This week Nature Climate Change published the Bain et al letter about ways to “promote pro-environmental action in climate change deniers”. How does Nature define this group? They imply that deniers deny science, but can the researchers, editors or reviewers name any peer reviewed paper with empirical evidence that the deniers deny? Surely this whole paper is not based on a name-calling assumption, a confusion about an illusory sub-species, Homo sapiens denier? Could Nature now be the Journal of UnScience? We shall see…
I have written to ask the lead researcher Dr Paul Bain:
Dear Dr Paul Bain,
Right now, it’s almost my life’s work to communicate the empirical evidence on anthropogenic climate change.
I can help you with your research on deniers. I have studied the mental condition of denial most carefully. There is a simple key to converting the convictions of people in this debate, and I have seen it work hundreds of times. Indeed, my own convictions that lasted 17 years were turned around in a few days. I can help you. It would be much simpler than you think.
Firstly, to save time and money we must analyze the leaders of the denial movement. I have emailed or spoken to virtually all of them.
They are happy to accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and causes warming, that humans produce CO2, that CO2 levels are rising, and that the earth has warmed in the last century. According to Hansen et al 19841, Bony et al 20062, and the IPCC AR4 report3, the direct effect of doubling the level of CO2 amounts to 1.2°C (i.e. before feedbacks).
All they need is the paper with the evidence showing that the 1.2°C direct warming is amplified to 3 or 4 degrees as projected by the models. Key leaders in the denial movement have been asking for this data for years. Unfortunately the IPCC assessment reports do not contain any direct observations of the amplification, either by water vapor (the key positive feedback4) or the totality of feedbacks. The IPCC only quotes results from climate simulations.
Since science is based on observations and measurements of the real world, it follows that a denier of science (rather than a denier of propaganda) must be denying real world data. I’d be most grateful if you could explain what “deniers” deny. Deniers repeatedly ask for empirical evidence, yet must be failing badly at communicating that this is the crucial point because none of the esteemed lead authors of IPCC working Group I seem to have realized that this paltry point is all that is needed. All this mess could be cleared up with an email.
The evidence for anthropogenic global warming is overwhelming, so the observations they deny must be written up many times in the peer review literature, right? After five years of study I am still not sure which instrument has made these key observations. Do deniers deny weather balloon results, or satellite data, or ice cores?
When you find this paper and the measurements, it will convince many of the key denier leaders. (But being the exacting personality type that they are, deniers will also expect to see the raw data. So you’ll need to also make sure that the authors of said paper have made all the records and methods available, but of course, all good scientists do that already don’t they?)
As a diligent researcher, I’m sure you would not have described a group with such a unequivocally strong label unless you were certain it applied. It would be disastrous for an esteemed publication like Nature to mistakenly insult Nobel prize winning physicists, NASA astronauts, and thousands of scientists who have asked for empirical evidence, only to find that the Nature authors themselves were unable to name papers (or instruments) with empirical evidence that their subject group called “deniers” denied.
If those papers (God forbid) do not exist, then the true deniers would turn out to be the researchers who denied that empirical evidence is key to scientific confidence in a theory. The true deniers would not be the skeptics who asked for evidence, but the name-calling researchers who did not test their own assumptions.
The fate of the planet rests on your shoulders. If you can find the observations that the IPCC can’t, you could change the path of international action. Should you find the evidence, I will be delighted to redouble my efforts to communicate the empirical evidence related to climate change.
Awaiting your reply keenly,
Joanne Nova
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REFERENCES
1 Hansen J., A. Lacis, D. Rind, G. Russell, P. Stone, I. Fung, R. Ruedy and J. Lerner, (1984) Climate sensitivity: Analysis of feedback mechanisms. In Climate Processes and Climate Sensitivity, AGU Geophysical Monograph 29, Maurice Ewing Vol. 5. J.E. Hansen and T. Takahashi, Eds. American Geophysical Union, pp. 130-163 [Abstract]
2 Bony, S., et al., 2006: How well do we understand and evaluate climate change feedback processes? J. Clim., 19, 3445–3482.
3 IPCC, Assessment Report 4, 2007, Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 8.6.2.3. p630 [PDF].
4 IPCC, Assessment Report 4, 2007, Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 8. Fig 8.14, p631 [PDF] see also Page 632.
5 Bain et al (2012) Promoting pro-environmental action in climate change deniers, Nature Climate Change volume 2, pages600–603
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NOTE to commenters: This post refers to the term “deniers” so I expect the word to be used in comments as appropriate. But the point of discussion here is to define exactly what it is that “deniers” deny, not to toss insults.
UPDATE: A reply from Paul Bain
Credit to him for replying promptly. It is a start, at least, to the conversation. — Jo
Comments about the use of the “denier” label are a fair criticism. We were focused on the main readership of this journal – climate scientists who read Nature journals, most of whom hold the view that anthropogenic climate change is real. There was no intention to make comparisons with Holocaust denial, as some skeptics have claimed was our deliberate intention. Rather it should be noted that describing skepticism as denial is a term increasingly used in the social science literature on climate change (e.g. in Global Environmental Change, Journal of Environmental Psychology, Routledge Handbook of Climate Change and Society), and is used informally by some within the climate science community. So we were using a term that is used and understood in the target audience, but which we thought involved a stronger negative stereotype (e.g. being anti-environmental, contrarian) than skeptic. My thought was this would highlight the contrast with the data, which suggests that you need not believe in AGW to support pro-environmental action, especially when it had certain types of (non-climate) outcomes (demonstrating a non-contrarian position). So in my mind we were ultimately challenging such “denier” stereotypes. But because we were focused on our target audience, it is true that I naively didn’t pay enough attention to the effect the label would have on other audiences, notably skeptics, especially because I don’t have the “denier=Holocaust denier” association that some of your co-travellers do – these people all pointed to the same single quote that I wasn’t aware of, and now that I am aware of it I can say I personally disagree with it. Although I hope this helps explain our rationale for using the term, I regret the negative effect it has had on the debate and I intend to use alternative labels in the future.
Beyond the negative reaction to “denier”, what has been interesting in many skeptics’ responses (in emails and on blogs) is that our research is propaganda designed to change (or “re-educate”) their mind about whether AGW is real, and I’ve received many long emails about the state of climate science and how AGW has been disproven (or about the lack of findings to prove it, as you highlighted in your email). Actually, the paper is not about changing anyone’s mind on whether anthropogenic climate change is real. There are also skeptics insisting that the issue is ONLY about the state of the science – whether AGW is real – but on this point I disagree. I am approaching this as a social/societal problem rather than as an “AGW reality” problem. That is, two sizeable groups have different views on a social issue with major policy implications – how do you find a workable solution that at least partly satisfies the most people?
Some climate scientists who endorse AGW seem to have assumed that the way to promote action is to convince skeptics that in fact AGW is occurring, and this has not been effective. Similarly, I don’t think skeptics will convince those who endorse AGW that they are wrong anytime soon. But the social/policy issue remains, whether you believe in AGW or not. So if policies are going to be put in place (as many governments are proposing), what kinds of outcomes would make it at least barely acceptable for the most people? For our skeptic samples, actions that promoted warmth and economic/technological development were the outcomes of taking action that mattered to them (even if they thought taking action would have no effect on the climate). So our studies showed that these dimensions mattered for skeptics to support action taken in the name of addressing anthropogenic climate change. The might also be other positive outcomes of taking action we didn’t study where some common ground might be found, such as reducing pollution or reliance on foreign oil. Overall, the findings suggest that if there was closer attention to the social consequences of policies, rather than continuing with seemingly intractable debates on the reality of AGW, then we might get to a point where there could be agreement on some action – some might think the action is pointless with regard to the climate (but many other people think it will), but if it produces some other good outcomes it might be ok. Hence, if governments were able to design policies that plausibly achieved these “non-climate” goals, then this might achieve an acceptable overall outcome that satisfies the most people (although admittedly not everybody will agree).
This is the message of our paper, and I hope readers of your blog will be able to accept my regret about the label and focus on the main message. Some have described this message as naïve, but a real-world example (noted by one of our reviewers) illustrates the general point: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/science/earth/19fossil.html?pagewanted=all
Kind regards
Paul.
My reply is here: “On rational deniers and gullible believers .”
Erratum: “Phil” Bain corrected to Paul Bain with apologies.
UPDATE: The headline has been shortened from “Nature — and that problem of defining Homo-sapiens-denier. Is it English or Newspeak?” It was too long.
Because I am a climate realist, a skeptic, a denier, I am a minority. I see so-called papers, studies and other pseudo-psychological material being produced to explain away what is basically a fundamental political difference in my viewpoint from the establishment’s.
All those erudite people and their studies, research and papers, lent a spurious legitimacy and authority to the whole thing and having laid that essential groundwork, facilitated what inevitably followed. They all got away with it too. Every last one of them.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/the-real-bastards/
Pointman
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You are right, Pointman.
So is JoNova in her letter to the lead author, Dr. Phil Bain.
Climategate emerged in November of 2009 as visible evidence of a cancer that developed out-of-sight on government science for fifty-four years (2009-1945 = 54 years).
Here’s documentation [1] of deception to obscure the source of energy that Copernicus discovered at the center of the solar system in 1543:
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-132
Even the best-funded Orwellian curtain of deceit cannot forever hide the truth, especially after President Barack Obama himself requested information on space weather !
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2012EO250003_Space-Weather.pdf
CSPAN News filmed government deception about the fountain of energy that created our elements, sustains life, and controls Earth’s climate in January 1998 [2].
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com
References:
1. Fred Hoyle, Home Is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist’s Life, (University Science Books, Mill Valley, CA, USA, Published 1 April 1994, 443 pages) pp. 153-154
2. Scientific Genesis: Global Warming Scam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3VIFmZpFco
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Here’s an update on events in 1945-49 that
1. Reversed the scientific method Copernicus used in 1543 to discover this fountain of energy in the center of the solar system (Sol) that sustains life on Earth and exerts dominant control over all the planets, especially the tiny, rocky planets close to the Sun – Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
http://tinyurl.com/7qx7zxs
2. Betrayed Galileo’s brave commitment to give the public observational reality instead of the official model of a geo-centric universe favored by ego-centric leaders of nations and religions in the 1600s.
Update: http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-142
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Mods – when I click the thumbs up icon, I go to the top of the page and the thumbs up count does not change (have you noticed that all the thumb counts are zero?).
———————
Truthseeker: I have indeed noticed. Damn Where are those thumbs up’s. I hope it can be fixed soon. I didn’t realize how much I missed them. — Jo
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Been happening to me as well – everyone’s score is a big fat ZERO!!
Cheers,
00
suits me
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“And some fell on stony ground.”
The chances of you receiving a response to your perfectly reasonable letter are slim to none.
In the unlikely event event ‘slim’ occurs, then do not expect to be responded to as though you were an intellectual equal, but in a abrupt, curt, deprecating manner.
For the CAGW cult/ Global warming industry to survive, it constantly has to produce alarming, albeit unfounded, predictions about our future climate. This pal review process feeds on itself and none of its beneficiaries want the gravy train to end, so as they cannot provide the evidence you requested – for the simple reason it does not exist – then you need to be spurned, villified and humiliated as well if possible.
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The Paul Bain position is along the lines that Sherlock Holmes said:
“Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in “The Sign of Four” 1890.
Which seminal paper are we skeptics romanticising, Dr Bain, as we go about our voluntary detection?
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Good sir, I regret that my thumb is presently tied, otherwise it would by now be oriented such as to indicate the Heavens, from which your Doyle quote and its propriety must surely have originated.
Indeed, had I not through happenstance watched the latest Sherlock Holmes vehicle for Robert Downey Jnr on a digital versatile disc just this very evening, my literary appreciation of your recall could have been caught flagging.
Let the detection proceed unencumbered!
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Pure class, Jo. Hope you share the reply if and when you receive it. 😀
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There’s a ‘movement’? There are ‘leaders’?
Damn. I must have missed the application form. No wonder I’m not receiving my share of the Exxon millions.
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Brilliant, just brilliant. Keep this letter and send it to any and every publication or politician who uses the term, “denier”. Thanks Jo Nova, from Florida, USA.
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Jo – extraneous ‘are’ should be deleted…
“All they need are is the paper with the evidence …”
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Brilliant Jo!
But please, please, please – don’t hold you’re breath awaiting the reply…
Cheers,
Speedy
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Well put. You are of course being generous to Bain et al. in expecting an informative, or indeed any reply, and in your overall courtesy and thoughtfulness.
But at the very least you are adding to what seems to me to be an increasingly stark contrast between the quality and integrity of those, such as you, on the side of the scientific method and that of those on the ‘CO2 crisis’ one. The tawdry and frequent use of ‘denier’ in this Nature piece is by no means extraordinary for those who purport to be so alarmed by CO2 that they have taken leave of their manners as a result.
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[…] Jo Nova has an excellent letter […]
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This is one of the best summaries of the situation I’ve ever read. I’m envious of your clarity. I wish I’d written it (can I pretend I did? ;-))
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Please correct this sentence
“All they need are is the paper with the evidence showing that the 1.2°C direct warming is amplified to 3 or 4 degrees as projected by the models.”
All they need is…
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Spot on with this Jo. We should be sending this question to all our members of Parliament.
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IMHO, Jo needs to reproduce this letter in a form (video or sound) that can be put up on YouTube.
It will almost certainly cause the rabid hoards to sweep down from the tundra, with eyes flashing fire, and nostrils belching steam. But such a reaction to a mild and polite open letter can only add to its impact.
If they want to play propaganda games, let us get serious in return.
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Totally agree … sad thing is that these “researchers” are home grown … all psychology academics at the University of Queensland. I guess Lewandowsky at UWA has some competition. It will now be a race to the bottom to see who can insult skeptics the most in the name of science.
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OT. UN takes the unprecedented step of classifying the Rio negotiating text Secret, yet the MSM is trumpeting the outcome as expected to be ineffective.
Are they just conspiring to get us all to drop our guard, while hiding it from anyone with the determination to plough through and illuminate turgid prose until it’s all already signed and too late to stop ?
What tyrannical delights does it really hold I wonder.
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[…] Please, please, please: supply us the link between CO2 and predicted global warming June 20, 2012 3:07 pm Dalwhinnie Climate Science Jo Nova bats it out of the park. In response to a pseudo-scientific article by Bain and others about the personality defects of AGW deniers, Jo asks the relevant question in the exactly correct way: please would you supply the evidence? […]
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While a popular magazine and not a science journal, Popular Science has also jumped the denier shark as well.
Warren Meyer at Forbes.com makes a great rebuttal to Popular Science: http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2012/06/18/a-response-to-popular-ad-hominem-err-science-magazine-on-global-warming-skeptics/
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That’s not entirely fair, the paper makes clear that deniers includes those who accept the extreme warming but deny the policy implications. Bjorn Lomborg is the perfect example, he is scientific in the fact that he doesn’t even bother to study the issue of warming and just assumes that the calculations are correct (it’s not his field), however he starts denying science when he says his calculations in his field show that the money and effort could be more profitably spent elsewhere. Someone like Lomborg isn’t going to stop denying the science merely because he shown evidence to support something he already accepts as true.
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Greetings to all:
I have used the word “denier” to describe myself, because I do not accept the ‘consensus’ meme of “climate change”, “anthropogenic climate change”, “global warming”, “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming”, or whatever else the enemies of science may come up with to describe their religion.
Indeed, it seems to me that us “deniers” are the only ones who have a realistic handle on the fact that Earth’s climate has always, and will always, continually change. Just because it is ‘changing’ now DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY mean that humans are causing it. Unless and until the rate and magnitude of natural climate change(s) has/have been quantified (NOTE: only us “deniers” already have this info … … .. ), and thusly REMOVED from the current trend can one discern the level of human influence on the climate.
And, BTW, still waiting on Ross (James’) correlation coefficient between Veizer and the B & K GEOCARB III curves.
Or, do you “deny” the result, Mr. James?
Regards,
Mark H.
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Simply terrific writing and sharp use of tact!!
I Like it!
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When given such a fantastic opportunity to present the empirical evidence to answer such a clear question and essentially close down the ‘denial’ business, I’d expect to see an inundation of scientifically rigorous answers. This is the chance to save the planet, be the person who shut the ‘deniers’ up. Come on, get those fingers typing.
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I had a look at reference 4 above –
Scientists tend to express themselves in much the same way as lawyers. It’s a battle to understand what they are talking about and their mumbo jumbo just seems to defy logic. Maybe in trying to make sense of their language I have misunderstood, but from what I have read elsewhere I have been led to believe that water vapour regulates the Earths temperature by absorbing heat as latent energy and in the process of condensation [cloud formation] releases that heat.
The IPCC seem to be saying in the reference that latent heat released in cloud formation hangs around in a blanket layer, radiating heat down to Earth? Heat moves from warm to cold.
Does the IPCC have any idea how a Coolgardie Safe works?
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http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/our-atmosphere-like-a-greenhouse-50-crass-authority-statements/
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Go Jo; brilliant.
00
Jo,
Is it Paul G Bain or Phil G Bain?
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Answer: It’s Paul. I did have it wrong, and corrected it. Apologies to Paul. – Jo
00
Thanks Jo.
Give them no quarter.
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Surely anyone realises that the minute you try to denigrate an opponent with an insult without any backup evidence you have lost the debate.
As someone who testified in prosecutions over environmental law in my working life you soon learn to report only verifiable fact.
I’m still not sure how a trace gas with unremarkable properties such as thermal conductivity can have the effect even some sceptics allow. Surely the thermal conductivity of CO2 as determined experimentally includes any radiative effects – I cannot for the life of me figure out how the experimenters could exclude it – it is a measure of energy transmitted over a standard distance at standard experimental conditions.
So surely CO2 has less radiative effect than ordinary air – else why is the conductivity about half ? CO2 certainly conducts heat less efficiently than air so has some insulating effect but at less than 0.04 % this is negligible surely ?
Water I can understand.
00
Good points, Rosco. And, yes, skeptics often “allow” the trace gas CO2 to have a warming effect. But we all should understand that the whole hoax was built on the causal correlation between CO2 and temperature that the ipcc posited (pre-2000). But that has been unequivocally refuted. So that means that, without any doubt, there is no causal correlation as originally claimed by the ipcc. And the ipcc has not gone back to the drawing board and offered an alternative.
Sure, we can speculate that perhaps CO2 has some warming effect, but the foundation of the theory has been knocked out. Yet, and this a problem for us, perhaps 98% of the public doesn’t know this about CO2. That’s why it’s important that we work to spread the word about this 3 minute video (excerpt from The Great Global Warming Swindle) that calls out algor for repeating the ipcc deception on CO2. Watch it, share it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg
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Simply brilliant
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That’s told ’em, Jo.
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These guys don’t get it. What they don’t get is there are two hypotheses of long term climate:
High sensitivity – mainly supported by models
Low sensitivity/solar magnetic – mainly supported by empirical data (eg pSCL, the CERES/ERBE data and some other aspects)
I can cite reams of actual data to support the latter, but I can’t for the former because I can’t look at the models. So, in Duck Soup terms and regarding the empirical data should I believe the IPCC or my lying eyes?
That is the problem. Many of us scientists and engineers with no skin in the game (aside from the carbon tax) look at the data and hundreds or even thousands of papers showing supporting data for the low sensitivity hypothesis and say “problem, what problem, I don’t see a problem”. And for this we are called deniers and are told we need therapy. Re-education camps is what they mean, more likely.
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That is right; everything indicates a much lower sensitivity then the modelling shows, even the IPCC and AGW’s own modelling!
00
Great comment Bruce.
It is a gigantic ego trip to believe that it is possible to model the entire spectrum of inputs to the world’s atmospheric variations with respect to CO2 fluctuations.
The fact that NO “model” has so far sensibly replicated its target is proof that as yet there are NO MODELS of CO2 driving atmospheric behaviour.
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[…] Nature — and that problem of defining homo-sapiens-denier. Is it English or Newspeak? […]
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Jo,
I’ve been up to my eyeballs in the temperature data that claim to support the 1.2 C “warming” that was “observed”. As near as I can tell, some of that “warming” is in fact an artifact of bad thermometer placement and creative “adjustment” of past records. The temperature data seem to show far more “warming” in Europe than anywhere else. They show that Asia is dead flat until about 1987 when a change of processing of the data introduces a 1/2 C or so “step function” higher.
It is also quite clear that the “volatility” and range of the data have been dramatically compressed in more recent records. IMHO this is due to abandoning thermometers in high volatility areas (like mountains and high elevations) and putting nearly all current thermometers at Airports or inside major metropolitan areas.
As a “Denier” I’m probably a bit more rabid than most, as I not only want to see that same empirical data you would like to see; but I’d also like to see a full end to end QA Suite and Benchmark Test done on the “temperature codes” like HadCRUT, CRUTEMP, GIStemp and the NOAA/NCDC products. So I “deny” that even the 1.2 C is accurate.
It depends greatly on the starting and ending points, on exactly which VERSION of the GHCN is used, and on which geographies inside of that are inspected. (Oceana and Asia have a very poor fit to the “global warming” notion, while Europe, the USA, and Canada have an excess of warming. Rather more like urbanization side effects than a ‘well distributed gas’…)
In my opinion, we’ve had about 1.2 C of warming from “Eighteen hundred and froze to death” in about 1816, but when we look at the 1930s, things are more flat (with a dip in the ’60s -’70s) and when you look back to the earlier 1700s, there are similarly warm times to today. Even further back, the Roman Optimum was clearly warmer than now. The MWP was about the same, though slightly warmer. Way back, the Sahara was green as a much higher temperature regime caused rains to be pulled into the center of the space. (The cooling that followed resulted in the return of the Sahara Desert and the collapse of the area. The remnant moved to the Nile and founded Egypt.) So an added question I have is simply “Given all the OTHER warm periods, what makes us think this tepid one is exceptional?”
In essence, I see the existing historical thermometer data series as compromised to near uselessness and the geologic record says things are very stable and modestly cool right now.
I do not “deny” geology, nor do I “deny” good data analysis. I do deny that the GHCN is fit for purpose and I deny that the folks preaching (and it is preaching a religion) “Doom In Our Time” are practicing good science.
So I support your letter, both in words and in intent, and wish for you to get a good response.
But don’t hold your breath…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/summary-report-on-v1-vs-v3-ghcn/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/v1vsv3/
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Well said.
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There is the problem of accuracy of both the thermometers, and of the readings.
The NOAA method only reads to full degrees (F), so the error there is .56 ℉ or about 0.3 ℃.
Their figures are in turn used by NASA GISS and by HADLEY.
Nor are thermometers inherently accurate, as anyone who has calibrated a batch of them will know. They may work fine at 0 & 100℃, but be out by anything up to 1℃ at 25℃. Obviously calibrated thermometers could & should have been used in the past, but I very much doubt that was the case.
The claim is that using a large number of readings cancels out the errors. No proof is offered, and by reducing the number of sites the likelyhood of that diminishes anyway.
The current occupation by the “believers” in adjusting temperatures downwards (before ~1950) and upwards (after ~1950) to “prove accelerating warming” could also be seen as an admission that the various BOM/Weather Bureaus don’t employ people capable of accuracy in the first place.
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Here’s Dilbert’s take on that.
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Hi E.M., I tried to give you a thumbs up for this, but when I click the green thumb it just takes me to the top of the page… ?
I don’t think there’s been any significant warming beyond what you’d naturally expect in a recovery from the Little Ice Age. It’s all fog-ridden, the fog of biased or problem-plagued temperature measurements, it’s nebulous, ambiguous. Certainly, the hockey stick has been shown to be false, an agenda-driven fabrication. Go outside and you see that the weather feels just the same as it always has, no matter where you are. Nothing is awry. The leftist fear-mongers are full of it.
Also, I wanted to, belatedly, thank you for your reply regarding the probable time when bunnies and men went their separate ways (80 million years ago) at: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/glires-and-euarchontoglires/
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The Chiefio – look at Hansen 1984 (in my references). He uses three methods to calculate the 1.2C. 1. Models. 2. the last ice age cooling and 3. Correlations of CO2 and temp from 1850 – 1980. (which is your point, and I don’t disagree).
But mainly he uses models. If the feedbacks are negative we’re looking at less than 1.2C anyway.
Yes, we can certainly argue the toss on the original calculation, but the feedbacks are more important. It’s the slam dunk. Even if we showed the recent warming was wildly exaggerated, they would still spin stories of how the worst is yet to come. Without the positive feedback, they have nothing.
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Oh, I see. I thought the 1.2 C was the ‘warming’ found in GHCN vis programs like GIStemp and HadCRUT / CRUTEMP. (It’s about that size, too, but the result of lousy data IMHO).
But yes, the “models all the way down” is pretty useless too. I ran a supercomputer center with a couple of Cray supercomputers in it dedicated largely to do ding simulation / modeling of plastic flow. ONE material in ONE die at ONE temperature with well defined physical parameters. It did a wonderful job of predicting performance of dies. Took 10 hours per run for a single part. Even at that, about 1 in 10 dies would need ‘rework’ as we learned something new… or found a limit in the model.
I’ve frequently tried to get folks to understand that models are NOT reality, and do not tell you what happens in reality. At best they can “inform our ignorance” when they diverge from reality and tell us where we missed something. Once very well vetted, they can be very useful for things like engineering (where you are dealing with standardized materials of known physical properties). Yet even there, they can NEVER be trusted implicitly. No less a company than Boeing with some of the biggest computers and best CAD software just had the wing on the 787 Dreamliner “have issues” in testing that required adding a bunch of added supports. Lucky for them, it was just a ‘rivet this in’ not a whole redesign needed. I can think of nothing more heavily tested and with more $Billions spent on it than aerodynamic and structural modeling. Yet still we test to find where the predictions diverge from reality….
But to your main point: Yes, it’s the feedbacks that are incredibly wrong and a key point.
@Eric Simpson:
Thanks! Interesting insights on humans and panic come from realizing how closely related we are to bunnies and rodents…. 😉
@Cohenite:
Glad you liked it.
@Graeme No.3:
Averaging a bunch of readings of SOME things for extrinsic properties can remove RANDOM errors.
Averaging a bunch of readings of other things, such as intrinsic properties like temperature, does not have meaning and does nothing.
Averaging a bunch of readings even for extrinsic properties can NOT REMOVE SYSTEMATIC errors.
AGW folks try to extend the first case to cover the other two.
(Average two pots of water, one at 0 C the other at 20 C. What is the final temperature when mixed? You can’t know. Is that 0 C water frozen or melted? What are the relative masses? That is an example of averaging intrinsic properties. It also shows the confusion of heat and temperature in AGW theories…)
Taking the temperature of ONE thing with a dozen thermometers at the same time, and average them, removes the random error between instruments. Take the temperature 10 times with a thermometer that reads high by 2 C and you will never remove that non-random error…
These truths are ignored by “Climate Scientists”…
@BobC:
That cartoon is just GREAT!
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Based on absorption characeristics, a doubling of CO2 would give a theoretical increase of 0.9°C according to the MODTRAN program, without any feedbacks. There is some increase in water vapour to be expected if the sea surface temperature indeed increases. That brings – again theoretically – the total increase to 1.3°C. But from then on, the problems start: more water vapour indeed gives an increase in absorption, but more water vapour also gives more clouds, thus more reflection and more cooling… Not according to the models, which implement less clouds in a warming world, thus increasing the warming. The same for other items like aerosols, which were used as scapegoat to match the 1945-1975 cooling with increasing CO2 levels, but depending of what you expect from aerosols, you can bring the balanced result of 2xCO2 to any level you like…
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I’m afraid I am a denier too but only after I began to look for the facts, coupled with a distrust of models. I put my hand up to champion science in the GM crop debate here in Victoria and received more than my fair share of abuse from the believers and slanted media interviews. I had one small victory over a model at a large agricultural conference when one of the anti-brigade quoted a model of GM pollen flow from Europe. Luckily I had read the paper and had it with me at the time and was able to tell the audience that the results were a desk top model and the authors bluntly stated that it recquired extensive field testing to prove their thesis. This proof never eventuated, much like the current warming models. I am a crop farmer and farming is an energy intense industry. We will feel the bite once the carbon tax costs are distrubuted to us from our suppliers and we cannot pass it on to our export markets. I’m sure the believers will say I can benefit from the soil carbon payments but anyone with a bare minimun of knowledge of soil science knows organic carbon is a moving feast and the cost of inputs needed to increase the production of biomass to enhance soil carbon make the whole exercise a loss maker. I’d be ploughing money into the soil.
Keep on punching Jo.
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Jo, don’t count on not getting a reply.
I read the actual paper and made a tongue in cheek post on it at Bishop Hill, where I substituted “Easter Bunny” for “climate change”. Then someone added Bain’s email address so I sent him a copy as below:
I got back a lengthy, and serious reply explaining why my use of the Easter Bunny metaphor was incorrect, and why I should have used a comparison to belief in Christianity instead.
Go figure – these people don’t even understand when you take the mickey out of them.
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Would that be “take the mickey out” as in Mickey Mouse? 😉
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Record temperatures on the first day of summer…
Repent I tell you, the end is near. 😉
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Even worse, Adelaide started its summer with extreme heatwaves. This is a global pattern. 🙂
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excellent jo. u may need to send a copy to Popular Science!
18 June: Forbes: Warren Meyer: A Response to Popular Ad Hominem, err Science, Magazine on Global Warming Skeptics
The article is a sort of hall-of-fame of every ad hominem attack made on skeptics – tobacco lawyers, Holocaust Deniers, the Flat Earth Society, oil company funding, and the Koch Brothers all make an appearance.
Of course, not once in the article is the mainstream skeptic scientific position even given…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2012/06/18/a-response-to-popular-ad-hominem-err-science-magazine-on-global-warming-skeptics/
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NewsSpeak!!!
21 June: SMH: Madeleine Heffernan: An offer Kohler couldn’t refuse
According to a letter to staff, Mr Kohler’s media upstart Australian Independent Business Media had received an offer ”it couldn’t refuse”. AIBM – publisher of business site Business Spectator and investment publication Eureka Report – will be sold to News Limited for $30 million in cash.
Launched in 2007 just before the financial crisis, Business Spectator had 480,000 unique browsers last month. Eureka Report, founded by Mr Kohler seven years ago, has 15,500 subscribers and generated the bulk of last year’s reported $8.84 million revenue…
***Mr Kohler will retain his ABC job and continue as editor-in-chief of Business Spectator and Eureka Report under a four-year contract with News. Columnists and fellow shareholders Stephen Bartholomeusz, Robert Gottliebsen and James Kirby will also join News.
Beyond Mr Kohler’s 28 per cent stake, other AIBM shareholders include Eric Beecher, chairman of media company Private Media (with an estimated 16 per cent) and businessmen Mark Carnegie and John Wylie (about 36 per cent)…
***Mr Kohler said the deal would not lead to a change in editorial direction, particularly at its smaller Climate Spectator site. ”The News Limited attitude towards climate change will not influence what we write,” he said…
http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/an-offer-kohler-couldnt-refuse-20120620-20oma.html
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Joanne Nova your an absolute riot, a laughing stock of the “climate science” institutionalized government run climate change associates and agencies ….. how dare you ask for actual observational factual empirical proof. (sarc)
Yours faithfully “a skeptic” …Oh! wait that”ll be a “denier”….I’m so confused the goal posts keep on a chang’in….just like the “climate”
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Fantastic. Logical clarity is a beautiful thing, poetry in motion. Now Jo, or anyone, can you point a completely uneducated (in the formal sense) person such as me to any books, publications or other resources that might help me to entrain my own mind with some of that clarity. I mean of course resources other than this one and numerous linked others which I find invaluable. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
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As an engineer with some experience in heat transfer, I go along with EM Smith (Chiefio) in not agreeing with the 1.2C climate sensitivity. I have commented a number of times that it appears no climate (pseudo)scientist and most physicists have little or no understanding of thermodynamics, heat and mass transfer, fluid dynamic or reaction kinetics because they have had no actual experience (such as measurements, process control, equipment design etc). If they understood heat transfer they would know that there are four types which affect surfaces a) conduction b) convection c) radiation and d) phase change. They would know that the Stefan-Boltzmann equation applies to surfaces in a vacuum without some mathematical assumptions and manipulations. When there is an fluid (eg air or water) over a surface other heat transfer mechanisms occur at the same time. If they understood simple technology they would also understand that a gas does not have a surface. CO2 is a gas which absorbs radiant energy over a very narrow wavelength and over a path length. The internationally acclaimed Chemical Engineer Hoyt Hottel developed graphs and equations involving path length to heat transfer from and to combustion gases from actual measurements in the range 100F to 10,000F. From the latter it can be determined that the radiant absorption of CO2 at the present level in the atmosphere (say 400ppm) is insignificant.
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You might find an explanation of the 1.2C “sensitivity” in this graph:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2012/06/global-warming-science-facts-noaa-fake-climate-science-fabricating-temperatures.html
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cementafriend: Both thumbs up! So excuse the typos 🙂
Systems react as a whole to a perturbation.
The “sensitivity” based on radiation is the upper limit of what is plausible. As soon as there is a change in a system, the whole system reacts in concert, which as we have observed historically, is to provide a nett negative “feedback” to suppress the perturbance.
Higher temperature increases propensity to convect which (along with the higher temperature) increases surface evaporation, accelerating the water cycle, enhancing the rate of phase change from vapour to liquid (aerosol and eventually droplets). Clouds are more likely to form “closing the iris” on inbound solar energy; reducing the surface temperature. Just one of the many negative feedback loops.
It’s pointless trying to develop a model with predictive qualities based on what is know because the state of the system at any point in time is indeterminate; and a small uncertainty in boundary conditions produces a vastly-ranging set of predictions resulting from dominant non-linearities.
It’s a chaotic system.
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My wuwt comment on this: It stands repeating in case we’ve forgotten that the term Climate Denier was taken solely for the reason that it sounded like Holocaust Denier. So it is intrinsically repellent, and, indeed, ghastly. They use the insulting and provocative term to demean us. It is gratuitous, and fully unnecessary as there are other well-known terms to use to describe us (as skeptic).
Some skeptics show signs of acceptance of the denier term, or of being inured to it. I say that should end. Don’t let the nasty warmists get away with that anymore. Hold the dastardly bums’ feet to the fire. Work to somehow help arrange for their comeuppance.
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Actually the term denier appears to have originated with catastrophists who speculated that the carbon dioxide theory of climate change implied the certainty of a global warming holocaust. It didn’t just sound like ‘Holocaust Denier’.
A handy term that allowed catastrophists to imply that acceptance of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas (another deceptive term) implied acceptance of their philosophical position.
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Jo
Ffft ! Don’t expect a reply anytime soon ! If you do, it will only be of the same standard we expect from all these Bozos.
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D[SNIP] (smack) – I mean retired engineers, geologists, Tories and libertarians love to never tell you the full story e.g. what happened to the final analysis of WUWT Surface Stations …. shhhh
Wonder if there’d be any evidence of an accelerated hydrological cycle – nah …. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6080/455
Think how much information just seems to not be reported by our Tea Party tribalists and self appointed (who asked) “Science communicators”
(and fancy Jo believing CO2 is a GHG – she’ll have to sit up the back at demos if she keeps that up – we ALL know that back radiation doesn’t exist and violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics don’t we, but I suppose respectability dictates that one doesn’t want to look like a total fringe dweller)
[snip]ED
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Well first — appropriate choice of moniker. Your affected ennui might go over well at a freshman party, but here it just makes you look dumb.
Second — the article you link claiming “evidence” of an accelerated hydrological cycle: They take 50 years of ocean salinity measurements, plug them into climate models (which have yet to demonstrate any predictive skill distinguishable from random chance) and conclude that the model outputs are “evidence” of an increased hydrological cycle.
Well gosh, since the hydrological cycle involves lots of easily measured things like historical precipitation amounts, humidity levels, etc., you would think that they would include this data as support for their model results — nope, no actual data at all, just the model results. One wonders if the actual hydrological data (like the radiosonde temperature readings vs. the “temperature – wind shear” theory) would have muddied the waters by contradicting their desired conclusions.
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A wonderfully insightful letter you’ve written.
It is difficult to understand how or why the term denier is applied to AGW sceptics. I don’t know too many who deny climate change, but as you rightly point out Jo show us the reasons or linkages for the belief in man caused climate change. Models just don’t cut it!!
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Slightly OT but can someone help me out here?
GISS has just posted its map of global surface temps for May, 2012. It shows the Arctic 0.2C+ above average. Yet the DMI shows temps for May below average.
GISS
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2012&month_last=5&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=05&year1=2012&year2=2012&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
DMI
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
I know they have slightly different base time periods, but surely they couldn’t be that far apart.
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Yes, they can be that far apart. GIStemp (which I ported to Linux and have running in my office…) does some fairly bizarre things, but worst among them is the way they “homogenize” temperatures. First off, a missing data item can come from an in-fill from 1200 km away. Then the data are compared to other temperatures and “adjusted” (supposedly for UHI, but in reality just based on “how close are they”) based on thermometers up to, yes, 1200 km away (that might now have data items for individual months that themselves from 1200 km further away…)
Now we’ve got “temperatures” that have been sporadically ‘smeared’ up to 2400 km, but with most of them from withing 1200 km. But wait, there’s more…
GISS uses the GHCN and USHCN, but they have no thermometers in the Arctic to speak of. There is on in a part of Canada called “The Garden Spot of The Arctic” and known for its high temps. There are a few in Siberia where the the USSR collapse “caused issues” and were not that reliable anyway as during the USSR period fuel allotments were based on … how cold your thermometer reported.
Basically, they “make up” the entire Arctic from a couple of warm spots and a lot of speculative “smearing”. The create 8000 grid /boxes in the version I ported (it is now up to 16,000 grid/boxes) and fill them with “temperatures” in the “baseline” (that are fabricated from the smeared “data” described above), and that uses about 6000 thermometers (mostly in the USA and Europe) to create a “polite fiction” in most of the boxes. In the present, GHCN had dropped to 1280 thermometers last time I looked, so 1280 GHCN thermometers (the USHCN ones only are in the USA) are “smeared” into 16,000 “present grid / boxes”. THOSE are then compared to the past fictional grid box values to calculate the “anomaly”…
So that GIStemp value is a speculation based on a comparison of two fictions made by smearing a couple of thousand thermometers over 16,000 grid/boxes and filling in data from 1200 km away up to 3 times in a row… Other than that, no problem…
(Yes, I’ve been through every line of the GIStemp code. Yes, I’ve run it. Yes, IMHO, it is pretty crappy code and does very silly things. But what do I know, I’m just a computer professional who wrote code for a living for commercial use and was a professional computer consultant for a couple of decades and have a teaching credential for “Data processing and related technologies” and have taught at a local college…)
In short, GIStemp is not useful for much, IMHO, and any values for the Arctic are fictional.
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Thanks for that.
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Some ‘ecologist’ today and the past couple of days on twitter started the name calling game because I asked him for evidence other than just that what he believes in is ‘the Consensus’. He then said to me to “check your head”, that I “ignore peer-reviewed literature”, that I am a “climate zombie”, that I am a “shill for ignorance”, assumes that I “clearly haven’t bothered” to read the literature he talks about, that I am ignoring the “cannon of peer reviewed science” (ironic that he uses the common religious word “cannon”), I “don’t know what your (to me) talking about” and behaves rather condescendingly. His twitter account name is Matthew Ruffin, and he has continued to provide little or no evidence other than saying it is the “consensus” (which is false), peer reviewed literature is “solid” (which for my side, it is), asks what my qualifications are (I am qualified) and asks if I have read the science of which (I have read fair bit of it).
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“Juliar”,
When the ignorant “individual” attacking you has finished with the purile name calling, DEMAND that they quote one, just one independant scientific study which proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that carbon dioxide (PLANT FOOD) is determental to the Earth’s environment and mankind.
I’ll bet that all you get is the sound of crickets chirping !
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I believe that these are the contact email address for these Anti Human “individuals”……..
p.bain AT psy.uq.edu.au;
m.hornsey AT uq.edu.au;
r.bongiorno AT uq.edu.au;
c.barnett1 AT uq.edu.au;
Send them an email and tell them what you think of their BS !
————————–
REPLY: Please people be polite. It does not serve anyone well if you send time-wasting or rude emails. “Angry” I coded those emails here to avoid spambots (please don’t post email addresses in full). — Jo
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Angry, UQ? is that Queensland. I wonder if they are aware of the Professional Engineers Act Qld. (which requires registration and applies to everyone in the state including the crown) and The Public Sector Ethics Act Queensland (which applies to all Universities, public sector education,local government, contractors to government as well as all public servants). Breaches come under the criminal code. If you are a Queenslander and are offended by a person specified under the Acts put in a complaint. It may be a good idea to let that person know you have put in a complaint. Even if the complaint is dismissed it should have the effect that they know that it will go on their record and be more serious if further complaints are made.
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There is no objective definition of “denier”, but there is a well-quoted survey that concluded 97% of climate scientists agree with the consensus. This survey did not exclude people who believe in negative, but significant feedbacks. So there are three options
1. The survey should be rejected as flawed.
2. The “Denier” term is purely a term of intolerance and prejudice.
3. Both of the above are correct.
http://manicbeancounter.com/2012/06/18/97-of-climate-scientists-claim-they-are-not-climate-deniers-survey/
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Absolutely brilliant wordsmithing and logic Jo! Superb letter. I have nominated this for the Quote of the Week at WUWT:
All this mess could be cleared up with an email.
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Hi all.
The honorable Dr Bain is busy defending himself in a typically socially-scientific-y way on the Judith Curry blog. The thread gets a bit shambollick quite fast but the ding-dong to date is usefully summarised at WUWT (for those who don’t regularly go there).
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Hey MV
*PLEASE* post Bain’s reply to you (after permission of course). I really could do with a laugh right now.
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i understand almost nothing of what mr. bain is trying to say, but i understand everything about …
20 June: CNS News: $9 Billion in ‘Stimulus’ for Solar, Wind Projects Made 910 Final Jobs — $9.8 Million Per Job
by Michael W. Chapman and Fred Lucas
The Obama administration distributed $9 billion in economic “stimulus” funds to solar and wind projects in 2009-11 that created, as the end result, 910 “direct” jobs — annual operation and maintenance positions — meaning that it cost about $9.8 million to establish each of those long-term jobs.
At the same time, those green energy projects also created, in the end, about 4,600 “indirect” jobs – positions indirectly supported by the annual operation and maintenance jobs — which means they cost about $1.9 million each ($9 billion divided by 4,600).
Combined (910 + 4,600 = 5,510), the direct and indirect jobs cost, on average, about $1.63 million each to produce…
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/9-billion-stimulus-solar-wind-projects-made-910-final-jobs-98-million-job
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Someone tell Mr. Bain that social science isn’t even close to a credible science in any sense. Mutual back patting is more like it. Please, don’t let them use one collection of nonsense to justify another. What a bunch of rubbish! Environmental Psychology is just a synonym for disapproval of those who have legitimate reason to disagree.
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Socilogy is a direct appendage of Socialism as it grew from those roots. It is, in essence, the early form of using “academic ‘science'” to justify political agenda action.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/socialism-utopia-workers-paradise
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There are two ways to deal with the world around you.
1. Ask yourself what actually is working and what isn’t. Then ask yourself what that means you should do to get along in the world as it is. Act accordingly. Act honestly.
2. Concentrate on all the problems, imagine solutions and then try to live — and force others to live — in that imaginary world.
One way you accomplish good things for yourself and others. The other way you cause confusion, strife and suffering, ultimately far beyond any problem you tried to fix.
Human nature is not ours to control but we have the right to try to understand it. Marx appears to have understood it but then made the mistake of believing he could change it.
The nature of the world we live in is competition, competition and more competition. The more successful competitors by and large are not holding down the less successful but lifting them up. Human behavior is tailored to this world by design. We forget this at our peril. Socialism is a direct denial of this reality.
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Bain’s reply is just confused gobbledygook (sp?)
Jo could give him a few lessons in written communication.
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Or the mental equivalent of the Michael Jackson moon walk?
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If I’m not mistaken, warmists getting together tend to result in the runaway effects of untempered fallacial thinking, ignoring their uncertainties in their craving for concensus and thereby reinforcing each other’s flawed logic . This is the mob effect pf seeking to belong more than to be right, that allows groupthink to produce real horrors that individuals never could allow themselves to on their own.
Whereas deniers tend to be individual thinkers, not so easily swept along by the transient dictates of fashion & popularity.
Warmists are dealing with their insecurities by showing agreement with the group.
whereas putting a bunch of deniers together at least gets you get a good yarn.
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Here’s a telling quote from Bains reply..
Bain is from the University of Queensland. A bastion of pinko lefto greenie rent seekers with their snouts in the trough.
Being a fellow Queenslander, bain would understand if I use the term “Limp Dick Wanker”. No offense intended of course Mr Bain. It’s just a term we use amongst ourselves here in Queensland.
So lets get back to this limp dick wankers quote.
They did? Fancy some climate scientists assuming that people need to be convinced about scientific claims. Here’s is some news for this [snip] SCIENTIFIC CLAIMS MUST BE BACKED UP WITH EVIDENCE STRONG ENOUGH TO CONVINCE RATIONAL REASONABLE PEOPLE, [snip].
Insinuating that climate scientists shouldn’t have assumed that says more about your advocacy and your standards[snip].
[snip] ever heard of BURDEN OF PROOF? Sceptics don’t need to convince anybody of anything. It is rentseeking alarmist pseudo scientists like yourself who claim something needs to be done, YOU NEED TO DO THE CONVINCING WITH REAL EVIDENCE.
Furthermore, [snip] says…
Did you all get that? What [snip] is saying is even though they don’t have enough proof to back their alarmist rent seeking claims, if we all thought about this as a social issue rather than a science issue, we can still go ahead with reducing CO2 emissions and change our way of life.
This moron thinks the rest of us are morons as well.
Here is the news, if the hypothesis hasn’t been proven, there is NO social issue to consider and THERE IS NO PROOF, NO PROOF WHATSOEVER that mans emissions of CO2 are affecting the planets climate to any degree that might raise an eyebrow or two. THAT MEANS NOTHING NEEDS TO BE DONE. THAT ALSO MEANS FRAUDULENT RENTSEEKING MORONS LIKE YOU NEED TO FIND AN ALTERNATIVE FORM OF INCOME. YOU’VE ROBBED ME ENOUGH OVER THE LAST 20 YEARS.
My apologies to non-rednecks who may be offended by my diatribe. I get very frustrated and angry when rent seeking pigs like Bain with their noses in the trough appear to be oh so conciliatory, oh so unaware of the implications of their original statements. Then they get on forums like this one and WUWT and Climate Etc and treat us as a bunch of unintelligent bloggers who are easy to con.
Lets make it a social issue instead indeed. What we need to make of it Bain, is a good old fashioned Tar n Feathering of the likes of you and Flannery and Hamilton and Nicholls and Karoly.
————–
Baa — Channel that anger without the names. Thanks. Jo
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You got it bad, very bad Humbug. Your language is very offensive.
Ross J.
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In his reply to the question to supply the hard empirical evidence for a high sensitivity to anthropogenic CO2 Dr. Bain included the phrase
“I am approaching this as a social/societal problem rather than as an “AGW reality” problem.”
So where is the empirical evidence that sensitivity to anthropogenic CO2 is high, let alone dangerous? Can anyone help Dr Bain please?
Else I shall continue considering this whole AGW malarky as a social/societal scam rather than an “AGW reality” issue.
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I thought he response was great. To the point and polite, apologetic, not to mention accurate. What a champ.
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Oh Matt, you really are moron, aren’t you?? Sorry, that’s just what we call people like you here in WA!!
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Really – I live in WA and hardly anyone calls anyone a moron.
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MattyB
WRONG! WRONG! MattyB – just Google “Moron WA” and you get over 1/2 million hits!
Just taking clips of all your comments – especially the one below in reply to MV!!!
Unbelievable!! MattyB 🙁
PS. Your spelling is going downhill as quickly as your manners!
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6,000,000 hits for d*ckhead WA so sir in a great West Aussie tradition I hereby declare you one.
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and 8,500,000 hits for [snip] WA. Take your pick!
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MattyB
Not good! You’ve really lost it!
I’ll just do a screen clip!
Bye MattyB!
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Brilliant Overseasinsider! (Thumbs up)
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Okay MattB, enough of the nice. Here is the first paragraph of Bain’s paper:
Now with a few minor substitutions:
Same words, just different target, and we instantly find ourselves in Nazi Germany circa 1937.
Now tell me again about Bain’s politeness and accuracy.
And don’t you dare mention Godwin’s Law. The continued use of the reprehensible term “denier” is what started all this.
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Wow oh look if you replace a few words in a reasonable comment with the word Jew then it looks like someone supports the Nazis. You absolute clown MV embarrasing yourself once again. You really are a miserable piece of work and I actually do pity your gutless self.
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p.s. I don’t need to invoke Godwins law. I’m happy enough just calling you a [snip].
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My my, touch a raw nerve did we, Matty?
Please explain how simply changing the target of a statement in any way alters the intent of the statement itself?
This entire “paper” by Bain is designed and written to malign and impugn the integrity, honesty, intelligence and motivation of all those people who, for one reason or another (actually for ALL reasons), choose not to drink from the “global warming” Kool-Aid cup.
But for as long as the target is “bad” as defined by you, then that’s totally alright and acceptable. The author is “reasonable, accurate and honest” as you put it.
On the other hand, the same attack using the same words with the same intentions aimed at a target you deem “good” reduces the author to the status of “embarrassing clown” – a “miserable, gutless piece of work”.
The bald two-faced attitude of you and your ilk never ceases to amaze me Matty. I once thought your statement that people starving and freezing to death because of the policies of people like you “should wear an extra jumper”, was the absolute pits that a member of the human race could descend to.
You continue to prove me wrong.
10
MattB,
If the shoe fits, wear it. You picked up the moron shoe and put it on so it must fit. Point proved!
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I sympathise with the Brisbane Group. Their article is a crie de coeur from a threatened species, the sociological baggage which accretes on the outside of a gravy train, a bit like the Indian poor on their way to Mumbai.
So, they latch onto the term ‘denier’ as a code word for the group they all wish to despise because they threaten their morally-fraudulent livelihood.
And for those who wish to understand my stance, there can be no present CO2-AGW because if you look in the Metallurgical Literature, Hoyt C. Hottell, replicated later by Leckner, showed experimentally that the absorptivity/emissivity of CO2 in air levels off at ~200 ppmV in an infinite physical optical path.
This is the phenomenon of IR self absorption. Furthermore, the recent Mylar balloon experiment of Nahle proves, as predicted in 1993 by Happer, that thermalisation is mostly indirect!
Enjoy the Holcene’s last 1500 years…..
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Bain states:
Then he states:
So why are you talking to climate scientists in this journal?
.
SIMPLE
Answer: MONEY, MONEY, MONEY
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There are two mind sets here, one based on the notion that Thomas Kuhn’s model of science is prescriptive and the other based on Karl Popper’s critique of that model.
If Kuhn’s model is prescriptive, it is the job of the guardians of the consensus to suppress opposing views and to label those who oppose those views as “deniers” in the sense of “heretics”. If descriptive, then calling skeptics “deniers” or “heretics” would, in Popper’s view, have signified a perversion of science.
For years I mistakenly believed that the paradigm that Kuhn described was descriptive: “normal” science operates to develop and enforce a “consensus” until the consensus fails to explain important observations. At that point an alternative explanation attracts enough scientists so that the consensus dissolves, to be replaced by a new consensus that begins to enforce its views.
Popper believed that this was not merely a description of the history of science but was intended as a prescription for the way in which science ought to be conducted.
Steve Fuller has shown that Kuhn’s model of scientific method is consistent with the needs of the institutions that fund science and the needs of universities for funding.
The Climate Research Unit at the UEA is typical of an institution that pursues “normal” science as defined by Kuhn. The funding fits the institutional needs that Fuller described.
“Since its inception in 1972 until 1994, the only scientist who had a guaranteed salary from ENV/UEA funding was the Director. Every other research scientist relied on ‘soft money’ – grants and contracts – to continue his or her work. Since 1994, the situation has improved and now three of the senior staff are fully funded by ENV/UEA and two others have part of
their salaries paid.” [http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/]
Critics of the “consensus” seem not to have understood that Kuhn provided the moral justification for enforcing discipline within scientific fields. If Kuhn’s model is prescriptive, then suppression of opposing ideas is required by “normal” science. Thus, alleged attempts by staff of a university to suppress opposing views would be justified by the Kuhnian model.
If Kuhn’s model is merely descriptive, following Popper, we would say that suppression of opposing views would be a perversion of the scientific method. Popper also said it was a threat to democracy.
It seems inconsistent to me that Naomi Oreskes could have written both The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science and also authored Merchants of Doubt. The first shows how geophysicists ignored the geological evidence and suppressed the study of plate movement. Based on a consensus that no geophysical theory supported plate tectonics, the evidence was ignored. S.J. Gould remarked that the only place a Harvard that continental drift could be discussed was in the back stairway
The second, Merchants of Doubt, is about climate skeptics, “The troubling story of how a cadre of influential scientists have clouded public understanding of scientific facts to advance a political and economic agenda.”
In the first book the skeptics are heroes, while in the second they are promoters of a corrupt agenda.
Equivalent to Nature’s “deniers”.
Oreskes is an historian and scientist whose research focuses on consensus and dissent in science. Now that she has taken sides, we are entitled to ask how dispassionate the research will be. We might ask the same about her co-author, Erik Conway, also an historian.
My comment in 2004 could apply equally to the theory of anthropogenic global warming: “The socio-political and psycho-social aspects of scientific research are increasingly recognized, but historians of science have not yet examined rejection of continental drift from this point of view.” [http://www.geoscience-environment.com/es767/comment.html]
In my view, the job of the historian is to make sense of what has happened, not to take sides and to attempt to influence an ongoing debate. This seems to me also the job of the editors of Nature.
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The problem is, climate science’s predictions are based on 5 major mistakes in basic physics so this bunch of Brisbane hangers-on are purporting a fancy sociological explanation of a false premise which is that those working in climate science have to be right because they are a great majority.
The reality is that they have been deceived and this includes being taught objectively incorrect physics. This is a key part of the scam as shown by the attitude in the ClimateGate e-mails of some CRU members of ‘the team’ who only tolerated the correct physics being taught by one lecturer solely because he was soon to retire.
This use of UK academia to teach propaganda to students proves beyond any doubt that climate science cannot be considered a true science, but a form of indoctrination. No asinine sociological or psychological justification of such behaviour is remotely acceptable.
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Wonderfully done. I’ll have to learn a bit more about Kuhn…
(BTW, to all: Apologies for typo’s in other comments. Typing while laying on your back without glass on can cause all sorts of odd characters to show up 😉
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I would have tbought that any supposedly reputable journal would prevent an author from using insultng terms due to it being blatantly ignorant and unprofessional.
Oh, that’s right, it’s nature. Should’ve known better.
Good on the author for the apology, but here’s a thought. Maybe if someone believes in AGW – which i really don’t mind if they do, maybe, just maybe they should get off their fat arses and go plant some trees, or do something other than continuing to try and get me to believe in that which they cannot prove.
This is not about the pitch. It is about one group telling another group to confirm due to the other groups beliefs
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I agree with the comments above – Jo, you are brilliant!!
And what do you get in response? A lot of apologetic waffle, which is very difficult to read through. And those people are in charge… Brrrr…
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Good on him for replying… and it would be good to see the ongoing debate….
i object however that I must pay a new tax for what both sides agree will achieve nothing, except take money from the workers and give money to the bludgers (gilards only hope for re-election)
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“what has been interesting in many skeptics’ responses (in emails and on blogs) is that our research is propaganda designed to change (or “re-educate”) their mind”
Quite possible this email sent by me to the Queensland legislature made its mark.
Subject; Promoting pro-environmental action in climate change deniers
Dear Mr Premier and Members,
Yes, the above subject is the title of the following paper produced by the “non-partisian’ academics of the School of Psychology, University of Queensland.
This tripe being peddled as reasoned psychological literature is making a laughing stock of Queenslanders around the globe. However, that is not my greatest concern. It is propaganda clocked in an academic paper that is feed to young and impressionable students.
Does the lead author of this psychobabble consider the effects on his students if the AGW theory fails under empirical evidence. In essence, the paper suggests those who are sceptical of CO2 effects on climate, as proposed by a ever decreasing consort of scientists, are inferior and need reeducation. The paper proposes various ways of influencing dissenters into compliance of their eco-warrior political stance.
Judith Curry, a respected and balanced climate scientist from the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, makes this comment;
‘I view this pretty much as the green equivalent of the unabomber billboard. I find this kind of stuff in a high impact journal to be offensive: what was Nature Climate Change thinking when they published this?
Somebody needs to research the sociology and psychology of people that insist that anyone that does not accept AGW as a rationale for massive CO2 mitigation efforts is a “denier.” The complexity of skepticism (ranging from multiple aspects of the science, to the impacts that can be attributable to AGW and whether or not they are “dangerous” to the policies proposed for CO2 mitigation) seems to be completely missed by all of the “scholars” writing articles about ‘deniers’. The argued point “A sizeable (and growing) proportion of the public in Western democracies deny the existence of anthropogenic climate change” should provide a clue to these people that something is fundamentally wrong with their thinking.
So ‘deniers’, tell me: will “increasing interpersonal warmth and societal development” work for you?”
Professor Curry’s Wikipedia profile is here:
Professor Curry’s article about this paper is here:
Our children’s minds are being polluted by a concerted effort so as to ingrain socialist ideology within our Universities. Universities should be halls of knowledge and openness, not used as tools for maniacal greens to promote their politics. A review of political divides in the context of history should guide your attitude in this blatant case of academic stupidity.
Liberals or the right in a political context, insist that an economic system based on private property is uniquely consistent with individual liberty, allowing each to live her life —including employing her labor and her capital — as she sees fit. It has been argued, for example, that all rights, including liberty rights, are forms of property; others have maintained that property is itself a form of freedom (Gaus, 1994; Steiner, 1994). A market order based on private property is thus seen as an embodiment of freedom, unless people are free to make contracts, or unless they are free to save their income, or free to run enterprises when they have obtained the capital, they are not really free.
Whereas, progressives or the left in a political context insist individualism of the classical liberal tradition is misguided. Progressives reject social and political life as the aggregation of inherently conflicting private interests. Instead, they seek to view individuals relationally, where an ethically desirable social order is understood as an organism in which the well-being of each part was tied to the well-being of the whole.
Progressives insist on change of liberal societies for greater equality amongst citizens, which through the ages has been shown not only to be unsustainable but often destructive.
Wiki explains, the Left includes progressives, social liberals, greens, social democrats, socialists, communists, and anarchists. The Right includes conservatives, reactionaries, capitalists, monarchists, nationalists, and fascists.
The political spectrum in Australia is centralist and I, for one, hope it remains so. However, let green infiltrators continue their pollution of young minds in our Universities and our children will end up in a deathly struggle between political extremes.
Yours sincerely,
Markus Fitzhenry.
PS: The School of Psychology UQ, actually has a GREEN campus.
CC:
Professor Kim Halford
Professor Matthew Hornsey
Professor Jolanda Jetten
Professor Justin Kenardy
Professor Sue Kruske
Professor Christina Lee
Professor Ottmar V. Lipp
Professor Jason Mattingley
Professor Andrew Neal
Professor Nancy A. Pachana
Professor Candi Peterson
Professor Roger Remington
Professor Matt Sanders
Professor Penelope Sanderson
Professor Virginia Slaughter
Professor Thomas Suddendorf
Professor Bill von Hippel
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The editor functions don’t seem to work correctly.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1532.html#/affil-auth
http://judithcurry.com/2012/06/19/analyzing-people-who-talk-about-agw-denialism/
Apologies if I broke it.
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Paul Bain’s letter and reply may have hit the nail on the head. The objective is to wean us off fossil fuels which are diminishing. The economical consequences of which will grow unless we find alternatives.
The error is that the use of scientific “facts” to create fear of the effects on fossil fuel use to push for those alternatives. It probably being seen as the most effective way of achieving this objective.
The increasing use of “denier” and is some cases “heretics” leads me to compare with religous aspects.
History abounds with examples of using “facts”/fears to promote actions in achieving outcomes required by the powers that be.
Spending years of back-breaking work to build the pyramids for the afterlife promised.
Slaughtering thousands of muslims for the forgiveness of sins.
Burning and torturing heretics to keep the purity of religion.
Sterilisation and other horrors in the science of eugenics.
Killing innocent civillians to achieve personal paradise.
These are extreme examples and may be seen as over the top. However how long before the fears created by the AGW lobby cause eg the burning of gas guzzling cars, attacks upon fossil fuel power stations (already happened?) and other atrocities which will cause deaths.
Think on’t
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Jo,
Current Journals and publications are reviewed by consensus scientists. This is why any new science or trying to correct bad theories is never published. This would threaten the current monopoly of cards and would collapse many careers.
I found another huge area full of errors and that is the consensus of LoD(length of day). Like climate scientists and their strictly staying with temperature data and ignoring any process that generates this. The LoD study misses many, many areas that generate our length of day from planetary tilting to velocity difference for the single calculation that they try to fool around as science based on a single average.
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Great letter but for the continued mention of the GHG effect.
Gasses do NOT trap heat..”Heat may be defined as energy in transit from a high temperature object to a lower temperature object. An object does not possess “heat”; the appropriate term for the microscopic energy in an object is internal energy.” hyperphysics.info
Also see.
http://slayingtheskydragon.com/en/blog/185-no-virginia-cooler-objects-cannot-make-warmer-objects-even-warmer-still
This is a weapon given by the denial (realist) camp to the Alarmists warmist(mongers). Just dont do it please uplug your mind from the false unphysical GH effect.
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It will take a long time for people to catch up. I am proud to be a skeptics skeptic. My father was 30 years ahead of the curve on GW. I suspect he is still ahead of the curve in regards to the GHE (non-existant). A good bookie would bet on him to be correct knowing this history. WUWT has become a bit of an echo chamber in the capitulation that Co2 has some affect. Reading between the lines, smart people like Anthony and Willis Eschenbach are coming around. It is very difficult to change the fundamentals of your thinking and understand there is no evidence that supports the actual effect of Co2 in the atmosphere. There are also some who comment there whose intent is to obfuscate (here too, John”muddy the waters” Brookes for example). We are patient and waiting until others catch up has been what we have done for the last 30 years anyway. The wait continues. Slow and steady wins the race.
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Paul Bain reply is that we perceive there was a bandwagon so we jumped on that bandwagon.
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So far have only read Jo’s letter and Pointman’s first comment.
Both great items.
One thing that does cause me concern is the use of the “concessions” to the existing “science” which I think may be giving away too much to the Warmer cause.
Principally the phrase “the direct effect of doubling the level of CO2 amounts to 1.2°C (i.e. before feed-backs)”.
My concern is that there is an implication that this “doubling” could be wrongly assumed to be all human generated and an admission that it is possible for humans to “double” the atmospheric CO2 content.
In fact the relatively small human output as shown by numerous papers is currently being countered within the space of two or three years by the counter action of natural sequestration (plant and biogrowth) enabled by more CO2).
The only real scenario by which the world’s atmospheric CO2 could double is through catastrophic natural events which would swamp existing natural sequestration.
Man would be a very insignificant bystander in this case.
The more “wrong assumptions” like this that we remove from use by the Warmers, the sooner this shameful period on NoN-Science will end.
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It is generally accepted by all those who accept the GHG theory that in isolation there is a logarithmic relationship between increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and temperature or perhaps more correctly retained energy (which incidentally is proving a little difficult to find particularly if, as the alarmist scientists suggest it is hiding at the bottom of the ocean). However does that simple relationship hold or is it valid in the sum of the many local and regional climate systems which depend on many variables in what is essentially a range of chaotic climate systems?
The reality that annual human fossil fuel emissions are two to three times greater that the annual increase in CO2 concentrations is a pretty good indicator that the climate(s)are quite capable of absorbing a large percentage, if not all “our” emissions as well as the effect of our land use changes.
If, as is likely, there has been natural warming caused by the interaction of those many “natural” climate input variables then it is a reasonable hypothesis that none of the annual increase in CO2 has anything to do with our fossil fuel emissions but rather may be the result of CO2 ocean “gassing”.
Further how reliable is the alarmist science accepted pre-IR atmospheric concentration of CO2 at about 280ppm. Any comments on the validity of the following:
“In the 1800’s direct air CO2 measurements were performed by various researchers. Interestingly, the CO2 levels reported by them were mostly in excess of 300 ppm. For reasons that are unclear, only a few of these tests were considered valid by G.S. Calendar (1898-1964)– the grandfather of the theory of man-made global warming. Today, the remaining data are largely ignored, although a few commentators like E. Beck and Z. Jaworoski suggest the data–some compiled by Nobel Prize laureates– are generally valid and were inappropriately dismissed (4, 21) .
Callendar claimed humans had increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, and had thereby changed the atmosphere from 274 ppmv to 325 ppmv by 1935– resulting in a 18.3 percent increase which had caused the global surface temperature to rise 0.33 deg. C (5). However, CO2 data available at the time showed concentrations ranged between 250 ppm and 550 ppm (Figure 4). Callendar has been accused of cherry-picking data from a sampling of 19th century averages, using 26 that supported his ideas, but rejecting 16 that were higher than his assumed low global average, and 2 that were lower (6)…”
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/stomata.html
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KK if I had a dollar for every time it has been explained on this blog alone that human emissions are increasing atmospheric levels I’d have at least $25. Which is enough time for you to have listened at least once.
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Speaking of listening — didn’t you and I recently have an extended interchange where I demonstrated that the model you proposed to show that CO2 atmospheric lifetimes were long enough to allow anthropogenic contributions to be significant actually showed the opposite?
So far, there are at least 36 empirical studies showing short CO2 atmosheric lifetimes, and no empirical evidence to the contrary. The entire argument for significant anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 is based on models predicting long lifetimes, none of which has been able to reproduce the empirical data.
As I summed it up once before — “A model or reality which can’t reproduce empirical data within it’s claimed domain is wrong”. So, the evidence for a significant anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 is entirely based on models demonstrated to be wrong.
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Thanks Bob.
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[snip] useless comment
[A bright guy like you can actually explain their point right?] ED
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this would be a pretty small blog if deletion of useless comments was applied consistently!
[You may be right. Or you may not be as bright as I thought. You decide] ED
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Ok. I’m right.
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Thanks Matt
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Well, to get into the spirit of the “discussion”:
Every word MattB writes is wrong — including ‘and’ and ‘the’.
(Appologies to Mary McCarty)
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http://www.vincent.wa.gov.au/Your_Council/About_Your_Mayor_Councillors
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BobC,
It seems quite difficult to explain the difference between residence time (which for CO2 is about 5 years in the atmosphere) and adjustment time (which for CO2 is about 52 years in the atmosphere):
The first is how long it takes before any CO2 molecule in the atmosphere, whatever its origin, is exchanged with a CO2 molecule from another reservoir (oceans, vegetation). As about 20% of all CO2 in the atmosphere is exchanged with the oceans and vegetation over the seasons, the exchange rate is 800/150 GtC and the residence time is about 5 years. Be aware that this is simple exchanging molecules, that doesn’t imply any change in total amount in the atmosphere, as long as the inputs are equal to the outputs.
The second is how long it takes for an extra injection of CO2 in the atmosphere, whatever its origin, to be removed until the old (temperature driven) equilibrium is reached again.
From the past we know that temperature drives CO2 levels. For a given temperature, CO2 levels follow with a rather constant average level, mainly maintained by the oceans and vegetation. If for some reason some extra CO2 is emitted (by volcanoes e.g.), both the oceans and vegetation will react on elevated levels by absorbing more CO2. But that will take more time than the simple temperature driven exchanges by the seasons. How much time? That can be calculated from the driving force and its result. Compared to ice cores, we are currently at 100+ ppmv (210 GtC) over the temperature driven equilibrium. If you don’t believe anything from ice cores, we still are 70 ppmv above the emissions/sink rates since the measurements at the South Pole and Mauna Loa started. From the same measurements we know that nature as a whole is a sink for CO2 of currently about 4 GtC/year (wherever that may be). Thus the adjustment time is 210/4 GtC or about 53 years. That is the e-fold time. The time needed to halve the extra amount of CO2 above equilibrium thus is ~40 years. See the page of Peter Dietze at the late John Daly’s website: http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm
Thus there are two completely different times involved, both sometimes called “residence” times, even the IPCC makes that mistake, but these are completely independent of each other and the short residence time has not the slightest relevancy for how long it takes to remove an extra injection of CO2, whatever its origin.
Think about residence time and adjustment time as if you have a factory with a huge throughput or turnover and thus a short residence time for your invested capital and the gain or loss you make at the end of the year on your investment: with the same residence time you still can have a loss or a gain or a break-even for your investment…
Thus while most influencial sceptics (Lindzen, Spencer, McIntyre, Watts,…) accept that humans are responsible for the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere (humans emit 8 GtC/year, nature absorbs only 4 GtC/year), many still believe that something else causes the increase. Even if there is overwhelming evidence of the contrary. That makes that the real arguments where the discussion should be: the real influence of the CO2 increase on temperature, is obscured by rearguard battles.
See further: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html#The_mass_balance
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Hi Ferdinand,
An interesting take on the old idea of “residence times” which are now to be called “adjustment times”?
To be honest, and despite your calculations involving GigaTonnes of carbon you still do not and are unable to separate “Natural origin” CO2 from “Human origin” CO2 and insist on blaming Human activity for ALL CO2 implications.
First; the NonHuman Bio Activity is so large as to swamp Human origin CO2 production.
Secondly: any “excess” of CO2 is “taken care of” by natural increase of natural sequestration in about two or three years and this is very well documented.
It seems that you are the odd man out when quoting periods of 50 years!
As I have pointed out many times in the past, you cannot quantify the human impact on global CO2 levels by the method you use when all of the inputs are not known:
The Factors.
CO2 – Human origin (estimated)
+ CO2 – Natural origin (core – essentially constant but unknown quantity)
+ or – CO2 – expressed or absorbed by the oceans (quantity not known)
+ or – CO2 – expressed from highly variable sources such as volcanoes and sub surface volcanic activity (totally unknown).
All of the above are then “moderated” by natural sequestration which has a lag time which appears to be about 3 years.
We then are left with the Measured CO2 fluctuations in Atmosphere.
Could you please explain again just why you attribute ALL of this change to human activity?
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Therefore, it would stand to reason that if more than ONE CO2 emitting volcano erupts every 52 years, the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere should increase by the average amount of CO2 emitted by those volcanos, no?
Though I don’t know what the figures are, I’m guessing substantially more than ONE CO2 emitting volcano erupts every 52 years, including surface and sub-sea volcanos.
However, the boffins are telling us CO2 levels were quite stable for thousands of years until mankind started emitting about 250-300 years ago.
What am I missing Ferdinand?
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KinkyKeith,
Your response is exactly an example of the difficulty I mentioned.
The most important processes involved in seasonal changes are the ocean surfaces and land vegetation. The summer temperatures cause more CO2 releases from the oceans and more uptake by vegetation. In the NH the mid-latitude vegetation shows an uptake boom in spring and a release boom in fall. That gives huge back and forth flows of CO2 and relative huge variability in CO2 levels at near ground levels. The flows involved are estimated at about 90 GtC (oceans-atmosphere) and 60 GtC (vegetation-atmosphere) during spring-summer fall and opposite during fall-winter-spring. The SH has far less seasonal variability (more oceans, less vegetation) and opposite to the NH. The CO2 exchanges involved thus are huge, but the net effect on global CO2 levels is rather small, as oceans and vegetation and NH and SH work in opposite ways. The net global effect is about 2.5 ppmv CO2 up and down for a global seasonal temperature change of + and – 0.5°C. Thus about 5 ppmv/°C (~10 GtC) short-term change in temperature, mainly due to land temperatures in the NH.
The huge 150 GtC exchange thus has a very limited influence on global CO2 levels, even over the seasons, even if the exchange flows are huge and the residence time thus is short (~5 years). If there is no year to year change in temperature (and precipitation in the case of vegetation), the seasonal flows would remain the same and the net change over the years would be about zero. Any temperature change over several years will have an opposite effect on both oceans and vegetation, but again limited to a few ppmv/°C. Even over very long periods like the MWP-LIA change and the glacial-interglacial periods, the change in CO2 levels is not more that 8 ppmv/°C. That is what happens with temperature changes. Most of the temperature dependent increase/decrease is a direct result of Henry’s Law for solubility of CO2 in seawater (about 16 microatm/°C to reach a new equilibrium with the atmosphere or ~16 ppmv in the atmosphere).
Now what happens if some process (volcanoes or humans) add some extra CO2 to the atmosphere? At first, not much happens, as long as the increase in the atmosphere is modest (for equal temperatures). But as the increase goes on, the pressure to push more CO2 into the oceans (and vegetation) increases, leading to more uptake by the oceans (and vegetation). That is quite a different process than the temperature dependent CO2 exchanges. In this case both oceans and vegetation work together, but both are limited in uptake speed. The ocean surfaces show a fast restore of the equilibrium, but are limited in capacity to 10% of the change in the atmosphere (due to ocean carbonate chemistry). The deep oceans can have far more CO2 uptake, but are limited because of the limited exchange flows between atmosphere and deep oceans. Vegetation grows harder with more CO2, but that also is a relative slow process and limited to average 50% increase for 100% more CO2 in ideal circumstances, which are seldom fulfilled in nature. The net result is that with the current 100+ ppmv (210 GtC) above the temperature dictated equilibrium, only some 2 ppmv/year (4 GtC/year) is absorbed by oceans + vegetation. That gives an e-fold adjustment time of ~53 years, quite a difference with the short residence time.
Thus in short: the short residence time of 5-10 years found in lots of empirical data is right, but only shows how much CO2 (from whatever origin) is exchanged between the atmosphere and other reservoirs, but that says next to nothing of what happens with the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. What matters is the adjustment time which influences the total amount of CO2, whatever the source of the deviation in CO2 level from the equilibrium and that one is much longer than the residence time.
In figures:
increase in the atmosphere = human emissions + natural inputs – natural outputs
4 GtC/year = 8 GtC/year + natural inputs – natural outputs
natural inputs – natural outputs = – 4 GtC/year
Thus nature as a whole is a net sink for CO2, not a source. That is all what we need to know. Where the natural sources and sinks are, how large they are and how they change from year to year is of not the slightest interest, only the net result over a year matters and that was more uptake than release by natural sources and sinks over the past 50 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em.jpg
It doesn’t matter that the human CO2 molecules stay in the atmosphere for years or are all taken away within a minute by the nearest tree. In all cases the increase is human induced, as the uptake of the tree is limited and if the tree hadn’t catched the “human” CO2, it would have catched a “natural” CO2 molecule instead, the net result is the same increase in the atmosphere…
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Baa Humbug,
Volcanic CO2 emissions are limited. Even a huge VEI 5 explosion like the 1992 Pinatubo was not measurable in the CO2 increase rate. To the contrary, the CO2 increase rate shows a dip in 1992-1993 because the temperature dip caused by the volcanic dust had more effect than the total CO2 release.
Further, most volcanoes and volcanic vents have a 13C/12C ratio near the zero per mil range (all subduction volcanoes) or below (the deep magma volcanoes), but near all have 13C/12C ranges above the atmospheric CO2 carbon at -8 per mil. Thus any increase of volcanic activities would increase the 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere (and ocean surface), but we see a sharp decrease in ratio with the human emissions (at in average -24 per mil). See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.gif
And last but not least, it would be very remarkable dat any natural process would mimic the human emissions in such an incredible straight forward ratio:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_emiss_increase.jpg
The main unknowns are underwater volcanoes, of which there are many. But underwater volcanoes and vents emit CO2 mostly in the deep ocean waters, which are under extreme pressure and undersaturated in CO2, thus I wonder how much of that CO2 reaches the atmosphere directly. Indirectly by dissolving in deep ocean waters, there is the same problem as with the land volcanoes: deep ocean water has a 13C/12C ratio at zero per mil, thus the influence of any low 13C underwater volcanic vents didn’t result in a lower 13C/12C ratio of the deep ocean waters.
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Hopefully, I’ll have time for a more complete answer later, but the short answer is:
The residence time has been empirically measured dozens of times using diverse methodologies — it is a fact.
The adjustment time in a linear system is a function of the residence time. If the interchange between the ocean and atmosphere is controlled by Henry’s law, then the system is at least quase-linear (there are lots of other things going on, including large biological effects) and the adjustment time wouldn’t be much different than the residence time. MattB’s model, that I analyzed here , is a good illustration of that. This model also can demonstrate the principle of a tracer measurement — just put in a mixture of “red” and “white” balls as the impulse, and note that the half-life of each kind and all together is the same.
Such a tracer measurement of the adjustment time has been made (the C14 bomb spike measurements) and the result is that the adjustment time has been measured to be ~8 years (half-life).
The longer values of adjustment times (52 years plus) are all from models based on unverified assumptions (for example, the assumption that the Suess factor can only be affected by burning fossil fuels — an assumption falsified by ice core data).
Generally, when it is impossible to reconcile theories with facts, the right course of action scientifically is to reject the theories — but we’re talking about a political ‘science’ here (“Climate Science”).
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BobC
June 24, 2012 at 10:19 pm
Not necesseraly. Depends of the processes involved.
In the case of the oceans surface, both processes (temperature influence and increased pCO2) are limited by the exchange speed (which is fast for the oceans surface), but any extra uptake is limited by carbonate chemistry, while the temperature influence is independent of the carbonate chemistry.
It seems that you reject the Suess factor, but that one is empirically proven. The increase in DIC (total dissolved inorganic carbon) in the ocean’s surface is only 10% of the increase in the atmosphere over the same period (1983-2003), see: http://www.bios.edu/Labs/co2lab/research/IntDecVar_OCC.html Fig. 1 and compare the increase in DIC with the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
It is there where your rebuttal of MattB’s model goes wrong:
That implies that the ratio between atmospheric and oceanic CO2 remains the same with increased CO2 in the atmosphere. That is true for pure dissolved CO2 (which is less than 1% of DIC), according to Henry’s Law, but not for (bi)carbonate. Thus instead of an increase in uptake from 20 to 24 balls, the real increase is from 20 to 20.4 balls…
In the real world, the difference in fluxes already shows that: the residence time fluxes are 150 GtC/year (largely in countercurrent), while the uptake is only 4 GtC/year for some 100 ppmv above the temperature dictated equilibrium…
In the case of vegetation, different processes are at work and there is hardly any link between temperature induced processes which cause the back and forth fluxes and thus the short residence time and the pCO2 induced extra uptake. Wood rotting bacteria and fungi show temperature dependent releases of CO2, no matter how much CO2 is already in the atmosphere…
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In addition:
The residence time fluxes are about 150 GtC per year, where the input fluxes are 4 GtC less than the output fluxes. That is an increase of 2.7% in total output flux compared to the total input flux. The increase of CO2 in the atmosphere nowadays is about 30%. Seems that Suess/Revelle were not that way off reality…
And I had lots of comments on the reference you gave for the “human fingerprint” article at WUWT, see: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/28/dusting-for-fingerprints-in-the-holocene/
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If the processes are linear, my statement is correct. See my analysis of MattB’s explicitly linear model here (last link to this above was broken, sorry).
Appologies: I meant to say the Suess Effect — the depletion of C13 w.r.t. C12 that is assumed (by AGW theorists) to be exclusively due to fossil fuel burning, but that paleodata shows has occured multiple times before in Earth’s history — usually during warming periods and many times predating Human civilization (or species).
What you are talking about is commonly called the Revelle Factor (co-discovered by Suess). The first paragraph of your linked study describes a dozen serious complications to the interpretation of their data — your interpretation is far from the only one possible.
The Revelle Factor hypothesises a breaking of Henry’s Law which has never been seen in laboratory experiments using CO2 pressures over 1000 times greater than the Earth has ever experienced. In addition, the Revelle Factor would preclude the manufacture of carbonated beverages, as explained by CHIP here.
1) I didn’t rebut Matt’s model — I showed that it proved my point, instead.
2) I analyzed MattB’s explicitly linear model — you change it to be non-linear, then claim that I analyzed it incorrectly (apparently because I didn’t first add your changes). Really, Ferdinand, you should be able to do better than that.
In normal scientific proceedure, it should be incumbent on those who hypothesize that a well-established physical law (Henry’s) is wrong to demonstrate that fact. Not only haven’t they done that, explicit laboratory experiments (as well as common industrial processes) demonstrate instead that the Revelle Factor is an illusion. This illusion is desparately clung to by warmists trying to ignore physical data showing that AGW is a non-problem.
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This is a pretty good summary of the Revelle Factor Hypothesis: If you remove CO2 from the ocean (by converting to bicarbonate) you will reduce the amount of further CO2 that can be absorbed in the future. This is the exact opposite conclusion from what you get from common sense, physical theory, and experimental evidence.
The Revelle Factor hypothesis is nonsense for many reasons:
1) It is a violation of Henry’s Law, which has been confirmed to hold true by laboratory experiments up to CO2 pressures thousands of times greater than any ever experienced on Earth.
2) Henry’s Law can be derived from the Atomic Theory of matter, as I note here. For the Revelle Factor to be true, the Atomic Theory of matter would have to be revised, adding non-local effects between atoms and molecules. There is no physical reason to do this, and such effects have never been observed.
3) The Revelle Factor would prevent the manufacture of carbonated beverages, which constitute an ongoing industrial verification of Henry’s Law to CO2 pressures many times greater than exist in the atmosphere.
Needless to say, there is exactly NO experimental evidence for the Revelle Factor, which is simply a desperate attempt to maintain the AGW theory by engaging in pure fantasy.
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BobC
June 25, 2012 at 1:50 am
I think that there is some misunderstanding here: the Suess effect or Revelle factor is not about the 13C/12C ratio but about the influence of a change in CO2 levels in the atmosphere on CO2 levels in the oceans.
There is no breach at all of Henry’s Law: if you increase the CO2 levels in the atmosphere for a given temperature, the amount of free dissolved CO2 increases in the same ratio. But free dissolved CO2 is less than 1% of all carbon forms dissolved in seawater (or any water). Bicarbonate and carbonate forms the bulk of the dissolved CO2, but these have no direct influence on the ratio as dictated by Henry’s law, only dissolved gaseous CO2 is involved. If the amount of free CO2 increases by an increase in the atmosphere, the equilibrium reactions will also increase the bicarbonate and carbonate levels. The point is that an increase of dissolved CO2 also increases H+, thus the pH lowers somewhat, which pushes the reactions the other way out, increasing the free CO2 levels. The net result is that a 100% increase of CO2 in the atmosphere (and thus a 100% increase of free CO2 in solution) only gives a 10% increase in total carbon, that is free CO2 + bicarbonate + carbonate in solution. The reactions involved are nicely explained here:
http://www.eng.warwick.ac.uk/staff/gpk/Teaching-undergrad/es427/Exam%200405%20Revision/Ocean-chemistry.pdf from chapter 2.2.2 (page 5) on.
About Matt’s model, he had it right, as he increased the number of balls in the exchange from 20 to 21, not what you did to 24. There you assumed that the exchange with the oceans increased in ratio with Henry’s Law, which is right for free CO2, not for total dissolved carbon… That still is simply linear, but different from a straightforward appliance of Henry’s Law, without taking into account the specific chemistry of carbon species in water.
BTW, in all cases Henry’s Law ánd the Suess effect still holds, no matter if you add CO2 to Coke at 7 bar or CO2 to the atmosphere at 0.0004 bar. In both cases a new equilibrium will be reached at a certain temperature for the pressure involved… In fact due to the alkaline nature of seawater, that can hold far more CO2 than Coke if you could apply the same pressure…
Some references that the Revelle factor doesn’t exist? As I have shown, both the increase in the atmosphere vs. the increase in the oceans surface as the minimal increase of CO2 uptake for a huge increase in atmospheric CO2 levels show that Suess/Revelle were right.
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You’re right about the ‘Revelle Factor’ — the ‘Suess effect’ is indeed about 13C/12C ratios. When I mistakenly said the ‘Suess Factor’, I meant the ‘Suess Effect’. I thought I already explained this in post #67.2.1.2.8
This explanation is in direct contradiction to the well-known and understood bicarbonate buffering system, which shows that an increase in disolved CO2 will result in an increase in disolved bicarbonate (see equation 1 in the link).
You are postulating that the system works backwards (and unstable, to boot) — claiming that an increase in disolved CO2 results in less bicarbonate, and hence a further increase in CO2 — a runaway feedback loop.
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Time to make an overview of the Revelle factor problem from this hap&snap discussion:
– Henry’s Law says that for a constant temperature, the ratio between CO2 dissolved and CO2 pressure above the liquid at equilibrium is constant.
– Henry’s Law is actually only for the gaseous phase of CO2 in water, other CO2 derived species like bicarbonate and carbonate don’t play a direct role in Henry’s Law.
– There is a chemical equilibrium between CO2 in solution and the formation of bicarbonate and carbonate ions, together with hydrogen ions in the same solution.
– That chemical equilibrium is influenced by changing the concentration of one of the ingredients.
– Decreasing the H+ concentration by adding alkaline material will increase the formation of bicarbonate and carbonate for the same concentration of gaseous CO2 in air and water.
– Increasing the H+ concentration by adding acid material will decrease the presence of bicarbonate and carbonate for the same concentration of CO2 (in general, the concentration of free CO2 in solution will exceed the equilibrium concentration, releasing CO2 to the atmosphere).
– If one increases the CO2 concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, that will have a double effect: The equilibrium reactions with bicarbonate and carbonate are pushed to the right and more of them is formed, together with more H+ ions. The latter concentration gives that the equilibrium reactions are partially pushed back to the left, as the previous item shows. The new equilibrium therefore shows less bicarbonate and carbonate change than the original CO2 change.
– The ratio between change in gaseous CO2 pressure in air or water and total CO2 change (gaseous CO2 + bicarbonate + carbonate) in solution is the Revelle factor.
– The Revelle factor is mainly a question of pH: for alkaline solutions like in seawater, the factor is ~10, for fresh water, the factor is ~30, thus fresh water can dissolve far less CO2 because its getting fast acidic. But in both cases, the same concentration of free CO2 is in the solution at equilibrium for the same concentration in the atmosphere.
The result of this all is that the ocean surface (and to a certain extent the plant alveoles water) follow any CO2 change in the atmosphere with only 10% and that slower processes (deep ocean exchanges, plant growth increase) are responsible for the removal of most of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. That makes that there is a huge difference between the residence time for any CO2 molecule in the atmosphere and the adjustment time needed to bring the total amount in the atmosphere back to the temperature dictated equilibrium…
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Ferdinand, Hello, but you’re at it again when you make unjustifiable assumptions like:
“Where the natural sources and sinks are, how large they are and how they change from year to year is of not the slightest interest, only the net result over a year matters and that was more uptake than release by natural sources and sinks over the past 50 years”.
That comment is not correct.
Nobody has any real idea of the quantities there. How is it that you are able to assess this?
Did you take into account the newly exposed organic biomass in the tundra. It is rotting; how much CO2 is it giving off, if any, when was this material first noticed as being freshly exposed to air?
Is your obsession with looking at micro mechanisms blinding you to the other factors that you appear to have put in the ‘too hard’ basket?
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KinkyKeith
June 25, 2012 at 8:29 pm
Kinky, what matters is how much of the natural + human CO2 inputs remains in the atmosphere after all natural outputs have done their work, at the end of the year. We don’t know much of the individual flows, we have a rough idea of the total flows in/out the oceans and vegetation, but we have a pretty good idea of the net result of all these flows at the end of the year. That is based on inventories of fossil fuel sales (taxes!) and the CO2 measurements in the atmosphere. The inventories have their error margin, but probably more underestimated than overestimated. The CO2 measurements are very accurate. Thus at the end of the year, we know what nature as a whole has done, even without any knowledge of any individual flow during that year.
There are only a few possibilities:
1. The CO2 levels after a year decrease (or stay even). That means that the sum of all nature sinks was larger than (or equal to) the sum of all natural inputs + the human emissions.
2. The CO2 levels increase, but with a smaller (or equal) amount than the human emissions. That means that the sum of all natural sinks is larger than (or equal to) the sum of all natural sources and the human emissions are the sole cause of the increase in the atmosphere.
3. The CO2 levels increase with a larger amount that the human emissions. That means that the sum of all natural sinks is smaller than the sum of all natural sinks and both human emissions and natural releases are responsible for the increase.
In the past 50 years, we had situation 2 (with a few years year borderline 1 and 3). Thus even if there was an increase in volcanic activity or increased wildfires or increased releases from thawing permafrost, that didn’t influence the balance enough to make that nature had any contribution to the increase in the atmosphere. In all years the natural sinks exceeded the natural sources…
The only exception is a temperature increase, as that gives a shift of the equilibrium “setpoint” where the sink rate is driving to. But the increase of maximum 1°C since the LIA is good for maximum 8 ppmv increase in the atmosphere.
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Sorry, error in point 3.:
“That means that the sum of all natural sinks is smaller than the sum of all natural sinks and both human emissions and natural releases are responsible for the increase.”
Of course must be:
That means that the sum of all natural sinks is smaller than the sum of all natural sources and both human emissions and natural releases are responsible for the increase.
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Maybe you should do more that just glance at the model. Try this: Start with an equal mixture of red and white balls in both the atmosphere and ocean — say 10% red in both (but 50 times as many total balls in the ocean). Then, double the number of red balls in the atmosphere to 20% and run the model. You will find that the half-life of the adjustment back to the 1:50 partition (with more total balls now) is ~3 years, same as before. However, there is no question now that the red balls coming back from the ocean to the atmosphere are not (with 98% likelyhood) the same red balls as went from the atmosphere to the ocean. (This is the essence of a tracer measurement.)
See the difference yet?
The fact that you’ve ‘mentioned it’ doesn’t make it true. Read the model — there is no assumption whatsoever made about either residence times or adjustment times. Those times emerge from the model as a consequence of the linear relationship between transfer rates out of a media and the concentration in the media — i.e., Henry’s Law. The fact that they are similar is a consequence of this linearity, it is not an input to the model.
No matter how many time you say that, it still remains that the only empirical measurement of the adjustment time (the C14 Bomb Spike) gives a value of 5 – 8 years.
I’ve shown you a linear mathematical model which shows that the residence and adjustment times are similar. (A linear model is reasonable, since Henry’s Law is linear and controls the largest exchange — between the atmosphere and oceans.)
Now you show me a mathematical model that causes them to be different by a factor of 10. (Not as a ‘fudge-factor’ input to the model either — but as an emergent result due to the physics of the interchange.) Then we can discuss it — just making declarations without logical or empirical support isn’t really a discussion.
Of course I should warn you: No one in the Climate Science community has yet managed to do this.
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What you have done here, Ferdinand, is simply assume what you should have to prove. There is no logical support for separating Human emissions and all other emissions. It would be just as (il)logical to lump all sources (including Human) together except for tundra outgasing (or undersea volcanic activity, or …).
Then you could make the same three statements as you do above, except you replace “human emissions” with ‘X’ (where ‘X’ = ‘tundra outgasing’, or ‘undersea volcanic activity’, or …) and ‘natural sources’ now includes human emissions.
The statements would be equally meaningless either way.
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BobC
June 26, 2012 at 2:01 pm
Again, what you describe is the effect of the residence time: you do increase the sink rate in your model with the same percentage as the increase in the atmosphere, which makes that the residence time and the adjustment time are equal. Thus the equality of both is implemented in your model. That assumption is only right if the same processes are responsible for the residence time and the adjustment time, which is not the case. The seasonal swings are fully temperature dependent (by Henry’s Law) and largely independent of ocean chemistry, while an extra uptake is mainly ocean chemistry dependent and less dependent of temperature (Henry’s Law only influences 1% of the carbon mass in the oceans).
It is proven beyond doubt, even with the very huge margins of error, that the ocean surface doesn’t double its carbon content with a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere. Thus your model is fundamentally wrong and doesn’t prove anything. And the 1:50 partitioning is 1:1.25 for the fast ocean surface exchanges and more than 1:50 for the slow deep ocean exchanges. Most of the “50” is in the deep oceans, not directly in contact with the atmosphere, even largely undersaturated in CO2 and with a turnover time of some 800 years… Thus even of we can reach a new equilibrium between the deep oceans and the atmosphere (and all the other reservoirs), that will cost centuries to millenia, not years.
Again you make the fundamental error to assume that the same reactions are at work. For the solubility of CO2 in seawater, Henry’s Law is only a small fraction of the equation, which makes that the uptake in the oceans surface is limited and 90% of any increase of CO2 must be removed by other, slower processes. These slower processes are as good linear by Henry’s Law (and consecutive ocean or biological chemistry) as the solubility in the oceans surface, but with much longer time constants.
It seems to be difficult to convince you that the 14C bomb spike has little to do with the adjustment time. Let us look at the figures:
The average pre-bomb 14C ratio in all carbon of the atmosphere was 1 ppt. The nuclear bomb testing about doubled that. The impact of the bomb tests on the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is negligible. Thus there is no effect at all on the sink rate and thus nothing left to derive the adjustment time from the fate of 14C in the atmosphere.
So where does the excess 14C go? Partly in the ocean surface and partly in vegetation, where the isotopic distribution would get in equilibrium over a quite short period, based on the residence time. As the mass ratios are about 1.25:1 (ocean surface), with the short residence time, some halve of the 14C spike would be distributed over these two fast exchanging reservoirs. The exchange with vegetation is mostly two-way, without much permanent storage, thus most of the absorbed 14CO2 returns in another season and plays a lesser role here.
Now the deep oceans. What comes out of the oceans has the 14C content of 800 years ago (as far as not mixed with much older deep ocean waters), but what goes in is the current composition with elevated 14CO2. That means that the exchange rate with the deep oceans makes that 14CO2 content in the atmosphere is further diluted with old ocean water. I haven’t made that calculation for 14CO2, but using the fossil fuel low 13C/12C ratio as “tracer”, one can calculate the CO2 exchange rate with the deep oceans:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/deep_ocean_air_zero.jpg
Which gives an indication that the deep ocean-atmosphere exchanges are around 40 GtC/year.
Again, that is about exchange rates, thus the residence time, nothing to do with the adjustment time for an excess injection of CO2.
I have given you the empirical evidence that the current sink rate is 4 GtC, while the excess CO2 in the atmosphere is already 210 GtC. The increase of the sink rate over the past 50 years is very linear with the increase in the atmosphere. The adjustment time therefore is over 50 years, involving processes that are different from the processes involved in the fast exchange rates which make up the short residence time.
If you use the fast residence time as adjustment time, that would give an extreme fast drop of CO2 with this high excess CO2, which is not observed at all.
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BobC
June 26, 2012 at 2:13 pm
It seems difficult to convince people for something that is obvious for most housewives/men with their household budget.
It is of not the slightest interest what the individual natural flows do during a year. Only the net result at the end of the year counts, as the net result of all natural flows is an increase or decrease or stay even of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Humans add 8 GtC/year. We measure an increase of 4 +/- 2 GtC/year, including natural variability. Thus nature is a net sink for CO2 of average 4 GtC/year. It is not of the slightest interest if volcanoes doubled their output in any year or if all natural input and output flows sudenly increased a tenfold, reducing the residence time a tenfold, or anything else that happened in nature. Only the balance at the end of the year counts. And that shows that nature as a whole was a net sink over the past 50 years, wherever these sinks might be. It is about one-way human input against two-way natural cycles.
If you have a surplus of money (quite rare these days) and bring some of that extra to your local bank, say AUD 100 per month, your bank account shows some AUD 1200 increase over a year (forget the rent, not worth being mentioned these days). Now you hear from an insider that the total net gain of the bank over all the tansactions in the same year is AUD 600. Your reaction seems to say, hé the gain of the bank is not because of my deposit, somebody else did put far more money on his account, even doubled his deposit per month. My reaction would be: get as fast as possible all the money from my deposit there and look for another bank…
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Well, that’s because you don’t seem to understand the concept of tracer measurements of system impulse functions (a technique in common use for over 100 years) and hence the argument you propose against it below is wrong:
You are misunderstanding Henry’s Law. Henry’s Law (and indeed, any other linear process) applies to each different molecular species independently of every other. Hence, when you double the concentration of 14CO2 (CO2 made with 14C isotope) you double the sink rate for 14CO2. This is independently true for 12CO2 and 13CO2 as well. Hence, if you double 14CO2 and measure its adjustment time, you have also measured the adjustment time for a doubling of 12CO2 and 13CO2. This, of course, assumes that they are treated similarily by the system (a requirement for any tracer measurement to work) — if these molecules didn’t behave fairly similarly, then Radiocarbon dating would not work.
I presume you would agree that, if you were to add an impulse of 12CO2 to the atmosphere, and then measure the time constant of the concentration decay back toward the residual amount left (~2%, probably), that you would have measured the adjustment time for the atmospheric CO2 cycle.
If the system is linear — that is, if the sink rate out of the atmosphere is proportional to the concentration in the atmosphere and the emission rate out of the ocean is proportional to the concentration in the ocean, then the adjustment time for 14CO2 is the same as the adjustment time for 12CO2, 13CO2, and all three together. (This can be derived, BTY, as a consequence of the Atomic Theory of matter.) This is what the linear model proposed by MattB shows. This model assumes that rates are linear functions of concentration, as in Henry’s Law — that the adjustment time is similar to the residence time is a consequence of that assumption — it is not added as an extra assumption, as you imply.
The rational argument you are proposing against this is that the rates are not linear functions of concentration:
But, in the paper you linked as proof of this, the authors admitted in the preface that there were too many unknown variables (they listed 12) to draw any such conclusion. Additionally, this conclusion (which the authors themselves did not draw) directly contradicts numerious laboratory experiments and industrial processes that daily affirm the correctness of Henry’s Law and the linear rate hypothesis.
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BobC
June 26, 2012 at 11:15 pm
Agreed, but that also has consequences. That means that the distribution between atmosphere and oceans surface is a factor 10 smaller than I expected. Then there is the problem with the fractionation between isotopes at the air-water boundary, which shows that there are differences in ratio (and/or speed) between the different isotopes. But the most important problem is the exchange with the deep oceans. The input flows from and the output flows to the deep oceans are disconnected for a long period of many centuries. The input flows don’t reflect the 13C or 14C composition of the current output flows in the seawater, thus are different from what one can expect from direct exchanges between atmosphere and oceans. The observed change of the 13C ratio in the atmosphere shows that there is a 2/3rd reduction in 13C/12C ratio, solely from this disconnection which is caused by the deep oceans exchange rates. Thus the real adjustment time is at least 3 times the 8 years rate as found for the 14CO2 from the bomb tests…
This is the recurrent point of discussion. Thanks to your link, now I have found the source of our dispute, Jeffrey Glassman:
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2007/06/on_why_co2_is_known_not_to_hav.html
I had several discussions with him in the past. To make a simple statement that defines my impression of him: he is a master in misinterpretation of what others say or mean. That makes any discussion with him next to impossible. But don’t believe me on my words, look at the evidence:
He misinterpretes Fig 1 of Takahashi: Takahashi shows the average fluxes of CO2 over a year for each segment of the oceans. Because that are averages, the 90 GtC outgassing and 92 GtC uptake don’t add up. A lot of the averages are from segments which are relative huge sources in summer and relative huge sinks in winter, that makes that a large part of the total fluxes is bidirectional, depending of the seasons, but that isn’t visible in the yearly averages. Jeffrey then nearly accuses the IPCC of fraud because of that and does an upscaling of the graph to match the ~90 GtC in and out…
The reality is visible in the maps by Feely e.a. showing the delta pCO2 between air and water, the driving force for the fluxes, in February and August:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/maps.shtml
Then his interpretation of the IPCC’s use of the Revelle factor:
I don’t think you will find any interpretation of the IPCC or anyone from the “warm” side that ACO2 behaves different from natural CO2. And he misinterpretates what the Revelle factor means.
I was searching for a graph that shows the solubility of total CO2 in water at different pH units for “normal” and “doubled” CO2 levels. I haven’t found it yet, but Fig. 8 of Jeffrey’s page can be used, be it that this one is for CO2 at 300 atm (I suppose, not clear from the graph).
The basic point is that CO2 in fresh water is only slightly soluble, as the solution becomes fast acidic. Look at Fig. 8 fro pH around 6: most is CO2 and (from another source) only 3% is dissociated to HCO3-. That makes that the 97% of all carbon obeys Henry’s Law and 3% doesn’t. If you double the pCO2 of the atmosphere, the free CO2 level in water will follow, thus nearly doubling the total CO2 in water, except that more bicarbonate is formed, but less than double the original amount. The Revelle factor in this case is less than 1.03 (I misinterpretated it in a former comment in opposite way as a factor 30).
What happens in seawater? Seawater has a much higher pH and contains buffering salts. Because of that, seawater in equilibrium with the atmosphere contains 100 times more carbon than fresh water at the same pCO2 pressure in the atmosphere. That means (and is chemically proven) that less than 1% of the CO2 in solution is free CO2. Still Henry’s Law is completely intact for this 1%, and provides the CO2 which is necessary to bring the pCO2 in air and water in equilibrium, but as a huge part of it is removed into bicarbonate and carbonate, the total amount necessary to bring everyting in equilibrium is 100 times higher than in fresh water. See Fig. 8 of Jeffrey for pH above 8 for seawater.
Now we double the atmospheric CO2 pressure again. Thus the free CO2 in water also doubles, according to Henry’s Law. Theoretically, also the rest of the dissolved carbon should double, but as more CO2 is transformed into mainly bicarbonate, the pH lowers and shifts slowly to the left. Thus while increasing free CO2 levels towards 2%, the ratio between free CO2 and bicarbonate/carbonate lowers towards 1:50 and bicarbonate levels should decrease, but in reality that results in a much lower increase than a doubling of the non-free carbon as result. In this case an about 10% increase which makes that he Revelle factor is about 10.
The above only shows that there is a combination of Henry’s Law and the Revelle factor at work, depending of the pH (and other factors) of the seawater. Still completely linear with changes in the atmosphere, but at a much lower rate. Still 10 times higher than a similar change invokes in fresh water. Thus the Revelle factor largely shows how much more CO2 dissolves in seawater than in fresh water for the same change in CO2 level of the atmosphere, it is the buffer factor.
Come on Bob, there are a lot of confounding factors in the results, thus the exact trend may be much higher or lower, but the theoretical trend, based on the Revelle factor is 0.9 micromol/kg/year. The different series are between 0.4 and 2.22 micromol/kg/year. Now that is a huge range in results, but nothing compared to what it should be without the Revelle factor: 9 micromol/kg/year. If that were the case, measurements would be much easier with less impact from the confounding factors. No matter the huge error range, that the Revelle factor is a “phantom factor”, as Jeffrey said, is proven false.
Again, Henry’s Law still is at work, but only governs a small part of the equations in seawater. The linear rate still is intact, but at a much lower rate. That is all.
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Forgot to add: this discussion should not distract from the utterly stupidity of Nature’s “denier” use. I think that the response of Dr. Brown of Duke University is the best response one can have…
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BobC
June 25, 2012 at 3:47 am
Bob, that there is a buffering system is no contradiction at all, it only makes that far more CO2 can be dissolved in seawater than in fresh water. As said before, any increase in dissolved CO2 results in an increase of bicarbonate and carbonate in solution, but that also increases the H+ ion concentration. That means that the equilibrium reactions are pushed the other way out, that is a negative feedback, which implies that it is impossible to have a runaway effect. The only effect is that the increase of carbonate and bicarbonate is less than the increase of free CO2 in the same solution, a factor of ~10. That is the Revelle factor. Please make a distinction between free gaseous CO2 which obeys Henry’s Law and how much CO2 in total dissolves in any water, depending of its pH and other factors. Or why rainwater is slightly acidic (besides other acid gases like SO2)…
Take some example:
One can make a solution of soda or sodium bicarbonate to such an extent that it contains more CO2 than you will ever see in seawater (or maybe even coke, need to check that). Despite that, no CO2 is bubling up from the solution (except if you heat the bicarbonate solution up to boiling point). Add some non-volatile acid and look what happens…
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Ferdinand;
1) Even the IPCC agrees that there is a 50:1 partitioning ratio between the oceans and atmosphere for CO2 content.
2) The natural fluxes between the oceans and atmosphere are vastly greater than the antropogenic CO2 generation rate (again, according to the IPCC).
3) The currently estimated Revelle Factor (RF) postulates that the current partitioning ratio for anthropogenic emissions is now 1:10, not 50:1 — that is, only 10% of current anthropogenic emissions can be absorbed by the oceans, and 90% must remain in the atmosphere.
4) Since there is no way that the oceans can distinguish between anthropogenic CO2 and natural CO2(they are identical), this 1:10 partitioning ratio must hold true for all excess CO2 above the current concentation — that is, only 10% of any CO2 introduced into the atmosphere can be now absorbed by the oceans (according to the RF).
5) This change must have happened fairly recently (or else the 50:1 ratio of ocean:atmosphere CO2 content would have changed significantly). So, somewhere between 280 ppm and 380 ppm, the absorption of seawater for CO2 has taken a 500-fold decrease.
A shift this dramatic would be trivially easy to detect in a simple laboratory experiment. Needless to say, such experiments (as well as numerious industrial processes) continue to show the 50:1 partitioning ratio persisting to CO2 pressures 1000s of times the current CO2 partial pressure on Earth. There is no evidence that the Revelle Factor has any effect on CO2 absorption by seawater (or fresh water) at all.
The experimentally verified existence of the 50:1 partitioning ratio to high CO2 pp, plus the experimentally determined short residence time of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere combine to show (with some simple calculations) that Humans currently are responsible for less than 4% of the CO2 in the atmosphere, and current rates of emission would need ~5000 years to double that concentration.
And, that is before you consider the precipitation of Calcium Carbonate out of the seawater, which allows even more CO2 to be absorbed.
The Revelle Factor is a non-physical fantasy invented to try to prop up a failed hypothesis — Anthropogenic Global Warming. If it was real, the sudden dramatic loss of absorption ability would be trivially easy to demonstrate in a lab. Your arguments are irrelevant in the face of experimental data to the contrary.
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If this were true, it would have several inescapable consequences:
1) It would be trivially easy to show that current samples of seawater have 1/500 the CO2 absorptive ability that CO2 depleted seawater has (from 50:1 to 1:10 partitioning ratio for CO2 increases above some threshold which is less than the current 380 microatmosphere pressure). Not only hasn’t this experiment been done and published, but numerious industrial processes show no such effect exists.
2) If slower processes were removing CO2 from the atmosphere, then the residence time of CO2 would be observed to increase accordingly. (If you remove it slower, it stays longer.) In particular, the direct measurement of the atmosphere’s response to an impulse of excess CO2 would show a dramatically longer recovery time than 5 – 8 years.
******************
Ferdinand: What we know about the world is what we observe and measure — theoretical arguments don’t trump data.
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BobC
June 26, 2012 at 12:39 am
About the different points:
1. There is a 50:1 ratio in CO2 content between oceans and atmosphere.
That is right, but completely irrelevant. The mass of the oceans itself is many times more the mass of the atmosphere. That says next to nothing about concentrations, pressure differences and fluxes. Further, most of it is in the deep oceans, not directly at the surface. The “mixed layer”, directly in contact with the atmosphere contains some 1000 GtC (CO2 + _bi_carbonate), quite comparable with the 800 GtC CO2 present in the atmosphere.
2. The natural fluxes between the oceans and atmosphere are vastly greater than the antropogenic CO2 generation rate.
Right, but completely irrelevant, as long as the natural in- and outfluxes are near equal. The year by year measurements show an increase in the atmosphere which is smaller than the human emissions, thus the sum of all natural fluxes is negative, or the net contribution of the vastly greater natural fluxes to the measured increase is zero.
3. “The currently estimated Revelle Factor (RF) postulates that the current partitioning ratio for anthropogenic emissions is now 1:10, not 50:1 — that is, only 10% of current anthropogenic emissions can be absorbed by the oceans, and 90% must remain in the atmosphere.”
Only partly right: The Revelle factor only is important for the exchanges with the oceans mixed layer, because that is in quite fast (1-2 years) equilibrium with the atmosphere. It doesn’t play a role (at least in the foreseeable future) for the deep ocean exchanges, as the deep oceans are largely undersaturated in CO2. For vegetation that is far more complicated, but there too there are fast, limited processes and slower but less limited processes. For the 1000 GtC in the oceans mixed layer that means that the 30% increase of CO2 in the atmosphere resulted in an increase of 3% or about 30 GtC. Quite small, but measurable and observed in the DIC measurements from several stations and ships surveys. Here again the reference:
http://www.bios.edu/Labs/co2lab/research/IntDecVar_OCC.html
Again the 50:1 ratio is about mass, not concentrations or fluxes.
4. “Since there is no way that the oceans can distinguish between anthropogenic CO2 and natural CO2(they are identical), this 1:10 partitioning ratio must hold true for all excess CO2 above the current concentation”
Right, but only relevant for the oceans mixed layer and possibly for the fast uptake by plants. The rest of the excess CO2 is removed with slower processes into the deep oceans and vegetation.
5. “This change must have happened fairly recently (or else the 50:1 ratio of ocean:atmosphere CO2 content would have changed significantly). So, somewhere between 280 ppm and 380 ppm, the absorption of seawater for CO2 has taken a 500-fold decrease.”
Hardly anything happened with the CO2 content of the deep oceans over the millenia, nothing happened with Henry’s Law (still intact) or with the Revelle factor. The confusion is that you take the 50:1 ratio as the solubility ratio, while it is only the current ratio in mass between the oceans and atmosphere (the latter shows the largest change). The deep oceans can contain far more CO2, because they are undersaturated, but rather isolated from the atmosphere, thus the 50:1 ratio has nothing to do with solubility ratios. The oceans mixed layer is where the fast action is…
“There is no evidence that the Revelle Factor has any effect on CO2 absorption by seawater (or fresh water) at all.”
Again, see the linked ocean measurements, real world, measured, empirical evidence that the DIC increase in the oceans surface layer is only 10% of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
“The experimentally verified existence of the 50:1 partitioning ratio to high CO2 pp”.
Wait a minute, I don’t know the exact solubility coefficient between atmosphere and ocean waters, but if you are talking about mass ratio, then it is 1.25:1 not 50:1, as only the oceans mixed layer is in direct equilibrium with the atmosphere (1000 vs 800 GtC) and the bulk of CO2 in the deep oceans is irrelevant. Please show some references for the real solubility coefficient at the average ocean temperature…
“Humans currently are responsible for less than 4% of the CO2 in the atmosphere”.
Right, but completely irrelevant. Even if all human CO2 was taken away within a minute after release by the next nearby tree and zero “human” CO2 remained in the atmosphere, still (near) 100% of the increase is caused by the human emissions. Human emissions are additional to the natural cycle, but the natural cycle itself was negative over the past 50 years.
From your next message:
1. “It would be trivially easy to show that current samples of seawater have 1/500 the CO2 absorptive ability that CO2 depleted seawater has”.
There was no such a change, you are confused with the mass ratio between atmosphere and the deep oceans, which are not in equilibrium with the atmosphere. The 1:10 ratio is for the oceans mixed layer and shows the result of a change in CO2 levels of the atmosphere on a change in CO2 levels in the mixed layer.
2. “2) If slower processes were removing CO2 from the atmosphere, then the residence time of CO2 would be observed to increase accordingly. (If you remove it slower, it stays longer.) In particular, the direct measurement of the atmosphere’s response to an impulse of excess CO2 would show a dramatically longer recovery time than 5 – 8 years”.
That is exactly what is observed: the response to the current excess in the atmosphere is dramatically longer than 5-8 years. It is over 50 years, as the 4 GtC/year (2 ppmv/year) sink rate for an excess 210 GtC (100 ppmv) in the atmosphere shows. That is the adjustment time. The residence time still is short, as can be seen in e.g. the fate of 14CO2. But the residence time is only a reaction of fast processes to (seasonal) temperature changes, which have no or a limited contribution to the removal of any excess CO2.
Everything of what I said is based on empirical evidence, as measured in the real world…
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That’s not an “observation” Ferdinand — it’s a conclusion based on CO2 cycle models and the difference between two large, poorly known numbers: The input and output fluxes of CO2 in the atmosphere. The small difference you are using to calculate the 50 year adjustment has error bars far larger than the value, if calculated honestly and not just assumed to be exact.
It also assumes that CO2 sink rates are not linearly dependent on the concentration — yet the major sink rate (into the ocean) is exactly so dependent. The link you referenced as “empirical proof” is honest enough to list a dozen serious problems with the data that they admit don’t allow firm conclusions (such as you claim).
There has been, as far as I know, exactly one actual measurement of the atmosphere’s response to an impulse of added CO2 — that is the C14 Bomb Spike data.
This measurement is completely independent of any model of CO2 movement — it does not depend on Henry’s Law, the Revelle Factor, inexact measurements of CO2 fluxes (and the assumption that the difference between two large, poorly known values is somehow magically exact) — it is a measurement of the real world.
If you continue to deny that system impulse response functions can be measured using tracers (in defiance of 100 years of engineering theory and practice), then I encourage you to follow the advice I gave you in comment #67.2.1.2.5 — make the suggested modifications in MattB’s model and demonstrate for yourself how tracer measurements work.
The adjustment time derived from this measurement, 5 – 8 years, could be wrong if the system is not entirely linear — that is, if the source and sink rates are not completely proportional to the concentrations. For the time to be off by a factor of 7 – 10, however, the CO2 cycle would have to be extremely nonlinear — and at the very low pressure of 300 – 400 microatmospheres.
This extreme amount of nonlinearity would be trivially easy to demonstrate in a laboratory experiment. The fact that it hasn’t been is because all such experiments (as well as numerious industrial processes) show that sink and source rates are indeed functions of the concentration.
(Ocean measurements where the data is affected by so many unknown processes that no real conclusions can be drawn, don’t count as evidence.)
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Strawman argument:
I said that Humankind was responsible for 4% of the total atmospheric concentration of CO2 — that would be 15ppm. You assume I meant that 4% of the actual molecules of CO2 in the atmosphere directly came from Human activities. If you had as much as glanced at the model I keep referring you to, you would know that this is nonsense. I have never made the irrational claim that it matters in the least where a specific CO2 molecule came from.
This is in contrast to your claim that 100% of the increase (110ppm) is due to Humans — a claim that is based on unverified models and wishful thinking, with a thin coating of mis-analyzed data to make it seem scientific.
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BobC
June 26, 2012 at 4:04 am
Nothing to do with models: it is the difference between the calculated CO2 releases from fossil fuel inventories and the increase as seen in global CO2 measurements. No matter how poor the individual fluxes are known or not known at all.
The error bars are maximum +/- 1.5 GtC for an 8 GtC human CO2 release and +/- 0.4 GtC for an about 4 GtC increase measured in the atmosphere.
Thus the measured natural sink rate of 2 GtC (1960) to 4 GtC (2012) +/- 2 GtC (that is the natural – temperature caused – variability) has an error range of maximum +/- 2 GtC and still singificant negative for near every year of the past 50 years. Over a period of 2-3 years, even the natural variability is flattened out and both the low sink rate and the linear increase in sink rate in ratio with the increase in the atmosphere are clear.
Thus a sink rate of currently 4 GtC/year for 210 GtC in excess is proven beyond doubt. See the evolution over the past 50 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em.jpg
Peter Dietze did the same excersize some 15 years ago with about the same result:
http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm
If your short response time should be right, the sink rate would be 20% of the excess amount or 43 GtC/year or a drop of 20 ppmv/year. I am pretty sure that no error bars can hide such a drop in CO2…
There is no such assumption, the deep oceans exchanges are very limited in flux, that is what causes the long adjustment time. And the very linear response of the sink rate to the increase in the atmosphere is clear.
No, that is mainly a response to the residence time, the exchange rate with other reservoirs by fast processes and only partly with the deep oceans. The 14C bomb spike is so miniscule in quantity that it didn’t change the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Thus that gives a good indication of the residence time, but no to little indication for the adjustment time…
Wait a minute, the data error range is huge (+/- 100% of the trend), but the trend in the ocean surface is around 9% of the trend in the atmosphere, thus within 0% to 18% of the atmospheric trend. According to your rejection of the Revelle factor, the real increase in the oceans surface should be 100% of the trend in the atmosphere. I think that your assumption is significantly rejected, no matter the error band in the measurements.
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BobC
June 26, 2012 at 4:24 am
I don’t see the difference, as in your model the remaining human CO2 (the red balls) is exactly the excess amount of CO2. But as already a few times mentioned, that assumes that the residence time and the adjustment time are very similar, which is not the case. The difference between both is a factor 10, by coincidence (?) the same difference as in te Revelle factor.
With the current knowledge, one can make a theoretical curve of the one-shot addition of all human emissions at year zero, 160 years ago. That gives the following curve of “human” fraction, based on the realistic residence time and the decrease of the excess pulse, based on the realistic adjustment time:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/fract_level_pulse.jpg
where Fa is the “human” carbon fraction in the atmosphere, Fl in the oceans surface, tCA total carbon in the atmosphere and nCA total “natural” carbon. After some 50 years, practically all “human” carbon is exchanged with “natural” carbon, but the excess still is over 40% of the injection and still 100% caused by the “human” carbon.
The same excersize can be performed with the real emissions and the previous residence time and adjustment time:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/fract_level_emiss.jpg
For the excess quantities quite a good performance, compared to the observations (at least for the past 50 years). Qualitatively, my calculation comes at currently 9% “human” CO2 in the atmosphere. But we can check that in another way: the exchanges should also show the impact of the low 13C/12C ratio from fossil fuel burning both on the ratio in the atmosphere as in the oceans mixed layer. Here is the calculation:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/d13c_calc_obs.jpg
Not bad for a first approximation, even if only ocean exchanges are used, without influence of the biosphere…
I like to see an alternative model, based on the estimates of the emissions over the past 160 years, where the adjustment time is fast, which performs like the above calculations…
01
So, let me summarize:
1) CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing by 4GtC/year.
2) Humans emit 8GtC/year
3) You calculate that for Human emissions to be responsible for the atmospheric increase, the atmosphere’s adjustment time (for an impulse of CO2) must be 50 years (based on the history of anthropogenic emissions).
4) Since the atmospheric adjustment time has now been calculated to be 50 years, that means that Human emissions are responsible for the atmospheric increase in CO2.
This is circular reasoning and is conclusion-driven — you generate the arguments to arrive at the conclusion you desire.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the only actual measurement of the atmosphere’s CO2 impulse adjustment time shows it to be 5-8 years. The data-driven conclusion, therefore, is that Human emissions play a minor role in the current atmospheric increase, since with such a short adjustment time, Human emissions are adequate to explain only 10% of the last century’s increase.
It’s obvious you’re not going to give up your desired conclusion, no matter how much laboratory physics (or industrial practice) you have to ignore, so I think that this discussion has reached a point of diminishing returns. Anyone who is interested can read through our exchanges and make up their own mind.
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I know I said I was through — but you have a fundamental error of logic here that should be addressed:
The rate at which CO2 is increasing (or decreasing, or holding steady) tells you nothing about the adjustment time. Consider the following model of two leaky buckets:
1) Bucket A has a very slow leak and a correspondingly slow input, such that the level stays constant at 10 L.
2) Bucket B has a very fast leak and a correspondingly fast input, again such that the level stays constant at 10 L.
I suddenly dump 1L of water into each bucket — the water level in each bucket therefore instantly rises to 11L.
Bucket A (slow leak), however, will take much longer (it’s ‘adjustment time’) to return to the equilibrium level of 10L than bucket B (fast leak). Feel free to model this mathematically — the only assumption you have to make to get this result is that the leak rate is proportional to the water level (with bucket B having a larger proportionality constant than bucket A).
If you calculate the time it takes to replace 1/2 the water in a bucket (the ‘exchange time’) you’ll find it is proportional to that bucket’s ‘adjustment time’.
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BobC
June 27, 2012 at 5:07 am
Sorry, the right summary is:
1) CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing by 4GtC/year.
2) Humans emit 8GtC/year.
3) Thus the net balance of all natural flows over a year is a 4 GtC/year sink rate.
4) Thus the human emissions are the sole cause of the increase.
5) The observed increase over the temperature driven equilibrium is 210 GtC.
6) Hence the adjustment time is 210/4 = ~53 years e-fold time.
Just straight-forward reasoning and 6) still is true if 4) should be false, which is impossible as long as no carbon escapes to space.
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BobC
June 27, 2012 at 5:28 am
– Bucket A has a long residence time
– Bucket B has a short residence time
If we dump an extra liter in bucket A we expect a slow release of the extra liter, or a long adjustment time.
If we dump an extra liter in bucket B we expect a fast release of the extra liter, or a short adjustment time.
We dump an extra liter in bucket B and observe a slow release of the extra liter, thus a long adjustment time. Ergo there are different processes at work which are responsible for the difference between residence time and adjustment time…
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Ferdinand – I think you are tilting at windmills trying to convince BobC of adjustment times. He’s totally convinced of his position, and appears unwilling to consider that he might be in error.
BobC – As I posted (and to which you failed to respond) in a previous thread, Bolin and Eriksson 1958 showed (using C14 to calibrate the Süess effect) that despite a ~5 year residence time, that adjustment times were on the order of hundreds of years, and made a prediction that CO2 would reach ~25% higher than 1959 levels by 2000. That prediction proved correct.
As a completely different estimate, the mass balance consideration as Ferdinand has discussed, the ~2ppm absorption of the biosphere in the presence of what would otherwise be an ~4.5 ppm rise in CO2 due to our emissions indicates (0.9818 remaining each year, dropping 2/110 ppm) an e-fold time of ~56 years.
The relevant number isn’t the residence time, how long an individual molecule remains in the atmosphere. The relevant number is how long total concentration changes, which is driven by the net difference between air->ocean and ocean->air.
—
Ferdinand – BobC has held to this view despite all of the evidence presented. Unless he is willing to look at net difference between flows, rather than individual molecular residence time, he’s not going to be convinced. And he will continue to be wrong.
—
Personal opinion – I consider those who think that CO2 rise in the last 150 years is not anthropogenic to be as incorrect as those who consider the radiative greenhouse effect to be in violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
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Ferd:
Yes perhaps Martians?
Please explain the exact boundary between “surface and deep” with regard to co2 absorption in the ocean. Is that a measurable depth?
By the way, Ferdinand you claim to be a responsible climate skeptic So explain your “skeptical” position?
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Oh jeez KR suddenly shows up in support of the “skeptic” Ferdinand.
Mostly I am not impressed.
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KR, this:
Stands out as very odd!
Are not “concentrations” made up of numbers of “individual molecules”?
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Mark D.
June 27, 2012 at 2:14 pm
1. Different processes: as I have explained before:
– The huge seasonal flows are caused by temperature changes. These give some 16 ppmv extra in the atmosphere for 1°C change in temperature, regardless of the chemistry in the oceans. Very fast as the exchange rate between ocean surface and atmosphere is only 1-2 years. These exchanges are mainly wind driven. In flat oceans, the diffusion speed of CO2 and _bi_carbonates or other salts is extremely low.
This gives the short residence time, mainly temperature driven.
– The same solubility change happens to an extra amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, but only for the gaseous phase of CO2 in solution, which is only 1% of all carbon in solution. Thus if you double the concetration in the atmosphere, the fast exchange gives a doubling of 1% CO2 in solution, but the rest of the carbon species, bicarbonate and carbonate, don’t follow with the same ratio. Ultimately the total carbon increases with 10% for a 100% increase in the atmosphere.
That makes that from a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere only 10% is removed at the same rate as for temperature changes. The rest of the doubling thus must be removed by other processes, which are much slower.
2. The “mixed layer”, that is the layer of the oceans which is in close contact with the atmosphere is the upper 100-300 m of the oceans. Depth depends mainly on wind speed. The border between mixed layer and deep oceans in general is quite sharp and visible in temperature, salt, organics, CO2, 13C/12C ratio and other markers.
3. Like several main skeptics, I don’t think that the current, or even future CO2 releases will have have catastrophic consequences, to the contrary, a doubling of CO2 will lead to a small increase in temperature (my guess: around 1°C) which is mainly beneficial. On the other side, I think that it is prudent to reduce our use of fossil fuels, which in many cases come from not so democratic countries and may end some year.
4. I am as critical for what is said by the proponents of CAGW as for what is said by the opponents. Bad science is bad science, no matter who wrote it and no matter how you like the results.
There is little doubt that humans are responsible for the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and that that should have some temperature response (before feedbacks) as good as that there is little doubt that the current climate models largely overestimate the effect of the increase…
Think of the residence time as the turnover of goods and thus invested capital in a factory. Think of the adjustment time as the gain (or loss) you have on your investment at the end of the year. Both are largely independent of each other. One dollar invested can have a turnover of a few days, but one dollar gain may need a year, or never…
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“I consider those who think that CO2 rise in the last 150 years is not anthropogenic to be as incorrect”
Rubbish
No Correction.
Unscientific Rubbish.
You have no idea how naive that comment sounds to people who actually have a science education and experience in the real world.
The funny thing is you will probably come back and protest that I am not being “reasonable” to not consider your view.
There is no need to consider anything – your comment illustrates scientific illiteracy but you shouldn’t feel too bad because you are not alone in being fooled by the warmers.
10
Actually, KR, I did respond, HERE, all of two comments down from your post — real hard to find, I know 😉
The gaping hole in Bolin and Eriksson’s argument is that they assume that the Suess effect (depletion of both C14 and C13 w.r.t. C12) can only be due to fossil fuel use. This assumption (which they accept without evidence) is easy to test using other paleotemperature proxies, such as ice cores. When this is done, it is found that many episodes of C13 depletion have occured in the Earth’s history — usually associated with warming periods, and many far predating Humankind.
Kind of difficult to carry on a conversation with someone who isn’t listening — perhaps that helps explain why logical argumentation seems to go right by you.
Well, as I pointed out in the reply you couldn’t seem to find, a better prediction could have been made by making a logarithmic plot of CO2 concentration and extending it with a ruler. Not what one would call a crucial prediction for your theory.
10
BobC – You apparently missed the later post, which I also referenced in my last comment.
Bolin and Eriksson used the C14 pulse to calibrate the Suess effect, and to calibrate oceanic rate of absorption of CO2. Residence time is ~5 years, no argument there. But adjustment time (concentration change) is driven by the difference between total molecular rates of air->ocean and ocean->air, the Revelle factor and ocean circulation rates (as Ferdinand has pointed out) limit this differential, and adjustment times are on the order of hundreds of years. Followed by a period of relative equilibrium with 20-40% of the additional CO2 remaining in the atmosphere, followed by slower rates of the biological pump and chemical weathering.
And the B&E prediction was based upon estimates of emissions, not some mysterious natural driver of CO2 (as you seem to be invoking) that _just happened_ to match our emission levels and changing atmospheric CO2 concentrations just as they predicted, driving CO2 to levels not seen in the last million years.
Given B&E’s direct calibration of oceanic absorption rates with C14, I would have to consider your reference to C13 levels as, well, a red herring in the adjustment time discussion.
—
Other readers (as BobC appears impervious to discussion); CO2 adjustment times have been reasonably well understood for at least 50 years, calibrated with C14 levels at various depths, observations of mixed-layer chemistry, thermohaline circulation, and quite separately supported by simple mass balance observations on the rate of atmospheric CO2 change. Residence Time does not equal Adjustment Time, and claims that they do are a red herring based upon a misunderstanding.
It takes considerable time for the oceans and biosphere to absorb excess CO2.
00
You are again exhibiting your ignorance of equilibrium systems. What you say would only be true if the flows were not affected by the concentrations — but that would describe an unstable system. All equilibrium systems have the response be a (often linear) function of the perturbation.
If the flux from air -> ocean is proportional to the concentration in the air; and the flux from ocean -> air is proportional to the concentration in the ocean (i.e., like Henry’s Law mandates); then the residence time and the adjustment time are closely linked, and can’t be much different from each other. We know this is the case for the air – ocean system because the C14 bomb spike graph is an exponential decay curve — if you were right, it would be linear.
You obviously didn’t grasp the significance of my bucket model, or of MattB’s model, which shows this effect explicitly .
00
And you seem to be failing to understand basic logic:
1) The Suess effect is caused CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.
2) The Suess effect is also caused by other unknown natural processes.
3) Therefore, the Suess effect cannot be used as a measure of total fossil fuel effect on the atmosphere, since we don’t know the magnitude of the natural effect.
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BobC
June 28, 2012 at 8:27 am
We have a pretty good idea of the natural variability in the Suess effect at least for the 13C/12C ratio. And there was a similar effect for the 14C/12C ratio, as the carbon dating showed an increasing deviation from the standard since humans started to use fossil fuels.
Of course, huge changes in global temperature like a glacial – interglacial change have an influence on the 13C/12C ratio. That is directly measured in ice cores and shows a change of some 0.7 per mil, including huge changes in land area and sea currents. Increasing temperature here mean an increased 13C/12C ratio:
In comparison, over the whole Holocene, the variation of d13C was only 0.4 per mil:
http://courses.washington.edu/ocean450/figures_08/Week5_Ice_Cores_08.ppt
Result: “The d13C of CaCO3 in benthic forams decreased by ~ -0.3 to -0.4 ‰ (average) during glacial times.”
Over the Holocene, the temperature changes were smaller, leading to smaller changes in d13C:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/nature08393.html
Result: “The increase in δ13C of about 0.25‰ during the early Holocene is most probably the result of a combination of carbon uptake of about 290 gigatonnes of carbon by the land biosphere and carbon release from the ocean in response to carbonate compensation of the terrestrial uptake during the termination of the last ice age. The 20 p.p.m.v. increase of atmospheric CO2 and the small decrease in δ13C of about 0.05‰ during the later Holocene can mostly be explained by contributions from carbonate compensation of earlier land-biosphere uptake and coral reef formation, with only a minor contribution from a small decrease of the land-biosphere carbon inventory.”
Note that higher temperatures are connected to more biomass production and therefore higher levels of d13C.
Coralline sponges in seawater and ice cores for the atmosphere show a pre-industrial variability of +/- 0.2 per mil d13C. Since about 1850, the d13C level decreased with 1.6 per mil in the atmosphere and 1 per mil in the oceans surface, completely in ratio with the use of fossil fuels:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.gif
Conclusion:
The influence of fossil fuel use by far exceeds the influence of natural variability, which is mainly temperature dependent. The current trend is opposite to the temperature trend, thus fully caused by the emissions from fossil fuel burning.
00
In addition to the short residence time of 14C of ~8 ppmv, I mentioned already the thinning of the bomb spike due to the refresh rate from the deep oceans, where output and input are disconnected for many centuries. That alone gives a dilution with a factor ~3. Besides that, the use of fossil fuels adds to the thinning, as fossil fuels are completely depleted of 14C after millions of years conservation. Anyway, the 8 years residence time from the bomb spike needs a lot of corrections to know the real adjustment time…
00
“In addition to the short residence time of 14C of ~8 ppmv”
Some one-day heat wave here, affecting normal brain work… residence time is of course in years, not in ppmv…
00
Another telling quote from Bain’s reply:
“describing skepticism as denial is a term increasingly used in the social science literature on climate change”
00
That was a rather interesting response.He blathered about the word ‘denier’ but didn’t bother to refute or repudiate any of your arguments. True to form.
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Re: Paul Bain’s reply
Well, that certainly was a Post Modernist point of view! Apparently, Bain thinks the main point of contention is not “Is AGW real?”, or “Are the models correct?”, or even “Is there a real problem?”, but rather “What actions should we take based on what people believe?” I wonder if he even understood Jo’s point?
Doesn’t this article belong in a journal like “Social Text” (where Alan Sokal published his hoax)? Perhaps ‘Nature’ needs to change it’s name to ‘Social Nature’.
Imagine if aeronautical engineers took this attitude: “It doesn’t matter if the design performs as expected in the wind tunnel tests — the only question to be resolved is ‘How many do we build, what colors do we paint them, and how do we get the critics to shut up?'”. (Paul Bain would probably advise them to get the critics involved in the color choices, and emphasize how pretty they would be.)
What the Postmodernists like Bain don’t grasp is that reality isn’t simply what you believe — you can’t fool Mother Nature.
00
Public Understanding Of Climate Science Rebounds, 72% of Independents Say There Is ‘Solid Evidence’ Of Global Warming
Record heatwaves in US summer is showing people the reality of Global Warming.
A little over 9 days our own small effort to slow the rate of warming begins. Good.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/06/13/498892/public-understanding-of-climate-science-rebounds-72-of-independents-say-there-is-solid-evidence-of-global-warming/?mobile=nc
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Yep, some of those temperatures (but not many) exceeded the records for heat set in the 1930’s.
The reality that people who actually look into the claims (like your’s above) find is that the current warming isn’t at all unusual, and that the current temperature record is a deliberate distortion of the historical record.
(Or, you can choose to believe — as Maxine apparently does — that 100 year old records of thermometer readings need to be continually adjusted and re-adjusted to make them “right”: Apparently meaning, ‘in agreement with the current politics’.)
00
So back to the worn out consensus idea one more time.
Nine out of ten leading dentists recommend toothpaste X.
It’s as meaningful one way or the other. And the fallacy is the same too. You can find it here.
00
PS: Maxine, are you sure you’re not American? You make arguments of the same quality as President Obama. Surely you’re influenced by him in some way, yes?
00
Maxine,
I have searched for some credible evidence that atmospheric carbon dioxide is doing anything except what it’s been doing for millions of years. It’s taken me years of reading. At first I was afraid it might be true after all, even though the evidence just didn’t seem to be there. But now, after years of looking in vain and suffering through mountains of rubbish to find what actually holds up, I can tell you with great certainty what the real evidence shows. You have been conned.
The whole thing is a plan by a few in the United Nations and their lackeys — including Gillard in my view — to take over the world and run it their way.
They are evil Maxine. They make Alexander the Great look like a Sunday school teacher.
If you and others choose to dismiss this it’s at your own peril. The noose is tightening and you’ll be caught in it just like the rest of us.
The time for plain speaking has arrived — is overdue in fact. You are the victim, not the victor.
Go ahead and gloat over your carbon tax. You have just a short time left to enjoy it.
Maybe because of your lack of acumen and apparent ignorance the comparison with Alexander the Great is lost on you. For your sake and for the sake of everyone, I hope not. The world is in deep trouble and it isn’t because of carbon dioxide.
BB
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Heatwaves in the US show the reality of global warming?
Would that be in the same manner in which record cold in the US, or elsewhere, doesn’t disprove global warming because then it is a localized event and not global? Just like these heat waves are localized events and not global?
So why is it that, taking this past May for example, those record warm temperatures were only a few days here and there NOT the entire month? And of the entire month much of it was normal or in some cases cooler than normal. Doesn’t bode well for the claims that it shows the “reality” of global warming. At least not to people capable of rational thought and critical reasoning.
It does however display the incompetence or outright collaborative dishonesty of the media. I would be more concerned with global stupidity as demonstrated by the likes of Maxine than I would be with warming. Warm is so much easier on the human body for survival than cold.
Maxine, just another idiot who sees anything in print that supports her beliefs as true without spending one moment of actual thought on it.
00
An interesting response if not grossly Naive. Clearly Bain has done a little thinking about what might convince the evil demiers to capitulate to the taxes by suggesting that Government choose methods that generate other societal good. This is quite true – this does work, the Coalition proposes just such a program, however, if you respond to Bain please point out that this is perpetrating a fraud. It is tantamount to saying, “we will use climate chamge as a means to implement some other thing” – if that thing were worth having, then should it not stand alone.
For example I see peak oil (finite resource arguments) as being a much better reason to reduce reliance on oil, however I consider it dishonest and unethical to be lobbying for peak oil mitigation, using the climate change bogey-man arguments. It would seem more honest to make your argument on the central issue of finite resources, rather than using a proxy argument (lie) you think might win you support.
Bain should examine the moral and ethical implications of using such a lie to justify a societal change that is arguably not related to the central issue. What does that teach our children about truth-telling and science. The end doesn’t justify the means.
00
It just occurred to me that R. C. E. Wyndham — well known from the previous thread — could eat Bain’s lunch in about half a second. I wonder if we could get him to do it.
Hey Jo, that’s something to work on in your “spare” time.
Well, I can hope, can’t I?
00
Nice of Dr. Bain to reply. I hope he reads this (my humble comment)
First, his reply is way too many words that simply spell out “precautionary principle”.
Second, if he pretends not to recognize the offensive connection of “denier” to the Holocaust fine. He should certainly understand the clinical use of the word denial. Obviously since he preferred name calling that his “target audience would identify with” it seems like he’s more concerned with fostering and maintaining group-think to me.
This I find even more offensive. If he isn’t guilty of creating propaganda, there would be no need for name calling.
00
First post here, bear with me.
Frankly, I don’t accept Bain’s explanation about the use of the word “denier”. First, he seems to take an “everybody else does it” approach and then says he does not equate it to Holocaust Denier.
However, using an analogy, I’d like to talk about the anus. The anus serves the very important human bodily function of removing waste products. As a matter of fact, we would die without an asshole; that’s how important it is.
Paul Bain, you’re a climate anus which as you can see from the above means that you’re an important and necessary part climate change discussions.
[Welcome Mike, please post here regularly and with humor. Please also, don’t scare off the good Dr. bain.] ED
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Ha Ha!
But also the part where the [waste material] is emitted. I’m sure that you didn’t mean anything like that! 😉
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Mike, if by that you mean he serves to make skeptics look even better than they already did, bravo!
BB
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In fact, long before man developed to his current stage, the various bodily parts had a debate about which should be the boss of the whole body.
The eyes said they should be boss because they allow man to see where he is going.
The ears said they should be boss because they allow man to hear danger, hence keep him safe.
The mouth said he should be boss because he allows man to eat nourishment and to communicate.
The brain said he should be boss because he allows man to think and rise above other more powerful animals.
From a distance, the anus called out “What about me? I want to be boss too”.
Hearing this, the other body parts started laughing uncontrolably and making fun of the anus. Anus was so upset at being made fun of, he curled up, shut his mouth and wouldn’t talk to the others nor would he partake in mans daily activities.
After a couple of days had past, man wasn’t feeling too good at all. the other body parts tried to get anus to work but anus was still curled up and wouldn’t talk to them.
After 3 days, mans eyes started to water and his brain started getting cloudy and disoriented.
After 4 days, he couldn’t even walk, let alone talk or think. Things got so bad, all the other body parts apologised to anus, told him they’d underestimated his power and said he could be the boss.
To this day, all the leaders of the world are [snip crass] and ever it shall be so.
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Who wants a laugh?
http://media3.everguide.com.au/resources/flyer/170412124035_9780522861693.jpg
Recommended by Tim Flannery!
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Excellent letter Jo. Nice that Paul replies, but I as many, have some troubles with his answer.
In his answer Paul is again misappropriate saying “climate scientists who read Nature journals, most of whom hold the view that anthropogenic climate change is real” is misleading. Confusing the debate and focusing on bringing “non-believers” to support some “believers” initiatives.
Most of the people agree that there is “some” change, but the question is if it can be discerned from the natural variation rather then if it will be catastrophic how a “believer” thinks.
Then he is hiding behind the “everybody else does it” meme.
His approach to the problem is wrong. What we non-believers do, is that we “hate to see a good civilisation going to waste” (thanks Jo).
We hate to see how the “believers” impose costs over costs, literally ruining societies, imposing famine and cold on the most poor and still posing as saints fighting for the good cause, insulting, bullying hiding data and corrupting science.
I dare him to try to study and analyse “believers” on how could we convince them to do some true pro environmental and pro-human actions which do not help climate at all, analyse how do they react to understanding some of their solution is creating famine, how do believers react to the destructions their solutions bring? Just make the announce that he wants to make a study in both directions, to find the best common ground.
He will very fast learn what a denier is.
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So Paul and his crew admit that whether MMGW thru CO2 is REAL or not is an irrelevance to him.
He is interested in “perceptions” which can guide politicians in framing their public pronouncements with the only aim of MAXIMISING VOTES; Get IT?
How did our universities get to the point where we have Climate Studies section in Law and now Psychology.
We truly are a rich country to be able to waste so much of our resources on such crap!
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Forgot to comment on the reply.
If this tripe is accepted in university lecturers were are really in trouble.
An appalling piece of writing that would be a disgrace for a first year undergraduate student at the University of Newcastle.
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Dear Paul Bain:
First off, thank you for responding.
FWIW, I am a hard core skeptic. I’m the “target” of your analysis. As such, what folks like me think ought to be particularly important to you. So a bit of history on me and climate change.
I first came to the AGW issue thinking “Gee, this looks important, I ought to learn more about it.” At the Skeptic sites (like WUWT) I had generally kind acceptance and explanation of where I had parts missing from my understanding of the “issues” about AGW and where it was “gone wrong”. At “Believer” sites (an curiously appropriate term as it has all the hallmarks of a religious belief) I would ask simple and innocent questions and largely get derision in return. Simply asking “But doesn’t CO2 have a log limit on absorption effects that we have passed?” or worse, saying “But this article (on skeptic site) seems to have a valid issue.” would bring “Attack the messenger” responses. That, for me, was the first and largest clue about which side was indulging in propaganda more than in dispassionate examination of facts and data.
So I set about a long path of “learning for myself”.
At Believer sites, I’d have a load of links shoved down my throat with, effectively, “You idiot, read all this first or shut up”… At Skeptic sites I’d get “Well, here are some links, and the net-net is that the data are lousy and the models do not predict. But check it out yourself.” Hardly something to make one feel like Believers were doing decent unbiased examination of the facts.
But I read a lot of the links anyway. Most of them were of the form “Given the assumption that AGW is real, what bad thing happens?” Many more were of the form “Assuming the theory is correct, what does our model show?” While all of that is interesting speculation, none of it is really what I’d call Science. Where are the data? The analysis? The testable hypothesis? Etc. In short, where is the SCIENCE in “Climate Science”? (In most part it really ought to be called “Climate Model Storytelling” once you get to the end of the papers.)
At the core of it all, I found the general truth that there was Agenda Driven Politics. What published papers could be bought to support a pre-designed Agenda for political change. (Only much later did I find the Agenda 21 site at the UN and found the source of The Agenda… but it was nice to find that my earlier conclusion was supported by the facts.) The more I looked at the AGW “Science” claims, the more I found flawed and politically driven papers being written “for effect” with little in the way of actual unbiased search for truth.
On the Skeptic side I found a lot of folks who had no agenda. Often, like me, they just need everything to “fit”. And that “fit” must also fit with the scientific method we learned oh so long ago. (No ‘new age’ science here. No “moral relativism” and there IS an objective reality.) So when we find things like the GHCN temperature history being continually re-written to create a warming trend, it “doesn’t fit”. History is fixed. Temperatures were recorded once, by a known person, and written down. They do not change. And a big buzzer goes off… (One of the earliest users of thermometers was Newton. Another was Galileo. Do we really think folks of that quality could not read the instruments that they, themselves, created?…)
We get folks looking at the statistical methods used and finding them badly designed and poorly used. “Broken” comes to mind. I took it on myself to look into GIStemp (as I am a computer programmer who knows FORTRAN and after saying for 6 months “someone ought to look at it” decided “I am someone”.) What I found was a nightmare of crummy code and questionable methods. A complete lack of any kind of ‘test suite’ or ‘benchmark testing’ code. A level of amateurish code and testing methodology that would have caused me to stop the product from shipping in my shops. (I have managed software production commercially including software that got 4 patents and was used in production.) Eventually that lead to examination of the GHCN data set directly where even worse issues were found.
The result from the Believer side has largely been “We are right, shut up.” Occasionally “We are right, our friends tell us so and we tell them so.”
Then ClimateGate broke. In the emails was direct evidence in their own words of exactly those faults. Producing “science for effect” and manicuring the data and code to produce ‘desired’ warming results.
Along the way, the term “Denier” was coined (as noted in the links) directly to tie Skeptics to The Holocaust” and as a political term. Please read that twice and think about it.
Now, to your response.
Your first paragraph amounts a (or reduces to a) argument that “Everyone is doing it”. So, it is OK to use the N-Word because all your friends in the KKK us it? Is it OK to use ANY insulting degrading term “because all your friends” use it? Really?
Ignorance of where a term came from, or what it’s propaganda purpose was and is, is not an excuse. It is even a worse excuse in what is supposed to be a peer reviewed or carefully objective broad science context. Is it acceptable to just plead ignorance of, say, Einstein and Relativity in a paper on physics? Just say “Oops, didn’t know that, but I’m going to keep on ignoring it anyway.”? In ANY paper on the sociology of “Denier” one would reasonably expect the very first step to be looking at where the term originated, from whom, for what purpose and to what effect.
So here’s one free clue for you: I, like others, will now use the term “Denier” from time to time for ourselves. This is EXACTLY like blacks using the N-Word with each other to blunt the effect of it. Someone outside the group uses it, it is a red flag of bigotry. Similar to an Italian calling himself a “Wop” or any of a dozen other bad terms being used inside or outside the insulted group. So WHEN you use the term Denier, and you are not a Skeptic, you are waving a large “I Am A Bigot” flag. Got it?
Keep using it, and you are saying “I am HAPPY to be waving a large I Am A Bigot flag”…
Saying “All my friends us it” is saying “I’m Happy that all my friends are waving large I Am A Bigot flags”.
Just ask yourself “When is the N-Word” acceptable and you will have a decent guide to the proper usage and context of the term, and an accessible touchstone for the sociology of the term.
Now, ask yourself this: If you wish to convince Skeptics to join the Believer side, do you think calling them “The D-Word” will be helpful?
Your second paragraph, as others have pointed out, is mostly a ‘dodge’. “We don’t care to figure out if it is real, just how to convince folks to act on it.” If it isn’t real, acting on it is incredibly stupid. At the core of the “Skeptic Problem” you face is simply that we do NOT agree that “action” is needed and never will as long as the science is dodgy, the data are mutating before our eyes, and the “science” is politically Agenda (21) driven and of the form “Given these conclusions what assumptions can we draw?”.
So dodging the issue of “truth” is to simply ignore the basic problem. Skeptics are all hung up on that truth and accuracy thing. We are not so interested in “truthyness” and “feeling good”, but in what is actually and accurately true and correct. ANY proposed “solution” that does not recognize that will fail. What I like and what I want and what makes me feel good is entirely irrelevant. My ‘belief’ or ‘skepticism’ is entirely a function of the analytical side of the brain, of hard core real science based in data and analysis. No amount of “feel good” or “peer pressure” or “desired outcomes” will have any effect. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nothing. Got it?
Your third paragraph says, in essence: “Some Believers think we have to convince them. That hasn’t worked, so maybe if we focus on other presumed ‘benefits’ of the actions we propose then they will get on board anyway.” See my last paragraph.
But it is even worse than that. The Agenda 21 stuff comes directly from efforts by The Club Of Rome to foster panic and fear about “running out” as a means of social control. They have been at this for at least since the ’70s (when I studied “The Limits To Growth” by Meadows et. al. Yes, studied. I had an entire 3 unit class at University focused just on that book, promoted by The Club Of Rome). They have now updated The Big Scare (since Limits predicted Doom In Our Time for the ’80s and ’90s and those have, well, kind of passed by without incident…) to be the AGW Scare (and with ongoing ‘resource shortage’ scare sprinkled in for effect). Now I’ve devoted several years of my life to looking at resource issues. The bottom line is, we are not running out, we never run out, and the Big Scare is a political tool.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/everything-from-mud/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
So, you see, attempting to convince me that we need to destroy Western Industrial Economies to support a political agenda that is based on misdirection and error is not going to be a very productive path either.
Make no mistake about it. Cutting CO2 emissions to 1990 levels means little things like no iron production (coal is used a coke in reducing iron ore from the oxide, and putting out CO2 in the process), no steel (that depends on iron), no aluminum (that uses massive amounts of electricity of a sort not available from solar panels. It needs cheap and concentrated electricy, not expensive and diffuse.) It means no shipping of goods by trucks, ships, or airplanes. (You can make a marginal electric car, but not an effective electric truck or ship. They need energy dense fuels.) It also means a dramatic reduction in food production and the attendant deaths. (Modern agriculture largely turns fossil carbon sources into fertilizers, ploughing and harvesting, and processing and delivery. It is not possible to change that and produce the food needed by the world). BTW, my degree is in Economics and from an Ag School in Ag country. I’ve helped raise cows, grow corn, pick fruit and nuts. This isn’t a hypothetical.
So while the Believers have what looks like a “Fuzzy Bunnies and Fluffy Slippers” view of the economy, where it’s always simple, easy, and has no consequences to do things like substitute solar cells for nuclear and coal; ask the engineers and farmers who have to make it work. Ask the business owners who have to make a profit to keep folks employed and fed. They can tell you that it isn’t all Fluffy Bunnies and Fuzzy Slippers…. It’s hard work, often just barely worth it at the margins.
That means that your “maybe we can convince them it’s just a good idea anyway, even if it’s wrong.” approach is going to run headlong into reality. The only question, really, is “Before or after the economic collapse is realized in the economy?” That is going to be a very hard sell. Especially to folks trained and experienced in avoiding The Bums Rush and The Fairy Tale Story and Yet Another Bright Idea That Implodes. In essence, the Skeptics tend to come from the group that is expected to make things work, and they can see that the proposed “solutions” just don’t work.
A specific note on oil:
The Peak Oil Theory is just that, a theory. Right now oil prices are in freefall as supply is well ahead of demand. Even IF Peak Oil is true, it’s a bell curve. We’ve taken 200 years to get here, so even if this IS the peak (and that is very much not demonstrated, what with Brazil finding more oil faster than they can produce it and with at least a Trillion Barrels in shale oil in the USA coming into production) but even if this IS the peak, it will take 200 years to slide down the backside of the bell curve. So given that we have a few hundred years of coal, and at least 200 years to the last of the oil, exactly what is the urgency, what is the “emergency” right NOW to do anything, if not AGW and manufactured panic?
At MOST, we ought to use natural gas to replace oil in cars and trucks as fracking has provided a few hundred years of it at about 40 CENTS per Gallon Of Gasoline Equivalent (though it is retailing at $1.80 / GGE locally due to government tariff issues.)
We simply are NOT running out of fuels. Period. Full stop.
So what are you “fixing”?
Frankly, for a very long time (about 40 years) I’ve been a strong advocate for things like “eliminating reliance on foreign oil”. One of THE major “issues” I have with the AGW Agenda is that it is directly in conflict with that goal.
The single most effective thing we in the non-OPEC west could do to eliminate dependence on Foreign Oil is build Gas To Liquids and Coal To Liquids factories to turn our natural gas and coal into gasoline and Diesel. (This avoids “fleet change”. Take the 300,000,000 or so cars and trucks in America. Multiply by about 30,000.00 each for a new replacement. That’s one heck of a lot of $$$ needed to change that fleet. As the average vehicle is presently kept for 10-15 years, any solution that involves fleet change would take at least 20 years to turn over naturally even if we were already buying the new non-oil cars which we are not… So you simply MUST make gasoline and Diesel fuel if you wish to get off of OPEC oil.
Yes, by all means, make e-cars and sell natural gas conversion kits and LNG trucks methanol cars and everything else. But recognize that the likely “time to solution” down that path is a 1/4 Century of fleet change on a gradual basis.
Now think about THAT for just a minute too. You want to convince me to support mandatory sales of e-cars and destruction of coal mining with mandatory consumption of solar cells. (Never mind that we can’t both charge cars AND eliminate coal electric generation) You want me to embrace electricity that costs 25 Cents US / kW-hr (per my bill – headed for $1/2 kW-hr per filed rate tariffs for mandatory ‘alternative energy’ in California) and at the same time expect me to buy an e-Car as a ‘solution’ to OPEC oil? Just nuts. Obvious to anyone who’s an engineer. We can turn coal into methanol and with a minor ($500 or so) kit on the car or truck run in in the existing fleet. We can do that conversion in about 5 years and with fuel that would be about $3 / Gallon Of Gasoline Equivalent OR LESS. We can turn coal into gasoline and Diesel, as South Africa has been doing since the ’70s, at similar costs and similar time frames.
Now think about that.
You want to sell me a “bill of goods” that has destruction of electric generation while my transportation is made dependent on electric generation. You want my electric costs to rise from 10 cents / kW-hr to 50 cents kW-hr at the same time. You want me to buy a new $50,000 to $100,000 e-car instead of a $30,000 gas car (or just keeping my old Mercedes Diesel running at about $2000 / year) and you want all of us to do all this buying inside 5 years.
Can you see how “nutty” that is? (If you can’t; I strongly suggest some time spent with an engineer who can ‘do the math’ for you and perhaps a business major who can show you the costs). By putting Coal and Natural Gas ‘off limits’ you assure that there can be no effective conversion away from OPEC oil. Not now. Not in a decade. Not in my lifetime.
If, instead, you advocate for CTL and GTL, you can tell OPEC to go away in less than a decade even if you are slow about it. NO fleet change is required. Gasoline and Diesel prices would likely drop some. (They are competitive with oil at about $80 / bbl, so cheaper than oil above that price point, more expensive below it.)
So think again, for just a couple of minutes, about how effective it will be to try and “sell me” that e-cars and solar cells and windmills will replace OPEC. That taking that path, for that reason, is a suitable alternative to AGW Belief.
FWIW, I’ve been an advocate of alternative energy since the ’70s Arab Oil Embargo and have advocated for substituting any and all alternatives (including solar, wind, hydro, garbage gasification, you name it) for OPEC oil for that whole time. I am not against solar and wind. It is just that you must recognize their costs and technical limits in any real world solutions. They re ‘bit players’ at best with very large ‘dispatch’ issues.
So, in summary: Social POV, meet Engineering Mindset and Reality Constraints.
Want to convince me? Then show an Engineering solution that makes business sense.
Until then, the Fluffy Bunnies live in the back yard… (Which reminds me, I need to go check their feed and water… I really do have bunnies…)
[bolding fixed. mod oggi]
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As much as I generally do not read long-winded blog posts, I thoroughly enjoyed every sentence in this one. Thanks E.M. Smith – this is a brilliant essay which I can relate to very closely with my own journey along the skeptical path these last 10-something years. Just brilliant.
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I agree and have just copied it out for future reference.
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I agree MJ … worthy of a book !
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Great post EMS. I have commented the same at WUWT under your article there. It would seem that Dr Bain is based at a Queensland university and is subject to the Public Sector Ethics Act. He clearly has no understanding of the technology necessary to assess weather and climate changes. Thus, under the Act he should not be commenting on that. Hope someone puts in a complaint to the authority under the Act and to his University.
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Hi EMS
The first half is brilliant.
Will read the rest after I get back from work.
🙂
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This has to be the best I’ve ever read in blog comments anywhere.
A multi-paragraph comment or article will lose me very quickly if there’s no substance (life’s too short to waste and in my case getting disconcertingly shorter by the minute) but Chiefio’s engineering and economic pragmatism is hard to fault.
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Dear E.M.Smith thank you for taking the time to put the answer so detailed and clear.
Jo, I would propose to put the comment as a post of itself as it deserves broader audience.
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Sorry folks, don’t give this individual any credence for his reply to Jo, Bain’s reply was nothing more than a “boiler plate” response that he made at Judith Curry’s blog and at WUWT. He has been deservedly savaged at both Climate etc and WUWT.
Sorry Dr Bain, you will need to do better than that. How about you write a letter for publication by Nature apologising for your appalling lack of consideration ? Better still how about you pull that pathetic paper and make the necessary amendments to your insulting language ?
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[…] http://joannenova.com.au/2012/06/nature-and-that-problem-of-defining-homo-sapiens-denier-is-it-engli… […]
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Ah soooo good to see a website created for the intellectual [snip! redundant serial spam will be terminated] ED
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Paul claims that he wants to get to a point where there could be agreement on some action. That is easy. Propose research on developing new sources of cheaper and cleaner energy.
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Jo,
I’ve written this before and I’ll write this again… the first letter of a genus is capitalised.
[Thanks for the help. Would you like a job as volunteer editor?] ED
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Don’t rub it in. When you can’t write but know the rules of writing – edit. When you can’t put an argument together but know how to do it – edit.
Yes, I have actually done a lot of editing and for similar reasons, teaching.
01
I’ve written this before and I’ll write this again: I have read many of Gee Ayes comments and still have trouble finding any point to the comments made.
What exactly are you trying to convey to us?
MFJ would be turning in her grave if she knew you were still here writing pointless criticisms about minutiae.
🙂
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Hey keeper of MFJ’s spirit. If you think this was pointless (although I note that the correction was made – but luck I didn’t mention that italics or underlining are also standard for organism taxonomy) you should see post 13.2 in the 50,000 people flock to Rio thread!
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Gee Aye
I have to admit that is brilliant and reminds me of a Buddhist technique called an activity teaching where someone sets a task for the learner.
However I’m sure a swallow could not swallow a piece of machinery while fooling around in the corn.
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an additional note if you want help with copying my formidable prose, try this site http://watchout4snakes.com/CreativityTools/RandomParagraph/RandomParagraph.aspx
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OK
Global Warming + temperatuture gives:
“Global warming reasons under the ploy. When will this startled line puzzle global warming? A falling gut vanishes. Temperature discriminates. Temperature hums next to the reserved symphony. Global warming cycles temperature without a celebrated precedent.”
With that sort of technology at your disposal you could work for the IPCC
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That is what I would have said part from the fact that a garnered rabbit slotted me.
Hey… not funny that actually happened.
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Hey KK, GA makes a reasonable point. I learnt long ago when you are up against the inertia of management you need to dot every t and cross every i (in a manner of speaking). I call it ‘telfon coating’. If you sufficiently telfon coat your case then they have no point of purchase to attach negative waves to. At this point they switch to a different mindset – the oh we better look at this because if he’s thought this through we may get criticised for saying no if someone higher up notices.
Then they will look at your proposal and maybe give you some money to work on it. Multiply this by thirty years any you can see why I slip and get a bit cynical from time to time.
Sceptics have the same issue. You must be whiter than white or the opposition will latch onto what you say, however trivial, and beat you with it forever. This is what happened to Heartland recently. Big lie principle, say it long and often enough and the mud sticks however unjustified.
But underlying the whole climate argument are two things: the data and the temperature. No matter how much you cool the past, if today is colder than yesterday it suggests CO2 sensitivity is not as high as the powers-that-wannabe say. Empirical data is my friend, I just have to have the chance to make my case, which is why my other friend is teflon.
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Hi Bruce
Yes , I guess that sort of conciseness in writing is important just as the rules of science need the same sort of constant attention and monitoring to guarantee scientific relevance.
🙂
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that is pretty much where I am coming from. Whether it is at the scale of rubbish arguments (e.g. Plimer) or tactics (e.g. Plimer) or capitalising the Genus in this post. Being such a hero in science I offer this formidable prose.
Hero dishes the garbage without a secret. An address advances. A polynomial iron wrecks science. Science turns a sauce opposite the alcoholic radical.
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Dr Bain’s rely is truly remarkable. He states “Overall, the findings suggest that if there was closer attention to the social consequences of policies, rather than continuing with seemingly intractable debates on the reality of AGW, then we might get to a point where there could be agreement on some action”. This taken together with the rest of the letter is effectively saying – lets stop worrying about whther AGW is real or not and instead lets find a convincing reason for carrying out the action we want you to take. To me thats a glaring admission that AGW is not the issue for warmists, it is simply a convenient lever for forcing people to agree with their arbitrary agenda and if AGW is not effective, why, then we will simply change to another rationalisation.
Thats about the clearest proof that AGW is a scam that I have seen for a while.
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So one man’s opinion with which you disagree is the clearest proof that AGW is a scam that you have seen for a while. I do hope you don’t get on the jury for any serious crimes any time soon.
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MattB, It’s really telling that you would respond with snark to the above comment, but have nothing to say in response to the flaying of Bain and CAGW by E.M.Smith at 8:10 am.
I’ll check back to see how you brilliantly respond to Mr. Smith’s comment.
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blah blah blah.
Look I essential think that EM Smiths opening paragraphs:
“I first came to the AGW issue thinking “Gee, this looks important, I ought to learn more about it.”
through to “But check it out yourself.” Hardly something to make one feel like Believers were doing decent unbiased examination of the facts.”
Are completely different to the experience I have had at such websites. I find it hard to consider that someone approaching with a genuinely open mind would have had such a response. I’ve asked plenty of stupid questions at such sites and always recieved courteous and polite pointers and suggestions.
So essentially I call EM Smith out as essentially creating a make believe world that suits his opinions.
I mean he claims “Along the way, the term “Denier” was coined (as noted in the links) directly to tie Skeptics to The Holocaust””
Look I don’t use denier as it gives nutbag skeptics the chance to avoid the discussion and cry they’ve been mortally offended. But the truth is you can be a denier of anything you like but only holocaust deniers deny the holocaust.
I mean seriously a question ““But doesn’t CO2 have a log limit on absorption effects that we have passed?”” .. it is hard to imagine such a comment posted. Why not post at the skeptic website you read it at asking why?
If basically the approach is to pepper websites with random skep[tical factoids then it is not surprising that one occasionally gets a hostile response.
Look I guess if the learned EM Smith’s approach is to troll the internet looking for answers that satisfy his world view then there is no surprise he(she?) ended up where he did.
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And where does this come from:
“You want to sell me a “bill of goods” that has destruction of electric generation while my transportation is made dependent on electric generation. You want my electric costs to rise from 10 cents / kW-hr to 50 cents kW-hr at the same time. You want me to buy a new $50,000 to $100,000 e-car instead of a $30,000 gas car (or just keeping my old Mercedes Diesel running at about $2000 / year) and you want all of us to do all this buying inside 5 years.”
Is it in Bain’s paper? I certainly don’t want to do any of those things.
Lastly – smith has this cracker “You can make a marginal electric car, but not an effective electric truck or ship”
well tell that to the nuclear submarines lol. Off the planet with whakoness now.
I mean it is a rant. Good on him but if I replied to every rant on the internet I’d not have much time for anything else.
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Er, Matt, most everyone here and Chiefio too as I recall, quite like nuclear power.
But when I was shown a fax by the technical director in the early 1990’s we both had a good laugh. See, when the USSR fell their submarine nuke plant guys lost their markets. One of them worked out we had a certain installation using 35MW and hey their sub plant produced this. So they offered us one for sale.
We had a good giggle because after tooth and nail warfare with them for decades we knew exactly how the Australian green groups would react if we squeaked any hint of this.
E.M. is right. EV’s are lemons, energy realities say that they always will be compared to the power densities of liquid fuels. Maybe Ballard can do a car, but batteries aren’t the way to go. And if you want to drive a nuclear automobile please tell me first so I can move to a different city OK?
00
Matt — nuclear submarines are powered by nuclear power. To say that they are powered by electricity because electricity is involved in the transmission of that power is the same as saying that my car is powered by its driveshaft, or by its wheels (who needs the engine?)
00
Oh ok ok a reliable non-fossil fuel energy source. I mean that’s the point surely.
00
Well, sailing ships got around (slowly) using non-fossil fuel energy. (One could even say that they used fusion energy, since without the Sun, there would be no wind.)
I don’t know, however, of any examples of long-distance (or even medium distance) trucks that use anything but fossil fuels.
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BobC one of the logical outcomes of a price on carbon is it sorts the wheat from the chaff in terms of having those uses that really need fossil fuels continuing to use them, but other uses that can change to other energy sources doing so because it makes $$$ sense.
No doubt there are some things that will still require liquid/gase carbon based fuels. Jet airliners etc. maybe trucks (although hybrid technology is apparently very well suited to trucks etc as they do high kms thus returns are good).
Here’s a range of HINO trucks: http://www.hino.com.au/models_hybrid_landing.aspx
Rail is suited to electric… so maybe a switch back to rail could be on the cards.
Here’s a handy ship: http://mashable.com/2012/06/26/hybrid-ship-viking-lady/
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Price controls are always justified by resort to “logical outcomes” — i.e., the desired outcome of the price controller.
Actual price controls, however, have a long historical record of producing unintended consequences (shortages, if you’re lucky, and economic catastrophe if you’re not) and rarely (if ever) producing the effect they were instituted to achieve.
To support any kind of government-inforced price controls requires one to be ignorant of (or deliberatly ignore) the historical record.
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MattB;
Firstly, I also hope I don’t get on a jury for any serious crimes – ever – however to go back to the issue at hand, you obviously utterly missed the point of what I was saying. Maybe a little less bluster and a bit more thought? For the record, Bain is saying in effect – well if you dont like the AGW argument well still keep the actions the same but simply find another reason to justify them. If you don’t see the serious problem with that there is no hope for you.
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One of our regular Warmist Contributers “Matt b” actually stated the following admission in post (199) of this discussion:-
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/03/thousands-of-angry-ordinary-australians-turn-up-and-alarmist-smears-begin/comment-page-5/#comment-244212
…………
The words of MattB;-
“Therefore we can only logically conclude that there is No Proof, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that mankind is responsible for global warming”
THAT’S WHAT I SAID!!!
THAT’S THE ANSWER!
……………….
That response was in relation to my challenge at post (121) of the same discussion
My Words (and challenge):-
Simple question for you characters “MattB”, “John Brookes” etc..
Please post at least one Peer Reviewed Scientific Paper which PROVES, Beyond A Shadow Of A Doubt, that mankind is responsible for global warming.
I await your responses with baited breath…….
…………
Well there you have it!
The warmists admit that there is No Proof and thus No Justification for a carbon DIOXIDE (Plant Food) Tax!!
I rest my case.
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no proof “beyond a shadow of a doubt”… you dunderhead.
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I’d be quite happy to accept his assertion that “climate change” is directly caused by man if he was able to provide the empirical proof that shows the definitive link between our emissions and a warming planet. At this point, I don’t believe any exists. I remain a sceptic.
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[…] Smith, known in blogworld as Chiefio, replied at Jo Nova to Paul Bain’s response to Jo’s letter critical of Bain’s Nature […]
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[…] Smith, known in blogworld as Chiefio, replied at Jo Nova to Paul Bain’s response to Jo’s letter critical of Bain’s Nature […]
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Mr Bain is simply attempting to move the debate on past the science. He is of the opinion that this is a negotiation now and seeks to offend the minimum of people while satisfying the majority and he is of the opinion that the AGW camp is that majority.
That is why anybody who conflates sociology with science is wrong. It is not about facts, it is about emotions and feelings.
Now Mr Bain needs to really understand what we are. We are skeptics not fools seeking some advantage. We just don’t buy your line and we gain no benefit from this. It is just we are skeptical of the AGW canon. Joanna is right, just give us the paper that ties CO2 to catastrophic warming. Show us clearly why we are wrong without telling us 97% of all scientists do without showing us why.
It may well be that you feel controlling CO2 will bring many good things that are climate unrelated. Things we all want, clean seas and forests, more wild animals, happier humans and so on, Our stance is that you can’t build something good on a lie. The truth will always out on if you are lying about CO2 eventually whatever new Halcyon Fields you think you are building will turn to the Augean Stables.
Just give us the actual science that supports your stance, we can do the sociology later.
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Oh great censoring of my last post Jo ( the T.V. presenter) wow now that surely beats a climate scientists qualification doesnt it.
Must of taken a 3 month correspondence course for your trivial qualification.
Good to see you cant cop the same criticism of censorship you level at others.
Oh and unlike Mr bain i do not care if i offend fools such as yourselves who have the I.Q of an ant.
Your husband certainly didnt marry you for your intelligence you fool
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Oh great censoring of my last post Jo ( the T.V. presenter) wow now that surely beats a climate scientists qualification doesnt it.
Must of taken a 3 month correspondence course for your trivial qualification.
Good to see you cant cop the same criticism of censorship you level at others.
Oh and unlike Mr bain i do not care if i offend fools such as yourselves who have the I.Q of an ant.
Your husband certainly didnt marry you for your intelligence you fool
——————————————
Hi Mr (Miss?) Fools-Please, I’m sure the mods had a good reason. I just hope they saved a copy of it for me. 😉 Jo
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Why wasn’t this post censored as well? Is there a rational thought in it?
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Obvious Bob. The quality of argument and lack of literacy on display have a negative feedback on the writer that is far greater than any abuse they are transmitting (should one be able to even follow what they are saying. So to “no fools please” I will give you, free of charge this wonderful piece of prose…
The large institute flips. A reflecting philosophy collates the remembered prostitute. Will the bass tip advance with fool? The wide alcoholic chooses around marriage. Can our profile quarter fool? The pet stress terrifies fool.
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I see your point, Gee Aye.
If you want to take the random text to higher levels, you should look for a generator that uses a training script and uses ordered parts of it. For instance, you could take a bunch of your own writings and assemble random script from groups of 2, 3, 4, etc words that occur together. The more ‘grams’ you use, the more it sounds like you — but it never really makes sense.
You could experiment to see how ‘ordered’ the random text had to be before nobody here could tell it wasn’t you.
Here’s an example of this kind of random text generator. It allows you to pick from a number of pre-set input texts, but doesn’t allow you to input your own, unfortunately.
Here’s a multi-gram generator that just comes up with random PostModern essays everytime you refresh the page. The frightening thing is that they make as much sense as real PostModern essays.
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Hi Bob,
yes I’ve seen better and clever random script generators such as the ones you’ve included. The problem is that if my comment looks too much like an actual comment I might get a reply! I much prefer the implied full stop.
Regarding the essay generator, it does remind me of Sokal’s paper where random nonsense made it into an academic editor reviewed journal – fortunately wikipedia makes it easy for me to cite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
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“damo”,
Ahh but an ant has more intelligence than an a brainwashed AMOEBA such as yourself.
Poor diddums, feeling a bit precious now that your COMMUNIST MASTERS agenda has been revealed to the public are we?
Traitor!
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Angry
You are the traitor you dog,just because you are to stupid to understand the science doesnt mean it isnt real.
Fortunately i had a private education and understand the science quite well
I guess you and the 2 blimps reinhard and handpalmer are the real traitors wanting to freeload of the tax payer.
This site is for the corrupt puppets of the 2 blimps and their ilk.
The only traitors are neo cons like the fat cow gina and mad cow Palmer who are STEALING our resources because of the stupidity or corruption of your breed
As for communist masters yeah and communism still exists ( outside North Korea )…..how old are you buddy 10
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“no fools please”,
Please supply one, just one scientific paper, which proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt that mankind and carbon dioxide (PLANT FOOD) is responsible for determental affects on planet Earth.
If you cannot or will not do so then you “no fools please” are the REAL IGNORAMUS.
Stop wasting your time promoting this green COMMUNISM and the use of carbon DIOXIDE trading as a trojan horse being used to try and implement a One World Government by the united nations.
People have wised up to what the TRUE AGENDA is and nobody but Anti Australian COMMUNISTS like you “no fools please” are buying it.
Sychophants such as yourself “no fools please” are dwindling in vast numbers on a daily basis and will soon cease to exist.
Nobody will mourn their passing !
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Oh and “no fools please”, do TRY and keep up with current events regarding the global warming FRAUD.
Read the CLIMATEGATE documents for yourself instead of being a simple mouthpiece for your Leftist/getup masters !
Climategate – Anthropogenic Global Warming, history’s biggest scam……….
http://www.climategate.com/
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Hey good to see you back Damian. Where have you been?
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I’M NOT YOUR “BUDDY”
[snip I think they know] ED
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Angry
Oh come on BUDDY, i always wanted a pet imbecile and you would be perfect .
As far as providing evidence,or wasting my very valuable time arguing a truism with Princess Reinhardt ( Jo you are definitely hotter than your mother Queen Gina 😉 ) and her foolish followers,that would appear to be a waste of time, given the intellectually and morally bankrupt here will never be convinced anyway.That is not my purpose here.
You see i too am sick of climate scientists and spokes people,but for very different reasons.
It’s because they pussy foot around ignoramus such as yourselves,tolerate your foolishness and give you the time of day.
My purpose here is to let you all know what truly intelligent people say about your lot, nothing more and nothing less.
P.s.
Watch out for the communists,aliens and purple people eaters,oh and Safeway has a special on aluminium foil for your hats if anyone is interested
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Angry
Did you know that if you reverse “damo’ you get “o mad”.
I know that comment is childish but it does have at least and possibly more (49.2% more) relevance to elucidating the driving force behind the AGW mass delusion.
If you read the comment carefully, or even just casually, you will see that he/her considers themself to be part of the carefully self selected group of “truly intelligent people” and “non ignoramuses” and further to have the capacity to look after and care for a “pet imbecile”.
This last is really concerning because I’m not sure that any Warmer would have the common sense and capacity to do that if they are unable to extricate themselves from the Man Made AGW Delusionism that is rampant in trendy circles at the moment.
When the pot calls the kettle black and is not even aware that it is b–ck (is it pc to use that word?) then the pot has a problem.
ps You and I would be the kettles.
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I don’t have the “denier=Holocaust denier” association that some of your co-travellers do
================
Of course you don’t have the same association, you have your own association.
It seems clear that you are either trying to hide your knowledge through deceptive language, or you don’t have the required knowledge to be offering an “expert” opinion. More commonly described as either a liar or a fool.
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Thanks, Chiefio.
My journey to becoming totally sceptical of so-called ‘climate science’ was similar to yours; I began by asking a question on the Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’ section (following an article by George Monbiot, which did not ring true to me) about the standards for sites where max/min temp readings are taken. I was thoroughly denounced by swarms of abusive comments for my innocent question, some so gratuitously nasty I was shocked. I looked at the profiles of those people and found that most were self-confessed ‘Climate activists’, a new species then in my experience..
When the ‘Climategate’ emails appeared on various blogs, I found them compelling reading, particularly the ‘Harry Readme’ files. Both Climategates 1 & 2 seem to have been missed entirely by the MSM and I was amused recently that the British scientist Myles Allen and his cohort seem to imagine that Climategate and the threadbare pretences of official ‘enquiries’ that followed and ‘found’ little amiss (apart from scientists being a bit snide with each other and not playing nice with their data and code) was about the CRU database and not about the attempted corruption of science itself, including the Peer Review process, by ‘The Team’ and by the entire global warming industry.
I find it very sad that obviously intelligent people such as Dr Paul Bain, and the editors of his article, have waded into a moral and ethical swamp but have not yet recognised that they have done so. Their stance brings to mind the scientists who worked in and for Nazi Germany and claimed a mythical ‘ethical neutrality’.
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Climategate’s Harry_Read_Me.txt: We All Really Should…….
http://pjmedia.com/blog/climategates-harry_read_me-txt-we-all-really-should/
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Nic Lewis reports that he tried for over a year to get data for Forest et al 2006 study. Forest finally comes forward and declares conveniently that the raw data is now “lost”.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/06/25/questioning-the-forest-et-al-2006-sensitivity-study/
This is a scandal.
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Those that Paul Bain call “homo-sapiens-deniers” are actually members of society that oppose our government becoming like the one described by George Orwell in the futuristic novel written in 1948 and titled “1984” !
1. Distorting information, and
2. Using electronic surveillance of individuals.
[George Orwell, “1984″ (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc, 1949, First Signet Classic Printing, 1950, 328 pages)]:
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/
Since November 2009, these “homo-sapiens-deniers” have slowly realized that. . .
the AGW scam has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with Earth’s global climate. It is all about building a tyrannical, one-world government to protect world leaders and society from possible destruction by “nuclear fires”.
Here is the documentation:
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-142
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Communists infiltrated the Enviromental Movement to use them to promote their political goals……
The Case of Mikhail Gorbachev:-
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/kohlmayer051107.htm
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We all felt anger when we first realized that we had been deceived for years by an unholy alliance of world leaders and leaders of the news media and scientific organizations.
Here’s the story of the loss of integrity in science and government after 1945:
https://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-142
Restoring integrity to science and civilian control of government will be a formidable task, not unlike the historic battles against the forces of darkness, described in
a.) The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 1) on the field of Kurukshetra and later in
b.) The Bible (1 Samuel, Chapter 17) in the Kingdom of Judah.
https://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-146
https://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-172
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com
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World Bank President Admits Agenda For Global Government:-
http://www.infowars.com/world-bank-president-admits-agenda-for-global-government/
IPCC Official: “Climate Policy Is Redistributing The World’s Wealth”:-
http://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1877-ipcc-official-climate-policy-is-redistributing-the-worlds-wealth.html
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. Like several main skeptics, I don’t think that the current, or even future CO2 releases will have have catastrophic consequences, to the contrary, a doubling of CO2 will lead to a small increase in temperature (my guess: around 1°C) which is mainly beneficial. On the other side, I think that it is prudent to reduce our use of fossil fuels, which in many cases come from not so democratic countries and may end some year.
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Oh and angry
Cimategarbage is [snip – no insults and slurs without some substantiation – make the effort – Jo]
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“damo”
NOBODY IS FOOLED BY YOUR [snip…]
After the next federal election there will be NO WATERMELON OR ALP (AUSTRALIAN LIARS PARTY) politians…. PERIOD!
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—-
]I’ve snipped and saved this comment. Its revealing. –Jo]
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[snip – “Damo’s comment shouldn’t have been posted in the first place. – Jo]
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Ah, woke up this morning feeling GREAT !!
Today is CARBON PRICE day you beauty !!!
I hope all you people here woke up feeling the same and are looking forward to doing your bit for the environment,especially you Angry as i know you have been looking forward to this day with great anticipation,or is that masturbation,oh well I’ll let you decide on that.
Oh and before i forget Angry,its only fruit loop nut jobs such as yourself who believe the Labor party are Communists,the rest of us in the real world see them as they really are,just another Liberal party that is only slightly different to the Mad Monk T.Blabbitt and his Liberals.
Grow up little one.
Now lets all join hands together and sing Kumbaya my Lord Kumbaya,Kumbaya my Lord Kumbaya
Love and kisses to all especially you Jo Nova you chickie babe you 😉
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are you two related?
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“damo”,
Unless you address the points raised in the websites I have quoted you are simply demonstrating that you are simply a VACUOUS TROLL.
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Yes
Gee Aye we are.
I’m his brother from another mother and as such am his sworn nemesis.
I am Luke Skywalker to his Darth Vader
I am Rocky to his Apollo Creed
I am Superman,fighting for truth and justice to his Lex Luthor,fighting for the American way
I am BLURAY to his HD video disc.
Anyway time to sign off for the last time as it appears poor Angry hung himself Sunday night when the carbon PRICE came into effect
th th th thats all folks
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Angry ,look there are no points to address, this argument has been over for quite a while and wasting my time trying to convince someone like yourself who refuses to believe what is right in front of his face is pointless. People on this site are either running an agenda for the polluters or to stupid to ever be convinced anyway
AGW is real and i feel sorry for people who are caught up in conspiracy theories and other such rubbish.
I would think the big polluters would be more likely to have a hidden agenda,but then again i have common sense as well as a good education,so Alan Pink Fairy Jones,T.Blabbitt and a road laborer like Angry Anderson don’t really sway my opinion at all.
As far as your communist comments go,those show you are completely clueless about who any of our current political parties truly represent.
Calling someone a communist for being against big business destroying our environment or paying their FAIR share of tax is intellectually lazy and mentally incompetent
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So I’m curious, your hypothesis is that all skeptics are paid or stupid. So the 31,500 scientists who are skeptics (y’know 9,000 PhDs, hundreds of profs, 2 Nobels, 3 Apollo Astronauts etc etc.)
Which ones are paid by “polluters”, and which ones are stupid?
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Obviously, everyone but Damo is stupid. It’s no wonder he is too busy to “waste his time” he thinks he’s busy single handedly saving the world!
I do wonder how he defines FAIR share of tax though. I’d even like for him to explain who “big business” is?
C’mon Damo demonstrate how un-stupid you are.
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damo – People on this site are either running an agenda for the polluters or to stupid to ever be convinced anyway
I think that’s a pretty inaccurate charaterisation.
Jo – your hypothesis is that all skeptics are paid or stupid
People on this site =/= All skeptics.
Jo – So the 31,500 scientists who are skeptics
Having a Bachelor of Science =/= Being a scientist. That seems pretty straightforward.
Having a PhD in a science =/= Being a scientist. At least in this case the individual has probably completed some sort of mostly independent research in a field which may have resulted in their thesis/dissertation being published.
I think unless someone is being paid to conduct research via the scientific method, they probably don’t qualify as scientists.
On top of that, I think unless someone is being paid to conduct climate change research via the scientific method, counting them has little meaning.
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Gotta love DESMOGBLOG and the research and fact checking they do on the d[snip] oops, sorry y’all is skeptics aint ya ??
And Jo you are a very naughty girl because you know what you are doing is wrong and yet still do it.
And i do not appreciate you Lorena Bobbittesque approach to my extremely intellectual posts 🙂
Toodles all.
[yawn] ED
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.
Good one DAMO
270271 comments on this one post of JoNova & then DESMOGBLOG has 8 comments on it’s last 5 posts!What a demographic comparison – opps, sorry warmist, opps – Y’all is
MONEY GRABBERSClimate Changers NOW! – probably embrassing really!You know what you are doing is wrong and yet you still do it!
And i do not appreciate you Adam Smith approach to my extremely intellectual posts
Toddles Damo!
P.S. 4 days late too!
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Dave
That would be TOODLES you intellectual midget 🙂
And i dont find anything embarrassing at all about exposing your mob for the fools and liars they are.
271 comments from the morally bankrupt or the intellectually inferior vs 8 comments from people who graciously waste their time with facts and people research, acknowledging simpletons such as yourself, hmmmmm let me think…….no i do believe i win yet again.
Off you go to your next class , i do believe its finger painting 101.
Now, i would love to entertain myself reading more foolish and hilarious posts on this site but i have a planet to save and lovely fresh, clean air to breathe
Ta ta …….i hope that’s not to many letters for you to spell correctly when you plagiarize my post
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.
You win DAMO!
I’ll enroll in Finger Painting 101 ASAP since you rely on this info!
This will give you time to
grab the moneysave the planet and get rid of all the CO2 – OOPS – don’t plants need CO2?I’ll think I’ll enrol in Plant Physiology 202 instead!
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Dave ,Dave,Dave, its obvious a simple explanation suits your simple mind.
That old furphy Co2 is plant food.
Well of course it is but that doesn’t stop to much of it causing global warming.
Now off you go to finger painting 12 ,yes with your reply you just dropped back about 89 classes.
I think its time you and the rest of the kiddies here just left the debate to the grownups and morally decent.
I will have to sign off for the last time now as educating people at a Grade 1 level can be extremely draining.
One last thing if you think that Plant Physiology will help you understand AGW then maybe finger painting is just a little hard for you at this point in your life.
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I don’t doubt it! Your ability to maintain your discourse exclusively at a Grade 1 level is remarkable — unless of course, that is your mental level.
You have yet to present a single coherent, logical argument about anything at all, so the presumption of mental infancy seems rather likely.
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Hi Damo
It’s middle of winter but it has been a sunny day, warm even when sitting in the Sun.
Sun goes down and abruptly the temperature plummets.
Starting to get cold, freezing after half an hour.
Giving up I reach for that can of beer under my seat and ripping open the lid hold it overhead.
You see, I know what’s what; I read how to save the planet by WWF.
They say that CO2 can warm the Earths atmosphere and that’s right where I’m sitting, out here in the atmosphere.
You see, CO2 is more dense than other gases, that’s why I hold it over me, I did science in school.
The golden warmth of CO2 bubbling from the can spills gently over me warming my inner parts and I give thanks for the wisdom of WWF and Tim the Plant Biologist (PhD) and Juliargh.
I particularly give thanks to her because without her efforts to save the planet we would all have been incinerated by Global Warming from excess CO2.
Sure I don’t have a house anymore, I lost that when my job went overseas to Chyna which has no carbon tax, but hell, I’m still here.
My arm is starting to ache now. It hasn’t warmed up.
All that CO2 warmth was just naive hope, it really is bloody cold.
Stuff Tim, stuff Juliargh, stuff WWF and the IPCC too.
They lied to me and if the Sun doesn’t rise soon I’m done for.
KK
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