By Dr. Roy Spencer
I sometimes get asked for a concise and accessible summary of my skeptical views on global warming. After a year or more of thinking and writing, my new Kindle book Global Warming Skepticism for Busy People is meant to fill that need.
As a bonus, I guarantee it will be easier to understand than Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.
At nearly 32,000 words with 40 high-res illustrations it’s more comprehensive than my previous Kindle books, but still readable in about 2-3 hours. The book is not meant to cover all of the skeptical views out there, but rather everything that I believe is most important to the global warming and energy policy debate. (If people convince me I’ve missed a couple of subjects that need to be addressed, it is easy and fast to update Kindle books.)
Maybe the best way to summarize what is in the book is to list the chapter titles:
Preface
1. Overview of the Reasons for Skepticism
2. The Five Big Questions
3. Skepticism versus Alarmism
4. The Unholy Alliance: Politics and Science
5. How Could 97% of Scientists Be Wrong?
6. What is the Greenhouse Effect?
7. What Causes Temperature Change?
8. The Good News about Increasing CO2
9. The U.N. IPCC Consensus: Government-Funded Biased Science
10. Climate Models Exaggerate Recent Warming
11. Warming since the 1800s Suggests Climate Models are Too Sensitive
12. How the Reliance on IPCC Climate Models Affects You
13. Why is Warming Not Progressing as Predicted?
14. Refuting Common Climate Delusions
Conclusions
That last chapter is where I refute the frequent media claims about worsening heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, weather-related disaster losses, sea level rise, sea ice melt, ice sheet collapse, and ocean acidification.
I consider this my most complete treatment of the subject in one place, with my latest position on a variety of subjects. I have references to some of the latest findings and events of interest — as recent as September 3, 2018. I’ve included hyperlinks where appropriate so that readers can easily investigate my claims for themselves.
I hope you find it entertaining and informative. And, again, I am open to suggestions for material I might have missed… keeping in mind I am not aiming for the most exhaustive treatment of global warming skepticism, but the most effective one.
ALSO: I have updated and expanded my Kindle book Inevitable Disaster: Why Hurricanes Can’t be Blamed on Global Warming, with new information and inclusion of Hurricane Florence. This 2nd Edition should go live tonight.
From the Amazon description:
This book draws on decades of climate research to explain why the threat of anthropogenic climate change has been grossly exaggerated. Global warming and associated climate change exists – but the role of humans in that change is entirely debatable. A little-known aspect of modern climate science is that the warming of the global atmosphere-ocean system over the last 100 years, even if entirely human-caused, has progressed at a rate that reduces the threat of future warming by 50% compared to the climate model projections.
To the extent warming is partly natural (a possibility even the IPCC acknowledges), the future threat is reduced even further. This, by itself, should be part of the debate over energy policy – but it isn’t. Why? The news media, politicians, bureaucrats, rent-seekers, government funding agencies, and a “scientific-technological elite” (as President Eisenhower called it) have collaborated to spread what amounts to fake climate news.
Exaggerated climate claims appear on a daily basis, sucking the air out of more reasoned discussions of the scientific evidence which are too boring for a populace increasingly addicted to climate change porn. Upon close examination it is found that the “97% of climate scientists agree” meme is inaccurate, misleading, and useless for decision-making; human causation of warming is simply assumed by the vast majority of climate researchers. In contrast to what many have been taught, there have been no obvious changes in severe weather, including hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or floods.
Despite an active 2018 wildfire season, there has actually been a long-term decrease in wildfire activity, although that will change if forest management practices are not implemented. Proxy evidence of past temperature and Arctic sea ice changes suggest warming and sea ice decline over the last 50 years or so is not out of the ordinary, and partly or even mostly natural. The Antarctic ice sheet isn’t collapsing, but remains stable.
The human component of sea level rise is shown to be, at most, only 1 inch per 30 years (25% of the observed rate of rise); and the latest evidence is that more CO2 dissolved in ocean water will be good for marine life, not harmful. Admittedly, continued emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel burning can be expected to cause (and probably has caused) some of our recent warming. But the Paris Agreement, even if extended through the end of the 21st Century, will have no measurable effect on global temperatures because the governments of the world realize humanity will depend upon fossil fuels for decades to come.
Despite news reports and politicians’ proclamations, international agreements to reduce CO2 emissions are all economic pain for no observable climate gain. What government-mandated reliance on expensive and impractical energy sources will do is increase energy poverty, and poverty kills. This downside to illusory efforts to “Save the Earth” is already being experienced in the UK and elsewhere.
If people are genuinely concerned about humanity thriving, they must reject global warming alarmism. In terms of environmental regulation, the end result of the U.S. EPA’s Endangerment Finding will be reduced prosperity for all, and climate gain for none.
The good news is that there is no global warming crisis, and this book will inform citizens and help guide governments toward decisions which benefit the most people while doing the least harm.
Available now on Amazon
That last chapter is where I refute the frequent media claims about worsening heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, weather-related disaster losses, sea level rise, sea ice melt, ice sheet collapse, and ocean acidification.
Methane and the polar bears are on my hit list. Not having read the book yet, maybe the bears are under sea ice.
But it looks like methane is not covered.
The ridiculous Global Warming Potential statistics currently list methane at 86 times more powerful than CO2 including the feed backs. When the new IPPC Assessment Report comes out that number will increase because the standard used is the atmospheric concentration of CO2 which increases constantly. Sort of like measuring Jello with a rubber yard stick.
Anyway, what isn’t said and you can’t find is how much methane will actually run up global temperature. Some determination of what that actually is might be a useful tidbit of information to include in the book.
The traditional measure of the potency of methane was to count up the number of molecules in the formula and compare it to H2O and CO2. That was bogus. Roy, do you have any latest stats on the actual photon absorbance % across the complete bandwidth of methane compared to H2O and CO2?
When you talk about methane from animals, the carbon and hydrogen in CH4 originated in one molecule of CO2 and two molecules of H2O in the atmosphere. So (based on their moleccular weight) we should be comparing the effect of one ton of CH4 with five tons of CO2 and H2O.
I didn’t mention methane because CO2 is the dominant radiaitve forcing agent (3-4 times CH4), and is increasing, while CH4 radiative forcing is expected to either not increase or increase much more slowly than CO2. The book isn’t meant to be exhaustive, but address the most important issues (in my opinion). There’s a danger of watering down the major points by including too many minor points.
Thanks for the reply – I agree methane really isn’t important as far as it’s contribution to the greenhouse effect, but the perception in the real world is that it is. After all, California is regulating or at least wants to regulate CH4 emissions from the state dairy herd. The folly in that needs to be pointed out.
Trying to reduce methane emissions from a diary industry = stupid on steroids ^ infinity.
Actually, methane should probably be included to shed light on the damage to dairy and beef industries globally with this overblown misinformation. The new Gov’t in New Zealand is also crucifying its dairy/beef industry on the alter of ACC/CAGW and is a rallying point of the climate turds why none of should eat meat. And then there is the constant shrill of the melting permafrost methane that will send us all to a fiery Venus like atmosphere. So yes, methane should very much be included because it is on the the front line of anthropogenic climate misinformation.
What the ding-dongs aren’t aware of regarding Venus’s temperature is that if our atmosphere were as thick as Venus’s atmosphere our surface temperature would 750F+. It’s called dry adiabatic lapse rate, it has almost nothing to do with the CO2 in Venus’s atmosphere.
Thanks for the great reply (-:
So yes, methane should very much be included because it is on the the front line of anthropogenic climate misinformation.
Along with sea level and “Melting” Antarctica – but then Dr. Roy is covering those topics
I have read that methane emissions in cattle are up because of confinement feeding, both slaughter beef and dairy. Get the animals back on their natural diet, and this will drop. I have not verified that, but it is something that we should want anyway because this unnatural feeding is causing bacterial antibiotic resistance. Manure from these operations has contaminated nearby waters, causing deadly outbreaks in spinach and romaine lettuce
At an atmospheric concentration of less than 2 ppm, methane is a non-starter in warming the planet. According to Wikipedia, the concentration of methane in the atmospheres on other planets is as follows: Jupiter = ~3,000 ppm, Saturn = ~4,000 ppm, Uranus = ~23,000 ppm and Neptune = ~15,000 ppm.
BINGO! And it’s going up at a whopping 6.5 ppb per year. The warming due to methane by the end of the century might be a few insignificant hundredths of a degree. But that’s not what what our wonderful, firmly in the pocket of left-wing liberal democrats, media wants us to believe.
Methane seems very strong around Uranus.
I see what you did there. . . . 🙂
There’s a movement afoot among astronomers, led by Neil deGrasse Tyson, to :change the name of Uranus in order to put a stop to all of these stupid jokes. The leading contender for a new name is: Urectum.
BWAHAHAHAHA!!
Methane seems very strong around Uranus.
Also on the streets of San Francisco.
Atmospheric methane dissociates quickly to CO2 and water (both greenhouse gasses). This dissociation is likely due to its absorption to saturation at 1.66 microns as of 1948 concentration, increasing entropy.
Dismissing a gas because it has a small concentration is about as sciency as the warmists arguments.
What matters is the potency not the concentration. Please dont sound as ridiculous as the warmists.
Methane is only significant in the minds of the climate obsessed.
Dismissing a gas because it has a small concentration
Dean, do alittle studying. There’s small, and then there’s small.
Take a look at the absorbtion spectrum and ask yourself if it can be significant.
http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/
The Greens’ claim that it is ‘an extremely potent greenhouse gas’ is based on a misepresentation of the fact that it does have an effect at lower concentrations than CO2. At the actual concentrations in the atmosphere though, its effect is negligible.
Air pollutants have shortest lifespan in the atmosphere, next Methane has shorter lifespan in the atmosphere compared to carbon dioxide.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Methane decays to CO2 anyway.
The fear is that warming in the arctic will cause more permafrost to melt which will in turn release more CH4 into the atmosphere which in turn will cause more warming and will cause the Earth’s climate to pass a tipping point where the Earth’s climate becomes out of control. But the paleoclimate record shows that we need not worry about that. The previous interglacial period, the Eemian, was warmer than this one with more ice cap melting and higher sea levels yet no tipping point was ever reached. The last ice age followed. The current Modern Warming Period is not much different then the previous Medieval Warm Period which would tend to support the idea that Mother Nature is still in control of our current climate. One can only expect that we will have another ice age but that its development may be thousands of years off in the future.
Methane is a nothing concerning climate, so nothing needed. OTOH, it does a dang good job fueling power plants.
Hi Roy,
Good luck with the book. We certainly need the message spreading. I am an engineer but I have also done a lot of earth science. We know how the greenhouse effect works but we also know that water vapour, in particular, absorbs across the IR spectrum including the same wavelengths as CO2. I think it is 15-16 microns or thereabouts. There is a whole lot more water vapour than CO2 butI have not seen any explanation of why the water vapour effect doesn’t swamp CO2 absorption. Does this merit covering?
I do discuss the dominant role of water vapor in the book.
Asking as a layman- if water vapor is the most potent ghg, and CO2 is evenly spread throughout the atmosphere, then why aren’t, say, tropical rain forests the hottest places on earth? The hottest places seem to me to have the least ghg-deserts, with very little water vapor.
It is because water absorbs a tremendous amount of energy when it evaporates and turns into water vapor, and once it is a vapor in the air, it raises the specific heat of the air, and so more energy is required to warm this moist air by a given amount than it does to warm dry air by the same amount.
(BTW, this is one of the big problems that many have with the concept of an average temperature for the entire Earth)
Plus places that have lots of water vapor tend to be cloudy, and to rain a lot.
Clouds reflect away a lot of the incoming solar energy, and rain brings cool water to the surface from aloft, which absorbs heat from the air as it falls and warms. (most of the rain that falls starts out as ice, even in the tropics)
Please note that in my above response, I should have referred to evaporation and transpiration, as much of the water vapor in the air in rain forests got there by transpiring from the leaves of plants…but the amount of energy the water carries away from the surface is the same as for evaporation.
Also, there is another mechanism which makes desert regions hotter than rain forests.
Although it should be pointed out that deserts are only hotter than rain forests, generally speaking, during the daytime hours in the low latitude deserts, one reason they are (sometimes) hot is the same reason they are deserts and why they have low moisture content in the air: Deserts are characteristically places in which air descends from aloft under the influence of high pressure belts or cells. And when air descends, it becomes more dense and hence warms up adiabatically, and by warming the relative humidity is decreased because warm air has the capacity to hold more moisture than cooler air. Other reasons for deserts being dry have to do with such things as the rain shadow effect, which is partly itself the result of air warming as it descends from altitude. The driest deserts tend to both in a rain shadow and in a belt of semi permanent high pressure. These areas of semi permanent high pressure are generally centered around 30 degrees north and south latitude, and at the poles.
And rain forests tend to be wet because they are characterized by being zones of rising air, such as exists at the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ, as is the case in for instance places like Borneo and the Amazon Basin, or because persistent moist winds run into steep and tall topography, such as is the case in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington.
So, rain forests are not always tropical, and many are cool due to latitude or altitude, and deserts are not always hot, either because it is night time, or they are in polar regions, or in high latitudes away from the poles.
The Atacama, the Gobi…these are not hot places. And Antarctica is the driest place on Earth, and is never anything but frigidly cold, except near the coasts.
Learning about climatology from the beginning is the only way to get a relatively complete answer to your question.
This page is fairly bias free (for Wikipedia anyway) if you want to learn more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Köppen_climate_classification
BTW Jim…you know you asked a good question when the answer raises a whole bunch of new questions.
Thanks!
Steve,
Dr. Tim Ball seems to be ‘fixated’ on this issue — give some of his published papers or some of his articles here on WUWT a read.
I doubt that Tim has any insight that hasn’t been already covered in my and others’ published research on the subject. Yes, you could say that water vapor, on average, “swamps” CO2 absorption. But what matters for climate *change* is the effect of *increases* in both over time. Overlapping of absorption bands is a red herring, since onviously CO2 overlaps with itself and still a doubling of CO2 will have *some* effect. The question is, how much?
The question is what will determine CO2 concentrations moving forward is it the oceans/ environment ,or man’s contribution off setting natural contributions?
I say the former.
A lot of IR radiation to space must come from cloud tops, which introduces a non-obvious (to me) connection between their temperatures and the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
climanrecon
A lot of IR radiation to space must come from cloud tops, which introduces a non-obvious (to me) connection between their temperatures and the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
_________________________________________________
A lot of re-radiation to space comes from cloud tops due to cloud albedo.
Hi Steve,
If you haven’t seen anything about water vapor then it seems you haven’t been reading mainstream scientists. It’s well known and documented that water vapor is an important part of the greenhouse effect causing current global warming. It acts as a positive feedback. It’s abundance is driven by air temperature, so adding CO2 warms the earth, which increases the atmospheric H20, which warms the earth further. However, without the CO2 driver it would quickly fall back to preindustrial equilibrium levels on its own. So, it plays a major role in the size of the greenhouse effect, but by itself it isn’t the driver of the current enhanced effect. All this is discussed in much more technical detail by climate scientists and included in all realistic models and calculations. If you will take my advice, don’t hang around a crank propaganda site like this, go check out https://www.skepticalscience.com for conveniently organized explanations, or http://www.realclimate.org for professional input.
Ok Josh, so explain how in the one place where the effect of moisture is absent, Antarctica, has had no warming at all, and has in fact cooled over time.
Should be easy for someone who has all the answers from the warmista websites.
we should all buy at least one copy and give it to someone!
You cant wipe your arse with a kindle.
Which is all i would do with a book promoting the mythical concensus RGHE Hypothesis.
RGHE?
“Global Warming Skeptics”, “Climate Change Deniers”… Why do we let the loony left define the terms? They would call me such a “skeptic”, such a “denier”, but I am neither. I am not a Global Warming Skeptic nor a Climate Change Denier. I am a skeptic of the amount of anthropogenic influence on these things. Younger people coming up (and other people without critical thinking skills) who are going to matter with their votes and other choices, too easily misconstrue who we are and get attitudes based on this false understanding.
I am not a skeptic. There is nothing proven to be skeptical of. I am a climate realist and the Hansens and Manns are climate alarmists.
JD
I understand where you’re coming from but I would say, as an alternative, that I am skeptical of every step in the AGW story, because the whole thing is a house of cards. All poorly supported hypotheses, assumptions, circular reasoning, group-think, and “data” that is no such thing, but rather a collection of guesswork and unjustified “adjustments.”
Alarmists they are, but a more compete description of their ilk is to refer to the gangsters they emulate.
So let’s just think of Don Mann and his ilk as The Climate Mafia.
All the same methods are used: Protection rackets, intimidation, bribery of politicians…right up to what happens to anyone who tries to leave The Family.
Not only is there no global warming crisis there is no global warming.
Books like this should be banned and the author black listed because such works are disrespectful to science and scientists. The doom scenarios which climate science has given us have taken lots of work by lots of very clever people. It is so wrong to disagree with their work like this.
/ Sarc off
“Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?” – And the pseudo-scientists that have this attitude, and their deluded sheep followers, call “skeptics” “anti-science.” The very notion that data should not be made available for scrutiny is in and of itself as anti-science as it gets, yet the Climate Nazis attempt to hide their work behind a curtain constantly. There’s a reason for that, and it’s not because their work is good, that’s for damn sure. It’s pitiful.
Roy, I heard a talk by you years ago at the Houston City Club. If anyone can clarify these issues for non-scientists, it is you. Look forward to reading your new book.
I was at that breakfast and as well, and still have fond memories as well as an autographed copy of Dr. Spencer’s book.
“ the governments of the world realize humanity will depend upon fossil fuels for decades to come”
Do they? Some of them have a funny way of showing it.
I agree.
Fossil fuels left untouched are just money in the bank. As long as you don’t collapse your economy, there is no major downside for politicians to be anti-fossil fuel.
Fossil fuel in the ground is income left unearned.
There are people who are hungry and cold today. Those fossil fuels are part of the solution to fixing those problems.
Leaving fossil fuels in the ground means that people today are poorer than they could have been.
If you have no problem with that, then you don’t care about people.
Not just poorer, but hungrier, colder, and likely to die younger. Cheap energy is what makes man prosper. Leaving cheap energy (fossil fuels) in the ground is to be complicit in condemning the poorest people of the world to a short life of misery with an early death.
Fossil fuels are SUPERRENEWABLE, because once burned, they become trees and other plants that can be used for energy again and again and again.
In the meantime, you have more Life on the Earth. Fossil fuels and ONLY fossil fuels increase the carrying capacity of the Earth for Life. Our enemies–and anybody who would call you a “denier” is full of hate, i.e. an enemy–are willing to do absolutely anything to the natural world in order to harm or kill human beings. Recently, they were shrieking about how bad the 40% increase in plant cover is.
But there is another hidden element–the funding. We are NOT supported by the fossil fuel industry. The alarmists have 100x (1000X?) more funding than we do. I just learned that some of that funding is coming from Russia, supporting American Greens, in order to hurt US energy industry. Russia’s economy is heavily oil and gas sold to EU and China, and they don’t want American competition.
OK, so we’ll shut down your home’s connection to the power grid, we’ll take away any automobiles you own, and you can start hunting, fishing, and growing your own, for food, and start making your own clothes from the skins of any dinners you can actually catch. You can get heat only from the firewood you cut by hand on your own property and burn in your fireplace (you do have a fireplace, yes?).
After a year, if you haven’t frozen to death, starved to death, or died of heatstroke or disease (no pharmas without fossil fuels either!), we’ll talk again about that lack of “downside.”
Climate delusion – spread by climate hypocrites for climate sensitive congregation. Causes climate fatigue in general public.
Roy
I’m not a scientist, nor even well educated so I’m off to Amazon directly after posting this to download your book. Laymen desperately need a Janet and John explanation of the issues surrounding the subject of AGW.
I will look for two things that convince me the entire subject is simply mass hysteria whipped up by a few people who are on a gravy train:
To the best of my understanding:
1. there is not one empirical study that successfully demonstrates CO2 causes the planet to warm. With the best minds in the world working on the subject, there should have been dozens, if not hundreds over the last 40 years and,
2. the only observable manifestation of increased atmospheric CO2 is that the planet has greened by 14% over the last 35 years or so. Zaichun Zhu, Shilong Piao, Ranga B. Myneni et al. https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004
I don’t know if it helps but I have taken years to wade through the scientific murk to reach those most basic of conclusions.
Regards,
HotScot.
You seem to be better educated than a lot of Phd’s that I know.
MarkW
Thick as two short planks mate. That’s why I have to find some absolutes to judge everything else by e.g. water vapour @ ~95% of all greenhouse gases and Tyndall stating it’s the most significant GHG by far, with CO2 ~3%. CO2 @ ~0.04% of the entire atmosphere and man’s contribution around 0.0012%.
These to me are silly numbers but when I present them to alarmists I’m frequently told bacteria can cause death at much lower concentrations; but bacteria is a self replicating organism, CO2 isn’t self replicating, nor is it dangerous to mankind until it get’s into the multiple thousands of ppm. And I’m pretty sure if we burned every bit of known fossil fuel reserves tomorrow we couldn’t come close to increasing atmospheric C02 by more than a couple of hundred ppm.
Just basics I know you understand very well judging by your past comments which are always insightful and knowledgeable.
I’ll stop now lest we start a backslapping competition. 🙂
P.S. Reading Roy’s book as we speak. At the third chapter, very good so far, but he has some digs at alarmists which will rile them to the point of chucking the Kindle out the window.
Oh, no! The last thing I wanted to do was that!!
Roy Spencer
🙂
But we want to persuade them, not alienate them.
Softly softly, catchee monkey.
However, to persuade them would require that they have an open mind. If the cause (persuading them) is lost, then it doens’t matter too much. Forget about the couple thousand zealots and concentrate on the other 7 billion people.
I will bet you, that for the majority of them, CAGW is their only religion.
Retired_Engineer_Jim
To get to the 7Bn you must have the MSM behind you. To get to them requires persuasion.
evolution isn’t a secret, so it’s a personal problem.
plus, when i axed to be born, i did not agree to lick any freakin wounds or educate any morons – or even mind anybody else’s business.
i don’t care about their unborn dead babbies, for good measure.
they can all blow hippos for all i care. they have nothing to offer me.
i have no use for them at all.
they’re not allowed on my property, so i’m good.
Dr. Spencer
How about chapter 15. Unknowns
currently not understood or rejected but with some future potential, challenge to new generation of enthusiastic researchers.
Here is an example http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/GT-GMF1.htm
Yeah, that’s a good possibility.
Dr. Spencer,
You might consider a chapter on the psychology of fear as a motivating factor for selling an argument. Obviously it’s not your area of expertise, but perhaps you can find a collaborator to help. The topic is important to address because fearful people are immune to rational arguments. Dispelling fear is a necessary first step before the mind can deal with facts and data. Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking Fast and Slow , is a good reference to some of the psychology of how people reason.
A good marketing/advertising professional could handle this. The axiom of the advertising field is that emotion does the selling and only then is it possible to address facts and actually be heard. In fact, I’m a little concerned at the comment in here earlier that Roy slams the alarmists who will then chuck the book before finishing. This is also why I can’t forward the vast majority of articles or youtube videos to my liberal alarmist friends and family… we’ve got to learn how to manage our own emotions. Rise above the click-bait. Professionally draw any reader in using realistic diplomatic and marketing skills.
Yes I understand your concern.
Roy Spencer
Hey!……..What did I say wrong?
Kahneman and Ariely like to put Sophie’s (Sophists) Choice to hapless subjects, to dehumanize them, then claim they are irrational. This is brainwashing psyops, from certain armies.
After all, the entire environmental ploy , Endangered Atmosphere, is just that – dehumanization – convince people they are animals running from a fire – Margaret Meade’s marching orders at that 1975 conference.
Dehumanisors putting Sophie’s Choice to people to abandon the very basis for civilization or face certain extinction, is pure Kahneman behavioral psychology.
It was this clique around Obama that produced Obamacare, for lives they deemed worth living.
Roy
pity we [skeptics] do not [yet] make the 97%
but, as I always, I say,
on science, you cannot have an election…
you only need one man to get it right.
At least, we can say, you and I got it right!!!
no warming here in South Africa:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h7944heslj7gg7q/summary%20of%20climate%20change%20south%20africa.xlsx?dl=0
http://breadonthewater.co.za/2018/05/04/which-way-will-the-wind-be-blowing-genesis-41-vs-27/
God bless you with your book.
Just got my copy and look very much forward to reading it. I get sick of being branded a science denier by ‘friends’ who rely on MSM for their news on this subject. I challenge them to name just one scientist in the field – and of course they can’t.
Thanks Roy, from the other Roy on this forum :0)
Renewable policy is driven by the idea that, as a market emerges, the technology will get better and cheaper.
One example of amazing technological progress is computers. Current cell phones would have qualified as supercomputers not that long ago. Computing power has become very cheap. A $5 Raspberry Pi Zero outperforms by far the desktop computer which cost $5000 in 1980.
The computer example causes many people to think such progress applies to all technology. That is not usually the case and certainly has not been the case for renewable energy. Renewable energy progress has mostly been incremental. Breakthroughs, especially with regard to storage haven’t occurred and probably won’t. The longer researchers have unsuccessfully worked on something, the less likely there will be breakthroughs. All the low hanging fruit has been picked.
Progress in renewable energy faces the law of diminishing returns. In drug research that is described by Eroom’s Law. Throwing vast amounts of money at renewable energy will not ensure technological progress. The real result is a waste of treasure and human resources and a huge drag on the economy. Policy makers clearly don’t understand that and it should be brought to their attention.
Very true commie, I think this aspect is too often overlooked. It’s the banks and investment houses who are driving this madness. The difference between them and rational people is that they can’t stop. Follow the money.
commieBob
The fact we are employing medieval renewable technology to solve a 21st Century problem says a lot about the people promoting it.
We have millions of tons of nuclear ordnance on the planet designed specifically to go BANG. Yet somehow, the public is frightened of nuclear energy designed specifically NOT to go BANG.
We have wasted at least 20 years of small modular reactor development. We could by now, be installing them in developing countries using the money wasted on medieval solutions, and the benefits would be immense to the whole world, in a short space of time, for the long term future.
Fukushima went BANG:
Coeur de Lion
Not nuclear BANGS. Richard Head.
Fukushima was designed specifically NOT to go BANG. It did.
Lots of things that are designed to not go bang, go bang.
Do you have a point other than once again revealing your irrational fear of the safest and cleanest form of power available?
It’s not clean. Nuclear waste is nasty stuff.
A nuclear power plant going BANG is scary, and the contamination Fukushima spews continues to this day.
If it is “clean” why can’t human beings enter the buildings where the Fukushima reactors melted down?
COEUR The most nuclearized country, France has had only one death in the industry and it may have been a forklift accident. Since 1950, only ~70 persons have died and 90% of them were at the Chernobyl-accident-waiting-to-happen, a Soviet negligent design. No one died from radiation at Fuk – the massive Tsunami did that. Did you know that within a year after Hiroshima bomb, radioactivity was back to background and they rebuilt the city. Yours are 1950s fears so I judge you to be an old Cold War alumnus. Get over your life crippling fears.
Coeur de Lion
No one questioned the localised contamination.
I said it didn’t go BANG, indicating there was no nuclear explosion Richard Head.
Nor has there ever been a nuclear explosion caused by a nuclear power plant. It remains the safest form of energy production.
Because the government is made of alarmist idiots such as yourself.
Coeur de Lion
Fukushima doesn’t “spew” radiation. Stop dramatising it. The limited contamination has been confined and is being dealt with.
Did I hear you calling for coal to be banned immediately following the Aberfan disaster? 116 children and 28 adults died, far more than caused by Fukushima.
Richard Head.
“The limited contamination has been confined”
..
Nope
..
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/03/29/national/seven-years-radioactive-water-fukushima-plant-still-flowing-ocean-study-finds/
Coeur de Lion
You post an MSM article as evidence of anything?
Get real.
The tiny bit of radiation that is leaking out with groundwater has been contained for years.
There is no air borne leakage.
As always, you base your fear on facts that were disproven long ago.
“has been contained for years.”
.
Nope
.
It continues to leak into the ocean:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/03/29/national/seven-years-radioactive-water-fukushima-plant-still-flowing-ocean-study-finds/
Those studies are about as reliable as the studies that proved that the arctic would be ice free by 2013.
Coeur de Lion
If it wasn’t for people like you there would be far less nuclear waste. New generation nuclear power plant designs can use existing waste to create energy.
Fission products (known as “waste”) cannot create energy.
Coeur de Lion
Not true. Fission products yield 5-7 % of the reactor total heat as decay (delayed) radiation after the initial fission products slow down in the core and moderator with collisions. Most of this decay heat is produced within the first hours after fission, then they decay off if no further fissions occur (reactor shutdown.)
Look up the definition of “create” Mr. Cook
.
Look up the definition of “existing waste” Mr. Cook
Tell me Mr. Cook how does something like Cesium 137 produce energy? You have a means of transforming beta decay into electrical energy?
Coeur de Lion
From Wikipedia, and other sources copied from there.
Simple beta decay, with a 30+ year half-life. The emitted beta particle has kinetic energy, as does the recoiling (heavier!) Barium isotope. That kinetic energy is the source of the heat building up in ANY radioactive material. How much decay heat per reaction, how many reactions per second in each radioactive isotope, how many reactions in each gm of the radioactive material, what the heat transfer coefficients are in each material from source to sink determines what the surface temperature of the material will be.
Now, the reason the Cs137 is present in the original source is the original fission reaction.
Yes, I have been tested on those questions. Many times. What do you need to know?
When they shut down a nuclear reactor, they stop producing electricity in the plant, and they dump the waste decay heat. Now, please tell me how one produces energy from nuclear waste?
There’s tons and tons of spent nuclear fuel rods that are being stored at most all nuclear plants. The spent fuel rods are not producing energy. Now please tell me how come they don’t use them to produce energy?
PS Cook, the plutonium in the spent fuel rods is not a “waste product” since the fission of a uranium nucleus will not produce plutonium.
Coeur de Lyin, even someone as clueless as you should be able to figure out that the fission of uranium isn’t the only thing that goes in in a nuclear power rod.
Fission is the major energy production reaction in a fuel rod. You can’t spin electric generating turbines solely on decay heat.
Not true.
You’re confusing the fast neutron fluxes that make Pu239 production most efficient in certain carbon-moderated, water cooled core designs with the less efficient, equally effective U233/238 reactions at other neutron speeds (energies) and with other fuel mixes in the core. You have taken your basic, advanced and graduate NE courses, haven’t you?
By reprocessing them. It really is simple. Perhaps if you stopped to learn something you wouldn’t sound so ignorant and paranoid.
Reprocessing a spent fuel rod does not convert the fission products into fissionable material.
Democrat-environmental-socialist opposition in the 70’s, 80’s 90’s, 2000’s, and now 2010 to energy independence and efficiency. Recycling that fuel could have been in working reactors as early as Carter’s regime.
BY reprocessing it you ignorant slut.
Moderator, could you please tell MarkW that name calling is not welcome here?
Coeur de Lion
No wonder MarkW called you a name. You are stubborn in your ignorance and congenitally stupid. Follow the link then drop the subject!
https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/nuclear/nuclear-waste-to-energy
The energy from reactor decay products – and the effect those decay products and prompt and delayed neutrons have on fast and continued thermal neutron production, absorption and loss – is fundamental to reactor core design and rod efficiency/rod withdrawal and insertion rates. And affects the fuel mixes in each rod, and the fuel enrichment distribution and moves around the core as core lifetime goes from t=0 to t = refuel.
Coeur de Lyin, you sure do love to display your ignorance.
Anything that is fissile is capable of creating heat.
Most of the so called waste products from first and second generation reactors can be refined and used as fuel.
Fission products are not fissile. Cesium, iodine, etc cannot be refined and used as fuel
Cesium, iodine etc are resources and raw materials you drop kick
Todays spot prices
Cesium is $11000 per Kg
Iodine only $83 per Kg.
It’s not nuclear waste.
Coeur de Lion
It didn’t go NUCLEAR BANG Richard Head.
Nuclear waste can be “glassified” and thus prevented from future leaching.
“The most nuclearized country, France has had only one death in the industry and it may have been a forklift accident”
[If you count the propulsion of military vessels in the peaceful/civilian use of fission (they are PWR with the same design principles as in stationary plants), there were many death in a sub following some condenser problem. Horrible accident.]
One day, some workers (one or two I don’t remember) in a nuclear facility got “skin burns” (I think by using H2O2 to clean pipes that were dirtier than expected). This is on all TV news. One green MP said that this was evidence that the nuclear power plant was too old (it didn’t happen in power plant, but in some fuel preparation facility). They did extensive cover on the incident.
We learnt several days later that the workers had been checked by the medical services for workers and let without any follow up, meaning they had no actual burns.
Oh, the very same day two construction workers died in some construction site, but there is nothing else I remember about it… because the TV news just barely mentioned it.
Who thinks antinuclear people (who mention all the time the alleged lack of information on radiation exposure and health effect for nuclear workers) really care about workers?
Until recently nobody had been killed by leaked radiation (there has been one recent fatality that may have been caused by radiation).
But over a hundred died as a result of the forced evacuation.
Chris
You nailed it HotScot.
There is an economic concept, opportunity cost. As far as I know, nobody disagrees with the concept. The question is, as you cogently point out, what else we could have done with our resources.
When the greenies ask what we’re doing for the grandchildren, I would point out the criminal waste of an opportunity. It’s almost like green energy policy is designed to fail.
Thye correct term is DUMB ENERGY. Using the other term to describe wind and solar generation is incorrect. It is a misnomer that perpetuates a view it isn something that it is not.
This is what the warmist playbook seems to be based on!
“There’s nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.” – William James
Thanks, Roy. I just downloaded my copy.
Cheers from another Kindle ebook author.
Bob
Here are three posts that sum up the arguments against CAGW in easy to understand language:
Comprehensive Climate Change Beatdown; Debating Points and Graphics to Defeat the Warmists
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/08/11/comprehensive-climate-change-debating-points-and-graphics-bring-it-social-media-giants-this-is-your-opportunity-to-do-society-some-real-good/
Isolating the Impact of CO2 on Atmospheric Temperatures; Conclusion is CO2 has No Measurable Impact
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/08/01/isolating-the-impact-of-co2-on-atmospheric-temperatures-conclusion-is-co2-has-no-measurable-impact/
Why CO2 is Irrelevant to the Earth’s Lower Atmosphere; You Can’t Absorb More than 100%
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/09/08/why-co2-is-irrelevant-to-the-earths-lower-atmosphere-you-cant-absorb-more-than-100/
CO2isLife
As brilliant as your examples undoubtedly are, I got to the third or fourth graph in the first one and you descended into ‘science speak’. e.g. “Chart #5: Climate models assume a linear relationship between CO2 and Temperature. The alarmists use the core model of ΔT = f(ΔCO2). It is a direct, linear, and essentially single variable model.”
I suspect over 90% of the earth’s population are not scientist’s so presenting them with anything more than a plain language explanation is futile.
To me, the most obvious and logical graph there is “Climate over Geological Time”.
Chart #4 is fine as Iv’e seen it so often, but it’s just a scary mess to other non scientists. It would be better just to show the IPCC average and its extremes, upper and lower, and the reality.
My enduring refrain is that scientists are blessed with representing me, a layman; but are burdened with the responsibility of reporting back to me in a form I understand.
Roy, Any chance of getting a hard copy?
W. Corey Trench
Just buy it on Amazon and view it on your PC.
AccuWeather are dragging out all the usual superlatives for hurricane Florence, to wit: “Historic”, “Unprecedented”, “Catastrophic”. I’m waiting for “Biblical” when the flooding is in full swing.
And CNN is showing it as a 5 well offshore, a 4 as it apporaches the coast, and then, rapidly declining to a 2 before landfall. It can still create a lot of havoc, but it isn’t as big a deal as the fear-mongers want us to think.
Good on you Roy. I haven’t read your other work, but I will read this one. I’ve been invited to give a talk on the sceptical side at the monthly meeting of an”eclectic discussion” group club in our city and said I might. Looking at your T of C, I think you may not have included historical stuff on cold and hot periods of the past several millennia that are unequivocally “business as usual” climate records of considerable variability.
Your celebrity and notoriety to some, are sure to attract a lot of readers and character assassinations which are pretty well all the game that the Team has (their refusal to debate is something you know of first hand.). That the latter offer bluster, handwaving and ad hominems instead of incisive scientific criticism may not go unnoticed by intelligent uncommitted readers and observers.
Thank you, I bought the book and skimmed the 97% consensus part.
I’m struck by how we’ve been led astray by the “science is consensus” philosophy that’s been perpetrated by Naomi Oreskes and others. Oreskes, in a TED talk, articulated three ways experimental science can be wrong, and then concluded that we therefore have to rely on consensus. But consensus is itself subject to those same three flaws, and even more as we all know well, so it cannot be a firmer foundation for science than experimental evidence is. Shifting science from a foundation on evidence to a foundation of consensus (supposedly based on evidence) is a very slippery slope, as models, for example, can be introduced as a “consensus of modeling.” A subtle shift happens because we aren’t strict with our definition of science as grounded in experimental, not modeled evidence. I’ll also set forward that models can help us understand but can never prove theory; only physical experiments can.
In addition, Oreskes claims in that TED talk that science is organized skepticism; we all know that climate science is simply its opposite, organized consensus.
My point is that a perversion of the definition of science has allowed “consensus” to slip in, and it seems to me that pointing out what has happened would help the general public understand why mainstream climate science isn’t really science: the data does not support the theory; only the consensus does, and by holding that consensus is science we allow this perversion to continue.
We all know the drill: how can 97% of scientists be wrong! Simply because they forget what science is.
/end preaching to converted
Don132
The spear point of the attack on the consensus should be to point out that there was/is a large group of warmist-biased people who flocked into the field as soon as it became a “thing,” and who have continued to do so: radical environmentalists whose core belief is that in any modification of nature, Man is guilty until proven innocent. A second group is those who believe the current economic system needs to be disrupted. No conspiracy among them was/is necessary for a censorious consensus to form.
(The predominence of such mindsets among the 97% could be determined by surveying to determine how many are affiliated with radical green groups or far-left groups.)
The second spear point is to cite the 2008 G.Mason Univ. survey and the von Storch survey of climatologists , which found alarmist/catastrophic views of future impacts at well under 97%.
I agree with you.
My point is that consensus can’t be a more robust foundation for science than is experimental confirmation– for reasons I sketched out above– yet consensus is set forward as the confirmation of scientific truth.
This is a fundamental error.
Oreskes, a historian of science, should know better. What she is saying is logical nonsense. It’s a deception that’s more significant than the hockey stick and was perpetuated on the public through the “Merchants of Doubt” movie.
Maybe I’ll write an ebook about all this.
Don132
I’d take it a step further and say that consensus simply IS NOT SCIENCE, and could never BE science. Consensus by its very nature is antithetical to science. Consensus is a creature of POLITICS, NOT science. Which tells you exactly where the claims of “consensus” have their basis. Not in science, but in the political beliefs of the “consensus” promoters.
“Consensus” claims are a way the Eco Nazis attempt to get people to stop thinking and stop questioning, and they assert such “consensus” claims because they know their pet “science” is a steaming pile of manure.
Wow, Oreskes said something accurate – SCIENCE IS organized skepticism. First time for everything, as they say. However, CLIMATE SCIENCE is just organized group-think and isn’t “science” at all.
I think Michael Crichton nailed this “consensus” subject more than anyone – I really wish he was still around. Some Gems of his:
“Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.”
“The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”
“Science is nothing more than a method of inquiry. The method says an assertion is valid – and will be universally accepted – only if it can be reproduced by others, and thereby independently verified. The impersonal rigor of the method has produced enormously powerful results for 400 years. The scientific method is utterly apolitical. A truth in science is verifiable whether you are black or white, male or female, old or young. It’s verifiable whether you know the experimenter, or whether you don’t.”
“Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.”
Agreed!
But Oreskes doesn’t really mean that science is organized skepticism. What she really means, and promotes, is science as organized consensus. She’s just being slippery and attempting to justify her theory of science, which can’t be justified rationally.
She’s done great harm with her philosophy of science and she certainly should know better. I’d argue that science as consensus is one of the core deceptions, if not the single core deception, in all this.
“Admittedly, continued emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel burning can be expected to cause (and probably has caused) some of our recent warming.” We don’t know that, and it can’t be proven, so why admit it? I say, don’t pander to Warmunists, or you’ll regret it.
Bruce
It’s not an ‘admission’ if it can’t be demonstrated. I think the point is that even were man responsible for all global warming, it’s a derisory amount and utterly ignores natural CO2 rise.
My contention is that I hope man is wholly responsible. If not, we have no control if mother nature decides to switch off the CO2 generator and we slip to below 150 ppm, when we all begin to die.
We are only ~250 ppm away from that, I would far rather be 750 ppm away from it, and sod the consequences, we’ll deal with those. It’s difficult to deal with anything when you’re dead.
Not that I believe for a moment that CO2 has much to do with warming at all.
I think people on both sides should state what would change their opinion about climate change.
Here’s what would change my contrarian opinion on the prospect of alarming climate change in the future: If 97% of climatologists pooh-poohed it.
(Just kidding, sort of.)
meteorologist in research
That’s easy.
1. Demonstrate to me, observably, what damage increased atmospheric CO2 has been directly responsible for. As far as I’m aware, the only observable manifestation of increased atmospheric CO2 is that the planet has greened by 14% in 30 years according to NASA.
2, Demonstrate to me, by empirical means, that CO2 causes the planet to warm. And by that I mean field studies, not lab or computer studies. So far, after 40 years of climate hysteria, I have found one study which has been discredited. There should be dozens, if not hundreds by now. If not, devoting a single cent to climate change mitigation is criminal.
1. No one I work with says that things are terrible yet.
2. What field studies could tell you that CO2 will cause the whole planet to warm? We watch the planetary wave pattern for changes. So far it’s been murky, but that’s where it will be demonstrated to the climo guys, because that was the reference state of climate ever since good data has been collected.
meteorologist in research
“1. No one I work with says that things are terrible yet.”
“yet”
Precisely how much worse has the climate got from, say, 40 years ago? What are the observable direct negative impact attributed solely to man’s CO2 contribution to the atmosphere?
“2. What field studies could tell you that CO2 will cause the whole planet to warm? We watch the planetary wave pattern for changes. So far it’s been murky, but that’s where it will be demonstrated to the climo guys, because that was the reference state of climate ever since good data has been collected.”
This is the type of nonsense persistently, and predictably trotted out by “climo guys” over the last half century. “It’s not clear yet, but we’ll know in 5/10/15/20 years time”.
It’s like fusion, it’s always 20 years away. Meanwhile, the positive effects of increased atmospheric CO2 are ignored whilst we wait for the ‘inevitable’ catastrophic effects.
1. I wonder what you expect to see if you don’t look at the upper air charts? The warming is barely begun to show up in temperatures. It was expected to start slowly and be cumulative.
2. I can see how you would think it’s nonsense if you don’t understand it. But it’s how regional climates are formed and sustained and it’s also how all weather is forecast and how trajectories of hurricanes are projected 5 rotations of the planet into the future.
Until we have identified all of the factors that impact the Earth’s climate, have observed and measured all such forces with sufficient accuracy over a sufficient period of time to be meaningful, and have similarly observed and quantified the interactions between those forces, we cannot say anything remotely “scientific” about climate changes or their causes.
You talk about “expectation,” which reveals a cart-before-the-horse mode of thinking. This is unfortunately not surprising or unusual in the “climate science” field. Your “belief” that CO2 level rise will cause temperature rise is nothing more than that – a belief. A belief which should never have taken hold by any scientist absent some empirical evidence (which means a real world observation) that supports it. Such evidence has never been produced, so let’s not pretend that it has a “scientific’ basis. When you observe things *looking for* what you think you already know, that’s not science – it’s confirmation bias. And we’re not talking about whether CO2 absorbs certain bands of radiation – we’re talking about whether more atmospheric CO2 CAUSES temperatures to rise, IN THE EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE. Since this observation doesn’t exist, it isn’t something we should be rushing to base “policy” on.
The best current explanations are what comprise science. We don’t need to know everything to theorize. That’s also an old argument for teaching alternatives to evolution in schools.
What you call the beliefs are the physics of greenhouse gases. The temperature and CO2 records in the ice cores. The record showing CO2 rising for a century and so have temperatures. The best explanation is that increasing greenhouse gases prevent natural cooling cycles. Also we believe we see shifts in the planetary wave pattern which can be explained by fluid dynamics. Along with increases in GHGs there’s also geomagnetic ideas and the ultraviolet bursts (causing SSWs).
meteorologist in research
I’m not sure if we’re talking at cross purposes here.
“1. I wonder what you expect to see if you don’t look at the upper air charts? The warming is barely begun to show up in temperatures. It was expected to start slowly and be cumulative.”
So, for 40 years this ‘anticipated’ upper air warming has been predicted, along with all the catastrophic manifestations, but it has “barely” begun to show up now?
So if it’s barely begun to show up, when will dangerous AGW actually manifest itself? A date would be nice.
“2. I can see how you would think it’s nonsense if you don’t understand it. But it’s how regional climates are formed and sustained and it’s also how all weather is forecast and how trajectories of hurricanes are projected 5 rotations of the planet into the future.”
I don’t understand it, nor does the rest of the world. Get your pompous head out your arse. ‘Understanding’ is largely confined to a clique of conspirational climate scientists who regularly announce the next catastrophic event, which just passes over us as normal events do. Or so it seems. I’m inclined to believe its media distortion of honest scientists who cringe when their research is misrepresented.
Regional climates are not global climates. National climates are not global climates, nor can meteorologists predict weather much further out than a few days locally, if that on most occasions. Smothering that failure with the concept of grand schemes of global events 5/10/20/30 years into the future is simply professionally dishonest and corrupt.
Please don’t try to convince the august members of WUWT that failing to predict daily, weekly and monthly weather forecasts is a mere detailed inconvenience in the grand scheme of global climate prediction.
When you, in the research department of meteorology, can deliver consistent accurate hourly, daily and weekly forecasts of the weather, across the planet, then sceptics will sit up and take notice of your climate predictions.
As importantly, when you can do that and manage to communicate with the MSM in a way that doesn’t allow them to distort your messages, climate change might adopt a different complexion.
But you won’t, so we sceptics won’t listen. Get you finger out your 19th Century arse and do 21st Century climatology and communication. Old school pomposity is dead and gone, you have to deal with arseholes like me now on a global communications platform. There’s nowhere for you to hide.
Climatologists are conspiracists?
Read some material on dynamic meteorology.
meteorologist in research
“I’m inclined to believe its media distortion of honest scientists who cringe when their research is misrepresented.”
If you can’t read, how can you make climate predictions?
I presume you know lots on dynamic meteorology. Not helped you deliver an accurate weather forecast though, has it?
I think I’ll pass.
Here at the lab some very intelligent people (visiting physicists) took the data that’s available to everyone and made a snow forecast. Everyone should try it. The obvious ones are snow, thunderstorms, high wind, hail, record cold and the onset of clearing weather.
meteorologist in research
“Here at the lab”
Did you even think about that post before delivering it? No wonder people think lab rats are idiots.
We may get an inkling of evidenced theory from a lab, but unless that theory can be replicated in the real world your conclusions are meaningless. Yet you foist them on the world as meaningful.
Lab rats tell us that CO2 is the cause of all evil on the planet. But to date, no one has proven CO2 does us any harm in the real world. Well most of you, but Tyndall tells us that atmospheric water vapour is the dominant greenhouse gas, but he was crap at his job, wasn’t he?
In fact, it’s taken observational studies to conclude that increased atmospheric CO2, much to the lab rats surprise, has provided us with the single identifiable result of it’s proliferation, global greening. But lab studies didn’t anticipate that did they? So it’s consigned to a backwater somewhere the public can’t see it, well away from the MSM.
Whilst lab rats are useful to work on lab manageable phenomena, climate doesn’t exist in an air conditioned office. The theories you’re working on aren’t working, nor have they been working much better than my grannies seaweed, nor my wife’s uncanny sense of impending weather.
You lot just spend gross amounts of money and deliver weather forecasts no better than those in the 1970’s.
It’s a geophysical lab. We monitor stratospheric ozone along with NASA contractors. Also, universities pay to piggyback on our platform, with some very interesting experiments. Never a dull moment.
Just bought it.
Very good indeed . . .
I’d pay twice the price for a PDF copy.
Warren
I’d pay twice the price for a PDF copy.
Great, so the Prof doesn’t get a dime as it’s copied across the planet on PDF?
Not being a scientist I tend to use logic and logical inconsistencies. My go to argument is basically the history of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity. Feel free to correct errors
What I believe to be true is that the first estimate was done about 55 years ago by Dr. Revelle. His estimate was 1.5 to 4.5, the last IPCC report pretty much said the same thing. Since ESC is the most important question to answer and all other should follow, our inability to make even a tiny bit of progress leads me to question the ever increasing certainty that they claim.
I also talk about the know vs unknown parts. When you show that the unknown portion is roughly 0.4 to 3.4, it really shows the uncertainty being dealt with, which is completely contrary to the confidence we are told.
Global warming by CO2 is bullshit to say the least.
Roy,
Excellent read. Thank you.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been a lurker on WUWT since it’s early inception. I’m a simple sceptic. No science background. Sometimes, I may bite and add my comments – but most of the time, like many others, I come here for my daily fix. My search for truth. I am also reasonably intelligent and am not an idiot.
Similar publications’ (just like yours above – which is also aimed at the layman) invariably miss a one vital important issue – that IF CO2 is so evil, WHY do we use it for so many things? Why do we manufacture the stuff on such a global scale – every day. Why is it that us humans continue to produce vast quantities of it (and I’m not talking about burning fossil fuels) for Food production, Beverages, Cremation, Welding, etc.
A simple, but comprehensive list of all the ways we use CO2 – from Ammonia manufacture to shoving the stuff (in highly compressed form) into airbags, life vests, extinguishers; from bread making, wine making, agricultural polytunnels, processing decaffienated coffee to cleaning dentures and removing limescale. It’s going to be a very long list.
The best one is that, on a global scale, humans actually inject the evil stuff into carbonated drinks. It adds no flavour – it’s just there purely as a novelty effect. Every nation. Every bottle of Coke. Every bottle of lemonade. Worldwide.
410ppm. Humph.
410ppm = 1/2,439th of the sky. Whoopeedoo. And THIS is the sole reason why the UK had a heatwave during June & July. Nahhh, I don’t think so.
Rounding it all up, let’s say 95% of CO2’s 410 ppm is natural and 5% is man made. How much of that minuscule 5% (that we make) is purely down to driving your car, ignighting the log burner or powering a coal-fired power station (when the sun isn’t shining and the wind’s not blowing). Very good question.
If CAGW is our fault – then how much of it is really because we also bake a lot of bread (or brew beer, or use CO2 lasers to manufacture computer PCB’s, or use dry-ice pellets for sand blasting)?
After all these years of following WUWT, I’m becoming tiresome of excuses.
Roy, we need a list.
Ban CO2 in beer, champagne, sparkling wines, and soda pop.
Start with phony Green campaign to ban CO2 in beer:
THE FLAT BEER MOVEMENT – NO BUBBLES IN BEER!
That should put the Greens out of business soon enough. 🙂
Fermentation of biomass grains is renewable certainly. The CO2 is recaptured in the grain regrown to make next years batches. Ya know, burning biomass and fermenting corn for fuel is all green endorsed. The same principle is true of meat production from our vegetarian cattle sheep, pigs, fowl… grass and grains they ate have all regrown to feed the next batch. You nimrods are happy to burn Carolinas hardwoods in UK former coal fired electrical plants as renewables and they take a century to regrow. This builds up CO2 in the atmosphere greater than more efficient coal!
Someone above touched on the missing issue – psychology. No amount of argument on CO2 terms gets around this extremely annoying gorilla under the carpet.
As I posted above, the issue is putting Sopie’s Choice to ordinary citizens – abandon the very basis for modern civilization (carbon) or face certain extinction soon. This is Kahneman military brainwashing (forced irrationality).
This was pushed before at the 1975 conference on Endangered Atmosphere by anthropoligist Margaret Mead – keep people running from fire or disaster, to control and cull. One can see exactly how Dr. Schellnhuber uses this method. Even the Pope is at it.
Of couse a fear ridden herd will stone a single (elected) human who refuses to be herded by an illusion.
It is the oldest trick of various , all extinct, empires.
Thank You
Dr. Roy Spencer wrote above:
“The good news is that there is no global warming crisis,”
My co-authors and I published in 2002 as follows:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – THE ALLEGED WARMING CRISIS DOES NOT EXIST.”
We also correctly predicted the failure of most green energy schemes, as follows:
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – THE WASTEFUL, INEFFICIENT ENERGY SOLUTIONS PROPOSED BY KYOTO ADVOCATES SIMPLY CANNOT REPLACE FOSSIL FUELS.”
Source:
DEBATE ON THE KYOTO ACCORD
PEGG, reprinted in edited form at their request by several other professional journals, THE GLOBE AND MAIL and LA PRESSE in translation, by Baliunas, Patterson and MacRae.
http://www.apega.ca/members/publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/KyotoAPEGA2002REV1.pdf
Told you so, 16 years ago. 🙂
Regards, Allan MacRae, P.Eng.
For the record:
Roy Spencer and John Christy at University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH) are two of the climate scientists who I respect and trust the most, based on their lifelong track records of integrity and accomplishment. I preferentially use their UAH atmospheric temperature measurements as most credible.
Other scientists who I also trust and respect include Richard S Lindzen, Richard S Courtney, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, Tim Patterson, Jan Veizer, Nir Shaviv, Tim Ball, Tom Harris, Pat Michaels, Chris Landsea, Madhav Khandekar, Judith Curry, Ross McKitrick, Chris Essex, Steve McIntyre, Will Happer, Steve Koonin, Joe d’Aleo, Joe Bastardi, John Coleman, Patrick Moore, etc.
Others who I do not necessarily agree with but who deserve mention include Murry Salby, Ernst Beck, Ferdinand Engelbeen, etc.
There are many more good ones out there – this is not an exhaustive list – it is just those who come to mind this morning – pre-coffee – my apologies to those deserving scientists of true integrity who I have left out.
Integrity in the face of widespread persecution is rare, and is to be greatly admired.
It has been a difficult path for these heroes – they have been falsely vilified and shunned by corrupt and incompetent academics and politicians – those who will follow any path that leads to money and power.
That list is large – the crowd that bleats “you’re all gonna burn!” – those who claim to be part of the phony “97% consensus”. A special place in hell is reserved for the hockey team and the disgraced scoundrels and schemers in the Climategate emails.
The IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity are wildly and deliberately exaggerated, to produce a very-scary false result.
Global warming alarmism is a deliberate fraud, in fact it is the greatest fraud, in dollar terms, in the history of humanity.
Properly deployed, the tens of trillions of dollars squandered on global warming alarmism could have:
– put clean water and sanitation systems into every village in the world, saving the lives of about 2 million under-five kids PER YEAR;
– reduced or even eradicated malaria – also a killer of many millions of infants and children;
– gone a long way to eliminating world hunger.
Regards, Allan
Roy,
I have just purchased your book on kindle to add to my library.
You are probably familiar with Professor Garth Paltridge’s short book , The Climate Caper(2009) which covers some of the territory in your latest book.
There is one interesting point he makes about Climate forcing which intrigues me and which you may address in your book.
After giving a simple equation and a couple of graphs in examining positive and negative feedbacks,he remarks,
“ As a final random thought, it is at least theoretically conceivable that the total feedback gain of the climate system is actually very close to 1.0 ( where the divisor of unforced doubled CO2 is 1-G and G = g1,g2,g3, g4,etc.being the various climate forcings).In such a circumstance one could imagine the climate skating from one extreme of temperature and back again.The extremes would be the points at which the total feedback gain became less than 1.0- as for instance when cloud cover reached zero or 100 percent and could no longer contribute to the feedback.After all, the climate has always been flipping in and out of Ice-Ages!”
Too speculative?
Roy, did you discuss Anthony’s Surface Stations project and the absolute lack of any reasonable precision in the data caused by siting issues? (www.surfacestations.org)
With the large numbers of (best in the world) US weather stations having 5 degree or larger expected errors, historical temperature rise trends from the land based stations are merely noise. The rising trend may be real, but how can you trust that it is?
Just bought the book and reading it now. So far so great!
“Proxy evidence of past temperature and Arctic sea ice changes suggest warming and sea ice decline over the last 50 years or so is not out of the ordinary.”
I’d call 5 times in half a million years out of the ordinary. Now racing towards ice-free and galloping past the Eemian.
Thank you, Dr. Spencer
“a populace increasingly addicted to climate change porn.”
Is there climate change PG-13? 🙂
This picture shouldn’t be on this site.
She is way too young and that is way too suggestive.
Not to mention that it adds fuel to the fire for those who might say that deniers are just a bunch of perverts.
This is where the mods should step in.
Don132
Mods I think this image should be deleted immediately….just think what the opposition could do with this!
She’s just playing with her toy dolphin not WTF
So that’s the level of maturity reached at WUWT?
She’s mature. She doesn’t play with her food on dinner dates
Dr. Spencer:
Since you indicated that you were open to suggestions for other inclusions in your book, I would like to point out that Earth’s climate is primarily controlled by the amount of dimming Sulfur Dioxide aerosols in the atmosphere, of either volcanic or anthropogenic origin, and as such, is amenable to alteration by man’s efforts.
Decrease the net amount of SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere, and average global temperatures increase. Increase the net amount, and average global temperatures decrease.
This fact is obvious from the climatic behavior of a large volcanic eruption.
Initially, cooling occurs due to the injection of SO2 aerosols into the stratosphere. As these aerosols eventually settle out, temperatures recover to pre-eruption levels because of the cleaner air, or often higher, forming a volcanic-induced El Nino.
The reduction in the amount of anthropogenic SO2 aerosol emissions from the atmosphere due to Clean Air efforts has the same effect, a man-made in crease in average global temperatures and occasional El Ninos, as in 2015-2016.
Thus, the global warming that has occurred since 1975 has, unfortunately, been CAUSED by the environmentalists.
All of the increases and decreases in a plot of average anomalous global temperatures are entirely due to changing levels of SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere, primarily volcanic-driven.
Any overview book on Climate Change needs to include this information!
I just finished the Kindle book and it is an excellent read. Dr. Spencer covers the subject in a comprehensive, concise and thorough manner. His reduction of complex scientific concepts, principles and research studies to understandable (to a nonscientist such as myself) explanations is invaluable. The subject of climate change is fascinating and prescient. This is a magnificent contribution to the understanding of that subject.
This is a good effort, but it still drinks the standard Kool Aid that carbon dioxide causes global warming. It doesn’t. My research (in press) reveals that in fact it can’t.
The way I get across the problem of the CAGW failure is to use probability and logic.
In order for their to be catastrophic results it requires all 3 things below to be true. If any of these 3 things is false or low probability then because the rules of probability require multiplying these 3 things to arrive at the probability of the final thing one thing with low probability even if the other 2 are high makes the whole thing improbable.
The 3 things are:
1) We have to massively increase CO2 to 1000ppm in the atmosphere or greater
2) It must be the case that the response to CO2 must be large, i.e. that if CO2 doesn’t cause a large response in temperature you cannot get the catastrophic result
3) The bad effects of temperature rise have to outweigh by a large amount the good things that result
1)In order to get to 1000ppm would mean increasing the rate we put co2 into the atmosphere by a factor of 10. We are already in developed countries reaching what appears to be a peak output. It is developing countries which are increasing co2 output. Once they achieve more parity they will stop increasing. Further new technology will eventually solve this problem. There are existing solutions if things were to get bad to drastically cut co2 output including the use of nuclear. No reasonable way could be found to get to 1000ppm or anywhere above 600 or 700 in the next 80 years. Therefore this is false.
2) As the author above points out ocean effects have already shown that model estimates of the impact of co2 on temperature are half. For the models to be correct the atmosphere has to start reacting to CO2 differently than it has over the last 70 years. Why would it do that?
3) The impact assesments of rising temperatures are horribly flawed and don’t take into account massive benefits from rising CO2 and temperatures including more arable land and more wetness resulting in less desert. Also frequently overlooked is that more deaths happen with colder temperatures and fewer deaths from higher temperatures. One study showed that 23 times more people die from colder temps than higher meaning that we will have much faster reduction in the number of deaths from cold than we will have increasing deaths from heat. Estimates of farming losses are grossly in error and new studies show no loss in agriculture which is considered to be the biggest factor.
The result of this is that the probabilty that any of the 3 things needed for their to be a catastrophic response to co2 is almost zero and the combined product of the 3 probabilities is essentially zero. There is NO chance for CAGW to be true. Even if we produce massive co2 for some reason the change that co2 produces is a lot less than they think. Even if the response somehow becomes like the models say we aren’t likely to put in enough co2 to cause a significant rise and even if we put in a lot of co2 and the response is what they say the chances the response is actually catastrophic is near zero. In no case could there be a catastrophic result. Case closed. Science and math prove it.