Here’s a forgotten paper that deserves more attention: Idso 1998.
Rather than using an enormously complex global circulation model (or 22) to come up with a figure for climate sensitivity, Sherwood Idso does calculations from eight completely different natural experiments which all arrive at similar figures. In short, he reviewed 20 years of work to arrive at a prediction that if CO2 is doubled we will get 0.4°C of warming at most, and even he admitted, it might be an overestimate. Basically by the time CO2 levels double, he says we ought expect 0 – 0.4°C of warming, after feedbacks are taken into account. Idso started off assuming that the feedbacks were largely positive, but repeatedly found that they were negative.
Idso’s approach was novel. Instead of climate sensitivity to CO2, he estimates the sensitivity of the Earth to any factor. He calls it the “surface air temperature sensitivity factor“. Once something known heats or cools the Earth, how much do the net feedbacks amplify or dampen that initial change? Rather than trying to measure and capture every single feedback and process, and then calculate the end results, Idso finds situations where he can isolate a factor and calculate the effect after all the known and unknown feedbacks have occurred.
There are eight natural experiments Idso looked at. Even he was skeptical initially, knowing his initial experiments were based on one city and shorter time frames, but the independent experiments turned up such similar numbers that he grew confident that the results were meaningful.
Natural Experiment 1: Humidity over Phoenix affects minimum temperatures
He looked at humidity and temperatures on cloudless days over Phoenix Arizona. He followed 30 years of records looking for how water vapor may have influenced the maximum and minimum temperatures at the same time of year. He found that the amount of water vapor didn’t affect maxima, but did affect the minima which occur just before dawn — when the effect of the humidity trapping the outgoing heat radiating off the planet was not confounded by incoming solar radiation.
Natural Experiment 2: Dust over Phoenix keeps the city warmer in winter
Idso estimated the sensitivity by calculating the extra warming effect of the dust in the winter months and the changes in radiative flux from the changes in vertical distribution of dust between the seasons.
Natural Experiment 3: Changes in incoming solar radiation and temperature at 81 US sites
There were two common trends, a lower one for the West Coast which he speculated was driven by the Pacific, and a higher one for the interior which matched the trends at Phoenix. This was the beginning of a pattern that consistently shows that different regions have slightly different sensitivities — all negative.
Natural Experiment 4: The natural greenhouse effect
The natural greenhouse effect is accepted as being 33°C due to 348Wm-2 of greenhouse warming. That’s 0.1°C /(W m-2). (The IPCC expects that doubling CO2 will increase radiation by 3.7 W m-2 before feedbacks,, suggesting a temperature increase around 0.4°C.)
Natural Experiment 5: The Pole to Equator Gradient
Idso divided up the globe into small bands across the latitudes, used the distribution of cloud cover , mean air temperatures, water vapor pressures and the solar radiation absorbed at the surface to calculate estimates of sensitivity for each band. The results fell into two major trend groups. Basically most of the globe recorded similar estimates to the one in Experiment 4 [0.1°C /(W m-2)], but the poles were twice as sensitive [0.2°C /(W m-2)]. This is what we’d expect. (The tropics are less sensitive to temperature change because evaporation rises dramatically at around 30°C which slows further heat gain. The poles are the most sensitive because there is little evaporation, and albedo changes from highly reflective ice to highly absorbent ocean can exacerbate temperature changes.)
Natural Experiment 6: Mars and Venus
Venus has a 500°C greenhouse effect, while Mars is about 5-6°C. Using partial pressures and plotting these on a log plot again produces a 0.40°C rise due to CO2.
Natural Experiment 7: Faint Sun Paradox
The sun was about 25% weaker 4.5 billion years ago (according to Standard Solar models). Using estimates of the CO2 concentrations billions of years ago (which were in the order of 10 – 20 times higher) Idso calculates that the warming effect required from all that extra CO2 back then implies a climate sensitivity to doubling CO2 of 0.4°C again.
Natural Experiment 8: Heating the tropical ocean
Idso uses estimates from other researchers that it takes an increase of 14W m-2 to warm the sea surface by 1°C to calculate that the sensitivity is 0.07°C /(W m-2). This is lower than land and the poles, which is to be expected, and fits reasonably well with a global estimate of 0.1°C /(W m-2).
On their own, none of these calculations is definitive, but the closely matched results makes it worthy of note, especially because it is also similar to more recent estimates done in completely different ways. The calculations are based on observations, though some interpretation is required so there are uncertainties with all the estimates (particularly, with the strength of the sun, or temperatures long ago), and very large uncertainties with some. There are also implicit assumptions — like the one of linear (rather than log) effect of the natural greenhouse effect. Nonetheless, the results are internally consistent, and come from a very varied set of experiments that literally cover the Earth from top to toe, and back to front.
It’s interesting to read a paper that speaks so honestly about it’s failings and limitations as you go through it. It’s very different to recent papers about models which talk with weasel words about how things “may”, “possibly” be “consistent” with predictions that are vague or indeterminate, or projected 90 years in the future. Constantly Idso makes skeptical remarks about his work, finding reasons to doubt whether two close figures were really similar, or just a coincidence. Certainly there are many estimates and calculations upon calculations, so the uncertainties are significant. But the complexity and uncertainties involved in Idso’s work are but one hundredth of those in standard models. The fact that Idso’s work is so internally consistent, and fits with entirely different methods by Lindzen and Choi and by Spencer makes all of their results more reliable.
About Sherwood Idso
Dr. Idso won the Arthur S. Flemming Award 1977, has published over 500 scientific publications, and has served on the editorial board of both Agricultural and Forest Meteorology and and Environmental and Experimental Botany. He’s been invited reviewer for 56 different scientific journals. He is an ISI highly cited researcher.
Sherwood Idso
Sherwood B. Idso, B.S. Physics Cum Laude, University of Minnesota (1964), M.S. Soil Science, University of Minnesota (1966), Ph.D. Soil Science, University of Minnesota (1967), Research Assistant in Physics, University of Minnesota (1962), National Defense Education Act Fellowship (1964-1967), Research Soil Scientist, U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (1967-1974), Editorial Board Member, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Journal (1972-1993), Secretary, American Meteorological Society, Vice-Chair, American Meteorological Society, Central Arizona Chapter (1974-1975), Research Physicist, U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (1974-2001), Chair, American Meteorological Society, Secretary, Sigma Xi – The Research Society, Member, Task Force on “Alternative Crops”, Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (1983), Adjunct Professor of Geography and Plant Biology, Arizona State University (1984-2007), Editorial Board Member, Environmental and Experimental Botany Journal (1993-Present), Member, Botanical Society of America, Member, American Geophysical Union, Member, American Society of Agronomy, President, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (2001-Present) [Source SPPI]
Sherwood has been so effective as a skeptic he has hate-pages dedicated to him accusing him of being an Exxon-sponsored-scientist . (Note to smear merchants: Idso was a skeptic back in 1977, fully twenty years before any hint of oil related funding). It appears he’s an independent scientist who made up his own mind regardless of the fashion, popularity, or funding of the idea. That doesn’t make him right, but it makes those who bring up the funding, illogical and a tad confused about cause and effect. In the end, they are telegraphing just how much they don’t want to discuss the science.
REFERENCES
Idso, S. (1998): CO2-induced global warming: a skeptics view of potential climate change, Climate Research, vol 10 pp 69-82. [abstract] [PDF]
Thanks to George White for some feedback on this paper.
Images are generic: Earth on Dec 21, John Walker | The Atmosphere Tecnòlegs de l’IES Bisbal | USA Map of Counties.
Thanks to Tony Cox for getting me back into the science.
Thanks to WArwick Hughes for posting on this paper in 2006 and for the comments there. (Which were useful).
There seems to be a problem with the administration over at DeSmogBlog. They don’t even have a page dedicated to the smearing of Sherwood Idso. Usually they just rely on stolen and fabricated documents and then claim their documents are authentic. Maybe PR thug James Hoggan is still in the process of manufacturing new slime for his “database”.
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Google “Sherwood Idso”. Check the first page. Desmog are there showing all their logical talent. — Jo
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‘logical talent.’
Did you forget the /sarc tag? 😉
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Logical talent is a scale that has both negative and positive dimensions.
I think Jo’s statement is perfectly accurate.
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“Logic” and “Das Smog” in the same sentence is an oxymoron.
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This is now becoming a signal of scientific veracity. If you want to know the integrity of a particular scientist, you can use the traditional approach and search the literature (tedious and time consuming).
Or, you can use the technology currently available, and do a Google search on their name and then count all the web pages and blog entries that claim they are funded by the energy industry (or tobacco).
Given that the second approach is cheap and quick, it is now our first cut. If the hate-mail-quotent is high enough, we will turn to the academic literature to get the real facts.
See – even the Twitterati demonstrate the wisdom of crowds, although perhaps not as they intended.
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Rereke
Love your work! The same methodology can be applied to test for political integrity: The worse the smear the more desperate the smear merchant, as evident in the recent Queensland elections.
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You are dead right. There is an old saying, “Empty vessels make the most noise”.
Hmm, by that token, perhaps I should shut up. 🙂
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all we need to know is the earth is cooler in the daytime compared to the moon( no atmos gases) and at night warmer( slow cooling) than the moon,
atmos gases cool the earth in the daytime and slow down cooling at night.
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Richard
So very succinct and simple (KISS principle) – why is it that some of our brightest and best scientists have been hoodwinked by this scam and REFUSE to see the “wood from the trees”?
Oh, hang on, could it be the money?
Cheers,
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And the more CO2 in the atmosphere the less cooling at night. Glad we agree on the Greenhouse Effect.
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Hang on a second Max i think you may have stubbed your toe on this one.
If as you say
Then that would infer that CO2 has some sort of role to play in the hydrologic cycle as it cannot possibly absorb and re emit Infra red energy at night because the sun is no longer provide the source of teh energy. Now you and i both know that CO2 plays no role in the hydrologic cycle so i will give you the opportunity to re word what you said in an effort to save face.
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Don’t waste your time Crackar.
Maxine is a drive-by troll who has already moved on to his/her next targeted realist blog.
Sort-of like a stray dog moving on to the next tree, and for pretty-much the same reason.
He/she has utterly no interest in actually engaging in anything as tawdry as scientific debate.
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point taken MV and your analogy is spot on as always.
Cheers
crakar
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So the Earth doesn’t emit any radiation at night? So then why does the Earth cool during the night and usually the coolest temps are are about an hour before sunrise?
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Radiation does not have to be emitted to space for a location to cool. Atmospheric circulation will achieve the same. As one part of the globe moves away from the sun the air cools – but the heat may be absorbed by other surfaces.
And I note your observation that the airtemp is coolest just before dawn, when the local CO2 conc. is approaching its highest. Overnight, vegetation respires, giving off CO2 and on a still night the CO2 conc. can rise to very high levels. Then during the day the vegetation will photosynthesise, reducing CO2 levels and increasing O2 level with a very high swing in concentration. Ironically the highest temperatures of the day are when the local CO2 conc is at its lowest.
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Idso is one of those quiet heavyweights of science. When he decides to talk about anything, the lightweights know enough to shut up and just listen. Fearless and doesn’t care where the chips might fall. They don’t come any better.
Pointman
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Off Topic. Poll “Did you switch off your lights for Earth Hour on Saturday night?”
SMH
http://www.smh.com.au/polls/environment/earth-hour/earth-hour-2012-20120331-1w51i.html#poll
On Topic
An Idso video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkma7RO4Q24
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It’s 12.33 Apr 2 and I just voted. 72% said they did not turn off their lights, 28% said they did. That’s fairly significant and should give the SMH cause to think their “overwhelming majority” could actually be a minority and it likely might be wrong.
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Not related to this topic, but I posted a Comment over on Joanne’s Earth Hour Post, and with three new Posts since then, not many people would go back and see it, so I hope you don’t mind if I link back to that comment.
Something really spooky did happen at Earth Hour on Saturday night.
It seems that all the Wind Towers, 965 of them in all, decided to get in on the spirit, and nearly 87% of that number decided to close down as well. I suppose that they thought that with all the Power shutting down, then they weren’t needed either. Still, when they all closed they were supplying only 1.4% of actual demanded power.
They even had a practice run the week before, and at one stage there was barely 40 of them running at all.
Here’s the link back to that Comment here at Joanne’s site.
Tony.
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Oh boy, Lawrie, you obviously did come down in the last shower! Sele selecting polls have no validity. The 78:22 just shows Lib fanbois were out there furiously voting multiple times.
Among other facts you might like to learn:
2 + 2 = 4
The Globe is warming
JoNova is an astroturfer posting blog posts based on no evidence.
The Convoy was a huge failure
etc
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Maxine,
Hmm!
You seem to come here a lot.
Surely if it was so bad in your eyes, you’d just ‘pass’.
Hey, don’t worry. Insult the host, and you’ll soon get that ‘pass’
Tony.
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.
Don’t waste your time Tony.
Maxine is a drive-by troll who has already moved on to his/her next targeted realist blog.
Sort-of like a stray dog moving on to the next tree, and for pretty-much the same reason.
He/she has utterly no interest in actually engaging in anything as tawdry as scientific debate.
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Except the globe is cooling now, Maxine. I made the plot a neat 15 years in honour Phil Jones.
Also the webpoll is 72:28, not what you said. I did vote, once, but then I do read SMH site every day.
And 28% is exactly what Newspoll gave the ALP last week, and statistically same as the ALP primary votes at the Qld and NSW elections and the Nielsen poll out today. Must be just a coincidence.
Well, if this keeps up Federal ALP caucus will have to move to a smaller room. Closet sized is looking about right at this rate.
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Thanks for the link Siliggy ,
It led Me to find this excellent “The Poor Man`s Biosphere” experiment by Prof. Idso on the tube , reminds Me of the black and white tv days when We had Prof. Julius Sumner Miller exorting kids to ask and find out “Why is it So ?”
Such a far cry from the “Do not question , just believe” dogma of the post-normal science of CAGW
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Thank you Byron!
19 long months!
Felt like typing out his last few words on that.
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So disappointed, no option for turned on extra lights and appliances.
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Good reasons to like Canadians.
“The skyline in Saskatoon was a little brighter during Earth Hour on Saturday.”
http://ckom.com/story/lights-stay-during-earth-hour/50515
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Did you switch off your lights for Earth Hour on Saturday night?
Yes
26%
No
74%
Total votes: 2708.
Courtesy; SMH Poll.
…well well well, looks like climate change, earth hour, greenies and juliar are about as popular as a FART in an elevator!!
This year is going to get interesting real quick, I think!!
Im grabbing the popcorn and a Carton of XXXX.
🙂
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Also off topic but even the MSM have noticed Flim-flam Flannery`s not exactly a reliable source read here
Have fun with the poll !
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It is said that everybody is entitled to his or her own opinion but that they are not entitled to their own facts. Flimflam creates his own facts … and better that he keeps his opinions to himself.
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No Streetcred if he is shredding the alarmist cause let him go.
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‘Scuse me Mods, Dirty Harry said, “Opinions are like arseholes, everybody has one!”
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True but according to the green econuts their $hit smells of roses, so their opinions are worth more than ours.
Our $hit smells like….well….$shit.
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Prof. Flannery isn’t even consistent with the IPCC.
IPCC Special Report (huge PDF)
Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX)
In plain language; there is no physical evidence that climate change has anything to do with losses from natural disasters; the so-called “extreme events”.
via WUWT and Roger Peilke Jr.
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The real story here is the fact that a major has printed this story at all. It would not have happened two years ago or even one year ago. The end is truly nigh.
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78% say Flim-Flan is either “unreliable” or “extremely unreliable”. Sounds like a consensus, Tim!
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This sounds reasonable to me –
http://www.spinonthat.com/Spinonthat%20Blog/Blog/217FADEE-3C59-41AD-80FF-560D080EC146.html
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Sounds pretty unreasonable to Sherwood Idso:
Idso sees no bone to pick with the Greenhouse Effect. He goes on to conclude:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/idso98.htm#e1
We can persuasively show that the modern rates of climate change aren’t anomalous or dangerous without resort to provocative claims that confuse and divide rather than unite opinion.
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.It is VERY much in question and is unphysical and basically BULLSHIT!~
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* *
“The Greenhouse Effect” is a METAPHOR for a complicated set of phenomena described by the physics and chemistry of how our atmosphere functions to keep the planet’s surface from being a frozen snowball in space while serving the universal master of thermodynamic law to transport heat from the bottom to the top of the atmosphere… “The Greenhouse Effect” is a colourful shorthand that gives the lay person a familiar image to get a handle on phenomena which is too complex to explain quickly.
All metaphors have limitations. If you carry a metaphor too far it breaks down.
It’s illogical to say “the greenhouse effect does not exist,” because we’re talking about a metaphor here and, obviously, the metaphor – Greenhouse Effect – certainly does exist or we wouldn’t be talking about it.
What one might logically be able to defend is something like “I think the Greenhouse Effect is a bad metaphor for how the atmosphere works” And then explain your reasoning.
That said, I’m perfectly happy with the Greenhouse Effect metaphor and see most objections to as unnecessarily divisive rants by people trying to prove they are uber-skeptics who understand physic better than you do.
The greenhouse effect — and anthropogenically increasing atmospheric CO2 levels — are not supporting evidence for catastrophic global warming forecasts.
Therefore, to engage in a debate as to whether either exists or not is to play into the warmists propaganda about “runaway greenhouse effects”, “tipping points” and “catastrophic CO2 levels.” It’s a distraction away from the real topics of relevance, such as whether water vapour feedback is ridiculously positive.
One rhetorical technique people use when losing a debate is to attempt to divert discussion into off topic cul-de-sacs. Quell surprise, Johnny Brookes pops in just now….
Whistling past the graveyard is all the warmists got left.
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I’m confused, do you guys agree with Idso that there is a greenhouse effect, or not?
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Define “The Greenhouse Effect”
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Would you want a confused person providing a definition?
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The greenhouse effect. That there are gases in the atmosphere that make the surface warmer than it would otherwise be because of the wavelengths at which they absorb em radiation.
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So no greenhouse substances? Not even those used to make greenhouses? Yet the globe still warms!
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Another fascinating display of cherry picking to prop up a failed religion.
I beleive what Kevins comment was TRYING to demonstrate is that no GAS absorbs energy and keeps it thereby warming the planet. The gas will absorb the energy and then release it………all of it………….not some of it……………not just a tiny bit but ALL OF IT. Nothing known to man can trap/keep/absorb (and not let go) energy. Therefore all the energy that strikes the Earth leaves the Earth got that Max?
One could say that the longer the time it takes for the energy to leave the Earth my result in a small increase in temp but this purely derived from the delay not from any entrapment of course teh increase in time (delay) is in the of pico seconds. Will this additional pico second delay cause CAGW………of course not only a fool would believe such tripe.
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We return to the only logical conclusion that the temperature of the atmosphere is bound by it’s total mass, not the heat conductivity of a small trace component. As we know, the mass is dictated by the energy inputs which cause evaporation of liquids from the surface. Namely, the sun and the earth’s core. C02 is not an input in this equation, there is no possibility of positive feedback.
Basic science, lost on bureaucrats in white coats.
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And it seems on small fluffy doggies!
Tony
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So Maxine; Give us your insight on Sherwood Idso’s arguments. Any smart-ass drive-by comments that (you think) show he is completely wrong? Can’t even cut and paste some from SkepticalNonscience?
Out of your league, for sure.
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“Sherwood has been so effective as a skeptic he has hate-pages dedicated to him accusing him of being an Exxon-sponsored-scientist.”
This makes him a hero-scientist in my book. Anyone subject to this sort of ad-hominem attack based on nonsense and fantasy is immediately shown to be worthy of attention by serious thinkers.
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Excellent research Jo. Will have a look at Sherwood.
On a related note, did you see the episode of ‘Australia: The Time Traveller’s Guide’ last night on the ABC?
In the closing few minutes the Permian mass extinction event was covered by Dr Richard Smith who stated categorically that the mass extinction event was due to volcanic emission of CO2 resulting in “runaway greenhouse”. no caveats; no mention of contrary evidence or competing theories eg. of polar glaciation or glaciation of Gondwana leading to global cooling; or volcaniuc emission of silicate-rich sulphates and ash clouds leading to (guess what) oceanic acidifcation and global cooling… No. None of that. It seems the ABC and Richard Smith (bless their hearts) didn’t want to overload our minds by pointing out that the scientific debate on the possible cause(s) remains in full-swing, that is, it is NOT “settled science”. Instead they saw fit to leave us all with the clear and unimpeded view that 95% of species that went extinct at the end of the Permian were victims of volcanic CO2 which triggered a “runaway greenhouse”.
They never saw fit to explain how the runaway greenhouse (positive feedback) subsequently ended without all the surface water on the planet boiling away and all life on Earth dying-out… I guess we must all be just really, really lucky… or perhaps they’re going to illuminate us all next week on the next installment of this latest piece of ABC ‘climate change’ propaganda. Can’t wait!
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Smith also completely missed the point that in the Devonian, an ice age, atmospheric CO2 levels were around 4,000ppm, a contrdiction to the AGW crowd that they have never convincingly dealt with.
I switched off, mentally, after this gaffe.
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Where is a ABC good website/email and (one for Smith if he has one) to write a demand for an explanation of Smith’s claim? This blatant non science opinion by warmists goes on constantly in the MSM and they are not called on it often enough. For the average viewer this is more “the science is in” evidence since it comes from a “scientist” and the ABC.
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“the scientific debate on the possible cause(s) [of the Permian ME] remains in full-swing.”
Andrew’s comment applies with equal force to all five major mass extinctions. Even the end-Cretaceous event, which I imagined to have been settled by the discovery of the Chicxulub crater remains contentious – see for example, Archibald (Extinction and Radiation) who subscribes to the coup de grace school.
Regarding the Permian ME, my recollection of the literature is that anoxia, a direct effect of massive vulcanism, is held to be at least as important as greenhouse gas warming. Could be wrong on that, but it would be consistent with the evolution of archosaur flow-through respiration (air sacs). Of course, that’s not settled either.
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I did see that show, and for a half hour I actually felt pleased at my tax dollars being used well. I liked it! Yes, they managed to almost do the whole show about fascinating aspects of Australian paleontology without the usual climate caveats. Just that one at the end talking about the PT extinction. They were very restrained, well spoken, carefully considered, and all the things you’d hope to find on a public station. Mostly science without the politics.
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I saw the show too, Jo. And I agree, it was very well done. I loved it!
You can’t fault them for a 15-second blurb on the scientific fashion of the moment about the PT boundary. That’s what TV does. Of course, it could get worse at the end. These kind of things usually like to wrap up with a Wowser diatribe worthy of me mum before an important event. The only difference being me mum was always right.
As for your tax dollars, I don’t see why the show couldn’t have been made by private enterprise if the monopoly of the ABC wasn’t bogarting the airspace niche.
The tax-payer funded ABC monopoly preempts more than it produces.
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This is the key issue today in the climate science debate.
The IPPC bases its models on the assumption of positive water vapour feedback. Even the IPPC “consensus” has certified that additional CO2 can’t heat the atmosphere catastrophically so they’ve bet the farm on a never-before-observed (on a global scale) positive climate feedback mechanism. Yet the Earth’s climate record seems to show water vapour feedback isn’t very positive at all.
For instance, look at the Medieval Warm Period ( ~1000 AD), which was a bit warmer than today…. According the the IPPC’s models the MWP’s “dangerous” warming level was beyond the fabled “tipping point” and that should have caused the positive water vapour feedback mechanism to kick in warming the planet a further 2c-6c. Worse, the phase shift to a new hot greenhouse climate should have persisted for a very long time.
Of course what happened was the WMP didn’t set off any positive climate feedback mechanism, but instead ended rapidly, which might suggest that any warming beyond today’s levels tends to kick off negative climate feedbacks of some kind…
Oddly, the Climate Cartel has been very reluctant to examine history for empirical evidence to test their theories. Instead they lionised Michael Mann for literally disappearing the the inconvenient amplitude of climate variation over the last couple of thousand years. Who needs stinking historical evidence when you have computer models and a bias to confirm?
In fact, even if one knew nothing about climate one would expect a long-lived vastly complex meta-system –a system made up of layered systems and subsystems — that maintains a boundary condition far far away from thermodynamic equilibrium with the space outside of itself is by definition a massive tangle of NEGATIVE feedbacks. That’s because any positive feedback mechanisms tend to “runaway” from the steady state the complex system is working to maintain, derailing the balance and destroying the system. The fact that we are here debating this issue is evidence that the Earth’s climate is dominated by negative, not positive feedback or the narrow range of conditions necessary for our evolution wouldn’t have been provided for.
Given the Earth’s biosphere’s great age and all the catastrophic perturbations that have tempered its evolution (volcanism, asteroids, solar events, supernovas, etc.) one might expect that an extra couple of hundred parts per million of a trace gas necessary for life wouldn’t be a tipping point for much more than higher lawn mower sales. Especially since we know that we are closer to the historic low limits of atmospheric CO2 concentrations (~180ppm) than the highs of a few million years ago (~1,000pmm.)
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Hi wes; the AGW establisment counters the -ve feedback paradigm in a number of ways.
Firstly, and most importantly, they predict a lag whereby the extra warming is stored and the final equlibrium occurs centuries in the future. This is the supposed difference between transient sensitvity and equilibrium sensitivity which the IPCC explains here. In a recent paper Foster [tamino] and Rahmstorf attempt to establish that the current temperature is consistent with the official climate sensitivity. But F&R are forced to conclude that AGW over the modern period which has had the most CO2 increase, shows:
The significance of this in respect of the difference between transient climate sensitivity [tcr] and equilibrium climate sensitivity [teq] is that F&R, by removing all possible feedbacks in the system, except ocean heat uptake, have produced a ‘pure AGW’ signature which is different from both tcr and teq. The temperature response to 2XCO2 which F&R have isolated BEFORE feedbacks are considered is 1.4-1.8C.
If heat is not being stored in the ocean then that AGW rate will not rise in the future so both tcr and teq are contradicted. Most of the recent studies are not showing any heat being stored in the oceans.
Secondly, if the AGW temperature response is constant when CO2 is increasing, if AGW is real [ie something else is not causing the temperature increase] then feedbacks are working against the increased AGW effect in a negative fashion.
F&R’s paper is very important because it both defeats the idea of a delay or lag in the effects of AGW and shows that feedbacks must be negative.
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Cohenite, I’m guessing Tamino would beg to differ with you on what the F&R paper finds. 😉
If The Team was really curious about what happens when the Earth warms to today’s level or a bit more then they’d toss some research funds at wringing some good datasets out of the Medieval Warm Period and the decades of declining temperatures that followed. True, we might find the causes for modern warming are different than Medieval warming.
However, no matter what caused the Earth to warm to today’s or the Medieval Period’s temperatures, the consequences of warming should be the same… If, like the IPCC, you believe that today’s level of warming should trigger positive feedback mechanisms, which will dramatically amplify further warming, it doesn’t matter what the original cause for the warming was.
Obviously, to everyone but climate scientists, for a hypothesis to be meaningful it has to be testable. Since theories about climate evolution can’t be tested by looking for evidence in the future – until time machines are invented – we should be focusing on collecting and understanding climate data and proxies from the past. Especially the recent past where we might hope to find a high resolution record of a climate most similar to our own. A useful climate theory should explain past phenomena as well as have interesting implications for the future. Thus far, the AGW theory is useless for explaining past climate phenomena, therefore its untestable implications for the future are suspect at best.
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wes, I’m sure Foster would “beg to differ”! But that is the nature of science; sometimes inadvertent results occur and it is not so much what F&R intended to do, it’s what they actually did which counts.
There have been some amusing interpretations of the F&R paper. As I noted F&R attempt to isolate the AGW temperature signature by removing the natural factors; so they remove MEI [ENSO], volcanoes [AOD] and the sun [PMOD]. According to their 2nd equation as ferd berple observes:
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Lol! That was the funniest thing I’ve read all day and I’ve just come from the cheeseburger network.
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Nice comment but just to expand a little on the MWP there Wes, what i find intriguing about the warmbots is the lengths of denial they go to to maintain the faith, by simply looking at a few facts we can deduce that the AGW theory is on shaky ground but yet the warmbots will manufacture all kinds of fancy storytelling to avoid the invetiable.
These facts are:
If we look at the CO2 levels since the late fifties we can see the level in 1959 was 316.38ppm and the level in 2012 was 393.65ppm (should we have a reading as yet or is this actually from last year?) Anyway we can see that this is an increase of 77.27ppm over 54 years which equates to an average of 1.45ppm per year.
Now one would naturally think that the PPM would increase as the years roll on and this is what you see however if ALL the co2 since 1959 is man made then the increases do seem rather small and suggest something else is going on. For example the decadal increase of CO2 is consistent but small, 1959 to 68 it was 0.677/year, from 69 to 78 it was 1.08ppm, from 79 to 88 it was 1.5ppm/year, from 89 to 98 it was 1.27ppm/year (a reduction in rate), 99 to 2008 it was 1.67ppm/year and from 2009 to 12 (4 years) it was only 1.55ppm/year.
All this gives us that nice slow but methodical linear increase in CO2 levels but surely we would see something different. Current theory tells us that man made CO2 floats around for 100’s if not 1000’s of years it is well mixed and is increasing at a rapid rate. If all this was true then surely we would see a much more dramitic and consistent increase in levels, the past decade has produced approximately a third of all CO2 emissions and yet the rate of increase is similar to the 1980’s and the last 4 years is below that of the previous decade, so no the current theory is not supported by the facts.
An alternative theory however is supported by the facts, firstly we must rid ourselves of the notion that CO2 floats around for centuries and embrace the idea that CO2 is actually heavier than air and therefore stays much closer to the surface where it is absorbed quite quickly by plants. Therefore a majority of the CO2 that leaves the exhaust pipe, smoke stack and human body is absorbed by the surrounding environment and does not “float” about as we are made to believe.
If this is the case then what could be causing the linear increase of CO2 levels? Weel of course it is the ~800 to 1000 year lag between temp and CO2. The temps in 1000AD were about the same as they were in 1900AD and continued to climb there, this temp rise reached its zenith after 1200AD. Therefore if we add ~800 to 1000 years onto these dates we can see that CO2 should be rising during this period of time. The nature of the rise is as expected a slow increase from the oceans and not an erractic increase from year to year increasing significantly over the past decade one would expect to see if man was contributing to this measurement in any significant way.
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That’s a creative angle but since the logarithmic effect of increasing CO2 levels means that even a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from today’s levels means very little in terms of warming, unless, you know, you make big unsupported assumptions about positive feedback of water vapour, then what’s your point?
If it is that humankind is not contributing to the increase of atmospheric CO2 in a significant way we’ll need to see some hard evidence to support this claim. Got citations?
One problem with the natural CO2 hypothesis is that the oceans are a net sink for CO2, rather than releasing CO2, they’re mopping it up. As Cohenite pointed out above there is no evidence for the oceans warming in the last decade. Oceans have to warm up to release CO2.
Another more political problem with that position is that it cedes the argument that CO2 causes dangerous warming to the Warmist camp. Instead of arguing the IPPC-certified facts about the logarithmic effect of CO2 you appear to be ceding the position that rising CO2 is a problem. Moving along instead to claim — Hey, don’t blame Earthians! The modern CO2 increases are ALL natural.
The fact is that its almost irrelevant to the climate science where the CO2 increases are coming from. It could be coming volcanoes and the results would be the same.
As a rhetorical strategy in a national discourse designed to win hearts and minds I rate “human activity has no significant effect on atmosphere CO2 levels” with “The Greenhouse Effect doesn’t Exist” as losing propositions.
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On second thoughts Wes lets just pretend i never responded as once again you seem to have failed to grasp the core claims made in my comment.
Cheers
Crakar24
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wes, the idea that a declining ocean heat content, which has been happening for the last 9 years, means that the ocean cannot be both a sink and a source was looked at by poor, old Beck some time ago:
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/bayreuth/CO2-cycle-e2.pdf
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Ah, poor old Beck.
You’re the font of all links, Cohenite. Beck says that the oceans are outgassing in El Nino hot spots along the coast of Peru, for instance, and absorbing in Arctic cool spots.
But since we’re talking about a global phenomena here. I wonder if you have any links at your fingertips that answer the question…. Are the Earth’s oceans a net sink for CO2 or not, recently?
It seems there is little, ahem, consensus on this topic, so Crakar’s claim isn’t as cracked as it might look even though he’s declined to defend it.
I’m going with a net Ocean Sink at about 2,000 Million tons of CO2 annually, according to one source that I can’t lay my hands on….whoops.
Furthermore, this link has made a correlation between the rate of CO2 increase and economic cycles…
http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/pdf/pep/Peters_2011_Budget2010.pdf
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Dunno who Beck is but tell him/her he/she is dreamin’.
The coast of Peru is the UPWELLING ZONE where the waters are usually about 8DegC cooler than the nearby areas. If one had to, one would call it the LA NINA cold spot, not the El Nino hot spot.
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Baa,
During El Ninos warm water moves east along the equator suppressing the normal upwelling of cold water along the coast of Peru killing off the anchovy fishery and causing flooding and landslides in what is normally a desert environment. The warm water along the coast from Baja downward causes wet winters from California to Florida as a stream of wet low pressure systems flow east across Mexico and through Texas. The opposite occurs in La Ninas, which is why it was so wet and cool this summer on our end of the Pacific.
Poor Old Beck’s 2008 map in Cohenite’s link shows an El Nino event along the coast of Peru, I guess because 2008 was an El Nino year.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/climate/indicator_enso.jsp?c=soi&p=monthly
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To answer that question wes, you will have to resolve the issue of whether all the atmospheric increase in CO2 is from ACO2. To do that you will have to choose between Engelbeen and Salby!
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@Wes
El Nino: weak, 2006-7
La Nina: Weak/moderate 2007-8-9.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/enlist/index.shtml
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/lnlist/index.shtml
Anchovies do not ‘die off’ during El Ninos. They mainly shift south and are replaced by other species ( sardine, mackerrel, tuna etc).
However, over fishing, especially during environmentally tough times for certain species (anchovies in the year FOLLOWING the Austral spring dominated by El Nino) distrupt the breeding cycle causing a massive drop off in numbers in that following year.
Yes, warm waters slosh back east during an El Nino, however, the Humboldt Current never stops. The waters off the coasts of Peru and Chile may then be warmer than ‘usual’ but are still cooler than the rest of the equatorial Pacific. (pertinent to the degassing of CO2 discussion).
http://www.mpl.ird.fr/suds-en-ligne/ecosys/ang_ecosys/upwelling/humboldt.htm
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/41145959?uid=3737536&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21100697665101
To recap, the Humboldt Current (upwelling) never stops. the waters off the coasts of Peru and Northern Chile are ALWAYS cooler than the rest of the equatorial Pacific waters.
Oh, by the way. It is said that la Ninas bring wet weather to Australia and drought to western South America and vice versa during El Nino (dry in Oz, wet in SA) but then how to explain this? (Dated 12/03/2012, 3 weeks ago)
http://c4i.me/site/2012/03/11/landslide-south-america-peru-5/
March 22 report
http://weather.pdc.org/index.php/2012/03/22/pdc-global-flood-survey-12/
Lots of floods in South America during this latest La Nina.
regards
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Wow…Thanks for all that homework, Baa. Good stuff.
I’ll check it out 😉
My story about the lack of anchovies during El Niño were based upon stuff I read as a kid in the 1970’s in musty old books probably from the 1940’s or 50’s. So I needed an update.
Not sure overfishing was an issue back in the 1950’s, though… Anchovies which normally teem in their billions off the coast of Peru literally disappear during El Niño events of which the Peruvians have records going back to the 1700’s. People use to starve to death because the anchovy harvest failure, which was timed to El Niño. That’s the only reason the correlation and name came about. El Niño is Spanish for “the boy child”. Seems that El Niño tends to occur at Christmas, so the Peruvians called it their name for the Christ child…. Sad to learn overfishing has caused the decline of the anchovy industry.
I was under the impression that while the upwelling of cold water along the coast of Peru never stops, an El Niño caps it off with a layer of warm water, preventing the cold current from rising all the way to the surface with all the nutrients the fish love to eat. The massive swell of warm water coming from the west pushes the thermocline down, down, down… This kills off the fishery. Not the fish. Sorry to confuse you. The fish surf the front edge of the warm pulse to cooler waters in the south.
As for the recent flooding in Sur America, obviously the Southern Oscillation isn’t the end all of weather. It’s a statistical thing. Not every La Niña has historically brought floods to Australia either.
Here’s my favourite Pacific Oscillation site, page set to what is perhaps the biggest El Niño event ever closely measured. Enjoy!
http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/elninopdo/elnino/index.cfm?Fuseaction=ShowNews&NewsID=256
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No Wes its just that i would rather not debate anything with you as you dont read what people say.
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Hmmm, I’m becoming a Wes George fan…
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If our aim was to “win” hearts and minds we would simply do what the pollies do and go with the “consensus”.
Some of us at least, are here to learn and expand our thinking, not win consensus-driven debates.
Six months ago I wouldn’t have even stopped to question the “greenhouse effect” per se, only the outrageous claims of tipping points and catastrophic outcomes. Now thanks to comments here, and supporting links and a lot of supplementary reading, I’ve been challenged to consider entirely new possibilities.
Ditto for atmospheric temperature being largely a product of atmospheric pressure instead of a “greenhouse effect”, and at least a dozen other concepts I previously held as self-evident since my high school days.
I’m in my sixties and I’m being forced to learn every day and I’m reveling in it.
If I wanted to wallow in the warm ooze of groupthink I’d be over at the Greenpeace site instead.
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And yet you seem pretty upset that someone dares to disagree with you. Why is that?
I cited Sherwood Idso as one skeptical scientist who has no problems with anthropogenic CO2 or the Greenhouse Effect. He thinks it doesn’t need refuting in order to show CAGW is wrong. I’ve cited evidence that recent CO2 rises fluctuate with cyclical global economics.
I said I don’t think making unnecessary and unsupported claims help the skeptical case in the political arena. In fact, it damages our credibility.
Please by all means, I’m here to learn as well. Enlighten me.
Explain to us what the Greenhouse Effect is and why is it bogus.
Then show us why rising CO2 levels are natural rather than human-induced.
Thanx in advance.
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If the atmospheric greenhouse effect isn’t important then how do you explain the fact that the atmosphere near ground level gets warmer during the day and cooler at night. Note that I said atmospheric greehouse effect to distinguish it from the greenhouse greenhouse effect. The two are quite different. A greenhouse structure merely prevents the air from mixing convectively. The atmospheric greenhouse effect on the other hand involves absorption and emission of infrared radiation.
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The paper you cited wes, showed that CO2 emissions were correlated with global economic conditions.
If you’ll compare the first graph in that paper with this graph of CO2 atmospheric concentrations, you’ll see that there is somewhere between 0 and a trivial amount of correlation between anthropogenic emissions and atmospheric concentrations.
Thus, the implied claim in that paper (and the explicit claims of the warmistas) that anthropogenic emissions are responsible for the atmospheric concentration increase is not supported by the evidence.
Jo had a post on that recently, outlining the various lines of evidence that anthropogenic contributions are a minor part of the modern CO2 concentration rise.
There is another line of evidence against the anthropogenic origin for (most of) the CO2 concentration increase, and that is the short atmospheric lifetime of CO2, and the measured rate at which a concentration impulse is removed.
Most warmista sites (and many of our trolls) play deliberately stupid on this topic, so I’ve been forced to explain it in excruciating detail. For anyone interested, this is the start of a typical “conversation” on the subject, and this and this are perhaps my best efforts at a simple explanation.
Can’t help you there — I agree with S. Idso on this.
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The relationship between CO2 and temperature is also interesting:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1959/mean:12/offset:300
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Thanks for that Bob and Cohenite.
After studying yours links…
We can measure pretty accurately how much CO2 human emission are produced annually… about ~5,000 million tons.
But no one is sure how much the oceans cycle in and out. Let’s say 85,000 million tons are outgassed and 90,000 million tons are absorbed this year because it’s a La Niña year and the numbers are turned around during a warmer El niño year.
The oceans capacity to absorb and outgas CO2 are about 20 times human emissions. But the difference between outgassed and absorbed in the annual cycle might vary from as little as 0gt or as high as 10,000gt compared to the human emissions of ~5,000gt. And human emission are ramping up.
Since human emissions only add CO2, never subtract as does the annual ocean cycling of CO2, the contribution has to be considered significant and additive.
As you know I’m not arguing the Warmista position that we need to be alarmed.
I’m inclined to posit the anthropogenic CO2 increase is a feature of the evolutionary trajectory for an Earth-like planet to naturally evolve intelligent life that utilises the eons of stored solar energy buried underground to kickstart its civilisation up the Kardashev scale.
As Byron pointed out a few posts ago at the time of the first land plants (~450 million years ago) atmospheric CO2 levels were over 4,000 ppm. And most of that CO2 is now buried in hydrocarbon deposits across the planet. It follows that humans extracting some fraction of it to use will return some of that CO2 to the atmosphere.
The best evidence that the oceans are not dramatically swamping the human emission signal seems to be the rather steady annual upticking of CO2 in the atmosphere. If natural CO2 cycling were swamping human emissions we might expect to see a more jagged atmospheric CO2 signal, one that more closely corresponds with the global temperature record.
If the paper shows CO2 emissions are correlated with the global economic cycle then by definition the correlation must be with the anthropogenic part, no? The reason why your woodfortrees graphic makes the correlation look trivial is because it lacks the resolution of the finer details.
*
As a political aside, I don’t think this is a useful talking point for the Australian skeptical community as we seek to build a consensus to reverse the Carbon Tax going towards the next election. The supporting data is so vague that it looks terribly partisan to claim something like “humans have no effect on the atmosphere’s CO2 level.” It seems to be the same kind of unsupported hyperbole that so undermines the Alarmist position. We have to be better than them at measuring realities….And It’s divisive and unnecessarily provocative. Hey, maybe some day it will be shown to be true. But that day ain’t here yet. We have to work with the information we have now.
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Absolutely correct. I don’t think anyone can disagree that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are correlated with the global economy, since our economy is largely driven by cheap hydrocarbon energy.
The important question is, however: How much of the atmospheric increase is driven by anthropogenic emissions — since this determines how much of the increase is potentially within our control.
The data is not so much vague, as it requires logical analysis and synthesis to draw conclusions from — in other words, science.
For example: The Bomb Spike data shows that there is a 2-3 year mixing lag between hemispheres. (Most A-bombs were set off in the Northern Hemisphere, and it took that long for the Southern Hemisphere concentrations to catch up.) On the other hand, Jo’s post on the subject shows that the current increase has the opposite pattern — increases in the Southern Hemisphere lead the Northern Hemisphere, even though most anthropogenic emissions are in the Northern Hemisphere (sorry, Aussies — you’re small potatoes in the global economy). This is a clear indication that human emissions aren’t the driver behind the modern increase.
This kind of reasoned analysis, however, seems today to be out of the reach of much of the general public and certainly out of range for most politicians and many government scientists. You may have a practical point.
(Of course, the data ‘supporting’ the AGW hypothesis is not only equally vague, but also requires that one not apply too much logic to it.)
Well, two points:
1) If you divide up the CO2 cycle into sources and sinks, then the above statement is true for every source and the opposite is true for every sink. You can’t really draw any conclusions from this beyond that when you verbally divide something into two parts then you think about it as two parts. If you arbitrarily combine a source and a sink into the same part, so that you think of them together, you haven’t changed anything real. To try to say that a particular source is the one responsible for the increase is to fall into a Nasrudin story.
2) It’s not that clear that human activity is only a source. For example, there is significant evidence (historical photos and accounts) that there are between 3 and 10 times as many trees in the US today as 150 years ago. This represents a significant sequestration of CO2, and is consistent with the measured result that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 decrease as an air mass moves from the Pacific to the Atlantic across the US driven by the Prevailing Westerlies. The continental US is a net sink of CO2, and most probably, Human forest management plays some part in that.
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Gosh, Bob…
I forgot all about Tom Quirk’s study. I remember Jen’s post back in 2009.
If the CO2 source is an all natural global phenomena that means that the Earth or at least its oceans are steadily warming. It doesn’t say anything about the cause of the warming, but if natural CO2 outgasing is going on every year for many decades now and human contributions are insignificant maybe the oceans are still rebounding after the LIA?
But how do you explain that CO2 levels were only 280ppm during the MWP? Why would today’s warming, very similar to the MWP provoke an extra 110ppm with no sign to an end in the rise? Maybe during the medieval period the great forests had yet to be cut down so mopped up 110 ppm of CO2? If so the reforesting of North America has a ways to go. Or is it cancelled out by the deforestation going on in China and Asia? We won’t even mention South America, Africa and Indonesia because they’re in the SH.
Or if ocean warmth was still bouncing back from the LIA shouldn’t we expect the SH CO2 levels lead the NH? SH is almost all ocean, with the biggest cyanobacteria populations on Earth.
Steve Short, a bloke worthy of respect, isn’t convinced that Tom’s result are spot on:
Steve Short speculates that the cyanobacteria in the vast sub-arctic waters of the SH keep the difference between SH and NH to a minimum, although he still claims:
He goes on to add:
Could that be the signal of economic growth particularly in the developing world?
I just don’t think we can settle this question with today’s incomplete data base.
Still with oceanic reservoirs of CO2 being 50 times that of the atmosphere it’s worth keeping the anthropogenic contribution in its proper place as only a tiny fraction of that total.
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No argument there. One of the main problems with AGW “science” is that the gov’t scientists have stopped looking for any real evidence of what is happening (since the 1970’s at least) and are just looking for justification for more grants.
Eisenhower’s prediction in 1961 has been fulfilled:
It’s only independent scientists like the Idsos, Quirk, and others who are continuing to do real research, and they are often villified by those whose agendas they threaten: The government scientists’ grant money stream, the politicians’ desires for power, and the Green’s dreams of World Socialism.
It’s definitely an uphill battle, but I think they are clearly making progress.
Well, there are many reasons to believe that this data is also subject to the bias that has been so evident in the temperature data.
First, the Mauna Loa data, which is the most often referenced by the warmistas, has suspicious differences from the other data sources around the globe. In addition, NOAA has admitted that the global CO2 “data” is, in fact, data-free.
Second, the pre-Mauna Loa data is quite unlike the ice core data that supposedly parallels it, and it is undeniable that this data was severely cherry-picked in order to match the ice cores.
Third, the aging effects on gas bubbles in high pressure ice cores is a subject that has been nearly totally ignored by current climate science (other than the arbitrary 80 year shift done to match the raw ice core measurements with the Keeling curve). Independent research has identified serious problems with the interpretation of ice core CO2 data that, when corrected, give a completely different answer than the official value — indicating that today’s values are nothing special.
Back to your observation that:
The data (that would allow a rational analysis of anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2, as well as to global climate) is not being expanded by government-funded science, as that would be against their self-interest. It is, however, being (slowly) expanded by independent research — and, so far, that research has tended to show that the AGW hypothesis is unsupported by actual data.
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I agree that the data we have to work with is corrupted by an unknown quantity of confirmation bias. I won’t say fraud or malicious attempts to skew results, although we see that even MacArthur Geniuses aren’t above committing felonies to “Save the Earth.”
But data about anything is always incomplete and damaged and we still have to work with it to get results. Shysters have always existed. I’ve never made an important decision in my life based on totally complete and accurate information. Such is the human condition.
What makes me morose, is to imagine all the research paths unwalked and concepts disappeared from our imagination by the wilfully presumptuous.
I suspect that the way confirmation bias mostly works is by deleting or not making unavailable data or results which fails outside the narrative. That’s the greatest lost, the ideas and possibilities that are just going down the memory hole. The youthful grad student with a new approach turned away. The leads, the hunches, the insights, the grant proposals that’ll never see the light of day. It’s impossible to measure this effect.
I suspect that if climate change really was the great moral challenge of our age, rather than the greatest rort in history, many of the questions about climate could be solved rather quickly. After all, climatology is not subatomic physic. The powers that be really don’t want to know any more then we did in 1998 when Mann came out with his hockeystick. In fact, they’d like to know a lot less!
The daily displays of wilful ignorance paraded in our national discourse about climate must be very difficult to maintain as the truth dribbles out.
The Greek philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, etc.) had an oddly modern conception of evil, they called it Kakon. They thought of evil as the deprivation of existence. Existence being good. Evil was the black hole of nothingness, something you couldn’t know, the lack of knowing. They didn’t dwell on kakon because little can be said about nothing.
In our information age perhaps the ultimate evil is gatekeepers of information and researchers conducting the search for more useful knowledge to consciously or unconsciously deprive knowledge of existence.
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wes, I think you still have some illusions about scientific research. I used to have them too — I read Boy’s Life as a kid.
Re-read Eisenhower’s quote again — scientific research today is a near monopoly of government. It’s funding is controlled by the government and what is funded is largely determined by politics.
Since politics is how Humans allocate common resources, this is not necessarily a bad thing, if the politics is transparent. However, I’ve yet to see anyone try to shine a light on the internal workings of the funding agencies which are, no doubt, themselves hives of political activity.
Of course, no one is forced to participate in government-funded research — I have lots of ideas I can follow up on, but I’m forced to pick ones that can turn a profit fairly rapidly as I have limited resources.
I don’t think that confirmation bias is the active agent behind bias in government-funded research — that would presuppose that government science is primarily concerned with the search for knowledge. The problem is more akin to Natural Selection.
The primary concern of the funding agencies is to achieve continued and increased funding. Like all bureaucracies, they do this by pleasing the politicans who can make these decisions. Politicians are not generally known for disinterested scientific curiousity, but are mostly interested in promoting their own power and careers.
As one who has received government funding (and known many others who do), it becomes very clear what kinds of research will be funded and what will not. Of the directions for which funding is available, it is crystal clear what kinds of results will attract continuing funding.
For example:
The Department of Defense funds research that allows the military to fight better — better weapons, better defenses, better intelligence. I have a current grant in this area.
The National Institutes of Health funds research that makes it easier to identify and treat disease. Much of my funding comes from development of better microscopic imaging techniques.
I sometimes have great ideas that are spun off of the above research, but if the funding agencies aren’t interested, they will go nowhere.
Climate science is currently being funded by political interests who want to justify massive increases in political power. How this came about, I’m not sure. Perhaps because climate science has no real immediate benefits and few benchmarks of success, it couldn’t attract more pragmatic funding like that supplied by the DOD and NIH, so was gradually taken over by interests in the government that saw how it could be used to increase political power. At any rate, you cannot get funded just for intellectual curiosity — you must propose projects that will (or have the potential to) advance the political agenda. Getting ‘useless’ answers (that is, ones that don’t advance the agenda) will reduce the chance of future funding.
The government gets what it pays for. In climate science, it is paying for people to say “the sky is falling, government must do something!”.
********************************************
The closest thing to pure science in the last century was possibly Bell Labs. Bell was able to fund the Labs, as they had a government monopoly on the telephone system and were enormously profitable. The Lab was a way of generating good will to counteract the inevitable friction a monopolistic organization creates. Good will made it less likely they would lose the monopoly. This purpose was served by any research that produced something new and exciting — it almost didn’t matter what it was.
An astonishing amount of today’s technology got its start at Bell Labs. As far as I’m aware of, there is no government-funded program that comes within lightyears of matching the old Bell Laboratories.
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So, in plainspeak you want Crakar to supply a peer-reviewed, published, scientific paper proving a negative?
Good luck with that Crakar.
Oh, by the way, I gave you a thumbs up for your reply to Wes.
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Then please show evidence for the positive version.
Show us how natural sources are responsible for recent CO2 increases.
Obviously, if natural sources are the cause of recent CO2 increases then humankind is NOT responsible.
Citations are still appreciated.
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I can assure you Wes, nothing upsets me anymore. I just call it as I see it. I made my comment because, at the end of the day, you were making a statement based on a “consensus”, EXACTLY what most of us argue AGAINST most of the time.
Professor Sherwood Idso is a man I have a towering respect for. That doesn’t make him right on everything. Professor Idso’s main argument is that increased levels of CO2 would be good for the planet, and I concur absolutely. That STILL doesn’t make him right.
Age-wise Professor Idso is a compatriot of mine – we would have had virtually identical high school and early university training wherein the greenhouse effect was unchallenged – that STILL doesn’t make him right on that particular area. He could well be as wrong as I now consider I was up until six months ago when I started venturing out of my comfort zone.
No you blatantly attacked and basically ridiculed Crakar for bringing to attention some recent, and plausible alternatives in the ongoing debate. If we are to be the “skeptics”, then debate, even amongst ourselves, is our very lifeblood.
I have made five detailed posts on previous threads on this very subject over the last two weeks. If you’re admitting you don’t read all the posts, then I’ll provide a link to one of them.
Again, I have posted on this in the last week, in fact in the last couple of days. The entire concept that CO2 levels were “stable at 280 ppm until the industrial revolution” would increasingly appear to be bogus, with multiple fluctuations actually recorded and logged in the past.
Plotting these “dismissed” CO2 fluctuations against global temperatures shows us exactly the correlation we would expect to see in accordance with Henry’s Law. Ocean temperature goes up, atmospheric CO2 goes up (outgassing). Ocean temperatures go down, atmospheric CO2 goes down (absorption).
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Carrying on from my previous reply regarding the validity of claims that CO2 was “stable” at 280 ppm up until the industrial revolution, even from the IPCC and its sycophants we get a claimed average rise in atmospheric CO2 of around 1.5 to 2.0 ppm per year.
However, simply from the alleged rise in global temperature over the same period, outgassing of CO2 from the alleged warming oceans should have contributed between 2.0 and 4.0 ppm to atmospheric CO2.
So you see, Wes, the question isn’t where all the CO2 is coming from, it’s where it’s disappearing to. According to the alleged figures (which I think are baloney) we don’t have atmospheric CO2 we can’t explain, we have an ABSENCE of atmospheric CO2 we can’t explain.
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You’re upset because the consensus here is that “statements based on consensus” is what we should fight against???? 😉
Whew, boy, a bit muddled, eh?
The proper use of consensus needs clarification because we’re no longer a fringe movement in permanent opposition, but part of ascendent coalition that will soon be elected to govern by a consensus among the Australian people that it’s time to ditch the Carbon Tax, ditch the Greens and review all climate science policy.
While it’s absolutely true that consensus has no place in the scientific method, consensus is central to politics.
In fact, one could say that politics is the art of building and measuring consensus while always keeping in mind the political goals one hopes to achieve.
And when science enters the political arena it can inform the democratic forces of consensus.
For instance, when the government makes decisions about which drugs to subsidise in the paid pharmaceuticals scheme the decision is made partly upon the science but also upon a political consensus that properly considers more than just the science. If the government decides to fund a certain new drug it’s NOT a scientific confirmation of the drug effectiveness, but it is a political consensus making a judgement based however tenuously on a topic informed by medical science.
In politics we have to reach consensus on scientific topics all the time. The Green/Labor government consensus did not erred by attempting to use science to inform their policies.They erred by being unable to discriminate between hard scientific evidence and evangelic environmentalism posing as science.
Now that we are in the vast majority we’ll need to be able to discriminate between the proper usage of political consensus and the anti-scientific method usage, which is really just a logical fallacy employed to pre-emept debate. Obviously, if 99 scientists think the Earth is flat while only 1 thinks it round, the Earth remains unaltered by “expert consensus.”
When the coalition comes to power we can expect that the first issue on their plate will be the Carbon Tax. The emerging political consensus is that the Carbon Tax is bad policy. This consensus is based upon a number of scientific studies from not only climate science but from economics to the logistics of energy production.
It’s perfectly honourable and absolutely necessary for the Coalition to employ political consensus while forming climate science policy.
We are the mainstream now, mate. Consensus is what were about.
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I have had a html version of Idso’s paper up since 2006.
Not sure how I did that – maybe OCR.
How MINISCULE is the Anthropogenic Greenhouse Effect ?
January 24th, 2006 by Warwick Hughes
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Anyone watch that brilliant program “Australia—the time travellers guide” on ABC1?
Showed how in the Devonian era the proliferation of plant life reduced atmospheric CO2 to such an extent that there was a global ice age.
We are now looking at the corollary of this.
Food for thought!
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They simply assume that the reduction of CO2 caused an ice age (’cause that’s the current fashion). Pop Sci programs on the telly don’t make a proof.
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Didn’t get it from a pop sci program.
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I was taught that in the plants respiration process oxygen is taken out of the air and carbon dioxide is emitted. A balancing act to photosynthesis by the sound of it.
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Kevin,
You might have that the wrong way around.
Plants take in carbon dioxide, hang on to the carbon bit, and throw out the oxygen, all during the process of photosynthesis. The process reverses at night when there are fewer photons to synthesise, but no where near at the same rate. The sum total is that plants remove carbon dioxide and grow, and produce oxygen so that we can breath – symbiosis baby.
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The night bit is called respiration I thought.
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Yes, that is what they called it when I was at school too. On reflection, we found it odd that plants actually take one breath per day. But that is the conclusion we came to.
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As plants need CO2 for photosynthesis wouldn’t the output of CO2 in respiration have to be more or less equivalent?
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We are talking about a world that went from a tiny fringe of green around the costs, worts and the like, to a world covered with 40m trees. A shedload of carbon removed from the atmosphere. Dead trees did not decay like they do today so the amount of locked up carbon zoomed.
You could look this up for yourself if you still had some native intelligence.
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Yes, it’s uncanny how the greens are always found around the money.
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STOP PRESS!!!
Global warming changes the way things decay!
Grave implications for tooth cavities says Australian Society of Dentists.
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Oh, it showed that did it Maxine? Interesting. So should be easy for you to explain then how it is, if the driving force for global cooling, glaciation and ice ages was low atmospheric CO2 concentration, that we are not in the midst of a global ice age now? I mean, afterall, atmospheric CO2 levels are presently very low by comparison with the Devonian. In fact, they are the lowest recorded in geological history. And looking out of my window, all I can see is a nice warm (inter-glacial) sunny day!
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Global ice age. Trees died. In fact there was a huge extinction even at the Devonian-Carboniferous boundary.
From decay of some dead trees left exposed to vulcanology enough CO2 formed to begin warming the world again
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Got some links or references?
We are talking late or early Devonian?
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Maxine, the link below shows a chart of Atmospheric [CO2] and Avge Global Temperatures over the geological past (600M years).
As you can see, atmospheric [CO2] and Avge Global Temps are harly in lock-step. Note also the rate of change in [CO2] and Temp at the time of the Permian ME event: again, hardly a “runaway greenhouse” was it?
Finally, a quote from the linked piece below:
“To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age while at the same time CO2 concentrations then were nearly 12 times higher than today– 4400 ppm. According to greenhouse theory, Earth should have been exceedingly hot. Instead, global temperatures were no warmer than today. Clearly, other factors besides atmospheric carbon influence earth temperatures and global warming.”
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
Feel free to talk us through your thinking, Maxine… maybe Richard Smith or the ABC could help-out?
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…And Maxine, grateful if you would also touch on the Cretaceous…
Asyou can see from the linked graph above, the very inconvenient fact that for much of the Cretaceous period (in fact, well into the present Quaternary) atmospheric [CO2] and global avge Temp were heading in…well, diametrically opposite directions.
How does that gel with the CO2 driven global warming hypothesis?
In science, you only have to falsify an hypothesis once to throw it out. So, if the theory of evolution by natural selection (first fully-described by a Mr C. Darwin) could be falsified just once – the biological sciences would necessarily have to discard it as the fundamental basis of its entire understanding.
From the evidence presented in the graph above concerning atmospheric carbon and avge global temps over 600M years, the late Ordovician (see post above) and the Cretaceous clearly falsify the hypothesis of CO2-driven global warming.
And yet, it seems, mainstream climate science has no need for the scientific method. It has replaced it with superstition – fodder for the green fascist movement and the rationale used by the parasitical classses to coerce and loot from the productive members of society, at the same time removing, piece-by-piece their democracy and their liberty.
Food for thought, Maxine…
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Whilst Maxine is providing links, perhaps Maxine can explain the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 55m yrs ago:
During the PETM, for reasons that are still unknown, the amount of carbon in Earth’s atmosphere rose rapidly.
“Our results imply a fundamental gap in our understanding about the amplitude of global warming associated with large and abrupt climate perturbations,” warns Zeebe’s team.
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Maxine your devotion to the faith of global warming is indeed an inspiration to all those dedicated to a cause or a faith. The linking of CO2 to extinction events that happened in all cases in the blink of an eye in geological terms is rather clutching at straws.
A rather young and unsettled sun prone to temper tantrums and a young solar system full of wayward travelers in drunken orbits would probably explain the situation more readily. The suns tantrums tend to make our planet roil and boil causing all sorts of mayhem, like volcanoes and earth quakes, both our planet and the sun were less settled in the past. I am sure you were a teenager once, just have a think back.
Then there were the odd unruly big rocks that did not behave in the politically correct manner, that ran around beating up planets, the moon is another oddity that we inherited probably after it bounced off the earth. Our sun had another planet once that is now called an asteroid belt one of those wayward bullies I would imagine.
Maxine now tell me how this gas, this CO2 caused all this destruction. I think not.
H2O and CO2 together are the live blood of flora, the O2 they make gave rise to the possibility that we could evolve into what we are, if you do not like we as humans it is your problem and not ours. We have the technology now, to turn the entire world into a garden of Eden, except those places that are too cold. The opposition to a change for the better comes from people such as yourself that sees bees wax tapers as the future for illumination.
I do feel some what sorry for you Maxine as the sun is on holidays and the next few decades will be cooler, thus putting a rather large hole in the global warming fantasy.
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exposing BBC’s Richard Black…love the ICE bit:
30 March: Blackswhitewash: A Global Coup D’etat – Part Two – Richard Black
ICE, ICE Baby….
ICE is a campaign to bring about an “International Court For the Environment”. It states its aims pretty clearly:
“In order to bring accountability to the current system, institutional reform is required. We need to integrate the decentralized environmental governance regime and provide an enforcement mechanism that holds both States and non-state actors to account. We need accountability – We need the International Court for the Environment.”…
http://blackswhitewash.com/
check the carbon dioxide futures price, which is continuing to drop:
ICE
ICE Futures Europe is the leading market for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
ICE Futures Europe currently offers derivatives contracts on four types of carbon units: EU Allowances (EUAs), EU Aviation Allowances (EUAAs), Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) and Emissions Reductions Units (ERUs)…
https://www.theice.com/productguide/ProductGroupHierarchy.shtml?groupDetail=&group.groupId=19
ICE: IntercontinentalExchange
On March 4, 2009, ICE announced that ICE US Trust, LLC (ICE Trust), a New York limited liability trust company, received regulatory approval from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to become a member of the Federal Reserve System and to serve as a clearing house and central counterparty for credit default swap (CDS) transactions, initially for North American CDS indexes and later adding liquid single-name swaps. Now known as ICE Clear Credit LLC it is subject to direct regulation and supervision by the CFTC and the SEC.
In December, 2010, The New York Times fielded a substantial examination of the Trust and its members, saying in part “the details of their meetings, even their identities, have been strictly confidential. Drawn from giants like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the bankers form a powerful committee that helps oversee trading in derivatives … [and also] share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable — and controversial — fields in finance,” a system with “costly implications” for customers and smaller banks…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IntercontinentalExchange
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http://www.martindurkin.com/blogs/green-superstate-what-global-warmers-really-want
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2 April: Ninemsn: Carbon price regulator starts work
The Clean Energy Regulator is an independent statutory authority that will administer several schemes including the carbon pricing mechanism which starts on July 1.
It was formally established and started work on Monday…
A list of the companies which will have to pay the carbon price will be published on the regulator’s website.
Chief executive Chloe Munro said the regulator’s first priority was to make sure people who were involved in existing regulatory schemes to reduce carbon emissions had continuity of service.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8445100/carbon-price-regulator-starts-work
nice how Chloe is connected to the Victorian desal plant! this has an update:
“Update: Ms Munro resigned as Commissioner and Chair of the National Water Commission on 31 March 2012 to take up the position of Chair/Chief Executive Officer of the new Clean Energy Regulator.”
National Water Commisson: Commissionerss: Ms Chloe Munro
Ms Munro was appointed Chair of the National Water Commission in May 2011 bringing strong commercial skills and expertise in public policy and corporate finance, drawing on public and private sector experience in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
She is also the independent non-executive chairman of AquaSure, the consortium building Victoria’s desalination plant and a non-executive director of Hydro Tasmania. Until July 2009, Ms Munro was an executive director at Telstra…
She has been a member of the board of Food Science Australia and a commissioner and deputy president of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission.
Ms Munro holds master’s degrees in mathematics and philosophy from Cambridge University and in business administration from Westminster University. She is a national and Victorian Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration Australia and was awarded a Centenary Medal for outstanding contribution to public administration in 2001.
http://nwc.gov.au/commission/commissioners/chloe-munro
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After an election their jobs may be surplus to requirements.
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in case Chloe’s online presence is disappeared:
2 Nov: RubyConnection: Chloe Munro
by Louise Upton
(Munro) is leading a review of the capacity of the Bureau of Meteorology to respond to extreme weather events; is a member of the advisory boards of FutureEye, a consultancy specialising in social licence to operate, and Lucy Guerin Inc, a contemporary dance company. And just in case there’s any time left unaccounted for in the schedule, Chloe mentors, consults, contributes to think tanks and workshops on topics such as business sustainability and effective leadership, gardens and, most recently, runs…
“I’m not saying I want to work for the greater good of all mankind. My horizons are much lower than that, but I like to think that someone or something somewhere else is better off than it would have been because of my action.”…
http://rubyconnection.com.au/articles/chloe-munro
yes Chloe, GS, JPMorgan etc etc would indeed be better off if the Govt gets its way, against the wishes of the majority of Australians.
Two more appointments to Clean Energy Regulator
The Clean Energy Regulator has two new members, with Jennie Granger and Dr Michael Sargent to join on 2 April.
Both Ms Granger and Dr Sargent will assist in setting the strategic direction of the Clean Energy Regulator and making key regulatory decisions.
Ms Granger comes to the position with a wealth of public sector experience including working as a Second Commissioner at the Australian Taxation Office.
Dr Sargent brings extensive experience from the energy sector having worked in numerous roles including as current Director at the Australian Energy Market Operator…
http://www.thegreenpages.com.au/news/two-more-appointments-to-clean-energy-regulator/
no mention of Sargent’s involvement with Solar!
Aug 2009: Board appointed for $100m solar institute
The board will be made up of Jennifer Goddard, Professor Michael Cardew-Hall, Jason Coombs, Dr Michael Sargent and Peter Thomas with Ms Goddard as chair…
http://myresources.com.au/news/17-othernews/196-board-appointed-for-100m-solar-institute
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This was a peer reviewed report from a expert scientist on climate. Was it considered by the IPCC? If not, why not? If it was considered how was it eventually discounted?
Maybe Donna Lafromboise could find out.
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Because it did not fit with the established dogma. It was, “a statistical outlier” when considered against “the breadth of the established literature” as demonstrated by the “vast consensus of experts in the field” . I am misquoting here, but you get the gist.
The IPCC has never been about the science. It has always been a bureaucratic organisation designed to find the evidence to support the core (and only) purpose of the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change, which is to create a bigger and better bureaucracy to manage and research climate change.
The mandate for the UNFCCC was the result of some political horse trading that went on in Kyoto – the talkfest that produced the doomed Kyoto Protocol.
In short, the IPCC will not consider anything that risks its continued existence, and that of its parent body. Stupid they may be, but suicidal they aren’t.
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Interesting little QandA program going on here fellow posters and Jo!
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/changeyourmind/
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Yes, indeed. Some eminent people are involved I see.
But the Survey!!! This has to be one of the worst surveys I have ever seen. The ABC bias has out done itself. I went right through the process (but didn’t submit it), and it talks about the effects, but does not once ask about the possible causes (other than to lamely ask “is it man-made?) I am shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
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I am certainly looking forward to it. Have put a reminder about it in my diary.
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I think the survey’s pretty good, and it does ask if you think it’s mostly natural or not.
Jo still quiet about this whole thing, but it looks big.
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Ah yes. I will comment soon. They did come inside our house for 4 intense hours last September. Let’s just say we had Delingpoles BBC experience in mind and were skeptical of their claims to be unbiased. I hear it went alright, but you never know til you see the edits.
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[…] Jo Nova Share this:PrintEmailMoreStumbleUponTwitterFacebookDiggRedditLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. This entry was posted in Climate Change and tagged climate research, climate science. Bookmark the permalink. ← New comparison of ocean temperatures reveals rise over the last century Andrew Bolt: Facts are water under the bridge → […]
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Having a little fun with the activists’ inability to do arithmetic: Deep-Fried QANTAS
You’ll have to follow the link to see how I mess with superstitious minds. 😉
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Thanks BF. Now I know, that as I buckle up to commit aviation the flight crew are not just concerned with wondering who in the world ‘maintained’ their aircraft, and will they have to ‘relocate’ to protect their jobs etc.? But now they have to cope with fuel which may cause problems that were not present with standard fuel.
Yes, that is just what I did not want to know. That the crew who are to deliver me safely to my destination now have another layer of duty,…to save the world, by burning up the detritus from a serve of chips and battered fish to compensate for the coal burnt to fry the chips and battered fish.
Biofuel! Why?
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I wouldn’t be too concerned about the first flights. The lubricity of bio-fuels is a significant factor why they can’t be used (in more than “tainting” ratio in modern diesel-engined cars. The stuff simply doesn’t lubricate as well under high pressure and temperatures.
If the engines of the Airbus do use the fuel to lubricate (and cool) e.g. the turbine shaft(s) bearings as well as the fuel pumps, then long-term use may be a problem, resulting in early bearing and fuel-system component failures.
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[snip… anonymous maxine uses words she/he/it can’t define in English. “Denier” no more posts from you Maxine until you learn to speak English. – Jo]
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Hahahahaha I love this bit:
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[snip. Maxine, explain it to us in English, with links and logic that substantiate your claim. If you are going to call someone a “fraud” you need a site that writes accurate english as a source. Orwellian perversions of our language are not science. We don’t have to edit your comments. You do. No I don’t have time to check to follow up links from people who I know don’t use English accurately. –Jo]
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I doubt it Maxine did you notice this little sentence in the midst of the Cut & Paste you quoted?
The scientist is very quick to make an assumption on the one hand but can’t draw a comparative on the other, who is the fraud ?
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You’re using an “anonymous” smear-blog to support your argument.
A smear article of Craig Idso; not even Sherwood Idso.
And then you accuse Idso of being a fraud.
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This does it for me, Idso puts it so succinctly.
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Dispite the fact that to this question:
I answered: Strongly agree
Yes folks, I’m a denier!
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I( should also state that I indicated that both the people and the government should take strong steps to tackle the climate change problem. 🙂
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Waffle, a really flawed survey because I also said that I believed that Global warming was happening …somehow they say I don’t believe it is …go figure
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Hey, I’m a Dismissive too. Wow!
I wanted another question like this one: “Over the past 12 months, how many times have you punished companies that are opposing steps to reduce global warming by NOT buying their products?”
Answered never.
Only I wanted “Over the past 12 months, how many times have you punished companies that are promoting steps to reduce global warming by NOT buying their products?
I have done this quite a few times out of sheer fury. I wonder what the business community would think if they found out that many of their prospective customers hate their warmist policy.
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Woohoo I’m a dismissive !!
A different D word 🙂
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Ditto.
I am sure that when copernicus concluded that the sun was at the centre of the solar system, and not the Earth as the consensus of the time said, that he would have been classed as a “Dismissive” as well.
Gosh, I’d bet he was stubborn bastard about it too.
Until they can prove the positive feedbacks, I will continue to Dismiss rubbish.
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Something that’s overlooked in the CAGW-debate is that, coincidentally, you get exactly the same result if you use Trenberth’s and the IPCC’s figures. The IPCC say that the atmospheric greenhouse is solely responsible for increasing the mean surface temperature 33C higher than it otherwise would be and according to Trenberth the back-radiation from all sources amounts to 333W/sq.m thereby giving us a linear relationship of 0.1C/1/Wsq.m. It would seem that the IPCC have (no doubt unknowingly)have verified Idso’s results. Neat, eh? Using the IPCC’s own positive feedback equation we get a total temperature increase of 1.6C from s doubling of CO2. Please see my (rather unprofessional) blog-post here: http://chipstero7.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/cold-truth-about-co2.html
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The 33DegC arrived at by the Greenhouse consensus is a technical error.
It is arrived at by firstly assuming that an Earth without an atmosphere would be -18DegC. That is the temperature of the surface. Surface being dirt on land and the top few centimetres of the oceans.
They then estimate the average global temperature AS MEASURED BY METEOROLOGICAL INSTRUMENTS 2 METRES ABOVE THE GROUND as 15DegC.
The difference between -18 (actual surface) and 15 (2 metres above actual surface) being the much tauted 33DegC greenhouse effect.
It is wrong wrong wrong
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Furthermore, people get so caught up in the study of trees, they fail to see the forest.
It seems simple enough to ADD the Wm2 equivalent of -18DegC to whatever they think is being backradiated to come up with a total Wm2 equivalent of 15DegC.
However, -18DegC (240Wm2) is the temperature one keeps retail icecreams at. IT IS FRIGGING COLD.
Anybody claiming that that -18DegC can radiate enough ‘HEAT’ (try putting your hands in an icecream freezer for 10 minutes and avoid frostbite) which then ‘backradiates’ from GHGs to raise the surface temperature by a whopping 33DegC is either a fool or a fraud.
As I keep saying, why do Europeans and North Americans bother with trying to warm their abodes with costly heaters?
According to the Greenhouse Theory, all they need do is shovel some cold snow onto their living room floors and watch that cold snow radiate enough ‘heat’ to raise the rooms temperature to a nice comfy 15DegC or more. NUTS.
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Sorry another luke warmist skeptic gone wrong.
There is NO GHGE! Experiment proves.
Incorrect. The so called 33°C ficticious is wrong! based on miss calculation from the Stephan-Boltzmann law. 348Wm-2 is just plain wrong and a miscalculation.
..348Wm-2
http://principia-scientific.org/publications/New_Concise_Experiment_on_Backradiation.pdf
QED
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> There is NO GHGE!
This principia-scientific mob are a bunch of nutters who have found each other by the miracle of the internet. Giving themselves a latin-esque name doesn’t raise their IQ. Strap yourselves in as we take the red pill and follow the Cotton-tail.
This is a peculiar brand of Slayer: someone who disbelieves the GHE because they willingly misunderstand the definition of GHE and relish the ambiguity of the English verb “warm”. If you are going to disprove the existence of a greenhouse effect you can’t do it by that report’s method. Let’s review this wond’rus experiment and its many scientifick conclusions:
Gee whillikers! With all this measurement of thermal radiation from the atmosphere, it’s obvious he’s going to conclude that backradiation exists, right?
Right, so what he just spent all night successfully measuring isn’t actually real.
Uhuh.
Moving right along….to THE ZORRO GRAPH!
Swish swish swish! It’s sweet, ay! The mark of Zorro, clearly proving the slayers are right…out of their tree when it comes to drawing graphs. The ΔT scale is drawn UPSIDE DOWN. Okay no biggie, because we can see that the rate of temperature change is initally around -2.5 and by the end of the experiment it is nearly -3. He describes this decrease as an INCREASE. He can’t read his own graph! (Probably because it’s upside down.) He seems quite fuzzy-headed about what decrease and increase mean with negative numbers.
And then the pearler: “the temperature of the soil does not depend on thermal radiation from the atmosphere.” Well EXCUSE ME Mr Radiation! How presumptuous of you! I am NOT READY TO RECEIVE YOU YET, PLEASE GO AWAY.
Since the soil is allegedly capable of checking the passports of incoming radiation to see if these photons have met any nitrogen lately, AND since the soil DID warm up somehow since the previous night, he concludes the soil temperature may depend upon radiation if it came from the sun or the clouds but it does not depend on thermal radiation from the rest of the atmosphere. What a crock!
Are we to conclude the dirt under his feet was more discerning than he is? 😀
Don’t get comfy yet! Get out your Jump-to-Conclusions Mats, because it’s party time!
Oh, so close! This is the closest he ever gets to understanding thermodynamics, and he screws it up. He has no problem understanding that the difference between received and emitted radiation determines whether the surface warms up or cools, and then completely fails to recognise that the size of that difference determines how quickly it can warm or cool. He fails to apply the principle he just identified to the problem at hand: that backradiation from the dark night sky which he measured as 55 W/m^2 will increase the surface receive rate thus decreasing its cooling rate. It is thus warmer than without that 55W/m^2.
That is all the Greenhouse effect is: keeping energy close to the surface for longer than it would be without the blanketing effect. It stores incoming radiation (mainly by ocean and soil) and intercepts escaping radiation (mainly with H2O vapour and some CO2) to give it a second chance to go down or sideways instead of up, thus keeping it in the lower troposphere for longer. Backradiation, that’s the radiative greenhouse mechanism, he just measured it. Same as Roy Spencer did. Yet he has the sheer bloody mindedness to say Spencer dismisses the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. What a crock.
His basic problem is that he misunderstands the radiative mechanism of GHE as implying that the final effect of GHGs is to warm the surface temperature, when actually no such claim has ever been made, so his entire report is attacking a strawman. The effect of both GHGs and UHIs is to reduce Diurnal Temperature Range by reducing the night time cooling rate,(ie increasing ΔT) thus leaving temperature slightly higher when the Sun rises, thus slightly increasing the global average temperature above a no-GHG scenario (eg the Moon).
And the final mind-numbing conclusion:
His radiometer must be the telepathic model from Hogwarts if it doesn’t use received radiation to measure temperature at a distance. Except he just told me no fewer than nine times that he used it to measure thermal radiation from the atmosphere.
These guys couldn’t hold a cohesive thought even if you glued it to their forehead.
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OK Andrew , so do you know physics! I challenge YOU to produce a paper that PROVES the ‘greenhouse gas theory’ using CO2 form quantum mechanics from first principles!
Come on get going..It hasnt been done yet.
His basic problem is that he misunderstands the radiative mechanism of GHE ..AND so do YOU. What do you belive? come on its a belief system isnt it!! Nothing real here.
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Ooo, they have six possible outcomes, which means that they are probably scaling to give a binomial distribution in the true fashion of epistemology.
So if there are too many Dismissive’s, they will bump some into the Doubtful’s, which will Disengaged some more who, of course, will make others more Cautious, but less so than those who become so Concerned that they are Alarmed about it.
I predict that whoever came up with this fiasco will also pontificate with a statement that, “A full third of Australians are still either Alarmed or Concerned about Global Warming”.
This is an example of one branch of pseudoscience supporting another branch of pseudoscience.
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Ho hum,
My #29 was intended to be in answer to Bob Massey’s #26
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They still can’t get away from the D words though ..I bet Lewandosky put this abomination together. He thinks all us Dismissives, Doubtfuls and Disengageds are crackers but I have another theory.
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One should wonder how so many of these guys believe that there is some effect even tho it has been shown as false by now 2 experiments and several papers on the subject. Arhenius was incorrect 100 years ago but they still adhear to it. The laws of thermodynmaics AND quantum mechanics well shown in physics is poorly understood by many so called persons involved with the subject and it shows.
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Sorry to be o/t but I think the eds of The Australian have been spooked in backing away from their unreserved support of taxing C02 to “cut emissions”. Seems they might be finally acknowledging that the science ain’t so settled!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/a-few-economic-home-truths/story-e6frg71x-1226315873432
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lmwd, I syphoned off this little gem from that article.
I nearly choked on my coffee.
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True, true.
They are sending out an inconsistent message – advocating trading in Co2 while advising the Govt to delay the tax to “allow for clarification of climate science”. Given uncertainties, then emissions trading is also a bad idea, but less damaging potentially than Gillard’s tax.
However, this is the first time the Eds of The Oz have acknowledged that there are uncertainties in the science. Previously, they always said they accepted the science (as in unquestioning acceptance that it was settled and there was consensus).
The point when people realise they may have been taken for a mug, including deliberate manipulation by the green lobby, is the start of the sceptical journey…..
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People often confuse being complicated for being sophisticated. (e.g. Climate modellers, anything to do with the IPCC.) Idso’s experiments have the virtue of being elegantly simple. I don’t like some of the assumptions and approximations he made, but then again, neither does he. Perhaps we should contrast Idso’s ideas with the workings of the IPCC climate models then reflect on the words of Mark Twain:,
Cheers,
Speedy
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if could get extra heat out of extra co2 i would be putting clear tubes on my roof filled with the stuff,
now i know some places that do have tubes full of the stuff but they use it for cooling.
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It is surprising that this article has not gained wider coverage. One of the problems with highly complex and chaotic systems is that single studies cannot claim a high degree of statistical confidence. The “Idso Method” is to arrive at the same result from different means. On their own, each “natural experiment” is not persuasive, but together they form a consistency.
I use the term the “Idso Method“, as at CO2science that is run by Craig Idso you will find an accumulation of studies confirming that there was a medieval warm period, and a huge number of studies showing that higher levels of CO2 promote increased plant growth.
An alternative to the Idso Method is “Mannian Science“. This includes (but is not confined to)
1. Cherry-picking the limited studies that support your argument.
2. Ignore the greater number of studies that contradict your argument.
3. Add in a greater number of studies that say nothing either way.
4. Devise a complex models, that puts undue prominence to the limited studies that support your views.
5. Get you mates to “peer review” your work, then evade, or attempt to suppress any criticism.
6. Get lots of followers-on to brand any critics as heretics, and promote you to the status of demi-god.
Points 1 to 5 can be gleaned from Andrew Montford’s Hockey Stick Illusion. Point 6 can be verified by looking at attack blogs, NGO websites, mainstream media……
An analogy of the Idso Method is a criminal prosecutor, lacking direct evidence, building a case from numerous pieces of corroborating, but circumstantial evidence.
An analogy of the Mannian method is a criminal prosecutor suppressing the evidence, knobbling the jury, and denying the accused any defence. The strongest parts of the prosecutions case are
1. An opinion poll of police officers saying they believe the evidence (and any police officer who does not sign can say bye-bye to any promotion prospects).
2. A claim that the criminal is assuredly guilty as they have been seen in the company of disreputable characters.
Both of these have been plots for crime fiction. The Idso Method is similar to Agatha Christie plots. Mannian Science is similar to low-grade TV movies. Only, for such a plot to succeed, the “accused” is the real hero, not the prosecutor.
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For those that still cling to the hopeless idea of AGW by CO2 or some other magic. Here is a video that should be seen by ALL..
Piers Corbyn at the ‘Internationale Klima- und Energiekonferenz in München, Nov 2011’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbGWLgpylKc&feature=player_embedded
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Would someone please explain what “feedbacks” mean in relation to climate. I have never heard the term before. Thank you.
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Damili,
Quite often the analogy used to explain feed backs is the audio amplifier so i will stick with tradition and use it to explain it to you.
With an audio amp you will start with a low sound (micro phone input) and a get a bigger sound at the out put (speaker).
The AGW theory is the same as they claim if you add CO2 you get an increase in the temps.
If you then take the output of your amp and feed it back into the input the output will be even bigger, if you then take that output and feed it back agin into the input the output will get even bigger again because your input keeps on increasing……….get it?
Lets say the amp has a factor of 5
1dB into an amp gives us 5dB out then fed back to the input
5dB into the amp gives us 25dB out then fed back to the input
25dB into the amp gives us 125dB etc
So now back to the AGW theory, the additional increase in temps from the initial increase in CO2 will cause an increase in water vapour. This water vapour will then cause additional warming which in turn will cause additional CO2 and water vapour to be released into the atmosphere. So in this case just like the amplifier the initial warming from the input of additional CO2 causes a greater warming at the output which then means the input (warming) gets bigger etc etc.
This is known as a positive feed back because when the output is fed back input the input gets larger and the output follows and gets larger. AGW theory tells us that this process will continue until we reach a point where the feed backs will become so strong that they cannot be stopped and we will end up being like Venus this is known as a “tipping point”, you may have heard that term mentioned before.
Some audio amps do suffer from positive feed backs but generally amplifiers dont suffer from this because we intentionally supply a negative feed back which keeps the input at a constant level.
The opposing view is that there are negative feed backs at work in the environment which means we will see very little warming because the output when fed back into the input is out of phase to use a techo term and therforewill actually reduce the warming.
Hope this helps
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Thanks for your help, Crakar24, I appreciate it. It’s good to know what “feedback” is as it seems to pop up quite regularly in climate literature.
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