Why Big Green energy investors rely on the man-made global warming myth
Tom D. Tamarkin
Supposedly “green” or “renewable” energy has become a trillion-dollar-plus annual industry that has spawned tens of thousands of new businesses worldwide. The total Climate-Industrial Complex is a $2-trillion-per-year business. Major fossil fuel companies like Shell Energy now have green energy divisions.
These companies are virtually 100% dependent on the politically driven notion of “dangerous manmade global warming and climate change.” The media, public and political establishment constantly recite the assertion that 97% of scientists say the problem is real and manmade carbon dioxide (CO2) is the cause.
However, increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere do not lead to global warming and climate change. Carbon dioxide is a trace gas in the atmosphere. The major “greenhouse gas” is water vapor. An intricate feedback system regulates the Earth’s temperature, maintaining immunity from temperature increases and decreases due to such trace gases.
Furthermore, the false notion of CO2-driven climate change is responsible for the potential massive redistribution of wealth from now-wealthy industrialized nations to poor countries. This has led to the corrupt worldwide business of carbon tax credit trading and more money to fund wind, solar and biofuel energy. Green industries should not predicate their business models on false claims about climate change.
They should base their businesses and R&D budgets on the fact that fossil fuels will become less economically viable over the coming decades as easily recovered reserves are depleted. Renewables such as solar and wind cannot provide material amounts of energy required worldwide – and require vast amounts of metals and other materials that are themselves not renewable or sustainable.
Utilities and energy companies must be free to use petroleum, coal, natural gas and biofuels at market-demand costs and must increase nuclear energy production. New sources of high energy density power generation must be created.
Today the “green energy” or “renewables” sector of the power generation industry is driven by the perceived but not scientifically proven notion that carbon dioxide resulting from the burning of fossil fuels and bio-fuels cause “global warming” or “climate change.” This is based on incorrect ideas about the real practical effects that “greenhouse gases” cause when introduced into our atmosphere.
This chart demonstrates in dramatic fashion that there is absolutely no connection between steadily rising CO2 levels and nearly stable to slightly higher average global temperatures over the past four decades.
Water vapor is the gaseous form of water and is by far the most important greenhouse gas. Its spectral absorption is wider than that of carbon dioxide – meaning its absorption of photons from the Sun, as radiated by the Earth’s surface at night, across a wider electromagnetic radiation (EMR) spectrum, causes a higher rise in molecular vibrational momentum, equating to higher thermal rise than carbon dioxide.
Furthermore the water vapor content in the lower atmosphere varies from 100 PPM or 0.01% to 40,000 PPM or 4% – whereas carbon dioxide is ≈ 400 PPM or 0.04% of the atmosphere. That peak level is two orders of magnitude difference. This suggests that water vapor has a much greater effect as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Water vapor and clouds account for 90% of atmospheric greenhouse gas volume.
It is theoretically possible that carbon dioxide and other non-condensable greenhouse gases like methane, nitrous oxide and ozone can create minute increases in thermal absorption and therefore could increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere via a “positive feedback cycle,” leading to warming and an increase in evaporation of sea water. However, the trace amounts of these gases would lead to virtually undetectable and immeasurable temperature and water vapor increases.
Moreover, adding more water vapor to the atmosphere would also produce a negative feedback effect. This could happen as more water vapor leads to more cloud formation. Clouds reflect sunlight and reduce the amount of energy that reaches the Earth’s surface to warm it. If the amount of solar warming decreases, then the temperature of the Earth would decrease.
In that case, adding more water vapor would result in global cooling, rather than warming. But cloud cover does mean more condensed water in the atmosphere, making for a stronger greenhouse effect than non-condensed water vapor alone. It is warmer on a cloudy winter day than on a clear one.
Thus the possible positive and negative feedbacks associated with increased water vapor and cloud formation will largely cancel one another out and further complicate the ability to model these feedback cycles using computer simulation and mathematical modeling.
Many in the “renewables energy” industry will object to this analysis, because they see it as undermining their reason to exist, affecting investor interest and sales opportunities. They miss the key point.
We do need to find replacements for fossil fuels – but not because of “climate change.” The real driver is the absolutely indisputable fact that we are depleting economically viable sources of fossil fuels, while at the same time increasing our demand for energy worldwide. The key term is “economically viable,” because the petroleum industry will be forced to pursue more difficult to recover deposits of oil and natural gas, while also enduring ever increasing amounts of litigation.
Today the only viable energy source beyond fossil fuels is nuclear fission. Our nuclear energy industry must be rebuilt if America is to remain a leader in energy, economic growth and opportunity. We must also continue our research and development in fusion energy which has many advantages over nuclear fission, if it is ever perfected.
We commissioned an objective science-based analysis of solar power as a means to generate 100% of baseload power in the USA based on current demand. The results are clear: solar power for baseload electricity is simply unrealistic. It is a virtual impossibility to power America from solar energy based on the science, let alone the economics, reliability or land and material requirements. Electrifying the transportation infrastructure will increase this impossibility several fold. The same is true of wind power.
We must develop the next generation of very high energy density nuclear power – first nuclear fission, to be replaced possibly by fusion in the mid to late 21st Century. We must also learn to conserve energy and materials better, not to save the planet from man-made climate change, but to give man more time to develop high flux density energy generation science and technology.
In December 2018, both Excel Energy and Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) announced plans to convert to 100% renewable green energy generation by 2050. That is a scientifically impossibility, unless policy makers and environmentalist alike redefine nuclear energy as green.
Why would they make such claims? For Excel boosting stock prices through subsidies comes to mind.
NIPSCO is a government-protected monopoly utility, with Indiana state government guaranteeing NIPSCO a profit of approximately 10% for every dollar it spends. That means NIPSCO has an obvious financial self-interest to engage in costly business practices. Building expensive new power facilities, even when existing facilities are working perfectly well, is one of the most effective ways for NIPSCO to ramp up its spending and guaranteed profits. Of course both companies do so at the expense of consumers, many of whom have no knowledge that their electricity bills are about to rise substantially.
(To learn more about fusion energy, its promise and scientific difficulties facing it, visit our website Fusion4Freedom.com. For information about what energy is and where it comes from, see “Energy Basics: Where does energy on our planet come from?” Go here to learn more about Excel Energy’s deceptive and wholly unrealistic plans – and here for more about NIPSCO’s wholly unrealistic plans.)
Let energy buyers beware. Politicians, activist groups and industrialists are all using “climate change” to increase their power and income. We need to figure out what they’re doing – and fight back.
Tom Tamarkin has been involved with the utility business and energy since 1985. He is founder and president of EnergyCite, Inc, in Sacramento, CA and founder and GM of the Fusion Energy Consortium.
Meanwhile the big move down in industrial activity and jobs in the EU is picking up speed.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ford-europe-turnaround/ford-europe-to-slash-thousands-of-jobs-in-turnaround-plan-idUSKCN1P411J?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FbusinessNews+%28Business+News%29
Please use a service like tinyurl.com to make your links useable http://tinyurl.com/y9g4xomm is what your link looks like with tinyurl.com
What’s the problem with 200 or so extra characters. The link works. Time cost of the extra characters, maybe a micro second or two.
Time to get a tinyurl, a minute or so, if you don’t make any typos.
“Consensus: “The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: ‘I stand for consensus?”
― Margaret Thatcher
“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
“Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.”
― Michael Crichton
Margaret Thatcher, the mother of global warming!
Talk is cheap.
She used it as a weapon to break the coal mining unions who had a stranglehold on the British economy. At the time no one really had any idea, it just sounded good.
Richard Patton
She used it as one of many weapons.
As a scientist she eventually understood the facts but did start the movement: https://tinyurl.com/ycvw3hy3
“In her 2003 book Statecraft she wrote of “a new dogma about climate change has swept through the left-of-center governing classes,” praised former President George W. Bush for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol and bemoaned the “costly and economically damaging” schemes to limit carbon emissions.” https://tinyurl.com/y8xvfqf2
PS. Thanks for the tinyurl link. 🙂
should be 1000 PPM or 0.1% (my guess at what was meant)
or 100 PPM or 0.01%
0.1 % should indeed be .01% and 100 ppm. It is correctly stated on our online version at: https://greatclimatedebate.com/funding-the-climate-industrial-complex/ I will ask the editor to see if WUWT can modify it accordingly.
Thanks,
Tom Tamarkin
corrected from mobile.
hope i did correctly.
If only 1/10 of the money use for the CO2 boondoggle was used to investigate all the climate effects of water — oceans, seas, rivers and lakes, clouds and rain, in the atmosphere, and in the biosphere — then the study of climate would be much closer to being a science.
And NO we don’t know how water works in our ever changing environment, thus our climate geeks are ignorant of a very basic parameter affecting many aspects of the climate.
Tom Tamarkin – January 10, 2019 at 2:35 pm
And I was thinking that in your terrifically great commentary that you should have noted that the afore stated “0.01% and 100 ppm” only exists in extreme desert environments.
Otherwise, atmospheric H2O vapor ppm quantities always far exceed any CO2 ppm quantities.
Yes we the people via the more than willing politicians and of course the Media have produced a monster.
So how do we kill it off, or has it now reached the point like the bug banks, that it is too big to be allowed to fail.
I say yet again that we must prove to the general public c that CO2 is a good gas and is essential to all life on Earth.
And that the warmers argument that even with the benefits, which they find difficult to deny, its a case of their simply being too much CO2 in the atmosphere, so it must be reduced.
MJE
“fossil fuels will become less economically viable over the coming decades as easily recovered reserves are depleted”
Centuries, not decades.
In the name of fighting one myth, he propagates his own.
The key phrase here, and it is an important one is: “less economically viable” That is a function of many factors. Also a partial line was taken out of context. The paragraph in question is:
The real driver is the absolutely indisputable fact that we are depleting economically viable sources of fossil fuels, while at the same time increasing our demand for energy worldwide. The key term is “economically viable,” because the petroleum industry will be forced to pursue more difficult to recover deposits of oil and natural gas, while also enduring ever increasing amounts of litigation.
Tom Tamarkin
As stated the key phrase is economically viable. The above comment takes a partial line out of context from the paragraph. The entire paragraph follows:
We do need to find replacements for fossil fuels – but not because of “climate change.” The real driver is the absolutely indisputable fact that we are depleting economically viable sources of fossil fuels, while at the same time increasing our demand for energy worldwide. The key term is “economically viable,” because the petroleum industry will be forced to pursue more difficult to recover deposits of oil and natural gas, while also enduring ever increasing amounts of litigation.
Tom Tamarkin
“The key term is “economically viable,” because the petroleum industry will be forced to pursue more difficult to recover deposits of oil and natural gas, while also enduring ever increasing amounts of litigation.”
Tom Tamarkin
two thoughts on this argument
Shale cowboys up-ended economically viable and continue to do so. Nuclear has a known tail of litigation meaning political resistance.
Maybe nuclear is the answer but we’ve done OK price wise without building a lot of new reactors. I live in the TVA service area. Certain you know about our great nuclear bust in the 80’s.
We are centuries away from exhausting economically viable deposits of oil, gas or coal.
PS: The quote accurately portrayed the gist of your comment. IE, that we are running out of economically viable fossil fuel deposits, and that simply isn’t true. Yes we will some day, but our great great grand children will still be using oil, gas and coal.
Prices will raise until then.
Methane is inexhaustible within even vaguely foreseeable future, however. Between methane layer and digesters.
Unfortunately, “green” BS industry sank methane layer harvesters before they were built and turned digesters into bloated sludge bombs.
There will always be a balance. If due to scarcity oil companies need so sell oil for $150 per barrel for it to be financially worthwhile to extract the next barrel, then the price of oil will be $150 per barrel. We’ll “need” a lot less of it at that price. Alternatives to fossil fuels already exist. It’s simply a matter of economic balance. We will automatically transition away from fossil fuels as they become more scarce and the prices increase.
A lot of greenies think that if we don’t leave a lot of those fossil fuels in the ground, we’re going to have a global catastrophe. Well, they convinced the world that we should not convert to nuclear power, so its up to them to convince the world they were wrong. Of course, they’ll first have to admit it to themselves.
Dwight D. Eisenhower might have said:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the climate-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”
The guards were paving the path with grants and political cover while this undue influence marched out of university campuses and Socialist “think tanks”and took over the world.
We are now infested head to toe with these economic “ticks”.
“water vapor content in the lower atmosphere varies from 100 PPM or 0.1%”
I do believe the conversion is wrong (1000PPM or 0.01%)?
Anyway, very good article.
0.1 % should indeed be .01% and 100 ppm. It is correctly stated on our online version at: https://greatclimatedebate.com/funding-the-climate-industrial-complex/ I will ask the editor to see if WUWT can modify it accordingly.
Thanks,
Tom Tamarkin
An excellent concise summation of the facts.
Sad to learn there is a $trillion dollar businesses dependent upon maintaining the scam.
Even sadder to realize that most of the trillion dollar business is funded directly or indirectly with tax dollars. Very little private money in involved.
Yes, Margaret Thatcher , wife of an oil executive who wiped out the coal industry. Mother of global warming and global warming science.
History of the Met Office Hadley Centre
The Met Office Hadley Centre was opened in 1990, by the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, when the Met Office was at its previous headquarters in Bracknell.
Prior to the opening of the dedicated centre different areas of the Met Office had been undertaking climatology research. By the late 1980s the Synoptic Climatology Branch was working closely with the Climatic Research Unit to produce an integrated global land surface air and sea surface temperature data set. This was the primary data set used to assess observed global warming by the IPCC in 1990.
It was the unions that whipped out the coal industry in Britain.
Thatcher just cut off government subsidies from the dying beast.
Thatcher was a puppet of the American oil industry. Britain’s worst ever traitor. She destroyed the coal industry for a foreign power. She also implemented monetarism on behalf of the Americans (Milton Friedman) and eviscerated the economy.
Funniest video on Youtube.
Thatcher Denies Having Ever Subscribed to Monetarism
It really is sad when hatred turns a brain to mush.
Thatcher did not kill the coal industry. The coal industry had ceased to be viable decades previously.
Your belief that she did it for American interests is equally absurd and the product of a sick mind.
It wasn’t monetarism that ruined Britains economy, it was unionism and socialism.
Britain was known as the sick man of Europe long before Thatcher became Prime Minister.
PS: Following Friedman’s advice was one of the best things that ever happened to the US economy.
The only other country where extreme (experimental) monetarist policies were implemented was Chile. Run by Thatcher’s stablemate and geopolitical friend, CIA installed dictator, General Pinochet.
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-chicago-boys-in-chile-economic-freedoms-awful-toll/
Eric McCoo
Everything worth having, we have thanks to free trade Capitalism.
Before Thatcher the UK was heading down the rathole of rampant socialism with, as MarkW points out, not just unprofitable, union run, nationalised businesses (a laughable concept as they were most certainly not businesses) but grinding poverty and recovering from a 98% top rate of tax with the best minds in the world having fled the country.
Thatcher, more than anyone else, recognised the threat of the emerging Tiger economy and the risk it represented to our traditional businesses like shipbuilding and car manufacturing. To compete we would be forced to pay oriental levels of pay, a fraction of what British workers demanded.
She recognised the need to capture the intellectual and financial markets, where goods and money could be controlled and profits made from people with the education to understand the concepts.
She took the country from competing on the breadline to leading the world in finance, law, business, science and technology etc. and attracted investment from across the globe.
She interrupted the complacent dependence on the welfare state and forced people to get off their arses and get back to work. It was standard practice to interrupt the working day once a week to ‘sign on’ for the unemployment benefits.
If Churchill won the war, Thatcher most certainly won the peace and the only people objecting were/are socialists who believe the state owes them something.
I’d suggest that technology, women working and exploitation of far eastern workers are the treason for advances in living standards. Nothing to do with Thatcher who literally destroyed our industrial base.
Thatcher massively increased the number of benefit claimants and also created the sick note culture by forcing claimants on to incapacity benefit to keep the unemployment numbers down.
She was a heartless monster and a traitor to American oil interests. Look how well Norway has done with its North Seal oil fund.
She almost single handedly created modern global warming science and made enviro and religious lunatic Dr John Houghton head of IPCC.
Eric McCoo
“I’d suggest that technology, women working and exploitation of far eastern workers are the treason for advances in living standards. Nothing to do with Thatcher who literally destroyed our industrial base.”
Well you got one part of that right, technology. And if women got back to work it was because of Thatcher and her policies that increased employment opportunities hitherto unavailable to women. If you want to include women in the equation the Thatcher virtually doubled the British workforce, something conveniently overlooked by socialists.
I am Chinese by birth and your contention that Far Eastern workers were exploited is absolute rubbish. There was no work before the west invested and Japan recovered from WW2 and went down the route of consumer manufacturing which spread throughout the Far East.
Thatcher didn’t “destroy” our industrial base, she traded it for technology, finance and entrepreneurialism. My parents bought their first house in UK, in the early 50’s with cash they had to save and borrow because mortgages were virtually unheard of. Thatcher was instrumental in the City of London generating the underlying finance for banks to lend money to almost anyone to allow them to buy a house instead of being allocated a shitty council house with all the invasion of privacy that entailed.
Thatcher changed the unemployment culture by refining it. Instead of just pitching up at the ‘dole’ office to sign on because it was easy and the only source of income, people were assessed and were often given more than they would on the dole because they were found to have more health issues than the dole could fairly accommodate. Another fact socialists like you sneering ignore. And whilst the incidence of ‘unemployment’ may have risen, people were cared for in a more appropriate manner, and of course the fact that women were encouraged into the workforce (hitherto ineligible for unemployment benefit and therefore not counted as unemployed by previous governments) Thatcher not only afforded them employment, she counted them in the employment numbers which meant the numbers of the employed rose dramatically.
In the 1950’s it was standard practice for the little lady to be a housewife with no employment prospects and not counted in the workforce. Thatcher changed that and we now have most families with both parents working. Where the hell did all that employment come from, socialism?
It also means tax income is higher to pay for the welfare state we operate, something that would have been impossible had Thatcher not empowered women to work and contribute to their own state pension as well as allowing them to invest in their own pensions.
Norway has done well with it’s Oil boom but it has a far smaller population relative to the Oil income and while Thatcher was forced to shore up our crumbling welfare state and the economy with Oil revenues, the Norwegians suffered lower standards of living whilst their government invested revenues in the stock market. A shrewd move as it turns out but Norway wasn’t carrying nearly the war debt the UK was in terms of cash and loans as well as the physical rebuilding of a country with cities bombed to rubble.
Bearing in mind that Thatcher was a scientist so judging by the best science available at the time from people like Houghton, she agreed with the concept of AGW. That was until better science became available and she changed her opinion, based on scientific evidence she was well placed to assess. She would undoubtedly be its biggest critic were she alive today and had the scientific integrity to change her opinion as science evolved, unlike Hanson et al.
Your socialist vitriol against Thatcher is ill considered, ill directed and at best overly simplistic, if not downright dishonest, in its historical and political analysis.
Chile prospered under monetarist policies. Friedman worked with Pinochet in order to benefit the people of Chile.
Would you have preferred that Friedman remain “pure” and the Chilean people continue to suffer?
Eric, nothing you claim is even remotely true.
What’s your real reason for hating Thatcher?
I am not going to be schooled by rabid, right wing nutters. Your history is not the accepted version because you are indeed a rabid, right wing nutter. Like the GWPF loonies.
I am not now nor have I ever been a socialist. I hate socialism. I was an anarchist back in the 1980s until two of my buddies were intimidated at home by Thatcher’s Special Branch goons.
“Seumas Milne’s book starts in a somewhat surprising way: With a telephone call to Arthur Scargill from Miles Copeland, the father of Stewart Copeland, the drummer with The Police. Miles Copeland was a retired senior CIA officer and he was warning Scargill that he was being ‘set up’ by both MI5 and the CIA: “I don’t like your views and I never have,” said Copeland to Scargill “But I don’t agree with the way you’re being treated.”
When I arrived in England in January 1970 the labor unions and Prime Minister Harold Wilson had taken Britain far down the path to third-world status. However, the discovery and exploitation of North Sea gas and oil in 1967 was transforming the British economy despite the British Labour Party and the unions. The nationalized industries were still unprofitable, inefficient, outdated and starved for capital needed to modernize, but the unions still had political and economic clout. When the UK coal miners struck in 1972 electrical generation quickly ceased and it was odd to have to buy coal for our fireplaces because there was no electricity to operate our recently installed natural gas system with hot water radiators. I left England in 1975, and when I returned in 1988 I was amazed at the economic progress and quality-of-life improvements thanks to Margaret Thatcher.
I was in England in 1983, when Arthur Scargill and his cronies were extorting the populace with violent actions and mobs of 100,000 goons. The country was a shocking mess. When I look at the disaster that Venezuela is today it is obvious that Britain wasn’t far from that condition.
When I went back four years later the unemployment rate had dropped dramatically as had the inflation rate and British industry was starting a multi-year upswing.
Trying to rewrite history through some magic Socialist glasses is about the most idiotic and blind thing I can imagine and I actually find it offensive. Socialism has failed everywhere it has been instituted at huge cost to millions of individuals. It is inherently coercive. Yet people like you keep trying to reinvent the square wheel that kills its operator.
Open your eyes, man!
It’s the money: Advertising dollars and Marxist goals drive the MSM but the ‘Big Oil’ interest is also throwing dollars at the media like NBC Meet the Press Chuck Todd ‘Chuck Todd Dedicates Sunday’s ‘Meet the Press’ to ‘Climate Crisis,’ Bans ‘Climate Deniers’ From Show’ They know better yet they fund the likes of Chuck Fascist Todd.
“Advertising dollars and Marxist goals” are almost surely contradictory. As a number of historians have shown prior to newspapers relying on advertising as their main source of revenue there were large numbers of left wing papers in the UK the vast majority of which either went bankrupt or became right wing as advertising took over.
Businesses these days are primarily NOT right wing. I’m talking the big businesses here.
I see that Percy is amongst the useful idiots who actually believe that being in business proves one is right wing.
PS: Percy’s economic knowledge is likewise highly slanted and completely wrong.
Allegedly, prior to advertising, left wing newspapers thrived. Presumably from selling papers.
If these so called left wing papers were so good, they could have continued to do business the same way. By selling papers to useful idiots such as Percy.
A ‘sidebar’ comment: MSM is an acronym for Marionette Sycophant Media — a.k.a. — Howdy Doody Time.
Reuters and CBC are happy to publish this mega news:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/ocean-temperatures-1.4970696
“The world’s oceans are warming faster than predicted!”
The Reuters article goes on with the lead author: “It’s mainly driven by the accumulation of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to human activities,” said Lijing Cheng, a lead author of the study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.”
They at least provide the link toward the paper itself: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6423/128
Then guess who are the other authors of this?
How fast are the oceans warming?
Lijing Cheng1, John Abraham2, Zeke Hausfather3, Kevin E. Trenberth4
1International Center for Climate and Environment Sciences, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China.
2School of Engineering, University of St. Thomas, 2115 Summit Avenue, St. Paul, MN, USA.
3Energy and Resources Group, University of California, Berkeley, 310 Barrows Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
4National Center for Atmospheric Research, Post Office Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307, USA.
But Reuters keeps this well under the reader’s view and so does the CBC. And nowhere do they try putting these results in perspective. Roy Spencer however does give some ideas here: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/01/chuck-todd-devotes-an-hour-to-attacking-a-strawman/
“Between 2005 and 2017, the global network of thousands of Argo floats have measured an average temperature increase of the upper half of the ocean of 0.04 deg. C. That’s less than 0.004 C/year, an inconceiveably small number.
Significantly, it represents an imbalance in energy flows in and out of the climate system of only 1 part in 260. That’s less than 0.5%, and climate science does not know any of the NATURAL flows of energy to that level of accuracy. The tiny energy imbalance causing the warming is simply ASSUMED to be the fault of humans and not part of some natural cycle in the climate system. Climate models are adjusted in a rather ad hoc manner until their natural energy flows balance, then increasing CO2 from fossil fuels is used as the forcing (imposed energy imbalance) causing warming.
That’s circular reasoning. Or, some might say, garbage in, garbage out.”
Another proof that obfuscation is a media tool to sell the green catastrophe ideology!
Three huge problems with using the Argo floats to claim an increase in ocean temperature of 0,04C.
1) The floats, when launched were only accurate to about 0.1C. More than twice the signal claimed.
2) There has been no re-calibration of the sensors since the floats were launched. There’s no way they are still accurate to 0.1C.
3) A few hundred floats is several hundred thousand times too few to accurately measure the temperature of the ocean. That would be like placing 1 sensor randomly in the US and from that declaring that you can accurately measure the temperature of the US. Even worse, move that sensor randomly every month, and from the results declare that you can determine how the average temperature of the US has changed over time.
One of the clearest and concise articles on the subject I have seen.
Excellent work Tom, if only our mentally defective politicians in Australia would read this and understand it.
We are just about to vote in a government even more stupid than the current one, bringing in renewables in as a major power source. Just a matter of time before the blackouts start.
Keep Trump in power and I may consider becoming a US citizen. If the Democrats came back, I’d be outa there.
There is a bit of conjecture concerning water vapour content. I’ve heard that (overall, on average) water vapour makes up 95% of the greenhouse gasses & co2 4%. Is this a reasonable assumption?
My original statement was 98% based on my analysis of many factors but that is some what controversial so I backed it down to the more acceptable 90%. Needless to say its the clouds that count.
Tom Tamarkin
Thanks for the reply Tom.
You mean the clouds that will be emitting IR upwards to be absorbed by the CO2 above them?
Phil
Why would CO2 molecules absorb IR reflected from clouds when the IR from incoming sunlight passes them by first?
Are CO2 molecules somehow one sided, aligning themselves accurately with the planet thereby incapable of absorbing incoming IR?
Or did I miss some sarcasm?
It’s not reflection of the solar IR, the water droplets by virtue of their temperature will emit blackbody radiation which spans the absorption spectrum of CO2.
Satellites measure the temperature of the tops of clouds by measuring the IR emitted from the tops of the clouds in the window region, emissions at the longer wavelengths are absorbed by the CO2.
“Of course, sometimes clouds block the satellite’s view of the surface; so what’s being displayed in cloudy areas? Well, while atmospheric gases absorb very little infrared radiation at these wavelengths (and thus emit very little by Kirchhoff’s Law), that’s not the case for liquid water and ice, which emit very efficiently at these wavelengths. Therefore, any clouds that are in the view of the satellite will be emitting infrared radiation consistent with their temperatures. Furthermore, infrared emitted by the earth’s surface is completely absorbed by the clouds above it. Remember that since clouds emit infrared radiation effectively at this wavelength, they also absorb radiation very effectively. So even though there is plenty of infrared radiation coming from below the cloud and even from within the cloud itself, the only radiation that reaches the satellite is from the cloud top. Therefore, infrared imagery is the display of either cloud-top temperatures or Earth’s surface temperature (if no clouds are present).”
https://www.e-education.psu.edu/meteo3/l5_p5.html
“Clouds also emit thermal radiation, and except for thin cirrus they emit a nearly ideal blackbody spectrum corresponding to the altitude-dependent cloud temperature and cloud emissivity, which is 1 for clouds with at least 0.1 mm of integrated liquid [23] and is usually less than 1 for ice clouds with an ice water path less than 0.1 mm [24]. Optically thick cloud emission is therefore similar to a blackbody curve at or near the temperature of the cloud (i.e., the air temperature at the cloud-base altitude).”
http://www.montana.edu/jshaw/documents/Physics_IRCloudImaging_EJP2013.pdf
Reproducibility is certainly important, but even more important is when the reproducible analysis of data is consistent with quantifiable theory. For example, when the precession of Mercury is explained by General Relativity. Another is when measurements of the relationship between the planet’s emissions and the temperature of the surface below is precisely explained by the SB Law of a gray body emitter whose emissivity is given by (To/Ts)^4, where To is the equivalent radiant temperature of its emissions and Ts is the equivalent radiant temperature of the matter absorbing and emitting energy.
The climate industrial complex employs these tactics for two reasons: (1) They’re lucrative and (2) It gets away with them (at the expense of others). The costly deception will continue so long as the alleged scientific justification is permitted to stand. Prominent is the Endangerment Finding, which the Trump administration has neglected – a missed opportunity not likely to return soon. Things won’t change for the better until the alleged justification for the Endangerment Finding and other baseless propaganda are publically put to the test and invalidated.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/01/07/prodding-trumps-epa-to-reexamine-endangerment/
Don’t look for that to come from the 13 federal agencies who produced the latest climate hysteria report, or others funded by the public dollar and the $2 Trillion per year stream to produce doom. Meanwhile, the beat goes on and, with each new congress, grows louder.
United Nations
“Partnerships For The SDGs”
“Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century”
Description and Partners List:
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/partnership/?p=1619
Networks and U.S. is included in the above list.
UNFCCC
News
UN Climate Speech / 01 JUN, 2004
Bonn
“Keynote address at the International Conference for Renewable Energies by Executive Secretary Joke Waller-Hunter”
“The Contribution of Renewable Energies in Meeting the Climate Challenge”
Speech at:
https://unfccc.int/news/keynote-address-at-the-international-conference-for-renewable-energies-by-executive-secretary-joke
Some Renewable Energy history and its climate role.
UNFCCC
Articles and articles related to the International Conference for Renewable Energies 2004, Bonn
Plenty of articles!
https://unfccc.int/gcse?q=International%20Conference%20for%20Renewable%20Energies%202004
Can just browse through the articles.
“This chart demonstrates in dramatic fashion that there is absolutely no connection between steadily rising CO2 levels and nearly stable to slightly higher average global temperatures over the past four decades”.
Well yes if you exaggerate one of the axes wrt the other, as is well known the effect of CO2 is logarithmic so a more honest representation would be to plot log(CO2)
That’s a good point.
Tom D. Tamarkin,
Excellent summary – Thank You!
Re: “This suggests that water vapor has a much greater effect as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.”
The data you provided does more than ‘suggest’….. it empirically demonstrates that water vapor is the dominant green house gas, by more than 2 orders of magnitude greater effect than atmospheric CO2.
Don’t be afraid to make justifiable assertion when the unambiguous data clearly supports.
J Mac
~1859 John Tyndall “concluded that water vapour is the strongest absorber of radiant heat in the atmosphere and is the principal gas controlling air temperature. Absorption by the other gases is not negligible but relatively small.”
The linear trend on the UAH series in the accompanying figure appears slightly too flat.
See for example the same data plotted by WoodForTrees:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/mean:13/scale:100/offset:350/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979
Also one should note that the CO2 data is incorrect, it is displaying the full 1959 – 2018 record compressed onto 1979 to present. In 1979, MLO CO2 annual average was between 336 to 337 ppm. The Tamarkin plot shows the1979 CO2 at ~ 315 ppm. It was last 315 ppm in 1959.
Don’t take my word for it, check it yourself here:
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/graph.html
It appears to have ~40 annual peaks but as you point out they’ve used the scale appropriate to 1959-present.
A Photoshop™-ed data figure? 😳
Please see my online version and the two paragraphs located under the chart at: https://greatclimatedebate.com/yearly-temperature-variation-and-atmospheric-co2-levels-1979-2018/
But why does your carbon dioxide data start at ~315 ppm in 1979 when it was, in fact, closer to 335-337 ppm according to NOAA. Are you saying the NOAA data is incorrect?
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/graph.html
We assume the NOAA data as presented in this data set is correct. See: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/full.html
As both Joel and DRH have pointed out, your graph is incorrect because it does not match the NOAA data that you refer to as the source. The NOAA data are fine, it is your graph of it that is wrong.
Jim our data has been directly lifted from the NOAA data set for the years 1979 to present. There is nothing wrong with the NOAA data presented on our exemplary illustration. My source for that data is at: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/full.html if you see something different please be specific and describe it.
Thank you.
Tom Tamarkins
Mr Tamarkin,
Please stop insulting readers here at WUWT.
Your graph of MLO CO2 data is clearly wrong.
You simply did not “directly lift it from the NOAA” unless by “lift”, you mean copy and paste in a graphics editor like Photshop or PowerPoint. And that is huge no-no in science.
If you had used the actual NOAA data set then your 1979 CO2 concentration would start at 336 ppm not at 315 ppm. The resulting slope of the CO2 trend is thus steeper on your graph than reality.
And stop blaming your editor for anything. You own this mess.
There is nothing wrong with the NOAA data presented on our exemplary illustration.
It’s anything but exemplary! As pointed out by others you’ve put an incorrect legend on the axis for the CO2. CO2 should be represented as a log function, once that is done the two parameters should be presented appropriately scaled, overly compressing one to suppress the trend is inappropriate.
Phil, do you have time to produce a more accurate graph I can use to replace my old one with. If so, I would very much appreciate it. Currently at: https://greatclimatedebate.com/yearly-temperature-variation-and-atmospheric-co2-levels-1979-2018/
Thank you.
This is getting tedious. I don’t need to be specific here because others have explained the details. As Joel points out: “If you had used the actual NOAA data set then your 1979 CO2 concentration would start at 336 ppm not at 315 ppm.”
All YOU need to do is to look at the graph from YOUR data source here:
and tells us what the CO2 level was in 1979.
It is obvious that you “clipped” the original CO2 data at around 1979, but then attached the scale from the original data which was from 1959. You made a mistake. Your graph is not “exemplary”. No big deal, we all make mistakes. But failing to check (and correct) your plot when an obvious error has been helpfully pointed out to you by many commenters here is indeed insulting.
Jim, would like it if someone, perhaps, you, Joel, Phil or the other commenter who offered constructive advice on how to more accurately construct the chart I incorporated into my article, to please take the time and produce a new chart I can use to replace the current one. I will replace mine with the new version and remove my declaratory language in the text concerning the old chart and replace with language appropriately describing the new agreed to accurate chart. I simply do not have the software tools necessary to do this myself to that level of precision and would prefer that it be done by someone with greater expertise in constructing such charts. I would like to make this welcome addition on my online version of the article ASAP at: https://greatclimatedebate.com/yearly-temperature-variation-and-atmospheric-co2-levels-1979-2018/
My only request is that we use the same NOAA data and UAH offseted data as described on the old chart.
Just to be clear … my comment above was in response to Tom Tamarkin
January 11, 2019 at 3:06 pm.
on a side note the main beneficiaries of smart meter deployment to date have been utility companies. Delinquent accounts can now be cut off from a central location saving the need for a worker in a pickup. This also accelerates cash flow as delinquents pay faster to get the power back on. Especially in Winter and Summer.
Did we offer subsides for the deployment of this technology. Think we may have.
What the heck. Only the unwashed suffer.
And the Bastards at the electric company still charge a hefty reconnect fee.
Yes, the plot has several problems. There are 40 peaks for CO2, making the time scale of the CO2 plot off by a couple of years, in addition to its vertical axis, which is off by more as you say, along with the temperature trend and Phil’s suggestion that the log CO2 should be plotted.
The plot is simply wrong. And that deeply damages the credibility of this essay by Mr Tamarkin in my own scientific view. It is why even scientific journal review articles from subject-matter experts and any opinion pieces in journals undergo Peer review to catch credibility damaging mistakes.
And the plotting of log CO2 is a ridiculous suggestion. Should we use base10Log, natural Log, base8Log? Unless you mean a log of ratio, then one has to specify the denominator value.
Not ridiculous, it should be logarithmic in form, which base and what scaling factor don’t matter as long as the scales of both quantities are reasonable. As you said this fake graph has the temperature scale excessively compressed and exaggerates the scale of CO2 as well as not plotting the log form (preferably 5.35·ln (C/C0).
I would suggest that this is an exemplary illustration. My editor added the word dramatic. Its purpose is to cause policy makers and government leaders to examine the details. Regarding scaling issues please note the explanations I provided on our online version as follows:
Forty years of annual temperature variations and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are presented on one chart. There is no correlation between CO2 and temperature. None! Never in the course of human events has man spent so much money on so little…. But then what’s a trillion dollars here and a trillion dollars there?
Temperature variation is based on the UAH satellite based lower tropospheric data set. This is presented as the 30 year average, 1981-2010. It does not change the ranking; it is merely an additive offset. For yearly averages one could just use the raw temperatures, but scientists use monthly anomalies so much, it’s important to have removed the seasonal cycle, which dominates the variability. The Carbon Dioxide (CO2) curve is the universally accepted Keeling curve based on the Mauna Loa, Hawaii monitoring station and obtained from the NOAA data base. The red sinusoidal lines through the CO2 curve represent the seasonal variations caused by plant life CO2 intake. At: https://greatclimatedebate.com/yearly-temperature-variation-and-atmospheric-co2-levels-1979-2018/
My intent is to generate discussion suggesting as one commenter on this article suggested: “The President is a bit busy now trying to build a wall but he should call someone in the EPA or other agency and have this matter looked into.”
Yeah, on second thought maybe Phil’s idea is not so good. In theory, forcing is logarithmic with respect to CO2 concentration so my initial reaction was that his comment made sense, but the data should be examined to see what the relationship actually is. The trend line can always be examined via software for best fit statistically.
And yes, this plot needs to be corrected to be credible.
GHGE added forcing certainly is logarithmic with respect to a baseline value of the GHG. Plotting forcing of CO2 concentration changes must be done as Ln of the ratio. No disagreement there.
Not when you at it closely. There are several reasons why the two data series look so unconnected. For one, they’re comparing annual UAH with monthly CO2. Also, the UAH data is plotted on a scale that is way wider than it needs to be. The minimum data point (left y-axis) is around -0.4 C, but the minimum scale point is -1.0 C; likewise the maximum data point is around +0.5 C, but the scale goes up to +1.0 C. This has the effect of ‘flattening’ the appearance of the UAH data and minimising the visual impact of its upward trend, which, far from showing “nearly stable to slightly higher average global temperatures”, in fact shows statistically significant warming at a rate of 0.13 ±0.06 °C/decade (2σ).
I plotted the monthly data for both UAH and CO2 on Excel (Jan 1979 to Nov 2018, CO2 value for Dec 2018 not yet posted) and ran a correlation analysis which produced a coefficient of 0.63. For n= >400 samples this is significant at the >99% confidence level. I also used Excel to produce a scatter chart and added a trend line that has a R-squared value of 0.402; again, positively correlated: https://postimg.cc/nX0Ht6dL
Whether there is a causal link or not is another question, but a proper analysis of CO2 and UAH temperature anomalies shows they are most definately correlated.
The UAH data set starts at 1979 when the 40 year post WW2 T hiatus was coming to an end.
The CO2 – temperature correlation looks pretty weak for the entire period of supposed a dominant human influence (the post 2015 trend excepted due to the recent El Nino).
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1945/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1945/to:1985/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1985/to:2005/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2005/to:2015/trend/plot/esrl-co2/normalise/offset:0.6
Per capita consumption of cheese in the US, 2000-2009 has a correlation of r = 0.947 with number of people who died by strangulation in bed sheets over the same interval.
Yes, definately (sic) correlated.
http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Is there a suspected causal link between per capita cheese consumption in the US and accidental death in bed by strangulation?
Well now you raise an interesting point DWR 5-4.
“cutting the cheese” in bed with one’s wife/significant-other maybe could lead to one’s “accidental” strangulation …
Just sayin’…
Consumption commonly requires cutting the cheese into edible sized pieces. Inevitably, some fraction of people cut the cheese in bed.
The chart shows nothing at all. To check for a correlation of CO2 to UAH temperature in one of their data sets, say Northern Hemisphere, you have to graph CO2 versus UAH and look for a correlation using regression analysis to get a line or curve trend. This was not done. Nothing can be concluded from the overlay shown. The CO2 rise perception is based on the scale, and can be rescaled to look horizontal.
Why doe’snt Pres. Trump order the EPA to bring the matter of CO2 as a b ad gas, before the Court.
True he is busy trying for a wall, but just a phone call could get this matter going.
MJE
In addition to the many comments above re scale issues on the posted graph, I would also suggest that it is not good practice to plot one dataset on an annual basis and the other on a monthly basis when looking for possible correlations (or lack thereof). Ah, I see now that DWR54 has already made this point.
The biggest issue, however, is that strong hints of a correlation are visible on the graph. It is possible to easily identify variations in CO2 growth rate (based on the black line, which has the seasonal cycle removed) and temperature change associated with the El Niños of 1987-1988, 1997-1998 and 2015-2016 (offset due to scaling problem), as well as the slow down due to Pinatubo in 1991-1992. Of course, confirmation would require more appropriate in-depth analysis, but then such analysis has been published many times before and the correlation between El Niño, temperature and atmospheric CO2 growth rate is well known.
I appreciate the point that the author is trying to make, but in my view it is not appropriate to state that the graph “demonstrates … absolutely no connection” between CO2 growth and global temperatures.
I would suggest that this is an exemplary illustration. My editor added the word dramatic. Its purpose is to cause policy makers and government leaders to examine the details. Regarding scaling issues please note the explanations I provided on our online version as follows:
Forty years of annual temperature variations and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are presented on one chart. There is no correlation between CO2 and temperature. None! Never in the course of human events has man spent so much money on so little…. But then what’s a trillion dollars here and a trillion dollars there?
Temperature variation is based on the UAH satellite based lower tropospheric data set. This is presented as the 30 year average, 1981-2010. It does not change the ranking; it is merely an additive offset. For yearly averages one could just use the raw temperatures, but scientists use monthly anomalies so much, it’s important to have removed the seasonal cycle, which dominates the variability. The Carbon Dioxide (CO2) curve is the universally accepted Keeling curve based on the Mauna Loa, Hawaii monitoring station and obtained from the NOAA data base. The red sinusoidal lines through the CO2 curve represent the seasonal variations caused by plant life CO2 intake. At: https://greatclimatedebate.com/yearly-temperature-variation-and-atmospheric-co2-levels-1979-2018/
My intent is to generate discussion suggesting as one commenter on this article suggested: “The President is a bit busy now trying to build a wall but he should call someone in the EPA or other agency and have this matter looked into.”
You commonly hear accusations the fossil fuel lobby, and how corporate interests are poisoning the debate with money. I guess somehow “corporate interests” and companies in the energy sector don’t expect to benefit financially if the world spends trillions of dollars on an infrastructure shift. We’d better listen to Al Gore, a former politician turned investment banker, now making hundreds of millions of dollars for himself and his partners.
(By the way, that chart with steadily rising CO2 and unsteadily rising temperatures appears to demonstrate the opposite of what is claimed.)
This graph is nonsense. The scales of temperature and CO2 have to be made fitting. That CO2 was lower than temperature at the begin cannot be told and that CO2 was higher than temperature at the end also cannot be told. Please fit the scales for fitting begin and end and then you may think, whether the curves would fit between begin and end and if not, why not. For example Enso and volcanos have to be considered.