As promised, I attended Al Gore’s climate change lecture at Rice University last night. Rice University is one of the most beautiful university campuses I’ve ever seen, so it was a delight to see it again. The architecture is outstanding, and the buildings are placed in a garden-like setting. It was lovely to walk from the parking lot to the fieldhouse. The speech was held in a packed Tudor Fieldhouse which seats 5,750. By the time the Rice University Provost was introducing Al Gore, there were no empty seats that I could see, see Figure 1.
Figure 1
A couple of minutes later, when Al Gore came on stage he received a standing ovation, I must say I was a little surprised, like I was in an alternate universe. However, about 40% of Texans vote Democratic and these voters are concentrated in Houston, San Antonio and Austin. As an example, Houston went for Hillary Clinton by over 160,000 votes. This was very apparent in Tudor Fieldhouse. The crowd even cheered when Gore railed against the fossil fuel industry and called for dismantling it. Although, I noticed lots of people (including the couple next to me) got up and walked out at that point. When the lights came up for questions, there were many empty seats, perhaps a quarter or more, had walked out during the speech.
As some predicted, prior to the speech, questions were pre-screened by the provost (Professor of statistics Marie Lynn Miranda). She is an unquestioning true believer in catastrophic man-made global warming (CAGW) just like Al Gore, so the three hand-picked questions she asked were softballs that merely prompted more vitriol about “deniers.” Yes, he used the word a few times. Once he said, “I know I’m being dismissive of them, but what can I do?” This was accompanied with an irritatingly smug and superior smile, like the one that lost him the election in 2000.
The first question is the only one I’ll discuss here. It was (paraphrasing): Why is the media ignoring climate change? Al Gore’s answer was very long and rambling, but he essentially said, even though climate change is the most important issue facing human civilization ever, the media ignores it because too many people turn off their TV’s or radios or change the channel whenever it comes up. He believes the media are not informing any more but, they are entertainment only. That was interesting, I agree with him on that point. Then he went on to say the internet and social media are not a positive thing today, they are divisive; but he had hopes for the future of social media. The media is toast, since both sides now think it has devolved to entertainment.
Points made in the lecture
The lecture was in two parts. In the first Gore asserted that humans are causing “dangerous” climate change, without offering any proof. He further asserted that 16 of the 17 warmest years “on record” were in this century, asserted that greenhouse gases (“mainly carbon dioxide”) were the cause since they “trap” 400,000 Hiroshima bombs worth of heat on the Earth every year. He presented no evidence that the greenhouse connections are related to the warming or that heat is “trapped” by them. The “evidence” that man’s emissions cause climate change is computer-model based, and not based on, or supported by, observations as discussed here. The popular concept of greenhouse gases “trapping” heat is very misleading and inaccurate as described by Rasmus Benestad here.
The idea that 16 of the 17 warmest years “on record” are in this century is debatable and depends upon which surface temperature record one chooses to use and the estimate of error-of-measurement one chooses to use. For a discussion of this see Pat Frank’s post here. This statement also ignores the very small change in temperature in this century, versus the latter part of the 20th century, as can be seen here. Further, the measured global temperature record only goes back to 1880, at the earliest, and this was the end of the Little Ice Age. The Little Ice Age is the coldest period on Earth since the beginning of the Holocene as can be seen here in figures 3A and 3B. Do we really want to go back to the cold and miserable Little Ice Age? This was a very difficult time, as discussed here. I and most people like it warmer than that.
So, Gore’s assertions are very contestable, yet he moves on undeterred, and describes cherry-picked catastrophes all over the world, with emotional pictures. According to him, all are linked to man’s supposed changes to the global climate. He asserts that hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria were all made worse by global warming. He acknowledges “some say no link of climate change to extreme weather can be shown.” He doesn’t mention a source, but I suspect he was referring to the excellent work by Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. (here) and Dr. Cliff Mass (here). Dr. Judith Curry, a hurricane expert, has also discussed global warming and hurricanes here. Dr. Curry, in the cited post, says:
“Thinking that reducing fossil fuels is going to help with extreme events on the timescale of the 21st century is a pipe dream. Even if you believe the climate models, and we are able to drastically reduce fossil fuel emissions by 2050, we’re going to see miniscule impacts on the climate and the weather by the end of the 21st century. Any benefits would be realised in the 22nd and 23rd centuries. If we think we have enough wisdom and knowledge to what might happen in the 22nd and 23rd Century — personally I’d rather see us deal with here and now, and maybe focus on what we might be facing out to 2050. That seems a more practical and realistic goal, for what we should be trying to do. That’s my opinion.”
But, then he asserts that the “probability” of “record breaking” extreme weather events are increased, although he contradicts himself to the “extreme” within a few seconds, the crowd did not seem to notice.
He moves on to blame global warming (or climate change) for “record breaking” precipitation, droughts, wildfires, etc. Sea level rise will flood Miami and other low-lying cities. “Rain bombs” are the new scary monster. He says CO2, through warming, supposedly increases water use by plants, ignoring evidence that CO2 decreases water use per pound of plant. Further, he says climate change also caused the “Arab Spring,” destabilizes governments, and we are in the sixth great extinction event. Fifty percent of all species will be wiped out, and on and on. If it’s in the news, global warming caused it.
Al Gore believes that fossil fuels receive $700 billion in subsidies. He didn’t supply a period of time, but this was just for U.S. A 2015 report by the EIA, exclusive of welfare programs like LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance), the U.S. industry receives $3.4 billion in subsidies per year (see here).
He also believes that solar and wind are at grid parity (cost of producing electricity) with coal and other fossil fuels and soon will be cheaper. This is sheer fantasy as explained here and here.
At the end he received a standing ovation.
Conclusions
The climate alarmists appear to be losing the battle for public attention and concern, but you would never know it from the reception to this speech. Those opposed to the idea of catastrophic man-made global warming, if they even came to the talk, left before the end.
The speech was all over the place, floods here, droughts there, sea level rise, wildfires, etc. Mr. Gore, there is always a flood, a drought or a very high tide somewhere, they don’t have to be caused by the same thing. As a skeptical scientist, with some knowledge in the area, I was unconvinced, but the others in the audience seemed happy with what he had to say.
I interpreted Gore’s speech to be more anti-fossil-fuels than pro-CAGW. He stated that he wanted to completely replace fossil fuels with other sources of energy. He is also pro-nuclear.
These issues are very political these days and very unscientific, which is a shame. But, then, many other issues are as well.
I had two questions, but was never asked for them, they are below:
16 of the 17 hottest years on record have occurred in this century. The record goes back to 1880, the end of the Little Ice Age, which geologists believe is the coldest period since the end of the last glacial period, 12,000 years ago. Why use such an unusually cold period as a benchmark temperature?
Both Nature magazine (2012 editorial) and the IPCC (in AR5, 2013) have determined that we cannot compute the man-made global warming contribution to any storm or to any trend (increasing or decreasing) in extreme weather. This is also the conclusion of Dr. Roger Pielke (University of Colorado). Can you comment on this?
If I had been allowed to ask the questions, I wonder what he would say? Would he call me a denier and go to the next question?
Needs a verb after “on record”. Otherwise you have not stated an idea, but only that [blank] is debatable.
Thanks jdgalt, fixed.
Gee !
For a moment there thought he was saying that nineteen of the hottest 20 years have occurred this century.
I wonder if he has noticed that many of the highest altitudes on this planet occur up in the mountains !
Thanks for the report Andy; I’m glad you were allowed to leave eventually. I know quite a few Rice graduates, and I can tell you they tend to be a lot smarter than the average bear.
G
Gee, Andy, it almost seems like that was two-plus hours of your life that you’ll never get back. You’re very brave to sit through that without falling off your chair, laughing.
Can you advise your understanding of what “on record” means? What it actually means scientifically? As in data collected, reported and recorded. By scientists, and laymen, using scientific instruments. And therefore an accurate record of actual temperatures actually recorded?
“On record” means temperatures recorded by men using thermometers. It does not speak to the accuracy of the thermometers or their enclosures. Since radiant energy striking thermometers in the open air affects them, stevenson screens were invented and in place by 1880, this is why records of world-wide average temperature are usually started in that year.
Ref. non-hydro renewables supposedly being at grid parity with FF:
I reckon you meant to say sheer fantasy, but perhaps this was a play on words, e.g., wind shear.
LoL!
fixed, thanks.
Catastrophic Al Gore Weaseling.
Indeed I think Andy May deserves a medal for staying through the whole thing!!!!!!
James Bull
I presumed Algore would screen questions.
Yes, You are a D-Nye-R – Nothing for You!
Next!
Andy, Did you get another photo with the empty seats after the lecturing was done?
Under 6,000 seats for a “Celebrity” know-it-all ain’t much, in TEXAS!
No, when the lights came on too many people stood up to get a good picture. Plus, I stayed for the questions.
Gore can manage without the media. He’ll do what Mao did in the cultural revolution, when he was losing his grip. Turn to the gullible youth. An army of social justice warriors!
Excellent analogy. Seems that is exactly what is going on. Some of the youth is gullible but some just have been “brain washed” by our educational system. Few know how to think for themselves. They believe thinking is just when their little gears in their brain are spinning away in random firing of their synapses.
Agreed.
That the earth is warming and the climate is “changing” are unquestioned “facts” to that generation because that is all they have heard from teachers, family and the MSM. (Questioning either is a sign of ignorance.)
They go to an AL Gore rally to be reinforced in that belief (like a religious revival meeting) and to hear from the (G)oracle what should be done about it (by other people of course).
They will still fly home on break if they live a distance, and drive around in the car Daddy bought them. But if the foul fossil fuel companies would only disappear in favor the the cheaper renewables, all would be good.
(Oh I forgot; Trump has to sign the Paris agreement and THEN all will be good.)
The messiah Gore saves!
“Why is the media ignoring climate change?” The question would be more accurate if it also included “with the exception of the US public-funded PBS NewsHour news outlet.” By my rather laboriously collected count of direct broadcast discussions / significant mentions of the global warming topic at that program, along with directly related online NewsHour content, this tallies up to around 680 times over the last 20 years, If you figure 26 two-week periods in each year, this all works out to the topic coming up at the NewsHour a bit over once every two weeks, non-stop. No objective person would call this particular situation “a news outlet ignoring climate change.”
It’s a false premise question, and I have my doubt that it was even a real one from the audience, although if it was, the questioner probably read it as a talking point at some pro-AGW website. Undertake various internet searches of combinations of the words “media cover climate change,” and you will see exactly what I mean. Always ironic that AGWers accuse us of pushing misinformation, when it is THEY who are doing that.
By that i assume what was meant is that the media are not hyperventilating about it. This “problem” would go away if it weren’t for the establishment and social media harping on it 24/7. They are the main drivers of (perceived) CAGW.
For the most part the LSM (lame stream media) haven’t been ignoring the issue. Perhaps they simply aren’t regurgitating the initial tripe. They are in the entertainment business. Their revenue stream is directly driven from advertising sales which is determined by viewership. They’ve had allsorts of “news” programs for years including all sorts of gossip. The gap between verifiable facts and gossip used to be sacrosanct. Sadly it appears as though the money men have prostituted the entire business.
I don’t know many people who take Al Gore, or Bill Nye seriously anymore.
That crowd did and that’s whats matters!!
But, nobody takes the crowd seriously, and individually they are on weak ground as well.
I believe the Texans who left were just too polite to point out Gore’s inconsistencies. It’s southern hospitality.
My thought as well.
It is hard to stop the alarmistas with southern hospitality.
Okay, let’s see how far politeness goes. Propose a state income tax in Texas for Al Gore to spend as he sees fit under the umbrella of climate causes. That is basically what the Waxman Markey bill said.
My question would have been: Is the weather here today at all unusual?
I can’t comment on weather in Texas. Sad to say, in my several trips to the US there are many states I have not been able to visit, Texas being one of them. However, having spent a lot of time in Australia, I would hazard a guess that Texas weather is relatively stable. In my home, New Zealand, which is a relatively narrow, long strip of islands, weather is very changeable. We sometimes think the forecasts are good if they get it right more than 6 hours out. But my observations suggest that if I were to predict that tomorrow will be same as today I would be right about 70% of the time.
So, was the weather unusual that day? Would I be right if I suggested there was a 70%+ chance that it wasn’t?
Gary Kerkin,
The weather has been very nice for the last few days. 21 degrees (C), low humidity and sunny during the day and 15-16 at night and clear. This is the good time of the year here. And, you are correct, the weather is predictable here.
Thanks Andy. We are coming through spring and today’s temperature at my home, a wee way north of Wellington, will probably get up to 22ºC. Currently, at 1045 NZDT, it is 19.7ºC. The minimum last night was 12.7ºC.
When I am talking to others about the temperature increase over the last century (around 0.8ºC for New Zealand based on the adjusted records available) I try to put it in perspective by stating that the diurnal variation on any day is likely to be between 10º and 15º.
Gary,
I spent most of my adult life living in Northern California. It really only has two seasons because it has what is called a Mediterranean Climate. I never gave much thought to weather forecasts because it was usually sunny in the Summer and raining or cloudy in the Winter. However, when I got drafted and assigned to the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab in New Hampshire, I was struck by how often the weather forecasts seemed to be wrong. Other than a brief thunderstorm in the late Summer afternoons and cold and snowy in the Winter, nothing else seemed predictable. I wrote it off to the topography. I’m now living in the Midwest, and we have weather satellites and Doppler radar, which we didn’t have when I was in the Army. Yet, it seems to me that the weather forecasting isn’t much better than it was in New England 50 years ago. It seems that the false-positive rates for precipitation are high, in particular. So, I don’t have a lot of confidence in the weather forecasts and resort to looking out the window and making my own call.
Ya I like the look out the window approach. Check weather station barometer trend if need be, and if important review the radar imagery movie.
I like the trusty old weather rock. It is a one-ton boulder suspended on a rope from a timber tripod. If it is wet, it’s raining. If it is dry, there is no precip. If cold or icy, the weather is winterish. Etc. in my Boy Scout days in Oklahoma, just about every campout we had a trusty old weather rock.
here in belgium the weather is also unpredictable: it can go from very balmy 20-22 degrees with the right sirocco wind flows straight from the Sahara (like the ones ex Ophelia pushed in) or cold, it can be sunny or grey and wet. It all depends on how the NAO is and pressure system setup over the continent of Europe…
the same in the winter: we can have or wet pretty gentle winters or dry and freezing winters. it all depends on how it all is setup….
Where I live close to downtown Sunnyvale California, the temperature excursion during almost any week, exceeds the total range that the average global Temperature has been for the last 650 million years ; circa 12 -24 deg. C
G
WX in TX varies pretty widely and wildly. It ranges from cold, dry and windy to hot and dry to hot and humid.
My question would have been: If we all stop using fossil fuels immediately, will the climate stop changing?
i would just ask: “isn’t the climate always changing?”
in a chaotic system that climate is, the only constant is change.
If that happened you’d probably be too busy dealing with the changed social climate to notice. Apocalypse now, so to speak.
… Chicken Little (or maybe perhaps more like Big Bird) on steroids.
Don’t deny yourself such a golden opportunity to yawn in the future. That is time you’ll never get back.
although he contradicts himself to the “extreme” within a few seconds,…
Andy, what did he say??
First he said “others claim” extreme weather cannot be linked to climate change, then he immediately links extreme weather to climate change – and goes on and on about it.
how do people get away with ‘extreme weather’ and ‘rain bombs’?….are the people that fall for that 3 years old?
Religious experience requires shutting off critical analysis. So yeah in a way they are the equivalent of 3-year-olds, accepting rather than discerning.
(lest anyone be offended by my remark, I said “religious experience”, not “religious belief”.)
A raving lunatic gets a standing ovation? our country is duped!
Hey he invented screen doors for submarines, and ejection seats for helicopters ! He’s a flaming genius.
G
EMS, that gave me a good laugh! He should be the first to give them a trial…
George e. smith, sorry brainstorm…just recovering from surgery is my excuse.
The more outré the crank the larger the audience in general. You don’t pull in the crowds for being just a bit silly. Look at David Icke for a prime example
7000 people in an arena aren’t “our country”. They are a very small part of it. There’s always going to be stupid people.
Well I’ll be; ManBearPig in the flesh. And he’s still cereal! Wonders will never cease.
I don’t get the walk-outs, unless they planned to do it ahead, in protest. I mean, what did they think he was going to say?
common sense people just believe that live hearing a former vice-president, Nobel co-recipient, is a great opportunity. It takes a great deal of attention to IPCC crap to know beforehand it isn’t, and most people just don’t know.
When they discover how bad the guy is, they leave.
Sounds like an “algorithm” to me?
Like the Munk debate in Toronto, where the majority agreed both before and after the debate that democracy was in crisis because of DJTrump, this appears to have been foregone. The Goracle came to speak to the true believers and they cheered it…no debate needed when you believe.
Someone should have stood up and yelled ‘liar’ on every wrong point Gore made until they were escorted out.
Real scientists will not call someone a liar unless they have evidence.
There is a multitude of evidence that Gore’s claims, both past on like his Arctic sea ice claims and the present like his attribution of extreme weather to CC, are utterly false and that he must know they are false. He must know they are false because even his beloved IPCC has told him so.
Gore is liar. And Demonstrably so.
Your opinion is noted. Now, show us the evidence.
How about the conclusions of the “Father of Hurricanology”, the late, great Bill Gray?
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPol/EnviroPhilo/HurricanesAndClimateChange.pdf
Please explain why, if “climate change” makes hurricanes worse, no major hurricane struck the continental US in the supposedly record warm years of 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. Thanks.
Show us the evidence? Perhaps you could just google it for yourself.
One recent lie that comes to mind is Gore claiming that flooding in Manhattan caused by TS Sandy proves his 2006 claim that melting ice could cause flooding in Manhattan.
If I remember right, he has also claimed that climate change is killing off polar bears, caused Hurricane Katrina, and is responsible for the melting snow on Kilimanjaro. I’m sure you can find plenty more if you care to look.
Rob,
from AR5 WG1 chapter 10.6.2: ” At present, therefore, the evidence does not support the claim that we are
observing weather events that would, individually, have been extremely unlikely in the absence of human-
induced climate change, …”
Al Gore certainly must know this. It has been quoted multiple times by all sides and in the media. He has been explicitly told this in interviews. Yet he still makes substantial and authoritative-sounding claims to the contrary on extreme weather attribution on a regular basis, like at this presentation. He must know he is telling falsehoods. Knowingly telling falsehoods is lying. Al Gore is a liar.
He has never admitted his sea claims were false. Just as he will never openly admit his storm attribution claims are likely false.
Either he figures his faithful followers don’t care or are too ignorant to know different.
Gabro posted: “, no major hurricane struck the continental US.”
..
Nice cherry pick.
..
FYI, our planet is much more than the CONUS. There were lots of storms out in the Pacific. Really big ones.
Craig says: “Just Google it”…..
…
Sorry Craig, I’m not going to do your work for you.
Even AGW proponents like Gore adviser, paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson have admitted that Kilimanjaro’s ice field was reduced by deforestation down slope, contrary to his assertion in 2001 that the snows there would all melt within 20 years, due to “global warming”. Never mind that there has been little or no warming around the tropical mountain.
In fact, the ice has stopped retreating there, having achieved a new equilibrium with the reduced precipitation from less forest.
Joel, your quote, my emphasis:
At present, therefore, the evidence does not support the claim that we are observing weather events that would, INDIVIDUALLY, have been extremely unlikely in the absence of human induced climate change, …”
..
which is true, but it’s not what Gore is claiming.
Rob Bradley October 24, 2017 at 3:14 pm
Hardly a cherry pick, since Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes normally hit the US with some frequency. Under your baseless assertion, how could the US have enjoyed the longest major hurricane drought in its history?
Tropical cyclones elsewhere in the world have not been anything out of the ordinary in this century. Indeed, they’ve been less frequent and powerful than in prior centuries. The most potent tropical cyclone ever directly observed from the inside remains Typhoon Tip, of 1979. It is still the largest and most intense ever recorded.
“Hardly a cherry pick”….I disagree…..hitting the CONUS is a cherry pick. You brought it up, it’s your pick.
” how could the US have enjoyed the longest major hurricane drought in its history?”
…
Simple, the area of the USA is about 1.84% of the surface of the earth.
1.84% is a very small “target”
Rob,
Consider also that the strongest recorded hurricane to hit Hawaii was Cat 4 Iniki in 1992, an active tropical storm season in an anomalously cool year, thanks perhaps to Mt. Pinatubo.
Since then, despite supposedly record warm years, nothing like it has been seen there.
A cold world is a stormy world. Hotter, not so much. Storms result from temperature differentials, which are less under warmer conditions.
Rob Bradley October 24, 2017 at 3:39 pm
Yet CONUS has been the same share of the earth since 1853. Why did the hurricane drought occur during the allegedly warmest years on record?
” Indeed, they’ve been less frequent and powerful than in prior centuries.” ….
…
Yeah, the satellites they had in the 19th century shows us how small they were.
..
LOL
Rob Bradley October 24, 2017 at 3:43 pm
Apparently you’re unaware of all the historical, archaeological, meteorological, oceanographic and paleoclimatological data available to reconstruct hurricane seasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlantic_hurricanes_in_the_17th_century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlantic_hurricanes_in_the_18th_century
http://myweb.fsu.edu/jelsner/PDF/Research/BossakElsner2004.pdf
And yet you consider yourself competent to comment on the history of hurricanes. LOL!
“Storms result from temperature differentials”…..yes, so if the ocean is warming, and the storms are driven by ocean heat….the logical conclusion is …….
Rob,
Your assertions about Gore’s recent statements not individually naming hurricanes are false. Even his supporters have publicly warned him to stop lying about hurricane and CC attribution.
Gore’s storm comment causes stir
“the former vice president made in an interview with The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein.
In the interview, published Wednesday, Gore said that “the fingerprint of man-made global warming is all over” storms like hurricanes and other extreme weather events.”
(bold emphasis mine)
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/al-gore-hurricane-comments-095827
Joel, your Gore-quote does not name any INDIVIDUAL storm/event.
Rob Bradley October 24, 2017 at 3:51 pm
What part of “differential” don’t you get?
It refers both to the difference in SST and to the air v the sea. Tropical SST hasn’t warmed much if at all. Extratropical allegedly has, ie gotten closer to tropical SSTs, hence less differential.
Tropical depressions tend to form at night because of the greater differential temperature then between the air and SST. In long periods like the LIA, when average air T is lower but tropical SSTs about the same as now, more such depressions, storms and cyclones form, and grow more powerful.
Now, you’ve been shown overwhelming evidence that Gore is lying. Please show the evidence which convinces you that hurricanes are more frequent and powerful than in the past. Thanks.
Exactly we have had a dearth of hurricanes
Gabro: ” Tropical SST hasn’t warmed much ”
…
Thank you….I love your use of the word “MUCH”
What contributes to storms is the temperature gradient between the tropics and higher latitudes. Most of the warming reported has been in higher latitudes, so overall storm energy should decrease, and it has.
You are also ignoring the instrumentation artifact of satellites picking up minor storms that would have gone unnoticed if they did not cross land or shipping lanes.
I see that we have a Gore acolyte visiting,since his replies are straight out of the Goracle evasive replies book.
” Rob Bradley
October 24, 2017 at 3:14 pm Edit
Gabro posted: “, no major hurricane struck the continental US.”
..
Nice cherry pick.
..
FYI, our planet is much more than the CONUS. There were lots of storms out in the Pacific. Really big ones.”
The Pacific Hurricane season was actually below average this year,as well as all the other ocean basins except the North Atlantic,which was slightly above average.
Your cherrypick claim is dumb because it was your god Al Gore and many other warmists in 2005 who cried to the heavens, that it was proof of “Global warming/Climate change,but never replicated since with some below average years such as THIS year.
The 12 year drought of no landfalling Category 3+ Hurricanes was by far the LONGEST on record,which you chose to ignore,which is significant since that is way out of the usual cyclic pattern.
SEVEN Hurricanes made landfall in 1886,which is still the most for a single year,more than the busy 2005 season did.
You have anymore shallow replies to offer?
Gabro talks about the LIA: “tropical SSTs about the same as now”
…
Yup, we have data sets of SST from the LIA……..
..
Then, you use the phrase: “ABOUT THE SAME”
…
You are not using precise terms there Gabro…… 125 MPH is about the same as 110 MPH……even though they differ by 12%
And FYI 125 vice 110 is 29% stronger in wind force.
Rob,
I would have said “at all” and left it at that, but I haven’t looked in detail at every portion of the tropical Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans since WWII.
In any case, it hasn’t been enough to affect hurricane formation. As long as the water is above a fairly low minimal threshold T, hurricanes can and do form. The Gulf of Mexico, for instance, is virtually always above that base limit.
Rob Bradley October 24, 2017 at 4:06 pm
Again, you seem to be unaware of all the proxy data we have for SSTs going back not just centuries, but millennia and even millions of years.
SunsetTommy, your “landfall” metric, which only represents 1.8% of the surface of the earth is……not very illuminating.
Rob Bradley – Al Gore asserted that the Vostock (Antarctica) ice core studies showed that increased atmospheric CO2 caused increased global temperature. The ice code studies showed just the opposite, that temperature increased about 800 years prior to CO2. This was well known prior to An Inconvenient Truth, and is in keeping with basic physics: warming water releases CO2 to the atmosphere, cooling water absorbs it. He also displays a willful ignorance of the alternating long glacial and short interglacial periods of the past 2.6 million years. Al’s lies are compounded by ignorance of science.
Rob Bradley October 24, 2017 at 4:10 pm
You’ve yet to provide any evidence whatsoever for more and stronger tropical cyclones over any portion of the planet, whether one percent or 100%, for any interval since CO2 took off after WWII.
You won’t because you can’t.
LOL @ Gabro…..”proxy data”…..you mean like tree rings?
….
What “proxy data” are you using for measuring the power of hurricanes for the past millennia/millions of years?
Rob Bradley October 24, 2017 at 4:15 pm
You do a lot of laughing out loud, which saves the rest of us the trouble of laughing at your low information level.
Tree rings make bad proxy thermometers, but the proxies for SST are numerous and valid. Please study paleoclimatology before presuming to comment upon it.
Hurricane proxies, as opposed to SST proxies, generally only go back centuries, or at most millennia. Please see the links I provided to the effects of hurricanes observed in Central American and Caribbean sediments.
“You won’t because you can’t.”
..
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2646
Notice that Rob Bradley,spends all his time making comments without any logical support and quickly dismisses anything science based made against his comments.
He is here to stonewall anything since he is a warmist fanatic.
He is Trolling people.
Rob,
To further your paleoclimatological education, please read up on how SSTs from 100 million years ago are reconstructed:
The Cretaceous Thermal Maximum and Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 in the Tropics: Sea-Surface Temperature and Stable Organic Carbon Isotopic Records from the Equatorial Atlantic
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006AGUFMPP33C..04F
” proxies for SST are numerous and valid.”
…
Yes, the proxies from a millennia ago were calibrated to the thermometers they had a millennia ago.
….
Are you serious?
Rob Bradley October 24, 2017 at 4:25 pm
As I said, you can’t.
1) The paper you cite is based upon assumptions and computer modeling, not reality.
2) Yet it still found that there is a trade-off between intensity and frequency. IOW, you can’t maximize both variables at once. As always, Gore’s fantasy is unphysical.
Even liars like Mann with scientific education only claim increased strength, not frequency as well.
But, please, try again.
Rob Bradley finally post a link,but it doesn’t really support his claim anyway,as the very first paragraph shows:
“Global tropical cyclone climate has been investigated with indicators of frequency, intensity1 and activity2,3. However, a full understanding of global warming’s influence on tropical cyclone climate remains elusive because of the incomplete nature of these indicators.”
Of course they then present a MODEL …………..
There is no significant increase in Tropical storms over time.
LOL @ Gabro: “RECONSTRUCTED”
…..
PS, your link to harvard.edu gives: ” ADS Message
[ADS]
No valid record indentifier specified”
Rob Bradley October 24, 2017 at 4:28 pm
Can you really possibly be this ignorant of the simplest paleo proxies?
We calibrate the forams and other proxies by observing the waters in which they or their nearest relatives live now. Same with the chemical proxies.
Please study the subject before presuming to comment upon it. You’re just making yourself more of a laughingstock with each new display of total ignorance.
Sunsetommy, you didn’t read the whole abstract, you missed the part that says: “We calculate an average increase in global tropical cyclone intensity of 1.3 m s−1 over the past 30 years of ocean warming occurring at the expense of 6.1 tropical cyclones worldwide.”
….
Also, the word “model” doesn’t appear in it.
Rob Bradley, completely ignored this part of my comment:
“SEVEN Hurricanes made landfall in 1886,which is still the most for a single year,more than the busy 2005 season did.
You have anymore shallow replies to offer?”
His shallow reply was this,
“SunsetTommy, your “landfall” metric, which only represents 1.8% of the surface of the earth is……not very illuminating.”
Yup a shallow and stupid reply, since you ignored the fact that it was VERY unusual to have none for so long,all while it is supposed to be hottest decade on record. There was no increase in landfalling hurricanes elsewhere at the same time frame.
You are quickly proving to be a shallow thinker as you miss the obvious.
Gabro, I understand completely your acceptance of “proxies.” You accept the proxies that support your point of view, but you do not accept the multitude of proxies that show the “hockey stick.”……
…
I believe the proper term for that type of acceptance is “conformation bias”
Rob Bradley October 24, 2017 at 4:44 pm
No proxies show the bogus HS. Mann, et al, hid the decline on their tree ring misanalysis, then tacked instrument “records” onto this grossly mismanaged melange of inappropriate proxies and statistical malpractice.
The SST proxies are valid. Mann’s tree rings weren’t. Tree rings reflect precipitation more than T.
As for the models in your link, what part of “projected” don’t you understand. Suggest you read the whole article before presuming to cite it.
It’s an instance of modeled cyclone tracks projected onto modeled environments to see which manufactured wiggle best approximates another manufactured wiggle. IOW, an imaginary wiggle matching exercise, about as far divorced from reality as possible.
Rob, it is a PROJECTION as they themselves state here:
“a, Projected length of global TC climate variabilities. b, Projected length of six regional TC climate variabilities. The length represents the correlation coefficient. Variance portion (%) shows how much the best explanatory environment (upper abscissa) explains each TC climate variability (lower abscissa). Significance of the correlation coefficient is examined using t-values. The ranges of significant correlation (α ≤ 0.05) are shown with red lines. The contribution of El Niño (N) is shaded in purple and the contribution from global ocean warmth (O) is shaded in yellow. The two have an overlapping area indicating the portion of positive collinearity. No colour is given to the portion of negative collinearity. Green vertical lines indicate the variability direction of O and −O.”
Projections are ALWAYS part of a modeling exercise, why are you lying?
Here is that chart you didn’t see:
Rob Bradley writes: Sorry Craig, I’m not going to do your work for you.
It’s not my work; I could care less if you keep your blinders on.
“No proxies show the bogus HS. Mann, et al”
…
http://environmentalforest.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/enough-hockey-sticks-for-team.html
“LOL @ Gabro…..”proxy data”…..you mean like tree rings?”
That’s Just consigned Michael Mann’s hockey stick to the pile of nonsense we all knew it was.
And that from an alarmist, he must be converting.
“Yeah, the satellites they had in the 19th century shows us how small they were.”
So what Rob Bradley is in fact saying is that there is no comprehensive historical data on hurricanes/typhoons etc. before satellites; and since satellites were utilised, there has been a decline is hurricane/typhoon activity over their period of activity.
It seems Mr. Bradley is indeed, coming over to the dark side.
Sunsettommy, “correlation coefficients” do not come from “models”, they come from two measured datasets.
Kilimanjaro Snow does not melt; it’s at 20,000 feet. It sublimes because of the low humidity. Mostly because over the centuries, they cut down the former surrounding forests.
G
HotScot: Yes, there is no comprehensive historical data on hurricanes/typhoons in the 19th century, especially the Cat-5 ones that made landfall at Cat-3.
I wonder if Mr. Bradley would kindly explain to us all why the only, single, observable manifestation, directly attributable to increased atmospheric CO2 is global greening? An entirely positive benefit.
Could he also explain why there is not one single, credible, empirical study that demonstrates increased CO2 causes the planet to heat up?
Hotscot: Changing the subject doesn’t help you in this discussion.
Rob Bradley – You haven’t commented on Al Gore basing his entire argument on Vostock ice cores indicating the opposite of his claim. Or do you agree with Al Gore that increased CO2 precedes increased temperature? To do so would be in complete disagreement with the ice core studies, both in Antartica and Greenland, and North Atlantic sediment cores. In the past million years there have been eight periods of alternating long glacial periods and short interglacials, as the Holocene interglacial we are now in. Greenland ice core and widespread sediment core studies indicate that we are in the coldest 1,000-year period of the past 10,000 years, and that an overall cooling trend has prevailed since 8,000 years ago. A key point Al and you missed about the past million years; as each interglacial reached its peak of atmospheric CO2, cooling began that persisted for about 100,000 years per glacial period. That’s right, there was no runaway warming then from increased atmospheric CO2, and there is none now. Current warming is the least of the five warm periods of the Holocene, a 10,000-year period. The warmest was the first, the Holocene Climactic Optimum, lowed by decreasing warm periods the Minoan, Roman, Medieval, and present. Current modest warming is aa natural rebound from the coldest period of the past 10,000 years, the Little Ice Age (1350-1850 AD). Present warming started about 300 years ago, as indicated by glacier retreat and sea level rise that began then. Current modest sea level rise of 1.08 mm/year (4.25 inches per century) has been constant for over 200 years and shows no sign of acceleration, per world tide gauge records at psmsl.org.
MajorMike, nowhere in the ice core record is there a concentration of 400 PPM of CO2.
..
This indicates we are in “uncharted territory”
…
Sediment cores cannot proxy atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
best evidence there is is ironically hurricane Ophelia this year:
Ophelia could strengthen to a category 3 storm thanks to the temperature gradient: slightly warmer then average ocean surfance temp, but the upper air that was 2 to 3 degrees C colder then normal.
If CAGW is correct the upper air layer should just be warmer decreasing the gradient and thus inhibiting convection.
that’s how the greenhouse gas effect works so that would inhibit stronger storms as next to SST you need convective gradient in order to generate stronger convective circulations.
with the upper air that should be then warming faster then your surfance temps, that would seriously break down one of tropical cyclones their main feeder channels.
SST is actually one of the least important factors for a hurricane to form in order of importance a tropical cyclone is modulated by:
1 wind shear (inhibits or favors the convective circulation)
2 temperature gradient of the air above it (determines the convective potential)
3 inflow outflow (determines the strength potential)
4 SST (determines the moisture feed)
Ophelia had all the first three factors combined in a very favorable way and managed to strengthen to a category 3 storm over SST’s that even shouldn’t support a tropical storm if SST was that important..
that are details many seem to forget when it comes to tropical cyclones
Ophelia also showed that even baroclinic features can sustain the warm core convection as a help. (however then in a by role, not as a main driver like in nor’easers or european windstorms where baroclinic forcing is the main driver)
PS MajorMike, please explain the physics behind a “natural rebound.” I do not believe there is anything in climate science, atmospheric physics, or geology that defines what a “natural rebound” is.
ah damn forgot something in point 4 it should be
4 SST (determines the moisture feed and updraft potential)
sorry for that
Rob Bradley October 24, 2017 at 4:56 pm
None of those alleged HS are in fact hockey sticks.
When valid proxies and statistical methods are used, the well-established previous cool and warm intervals stand out.
Mann tried to “get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”, but failed miserably. It’s still there in every valid proxy, everywhere on earth.
Rob,
Of course rebounds are real. Climatology abounds with rebounds. Canada is rebounding from having lost its ice sheets.
The Current Warm Period is a rebound from the Little Ice Age Cool Period. Climate fluctuates naturally and we’re lucky to live in a warming cycle. Before the LIA was the balmy Medieval WP, the peaks of which were hotter than any interval in the Current WP so far. It was a rebound from the preceding Dark Ages CP, which followed the Roman WP, which followed the Greek Dark Ages CP, which followed the Minoan WP, which followed the cold period after the Egyptian WP, which followed the cold period after the Holocene Climatic Optimum, the hottest interval of our present interglacial.
All these swings are natural and so far in the present warming cycle nothing the least bit out of the ordinary has happened.
Labeling something a “rebound” is not the same as providing the explaination of it.
…
Isostatic rebound is explainable. Climatological not so much. What is the physics behind the “rebound” from the LIA to the “current warm period?” Saying the swings are “natural” is not acceptable from a physical point of view. When you say they are “natural” you are saying you don’t know.
Frederik October 24, 2017 at 5:31 pm
Good summary on tropical depression, storm and hurricane formation. The truth is truly inconvenient for Fat Albert.
Alarmists are reduced to arguing that, while warmer water doesn’t mean more hurricanes, it could mean stronger ones, but all available evidence belies this conjecture as well.
Rob Bradley October 24, 2017 at 5:50 pm
Science frequently observes phenomena without yet being able fully to explain them.
Mann has argued that volcanoes explain the Little Ice Age, but they don’t.
What does however enter into the equation is solar activity. The LIA suffered repeated solar minima, with the Maunder associated with its coldest decades. The Medieval and Current WPs, by contrast have been short on solar minima.
He uses Miami Beach flooding (pictures of flooded Miami Beach streets in most of his presentations) knowing those pictures are at extreme high tide and that Miami Beach streets were laid out below King tide in 1917 (and the town was completely wiped out by a hurricane in 1926). There is also measurable subsidence.
SLR did not cause the flooding he domonstrates.
If that is not technically “lying”, it most certainly is dishonest.
Gabro: “It’s the sun” does not explain “rebound.”
…
If the sun was causing global temperature changes, you’d observer an 11 year cycle in the temperature record. That cycle is not observable. Besides the measured variation in TSI with the sunspot cycle is not enough to account for temp changes.
…
Now, please, what is the cause of a “natural rebound?”
Rob,
The evidence is overwhelming that almost everything he says related to climate science is either an outright lie, a lie of omission or at the very least, an ignorant misrepresentation of truth. How much more evidence do you need than his words?
My take is that the reason nobody stood up to speak truth to power was the same reason anyone applauded anything he said. In both cases, it’s all about political bias where truth is secondary to ideology.
Rob,
To be fair, most of Gore’s lies are the result of ignorantly accepting the absurdly high climate sensitivity claimed by the IPCC. His pride and political bias just prevents him from acknowledging the truth since he is so vested in the lie, to acknowledge the truth would highlight an ideological weakness that could be fatal the rest of the progressive platform.
I could explain in great depth why even the low end of the IPCC sensitivity is larger than the maximum sensitivity allowed by physics, but based on your other comments, I’m afraid that it would be over your pay grade.
Another troll arguing from invincible ignorance, is it?
Rob
Ehhe. Nice try. 1.8%?
Ohhh I see. You compared U.S. land area with Earth entire surface area.
Gee, when can hurricanes target ocean?
U.S. is 16% of total Earth land area.
Oh, even cuter you keep repeating it as having substance.
Rob Bradley October 24, 2017 at 6:29 pm
Apparently you don’t know what solar minima are, which is no surprise at this point in your demonstration of lack of basic information.
Solar minima aren’t the ~11 or ~22 year solar cycles. They last decades. During the Maunder Minimum, sunspots were exceedingly rare for about 70 years, ie c. AD 1645 to 1715. Many of the coldest decades and years on record occurred during this grand solar minimum.
But in the LIA, one or two GSMs preceded and one followed the Maunder. The number preceding it depends upon when you date the start of the LIA.
OK Gabro, please explain how “solar minima” cause “natural rebound”
Rob,
Should be obvious.
Solar minima cause earth to cool. When they stop, with a lag, and solar maxima follow, earth warms.
Wow said better than anyone!
Right now, there are no sunspots (minima): https://www.space.com/36188-spotless-sun-has-no-sunspots.html
…
Why isn’t the earth cooling?
Rob,
Earth is cooling. Arctic sea ice is growing. The repository of most of the fresh water on earth, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is gaining mass.
But we’re still working off the thermal inertia of decades of high solar activity. It will take more time for the effect of a quieting sun to show up more dramatically.
For decades, the more active sun heated the tropical seas. Earth’s climate system will dissipate this stored energy through oceanic oscillations and other climatic phenomena for quite a while. Then another cycle will begin.
Centennial scale warming and cooling periods contain cyclic trends counter to the secular tendency. Thus, during the LIA, there were pronounced warming cycles, at least one of which, the early 18th century warming coming out of the Maunder Minimum, lasted longer and warmed more than the recent late 20th century warming cycle.
“Earth is cooling. ”
…
NOPE
…
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah5/plot/uah5/trend
“Earth is cooling. ”
…
NOPE
…
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/rss-land/trend
Rob,
Plot just the past 20 years and take out the effect of the El Nino weather events. And use only legitimate observations, not the corrupt cooked books of NOAA, NASA, HadCRU and now, sadly, also RSS.
But the lower troposphere in any case isn’t the whole story. Look at what the present T proxy data show, ie ice for instance.
The one place on earth which should show GHE warming is the South Pole, according to the AGW hypothesis. That’s where water vapor is at least as low as CO2 concentration. Yet there has been no warming there. The corrupt gatekeepers can’t cook the books for the South Pole. And it, along with all other reality, shows the AGW hypothesis false.
Perhaps Mr. Bradley would like to refer to the IPCC who, I believe, concede that there is no evidence hurricanes are linked to global warming.
But then they would make that statement wouldn’t they as, coincidentally, the 12 year period when no major hurricane made US landfall happens to fall neatly within the 18 year temperature hiatus.
During the same period, according to satellite observations, there has been a notable decrease in hurricane frequency and severity.
So in fact there is some evidence, unfortunately it contradicts the IPCC.
Is the Earth cooling or heating? Depends of what you call the Earth.
Geothermal energy exist. It manifest a LOSS of energy by the Earth. planets are emitting more energy than they receive from the sun
The Earth radiates more or less equal energy that receive, ~240 W /m². So it basically do nor gain or lose energy.
However, photosynthetic beings are working hard to turn part of this energy into mass, cooling the Earth in the process (ie, for the same amount of energy, more of it is in chemical form, and less in heat form). And other beings just cannot eat it all, some of it is lost for until man matter to turn it back into energy, the way he does with fossil fuel.
That leave LESS energy in Heat form.
However, ice mass is growing. When water turns into ice, it release heat. This leave MORE energy in heat form
Bottom line: we just don’t know how heat evolves on Earth.
His failed predictions are evidence that his hypothesis is bogus. Furthermore, he is not a scientist. Furthermore, CAGW is not science.
Rob, even you have to be aware that there are many forms of proxy data.
Just because you can’t use tree rings as a proxy for temperature, doesn’t mean that nothing else can be used as a proxy for temperature.
Your lying and evading just shows how little you know and how desperate you are.
“Al Gore is a liar.”
Well put, joel. 🙂
I don’t know what it is about that bunch, but Al Gore and both the Clinton’s are exceptionally accomplished liars. Were they natural born liars or did they learn from each otther? Maybe it’s just that they are all Liberal Democrats.
Let’s see.
The claim, Gore uses the Vostock core to claim that CO2 increases precede temperature increases.
Reality, the Vostock cores show that temperature precedes CO2 increases.
Rob’s response. Nowhere in the Vostock cores does CO2 rise to 400ppm, so the Vostock cores don’t count.
1) If the Vostock cores don’t count, it wouldn’t be honest to bring them up in the first place.
2) The fact that the cores show the opposite of what Gore claims is not challenged.
3) The idea that CO2 acts differently at 400ppm than it did at 300ppm is ridiculous, but then so is Rob.
Rob, BTW, if you were half as smart as your mother tells you you are, then you would know that for most of the history of life on this planet, CO2 levels ranged from 3000 to 7000ppm. 400ppm is not uncharted territory.
Rob, natural cycles always return to the mean.
In other words, they rebound.
Rob, is the concept of thermal mass completely foreign to you?
Regardless, TSI is not the only way the sun impacts climate.
The claim that the US is only “1.84%” of the Earth’s surface is a good example of trolling. It is a meaningless statistic. As Vicus pointed out, only land surfaces are appropriate for the discussion, but even worse than that, it is only relevant if every point on Earth had an equal chance of being hit by a Hurricane. Not even wrong. Laughable in fact.
That comment alone demonstrates Rob Bradley is either lacking simple math skills or a dishonest troll. Which is it, Rob?
Roy
***Your opinion is noted. Now, show us the evidence.***
It was done in England. the schools had to show the 9 points that were found to be false by the court if they were showing the movie.
Gabro @ 3:24
Typhoon tip or Typhoon Tipper caused by Gorebull warming??
Manatee Man experienced the fury of Typhoon Tipper when she found out about his sexual assault on a Portland masseuse.
Al Gore,has made whoppers so stupid,that I wonder if he does it for money:
Gore has no clue – a few million degrees here and there and pretty soon we’re talking about real temperature
“This is mind blowing ignorance on the part of Al Gore. Gore in an 11/12/09 interview on NBC’s tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, speaking on geothermal energy, champion of slide show science, can’t even get the temperature of earth’s mantle right, claiming “several million degrees” at “2 kilometers or so down”. Oh, and the “crust of the earth is hot” too.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/16/gore-has-no-clue-a-few-million-degrees-here-and-there-and-pretty-soon-were-talking-about-real-temperature/
His “documentary” lies by omission,when he made those CO2 rises before temperature does claim,ignoring many published science papers he never bothered to cite,that showed CO2 change lags behind temperature change by the order of centuries.
Pathetic.
If you look closely at the graph he used in this pack of lies movie, it clearly shows that CO2 rises after temperature, not before. Its increase is an effect, not a cause of global warming, except as a possible slight feedback effect, which isn’t really in evidence.
Sunsettommy
Of course he does it for money. The longer he can keep the bandwagon rolling, the better for his investments is the ‘phenomenon’.
Didn’t his carbon trading investment fund close it’s doors to new investors at $5Bn. That’ll be doing very nicely I suspect thanks to the insane amount of taxpayer AGW money sloshing round world governments.
Vicus: “Gee, when can hurricanes target ocean?”
…
Hurricanes are born on, and live on oceans. They die when they hit land.
stock October 24, 2017 at 8:27 pm
Glad you think so. Solar cycles aren’t the whole explanation, but are for closer to being a control knob on climate than is the trivial effect of a fourth CO2 molecule per 10,000 dry air molecules over the past century.
In other words, Mr. Bradley has no explanation to a couple of simple questions.
So he simply dismisses them.
Shame.
Much like the man he is defending.
CAGW is a religion. If they had a formal Vatican-like vote of Bishops/Cardinals, Al Gore would be the pontiff of that religion, or at least a senior Cardinal among a few others.
This was meeting of the CAGW religious faithful. Critical though not required nor welcome.
thought, not though
I went to a talk given by David Suzuki, Canada’s version of Al Gore. I wanted to hear with my own ears and see with my own eyes. After about 30 minutes of complete garbage I got up and left. I feel for those Texans who didn’t stay to the end.
I wonder how much he picked up from this little gig , at one stage he was coming at over 100,00o to spread the word about ‘the most important thing ever ‘ which is odd because if that where true you think he would do it for free !
Al Gore – the Wizard of Oz or our time. It will be interesting to read a history book in 100 years when he’ll be likely be known as ta huckster called the “Big Bag of Hot Air.”
In 100 years this will be known as the time of the Fossil Fools, and one of the biggest fools to be remembered will be Al Gore.
+1
Just looking at that arena photo, the CO2 concentration must have hit 2,000 ppm or more. Talk about catastrophic warming. Someone should have told them to stop exhaling.
Probably more. But the increased level didn’t affect the crowd’s cognition, since those who stayed to the bitter end, besides Andy, and gave the big, fat liar a standing ovation must already have sustained organic brain damage.
And today on NPR’s Terry Gross we had Jeff Goodell telling us how the waters will rise up, using Miami Beach as an example but failing to note that the west side of Miami Beach is built on a former mangrove swamp and is subsiding, or that stormwater runoff from increased impervious area would go into Biscayne Bay and could end up pushed back toward shore by prevailing winds. Logical, common sense, and immediate causes could explain all of Miami Beach’s flooding.
Terry Gross lapped it right up, and I’m sure many of her fans did as well. Thanks, Terry, for nothing,
I’ve been to several climate change “debates” at Rice, and all have been very one sided in the moderation. Not only would they screen the questions, they would actually change the wording such that the a completely different question from what was asked was presented to the speakers.
When you say Democrat voters are concentrated in Houston, you have to be clear that you’re talking about the City of Houston. Most of the surrounding greater Houston area (which is more that the population of the City of Houston) is solid red.
Same for the Austin and San Antonio areas–little blue ponds surrounded by red oceans.
It’s interesting that Al Gore provides such entertainment for this blog.
If not for that, then I would vote never to give him another word here.
I think, in the future, when Al Gore or Bill Nye are the subject of a post, I will post something randomly off topic, in order to deny their existence. Am I a “denier” then? — you betcha — I am denying the existence of Al and Bill.
The US Left now has a formal movement to deny a reality, the existence of a person. That is the reality of Trump is indeed their President.They call it The Resistance.
The irony of course is that everyone of these folks exactly 12 months ago today were also saying that anyone who didn’t accept the results of the Nov 8, 2016 election were traitors. Of course, then they universally had already coronated Hillary as President and expected the actual election to be just an affirmation of their belief.
Via their self-proclaimed “Resistance,” the Left is now demonstrating all sorts of mental illnesses springing from this Trump Derangement Syndrome. Even today, the guy who threw Russian flags at Trump inside the capital building was arrested and likely if he had an official Capitol security access badge it will be revoked. TDS strikes again.
Denying someone exists (that is reality) is not healthy. No matter which side of the ideology one falls.
8 years ago, anyone who didn’t accept Obama as their president, was labeled a racist and a traitor.
Now, it’s the heights of patriotism.
Oh yes, anyone who disagrees with them is still a racist.
The Left in the USA should get ready to suffer a lot more in the future as the *new* Russian collusion story becomes public, that being the collusion between Hillary Clinton and Vladimir Putin to sell Russia 20 percent of U.S. uranium. The benefactors of this deal alledgedly donated $145 million dollars to the Clinton Foundation.
This Russian Uranium scandal seems to include some of the biggest names in the Obama administration like Holder and Clinton and Comey, and it was said yesterday that someone is claiming Obama was getting real-time updates on this situation through his daily briefings. So Obama may have known and let this deal go through anyway. Certainly some of his Cabinet members knew and let it go through.
At least one FBI Director may be involved in this coverup that helped Hillary keep her Russian Uranium deal from turning into a scandal. Possibly even former FBI Director Mueller, who is currently the Special Counsel investigating “Russian collusion” may have had knowledge of the Russian bribery of American officials.
Trump is innocent of any wrongdoing, as far as Russian Collusion goes, and the Obama administration is full of corruption, and knee-deep in Russian collusion, which will be revealed in the future.
That ought to create even more Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Btw, Trump will have a lot friendlier U.S. Senate after the 2018 midterm elections. 🙂
That is a manifestation of the 1st Law of the Conservation of Morass, which states,”Whatever the Left accuses the Right of doing is exactly what the Left is doing.”
joelobryan,
I don’t think people are denying that Trump exists. I think that they are denying that he won the presidency.
As for my denying Al Gore’s existence, … well, … in reality, that’s pretty hard to do — I was merely venting a fantasy that is impossible to fulfill. As for writing words with no substance, as another viewer suggests that I do, you can definitely count on my doing that, when Al’s name comes up again in a post.
But I’ll break my promise for the moment, to provide some substance about Al:
For somebody who so heavily benefits from and critically depends on the conveniences and comforts that the fossil fuel industry provides, Al Gore seems oblivious to the substance that his reputation depends upon. I think that he MUST know this, and yet he is living a contradiction in pretending not to know this, in order to push a religion that makes him a substantial income.
Off topic you say! OK, anyone know how Doug Cotton is getting on these days?
I see that Robert Kernodle, sure know how to post a lot words that says absolutely nothing of substance.
How do you it?
I see that Robert Kernodle, sure know how to post a lot words that says absolutely nothing of substance.
How do you it?
Any particular group of my words bothering you, Susettommy ?
A general accusation is not easy to address. So let me ask YOU, what “substance” exists in the words that YOU posted above?
I’m willing to learn, if you have some pointers, but I’ll need a better example of “substance” than you just offered.
People are just getting tired of BS algore-ithyms, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!
https://youtu.be/JmzuRXLzqKk
The radical left needs another phony crisis to peddle to idiot kids – this on is like, i mean, so 1900’s.
So most of the audience gave standing ovations, how cute! Didn’t anyone kneel? Or do this…
http://dogknobit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/finger-die-ein-kreuz-bilden-15289186.jpg
They should hold their breath for a minute of silence-and a minute without exhaling evil CO2!
That may become a sacrament at some point
They only kneel on certain occasions.
Trump: “Bend the knee before me, you who worship me.”
Trump: “OK, start up the Star Spangled Banner!”
[??? .mod]
Think about it.
[hint: NFL]
In other words (those of Matt Walsh) “Oh my lord, Trump has tricked his critics into kneeling before him”
I’d bet $10 that’s the guy who tweeted that, and my inspiration source. Oh that was funny!
Yep that’s him
https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/912150462593470464
IN your link to EIA I noted under the daily prices for various fuels that sunlight is still free.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/prices.php
The other example of comparing electric production costs and comparing to a 100% renewable grid with “storage” is just a horrible comparison.
sans pot shots at solar, article was nicely done, thanks for going to see what the “narrative” morphs into.
In the ground, coal, oil and natural gas are also free.
The cost for all forms of energy is converting it to something useful.
Since the end cost is all that matters, wind and solar are still more costly than fossil fuels. And that is before you account for the expensive systems needed to compensate for the fact that wind and solar aren’t always available when you need them.
“He is also pro-nuclear.”
When did this happen?
The greenies got co-opted into nuclear is green because of low CO2
So is James Hansen.
But, but, but….didn’t Al Gore create the internet himself? 🙂
[Yes, he did try to claim credit for that, Snopes]
These establishment fools hate the internet, in which real news can take place, and the fake news narrative can be exposed.
It more that real news can’t be suppressed in today’s internet world. That ‘s is the Left’s real ploght in loss of control of the message.
WUWT is the perfect example. Pre-internet, tactics like the LATimes refusing to host climate skeptical views would have impact. Today with the internet, the LA Times attempt to suppress climate change skepticism has little meaning other than to highlight the LATimes inherent bias and censorship.
Those in power work to keep the real goings on out of the public eye ( Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch type meetings). The internet makes it harder for them to manage the news. The flip side is that there is a ton of garbage fake news propagated on-line. One has to use one’s noggin to figure out what makes sense and what is someone else’s political agenda that is pumped and primped for you to believe.
That must be why the establishment is working so hard to regulate the internet.
Here’s an awkward question for Gore that might get past moderation next time:
If you could go back in time ten years, how would you have made “An Inconvenient Truth” differently, knowing what you know now?
He’d just say that he was way too optimistic then. It’s now much worse than anyone possibly could have imagined when he made the movie. We’re all doomed!
So much brain power wasted on a nothing.
[Quote from post] Al Gore believes that fossil fuels receive $700 billion in subsidies. He didn’t supply a period of time, but this was just for U.S. A 2015 report by the EIA, exclusive of welfare programs like LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance), the U.S. industry receives $3.4 million in subsidies per year (see here).
From the linked article, the U.S. fossil fuel industry receives $3.4 Billion (not million) per year in subsidies. Still, the Goracle is over 200 times the truth in his estimate of fossil fuel subsidies. Also, renewable energy sources receive about 6 times as much subsidies as fossil fuels.
Also, it was interesting that about a quarter of the audience walked out when Gore dissed the fossil fuel industry. Could the “walkers” have been students in Petroleum Engineering or future refinery engineers, who didn’t appreciate Gore dumping on their future careers? The oil industry does provide a lot of jobs in Houston!
The FF industry pays taxes. The “renewable” sc@m, not so much. Their projects wouldn’t exist without subsidies.
solar PV 7 to 12 centss per kwh with no subsidies, on small household size scales.
Stock,
Even household solar systems are subsidized in the USA.
@stock
The rule of thumb for solar investment is that 1$/W turns into a 0.1$/kWh price.
Show me a project that cost 700 to 1200 $ /kW with no subsidies, and i’ll believe your “solar PV 7 to 12 centss per kwh with no subsidies, on small household size scales”.
At retail price, i found them at ~2000$/kW, and i would still have to pay for installation, connection, etc.
stock, you forgot to count for the cost of the batteries needed when the sun isn’t shining.
stock : “solar PV 7 to 12 centss per kwh with no subsidies”
you just said “solar is free”, how is it possible to have its kWh costing more than 0 cent ? Someone must be lying to you.
Does Gore ever declare a financial interest in the results of his proposed solutions to ‘global warming’?
I thought politicians had to do this when making comments about proposed legislation, and he seems to have had a big hand in carbon trading.
A progressive friend of mine explained the logic behind the $700 Billion in ‘subsidies’:
1. Oil comes from the Middle East
2. Our military exists only to the Middle East so oil companies can access its oil
3. Therefore if we don’t need oil, we don’t need a military
4. Therefore our entire defense budget is a subsidy to the oil companies to secure access to oil.
Proposed FY18 defense budget: $639 Billion
Morden96, I suspect you are correct, although Gore didn’t explain the number. I remember one study that claimed WWII pipelines from Houston to New York in 1941, to avoid German submarines, were a “subsidy.” The left uses insane logic.
Steve Zell, thanks for pointing out the error, I fixed it. Most of the “walkers” I saw were older and didn’t look like students. Those cheering Gore on looked like students to me.
A tax deduction that every company receives, is not a subsidy. Never has been, never will be.
“40 per cent of Texans voted Democratic” Are you sure they didn’t vote Democrat? Sorry, my pet peeve this week
There’s precious little democratic about the Democrat party.
When I was a grad student at Baylor College of Medicine, the grad school hosted Hwang Woo-suk, the South Korean scientist who claimed to have cloned dogs for the first time.
During his talk he described how he encountered many of the same challenges that stopped other scientists trying to accomplish the same thing. He then launched into a tale of how his breakthrough came due to the special abilities of his lab technicians. One lady was so devoted that she would sing to the cells and she would sit in the lab with them for long hours to keep them company. She treated them kindly and doted on them like a mother and child. It was this motherly attitude and care that led to success where so many others had failed.
As my BS detector was climbing to stratospheric new heights I started looking around me to see the reactions of the 100+ other scientists and trainees in the audience, and I was surprised that nobody else seemed at all concerned about what they were being told. His accomplishments had already been published, and he was already lauded as a scientific genius, so I suppose people gave him the benefit of the doubt?
But a few weeks later when the news broke that his claimed discoveries were fabricated and his colleagues started bailing out and abandoning him, I can’t say that I was at all surprised. I don’t know how seemingly intelligent people can buy into nonsense just because it has a scientific sheen to it, but I witnessed it first hand in that Houston auditorium.
One of the new Nobel laureates this year, Jeff Hall, expressed a similar feeling for his organism, the fruit fly. So, just because of one fraud, don’t throw out the maggots with the banana.
It’s one thing to claim to have a soft spot in your heart for your research subjects.
It’s another thing to claim that singing to cloned cells is the reason for your success.
I did get to ask Al Gore a question at a conference so I can tell what his reply would have been. Remember that he is first and foremost a politician and knows how to control the stage. I asked him (in 2015) “given there hasn’t been any warming in 16 years, how many years of stagnant or cooling temperatures would it take for him to change his mind or evaluate his conclusions “. He went on a 10 minute rant about storms, floods, Fukushima and disasters. He never came close to addressing my question and he wouldn’t have answered yours either so donfeel like you missed out
I suspect you are correct Scott.
Fukushima? He actually brought up Fukushima in a climate rant?
Mr Bradley has hijacked this thread with inane responses he can’t possibly believe himself.
He probably won’t be banned because our host has too much integrity, but we should learn not to respond to him (like I foolishly did below). Taking the discussion off on a tangent is exactly his purpose.
An argument from invincible ignorance can be sustained for as long as others don’t catch on that the instigators’ standards of evidence are impossibly high and ever-shifting. The best response is to call them out on it and walk away.
I scrolled past 80% of that hijack once I saw how ignorant the bastard is. Can’t stand Stupid and Bradley wears it on his sleeve.
I would face backwards.
It’s a race between NK and Al Gore. I think NK will turn out the lights a few months sooner.
So how much does the “average citizen” believe Al Gore? That’s the real issue. I don’t think ‘much’.
“Would he call me a denier and go to the next question?”
That is undeniable.
I really enjoyed watching both “An Inconvenient Truth” and the follow-up ” Truth to Power” documentaries. Putting one’s personal bias aside, you have to give the former U.S. Vice President, Gore credit for following a passion. I think he uses his oratorical skills to get the message across socio-ethnic-cultural barriers that climate change is a global problem.
I do not enjoy watching the liars enriching themselves off lies sold to others.
Al Gore is a failed politician and political money pimp. People like him cannot argue scientific principles and if he was forced to do so, he would be made a fool out of in short order by the scientifically astute.
So it is no wonder the University coddled and protected him by screening all questions. This is how they must operate to save face. A seminar setting with open questioning and follow-up crossing would be disastrous to any warmer considering the data available to refute all claims. The universities interest seems to be the continued desire to spread climate hysteria and propaganda so as to help the political establishment steal more of your hard earned money with frivolous carbon taxes and regulations, all of which stand to benefit all the players. Academia that gets some of the spoils, Al Gore who wants to sell carbon offsets is rewarded and the political class who can never get enough of your money with the taxation proposals. And the public at large? They get nothing in return for the taxation except they are told to feel good about the screw job foisted on them because after all, their “savin the planet”. My opinion of academia has been lowered another peg. Science in the post modern era appears to be relative to the flow of money rather than the truth.
2 time VP and got more votes than Bush in 2000 is “failed”
Plus, following a passion against GW for more than 30 years, I am betting before you even heard of it?
He has a lot on most of us.
He’s got nothing. He was born with a Commie-backed silver spoon in his mouth. He was a C student at Yale.
When he was buying into man-made global warming, I had not only heard of it but knew it for a pack of lies and junk science from the git-go. Roger Revelle, the college prof from whom he got the phony idea realized how wrong he had been before he died. But Prince Albert didn’t know enough science to correct his former misinformation.
Yup! He’s gotten rich off something he has absolutely NO professional or intellectual capacity to contribute to or even understand. He is a blatant political OPPORTUNIST and that is all he is. A failed divinity student for crying out loud! Basically, a functioning idiot! But a dead eye target for an easy buck!
He can’t even speak without putting people to sleep.
When counting Democrat votes, you always have to discount the 2 to 3% illegal votes.
Regardless, as Al Gore’s campaign manager said, if the election had been pure vote total election, both campaigns would have used vastly different strategies.
The claim that Al Gore may or may not have gotten more votes is just sore loser strategy by those who wish to change the rules of the game after the last play is completed.
He’s a lot more than you, but then that’s a mighty low bar.
“He [Gore] has a lot on most of us.”
Gore has no redeeming qualities. Just like the Clinton’s, you can’t believe a word Gore says.
“Both Nature magazine (2012 editorial) and the IPCC (in AR5, 2013) have determined that we cannot compute the man-made global warming contribution to any storm or to any trend (increasing or decreasing) in extreme weather. This is also the conclusion of Dr. Roger Pielke (University of Colorado). Can you comment on this?”
Simple. Even if you can not compute it, the water is hotter that it would be without GW. Therefore, on first principles, there will be more evaporation and thus more rain.
There is zero evidence than any SST is higher now than it otherwise would have been without more CO2 in the air.
simple fail, again.
“the water is hotter that it would be without GW”. It isn’t. Ocean show insignificant warming, like 0.01K.
And other CAGW believers have also said that hotter could mean drought, because, you know, hotter means higher dew point, so less rain.
Make you choice. More rain, or less rain? (although a “reallyskeptical” would know his choice may be wrong, and he will doubt it…)
I made mine: we just don’t know, and never will, because this problem is just intractable. Maybe we’ll observe more rain, or less, but we never be able to really explain why.
There are many factors that go into determining how powerful a storm will be.
Focusing in on one of those factors and proclaiming that you know precisely how changing it will change the storm is the kind of thing snake oil salesmen are famous for.
reallyskeptical : “Therefore, on first principles, there will be more evaporation and thus more rain.”
—————
more rain, and more drought too according to Goebels warmers, don’t forget that.
In fact, GW causes everything, and its contrary, les snow and more snow, less ice and more ice… there are thousands of papers to “prove” it.
“16 of the 17 hottest years on record have occurred in this century. The record goes back to 1880, the end of the Little Ice Age, which geologists believe is the coldest period since the end of the last glacial period, 12,000 years ago. Why use such an unusually cold period as a benchmark temperature?”
because:
1. Present temps are likely higher now than in Medival times, before the LIA.
2. It’s not the the temp now, it’s the trend. We are 1 degree C up, and there is no evidence of a cooling trend. Based on what we understand, we could be +5 in two centuries.
3. even if we stop emitting C now.
All available evidence shows that a number of 50 year periods in the MWP were hotter than any 50 years yet experienced in the Current WP.
We ‘likely’ ‘could’ all be living on Mars in two centuries. If we stop emitting CO2 now we’d all be dead in about two minutes.
1. Present temps are likely higher now than in Medival times, before the LIA.
->That certainly why retreating glacier in Europe reveal medieval forest, village, etc. Or not.
2. It’s not the the temp now, it’s the trend. We are 1 degree C up, and there is no evidence of a cooling trend. Based on what we understand, we could be +5 in two centuries.
->Nope (unless you use “could” as in “based on what we understand, we could be Elves in two centuries”; ô magical word, that allow any fantasy…). Based on what we really understand, we couldn’t add more than +1 (not an current temperature, but on temperature that would have had happened without that; did you get this?). Based on what we understand, +5 will be a boon for life, while a mere -1 would be a disaster. Better incurs a loss (that wont happen, but, anyway) at +1 that risk a -1.
3. even if we stop emitting C now.
-> If so, then stop trying to stop the train with our miserable hands, just use our effort into coping with that new reality. Indeed, all the effort that are asked of western country would only delay the doom (if true) from 2100 to 2101. Completely useless anyway.
reallyskeptical, Gabro and paqyfelc did a good job of addressing your issues. I would only add that the current average surface temperature of the Earth is about 15-16 degrees. Over the last 600 million years the average temperature of the Earth has been ~20 degrees. An increase of 5 degrees is only reversion to the overall mean. Our current icebox condition is very rare in Earth’s history and will not last. Although, given the very cold Little Ice Age, which may have been a failed attempt at a new glacial period, we are probably headed toward a new glacial, but the next possible initiation of the glacial is not for another few thousand years. For more see here: https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2017/08/08/the-effects-of-the-bray-climate-and-solar-cycle/
Reallyskeptical-
Please stop emitting C now.
The Medieval warm period was as much as 1C warmer than today.
“2. It’s not the the temp now, it’s the trend. We are 1 degree C up, and there is no evidence of a cooling trend.”
Here’s evidence of a cooling trend. Notice how it was hotter in the 1930’s than it is today. If you draw a straight line from the high of the 1930’s to the temperature today, you will be looking at a downtrend.
The Climate Change God Hansen said it was 0.5C hotter in the 1930’s than 1998, which makes it 0.4C hotter than today.
If we ever break that downtrend line, come back and revisit this issue with us.
A scary Halloween story dressed up as actual science. And the headless whoresman to scare the kiddies. Wonder how many of the parents paying the tuition bills would agree that this is a wise use of limited education resources.
El Calentamiento es REAL….. sucedió, ya se esta terminando, los nevados,los glaciares ya están recuperando la nieve. La falla es haber culpado al CO2, a los combustibles fósiles,a la actividad humana del Calentamiento Global, estos causan un mayor daño CONTAMINAN
El calentamiento fue real, pero no mucho. Y no es ahora.
Ron Bradley, we are getting into solar minimum, and had huge El Nino, no cooling yet
Are you saying that El Nino causes a “natural rebound?”
…
Nobody here has explained what causes a “natural rebound”
…
Do you know what causes a “natural rebound?”
Rob,
You aren’t paying attention. That earth enjoys warming cycles and suffers cooling cycles is a scientific fact, ie an observation.
You’ve been repeatedly shown one reason for these alternating cycles. On decennial, centennial, millennial and longer scales, earth’s climate warms and cools.
The long-term trend remains cooling, as earth has done for the past ~3000 years and continues to do. But on the shorter-term scale of 300 years, earth has warmed as its average T has rebounded from the depths of the LIA during the Maunder Minimum. On an even shorter scale, it recently warmed slightly, since we are in a secular warming trend, ie the warming cycles are the main trend and coolings the counter trend cycles. That’s the opposite of the LIA.
It’s all natural. No significant human fingerprint is observable. And if there be one, it’s because we cleaned the air compared to the 19th and early 20th century over the then industrialized world.
What causes the “natural rebound?”
“earth has warmed as its average T has rebounded from the depths of the LIA during the Maunder Minimum.”
…
Why?
There are no sunspots today. We in a minima. Why do global temps continue to rise?
Rob,
I told you one reason for the rebound, it why the LIA has given way to the Current WP. That you don’t like the answer isn’t an argument.
Again, as I said, there is thermal inertia. The sun has only recently gone quiet after decades of exceptionally high activity.
And, the fact is that, factoring out El Ninos, earth’s T is at best flat and, based upon proxy data, cooling.
From 1979 to 2012, Arctic sea ice trended downward. Since 2012, it has trended upward. This is the first year since the dedicated satellite record began in 1979 that five years have passed without a new record low summer extent.
Earth warmed in the 1910s to ’40s, cooled in the ’40s to ’70s, despite rising CO2, warmed in the ’70s to ’90s or ’00s, and is now starting another cooling cycle. No human fingerprint is observable.
“There are no sunspots today. We in a minima. Why do global temps continue to rise?”
They don’t.
The ONLY rise in the satellite temperature data sets has come from El Nino and ocean oscillation effects.
There is absolutely NO CO2 signature in the satellite record.
El Ninos are a solar/wind effect, nothing to do with anthropogenic anything.
And if you think TSI is the only change in solar output, you prove yourself to be childishly ignorant.
If you think that the 70% oceans doesn’t have a huge buffering and delay on warming and cooling, you also prove your wilful ignorance.
But please keep going.. its funny to watch.
Rob,
Of course there are lags, but go ahead and plot satellite tropospheric data for the period since the height of the 2016 Super El Nino warmth, which also happens to coincide with the sunspotless interval.
You won’t like the results.
What causes the “natural rebound?”
Lags in storage/release process
That’s the way complex system create cycles without any external stimulus.
If you don’t understand this, please just stop pretending you know something about climate
Any storage/release process could be at work, and there are many of them. Water circulation, involving El Nino, is just one (now comes at the surface water that went down thousand of years ago. If this water is hotter that the water that came at the surface a century ago, then warming occurs)
“Rob Bradley on October 24, 2017 at 8:56 pm
There are no sunspots today. We in a minima. Why do global temps continue to rise?”
Why is the warmest part of the day after noon?
If one thinks that the burning of fossil fuels is bad then they should immediately stop making use of all goods and services that involve the use of fossil fules. That includes wearing clothes, eating food, or entering buildings that involve materials that were transported by the use of fossil fuels or even walking on pavement made of brick, concrete, or ashpalt. It is your money that keeps the fossil fuel companies in business.
From an examination of the paleoclimate record and climate modeling results, one can conclude that he climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which Mankind has no control There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific reasoning to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is really zero If CO2 really affected climate then the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years should have caused at least measureable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened.. Even if Mankind could some how stop the climate from changing as it has been doing for eons before mankind ever started making use of fossil fuels, we would still have extreme weather events because they are part of the current climate.
The AGW conjecture is full of holes. The AGW conjecture depends upon the existance of a radiant greenhouse effect. But this radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed on Earth or on any planet in the solar system with a thick atmosphere. A planet’s atmospheric effect is a function of the heat capacity of the atmosphere, the depth of the troposphere, and gravity and has nothing to with the LWIR absorption propreties of component gassed. With the radiant greenhouse effect being only sceince fiction the AGW conjecture is nothing but science fiction.
Thank goodness someone who knows the difference between science and hype is being featured in such a prominent place online! And you have sources! How different than the cherry-picked, filtered, blindered and outright falsified examples used by the alarmists. Its amazing that anyone can do research on the internet and discover the truth snout global warming. Its hilariously ironic that Al Gore invented them both!
It was less of a lecture and more of a pep rally. You have to understand that on the Rice Campus he was preaching to the choir.. Though located in the Energy Capital of the World, the Rice Campus emits a faint blue glow at night. Ok, that’s a joke, it doesn’t. However, Gore holds some emeritus position at the University on one or another advisory committees and while I would never suggest that the level of scholarship at Rice is anything less than top tier, those present generally were not there to learn. This is virtue signalling at its finest.
Anyone who gets a standing ovation for being introduced and then a second one after a vapid gooey speech, probably got a Peace Prize for doing nothing too.
Yeah, I stayed to the bitter end but I got there at 6:15 for a 6:30 start and easily found a seat on the ground floor about midway up to the stage for a “Sold Out” first come, first served event. At least a quarter of the house didn’t bother with the question period Would that I capitalized on the Wisdom of the Crowd.
The Web pegs Gore’s remuneration @ 100K plus travel, per diem, etc, etc. I chose the wrong career field.
Where is our resident Court-Jester, Griff, on this …. I need a good laugh!!!!!!!
I suggested he was Ed Miliband some time ago and there’s been silence since. If I’ve inadvertently killed Tinker Bell I can only apologise for spoiling everybody’s fun.
I don’t know whether to thank you or cuss you, Nigel. I find I kind of miss the little twit.
But perhaps he has just changed his moniker to ‘Rob Bradley.’ The trolls will always be with us.
What? A quarter walked out? Quite a statement from an audience paying dearly to listen and learn. Apart from learning a lesson of politician enriching himself at their expense (with saving the world from mankind nonsense), how could anyone could call it a success? Perhaps the wiser students can make a case for a refund. But no worries for Al either. The parents willing to pay for any manmade disasters may be willing to pay extra also for this latest anomaly.
Al Gore has almost no scientific evidences in his talks. I have carried out research work about the basic effects of GH gases. My purpose is to fight back against the IPCC’ s climate science with scientific means. I want to comment the following statement of Andy May:
“The popular concept of greenhouse gases “trapping” heat is very misleading and inaccurate as described by Rasmus Benestad here.”
There is a following claim in Benestad’s paper:
“The basic principle of the GHE in general terms is that the air is opaque to light in the long-wave range (IR) but transparent to short-wave radiation (visible light). Most of the energy from the sun that is not reflected away is absorbed at the planet’s surface, as a cloud-less atmosphere is transparent to visible light while clouds tend to reflect it (accounted for through the albedo A).”
It is an astonishing common belief that the cloud-less atmosphere does not absorb visible light (shortwave radiation). The measurement based analysis show that in the case of cloud-less sky the solar radiation is 342 W/m2, the reflected flux is 53 W/m2 meaning a net flux of 289 W/m2 absorbed by the atmosphere & the surface. Because the measured surface absorbed flux is 220 W/m2, the atmosphere has absorbed 69 W/m2.
By the way, the absorption by the atmosphere is almost the same in all sky conditions: clear sky 69 W/m2, cloudy sky 72 W/m2, and all-sky 71 W/m2.
Dr. Antero Ollila
Of course the atmosphere absorbs a reasonable amount of incoming solar irradiance, since at the equator under clear sky conditions (no clouds) the amount of solar irradiance is around 1050 to 1100 W/m2, such that about 260 W/m2 of incoming solar irradiance is absorbed by the atmosphere.
PS. i have not checked the precise figures. These are just ball park figures relevant to the principle (not quantification) being discussed above.
Once a lenient political dialogue has been discovered, those arguing in it with science only might be recognised classy. Comparable to someone successfully golfing 18 holes in row with a putter only. But, based on Richard’s revelation on BBC, looks like underworld freezes over first before such recognition is granted to anyone.
Your point seems valid to me. Hope you don’t mind me pulling out the driver now and risk calling out a fore afterwards. Based on what is observed in the rest of the solar system (e.g. pV=nRT overwhelms the GHG conjecture to a point) 100% of atmosphere can be considered as a “greenhouse gas”. In my understanding the following statement is accurate description of GHG conjecture:
Ultraviolet is neither. The effect of which is terrible enough for some to fear holes in the ozone layer. Why would GHG conjecture look only into IR and visible? If they go further, what exactly is measured in the “absorption of solar radiation”? And how? This is how NASA discovered the sun since 2010.
Looks to me even the emitter is still a puzzle and, yet, it’s implied the absorption on Earth is measured/known globally in three meaningful figures per m2. What I’ve seen so far, I’m not buying it.
Dr. Ollila, The atmosphere does absorb some energy from the sun during the daytime. It also emits radiation, both during the day and at night. Over some period of time the absorption and the emission balance. The atmosphere (except for water vapor) does not trap energy for more than a few milliseconds. Water vapor can hold energy for longer periods (hours or days) as latent heat, but even water vapor eventually emits it’s energy. 99.9% of the stored heat energy on the Earth’s surface is in the oceans, they can store heat for 1500 years before they release it. The only “trapped” thermal energy on the planet is in the oceans, atmospheric thermal energy “storage” is insignificant.
Just to illustrate the grip that the warmists have on MSM (and the biased agenda pushed by the BBC), see the following article. What hope is there for rational discussion when you have such apologists in charge of the media.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5013881/BBC-apologises-climate-sceptic-Lord-Lawson-interview.html
This newly coined cliché, the “hottest year on record” needs to be looked at.
If the “record” now only includes the last circa 150 years of written records, why are proxy tree ring and ice core guesses regarding co2 simultaneously admitted as being records/recordings?
Conversely, why are other much warmer periods excluded from the cherry picked minute timescale?
It appears that scientists will not stand over the “science” of theorising when it suits them not to, by deferring to written records to permit them to say “hottest year on record”.
Considering that all of the “years on record” have been subject to “corrections” it would appear that the record can be rerecorded at will.
There was no apparent warming or noticeable climate trends for the US for most of the 20th century according to NOAA’s Hanson and Maul in 1988, but now, in the 21st century, NASA says it’s adjustments account for 0.5°c of the warming experienced by the US in the 20th century.
And there were pretty much no records for the rest of the world for the so called years on record.
How can any year seriously be taken to be the hottest on record when the records are so full of modern upward adjustments?
I guess it softens the scare to say “recent adjusted record”.
In my view, “adjusting” or homoginizing” even “correcting” a record, renders it no longer a “record”.
It is not that which was recorded. It is something else.
Fantasy comes to mind.
Gore – a disgusting man
Disgusting, I’ll give you.
Man, you need to prove.
Andy, I have a question and it may have already been answered. Did the university pay Gore to speak?
Al Gore’s usual speaker’s fee is $ 300k. Maybe he gave a Rice – discount, but I doubt it.
I must admit that I do not know whether he got paid, but it is said that his greedyness is correlated to his universal ignorance.
I also do not know if he was paid, or if this was part of the deal to get his New Leaders board advisor position.
“The “evidence” that man’s emissions cause climate change is computer-model based,”
err no.
it is basic physics.
the best evidence that you will probably not get is shaun lovejoys work.
Simple solutions for simple minds.
In the real world, there are confounding factors, feedbacks and other things to worry about.
That’s why they use models instead of just a paper and pencil to do their “projections”.
Sorry, Steven, that is not correct. Basic physics tells us that CO2 absorbs and emits IR and it tells us that additional CO2 might delay the transport of heat from the surface to space and might increase atmospheric temperature. It does not tell us by how much, is it very small or very large? Are the main feedbacks net negative or net positive? Is the effect larger than the current ocean and sun drivers of climate or smaller. Physics tells us none of this. Al Gore asserted that man causes climate change, basic physics cannot tell us this is true. A computer model can estimate the magnitude of the effect, but how good is the model? Not very good when compared to observations, I’m afraid. You are way past your data here.
Any sane intelligent person understands climate does adjust/change. Human element contributes to this adjustment…..but Al Gore has not only enriched himself by exploitation but is a phonatic and condescending nimrod.
In typical elitist fashion he denegrates challenge. People should be wary!!
It’s a sad commentary on our university system that you can find so many true believers of basically junk science. But then, how many of those in the audience are majoring in the sciences? I would guess that not many are. I would hope not. It would be most enlightening to quiz these gullible folks with a basic knowledge test to see just exactly how little they know about the subject. Like, for example : what were the average temperatures during the Medeival Warm Period compared to this century? What were the CO2 levels during that period? Etc etc. Andy May is now in a position to know what Gore’s standard spiel looks like – he should construct such a quiz and administer it to members of the college audience after Gore’s speech, as “a measure to determine Gore’s effectiveness in imparting knowledge about global warming o the general public.” Also a sheet that contains footnoted contradictions of every point made by Gore, along with a recitation of all of Gore’s past mistakes in estimates of the future, etc (Mt Kilamanjoar’s “disapearing snow.” etc. Pass that out as a “review of Al Gore’s positions.”
Apocalypse is not necessarily something bad; it literally means ‘a revelation’, which could be good, bad or indifferent.
Not sure I’d look forward to the revelation these four were bringing.
Thank you for your report, Andy. I think it is good to analyze why other people believe in other things and to question ourselves if they may be right or not. I do not think you wasted your time.
According to your report we can analyze Al’s talk and the public response.
The basis is truthful or he would have a harder time convincing people. The planet has been warming for centuries, but most people only care for the last decades when they were alive, and most people won’t bother finding out what happened before. For all practical purposes the world has warmed during our watch, and thus the claim that the last years are among the warmest is obvious and uninformative. In a warming world the latest years are expected to be the warmest.
Then Al abandons the realm of science to play with people’s emotions. There is no scientific evidence that the warming enhances the frequency or effects of extreme weather except in the case of heatwaves. However, it is in human nature to believe that whatever bad that happens, specially when they are victims or identify with the victims, is worse than anything that happened before. This is related to the way our memory works. So people are preconditioned to believe that bad things are worse now than in the past, and to try to blame somebody for it. Most people would respond positively to the story that Al tells, specially since most scientists don’t clearly contradict it, and some even support it.
Lastly, Al puts the blame on the fossil fuel industry, which is the main, but not the only, producer of the GHGs that are emitted to the atmosphere. He is again playing to people’s emotions. It is a natural human response to not accept responsibility for anything bad and try to put the blame on somebody else. The story gets thus completed with a guilty party that deserves punishment. The consequence, that a reduction of emissions would lead to a reduction in the warming and in the extreme weather effects, is left untold for people to assume. This is because again it is completely unsupported by science. Significant reductions in GHGs emissions are very likely to have negligible effect on climate change even by the same models that put the blame on emissions. The cost of the emissions reduction is also ignored or downplayed in a typical agenda-driven proposition.
Presented with this information and told this story most people would logically believe it and support it. The interesting question is why after so much information in favor of AGW, so many people don’t believe it, and doubt or reject it. The most likely explanation is political. In countries where there is no political distinction on climate change and every political party supports AGW conclusions, over 90% of the people believe on AGW tenets. The conclusion is that most skeptics are politically motivated and only look for reasons to distrust AGW after taking a position. Nothing wrong with that, but it has to be taken into account before criticizing harshly believers of AGW. It is clear that both positions can be supported on science, and both are.
It is quite easy to doubt AGW without any scientific proof! After 60 years of this running catastrophe, I can’t tell the weather from the early 1970’s. Any differences are pitifully small, such that they cannot even be established beyond considerable doubt.
It is an eco-Socialist religion, based around weather variations that our ancestors shrugged off many, many times over past millennia even though they had a fraction of the ability to deal with such changes. We are consistently the silliest intelligent species that could be imagined.
Believers in this nonsense should be too embarrassed to show their ignorance. Mostly humanities students and grads, masquerading as knowledgeable about the natural world.
Thanks Javier, good points. To be a good skeptic, we must look for convincing evidence and analysis. Hearing Gore’s talk, I was unconvinced. He showed evidence that CO2 is increasing and most is from humans. I believe that CO2 is increasing and most of the additional CO2 is from humans, check. Then he shows us emotional pictures of weather related catastrophes all over the world and asks us to connect these to the additional CO2. Big problem! We’ve always had weather catastrophes, how do we know today is better, worse, the same?? We don’t. How do we know the weather events we see are being affected by man-made CO2? We don’t. Until these holes in his analysis are filled, I will remain skeptical. He is making the assertion man controls the climate, the burden of proof is on him – although he does his best to reverse that.
The revelation of the inanity of AGW will be an apocalypse for money grubbing parasites like Gore and Mann.
How much was the student activity fund hit for this?
You may resume your normal carbon lives after Gore jets away.
Why isn’t this Hate Speech? He Hates the Human Race, he Hates Capitalism, etc etc etc
First there was the back stab that led to Rice University’s founding, then there was Al Gore to repeat the act….for a fee.
Why is there no requirement for Rice to provide a platform for a contrary view? A lecture by any number of people aimed at Gore’s talking points and given either immediately before or after his speech would be just the ticket to take the shine off his baloney.
With all due respect for my junior colleague, professor Miranda and her undisputed reputation in her own field, I cannot help asking with what competence she prescreens the questions for Mr Gore? As far as can be told from her bio, her research activities do not remotely relate to climate science. Not that Mr. Gore’s do it, either – or rather, he has no contact with any kind of field of research whatsoever. His frequent appearances as an expert in the field are grotesque. He should by now accept the fact that his constant decline to engage in a true, objective discussion has turned him into a veritable laughing stock.
“I cannot help asking with what competence she prescreens the questions for Mr Gore?” Trust me, she didn’t pre-screen the questions. She just read the one AL wanted.
Frederick Neitche (sp?) famously said, “there are no facts, just interpretations.” Al and Frederick would see eye to eye it would seem.
“Why is the media ignoring climate change? ” That is not what I am seeing. If, in fact, there is some truth that statement it many be because the media realizes public opinion is not interested so it is not worth wasting air time on it.
It’s been unseasonably warm here the past few weeks, but the front that came through Sunday really cooled things off this week. Thanks for bring the Gore Effect to Houston, Al!
Arguably the center of the US O&G industry, Houston Texas, and he gets a standing ovation? The charlatan, should have been run out of town..
This is a truly an excellent report and analysis of Al Gore’s presentation! Despite where we stand on this important issue, all sides need to agree to learn to work towards cleaning up our Earth without taking a ladt stand with either the intolerant, emotionally apocalyptic approach of Gore and many others, and the totally unreasonable fuel industry’s resistance to giving an inch or planning its evolution to alternative means of energy!! Joining these two belligerant but powerfully capable camps will yield wonderful environmental successes for the greater good of all life on Earth despite the direction and/or pace of where mother nature is headed!!