Two Climate Change Wrongs Don’t Make a Right
In his State of the Union address, President Obama launched his latest campaign in the war of ideas over global warming and what to do about it. This time, instead of a mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions, he proposes that Congress enact a “clean” energy standard — though just what will count as clean remains fuzzy.
Many Republicans will doubtless again respond by challenging the science that shows that greenhouse gas emissions could cause harmful climate change. Were such challenges directed at poking holes in the often hyped claims of green advocates, they would serve the public interest. But Senator James Inhofe and many other Republicans go much farther, claiming that manmade climate change is a huge scientific hoax and that greenhouse gas emissions pose no risk.
Hoax, really? Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish Nobel laureate chemist, first described the greenhouse effect in 1896. Science, then, has long known that carbon dioxide and some other naturally occurring gases in the atmosphere cause Earth to be about 30 degrees C warmer than it otherwise would be. Mankind, by burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests, is adding to the atmosphere’s stock of warming gases. If that process continues, all else being equal, simple logic tells us that the planet will warm further. Warming is highly likely to affect rainfall, clouds, ice cover, and much else.
That said, the size, timing, and economic impacts of manmade emissions remain unclear. Some climate system responses to the build-up of greenhouse gases are known to dampen the extent of warming and some to amplify it. The balance between the two responses remains under debate. In other words, a given increment of emissions could produce a lot of change or only a little.
Thus, climate science provides at best hazy guidance. Even so, some scientists are calling for stringent curbs on emissions. Their demands largely ignore the need for policy to factor in economic and political realities that lie outside the scope of climate science and that are far beyond the ken of most climate scientists. These scientists, moreover, have been quite lax about distinguishing which of their statements rest solely on science and which voice their personal policy preferences.
Hoax, really?
Yes.
No hoax!
Didnt you read what he said!
“Science, then, has long known that carbon dioxide and some other naturally occurring gases in the atmosphere cause Earth to be about 30 degrees C warmer than it otherwise would be.”
SEE!
Its 30 DEGREES CENTIGRADE warmer than it should be…
Thats 86 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT to all us ignorant bumpkins, clinging to guns and religion out there in Flyover Territory
ITS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT ZERO DEGREES OUTSIDE IN AUGUST!
AND ROUGHLY 30-40 BELOW ZERO RIGHT NOW….
But we ruined the planet with our SUV’s and High Capacity magazines.
Thats the “settled science”, they know is true.
No question (or proof reading) required!
No, not “should be”. The correct statement would be that the earth is 30 degrees warmer than it WOULD be with out normal natural global warming. It also true that There are feedback loops at work that they don’t understand and cannot know the effects of until they do. Whatever is done needs to be done in light of understanding exactly what IS going on and what will happen. Ruining the economy of the U.S. by unilaterally capping our emissions of carbon dioxide without knowing for sure that it would benefit the Earth’s climate would be stupid. And it would be nice to know ahead of time if it’s going to even be cost effective. The sun is a 4% variable and it can heat up and cool down through combinations of it’s various cycles, not many of which are understood yet and overcome any changes we make.
Just read what he wrote, and digest the absurdity of it…
He is saying scientists “have known” planet temperature is “off” by almost 100 degrees F….As if its “naturally supposed to be” something else, like below freezing…. in Atlanta…in August.
Yeah, that sounds plausible, doesnt it?
Or like at the Obama DNC Convention, Al Gore live on TV in his speech made a similarly absurd statement:
“it is possible, within this next administration, that the ENTIRE polar ice-caps could melt if we do not act”
Simple known thermal dynamics like the rate of ice melting at +33 degrees f. x cubic miles of frozen area prove this to be an INSANELY impossible scenario…unless it gets we get a sustained temp of over 75 degrees F at the north + south poles for a DECADE.
These people say the most outlandish, physically, mechanically IMPOSSIBLE things, without batting an eyelash.
And no one in the MSM questions them at all.
I don’t know of any skeptics who deny AGW altogether. The question is whether the result is slight… whether it will cause Catastrophic AGW or CAGW. CO2 has been nearly 18 times higher in past ages and the planet didn’t turn into Venus. Nature has shown a negative AGW feedback rather than a positive one. Look, the scaremongers have been selling this scare for 30 years. Dr. Hansen of NASA GISS predicted in 1988 that by 2008 parts of Manhattan would be underwater by now. And Dr. Viner of the CRU told us in 2000 that snow would become rare. Don’t the rainmakers have to produce rain sometime?
Count me as one “skeptic” who DOES deny the existence of MAN-MADE global warming. Yes, we spew a lot of CO2, but ANY major volcanic eruption spews orders of magnitude more CO2 than all that emitted by humans in scores of years! CO2 constitutes, at most, about 3% of the “greenhouse gasses” in the atmosphere. If you want to have a REAL impact on reducing such gasses, find a way to reduce the amount of WATER VAPOR in the atmosphere, which constitutes about 96% of the greenhouse total. Of course, be prepared to suffer droughts and other such catastrophies on a world-wide scale.
Or big forest fires like we had in Yosemite recently and like they have had in Australia several times in the last decade. How much more would have burnt if we hadn’t fought those fires tooth and nail.
And how much less would have burned if the eco-nuts hadn’t forbidden controlled burning.
Gotta disagree. The radiative balance equations are based on rock solid physics. No serious skeptic doubts them. In fact, that’s the *only* “settled science” in this whole mess.
Doubling CO2 will, *in the absence of other factors*, increase CO2 by 1 degree C. That is an easily provable fact.
However, the “other factors” range from natural variability to the big one in the AGW scare: feedback. The scary AGW scenarios assume that positive feedback will amplify that change by factors of 4 or more. The science supporting that is sketchy – it is based on untestable computer models.
The fact that CO2 makes up only 3% (or whatever) of greenhouse gases (or a better number, .00038 of the atmosphere, does not change the radiative balance results. By far the most significant greenhouse gas is water vapor, and whether it is increased or decreased by CO2 emissions is unknown. A powerful feedback factor is clouds, and they can provide positive or negative feedback depending on droplet size.
Imagine how hard it is to predict that relative abundance of various cloud droplet sizes due solely to an increase in CO2. But that’s what the alarmists are claiming.
Radiative balance? Whatever happened to convection?? You know clouds and stuff like that. Thunderstorms transporting heat (energy) from the surface high up into the atmosphere where the cloud is warm relative to the standard atmosphere and therefore radiates more heat out into space than a clear sky does. I just watched a NOVA program on the loss of an Air France A330 jet due to supercooled water at 35,000 feet being at -40 degrees F and clogging the pitot tubes, while the atmosphere is normally about -65 degrees F and the problem doesn’t occur. That was the feedback cooling loop in action!!
PIMF: Should be “Catastrophic AGW or AGW”. Strike “by now”. I blame the late hour.
“They know that [anthropogenic] climate change poses a threat.”
Really? Prove it.
Do you believe this guy?
Can ANYONE on that side of the fence do simple math?
“Science, then, has long known that carbon dioxide and some other naturally occurring gases in the atmosphere cause Earth to be about 30 degrees C warmer than it otherwise would be.”
Yup, thats the Global Warming Science Truth, folks…its 30 DEGREES CENTIGRADE warmer than it should be… Thats 86 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT to us ignorant bumpkins, clinging to our guns and religion here in Flyover Territory
So he’s saying it SHOULD be about zero outside IN AUGUST, and roughly 30-40 BELOW ZERO right now.
How dare we dispute such perfect wisdom?
If our temperatures were not modorated and controled by the atmosphere would would have temperature swings of about 400 degrees from day to night, so I say “Yay! for global warming.” It’s all that’s keeping us at a livable temperature now.
Again:
He’s saying in effect, if “the earth” were not “the earth” it would be something drastically different…
So were supposed to be shocked and confused that it IS what it IS, instead of what its NOT, and never WAS?
Makes as much sense as:
“If I were 9 feet tall, but legless, would my SHOES fit?”
What is being denied is not that there are green-house gases, but that there is Man Made Global Warming or for the less religious Man Made Climate Change (gotta account for the cold). The major GHG is water vapor. Practically every natural and human process releases water vapor. The truly religious want all human activity to stop. This is insane. Even Man Made C02 is very tiny. The bottom line is this hoax/scheme is nothing more than ecomarxism.
Very interesting perspective. Thanks for your viewpoint. Eventually, the world will have to move away from the use of fossil fuels, be it because they damage the environment or because we just plain run out of them. When that day comes, I just hope the the US is at the fore front of “clean energy” technology so we can lead the world. It scares the you know what out of me to think of a China ending up leading the way. Now is the time for the US to develop alternatives, before the countries mentioned in this article get to the point to challenge the innovation capabilities of the US. When they come around, they will need to come to this nation for help. That is how we will continue maintaining our position as world leader.
We do have alternatives. The only problem is that these alternatives are not as cost effective as fossil fuel. When the time comes, we will be in the fore of new energy production.
Neither Inhofe nor anyone else is saying greenhouse gasses don’t / can’t affect the climate (Has the author ever heard of water vapor?). This is a complete straw man argument. Man made global warming via CO2 IS A HOAX. For reasons posted ad nauseum elsewhere, it is simply beyond the capability of science to establish a reliable baseline for a 3.5B year old dynamic system.
When considering such system the idea of proposing “trends” based on around a hundred years worth of actual measurements tainted by poor record keeping, inconsistent procedures and placement as well as the heat island effect in terms of trends of only a few years is laughable to anyone with an education in the physical sciences.
Quoting long dead Nobel laureates who never heard of man made global warming via CO2 is also laughable.
This writer is ill informed. Dr. Richard Lindzen at MIT holds that Arrhenius’ calculations about CO2 enable prediction of only one degree centigrade of warming this century and that such warming poses none of the dangers trumpeted by Al Gore and others. There is no science which enables prediction of the dangerous effects of warming that some like Al Gore envision. For critical discussion of these matters, visit Wattsupwiththat a website created by Anthony Watts.
After going through one of the worst winters on record here in my home state of New Jersey, you’re really NOT going to get me to be too sympathetic to the “global warming” argument (not that I was sympathetic to it to begin with). But, I’m sorry, Al Gore and his crew are now calling it “Climate Change.” Well Al, I could really, really use the climate to change to warm weather, and soon, as I dig out from under all this snow! This is all just another scam to redistribute billions, if not trillions, of dollars to other nations. Al Gore and all of his minions should be ashamed of themselves.
The new term gaining alarmist popularity is “climate disruption”. This covers everything from too little snow to too much snow, too hot to too cold, too dry to too wet, too few hurricanes to too many hurricanes, the oceans too basic to oceans not basic enough (ocean acidification, scared yet?), etc., etc., etc.
Their constant need to rename the so called phenomena just proves to me that they have no idea what is really happening and are just trying to bilk us out of our money.
The new favorite term I’ve heard is “Climate Chaos” – it’s scarier.
Of course, anyone who knows about Chaos Theory knows that Climate chaos makes it *harder* to predict whether CO2 is a problem.
But the alarmists are moving to the term.
It’s not about money. It’s never been about money. Yes, some will make tons of money along the way – that’s just a bonus. Don’t be distracted by that.
It’s about control. It’s about Marxist ideology using crises (real or manufactured) to gain control.
Idealogues are far more dangerous than mere hucksters who are in it for the money. Power is a far more potent motivator than mere greed.
If you chalk it all up to being about the money, you are making the serious mistake of underestimating your enemy.
I would suggest that you get educated on climate change fairy tales first before you preach on pajama’s media. There is ample proof today that this is a fraud and a hoax perpetrated on the people by elites just like you. You cite one scientists against a wave of over 30,000 true scientists who believe likewise that chasing carbon dioxide off the earth is a waste of time. Of course lets first ignore that if what you say is even remotely true, why are we freezing our asses off this winter. No sane person believes this crap and I use it as a basic bull shit detector to guide my votes towards politicians, to make judgements about people and their brain power and a variety of other screens. Ever heard of East Anglia University?
We have enough on our plates right now trying to keep politicans from spending us into a debtors prison without giving them one more bogus program to spend money on “for our benefit and of course the children.” The children already will face a lower standard of living and a crushing debt from their parents, what they don’t need now is our woodstock generation spreading and supportiing more lies. We have done enough damage.
So thanks but no thanks to your article and you.
Any credence whatsoever given to the “global warming” thesis on the strength of computer models or closed-chamber experiments is horribly misguided. The Earth is not a closed system; moreover, it has historically behaved as an adaptive system, in which the rise of one influence has evoked a rise in a counter-influence. The warmistas have done their best to obscure these facts with their computer models, not one of which, with all the adjustments they can think of, has succeeded even at “backcasting” past changes in global or regional climates.
No evidence exists that supports the thesis that manmade “greenhouse gas” effluents would unilaterally and uncompensatedly unbalance global temperatures in either direction. Given the primitive state of climatology, we really should have known better all along.
As far as knowing better, I have from the start. I knew that CO2 makes up less than one half of one percent of earths atmosphere and has been so since it was first established three hundred years ago. I learned this fact nearly sixty years ago, in elementary school. Computer models are STATISTICAL models, and any competent statistician will tell you that statistics PROVE nothing, that is by definition. AGW is most definitely a HOAX perpetrated by liars quakes and fools.
My favorite statement from my math professor was
“all statistical models are wrong…however, some of them are useful”
Aint that the truth!
Useful at bilking the taxpayer!
Actually, most climate models are physical models, not statistical models. They are routinely used for weather forecasting, for example. In forecasting, they are pretty good out to about 5 days, when chaos takes over.
nice try!
but still: CO2 concentration rises as a consequence of global warming and therefor cant possibly cause it.
come on …
Hey, Paul, Al Gore agrees with you. In his “Inconvenient Truth” movie he points out a chart that shows exactly what you are saying, that CO2 rise lags behind global warming by about 5 years, which suggests that warming causes increased CO2 concentrations. But Al Gore is so stupid scientifically that he doesn’t realize what he is showing. For that and other errors he got an Academy Award and Nobel Peace Prize.
just a slight correction.
The Vostok ice data show that co2 level change lag the oceanic temperature change by 500-800 years. The Medieval Warm period MWP) was about 800 years. Thus, a good part of the current co2 level increase is tied to the MWP. Some of the current co2 increase is man-made as imputed by isotopic studies.
Thanks for setting me straight, friedfish.
jarmo
Paul – There’s a reason CO2 rises when the earth gets warmer: There is CO2 in the ocean (and not a small amount). Think of the ocean as a seltzer bottle. As the seltzer bottle gets warmer, it loses its fizz by releasing CO. That’s what the ocean does and that is why there can be a lag between a warming earth can be followed by an increase in CO2.
ps.: and if I may add: its a good sign, when members of the church of global warming start to advocate the idea, that by attacking there position, in the end both sides will loose ….
CPC’s Lee Lane is doing damage limitation here?
“Mankind, by burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests, is adding to the atmosphere’s stock of warming gases. If that process continues, all else being equal, simple logic tells us that the planet will warm further.”
Ah, there’s the rub. All else is not equal and will not stay the same. Consider the fact that plants take in CO2 and humans expel it. And the opposite is true with O2. Do you suppose that extra CO2 might cause more plants to grow and cause a cycle of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere? Simple logic tells us that there is a cycle.
It’s interesting how the data to “prove” global warming started out by measuring the mean temperature. But the scientists now talk about global climate change to anecdotally use the supposed extremes in the weather to bolster their case. They have moved the goalposts and claim that what they first proposed is true.
When certain folks see the ability to control others and earn lots of money in the process, it taints their motives and causes them to make stuff up and call it a documentary, fail to correct errors in their peer-reviewed articles, and write legislation to control what is uncontrollable. This is why Senator Inhofe and other dare call it a hoax.
OMG! More plants? We’ll be overrun. OH NO! Run for your life…
1) I do not accept the postulate that global climate change is caused exclusively by man’s interventions. What is certain to cause global climate change and has created change time and time again has been solar activity which is totally beyond man’s influence. Anthropogenic climate change is at best an unproven hypothesis.
2) All “solutions” proposed by the proponents of anthropogenic climate change always translate into Americans and Europeans lowering their standard of living. They are supposed to do this by not driving, not manufacturing and not keeping their homes at comfortable temperatures. The rest of the world is expected to not advance into industrialization or increase their standard of living at all. While there is a major emphasis on forced redistribution of wealth from the developed world to the undeveloped world we all know that the wealth will never actually enrich the lives of the people in those nations. It will go down the same rabbit hole more than 50% of humanitarian aid money goes. Corruption, theft by thuggish governments, shunted into the nearest war between thugs fighting a turf war.
3) I have yet to see or hear of any proponent of anthropogenic climate change hypothesis who actually walked the walk. They all still fly on aircraft, still ride in private vehicles. No matter if they are the latest Hollywood empty-head or politician. The sacrifice must come from OTHER people, not from them. Either one leads by example or one is not a leader. You can not live a lifestyle that dumps many tons more carbon into the atmosphere than I do and then lecture me on my way of life. I won’t stand for it.
The author says, “Hoax, really? Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish Nobel laureate chemist, first described the greenhouse effect in 1896. Science, then, has long known that carbon dioxide and some other naturally occurring gases in the atmosphere cause Earth to be about 30 degrees C warmer than it otherwise would be. ”
First – Paul Krugman is a Nobel laureate economist. Barack Obama is a Nobel laureate peacemaker. Enough on that score.
I am not a climate expert. But I do note that despite the scientific evidence (sic) no scientist who puts forth the evidence has been able to predict the weather trends accurately. None. I believe the closest estimates have been by individuals who put most of their focus on solar events, as opposed to manmade phenomena. Further, the author does not explain how mankind is to deal with the “carbon emisssions” of cows, men, volcanoes, etc. I don’t believe the climate scientists who promote global warming have earned any serious consideration.
This is so: we exist here comfortably as there is always a certain amount of warming due to the Greenhouse Effect (Planetary temperature formula, Tplanet = TG + Tsun √[rsun √(1 - α - β / 2) / 2d ] – TG is the natural greenhouse temperature, 36 degrees K). Basic stuff learned in Weather, Climate, and Atmosphere 101.
However, there are few if any atmospheric or weather processes that are positive feedbacks, that is that they oscillate out of control (“Tipping Points”). Instead, most are negative feedbacks that dampen themselves out.
THAT is a hallmark of the IPCC/AlGore/East Anglia/Fellow Travelers screed. In point of fact, virtually every scenario used by the afore-mentioned group are dire and catastrophic, and contain numerous never seen positive feedbacks.
Yes infrared absorbing gases help warm the Earth, but the absorption is inverse logarithmically related to concentration, not linear or exponential. So the effect of the first 30 ppm is equal to the next 300 ppm equal to the next 3000 ppm in impact. Carbon Dioxide at 370 ppm is a minor IR absorber compared to water vapor at 40,000 ppm on average. So doubling CO2 increases “greenhouse gases” by only 1% which contributes to absorption by a maximum of 0.1% and less for wavelengths where absorption is already near the maximum. This is confirmable by correlating troposphere temperatures to CO2 levels (there is none).
Blaming atmospheric CO2 levels on human contributions is also wrong. The oceans contain 60,000 times more than air and as water temperatures rise, CO2 is released to the atmosphere. So, global warming causes higher CO2. This can be confirmed in addition to the ice core data by checking Carbon isotope ratios.
Your point is valid, but your math is wrong. The log base is 2 and you used 10.
The first DOUBLING is equivalent in effect to the second DOUBLING.
Correct! Thanks.
This sort of open meeting of the minds is why PJM is the balls.
“simple logic tells us that the planet will warm further”
- And you lost me there & then; try common sense next time & see what you come up with. The “simple logic” demagoguery only works with simpletons.
You’ve got to stop treating the earth as a closed system when discussing these things. The upper atmosphere expands and contracts in response to the sun’s output, more heat in=more heat out of the system.
Not to mention, the absorption band of CO2 is nearly saturated so more CO2 means less warming per unit of CO2…and it doesnt start getting toxic for us until about 50,000ppm.
We can limit our growth all we want and its not going to make one iota of difference when juxtaposed with the sun’s variables.
But dont say that to James Hansen, he’ll tell you that their calculations well account for (the limited scope) TSI and that by now, man made effects have well overtaken the sun as our climate’s primary driver *guffaw*
Plant more trees, and stop the ethanol production farce…that would likely have more positive impact (regardless of ‘AGW’mythology) than trying in vain to reduce CO2 emissions. But that would involve developing country commitments as well…Once you’ve killed a forest it’s tough to bring it back.
It takes 30 yrs about to achieve a respectable stand of trees. If left alone they will come back of their own accord. I know this from experience. Of course, all bets are off, if there is a sustained attack on the growing things, like what has happened in NE Africa.
STRAW MAN ALERT. Contrary to the author, Sen. Inhofe doesn’t dispute the existence of “the greenhouse effect’ in raising earth’s temperature.
No, he disputes the claim that *man-made carbon dioxide* is having a significant effect in increasing temperatures beyond what naturally occurs. Arguably right, he opines that much support for it is a scam.
You lost me at “climate scientists”. Page two probably goes on to mention media experts. Nice try.
“…all else being equal…”
When you failed to follow up on this little qualifier and acknowledge that not only do we not know that “all else is equal” we don’t even know what “all else” is, I realized you were a hack and stopped reading. I’d like to say I’m baffled that someone with your background would not recognize that climate “science” has been so poorly conducted that we don’t have the data we need to even begin to understand it. You are right to state we need to consider economic and other impacts, but you seem to think the “science” is just fine. Anyone with honest scientific training (you know, trained in collecting data, calculating margins of error, etc.)would know that the first problem is the data has not been treated scientifically. Then, the hubris of the model builders, claiming (without proof) that their models are accurate (implying they know everything that influences climate) should be recognized as foolish. You give a pass to all that and seem to accept AGW as a scientific proven – it’s not.
Hmmm, sorry Mr. Lane. There is too much disparity, dissension and outright deception among scientists and governments to accept even the premise that global warming is a current or future threat to the world. Until scientists are able to align their modeled theories and actual data on climate change, the “theory” of global warming as a global threat is nothing but hot air.
You really shouldn’t refer to those hucksters as scientists.
Of course this is a hoax…water vapor has much more “greenhouse” effect than any carbon compound within the atmosphere. The difference is that trying to impose economic and political motives to that is impossible while CO2 is easy. This is particularly so given the ignorance of the media to really anything scientific…they only care about “motives”. The fact that the data had to be manipulated or was “lost” due to “storage problems” points directly to the fallacy of the entire of the entire enterprise. Had they been veracious they would be more than available…they would be trumpeted and any minor flaws expected without impacting the final conclusions.
Sorry, Lee. You need to do some digging. The status of the official temperature gathering sites in the US is dreadful. 90% of them have artificial influences that will cause a 1 degree Celsius warming indication. That error encompasses the whole of the supposed Global Warming Factor. http://www.surfacestations.org/
NASA and GISS have come out and stated that there is no Urban Heat Island effect and do not correct for biases arising from this fully-documented phenomenon.
Far from worrying about Global Warming, we should be paying attention to the fact that the Sun’s solar activity is at an alarmingly low level and this winter is curiously colder. This correlation is far more convincing than any model hyping the CO2 greenhouse impact. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/18/nasa-sunspot-number-predictions-revised-again/
The earth has been warming and cooling as a part of a natural cycle for eons. We may well have reached the peak of the latest cycle. Global cooling is likely to be far more devastating that warming. Imagine this year’s 100% crop loss in Mexico being an annual event then throw in losses in China, Russia and the US.
Global warming is (has been) real. Man-caused global warming is a hoax.
The continued lack of sunspot activity is chilling – no pun intended.
If we are on the verge of an event such as the Maunder Minimum AGW will soon be the least of our worries. Once we are in the grip of a ‘little ice age’ we won’t be quibbling about whether we should drive SUVs or a Prius. In a warm climate it is quite easy to provide food for 6 billion people. In a climate such as the little ice age – not so easy – even with our modern methods of farming.
Anyone know of a good sunspot dance? If the link above is any indication (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/18/nasa-sunspot-number-predictions-revised-again/) we may well see a turnaround of glacial shrinkage – and global temps drops the time-frame of a few years that could put political and social order in real distress. The world runs on oil but the people who live in this world run on food.
These are the facts about global warming/ climate change:
It is an existential issue, who ever gets it wrong will either die or be enslaved. Without carbon combustion billions will die. War of energy will be certain.
There will be no economical substitute for carbon and uranium fuels for the next century. The best technical people on earth have studied this intensely.
Americans has centuries of carbon fuel, and uranium under our feet. Due to government dictates, they are essentially illegal to use.
Senior Senators, senior government officials, and senior scientists are now reduced to calling each other liars. Some have good cause.
The professional standards of the global science paperwork is not up to what is legally required to engineer an apartment building. If you do not have the data, and checked calculations, you have nothing.
There are a lot of fools in Washington D.C. and elsewhere.
This is no way to run a nation’s most critical technical problem.
Due to the above, currently America is going out of business.
And when you scratch the surface of the environmentalists driving this stuff, you will find the “Sustainable Population” folks who think that a die-off is needed to reduce the world population. They are working to bring that about.
“There are a lot of fools in Washington D.C. and elsewhere.”
One of them being Mr. Lee Lane. It’s journalists like him who give hope to bigger fools like the U.N., Obama, the greens, G.E., Al Gore, etc.
When we can grow crops and raise cattle in Greenland like the Vikings did in the Medieval warm period, ca 950-100(?), then I will take all the blather about Manmade Global Warming more seriously. If you can’t explain how the world was warmer with 1/3 of the population and ZERO industry than it is today. You are completely full of crap.
Your post causes me to ask; “What did humans do to cause the Medieval Warming?” While you are at it how did they cause the Mini-Ice age?
“NASA and GISS have come out and stated that there is no Urban Heat Island effect and do not correct for biases arising from this fully-documented phenomenon.”
How…fraught. I still have thesis papers from the 1990s on that very topic, and clearly showed with good radiometric data that it does exist.
Precisely. But NASA and GISS assign MORE weight to the urban weather stations thus amplifying the impact. This is out and out fraud.
The scientist who does not question the purity of baseline data before drawing conclusions is either incompetent OR a scam-artist.
Let’s not forget the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They are on the AGW bandwagon also. And, who funds them? The Feds. Last year NOAA had their budget increased from previous levels. At one time they had the “Hockey Stick” graph on their website but removed it. As far as NASA, they were at the mercy of the Obama administration. Now that the Republicans are looking for spending cuts, I’m sure both NOAA and NASA will tone down their rhetoric.
The author is a fraud. Not to mention Global Warming. How could anyone right such drival with the amount of information available showing just how big a hoax this crap is?? Why are we still discussing this? Please stop writing articles, this is embarrasing.
Welcome to Planet PJM, Mr. Lane.
As long as this admin plans on spending so much on climate change policy and research, as well as regulate the energy industry out of existence (in the US) this is an issue that will dog us. The tipping point is approaching, and it’s in Washington.
It is fortunate that Obama can only sign the ‘checks’ coming out of Congress. It is Congress that writes them.
Of course he may find a way to make an end run – some way of financing what Congress refuses to.
Mr. Lane: May I direct you Jules Kalbfeld’s important paper: A Challenge to the Carbon Dioxide/Global Warming Connection. The bottom line is that while CO2 may add to global warming, there is too little of it to add very much. Moreover, humankind’s addition to CO2 is dwarfed by natural sources of CO2. Add to that the logarithmic relationship between temperature and CO2 (T = log(mass of CO2)), then whatever effect humankind has on temperature is simply noise. Let me also direct you to A.W. Montford’s masterful exposure of the fraud that is climate science in his book: The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science. Finally, you should look into work done by Lord Monckton on the issue of global warming to see just how bad the warmist forecasts have been. (And BTW Phil Jones of Hadley/CRU, a global warming hot spot, admitted before a Parliamentary committee that there has been no appreciable warming since 1993.) Any warming that is reported is all (Michael) Mann-made (up).
Let’s not forget the prestigious British Royal Society that has last October reversed their position on GW and stated that the science is still not settled. They also stated that there has been no GW for the past 10 years. These guys originally supported the case for AGW. In the meantome CO@ has been rising. Seems to me this suggests that there is no relationship between AGW and CO2.
Odd the author of this article – as many articles that support “AGW” fail to mention Robert Wood and his experiments in 1909.
Not only that but this article seems to briefly acknowledge cycles of cooling and warming. What they fail to address is the massive amount of water on earth and the soluability of Carbon dioxide in water.
CO2 is readily soluable in water The resistivity of pure water is ~18 Mega ohms per centeimeter – while after exposure to atmosphere resistivity of Water is ~1.8 mega ohms per centimeter – dut to carbon dioxide disolving in water.
Any one who has opened a soda knows if the soad is warm – more fizz that is more carbon dioxide is released into the Atmosphere. If the soca is colder – less fizz. Think of that globally – the warmer the water on earth – even a fraction of a degree – the more CO2 is released into the atmosphere the cooler the more CO2 is absorbed into the water.
It could very well be that CO2 is a trailing indicator of global warming.
Some interesting references, altho those who have convinced themselves that climate change is a hoax and a fraud probably won’t get it.
http://www.climateconservative.org subtitled: “what would Reagan do”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ subtitled: “getting skeptical about global warming skepticism”
#30 touche’ “The author is a fraud. Not to mention global warming……why are we still discussing this?”
Possibly because you and others who think the warming is a fraud and hoax can’t explain why almost every glacier in the world is receding. Ever been to Kilimanjaro?
And the forests in the vicinity were decimated, leading to dramatic changes in precipatition patterns. At least that’s the current leading theory. And they’ve been saying that about glaciers since I was a kid in the 60′s…and then along came AGW.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/28/kilimanjaros-snow-its-about-land-use-change-tree-cutting/
One referrence among many
Mentioning Kilimanjaro is funny – there seem to be things you do not get. The question is, will you ever. But just in case, check out American Scientist, The Shrinking Glaciers of Kilimanjaro. You may need to buy a PDF to download to get full access, or venture to a library for the back issue, but what price education? You know what I mean.
Both Phil Jones of the CRU, East Anglia and the British Royal Society stated there has been no GW in at least the past 10 years, while CO2 has been rising, which indicates there is no relationship between GW and CO2. Some claim that temperatures have actually been cooling. The alarmists are defending a house of cards. There has been evidence of trying to hide facts (Medieval Warm Period), sloppy “peer review” as seen on the UN IPCC 2007 report; using information directly from magazines and green promo literature; claiming that the earth is warming when there has been none for 10 years; not using proper statistical analysis on the “Hockey Stick” graph; personally attacking and demonizing skeptics; constantly referring to some “consensus of scientists”, half of who are environmentalists, and ignoring prominent scientists that are skeptical, etc., etc., etc.,
The following represents all that is wrong with AGW theory, a critique of the EPA justification for GW.
http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/DOC062509-004.pdf
“Possibly because you and others who think the warming is a fraud and hoax can’t explain why almost every glacier in the world is receding.”
I guess nobody informed you of the ‘recent’ ice age that ended some 10K years ago?
I would imagine those glaciers will continue to recede until some balance is achieved. Care to guess when that will be? Because that is when they will cease to shrink. And not before. Oh – and those glaciers actually grew during the ‘little ice age’ a couple hundred years ago. Hardly surprising that they would seem to be ‘rapidly’ receding since that was a very recent event.
Your argument is full of holes. Patch it up and come back for another go. I just love shooting!
If you think CO2 is destroying the world start crusading to replace coal plants with nukes and stop crusading to rip down the dams for hydro-electric power generation
Maybe you can even find some time to encourage telecommuting albeit I think you may be surprised at the obstacles put in your path by the same government bureaucrats and tort lawyers who are trying to make us fear the internal combustion engine.
The hoax isn’t the science, because scientists obviously don’t know whether man-made CO2 is a significant climate factor or not. Of course, they know it COULD be, and that’s enough for many of them, since their funding depends on pretending that it is.
The hoax is in declaring that something is true when they don’t know; in twisting the language to make it seem that there is an undeniable danger (“climate change”); in exagerating the impact of a factor that might or might not be significant; in doctoring data to support a political cause; and in using unproven speculations for political purposes that have nothing to do with the climate.
The author chooses to pick at one aspect of the hoax in order to attempt to prove it isn’t a hoax. All he does is reveal his own prejudices.
Maybe some scientists are willing to say they don’t know, but read Monford’s book which shows that those pushing AGW were committing fraud.
Idon’t doubt there is some climate change, and some of it might be caused by mankind. I am not sure we can do anything to effect the changes, and we are foolish to decimate our economy in trying. If there is warming, if we are prosperous we can deal with it better. I live in upstate NY, and if the winter weather was milder, we would use less fuel, thereby reducing our carbon footprint. Sometimes, these scientists are chicken littles, “the sky is falling!” What happened to the ozone hole?
Yeah, but Touche, there really ARE some climactic changes going on. Most are small effects, compared to the dire statements of the IPCC et al. Most of them can be easily explained by a variety of natural effects (increased solar output, long-term variability of ENSO, ADO, cosmic rays seeding increased cloud production, etc.).
Don’t confuse measurable and explainable weather changes and short-term climatological variations with the politics of AGW.
What we have is a period of natural variability, frankly really no different than any other naturally occurring one seen throughout the Climatological record. However, those basic facts have been taken and hyper-inflated into gloom and doom scenarios by agenda-driven people.
It’s funny…I keep pointing out to people, “and so? Even if so, the seas rise a few meters and the overall climate is warmer. Do you somehow believe this will make the human species roll over and die? We’ll merely move where we live and accommodate the change – just like our species has been doing for thousands, millions of years.”
I’m certain if I were some AGW crank, and I could go and blubber about rising sea levels to Ogg, an ancestor who’d lived through the last ice age, he’d slap me upside the head and say, “get a grip.”
When you observe things, they change. How many Philosphers and Scientists have spun this theme. I think we should call AGW advocates, change deniers…they want to stop change.
Now, this is what I call logic!
Bear: “I think we should call AGW advocates, change deniers…they want to stop change.”
/Win!
There it is in a nutshell. AGW “advocates” believe today’s climate is “perfect,” and it can be controlled by us hacker Apes. Yeah, OK. Then why did you jerks land several feet of snow on top of me, recently? S***s and Giggles?
I believe in the “Weak” Anthropic principle: that the various systems of the Earth, biological and climatological, act as if they are a semi-intelligent system. Unwelcome change is damped down, because the system has found it’s preferred state and resists unwanted change.
There’s also the “Strong” principle: This systems is alive and conscious (“The ‘Gaia’ Hypothesis). Yes, my Hibiscus will crap in my boots to let me know it wants a better form of plant food. Or else.
The “Null” principle says it’s a dumb animal, reacting on reflex.
Dunno, just making intelligent conversation here…
Well said. I like to suggest to AGW believers that they look at globe. Specifically, they should find the parallel for 45 degrees north latitude. Once they find that, look at how much of the earth’s surface is above that line. If the Earth warms up a little, and all of that land becomes a little more livable, isn’t that good? If we lose a few hundred square miles worth of vacation land on tropical islands but gain a few million square miles of farmland, aren’t we better off overall?
Paul from Hamburg – Now you’re beginning to think like an economist. You are asking the right question: What are the costs and what are the benefits of global warming? Next question: What are the costs and what are the benefits of taking actions that we think might (lot’s of uncertainty here) reduce purported AGW. My guess – lots of benefits from global warming, lots of costs (and no benefits) from taking action to reduce purported AGW.
“there really ARE some climactic changes going on”
This shows the brilliance of the marxist con. They take something that is 99.999% natural and 99.999% out of the control of human beings; call it as a crisis, and use that as a reason to demand total power. If you so much as dare to question the danger, AlToad will ask you “so you don’t think the climate is changing” with an arched eyebrow that demonstrates that you are a flat-earther. Brilliant.
Other suggestions.
- Sun spot crisis; will they ever get back to normal unless we do something about it NOW? Only a massive investment can save the planet.
- Reproduction crisis; some people are having fewer children, some more; unless we act now, the human race will disappear or eat the earth; taxes must be raised to avert the crisis.
= Breathing crisis; oxygen levels are changing, billions could die, trillions will be required to stabablize this critical component of the atmosphere.
- Asteroid crisis; no question the earth will eventually be hit with another asteroid; yes it will take the entire GDP of the world to develop the technology to detect and defeat the threat, but the alternative is extinction for the human race. We must act immediately. Nobody can know when the next asteroid will strike.
You forgot to mention the supervolcano under Yellowstone Park that is way past due to erupt. We need to start working to solve the problem NOW. We need to get the UN involved to levy taxes on the rest of the world, because if the volcano goes, the whole world goes. Can you imagine the Germans, Chinese, Russians, Iranians paying taxes to solve what can one day happen in the U.S.? Har-har-har.
Many AGW skeptics suspect not only the simplistic theory but also the data that has been trotted out to support it. For example, the graphs here:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/data-corruption-at-giss/
illustrate how past temperature data have been “adjusted” to support the AGW narrative. Such shenanigans would bring the SEC down on a private company faster than a chicken on a junebug, but tax-supported scientists in the alarmist camp do this pretty routinely. Such data “adjustments” have precipitated a recent scandal in Australia.
Thomas Jefferson (a naturalist who kept detailed records all his life) noted the current warming trend in 1809. Until the alarmists can explain why warming began a century before its purported cause even existed, they should not be taken seriously.
“If that process continues, all else being equal, simple logic tells us that the planet will warm further.”
When did ‘simple logic’ displace scientific discovery?
I suppose ‘simple logic’ kicked in right after the ‘scientific theory’ for that fairy tale known as AGW (AKA climate change – AKA climate chaos – AKA ‘no snow’ – etc etc) fell apart like the house of cards it really is eh?
Would that be an accurate statement?
Sorry, but it ain’t that ‘simple’.
You guys have more turns than a worm…
Several years ago a group of euroweenies of the green variety came to Canada’s frozen north for a first hand look at the melting of the ice (it isn’t) and the demise of the vanishing polar bear (they aren’t).
Totally unprepared for the minus 45% weather in blizzard conditions, they almost froze to death in their pup tents. Fortunately for them our crack team of arctic pilots flew in to the rescue, although they had to wait out the blizzard for a couple of days before they could land.
The previous account is true, however I don’t know if the following story is. I saw a version of it related by a commenter on Small Dead Animals blog.
Apparently one of the greenies ventured out by himself and came face to face with a polar bear. In an instant conversion, terrified, he fell to his knees and started praying. To his amazement the bear knelt down beside him and started praying too! “It’s a miracle”, he shouted. The bear opened one eye and looked at him saying. “Shut up, I’m saying grace.”
A couple of questions come to mind when reading this article. First, how did this writer get a job with the American Enterprise Institute? Why the need to disparage James Inhofe, the sole elected representative who had the courage to expose the fraud of Global Warming? Finally, an observation, this article is the exception to the rule that Pajamas Media is almost always a supplier of excellent commentary. Every publication whiffs now and then.
The difference in outlook seems to boil down to:
I look at the natural variability of the weather and climate, and if it’s become a problem, I think about how I can accommodate the problem. Period, end of discussion.
AGW proponents look at the natural variability of the weather and climate, and if it’s become a problem, they piss their pants and run in circles, making Wheeping sounds. “Oh, GOD! This change CAN’T be HAPPENING” (note the hysterical cadence implied).
WTF kind of species do these people believe we are?
How very disappointing. In many ways, they’re exactly like those who feature on “Ancient Aliens” on the History Channel: they’re completely bollixed by the possibility that the human species might be able to solve problems by themselves, without divine assistance.
Odd. We’re still here, despite all. Kinda *inconvenient*, that.
I gotta add, those are probably the three longest posts I have ever made on PJM, over several years.
Let’s see if I understand this: human breath – and that of all other mamals – is CO2 and even though it is an essential plant food, all human activity necessary for life, little things like keeping warm, cooking food, planting and watering food, not to mention breathing, should be stopped. I trust the writer supports that dunderhead Prince Phillip in wishing for a good virus to kill a goodly number of people because it is for the good of earth. Somehow I think the struggle is better defined as improving our lives as human beings not that of the earth which has and will outlast us all. Isn’t it chilling that these people never seem upset at the thought of killing and punishing other human beings when they are so sure it is the right thing to do. Have they sworn off having children? Are they going to stop themselves from emitting CO2? A fair question to ask it semms to me as they seem to begrudge anybody else’s continued existence. Where is George Orwell when you need him!
This is ridiculous. Last time I bother reading PJM. You lost me.
How come:
1. The same people preaching catastrophic manmade warming were predicting catastrophic manmade cooling until about 1990? What huge, demonstrable change in the data caused them to do a U-turn? Why do they never mention this? Do they think all of us of a certain age have forgotten the “New Ice Age” scare stories from the ’70s and ’80s?
2. The people terrified of manmade CO2 aren’t pushing as hard as they can for a massive ramp-up of nuclear energy? T. Friedman and other idiot-savants (mostly just idiots) of the left claim we need “a new Manhattan Project” on clean energy. But the original Manhattan Project was quite adequate to produce dependable (unlike that produced by “alternative” sources) CO2-free energy, if we’re supposed to be so worried about that. It might even be economical, too, if environuts would quit suing to stop it. Why isn’t Al Gore going around the world preaching that we, like France, should be producing 70% of our electrons with nukes? And mentioning, to boot, that France has no “nuclear waste storage problem.”
We could have a new Garden of Eden if we all drove nuclear-powered Volts and Leafs.
Just asking.
Stop on Allston. This is the “perfect temperature” for the planet syndrome is what is so funny about this charade.
It reminds me of the extinct species non sense. “A species is going to go extinct if we don’t do something!” Let’s stop industry to save this worm or that snail. In reality, 99.99 percent of all species that have ever lived on the planet are extinct. That is a fact. So to actually try and save a species we must go against nature. Species have been coming and going on this planet for millions of years, yet we man will save them? And always the solution is to stop our own economic improvement and development. Just another scam by these same pathetic folks who now brings us Global Warming.
I just said that on another web-site the other day.
Funny thing about the left: They believe in evolution, but can’t bear to watch it in action!
Sorry ment “spot on Allston.”
I am once again taking heart in the intelligence of my fellow man after seeing the overwhelming shout of “BS” from the responder to Lane’s article. You can see that “global warming” religion is still out there but trying now to reinvent itself or morph into some pseudo intellectual counter point that “both” will lose. The sooner people jump up and get in their face the better. We are sick and tired of this crap. These global warming morons can believe whatever crap they want to but no one is going to give a nickel in taxes or pay for their stupid theories. Thanks to the PJM for socking it to this writer.
Mr. Lane, Who is Phil Jones? Where’s his data? ……oops.
Mr. Lane, did your B.A. in European History give you this grand insight? What SCIENTIFIC credentials do you have, anyway? Believing in a surreptitious global wealth redistribution plan propagated using FAKED “science”, FAKED or NONEXISTENT data, and political control of “scientific” journals is NOT a scientific credential. Why is pajamasmedia.com even posting your tripe?
I think you have an error there. You said 30 degrees C, when I think you meant 3.
No reasonable person is disputing the fact of climate change, only the driving forces behind it, and which are 1st order effects, 2nd order effects, etc. Mr. Lane, Executive Director of the Climate Policy Center, expects to dismiss the skepticism of a very large number of Anthropogenic Global Warming climate scientists by referring to the work of Svante Arrhenius in 1896? Of course referring instead to the likes of Michael Mann, his now infamous “hockey stick” graph, Al Gore and his equally infamous and factually challenged docudrama, “An Inconvenient Truth” and the IPCC, all of whom have been resoundingly discredited in the Climategate scandal and elsewhere, would render this entire article misleading and irrelevant. It is indoctrinated and grossly inaccurate and falsely portrayed misconceptions such as the manufactured “GHG calamity” that have led to the current energy crisis faced in America as mounting evidence indicates that there is more than enough fossil fuels available domestically to make America energy independent and more, much more than that; fiscally solvent, fully employed and once again the envy and role model for the free world. Instead the likes of Mr. Lane have us in a quagmire of self flaggellation, collective guilt and the feckless “Green Revolution” sure to perpetuate Americas decline into mediocrity and international derision
The fact that the mating of two Orientals do not produce a Caucasian is also known as two Wongs don’t make a White. However this Author is not very convincing that the current controversy about the degree of mans contribution to climate change and what to do about it, is not a hoax, a power grab, and the last, best, man-made investment opportunity for the those who didn’t get rich playing the housing market by taking investment advice pulled out of their Fanny.
Those old as me remember a yesterday where the climate alarm was global cooling, a new ice age, food shortages, people freezing to death from lack of fuel , etc. Those poor olde perpetrators didn’t have the hucksters of today and they never got enough traction to accelerate into a climate catastrophe illusion.
Today the Government has bought into controlling SeeOhTwo, etc., and while they are still allowing us to breathe they are concerned with our exhaling. Our Founders said our freedom came from God, but now our right to exhale is provided by the EPA. It is too bad that our founders were so naive as to not say the right to breathe and to burn also came from God.
While the Government is not yet coming after the population of sinning breathers, they are going where the money is, the corporations that produce the power we need to live our used-to-be free lives. The hucksters will use Government quotas on SeeOhTwo and the “free” market, to start a cap and trade right to make power, which is where enough money resides to make it worth the huckster’s while.
After control of the power industry, it will be every vehicle, each household and then every breath. They are like gun control advocates, going after the easy marks, the law abiding citizens, and letting the criminals run loose, while the cap and traders let the criminal volcanos shoot whenever they please, because they are helpless to do otherwise.
Many Americans realize we cannot allow the Government to control how we heat, cool, eat, drink, move-about or breathe and remain free. Congress can defund the EPA and any other Government agency, perhaps the FCC, that attempts to overstep its Constitutional authority.
Then for decisions on the man made climate change we should continue the satellite collection of data, and watch day by day and year by year how the extrapolation from computer models using the data meets the reality around us. It will take at least twenty years of doing so before there is a chance of making any conclusions based on science that has data and models able to reliably predict short and long term. And twenty years is not too long to wait, since nothing has happened since the Kyoto agreement except the models failed and it got cooler.
This is the fairest treatment of the debate I have read. It sums up very well the problems I have with some pundits (like Limbaugh) who flat out deny the possibility of global warming.
At 6 billion people, and doubling several times per century, our population is catching up to the earth’s resources. We long ago passed the 1 person per square mile marker, and today we are up to about 30 people per (that includes oceans). There may not be enough people yet to affect the atmosphere, but that can’t remain true forever.
On the other hand, the article points out that there is not enough data to draw strong conclusions. Meanwhile, theories based on this weak data have been granted the status of certainty. From an economic standpoint, this is like me telling you I was 55% certain I could make you money. So I want you to cut your total spending by 25% and give it to me to invest.
Rush is wrong on this one, but that doesn’t mean that climate crowd is right either. The real answer is “we don’t know yet”. Anyone claiming certainty is leading you astray.
There is no doubt among credible scientists that anthropogenic climate change is real, scientists have been predicting it since the late 19th century.
The physical evidence is overwhelming and has never been in doubt, only certain nuances such as:
how quickly re the coastlines worldwide being drowned, along with the homes of billions of people?
The quantity of sheer hot air in his comments thread makes me want to give up on democracy altogether and pray for a global dictatorship that would stay in power long enough to:
1) control greenhouse emissions, protect habitats and biodiversity
2) lower the human population back to sustainable levels – probably circa 1 billion
3) institute a global eugenics program so that everyone on earth would be MUCH smarter than most of the people who post here
Which now places you in with the nuts, too.
We have to embrace our fellow men and women, boys and girls as they are all part of the Great American Experience. Maybe the embrace will be boa-like, but chatter about eugenics, while slightly clever in this context, is sort of like using the n-word.
Have you hear the joke about the birther and the jihadist, who meet at a bar? I forget how it goes, but you can just make it up.
It seems logical to suppose that taking all the carbon sequestered for millions of years in petro deposits and spewing it out into the atmosphere over a relatively short period of time just might have some effect on the climate, but the AGWers have such complicated and possibly falsifiable sets of “data” that one almost has to be skeptical.
Nice. Because you have a perverse sense of omniscience, you wish others dead? I wouldn’t worry about the population issue. People that think like you will care of it one way or another.
The trouble is AGW’ers refuse to concede that their underlying premise is unproven. Yet the science is settled. And that’s enough for the useful idiot eugenicist.
Yes, greenhouse warming does exist. As the article points out if it did not exist earth would be about 30 deg C colder. However, this does not mean that more CO2 will have any further effect. The equation to consider is dI/dC = kI where I is light intensity and C is concentration of absorbing substance. The constant k is for a given wavelength. This law, known as Beer’s Law, has been understood since 1850. In practice this equation is a compound interest type equation. In our atmosphere 20 ppm of CO2 will absorb 80% of the infrared at wavelengths where light absorption happens. That means that by the time CO2 has reached 100 ppm for all practical purposes 100% of the infrared has been absorbed. Addition of further CO2 simply lowers the altitude at which a practical 100% of the infrared has been absorbed. At the preindustrial level of CO2 of 280 ppm 100% absorption happened by an altitude of 100 meters. All added CO2 does is make this very low altitude absorption happen a little bit lower. But it will not heat the atmosphere as a whole a bit more. In fact the added intensities of thermals generated may well reduce surface temperatures due to added cloud formation.
I understand lawyers in Washington know nothing at all about math. It is very dangerous to have people making law when they have no clue about science.
I’d be curious to see how the ‘models’ perform as a predictor of Venus’ temperature, which proves your point. The Atmosphere there is in the 80%+ range CO2 from what I recollect. The clouds are so thick that….
Venus isn’t that good a proxy for our own weather/climate dynamics. Venus has/had a reducing atmosphere, which means that over time it lost most of it’s H and O2, such that the entire atmosphere is now a hellish mix of Nitrogen and CO2.
I know that. My point is about modeling, not whether its a good proxy. In fact it shouldn’t be called modeling at all…that implies that we know all the variables and how they interact…which would then give it’s predictive ability some credibility. Right now, they aren’t credible. And they are necessarily simplistic, given that a true process model would require capacity that doesn’t exist. So we resort to statistics and correlations based on inconsistent data collection, and then dress it up with CGI.
Well, it IS a proxy inasmuch as it’s an example of “extreme” greenhouse warming. But due to the different solar insolation, different atmospheric composition, different atmospheric depth and pressure, it’s not a good proxy in this regard. That’s what I’d meant.
I agree about modeling. In school, I used to write a variety of them (PCI scripting language on SparCs), and frankly, I could make that model do any damned thing I felt like. More important to this conversation and to agree with you, as J. Fred Singer once said, “models aren’t evidence.”
Venus has a surface pressure of 90X earth’s surface pressure. The atmosphere is about 96% CO2. In addition there is a lot (from a greenhouse gas standpoint) of CO, H2O, sulfuric acid. etc. Earth’s atmosphere does have some areas in the IR that are transparent. Just ask any astronomer. They observe at those open wavelengths. Venus has no open wavelengths in its atmosphere due to its different chemical composition. Also, due to its high surface temperature it radiates from the surface at a considerably shorter wavelength and higher intensity compared to earth. Add in dust suspended in the Venus atmosphere and making any comparison to earth is about like comparing rubber boots to a sniper rifle. And that is before considering higher insolation.
Just in the last 1000 years we have had a period where the earth’s climate was warmer than present by several degrees. That is when Greenland was settled by the Vikings. Then earth returned to about today’s climate and froze the settlers out of Greenland after they had been there doing fine for over 100 years. A few hundred years latter we had the “little ice age” that took a huge toll on mankind. It was several degrees colder than the last 150 years. All in all the historical record shows earth’s climate varies a bit and persistent warm and cool periods can last a hundred years or more. And no one really has a clue why these historical extremes happen. Likely there are multiple independent reasons. With multiple reasons and small changes it will be very hard to ever figure out what caused them and even harder to predict when the next extreme will happen.
Exactly. It’s atmospheric optical depth, scattering, absorption, emission…all operate quite different than Earth. As I recollect it, it’s an entirely unique energy balance equation; by definition, it would have to be. A lousy analogue for processes occurring on Earth.
Despite it having experienced a runaway greenhouse effect in the distant past, the very reasons it did so are not comparable to Earth. A very spotty geomagnetic field and a bit too much insolation (Venus is right on the extreme inner edge of the “Goldilock Zone”) started it (a combination of low atmospheric escape velocity, increasing planetary temperatures and solar wind), and it just kept going and going until the planet is what we see today. And, of course the absence of a large companion moon to assist in stripping away excess atmosphere didn’t help.
Which is kinda funny, considering the entire AGW argument. The extreme greenhouse effects as seen on Venus are sometimes used by them as an example of what could happen on Earth. Bat Guano. They’re two entirely different animals. Any Planetary Science Frosh in his first 101 class could tell them that.
You’re all blasphemers. The Gods are angry and will wipe out humanity unless a proper sacrifice is made to Lord Volcano.
I have spoken to the Lord God of Fire, and he demands the sacrifice of Al Gore. He must be thrown into Hawaii’s most active caldron by a group of politically correct lovers of jihad while they sing “Out, out! Damn spot!” backwards.
This, and only this, will prevent us from being eaten by zombies.
Twelve persons have verified this.
Thirteen.
“This, and only this, will prevent us from being eaten by zombies.”
Yes, but I can save on my Homeowner anti-Zombie insurance from Geico…
As an engineer, I’m all for clean energy. The fact is that if environmentalists are sincere about global warming, we would be building nulear power plants across the country as the 1st step in controlling emissions. No movement on that front means that they are not as concerned as they say. Instead, we build more gas fired plants to meet projected needs.
I’ve been waiting for 35 years for solar energy to become economical. That goal has always been “just around the corner” and still is. Large scale wind power? Fine, if you don’t mind the unpredictable lulls (blackouts).
Fusion power is the ideal, but we are still decades (optimistically) away from the systems needed to contain such reactions.