Dr. Svalgaard, what is your take on lisird? (thanks)…
When you show a Figure like this, you should also show the caveats [from their website]:
“Imminent changes to TSI reconstructions may in fact be expected for two reasons:
1) The 2013 IPCC AR5 report used input solar forcing from the CMIP5, which is largely based on a prior version of the NRLTSI model. The recently-released IPCC AR6 CMIP6 instead uses an average of both the NRLTSI2 model and the semi-empirical SATIRE model. The reconstruction shown here, however, is based only on the NRLTSI2 reconstruction, which better matches the SORCE/TIM data because neither show the decreasing secular trend in TSI over the last three solar cycles that the SATIRE model (and thus the CMIP6) presently does.
2) Changes even greater than those in the CMIP6 are also expected due to a revised sunspot record released in 2015. Historical TSI reconstructions based on this revised record suggest significant changes prior to 1885 from both the NRLTSI2 and the SATIRE models. (See Kopp, Krivova, Lean, and Wu, 2016)
Dr. Svalgaard, what is your take on lisird? (thanks)…
Basically this:
http://www.leif.org/research/EUV-F107-and-TSI-CDR-HAO.pdf
Here’s another one from this greenie useful idiot:
https://xkcd.com/1732/
NB: wrong about Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods but Especially wrong about recent warming.
Chris,
On the cartoon timeline of warming that you show, is bthere any agreement about what mechanism might have driven this warming?
Wasvit merely a reduction of a prior cooling influence?
So often in the past we have seen loose comments that recently the globe has warmed naturally since the Ice Age even LIA.
By what mechanisms?
Geoff
It’s quite simple: before the appearance of man, everything was natural and therefore good. After man appeared, everything was his fault.
He seems to think that some warming is caused by Milankovic cycles which starts the whole interglacial. Some warming is also attributed to increasing CO2 at around 17000 BCE. Some cooling is supposedly due to glacial meltwater cooling the oceans which when you think about it may be way too simple since he’s referring to so-called “global average temperature” not local events. Other warming/cooling periods (notably the Medieval Warm Period and little ice age) have no cause attributed to them. Just magic I guess. He does mention that the MWP was a local European and Northern phenomenon which had little effect on GAT; although recent research shows pretty definitely that it was a world-wide phenomenon. Only at the end is the sudden change in temperatures (obviously obtained by models not observations) attributed to CO2. Overall I don’t have the impression he’s updated his climate knowledge since the late 1990s.
His reliance on Milankovic to get the melt started does not lead to him thinking that the cycles are still with us and will obviously have a cooling effect at some point long after we have burned the last barrel of oil, last piece of coal and the last tree-turned-into-woodchips and CO2 levels have become devastatingly low.
…I have not been idle to that end and bought a copy of The Golden Bough to gain insight on what sort of rituals a new animist belief system might have….
I would hope that most educated people would have a copy on their bookshelves already – the cheap Wordsworth abridged edition is quite good enough. But, to educate people like XKCD, I would recommend Charles Mackay’s excellent tome – Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds.
Another book which everyone ought to have read…
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madness-Crowds/dp/1463740514/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484696324&sr=8-1&keywords=Charles+Mackay
Vol. 1 is available as an audiobook also: https://librivox.org/memoirs-of-extraordinary-popular-delusions-and-the-madness-of-crowds-volume-i-by-charles-mackay/
For investors, “Devil Take The Hindmost” picks up where Mackay leaves off. The first edition of Mackay was done as 3 volumes. Second edition and later were done as only 2.
The Golden Bough is out of copyright and available as a PDF.
http://www.templeofearth.com/books/goldenbough.pdf for example.
Chapter 5 “The Magical Control of the Weather” seems apropos.
Okay sorry: didn’t read closely enough. You already got this piece of didinformation.
aaaaargh: …dis… not …did…. Damn spell checker!
Water seems like the next logical choice for a contrived environmental crisis.
It would be, but the Israelis have solved the problem.
http://www.thetower.org/article/how-israel-is-solving-the-global-water-crisis/
Great story. thanks!!
So why doesn’t California take the money currently being wasted on the train to nowhere and spend it on water projects as the Israelis have done? Wouldn’t this also relieve the pressure of providing for the delta smelt?
Jack Simmons, I think the Delta Smelt minnows could be quite easily protected without wasting all that water.
Here are 3 articles about California’s water problem which argue persuasively that a big part of it is due to environmental politics.
This article is from Feb. 2013 (when there was no drought, or at least not much of one):
http://westernfarmpress.com/blog/californians-lose-800000-acre-feet-water-305-minnows
This article is from early 2014 (a drought year):
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/02/califorinia-drought-is-not-about-climate-change-its-about-failed-liberal-policy/
This article is from April, 2015:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417685/why-californias-drought-was-completely-preventable-victor-davis-hanson
Here’s an excerpt from the 2013 Western Farm Press article:
I don’t think the pumping halts were really about protecting minnows. Protecting the minnows is a simple engineering problem. You just need larger screened water intakes. The larger the intake, the lower the water velocity at the intake. Most Delta Smelt minnows can swim at more than 20 cm/sec.
(ref: http://online.sfsu.edu/modelds/Files/References/Swanson1998JEB.pdf ).
It should be straightforward to design large screened water intakes, which take in water slowly enough that they don’t suck in fish. I think the real reason for wasting all that water is simply “green” ideological opposition to human use of natural resources (water, in this case). The minnows are an excuse.
In most places, fresh water issues can be solved by engineering, and/or getting the reams of green tape out the way.
“the little bit of warming from carbon dioxide will cause more water vapor to be held in the atmosphere. Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas which will cause more warming which cause more water vapor and so on ad infinitum,”
If such a system existed, it would have been activated during one of the Earth’s frequent transitions from ice age to warmer and back. It would have run away and cooked the planet long ago. Clearly there is no such system.
Positive feedback, whether from water vapor or any other source, does not “run away” unless it’s extraordinarily strong ( >= unity), and water vapor feedback is nowhere near that strong. No real-world feedbacks are anywhere near that strong.
We just discussed that over on the “Cloudy Question” article (comments are still open there, BTW).
U. of Chicago’s online MODTRAN interface calculates that for a Tropical Atmosphere water vapor feedback should increase the warming effect of CO2 in the tropics by only about 8% to 9%. (That’s the difference between holding absolute humidity constant, and holding relative humidity constant, for the calculations.)
That’s probably on the low side, especially for the planet as a whole, since the warming effect should be greater near the poles (where absolute humidity is lower, so additional water vapor has less effect — part of “polar amplification”). Most other sources give much higher estimates, generally between 60% and 100% (i.e., up to doubling).
However, there are also a number of negative (stabilizing) feedbacks, which attenuate the warming effect of CO2 and other forcings.
And anyhow, fortunately, the bulk of the warming from the CO2+H2O vapor greenhouse effect is expected to be at extreme latitudes (where warming is helpful), rather than near the equator (where it’s already warm enough).
No. If the growth is compounds the formula is x^(1+r). That is an exponential factor and it will go to infinity toot sweet.
“U. of Chicago’s online MODTRAN”
The folks who gave us Barack Hussein Obama. Wow, I really trust them.
No, that’s the formula for compounding interest, Wakter. Positive feedback does not mean “compounded interest.” Please click the link I just gave you, and read that thread, esp. the comments by Ian Macdonald and by me. Or read this:
http://www.sealevel.info/feedbacks.html
Also, U. Chicago is better known as Milton Friedman’s school.
Oops, sorry about typo’ing your name.
I need a better explanation. The idea seems to be that when the atmosphere warms, the waters warm, more water evaporates, which increases the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. That in turn warms the atmosphere, which cause more water to evaporate. and so on.
That is a compounding system, and it will go to infinity.
In the real world that does not happen, because the water vapor condenses as it rises and releases heat into the upper atmosphere, and forms clouds with a high albedo.
But, the logic of the warmesta theory is an atmosphere of super heated steam.
Friedman got old, retired and moved to San Francisco, then he died that was a while ago. And the leftists took over as they do in all academic institutions, and they groomed and promoted Obama, May they rot in a very hot place full of super heated steam.
And no, I ain’t gonna read your thread, because I have zero interest in warmesta propaganda.
Gee, Walter, first you say, “I need a better explanation,” but then you say, “I ain’t gonna read your thread,” and you call me a dirty name.
You’ve already got that better explanation, but you won’t read it.
Walter – the absolute humidity (mass of water per volume of air) goes up exp with temperature (constant rel humidity) but like the CO2 plot above, the effect of water drops off as the concentration goes up.
As David points out in the second last figure, that doesn’t quite fit the theory.
daveburton January 17, 2017 at 4:59 pm
That’s probably on the low side, especially for the planet as a whole, since the warming effect should be greater near the poles (where absolute humidity is lower, so additional water vapor has less effect
Another great tidbit/factoid. (-:
Walter:
Dave Burton? Warmesta? You sh***ing me?
daveburton
1) you forget that “positive feedback” may be of many kind, not just the proportional kind. The delayed one are the more fun to observe (not always fun to be stuck in though…), producing weird, chaotic patterns. And we KNOW (that’s among the very few thing we know for sure) that climatic things are delayed.
2) you are not talking feedback, you are talking amplification and tuning.
Any increase of the warming effect of CO2 via water vapor “feedback” (sic), is NOT feedback: it’s amplification.
Feedback there is, indeed, but negative: more water mean CO2 has less effect, making GHE logarithmics.
Bottom line : the feedback is negative, that’s why there may be amplification instead of a runaway
MRW: Thank you! 🙂
paqyfelyc: you wrote, “you forget that ‘positive feedback’ may be of many kind, not just the proportional kind.”
In nature, feedbacks are rarely perfectly linear. But they’re usually roughly linear at least for small perturbations.
paqyfelyc wrote, “The delayed one are the more fun… producing weird, chaotic patterns. And we KNOW … that climatic things are delayed.”
Classically, delays in a feedback loop can produce instability/oscillation for strong feedbacks, even for strong negative feedbacks. But I don’t know of an example of that among climate feedbacks. here’s a list of climate feedbacks; which do you think are so strong and so delayed that they could cause “weird, chaotic patterns?”
paqyfelyc wrote, “you are not talking feedback, you are talking amplification and tuning. Any increase of the warming effect of CO2 via water vapor “feedback” (sic), is NOT feedback: it’s amplification.”
Sorry, you don’t get to redefine the terminology.
The water vapor feedback loop goes like this: temperature affects humidity which affects temperature
1. Some other forcing (e.g., CO2) causes warming
2. which causes slightly increased absolute humidity
3. which, because H2O vapor is a greenhouse gas, causes a little bit of additional warming
I.e., it “feeds back” to temperature (step 2).
paqyfelyc wrote, “Feedback there is, indeed, but negative…”
There are both negative and positive feedback mechanisms in the Earth’s climate systems.
paqyfelyc wrote, “Bottom line : the feedback is negative, that’s why there may be amplification instead of a runaway”
Wrong. Negative feedback causes attenuation, not amplification (unless very strong + delayed, in which case it may cause oscillations).
Water vapor feedback is a positive feedback mechanism, which is why it amplifies the effects of forcings like CO2 warming, particulate cooling, TSI, etc. on temperature.
CORRECTION: I wrote, “That’s probably on the low side, especially for the planet as a whole, since the warming effect should be greater near the poles (where absolute humidity is lower, so additional water vapor has less effect — part of ‘polar amplification’).”
I badly garbled that. What I meant was: “That’s probably on the low side, especially for the planet as a whole, since the warming effect should be greater near the poles, where absolute humidity is lower — that’s one of the causes of ‘polar amplification’. Additional water vapor has less effect in the tropics because there’s already so much water vapor in the air there.”
Thank you, Steve Case.
Positive feedback DOES typically cause an exponential increase in output and is only limited by the power supply. Wikipedia actually explains it pretty well: “… positive feedback is in phase with the input, in the sense that it adds to make the input larger. Positive feedback tends to cause system instability. When the loop gain is positive and above 1, there will typically be exponential growth, increasing oscillations, chaotic behavior or other divergences from equilibrium. System parameters will typically accelerate towards extreme values, which may damage or destroy the system …”
daveburton: The gain you’re talking about is the loop gain of the system. In other words it is an amplifier if the loop gain is >1. Any loop gain less than one means you have an attenuator and no chance of any amplification (think what that means for global warming).
That’s incorrect, Jim Gorman. There are three cases:
1. If the loop gain is negative (i.e., less than zero) the feedback attenuates (reduces) the effect of other inputs (forcings). That’s why it’s called “negative feedback.”
An example of this is “Planck Feedback.” Radiative emissions from a warm body are proportional to the 4th power of the body’s absolute temperature (temperature in in Kelvin). It is calculated that a uniform global temperature increase of 1°C would increase radiant heat loss from the surface by 1.4%. So the feedback loop is:
higher temperature -> increases radiative heat loss to space which -> reduces temperature
2. Positive feedback has the opposite effect. If the loop gain is positive, but less than one, the feedback amplifies the effect of other inputs. This is the typical case, in nature, for positive feedbacks.
An example of this is “Water Vapor Feedback.” It is generally expected that warmer temperatures should increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, because warmer air holds more moisture. This effect is usually approximated in climate calculations by assuming stable relative humidity as temperatures change. Under that assumption, warmer temperatures cause greater amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere, and since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, increased water vapor in the atmosphere should increase greenhouse warming: a positive feedback:
higher temperature -> increases absolute humidity which -> increases temperature a little bit more
3. If the loop gain is greater than or equal to one a linear system is unstable. Initially you get exponential growth, but sooner or later some sort of nonlinearity kicks in, with the result being “increasing oscillations, chaotic behavior or other divergences from equilibrium.”
This is rare in nature, but an example is the combustion of gunpowder:
heat ignites a small amount of gunpowder -> produces more heat -> ignites a larger amount of gunpowder -> produces a larger amount of heat, etc.
Initially, the heat produced grows exponentially, but, of course, that doesn’t go on forever. Soon the system runs out of gunpowder: that’s the “nonlinearity kicking in.”
This is the most obscure post that I have yet encountered on WUWT.
XKCD ? — I had zero clue.
Cri de Coeur ? — also zero clue.
I had to look up both to even understand the title.
i ges i knead t reed mor
XKCD can be quite obscure sometimes. It’s the only cartoon I know that has a site devoted to explaining it. Explain XKCD
Robert, XKCD is a snowflake cartoon based on a pseudo-scientific culture of arrogance and snark.
If you had college age children in the last decade you likely got an email, greeting card or maybe even coffee table book with XKCD cartoons. They’re very popular among the scientifically inclined snowflake set.
The key words are “arrogant” and “snark”. Some take humor where they can find it.
There are many parallels between Christianity and the global warming belief. In modern Christianity, they take bits and pieces and form an amalgam.
For example: How many people have actually read the first three chapters of Genesis? If you go to a church and ask that question, I will bet 95% of the people there will say they have not. The Bible does not say it directly, but the whole earth was not a perfect paradise, just the little spot called Eden. Adam was given a job: to reproduce and expand Eden. After Adam ate the fruit, both Adam and Eve became imperfect and realized they were naked. (Another fact Christians throughout the years have gotten wrong is they blamed Eve for the fall from grace. The Bible shows that God did not pronounce sentence on humans until Adam ate the unidentified fruit. The Bible never says it was an apple either.) Then they were kicked out of Eden where angels were posted to guard the way back in. But if the whole earth was a paradise, why would kicking Adam and Eve out be a punishment? Outside would be just as nice as inside.
The global warming belief takes a few bits of truth, gets it mixed up, and spreads it as divine truth. Just like the story of Adam and Eve. I am often reminded of the school game where you whisper something into someone’s ear who whispers that into another person’s ear who whispers that into another person’s ear and so on. What comes out is way off the mark. People misremember and misinterpret. The problem is when the facts clearly show your interpretation is wrong but you still defend it to the end.
Now, I am not trying to belittle people who believe in God or believe in gods. You can educated and a scientist and still believe in God. We should not blacklist or denigrate people who do believe in a creator. I was just pointing out how people get things mixed up, even things easy to verify if they would just research but they choose not to research.
The Adam and Eve thing is clearly a metaphor used to attempt to explain the Problem of Evil.
alexwade,
“The Bible shows that God did not pronounce sentence on humans until Adam ate the unidentified fruit. The Bible never says it was an apple either”
I believe the fruit is identified, and it’s not the sort we literately eat (or see);
And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
The tree of knowledge of good and evil? The “fruit” is knowledge, it seems to me. I believe that “tree” was “in the midst of the garden”, because a certain “shinning one” was in the garden (soon to offer his “fruit” to the people), and the tree of life is the Son, through whom (it is made quite clear later) eternal life is made available to us humans.
To “eat” the fruit means to take it in, intellectually speaking, and this metaphorical usage persists throughout the Book . .
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
The problem is fanaticism. The same argument could be applied in the Middle East, where the problem is not Islam as such, but the branch known as Wahhabism which advocates a return to the kind of practices described in the War Suras, when Mohammed was fighting a pitched battle with corrupt tribal rulers.
Christianity went through a similar problem with the Inquisition, which was basically all about the fact that the Christ had not returned yet, and perhaps that was because of the presence of Unbelievers.
The climate fanatic likewise cannot accept that in the light of our knowledge of how renewable energy products perform, they are not a very good solution to our energy needs. Instead of adapting to that new knowledge, the fanatic becomes even more hell-bent on spending vast amounts of money on them, as if that will somehow make them work.
A common factor in the fanatic’s world view is the inability to modify their views in the light of new knowledge or changes in society.
I think we all become attracted to system which reinforce our existing beliefs.
The Left love AGW because it gives them a sciencey reason to do what they want to do – cetnralise, increase the powers of the state, do away with all those nasty businesses. Our generation know they lost the economic argument to do all that conclusively, but they refuse to change the belief, despite that.
The fanatic takes it a step further and wants to impose his view on everybody, because it drives him (and it’s almost always a him) mad that others won;t recant and convert to his way of thinking.
Ian,
“Christianity went through a similar problem with the Inquisition, which was basically all about the fact that the Christ had not returned yet, and perhaps that was because of the presence of Unbelievers.”
It is made abundantly clear in the Book that “unbelievers” will not only exist, but will be persecuting Christians mightily when Christ returns. This is extremely easy to demonstrate if you have any doubt whatsoever.
For example; (Matthew 24: 3 – 14)
And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.
And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
All these are the beginning of sorrows.
Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.
And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.
And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.
And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.
(People can claim whatever they like, but it is obviously false teaching it they claim the presence of unbelievers prevents His return, it seems beyond reasonable doubt, to me. The two religions are very different in this regard, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t muddy the waters, so to speak.)
“corrupt tribal rulers?” Source please. By the way, when you link “Christianity” with “the Inquisition” you seem to be forgetting that the Copts, the Armenians, and the Orthodox never had the Inquisition; that was a Catholic institution. (I heard a lecture by a historian who had dug through the records of the time and found that you were actually safer with the Inquisition than with the civil courts.) I don’t know why you think it had anything to do with the return of Christ. The usual explanation is that it was due to social unrest which has been linked, at this site, to (natural) climate change. If you read Malleus Maleficarum — my copy, which I can no longer locate, was the Montague Summers edition — you will pick up that the three things witches were particularly feared for were (1) killing people, (2) interfering with human and animal reproduction [that is, contrary to modern myths, witches were not or were not perceived to be people who celebrated sex or fertility but people who attacked them], and (3) CONTROLLING THE WEATHER. (See chapter 5 of the Golden Bough…)
Eve at the fruit, then gave some to her husband, who also ate.
The punishment thing didn’t happen until the next day.
Eve clearly ate first, but Adam was present and did nothing to stop her, he also freely ate. So they were both guilty.
Probably the last ditch for alarmism will be oceanic acidification.
Robert Kernodle,
XKCD can be a little obscure, but generally quite to-the-point with an enjoyable, intelligent and sarcastic humor. But everyone swims out of their depths once in a while. If you haven’t follow the link to Josh’s cartoon.
Also, your spellcheck is not working. :>)
D*mn punctuation!
If you haven’t, follow the link to Josh’s cartoon.
Sod’s Law in action.
Oh, there’s just so much irony in this little exchange here. (^_^)
I had to look up Sod’s Law too:
Comparison with Murphy’s law. … While Murphy’s law says that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong (eventually), Sod’s law requires that it always goes wrong with the worst possible outcome.
“Plant growth shuts down completely at 150 ppm of carbon dioxide. From the glacial low of 180 ppm, it would have only been a fall of another 30 ppm to wipe out all life above sealevel.”
Is there any evidence for this? It is understood higher levels of CO2 will show more photosynthesis, but I’m talking this specific claim: Plant growth shuts down completely at 150 ppm of carbon dioxide.
This link https://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/photosynthesis-and-co2-enrichment/ shows a graph
Frankly I’m calling it out as just another artifact of the echo-chamber.
Frankly you’re an idiot. Did you even look at the “graph” you mentioned (not that you noted which particular graph it is in your link…there are several)? One of the graphs shows a net photosynthesis rate of zero at 100 ppm CO2 for C3 species, although it was not experimental data. Did you bother to read the text in your own link?
This one might be a little more comprehensive and serious.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03441.x/pdf
Thank you for your courteous response and for studiously ignoring the question. And yes I did browse through that link before you posted it but it seems to be talking about CO2 level in conjunction with temperature, not in and of itself.
Anyone actually have some evidence to back up the claim? That: “Plant growth shuts down completely at 150 ppm of carbon dioxide” and that “a fall of another 30 ppm to wipe out all life above sealevel.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/17/xkcds-cri-de-coeur/#comment-2399650
Hope this helps with your manners.
Photosynthesis in C3 plants, I think c4 plants do things a bit differently, use an enzyme named RaBisCo to “capture”
. The enzyme is not completely specific and will also capture oxygen. At low enough partial pressure of 
oxygen capture dominates and this starves photosynthesis.
I believe it is true, or nearly so, that growth ceases at around 150 ppmv for C3 plants, and it’s worse under dry conditions. C4 plants can limp along with a bit less, if necessary. But all plants are happiest with above 1000 ppmv CO2.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03441.x/pdf
From the same paper:
http://www.sealevel.info/C3_plants_150-700_ppmv_CO2.png
Simple maths.
150ppm is no-growth..
If we start from 300ppm, then increasing to …..
400ppm gives 1⅔ times the available CO2
450ppm doubles the available CO2
600ppm triples the available CO2
900 gives 5 times the available CO2
OK, we’d better stop emitting CO2 then, or I’m gonna need a drilling rig to deal with my dandelions.
Tony,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03441.x/pdf
Studies addressing the effects of low [CO2] on plants are
also fundamental for understanding plant evolution in
response to changes in resource availability through time –
primarily since changing [CO2] has been shown to have
major implications for plant fitness (Wardet al., 2000).
Modern plants grown at low [CO2] (150–200 ppm) exhibit
highly compromised survival (Ward & Kelly, 2004) and
reproduction (Dippery et al., 1995) at conditions that
occurred only 18 000–20 000 yr ago.
Yes I agree Gloateus, but “highly compromised” is not the same as the extinction of all terrestrial life.
That research you link mixes temperature in too and I don’t know whether those conclusion were solely relating to CO2.
The meme in this post is that more CO2 is urgently needed to avoid a cold extinction. An understandably common meme among warming skeptics.
Perhaps if humans were clever enough they may have been able to tweak the CO2 level slowly (like over 100 years) up to 290 or 300, thus artificially maintaining the inter-glacial. Smashing through 400 with a baked-in 500 doesn’t seem that prudent to me.
“thus artificially maintaining the inter-glacial. Smashing through 400 with a baked-in 500 doesn’t seem that prudent to me.”
roflmao.. hilariously brain-washed funny.
You have been shown that there is basically ZERO warming from the sharp rise in CO2 in the satellite era.
You have been shown that the world has existed VERY happily with far higher levels of CO2
Just keep DENYING the facts and chanting your religious mantra….., its funny to watch 🙂
Glad to oblige you Andy.
Check out this https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/17/xkcds-cri-de-coeur/#comment-2399704
You could be right but you could be wrong. BTW I sincerely hope it is you that is right, because whacking the atmosphere with a mallet (in geological time-frames) has got to have its risks.
Nothing relevant at that link.
Or are you trying to change the subject again because you can’t argue against the current one.
ie ZERO CO2 warming signal in the satellite temperature data.
CO2 does not produce warming in a convective atmosphere.
So let me see if I have this straight…Warmistas like Tony are sure high CO2 are going to roast us all like cookie sheet of Tater Tots, and want us all to deindustrialize our economy, go poor paying our electric bill, and shiver through Winter with not even a wood fire for warmth, even though there is no evidence any such thing will happen except in some computer fantasyland they have invented.
But when it come to plants starving to death for lack of the basic ingredient for photosynthesis, and everything that depends on those plants (which is everything else) starving to death as a result…well, that requires proof extraordinaire, even though it is a simple fact of biology.
Warmista jackassery at it’s finest.
Is it January 20th yet?
You put a bunch of (junk) words in my mouth and then call me a jackass for it. Charmer.
Sorry, forgot where I am.
Tony Clode:
• A) Billions spent on alleged CO₂ research. Not only have they failed to prove CO₂ contributes towards excessive atmospheric warming, but they’ve failed to research many other CO₂ questions.
• B) Far slower means far less plant growth. Low levels of plant growth restrict animal populations.
• • a) a population restriction caused by starvation or malnutrition.
• • b) just what level of disaster do you need? A low enough CO₂ level that C4 plants also expire?
• C) “meme in this post is that more CO₂ is urgently needed to avoid a cold extinction”
That is not the ‘meme’ and is as patently absurd as the whole CAGW meme.
• D) Where is your life supporting CO₂ levels concept originating from Tony? Perhaps a belief that plants survive in all CO₂ levels?
• • a) just as people can suffocate from too little percentages of O₂ in the atmosphere, plants can starve by too little CO₂ in the atmosphere.
• • b) when CO₂ and photosynthesis is unable to build sufficient sugars, new growth shuts down; at lower CO₂ levels the plant expires as it uses up all internal reserve attempting photosynthesis without CO₂.
• E) Current CO₂ atmospheric percentage, 400 ppm is 0.04%. At 150ppm, the atmospheric CO₂ is 0.015%.
• • a) Plants developed during high CO₂ levels, not low levels. C4 plants appear to be an evolutionary attempt to cope with previous glacial period CO₂ levels.
• • b) Both C3 and C4 plants thrive better at much higher CO₂ levels.
• F) “thus artificially maintaining the inter-glacial”.
Tony you must work on your reading and comprehension skills. That is your belief imposed on the article and comments.
• G) From your long period of troll commentary, I suspect you’ve just thrown out another diversionary straw man.
• H) Your links to other comments do not back your claims. More reading comprehension examples.
ATheoK
Dude, if you think I’m a troll stop feeding me.
In the last few million years, CO2 levels have exceeded 7000ppm. Yet you get your panties in a twist over the possibility of going over 500ppm.
Go back to your echo chamber, you are embarrassing yourself.
“Dude, if you think I’m a troll stop feeding me.”
Even trolls like you have a use occasionally.
You obtuse and intransigent attitude has caused a number of contributors to post some highly informative data on the precise effects of different CO2 levels on the growth of plants which may well educate readers who were previously unaware of the benefits of increasing atmospheric CO2 levels.
Plus, it is often amusing to poke you with sharp sticks to make you froth and wriggle and puncture your bubble of self-satisfied superiority to we humble sceptics.
Tony, the established “meme” runs the opposite your claim though; it’s that rising CO2 is harmful.
You observation that “whacking the atmosphere with a mallet (in geological time-frames)” has happened is also unfounded. Beyond the instrument record, there’s no evidence available with a temporal measure necessary to tell us it carbon dioxide (or temperature) have risen “rapidly” in the past; the data just don’t exist.
You’re making allegations and insinuations based on faith, not observation. I understand it’s what you believe, but there’s no evidence to support the belief.
So you want everybody to be polite to you, yet your original comment says:
“Frankly I’m calling it out as just another artifact of the echo-chamber.”
Why do you get to be rude but take such umbrage if people are rude back?
Because he’s an morally superior being. (His mommy told him so.)
Because in his world, AGW sceptics are at best ill-informed scientifically illiterate proles and at worst evil climate saboteurs hell-bent on hurting the little kittens and puppies, so unlike him, undeserving of basic levels of respect.
artifact of the echo-chamber … that’s a curious way of putting it. What “chamber” are we referring to? — the belief system that understands the role of carbon dioxide in the terrestrial life process ? … where graphs illustrating the truths of this belief system ARE, in fact, artifacts, as are ALL “artifacts” of knowledge ?
just another, then, implies that such “artifacts” are somehow tainted. And so are you suggesting that the belief system that understands the role of CO2 in the terrestrial life process is somehow tainted ? Do you disbelieve that CO2 has a vital role in the terrestrial life process ? If so, then your tone might illustrate a need for you to review your own beliefs in regard to this substance. Otherwise, why would you not give greater validity to such an “artifact” that clearly shows that photosynthesis of a certain class of plants shuts down, regardless of temperature ?
At this level of concentration, CO2 is the LIMITING FACTOR. Here’s a pretty good explanation of that idea:
http://www.rsc.org/learn-chemistry/content/filerepository/CMP/00/001/068/Rate%20of%20photosynthesis%20limiting%20factors.pdf
Now would 150 ppm wipe out all life above sea level ? Well, considering that most of life depends on plants that thrive in this range, then, maybe not ALL, but a significant percentage to start. And considering that the remaining life might have depended on the life that would die out, the cascading demise of life would seem to continue onto the next tier too, from which I’m not sure how much farther down the deterioration might progress.
But to argue over the word, “all”, in this context is just an exercise in winning a debate, when the REAL point is that ALL life WOULD suffer in this range of CO2.
Any evidence that refutes his religion, has to be denigrated.
That’s why the documented fact that plant start to starve below 150ppm has to be the result of an “echo chamber”.
heh- the article is almost self-diagnostic.
and ffs- learn to use a freakin dictionary, eh?
‘importune’ doesn’t mean what your wild pundit priapist wet dreams told you.
David , I’ve had your “Beer’s Law” graphic on my http://cosy.com/Science/warm.htm since way back too .
Is it yours ? I’ll add an attribution .
On the side issue : there is nothing new about animal sacrifice in NYC . It had to be in the ’90s when I was strolling with some friends on Orchard Beach in the Bronx and saw something that looked like some sort of dead bird . When I went over to it , it turned out to be a sacrificed chicken . They called it Santeria back then .
There probably are still live poultry shops in the Bronx . Most of the time I lived there there was a small red wooden house-looking building on Grand around Centre at the interface of China Town and Little Italy which was a live poultry store . Of course you could buy live turtles and doves and frogs and the like from street vendors in China Town .
Beer’s law?
Is that the one that says you can only buy six-packs after last call?
No, the one that states that having 24 hours in a day and 24 beers in a case is no coincidence 🙂
Lambert’s name is also connected with it . But I have to admit I like the notion of “Beer”‘s Law .
Beer’s law gets me hopped up.
Earth’s carbon cycle contains 46,713 Gt (E15 gr) +/- 850 Gt (+/- 1.8%) of stores and reservoirs with a couple hundred fluxes Gt/y (+/- ??) flowing among those reservoirs. Mankind’s gross contribution over 260 years was 555 Gt or 1.2%. (IPCC AR5 Fig 6.1) Mankind’s net contribution, 240 Gt or 0.53%, (dry labbed by IPCC to make the numbers work) to this bubbling, churning caldron of carbon/carbon dioxide is 4 Gt/y +/- 96%. (IPCC AR5 Table 6.1) Seems relatively trivial to me. IPCC et. al. says natural variations can’t explain the increase in CO2. With these tiny percentages and high levels of uncertainty how would anybody even know? BTW fossil fuel between 1750 and 2011 represented 0.34% of the biospheric carbon cycle.
I really don’t think you meant ‘importune’…
Don’t know where he got his data, but checking the USHCN date for nearby Farmington, MO (there is no station in St. Louis itself), there are… a handful of days below zero all the way up to 2014, when the data ends. Perhaps the dread UHI effect is at work?
Cartoons don’t do much for me.
But real pictures do.
http://jo.nova.s3.amazonaws.com/graph/plants/plant-growth/plant-growth-co2-carbon-yield-increase.gif
The thing is, even at 100 ppm, the C3 rice is still growing, but it probably doesn’t reach maturity stage so that it is producing viable seeds to continue the line of next year’s plants. Now cut rainfall by 30% or 50% as in the ice ages and the C3 rice doesn’t make it past the germination stage.
The C4 foxtail grass in this example is not hurt that badly and probably produces viable seeds and makes it to next year’s plants..
That is what happens at low CO2 levels, the C4 grasses take over because they out-compete other C3 plants in the year-by-year derby, especially if it gets dryer. So grassland takes over and the grass herbivore herds become huge. Humans do okay in this scenario since we like our steaks and have weapons to hunt herbivores and can run them down over long distance. The ice ages made us who we are, not the other way around.
There is one C4 plant, however, that is destined to take over the world if CO2 ever falls to the lowest levels and rainfall stays high enough. Bamboo.
Thank Bill.
It seems “a fall of another 30 ppm to wipe out all life above sealevel.” is indeed just non-scientific arm-waving.
I expect this myth will now be put to bed (until the next poster) sigh.
I would hate to feed the planet with CO2 that low. It likely means the other parameters necessary for adequate growth needed to produce sufficient per acre foodstuffs has been disrupted as well. Therefore if atmospheric CO2 is that low, I can reasonably speculate that plant survival will be severely curtailed with die-off present.
Food per unit area would plummet.
The world’s population could not feed itself.
The greenie agenda, writ large
Starve people of the Earth…Bwa ha ha ha…………….wait, CO2 is sky-rocketing isn’t it? Awesome, we’re saved…. But wait on! we’ve got the greenies to thank for that? wuwt?
Try reading here: http://co2science.org/
… for a couple of hours and get back to us.
so is AGW so we are even … 🙂
Is that a link to evidence for: “a fall of another 30 ppm to wipe out all life above sea level.”?
So if very few plants can grow and mature at that level, and since the vast majority of life on land is ultimately dependent on plant growth, what do you think happens?
So, we can relax, if only MOST of life is wiped out ? — is that what you might be implying ?
I don’t think I could rest very well in that bed.
To be more clear … in reply to:
. . . I wrote:
So, we can relax, if only MOST of life is wiped out ? — is that what you might be implying ? I don’t think I could rest very well in that bed.
Tony writes “I expect this myth will now be put to bed”.
Tony, you’ve just seen experimental evidence, but you discount it? Call it a “myth”? One shows rice seems to prefer 800ppm and suffers below 200. But you choose snark? Why?
The evidence supporting the claim is before your eyes. What else would you like? Better still, why should anyone care?
There is a school of thought out there that says that the 800 year lag in ice cores is not one of co2 lagging temperature, rather it’s global temps lagging temperature at the south pole. The THC keeps temperatures cooler than they otherwise would be at the equator and it takes the full circulation of the thermocline for temperature to catch up. (and visa versa in a cooling world with an even longer lag) It should be noted that shallow ice cores show no such lag when compared to global temperature reconstructions…
The CO2 lag is actually a very complex issue, as it is tying local temperatures to global CO2 levels, and it is complicated by the issue that the age of the gas does not match the age of the ice due to the firning process. The age difference between both is variable as it depends on local precipitations.
We also have the problem that probably we are seeing a two sides effect as the increase in one factor increases the other.
More recent research suggests that the lag in Antarctica is not 800 yr., and the coupling between both is tighter. Perhaps as tight as 200 yr. ± 200 yr. See:
Pedro, J. B., Rasmussen, S. O., & van Ommen, T. D. (2012). Tightened constraints on the time-lag between Antarctic temperature and CO2 during the last deglaciation. Climate of the Past, 8(4), 1213-1221.
http://www.clim-past.net/8/1213/2012/cp-8-1213-2012.pdf
Most important, the resolution is not +/- 25 years, as would be necessary for any even marginally relevant comparison with contemporary instrument records and the significance of the alleged “unprecedented” observations over the past 150 years.
Stick with the Tried And True, here.
Pagan Fertility Rites.
Scandinavian Hot Rocks + Steam style saunas plus more Fertility Rites.
Full Moon and New Moon Beer and Ale Drinking plus more Fertility Rites.
(Beer Goggles invented for a reason)
And you have a winner!
Even people who do not subscribe to your new religion will still enjoy at least some of your rituals and celebrations. (It is important to have community support.)
Missing the plywood violin and brace of angels …