Guest essay by Lance Wallace
For several months, the New York Times has been running a permanent feature on climate change. They direct their readers to this feature with the promise that it will answer their questions.
Will it really? Let’s see. My responses are in italic below each item.
Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change
NOV. 28, 2015
The issue can be overwhelming. The science is complicated. Predictions about the fate of the planet carry endless caveats and asterisks.
We get it.
So we’ve put together a list of quick answers to often-asked questions about climate change. This should give you a running start on understanding the problem.
1. How much is the planet heating up?
1.7 degrees is actually a significant amount.
As of October 2015, the Earth had warmed by about 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880, when records begin at a global scale. That figure includes the surface of the ocean. The warming is greater over land, and greater still in the Arctic and parts of Antarctica.
Richard Muller’s Berkeley group (BEST) has pushed the starting point back to 1800. What that shows is a similar rise in temperature (land only) of about 0.5 degrees C (0.9 degrees F) from 1800-1880. Isn’t that interesting? Long before the rise of CO2, we have the earth emerging from the depths of the Little Ice Age, temperatures rising for more than 200 years now. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/from:1850/to:1880/trend/plot/best/from:1800/to:1850/trend
The number may sound low, but as an average over the surface of an entire planet, it is actually high, which explains why much of the world’s land ice is starting to melt and the oceans are rising at an accelerating pace. The heat accumulating in the Earth because of human emissions is roughly equal to the heat that would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs exploding across the planet every day.
The temperature has been higher in the past. During the Holocene Optimum, for example (Shakun et al, 2013). From 10,000 to 6,000 years before present, the temperatures were perhaps 0.7 degrees C above the low reached at the end of the Little Ice Age. See Fig. 1 in http://science.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1198/tab-pdf
Marcott, S.A., Shakun, J.D., Clark, P.U., Mix, A.C. A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years Science 08 Mar 2013: Vol. 339, Issue 6124, pp. 1198-1201 DOI: 10.1126/science.1228026.
The authors conclude: Current global temperatures of the past decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of the Holocene temperature history.
(Note: It is unfortunate that Marcott, whose Ph.D. thesis led to the above article in Science, was persuaded to publish a later article in which the high-resolution temperature measurements of the last few decades were appended to his low-resolution (100 year average) estimates in an attempt to show that present temperatures were “unprecedented”. Of course, if it were possible to increase his resolution, there could well have been periods in which short-term (decadal) averages reached quite high levels.)
[oceans rising at an accelerated pace] Arguable. Church and White (2006) find an acceleration of 0.013 + 0.006 mm per year per year. If the acceleration is constant until 2100, the rise would be 31 cm (one foot). But the tide gauges, the glacial isostatic adjustments, the land subsidence or rise due to continental drift are so uncertain that it seems extremely difficult to use our limited short-term measurements to reliably extract an acceleration signal.
[400,000 atomic bombs] Fear-mongering.
Scientists believe most and probably all of the warming since 1950 was caused by the human release of greenhouse gases. If emissions continue unchecked, they say the global warming could ultimately exceed 8 degrees Fahrenheit, which would transform the planet and undermine its capacity to support a large human population.
Some scientists, most dependent on Federal funds for their research. What would happen to them if their research showed something different?
Human emissions are about 5% of the total carbon flux. If they were the cause of increasing temperatures after 1950, what caused the increase between 1910 and 1940, which was nearly identical to that between 1975 and 1998? What caused the pause between 1998 and 2015? What caused the increased temperatures around 1000-1300, when the Vikings were growing grapes in Greenland? CO2 emissions cannot account for these variations. Please ask your climate scientists for the explanation for these earlier temperature changes. If they cannot supply the reason, why could not the present-day reason be related to these earlier increases?
2. How much trouble are we in?
For future generations, big trouble.
The risks are much greater over the long run than over the next few decades, but the emissions that create those risks are happening now. Over the coming 25 or 30 years, scientists say, the climate is likely to resemble that of today, although gradually getting warmer. Rainfall will be heavier in many parts of the world, but the periods between rains will most likely grow hotter and therefore drier. The number of hurricanes and typhoons may actually fall, but the ones that do occur will draw energy from a hotter ocean surface, and therefore may be more intense, on average, than those of the past. Coastal flooding will grow more frequent and damaging.
Maybe. But if the destructive potential is due to the collision of hot and cold air masses, as some have shown, then the colder air masses will be warmer and the difference no longer so great. By the way, we have now gone 4000 days (a new record) with no hurricanes of level 3 or higher making landfall in the US.
Longer term, if emissions continue to rise unchecked, the risks are profound. Scientists fear climate effects so severe that they might destabilize governments, produce waves of refugees, precipitate the sixth mass extinction of plants and animals in Earth’s history, and melt the polar ice caps, causing the seas to rise high enough to flood most of the world’s coastal cities.
This all depends on the unvalidated predictions of global climate models. For the last 20 years, these models have run hot by a factor of at least two compared to satellite and weather balloon measurements. The models have an average sensitivity of 3.2 degrees C per doubling of CO2. But most recent estimates are in the neighborhood of 1.6 degrees C per doubling. (Otto et al, 2013, Lewis 2014, Lewis and Curry 2016). The models have inadequate resolution to deal with actual important climate-affecting processes, such as thunderstorms and cloud formation. They have to be smeared over their smallest possible cell of one square degree (3600 square miles) so evolution from any initial conditions rapidly approach chaos within a few years of model time. See Lorenz about 1963 for the first demonstration of chaos in weather prediction.
All of this could take hundreds or even thousands of years to play out, conceivably providing a cushion of time for civilization to adjust, but experts cannot rule out abrupt changes, such as a collapse of agriculture, that would throw society into chaos much sooner. Bolder efforts to limit emissions would reduce these risks, or at least slow the effects, but it is already too late to eliminate the risks entirely.
[collapse in agriculture]. Increased CO2 has been associated with increases in food production, perhaps accounting for 15-25% of the observed increase. 50% of the earth’s surface has greened due to CO2 rise compared to 4% that has browned. This alone makes the social cost of carbon negative, (i.e., a benefit to plant growth, as all greenhouse operators know).
The “too late” comment depends on the Bern model of CO2 residence time in the atmosphere. The Bern model includes a portion of the emissions that are assumed just to persist in the atmosphere for basically forever. But the nuclear tests in the atmosphere provided a natural experiment, raising the level of C14 while they were occurring and then with their abrupt end, providing a direct measurement of the residence time in the atmosphere, which is in the neighborhood of 10-15 years.
3. Is there anything I can do?
Fly less, drive less, waste less.
You can reduce your own carbon footprint in lots of simple ways, and most of them will save you money. You can plug leaks in your home insulation to save power, install a smart thermostat, switch to more efficient light bulbs, turn off the lights in any room where you are not using them, drive fewer miles by consolidating trips or taking public transit, waste less food, and eat less meat.
Perhaps the biggest single thing individuals can do on their own is to take fewer airplane trips; just one or two fewer plane rides per year can save as much in emissions as all the other actions combined. If you want to be at the cutting edge, you can look at buying an electric or hybrid car, putting solar panels on your roof, or both.
If you want to offset your emissions, you can buy certificates, with the money going to projects that protect forests, capture greenhouse gases and so forth. Some airlines sell these to offset emissions from their flights, and after some scandals in the early days, they started to scrutinize the projects closely, so the offsets can now be bought in good conscience. You can also buy offset certificates in a private marketplace, from companies such as TerraPass in San Francisco that follow strict rules set up by the state of California; some people even give these as holiday gifts. Yet another way: In states that allow you to choose your own electricity supplier, you can often elect to buy green electricity; you pay slightly more, with the money going into a fund that helps finance projects like wind farms.
In the end, though, experts do not believe the needed transformation in the energy system can happen without strong state and national policies. So speaking up and exercising your rights as a citizen matters as much as anything else you can do.
“Fly less, drive less, waste less”. Please pass this message on to the 20,000 people who attend conferences to save the Earth in Rio, Bali, Cancun, and Paris. Electric cars and solar panels cannot compete on their own, so rich people get subsidies and poor people pay higher prices for electricity.
4. What’s the optimistic scenario?
Several things have to break our way.
In the best case that scientists can imagine, several things happen: Earth turns out to be less sensitive to greenhouse gases than currently believed; plants and animals manage to adapt to the changes that have already become inevitable; human society develops much greater political will to bring emissions under control; and major technological breakthroughs occur that help society both to limit emissions and to adjust to climate change.
The two human-influenced variables are not entirely independent, of course: Technological breakthroughs that make clean energy cheaper than fossil fuels would also make it easier to develop the political will for rapid action.
Scientists say the odds of all these things breaking our way are not very high, unfortunately. The Earth could just as easily turn out to be more sensitive to greenhouse gases than less. Global warming seems to be causing chaos in parts of the natural world already, and that seems likely to get worse, not better. So in the view of the experts, simply banking on a rosy scenario without any real plan would be dangerous. They believe the only way to limit the risks is to limit emissions.
“less sensitive to greenhouse gases” Already shown in multiple new estimates of climate sensitivity mentioned above leading to halving the predictions of global warming.
“Global warming … causing chaos… already” Hard statistics on tornadoes, hurricanes, drought, floods, etc. do not support this statement. You point out another important factor below (item 13), where you state that “The Internet has made us all more aware of weather disasters in distant places. On social media, people have a tendency to attribute virtually any disaster to climate change, but in many cases there is no scientific support for doing so.”
5. Will reducing meat in my diet help the climate?
Yes, beef especially.
Agriculture of all types produces greenhouse gases that warm the planet, but meat production is especially harmful – and beef is the most environmentally damaging form of meat. Some methods of cattle production demand a lot of land, contributing to destruction of forests; the trees are typically burned, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Other methods require huge amounts of water and fertilizer to grow food for the cows.
The cows themselves produce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that causes short-term warming. Meat consumption is rising worldwide as the population grows, and as economic development makes people richer and better able to afford meat.
This is worrisome: Studies have found that if the whole world were to start eating beef at the rate Americans eat it, produced by the methods typically used in the United States, that alone might erase any chance of staying below an internationally agreed-upon limit on global warming. Pork production creates somewhat lower emissions than beef production, and chicken is lower still. So reducing your meat consumption, or switching from beef and pork to chicken in your diet, are both moves in the right direction. Of course, as with any kind of behavioral change meant to benefit the climate, this will only make a difference if lots of other people do it, too, reducing the overall demand for meat products.
Good luck with this suggestion. It might make you feel better—a noble cause. But so unlikely to happen!
6. What’s the worst-case scenario?
There are many.
That is actually hard to say, which is one reason scientists are urging that emissions be cut; they want to limit the possibility of any worst-case scenario coming to pass. Perhaps the greatest fear is a collapse of food production, accompanied by escalating prices and mass starvation. Even with runaway emissions growth, it is unclear how likely this would be, as farmers are able to adjust their crops and farming techniques, to a degree, to adapt to climatic changes. Another possibility would be a disintegration of the polar ice sheets, leading to fast-rising seas that would force people to abandon many of the world’s great cities and would lead to the loss of trillions of dollars worth of property and other assets. Scientists also worry about other wild-card scenarios like the predictable cycles of Asian monsoons’ becoming less reliable. Billions of people depend on monsoons to provide water for crops, so any disruptions could be catastrophic.
If this is the greatest fear, then we are certainly saved! Because the 15-25% effect on increased food production already observed can only increase as the great wheat-growing areas in Canada and Russia will come into play.
[Disintegration of polar ice sheets]This disintegration would take millennia.
7. Will a tech breakthrough help us?
Even Bill Gates says don’t count on it, unless we commit the cash.
As more companies, governments and researchers devote themselves to the problem, the chances of big technological advances are improving. But even many experts who are optimistic about technological solutions warn that current efforts are not enough. For instance, spending on basic energy research is only a quarter to a third of the level that several in-depth reports have recommended. And public spending on agricultural research has stagnated even though climate change poses growing risks to the food supply. People like Bill Gates have argued that crossing our fingers and hoping for technological miracles is not a strategy — we have to spend the money that would make these things more likely to happen.
[growing risks to the food supply] Why do you keep saying this without mentioning the already-observed beneficial changes?
8. How much will the seas rise?
The real question is not how high, but how fast.
The ocean is rising at a rate of about a foot per century. That causes severe effects on coastlines, forcing governments and property owners to spend tens of billions of dollars fighting erosion. But if that rate continued, it would probably be manageable, experts say.
The risk is that the rate will accelerate markedly. If emissions continue unchecked, then the temperature at the Earth’s surface could soon resemble a past epoch called the Pliocene, when a great deal of ice melted and the ocean rose by something like 80 feet compared to today. A recent study found that burning all the fossil fuels in the ground would fully melt the polar ice sheets, raising the sea level by more than 160 feet over an unknown period.
With all of that said, the crucial issue is probably not how much the oceans are going to rise, but how fast. And on that point, scientists are pretty much flying blind. Their best information comes from studying Earth’s history, and it suggests that the rate can on occasion hit a foot per decade, which can probably be thought of as the worst-case scenario. A rate even half that would force rapid retreat from the coasts and, some experts think, throw human society into crisis. Even if the rise is much slower, many of the world’s great cities will flood eventually. Studies suggest that big cuts in emissions could slow the rise, buying crucial time for society to adapt to an altered coastline.
[soon resemble the Pliocene]. How soon? Multiple centuries?
9. Are the predictions reliable?
They’re not perfect, but they’re grounded in solid science.
The idea that Earth is sensitive to greenhouse gases is confirmed by many lines of scientific evidence. For instance, the basic physics suggesting that an increase of carbon dioxide traps more heat was discovered in the 19th century, and has been verified in thousands of laboratory experiments.
Climate science does contain uncertainties, of course. The biggest is the degree to which global warming sets off feedback loops, such as a melting of sea ice that will darken the surface and cause more heat to be absorbed, melting more ice, and so forth. It is not clear exactly how much the feedbacks will intensify the warming; some of them could even partially offset it. This uncertainty means that computer forecasts can give only a range of future climate possibilities, not absolute predictions.
But even if those computer forecasts did not exist, a huge amount of evidence suggests that scientists have the basic story right. The most important evidence comes from the study of past climate conditions, a field known as paleoclimate research. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air has fluctuated naturally in the past, and every time it rises, the Earth warms up, ice melts, and the ocean rises. A hundred miles inland from today’s East Coast, seashells can be dug from ancient beaches that are three million years old, a blink of an eye in geologic time. These past conditions are not a perfect guide to the future, either, because humans are pumping carbon dioxide into the air far faster than nature has ever done.
There is also important evidence suggesting the basic story is wrong. All greenhouse gases work by affecting the lapse rate in the tropics. They thus create a “hot spot” in the tropical troposphere. This is admitted even by Gavin Schmidt. The theorized “hot spot” is shown in the early IPCC publications. Yet it has never been seen. Some millions of radiosondes, weather balloons, and satellite measurements (since 1979) have been unable to locate the “hot spot.” As my Caltech physics professor used to say “Doesn’t matter who made the theory, doesn’t matter how many people believe it, if the observations are not there, it is wrong.” (R.P. Feynman).
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the air has fluctuated naturally in the past, and every time it rises, the Earth warms up, ice melts, and the ocean rises.]
This is the most completely false and misleading statement in the whole sidebar. Yes, temperature and CO2 move together, as shown by the Greenland and Antarctica ice cores. But not quite together—for the last four interglacials (last 400,000 years) the temperature rises or falls first—CO2 follows about 600 (+ 400) years later (Fischer et al., 1999). So CO2 cannot be a cause of the observed temperature rise. Temperature could be a cause of the CO2 rise, for example, if as the oceans heat up they emit more CO2 to the atmosphere (Henry’s Law). Some estimates of the ocean overturning time to complete mixing are in the neighborhood of 1000 years, so this is a plausible cause of the CO2 increase. But there may also be something else (e.g., solar insolation) causing the temperature and then the CO2 to increase.
Perhaps you are not aware that Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth used this very argument to show CO2 causes temperature rise. A British court found that this was one of the 9 errors of fact that appear in the movie. The court ruled that any theater showing the movie would need to inform the audience of these 9 errors. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/3310137/Al-Gores-nine-Inconvenient-Untruths.html
Fischer, H., Wahlen, M., Smith, J., Mastroianni, D., and
Deck, B.: Ice core records of atmospheric CO2 around
the last three glacial terminations, Science, 283, 1712–1714,
doi:10.1126/science.283.5408.1712, 1999.
10. Why do people question climate change?
Hint: ideology.
Most of the attacks on climate science are coming from libertarians and other political conservatives who do not like the policies that have been proposed to fight global warming. Instead of negotiating over those policies and trying to make them more subject to free-market principles, they have taken the approach of blocking them by trying to undermine the science.
This ideological position has been propped up by money from fossil-fuel interests, which have paid to create organizations, fund conferences and the like. The scientific arguments made by these groups usually involve cherry-picking data, such as focusing on short-term blips in the temperature record or in sea ice, while ignoring the long-term trends.
The most extreme version of climate denialism is to claim that scientists are engaged in a worldwide hoax to fool the public so that the government can gain greater control over people’s lives. As the arguments have become more strained, many oil and coal companies have begun to distance themselves publicly from climate denialism, but some are still helping to finance the campaigns of politicians who espouse such views.
But in fact conservative politicians and economists are “trying to make [climate change policies] more subject to free-market principles.” The government provides thousands of dollars to rich homeowners to put solar panels on their homes, or to buy electric cars. The government then forces electric utilities to buy solar or wind power as a priority over fossil fuel power and at a higher price. This is of course the opposite of a free-market approach. President Obama has been quoted as saying this will cause electricity rates to “skyrocket” (direct quote). Does he not realize that this is a war on the poor, who spend a much higher percentage of their incomes on electricity? Well, he does realize it, but the noble cause means that some must pay the price. If solar and wind were not subsidized by the government, which makes very bad choices (Solyndra) when it meddles, then they would depend on technological change to bring their prices down to compete with fossil fuels. Once the technology is there, they might then naturally complement the fossil fuels. The present force-feeding before they are ready causes pain. In Germany, over 300,000 homes have been thrown into energy poverty by the Energiewende.
The “ideological position” is that taken by the IPCC, which has convinced various countries, which have spent far more, in the hundreds of billions of dollars, to prop up the war on demon CO2. Consider that there are about 40 separate global climate models, each of which requires millions of dollars to run on supercomputers. Why 40? 39 of them must be wrong.
The main cherry-picking was famously carried out by Michael Mann, who erased the Medieval Warming Period as well as the Little Ice Age from history, at least for a few years until his work was debunked (The Hockey Stick Illusion, by Andrew Montford). The IPCC ran his graph about six times in one of their earlier reports just to make the point that present conditions are unprecedented. After the debunking, his graph has completely disappeared from subsequent reports.
Virtually the entire attention of the IPCC is to the short period from 1950 on. If they went back any further, they would see inconvenient truths, such as the sharp increase in temperature from 1910-1940, which even Phil Jones is on record as saying was undistinguishable from the 1975-1998 increase, the latter of which is supposed to be from CO2.
11. Is crazy weather tied to climate change?
In some cases, yes.
Scientists have published strong evidence that the warming climate is making heat waves more frequent and intense. It is also causing heavier rainstorms, and coastal flooding is getting worse as the oceans rise because of human emissions. Global warming has intensified droughts in regions like the Middle East, and it may have strengthened the drought in California.
In many other cases, though, the linkage to global warming for particular trends is uncertain or disputed. That is partly from a lack of good historical weather data, but it is also scientifically unclear how certain types of events may be influenced by the changing climate.
Another factor: While the climate is changing, people’s perceptions may be changing faster. The Internet has made us all more aware of weather disasters in distant places. On social media, people have a tendency to attribute virtually any disaster to climate change, but in many cases there is no scientific support for doing so.
Tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods are not increasing. See Pielke, Jr., an advisor to insurance companies, for the data.
12. Will anyone benefit from global warming?
In certain ways, yes.
Countries with huge, frozen hinterlands, including Canada and Russia, could see some economic benefits as global warming makes agriculture, mining and the like more possible in those places. It is perhaps no accident that the Russians have always been reluctant to make ambitious climate commitments, and President Vladimir V. Putin has publicly questioned the science of climate change.
However, both of those countries could suffer enormous damage to their natural resources; escalating fires in Russia are already killing millions of acres of forests per year. These countries may think differently, once they are swamped by millions of refugees from less fortunate lands.
Present-day refugees are fleeing violence and poverty, mainly. This statement is more fear-mongering, sounding almost as if the NYT is hoping this will happen.
13. Is there any reason for hope?
If you share this with 50 friends, maybe
Is this a newspaper or an activist Green NGO?
Scientists have been warning since the 1980s that strong policies were needed to limit emissions. Those warnings were ignored, and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have since built up to potentially dangerous levels. So the hour is late.
But after 20 years of largely fruitless diplomacy, the governments of the world are finally starting to take the problem seriously. A deal reached in Paris in December commits nearly every country to some kind of action.
Purely voluntary, no enforcement, China gets a free pass until 2030, Indian premier says no way will he do anything that would slow down his country’s emergence from energy poverty. Meanwhile the developed countries are supposed to cut back on their already small contribution to total emissions and hurt their economies and their people with taxes and higher energy costs. What a great deal!
Religious leaders like Pope Francis are speaking out. Low-emission technologies, such as electric cars, are improving. Leading corporations are making bold promises to switch to renewable power and stop forest destruction. Around the world, many states and cities are pledging to go far beyond the goals set by their national governments.
What is still largely missing in all this are the voices of ordinary citizens.
You just heard the voices of ordinary citizens in the recent election. These ordinary citizens care about jobs and electrical bills, not future uncertain catastrophes. The longer the NYT does not listen to ordinary citizens, the farther from relevance you recede.
Because politicians have a hard time thinking beyond the next election, they tend to tackle hard problems only when the public rises up and demands it.
Except when they get a chance to tax the air you breathe, you will find many who are willing, throughout the EU, Canada, Australia, etc.
14. How does agriculture affect climate change?
It’s a big contributor, but there are signs of progress.
The environmental pressures from global agriculture are indeed enormous.
The demand for food is rising, in large part because of population growth and rising incomes that give millions of once-low income people the means to eat richer diets. Global demand for beef and for animal feed, for instance, has led farmers to cut down huge chunks of the Amazon rain forest.
Efforts are being made to tackle the problems. The biggest success has arguably been in Brazil, which adopted tough oversight and managed to cut deforestation in the Amazon by 80 percent in a decade. But the gains there are fragile, and severe problems continue in other parts of the world, such as aggressive forest clearing in Indonesia.
Scores of companies and organizations, including major manufacturers of consumer products, signed a declaration in New York in 2014 pledging to cut deforestation in half by 2020, and to cut it out completely by 2030. The companies that signed the pact are now struggling to figure out how to deliver on that promise.
Many forest experts at the Paris climate talks in late 2015 considered the pledge as ambitious, but possible. And they said it was crucial that consumers keep up the pressure on companies from whom they buy products, from soap to ice cream.
But as we speak, climate policy in the UK is causing a main energy provider (Drax) to stop using local peat and coal and use instead wood pellets gained from cutting thousands of trees in the Carolinas. These are then transported across the ocean on diesel-powered ships. How’s that for a sensible solution?
15. Will the seas rise evenly across the planet?
Think lumpy.
Many people imagine the ocean to be like a bathtub, where the water level is consistent all the way around. In fact, the sea is rather lumpy – strong winds and other factors can cause water to pile up in some spots, and to be lower in others.
Also, the huge ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica exert a gravitational pull on the sea, drawing water toward them. As they melt, sea levels in their vicinity will fall as the water gets redistributed to distant areas.
How the rising ocean affects particular parts of the world will therefore depend on which ice sheet melts fastest, how winds and currents shift, and other related factors. On top of all that, some coastal areas are sinking as the sea rises, so they get a double whammy.
This argues for infrastructure work at the threatened areas. But a King Canute command to the oceans to stop rising will not get the job done.
16. Is it really all about carbon?
Here’s a quick explainer.
The greenhouse gases being released by human activity are often called “carbon emissions,” just for shorthand. That is because the two most important of the gases, carbon dioxide and methane, contain carbon. Many other gases also trap heat near the Earth’s surface, and many human activities cause the release of such gases to the atmosphere. Not all of these actually contain carbon, but they have all come to be referred to by the same shorthand.
By far the biggest factor causing global warming is the burning of fossil fuels for electricity and transportation. That process takes carbon that has been underground for millions of years and moves it into the atmosphere, as carbon dioxide, where it will influence the climate for many centuries into the future. Methane is even more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, but it breaks down more quickly in the air. Methane comes from swamps, from the decay of food in landfills, from cattle and dairy farming, and from leaks from natural gas wells and pipelines.
While fossil-fuel emissions are the major issue, another major creator of emissions is the destruction of forests, particularly in the tropics. Billions of tons of carbon are stored in trees, and when forests are cleared, much of the vegetation is burned, sending that carbon into the air as carbon dioxide.
When you hear about carbon taxes, carbon trading and so on, these are just shorthand descriptions of methods designed to limit greenhouse emissions or to make them more expensive so that people will be encouraged to conserve fuel.
Let’s not forget that politicians and governments are always on the lookout for new revenue streams. What better to tax than the air we breathe?
Fake News!
What is the fake news, this site or the fake “scientists” refuted here?
[it could also be your comment -mod]
NYT is very fake news. Their mere news has been liberal trash for a long time.
CAGW promoters have long had contradictions with the historical records (e.g. “hottest” vs ice covered parts of Europe and Greenland that were exposed hundreds of years ago; changing the records more than Soviets) and their “science”, the simple earmarks of fraud and collusion.
When ANY person in the news says something, and the reporting public media person says they said something else, THAT is fake news.
The only thing in THAT category that is NOT fake news, is the EXACT words, used by the person in the hews.
For example, If I say I am going to go dancing in the streets in the nude, in seven different countries, which I name, so you know which ones to go to, to report on my antics; it is FAKE news for Anderson Cooper to report that I said I was going to go dancing in the streets in the nude in seven ” mostly Islamic countries. ”
I said no such thing; so that is a lie.
It isn’t rocket science. Report what your subject person said or did; not something else that they did NOT say or do.
G
Fake news is the ever changing outputs of surface temperature data. Just try to explain the consistent changes over the last 40 years.
Geologists are scientists, so are astrophysicists, computer scientists, neuro scientists, engineers, aeronautical engineers, chemists and this list goes. All these clever people get grants and are funded by universities when doing research yet none of the people below question their research and accuse them of making stuff up to get grants. Funny that when it comes to the 3000 scientists who put together the IPCC report most of the people below say these scientists dont know what they doing or they are doing it for the YUGE amount of grant money. Really? That is the argument of a simpleton.
Steve –
I used to be as naive as you clearly are! There is indeed outright distortion and deceit in many branches of science, and probably for the reasons that you cite, although there are others as well. And although it probably isn’t general, there are plenty of examples where such things have been brought out into the open.
In climate science, surely you will be familiar with the extraordinary shenanigans in palaeoclimatology at UEA and Penn State, so meticulously documented and clinically dissected by Steve McKintyre and Ross McKitrick? And even with all that evidence produced by M and M, many of us, believing in the good faith of the scientific establishment, would probably not have been convinced that it was actually happening, were it not for the revelations of the ClimateGate emails..
But you don’t really need to invoke a conscious conspiracy in order to produce these distortions, when you have large cadres of scientists who believe themselves to be saving the planet, and whose very job existence depends upon the maintenance of the theme that has been cultivated thus far. These people are only human! And nor would I suggest that the majority of contributors to IPCC are at all dishonest (they include, or have included, many sceptics in their number, of course). But you will find the actual science of the working groups of IPCC reports is one hell of a lot less frightening than the summaries (what are called the ‘Summaries for Policymakers’) which are politically determined rather than scientifically determined, but which are of course what the mass media is invited to alight upon, and governments are expected to act upon, and which have ingrained themselves in the public consciousness.
I couldn’t really believe I was being railroaded, either. But now I do.
Money corrupts. That isn’t the argument of a simplton, just simple observation.
Actually I’ve gotten academics fired for willful, bad science despite political cover, in industry. It was not easy. This CAGW business is stupefyingly worse for the level of politicization.
Who are “the people below” who are doing this bad stuff ??
G
Man made Global warming is very simple physics. I went to the NASA website its very informative. Of course hubble is bad science as they got government money to put it up there. And the apollo missions and all that other made up stuff.
Calling all 3,000 persons who put together the IPCC report “Scientists” is a bit of a stretch.
A lot of them are simply some form of statistician.
Statistics; like any other branch of mathematics is pure fiction; all made up; it is not science at all, but it is a sometimes very useful art form.
Statistics is in a class by itself.
It always gives the exact correct answer for any real data set.
A real data set is a finite set of finite real known numbers. no other constraints are placed on those numbers, and the rules of statistical algorithms presuppose NO specific relationship of any kind between ANY subset of numbers in that data set.
They can be numbers taken sequentially from the pages of a daily newspaper; with no apparent connection between any two of such numbers. Or they can be numbers calculated from a specific closed form equation.
Makes no difference; you always get a valid result.
And that result always means exactly nothing, except what YOU have elected to call it, and has no importance besides what you define it to have.
Nothing real in the universe pays ANY attention to your statistical machinations; they are simply numerical origami obtained by applying a rigid rule to a qualified data set .
Science on the other hand involves observation and experimentation of, or on real things in the real universe.
Nothing (as in not one single entity of any kind) in ANY branch of mathematics, actually exists ANYWHERE or at any time, in the real universe.
They are all pure fiction conjured up by us in our heads.
And anybody, can make up their own system of mathematics to suit whatever interest or purpose they choose. We do it all the time.
Just a few weeks ago, I defined a system of statistics of COMPLEX numbers (of the form (r) + j (I) )
And gave the algorithm for calculating the average of a data set of complex numbers.
Please feel free to use it if you wish.
G
Ooooooh!
Oh, man!
You went to THE NASA WEBSITE!
Why the hell didn’t you just say so to begin with, so we could have all completely ignored you, Steve?
It may surprise you to know the level of science education and practical experience of the average WAWT commenter.
Know this…your “simple physics” was discovered and then refuted over a hundred years ago, and by everyone who work on the topic since…right up until it was dusted off and trotted out by Big Jim Hansen, and glommed onto by green hordes and liberal elitists for scads of separate and specific reasons…none of which have a single solitary thing to do with physics or any actual science.
Try reading some stuff by people who are not paid to say a certain thing, and who will not be fired, blackballed, and blacklisted, if they speak the truth.
mods, correction to the above…WUWT, not WAWT.
Sorries.
Steve: re your faith in the IPCC: check out the $3 ebook by Donna Laframbois, The Delinquent Teenager . . . (a 10% sample is free), at https://www.amazon.com/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistaken-Worlds-Climate-ebook/dp/B005UEVB8Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1489886400&sr=1-1&keywords=the+delinquent+teenager
Horizontal follow-on, “Into the Dustbin” is also a revelation.
steve d March 18, 2017 at 4:29 pm
“Man made Global warming is very simple physics. I went to the NASA website its very informative.”
It’s not simple at all. It’s probably the most unsettled “science” of the current era. The website you looked at is that of GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) – a little offshoot of NASA that was hijacked by notorious climate alarmist and scaremonger James Hansen in 1981. Did you see anything about “space studies” on the site?
“Of course hubble is bad science as they got government money to put it up there. And the apollo missions and all that other made up stuff.”
Here’s what the REAL scientific talent behind Hubble, Apollo etc. have to say about the efforts of that little sheltered workshop known as GISS:
“We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.”
Read more at http://www.livescience.com/19643-nasa-astronauts-letter-global-warming.html
Have fun!
The summary for policy makers is written by at most a few dozen rabid ideologues and shameless rent-seekers. It doesn’t matter what real scientists say in the supporting documents.
So you all seem to have dismissed NASA, big call! What about the website of the Royal Society or do all know more than them as well. Now that you have proved man made global warming is a hoax i cant wait to see all your names on the short list for the Nobel science prize, by the way, leave your tin foil hats at home they will clash with your tuxedo.
steve d March 18, 2017 at 7:17 pm
“So you all seem to have dismissed NASA, big call! ”
Didn’t you bother to look at the list of NASA scientists who have dismissed GISS as nothing more than “unbridled advocacy”? Here it is again https://www.businessinsider.com.au/nasa-scientists-dispute-climate-change-2012-4 in case you missed it first time round,
“What about the website of the Royal Society or do all know more than them as well. ”
43 of its elected fellows sent a letter protesting that some of the society’s statements, including ones in a pamphlet called “Climate Change Controversies” and comments from Robert May, then president of the society, were oversimplified.
“Now that you have proved man made global warming is a hoax i cant wait to see all your names on the short list for the Nobel science prize”
They don’t give Nobel prizes for debunking shonky pseudoscientific claims. I’m guessing you’re about 15, yes?
(Age or IQ or both)
Steve,
I take back my comment regarding your age.
My new guess is 14 instead of 15.
Listen child, and listen well:
People lie, and people who lie do so repeatedly, and sometimes convincingly.
People have all sorts of reasons to make up the lies they tell, a fact you will come to understand as you grow up. You will be well served to know this ahead of time, so you can be on the lookout for it.
Sometimes the people lying to you will be people in positions of trust and authority, and use misinformation and propaganda to try and bend peoples opinions and ideas to conform with what the liars want people to think, rather than what is the actual truth.
Some lies are mixed with truth, which makes it confusing to sort out which is which.
Some lies are told by people who think the lies are true, learn that as well…and learn that sometimes, people can seem to believe their own lies! Believe it or don’t…some people are such good liars they fool themselves. You will see…you live and you learn.
But perhaps the most egregious thing these liars have done is to feed these lies, wholesale, to young children…school kids. This is calculated…they know that young minds are impressionable, and they wish to make large numbers of people, everyone really, believe the BS, and the fake news, and the propaganda, and the false facts that they are spouting.
They use the teachers, in schools and universities, to indoctrinate all of you young and impressionable minds into the fake world they want you to accept as reality. This may seem unbelievable at first, that those who are entrusted to teach and to educate…to instill knowledge and facts, are instead preaching an ideology, a sort of religion, to their students.
Instead of teaching you how to think, they tell you what to think.
This is perhaps the best clue one might have at first, that something is amiss.
In point of fact, it is actually an accepted truism of logic that the sort of reasoning you have used here is logically fallacious reasoning, and there is a name for it…it is called argumentum ab auctoritate, or, appeal to authority.
To use such reasoning proves exactly nothing.
I will say it again…believing or declaring something to be true because of who said it is a reason with no basis in logic or in science or in fact. I will post a link at the bottom where you can read up on such fallacious reasoning, but I will also point out here something very specific…there is good reason to never ever believe anything just because someone else said it was so. No matter who they are.
Anyone who asks you to believe something because of who they are should be suspected of lying to you…ask for the facts, and never accept “It is true because i said so”.
Ever.
The entire history of science, and many other fields of inquiry, has advanced over time not by gradual accumulation of knowledge but what is called a paradigm shift, in which most or all what was generally believed to be true is found to be false, and discarded…thrown away.
To be replaced with another idea that is in better accord with some what is known.
Examples are both the arcane and the familiar, but in each case, right up until the paradigm shift, there were large groups of so-called “expert” who all believed something which was found out to be completely untrue.
And these experts are the ones who were telling everyone else what was and what was not true, so everyone, or most people, believed it to be true as well.
Modern progress in understanding the world only came about when the idea that some things were obviously true, or true because lots of people believed it, was itself abandoned, and was replaced by what is called the scientific method, in which only what is testable, repeatable, and verifiable. At the heart of this method is experimentation. If experimentation cannot verify what is asserted by hypothesis, the hypothesis must be abandoned or discarded. It matter not one bit who believes what, or who says what…it matters only what can be shown true by repeatable experimentation.
“The Oxford Dictionaries Online define the scientific method as “a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses”.”
Examples of widely believed ideas thrown out by paradigm shifts?
The Heliocentric model of the Solar System.
Spontaneous generation of life.
The phlogiston theory of fire.
Diseases are caused by miasma.
Light waves travel across space in a substance called the aether.
Newtonian model of gravity and physics in general.
Classical mechanics at the microscopic level (replaced by quantum mechanics).
Continents cannot moved across the surface of the Earth.
The age of the Earth.
The source of the Sun’s heat.
Peptic ulcers caused by stress and spicy foods.
In every one of these cases, there were legions of established experts who were very authoritative, and very sure they were correct…and ultimately very wrong.
Some of these were quite recent…we are not talking ancient history here.
There is no one who is correct because of who they are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
Dear menicholas, I suppose you are the only one not lying. How convienient.
menicholas, you left out my favorite false paradigm, “the incredible edible egg”! For decades they told us that if you eat more than two eggs a week IT WILL KILL YOU. i’m always amazed at the gullibility of those who except everything at its face value. (those of us who forget history are doomed to repeat it over and over again) Pay no attention to “steve d’ troll”. He and his flat earther buddies will soon be assigned to the dustbin of history along with all those others who have promoted false paradigms. (if he stuck around long enough — and he won’t, he’d be an embarrassment; he’s no match for the intellects here at “watts at with that”… ☺)
You overlook the fact that whether you’re in geology or astrophysics, if you can link your grant application to climate change you have a better chance of success. That is why scientific inquiry has become so distorted in one direction.
Furthermore, if anyone on your science team says, “I don’t actually believe all that climate propaganda!” then that jeopardises your funding. So, that cannot be allowed to happen.
Not just hypothetical either, I’ve seen it in action at our local uni.
steve d – March 18, 2017 at 9:40 pm
Now steve d, …… which one (1) of these two (2) Religious books have you been “brainwashed” into believing is not lying to you, ……… the Christian Bible or the Islamic Koran?
Given the literal fact that there is far more adamant religious believers and worshippers of the Islamic Koran …… than there are adamant religious believers and worshippers of the Christian Bible, ….. is that also literal proof that the content/context of the Koran is true and factual and “not lying” to any of its believers …… whereas the same can’t be said for the Christian Bible?
Testify, steve d, …….. testify, …… which one is the truth and which one is a lie.
Steve, you said:
“Geologists are scientists, so are astrophysicists, computer scientists, neuro scientists, engineers, aeronautical engineers, chemists and this list goes. All these clever people get grants and are funded by universities when doing research yet none of the people below question their research and accuse them of making stuff up to get grants.”
This is false. We have not discussed these other branches of scientific inquiry on this thread, but we surely have on others.
In fact, it is a downright shame how many research papers, in many fields of inquiry including medical science and related fields, have to be withdrawn, retracted, revised or corrected, because of everything from data manipulation to outright fraud. Entire fields of research have been found to be based on fake science, and in some instances, thought leaders in the field were found to have fabricated everything, or nearly so, that they ever published!
The field of stem cell research comes to mind…I leave it to you to do the homework.
Even in the recent past, articles have been presented here that look at the sad state of affairs regarding research integrity and reliability.
Here are a few links to head you in the proper direction.
You must be new here…skepticism is the hallmark of a good scientist, and a critical mind is required to do good science.
And one more thing…scientists, or would-be scientists, are no more immune to human weakness and failings than any other person.
And yet many people seem to think just being a scientists imbues a person with goodness and removes the possibility of having untoward motives and methods.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/04/big-jump-observed-in-scientific-research-fraud/
http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/27/up-to-50-of-govt-funded-scientific-research-is-totally-flawed-says-new-report/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528826-000-is-medical-science-built-on-shaky-foundations/
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/12520/can-up-to-70-of-scientific-studies-not-be-reproduced
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-suk
Moderators, it seems by using the f word my recent comment needs moderation approval before being posted.
Just a heads up.
Mucho gracias
Do you think that by using the f-word, it actually improves your comment? That it wouldn’t be subject to moderation? Well no, it’s not that, it’s the fact that you have 4 links in it, and that looks like spam to the automated spam filter. So, it gets held for moderation.
TO: Steve D.
A large majority of scientific studies can not be replicated.
There was an article on that subject here recently.
The research of all scientists is in question today, not just scientists on government payrolls hired only if they believe CO2 is the climate controller.
There is no scientific proof that CO2 is the climate controller, and only one decade in 4.5 billion years where manmade CO2 and average temperature rose significantly at the same time (early 1990s to early 2000s).
There is no evidence that the climate in 2017 is unusual (or even unpleasant).
There is no evidence that the very roughly estimated change in the average temperature since 1850, of about 1 degree C., was unusual.
I’m afraid the climate science simpleton is you.
That is not an insult, just my observation — very few people are experts in more than one subject — science is obviously not a general subject you are an expert in.
In the 1970s and 1980s, a series of studies were published showing abortion was numerically, statistically related to subsequent breast cancer (“ABC” hypothesis). Everyone saw this info, and expressed concern over this tentative connection.
This was bad for business. A social approach, rather than a scientific approach, was taken. In short, presently, it is taboo to state the evidence-based possibility that abortion is a risk factor for breast cancer. You cannot even include it, for good measure, as yet another covariate if investigating any study of influences upon breast cancer. You will not get funded, and you will not get published. At least not in the nations of the developed world that also happen to be all ga-ga over manmade global warming: the wealthy Anglosphere.
Here is brief, essential history:
In 2002, NCI held an invited expert panel review of data, and were able to arrive at the desired answer: abortion is not a cause of breast cancer (“Summary Report: Early Reproductive Events and Breast Cancer Workshop”). Astonishingly, Susan Komen felt confident enough to immediately chime in their support, as were other organizations. Surprise, surprise.
The overall approach, and the specific articles, of NCI 2003 ABC have been criticized by Joel Brind, in 2005, in a good analysis: “Induced abortion as an independent risk factor for breast cancer: a critical review of recent studies based on prospective data.” More of the story here: http://abort73.com/abortion/abortion_risks
In short, it is perfectly scientifically proper to continue to keep the abortion-breast cancer issue in play. Yet, it is taboo. In the Anglosphere. The 2003 NCI Report is the “97% consensus” and “MBH1998” of the ABC world.
It is not taboo in other parts of the world. I occasionally scan for emerging studies on this topic. In Eastern Europe and most all of Asia (near East, subcontinent, etc.), this taboo does not exist – or the taboo has much less power. Possibly because their histories with abortion are different from ours, here in the Anglosphere.
Studies keep coming out showing this ABC connection. I have well over a dozen saved away in a file.
Sure, the case-control studies, with the greatest effect, are likely biased by the inherent bias involved in case-control studies where predictors (such as abortion) are heavily influenced by social factors. Risk factors vary wildly – varying by matching strategy.
But the longitudinal epidemiological cohort studies seem to either have little/no effect, or repeat the oft-noted 50% greater risk. So, there is some signal worth investigating.
One aspect is this: if you consider women who did not have a full-term delivery in years soon after the abortion, the risk is more obvious than those who did have a baby. This fits the biological-plausibility aspect: abortion interrupts breast cells as estrogen promotes them to develop to milk-producing state, and they do not naturally return to non-milk-producing state, and so remain at elevated sensitivity to estrogen.
But never mind all of that. It is more important to toe the line, and observe the taboo.
Actually 1.7 deg. F over the entire globe is peanuts.
The total range that could exist simultaneously is more like 270 deg. F.
They should quit lying to us.
G
or a wire tapping ……
Fake news! — I submitted my comments on Justin Gills articles in NYT relating to Climate Change and agriculture. As my comments are critical on the articles, they find no place. At the same time on Dot Earth of Revkin in NYT, most of my comments were included — sometimes he presented Justin Gill articles under Dot Earth.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
I find it fascinating how they have to go back almost 70 years prior to the rise in CO2 concentrations in order to find enough warming to worry about.
A suggestion. You need to bold “My Answer” by each of your responses to make them clear.
I assume they were your responses to the NYT puff piece.
I suggest quotation marks . . when quoting the words of others . . since they could use italics too . .
I do this “””””….. you said this …..”””””
That’s how you can differentiate what I did say, from what I didn’t say but someone else did.
G
You don’t say?
I believe he prefaced them with the notation that his answers were italicized.
How did we allow science to become so horribly distorted for ideological reasons?
Apathy and laziness.
And federal funding
Yes, OPM, the opiate of bad science.
Voting for the wrong people leftists, Socialists, and easy-money politicians who knew where the big money is.
Applying logical constraints to the Left is like pushing a string. Also, people in general are too trusting and when a bunch of flimflam artists show up with enticing arguments, it’s hard to recognize them for what they are.
Science is not so much distorted. NYT and very much of so called MSM is.
Only certain type of people become journalists. Only some of them are employed in MSM. They become more alike when they study and work together. Group think,and illusion of betterness. In the end, just leftism combined with Dunning Kruger.
Here you need to forget that leftism.
hugs, Only certain type of people become journalists.’ you forgot a few words: “Only certain type of people become ARE ALLOWED TO BECOME journalists “
your tax dollars at work.
own it.
The distortion introduced by so-called ‘reporters’ is the greatest issue here. You can’t fake the science (for the truth will always ‘out’) but you can fool most of the people most of the time by using reprehensible abuse of the status of ‘reporter’ and become, instead, a traitor to your profession.
I await the day that reporters grow a (new) set of gonads and do what they profess they do – reveal the truth, expose the lies.
“How did we allow science to become so horribly distorted for ideological reasons?”
Indoctrination, to put it simply, it seems to me, which turned science into a virtual authority figure. Even in that question you speak of “science” as if a discreet it, which can be horribly distorted, when it’s really a method that can still be utilized just fine . . Essentially a call to put things to the test, in reality-land (the time/space continuum in science speak ; ) rather than treat some authority figure’s figuring as the last word . .
In this particular realm they call “climate science”, the authority figure aspect is often revealed it seems to me, in phrases like “Most of the attacks on climate science are coming from ..”, rather than speaking of some people disagreeing with or questioning the assertions of a few supposed experts. Each and every time we have “allowed” statements about what “science tells us” and the like, without objection to the anthropomorphic incantations, we allowed this false god to grow more powerful, it seems to me.
all true and there’s more to it.
mimicry and systematic destruction of ‘heroic figures’ are elements you neglected to mention.
take away ‘thinkers’ and the role models that remain for children to emulate are personifications of wut?
The great and powerful Oz, of course ; )
Drivel.
Anthony
Can you put these informative but long articles in a PDF link at the bottom? With long sci papers I get the PDF, tap “open in iBooks” and then can read off-line when travelling (I have no 4g and downloaded is more reliable anyway).
Even more importantly, I’d like to have this to refer to quickly if in an argument with alarmists or just to reread in two years’ time. I can bookmark it but accessing a downloaded PDF is so much easier- 4g/slow wifi issues again. And my global warming bookmarks outnumber what I’d download as PDF by 50:1. Many are short pieces from other sites not worth putting in PDF format.
Scute,
In Chrome (as an example) find the three dots on upper right corner, click them, choose print, when print menu comes up, click “change printer” which will give you another menu from which you can choose…. “save as pdf”
ta da!
David, Thanks for the great tip!
Alternative – you can right click on the page and save it as a web page. You can still read it then when off line, just double click the file and your default browser will open it despite not being connected to the internet.
Or (Windows) Ctrl+P. Select – Microsoft Print to PDF- from ‘Name’ drop-down menu.
Scute: If you’re using any other browser, just copy the part you want (run your cursor over it), and paste it into a blank Word document. Save it as a pdf.
Scute, here is a pure Mac centric solution for iPad iBooks. Just tested.
Open WUWT post using Safari on an iMac. This trick doesn’t work starting from iPad alone.
Click print in the Safari tool bar (if you dont want comments, choose the appropriate page range for the post only).
Click PDF when print opens
Click email pdf when options opens
Email as an attachment to yourself. This assumes you have a Mac acessible email account somewhere.
Open that email using iPad
Open attached PDF
Open PDF in iBooks and it is there permanently until you remove it.
Good point about “if you don’t want comments”. Tried to email to myself, with comments, 37.7MB pdf.
Skype on home network is the way to go.
Tools-Options-Advanced-Connection. Uncheck “use port 880 and 443 for additional incoming connections”. Save.
Old image.
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/kevster1346/home.jpg
All good answers from a practical point of view.
But it ignores the root cause.
The root cause is that WUWT is not rich. It has not the funds to afford professional IT support.
So workarounds are necessary.
What is needed in the long term is for WUWT to be on a high-powered format. One where we get a preview system.
But, alas, we are still awaiting the Big Oil Money.
You did not get your check yet either, M. Courtney?
I thought it was because i moved.
Well I don’t have an iBook, or any of the 101 ibook lookalikes, so I need Anthony to put it in plain English so I can read it/
That was around long before ibook.
G
One approach is to save threads like this to “Pocket” (with only a single click, plus an entry or two in the tag field). Then, to retrieve a thread, go to the tab that contains the Pocket data and search on a tag or (with the premium version) on a title. Each item has a readable thumbnail.
You can find a pdf of 10 years of WUWT here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/17/wuwt-milestone-10-years/
Here are some article you will never see quoted in the NYT:
Climate “Science” on Trial; Germany Builds Wind Farms While NATO Burns
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/03/17/climate-science-on-trial-germany-builds-wind-farms-while-nato-burns/
Climate “Science” on Trial; Temperature Records Don’t Support NASA GISS
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/03/12/climate-science-on-trial-temperature-records-dont-support-nasa-giss/
Climate “Science” on Trial; How Does Ice Melt In Sub-Zero Temperatures?
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/03/05/climate-science-on-trial-how-does-ice-melt-in-sub-zero-temperatures/
Climate “Science” on Trial; The Criminal Case Against the Alarmists
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/02/21/climate-science-on-trial-the-criminal-case-against-the-alarmists/
Climate “Science” on Trial; Confirmed Mythbusters Busted Practicing Science Sophistry
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/02/04/climate-science-on-trial-confirmed-mythbusters-busted-practicing-science-sophistry/
Really Fake News!
We should now do an article entitled, Long Answers To Shortsighted Thinking About Climate Change
If this is typical of NYT journalism then it must be a low quality rag.
No. Just following the NWO agenda being pushed by their DNC masters.
The New York Times appears to have confused “talking points” with “answers.”
No, they just believe the two to be equivalent. Redefining language is a hallmark of the Left.
Newspeak!
I note that they don’t invite a thinker to contribute to the article. And BTW, skeptic means thinker.
“……..If you want to offset your emissions, you can buy certificates, with the money going to projects that protect forests,…….”
Um, yea. Do you mean buying certificates to protect forests from that evil CO2 Gillis? And I’m supposed to believe that agriculture yield is going to collapse someday from higher CO2 emissions and warmer temperatures? Never mind that ag yields have been going up and that greenhouse operators and plant biologists know why. And on and on.
This whole screed from Gillis is so full of holes, its a bad joke. Even as a non-scientists myself, I can look at the Antarctic ice core sample (which is (or was recently) posted on Tom Nelson’s Twitter page) and the Greenland ice core sample and see that Gillis and his ilk appear to have the relationship between temperature and CO2 bass ackwards. Scientists, as I understand it, do not really know what the human contribution to the warming is, if any. And that collapses his whole House of Cards.
I guess this is what happens when you put your blind unquestioning faith in people who have chosen to abandon sound science years ago, only Gillis is too ignorant to know that he’s done that.
Surprised the NYT didn’t direct readers to whichever emissions certificate fraudsters they are invested in.
It’s amazing what a person will believe (or profess to believe) when his/her paycheck depends on it, and there’s more than a little motivated reasoning going on with the doomists.
CD, good comment, thanks.
I thought GW was supposed to not affect the tropics, warming at mid to high latitudes and night temps only…
I’ve yet to see what’s wrong with that.
“Share this with 50 friends?” The NYT is no longer a newspaper or even a green NGO, they’re a sci-fi chain letter making the rounds in Chappaqua.
Best reply by Lance:
“Is this a newspaper or an activist Green NGO?”
Purely rhetorical ( & I didn’t even need to point that out! )
Journalists don’t make any difference between journalism and advocacy. They think right means their own talking points. It’s so myopic it is hard to understand how you manage to do it. You gotta love your opinions to think you can’t err when you’re talking ‘ex cathedra’.
It is different here. We have the right to be Dunning Krugered, a journalist just sucks when s/he does it.
The beef issue perks up my ears. It doesn’t seem like the AGWists fully acknowledge that every atom of carbon that comes out of a cow (as methane or CO2) first went into the cow (as food), and that carbon atom came from the air (via photosynthesis). There is an analogous flow balance with water. By focusing only on the output, the bloviators exaggerate their significance.
That’s a peeve of mine , too . I like pointing out that every bite of food we eat is made from CO2 , not that we exhale it . At http://cosy.com/Science/warm.htm , I put it most generally as
Also, the same balance with burning deforestation. I have yet to see a good study of the CO2 balance of dense forest (what we used to call jungle) compared to multi-cropped ag open land.
And then they tell us methane as a greenhouse is 86 times as powerful as CO2. And they’re getting away with it!
If vegetation isn’t eaten by cows, won’t it die and decay anyway? Doesn’t the decaying process release about the same emissions as digestion, just at a slower rate? But a wild fire works even faster than digestion. So I don’t see how beef would make all that much of a difference in overall emissions when all is said and done.
It is a mathematical thing…they have the idea that if no one ate meat, then land that is used for pastures could become wheat fields when we all switch to a bread and water diet.
And the corn that is used to fatten cattle would go to…um…I am not sure…the poor?
Corn bread for Sunday feast?
It’s because cattle magically produce CO2 in excess of what they eat.
“It is a mathematical thing”
No, it’s a religious thing. They want to stop everybody from eating beef. Any excuse will be trumpeted from the rooftops.
It may be a religious thing for certain people, but the most common arguments made by the likes of the UN is that it takes a lot more resources…land, time, water, and ultimately energy…to produce a certain number of calories of food in the form of beef than it does to make the same amount of calories of food if it is bread, or corn, or some other non-meat foodstuff. And that this is somehow “unsustainable” and hence a burden on the Earth.
They need the corn to use for biofuel.
Ocean level acceleration of 0.013 + 0.006 millimeters per year? Is it measured with something like this?
But presumably not in Bay of Fundy
Yeah, “sea level rise” of the width of one of my horse’s tail hairs per CENTURY really freaks me out! /sarc
More like this:
http://gilligan.wikia.com/wiki/Quick_Before_It_Sinks
You notice no one drowned in the video even thought the sea level rise dwarfs the raise the AGW people talk about.
Add in it happens twice a day.
No Jaakko you don’t need that little short stub on the left hand side or the left hand side of the C-clamp.
You just stick the rod down in th water, and screw it till it touches the bottom.
G
While this is a nice deconstruction of the NYT sermon, it is also longish and complicated. Simpler talking points are also needed. An example.
The NYT says future generations are in big trouble. But such predictions can only come from climate models, and those models have failed. They predict a tropical troposphere hotspot that does not exist. They failed to predict the pause. And teir ECS is twice what is observed since 1880.
Another simpler talking point would include the micrometer (shown three comments up) accompanying any 20 (or fewer) word fact about sea level rise.
Micrometers, not Polar Bears.
Yup. Another good sound bite.
Also the fact that only “evidence” support CAGW was fraudulent.
Deniers tend to be scientifically literate and not able to keep it simple.
My simple “climate” talking points to people in my home state of Michigan.
(1) I’ve lived in the same house since 1987, and have only noticed slight warming.
Even then the winter of 2013 – 2014 had record snowfall for the Detroit metropolitan area, and my water meter in the garage froze and cracked in February 2014, for the first time since 1987.
(2) My property was under a mile of ice 20,000 years ago.
What started the ice melting back then?
Was it coal power plants and SUV’s?
I don’t think so !
The New York Times has reflected the publishers politics for a very long time, and this screed is but one of his catechisms reflecting his orthodoxy. If one wants Green Democrat Gun Control Feminist mainstream opinion, go to the Times. For the fringe, go to the Huffington Post or the Daily Kos.
Here is the NYT will definitely not be mentioning:
Climate “Science” on Trial; Climate McCartyism
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/03/18/climate-science-on-trial-climate-mccartyism/
WUWT, you should commission someone to expand upon this article and go point by point, and each time the NYTs publishes something, publish a response. The bias in the NYT is appalling.
At the current level of CO2 there is one cubic foot of CO2 spread across each 2500 cubic feet of air. Everyone should be dubious about this presence being any type of effective “heat blanket” let alone a climate changer. If the past record of temperature change since 1880 is any indication then there will be only 40 years of warming this century and probably for less than one degree F. Then there are the inadequately addressed pauses in warming that are as lengthy as the periods of warming.
Agree with you. I still don’t understand why scientist can’t built un experiment that would measure the temperature increase in troposphere for each, say 10 ppm co2 increase, takink into account feeback if any, humidity, etc. Then we would know if such a tiny portion of co2 has any effect at cuurent concentration. If Trump has any positive effect on science, he should put some money in it, instead of all fake climate science we endured.
Got a link to any science behind that claim? Nope, so just making things up then.
Just making stuff up, huh?
Pretty much like every single word ever uttered by a warmista then.
I see uneducated/dumb people visit here all the time but you’re probably one of the most naive too.
400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs exploding across the planet every day.
So when they told us that a nuclear war would destroy the earth even though the entire arsenals of all the nuclear armed countries in the world are a tiny fraction of that, they were lying?
Misinformed.
There is a big difference.
As you know.
One incredibly stupid analogy deserves another.
In a heated argument yesterday, a social justice warrior told me that everything wrong with the world was caused by straight white males. I asked if that meant that I (since I am one) was part of the problem, to which I received an emphatic “Yes!”. I then asked if that was the case, are all Muslims part of the terrorism problem? Red face, steam coming out of ears, torrent of insults with words like bigot and racist and moron…. So I won.
Moronic analogies deserve moronic responses.
To David M Hoffer:
First, let me say you’re one of the WUWT commenters I respect a lot. And I’ve been hanging around here, and commenting occasionally, for 8 years +.
But there’s a logical problem in what you say this time… and if you did win the argument, you won it unfairly.
(1) Everything wrong with the world is caused by straight white males, is not the same as:
(2) Every straight white male causes things that are wrong with the world.
And:
(3) All Muslims are part of the terrorism problem, is not the same as:
(4) All terrorists are Muslims.
You tried to answer (1) with (3). If you had been fair to your interlocutor, you would have answered with “that’s like saying (4).” But (4) is obviously false; as is (2) [Which was probably the contention you were trying to respond to].
Neil Lock,
Pish posh.
We are in a situation where one side is trying to deconstruct our industrial society, and to do so make up one giant lie after another…pure lies, no truth to them, and have repeated them so long with such a big megaphone many people have come to believe these lies are the truth.
The NYT articles highlight many of these lies, spoken as if established facts.
And here we find people on the other side, who represent the rational and the sane point of view, arguing over subtleties such as you bring up?
Maybe instead of answering the liberal blowhard as he did, David could have simply asked what group of people are most responsible for bringing about the modern world we live in today, in which life is ever longer, more well fed, more comfortable, and in general less brutish and unforgiving than it was for all of history except for the past 100-200 years or so…and improving fast?
Would those most responsible for this transformation include any cis-white males?
Maybe mostly cis-white males (sorry ladies)?
But that would be racist and sexist and all kinds of other hateful -isms and -ists, wouldn’t it?
Oh, and BTW, what has been the primary energy source powering most of this transformation?
That might be relevant to the current article and discussion.
Also BTW…you cis-gendered white ladies aint exactly off the hook either…who birthed all those planet wrecking straight white males anyway…hmmm?
Neil Lock;
(1) Everything wrong with the world is caused by straight white males, is not the same as:
(2) Every straight white male causes things that are wrong with the world.
I asked him to qualify it. He did, effectively accusing me and all straight white males of being guilty of his accusation merely by being who we are. So my analogy in fact holds. Had I not insisted that he qualify it you would be right. But he did.
I agree David – when the sjw replied “yes” to your question, he made the leap from (1) to (2), making (4) a legitimate analogy.
No fgs, the Hiroshima bomb as a unit of heat is so dork, so incredibly stinking green ngo propaganda sheet there is no need to take seriously anyone who uses that. By using it, NYT shows it is no different from Pravda, unless you remember Pravda was printed on some useful paper.
Pretty much like discussing ocean rise by using the number of tons of ice melting in Greenland, or the oceanic heat content in joules.
Big numbers tend to impress the uninformed.
Add in a sprinkle of nuclear fear for good measure…lather, rinse, repeat…ad nauseum.
Pravda is Russian for Truth. Whenever you see an official government paper being called truth, you know that’s the last thing it will print. Much like the NYT, in fact.
Speaking of Pravda, the Victorian government (Australia) ran with propaganda like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcMNZueIyNI and this
for (what seemed like) years. I guess one day they realized that
a) A CO2-filled balloon will sink, not float
b) What happened to all the balloons? Maybe they all ended up in the ocean and baby dolphins choked on them.
It might be less dishonest if they included how many Hiroshima bombs are sent by the sun daily. Makes their argument look silly, though, so I don’t anticipate it happening soon.
Sheri March 19, 2017 at 10:51 am
“It might be less dishonest if they included how many Hiroshima bombs are sent by the sun daily. Makes their argument look silly, though, so I don’t anticipate it happening soon.”
Just a back of beer coaster calculation says the Earth receives 2,762 Hiroshima bombs worth of solar insolation every second or 10,000,000 per hour or 240 million Little Boys every single day or 600 times their puny little human input estimate. Yes, they do look pretty silly.
When one vaporizes our major population centers and heaves the neutron activated debris into the atmosphere, the quality of life for the rural survivors, is expected to degrade. Go figure. GK
Maybe. And maybe not…
The NYT publishing this sort of crud is one reason why they are going down the tubes. Anyone with half a brain can see what they’ve done here. They asked “questions” which amount to straw men, and simply regurgitated the standard Climatist ideological crap. They are playing to their base – liberal drones who’ve guzzled the Kool Aid, with the sole purpose of renewing their Faith in the CAGW religion.
The same liberal drones guzzling the Times’ Kool-Aid also believe that biological sex is an oppressive social construct of the capitalist, patriarchal Right. So much for their “science.” Pretty obvious they were busy studying Alinksy, not biology. No wonder they’ll believe anything if it furthers their victim narrative.
The rebuttal to this is simple. There is no global average temperature. Their talking point is extremely deceptive in that not everywhere on the planet has warmed. Some places have cooled, some have warmed, some have remained relatively static. By dishonestly saying the entire surface has warmed based on a fictitious average, They show they are not about information, but propaganda.
Maybe someone who has fun playing with numbers could figure out how many “Hiroshima atomic bombs” the heat content of the Earth would equate to without what Man is supposed to have added?
Then describe just where life on Earth would be without all those “nasty nukes”?
Would Earth really be better off if everything was dead?
For a very long time, scientists and historians have been in unanimous or near-unanimous agreement that for human interests and for life in general, warmer is better.
The cold periods have been pretty much disastrous in many many ways…more wars, famines, inhibited trade…less prosperous times all around.
Cold kills everything. Life thrives in hot conditions, given a sufficient water supply. And a warmer world is generally a wetter world, at least it always has been.
Many more people die of cold than of heat.
One enduring mystery to me has been how readily people have been brainwashed into believing the opposite is true, without even a discussion, let alone a debate, on the subject.
And this (the nuclear bombs analogy) is one of the ways how this was accomplished.
Where do you want to live…here:
http://www.coolantarctica.com/gallery/scenic/mountains/Antarctica_sea_ice_Coronation_island2.jpg
http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/36/3681/N1OCF00Z/posters/geoff-renner-single-gentoo-penguin-on-ice-in-a-snowy-landscape-on-the-antarctic-peninsula-antarctica.jpg
http://girlsjustwannahaveguns.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/iqd0xzf.jpg
Or here:
http://www.arts-wallpapers.com/travel_wallpapers/Tropical%20Paradise%20Wallpapers/images/kaneohe_fish_pond_oahu_hawaii.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wwZ1Ovlnq24/T0UY4dRjDgI/AAAAAAAAFf0/cThUh-Lqxsc/s1600/beach34-scenery-wallpapers.jpg
http://www.hawaiimagazine.com/images/content/Hawaii_Oahu_Kauai_Hilo_Waipio_/RainboTor.jpg
I know which world looks better to me!
Menicholas: Actually, I’m going with the first pictures. I like cold and snow. I’m happy most would choose the second part of the pictures, though, because it leaves the frozen, barren wasteland wide open for me to enjoy!
1. How much is the planet heating up?
1.7 degrees is actually a significant amount.
As of October 2015, the Earth had warmed by about 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880, when records begin at a global scale. That figure includes the surface of the ocean. The warming is greater over land, and greater still in the Arctic and parts of Antarctica.
Average temperature is up about a degree from what it was in 1850 and most of that warming is in the winter. Summers in the United States at least have been cooling for decades. The frequency of the most violent classes of tornadoes has decreased, and precipitation is up.
Add it all up and we are enjoying a mild climate compared to what it was 80 years ago. Pretty soon the claims that, “Climate Change will bring extreme weather” will have to scare us with “extreme mildness”
As of October 2015, the Earth temp ‘has been adjusted’ by about 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880
Mr Wallace,
Your rebuttal(s) constitutes an enormous of work. Aside from this post here at WUWT, have you published a running rebuttal of the NYT page in any other location?
Paul Westhaver–
No, I’ve published no other rebuttals of the NYT page.
Last week, however, I did make use of the NYT offer to consider reader complaints about an error of fact. I raised the point about the ice core showing that temperatures rose (and then fell) several hundred years before CO2 followed. Since this claim (made in Al Gore’s movie as well as the Justin Gillis article) was disputed in a British court, and found to be an error of fact, I felt that there was independent support for my point. The NYT editor has responded that my complaint has been received. There matters rest.
So with all this evedence you should be able to put together a paper based on the scientific evidence you have then publish it. Prove man made climate change is a hoax and win a Nobel prize for science, you also get a million dollars for winning a Nobel. There’s a good insentive. Good luck.
What are you Steve…about 15 years old?
The observation from ice cores that atmospheric CO2 concentration is a function of temperature and not vice versa is fatal to the CAGW hypothesis.
I’d be most grateful if you could post a link to the debunking of Gore’s claim to the contrary.
steve d March 18, 2017 at 2:46 pm
“So with all this evedence you should be able to put together a paper based on the scientific evidence you have then publish it. Prove man made climate change is a hoax and win a Nobel prize for science, you also get a million dollars for winning a Nobel. There’s a good insentive. Good luck.”
It’s “evidence” and “incentive” – they should have picked you up on this back in primary school … a couple of years ago. Clearly you can’t read either. As stated before, they don’t give out Nobel prizes for debunking junk. And all the evidence you need is out there already, if you dare to go look for it.
steve d, has anyone ever told you you’re a complete waste of bandwidth?
Well, they have now.
The cows themselves produce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that causes short-term warming.
Well at least Gillis fort of spared us the 86 times as potnet nonsense. I won’t spam this thread with my take on that, except to provides links to my posts from a day or so ago here and here here.
Uh that should be “sort of” and “potent”
If grass and other vegetation isn’t eaten by cows, there exists no bacteria outside a cows stomach that could break it down into methane and other gasses, right? And there are never any range fires that burn vegetation and release CO2 back into the atmosphere, either. At least that’s what I’d have to assume since the NY Times doesn’t factor any of that in when talking about how avoiding beef and pork would lower emissions.
On the topic of beef, if you look at the mass of the current herd of beef cattle it is not significantly different from the total mass of bison that freeranged in the Great Plains before that are was settled. So the entire is to increased CO2 is moot.
BINGO! Cattle and Bison are so closely related they can produce the hybrid beefalo.
http://s24.postimg.org/aswhcmuf9/buggalos.png
On the topic of beef, if you look at the mass of the current herd of beef cattle it is not significantly different from the total mass of bison that freeranged in the Great Plains before that are was settled. So the entire is to increased CO2 is moot.
Regarding: “Human emissions are about 5% of the total carbon flux”: The flux has both sources and sinks that surge and ebb seasonally. Human emissions account for almost twice the atmosphere’s gain of CO2 over the years, which means that on a yearround average, nature is removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
This can be inverted and results in a statement that is even truer: ‘Most of the supporters of climate catastrophy are coming from liberals and socialists who like the collectivist policies that have been proposed to fight global warming’
And, inverted, it would be closer to the truth.
Psychological Projection: it’s not just a mental condition anymore, it’s now also a standard leftist political tactic AND a floor wax!
As for this, mentioned in a section on hurricanes and typhoons drawing more energy from warmer oceans: “But if the destructive potential is due to the collision of hot and cold air masses, as some have shown, then the colder air masses will be warmer and the difference no longer so great”. The temperature contrast between hot and cold air masses is not the energy source for hurricanes and typhoons, although it is for other windstorms.
“Scientists believe most and probably all of the warming since 1950 was caused by the human release of greenhouse gases.”
Should be some scientists( maybe only two?)— others don’t.
“Scientists fear climate effects so severe that they might destabilize governments, produce waves of refugees, precipitate the sixth mass extinction of plants and animals in Earth’s history, and melt the polar ice caps, causing the seas to rise high enough to flood most of the world’s coastal cities.”
Who wouldn’t fear such apocalyptic climate changes? But can they be accurately predicted and attributed to human activity?—NO
This is sixth grade writing with no logic check in place. It not only is erroneous in many places it so poorly states its points that they cannot stand on there own let alone under a fact check.
“The Earth had warmed by about 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880″
What was that? Granted, the the settled scienceTM has been warming the entire Earth to an extent
the 1800’s literature starts looking more scientific
http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/exhibits/scifi/images/journey_to_center_of_earth.jpg
It is well known that Al Gore is a scientific illiterate.
He took exactly one science related class in college, and he got a D.
And it was not even an actual class in any sort of basic science.
He is a shining example of a person who literally knows less than nothing.
That’s right Menicholas. There is proof ignorance extends far beyond:
OECD compares education systems of countries and grants PISA rewards annually. Finland has a history of scoring well. Now, the Finnish Association of Science Editors and Journalists rewards journalists. Where do they set the standards?
The choice of science journalist of the year 2015 didn’t make it though college and in his own opinion
a) his own publication mistakes aren’t a big deal,
b) consider local politicians ignorant,
c) would quit his profession if he even was offered a job in another and
d) no longer subscribes the local journal he is writing to.
Monty Python quote summarises the established gold standards – OECD calibrating the standards inferior elsewhere:
Sir Bedevere: …and that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped.
King Arthur: This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep’s bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.
https://goo.gl/images/A4Iypg
The heat accumulating in the Earth because of human emissions is roughly equal to the heat that would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs exploding across the planet every day.
For perspective, the energy of 400,000 Hiroshima bombs (at 63 TJ each (Wikipedia)) times 365 days is 9.198*10^21 J. The Sun’s energy striking the earth is 5.5*10^24 J per year (Wikipedia).
The amount of Sun energy striking the earth is 598 times as much as Mr. Gore’s 400,000 Hiroshima bombs. Or … the bomb energy is less than two tenths of one percent of the sun’s energy. Easy to calculate, tough to measure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28energy%29
Fun fact for today, 5.5*10^24 J is 5.5 YJ or Yotta Joules. Yotta is the largest decimal unit prefix in the metric system, denoting a factor of 10^24. (Wikipedia)
Scientists have published strong evidence that the warming climate is making heat waves more frequent and intense.
Not in the United States. We usually associate heat waves with summer, and summer time highs have been cooling for decades. Here’s the graph and trend from NOAA’s Climate at a Glance
:
http://oi63.tinypic.com/156fl8y.jpg
That can be done for all states, and the results are quite interesting:
http://oi68.tinypic.com/95vcec.jpg
Oh no, you can’t seriously be using the US as a proxie for climate. Everyone knows the correct proxie is arctic ice. Canary in the gold mine.
Thanks for that, I’ll have to remember that and the Bristlecone pine in that Russian peninsula for the next time someone complains that the U.S. is only 2% of the world’s total area.
Yeah…you cannot use the place with the best and longest temperature records.
Even if it does span a continent and abut two oceans and a large gulf.
Even if it does have a mix of every landform on the Earth.
It in no way can be considered to represent what the Earth as a whole is doing.
Not without significant adjustments anyways.
And how do climate scientists know this to be true?
Because the Earth is warming, and the US is not…so it must be true.
See…you just need to start your scientific inquiry with the proper set of conclusions.
As for CO2 lagging temperature for the past 400,000 years: For all of this time that was before the Industrial Revolution (more than 99.95% of the past 400,000 years), change of atmospheric CO2 was a positive feedback, enhancing temperature change initiated by something else (probably mostly the Milankovitch cycles). That was when the sum of carbon available to the carbon cycle in the atmosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere was essentially constant. Things have changed since humans started transferring carbon from the lithosphere to the atmosphere.
Wrong. There is zero evidence that CO2 was ever a positive feedback, despite the wild hysterical claims of carbonophobes. And the only that has changed, is that we are adding much-needed CO2 to our biosphere.
>>
For all of this time that was before the Industrial Revolution (more than 99.95% of the past 400,000 years), change of atmospheric CO2 was a positive feedback, enhancing temperature change initiated by something else . . . .
<<
It’s amazing how an 800 year lag in the CO2 rise can be causing a positive feedback. On the falling side (usually ignored by alarmists), CO2 lingers at a higher value and drops about half the rate of the temperature drop. If CO2 is causing the rise (with an 800 year lag), what is causing the temperature to drop? Not CO2, obviously, as the temperature seems to be pulling the CO2 down (somewhat reluctantly I might add).
Jim
Temperature drops lasting long enough to get the CO2 to drop get reinforced by the CO2 drop. Meanwhile, the 800 year lag is only an average, mostly from slower changes that include enough time to mostly recirculate the ocean and maintain near-equilibrium of CO2 between the atmosphere and the whole ocean. Faster temperature changes disturb equilibrium of CO2 between the atmosphere and the top of the ocean, and the top 10s or 100s of meters will respond much more quickly than 800 years and affect atmospheric CO2. Notice how global temperature blips from major ENSO events are followed by same-direction blips in the Mauna Loa CO2 curve.
When there was a temperature change happening too fast for it to be reinforced by the CO2 change that it caused, a likely explanation is a different positive feedback. There were times when large areas of land that got plenty of sunlight were intermittently covered by large ice sheets. If something such as change of sunlight at a critical time of year due to progression of the Milankovitch cycles causes such an ice sheet to start forming or start melting, then it could hit a tipping point of the surface albedo feedback being strong enough to cause instability, then things change quickly until the ice sheet reaches a state of lower mobility and then the surface albedo feedback decreases.
>>
Temperature drops lasting long enough to get the CO2 to drop get reinforced by the CO2 drop.
<<
It is a nonsense concept–800+ year lags working their magic. Maybe you should check out this link first (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/co2-temperatures-and-ice-ages/).
Jim
I typo-ed. I meant to say, “Temperature drops lasting long enough to get reinforced by the CO2 drop”. In which case the temperature drops more.
>>
I typo-ed. I meant to say, “Temperature drops lasting long enough to get reinforced by the CO2 drop”. In which case the temperature drops more.
<<
So (if I understand you correctly), you’re saying that the concentration of CO2 has little or no effect on temperature, but the rate-of-change of CO2 now controls temperature? I’m not aware of that particular law of physics. And the fact that CO2 is a weak GHG doesn’t really matter then?
Jim
I am not saying rate of change instead of concentration of CO2 is what affects temperature. I am saying that a temperature change initiated by something other than CO2 has to to be sustained for a while in order for it to cause a major CO2 change. And once the CO2 changes significantly, it reinforces the temperature change, causing the temperature change to increase further if the initial cause of the temperature change is not removed. Normally the positive feedback is small enough to be short of causing instability, and this process levels off.
I guess “Demon” (or should that be “Daemon”) CO2 can do anything and everything.
Jim
There is no evidence that human emissions of CO2 are the main driver of climate change.
From about 1980 to 1998, there seemed to be evidence of a correlation between increasing CO2 and global warming, and then something odd happened after the 1998 El Nino. Despite one third of all human emissions of CO2 happening between 1998 an 2016, the rate of global warming has slowed down instead of accelerated.
If the Karl paper of 2015, which is based on data that was not archived, was not subjected to the standard vetting that internal research papers according to NOAA policy before being submitted for publication, and cannot be reproduced, has to be withdrawn, then there is no evidence for any statistically significant global warming between the 1998 El Nino and the 2016 El Nino.
The combination of a slowdown in global warming happening at the same time as a full third of all human CO2 not only makes the claim that human CO2 emissions drive global warming seem dubious, it also casts doubt on the claim that human CO2 emissions even correlate with global warming.
A big problem with the Anthropogenic Global Warming Hypothesis is that nearly all of the climate models predict too much warming. If the models all consistently predict to much warming, then the error is probably with an assumption shared by all of the models, which makes it likely that there are errors in the AGW hypothesis. Then there is the relative uncertainty of the models that no one mentions– cloud effects. If you read the executive summary of Chapter 9 of the IPCC Working Group 1 Assessment Report 5, you will find the uncertainty in the cloud modelling is equivalent to a radiative forcing of tens of watts per square meter. The observed direct effects of an additional 20 ppm is only 0.2 watts per square meter, so the models really have no predictive power.
Source pointing to errors in the Karl paper:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…/World-leaders-duped…
Sources to back up my claims that the models report too much warming, global warming has slowed down, and a third of all human CO2 emissions are since 1998.
Climate models predict too much warming:
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep09957
Global warming has slowed down since 2000:
I am told that the paper is pay-walled at the Nature Climate Change website, but the Breitbart story has a free link to the paper. Click on the hyperlink “Nature Climate Change” to see the paper for free.
http://www.breitbart.com/…/study-the-pause-in-global…/
A third of all emissions being recent comes from the Oak Ridge website. The data only goes up to 2009, but extend it by repeating the 2009 emissions for the years 2010 to 2016. Sum up all of the total emissions and divide that number by 3 to get a third of all human CO2 emissions. Starting at the end (2016) add the yearly emissions until the running total exceeds a third of human emissions, which occurrs at 2000:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2009.ems
Observations of effects of CO2:
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/…/co2-greenhouse-effect…/
I will assume that you can find the AR5, on your own.
The Oak Ridge website recently published estimates of CO2 emissions from 1750 through 2014. There are some nice graphs on the site, showing that we are now producing almost exactly 10 billion metric tons C per year and the total stands very close to 400 billion.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/GCP/carbonbudget/2016/
By the way, the site has for some months been running this notice about an imminent shutdown. Does anybody know what is going on? This was pre-Trump.
“NOTICE (August 2016): CDIAC as currently configured and hosted by ORNL will cease operations on September 30, 2017. Data will continue to be available through this portal until that time. Data transition plans are being developed with DOE to ensure preservation and availability beyond 2017.”
Getting a linear trend in global temperature starting anytime 1972-1979 to end with meeting the start point of a later linear trend that ends anytime around or after 2014-2015, especially a year chosen to minimize the later linear trend, shows the pause started a few years after 1998. Try this yourself with woodfortrees, using any global temperature dataset that does not use Karl’s ERSSTv4 (excludes only GISS in woodfortrees) or the non-pausing UAH v.5.6. I mostly come up with around 2003, sometimes 2004.
Annual Co2 seen in the sawtooth graph of Mona Loa also follows temperature (see Humlum 2013) and has no correlation to rate of human emissions (see Harde 2017). I am not convinced that the ECS will be positive if we ever find a way to accurately quantify it.
“That was when the sum of carbon available to the carbon cycle in the atmosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere was essentially constant.”
Aha. The sum is constant based on what? Zero major volcanic eruptions like Santorini?
“Things have changed since humans started transferring carbon from the lithosphere to the atmosphere.”
And “fossil fuel” has never gone via biosphere or it really is dinosaur muck? Take a pick.
I was talking about the past 400,000 years. For the first 399,800 or so of the last 400,000 years, fossil fuels sat still. Their formation from biomass occurred a lot more than 400,000 years ago.
Interesting that they bring up agriculture and go after beef production pretty hard, but not one word about ethanol.
Ethanol is vegan origin, milk is not. Think of the children!
/sarc
14. How does agriculture affect climate change?
It’s a big contributor, but there are signs of progress.
The environmental pressures from global agriculture are indeed enormous.
The demand for food is rising,
Mr. Gillis forgot to mention that the United States is putting a huge portion of its agricultural production into the nation’s gas tanks. If you ask me, the production of ethanol to use in trucks and automobiles is a crime against humanity. President Trump should stop the ethanol subsidy
Forcing people to buy something is also anti-Constitutional and anti-democratic.
Where I work we use about 5 tons of CO2 a day.
Our CO2 supplier gets it from ethanol production.
Now, we don’t care where it comes from. We need it everyday.
Our supplier would be getting it from somewhere else and we’d be “sequestering” CO2 that wasn’t a byproduct of efforts to reduce CO2.
PS The liquid CO2 we use is a small part of the CO2 they sell. Most of what they sell is in the form of dry ice. That just goes right into the air as it evaporates.
Ethanol production increases Man’s CO2 emissions. And then it’s burned? Producing more CO2?
What’s their goal again?
It’s hard for me to remember when they seem to keep forgetting it themselves.
Greenies hate ethanol now. Before, they loved it. Ethanol was going to help “save the planet”. Under the bus it goes. Inconvenient.
This may sound off subject, but it may not be. I just got a document of several required by the (UN)Affordable Care Act. If I was rich I would get together a copy of all the paperwork this generated and send it to Washington, except it might stop up the Postal Service. Over a century ago we had a Eugenics movement in the world, based originally on the available science of emerging genetics. This used to be taught in basic biology.
In the medical journal The Lancelet (volume 373, January 31, 2009) is a paper in the section “Department of Ethics” by Govind Persad, Alan Wertheimer, and Ezekiel J. Emanuel, the latter whose name is well known. The paper is “Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions.” There is a graph on page 428 on the “Probability of receiving an intervention” charted against age. The figure is called “Age-based priority for receiving scarce medical interventions under the complete lives system.” It starts at near zero (Minimum), reaching a peak (maximum) about 20, decreasing to about 50, rapidly falling until 60 then gradually falling again to about 75 where the graph ends.
There are 97 references in a paper that tries to be scientific, and some of it sounds like what you might get in an animal husbandry journal. They state “ Many thinkers have accepted complete lives as the appropriate focus of distributive justice.” In the conclusions– “To achieve a just allocation of scarce medical interventions, society must embrace the challenge of implementing a coherent multiprinciple framework rather than relying on simple principles or retreating to the status quo.” Is this too far out to be hidden in NYT number 3– “Is there anything I can do?” I don’t think this is that much out of context, but draw your own conclusions. It may not be just be for taxes.
The journal is the Lancet.
Menicholas March 18, 2017 at 4:20 pm
And there is another brother, a warmista climatologist named Kerry.
Coincidence?
If you think so, I got this really nice bridge for sale…
More false facts, Kerry is not Rahm’s brother!
Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)60137-9/fulltext
Full text available free with registration.
Ezekiel J. Emanuel is the brother of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel.
And there is another brother, a warmista climatologist named Kerry.
Coincidence?
If you think so, I got this really nice bridge for sale…
“Many thinkers have accepted complete lives as the appropriate focus of distributive justice.”
Translation, because Dr. Zeke is the prototype of Nutcase Profs:
Many Academics, isolated so far away from reality that their thinking is ipso facto automatically true, have accepted “complete lives” – defined as such by whatever the Academics happen to think up and then becomes a Consensus of thought as “true” in like manner – as the appropriate focus of a Perfectly Equal “distributive justice”, which will then be applied to the rest of a Society’s people, but not to them.
Noting that, if Dr. Zeke’s metric for a “complete life” was applied to him, he’d owe us enough back to repay the U.S. National Debt.
Not to mention he (Zeke Emanual) is a simply awful sort of person.
Every single time i have ever seen him being interviewed, he has come across as one of the most obnoxious, egotistical, and self-important person I have ever seen in my entire life.
Unfortunately for him, and very fortunately for everyone else, raising one’s irritatingly screechy voice, and making a series of increasingly rude insults are not very convincing ways to persuade anyone of anything…or else we would all believe every word out of his smarmy mouth.
He somehow manages to make Jonathan Gruber only the second most detestable person involved with crafting the Unaffordable Careless Act.
“A recent study found that burning all the fossil fuels in the ground would fully melt the polar ice sheets, raising the sea level by more than 160 feet over an unknown period.”
But would it do so before the next ice age sets in?
They must have used a very high “climate sensitivity” figure to do that. My recollection is that there isn’t enough coal available in the ground to double the CO2 figure. Even if you could double the CO2 in the atmosphere, it would only increase the “global temperature” by 1.7 degrees Celsius. That wouldn’t be enough to melt both ice sheets.
Er, not sure that Vikings ever grew grapes in Greenland. Vinland was somewhere on the N. American continent.
Yes, the Vikings farmed Greenland during the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ because it was much warmer in the past than it was today. Their graves are now under ‘permafrost’ because what was soil then is frozen now.
The claim that today is ‘unprecedented’ and ‘the hottest for hundreds of thousands of years’ is complete propaganda and false.
Everything is “unprecedented” today, according to the Moron Stream Media. I’m just glad Hillary Clinton was unpresidented, myself.
They grew grapes in England during the Medieval Warming Period – I’ve read the wine made from those grapes wasn’t very palatable. Vinland is believed to have been in Labrador, or more likely Newfoundland.
Medieval English wine was so good that it challenged French dominance.
Labrador was probably Markland and Newfoundland Vinland, but farther south is also possible. Newfoundland’s climate was milder in AD 1000 than now, too.
During the Roman Warm Period (RWP), which was even warmer than the MWP, wine grapes were known to have been cultivated north if Hadrian’s wall in Great Britain.
And all of these warm and cold periods have substantial confirmation, not the least of which is the Greenland Ice Core data:
Cue the usual chorus of complainers.
Chimp March 18, 2017 at 11:56 am
Medieval English wine was so good that it challenged French dominance.
It still does!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/20/english-sparkling-wine-beats-champagne-in-paris-blind-tasting/
Menicholas March 18, 2017 at 4:26 pm
During the Roman Warm Period (RWP), which was even warmer than the MWP, wine grapes were known to have been cultivated north if Hadrian’s wall in Great Britain.
Not true, certainly the Roman garrison at such places as Vindolanda consumed wine but they imported it from Gaul.
Hadrian’s Wall was the northern limit of the Roman Empire.
North of the wall was not Roman territory, I do not think…that is what the wall was for, no?
Besides, just because they were growing wine grapes there does not imply or state that everyone in the vicinity drank the wine from elsewhere.
I have no idea, not being a wine quality historian, whether it was good wine or some swill, uniformly eschewed by the refined palates and delicate sensibilities of the Roman legions.
Perhaps the people who lived north of the wall, like perhaps the Picts, were cut off from getting wine from places to the south, and that is why they grew their own?
Who knows?
We grow wine here in Florida, and in New York, and in California…and many other places in between I would suppose, and yet some people stubbornly still buy wine brought all the way the hell over from France.
I now…I was astounded to learn of this myself.
For some reason, people buy stuff from far away when local stuff is readily available…go figure.
My supermarket sells coffee beans brought all the way from Sumatra, for Heaven’s sake!
Why, I ask…why!?
And it is ‘spensive…almost as if they row it over to here one bag at a time.
I am no historian, but it is quite well documented that in Roman times, grapes were grown north of the wall…and that it was much warmer then!
Do you require documentation of this historical fact?
Here…normally i require my pupils to do their own homework…but much info is readily available, and this was some interesting reading…just to get ya started:
“The ‘Winelands of Britain’ combines geology with climate change to delineate the past, present, and prospective winelands of England and Scotland. In the present Industrial Revolution Warm Phase abandoned Roman and Medieval winelands are becoming re-established, sometimes with vineyards being re-planted on the sites of ancient ones. New winelands, such as the Weald, have become established in areas that were not de-forested until the Little Ice Age. Some ancient winelands, like the Greensand Hills of Surrey, have not been re-established, due to re-forestation. Since the publication of the first edition in 2004 the northern limit of English vineyards has advanced from Mount Pleasant, Lancashire, to Accomb, Yorkshire, within 5km of Hadrian’s Wall.
Changes in the new edition
• The latest predictions of global warming show that the average summer temperature in southern England may rise by 4.5-5.0 degrees C. by 2080 and by 6.0 degrees by 2100. The new edition describes how these data can be used to predict the areas where different grape varieties may be planted across the UK. Some parts of southern England may be too hot for viticulture by 2080.
• Includes new evidence of the extent of viticulture in Roman Britain, including additional vineyards and wine amphora potteries”
Bottoms up!
PS…I do not drink, so you can have mine.
http://www.winelandsofbritain.co.uk/book.htm
Menicholas March 18, 2017 at 7:19 pm
Hadrian’s Wall was the northern limit of the Roman Empire.
North of the wall was not Roman territory, I do not think…that is what the wall was for, no?
Check out the Antonine wall.
Besides, just because they were growing wine grapes there does not imply or state that everyone in the vicinity drank the wine from elsewhere.
They weren’t growing grapes there!
I am no historian, but it is quite well documented that in Roman times, grapes were grown north of the wall…and that it was much warmer then!
Do you require documentation of this historical fact?
It is not ‘well documented’ nor a ‘historical fact’, so yes I do!
Menicholas March 18, 2017 at 7:27 pm
“The ‘Winelands of Britain’ combines geology with climate change to delineate the past, present, and prospective winelands of England and Scotland. In the present Industrial Revolution Warm Phase abandoned Roman and Medieval winelands are becoming re-established, sometimes with vineyards being re-planted on the sites of ancient ones. New winelands, such as the Weald, have become established in areas that were not de-forested until the Little Ice Age. Some ancient winelands, like the Greensand Hills of Surrey, have not been re-established, due to re-forestation. Since the publication of the first edition in 2004 the northern limit of English vineyards has advanced from Mount Pleasant, Lancashire, to Accomb, Yorkshire, within 5km of Hadrian’s Wall.
Hardly, Acomb Grange vineyard is more like 150km south of Hadrian’s wall (via Dere Street presumably).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dere_Street#/media/File:Roman_Roads_in_Britannia.svg
The source you cite indicates the limits of vineyards in Roman times as far south of Hadrian’s wall, see the map below:
http://www.winelandsofbritain.co.uk/britainmap.jpg
“Cue the usual chorus of complainers.”
I have a complaint, but not the one you are thinking of. Look at the peaks for the Minoan, Roman, Medieval & 21 century warm periods. Notice that it forms a sharp downward trend. Our warm periods are getting colder and colder. If we aren’t careful, our next warm period will be an ice age.
Menicholas March 18, 2017 at 7:27 pm
Here…normally i require my pupils to do their own homework
What do you tell them when they persistently produce a graph which they have been shown by their teacher is inaccurate?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/13/crowdsourcing-the-wuwt-paleoclimate-reference-page-disputed-graphs-alley-2000/
Hivemind March 19, 2017 at 1:58 am
“Cue the usual chorus of complainers.”
I have a complaint, but not the one you are thinking of. Look at the peaks for the Minoan, Roman, Medieval & 21 century warm periods. Notice that it forms a sharp downward trend. Our warm periods are getting colder and colder.
Not sure how you can tell that from a graph that ends in the mid-19th century (1855AD)?
Maybe not grapes in Greenland but they did farm it.
Here’s a link with some interesting info.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Vinland
Interesting that the grapes found in Vinland were growing wild.
The NYT is doing pure propaganda, just like the government funded climate “scientists” are doing. We can debunk the drivel all we want to, but the fact is that the NYT’s propaganda is believed by millions of low information votes. Oh well.
I would like to point out that this is one of the reasons that those of us, who understand that thermodynamics tells us that CO2 does not make the surface warmer, have tried to get the rest of the skeptical community to acknowledge that fact. Climate sensitivity to CO2 is zero if it is not a negative number.
Yes, the planet warmed coming out of the little ice age but CO2 had noting to do with it.
You say: “… those of us, who understand that thermodynamics tells us that CO2 does not make the surface warmer…” and “Climate sensitivity to CO2 is zero if it is not a negative number“.
You obviously don’t know as much about the thermodynamics of radiative gases as you pretend.The fact is that atmospheric CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas, a doubling of which almost certainly causes a little, non-alarming, surface warming.
In saying such things, you give succour to climate alarmists and do a disservice both to science and to those of us who are skeptical about significant human-caused global warming. Please desist.
David, I have seen that type of BS answer for years. The luke-warmers such as yourself always claim that we are “giving aid and comfort” to the enemy to even talk about such matters. How very scientific of you.
The following link is just one of many that I could link to, but this one states my position pretty well.
https://okulaer.wordpress.com/2016/01/10/the-climate-sensitivity-folly/
“As you can see, it’s nothing but assumptions all the way down. No real empirical evidence from the actual Earth system to support any of it.”
This is why the “climate sensitivity” is so important. A tiny amount of warming is immediately counteracted by a slightly earlier rising of thunderclouds (I know this works in tropical and temperate, ie US corn belt areas, it is basic junior-high science). So the transient warming has no real warming effect on the world. Climate models only get their extremely high temperature rises by assuming a high level of positive feedback from clouds, instead of negative.
Markstoval,
Thanks for your robust response.
I agree with you that there is no empirical proof available that the (modest) observed increase in surface temperature since the beginning of the industrial revolution is all or partly due to atmospheric CO2.
Trouble is, there is also no empirical proof that the observed increase in temperature over that period is entirely natural.
It is well-established both empirically and theoretically that if radiatively absorptive/emissive matter is enclosed in a container that receives a constant flow of energy through one wall face, and loses that energy flow through an opposing wall face that is attached to a cooler constant-temperature heat sink, the steady state temperature of the warmer face will be higher than if the contained materials were not absorptive/emissive. To argue that this is untrue is to go against basic thermodynamics, as any professor of physics will readily confirm.
But the atmosphere is a very much more complex system than a box in a laboratory and ‘lukewarmers’ (your name for normal mainstream skeptics like me and many others on this site), and including such distinguished atmospheric physicists as Professor Singer, Dr Lindzen and Dr Spencer, believe that the GHG effect, rather than being non-existent, is simply being offset by other natural effects (such as increasing cloud cover as the world warms) and that these collectively act as a negative stabiliser.
Of course that leaves entirely open the question of how much of the empirically observed increase is natural and how much is due to CO2, and there is clearly no current agreement on this. But it is by far the most responsible scientific stance to take.
In contrast, outright denial of the theory of CO2 warming is unscientific and counter-productive. It simply allows climate alarmists to claim that skeptics are denying well established thermodynamics and therefore should not be listened to.
An argument sceptics probably surprise scientific CAGW proponents by NOT raising it is a discovery of NASA and Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of scientists that the ice cap on Mars shrunk in concert with that of the northern hemisphere on earth!! This was reported by the two organizations about 10-12years ago and even picked up by NatGeo (google this). This is why the crisis is not agitating the Russians and why NASA has never mentioned it again. This is the most powerful evidence of the primacy of natural variations, but every one is mum about it. It is an explanation understandable by all. Did you know this Lance? Someone please dig up a link, I’m not good with a smart phone for this stuff.
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/07aug_southpole/
http://www.nature.com/news/1998/011213/full/news011213-1.html
Of course, CACA adherents look for other explanations than solar variation. Even Pluto showed signs of global warming.
Good question, Gary. In my opinion cAGW has annulled not only intellect, but even parody. The real universe has plenty of interesting mysteries, pointless to discuss with any clergy:
Mars is smaller than Earth, but its atmosphere contains >6-times more CO2 than on Earth. Mars has also water. Why do snowflakes of solid CO2 fall from the Martian sky during winter at about -193 F (-125 °C) and persist in glaciers? Why doesn’t Martian summer trigger a runaway greenhouse effect?
Venusian atmosphere has about 90-times more CO2 than Earth, but practically no water. What sort of greenhouse grows plants dry, under high pressure CO2?
Proportionally Earth has significantly less carbon than the rest of the solar system. Why is carbon a problem on Earth? The biospheric fraction more specifically? Most of Earth’s carbon is in the lithosphere.
Why does the biospheric fraction of atmospheric carbon drive the oceanic temperature and pH? Most of Earth’s volcanos are on the ocean floor, which we know less about than the surface of the moon.
NYT says, “In the end, though, experts do not believe the needed transformation in the energy system can happen without strong state and national policies. So speaking up and exercising your rights as a citizen matters as much as anything else you can do.”
Peak Liberal:
http://www.sinkers.org/posters/peakliberal/peakliberal.jpg
Thanks for the article WUWT. That NYT piece deserves a response.
Here are some Shorter Answers to Climate Alarmism over Carbon Dioxide, Greenhouse Gases, Global Warming, Anthropogenic Global Warming, and Climate Change:
1. Other than a small portion of life on Earth that lives by chemo-synthesis at deep ocean volcanic vents, all life on Earth depends for its food, and for its Oxygen supply, upon photosynthesis.
2. Carbon Dioxide is essential for photosynthesis.
3. If the concentration of Carbon Dioxide in the air drops below about 150 parts per million, photosynthesis stops, and then virtually all life on Earth will lose its food supply.
4. Greenhouse growers add CO2 to the air in greenhouses to stimulate growth, doubling CO2 concentrations over current outdoor levels, with no bad effects on plant growth.
5. The “Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect” (AGE) moderates the temperature variations of the Earth’s atmosphere. Without AGE, daytime highs would soar and night-time temperatures would plummet, making life as we know it impossible.
6. The largest contributor to AGE is Water Vapour, which accounts for about 96% of the AGE. However, the effects of increased or decreased temperatures and increased or decreased Water Vapour in the Earth’s atmosphere are not well understood, as Water Vapour acts as a insulator trapping heat that would escape into space from the Earth’s surface and from lower levels of the atmosphere, but also forms clouds that reflect Sunlight away from the Earth, thus tending to prevent further heating of the atmosphere.
7. Variations in the output of the Sun not only vary its heat output, but variations in the Sun’s magnetic field can effect the amount of cloud cover of the Earth by resulting in variations of the rate of nucleation of water droplets and hence cloud cover in the atmosphere.
8. The models used to predict increase global temperatures are woefully deficient since Climate Science is in a primitive state and many of the recognized factors that contribute to the heating and cooling of the atmosphere are not well understood. These poorly understood but recognized factors include Water Vapour, the most important AGE actor. The effects of Water Vapour and many other “climate forcing” factors are accounted for in climate models by estimates or “Fudge Factors”.
9. To make their models fit observed data, Fudge Factors are routinely varied by some “climate scientists”. This adds a “your guess is as good as mine” vagueness to “Climate Science” predictions of runaway global temperatures from Carbon Dioxide.
10. Climate models that predicted runaway temperature rises and catastrophic sea level rises have been proven to be inaccurate, and hence unreliable as climate predictors.
11. The proponents of Climate Alarmism have attempted to prevent debate and proper scientific research into the effect of CO2 and other “Greenhouse Gases” by shame-labelling those who insist upon researching the issues. The proponents invented the shamefully false Mantras “The Science Is Settled”, “There is a 97% Scientific Consensus”, and “Those Who Do Not Support Our Global Warming Thesis Are DENIERS of Scientific Truth”.
12. The proponents of Climate Alarmism have resorted to hiding the data sets they have used as the bases for their predictions, and have also resorted to “adjusting” temperature records to make the past seem cooler that it was, to increase the reported increase in atmospheric temperatures.
13. Evidence has been discovered of Climate Alarmism proponents attempting to prevent the publication of any research that questions or contradicts the Climate Alarmism dogma. Climate Alarmism proponents have been successful in reducing funding available for those scientists who question Climate Alarmism, and in denying tenure track positions at universities to those who question Climate Alarmism.
14. Climate Alarmism has been used very successfully by proponents as a means of getting funds for research, and used by Carbon Credit traders to promote their Carbon Credit trading businesses.
15. Politicians have adopted Climate Alarmism as a means of stampeding the public into giving these politicians support “to save Life On Earth From Global Warming”. The nicest thing that I can say about these politicians is that perhaps they are well meaning but totally ignorant of science.
16. The public purse has been plundered to support production of electricity from “Renewable Energy” sources such a Sunlight, Wind, Waves, and Biomass. These have proved to be much more expensive sources of electricity than traditional thermal generation plants, and have also proved to cause significant ecological damage in some cases (killing of birds being one example). Electricity prices have been raised markedly in many areas to cover the subsidies paid for installation of facilities that produce electricity from “Renewable Energy” sources.
17. To produce motor fuel from plants as “Renewable Energy”, much of food production has been diverted to producing ethanol, and forests have been cut down to create Palm Oil plantations. The net gain in energy from producing ethanol from corn is questionable if not negative. The net benefit in CO2 reduction from converting a forest to Palm Oil production used as motor fuel to replace petroleum fuel is also questionable if not negative.
18. There are far more pressing concerns about our environment than CO2 and other “Greenhouse Gases”, such as: (a) loss of farmland to urbanization; (b) the over-exploitation of ocean fish stocks; (c) the poisoning of the Pacific Ocean by radiation from Fukushima nuclear plants; (d) and the poisoning of our food production by Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), and by the herbicides like glyphosates used to foster growth of GMOs;(e) pesticides that pollute our ground water, lakes, rivers, and oceans; (f) the “Dead Zones” in our oceans where agricultural runoff of fertilizers and herbicides has killed off food chains; (g) the killing off of pollinators such as bees by pesticides; and (h) the poisoning or our atmosphere by radiation from Fukushima, Chernobyl, nuclear bomb tests, and routine leakage from nuclear plants.
19. Climate Change is a normal phenomenon of the Earth.
20. There have been periods during the life of the Earth when temperatures were significantly higher than present temperatures, and life flourished during those periods of higher temperatures.
21. Earth has suffered through many Ice Ages and enjoyed many warm periods, with the changes from one to the other not having been caused by human activity, as far as scientists have been able to discover.
22. CO2 levels have been low during Ice Ages, and rise AFTER temperatures increased. Thus, the record shows that CO2 is a follower of temperature rise, not a driver of temperature rise.
23. We have enjoyed a warm period for the last 150 years or so, since the last Mini Ice Age of around 1870. The temperature record shows several cold and warm periods in the last 2000 years, with human activity having little if any effect upon atmospheric temperatures.
24. Some climate scientists maintain that the rise in atmospheric temperatures stopped around the year 2000 AD, and some maintain that we are entering a period of atmospheric cooling caused by the Sun going into a Sunspot minimum period.
You forgot the part about water vapor and clouds having to do with thunderstorms, which transport immense amounts of thermal energy to the upper atmosphere in a matter of minutes.
These storms preferentially form where it is hot, and the hotter it is, the stronger they are and the more heat they transport.
Once in the upper atmosphere, it is a hop, skip, and a jump to outer space, the place where all the solar energy is heading to begin with.
Thunderstorms hasten the process.
Such weather is one reason why the tropics have such a uniform temperature…on the scale of a single day and night, over a whole year, and even over thousands and millions of years.
Climate models have no idea they even exist though.
All in all, Al Tinfoil, a very good summary, and well stated.
Except for 18.
You should have left out 18…which contains a collection of some different brands of alarmism and ecological propaganda.
I agree that 18 is contentious but on the other hand Al Tinfoil’s list is such a neat expression of the essentials of the mainstream climate skeptical case that it might reassure moderate environmentally-concerned people that climate change skeptics are not against other genuine environmental concerns.
Al Tinfoil,
Great discussion starter. Thanks.
John
The NYTs provides a case study in how to deal with liberals. Lie and speak in terms an 8th grader would understand. They know their audience is scientifically illiterate and is too lazy to check the facts, and even if they did check the facts it wouldn’t matter, they just want to believe. Now look at WUWT and other skeptics websites. They deal with facts and solid science. That works great for people that seek the truth, but is totally ineffective for dealing with liberals. This article addresses the issue in a bit more detail.
Climate “Science” on Trial; How Does Ice Melt In Sub-Zero Temperatures?
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/03/05/climate-science-on-trial-how-does-ice-melt-in-sub-zero-temperatures/
I love the references to well known climate experts Bill Gates and Pope Francis.
Still their scientists are better than your scientists so there! and besides they have 97% of them and you only have 3%. I am particularly a Trump fan but at least he has bought this tiresome debate forward probably 20 years. Things can be said now that werent being said publicly last year, and reality is now allowed to be noticed.
NASA are climate experts. Why not go to their website. You could learn from them or do already know more than them?
Funny how people who have degrees in math are called climate scientists by some people.
Like themselves.
The so-called climatologists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Study are political hacks, who have gotten exactly the results they were paid to get.
For a time.
That time is now drawing to a close.
You left out a “not” before “particularly”.
Menicholas March 18, 2017 at 4:32 pm
“Funny how people who have degrees in math are called climate scientists by some people.
Like themselves.
The so-called climatologists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Study are political hacks”
It’s almost hilarious. I wrote to the ABC (Australia’s leftwing warmista MSM) asking what constitutes a “top climate scientist”, a term they bandy about when introducing the latest climate scaremonger. I pointed out that NASA’s former “top climate scientist” was James Hansen – an astronomer. So is a top climate scientist an astronomer? They were quick to reply that Gavin Schmidt now heads GISS. I then pointed out that Schmidt was a mathematician. So is a top climate scientist now a mathematician? Still waiting for a reply. 🙁
“Let’s not forget that politicians and governments are always on the lookout for new revenue streams. What better to tax than the air we breathe?”
With 7.3 billion people on the planet all expelling 10,000 ppm of CO2 with every breath, for a total of nearly 840 pounds per person per year, that is a lot of human caused ‘carbon pollution’ that isn’t being directly taxed, yet. When you do the simple math, that is about 3 billion tons (3 gigaton) of carbon dioxide straight to the atmosphere just from every person on the planet breathing.
To put human breathing in perspective, mankind caused nearly 40 gigaton of CO2 from all human caused activity last year. I don’t know if the google source included human breathing respiration as part of the 40 GT, since some argue it is a moot point being part of the natural ecosystem. But let’s assume they did, to round up in favour of the alarmists. So, humans just breathing, are causing 7% of total human caused carbon dioxide emissions on the planet. The people of China and SE Asia just breathing cause more human CO2 emissions than many countries like Australia or Canada, which includes all their human and industrial activity.
How are we ever going to become carbon neutral as a planet going forward, if just breathing is part of the supposed problem? The war on “carbon” will soon die a slow death, especially now that America is questioning the motives for this unfounded misguided zealotry. If some country were to just impose a tax on the air we breath, or the watts per m3 that shines on our private property, there would be a revolution. I don’t understand how a small faction of supposed climate science academia have been able to bamboozle this debate for as long as they have. But it is coming to end since the average citizen with a high school education knows when they are being scammed. The hard part now will be to reverse this insidious “carbon tax” or crap and trade schemes, where everyone is extorted to utilize carbon based energy.
My point being, life is carbon, and carbon dioxide is part of the food chain that is our own food consumption mainly from plant production that produces oxygen which is also the foundation for most life. Without CO2, life would cease to exist as we know it. Below 150 ppm, all life becomes challenging to survive. With every cyclic ice age when the atmosphere has been dropping as low as 180 ppm, life has virtually been on the brink of extinction due to lack of enough CO2 to keep all planetary life alive. This may just be our fate, if it wasn’t for human induced CO2 into the atmosphere that will perhaps halt that natural evolution.
Let’s stop this stupid war on CO2 NOW, and start solving real problems that are flying under the radar, which present a real threat to human existence.
The CAGWers hate life. More specifically, they hate human life. That is what it boils down to.
Except their own lives.
They just want everyone else gone, just like they want everyone else to stop flying, and everyone else to eat bugs instead of meat, everyone else to give all their money in taxes to poor countries so they can build useless bird chopping wind turbines (whatever the kleptocrats do not steal, that is), and presumably everyone else to live in mud huts with no heat or light…while they are waiting to die.
For themselves, buying a Prius and condemning the unwashed den!ers is good enough for an all-inclusive ticket to warmista Heaven.
there is no man made warming
according to my own relevant investigation: there is no room for it in my equation…..
Henryp,
Didn’t you hear that incomprehensible drive-by proclamations are now out of fashion at WUWT?
“Is it really all about carbon?”, they ask the first question last and naturally make no mention of natural factors like clouds or the assumed role of increasing water vapour.
I have a few questions like:
Why have the satellite and radiosonde data not kept up with the model predictions?
Why, if increasing CO2 an evenly distributed gas is “by far the biggest factor”, has the modest warming of the past 60 years been mainly in the NH and there mainly in the far North?
Why, if increasing CO2 is “… by far the biggest factor” the temperature in the Antarctic has remained unchanged in the last 60 years of measurement particularly since CO2 “… has its greatest absorption of infrared radiation at sub-zero temperatures …” and “… the air is dry due to prevailing low temperatures, allowing CO2 to exert a much greater influence than would be possible in warmer and moister air masses at lower latitudes …” (climate4you)?
Why does the IPCC persist with its exaggerated model predictions which depend on increasing water vapour feedback (tropical tropospheric ‘hot spot’) when no evidence of strong feedback has been discovered?
Why have they not even mentioned the role clouds, the one big ‘unknown’ in understanding climate science?
Genuine climate scientists I’m sure have many more.
It has to be all about carbon, otherwise how could the tax the life out of our industry and dynamite the coal fired power plants that provide real, reliable power.
Indeed, the format of “Short Answers to Hard Questions” could be used to sell anything, including space aliens. Eg; “Are all space aliens bad”? Answer: No, not necessarily. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t embark upon a multi-$trillion anti-alien space invasion program immediately. Think of the children.
Hey, my house may burn down any day now too.
Maybe I should just call the fire department and have them hose it down every day when I leave for work, just to be safe?
It is no accident that “The New York Times” is an anagram of “The Monkey’s Write.” The NYT article(s) are utter garbage, propaganda that puts Goebbels to shame. Enjoy your bubble, monkeys.
Journalism has always had a point-of-view and a specific audience. The conceit was in elevating it’s product to something it never was. The consensus view being the only acceptable view until you realized that a small group of people were setting the agenda. Same schools, same parties, same dress, same mindset, same fossilization. We have demolished their corrupt grasp on civil conversation with the final spectacular battles being fought now. The President has the pulpit and he is not shrinking an inch from the fight. The MSM is making a concerted effort to destroy this administration. Trump knows all of the players from his years in New York. He didn’t need Steve Bannon to tell him who the domestic enemy was. He is slugging away.
> These countries may think differently, once they are swamped by millions of refugees from less fortunate lands.
Hmm, being flooded by millions of refugees is a BAD THING.
Somebody should tell that to the REST of the crew from the NYT. You know, those guys covering politics in Europe, places like Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands, etc.
Oopsy!
They accidently told the truth.
Hey, you are not supposed to be cross referencing political propaganda like that!
It screws things up when you compare one set of lies for one reason to another set of lies for a different reason!
Are the predictions reliable?
They’re not perfect, but are based on solid ‘political’ science.
Without the ‘Doom and Gloom’, nobody will pay attention.
JUSTIN GILLIS
“We get it.”
Yeah, so do we. Your blatant attempt at propaganda FAILS.
Buy the New York Times less.
The bottom of bird cages everywhere will suffer.
“Buy the New York Times less.”
I will do that…once I figure out a way to purchase a negative quantity of something.
OK, I got it…they will have to send ME money and burn some issues right off the presses.
Good idea Menicolas. NYT is a business. They can promote lithosphere conservation in favour of fundamental rights and democracy of western civilisations. They can even print on dead trees.
But calling their product science in order to defame those who don’t want to pay for it? That’s a step too far. NYT should compensate their victims.
Where is the scientific statement that melting of floating ice does not raise sea levels?
See Archimedes Principlevdating from ancient Greece.
The misleading claim is often made that melting polar ice will raise sea levels. It will, but it needs to be phrased as “melting polar ice that is on land and not floating”.
This caveat makes a rather large change to popular perceptions.
Geoff
14
‘But as we speak, climate policy in the UK is causing a main energy provider (Drax) to stop using local peat …’
Any evidence that Drax ever burned peat?
Whoops! Apparently no evidence for that. Don’t know where I picked that up. Thanks for pointing that out.
You were maybe thinking of Ireland, a little ways (35 km at the closest) across the water. They do have plants that burn peat for electrical generation.
Maybe you meant hundred-million-year-old peat…better known as coal?
‘ This uncertainty means that computer forecasts can give only a range of future climate possibilities, not absolute predictions.
But even if those computer forecasts did not exist, a huge amount of evidence suggests that scientists have the basic story right.’
This is buried in the text.
So we are supposed to believe that the models based on the settled science are not predictive, yet a huge amount of evidence show they are, as in ‘scientists have the story right’;
One rational conclusion is that both lines of evidence are wrong, as they rely on each other.
What a bunch of BS. I will give a real climate forecast next post and why.
My response to this fake news article full of BS.
HERE IS MY CLIMATE FORECAST BASED ON TWO FACTORS
FACTOR NUMBER ONE – ALL of the solar conditions must meet my criteria. Thus far all have with the exception of the solar wind /ap index but that should come in line soon ,as sunspots vanish. The coronal holes will dry up which is temporary in keeping up the solar wind speed and ap index .
FACTOR TWO – The upcoming probable El Nino, but this is very temporary and will last worst case scenario 9 months.
So let’s say a moderate El NINO develops and last around 9 months that would take us to the end of 2017 /early 2018.
At that time that is when the global temperatures will fall below the 30 year running normal.
It will be fast not slow when it happens.
Look at the period 1275-1325 the climate changed quickly.
Now if El Nino should fizzle and major volcanic activity picks up this dramatic cooling below the 30 year avg. will come before the end of year 2017.
So my climate outlook is, this is the end of the warm period. It has one year or less to go and when it ends the global temperatures will fall fast and be below the 30 year running normal and stay there.
If my two factors take place and the global temperatures do not fall I will be wrong.
I know two things for sure which are this period of time in the climate is in no way unique and AGW does not exist. .
Timing is everything, and…
Predictions are hard, especially about the future.
The history of stock traders making bold predictions is littered with people who got right what would happen, but were wrong about the when.
I do not know how or why you would claim to know when volcanic activity will increase, but at some point it surely will.
And as for a cooling trend replacing decades of warming and static temps…I tend to agree that this is likely to happen at some point, and that if the Sun is involved, it may be real soon and quite dramatic.
But I have to stop short of declaring that I know it will be so.
We need more information, and that will take time.
The ocean currents, and perhaps especially the AMO 60 year cycle, seems very likely to me to be a large factor in recent warming, and a general trend of declining Arctic ice, and that seems to have levelled off and may be about to increase again. If it does so for several years and then several decades running, CAGW is dead, as it is if actual cooling in the global trend becomes undeniable.
My opinion is that CAGW is dead but zombified…still walking, but not for long, and it may still hurt us if we are not vigilant.
I am gonna go ahead and still give you credit if it is two years, or three, or even five.
Timing is everything…and predictions, well…
PART TWO OF MY REPONSE – prove me wrong article.
It is not the reduction in solar irradiance although that contributes
but rather all of the secondary effects.
As far as the climate of the earth this period of time is in no way unique.
The climate in the big picture is controlled by Milankovitch Cycles, Land Ocean arrangements, with Solar Activity and the Geo Magnetic Field Strength of the earth superimposed upon this.
These factors then exert influences on the terrestrial items on the earth that determine the climate.
Terrestrial Items which are effected due to very low solar activity. These are the secondary effects which will have a big impact on the climate in my opinion.
Atmospheric Circulation
Sea Surface Temperatures
Global Cloud Coverage
Global Snow Coverage
Global Sea Ice Coverage
Enso
Volcanic Activity
All of this gives an x climate over x time. The historical climatic record supports this.
That is WHAT likely makes the climate change, NOT the scam they promote which is AGW.
The historical climatic record showing this period of time in the climate is in no way unique while changes in CO2 concentrations having no correlation in leading to resultant climate changes.
Now how the cooling evolves will have to be monitored. Of course going from an El Nino condition to an La Nina condition is going to cause an initial cooling.
For clues that if solar is involved the depth of the cooling will have to be monitored and if the cooling is accompanied by the terrestrial items I have mentioned above.
Each one of those terrestrial items having been shown to be linked to Milankovitch Cycles Land Ocean Arrangements in the big slow moving picture while solar and geo magnetic variability being factors that can change these terrestrial items on a much smaller time scale.
The solar parameters needed are
Solar Wind sub 350 km/sec.
AP index 5 or lower
EUV LIGHT 100 units or less
COSMIC RAY COUNTS – 6500 or greater
SOLAR IRRADIANCE – off by .15% or greater.
All very attainable going forward and being compounded by a weakening geo magnetic which if attained with sufficient duration of time will translate into bringing the terrestrial items that control our climate to values which will cause the climate to cool gradually if not in a sharp drop off if certain thresholds should be meant.
Salvatore You’ve been previously banned for bad behavior….don’t make the same mistake again.
Bad behavior? There has been none that I can see here. His viewpoint is one that all can benefit by seeing.
“Why 40? 39 of them must be wrong. ”
My contention is that 40 of them are wrong. The radiative forcing model creates an onion Earth and is completely wrong. It can’t produce correct results, which is why so many organisations have had to retrofit data to the theory. Early models couldn’t even show the Sahara Desert. They are so bad, the IPCCCP won’t even call what they do predicitons.
My opinion is that the Earth is a whole bunch of convection systems pumping heat about from the tropics to the poles. Only once you are willing to model that, will you get predictions that actually predict anything.
The fact remains that the highest form of western civilization produces BELOW ZERO net CO2. We efficiently bio-sequester all our own CO2 into corn, wheat, hamburger and forest products like lumber and newsprint. We also bio-sequester lots from China and India as well blowing in on the prevailing winds. Scientific papers produced by teams of scientists working at Princeton University this century, have proved this beyond all doubt. I have read and possess the original scientific papers, and not doomster summaries and political propaganda scatologies,” so favored by the would-be taxers and political fraudsters.
Strangely the CAGW doomster frauds neglect to point out that North America is a Net CO2 Sink”. The largest on the Planet and larger than the Amazon rainforest. Why?
Do not forget the hamburger rolls.
I hate burgers without the buns.
[snip – so far off topic it’s in another galaxy -mod]
I love the way that the New York Times says ” Scientists believe most and probably all of the warming since 1950 was caused by the human release of greenhouse gases” – so they don’t have proof something proven many times by the skeptical science dodgy literature review even a warmist couldn’t find any significant number of papers- it is a religious belief.
Belief should NEVER come into science. Only falsifiable hypotheses backed up by hard, reproducible evidence.
Fake news
Fake news
Is crazy weather tied to climate change? In some cases yes according to the crazy “science” called Attribution Science.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2929159
Interesting scare remark in the main article about the heat from humans being equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima bombs daily. Perhaps the best answer is that therefore the heat radiated from earth each day must be equivalent to 400,001 Hiroshima bombs daily.
As has been argued many times before here, you cannot use the C14 tracer to pin the residence time of carbon. True, it is not forever, but also not 15 years. It’s about 50 years. See the exposé of Peter Dietze at John Dalys website, which criticises the Bern model.
The modelers presume the residence time is basically forever.
If half the CO2 (or more…the rate of increase has hardly budged even as emissions have skyrocketed) put into the air never even shows up, why should we doubt the residence time will be very very short?
Here are my short answers to the NYT’s article(s):
1. How much is the planet heating up?
1. Not much. In the next 100 years it may actually cool. Check back with me on that one.
1. From the Times: “…it is actually high, which explains why much of the world’s land ice is starting to melt and the oceans are rising at an accelerating pace…”
1. Except for Antarctica and Greenland where the ice is thickening overall.
2. How much trouble are we in?
2. Not much from climate change, but there is a whole list of other things which spell trouble (nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists, a solar storm similar to 1859—known as the Carrington Event, a tsunami on the east or west coast, an F5 hurricane or tornado with a direct hit on a major city, etc.).
3. Is there anything I can do?
3. Vote all of the climate alarmist out of office. Get rid of ICLEI and UN Agenda 21 from your city town or county.
4. What’s the optimistic scenario?
4. Adaptation is the best policy – for humans, plants, and animals. Drill baby, drill.
5. Will reducing meat in my diet help the climate?
5. No. (Ref. Leviticus 11, King James Version)
6. What’s the worst-case scenario?
6. Collapse of food production from cold weather and using food to make fuel.
7. Will a tech breakthrough help us?
7. Yes, that has always helped humans in the past.
9. Are the predictions reliable?
9. NO, even 10 day predictions/forecasts on weather are not reliable.
10. Why do people question climate change?
10. Because of the scientific method – theory vs evidence/experiment/data
11. Is crazy weather tied to climate change?
11. Yes climate has always changed, and that includes extreme weather events happening (crazy weather).
12. Will anyone benefit from global warming?
12. A lot more than those who would gain from global cooling.
13. Is there any reason for hope?
13. Yes. (things are starting to change)
14. How does agriculture affect climate change?
14. It probably does, but not in a negative way in the long run.
15. Will the seas rise evenly across the planet?
15. Yes, and at the present rate, about 6 – 7 inches per century.
16. Is it really all about carbon?
16. No, it’s about carbon dioxide (CO2) New York Times – cant you get it right yet?
And CO2 is not the control knob, get with it…
can’t…damn…
I say we have to give the “accelerating ocean rise” claim special status as a “pure and unadulterated lie”.
It is categorically untrue, yet stated as fact with no discussion.
And from whence the climate refugees, if not from submerged islands?
The submerged islands meme has likewise been completely and irrefutably debunked. Coral atolls always stay a few feet above the sea.
+10
Fake news . NYT is ruining its brand
You might want to re-think the statement of Vikings growing grapes in Greenland.
The saga report the discovery of Vinland (likely Newfoundland or possibly Nova Scotia), where wild grapes grow and could have been fermented to a wine-like concoction.
It is completely unsubstantiated that they grew grapes in Greenland!
I do not know about the grapes, one way or the other.
But they undoubtedly and for sure farmed in Greenland, in places it is too cold in the present era to farm.
This is a matter of historically documented fact, and yet so damning to the warmista narrative that many of them feel strongly compelled to attempt to refute this fact.
Even right here on this site, in the past year, several warmista shills (no need to name names, they and everyone here know who they are) have made utter fools of themselves while trying to rewrite history to suit their audience and relieve their own cognitive dissonance.
The Norsemen didn’t call it Greenland to be pointlessly ironic. Hipsters hadn’t been invented yet.
Since the CAGW moniker is no longer fashionable in all cases, we need a new acronym in line with the idea that climate change of all kinds is occurring rather than simple monotonic warming. I propose Catastrophic Anthopogenic Climate Adjustment, or …
No, I disagree.
Changing the narrative is exactly what the warmistas do to try and deflect attention away from the complete failure of their predictions and scare stories to come true.
They try to call it climate change, climate weirding, climate chaos, etc. The NYT articles include such weasel tactics and squirmy doubletalk.
Their basic premise and the basis of everything else all boils down to propagating the idea that CO2 is the temperature control knob of the atmosphere, and increasing concentrations of CO2 will cause the globe to warm, and that this will be absolutely and assuredly disastrous for human beings and for life on Earth…an extinction level event. And along the way, every possible bad thing that has or can happen, will happen, and all bad happenings and disasters are because of the devil gas…which they have decided to call “carbon” instead of being truthful and scientific.
They do not just studiously ignore that carbon dioxide is literally the basis of the entire food chain of the Earth (yeah yeah…except for the mid ocean ridges…) and hence the entire biosphere. No, they do not merely avoid mentioning this fact, or acknowledging the tremendous benefit of increasing CO2 on all of plant life, but they have actually managed to make a large portion of the general public oblivious of this central tenet of biology…that without CO2 in the air, all life on earth will end…and end quickly. And not just that, but have, incredibly, actually had the molecule at the base of the food chain and on which all life depends declared a POLLUTANT! A noxious chemical to be done away with.
Together with convincing large numbers of people that a warmer world is deadly, rather than beneficial and a desirable thing, this reclassification of CO2 as a noxious substance represents a corruption of science, and of education in general, that is nothing short of astounding, and must be considered the biggest fraud in history, and a complete reversal of centuries of progress in understanding our world from a scientific perspective.
It is no less than a concerted and deliberate attempt to reverse the progress of civilization.
@Menicholas: Either you didn’t work out the new acronym or you don’t speak Spanish, perhaps both. The last work should probably be changed: Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alteration. The acronym, CACA, ends up being, in Spanish, an appropriate name for the entire enterprise.
Offset certificates? Indulgences are back in I see.
I below their motivations are not monetary, but rather based in their “green” mindset. I suspect that green-minded individuals flocked to the climate field since its earliest days, have dominated it since, and that their zealotry explains the bias and hanky-panky in the field. They are scientists second, greens first, in the crunch. They are conducting “advocacy research.”
(Evidence: I suspect climatologists are members of green advocacy groups at a far higher level than, say, meteorologists, or any other branch of science.)
Most “climate scientists” are not true climatologists, but GIGO computer gamers. Real climatologists gather genuine observations. They don’t make up “data” to fit the assumptions of their GC model programs.
Oops: “believe,” not “below.”
The warming effect of CO2 is modest and very roughly calculable, and logarithmically diminishing. As CO2 levels go up, two things happen:
1. The warming effect of additional CO2 decreases.
2. The rate at which the biosphere (“greening”) and oceans remove CO2 increases.
So increased CO2 levels have less and less effect on temperature, and as CO2 levels go up it gets harder and harder to raise CO2 levels further. It is inherently a very stable system. To me it looks like it was Designed as a stable system.
It’s calculable in a lab setting. In the real climate system, with all its feedbacks, not so much.
Agreed. That’s why I said “very roughly.”
Dave,
This is dynamite !
Quickly, tell NASA, I bet they haven’t thought of this.
My answers:
1. How much is the planet heating up?
Wait and see.
2. How much trouble are we in?
What have you done?
The rest just tries to push harder on solutions that would benefit investments in climate change. I have noticed a switch in strategy towards pushing for technology like a slimy salesman that looks nervous to lose his job. We will soon see some aggression coming from Mann and the people that bet on green technology based on a glimpse of temperature swings at the moment.
The NYT article is van utterly anti-scientific waste of bandwidth. Responding to it work anything other than derision is a waste of time. And gives the zzz hats at NYT far more credibility than they deserve.
lol.. shirly shome mishtake, unless there is there more than one NYT.
If you’re looking for their Office of Honest Reporting, check the janitor’s closet.
Is there anything we can do to reduce CO2 emissions? Yes. For starters, Justin Willis and the rest of that lot can get their mouths sewn shut.
The cold weather of the Little Ice Age was a blip, NOT an ice age. The Younger Dryas was also a blip. We humans weren’t doing a whole lot of industrial carbon dioxide production back then, so melting that big ol’ ice dam 25,000++ years ago, when we mere mortals were still hunting and gathering and flaking rocks for spear and arrow points was the byproduct of a burst of warm weather.
So there’s this Theodore White fellow who is predicting 36 years (ahead) of severe cold weather, claiming it’s another ice age. No, it is a BLIP. Nothing else.
It is more productive to look at atmospheric humidity levels in all areas of the world, along with monitoring landward wind directions, to see if any of that has changed. I’ve been tracking weather in my area (temp, humidity, WC, DP, precip + volume) for a very long time, and the most noticeable change is the level of humidity in the winter – much higher than usual – over the past three (3) years. That is significant.
The other thing I notice is how much cash goes into the pockets of climate scientists who agree with a political agenda and how willing they are to try to criminalize those who disagree with them. Medieval inquisitions, anyone?
it is all about money$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
daveburton, it wasn’t designed. It just happened. If it wasn’t a reasonably stable system we would not be here.
The simplistic ‘more CO2 means more food production’ is the hallmark of the armchair scientist.
What qualifications does Lance have ?, has he run these thoughts past any real scientists ?
WTF,
You mean besides for all the real scientists here?
Are you actually so dim witted and uneducated that you are not aware that the increase in CO2 is already and in fact responsible for a substantial and rising percentage of all food produced in the world?
How can someone so ignorant of basic science have the temerity and the gall to comment in such a manner as you do here, even if it is a gutless drive-by comment?
It is more than obvious what qualifications you have to comment here…none whatsoever.
Dear Menicholas
So asking basic questions sets you off ?, no wonder you are stuck in this alternative science world .
Why haven’t ” all the real scientists here” been able to get any ‘evidence’ past peer review ? – and please don’t go all conspiracy nutter on me.
steve d. “Funny that when it comes to the 3000 scientists who put together the IPCC report most of the people below say these scientists dont know what they doing or they are doing it for the YUGE amount of grant money. Really? That is the argument of a simpleton.”
steve d. “Funny that when it comes to the 3000 scientists who put together the IPCC report most of the people below say these scientists dont know what they doing or they are doing it for the YUGE amount of grant money. Really? That is the argument of a simpleton.”
Instant proof of the propaganda effect. The IPCC is not put together by 3000 scientists. It is review of the scientific literature, in which there may, or may not have been, papers put together by a total of 3000 scientists. The reviews are done by at most a couple of hundred scientists, many of them activists. They choose which papers are “right” – unique in science – and put the results into the IPCC reports. Having said that even activist scientists are wary of exaggeration and the body of the reports tend to point to uncertainties.
The actual bit that gets to the press is the Summary for Policy Makers, which is written entirely by politicians. I know this because I once asked a UK Met Office scientist while he was working on the preparation of the SPM what input the scientists had, and he replied, “We hold the pens.”
You might want to ask yourself why you’ve been led to believe that the IPCC reports are prepared by 3000 scientists.
Well said geronimo
Hundreds of scientists with integrity have resigned in disgust from the IPCC Committees. Some I know who are very knowledgeable skeptics remain as experts and reviewers in order to keep track of the actions of those manipulating, ‘homogenizing’ and faking the arguments.
In the end it will all come out, just like the CFC story. No climate modeler will bet money on the results of their models. That is telling. The climate is simply too uncertain and unpredictable to spend money on ‘changing it’.
Rather, be involved in dealing with the problems of the age in which you live. We are entering an age of famine in reason and integrity.
The belief that each of the very many noble and angelic and pure-of-thought-and-deed scientists in the world are unable to be swayed by mere money is the argument of a complete naïf.
There is nothing, literally nothing, that some people will not do for money.
People kill for money everyday.
Add to the money some power and prestige, a chance at fame, and a whole bunch of more money, and pit that against the ignominy and destitution of losing one’s job…and the number who will simply lie (or bend the truth, or look the other way, or substitute certainty for doubt) for money is not small.
From the source article:
” These past conditions are not a perfect guide to the future, either, because humans are pumping carbon dioxide into the air far faster than nature has ever done.”
This sounds unbelievable, give all that has happened on this planet. “faster than nature has ever done” admits that nature ‘does it’. That is a start, but as for scale? Poppycock. Humans have been emitting CO2 faster than humans have before (assuming the forest and savannah burning is about the same as it was). But ‘nature’? No way. A series of decent volcanic eruptions. of which there have been many in the last few million years, far exceed the rate of emissions.
The Toba eruption put out 22 billion kg CO2 per day and the Yellowstone eruption about ten times that, 220 billion. However these concentrate on rare events. It is more reasonable to consider that the difference between NH Winter and NH Summer CO2 levels. The difference is as much as 9 ppm. CO2 is 7.8 gigatons per ppm these days. So 9 ppm means 70 gigatons CO2 difference in 6 months (a little less time actually) is emitted by ‘nature’ from the biosphere and oceans.
That is a ‘rate’ of 140 GTons per year. This is far in excess of any annual rate of human emissions. In fact the peak emission rate by ‘nature’ is much higher than the average with close to half of it being emitted in about two months. The peak rate is about 20 GTons a month.
So nature not only has ‘done it’ faster, nature does it every year.
At least the NYT didn’t use the ‘97% of scientists agree’ mantra. Apart from that they continue with the fake news even as the NOAA is caught fabricating sea temperatures. Thomas Karl will probably plead the 5th., which has precedence for members of the scandal free Obama administration.
Predicting the Future is hard. Last year the US had an election and despite their greatest efforts to predict the election outcome, they were wrong and I was right. Now they are telling us what the weather will be like in 100 years. They will be wrong and I….. and most likely you as well, will be right.
In both cases, the people who are wrong are/were ignoring evidence that was right in front of their faces.
And they still are.
Cognitive dissonance is even more powerful than ignorance in shaping what any particular individual notices.
The rosiest scenario is also the more realistic and likely
Imagine that.
They remind me of Rachel Maddow explaining at great length and in minute detail how it is actually IMPOSSIBLE for Donald trump to be elected.
It is mind boggling how these people keep their fat paying jobs.
In my uni days, I was told by the professor of physics that it is very questionable scientific practice to draw any conclusions from measurements which are at the same kind of level as the noise floor of the system from which they were taken.
What is often overlooked is that all climate graphs have a large amount of smoothing applied to them. If they did not, the actual trend (or claimed trend) would be totally lost under the random noise. The signal the alarmists are looking for isn’t just at or even a bit below the noise floor, it’s figuratively speaking at the bottom of a coal mine below the building!
Without that smoothing, diurnal and seasonal changes would be of the order of 50C. It’s worse than that though, because as well as smoothing-out the seasonal and diurnal changes, the yearly 8C change in global average temperature due to the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit is smoothed out. Even this is more than 4x the claimed measurement.
Put it another way, would you buy a sound system with a claimed noise-to-signal ratio of 30dB? That’s noise to signal, not signal to noise, note. If not, would you ‘buy’ the climate scientists’ story?
All I hear, is a deafening hiss.
The reality that Climate Science is a religion is impelling. The promotion of a scientific argument getting a 97% consensus should be a give away. I could probably only get a 97% consensus if I polled Evangelicals about the Virgin birth. Climate scientists are very similar to the Catholic church priests that supported the kings “Divine right to Rule”. They were virtually the only ones educated and by supporting the power they were able to share in the spoils that with the churches support were voluntarily plundered by the crown rather than having to revert to the messy sword to steal. Finally, the scientists that back the political stance are remunerated like the priests far beyond what they could expect to receive for their contributions in the free market.
Mostly true, except you seem to think the 97% number is in any way real.
it is not.
it is fake news, as fake as it gets.
Question 10….
The question itself is offensive.
How dare we question “their” authority.
“5. Will reducing meat in my diet help the climate? …The cows themselves produce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that causes short-term warming. Meat consumption is rising worldwide as the population grows, and as economic development makes people richer and better able to afford meat. This is worrisome”
Just to cover their bases as the US rejects CAGW, vegan and vegetarian activists are simply reverting to the cancer apocalypse as before:
How cheddar and cream cheese could give you breast cancer: Eating too much can raise the risk by 50%
Dairy has a growth hormone called IGF, which enourages cells to turn malignant
It has also been linked to obesity, which raises the risk of 13 types of cancer
Eating yoghurt, which doesn’t have the hormone, cuts the danger by 30 per cent
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-4322418/How-cheddar-cream-cheese-breast-cancer.html#ixzz4bmyc7R4R
Now all the Boomers can meet their youthful-selves spouting this stuff and evaluate if they like what they see.
The ta tas are endangered, better ban something.
And look, NOx has been substituted for CO2 already:
Does any one here have any idea what the natural cycle of NO2 in the atmosphere and biosphere is?
I will give you a hint, the NO2 budget is as massive an unquantifiable as lightning events.
In fact, the greening of the earth is not likely from CO2 increases, but from NO2 increases — as we have clouds that move through states and discharge as much as 237 strikes in a matter of hours. And that is just one cloud.
Take home point: Every single stroke of lightning breaks up how much N2 in the atmosphere?
Tell me, is NO2 really a pollutant? Or is it the most important source to plants, trees and microorganisms of natural available nitrogen?
Here is a follow up article to this article:
Climate “Science” on Trial; Useful Idiots Don’t Rely on Facts
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/03/19/climate-science-on-trial-useful-idiots-dont-rely-on-facts/
If cows are bad for the environment and we must stop eating them, don’t we lose milk, cheese, yogurt, etc, along with the meat? Are we to eat goat cheese and drink goat milk from here on out?
Here are my own responses to the 15 questions in simple English:
1. How much is the planet heating up?
The planet is slightly warmer than 135 years ago, based on very rough estimates … but also colder than it was when dinosaurs were alive.
The starting point of the measurements determines if there was heating, or cooling.
Every warming period in Earth’s history was followed by a cooling period.
There is no evidence of any runaway warming, in spite of the fact that CO2 levels were higher than today for most of Earth’s 4.5 billion year history.
All 15 questions, and my simple answers, are at my climate blog for non-scientists:
http://www.elOnionBloggle.blogspot.com
steve d March 18, 2017 at 7:17 pm
“So you all seem to have dismissed NASA, big call! ”
Obama dismissed NASA about 10 minutes after he was inaugurated,
He then turned it into a Muslim outreach organization! All the scientists who were knew nothing about climate science had to have something to do.
Hopefully we can get NASA back to doing something useful.
I may have missed it but as far as I could see, nowhere in the article was ‘climate change’ defined. Is the disingenuous eco-Progressive NYT using one of the four UN definitions or merely the common usage? For the most part, UN definitions require zero humanity for zero climate change. This is the truth at the heart of UN Climatism.
The NYT is making a blatant and pathetic attempt to make politics look like science. The did a piece on the Maps that explain climate change and identify at Texas and Florida as the states the need to pay attention most. They are also the states that would guarantee a Democrat President. The article is truly a pathetic piece of propaganda.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/21/climate/how-americans-think-about-climate-change-in-six-maps.html?_r=0
Why is there such reluctance to using the record of recent temperature (since 1880) as a predictor of future temperature. There appears to be an apparent pattern to the change as shown by the record to date.