Some scientists just keep looking in the wrong places for answers. Here’s Stephan Lewandowsky, professorial fellow of psychology, in The Age trying to answer the most important question in modern science and economics. He refers to ClimateGate and asks if the stunning accusations of serious misconduct are true? Watch the flat out assertion backed by a non-sequiteur:
They are not. Even if we presume that the stolen material is authentic, the notion that climate data is being nefariously withheld is fantastical.
This does not even make sense within the confines of it’s punctuation. Is there a new Natural Law of Thermodynamics that says it’s impossible to withhold data? The data is gone, even Phil Jones, head of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit admits he has withheld it and won’t ever provide it:
“The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.”
We know the emails are real. Phil Jones has said as much. He admits he has withheld data for years, and that he’ll delete it as well if he has too. So it’s not “fantastical” to think that data is being withheld, it’s documented.
Then Lewandowsky claims the “data is freely available”. But that’s not true either according to Phil Jones himself who told Roger Pielke Jnr the original global records were gone:
“Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e., quality controlled and homogenized) data.”
Then Lewandowsky disagrees with himself: “Unfortunately, a small subset of the data is forcibly withheld by governments.” So the data is all available, (except for what isn’t).
I’m only 133 words into his piece, and already I’m losing count of the illogical errors, baseless statements and tautological impossibilities.
The mark of a white-wash, is that it doesn’t use direct quotes (they’re too damning). In an 800 word piece Lewandowsky uses only 4 words from the entire 1000 plus emails. Has he even read the emails he defends?
…what about the infamous use of a “trick” to “hide a decline” in the data? What about the pernicious “fudge factor” in the programming code? Surely those are the smoking guns that close the case against the scientists?
Wait for the reasoning:
No. If scientists fabricated their data, why is the Arctic melting…
We see another flat out assertion, followed by a logical error instead of evidence. Now there’s a new ethical index for scientists called “the Artic Melt”… obviously if the Arctic is melting, then scientists won’t be fabricating their data. Of course.
If there was recently record sea ice in Antarctica, that apparently, has no effect. Who’d have known?
It’s unsettling, to say the least, that someone with a science degree doesn’t understand cause and effect, but this man is a professorial fellow. He gives us a whole litany of the effects of warming, and not only pretends that that is evidence that carbon caused the warming, but that it somehow proves that climate scientists are honest as well.
Glaciers, windspeeds, sea-levels, and death tolls in Darfur are now lie-detectors for scientists. The nonsense and factual errors pile up:
“No, the climate scientists did nothing wrong. They just produced amazingly good science on a shoestring budget for the betterment of humanity”
A shoe-string budget eh? You mean like the $32 billion in funding for climate science shoe strings from the US government over the last 20 years? And it was all for the “betterment of humanity” according to Archbishop Lewandowsky. (How would he know?)
The ClimateGate emails are The Great Scandal of the modern scientific era. Possibly the only thing more shameful than the climate scientists who hide and delete data in order to deceive the world, are the way so many so-called scientists rush to defend the fraud.
Does Lewandowsky really think it’s OK to lose the entire raw data set for global temperatures and try to deliberately delete any other records you might not have “lost”.
“Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise. “ Phil Jones
If The Age were serious about getting the right information for their readers, they would interview the scientists at the centre of the scandal, like Jones, Mann, Briffa, and Trenberth. They would also interview the scientists who’ve been seeking the data, like Steven McIntryre, Warwick Hughes, Pat Michaels or Fred Singer. But what does The Age do? It asks a expert in short term memory to tell us what the emails mean. I wouldn’t mind if Lewandowsky was a bob-cat operator*, but if he’s writing an opinion in The Age, you would think he knew something about what he was talking about.
I challenge The Age to issue a correction
They should publish direct quotes from the most devastating emails. They should interview the scientists on both sides of the debacle, and they should apologize for printing material that was misleading to readers.
Lewandowsky made many statement that were factually incorrect. The global climate models did not predict the recent period of non-warming since 2001. There are hundreds of studies showing it was warmer 1000 years ago, not cooler.
Some climate scientists have got many things wrong, and worse, they’ve committed scientific malpractice. The newspapers who publish incorrect material and don’t retract it or issue corrections, are accomplices.
*Bob-cats. No disrespect intended to people doing real productive work.
Now Jo, be fair. You left this part out:
And:
Seems like good advice. Has anyone actually seen if they can download the AGW data and/or computer codes?
20
Neurotics build castles in the skies. Psychotics live in them. Psychologists collect rent on the castles. This psych seems to be off the mark. It is not uncommon. Psychologists can’t cure people and make their living on creating confusion and counseling confused people.
20
I think you’ve slandered bobcat operators there, Jo. Lewandowsky’s comments read like the work of someone who needs Mummy to tie his shoelaces, forget about operating machinery!
10
I’m with Gregoryno6. Just don’t be so hard on bobcat operators. Some of them may have chosen that career as a lifestyle choice.
10
Honest investigative journalism may be dead in the Pravda on the Yarra.
However there is still some hope – see link below to The Daily Mail in the UK, which has the largest circulation. This is a very good explanation of one aspect of the climategate emails and shows why they are so significant – the very foundations of climate change science are based on fraudulent manipulation of data.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1235395/SPECIAL-INVESTIGATION-Climate-change-emails-row-deepens–Russians-admit-DID-send-them.html
10
Hahahaha… Royal flush.
The cover up is getting to be even more pathetic than some climate scientists perspectives on ethical behavior.
Now that :
1) The Politicians can’t refute climategate without offending their voters, and,
2) Clive Goebbels can’t get the kids to turn on their parents to get them to buy into AGW, and
3) The PR people have failed to spin the story offtrack
The Lamestream is now resorting to getting a psych to construct an article worded in such a way as to push their case?
I am at a stretch to consider what they could possibly try to do next other than their jobs as journalists.
What is next? I’m serious here, what could they possibly try to do next? I am getting really intrigued now. This is interesting.
10
A story from the NY Times:
OR
Just food for thought.
10
Lewandowsky probably thinks soviet style ‘re-education facilities’ aka brainwashing institutions, are a good idea.
Here is a link to his presentation at the UWA.
http://events.uwa.edu.au/event/20091207T070318Z-790-29026@events.uwa.edu.au/whatson/publicaffairs
http://tinyurl.com/yc9ja7o
What the hell is the “science of skepticism & denial” ?
I thought science had to do with empirical evidence and the rigorous testing of theories ?
Aqua Fyre
10
Do you have the equivalent of our Kiwi “Press Council ” ?
“…It is important to the Council that the distinction between fact, and conjecture, opinions or comment be maintained. This Principle does not interfere with rigorous analysis, of which there is an increasing need. It is the hallmark of good journalism….”
http://www.presscouncil.org.nz/principles.html
Good journalism ?
10
Persistent Echo:
What Jones was doing was not “making a prettier picture out of his data”. He could have bolded it or coloured it to make it “prettier”.
What he did was combine parts of 2 entirely separate data sets to obscure what the graphing of just one data set(tree-ring data set) would show. The result was the opposite of what the true position was. This was designed to mislead users into believing that the data showed a rising temperature when in fact the data showed a decline.
That is fraudulent by any definition.
There is then a reference to having charts reflect the underlying data. In the case of the CRU there is no access to the raw underlying data from which the conclusions have been derived. The BMO has stated that it will take years to reconstruct the original data set which has been “quality adjusted and homogenised”.
This is no a fantastic leap to say that the final nail has been put in the coffin of AGW. As it now stands, without the original temperature data, these clowns cannot replicate their findings and it is their findings that is the basis for the IPCC reports. These charlatans are the lead authors of those reports. Until such time as their findings can be independently replicated they have as much currency as the musings of the local bobcat operator.
As vast amounts of taxpayers money has been given to these people nothing short of a Royal Commission should be instituted to investigate their activities.
10
As an ancient weatherman, we referred to any “reported” values or sets-of-same as data, and the stuff that was derived from this “data,” was called “product.” Very simple, and all the folks we dealt with understood the difference.
My question is, if I go to NASA and download “information” (for want of a better word at the moment), is it “data” or “product”? Or maybe it is a mixture. But could I tell the difference? And if so, how?
10
So,
OK, enough of this “they never change the data” BS. They did, they know it and we know it, thanks to the heroic efforts of a humble hacker or diligently ethical saint inside the CRU.
For anyone who continues to scramble and say Phil + Co didn’t fudge the data, I say the following:
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,- 0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
10
am ortiser:
I am with you in the first part of your riposte; it makes good sense. I’m not sure how you know this, but I will take it on faith that you did some honest research since you are so detailed. You appear to have an objective understanding of this part of the scenario and I agree, to an extent, that should these charges be *proven* (and only when proven beyond a shadow of a doubt) then Jones deserves to lose his job and perhaps be banned from any public monies for research. I’m not saying I am convinced of any of this personally – still, I respect your observation at this point.
But then you step it up a notch and go for the exaggeration:
I have to disagree for two reasons:
A) there is still a massive amount of information, observation, data, climate models, etc. etc. out there – one researcher at one institution does not bring down an entire discipline no matter how egregious the error or deception (otherwise we would not have to stop taking pharmaceuticals, using pesticides and petroleum products etc. etc.); there simply is not enough in the so-called “Climategate” emails to prove anything of any real substance (see above about the 2 articles in question actually making it into the IPCC report – anyone checked on that? – not to mention that both observers in the quotes above actually make convincing cases of their own) and…
B) Objectively you are wrong. Obama met with the Chinese President just last month. Copenhagen Climate Summit is ongoing as I type. Hansen and all his ilk are still in business. etc. etc. Climategate made a little splash in the media but people have other things to worry about. And the Climategate material is pretty boring really – made up of hum-drum day-to-day communiques. The best that the hackers could come up with was a decade old email and a small amount of data that *may* have been compromised.
10
Dunno. Why don’t you go to NASA and see if you can download the information? Pretty simple, no?
Is an “ancient weatherman” like the “Ancient Mariner”?
10
Absolutely not — I’m a lot saltier! The point I was attempting to make is that it is difficult to make any valid conclusions without knowing the provenance of the information. Perhaps that is why it was omitted.
10
Unless they have changed the generally accepted meaning of BA, Lewondowsky does not have a science degree. Psychology is an arts discipline, whereas psychiatry is a speciality of medicine, which is generally considered to be a science discipline. One of the key divisions between Psychology and Psychiatry. Note: his bio is confused by the fact that after he lists his Bachelor of Arts (BA) he notes the institution he got it from, which is in Maryland (abbreviation MD), he doesn’t have a medical degree that I can tell.
For Lewondowsky’s bio see here.
Cheers, your friendly neighbourhood medical student.
10
The Climategate emails are the smallest part of the story. As one person here noted, the computer program source code is the big story:
“valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,- 0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor”
is from the source code. What this means is that instead of analyzing real data, raw temperature readings, they are plugging in made-up values to produce the ‘model’ results.
This is why they have refused to release their data and their source code for other people to verify their models – because the computer programs were and are fraudulent.
Even if all 1000+ emails did not exist, the source code convicts them of perpetrating a hoax.
Not errors in computation, not unintentional data handling mistakes, but intentional fraud.
The shame of this all, is not only that other scientists allowed them to get away with hiding their data and models, but that science journalists did so.
Bleating that “everyone believes the consensus” is just making the problem worse. Many of us thought the AGW crowd was mistaken, but few of us really thought they were boldfaced, unrepentant liars without an ounce of professional responsibility. Silly us.
At this point in time, AGW is a myth, not science. It is snake oil.
If you want to believe in AGW, the tooth fairy, and the Easter Bunny, go ahead. They all have the same level of scientific rigor.
And the sad thing is they are even doctoring – ahem, calibrating – the satellite readings to match this sewage.
10
A Hyperbole too far?
At Copenhagen Gore claims North Pole ice will be gone in just 5 years
– but press does not Believe him!
In other news RecordSnow falls blanket much of America.
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A lobotomy is indicated where wild hallucinations and blabbering are present…
10
Time for another random thought experiment. Imagine a “balloon” filled with air, the balloon is a spherical membrane completely transparent to infrared radiation at 4.3 microns (one of the absorption peaks for CO2, Sodium Chloride windows are transparent to IR as it turns out.)Then you illuminate the “balloon” with infrared radiation at 4.3 microns.
What happens then? Glad you asked….A CO2 molecule inside the balloon will absorb an IR photon, become vibrationally excited, undergo molecular collisions, gain a small amount energy in collisions, lose a small amount of energy in collisions, and then emit an IR photon almost identical to the one it absorbed, it’s a very small peturbation based on how much vibrational energy was gained from, or lost as translational energy during the collisions for this particular CO2 molecule we have been so intently following.
As it turns out, the vibrational energy is much larger than the energy involved in collisions, so it’s quite hard for the collisions to affect vibration even if they could interact directly.
On average though, over many molecules, many absorption/emission cycles and many collisions the amount of translational kinetic energy stays the same, and the amount of energy present as radiation stays the same. The radiation does get a litte ‘messier’ (spectral broadening) but it’s never undergoes wholesale conversion into translational kinetic energy.
PHEW! So the average translational energy of the molecules in the gas stays the same, even when we illuminate it with infrared radiation. That’s important because average translational kinetic energy is what we’re defining when we talk about the temperature of a gas, particularly in the real world. Vibrational energy is a temporary form of internal energy that isn’t really relevant when we talk about the macroscopic properties of a gas like Temperature, Pressure and Volume; those qualities are very specifically derived from average translational kinetic energy of the molecules in the gas.
SO, if we illuminate our “baloon” with infrared radiation at 4.3 microns, we would expect any increase in the temperature of the air inside to manifest itself as an increase in pressure, which we could measure as a change in the volume of the balloon. So, can the balloon expand by illuminating it with infrared at 4.3 microns? Based on what I’ve read and understand, I can’t see how.
Fun stuff, anyone got some extra insight to offer?
10
Excellent article Jo. Not that anyone had to be much of a brains trust to pick holes in Stephan Lewandowsky’s scribbled drivelings.
…. and yes, it will be interesting to see if the AGE will correct this rotten piece of misinformation that Lewandowsky has stuck them with….. Though I won’t be holding my breath.
10
Logical errors and misunderstanding of cause and effect…what else would you expect from the profession that gave us false memory syndrome?
10
Energizer Bunny: #13
Two comments:
Firstly …
“there is still a massive amount of information, observation, data, climate models, etc. etc. out there”
Well yes, and no. In ClimateScienceLand all of the definitive data is copied across three institutions, one of which is the CRU.
One of the underlying threads that emerges from reading the “gossip” in the emails is that all of these institutions were working collectively to agree on the appropriate “adjustments” for various sites IN ALL OF THE DATA SETS. This is why Phil Jones, who we strongly believe was fudging the data at CRU, can say, “The data is fine, you only need to check it with the other data sets”.
In their defense, The Team always had a valid reason for “adjusting” each value, it is just that their “adjustments” always seemed to produce an increase in values, rather than a decrease, quite coincidentally, of course.
And …
“Copenhagen Climate Summit is ongoing as I type.”
Yes, it has tremendous momentum. Perhaps enough to take it to the next conference or even beyond. But the grains of sand are now in the gearbox, and the engine will eventually stall. It will not be dramatic, and the whole issue may be subsumed by “The Next Big Disaster”, but AGW will die.
10
During a recent overseas trip of mine, a highly placed source provided me with a translation of the confidential government position of a significant developing nation with respect to the Copenhagen conference negotiations:
– We don’t really believe in the stuff you’re peddling about catastrophic climate change and, to the extent that we do, we’re ambivalent about whether any consequences will be good or bad for us;
– Therefore we intend to do absolutely nothing to counter the threats you claim to have identified;
– However we will capture the moral high ground by making a virtue out of reality (a reduction in “carbon intensity” that was already going to happen) and by appearing to agree to commitments that we will later ignore or weasel out of;
– If the West wishes to indulge in a bout of self flagellation involving transfers of large swathes of its wealth in ways that history shows will see most of it squandered, stolen or largely ineffective, we will gladly support your position;
– We will then continue to pressure you by pointing to your inevitable failure to achieve what you needlessly committed to, while continuing to support ever-larger claims on your purse;
– Meanwhile we will fall about laughing and carry right along with what we always intended.
The only thing worse than an unsuccessful outcome to the Copenhagen circus would be a successful one….
Cheers,
Nick
10
Brad Jensen #17
“What this means is that instead of analyzing real data, raw temperature readings, they are plugging in made-up values to produce the ‘model’ results”
Firstly, my credentials: my second career was as a Scientific Programmer – I used to write this stuff in a R&D lab of a telecommunications company.
To understand the computer models, you need to understand the difference between scientific programming and regular commercial programming.
Commercial programming is all about tracking business activity, and the financial results thereof. Accuracy is paramount, and once a program has been shown to work correctly, and perhaps even audited, it is not touched unless the business need changes, and only then under strict controls.
Scientific programming is not like that. The purpose of a computer model is to try to mathematically duplicate what is observed in the real world. They are never finished, because they are never 100% accurate, and that is the point of models.
What you are supposed to do, is run the model against the observed raw data, to see how the output varies from reality. It never works, but what it identifies are areas where your knowledge is incomplete. So you do some more research to improve your understanding, change the model accordingly, and have another go. And you keep doing this until you can’t find anything else to learn about. And at that point, you throw the model away!
There are a number of problems with the climate change models (CCM), and they way they were used.
Firstly, the main purpose of the model is to identify further areas for research. To put in a fudge factor to “make the model work” is actually the first step in that process. “Oh look, if I change this array to these values, I get a better fit with the observations. What happens in the real world that might create these values?”
The problem with the CCM is that they never did the research required for the second step, or if they did, they never went back to replace the fudge factors (which are constant values) with program code that was independent of the data values.
Secondly, and more importantly, it is dangerous to use models with multiple independent variables for predictive purposes. Why? Because the system you are attempting to model becomes chaotic; there are always small inaccuracies or small unknowns in the data or the code.
Thirdly, in addition to changing the CCM, they started “adjusting” the data independent of the model. This is really not a terribly bright idea, because you never know how the model will react when it is given a different set of data.
In summary, the fudge factor is probably not the smoking gun that everybody assumes it is. It is the way that the modeling system is used by the scientists that is – how shall I put it – good for the growth of your roses.
By way of interest, the following is taken from “The Chaos Experience” at http://library.thinkquest.org/3120/
“The first true experimenter in chaos was a meteorologist, named Edward Lorenz. In 1960, he was working on the problem of weather prediction. He had a computer set up, with a set of twelve equations to model the weather. It didn’t predict the weather itself. however this computer program did theoretically predict what the weather might be.”
10
I might not share you certainty about this, but I think it is certainly a possibility. This seems to be human nature. But it is also human nature to deny catastrophe until it is too late or until we are faced with calamity. But this –
I’m sorry, but my B.S. meter is in the red…
10
It’s not the first time that psychologists have confidently waded into this debate and out of their depth.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/4953981/Climate-denial-is-know-a-mental-disorder.html
I did have a link to the actaul wwekend seminar but I can’t find it just now. I’m also too old to work out this linking stuff.
Sorry about both.
10
It’s not the first time that psychologists have waded into this debate and out of their depth.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/4953981/Climate-denial-is-know-a-mental-disorder.html
I did have a link to the actual weekend seminar but can’t find it just now.
I’m also too old to do that linking stuff.
Sorry about both.
10
Perhaps while we’re uncovering the fraudulent activities of the AGW scientists, it might be timely to have a look at some of the groups operating behind the scenes. The string-pullers and policy makers.
A good place to start would be “The Club of Rome” the environmental think tank responsible for most of the UN policies for the last 35 years.
The list of club members reads like a “Who’s Who” of UN officials and world leaders past and present, but their agenda is the real issue here.
They are mostly concerned with “a new world order” with a new Global Government, and they are using the threat of Global Warming to bring it about.
Here are a few quotes from our would-be world governors:
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
– Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
– Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
“We need to get some broad based support to capture the public’s imagination……So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts….Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest”
– Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports.
“Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.”
– Sir John Houghton, first chairman of the IPCC
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony, climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
– Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
And a quote from The Club of Rome 1991 book, “The First Global Revolution”
“In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill.”
Al Gore is a member of the club, along with Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, David Rockefeller and Mikhail Gorbachev.
There are some very interesting insights into the group and their agenda at:
http://www.green-agenda.com/globalrevolution.html
and
http://climategate.tv/?tag=club-of-rome
By nature I am not of the “conspiracy theory” type, but this all looks very suspicious to me.
P.S. I am not related to Energiser Bunny, I’m a plain old dumb bunny.
10
Just to show how confused I can get I did the 1st and clicked preview and got confused and didn’t realise it had been sent and did it again.
Sorry about that.
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Rereke Whaakaro,
I have developed instrumentation, process control, scientific, and engineering software for over 40 years.
Your description of simulation development and use misses only one issue: accumulation of computational error within iterative and recursive calculations. Run a simulation too long and it goes off the tracks for that reason alone. It doesn’t even take chaos for that to happen. This is the basic insurmountable problem for climate simulation. Even if all the correct process were programmed correctly and every feature of the climate system were represented, rounding error would still cause it to fail eventually. The smaller the grid size the faster it will fail. That the weather system is chaotic and necessitates the integration of non-linear differential equations with in the simulation only compounds the problem. Ultimate failure is assured. The only question is when will the failure occur.
10
Events are unfolding in the USA: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/14/doe-sends-a-litigation-hold-notice-regarding-cru-to-employees-asking-to-preserve-documents/#more-14177
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Lionel,
Agreed. Range and Precision, range and precision… still drummed into me after all these years.
Consider this. Basically, if there is < 1% probability of any risk eventuating and you have thousands of risks all with less than 1% probability of happening, it's a sure thing that at least one of the risks will eventuate. This is the the big problem with any large/complex engineering endeavor. I have seen this sort of thing occur on monumentally large SW engineering endeavors.
Now when modelling the climate, their are so many variables and inputs with so many interfaces (Known, known and assumed), that the chances of something going awry becomes much more likely than say modelling a snail race (for lack of a better example).
That's my 2c worth.
10
Looks like David Davis will be plotting to overthrow David Cameron sooner than we think!
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/146139/100-reasons-why-global-warming-is-natural
10
A weather event in Aus that you won`t hear about in Aus.
link on date????
10
try agai…….cold day in hell or a hot day in heaven?
10
Jo: Interesting: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/carbon-account-trick-a-rip-off/story-e6frg6zo-1225810351688
As far as I’m aware, Australias coal exports also count toward Australias CGC emissions (not the country where its burned). Be interested if you can find out if this is the case.
10
Here is a great video of Lord Monckton interviewing a Greenpeace activist on the street in Copenhagen. This has really touched me.
Monckton certainly has the communication skills to make him a great ambassador for rationalism. Apart from the tendency to arrogance, notice how he treats the woman with respect, and sticks to the issues.
But for me the most powerful aspect is that the woman is so endearingly sincere, motivated by a genuine caring for the environment, obviously has no idea that there is another side to the story, never exposed to the factual information, and tentatively happy at the thought that some of what Monckton is telling her might be true. There must be millions of people like her out there, the victims of incorrect information.
It is a poignant moment, however, when Monckton asks her whether she would feel that she had been misled by Greenpeace if she discovered that the facts Monckton gave her were true, and she says ‘No’.
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Former Media Mogul
Conrad Black onCopenhagen
10
Well Mike W #20, seen as you brought up balloons, heres a thought.
A hot air balloon. It should be called a hot CO2 balloon because it is essentially “inflated” by CO2 from burning LPG gas. As the exhaust fills the balloons cavity, cool air is forced out of the opening. The balloon rises. Once you run out of fuel, you can no longer heat (or fill with exhaust) the cavity.
At the higher altitudes, the exhaust cools and so the balloon gradually descends. If you wish to descend faster, you open a flap at the top of the balloon.
This is exactly how CO2 in the atmosphere behaves. It rises as it warms, reaches a cool altitude, then descends again to start the whole cycle over. Hence there can NEVER be a “greenhouse” effect. If there were to be one, there would have to be a “blanket” of warm CO2 somewhere in the troposphere, a hot spot if you will. The IPCC thinks there should be one, but no one can find it. Because it can NEVER exist, it would have to defy the laws of thermodynamics.
And if there is NO BLANKET, then there is NO GREENHOUSE, no glass ceiling if you will.
10
Steve #37
Yes I saw that as well Steve. But I was quite angry at that woman. You see, her kind are the most dangerous. The ignorant lazy lemmings who provide the oxygen to the fraudsters, the extremists, all the while comfortable in their thoughts of “helping” the planet. How arrogant AND ignorant to think she can “help” the planet.
She’d be better to spend her energies and resources helping the misfortunate, the helpless. They’re the ones who need help, not the planet.
Arrogant dumb so and so she was. sheeeshh
10
Climate Change will be “Debated” on youtube in about an hour in front of a “Mass” audience. Thankfully most greenies are very skilled at “mass-debating”.
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Lionell Griffith: #31
“Your description of simulation development and use misses only one issue: accumulation of computational error within iterative and recursive calculations.”
I didn’t mention precision errors, because they are common to most engineering problems, not just research models. But you are absolutely correct, and in hindsight perhaps I should have included a mention.
As an aside, I once modeled the wind loadings on a series of microwave towers to ten decimal places in an attempt to avoid this problem. When we presented the results to the Design Engineers, they arbitrarily added 40% to our calculations, “just to be sure”.
Structural Engineers are fairly pragmatic people. I wonder what proportion of them support AGW?
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@ Baa Humbug, I’m mixing it with the bigboys on physicsforums, lol. Essentially I’m trying to understand whether you can increase the “Temperature” and the Pressure of a gas with infrared radiation, certainly you can change the specific heat, but that’s quite different to Temperature, Pressure and Volume.
If (big if) radiation is ineffective at that, it begs the question, how does one raise the temperature of the atmosphere, the remaining options are, conduction, convection, latent heat, adiabatic cooling and heating. Just seeing where the physics takes me.
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Met Bureau
ClimateSimulator (courtesy Guardian)
The Guardian now has a Met Bureau interactive Copenhagen global climate simulator.
You specify the year emissions peak, and the percent reduction per year, it gives you the resulting temperature.
Oh Goody. Can you tell us the equations and model assumptions then ? Um, NO.
Isn’t this the same Met Office that recently announced that it would be reviewing its 160 year temperature record as a result of concerns raised about its accuracy and integrity? Hmmm.
The model has a curious built in uncertainty principle. For instance, if you pick a peak year of 2020 and s decrease in emissions of 5% per annum, the climate model predicts that the temperature might actually be the same in 2050 as if you did nothing to reduce emissions.
No way to know if your painful reductions in emissions were making any difference, then. The future of the [virtual] planet may depend on it.
Also no matter what options you choose, the model says it is still possible to exceed the magic 2 degrees C.
Seems like you are damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
I’m confident if the Met Bureau would just give us the code, we could change the assumptions and get a much better climate outcome!
We should demand the code to be open-sourced. The future of the [virtual] planet may depend upon it.
The future climate of the real earth will do whatever it was going to do anyway.
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Our professorial fellow no doubt feels that Eric the Red – in the pay of Big Blubber – staged the settlement of Greenland on an MGM back-lot. Maybe the same one they used for the moon landing.
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Rereke Whaakaro @42
Pretty standard thing in all engineering calculations. Add a safety factor. Safety factors are what keeps engineers (and their clients) out of court for a nasty little thing known as “negligence”.
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Hi MikeW. Sorry if there was a misunderstanding, I wasn’t having a go at your random thought. I was just taking a different spin on the balloon. 🙂
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********THE GREEN POLICE*********
Who says it couldn’t happen??
Check out this article by Justin the founder of I Love CO2.
http://ilovecarbondioxide.com/
Then come back here and sing this with me, a modified “Cheap Trick” song.
“The green police
They live inside of my head
The green police
They come to me in my bed
The green police
They’re coming to arrest me
Oh no
‘Cause they’re waiting for me
Looking for me
Every single night
They’re driving me insane
Those green men inside my brain”
I dunno whether to laugh or cry.
Sad days indeed.
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OT
Just watched the debate between Plimer and Monbiot on Lateline. Plimer has obviously made some gaffes in his book that were exploited ruthlessly by Snow and Monbiot (quite rightly). Plimer was evasive and very disappointing! Normally I’m used to seeing skeptics wipe the floor with AGW proponets, but it did’nt happen on this occasion.
Anyone else see it?
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Yeah Jac, I was devastated. Instead of a debate on Global Warming, it was a tandem attack by 2 journalists on a fool as it turned out. Big set back.
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Plimer Monbiot debate
The Journalists obviously had been informed that Plimer is thin-skinned if you attack his credibility on weak or controversial points.
The first issue that the journalists tried to crucify Plimers credibility on – the relative importance of volcanoes and human emissions – is a total non-sequiteur in the Global Warming debate. Whatever role you believe volcanoes may play in producing CO2 is surely irrelevant, this makes absolutely no difference to the key question of whether reductions in human caused emissions will have any impact on the climate.
This is not to say that Plimer is wrong here, but Plimer would have been far better advised to have immediately conceded the point that not everyone agrees with him on the relative importance of volcanoes and said that more research is needed.
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Jo,
You posted an excerpt from an email from Phil Jones, “Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise. “ Phil Jones. I think Mann’s reply to the email was damning as was the entire sequence of emails and replies.
From: Phil Jones To: “Michael E. Mann” , “raymond s. bradley” Subject: A couple of things Date: Fri May 9 09:53:41 2008 Cc: “Caspar Ammann” Mike, Ray, Caspar, …… 2. You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but this is the person who is putting in FOI requests for all emails Keith and Tim have written and received re Ch 6 of AR4. We think we’ve found a way around this. ……………………………………………… From: Phil Jones To: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk,”Palmer Dave Mr \(LIB\)” Subject: Re: FW: Your Ref: FOI_08-23 – IPCC, 2007 WGI Chapter 6 Assessment Process [FOI_08-23] Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 17:13:35 +0100 Cc: “Briffa Keith Prof \” , “Mcgarvie Michael Mr \” Dave, Although requests (1) and (2) are for the IPCC, so irrelevant to UEA, Keith (or you Dave) could say that for (1) Keith didn’t get any additional comments in the drafts other than those supplied by IPCC. On (2) Keith should say that he didn’t get any papers through the IPCC process.either. I was doing a different chapter from Keith and I didn’t get any. What we did get were papers sent to us directly – so not through IPCC, asking us to refer to them in the IPCC chapters. If only Holland knew how the process really worked!! Every faculty member in ENV and all the post docs and most PhDs do, but seemingly not Holland. So the answers to both (1) and (2) should be directed to IPCC, but Keith should say that he didn’t get anything extra that wasn’t in the IPCC comments. As for (3) Tim has asked Caspar, but Caspar is one of the worse responders to emails known. I doubt either he emailed Keith or Keith emailed him related to IPCC. I think this will be quite easy to respond to once Keith is back. From looking at these questions and the Climate Audit web site, this all relates to two papers in the journal Climatic Change. I know how Keith and Tim got access to these papers and it was nothing to do with IPCC. Cheers Phil ……………………………………………. From: Phil Jones To: “Michael E. Mann” Subject: IPCC & FOI Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008 Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise. I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!! Cheers Phil Prof. Phil Jones ………… From: Michael Mann To: Phil Jones Subject: Re: IPCC & FOI Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 08:12:02 -0400 Reply-to: mann@psu.edu Hi Phil, laughable that CA would claim to have discovered the problem. They would have run off to the Wall Street Journal for an exclusive were that to have been true. I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@yahoo.com talk to you later, mike
It is obvious that Mann is involved in the deletion of emails and participating in the conspiracy by forwarding Gene Wahl’s email address. Mr. Mann recently said that he did not delete any emails, his reply to Jones, taken in context with the other related emails and replies is solid enough evidence for a Grand Jury to hand up an indictment. As I have stated in previous responses to some of Jo’s other posts, the government is going to “squeeze from the bottom up” or in other words to put pressure on some of the smaller conspirators to roll over and testify against conspirators further up the food chain. Well, the Department of Energy in the United States sent every employee a “Litigation Hold Notice” asking employees to refrain from deleting any thing (documents, drafts, notes, etc.) The White House website lists the number of employees at” 16,100 Federal and 100,000 contract”. All of the federal ones got the email but I do not know if or how many contract employees, if any, received the notice. For an interesting article see:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/14/doe-sends-a-litigation-hold-notice-regarding-cru-to-employees-asking-to-preserve-documents/
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Baa,
No. CO2, like water vapor, O3, CH4 and other trace gases do have a ‘greenhouse’ like influence. It was a bad idea to even call this the ‘greenhouse effect’, because a greenhouse is a broadband heat retention system, while GHG’s exhibit a narrow band effect. In total, GHG’s absorb about half of the surface energy, meaning that the other half escapes. Relative to a greenhouse, it would be like half of the glass panels were missing.
There is also a widespread misconception about what the greenhouse effect really is. Even in a real greenhouse, the action is to delay the escape of heat not to increase the amount of heat that needs to escape.
George
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George (#53)…
Thank you. Yes, the “Greenhouse Effect” describes the processes that result in the temperature of the Earth being warmer than it would be in the absence of an atmosphere. Whether or not it is a good name for this phenomenon, that’s what it means. I am disturbed at the increasing tendency for people to find it necessary to spuriously claim that it does not exist.
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Steve,
I am disturbed when people insist on using terms that contain meanings totally opposite to each other. The purpose is to cloud one of the meanings and to make it more easy to substitute the contradictory meaning. Greenhouse Effect is one such term. An actual greenhouse does trap heat. There is NOTHING in the free atmosphere that traps heat. Yet by calling CO2 a greenhouse gas you imply that it traps heat. This is a major part of the AGW fraud. It is falsely accepted by the semantically careless as perfectly reasonable because don’t greenhouses trap heat?
Words are tools of thought FIRST and communication second. If your words are ambiguous and self contradictory, your thinking is going to be seriously flawed. Once that happens, what is it that you have to communicate? Meaningless mental mush.
So yes, I am not only disturbed, I am outraged at the general acceptance of the corruption of language. See the novel 1984 for a rather under spoken depiction of its effects.
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Steve,
When spurious claims come from one side of a politicized issue, some on the other side are driven to make equally spurious claims. I suspect that those who claim that the GH effect is not real do so because they have bought in to enough of the AGW propaganda that they believe if the GH effect is real, than the AGW’ers are right, yet for political reasons, they think the AGW’ers are wrong.
With so many believing in AGW for political reasons while spouting nonsense ‘science’, I’m surprised that there aren’t a whole lot more on the AGW skeptic side doing the same.
George
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Lionell,
No, the meanings are not totally opposite.
No, this is not my purpose at all, and I resent you trying to imply such.
No, it is not.
Lionell, you are jumping at shadows. You are dreaming. WAKE UP!
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steve,
1. Show how CO2 traps heat in the free atmosphere.
By the second law of thermodynamics, CO2 cannot trap heat in the free atmosphere. As soon as a CO2 molecule gains energy, it starts dumping the excess to its cooler environment and or convects upward. So to show CO2 traps heat, you are going to have to invalidate the second law of thermodynamics. Good luck.
2. Show how that mechanism is IDENTICAL to the primary mechanism by which an actual greenhouse traps heat.
The primary mechanism of trapping heat in an actual greenhouse is prevention of convection with the free atmosphere. There is no capability within the free atmosphere to prevent convection. However, that is exactly what you must show. Good luck.
Who is dreaming and who needs to wake up?
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[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by John Leal, Bill Giltner. Bill Giltner said: Confused? You might BE a psychologist « JoNova http://ff.im/-cWYtf […]
10
GREENHOUSE
Firstly I will not use words such as “spuriously claim” in order to have a civil, friendly yet rigorous debate.
1-) The Propaganda
I agree with Lionel, words are bullets. The AGW proponents use the term “greenhouse” because most people understand what a greenhouse does, (traps heat) some have even experienced it by being in one.
Even analogies such as “a blanket on the planet” has been used. Both are wrong and highly misleading as both convey the instant and inarguable message that heat is being trapped and so there must be AGW.
2-) The Reality
The purpose of a greenhouse is firstly to TRAP air, to stop it’s natural inclination to rise and hence to stop convection. Once convection is stopped, temperature rises.
The earth is CONNECTED to space (background radiation -273K) via the atmosphere, there is NOTHING that stops the atmospheres gasses (including CO2) from rising and so there is NOTHING that stops convection.
The term “trap” is misleading when applied to the atmosphere, (though correct when applied to a greenhouse). The correct term is “ABSORB.”
A greenhouse has the function of “warming” due to trapping of air, it does not have the function of cooling.
However in our open atmosphere, expanding (rising) warm gasses meet descending cool gasses, heat is exchanged, the warm gasses cool and descend back towards the surface. This is a simple way of explaining the “TEMPERATURE REGULATION” of the planet. So these gasses have the twin function of warming AND cooling, regulating if you will.
An example. The surface temperatures of Mars and our Moon where there is little or no atmosphere, not only do they freeze at “night”, they boil during “day”
If there was a greenhouse effect, then by their very nature, ALL gasses in the atmosphere should be called greenhouse gasses because they ALL absorb heat (otherwise they wouldn’t be gasses).
And so I refer back to my analogy of a hot air balloon, if CO2 (exhaust of burning LPG) could TRAP heat, a hot air balloon could stay afloat for a lot longer than one hour or so after fuel has been depleted.
One further food for thought.
The day somebody can find or invent a substance that can TRAP heat, our worries of future energy security would be over.
ps I am not a scientist nor do I do my own experiments in a lab. The above is my understanding of what I have learned from various sources. As Monckton says, do not believe me.
regards
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George (#57)…
Oh yes, I realise that. And I fully understand people’s frustration with the travesties visited upon us by the AGWers.
However, I also subscribe to the notion that two wrongs don’t make a right. The fact of the matter is that “if the Greenhouse Effect exists, than the AGWers are right” is simply not true. There are many, many ways in which the AGWers are wrong, and there are many ways of establishing this without the need to fudge the existence of the Greenhouse Effect.
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Lionell (#59)…
There you go, arguing against something I never said.
In fact, I have stated very clearly in another thread that the “Greenhouse Effect” does not work the same way that a horticultural greenhouse works. Of course it doesn’t.
As I said before, exactly the same as a computer virus does not work the same as a biological virus. Or, to keep it “on topic” for this psychological thread, “anal retentive” does not mean you go around literally with your thumb up your bum. Nobody expects it to be so.
Also, I think it became known as the Greenhouse Effect long before the AGW scare and associated political controversy became apparent, so I don’t buy the “deliberate attempt to deceive” line.
But here’s a deal… If you can tell me what word you use to describe the processes that result in the temperature of the Earth being warmer than it would be in the absence of an atmosphere, then that’s fine, I will try to always to refer to it by your terminology when discussing it with you. Fair enough?
I mean, I regard you and I to be allies in the fight against the forces of CAGW, so it is silly to be worrying about such a side issue.
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I am butting in on Steve and Lionels disscussion so I’ll accept rebuke if it’s directed at me.
How about “Thermostat Effect” of the atmosphere?
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Steve, yes the descriptive term “Greenhouse Effect” was first coined by the frenchman Joseph Fourier in 1824. However some claim it was John Tyndall who “proved” the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere. (Hence the naming of UK’s climate research centre TYNDALL, as it was thought to be politically incorrect to name it after a Frenchman lol)
Tyndall actually used the anology of a DAM to describe the atmospheres behaviour to the energy coming from the sun. We all know now how two dimensional and silly that analogy is.
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“Firstly, the main purpose of the model is to identify further areas for research. To put in a fudge factor to “make the model work” is actually the first step in that process. ‘Oh look, if I change this array to these values, I get a better fit with the observations. What happens in the real world that might create these values?. ”
Maybe in telecommunications, but not in climate modeling. What they assert is that their climate model accurately reproduces the influences on global temperatures, and that it can be used to predict future temperatures. Without that false assertion, there is no Kyoto, there is no Copenhagen, there are no carbon credit trading schemes.
The fact that they are plugging in fictional values isntead of real observations, particularly while hiding this from other researchers, is what would be called a “no-no”. It is a fake, a fraud, a hoax. When even cherry picking the data didn’t give them the results they wanted, they made data up. There is no way to whitewash this, or call it a co0mmon practice.
It is incredible that these charlatans have gotten this far without having to release their raw data and the algortihms they have used in their models.
Right now, belief in AGW has the same scientific basis as belief in the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. It is a myth.
Any one who advances theories based on Jones or Hansen’s data sets, until the data sets are extensively audited by independent, disinterested thrid parties, is wasting their own time and does not deserve to be taken seriously.
And anyone who argues that we are at a ‘tipping point’ and need to act now based on the output of these fake models, is a loon.
Brad Jensen
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Sergeant Robbie Munn
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,,26195798-3102,00.html
Valda June Kerrison
http://www.wbde.org/documents/Affidavit_of_Reply_ADT_17_August_2007_TAFE_s49_and_s50_and_s52_Submitted.pdf
Qu’ach Nhung
http://tiny.cc/40HgN
Bimla Chand
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/whistleblowers-life-in-ruins/2008/03/14/1205472088526.html
Bruce Thompson
http://www.starobserver.com.au/news/2008/09/03/gay-rail-guard-sacked/1538
Modern Soviet Style (included for comparative and reference purposes)
http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1078204.html
My sincere apologies to anyone who just ate dinner 🙁
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Censorship is still going on. I posted a view I had on an issue on John Cooks “skeptical science” website last night along the lines that the CO2 did not make sense as a major warming driver due to actions such as convection and water heat capacity, and that it was a bit like nopt seeing the forest for the trees.
I woke up this morning top find it had gone!. Sounds to me like some of the CRU data files? I posted another asking why. I expect it too will “disappear” under the small-print pretext he hides behind.
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Steve Schapel @ 63: There you go, arguing against something I never said.
You are using a standard ploy of saying you did not say that. Yes you did. You said Greenhouse Effect was an OK label. Not in as many words but that was your meaning. Stop equivocating.
You are unresponsive to my post at 59. ANSWER the questions!
I said the label was not OK because there is NO fundamental similarity between the free atmosphere and an enclosed actual Greenhouse. My point is that the term Greenhouse Effect MEANS trapping heat by blocking convection. When its falsely applied to the free atmosphere, there is an automatic subliminal inclusion of the concept of trapped heat in the free atmosphere. THAT is its purpose. All the AGW alarmists need to do after that is come up with some fraudulent but scientific sounding description of CO2 trapping heat and the intellectually lazy buy it hook, line, and sinker.
A simple application of the Three Laws of Thermodynamics and the basic Gas Laws shows that neither CO2 nor any other gas can trap heat. Hence there is NO Greenhouse Effect in the free atmosphere and thus the use of the label is false to fact. Therefore, the Greenhouse Effect label must be dropped.
Badly used terms leads to faulty thinking leads to even worse conclusions. Apply them on a global scale and you have a catastrophe in the making. See the novel 1984 for instructive detail.
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That psychologist should go back to his books and study what « cognitive dissonance » is.
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Lionel,
Maybe you need to cut Steve some slack, after all we know of inversion layers that keep clouds low, so the rising gases dissipate some latent heat into them which in turn slows the rate of cooling of the surrounds. This is manifest in the tropics where in higher humdities the overnight temperature is warmer than , say, a low hunidity desert area with the same CO2 levels. This is also the case with high level cloud that is claimed to ‘reflect’ a lot of the suns energy – although its more likely that a significant amount is simply latent enerrgy passed back to the colder ‘space’ environs.
You have lots to say on this site, some a tad extreme but heading in about the right direction much of the time. But you should remember there are lots of interactions within this climate stuff and sometimes Aussie English, of all languages, is not quite up to it. We abbreviate so much and too often.
Try keeping to the science rather than the man and follow the water. IN simple terms it might be like this – the ocean pumps/recirculates, the earth converts from one for to another, and the air connects them.
eg less ice in the Arctic and more at the Antarctic. The mass (amount) of CO2 in the air is “diddly squat (know my meaning?)
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macha @ 71: Try keeping to the science rather than the man
What? That IS what I am doing. I am not attacking the man, I am attacking his ideas that he so willingly adapts from the mass media and his post modern teachers. I am pointing out that fundamental SCIENCE does not support a Greenhouse Effect in the free atmosphere. A gas, CO2 included, does not and cannot TRAP HEAT when they are in the free atmosphere – period end of report. Trapping heat is what a greenhouse does. Therefore applying the term Greenhouse to the free atmosphere is not only misleading it is disastrously wrong.
If we are going to get a handle on this mess we MUST get the words right and our concepts clear. Mental mush and “you know what I mean” simply won’t cut it. To mean, MEANS to refer to something that exists and not some uncommunicative, foggy, approximate, intent/feeling inside someone’s head that is not and cannot be defined as anything in particular or that is inherently self contradictory. If we are going to think clearly, we must have correct words and clear meanings. Otherwise we just might as well hang it up and plan on returning to before the stone age in a most painful way. Because that is what is going to happen sooner rather than later.
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Lionel, You appear to be one angry man (you argue this, I said that, no you didn’t, etc.)
I wonder if such ranting is helping the debate. Eg Your response (72) back to me focused on the personal content I put up rather than the science issues (low vs high cloud)
I must declare my hand before going on: I am one of those that prefers to follow the Water trail and the Money trail – as various articles (including those on this site) have highlighted so well.
The catastrophic AGW’s are pretty cutesy (do you know what I mean when I use this word?) with the media. EG Melting ice, polar bears, kids asking for saviour,very visual effects, change from global warming to climate change, etc. Debates against need to stick to the big hitting issues, not get bogged down in minor side-issues like these sorts of semantics, else we are lost already.
Use the common sense part of the brain like most of us do – I know what he means even if its not grammatically perfect, and just get on with the real debate.
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Lionel and Macha, may I butt in?
You both are correct in your own ways, and I think most who read these comments understand what is being “meant.”
Although Lionel may seem pedantic about this issue, he is absolutely correct in that these words such as “greenhouse” have a profound effect on the understanding by the masses.
That’s how the “lobby” got the message across they wanted to.
Steve held out a friendly hand by suggesting we use a different term for greenhouse. Why don’t we do that?
I suggested “Thermostat Effect,” Others may have a better descriptive. Why don’t we agree on one and get on with the rest of the debate. 🙂
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Macha: You appear to be one angry man
And I shouldn’t be angry when the largest fraud in human history is in the works? The UN is working to become the seat of an unelected world government, they plan to restrict our use of energy such than modern technological civilization will cease to fiction, and then, to top it all, they plan to extract a major portion of the productive capital of the developed world and all of the intellectual property it has produced. Then they plan to give it to all the pestilent third world dictators (after they have pocketed the lion’s share). No, according to you I shouldn’t be angry. I should think “boys will be boys by always doing mischief”. It’s nothing but a piffle. Nothing to worry about or do anything about.
Its a direct assault on everything I value – including my life and my life’s product. Its all based upon lies, distortions, slight truths, and outright fraud. I am white hot angry because of this and I am using my not so inconsiderable ability to reason and communicate to fight it.
You say you just want to get on with the real debate. If we can’t specify the content of the debate in clear, precise, and accurate terms, its not a debate – its a capitulation before the debate has even begun.
You say you want us to use common sense which is unexamined automatized knowledge and judgment presented to us by unexplained feelings. Common sense won’t cut it because our common sense has been corrupted for so long we can’t even see it as corrupted. Its going to take a very uncommon sense to the extreme to be successful in turning back the tide of fraudulent bullshit that is engulfing us. We are just starting to fight. We have won a few small battles. It’s no time to retreat into mental mush and emotional approximation.
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Baa Humbug,
I agree that another label is needed. Thermostatic Effect implies temperature regulation rather than the trapping of heat. That is much closer to describing the heat transfer mechanisms in the atmosphere. However, it has the defect that it also implies that the regulation is accomplished by control over the source of heat. This has great opportunity for distortion of thought. Imagine, mounting an effort to control the sun while requiring us to not use sunlight for any purpose. This is no more absurd than controlling global temperature by prohibiting humans from emitting CO2.
The ability of our global climate system to smooth out temperature extremes is accomplished by vertical and lateral heat exchange using every means of physical heat exchange that exists in nature. This suggests Atmospheric Heat Exchange Effect might be a prospect for an alternate to Greenhouse Effect.
A 20 second sound bite just can’t communicate why the atmosphere doesn’t trap heat like a greenhouse. Our opposition has had 150 years for their false 20 second sound bite to seep into the global psyche. Its easy, its quick, and requires no explanation or thought. It sells without effort. It’s the MTV of science – hot and fast. Then we come on the scene and expect to communicate by playing the equivalent of all the operas of Wagner in German. Interestingly, Jo is doing an incredibly good job of it.
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The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
In other words, words are important!
We must choose our words carefully or continue to be tricked and be unable to communicate the truth about what actually is.
10
Perhaps the best name for this kind of gas is an ‘offset gas’. What an offset gas does is establish the ratio between surface energy and the energy released by the planet. For example, if there were no GHG’s in the atmosphere, this ratio would be 1. That is, the energy leaving the planet is the same as the energy leaving the surface. If half of the energy spectrum is absorbed by GHG’s, then this ratio would be 1.0/(1.0-0.5) = 2.0. Water adds a new complication caused by clouds. The energy leaving the planet now becomes the weighted sum of the energy leaving the surface and the energy radiating from clouds, each filtered by the appropriate absorption spectrum.
The absorption spectrum between cloud tops and space is much less than that between the surface and space. This is a result of low to non existent water vapor concentrations between cloud tops and space. HITRAN based calculations show that about 1/2 of surface energy is captured by the atmosphere and about 1/3 of cloud energy is similarly captured. Given that the average cloud coverage is about 66%, we can calculate the equivalent fraction of offset energy as,
0.66*0.33 + (1 – 0.66)*0.5 = 0.3828
From this, we can calculate the surface energy to space energy ratio as 1.0 / (1.0-.3828) = 1.62
We can cross check this by calculating the ratio between the energy leaving the planet (255K) and the energy leaving the surface (288K) as,
(288^4)/(255^4) = 1.63
Which corresponds to the expected ratio, given average measured cloud cover and absorption characteristics.
George
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co2isnotevil,
Thank you for being a good example of what I have been saying. You are still trapped into the fraud that GHG’s exist and that they trap heat like a Greenhouse. The fact remains that if the energy out is less than energy in due to the so called GHG’s, then the total energy “trapped” has been increasing since the existence of GHG’s. An increase of “trapped” energy expresses itself by an increase in temperature. If this has been going on at the rate of 0.05 degrees per year for 4.5 billion years, the global temperature would be millions of degrees. I don’t know about where you live but my outside temperature indicator is suggesting that the temperature is several millions of degrees below that level and is only 62 degrees F.
The Three Laws of Thermodynamics, likely some of the most thoroughly tested scientific laws in existence, insists that the energy out MUST eventually equal to the energy in. The temperature will rise and energy out will rise as a consequence until that point is reached and no further. Interestingly, the empirical evidence shows exactly that every place it has been tested including for the entire globe. This is the controlling fact.
The reason there is less energy emitted by the surface of the earth than by the global atmosphere, is that not all of the heat energy reaches the surface of the earth. It is not some GHG causing an offset. Its the liquid and solid water (NOT gasses) above the surface that is doing it by REFLECTING a significant portion of the incoming energy.
So, no “Offset Gas” is not an appropriate label. Its in effect an acceptance of false notion of the Greenhouse Effect of trapped heat. Your ratio does not measure what you presume it does. It is only the consequence that approximately 40% of the energy hitting the earth from outer space is reflected before it reaches the earth’s surface.
The global temperature is determined, among other things, by the integration of all the rates of energy exchange. The so called GHG’s. except for H2O, contribute an all but immeasurable amount to those exchange rates. The net of the H2O exchange rate is to speed the exit of energy from the globe with the oceans providing a significant modulation effect (eg El Nino and La Nina). Even that effect is not especially due to H2O as a gas, its due to H2O phase changes (solid to liquid, liquid to gas, and back again) and the concomitant effects of that: latent heat effects and changes in reflectivity.
I suggest you need to stop being trapped into erroneous thinking by a false to fact label.
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Lionell,
Maybe a better phrase would be ‘blocked’, although I was careful not to use the word ‘trapped’ and instead used the word ‘captured’, although the mechanism is more like ‘captured and subsequently released’. Another relevant property of GHG energy capture is that the subsequent release transforms narrow band energy into broadband energy. The fact that about half of the resulting broadband energy is in transparent regions of the atmosphere is why the captured energy eventually leaves the system.
There can be no doubt that because the atmosphere contains so called ‘greenhouse gases’, the surface temperature is warmer than it would be otherwise. But as you point out, this is not a result of the physics of a greenhouse, or the result of permanently retained energy and/or some kind of accumulating energy deficit, but because COE says that the energy leaving the planet must be equal to the energy entering, and if some surface energy is blocked by GHG’s, the surface temperature must increase so that enough energy can leave the planet.
I still like the term ‘offset gas’. Do you have a better term?
Regarding El Nino and La Nina, these seem to be the 2 stable equilibrium states that the planet bounces between. What we think of as normal, is really a metastable state between El Nino and La Nina. As the Earth accumulates energy, it migrates towards to the El Nino state, which manifests a greater outflow of energy than the La Nina state, relative to a constant average surface temperature, thus allowing the Earth to cool. As the Earth looses energy, it moves towards the La Nina state, where the energy outflow is relatively lower, allowing the Earth to warm.
George
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The implication being that:
[1] an accurate history of time spent in La Nina vs time spent in El Nino would provide information about any climate change that might be occurring.
[2] there may be a tipping point somewhere around the time that the El Nino state is happening close to 100% of the time (because that’s when the “thermostat” is working hardest to cool).
Does anyone know how far back we have records of these states?
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co2isnotevil,
See my post at 76 where I derive Atmospheric Heat Exchange Effect as a more appropriate label. Agreed it is a four word label and does not have the impact of a [word] Effect kind of two word label. However, it has the advantage that it is true to fact. In all cases, I go for truth value over impact value.
My proposed label speaks to the actual mechanism involved and is not focused on trapping, capturing, holding, offsetting or whatever irrelevant to fact term you wish to use. The atmospheric gasses are just that, atmospheric gasses. There is no special significance to be attributed to man induced emission of them. They are indistinguishable from naturally emitted gases of the same specie. It is notable that CO2 and O2 are critical for plant and animal life. That is simply one of the energy exchange aspects of the global system.
The temperature is set by the compound of all energy/heat exchange rates, heat capacities, and heats and rates of phase change of the components involved with the exchange. That is all that is physically happening. Agreed, that is a lot of detail. Because it involves non-linear rate relationships with singularities, it will never be calculable except by the global weather system itself. Yet, by the various physical laws we know and have massively validated, we can develop a good understanding of the mechanism. We just can’t compute the specific temperature result of the process. Especially not down to 0.01 degrees precision.
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I see comments on “greenhouse gases” but not much on “greehouse effects”. Sure, there is no glass barrier, but can’t clouds present themselves at high and low levels? Can’t they therefore “act” as a barrier that “effectively” slows teh rate of temperature change of the planet and keeps it from boiling during the day and freezing at night?
This effect is much like the glasshouse to grow plants to me.
Interestingly, I think that the only reason CO2 got into the GHG in the first place is because the botanists and gardeners were supplimenting it to encourage growth in theor greenhouse- else it would not have been included at all!. So when we talk about GHG’s should it really only be the non-condensable gases? I mean O2 and N2 have much lower freezing points that CO2, so they must be absorbing more energy than CO2. Then there’s the incredible heat capcity of water and vapour. CO2 has to be a miniscule influence, yet I see so mich about its “radiative forcing”. Why’s this so critical in earths energy balance?
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PS. This is a good read.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/The_Saturated_Greenhouse_Effect.htm
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CO2isnotevil #80
There can be no doubt that because the atmosphere contains so called ‘greenhouse gases’, the surface temperature is warmer than it would be otherwise.
That’s only half the story. The surface is also “COOLER” as proven by the temps. on the surfaces of the Moon and Mars
Macha #83
That kinda makes sense except a greenhouse (vegetable growing kind) doesn’t have a cooling effect, only warming.
As a side note, Mars has an atmosphere only 5% that of earth, BUT 95% of Mars atmosphere is CO2. i.e. it has many times more CO2 than earth. Drawing bit of a bow but if CO2 was such a strong AHEE (atmospheric heat exchange effect) gas, shouldn’t the mars climate be very different to what it is at present? Any thoughts?
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Macha #83
Because it’s science Jim but not as we know it.
The whole AGW scare campaign has the purpose of stopping the use of fossil fuels. It has nothing to do with proper science. They decided long ago they wanted to curb the use of fossil fuels (for a variety of reasons), so the IPCC was setup to “prove” CO2 was evil. 21 years on, here we are.
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Macha,
Yes, clouds do act more like an actual greenhouse as they absorb almost all longwave radiation and radiate longwave radiation back, much like glass reflects longwave radiation.
Adding CO2 to a greenhouse is strictly for growth enhancement and has no measurable effect on the interior temperature. This is similar to why incremental CO2 absorption underneath clouds has no net effect. The energy would be temporarily blocked from escaping by the clouds anyway.
The actual radiative forcing for doubling CO2 is claimed by the IPCC is only about 3.7 W/m^2, which for all intents and purposes is not really worth contending. The measured incremental effect of 3.7 W/m^2 of net incident solar energy (after subtracting reflected energy) results in a net increase in surface energy of about 6 W/m^2, which corresponds to a temperature increase of about 1.1C, even by IPCC math. The additional 0.4 – 3.9C is alleged to be attributed to water vapor feedback. In fact, of that 3.7 W/m^2, half is radiated away, so less than 2 W/m^2 is incident to the surface. This 2 W/m^2 of actual surface forcing results in about 3.2 W/m^2 of equilibrium surface energy, or a temperature increase of about 0.6C. The 1.62 ratio between surface radiation and incident radiation is a consequence of some of the surface and cloud energy spectrum being blocked by GHG absorption. BTW, doubling the CO2 concentration does increase the 1.62 ratio up to about 1.64 (1.61 up to 1.63 based on starting when CO2 was 280 ppm).
Radiative forcing is really just a distraction. What matters is that energy arrive from the Sun, modulated by the cloud effect of water vapor and that energy leaves the planet via radiation from clouds and surface, also modulated by cloud coverage and that the system converges to a local steady state by adjusting the surface temperature until Ein = Eout. If these are not equal, which occurs because there’s a time lag owing to the systems thermal mass, energy is being stored into this thermal mass when Ein > Eout and is being released by it when Ein < Eout. For current dynamic conditions, Ein == Eout is only true twice per year, once in September and again in April.
George
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Baa,
The Moon has a hotter max temp and a much colder min temp, but also has a lower average temp, which would still be lower, even if the albedo was adjusted to be the same as that of the Earth. The hotter max temp could be due to the fact that the solar day is 28 Earth days long. Just think how hot the day would get at the equator if the Sun was up for 672 hours straight.
George
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Brad Jensen #17 wrote:
And the emails reveal that the way that these CRUdites initially develope[d] consensus was nothing more than good old-fashioned virtual chain-letters – and a minimal amount of time for any independent verification.
For details, pls see: http://hro001.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/the-fog-of-uncertainty-and-the-precautionary-principle/
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George Re #87.
Thanks. The other issue for me is that the AGW / IPCC / skeptical science bloggers talk about energy balance calculations but don’t seem to differentiate between heat and temperature. My thoughts are that Energy is not confined to manifest itself as temperature and that its a dyanmic state of flux (not individual gases in isolation – that might be the case for weather rather than the climate). By my reckoning the temperature we see on a thermomemter is largely a function of humidity. If its dry – the quantity of energy is displayed quickly and accurately by the termometer. On a humid day, the thermometer reacts far more slowly (as a true measure of energy) due to the latent heat of water. So if average low level atmosphere is ~75-80% humidity and the upper stratosphere is closer to 35-40% (loss of water due to being colder and its rained out), then where is the accountability in these models? I see no references to these variables in fact it seem they are effectively constants in the models to be changed until the output matches the expectations?
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Macha,
Many on both sides frequently confuse energy, power and temperature. Power is what the Sun delivers to the surface and what the Earth radiates back into space and has units of energy per unit time, or a rate of energy. Energy is what’s conserved and while there are certainly non thermal forms of energy, thermal energy makes up well over 95% of the energy stored in the Earth. For example, less than 1% of all of the incident solar power is stored as the chemical energy of biomass. Temperature is a macroscopic property manifested by a specific energy flux (power), as given by the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, which says that the power associated with a specific temperature is proportional to the temperature raised to the forth power.
The IPCC considers the relationship between power and temperature to be linear. This may come from the idea that energy linearly increases the temperature of water (1 cal per cc of water per degreeC). However, this is for incident energy and as the temperature increases linearly, the energy radiated away increases at an even faster rate (T^4) requiring the incident energy to increase by more in order to maintain the higher temperature.
The maximum temperature is not a function of humidity. It’s rate of decrease at the surface depends on how quickly surface energy is allowed to escape into space. High humidity means that the water vapor absorption spectrum is at it’s peak. It also generally means clouds, which also blocks energy from escaping. The reverse of this is radiation cooling on a cold, dry winter night. In this case, there’s little water vapor absorption and energy is allowed to quickly escape into space. The latent heat in the atmospheric water vapor is not insignificant, but is still small relative to the latent heat stored in the surface.
As for how models handle these, it’s hard to tell. Usually, the atmosphere is divided into layers, each with it’s own water vapor concentration, but if the model is sensitive to a small change caused by increased CO2, it will be far more sensitive to incorrectly setting water vapor concentrations.
My base model uses 3 layers of atmosphere approximately corresponding to the layer between clouds and the surface, the layer between cloud tops and space and the layer containing clouds, where each 22.5 degree slice of latitude is modeled separately. I can slice it more finely in all dimensions, but this topology offers the best speed/accuracy/memory trade offs.
George
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For sufficiently small perturbations around a known operating point, the presumption of linearity is reasonably accurate. As the perturbation gets larger, it gets less accurate. The operating point itself cannot be calculated by linear means, it would need to be measured or calculated some other way.
The trouble is that looking at past perturbations (which happened at a different part of the nonlinear curve) does not provide workable linear gain values for present perturbations, so it requires recalculation of gain values (or direct measurement of the same). From what I’ve seen there’s a bit of a presumption that the same warming gains that pulled us out of last ice age (at 200 ppm CO2 or less) would be equally applicable in today’s substantially warmer climate (at 400 ppm CO2) and that’s when the presumption of linearity hits some serious problems.
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Perhaps this post would be better under the tag “Indoctrination” or “Propaganda”. I am simply outraged at the audacity of ‘those people’, scaring little children at Christmas time with unfounded claims of impending doom that Santa’s homeland is melting … and it’s all OUR FAULT.
Watch these two videos part 2 and part 3 to see if you don’t become as equally enraged as I.
Children must know that Santa is way too smart to believe propaganda cartoons. He looks at real satellite data to track the Arctic Sea Ice Extent and can see that he and his reindeer have nothing to be concerned about … other than helping us all have a Merry Christmas that is!
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Hi Mike,
I’ve seen enough of that to be just as disgusted as you. The website where this game is located has now become the first website to be put into my firewalls blocked list. I won’t name the website specifically, but it is obviously an extremely well funded propoganda machine targeting little kids.
Yes, it’s even worse than Clive Goebels Hamiltons letter.
To the people who create this crap – seeing as you think the end justifies the means, you can expect the same treatment from me you worthless peice of toejam.
Have a Merry Xmas everyone.
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Hi Madjak,
They’re getting so frustrated by their failure to scare us into accepting global socialist domination that they’re coming after our children. The people behind it need to be dragged out into the sunlight for everyone to know who they are IMO. Jeff Immelt? Ted Turner? Maurice Strong?
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Hi Mike,
I have just made the link between this video and the make a bear workshop. This is a company where ou can get a teddy bear for your kids where they’re stuffed onsite etc. A really cool kids store, actually.
The good news is that they’ve taken the videos off their site and apologized. Of course, I want a reassurance that they’re not going to try and push any political again.
I am so incredibly disappointed that a company with the most innocuous and good approach managed to stoop this low. I have sent the following email to them:
If anyone else wants to contact these guys, the email address is : vwhelp@buildabear.com
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Mike,
You’re missing the last and most important lot, namely
….and everyone who knows this and does nothing to stop it…
With freedom comes responsibility. If one ignores this responsibility freedom will be lost, IMHO.
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I was looking for arrest check related articles this was good
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[…] The Age interviewed a psychologist in an attempt to spin Climategate. Jo Nova deconstructs the psychobabble with ruthless […]
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It certainly is becoming increasingly common to see Skeptics/Realists/Questioners/Reasoners constantly accused of denying Climate Change or whatever else it is currently being called. If you do that you need to pause & consider carefully what you are doing.
I don’t deny Climate Change, though I will seriously question the politicization of it to espouse the fearmongering through alarmist/warmist propaganda supporting agendas claiming that the Climate Change is unprecedented, dangerous or catastrophic. I will also question the extent that any change that is occurring is significantly contributed to or caused by humans.
I will also question that the Science is settled or that all is known about it.
There are numerous leading scientists doing likewise & without getting too caught up in the politicization & denigration of the science.
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