By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Much has been made of the alleged standstill in global CO2 emissions, which are asserted to have been about the same in 2019 as in 2018, at 33.3 gigatonnes of CO2:
Obsession over transient phenomena such as this is commonplace among the climate genociders, whose cruel, dangerous and expensive global-warming abatement policies are killing tens of millions annually through the coordinated refusal of most of the world’s leading merchant, central and intergovernmental banks to lend to developing countries to install the one kind of electricity they can afford and can maintain and are desperate for – coal-fired generation.
Nothing lifts a poor nation faster, more surely and more permanently out of poverty, misery, disease and death than the universal availability of universal, affordable, continuous, base-load, coal-fired electricity.
Were it not for the genocidal emissions-abatement policies driven by the totalitarian fanatics and extremists of the far Left in the West, the whole world would by now be electrified, prosperity in the developing countries would have increased no less dramatically than it has in the electrified advanced economies, and the net benefit to the environment in the consequent stabilization of population would have been overwhelming.
Almost two centuries of official demographic statistics have demonstrated that, by a long chalk, the most effective method of stabilizing a previously-burgeoning population is to increase the general prosperity of that population. Frankly, nothing else works. The fastest way to displace poverty with prosperity is to give the people electricity. We should make this moral case against the genociders daily until they are compelled to pay heed.
The genociders’ trumpeting of the supposed standstill in global CO2 emissions is – as usual – misplaced. As the IEA’s graph shows, the imagined level of global emissions remained static for five years from 1990-1995. In Their terms, we were doing “better” then than now, for no increase in our sins of emission was reported over that period.
Their “our policies are at last working” meme is misplaced for a second reason. The emissions data are inaccurate. As with temperature, so with emissions, we are incapable of determining global data to a precision of a tenth of a unit. We know that the emissions data are inaccurate because if they were accurate – and if the link between emissions and concentration were as direct as They tell us it is – then the stabilization of emissions would have been matched by at least some diminution in the rate at which CO2 concentration is accumulating in the atmosphere.
However, the CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa shows a continuing and undiminished rate of increase over the past four or five years:
Since the trend in global temperatures has been generally downward over the past five years, additional outgassing of CO2 from the oceans does not account for the continuing increase in CO2 concentration.
Nor can it legitimately be argued (though some genociders have tried) that the terrestrial CO2 sink is failing. If it were failing, the rapid growth in the total plant biomass on the planet – the net primary productivity of trees and plants – would not have been as spectacular as it has been.
The question arises whether the decades of hot air generated by the climate genociders’ intergovernmental conferences, at vast expense in treasure as well as in common sense, have reduced global CO2 emissions below the business-as-usual prediction made by IPCC in its First Assessment Report in 1990.
The answer is No. The annual, official, peer-reviewed estimate of global CO2 emissions from all sources, Friedlingstein et al. (2019), who used the same wider measure of emissions as IPCC, shows that emissions are above the business-as-usual trajectory predicted by IPCC in 1990:
The 11.5 givatonnes of carbon estimated by Friedlingstein et al. is equivalent to 42.2 gigatonnes of CO2.
In short, the quintupling of electricity prices compared with what they would be without global warming abatement policies, the doubling of gasoline prices, the destruction of heavy industries such as coal, steel, aluminum, coal-fired power generation and motor manufacture throughout the Western world, the trashing of the countryside and the killing of billions of bees, birds and bats by windmills, the slowing of storms and the consequent flooding caused by those same windmills, and all the deaths that the genociders are inflicting upon our less fortunate cousins in the developing world with their refusal to countenance the immediate electrification of the one-sixth of the planet whose population subsists in enforced and involuntary darkness, have achieved precisely nothing.
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Someone, please tell this to Mark Carney.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-sunday-edition-for-february-16-2020-1.5459411/mark-carney-named-un-special-envoy-on-climate-change-says-the-smart-money-is-on-transition-from-fossil-fuels-1.5462453
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/01/bank-of-england-mark-carney-to-head-a-un-climate-action-effort/#comment-2860241
Mark Carney received much credit for the way Canada survived the 2008 financial crisis. Carney was the brand-new head of the Bank of Canada in 2008 and the real credit goes elsewhere, to his predecessors who established our stable banking system, to the steady hand of Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada from 2006 to 2015, and especially to the robust Alberta economy, which has financially supported the entire country for over six decades due to our petroleum wealth and the rapid growth of the Alberta oilsands from ~1998 to ~2015.
During this time, development of the Alberta oilsands included $250 billion in capital investment and created 500,000 jobs across Canada. Primarily because of the oilsands, Canada is the 4th largest oil producer in the world, and the largest foreign supplier of oil to the USA – and ~80% of Canadian oil production comes from Alberta, with our population of only ~4 million people.
http://www.calgarysun.com/2017/09/25/when-the-oilsands-hit-pay-dirt
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html
Albertans have been incredibly generous, providing one million dollars per family-of-four to the rest-of-Canada since 1961, essentially financing much of the health care for the entire country. Despite this incredible generosity, Albertans have been falsely vilified as “climate deniers” and destroyers of the planet by the Laurentian elite, and our economy has been twice sabotaged by the Trudeau’s, père et fils.
I have adopted Alberta as my home, and I am proud of our accomplishments and our enormous contributions to society. To give you an idea of what we are really about, have a look at this recent Calgary event, and smile.
Regards, Allan
I fully agree about Alberta.
As far as I can tell, the PM who did the best job of getting the nation’s financial house in order was Jean Chretien. link
Ah no Bob, it’s out of the side of their mouths talking french men that got us into this mess, he was the character who took thirty-some billion from Canada pension and threw it into general coffers, as a stop-gap against an uncontrollable liberal government’s spending. An illegal accounting of funds I would say. Even Paul Martin told him, “cut their payments they are paying to much into the Canada pension fund.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/public-service-employees-not-entitled-to-28-billion-pension-repayment-court-rules/article6554298/
I think they are still fighting it…
He was going to reverse Mulroney’s GST and renegotiate NAFTA, which was slanted to the south.
The question is with Jean Chretien, “Did he or did he not balance the budgets with tax hikes?”
Seems that’s the only dance step the Liberals know, here in Canada. Now they send us tax bills in the mail after the previous year has been settled.
Canada Socialism…sorry liberalism the highest taxes in the world, excluding some Baltic states, double the income tax Americans pay, and now an escalating carbon tax, which might as well be a breathing tax.
**I think they are still fighting it…**
No. the Supreme Court did a political ruling and said that the feds do not have to pay it back as they are responsible for the pensions.
Too right Allan…I was an Albertan for forty years till I retired to a B&B I made just across the border in Saskatchewan convent. Now there’s an end for a reformed Belfast catholic.
The crap that Fidel’s son is wreaking on the province of Alberta is disgraceful.
Strange that there were no whimpers and moaning about the billions heading east on, freight carloads of money to pay for those over-employed fat cats and weird little environmental shitheads, as you say. Who I would see at rig sites testing everything and forcing compliance to the great Gaian god of CO2.
Sawed-off little pricks…I remember asking one — who I was assigned to walk the site with, who drove up in a custom extra-large four-wheel-drive diesel ford pick-up at at a rig I was working at… He jumped out in his Sunday pants and get his tailored and custom fit winter overalls out of the back seat — all in red with custom embroidered name on the breast and back with the company logo embroidered on the back. That cost money to make. Quited overalls, with fancy stitching?
He breaks out a specially designed lab kit in a bomb-proof aluminum case, to test everything including the coffee I would dump in the snow back of the rig. “What that…?”, he said as he pointed to it. “It’s coffee from the coffee pots, it won’t hurt anything, come spring that area will have more nutrition in the ground from the coffee… the boys use it, it won’t hurt anything”. I walked around as this idiot pointed at everything and wanted to know what the reason was for everything.
Rigs are kept spotless and so is ground around them, it a must regardless of the law. Clean sites keep the vermin away, plus less injury, and beside riggers keep busy during drilling time. A clean and spotless site was pride in those days. I was on a directional drilling rig that was doing work for the oilsands recovery. It was pad work, hundreds of holes drilled and then steam to realize the oil at the main central pad.
So I say to buddy, “So you look like you landed a good gig there champ?; a big truck, that hell-of-ah nice set of winter overalls you got and a nice case with all your tools. What else?” He said,”Yeah, I get a truck, the overalls we go in and they measure us up for and then they are sent to us…”.
“Do you pay for them as we do…”
“No.”, he says. They give an American express for gas.”
“How much you make a day, if you don’t mind me asking?
“$1800 and all my receipts are paid every thirty days, in for two and out for one.” (He meant weeks in and week out)
Do you have an environmental degree?”
“No.” he says “…its more of a certification. I have worked in a number of environmental fields in industry. I believe in it”
I played possum as he gives me the special presentation, for a while I picked this idiot’s brain.
I swear to Christ he was chosen for his SJW attitude, about how big oil has screwed up the world and environment and is ruining the landscape.
I asked him “Did you know that this stuff was constantly leaking into the rivers and waterways before anyone came here. It only a couple feet below the ground in some places.”
He snapped, “No it wasn’t that the bullshit story the oil companies pass around to you guys.”
Alberta’s misery right now is Trudy Zoolanders disgrace, it was a plan of the globalists, the whole reality manufacturing machine has been running for some time now, to systematically take Alberta apart.
That new money, built infrastructure in Alberta towns and raised the standard of living, for Albertans, everybody prospered, the whole dam country prospered.
And that is the whole story behind “Wexit”. To isolate and landlock the prairies…
“But the sentiment did not reach some Conservatives, including Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who renewed his calls for Trudeau to cancel the federal carbon tax, rework the equalization formula [which is the same as the boom years, and Alberta is hurting today, they need a break in alimony payment] and build pipelines to reach international markets.
“There is a fire burning here in the Prairie Provinces… What I am doing is handing him a fire extinguisher and I’m asking him not to show up with a gas can,” Moe said Tuesday.”
But Trudy keeps showing up with a gas can and new hairdo…and billions to other countries. WTF?
Why the $465 million to Afghanistan; then $33 million for Afghan vets, 50 million on a dam in Afghanistan, does the retard know were the money came from, then $10 million to a terrorist. And now the mother**** wouldn’t buy an Albertan a coffee if we were freezing in the snow.
Actually Michael, Trudeau and his odious ilk are a lot worse than that.
Trudeau is delaying because THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR ECONOMY IS PART OF HIS PLAN.
Copy this note and send it to your friends.
This is the article that Trudeau’s “bought” Canadian press would not print.
“THE LIBERALS’ COVERT GREEN PLAN FOR CANADA – POVERTY AND DICTATORSHIP”
by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., October 1, 2019
(This article describes the Trudeau/Butts plan for a Marxist Canada, like China or North Korea}
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/10/01/the-liberals-covert-green-plan-for-canada-poverty-and-dictatorship/
[Excerpt]
“A highly credible gentleman wrote me as follows, concerning his recent conversation with an Ottawa insider.
The insider, he said, had been working on an advisory group to the Trudeau government. The group was not formed to discuss policy for the 5 year horizon that governments are usually interested in but to develop policies for the further future, 20 to 40 years out. The implication was that the group had concluded that the present economic model was flawed and had to be replaced. “Unregulated consumerism was unsustainable and people would have to learn to make do with less. The government would have to have more control over people to enforce their austerity and the wealth of developed nations would have to be redistributed to help undeveloped nations.”
Michael Burns, thank you!
“Trudy Zoolander”. I can’t stop laughing.
Now I can look at him and laugh out loud instead of feeling sick to my stomach and walking away. I’m old enough to remember mum Maggie’s party days.
Thank you!
Re: the intelligent foresight of the Canadian banks. A couple years before the 2008 financial meltdown in the USA, the five major Canadian commercial banks were lobbying the federal government so that they could pool their resources (merge?) so that they would have enough capital to form competitive INVESTMENT banks and make lots and lots of money in junk bonds JUST LIKE THE BIG AMERICAN INVESTMENT BANKS (e.g. Merrill Lynch, Lehman Bros., etc.). Due to typical Canadian inertia and sloth, and some opposition to even more concentration of wealth and power in a few banks, however, this didn’t happen, and Canadian banks were saved from their own greed and stupidity. Thus they and Mark Carney became self-proclaimed geniuses (Carney now sees possibilities in wealth “earned” through trading in carbon credits which have no intrinsic value).
In Ontario, the Liberals were in deep trouble, and Progressive Conservative leader John Tory was going to win power, until he decided on a matter of logical fairness to promise full government funding for religious schools of all faiths. Historically, Ontario had and has full funding for Roman Catholic public schools because this was a fair exchange for protecting English Protestant schools in Quebec which was and is largely French and nominally Roman Catholic. Yeah, logically if you fully fund Catholics, that’s “unfair” for other religions, and Tory could count on winning much of the Jewish vote. But the fair-minded majority of Ontarians saw that this would also mean full funding for Muslim separate schools, and this could lead to trouble integrating newcomers to our country (I am a third-generation Japanese-Canadian who thrived in the public schools of Manitoba and Ontario, with not a single negative experience of racism by teachers or fellow students, starting with Kindergarten in 1950, just 5 years after a vicious war started in the Pacific by the land of my ancestors). So Tory lost (he is now the mayor of Toronto), and the campaign manager for the victorious Liberals was treated as a genius. His name? Gerald Butts.
The Ontario Liberals continued their incompetent, corrupt ways, and were going to lose the next election, until the hardline Progressive Conservative leader promised to fire 100,000 workers, thus pissing away a sure win. Once again, Gerald Butts looked like a genius.
So much so that he moved to the federal Liberals to help elect his good friend Justin Trudeau. Tired of the Conservatives under sour Stephen Harper, Canadians elected a young, vibrant, good-looking feminist- and diversity-supporting (this was before his past as a Groper, Poseur/Imposter, & blackface artist became known) son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Another win, 3-for-3. Gerald Butts was a genius!!!
Known as “Justin’s brain”, Butts now got to control Canada through the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) which is like the Oval Office without the checks and balances of the Congress. Butts (past head of World Wildlife Fund Canada) now got to direct Justin toward carbon taxes, signing on to the Paris Accord, etc. Despite scandals that forced Butts out of direct power, the Liberals under Justin won re-election with a minority government supported by the leftist NDP and the one Green MP, so Canadians are getting the government they deserve.
Yeah, Mark Carney and Gerald Butts are geniuses.
/sarc off.
Good comments Roger.
The f$£k are you all talking about canada for? What does your local govt have to do with the article?
George – Re your question – here is why Canada matters:
In the last recorded year (2018), Canada was the 4th largest oil producer in the world (80% from Alberta) and the largest foreign supplier of oil and energy to the USA.
The USA’s fracking miracle is (temporarily?) stalled because of low oil prices and the invested capital that drove the “shale gale” is suffering very poor returns.
Meanwhile, Canada’s oil is still being produced despite even lower prices, caused by a severe lack of pipeline capacity, driven by foreign-financed extremist groups.
The Alberta oil sands are basically the world’s largest natural oil spill, and we are cleaning it up – at a profit.
Yeah Australia did well during the GFC as well, in large part due to very large and profitable amounts of iron ore,gas and coal despatched to the developing Chinese and India. The Labour Federal treasurer at the time got the credit, (getting international treasurer of the year) although he had nothing to do with it, in fact he didn’t even like mining, just a politician in the right place at the right time.
Jamie Davis towing left Alberta because of financial crisis in Alberta:
https://calgaryherald.com/entertainment/television/season-5-of-highway-thru-hell-has-jamie-davis-and-his-crew-dealing-with-a-different-type-of-crash-albertas-economy
https://www.google.com/search?q=jamie+davis+towing+left+alberta+because+of+financial+crisis&oq=Jamie+Davis+towing+left+Alberta+because+of+financial+&aqs=chrome.
Well, according to the Gistemp figures, it was a bit warmer lately, care to comment, your highness?
Weather
Turned out nice again.
Yes, but given the “common wisdom” why isn’t it a lot warmer, all the time? CO2 levels seem to have increased in a steady fashion.
The trend is not consistent with the theory and models- the hypothesis must be rejected and a better one proposed.
According to actual thermometers, GISTEMP is completely full of crap.
So there is that.
I have been waiting for 30 years to be able to grow plants even half a zone warmer, and for the planting date to move to the middle rather than the end of May. Despite what Giss says, no luck yet. So far, this year is running low end of ‘average’.
Perhaps Francois coould actually look out his window rather than believing what he hears.
Bring that warming to western WI please and melt all this crappy snow.
“… have achieved precisely nothing.”
Would the imprecise “+/-” on that be:
almost nothing/less than nothing?
“very likely nothing”
As long as lukewarmers keep supporting the GHE and consequentially the idea that the atmosphere is heating the oceans iso the other way around, this nonsense will continue unabated.
You can’t beat bad science with worse science.
Nobody is claiming that warmer air directly warms the oceans. As always, the sun warms the ocean. Warmer air slows down how quickly that warmth can leave the oceans.
That CO2 is capable of warming the atmosphere is not a controversial statement, by claiming that it can’t you are merely discrediting yourself and by extension all climate realists.
I was taught in far off days that CO2 is a coolant. Perhaps you could explain by what mechanism it is capable of warming the atmosphere. I think you will the concept is actually very controversial.
Outside the Warmist Cult that is!
Either you were taught wrong, or you aren’t remembering correctly.
CO2 absorbs a photon of energy, then transfers that energy to another molecule of air. It can do this millions of times a second.
N2 and O2 absorb energy from the surface (by direct contact and convection) then transfer that energy to CO2 (eventually), which radiates it to space and helps cooling the atmosphere.
Where were you taught about this “molecule of air”? I would be wanting my money back.
Obviously there is no such thing. Air is a mixture of gases.
Since the largest constituents of air do not absorb IR radiation, the re-emitted IR photon from the CO2 molecule needs to hit another CO2 molecule. CO2 is a trace gas, good luck in hitting that other molecule, needles, haystacks etc.
This whole malarky about CO2 is a extremely small insignificant detail in the giant book of Atmosphere
Ben Wouters , in the troposphere, the collisional relaxation of excited CO2 is much faster than the radiative relaxation.
On the other hand, the atmosphere is dominated by the hydrological cycle and convection. There is no current reason to think the energy CO2 transfers into the atmosphere will appear as sensible heat.
It can well be convected to height as latent heat and radiated off into space following water vapor condensation into clouds.
That CO2 necessarily warms the atmosphere is a controversial statement.
There is no current evidence that this is happening, or has happened, or even can happen. There is no adequate theory of climate that can validate the idea.
Pat, see my reply to Mark W.:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/02/19/sins-of-emission/#comment-2921113
I’m convinced the deep oceans are hot for the same reason the crust is hot: geothermal heat.
The smaal fluxes only mean that the adjustment to change will take a long time.
Deep ocean are hot?
The truth is the deep oceans, in fact the vast majority of the water column but especially the deepest parts, are frigidly cold…very close to freezing, even in the tropical latitudes.
“The smaal fluxes only mean that the adjustment to change will take a long time.” (sic)
This is rather a head scratcher.
What change are you referring to?
Small fluxes of geothermal heat, relative to the vastness of the ocean, the thermal capacity of water, and the temperature of the water that becomes deep water as well as the volume per unit of time thereof, keeps the deep ocean frigidly cold.
Nicholas McGinley February 21, 2020 at 3:21 am
All depends on your reference as I stated before.
Deep ocean temperature is ~275K, which is 20K WARMER than the Earth would be according the GHE believers (see eg Lacis ea 2010)
More relevant, it is ~80K WARMER than the average lunar surface temperature.
If you want to explain the surface temperatures on Earth, you first need to explain the temperature of the deep oceans. Sun only increases the temperature of the shallow surface layer a bit.
If eg the average surface temperature at some place rises 1K, the entire crust below that place has to adjust to this new situation. The Geothermal Gradient between the mantle and the surface has to increase, with a flux of ~65 mW/m^2 this takes a looong time.
The flux into the oceans is ~100 mW/m^2 and takes ~5000 year to increase the entire column 1K. If cooling at high latitudes changes, the entire Thermohaline circulation has to adjust.
Personally, I think the thermohaline circulation, as described in the usual cartoons, is a figment of someone’s imagination.
The only place where water becomes dense enough to overcome thermal stratification and sink from the top to the bottom is where sea ice is actively forming, adding brine to the surrounding water at the same time it is at the coldest temperature it can be.
I think this is a virtual certainty.
Those thermohaline diagrams show ocean currents in places where no such current exists, and at flow rates over an order of magnitude lower than surface currents which are known to exist and can be measured.
And the way they depict the return flow to the surface is flat out ridiculous.
The most common version of the cartoon shows the cold water flowing from the northern polar region to the southern polar region, then diverting to the Indian Ocean, where this frigidly cold and very dense water, over a very short distance, rises up through some of the hottest and, due to rainfall exceeding precip in that area least salty (and thus least dense) water on the planet and becomes hot Indian Ocean surface water!
If that is not pure malarkey, and obvious pure malarkey, IDK what is.
In fact it is almost for sure that deep water is replaced with new deep water, and it is too dense to rise up as currents anywhere. It just gradually gets lifted off the bottom as new deep water is formed.
There have been some very good discussions and article on the subject of deep water over the years. I can find a few and post links if you would like.
The fact is, the whole concept of the thermohaline flow is just a fiction, almost surely.
A theoretical construct measured nowhere.
TC looks more like this:
https://images.app.goo.gl/xrwsAE7veVmzUTxa6
AABW sinking to the ocean floor, flowing north and slowly warming up and then rising. Eventually returning to Antarctica to surface and release energy to the atmosphere/space.
Balance between warming by geothermal and cooling mostly around Antarctica determines whether the deep oceans warm up or cool down.
Last ~ 85 my they have on average been cooling down.
huls, MarkW said
“Either you were taught wrong, or you aren’t remembering correctly.
CO2 absorbs a photon of energy, then transfers that energy to another molecule of air. It can do this millions of times a second.”
MarkW should have said
“Part” instead of “Molecule”:
“CO2 absorbs a photon of energy, then transfers that energy to another part of air. It can do this millions of times a second.”
when it’s ppm.
– can you live with that.
Minuscule effect. Water vapour is 85%+ of warming effect. See also CFCs.
CO 2 is close to extinction level: 150 ppm.
That CO2’s effect is small compared to water has never been in doubt.
Regardless, small is not the same as nonexistent.
Mark please tell how much energy is required to raise 1 kg of CO2 1 degree K at 1 atm from 299-300K. Without any IR involved and with IR involved.
You’re answering the wrong question Mark. Assuming that 280ppm is the pre-industial level and the rest is anthropogenic, the question becomes “can atmospheric CO2 levels above 280ppm” have a measurable difference on atmospheric warming?”.
……. and that’s before you factor in the 30 – 40,000ppm of water vapor sitting in juxtaposition to most of the ocean’s surface.
Your last sentence is probably correct, but it’s answering the wrong question. Kind of a straw man really, although I know you probably did not intend that.
The answer to your question is yes. The problem is that the warming it does create is too small compared to the natural noise in the system to be discerned.
How do you know then? Since the only way energy is removed from the planet is through radiation, why could a radiative gas not cause an equally non-discernible change in temperature of the opposite sign? ….. or zero?
PS I did say measurable
philincalifornia, because the energy reflected to space may be 50% of the incoming energy from our Sun:
A sunray is directed from the core of the Sun, the gravity center of the Sun, to a distinct point on Earth.
Remember: “climate is a coupled system of nonlinear functions with chaotic behavior” –
– gives erratic, “chaotic”, random meandering of the sunray == incoming energy from the Sun in Earth’s atmosphere :
Random distribution 50/50 Earth’s surface / outer solar Space.
MarkW, you say:
Yes, this is the theory, which ‘originated in a highly speculative guest post in 2006 by Dr Peter Minnett at Real Climate, but there must be serious problems with it, because it has never been published. In over ten years of searching I haven’t seen a paper and no earth scientist I’ve spoken to has seen one.
We don’t care if the atmosphere heats the ocean, but if our emissions alone heat the ocean, it would validate the charges levelled against us by the warmsters, that we are creating a catastrophe.
One obvious problem with the theory is that the ocean sizzles 24 hours a day under 1000 w/m2 of energy from the sun, which creates gargantuan volumes of heat trying to get out of the ocean. It is inconceivable that the puny radiation from the human fraction (5% – 20 ppm?) of atmospheric CO2 can provide more than a gnat’s whisker’s worth of impediment to this tidal wave of rising heat and cannot add significantly to surface warming.
To be clear: the mechanism Dr Minnett describes, whereby a little warmth applied to the cool “thin skin” that almost covers the ocean “slows down” the egress of energy, was not confirmed in the experiment carried out by the New Zealand research vessel Tangaroa in 2004, and has not been described by other scientists.
For further clarity, I specifically accuse the UN’s IPCC, in continuing to promulgate the utterly vague “air-sea fluxes” as a significant cause of sea level rise is lying through its teeth and knowingly, consciously and viciously perpetrating a foul deceit on all humanity.
To be further very clear: if this mechanism proves the perfect dud it obviously is, the accusation that human industry is dangerously raising the sea levels fails and all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about it is futile.
But, if you have a reference, by all means tell us what it is.
Richard Treadgold,
You won’t tell me that experiment carried out by the New Zealand research vessel Tangaroa in 2004, same research vessel Tangaroa was equipped to carry out experiments to follow distinct solar rays behavior in Earth’s Atmosphere – will you.
Small wonder it has not been described by other scientists.
MarkW February 19, 2020 at 7:10 am
The GHE claims that the atmosphere increases the surface temperature from the 255K the sun is providing to ~288K. Since the deep oceans are ~275K, the claim is thus that also the oceans are heated by the atmosphere.
Unies you accept that the deep oceans are so hot for the same reason our crust is hot:
Geothermal Energy, in spite of the fluxes being small.
The sun only slightly increases the temperature of a shallow surface layer, which in tutn warms the atmosphere.
So yes, the atmosphere reduces the energy loss to space, and yes without atmosphere it would de colder on Earth, but NO the atmosphere does not heat the surface and the (deep) oceans.
It is very very cold down deep in the oceans.
Some water there may even be supercooled below the freezing point of water of that salinity:
Nicholas McGinley February 21, 2020 at 3:25 am
Relative to our bodytemperature yes, but ~275K is 20K warmer than the infamous 255K the GHE believers claim the sun is delivering, and ~80K warmer than the average surface temperature of our moon.
Glad you stated infamous 255K because the Greenhouse effect ignores the oceans energy content. The energy stored in the oceans likely bridges most of this gap so it leaves little else after. High water vapor content and ocean stored energy helps prevent temperatures going well below -100C on this planet like compared to the moon. Energy from the sun absorbed into the oceans helps prevents much higher temperatures occurring at the surface during the warmest part of the day.
The oceans warm and cool the atmosphere and the lag in the northern hemisphere is around a year. The oceans in the NH have been cooling for nearly a year, so this will transfer to the atmosphere very soon.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3nh/from:2000/plot/hadcrut4nh/from:2000
The global working age and childbearing population is shrinking, and there is really no end in sight to this process. Net energy consumption will go down as a result, since there won’t really anything such as economic growth as we have known it. Chris Hamilton has a bunch of very good posts on this subject at his Econimica blog.
https://econimica.blogspot.com/
“Since the trend in global temperatures has been generally downward over the past five years, additional outgassing of CO2 from the oceans does not account for the continuing increase in CO2 concentration.”
Please do not assume that the oceans are even close to equilibrium with the air regarding CO2 outgassing or absorbing. As the oceans have many different regions of different temperatures, both processes are happening constantly. However, outgassing is faster than reabsorption and the balance goes in that direct. Historical ice core records of CO2 always show rapid CO2 increases but relatively slow declines.
As long as the oceans are above a certain average temperature, net outgassing will prevail. As only so much CO2 l-laden water is near the surface at any given time, the process is somewhat steady.
The same is true regarding sea level rise and glaciers melting; until the average temperature drops below a certain level, there is a net melting and fairly steady sea level rise.
For that matter, it should be pointed out that we tend to fall into the false assumption that there is some kind of equilibrium overall for CO2. However, there are mineralization forces constantly at work that tend to drive CO2 down, possibly to life-killing concentrations. The Cliffs of Dover represent a massive removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. Looking at the historical CO2 record, we should worry about maintaining sources of CO2 in order to counter these life-threatening processing.
Is it known what the rate of mineralization of CO2 is? Perhaps the rate increases as the quantity of CO2 in the ocean increases?
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that Earth actually has been cooling for the past five years, I’d like to note that any cooling of the oceans will be at a lower rate than the land surface (or the conflated average) because of the difference in specific heat of water compared to other materials. Do we know the ocean temperatures and outgassing rates well enough to confidently say that there has been a decline in either?
Most of the outgassing occurs where cold, CO2-saturated deep-water rises to the surface. A few hundredths of a degree difference in the surface temperatures will probably make an immeasurable difference in the CO2 released when the temperatures are well past the temperatures necessary for release of CO2. As is typical with climatology, our measurements probably aren’t adequate for characterization of the processes.
Good points.
Quoting Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Not just the past “four or five years”, …… but for the past 62 years (1958-2020) the CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa has shown a steady and consistent, ….. continuing and undiminished average yearly rate of increase. (The ocean surface waters are still “warming” from the “cold” of the LIA)
But, but, but, …… if the global average near-surface air temperatures have been generally downward (cooler) over the past five years …….. and the average temperature of the ocean surface waters have been generally upward (warmer) over the past five years, …… then wouldn’t that condition cause an addition al increase in the outgassing of CO2 from the “warmer” water to the “cooler” atmosphere?
It sickens me no end what could be accomplished for the good of mankind and the world in general were we not wasting extraordinary amounts of money and resources on the folly of “Zero carbon”. It has been stated outright by numerous people involved in the “climate industry” that it is about changing economic systems (drastically).
It is very tiresome to watch the endless lies about CO2 and then the inevitable (and easy) counter arguments which always follow the lies spread through MSM.
What if we actually tried to have an adult conversation about things?
Nah, that would never work would it – when so many greedy souls are plotting to get rich from phoney scams and yet others wish to grab all encompassing power over humanity by posing as saviors of the planet.
“Nothing lifts a poor nation faster, more surely and more permanently out of poverty, misery, disease and death than the universal availability of universal, affordable, continuous, base-load, coal-fired electricity.”
Excerpts:
South Africa produces over 250 million tonnes of coal every year. It is estimated that almost 75% of this coal is used domestically. Nearly 80% of the energy needs of South Africa are taken care of by coal and over 90% of the coal consumed on the entire African continent is produced in South Africa. The biggest coal deposits can be found in the Ecca deposits, a vein of the Karoo Supergroup in South Africa.
Botswana has over 200 billion tonnes of coal reserves and the development of the coal industry has become a major priority. Mozambique is also expected to experience a sharp increase in coal production.
Africa’s vast quantities of natural gas, which are particularly large in South Africa and North Africa, have the potential to fundamentally transform the global landscape by uplifting communities…
https://www.miningafrica.net/natural-resources-africa/coal-mining-in-Africa/
My comment:
The fundamental problem with coal fired plants in Africa is available water. The issue should include energy and potable water supply.
Desalination plants in conjunction with clean coal and natural gas generation is logical yet would be coastal.
Depending on the location of aquifers, solar in conjunction with fuel cells could be logical as you get water and energy (as well as heat and noise). Or fuel cells with nat gas input with a green house to consume the co2 exhaust.
The principal problem with developing countries is political.
John McClure – South Africa’s Eskom utility recognized some years ago that water was limiting factor in coal-fired power station development. Accordingly, dry-cooled plants were pioneered, one of which, Matimba Power Station in Limpopo Province, was for a long time the largest dry-cooled station in the world. Matimba is about to eclipsed by the Medupi and Kusile plants, both under construction and with nominal generation output of 4 800 MW each. Unfortunately both power stations have major technical issues resulting from corrupt procurement practices and failure to use the expertise of Eskom engineers with their wealth of experience in building excellent coal-fired plants. This ideological and racist attitude by the South African governing party has damaged the country and its economy irreparably. The bottom line, however, is that it is entirely feasible to build dry-cooled coal-fired power stations in water-scarce countries in Africa. The penalty is that some of the output of the plant is required to power the fans cooling the radiator banks. This is an acceptable cost in return for reliable electricity. I support John McClure’s case for Africa. And yes, politics is the big issue, with African governments intimidated and threatened by the green politics of the west, and the greed of wind turbine manufacturers to offload their products in Africa as the public in Europe becomes increasingly vocal about the utter futility of more and more wind power to ‘fight’ the mythical monster of ‘anthropogenic global warming’.
I usually agree with Lord Monckton, but to claim that the emissions data is in error because the global CO2 is increasing makes no sense. As long as there are emissions greater than the sink, CO2 levels will increase. The only way higher levels of emissions would show up in the CO2 concentration graph would be as an acceleration in the rate of increase. That does show up as a slight upward curve in the concentration graph since 1990, but would not be discernible over just two years, 2018-2019, which was the warmist claim.
Good point. Another thing, that Keeling graph has a couple of numbers backwards on the vertical scale.
–AGF
The emissions were constant (according to reports) for 1990-1994, inclusive. There should have been a change in the slope of the Mauna Loa data. There wasn’t. So, either the emission reports are wrong, or the coupling between man-made emissions and atmospheric CO2 content is wrong. Pick one.
And curiously in the 15 years from 1998 to 2013 when the emissions grew the fastest we experienced “the pause”. WUWT?
Isnt he implying that CO2 increases are therefore not from man-mad emissions ?
Thanks to Lord Monckton and his straight-to-the-point presentations. I hope we humans are able to raise atmospheric CO2 levels to around 1,000 ppm before the next glacial cycle of our current ice age kicks in. How can the AGW crowd justify denying third-world counties the cheapest electricity they can get?
Ron, it’s easy for them because the basis of their belief system is a nihilistic, anti-human view of the Universe. By their religious screed humans are the source of ALL evil in the world; of course they don’t mean themselves or the ruling elite they aspire to, just the common man of whatever color!
It’s as insane as blaming white Europeans for the international slave trade! The slave trade out of Africa started 500 years before the Europeans reached Africa, and continued around the globe for more than one hundred years after all of Europe had outlawed it. The Abolition Movement was a product of European Christian nations who spent thousands of lives and billions of dollars suppressing the slave trade which the globalists have only recently dared to bring back in Africa!
The Progressive religious movement blames humankind for all the problems of the world, little realizing or caring that the survival of Life on Earth depends on Mankind’s continued production of CO2 to PREVENT the Great Die-off! Regardless of the variations in CO2 caused by outgassing and other natural phenomena, calcareous ocean life forms will eventually utilize enough atmospheric CO2 to cause the death of most plant life; what will Vegans eat then? The trend has been obvious for the last 150,000,000 years! Let’s stop killing bees, birds and bats; and, most of all, garden variety human beings!
We should be discussing the interesting weather and geology of Mars and the moons of Jupiter, not committing biocide!
If CO2 emissions stay stagnant (or are at least not growing exponentially) we will soon be able to tell how CO2 sinks actually behave. If they keep absorbing at the given rate, this will deny all the RCP models and their projections.
Essentially there are two basic scenarios.
a) CO2 sinks are (largely) a function of current emissions, since CO2 moves from the “enriched” atmosphere into to the less “full” ocean. However, this would only work temporarilly until the ocean filled up as well.
b) CO2 sinks are a function of elevated atmospheric CO2 levels as the biosphere comsumes more of it due to a “fertilizer effect”. In this case CO2 sinks will be lasting and the whole system will be self-regulating.
As long as both, emissions AND atmospheric concentration go up exponentially, you can not tell the difference with high confidence. But that, it seems, is going to change..
Ocean filled up? Mmmmm. See white cliffs of Dover..
Yes, with CO2. The RCP models treat it simply like a secondary reservoir for CO2 with 2x the size of the atmosphere.
I tend to prefer reality. Models that fail to predict are worthless.
Nothing lifts a poor nation faster, more surely and more permanently out of poverty, misery, disease and death than the universal availability of universal, affordable, continuous, base-load, coal-fired electricity.
Exactly. And if development of fluidized-bed coal plants would have continued, that would be the next-generation of coal-plants that would have largely eliminated the need for scrubbers, catalytic converters & even electrostatic-precipitators (bag-houses would suffice). Like nuclear, development was halted due to the Luddite enviro-commies.
Fluidized-bed coal plants claim to fame is generally their increased efficiency. If you’re still burning high-sulfur coal, a fludized-bed reactor isn’t going to magically remove the sulfur.
Hawkins, teaching moment — I was a PE for a major utility. That’s one of the points of a fluidized-bed (also low excess air & temperature in the bed to greatly reduce NOx formation). You add crushed limestone to the coal — in the burning, levitated bed it reacts w/sulfur to form calcium sulfate (gypsum) which falls out into the bottom-ash collection area along w/most of the ash underneath the bed.
For what it’s worth, that’s what a utility-boiler-manufacturer client was telling me about forty years ago.
beng135;
Counter-teaching moment. Fluidized-beds not quite the panacea you present. Still need both EP’s and bag houses, with higher particulate loading for both, and reduced efficacy for EP’s due to higher ash resistivity.
https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPURL.cgi?Dockey=P100PC8S.TXT
Regarding human CO2 emissions vs atmospheric growth rate, it’s quite the opposite. The emissions have been growing faster than the CO2 growth in the atmosphere – the airborne fraction is declining.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcSKKMLmAqG2Iuo14Py8UmDmLVc_exPRlc4YJ8i6IrAQjajaTa32
There are consensus papers that discuss this growing discrepancy between the emissions and the growth in the atmosphere (declining airborne fraction).
To be clear, I think that the growth in atmospheric CO2 concentration is caused (mostly) by temperature.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1955/normalise/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/derivative/normalise
But what if the ocean isn’t really warming? Few measurements are more direct than antipodal acoustic tomography, from Perth to Bermuda, 1960 vs. 2004:
“Note that these numbers suggest a 41% chance of cooling by a few m °C yr−1, against a 54% chance of warming. Alternatively, this comparison indicates that warming rate has been less than 4.6 m °C yr−1 at 95% confidence.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967063714000041
–AGF
Sorry I dispute
There are plenty of 3rd world countries with so much corruption, internal fighting and external medeling that they could never spend enough on the problem to lift themselves out of the mess. As we have seen you can’t go in to fix the problem because you are seen as invaders, so those countries are destined to be basket cases for years and decades to come regardless what anyone in western democracies do from either left or right.
“There are plenty of 3rd world countries with so much corruption, internal fighting and external medeling that they could never spend enough on the problem to lift themselves out of the mess.”
Not to mention deeply ingrained superstition, which leads to all sorts of atrocities.
Watch for it. Watch for a CO2 decline due to the coronavirus shutting down China’s economy. It should be a noticeable dip, no?
The Mauna Loa graph has a mislabeled right axis: 380-360-400 ppmv.
“Since the trend in global temperatures has been generally downward over the past five years….. ”
???
UAH LT v6 has it’s mean temp anomaly at ~ +0.15C and 2019 at ~ +0.4C
In my book that’s “generally” upward.
Failure to take your start point from the last EN I fear.
If you had said the last 4 years, then you would have been correct.
And no, that is not nitpicking – it merely highlights the speciousness of our Lordship.
Correction
at ~ 0.15C in 2014
Thanks, Christopher. That was an enjoyable read.
Regards,
Bob
Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
“The 11.5
givatonnesgigatonnes of carbon estimated by Friedlingstein et al. is equivalent to 42.2 gigatonnes of CO2.”“givatonnes” ? I give as many tonnes of co2 per year as I can. Mother Nature loves it ! LOL
This is great, no? I can’t wait to see the lefties’ response on Twitter.
https://phys.org/news/2020-01-planet-greener-global.html
Thank you for providing this link.
I downloaded the PDF file of this article with the DOI number provided at the end of the summary.
It will take me a while to read and understand this 14 pages article with a lot of data, figures, etc.
I think everybody should read this article.
Thanks again
Yes, the Earth is greening- but why then do I read at https://skepticalscience.com/Tree-ring-proxies-divergence-problem.htm that “The divergence problem is a physical phenomenon – tree growth has slowed or declined in the last few decades, mostly in high northern latitudes.” As a forester for 47 years, I don’t see any evidence of slowing tree growth- other than for individual trees that are diseased or stands of trees that are overly dense- just some of the factors they seem to not understand, relevant to tree rings.
So, if climate scientists are wrong about that slowdown in tree growth- then their explanation of “the divergence problem” is dead wrong- that they’ve done a terrible job of trying to correlate tree rings with thermometer readings- hence, one of the pillars of their “science” fails? Or not. I dunno- just asking.
The problem, Joseph, is that you’re reading “Skeptical” Science.
The fact is that tree growth (or lack thereof), is due to many factors, usually the most limiting. But you know this, as a forester.
Jeff, I do look at Skeptical Science- just so that when I discuss climate with anyone- they won’t say to me, “but you mostly look at Tony Heller videos”. :-]
So, I look at numerous blogs and web sites and I post comments on most- trying to learn. I do notice it’s a bit warmer here in Massachusetts but I haven’t met anyone yet who is complaining! I love saving money on my heating oil and at the age of 70, I’d rather have it rain more in the winter so I don’t have to shovel as much snow. Why anybody would bitch about a mild warming escapes me. Summers here also seem a bit warmer and drier- but that turns out to be great for logging projects. We used to favor winter logging when the ground would freeze solid. Now it seldom does. But in summer, the ground is often dry enough that it’s easier to log in areas with a high water table- it’s all about adjusting to the minor climate changes. The only negative so far for me is the spread of ticks. I had a nasty case of Lyme + anaplasmosis in 2012. But I’ve learned to avoid tick born diseases by the use of permethrin on my work clothes. Life is a constant adjustment.
My thought is, if climate stopped changing, we’d be in real trouble.
From the first article (2016) “This greening and associated cooling is beneficial,” said Shilong Piao of Peking University, and lead author of the paper. “But reducing carbon emissions is still needed in order to sustain the habitability of our planet.” Huh? Why?
“We know that the emissions data are inaccurate because if they were accurate – and if the link between emissions and concentration were as direct as They tell us it is – then the stabilization of emissions would have been matched by at least some diminution in the rate at which CO2 concentration is accumulating in the atmosphere.”
Err, no ……
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2016/05/23/why-has-a-drop-in-global-co2-emissions-not-caused-co2-levels-in-the-atmosphere-to-stabilize/
“Readers have asked why there has been no stabilization in the measured levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere when reported emissions of CO2 have fallen. Scripps CO2 Group Director Ralph Keeling gave this response:
There’s a pretty simple reason why the recent stabilization in global emissions hasn’t caused CO2 levels to stabilize. The ocean and land sinks for CO2 currently offset only about 50 percent of the emissions. So the equivalent of 50 percent of the emissions is still accumulating in the atmosphere, even with stable emissions. To stabilize CO2 levels would require roughly an immediate roughly 50 percent cut in emissions, at which point the remaining emissions would be fully offset by the sinks, at least for a while.
Eventually, additional emissions cuts would be required because the sinks will slowly lose their efficiency as the land and ocean start to saturate. A permanent stabilization at current levels therefore requires both an immediate 50-percent cut as well as a slow tapering thereafter, eventually approaching zero emissions. The recent stabilization in emissions might be viewed as a very small first step toward the required cuts.
– Robert Monroe
What you quote answers a question not asked. While we may not have seen a flat-lining of atmospheric concentration, if you hit a flat spot in emissions, you should see a change in the slope of the concentration curve. Did we? No.
Mapping produced using data from the CO2 measuring satellite indicates that broad leaf vegetation, especially broad leaf trees. is the primary source of atmospheric C)2 increase.
or did you mean decrease? Trees sequester carbon.
Since the trend in global temperatures has been generally downward over the past five years, additional outgassing of CO2 from the oceans does not account for the continuing increase in CO2 concentration.
Wrong. Outgassing followed the last five years’ temperature spikes as before.
Lord Monckton, please consider the sinks. If for some reason the plankton population of the oceans has been disrupted, either naturally or by pollution, then all bets are off. If the mechanical stirring of wave action is reduced then pull down will likewise diminish.
https://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/peril_oil_pollution.html is out of date but gives an insight into a mechanism where both those sink-reducing scenarios could have happened.
JF
Add the reduced aerosol production of a smoothed ocean surface and light dawns.
Good piece Christopher, far too rationale for some of the scruffy rascals I read hanging around this place ;)…33.3 gigatonnes, yes.
I keep hearing that from those idiots, its always the “30 some odd gigatonnes of carbon in the atmosphere as if they knew what that meant”.
But yet, the quiet sun, the changing global electric circuits, the many cycles within cycles within cycles, the ocean on this water planet, cosmic rays and galactic physics, changing atmospheres on other planets as signs of some galactic influence in the solar system an impeding cold that looks like a return to possible ice age, and this terrible carbon deficit we live in.