By Larry Kummer. Posted at the Fabius Maximus website.
Summary: Trump’s election, solidifying the Republican’s dominance at all levels of the US government, has disheartened climate activists. A new article in The Atlantic attempts to build support, but only shows the weakness of their beliefs. Perhaps the skeptics have won this round of the climate wars, but only the weather will determine which side is correct.
For 29 years advocates for public policy changes to fight climate change have struggled to convince the US public to support their agenda. They have failed. Polls show it ranks near the bottom of American’s policy priorities, and the increasingly dominant Republican Party has little interest in their recommendations.
It’s taken a while, but it looks like climate activists have worked through the process of accepting their failure. Paul Rosenberg’s January 2 article at Salon and now Meehan Crist’s article at The Atlantic suggest activists are moving into the fourth stage of the Kübler-Ross process, depression — and their leading edge is moving into the final stage of acceptance — and finding new crusades to wage.
Rosenberg’s article is discussed here. Crist’s article is less interesting, mostly just the usual throwing chaff into debate. But it is revealing in its own way. The opening is a classic tactic by climate activists.
“There has been a subtle shift recently in the rhetoric of many conservative pundits and politicians around climate change. For decades, the common refrain has been flat-out denial — either that climate change is not happening, or that any change is not caused by human activity. Which is why viewers might have been surprised to see Tucker Carlson of Fox News nodding along thoughtfully on January 6 as climate scientist Judith Curry, a controversial figure in climate science, explained, ‘Yes it’s warming and yes humans contribute to it. Everybody agrees with that, and I’m in the 98% [of scientists who agree]. It’s when you get down to the details that there’s genuine disagreement.’”
The first point is an outright lie, evident from his failure to cite any examples. Only a tiny fraction of skeptics believe that “climate change is not happening,.” The climate is always changing. As for the second, there is a fringe among climate skeptics who believe that “any change is not caused by human activity.” But the debate for the past 29 years, since James Hansen warned the Senate in 1988, is and has been about how much of the past warming is anthropogenic — and about forecasts of future temperatures. That’s true not just of skeptics (both scientists and laypeople), but among mainstream climate scientists as well. Let’s review the evidence, starting with what Curry said to Tucker Carlson.
CURRY: “…what you’re seeing is this dominant theme of human caused climate change — which is where all of the research is being directed. And far too little funding and effort going to understanding natural climate variability. That’s my concern. …It’s been warming for several hundred years. The key question is how much of the recent warming, say for the last 50 years, has been caused by humans. My interpretation of the evidence is that we really can’t tell, and I don’t see a clearer signal that is caused by humans predominantly.
“…Humans are contributing something, we don’t know how much. From the evidence that I’ve seen, I don’t think that it’s the dominant cause. …It’s warming, humans contribute to it. Everyone agrees with that, I’m in the 90%. It’s when you get down to the details that there is genuine disagreement that is really glossed over in the media.”
The Summary of Policymakers in IPCC’s AR5 Working Group I said “It is extremely likely (95 – 100% certain) that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2010.” More relevant to attempts to control CO2 emissions, chapter 10 said “more than half of the observed increase in GMST {global mean surface temperature} from 1951 to 2010 is very likely due to the observed anthropogenic increase in GHG {greenhouse gas} concentrations.”
In a 2012 survey of approximately 6,550 scientists studying climate change, 66% believed that greenhouse gases caused over 50% of this warming. Only 12% believed GHGs caused less than 51% of this warming. Another 10% said “unknown”, 9% said “don’t know”, and 3% said other. More interestingly, they asked how confident these scientists were in their conclusion that over 51% of the warming resulted from increased GHG: 34% were virtually certain, 32% were extremely certain, 20% said very likely, 8% said likely, Curry clearly holds a minority opinion, but has company among other climate scientists.
But activists such as Crist have good reason to focus on past warming: there is little agreement about forecasts of future warming. That is so important to hide that there are few surveys of scientists about this key point. The dynamics of future warming are the “details” that Crist tries to conceal. Curry explains at her website.
“Our ability to predict the effect of increasing CO2 is very limited. The IPCC AR5 puts the value of equilibrium climate sensitivity between 1.5 – 4.5 C, with ‘likely’ confidence, implying significant probabilities outside this range. Referring to this as very limited ability to predict the effect of additional CO2 on climate is not only defensible, but it is in accord with the IPCC’s own conclusion on this.”
After a long discussion of past climate (ignoring the key issues), Crist gives this astonishing quote.
“But according to Maureen Raymo of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, we know why climate changes naturally, and non-human activity can’t explain the rapid changes observed in the past century. “The Ice Ages happen due to subtle changes in the sun-earth distance that unfold over thousands of years, and which can lead to sometimes rapid climate change, when thresholds are crossed.” These cycles are still happening, but “the same factors that cause these huge Ice Age swings could not possibly be invoked to explain the warming we now see.”
Crist does not tell us who says that the same factors causing the “huge Ice Age {temperature} swings” explain the present warming. To say that climate scientists understand the cause of the massive ice ages is irrelevant to explaining the relatively tiny 2% increase since the mid-19th century (CO2 levels increased steeply only after 1950). But Crist’s analysis gets even stranger.
“As Gavin Schmidt, Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Principal Investigator for the GISS ModelE Earth System Model, put it, ‘In science, nothing is ever known perfectly. Is there remaining uncertainty in the exact value of gravity? Yes. But to something like the fourth decimal place. It doesn’t matter. So the question is: Is the remaining uncertainty relevant to any policy decision anyone would want to make? And the answer is: no.’ …
“According to Schmidt, ‘To say that science isn’t settled on things people are still researching is totally irrelevant. Does the earth orbit the sun? There’s no substantial ambiguity about the answer to that question, despite the fact that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of scientists working on gravity. There are lots of interesting things about gravity, it’s just that that is not one of them. There are lots of interesting things about climate change, and adaptation, and interactions between air pollution and clouds, but they’re just not relevant to the question, which is: Is what’s going on related to humans? And the answer is: Yes, it is.’”
It is absurd to consider scientists’ understanding of gravity, with their history of remarkable predictions (e.g., the New Horizons space probe’s journey to Pluto and beyond), equivalent to their understanding of climate — with a history of false or unproven predictions. It’s the kind of exaggeration which has produced three decades of failure for climate crusaders.
There is a second level to this. Public policy decisions about climate change — and the massive efforts proposed to fight it — require forecasts of future warming with proven reliability. Equating climate science with gravity is propaganda, not evidence. That Schmidt resorts to such rhetorical tricks shows the weakness of his belief.
Crist concludes with one of the oddest statements I have seen from a climate activist.
“The recent shift in conservative rhetoric exploits legitimate scientific uncertainty that most scientists agree is irrelevant to crafting responsible climate policy. Despite overwhelming evidence, many conservatives are still willing to ignore scientific consensus and stall political action.”
Crist quotes one scientist, and from this concludes that “most scientists agree”. That’s a guess, or a lie, or perhaps “fake news”. As for his last sentence, what is this “scientific consensus” about the need for policy action? Crist does not tell us, let alone give any evidence for it. As with Schmidt’s claims, that these are strongest claims Crist can give for his beliefs show their weakness.
Crist begins by mocking a distinguished scientist, but in 1900 words she presents no rebuttal to Curry’s concerns.
Are activists grieving for their failure?
In December 2015 I wrote that Activists go thru 5 stages of grief for the climate change campaign. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. We all have heard years of denial and anger. There was a brief period of bargaining, with activists attempting to deal with skeptics. Now we are in depression, and for a few — acceptance, as they find new crusades to pursue. Several recent articles support that theory. Crist’s conclusion, citing as his authority that not-a-climate-agency, the US military, show depression and perhaps acceptance.
“In September 2016, carbon-dioxide levels in the air crossed the dreaded 400 ppm threshold, and we are not likely to dip back below that level in our lifetimes. Crossing this red line signals an irrevocable shift toward an increasingly unrecognizable planet. …According to the Pentagon’s 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap, climate change will cause catastrophic changes to Earth’s ecosystems and wreak havoc on human populations, including famine, mass migration, and war. A carbon tax may be too little, too late, …”
Our dysfunctional response to climate change shows the decay of America’s ability to see and respond to our environment. We need a reality-based community. It won’t build itself. It won’t happen soon.
See Curry’s interview. Judge for yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wed1xoB0fcM
For More Information
For more information about this vital issue see The keys to understanding climate change, see my posts about forecasts of the future world, and especially these posts about the campaign for public policy action to fight climate change — how it went wrong and how it can be fixed…
- Ten years after Katrina: let’s learn from those predictions of more & bigger hurricanes.
- Manufacturing climate nightmares: misusing science to create horrific predictions.
- Can the Left adapt to the Trump era? Watch their climate activists for clues.
- Good news for the New Year! Salon explains that the global climate emergency is over.
- The bottom line: How we broke the climate change debates. Lessons learned for the future.
- Important: Climate scientists can restart the climate change debate – & win.
‘The Holocene records up to 8000 years before present, from several ice cores were examined. The differences in temperatures between all records which are approximately a century apart were determined, after any trends in the data had been removed. The differences were close to normally distributed. The average standard deviation of temperature was 0.98 ± 0.27C. This suggests that while some portion of the temperature change observed in the 20th century was probably caused by greenhouse gases, there is a strong likelihood that the major portion was due to natural variations’.
AN ESTIMATE OF THE CENTENNIAL VARIABILITY OF GLOBAL TEMPERATURES
Lloyd PJ. Energy & Environment · Vol. 26, No. 3, 2015
The average standard deviation of temperature was 0.98 ± 0.27C.
==================
From this there is only a 24% chance that the 0.7C warming during the last century would not have occurred naturally.
A far cry from the IPCC “expert opinion” that more than half was due to humans. Proving yet again the fallibility of experts.
Why does climate science rely on “expert opinion” (guesses)? Why not simply calculate from the data?
Data is their enemy, not their friend. And they’ve come to realize that the general public relies more on data than their extreme unsubstantiated views.
For a great example that climate change is real, just look at what has happened in California this winter: Record precipitation. The “climate change” activists and necromancers had about convinced everybody that the drought was here to stay!
Who are climate change deniers now?
Go read Scott Adams’ blog. It’s because the human mind does not respond to “data” and rationality the way it responds to emotional alarm and hyperbole. There’s a reason the CAGW message has been crafted by journalism and sociology majors, not scientists. Parsing the numbers requires a mathematical education which is now, unfortunately, exceptional. Responding to Biblical-apocalypse predictions is unfortuantely hardwired by a couple thousand years of culture.
“Why does climate science rely on “expert opinion” (guesses)? Why not simply calculate from the data?”
Come on Ferd, who in their right mind bothers with the readings of $10 thermometers when they’ve got $10,000,000
computer gamesclimate models to play with?Here you go, straight from the horse’s mouth:
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
– Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.
This month’s Physics Today is all gloom and doom, with the editorials whining that they have a right to whine if politics affects physics; well physics funding anyway.
And evidently, they are still trying to light a match under their Livermore whack-a-mole machine.
It’s officially the NIF, for National Ignition Facility, and they are still trying to light it off.
So they are talking about switching from plastic fuel, to diamond fuel. Well they call them “Holsraums” or something like that, but they are the actual fuel that you have to have made for you.
You send out a drawing of this spherical or cylindrical shaped thing that you are going to use as a bottle to put some deuterium and some tritium in so then you smash the bottle. So now you have to go and buy a new bottle to smash while they clear out the shattered pieces of the old bottle.
So they are going to buy some diamond bottels from De Beers, I presume, and see if they can smash those.
When POTUS; The Trump finds out what these chumps are doing, he may decide to save the money for ITER.
Hey Mr. President, tell ITER we don’t want to buy any concrete, just plasmatron scrunchers.
G
George
re Fusion dudes in general (Livermore just being a proper sub-set):
I’m 70 years old. For my entire life, fusion dudes have been 30-years away from “success”.
In the case of Gavin Schmidt’s uncertainty about gravity and climate, there’s a sight difference.
In the case of climate (sensitivity) not even the order of magnitude is known with any certainty.
In the case of Gravity (which sucks) we are confident we know it’s value to better than one part in a million. We know it better than that, but I’m not going to waste my time looking up the latest approved value (that’s …. G ……)
But when it comes to ( …. g …..) standard earth gravity; we do know the exact value; it is defined.
And no I’m not going to look up the value of that either; but its an exact number around 9.8 ***** ms^-2.
So Gavin is sort of whistling into the wind; Well pissing into the wind has a similar result.
G
I love it when “skeptics” pretend to know science, and are arrogant about it.
Nope. The fact that the Earth is not a sphere, but rather approximately an oblate spheroid, means that you are slightly closer to the center of the Earth at the poles than you are at the equator. This is enough to change the force of gravity by 0.02% — a small amount, but significantly more than the 0.0001% that you claim we are so certain about. Next, differences in the local geology — the composition of the Earth below a given place — can cause variations on the order of 0.01%. You may have heard of the term mascon, but probably not.
This is not to mention the difference in the apparent gravity due to the rotation of the Earth, subtracting about 0.03% of your weight at the equator compared to the poles. You probably wouldn’t have realized it, but that has nothing to do with the gravity force.
Here’s an actual scientist talking about it. I believe they aim their explanations at the 7th grade level, so you may understand some of it. http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/42-our-solar-system/the-earth/gravity/93-does-gravity-vary-across-the-surface-of-the-earth-intermediate
bobmunck
No. Your rather irritating answer appears to be confusing the “measure” of the earth’s gravitational force (at the surface of the earth at various radii) with the actual “G” or gravitational constant used to calculate the measurement of gravity at any place in the universe: including other solid oblate spheroids like the moons and Mercury and the gas giants that have no “surface” at all and all points in between.
No, I’m clearly discussing the former. The latter value, the gravitational constant, is actually less accurately known than the force of gravity caused by the Earth. That fact is discussed elsewhere in this thread, where I posted a link to this article: Why do measurements of the gravitational constant vary so much?. (I used to work at NBS, now called NIST; I’m pretty aware of this stuff.)
“(I used to work at NBS, now called NIST; I’m pretty aware of this stuff.)”
Mopping out the toilets?
Because from the level of your knowledge evinced by your posts, that’s about all you’re qualified for.
There’s not a single “sceptic” posting here who isn’t orders of magnitude more scientifically literate than you, you patronising little man.
I’ll let Mr. Cleese explain the problem you “skeptics” have.
“Are activists grieving for their failure?”
Let’s not delude ourselves. Anyone who believes that climate activists will lay down and give up is dreaming.
Ballot boxes and elections are complex things. Donald Trump’s ascendancy is a triumph for disgruntled whites and Hillary haters, but a victory for climate skepticism? – that’s a stretch of the first magnitude. Climate change as an issue was barely on the radar screen in the election.
The momentum in government and academia for climate change action is still very much alive. The election “euphoria” for conservatives and skeptics is likely an illusion that will fade quickly.
I’m not a pessimist so much as a realist. Reading despair into activist statements simply plays into their hands.
scraft1,
You are engaging in an ancient human activity known as “Whistling Past the Graveyard.” Are you reading the headlines? Trump will put a stop to all this nonsense with fiddled temperatures, jets running on soybean oil, and the senseless drivel about PM2.5. Washington DC has been nuked, and it is about time…
@Michael Moon
Trump has only 4 years certain, at best 8 years, to unmake the CAGW alarmist infrastructure built over the last 30 years. He can’t, for example, fire everyone at EPA, most positions are protected under various civil service legislation. The True Believers only have to keep their heads down until 2025 at worst.
He can fire them, but it will take time. However, he can eliminate the positions which is called being laid off. And that takes no time at all.
scraft1,
“Anyone who believes that climate activists will lay down and give up is dreaming.”
History says you are wrong. The Left (and Right) have waged long unsuccessful crusades in America that have failed, then they moved on to new ones. Change is the great constant in life, for political movements as well as individuals.
In several posts I’ve shown examples of this happening right now:
Salon explains that the global climate emergency is over.
Can the Left adapt to the Trump era? Watch their climate activists for clues.
I agree in part with scraft1, in that Trump is not out of the woods, having all the leftist mainstream media against him. In addition, belief in man-made global warming has been reinforced by decades of propaganda and won’t be swept under the rug. Mr. Trump has been quiet on the subject since Inauguration, and there is a risk that he may decide to fight other battles.
Having the press against you is HOW it was supposed to work. So it is not a bad thing. If they are honest in their opposition, it will keep Trump honest. If they continue with their dishonesty, they will be no better than the slavish sycophants boot licking Obama. In the former case, no one will believe them and hence Trump can get away with anything. In the latter case – no one believes them and Obama gets away wioth anything. Obama broke more laws than Al Capone – but the media never investigated, nor did congress (to any appreciable degree).
It is only when the press acts as an honest counterweight that the people are served. And it has been too many years since the press were competent enough to do that.
Yet another incentive to use the jargon term LOL. Wouldn’t he have had to start out that way?
Yea, it was despicable when he blamed the video for Benghazi. And yea, it was criminal when he used that private server for classified email. And then lied about how many devices he was using.
Oh wait, that was Hillary. If you are going to believe the fake news, you are going to believe any lie you want.
You believe that Donald Trump is an honest person? That explains a lot of your opinions.
Silly boy! I have not stated any beliefs! I have merely destroyed yours! When you learn how to read, you will understand and be able to respond in an intelligent manner.
Next time, learn to read and read what is written so you can respond intelligently.
Expectations of Trump commanding the tide of propaganda to halt IS delusional. The liberal world is united against him and the front line has not collapsed. There are weakened gaps in the line, where realist can gain ground, but there will be no coup de grace until prolong cooling occurs. With our present temperature reporting… How would we ever know. GK
Like a lot of us here, I’ve seen many elections come and go. One of the great constants in life is that, despite raised expectations, a lot more things stay the same and real change is rare. Trump will make changes in the agencies and some of them will make a real difference. What won’t change is academia and the MSM.
I’m actually hoping that, with a few exceptions, the MSM won’t change. Despite the popular view, the MSM for the most part behaves responsibly and usually can be trusted. They’ve consumed the kool-aid on climate change and a couple of other issues, and these opinions will take forever to change if they ever do.
A lot of conservative (alt right) media like Breitbart et al are simply fanatics, and the new administration has certainly bought their act. They provide an alternative reality for Trump and his constituents. But they tell people what they want to here.
If by “government” you mean elected officials, fugedaboudit. There is no interest in climate alarmism among the majority of members of congress or most state legislators.
The odds of a CACA true believer like Obama being elected president in 2020 or 2024 are slim.
Paging Jayson Blair. Jayson Blair, please pick up the courtesy phone.
scraft: your point is
a. Climate change as an issue was barely on the radar screen in the election.
b. The momentum in government and academia for climate change action is still very much alive. The election “euphoria” for conservatives and skeptics is likely an illusion that will fade quickly.
you have a plan c. ?
He’s going to find it difficult to stop the efforts in more realistic and hard-headed countries like Germany, China, and Australia. Not to mention the 64% of the American public who Gallup says are worried a “great deal” or “fair amount” about it. His biggest problem will be that it’s really happening and the effects are more obvious every day. Even he may come to believe it when he’s standing in two feet of seawater at Mar-A-Lago, trying to putt.
“Putting a stop to all this nonsense” will just be another way that Trump Makes America Third-world Again.
Why is it not surprising that many “GW Skeptics” are Trump supporters?
Well scraft1, you clearly never ever attended a TEA party rally. (That’s the “Taxed Enough Already.” party).
It’s a party of nobody’s and a party of everybody’s. It has no color and also more colors than any rainbow.
And they are hardly disgruntled. A more gruntled polyglot of individual thinking persons would be hard to find anywhere. They have no registration requirements, or even citizenship requirements; except they do take a dim view of any of the uncitizened associates actually voting.
“One America First” would be a good subtitle for them.
They don’t care whether the activists are in despair or are desperate. They have become largely irrelevant.
The American people are taking back their country.
G
The Tea Party is clearly a tool used by billionaires to increase their own wealth. Its members are dupes and stooges.
When you cannot even tell the difference between OWS and the TEA Party, no one is going to believe you know anything else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4
Never let it be said that a Brown graduate cannot learn. At least he is not writing any longer.
“According to Schmidt, ‘To say that science isn’t settled on things people are still researching is totally irrelevant. Does the earth orbit the sun? There’s no substantial ambiguity about the answer to that question, despite the fact that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of scientists working on gravity. There are lots of interesting things about gravity, it’s just that that is not one of them.”
___________________________________________
Yes, since some 20 years ‘experts’ claim gravity is ‘changing’ – without proof.
Cause in climate change debates we learned earth is changing – to the extent that MASS OF EARTH IS CHANGING.
Gavin Schmidt:
Yeah, but the subtle difference is in climate sensitivity it is not the fourth decimal place but the figure BEFORE the decimal point which is still uncertain : 1.5 to 4.5 ???
That does matter
Total misdirection and intentionally so.
Evidently, any portion of something below the fourth decimal does not matter for policymakers.
I tend to agree
CO2 @ 400PPM
.%.0004
CO2 should NEVER be mentioned again by policymakers
A few comments here::
1. Gavin Schmidt is right regarding the 4th significant digit of the value of G. G is known only to three significant digits. G is about 6.67 x 10-11 m3 kg-1 s-2 –
Not every statement Gavin Schmidt makes is wrong.
https://phys.org/news/2014-10-what-is-the-value-of.html
2. Nir Shaviv had an interesting post regarding that 1.5C to 4.5 C sensitivity,
http://www.sciencebits.com/AR5-FirstImpressions
“Now, have you noticed something strange? According to the AR4 report, the “likely equilibrium range of sensitivity” was 2.0 to 4.5°C per CO2 doubling. According to the newer AR5 report, it is 1.5 to 4.5°C, i.e., the likely equilibrium sensitivity is now known less accurately. But they write: “This assessment reflects improved understanding”. How ridiculous can you be?……One reason for the lack of improved understanding could be incompetence of the people in the field. That is, all the billions of dollars invested in climate research were not or could not be used to answer the most important question in climate, one which will allow predicting the 21st century climate change. I doubt however that this is the real reason. Among the thousands working in climate research, surely there are at least a few who are competent, if not more.
I think the real reason why there is no improvement in the understanding of climate sensitivity is the following. If you have a theory which is correct, then as progressively more data comes in, the agreement becomes better. Sure, occasionally some tweaks have to be made, but overall there is an improved agreement. However, if the basic premises of a theory are wrong, then there is no improved agreement as more data is collected. In fact, it is usually the opposite that takes place, the disagreement increases. In other words, the above behavior reflects the fact that the IPCC and alike are captives of a wrong conception.”
3. That 2012 survey included only “climate scientists”. I’m certain that a survey of astronomers , geologists, and meteorologists would have resulted in a much lower percentage of “true believers'” in manmade warming being the principal factor, and a much larger percentage of skeptics believing less than 50% of the warming is caused by humans.
The estimate range increases, and this results from an improved understanding?
They keep using that word, but I don’t believe they know what it means.
‘That 2012 survey included only “climate scientists”. I’m certain that a survey of astronomers , geologists, and meteorologists would have resulted in a much lower percentage of “true believers’”’
This is a standard trick used to discredit non-conformists – ‘they are not climatologists’ – which is like a sociologist discrediting a knowledgeable historian, who points out factual inaccuracies any given theory might depend upon, by saying ‘they’re not an expert’ Well, yes they are – usually a higher ranking expert in that particular field, as opposed to a ‘soft-discipline’ that depends upon many others.
Regardless of the field of education, some people are very smart, and understand things, while others are less smart, and do not understand as many things.
Oddly, these less smart people very often behave and speak as if they know everything.
Less smart people with a degree or a job in a particular field are often the most sure of what they think they know, and also the most wrong.
And then there are the liars…
I wonder if you realize that the entire atmosphere is 5×10^21 grams and that 400 ppm is 2×10^18 grams of carbon dioxide. That’s 2 million billion kilograms or 4,409,245,243,697,600 pounds (2.2 thousand billion tons). Still think it’s a tiny amount?
Alan McIntyre,
“Not every statement Gavin Schmidt makes is wrong.”
But g= 9.80665
https://www.google.at/search?q=Gravitation+9.80665&oq=Gravitation+9.80665&aqs=chrome.
____________________________________
nothing Gavin Schmidt ever said was true.
….. G …… = 6.67259 E-11 m^3/(kgs^2) +/- 128 ppm
It is NOT 6.6726 +/- 0.0001 E-11
G
True, 400 parts per million is .0004, so keep it there to fulfill the fourth-decimal-place-zero-policy-impact mantra, since, alas, .0004 is .04%.
Yeah, I hate it when my brilliance goes awry too. (^_^)
“how much of the past warming is anthropogenic”
and whether the anthropogenic effect is measurable and whether it is catastrophic and whether cutting emissions will change anything.
there are a lot of things about climate that climate scientists don’t know but they don’t know how to say we don’t know. the treatment of uncertainty by climate scientists is unscientific.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers2.cfm?abstract_id=2873672
“how much of the past warming is anthropogenic”
The answer is “We can never know”. We can make guestimates, we can make grafts, we can use proxies that we redefine the values of over and over (though we seem to do that with actual data also), we can even make really cool computer generated graphics and produce a show for the Discovery Channel showing how idyllic the earth was before man, but we can never know. There are no direct records of temperature. Indirect records have no way to be verified as accurate. The only possible way we could come close to “knowing” is if we understood the ENTIRE climate system and every single variable and what each variable contributes to the 3rd or 4th decimal place. Then, we’d need enough computer capacity to run the variables and get over 98% accuracy in our predictions. We have a better chance of setting up shop on Mars. Until we have such data and computing capacity, everything we do is describing a scenario that is as fictional as they come. Maybe we hit right, maybe not. I am not saying we shouldn’t study the climate, but trying to attribute what % humans contribute is nothing but political. Study what percentage natural events like volcanoes contribute, forest fires (that are not caused by people), drought, dust storms, etc. Stop assuming humans are the king of the mountain and trying to pitch them off as parasites.
Reconstruction of Earth’s CO2 levels for the past 600 million years (GEOCARB III), even taking the lower edge of the uncertainty bars, is mostly well above Dr. Hansen’s tipping point. During the last ice age we came uncomfortably close to the lower edge of photosynthesis survival. Now we are regressing back to more usual levels. I’m not sure “normal” is a useful concept here, when CO2 has varied so greatly over hundreds of millions of years. We’ve had a “pause” in the warming trend while CO2 has steadily climbed. The AGW crowd has yet to admit their models are junk.
And, they persist in avoiding the obvious questions: “what is the ideal climate state we must maintain?” “Who determined the baseline from which we have changed?” “and when, if our geoengineering guesses are successful, we we declare the war over?”
The baseline was determined when it was determined human beings are the cause. The baseline seems a bit fluid, moving up or down as to the start year, depending on what is needed to prove the theory. Now, much is talk is about 1950 and after. Removes some problematic areas that way.
…meaning our so-called “climate scientists” have fallen into the pit of stupidity regarding their own science if we’ve already gone past the “tipping point”.
No wonder “climate scientists” are considered the bottom dwellers of science.
And most of those rises were AFTER the temperature rose. CO2 effect is like a flea on a pigs back, in more ways than one.
” is irrelevant to explaining the relatively tiny 2% increase since the mid-19th century” Am I missing something? 2% of what? Celsius degrees….or Kelvin? From what baseline? 0.7 degrees, or whatever it actually is, of a heat-content Kelvin temperature, is considerably less than 2%! It is why the Y-Axis is always exaggerated. Otherwise it’s flat-lined.
Mike,
Great catch! Should be degrees, not percent. Spell-grammar catchers cannot catch everything, yet.
Gavin Schmidt is an undistinguished mathematician pretending to be a scientist. He certainly uses sciency words, and apparently claims he knows the value of gravity to a few decimal points. Really? Gravity is a force, varying between the limits zero and infinity, depending on the masses involved.
I’m sure he also claims that he knows the value of pressure, or of temperature, or of magnetism to a similar value. How about the length of a piece of string?
What a Wally! He can’t even propose a mechanism whereby he could warm anything at all using CO2. The ability of CO2 to make a thermometer hotter is precisely zero.
Maybe Gavin has confused computer models with reality. Who knows?
Cheers.
Mann was talking about the G in the equation
F = GMm/(r^2). THAT G, unlike g, which is not even constant on earth’s surface, IS theoretically a constant.
I know the weight of the earth to better than they know the anthropogenic contribution to earth global Temperature.
Last time I weighed the earth, it weighed 165 pounds; I would consider that number good to about one pound.
That’s the probable error of my bathroom scale; but it always checks to a balance measurement that’s better than one pound.
But the weight of the earth tends to vary depending on what it is sitting on.
In most of my tests the earth is sitting on top of me, but there’s a plastic bucket involved which lets me read the scale.
If I can get a blue tooth bathroom scale, I can eliminate the uncertainty of the plastic bucket.
G
Gavins ludicrous bafflegab is one of the densest attempts, to conflate scientists who study gravity with the anti-scientists claiming to research weather and climate.
No wonder Gavin refuses to debate people directly. Those kinds of osmium statements would not be believed by anyone.
???? Googling “osmium statement” doesn’t turn up anything.
Osmium (Os) is the densest naturally occurring element. So “osmium statement” is presumed to mean “bafflegab” derived from the densest naturally occurring brain. A reasonable approximation, I suggest.
I think this from wiki might explain it “Osmium is the densest naturally occurring element”. A fact I didn’t know, but now will be hoping for it to come up in a quiz.
Is my fault.
I was thinking Gavin’s sentence is as clear as
mudleaduraniumtungstengoldosmium.Mud, much too simple and easy to wash off.
Lead, much too common and easy to scrape.
Uranium, before it become lead, nah too complex; which species?
Tungsten, not really dense enough. Cracks easy though.
Gold, like lead, but far too valuable.
Osmium, bingo!
PS I learned about osmium from a superman comic years ago. I had to look it up too; and then put a palm to my head as I recalled the chart of elements; doh!
As you have already realized, Gavins sentences are impenetrable and don’t get stuck in the middle.
He certainly ran scared of the great Dr Roy Spencer. Shocking
Aye!
In May of 2016, Larry berated skeptics for for losing the climate policy debate and recommending changes we should be making to our strategy unless we wanted to be swept aside by the tide of history. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/03/22/why-skeptics-could-lose-the-us-climate-policy-debate/ I’d argue that the cohesive strategy Larry recommended we follow never happened. Now he’s asking if the alarmists are “grieving” their failure.
Blow with the wind much Larry?
The alarmists may have suffered a setback with Trump’s election, but they are ahead by a politics score of 104 to 5. They will dust themselves off and double down. They’re not in the “grief” stage, there in the “what kinds of tactics work and what don’t in light of Trump’s election let’s try some new stuff ” stage. They are experimenting with new ways to control the narrative, and they are going to pick it up a notch or three. This debate won’t end with this administration, or the next. However satisfying it may be for skeptics to believe that the alarmists are down and out, the fact is they have the hearts and minds of the youth, massive amounts of revenue at stake, and they are going to fight like h*ll to expand their influence over both. Suggesting otherwise is irresponsible.
“Blow with the wind much Larry?”
Reminds be of a line from King Lear….
“Blow wind, and crack thy cheeks…….”
Bill had a funny mind. 😉
double entendre? Who would have thought?
Larry may have been assuming that the “obamacene” would continue. (but a little something happened on the way to the ballot box)…
Public opinion of “blowgal warming” was in the toilet way before Trump was elected.
Once the cash spigots are turned off, being associated with that “science” will be as popular as smoking cigarettes or buying asbestos futures.
Larry ‘2 irons in the fire’ Kummer,
ever read about
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Gaveston,_1st_Earl_of_Cornwall
David,
“Larry berated skeptics for for losing the climate policy debate”
Wow. That’s not remotely correct.
Let’s look at the title: “Why skeptics could lose the US climate policy debate.” Nope, doesn’t support your claim.
Let’s look at the summary. “Temporary factors have prevented their victory, but weather or politics could change the situation quickly and soon.” In the post I said that change could result from “we might get one or more major extreme weather events” or the election “put the Democrats in power”.
A change of 85 thousand votes could have put Clinton in the White House, so “politics could change” looks accurate as of March 2016. As for weather, I said then and say now that some big extreme weather might panic the American people into supporting climate activists. Such things have happened before, in the US and elsewhere. After all, whatever happens will be blamed on climate change.
I believe a fair evaluation of your clam would rate it “bizarrely false”.
Let’s look at the title: “Why skeptics could lose the US climate policy debate.” Nope, doesn’t support your claim.
Ah yes, because everything you wrote was in the title. Cherry pick much?
A change of 85 thousand votes could have put Clinton in the White House, so “politics could change” looks accurate
Except at the time you wrote the article Clinton was leading, so if your purported 85k swing had happened, it would have meant that the politics DIDN’T change. You can’t have your words mean one thing then and another now.
But good on you for responding. I recall the first time I asked you a pointed question about something you claimed, across three different threads no less, and you simply ignored me (and others). So good on you for at least engaging this time.
david, don’t you know, when Larry uses a word,it means just what he chooses it to mean—neither more nor less. 😉
Davidmhoffer. “Ah yes, because everything you wrote was in the title. Cherry pick much?” Yet he also clearly quoted the summary. Editor clearly did not use only the title, yet you chose to use this part as though it was the whole of Editor’s argument. So David, cherry pick much?
” I recall the first time I asked you a pointed question about something you claimed, across three different threads no less, and you simply ignored me (and others).”
Having been asked a “question” by you based on an absurd mis-reading of what I actually wrote I can understand not responding to you. If you ask a question of the type “when you said X” it is incumbent on you to demonstrate that the person actually said X. You failed repeatedly to respond to my request to do so. If you fail to show that a person actually said what you claim they said then ignoring you is a reasonable response.
Out of interest, can you find the thread where your question was ignored? Maybe I will find I was wrong and you were simply being ignored.
David,
“Ah yes, because everything you wrote was in the title. Cherry pick much?”
No, which is why I followed that with a quote from the summary and another the body of the text.
“Except at the time you wrote the article Clinton was leading,”
Polls in March are an unreliable guide to election outcomes in November. I suspect everybody here knows this, including you. Your objections are so frivolous that I suspect you’re just trolling us.
“and you simply ignored me”
I am a consultant. You can pay me and I’ll respond with whatever level of detail you wish. Other than that, expecting responses to your comments (esp absurd ones like yours here) is quite nuts. I respond as I have time, when and where I feel like doing so.
I am a consultant. You can pay me and I’ll respond with whatever level of detail you wish.
I see, when you are a writer, you’re a writer. When challenged on your writing, as proven in your responses above, you are capable of responding. But when pressed on a point by Mosher and me that falsifies what you wrote, you’re suddenly a consultant with no obligation to respond except if you are paid to do so. Got it.
David,
Every one of your responses has misrepresented what I said. Nor have you made any substantive rebuttals, just focusing on trivia and chaff. That’s all very troll-like,
“I see, when you are a writer, you’re a writer. But when pressed on a point by Mosher and me that falsifies what you wrote, you’re suddenly a consultant with no obligation to respond except if you are paid to do so. Got it.”
No writer — or anybody — is obligated to spend unlimited time responding to comments at WUWT. That’s too obvious to need stating, except to trolls.
“and you simply ignored me”
I’ll do so from now on. Trolls should be ignored.
I’ll do so from now on. Trolls should be ignored.
Excellent Larry. I accept that as a commitment on your part.
No writer — or anybody — is obligated to spend unlimited time responding to comments at WUWT.
Mosher and I raised a point that required little to no time to respond to. You ignored both of us because you couldn’t answer without admitting that your position was untenable. Over three threads. Now, in THIS thread, you prove yourself capable of responding in quite a bit of detail, over a rather extended conversation. But when taken to task for your past behaviour, you label me a troll and commit to never responding to me again.
I appreciate your commitment to never insulting me with an ad hominem attack again. Thank you.
Davidmhoffer – are you ignoring me? I asked a polite question, which I will ask again here. What was the question that Kummar refused to answer over three threads?
If the Republican administration just shuts down the funding, it will resume the next time the Democrat party has anything to do about it. The beast has to be actively slain. The Republicans have to fund good science. Michael Mann has to be smacked down in court. The adjustments of the temperature record have to be shown for the fraud that they are. The beast will die only when most scientists are horrified when they learn the truth of what has been going on.
The best analog to CAGW is the orthodoxy on dietary fat perpetrated and enforced by Ancel Keys and his cronies. link People who didn’t agree with the orthodoxy had their careers ruined. The truth only able to come out after Keys was out of the picture. While he was on the scene, it seems like good science didn’t stand a chance.
True, However defunding the beast is a good start. And it’s more than would have happened had Hillary won.
The ur Kilogramm is loosing weight :
https://www.google.at/search?client=ms-android-samsung&q=urkilogramm&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwijy6j2uZHSAhWFtBQKHS5nANwQ1QIITSgE&biw=360&bih=615
The difference is that there are no scientists studying the details of gravity who are demanding trillions of dollars be given by the poor people of rich countries to the rich people of poor countries. That kind of money does wonders for the people controlling it.
Gavin Schmidt: ‘ … Is there remaining uncertainty in the exact value of gravity? …’
I hope Gavin was referring to the gravitational constant not acceleration due to gravity.
It would affect the gravity of his statement.
Phaedo,
+1
The value of this statement was affected by ‘the exact value of gravity’.
But no joking, he’s a mathematician so he didn’t make a mistake.
“Crist does not tell us who says that the same factors causing the “huge Ice Age {temperature} swings” explain the present warming.”
Should be “…*cannot* explain the present warming.”
No, i think he said it correctly. nobody’s claiming that recent warming is due to “ice age swings”. (that’s just a stale, old and stupid talking point)…
Maureen Raymo’s talking point is so old and stale, that ice age swings couldn’t possibly explain recent warming. (i must have heard that one ten years ago) As Dr. Curry has said, it’s been warming for several hundred years. There is no reason why recent warming couldn’t be a part of that trend…
http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/images/mwp/ipcc_6_1_large.jpg
graph uses basically all of the re-fabrications ala Mann. !
meaningless.
Yeah, andy, but still… using “their” data, it can be clearly seen that global warming predates anthro effects. (so there is no reason why recent warming couldn’t be part of a natural trend)…
As the Fonz noted, “their data” even demonstrate that the warming trend begins around 1600… And I don’t think all of the reconstructions are “their data.” I think MSH, 2005 is Moberg.
Actually this type of comparisons is very useful. When we use the overlap percentage version, we can see the agreement of the dozens to hundreds of proxies used.
http://i.imgur.com/Vg59Mh7.png
Right or wrong this is the consensus of evidence more than the consensus of opinion on climate change in the Northern Hemisphere. A lot more useful than a polar ice core. And it has very interesting features. Like a good agreement with solar TSI:
http://i.imgur.com/aXMnuOu.png
Or a good agreement with sunspots more recently:
http://i.imgur.com/yvrMXFy.png
What is PS2004? It does not fit the data well at all.
Awesome, Javier (just simply awesome)…
Yeah, seaice, i dunno (not a whole lot of variability in that one, is there?☺)…
Wow, are you guys serious? The only thing you focus on out of that graph is PS2004 and how it explains “recent warming”?
You are going to be very, very surprised is all I can say.
Ice age swings don’t explain the Minoan, Roman, and Medieval warm periods nor the Little Ice Age.
I don’t see the warmists rushing to proclaim that they must have been caused by CO2.
Gavin Schmidt: “The recent shift in conservative rhetoric exploits legitimate scientific uncertainty that most scientists agree is irrelevant to crafting responsible climate policy. Despite overwhelming evidence, many conservatives are still willing to ignore scientific consensus and stall political action.”
To me there has been not much of a change ( “shift”) in conservative “rhetoric” . but what really bothers me is the accusation that as a conservative I am supposed to be “willing to ignore scientific consensus and stall POLITICAL action”.
This site ( and many others) have always been open to anyone’s opinion and many of you have brought scientific proof that:
A Climate changes
B Man has some effect
C But as how much of an effect is open to debate.
Schmidt’s accusations are full of semantics and may look like it has content. To me I have a word for that content not printable on this site. He is an agitator and knows deep down the gig is up. In my eyes he is actually the one that wants to stall everything as far as policy is concerned, what worries me is how far is he willing to go to take POLITICAL action. I am sure he won’t be anywhere in sight when POLITICAL action gets on the street level ( as I don’t doubt he’d be cheering on from behind the curtain).
When ‘the ur kilogramm’ is loosing weight
then earth as a whole is winning weight – ever heard of meteors.
If you read the ‘experts’ solution to the problem they mumble about ‘not yet understood dissolving of platinum matter’.
I started reading your link and the new spheres to replace the original “ur Kilogramm”. I neeed to look at it later when I have more time. Interesting, thank you
michael
Mike, you’re welcome.
Science is in the Dark Ages. Modern Climatism has put it there with the political lies and activism that overrode skeptical inquiry and uncertainty.
That has activism has drug many a non-climate scientist along into the abyss of their dishonesty, as they naively believed any group of scientists could not lie and deceive to the extent needed for maintaining the left’s Climate Change agenda. But many being Left leaning were encouraged to support increasing climate lies to maintain their own funding, else be labeled by their colleagues as a “denier.”
Gavin Schmidt, Tom Karl, Kevin Trenberth, Ben Santer, Mikey Mann should be proud of their historical roles as key members of the Charlatans of the Climate Hustle club. History will not not be kind to them, but it will remember them, just as it remembers Charles Ponzi, Bernie Madoff, and Claudius Ptolemy.
There is an important distinction to made between Ptolemy and the others: Ptolemy was simply wrong whereas Schmidt, Mann and the rest are dishonest.
the uncertainty in the 2 x CO2 (@285 ppm) forcing (per doubling) (at 1.5 K – 4.0 K above of 288 K) is at least 3 orders of magnitude larger than the Newtonian Gravity Constant relative standard uncertainty 4.7 x 10-5.
Climate Science is not settled. It is not even close to gravity, and the lower the forcing in the uncertainty range, their are more benefits per costs that arise.
A false equivalence. It is simply an argument the Alarmists use to deflect criticism of their anti-CO2 religion.
I’m reminded of how similar climate science is to dark matter and dark energy.
Scientists believe dark matter plus dark energy make up from 90 to 95% of the universe; they call it “dark” to avoid admitting they have no idea what it is.
Looks like there’s a lot of things scientists don’t know.
(Maybe climate scientists should start calling it “dark climate” and save themselves some embarrassment.)
The big difference is that nobody is proposing massive new government programs to control dark matter and dark energy,
I can follow the discussions regarding these subjects with detached disinterest because they don’t have any impact on my day to day life.
I’m reminded how similar climate science is to string theory.
No testable predictions for over 40 years, no super symmetry discovered at CERN, yet some Stanford physicists openly stated the theory was so beautiful it didn’t need to be proved.
Sometimes smart people get tunnel vision. In the case of climate science, it happens to stupid people, too.
Gravity can be measured precisely. But Gravity is not understood and science cannot modify it as with electrical and magnetic forces. AGW cannot be precisely measured. The theoretical modifications effected by a massive reduction of anthropogenic carbon dioxide reduction are minuscule. Ergo, climate science does not know whereof it speaks and its remedies are necessarily inapropos. As an EE with 3 years of undergrad physics it does seem to me that the purported massive thermal effect of one carbon dioxide molecule in 10,000 molecules of air is spurious. A rather trenchant fellow (who must not be named) asked Dr. Curry to take a course in thermo. She went to a lecture or two it seems and then gave it up because she did not know what they were talking about(this according to the unnamed source). One might suspect that increasing the volume of the atmosphere by emitting carbon dioxide only effects the time constant between peak surface temperature and peak atmospheric temperature; all effect erased by overnight cooling.One might suspect the basic physics of AGW is very wrong. It seems that the backradiation effect of carbon dioxide to heat the emitting surface could be easily proven experimentally if it existed.
1. Climate has actually been remarkably stable over the last 100-150 years. Hurricanes down, extreme events about normal, probably less severe than during LIA. Wobbly Jet Stream this year, like there was around 1977, and many times before.
2. A minor bump in temperatures from solar forced El Ninos in satellite record. Highly beneficial warming since LIA , COLDEST period in 10,000 years
3. Certainly human activity of one sort of another filtering through to the surface data, be it land use, airport heat, urban heat. intentional and unintentional warming “adjustments”.
4. Absolutely no CO₂ warming signal in either satellite data set, only the 1998 El Nino step and the latest 2015/16 transient.
5. No CO₂ signal in sea temperatures, sea level etc
6. No CO₂ signal in sea ice at either pole. AMO effects and drop from LIA in the Arctic, still way above levels of first 3/4 of the Holocene, normal swings in Antarctic sea ice.
7 Droughts and floods, no sign or proof of any “climate change™” effect.
All round .. pretty benign. !!
Andy,
Yes, that’s exactly my point. The weather has been activists’ big enemy. But much of this is pretty random. A few big tropical storms hitting cities — and we might — bang — see panic support for activists. Because we know what will be blamed as the cause…
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was formed in 1988. ‘Climate change’ was the original term. The term Global Warming became popular in the late ’90’s because it suggested that all change was in one direction (constantly getting worse).
‘Global warming’ is scarier than ‘climate change’. It implies that nothing can be done locally, only globally, so we have to stop it before we can detect it. It also makes you feel guilty, because, even if warming would benefit you, it would be a catastrophe for the poor 3’rd world people — you racist!
In 2003 Frank Luntz advised going back to earlier term. There is no evidence that Democrats and other warmists alarmists take advice from Frank Luntz.
Opps, that was meant to be a reply to Griff below.
You’re right. Weather HAS been remarkably stable over the last 150 years or so, which is probably part of the reason the human population has expanded so much during that period,
Once climate goes back to varying as much as it did in the past, and drug resistant germs proliferate, the human population may be in for a drastic collapse, as happened several times in history,
The media changed from their use of the term “global warming” to the more general term “climate change” in the summer of 2012 and it was a purposeful obfuscation to make skeptics look stupid and to provide cover for CAGW proponents. The only public person to claim some sort of primordial stasis with regard to climate and temperature was Al Gore. “Sensitivity” and “uncertainty” have always been the salient questions and therefore, those are the questions the media never asks.
As we all know, the change in terminology was coined and promoted by the US Republican party…
Are you saying that the US Republican Party was the first to recognize that the planet was no longer warming, and that the “Global Warming” (Glow BULL Warming) was no longer an accurate term?
I think you give the Republican party too much credit. I’m pretty sure lots of other people, true climate scientists, long before realized that the planet had not warmed since the 1998 El Nino.
So the climate scientists are all part of the Republican party?
News to me.
The discussion from mairon62 referred to the media, not the scientists. Scientists use the terms to mean specific things. Global warming is only about temperature, climate change is about all aspects of climate. Up to 1975 man-made effects on climate were referred to as “inadvertent climate modification” They did not know what direction any such modification would go. It became clear in the late 1970’s that the overall effect would be warming, so the term “global warming” was coined. It was adopted by the media in the 1980’s as the blanket term for man made climate change, a synechdoche (a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole). In the UK “climate change” was always more popular than in the USA, where global warming became almost universal.
It is widely reported that a republican advisor to Bush promoted the use of “climate change” instead of “global warming” because it sounded less scary
“It’s time for us to start talking about “climate change” instead of global warming and “conservation” instead of preservation…“Climate change” is less frightening than “global warming”…While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge”.
Source: Republican Political Consultant Frank Luntz, 2003
Thus the evidence seems to suggest that the attempts to spin the use of the terms came from the republican side.
The term “climate change” is more accurate in most cases, because it includes changes of temperature (i.e. global warming (or cooling, if there were any)) as well as other changes. The term global warming does not include other changes such as rainfall etc.
The claim is often made that “warmists” promoted the change in use as a distraction from failures of temperature to rise. This does not make much sense, and as far as I know is undocumented. Maybe someone can offer some evidence. We know that the term was promoted by “skeptics” to make it less scary. Both terms are still widely used.
It wasn’t too long ago that the alarmists were telling us that CO2 was so powerful that it would completely over powered the natural cycles, and all we would see going forward was continuous warming.
It was only when they figured out that the real world wasn’t matching their apocalyptic predictions that they decided to use climate change as their code word instead.
That way, no matter what happened, it could be blamed on CO2.
Warmer than normal, CO2.
Colder than normal, CO2.
Wetter than normal, CO2
Drier than normal, CO2
Windier than normal, CO2
Calmer than normal, CO2
and so on.
Some Republican may be one of the first to have been recorded using the term, but the alarmists picked it up and decided to use it voluntarily.
If as our trolls have been claiming, the Republicans tried to push the term because it was less scary than Global Warming, then why did you alarmists agree to use it? There was no law requiring it.
Example: “Osmium statement”
See Griff at 3:15am above
Griffy
Finally! Some excitement for this thread – we’re saved from facts & logic by Griff.
Any how, exactly how do we all know that about terminology?
Javert Chip,
“Any how, exactly how do we all know that about terminology?”
we know about it because we have copies of the “memo”
https://nigguraths.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/luntzresearch_environment.pdf
Posted for our convenience on a skeptical site Shub Niggurath Climate.
The words are exactly as I quoted.
And at the rate of about 3 per week we see that same zombie claim made on this blog. Its quite a good analogy for the global warming issue itself. A conger line of zombie myths.
Many on this website including its owner will openly agree there has been an anomalous warming in the last few decades but the zombies just raise up and stagger back into the room. Watch.
No one with any credibility claims that global warming is not real and that the recent warming in the Artic has been unprecedented since measurements began.
Tony,
Assume you mean conga, not a line of these:
There is nothing the least bit anomalous about whatever warming has occurred in recent decades. The late 20th century warming was no different from the early 20th century warming and milder than the early 18th century warming.
Another ludicrous lie. But thanks for the laugh.
Luntz advocated adopting the Democrats’ weasel words “climate change”, but the Bush admin rightly ignored his suggestion.
Thanks for demonstrating my point Glotee. Only surprise was it took so long.
Tony,
What anomaly do you imagine to exist?
The warming from 1977 to 1996 was entirely within normal bounds, despite the best efforts of criminal conspirators to cook the books. Luckily, the satellites were watching, to keep their efforts within bounds.
There has also been nothing anomalous about the lack of warming since 1997, despite two super El Ninos, ie 1997-98 and 2015-16 (a longer than usual time apart).
Please show your statistical work for supposing that late 20th century warming was anomalously outside the normal range of climate variability, then kindly explain why observations differ so wildly from model predictions.
Thanks.
How about: August 2016 is the 16th consecutive month that a new, record high global temperature average has been set. (http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/climatechange/sixteenth-consecutive-month-of/60237110)
Or; the last year that was below the 20th century average was 1977. 39 consecutive above average years and with a warming trend. So, like where is the next cooler one coming from?
You don’t call that anomolous?
Not entirely. GW is about increases in the amount of thermal energy stored in the biosphere, and a large component of that does not involve changes in temperature. That is, the heat of fusion and heat of vaporization of water. A great deal of thermal energy is needed to change ice at 0ºC to water at 0ºC, yet there is obviously no change in temperature. We’re talking about gigatons of ice here, certainly a significant amount of heat, and the water produced is less likely to stay put than the ice, causing some pretty serious effects. That’s all part of global warming.
Gloteus: “Please show your statistical work for supposing that late 20th century warming was anomalously outside the normal range of climate variability,”
Statisical evidence here:
http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~gang/eprints/eprintLovejoy/neweprint/Anthro.climate.dynamics.13.3.14.pdf
They say
“We statistically formulate
the hypothesis of warming through natural variability by using centennial scale probabilities
of natural fluctuations estimated using scaling, fluctuation analysis on multiproxy data. We
take into account two nonclassical statistical features – long range statistical dependencies
and “fat tailed” probability distributions (both of which greatly amplify the probability of
extremes). Even in the most unfavourable cases, we may reject the natural variability
hypothesis at confidence levels > 99%”
Looks to me like “scientists studying climate change” have a vested interest in believing human activity has an adverse impact on the climate. If they didn’t they’d have a harder time justifying the checks from the goobernment.
How much in “grants” does Mickey Mann show on this web site?
I heard somewhere in the realm of $50 Million…… surely that can’t be correct. !!!!
Can anyone confirm with a screen grab or something.
Well, he did win/steal/claim-to-have-won a Nobel prize. Maybe it includes his share of the prize money?
ROFL gravity is not decided at all! Newton and Einstein fail at accelerations less than about 1e-10 m/s^2.
They are still working on Dark Matter, MOND, quantitized inertia, and probably some other theories to explain it.
We also still don’t understand the mechanism behind gravity.
good grief!
Peter
Gravity isn’t the crock of fraudulent shit Gavin Schmidt generated.
That’s pretty strong language! I approve!
Your comment doesn’t address, much less refute the author’s point.
He declares that there is little uncertainty in the value of gravity (gravitational constant) and you then declare that we don’t know what causes gravity.
“The recent shift in conservative rhetoric…, many conservatives are still willing to ignore scientific consensus and stall political action.”
Clearly someone who is unable to differentiate between science and politics.
And remember, conflating politics with science is only a problem if the left do it.
Do you have any evidence that the right is doing it?
Or do you just assume that everyone else must be doing it, because that’s what you would do?
The left and the right do it.
Proof through assertion.
At least you remain true to form.
The terms “left” and “right” are so nebulous that it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that climate science has gotten hopelessly entangled with politics, due to the fact that it is almost entirely funded by Government.
And Trumps gift to the oil industry.
“Donald Trump moved on Tuesday to expunge rules aimed at forcing oil companies to disclose payments made to foreign governments in order to secure lucrative mining and drilling rights. The rules, called the Cardin-Lugar regulations, were established under the Dodd-Frank Act, the wide-ranging financial regulations brought in after the last financial crisis”
I suppose he needs to work fast to lift anti-corruption legislation. It’s catching up with him fast by all accounts.
Yes.
It looks like he’s getting impeached in his first year in office.
M Courtney February 15, 2017 at 1:20 am
Hi M Courtney sis you miss a /sac? Orr did you mean the General Flynn business?
Logan act.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415397/logan-act-not-friend-liberalism-charles-c-w-cooke
The Democrats reached for this hammer before too use against the Senate. I’m mixed on this one, if they conceit that Flynn may have inadvertently violated the act, and it is valid law, then they themselves get to swing that hammer.
What was the lead of this article? Climate Nightmares..Now think of the Logan act as applied to Climate scientists and hollywood SJW. You can talk up a storm but not in an way act as a “Diplomat” . Think about all these Climate scientist being told sorry you can’t go as representing the U.S. Or acting as the spokesperson for government data.
Oh and impeached in his first year in office? Nope Republican House and Senate.
Oh and John Adams was infamous for concocting methods of suppressing free speech. The “No prior restraints” argument.
Anyway sorry for being off on a tangent.
michael
within his first year, yes… but will he make it as long as a year? I doubt it…
It’s hilarious to see the left continue believing that a Republican Congress who failed to impeach Obama or Clinton will now have the balls to impeach the most popular Republican President in decades.
But, hey, enjoy your dreams. And, remember, Trump is Mr Nice Guy. He’s the man the Tea Party elected after you and the Republicucks ignored them.
If you do manage to force him out of the White House, you really won’t like whoever comes next.
Mike the Morlock February 15, 2017 at 1:57 am
‘Logan act as applied to Climate scientists’
Yes, I wondered that. Were the various American NGOs and assorted ‘civilians’ at the COPs violating the Logan Act by pressing for US ratification of Koyoto Protocol and for huge payments by US taxpayers? This will probably run and run (geddit?).
Wishful thinking there Courtney.
They did impeach Clinton “President Bill Clinton was impeached on two charges, one of perjury and one of obstruction of justice.” They did not convict him in the subsequent trial in the Senate, where a 2/3 guilty vote was needed to remove him from office.
Any thought of impeachment is just as delusional as thinking climate activist will suddenly disappear. Set aside fears and hopes and embrace critical thinking. GK
Griff February 15, 2017 at 3:16 am.
It is very hard to impeach and convict a President to the point he is removed from office. As a matter of fact none has. The closest was Andrew Johnson.
https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwcg-imp.html
michael
Oh and by the way, those silly demonstrations? I remember 1967-8 and the riots at the DNC convention for nominating HHH. You ain’t seen nothing.
MarkG claims:
“It’s hilarious to see the left continue believing that a Republican Congress who failed to impeach Obama or Clinton will now have the balls to impeach the most popular Republican President in decades.”
Really Mark ? perhaps you have read any media over the last month or so?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-lowest-approval-ratings-any-president-in-us-history-poll-cnn-a7563091.html
Fake news sites Gareth?
Funny how corruption is only a problem when the right is being accussed of it.
Obama ignored law after law, and the left cheered.
Which specific laws?
But the carbon footprint to support world-class video conferencing is high too (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/10/claim-new-green-danish-facebook-data-centre-will-increase-co2-emissions/)
Especially as video conferencing will permit even more people to participate.
Perhaps they could just stick to publishing papers and discussing the comments. Or just hold voice calls
Griff, your arse hurts bevore you sit out Trump.
Living outside the US with access to less partial news channels, well, it ain’t looking good.
“access to less partial news channels”
Grifter you silly little creature, by no stretch of imagination can the Guardian be considered a “less partial news channel”. It is probably second only to the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation for Left-wing propagandising. Even the Daily Mail is more reliable!
Have you apologised to Dr. Crockford for lying about her professional qualifications yet?
Partial news channel.
That name really does fit the BBC. Only the news that we want you to know.
Griff February 15, 2017 at 8:27 am
Living outside the US with access to less partial news channels, well, it ain’t looking good.
Ah since when do we here in the United States of America give a flying fiddler’s f##k in the rain about what foreign news channels say.
The U.S. Senate “Trumps” your dog-eared joker.
michael 🙂
Griff, be careful, only Breitbart is acknowledged as having accurate reporting on the affairs of Trump. Everything else is false news. Only Breitbart will have an opportunity to ask questions at Presidential briefings and if the 99% of other media continues to publish “False News” Trump will have no option but to close them down and round up the journalists. His old mate Putin is showing him how it should be done.
You really haven’t a clue what you’re wittering about.
You’re nearly as big a buffoon as Grifter aren’t you, Philips?
“Only a tiny fraction of skeptics believe that “climate change is not happening,.” The climate is always changing. As for the second, there is a fringe among climate skeptics who believe that “any change is not caused by human activity.” ”
Is that really the case? The majority certainly don’t believe it is warming… therefore though they claim to believe it always has been changing, they don’t think it is changing right now…
Then there are plenty who claim it is actually cooling.
There are so many contradictory ideas out there on the skeptic side and under any article on this site you will see half a dozen, which cannot all be true, posted with no one pointing out that contradiction.
If it is not warming, or only warming a bit, or cooling, then there has to be some positive, scientific, observed evidence, backed by a provable theory as to what is actually taking place.
what is actually happening? and your evidence is? and the other people who posted… how come what they say can’t be true if what you posted is?
That is to be expected. Debate is normal in science. And philosophy too. Even the arts have varied approaches towards the truth.
Orthodoxy is only to be expected when the truth is revealed, not approximated. E.g. in religion.
Of course, some scientific theories are so well established and have such proven predictive power that hardly anyone disputes them. Phlogiston, Newtonian Mechanics and most of the works of Aristotle have held that position at times.
But surely you don’t think that that archetypal chaotic system called the Climate currently fits that bill?
I like that. Succinct, accurate and to the point.
Griff, most skeptics accept that it’s been warming since the end of the little ice age. It’s you alarmists that deny the little ice age happened (having eliminated it with mike’s nature trick) and claim the past was this montonic level temperature that only shot upwards with the advent of man’s use of fossil fuels (the hockey stick).
Griff – “backed by a provable theory”
That would be nice, right? Like with the Theory of Gravity where school kids can prove the theory through experiment.
As for contradictions, what of the term: “Carbon Pollution”? What’s your definition? I see it as a contradiction. If pollution is meant as ‘harmful to life’, and all life as we know it consists of carbon based life forms, then this term must mean that ‘carbon is harmful to carbon based life forms’. Can you clarify?
I see that as usual, Griffie is trying to define his own reality.
“The majority certainly don’t believe it is warming”
Really, care to provide some evidence to support your delusion. The vast majority of skeptics that I have talked to acknowledge that over the last 150 years, the earth has warmed. The debate is about how much man is responsible, and that ranges from none to around a third.
Two different posters have different ideas regarding climate change, and in Griffies mind this proves that all skeptics are wrong.
“ observed evidence, backed by a provable theory”
So evidence isn’t evidence until you have a provable theory to explain it? Is that really the story you want to go with? Regardless, as has been pointing out many times global warming isn’t provable, since according to your guys, everything is caused by it.
Duh!
That’s how science works… hypothesis first… then…?
And I see every day some skeptic saying it ain’t warming or it is cooling to an ice age.
No Griff. It is DATA first, then hypothesis (testable). YOu do not even know that much!
Not necessarily. Some hypotheses originate from the math or from the logic of the situation. Special relativity, for example.
Not necessarily. Some hypotheses are not testable, and in some fields (astrophysics, climate science) none of them are. I have a longer comment to that effect elsewhere in this thread.
I love it when laymen pretend to understand how science works.
Yes necessarily. You want us to scientize religion. It does not work that way.
Data (observation as someone else said) first. Then Testable Hypothesis. If you do not have those 2, you have religion.
Griff,
I suspect what you are not seeing is the context of people referring to warming and cooling. Those statements mean nothing without a relevant time frame (even science journalists often don’t see this, and so write gibberish). Earth is both warming and cooling — over different time frames: billions of years, millions, thousands, centuries, and decades.
In most discussions the context is clear. That is, the people involved know if they are discussing change since the last ice age ended, or since 2000 AD,
Cretin. Observations first. Conjecture, hypothesis, etc, follow after observation. And you don’t have to replace a bad hypothesis with anything. Simply providing evidence that the facts don’t support the hypothesis is sufficient. My God, you are dense.
Griffie, Griffie, Griffie.
Data is data, regardless of whether there is a “proven” theory that explains the data.
That is how science works.
PS: I love the way Griffie actually believes that until every single skeptic says exactly the same thing, that his religion must be considered proven.
D.J., he’s not dense (or at least not just dense), just scientifically illiterate. Anyone that knows the scientific method knows (as you pointed out) that observations come first. hypothesis come after, in order to attempt to explain what was observed, then comes testing the hypothesis – and that’s where CAGW falls down, every testable claim of CAGW has thus far failed in the real world (and every untestable claim just shows how CAGW isn’t science, but rather is politics and/or religion)
Griff – whether we are warming or cooling is relative to the time span examined. No one disagrees that we are cooling from the Minoan optimum. No one denies we have warmed up from the LIA.
Are you really incapable of understanding the concept of relativity. If so, one should find a less advanced blog. Bill Nye’s site would be a better fit, me thinks. GK
I know theses painful for you Griff:
Skeptics do not need to prove CAGW is incorrect, or propose a substitute theory; they need only show CAGW does not account for actual data.
Skeptics can have millions of ideas about what’s happening to climate, and that has zero impact on the invalidity of CAGW.
Scientific method as described here: observation, conjecture, hypothesis, testing etc. The trouble with the skeptics is there is no testable hypothesis. This puts it in the realm of pseudoscience. The skeptics have no explanation for the climate, but claim they don’t need one. This is indeed true, you don’t need one per se, but you do need one if you wish to claim to be doing science.
If I am wrong, and someone here wished to lay claim to being scientific, please point me to the testable hypothesis and how well it has worked out.
Nonsense. There are a great many areas of scientific enquiry where testing — running experiments — is impossible. Areas of geology, astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and of course climate science. Note that observation is actually the cornerstone of the way we validate hypotheses and theories; experiments are mostly a matter of setting up situations where we can observe things that are otherwise difficult. We built the Large Hadron Collider at a cost of $13 billion so that we could observe particle collisions that happen naturally in the upper atmosphere but are impossible to monitor in situ.
So what we have with climate science is literally hundreds of thousands or millions of observations in thousands of studies that confirm the theory that global warming is real and caused by humankind. “Skeptics” have found a tiny fraction of those that they can call into question for one reason or another, but those are trivial; the great weight of the evidence verifies the theory beyond what would be called a “reasonable doubt” in a court of law.
Wrong, seaice1. The skeptics are doing science every time they show the CAGW hypothesis lacking (it’s part of the testing phase of the scientific method). You don’t need to come up with an alternate hypothesis to show that a particular hypothesis is lacking (and there is an alternative to CAGW, it’s call the null hypothesis – something you CAGW alarmists have failed to get past). It’s like you claiming invisible unicorns exist. I don’t need to come up with an alternative hypothesis in order to point out that there is no evidence that unicorns (invisible or otherwise) exist.
Bobmunk: The hypothesis and testing does not need to be from experiment. In geology you come with a hypothesis that says something like “if this is right then next time we dig up 10 million year old rocks of this type we should observe X,Y or Z.” But I agree with your other sentiment.
John,
Null hypothesis has been rejected on statistical grounds, but that is a red herring anyway.
So we are agreed that here are no successful skeptical testable hypotheses? Your dispute is that the skeptics are still doing science even though they have no testable hypotheses?
The null hypothesis has not been rejected yet. And no climate “scientist” has made that claim. Even Trenberth has said it has not. So your statement is clearly false.
No the null hypothesis has not been rejected despite your false claims to the contrary and that’s the biggest problem for the much debunked CAGW hypothesis. And Again, I remind you, one does not need to put forth an alternative hypothesis to show that the CAGW hypothesis is crap. The onus is on the side of the CAGW proponents to come up with something to replace the debunked crap that they’ve been pushing because the real world observations just plain don’t match. and when observations and hypothesis don’t match, it’s the hypothesis that gets discarded, atleast in real science, something you clearly know nothing about.
But then again, ” skeptical testable hypotheses?” is a read herring on your part to cover the fact that science is predictive and every CAGW prediction your fellow alarmist have made has failed, and spectacularly so. Even Hansen’s three scenarios which were used to sell it greatly missed the mark (CO2 is well above his “worst case” while temps remain below his “best case”).
The null hypothesis has been rejected.
From upthread
Statisical evidence here:
http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~gang/eprints/eprintLovejoy/neweprint/Anthro.climate.dynamics.13.3.14.pdf
They say
“We statistically formulate the hypothesis of warming through natural variability by using centennial scale probabilities using scaling, fluctuation analysis on multiproxy data. We take into account two nonclassical statistical features – long range statistical dependencies and “fat tailed” probability distributions (both of which greatly amplify the probability of extremes). Even in the most unfavourable cases, we may reject the natural variability hypothesis at confidence levels > 99%”
So it has been rejected by that particular statistician. There may be room for dispute about the validity of the methods, but it is wrong to say that the null hypothesis has not been rejected.
“Is that really the case? The majority [of skeptics] certainly don’t believe it is warming…”
Griff, you are conflating natural warming with human-caused warming.
Skeptics will say there has been warming in the past, they just don’t agree that there is any evidence that humans have contributed to the last fifty years of warming.
Since 1910, it warmed naturally to about 1940, and then it cooled from 1940 to 1975, and then it warmed again from 1975 to today, at about the same rate it warmed during the 1910 to 1940 period. No human causes required. There’s some warming going on at certain times but no proof humans are involved.
So, yes, there has been warming. It just depends on the cause and what time frame you are talking about. Nobody denies it warms. Lots of people deny that humans are the cause of any of it.
That has got to be the most stupid statement ever written in these comments.
From the most stupid – and dishonest – poster ever to sully these comments.
@catweazle666: come on, Phil isn’t that bad.
@ catweazle666 while that does describe Griff, Seaice1 is certainly trying hard for that coveted position.
I personally see no sign of climate activists getting past the first stage, denial. This process is going to take decades yet.
Nah. SJWs go where the easy money is. Once the ‘global climate warming change’ funds are cut off, they’ll find somewhere else to leech from.
There are two very separate issues – the political and the scientific. There is no sign at all of the scientific argument being conceded by the climate changers. There is no change in that front. Yet there is very real fear among those that believe in AGW that the political argument is being lost, at least in the USA. I think it is this second, political, argument that Kummer is talking about. Winning this one is not the same as winning the scientific argument.
Too bad the actual data doesn’t support your religion.
MarkW, are you just posting stuff at random? How is that a response to what I said?
It should be very worrying that prof. Curry does not know what is the warming impact of CO2. If she would know that number, anything else is related to natural causes. The original quality control in science has been that a scientist will carry out the same calculations as presented in a new theory, if he/she has any doubts. So, the question is, if Curry has carried out these kind of calculations? Has anybody else carried out? What are the results?
Or, is there any climate change science? Is it only question of opinions. It looks like that.
There is no evidence of any measurable warming impact of the measured increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
What portion of zero is attributable to mankind is ergo moot.
We can disagree about the temperature increase but there has been warming. Alarmists and IPCC say t hast it is all because of CO2.
“there has been warming”
There has been warming since the Little Ice Age. Prior to that, the Medieval Warming Period, the Roman Warming Period, the Minoan Warming Period, and the twin peaks of the Holocene Optimum were all warmer.
Most of the Eemian inter-glacial periods was warmer than the Holocene.
53 million years ago the Arctic Ocean was a swamp.
The planet was once a molten ball of magma.
To claim that there has been warming one must first declare the “since”.
There is no warming that can be attributed to CO2 increase. The ice core records show that warming precedes CO2, not the other way around. The so-called “warming” has been flat for 18 years, while CO2 continues to climb.
Everytime I post on the Fabius Maximus website I get banned. His arguments boil down to Experts tell me this, I don’t question experts, you aren’t a climate scientist (whatever that is), so I’m right you are wrong.
I pointed out that is a science is understood, it can be modeled.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/02/06/climate-science-on-trial-if-something-is-understood-it-can-be-modeled/
I pointed out all the problem with the NOAA Data.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/02/12/climate-science-behaving-badly-50-shades-of-green-the-torture-timeline/
I challenged him to refute a single challenge to the “science”
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/climate-science-on-trial-the-smoking-gun-files/
I may not be a “climate scientist” but I have far more experience with multivariable modeling and quantum physics than those boys at the IPCC appear to have.
BTW, Fabius Maximum is the Roman General chosen by the Fabian Socialists as their role model. Basically, Fabians seek to undermine and deceive instead of facing the debate head on. Fabian Maximus was defeating Hannibal by avoiding to fight him, just like Climate alarmists avoid real debates about man-made climate change.
BTW, just watch, the Editor from Fabius Maximus will respond to this message saying everything I said was a lie. Typical, predictable and expected.
Did you try posting a comment with a quote from Judith Curry?
Sheri,
I would post a comment from CO2 citing any scientist. Certainly one citing Curry (btw, who disagrees with most of his claims in the thread discussed), who I personally know well. She’s the climate scientist I cite the most frequently..
Instead he makes big claims, When called on them, he moves on to make new and equally big (often bogus) claims.
Life is short. There are many place he can chatter to his heart’s content. The FM website isn’t one of them.
I don’t know if I actually quoted her, but I sourced her website and the comments from Bates post on her site. The guy will only accept “agree with me or you’re gone.” I am always getting “moderated” for raising legitimate questions. It is easier to censor than debate.
Sheri, this post references Judith Curry’s post. It was simply ignored and I was “moderated.”
I pointed out all the problem with the NOAA Data.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/02/12/climate-science-behaving-badly-50-shades-of-green-the-torture-timeline/
Editor of the Fabius Maximus, you claim:
“Instead he makes big claims, When called on them, he moves on to make new and equally big (often bogus) claims.”
Please provide an example where I make “big claims” and don’t back them up? Everything I state is extremely well documented and backed up. Here is the website to back everything up. As I’ve said before, refute a single claim I make.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/
Facts are, any science that is valid and “settled” can demonstrate their theory through a model. The IPCC Climate Models don’t even come close to accurately modeling the climate, not even close. You are defending a settled science that can’t even hindcast, let alone forecast. That is a legitimate comment. It may be a “big and bogus” claim to you, but that is game over for any objective person seeking the truth. I would be interested in your explanation why you support a “settled science” that can’t even produce a valid model. I won’t hold my breath. As I’ve said, it is easier to run from a valid debate.
BTW Mr Watts, feel free to re-post my article that addresses the issue was are discussing and let the people decide if I’m making big and bogus claims.
Feel free to cross post any of these posting. If I am making big and bogus claims, I’d like someone to point them out to me.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/
“Everytime I post on the Fabius Maximus website I get banned. His arguments boil down to Experts tell me this, I don’t question experts, you aren’t a climate scientist (whatever that is), so I’m right you are wrong.”
He laid that sh1te on me precisely once – apparently the fact that I disagree with Gavin Schmidt makes my opinion worthless, so now I just regard him as yet another waste of bandwidth with a grossly inflated idea of his own importance in the scheme of things and don’t bother with his prolix prognostications.
In any case, there is no point whatsoever attempting to discuss science with someone who is scientifically illiterate.
Yep, welcome to exile. Thanks for the comment.
The other thing he does is his false attempts at equivalency between left and right politically.
He will admit that the left has flaws, but every time he does so he has to soften the blow by pointing out that the right has similar flaws, even if he has to make up the evidence to prove it.
Yes, the comment editor a Fabius Maximus is a authority expert drone, his choice of expert of course. When he loses a point he quickly launches and ad hom attack and deletes your posts.
He’s even put up links and posts that undermine the very points he’s claiming to make. On the mirror board at the site we scuffled over the dating of the politicization point of climate science which he dates as “the 1980’s”. This is patently false, I provided numerous links to much earlier periods of carbon tax ambitions over “pollution” and the 70’s “ice age” agenda which is an ancestor of the current warming/change agenda.
It’s curious that the site does put up seemingly moderate to even skeptical content only to have a bully and thug on the moderation. You can visit the thread yourself to see the many straw man and accusatory methods involved.
One of my themes that I’ve had with Anthony here as well, the sanctity of Dr. Curry and her ingrained luke warm histography of the climate agenda and the over stating of the significance of actual hard science both now and at any point in the warming agenda history. It’s was and is mostly politics which both luke warmers and advocate warmers remain in yes……..deep “denial”.
Coincidently, and this only came in passing, he carries the major torch for New Deal Keynesianism and Paul Krugman as the perverse inheritor of the mantel for that cause as well.
So we’re back to the thematic point, aside from irrational green/left agenda we are saddled with parties who support them as resistance of the most nuanced kind with an orthodox all their own. “it’s about science” the mantra plays out. I’m sorry, the Happer/Linzen/Trump wing matters. The Fabius Maximus and WUWT Curry worship society are past peak editorially on the core of the Climate War.
co2islife February 15, 2017 at 3:38 am
You are so wrong on Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator and the so called “Fabian Socialist” Roman politics did not work that way.
First he belonged to the Patrician faction of Roman society not the Plebeians
Hannibal destroyed every army the Roman Senate sent against him. By avoiding battle Fabius Maximus bought Rome that most precious gift time. Also Roman field commanders were elected. Next the army was not Manipular legion at that time, it was still based on the Hastatii, Principes and Triarii formations. Thus the soldiers were citizens of various age and economic status within the Republic. Since they were called away for year after year to stand on a hill merely watching Hannibal, Fabius Maximus grew unpopular in favor Of the upstart Scipio.
Fabius Maximus pinned Hannibal in Italy, for ten years. During that time Scipio took Spain and prepared for the final invasion of Carthage.
No comparison between Roman political factions and our political parties/NGOs
michael
You missed the meaning of my comment. Facts are that Fabian Socialists are named after him. Their tactics are deceit, deception, and undermining by not debating. They chosen symbol is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. That was my point, I wasn’t trying to give a history lesson.
Avoiding debate isn’t unique to Fabius Maximus, it is common for the left. I’ve faced it many times. Here is a recent example of Dr Willie Soon at the American Freedom Alliance. No one would debate him. I wonder why if this is settled science. It should be easy to win the argument.
https://youtu.be/TVdKuNLmcCc?t=4m23s
Climate activists’ final act, as they move into the last stage of grief
sounds like the commies at jonestown prior to the last coolaid
seriously it does , read the wiki on jonestown
The solution to the confusion over the characterization of skeptics as “deniers” would be removed if you labelled them correctly as “lukewarmists.” It is the alarmists who have claimed that “deniers” deny any human effect. That simplfies their arguments immensely.
They’ve been depressed from the very outset – primarily by their diet of sugar washed down with alcohol.
Its got all the classic signs – muddled thinking, buck-passing, unwillingness & inability to both argue a point or defend it, inability to take on new ideas and endlessly call on consensus, scientists and The Computer Says. Nobody in their right mind will pick a fight with A Computer – they know that and try to capitalise on it.
They cannot argue a point and if you try to push the point, fists will fly – just like drunks on a night out.
Not at the very least, the huge over-reaction to an imagined problem – the over active startle response characteristic of dope-heads and others on depressant substances.
Something to think about –
Maybe some of us (50% of UK womenfolk certainly) will know about anti-depressants, Prozac, Fluoxetine etc.
OK.
So how can 20 milligram daily of that stuff cure depression when doctors will say its OK to consume 20 grams per day of a known depressant such as alcohol.
Oh yes drinkers will pipe up loudly, 20 gram per day maybe doesn’t harm the body, but, what damage does it do to the mind?
To an entire population……………
this is totally off topic, but inspired by your screen name, Peta from Cumbria. Joe Bob Briggs is a very funny writer from Texas, but he also makes good points. His most recent piece was basically about how, over the last 3 centuries or so, all of Cumberland (now Cumbria) packed itself up, left England, and moved to Kentucky.
http://takimag.com/article/a_brief_history_of_the_redneck_joe_bob_briggs/print#axzz4YlHw3upe
If you haven’t been to the area, you probably wouldn’t know that the biggest river in southern Kentucky is the Cumberland. There’s a reason for that.
“They cannot argue a point and if you try to push the point, fists will fly – just like drunks on a night out.”
Well that’s the sort of reception I get from skeptics when I challenge their points with links to science papers…
Griffie, a link to a Sierra Club press release is not a link to a scientific paper.
Nor is a link to the Guardian or Wikepedia – two more of Grifter’s go-to authorities on climate “science”.
Neither are indirect references to AWEA, CanWEA and EWEA information. Remember what you posted regarding Dr. Arlene King in Ontario, Canada?
MarkW & catweazle666
GOSH DARN IT – YOU’VE PROVEN GRIFFS POINT: every time he is silly enough to make a stupid statement on WUWT, somebody hurts his feelings by pointing it out.
I vote we give Griffy a participation trophy if he agrees to go away.
I will admit that I did not read the Crist article, however from the analysis, I think Larry has mis-catagorized her stage. She seems to be in the bargaining stage – pleading to just accept any part of their narrative. I think she has a long way to go to get to acceptance. There is no acceptance in her writing.
Phil,
You might be right. These things are subjective at best, and difficult to determine from one article. We need to see the trend in her — and other activists — over the next year of so. That’s why I describe this as a theory:
Climate, what is it?
Oh you say, addressing stupid peta from Newark (the Nottinghamshire one), “Climate is the 30 year average of weather”
Alright then I say, “What’s the answer, what is today’s ’30 year average?”
Furthermore, I say BS. You/anybody hasn’t got that answer and not least, hasn’t got a frigging clue about how to work it out. Admit it. And furthermore, temperature is not climate.
Why do I say that?
Picture yourself cast into an entirely new (to you) location, somewhere & *anywhere* on this Earth.
You may wonder, will I survive here?
So, you look around, at the plants, the animals, you feel the temperature compared to the height of the sun, you examine the dirt, are you on a hillside, facing which way, are the trees bent over, are there trees, are there lakes, how fast are the rivers & streams running etc etc etc
Within a few hours of doing this, you ‘know’ what the Climate is at your new location. And the biggest clue is surely The Plants around you.
You DO NOT need to stand around measuring temperature to 1/1000 of a degree, playing with a supercomputer and drawing endless tedious straggly little graphs for 30 years to tell you about The Climate.
2nd big idea from me today – Maybe plants control the climate.
Maybe we get it all wrong when we say “Oh I know why plants don’t grow in the Sahara, its got cr4p climate.”
Its the other way round, the Sahara has a cr4p climate because there are no plants there.
For muddled, slow and depressed minds, its far too big an idea. Too much hard work. Lets just blame everybody else via their ’emissions’
“And furthermore, temperature is not climate.” This is why “climate change” is more appropriate than “global warming.”
“This is why “climate change” is more appropriate than “global warming.”
The only way “climate change” would be appropriate is if the climate never changed until now.
The Earth’s climate has been changing since the beginning of time, long before humans came on the scene.
“The Earth’s climate has been changing since the beginning of time, long before humans came on the scene.”
And has resulted in the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals. It would be nice if this particular course of it, caused by homo sapiens sapiens, did not result in the extinction of said species. It would also be nice if it did not cause widespread human suffering and death, or the loss of significant amounts of the population’s wealth and possessions.
If you’re trying to argue that GW is no big deal because it has happened before, I would question your logic.
“If you’re trying to argue that GW is no big deal because it has happened before, I would question your logic.”
No, I’m just arguing that GW is natural, because there is no evidence that humans are causing the Earth’s climate to warm or change.
If you have some evidence that shows otherwise, I would be happy to consider it.
All the points and counter points are based an the unsubstantiated conclusion that warming is bad.
Griff:
=====
Is that really the case? [that most skeptics accept climate is changing all the time] The majority certainly don’t believe it is warming… therefore though they claim to believe it always has been changing, they don’t think it is changing right now…
=====
The transition from permanent global warming drought conditions to global warming flood and rain conditions in south east Australia where I live occurred in the middle of a long period when the global averaged temperature–a mathematical abstraction–didn’t change in a statistically significant way.
The global averaged temperature, the abstraction you erroneously conflate with “climate change,” is just an index with no predictive utility. It tells you nothing at all about what’s happening in the real world at any location; it’s just the number you’re left with when you average out thermometer readings, adding post-normal adjustments to make every year then”hottest year evah” until we submit to the cult and pay our tithes.
But it tells you nothing about the world, Griff.
That’s why our permanent global warming drought came to an end (in floods, just like California), why snowfalls became no longer just a thing of the past, why global warming winters started getting colder instead of milder, why Antarctic sea ice extent continued to increase, why Arctic sea ice extent continued to fluctuate, why Alpine snow conditions in 2008 were “best in a generation,” all happening while “global averaged temperature”–that meaningless metric– remained essentially flat.
Maggie Thatcher started banging on about this garbage 30 years ago, before China started ramping up CO2 output at a fantastic rate. And here we are at a petty sub-optimal 400ppm, with more or less the same kind of weather we had back then.
Btw, Griff: belief is a religious endeavor, not a scientific one.
I don’t believe the abstraction of weather over time we call “climate” is “warming.”
A good example of how skeptics believe climate is changing all the time, as opposed to the warmists who think in only a straight-line functions, take the drought in California.
The much-repeated warmist position was that the drought was now permanent, and that climate change was the culprit, and water shortages would be the result from now on.
Skeptics never denied that there was a drought, but also believed that it was most likely due to natural cycles, which cause the climate to always change from day to day and year to year. If the warmists were correct, then permanent water shortages needed to be dealt with. If the skeptics were correct, then the drought conditions would at some point reverse and turn back to wet conditions, with no action needed by man to help it along.
So hmmm, which position ended up being the correct one?
It seems to me the basic state of California and Australia in the warming world is drought and drought with heatwaves – interrupted by extreme precipitation.
For example: We may find California may be having the same amount of rain over a ten year period, but getting no rain for 9 years then 10 years worth in a short period is not the same as the good old average rainfall we used to get, with just about ‘enough’ every year…
what do you mean “used to get”??? Look at any 100 year chart for California and the southwest, and you will find that pattern has *always* been the long term norm.
You seem to be one of those people who think that all history began in year 2000.
WWS, you have to remember being a warming alarmist, like Griff, requires one to be completely ignorant of history. It’s why the medieval warm period and the little ice age had to “disappear”, its why the past has to keep being adjusted colder, etc. because history shows that their “unprecedented” narrative has many precedents.
Drought and flood has always been normal for California.
‘the same as the good old average rainfall we used to get, with just about ‘enough’ every year…”
What total, complete and utter drivel!
Crass, even by your standards.
You really believe that there was a time when everywhere on Earth – particularly California – got just about ‘enough’ every year?
Yes, from your abysmal posting history I really do believe you really are that stupid and ill-informed!!
Griff February 15, 2017 at 8:20 am
My first trip to California was in 1979. The restaurants were not serving water unless asked, instead they were recommending their local wines because of the ahem, drought.
so whats new?
michael
Griffy
It seems to me that the geology of California is more important than the weather/climate/whatever-we’re-calling-it-this-week.
The 1940 population of CA was about 7M (2016 is 38M) and they were already running out of water. Read you history.
@ Editor of the Fabius Maximus website February 15, 2017 at 12:10 am
Your comments also show that Spell-grammar catchers cannot catch stupid pomposity, yet, either.
T-Man
T-man,
“cannot catch stupid pomposity, ”
We are all awed by your logic!
If you have an objection, why not state it? I’ll bet you can do better than schoolyard insults.
Sigh. What takes center stage is an argument over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. There is no visible marker in the trend that identifies unusual human-caused separate from expected natural interstadial warming, ergo invisible angels. And the amount of that warming is tiny, ergo how many angels are dancing. In addition, the catastrophic portion is also tiny, ergo the head of the pin. It is appropriate to call those who fund the research into this fantasy pinheads.
We know there is more CO2 and that the CO2 comes from humans. We know it is warming and that CO2 is the only reasonable cause of the warming.
Argument from ignorance.
Strangely appropriate for Griffie.
There are dozens of reasonable explanations for the warming.
The mere fact that the world has warmed more, and faster in the past is sufficient to disprove your belief that it must be CO2 this time.
“Reasonable” ?
Really ?
Who is WE?! You, Santa, and the tooth fairy? Did I leave someone out? GK
And there in a nutshell is the CAGW argument, as vacuous and unscientific as it is. No wonder the “likely” value of the amount of warming due to CO2 (the critical parameter in the whole CAGW conjecture) is 1.5C – 4.5C. That’s quite a spread for something that is supposedly calculated from basic physics. I wonder how much bigger that spread would be for the “highly likely” value? Might even include zero.
Oops, meant to say “due to doubling of CO2” above.
Combustion products of organics are primarily H2O and CO2. From your ‘statement’, we can equally assert
“We know there is more H20 and that the H20 comes from humans. We know it is warming and that H20 is the only reasonable cause of the warming.”
Your ‘train of causation logic’ fails the most basic of tests.
B O L L O C K S !
Is that going to be the go to phrase for the next few weeks? ;*)
MarkW February 15, 2017 at 12:15 pm
Is that going to be the go to phrase for the next few weeks? ;*)
yes. 😀
Griff,
We also know that the warming started long before the modern increase in atmospheric CO2. So your correlation = causation argument is a bust. Then we are presented with the great leap of induction of CO2 being “the only reasonable cause of warming” dismissing natural climate variability. So who is the climate denier here?
No wonder Griff posts anonymously
How do you know that global temperatures are a function of atmospheric CO2 concentration and not vice versa?
MarkW “There are dozens of reasonable explanations for the warming.”
Can you name one?
Griff reminds of a cat walking past a dogs home where the dogs are contained behind a chain link fence. The cat only has to wink and the dongs go crazy trying to bite their way through the wire. Griff is one powerful person.
@Robert Kernodle: Your graph shows an increase of 23 ppm for CO2 over a period of 8000 years; we’re talking about an increase of 120 ppm over a single century, 400 times faster. The two situations are not comparable. That’s why the “historic data” touted by GW skeptics does not apply; the Earth has never before had a planet-wide industrial civilization releasing tens of gigatons of new CO2 into the atmosphere every year.
Gareth,
Great intellectual fact filled rebuttal – not! So all you still have is fear and loathing. Maybe I should add to that insults and lies.
No, you’re arguing that at some time in the distant past there was a very different (slower) global warming. That casts no light whatsoever on the current situation.
There are literally thousands of peer-reviewed and published papers that make it clear that GW is caused by human activity. Read some of them. I’d suggest the journals Nature and Science; they tend to publish more simplified papers that non-specialists can understand.
My university makes these journals and about ten thousand others available to alumni over the Internet; yours may also, if you attended a college.
We know there is more CO2. We do not know it all comes from Man.
You need a course in science 101.
Where else? I’ve heard no other suggestions for sources for the extra 25 gigatons of CO2 per year, or any fraction thereof.
YOu just said it. We do not know. There is a lot more we do not know than we know. And until you can understand that, you will always get it wrong.
It is not an admission of fault to say you do not know. It is an honest assessment.
But we do know; it’s coming from human activity. You’re making the claim that that’s wrong, that a significant portion of it is coming from somewhere else. Apparently you have no idea where, you just want to claim it’s from somewhere we don’t know about.
I suppose it’s brave of you to admit you don’t know, but it utterly invalidates your claim. Of course we were already aware that there’s a great deal more that you don’t know than that you do know.
Tag it and bag it. If you cannot, you not only are lying, you clearly are clueless. We can suspect. But so far, not even mann has proven it. Because the proof does not exist.
It is suspected. But it is not known. if it was, you could easily point out every extraneous molecule of CO2 that was a result of man’s activities, versus natural. Yet you cannot. Why? No one can.
You have a lot to learn about science. If you suspect something, you create an hypothesis. Then you test it to see if it holds up. None of which has been done. A man-made CO2 molecule is identical to a naturally occurring one.
Your ignorance is on display.
Science does not include the concept of “proof.” That is found only in mathematics and courts of law.
We can measure the amount of CO2 produced by human activity and the amount by which the CO2 in the atmosphere increases; they match. No additional source is needed to balance the books.
Heh.
False equivalency. I can prove your finger prints are not mine. And that is science. So your flippant remark is not only wrong, it is a non sequitur. Second, I did not challenge you to tell me how much CO2 humans expel. I said identify the molecules. You are now saying you cannot. You can only tell us how MUCH, which was never in the debate. Stop trying to move the goal posts.
And my final statement still stands. You have a lot to learn about science.
Interesting choice of example; fingerprinting is extremely inexact and error-prone. When I was at Univac we worked on the new FBI fingerprint DB out in West Virginia. Our judicial system is considering discarding the use of fingerprinting.
I take it you know nothing about mathematics or the law, don’t understand what “proof” means.
If you pour a quart of water into an already-full bucket and it overflows a quart, you don’t need to show that the water molecules that came out were the same ones you put in. It is beyond question that you caused the bucket to overflow.
If there’s anything at all to genetics, none of your grandchildren would stand a chance of being admitted to Brown.
Heh.
Sorry Bob – your waffling is still a non-sequitur. The RECOGNITION of the differences between fingerprints may not be ironclad (it does have the human factor), however the FACT that my finger prints are NOT the same as yours is not debatable. You clearly have no clue what you are talking about. You interject the fallacy of man into what is clearly a PROOF. Not of a scientific theory, but of a scientific FACT.
And once again, on the CO2 issue, we are NOT dealing with quantity, but identification. You do not seem to be able to grasp that simple concept. I do not care if you drown yourself in a quart of water. You made a clearly false statement, and I called you out on it. The issue is not quantity, but identity! Try to read that slowly so you can understand it. So far you have failed miserably.
Which is not a good testament to your professors or alma mater.
Now, you want to try again to prove which molecule is human originated and which is natural? Think at least before you answer for a change.
Good example; you displayed a proof that you are not a scientist, and in fact know nothing of science.
No, I simply demonstrated you do not know the difference between hypotheses, theories and facts.
But then you already declared that by trying argumentum ad verecundiam. No one asked, or cares where you had your safe space or have your safe space.
You’ve never heard of carbon-13 and carbon-14, have you? Here’s a very simple explanation, targetted at about 7th-grade level. Read all 12 pages, and then there will be a quiz.
Non sequitur again. I did not ask you for the Baskin Robbins flavors of carbon. You said you knew which molecules were from Man and which were from natural (I know a contradiction that will go over old bob’s head) sources. Man does not create one flavor and one flavor alone. Nor does nature.
Have you had ANY science courses? Either that, or you simply cannot understand the written language. You have YET to answer the initial challenge, and you keep trying to change the subject! Very badly I will add.
You didn’t read the NOAA article I assigned you, did you? Understandable.
Sorry, I only accept assignments from scholars, not BS artists. But then you would not understand that given your background and education. All you know are BS artists.
Yes, they are not stupid enough to qualify for that low institution. I guess it is somewhat good that it is around to admit the less intelligent, as you demonstrated.
Heh.
Religion? Where did that come from? I’m talking about the way science works.
You think that when Einstein hypothesized special and general relativity, it was religious? That’s hilarious. Have you ever met an actual scientist, or taken any kind of science course?
No, you are not. You have lied about the null hypothesis. That is not science. You have stated beliefs as facts. That is not science. Science does not work that way. Where did you get your education? Seriously, you need to learn about science. My admission that I do not know is a lot more intelligent than your false proclamation that you do know. I at least understand how it works, you believe you know everything, and in so doing, prove you know nothing.
When Einstein hypothesized, he did not KNOW! He suspected. He formed an hypothesis and then set out to disprove it, and encouraged all to disprove it! But he died not knowing. Why? Because his theories are not proven! They simply (for the most part) have not been DISPROVEN! And that is how science works.
What you are doing is shamanism. It is not science.
Brown University. My advisor was Leon Cooper, Nobel Laureate for the BCS Theory.
Thanks – I will make sure none of my grandchildren waste their money at that lousy place.
It is odd watching the twists and turns. We will see lots of comments and posts that say skeptics do not question that man is adding to atmospheric CO2, then we get his sort of argument. Just like statements hat skeptics do not dispute warming, or the greenhouse effect, then we will get arguments about hoe IR cannot warm the atmosphere. It is clear that there are plenty of commenters here that question all these things.
As for this one, we KNOW that CO2 is rising (as much as we know anything). We KNOW that man is putting a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere. The simplest conclusion is that the extra CO2 comes from man. Now simple isn’t always right, so we do need to check. We don’t just accept the simplest answer. The only way that the increasing CO2 is not coming from man is that it is coming from somewhere else. So scientists have looked at all the places where it could be coming from, and non of them can explain the CO2 with current knowledge.
That does not prove the case as current knowledge is not complete. However, it establishes the man-made theory as the only reasonable one to accept. All loose ends are tied up and we do not have to invent explanation for which there is no evidence. The man made explanation is consistent with all the data and theories we have.
Sure, it might be beamed in by aliens, or maybe there is a fundamental flaw in our understanding and spontaneous matter transmutation is occurring, or maybe there is some other massive source that we are unable to detect for some reason, that just happens to approximately coincide in magnitude with human sources and has occurred at the same time and the sinks are therefore much bigger than we understood them to be. These things are possible, but there is no good reason to believe they are true.
@seaice1: your two recent comments (null hypothesis and CO2 source) are much too cogent, logical, and reasonable for this forum. Remember, mindless parroting of questionable sources is the standard.
“but only the weather will determine which side is correct.” Wouldn’t that be the average of the weather over a variable base period? Weather is only relevant when it shows the planet warming. Otherwise, we’re just confusing weather and climate, aren’t we? (sarc)
“Summary of Policymakers in IPCC’s AR5 Working Group I said” The summary of policymakers is a POLITICAL document NOT based on the science. Plus, the 95% probably has no mathematical or scientific definition—they might as well say “We really, really sure we’re right so believe us. We’re the powerful and we need our jobs and we’re experts on political things”. It has no scientific standing whatsoever.
I like how Gavin compares the certainty of a mature science (gravity and the earth circling the sun) with a new science (climate change) and implies it has equal certainty. He should compare the science of climate change to the state of science prior to Newton.
Regarding: “To say that climate scientists understand the cause of the massive ice ages is irrelevant to explaining the relatively tiny 2% increase since the mid-19th century”: 2% of what? A 2% increase of absolute temperature is about 6 degrees C.
Very good article FM. Judith’s Curry is a classic and courageous scientist having walked back a somewhat more extreme position as the Pause advanced, Climategate exploded and the main CAGW actors got ugly and vindictive. Curry and Pelke Jr. and I’m sure others with moderate, reasonable positions on the status of Climate were pushed out of their disciplines.
It’s not hard to imagine the nasty world this would become if the Totalitarian elites who adopted climate change as their enabling tool were to succeed.
“… only the weather will determine which side is correct.”
100ºF in Mangum, Oklahoma on February 11, 2017. Warm weather.
Bob Munchk,
“100ºF in Mangum, Oklahoma on February 11, 2017. Warm weather.”
I’m sure you know that every day extreme high and low temperature records are set somewhere. Individually they tell us nothing about climate trends, and have zero influence on the public policy debate (which is the subject of this post).
“100ºF in February, in the middle of the US:” spelling my name wrong — good answer.
Bob,
Try reading the text of the comment, not just your name.
Putting effort into spell-checking comments is spending more time on them then they deserve. Who cares?
Tony Heller claimed on Twitter records show it was 99F in Oklahoma in February, 1918.
Good for Tony Heller.
So the 2017 record was caused by increases in CO2 in the atmosphere, according to Bob (I guess that’s what we are to read into his posting). But what caused the 1918 record 99 degree day? That was before we had added any noticeable amount of CO2. There’s no shame is saying you don’t know. But in that case, isn’t it equally possible that whatever it was, caused the 2017 record high temperature? That is the crux of the natural variation argument.
“I guess that’s what we are to read into his posting”
It’s interesting that you would make that assumption. What is your basis?
“But what caused the 1918 record 99 degree day?”
Global warming.
“That was before we had added any noticeable amount of CO2.”
What is your definition of “noticeable?”
OK Bob, I’ll give it one more shot before just giving up on you as a troll.
Your original comment was about a record high temperature in the middle of the US in Feb. Giving the context of the larger conversation it was reasonable to assume you were asserting this was caused by increased CO2 in the atmosphere (aka Global Warming). But rather than argue semantics, why don’t you just explain what your point was?
For the rest of your reply, Global Warming caused warming? Since that would be tautological, I assume you mean warming due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere. Please correct me if I’m wrong and define what you mean by Global Warming.
I said “noticeable” because if I had said “no CO2”, that would have been factually incorrect. Maybe “negligible” is a better term, meaning so little that it made no measurable impact on the average global temperatures.
“why don’t you just explain what your point was?”
That last weekend it was very hot in Oklahoma in the middle of the winter.
“Please correct me if I’m wrong”
I lack the stamina.
“define what you mean by Global Warming.”
An increase in the amount of thermal energy stored in the Earth’s biosphere.
‘Maybe “negligible” is a better term’
Only if you define it. Otherwise it’s just another way of saying it’s your opinion.
OK Bob, you are obviously a troll, just out to waste the time of serious people like myself. I will ignore you from now on. I suggest everybody else does too. Not sure how you get your jollies by doing this, but I refuse to participate in your silly games anymore.
I try not to use adolescent jargon like “LOL,” but I did indeed laugh out loud at that. You’re a member of a tiny and shrinking cadre of people who think they understand science and are smarter than most people who do it for a living. I do enjoy reading the attempts of you and your fellows trying to convince each other that your arguments make sense and that you’re winning the discussion. They don’t, and you aren’t; you’ve long since lost.
Anyone who Paul Penrose disagrees with is a troll by the looks.
You seem to believe that you have said something intelligent.
How much was the old record beaten by? Check the records for nearby days and nearby cities.
You will find that temperature spikes are not at all unusual.
Just because you are ignorant of reality is not proof that you are correct.
“The National Weather Service says the high in Mangum on Saturday reached 99 degrees to tie a record set Feb. 24, 1918, in Arapaho as the highest February temperature ever in Oklahoma.”
http://newsok.com/record-tying-high-temperature-for-february-in-oklahoma/article/feed/1166453
99F in Mangum OK, Feb 11 2017
99F in Arapaho OK, Feb 24 1918
Note – 99F, not 100F. Tied the previous high temp record that occurred in Arapaho OK in Feb 1918.
It was ‘warm weather’ in Oklahoma a century ago also…….
bobmunck February 15, 2017 at 7:27 am
“… only the weather will determine which side is correct.”
100ºF in Mangum, Oklahoma on February 11, 2017. Warm weather.
So did you consider it a pleasant day? Little to hot for me , whats it like today?
michael
One warm day for one city is proof of global warming.
On the other hand two brutally cold winters in a row, for the entire US, is just weather.
“100ºF in Mangum, Oklahoma on February 11, 2017. Warm weather.”
Yeah, now a couple of days later the low-pressure front has passed Oklahoma and Mangum is about 60 degrees. Nothing to see here. Oklahoma gets this weather all the time, decade after decade.
“Republican’s dominance at all levels of the US government”
The Flynn lynching shows the statement above to be pure fiction.
Jst1,
“The Flynn lynching shows the statement above to be pure fiction.”
It is an objective fact based on partisan affiliation of executive and legislative elected officials at the local, state, and Federal level.
Even if the Flynn incident showed power of the Democratic Party, which I doubt, it just means that there are two parties — that neither has tyrannical control over the government.
NO. It shows that the permanent government has it’s own ways of exerting power, regardless of which party is in charge.
Hogwash. It is an objective fact that classified information was illegally released by partisan criminals within one or more of the NSA, CIA, or FBI.
jst1 February 15, 2017 at 10:25 am
NO. It shows that the permanent government has it’s own ways of exerting power, regardless of which party is in charge.
If there was such a thing why would “they” bother? Since this permanent gov. is always going to be in conflict with either party why Flynn?
No any permanent gov only survives by hiding or remaining nonthreatening. The costs to those who instigated this will be greater than any gain from forcing General Flynn to resign.
They must have Pyrrhic king of epirus as a role model
michael
“No, any permanent gov only survives by hiding or remaining nonthreatening. The costs to those who instigated this will be greater than any gain from forcing General Flynn to resign.”
I think the leakers are probably Obama appointees who are still working in the government bureaucracies.
I think this will backfire on whoever did the leaking. There are only so many people who were privy to this information, so they won’t have to look too far.
All Obama appointees should be suspect. They are not on Trump’s side, and may do something to harm his agenda if given the opportunity. Trump needs to clean house throughout the entire bureaucracy. It’s infested with radical Obama leftists.
J Mac. Be careful what you claim to be objective fact. ” It is an objective fact that classified information was illegally released by partisan criminals within one or more of the NSA, CIA, or FBI.” (emphasis mine).
It is not objective fact that the individuals were partisan.
The permanent bureaucracy of the Deep State is conducting a guerrilla campaign against the Trump administration on all fronts, of which the Flynn lynching was just one skirmish.
The weather has already determined which side is correct and it ain’t the alarmists. They are a dead cause walking, zombie-like, and they are still very, very dangerous.
Karl,
“The weather has already determined which side is correct and it ain’t the alarmists. ”
The weather is highly variable. No matter what the climate trends, we could get a few big tropical storms hitting cities during the next year or two. Blamed, of course, on climate change. That might panic people into supporting activists’ programs.
Similar things have happened many times in the past, and can again.
“In September 2016, carbon-dioxide levels in the air crossed the dreaded 400 ppm threshold”
I thought 350 ppm was the dreaded threshold (as in 350.org). Which Rubicon are we not supposed to cross?
When the dreaded 350 ppm threshold was “reached and breached”, it became a mere threshold and tossed down the memory hole (wonder if the wunderkinds have 400.org, 450.org, 500.org parked? Not gonna risk looking….)
The “dreaded” part is only added to the NEXT totally NOT made up measure…
Is Griff a stage of Grieff ?
Inquiring minds want to know !…/grin
‘don’t grieve, organise’
Would it be fair to force the same scaremongers who told us (based on all that science) that there was a permanent drought in California to take some responsibility for moving a public policy forward that meant they didn’t fix a dam because the money was better spent on, I dunno, a conference in an exotic locale?
Forget climate alarmism, that is so last century.
There’s a new alarmist scare they can all migrate to – Asteroid Impact.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4227220/Earth-NOT-ready-asteroid-impact-expert-warns.html
‘It may not be the greatest risk or highest profile short term risk confronting earth, but if you make an assessment of what insurance premium it is worth paying in order to reduce impact, you would come up with a figure of several hundred million euros a year – which the world should be spending to reduce this risk.’
They just have to follow the money….
Problem is they can’t blame asteroid impact on man’s actions, and thus can’t use it as a means of controlling their fellow man.
lawrence,
Asteroids are a real and serious threat, and illustrate the complexity of dealing with shockwaves — low probability, high impact risks. There are many of them, so looking at them individually doesn’t work well (we could go broke fast by “adequately” funding them all). As we should all have learned from the climate wars!
Here are some posts looking at this “threat from the sky”: https://fabiusmaximus.com/tag/asteroid/
Lawrence,
Asteroids are real. They have hit the earth before. They still exist and we have already cataloged many earth orbit crossers, but certainly not all. These are all objective facts. From these it is reasonable to extrapolate that asteroids will strike the Earth again. We don’t know when, or how big they will be. So while it’s probably a good idea to keep a lookout for anything large enough to do real damage, the general prescription of increasing our technology and becoming a multi planet species still applies. Most of these threats, including extreme climate change (like ice ages) are best dealt with in the same way.
We had a big air burst over Russia just a couple of years ago.
Had the rock been a few feet bigger or come down over a more populated area, there would have been deaths from it.
I don’t expect there will ever be Acceptance (stage 5). Nothing comes close to the political and economic power would-be leaders can derive by manipulating our production of CO2.
R Taylor,
“I don’t expect there will ever be Acceptance (stage 5).”
Follow the money. Climate activism is well funded. Continued failure to achieve public policy action will eventually result in the money being re-allocated to other campaigns.
Look at the high profile climate activists. Many of them are in effect paid activists. As budgets change, so will they. Don’t cry for them! They’ll find new crusades to work.
The IPCC has said several times that most climate scientists agree humans are the cause for more than half the warming over the last 100 years. If climate computer models are in line with that vast majority opinion that they claim then the climate computer models would still show some warming if their simulation of human impacts on climate is removed. Because the consensus they claim is not that humans are responsible for ALL the warming, just more than half. So shouldn’t they show the predictions with no human impact along with their predictions with human impact so we can see what delta they are predicting caused by human activities? Since they don’t show predictions with human activities removed people will assume the prediction would be a ZERO increase in global average temperatures with no human impacts, which is not consistent with what they say is the overwhelming consensus.
” the consensus they claim is not that humans are responsible for ALL the warming, just more than half.”
“All of …” is a proper subset of the set “more than half of …”
That is true, but why would you use a phrase that implies something 1/2 of what you really mean, especially in scientific matters? If they really meant ALL or NEARLY ALL, then by scientific practice that is exactly what they should have said, rather than “more than half”, which implies something closer to 51%. Using this type of deceptive language is something that politicians would use, not scientists.
” why would you use a phrase that implies something 1/2 of what you really mean”
Why do you assume that they meant something other than what they said? The message was that human activity is the largest component of warming, the majority of it, and therefore the best place for us to put our effort into. They weren’t trying to convey that it is 50.001% or 75% or 99.999% or 100%. You’re reading something into their statement that isn’t there, and then criticizing what you yourself invented.
bob, do you have a point? Or do you just enjoy making yourself look pedantic?
“do you have a point?”
I’m pointing out that what Steve said in his comment was wrong. Did you not realize that?
“Or do you just enjoy making yourself look pedantic?”
A little precise language makes a nice contrast to the sloppy thinking and writing found in this kind of blog.
We can say with absolute certainty that scientists do not understand the main factors that control climate change. The evidence is the pause, the absence of a hotspot and the failure of many alarmist predictions. The latest models which constitute the best simulation of climate are failures as judged by normal scientific standards.
However, climate science is not normal science. The shocking state of basic measurements, the lack of scientific transparency, proper archiving and quality control suggest poor discipline and sloppy methodology. The culture of cherry picking, data manipulation, deletion of data, intimidation of critics, pal review, bullying of journal editors and publication of misleading results are not accepted in normal science.
Yes, you listed the situation pretty well. I hope that this situation could be solved by starting the investigation about the temperature data sets of GISS. Thereafter everything starts to go forward pretty much with its own weight. Let us hope that Trump can do it. Just official investigation about the GISS versions.
Climbing on my favorite hobby horse whenever Larry Kummer writes a WUWT guest article — after all, a hobby horse is no fun if you can’t keep on riding it — once again I offer my opinion that the public debate over the validity of today’s climate science will not reach critical mass unless and until government begins demanding real sacrifice on the part of the American people in the name of fighting climate change, something which the government has so far refused to do.
So far, the only Americans being asked to make real sacrifice in the fight against climate change are the coal miners and their families. However, they are a relatively small group of people who are a dying breed anyway as a consequence of the powerful market forces now working against them, mostly cheap natural gas.
Donald Trump and the Republicans will give coal miners a temporary reprieve from the specter of the Clean Power Plan. But unless the courts eventually rule it unconstitutional, the CPP and other faux climate action programs will be making a comeback once the Democrats return to power.
How soon will that happen?
The winds of political change are fickle. If Trump and the Republicans don’t deliver on their economic promises, and if incidents like the Flynn fiasco become a regular feature of Trump-style governance, the Democrats could be back in power as soon as 2020 with a strong mandate to do it their way.
Climate change will once again be at the forefront of their public policy agenda, polemically at least.
But will the Democrats resume their past habit of talking loudly about climate change while at the same time refusing to promote the kinds of aggressive anti-carbon measures needed to force a quick reduction in America’s carbon emissions?
Such measures would include enactment of a revenue-positive carbon tax, restrictions on the supply and availability of all carbon fuels, aggressively-enforced energy conservation measures, and an aggressively-enforced set of anti-carbon regulations that touch every nook and cranny of the American economy.
Once they are back in power, will the Democrats return to business as usual? Will they talk loudly about climate change while at the same time refusing to push any actions which might demand real sacrifice on the part of the American public, the kind of actions and the kind sacrifice that’s absolutely necessary if steep emission reductions are to be achieved?
Greenpeace, Sierra Club, NRDC, and others have annual budgets in excess of $100 million. They are larger than some publicly traded companies. That’s despite EPA data showing emissions from six major pollutants have declined 63% since 1980.
The issue is not going away. There is too much money to be hoovered up by the environmental zealots, activists, and the “alternative” energy companies who buy Democrats for the purpose of using the tax code to fleece the politically unconnected by forcing them to buy uneconomic energy via mandates and using the taxes the politically unconnected pay to subsidize the politically connected producers of uneconomic energy.
There is way too much money at stake in a wholly corrupt system. Thinking it is on its last legs is wishful thinking.
I believe it is on public record a certain set of brothers involved in fossil fuel have put 88 billion dollars since 1995 into organisations opposed to the science of climate change.
The amount of money going to Heartland and the GWPF, etc is immense
No “set of brothers involved in fossil fuel have put 88 billion dollars since 1995 into organisations opposed to the science of climate change.” You can’t produce any documents to support that false assertion, so why make it?
The Heartland Institute took in a paltry $4.5 million in donations last year.
http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2015/363/309/2015-363309812-0ce4733e-9.pdf
The Koch Brothers, if that is the mysterious “set of brothers” you refer to, were major funders of the Berkeley Earth project.
Ah, yes, the big project run by a known skeptic that all the other skeptics hoped would cast further doubt on AGW. It ended up doing just the opposite, and the former skeptic running it is one no more. Project Director Richard Muller:
Sad.
Muller was never a skeptic.
He claims he was, in the text I quoted. Is this the “no true Scotsman” effect, in which any member of the tribe who disavows the tribe’s beliefs was automatically never a member?
Yes, and another claimed you could keep your doctor. I find it hard to believe you are that naive.
Possibly one of the stupidest responses I’ve ever seen. Are you Jim Hoft?
Stupid to those who believe no one lies. You do know what a lie is, right? You have made several. The most recent of which is contained in your response.
LOL! Show us that record. You claim it is. And yet, even the richest man in the world has not had that kind of money.
You are not even trying to be believable.
From he evidence I think we can say that Muller was a skeptic, but not a denier. He was a skeptic in the genuine sense. He saw what he though were problems and he set about testing those problems. When he got the data he accepted it and concluded that the problems had not resulted in he erroneous results he had feared.
[Muller was never a skeptic, he’s a bait and switch artist – Anthony]
An excellent example of the ad hominem argument; if you don’t like the message, attack the messenger.
The classic bell curve of alarmist over-reach tactics still holds. At this point in the curve it is not just a metric like low rankings of public concerns. It has actually reached a point of mass distrust and negative rank values in the ratings associated with it and the people and groups still slinging it. The public is smarter than the PR strategists give them credit for. Alternatively, the key strategists are not in full control and cannot control the juvenile delinquent types that pollute the message. At any rate it is now a negative issue that generates red flags among the public and voters rather than just low ratings or neutral responses. It is also like quick sand in that the more they try to innovate and reshape the same basic lost cause message the more they sink as the public learns to read the signaling with greater skill. Not understanding that skills change is further evidence of the narrow minded PR approach.
What a bunch of bull. One of the major issues that climate science is studying is how to separate natural variability and the warming trend. To do this, we have to learn more about the dynamics of internal variability and how various cycles interact with each other and at different time scales. This is not being ignored at all. Uncertainty about future temperature increases and other effects also has to do with poorly understood thresholds for sudden phase changes, as well as possible positive and negative feedbacks. Negative feedbacks would be great, but we have to discount the risks involved in (uncertain!) positive feedbacks.
webej
“One of the major issues that climate science is studying…” – ABSOLUTE NONSENCE! This is settled science; we ain’t “studying” nothing! We’ve moved into saving the world (well, actually, taxing the world).
Griff will confirm this as soon as he gets more boilerplate from the mother ship. He will be here any minute…
Would this be the same guys who proclaimed that global warming had so overwhelmed natural variability that it no longer made any sense to talk about natural variability?
If the “climate scientists” actually behaved as you claim, then there would be no problem with them.
I’ll start worrying about positive feedbacks when someone can finally manage to find one.
Simple thought experiment is sufficient to disprove any belief in substantial positive feed backs.
We’re still here.
Had the climate been dominated by positive feed backs life would have ended back when CO2 levels topped 5000ppm.
The natural trends are quite clear, as is the evidence that warming is adding an additional level of change on top of natural cycles.
you only need to look at arctic sea ice for an example.
Much lower than the low point in the 1940s and continuing to decline. That shows the warming influence on top of the natural cycle/variation.
Not all activists move at the same speed. Griff is still in denial.
” and their leading edge is moving into the final stage of acceptance — and finding new crusades to wage.”
and that would be “social justice” with schools as their lever because only evil people would deny all kids a chance to succeed in their mind, to have equal schools for all our whole culture and our entire economic system will have to be erased everyone must be made equal on all accounts no more choice no more capitalism no more local control but don’t worry citizens, the experts will tell us what to do when how and how much
If the CO2/carbon situation is as critical as climate alarmists claim, then rationing of fossil fuels should be imposed.
When will alarmists demand rationing? Probably never as this would prompt the public to look into what their real agenda is.
“When will alarmists demand rationing?”
There’s no real call for rationing. A carbon tax, like that one being proposed by Republicans in Congress, will serve the purpose.
Only if the purpose is political suicide!
The purpose is to prevent or alleviate massive levels of human suffering and death, and the loss of tens of trillions of dollars of the resources of the nation. I realize that “skeptics” don’t care about that because they’re worried it might cost them some of their money. Saving lives is unimportant compared to that.
The loss of life and $$? Seems they are doing that all on their own as it is. Starvation and imposed costs with no results. I guess that is why liberals love it.
Just how is a carbon tax-giving more money to the federal government, supposed to limit global warming?
Having users of fossil fuels pay the full cost of their activities, instead of spreading those costs among everybody, reduces “The Tragedy of the Commons” and strengthens the economic “Invisible Hand.” They will tend to use less and find alternatives. The laws establishing those taxes would also specify that the increase in revenue be used to fund other conservation efforts. For example, replacing all lighting in government buildings with LEDs would have a huge effect on energy use.
What purpose is that, electing Democrats? No Republican in Congress is proposing a carbon tax. To do so would be political suicide. Bernie Sanders or Sheldon Whitehouse might get away with it, but no Republican that voted for it would be reelected. It the last Congress a resolution against a carbon tax passed with every Republican’s support.
James Baker and Hank Paulson will be politely ignored.
Talking about natural variability means that we know almost nothing about the climate change. We know that El Nino can increase the global temperature even by 0.6 C degrees during few months. But still we do not know why the temperature during the Little Ice Age was about 1.0 C degrees lower than today. Both belong to the class of natural variability but they have different meaning. If we would know exactly the latter case, we would have solved 80 % of causes of the global warming.
Alan McIntyre, how’d you support a declaration
“As Gavin Schmidt, Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Principal Investigator for the GISS ModelE Earth System Model, put it, ‘In science, nothing is ever known perfectly. Is there remaining uncertainty in the exact value of gravity? Yes.”
staying calm.
Everybody feel free to correct my where I’m wrong:
1. g = 9.80665
2. g (earth, nowadays) = 9.80665 but we have to consider the contemporary mass of earth when computing
3. so what.
g is not even constant on earth’s surface. Gavin Schmidt was talking about the G in Newton’s formula,
F=GMm/(r^2)
People like Gavin Schmidt, Al Gore and Allan McIntyre will denounce Physics to defend their gain.
Just who are you talking about? My name is Alan McIntire: I saw no posts by “Allan McIntyre”
I did’t take Gavin Schmidt’s word for it. I checked it out and provided a link showing that G is known only to 3 significant digits. He was talking about Newton’s constant,
F = GMm/(r^2).
And where did I “denounce Physics”?
True, but we may be beginning to figure out why that is:
Why do measurements of the gravitational constant vary so much?
Science marches on.
How can the recorded pauses in warming be reconciled with the idea of warming caused by greenhouse gases? Where do the greenhouse gases go during the pauses? How effective can CO2 be in slowing heat dissipation from the Earth’s surface if there is only one cubic foot of CO2 for every 2500 cubic feet of atmosphere?
1. You might add that the effect of Co2 is logarithmic. It takes an increase of atmospheric content from
1 to 2. 4. 8. 16. 32, 64 etc to get an increase in wattage from
x to roughly 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24 etc. From Trenberth’s, radiation figures, the surface gets about 490 watts, 390 in sensible heat, 100 in the latent heat of vaporization of water and in convection.
From the Stefan-Boltzmann formula, temperature is proportional to the fourth ROOT of radiation.
earth’s average temperature NOW is about 288 K. Plug in the figures, and we WOULD get a 4C increase in temperatures, but only in the event that atmospheric CO2 increases by a factor of 64 and all of the additional wattage goes into sensible heat rather than latenet heat. – We”l run out of economically recoverable fossil fuel and switch to nuclear power LONG before that point, rainfall and clouds would ALSO increase, further reducing that 4C increase in world temperatures.
CO2 DOES increase temperatures, but the increase is too piddling to notice, washed out by natural variations.
2. In reply to bobmunck
“Given that the scale height of the atmosphere is 8400m or about 27,500 feet, heat from the Earth’s surface has to penetrate a full eleven feet of pure carbon dioxide to escape from the biosphere. That’s quite a bit.”
If the scale height of the atmosphere is 840 meters, heat from earth’s surface would have to penetrate 840 meters of atmosphere as dense as at earth’s surface. Where do you get the 11 feet? Are you adding the assumption that our atmosphere is pure CO2 as dense as our current atmosphere at sea level?
YOu’ve also got to add in that not all infrared radiation is blocked by CO2, only a small fraction is. From
MIchael Hammer’s post here,
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2009/03/radical-new-hypothesis-on-the-effect-of-greenhouse-gases/
“…Solving Planck’s equation on a spreadsheet for a 288 K source at wavelength increments of 0.2 microns and then numerically integrating yields energies as follows;
Below 8 microns 45 watts/m2
8 microns to 14 microns 143 watts/m2
14 microns to 15.5 microns 28 watts/m2
Above 15.5 microns 174 watts/m2”
CO2 affects only the 14 to 15.5 micron range, 28 watts out of 390, or 7.2% of earth’s infrared radiation.
Your statement is true, but I would point out that the actual scale height is 8400 meters, not 840.
By using William Everett’s approximation that 400 ppm of CO2 corresponds to one foot of CO2 to 2500 feet of the atmosphere. 8400 meters divided by 2500 and converted to feet.
I made no assumptions about the percentage blocked.
Reconciliation is easy because the pauses exist only in the minds of “skeptics,” not in the real world. They’re an idea/fairy tale produced by cherry-picking and mathematical tricks, not something factual. You’ve been duped.
Given that the scale height of the atmosphere is 8400m or about 27,500 feet, heat from the Earth’s surface has to penetrate a full eleven feet of pure carbon dioxide to escape from the biosphere. That’s quite a bit.
Trenberth is a skeptic? Since when? Now you are just making stuff up.
@philjourdan: You’re a Trump supporter, aren’t you?
Reading Michael Hammer’s post, see link above, I learned something in addition to what was posted.
See the figure in section 4 here:
https://neutrium.net/heat_transfer/blackbody/
Note that as temperature increases, the amount of radiation between 14 and 15.5 microns ALSO increases, but not as rapidly as the temperature. That means, as earth’s temperature rises, the FRACTION, not the absolute amount, of the radiation intercepted by CO2 DECREASES- another negative feedback- though small with small temperature differences.
The pauses exist on the temperature graphs provided by NOAA they are not imaginings. Look at earlier versions of the graphs not the recent ones that are designed to mislead. The temperature readings used to complete these graphs are taken about four feet above the surface of the Earth. The heat they detect is that that has been reflected by the Earth’s surface. I would then think that whatever effect carbon dioxide was going to have on these temperature measurements would have to occur within four feet of the Earth’s surface.
The record of temperature change since1880, as provided by government agencies in the UK and US, can be a valuable tool for predicting future temperature. A host of computer models constructed by “scientists” failed to predict that the warming period that began in the mid 70’s would end around 2002. A person who had noticed a possible pattern to the temperature change shown in official temperature records might well have predicted the end of the warming period mentioned within a year or two. I am alarmed at the press releases and the website content of the official measuring agencies in this country (NOAA and GISS). They seem to be attempts to mislead the public into believing that warming is continuous. Warming is occurring but it is not continuous and the past products of these agencies show that. Their recent public pronouncements cause me to wonder about whether the future measuring duties of these organizations will be corrupted in order to bolster their apparent buy-in to the belief that man is the cause of global warming.
Those are values for air temperature. Global warming is the increase in thermal energy of the entire biosphere, not just the atmosphere. The ocean masses about 300 times as much as the atmosphere (1.4E21 kg vs. 5.2E18), and water has four times the specific heat capacity of air (4.18 J⋅g^(−1)⋅K^(−1) vs 1.00). Looking at atmospheric temperatures is only looking at 0.1% of GW. (Actually less than that when you take heat of fusion and heat of vaporization into account.)
You don’t think that the carbon dioxide in the entire atmosphere, not just the bottom four feet, would affect the amount of thermal energy impinging on the surface? What a strange assumption. You don’t appear to understand the situation at all.
What I believe is that the heat reflected from the Earth’s surface begins to dissipate immediately and continuously as distance from the surface increases. It is the level of heat near the surface that is felt by humans, animals and plants. If the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 400 parts per million (one part per 2500 parts) then I would assume that is the level that will act upon the heat close to the Earth. Additionally, if air temperature is not a realistic measure of global warming then why do the current arguments over whether or not there is AGW focus on air temperature data?
Well, sure, but the gradient with altitude isn’t very steep. The temperature 100 and 1000 feet above ground is pretty much the same as at ground level.
Because most “skeptics” can’t understand anything more complex than simple mechanisms like those determining air temperature, so it’s all they can argue about. Actual climate scientists are discussing much more complex and subtle things like ocean salinity and wind patterns. (Typical title from the current edition of Nature: “The adsorption of fungal ice-nucleating proteins on mineral dusts: a terrestrial reservoir of atmospheric ice-nucleating particles.” Imagine the “skeptical” commenters here trying to understand what a supercooled cloud is.)
That climate models make predictions is a myth.
Definition: “X is a model of Y if X can be used to answer a given set of questions about Y.” Climate models may be constructed to answer questions about future states of the climate, but they must be designed to do so. Most are not.
bobmunck:
I would explain the phenomenon of non-prediction by the global warming models by pointing out that prediction occurs by assignment of values to conditional probabilities. For assignment of these values, sampling units of various descriptions must be counted but for no such model is the underlying statistical population identified.
I used to teach Prob. & Stats., so I know that what you wrote is gibberish. It might have fooled most of the commenters here though, so good try. W.C. Fields would have been proud of you.
bobmunck:
Your response to my claim is of the form of an ad hominem argument. An ad hominem argument is illogical. Do you have a logical argument to share with ut?
Sure, I could just quote what you wrote; it’s prima facie gibberish. I didn’t feel that necessary because your text immediately precedes my comment.
I’ve looked at a bunch of your comments in your DISQUS profile; you do this a lot, don’t you? The gobbledygook argument?
bobmunck:
Real scientists make logical arguments. Phonies don’t.
Wow, you actually understood my point. Now try to do it.
bobmunck:
Do you claim to have made a logical argument in the course of our conversation? If so, kindly share the identity of this argument with us.
Yes. I stated that what you wrote was gibberish, gobbledygook, word-salad. The truth of that is clear; your words speak for themselves.
I’ve made quite a few comments in this thread, most of them responding to actual cogent arguments by others. Read them.
bubmunck:
The argument that you reference is not a “logical” argument for it is not of the form of such an argument.
If you were capable of understanding what a logical argument is, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
bobmunck:
No. When an argument is “logical” it is of one of several forms. Your argument is not of one of these forms. You are muddying the waters by stating falsehoods and wasting my time/. Good bye.
Short answer again – no. BS Artists are never at a lack of obfuscation and proliferation of words signifying nothing.
An interesting sentence. It probably sounded better in the original Jabberwocky.
Relief from the artist was short lived. Again, lacking knowledge, he tries BS.
I notice you’re completely unable to address the NOAA article. It does, after all, refute your argument.
Actually no it does not. Again, we are not talking quantity. Given you do not understand that, I find your “claim” of having “taught” Prob & Stats to be highly improbable.
It identifies the “flavor” of CO2 uniquely produced by human activity and quantifies the CO2 of that flavor in the atmosphere. Exactly what you argued wasn’t being done. Deny all you want, but I’m sure you know you’re lying.
It identifies the “flavor” of CO2 uniquely produced by human activity and quantifies the CO2 of that flavor in the atmosphere. Exactly what you argued wasn’t being done. Ignore the truth all you want, but I’m sure you know you’re being dishonest.
Short answer – no. He is not capable.
At Brown? That figures.
The air temperature inches from ground level is not the same as the surface temperature.
Science as it’s done in the modern world is overdue for a reassessment. One example is Milankovitch rhythms, mentioned here as the undisputed source of ice ages due to decreased insolation because of Earth’s orbital motions. One problem with this is the opposite effects of insolation in the northern and southern hemispheres, requiring additional forcing effects to make the process work. What if the driving forces were not insolation at all, but gravitational working on Earth’s delicately balanced plate tectonic system? And what if associated non-explosive volcanism elevated above sea level, as in Iceland, has a global warming effect through its non-production of aerosols and its release of HCl, which depletes ozone and thus allows greater UV-B irradiation of the planet? Clearly, there’s a lot of factors that haven’t been considered here, and this is just a small sample of those. In my new book, “The Real World, A Synthesis,” available as an ebook and a print edition on amazon,com, I consider these and a wide range of other scenarios, all of which are based on two things, hard evidence and consistency with what is actually known from such evidence about the operation of the Earth system. Commentary is welcome. Thanks!
David Bennett Laing:
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to comment. I would add to hard evidence and consistency with what is known from such evidence consistency with logic. Consistency with logic is not currently a feature of the methods of global warming climatology.
Over many centuries the quality of products of research suffered from the lack of a solution to the problem of induction. The problem was of how, in a logically justified manner, to reach general conclusions from specific instances of them. In 1963, the theoretical physicist Ronald E. Christensen solved this problem through an application of information theory. Like most scientists, climatologists ignored this advance. They continued to reach general conclusions from specific instances of them in a logically unjustified manner as was their tradition.. .
According to the table of U. S. Standard Atmospheric Heights and Temperatures, The temperature at 0 feet altitude is 59.0 degrees F. and the temperature at 1000 feet altitude is 55.4 F. Thereafter the temperature decrease for each 1000 feet of altitude is close to uniform at either 3.5 or 3.6 degrees. This is an indication that distance from the Earth’s surface governs the temperature decrease without any additional noticeable influences. However, water vapor, at its higher fluctuation levels, appears to have some influence on temperature in an ambiguous manner. Limiting heat loss at night and heat gain during daytime. It should be remembered that atmospheric water vapor at those levels has almost 100 times the presence of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The current sparse cover of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would not seem to have any noticeable effect on temperature except in the minds of some politicians and their followers, scientific and otherwise.
You’re declaring that all the 1000-foot intervals show identical temperature decreases based on what just one of them is? What’s the decrease from 1000 feet to 2000 feet? From 33000 feet to 34000 feet? Is it 3.5 or 3.6 all the way up?
Actually, your conclusion is the exact opposite. You’re claiming that the temperature decrease is a uniform 3.55 ± 0.5°F no matter what the distance from the Earth’s surface.