The nice thing about the term “Climate Change” is that it covers all possibilities. The Daily Mail reports:
Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997. …
Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food. …
AdvertisementAnalysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.
What this represents is an empirical test of the hypothesis that solar activity affect the earth’s climate more than Greenhouse Gases. Watts Up With That describes how the estimates of the sun’s activity are predicted.
What drives Sol, in turn, is the subject of a theory called the Great Conveyor Belt, “a massive circulating current of fire (hot plasma) within the Sun. It has two branches, north and south, each taking about 40 years to perform one complete circuit. Researchers believe the turning of the belt controls the sunspot cycle.”
According to NASA scientist John Casey, the drop in the solar activity will lead in turn to cold weather. Five years ago, Casey predicted there would be rising temperatures because models at the time predicted a heightened solar activity. But now that new data suggests a decline, his theory compels a prediction of global cooling.
So what’s the truth? The answer is that we shall see. The coming years will provide a data point on whether or not there is a likelihood that terrestrial climate is related to what goes on in the sun. But it is just a data point. Casey argues that the pattern has a 90% fit with past data. So the question is whether the correlation will be borne out in the future.
“We today confirm the recent announcement by NASA that there are historic and important changes taking place on the sun’s surface. This will have only one outcome – a new climate change is coming that will bring an extended period of deep cold to the planet. This is not however a unique event for the planet although it is critically important news to this and the next generations. It is but the normal sequence of alternating climate changes that has been going on for thousands of years. Further according to our research, this series of solar cycles are so predictable that they can be used to roughly forecast the next series of climate changes many decades in advance. I have verified the accuracy of these cycles’ behavior over the last 1,100 years relative to temperatures on Earth, to well over 90%.”
But science ought not to consist of a rush to judgment from one theory to the other. The great danger of presenting something like AGW as “settled science” is that it opens the whole position to being undermined by new empirical evidence. If there turns out to be no correlation between the solar cycles and climate, the AGW crowd will be trumpeting the fact from every media hilltop. But if — as seems not unlikely — the sun’s activity does drive terrestrial climate to a large extent, what then?
What of those billions of dollars invested in carbon trading? In zero-carbon houses and building codes? In the excoriation of climate criminals? Can people sue to get their money and reputations back? Probably not. After all, the Climate Change advocates meant well.
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $3.99, print $9.99
Quick editorial note — The first link should be called Watts Up With That, versus What’s.
[/pedantry]
fixed
Yeah great. Thanks for busting my delusions about climate change. ok, call me clueless, but are you trying to tell me that even climate change propaganda, like the stock market, is rigged?
How often have we heard it said
That we must stop it or be dead
It matters not what we must stop
It matters not, it’s just a hop
A skip and jump to ocean rise
Propelled by very subtle lies
Announced by people who will be
Enriched by saps like him and thee
Who bought the global warming scam
As folks like Gore then tried to ram
A fraudster scheme like cap and trade
Whereby their fortunes would be made
And now we’re told that it’s the sun
Not CO2 that is the one
That drives the climate of the Earth
So let me say for what it’s worth
That only fools were taken in
By all that settled science spin
From very first I shouted Bah!
I always knew ‘twas Amon Ra
Yes; the 10-10 video shows just how well meaning the AGW believers are.
Climate change is more accurate then Global Warming. Call it what you will the key point is that there is no evidence that humans affect Climate Change any more then they affect Global Warming.
This really upsets those who plan on using Global Warming/Climate Change to con billions of earthlings out of their hard won cash. To the Watermelons I say, ‘Get over it.’
Talk about yer inconvenient truths, we’ll all have to get as fat as Algore if we can!
Wait – maybe that’s why there’s an epidemic of obesity, because it’s getting colder and it’s a natural reaction to signs our science barely even knows how to detect! Yeah, that’s it. Pass the organic gravy, Maude.
–
Good article tho, I’ve saved it aside.
Damn–the very notion that the Sun might be the primary determinate of climate is heresy plain and simple. It would mean that no amount of intervention by the Wise could ever affect it one way or the other. And if you have something that can’t be made better by central planning and regulation, what good is it?
Its far better to pretend that such things don’t exist. We need to do that for the children and our Dear Leaders, although not necessarily in that order.
Wretchard: “…the Climate Change advocates meant well.”
“They meant well”…ah, yes, the ultimate reason.
Though a 100 million may die in the process of getting their program implemented, at least they meant well.
Ya know over the last few million years, for roughly 80% of the time the earth has been in an ice age in roughly 100,000 year widely varying cycles. With the last ice age ending approximately 16,000 years ago, give or take depending on who you read, heading into a new period of global cooling should not be cause for joy, for one of these days that global cooling cycle could turn out to be an ice age. In the last ice age, the ice sheet over the upper midwest was supposedly 1/2 mile thick which was probably I think bad for property values.
They changed from “global warming” to “climate change” a few years ago when the weather wasn’t cooperating. Somebody with more motivation could document this change in Google, and probably find the rationalizations.
Three years ago the city I live in had a couple weeks of freak snow and a lady in my building said “It’s climate change because it’s the weather going crazy, not just warming!” or something along those lines.
The great danger of presenting something like AGW as “settled science” is that it opens the whole position to being undermined by new empirical evidence.
Empirical evidence???? Hey, AGW theory was “peer reviewed”! Al Gore’s movie about it won an Oscar! Hollywood celebrities and feckless royal family members believe it! Journ0lists write stories about it! Who the hell cares what the sun and the earth think?????
Solar Green
Washing machine
Everybody needs one
Because it’s powered by the sun
And government guaranteed loans by the ton
Obama’s got the latest one
It launders money really clean
This solar green washing machine
It washes money very fast
With theatrics not made to last
Into the machine pours taxpayer cash
From the other end comes government trash
Because it’s powered by the sun
It washes money by the ton
And it’s controlled by the “One”
With this machine wealth will redistribute
Of that there can be no dispute
From the many throughout the the lands
Into a few corrupted hands
Albert Gore has one too
He bought his when they were new
Washing money is done by more than a few
Don’t believe me ask the shrew
It’s mostly taken from me and you
Although the Chinese pay their share too
How kind of the anthropogenic global warming crowd to admit, without fanfare, that their foundational assumption that CO2 levels produced high temperatures is really so much hot air.
From this fiasco we should learn that science, per se, can only be trusted when it becomes engineering.
Well, we did have a period of global warming prior to 1997, but Big Brother wants you to believe it’s still happening, and that CO2 is the cause, and that it has nothing to do with the big yellow ball in the sky.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/climategate_how_to_hide_the_su.html
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/12/climate_change_its_the_sun_stu.html
I have a wacky theory that furnace in my basement might be affecting the temperature in my Living Room but my real smart neighbor with a PhD tells me it is all the carbon dioxide I am exhaling that really affects the climate in my living room. One of us is an idiot.
The AGW argument is not going to be resolved by scientific evidence. The science IS well known and carbon is what they call on Wall Street a trailing indicator. When the climate warms you get more plant growth and with plant growth you get respiration and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The carbon does not cause the warming but rather is the result of the warming. Stopping carbon emissions will not affect climate one way or the other but it will ruin economies, cost jobs, increase poverty, wars, famine, pestilence, shorten lives, and generally make life here on earth shorter and more brutish than it already is.
The AGW alarmists actually want to ruin the economy and all the rest because they are ideologically driven to undermine capitalism and the bourgeoisie. Well OK some of them are just naive ninnies who have been duped by the socialist/communist ideologues who have latched on to AGW as a tool of global revolution but those ninnies aren’t smart or effective enough or driven enough to push this foolishness in the face of evidence and common sense. AGW is all about politics and nothing to do with science
Chicken Little and the kid who cried wolf were Progressive Communists?! Well, Hell’s bells.
Anyone who screams gimme the power is NOT the person to whom you give the power. This should have been the second commandment.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/79485476/Letter-from-Bishop-Sample-on-Religious-Liberty
Bishop of Marquette’s letter about the Obama Administration’s mandatory contraception rule being applied to all Catholic institutions within one year
This seems to be the top story of the week, and perhaps the month. Who in the hell do these people think they are? The question sort of answers itself, doesn’t it?
16. “AGW is all about politics and nothing to do with science.”
Really? I have been assured many, many times that indeed a scientific consensus existed. That consensus existed because the science concerning AGW was settled. I was assured of this by scientists.
http://zenpundit.com/?p=5226
Some more confirmation of Wretchard’s thesis about the glamor of joining the guerillas in the Philippines, this from Columbian girls who ran away to join the FARC:
….Boredom also contributes to a sense of being lost. In rural areas and urban slums, insurgency seems to provide excitement for those whose lives are devoid of it.[21] This theme appears over and over when former insurgents explain their motives. Ribetti, for instance, heard it from Colombians, particularly from the female insurgents she interviewed who sought to escape the tedium of a woman’s life in rural areas.[22] Louise Shelley observed that youth violence and association with terrorism is often linked to “the glamour of living dangerously and the adrenalin flow that is associated with living precariously.”[23] States not susceptible to insurgency have proxies for youth boredom and the need for excitement which drains these impulses into less destructive channels, whether video games, violent movies, sports, or fast cars. Societies without alternatives–particularly ones where the educational system has collapsed like Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and he tribal areas of Pakistan can see boredom be channeled into political violence.[24]
“After all, the Climate Change advocates meant well.”
A lot of people will argue the toss about this. They often revealed themselves to be arrogantly rushing towards a global control scenario. They denied the possibility that there could be other causes of warming, and then they tried for years to deny that the warming had stopped. First they tried to say that “no scientists disagreed”, then they tried to discredit those who did.
The unhealthy cartel of catastrophists ended up co-opting the mainstream media, arts personalities, academics, and ultimately even the formerly respected bodies such as NASA in America and CSIRO in Australia.
Politicians either loved the idea and ran with it (even winning elections) or were too cowed by the pressure of so many opinion-makers to take an opposing view – even though it became evident to many in the general public and the blogosphere that the whole thing was dodgy and poorly thought out. Calculations have been done even by the “sceptical believer” in warming Bjorn Lomberg that things like carbon taxes and CO2 reductions would do little if anything at huge cost over many years. Just as Europeans were deceived about implementing their loss of sovereignty, Australians were deceived about the carbon tax in more ways than one.
I’m not feeling very forgiving about this. We’ve even had a journalist suggest that deniers should have their foreheads tattoed! If it was a joke it was rather bitterly done, and in some quarters fairly bitterly received and commented on.
I think they meant to control, and trust has been destroyed on a number of fronts.
and with plant growth you get respiration and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
Carbon dioxide is THE major plant fertilizer. Surprised?
NASA spent a fortune forty plus years ago trying to close the food cycle for space flight/ LEO space stations.
It was quickly discovered that decent performance was ONLY possible if the partial pressure of carbon dioxide was lifted — tremendously.
This gambit is still used by those trying to synthesize bio-diesel.
The NEXT most important fertilizer is ‘fixed’ nitrogen — i.e. nitrogen in a ‘reduced’ state: ammonia, amines, ureas…
( Obviously, water is a huge factor, but no one assumed differently. )
——-
So, a SERIOUS percentage of the global harvest is DIRECTLY due to the increased partial pressure of carbon dioxide created by modern events — normally dominated by volcanoes. (!)
If the Carbonists were to have their way the biota would HAVE to shrink accordingly.
——–
It is commonly supposed that plants generate oxygen from carbon dioxide. When this was examined via atomic chemistry in the 1960s Science was shocked: it’s NOT TRUE.
It turned out that ALL of the oxygen released back into the atmosphere by plant growth comes from WATER. The oxygen that is incorporated in carbon dioxide stays behind to become carbohydrates — the structure of the plant.
So, carbon dioxide is an energy partner with water and photosynthesis to create the biota we all know and love.
Further, it is the RATE LIMITING chemical, most of the time.
That’ what bio-diesel engineering is re-discovering.
(If cannabis growers ever figure this out there will be a hot trade in bottled fizz.)
The earth is a small rock travelling through outer space where the temperature is nearly absolute zero and the blackness acts as a tremendous absorber of radiant energy. Given all of that, my vote has always been to be relaxed about a warm earth.
Excuse me, I’m a bit slow here.
Am I correct is saying the YouTube video by 1010Global.org that Wretchard linked was supposed to advocate belief in AGW? Is it correct to assume that the folks who made that video are genuinely advocating that people who do not believe in AGW (including children) should be murdered?
When I first saw that movie, I was assuming it was not so subtle anti-AGW propaganda. If the people who made that video were genuinely trying to win converts to the cause of believing in AGW then they may have the distinction of having achieved the greatest propaganda-fail in human history.
There was an amazing amount of hate driving that video. The people behind it probably need some psychiatric help. At the very least, they are seriously dangerous. I wonder how much of the mindset behind that video is driving the Left? If it’s more than 30%, then we have a very serious problem on our hands, i.e. there are a significant number of people out there calling themselves “leftists” who need to be in a padded cells and under sedation.
Come to think of it, that video is consistent with the notion that AGW is the “elephant in the room” and all other issues including the imploding world economy and the rise of Islamic fascism are utterly irrelevant. When you step into that mindset, it’s no wonder that we’re currently cursed with Obama as our President.
How did we allow ourselves to get into this situation?
24. Eggplant
I know you are being sarcastic here but for others who may not have seen this video:-
the 10-10 video was first presented in September 2010. Its message is that non-believers in AGW will be destroyed. The 10-10 people are so far gone that they thought this video was a compelling argument for sending them money. Someone told them that, no, the video would not make them universally popular and they took it off their web site. Too late because millions of people (like me) had already downloaded and kept safe their contribution to world peace and universal love.
Visit their innocuous girl scout website here to see the wholesome smiling facade that covers the beast within.
b @ 22: (If cannabis growers ever figure this out there will be a hot trade in bottled fizz.)
they know already, dood.
–
e @ 24: Excuse me, I’m a bit slow here.
was a news item early in the Obamanation, whoever the original sponsor was pulled it back after it didn’t go over so well, I forget the exact story but you could probably google it.
There was an enormous amount of hate driving that video.
Orwell argued that “social progress” meant nothing unless it provided an opportunity for one side to vanquish the other. Utopias meant nothing. They were just an excuse for the feeling of triumph they were after.
The important thing about every revolutionary struggle was it provided the opportunity to hate; it gave people the chance to feel superior; to lord it over others. Short of immortality the greatest buzz on earth was to see others rushing about your whim and direction. It was an acknowledgement of your superiority; your power. Orwell wrote that nothing was worthwhile attaining unless it was compelled.
So it doesn’t really matter whether the Green Energy projects work at all, or whether jobs are increased. If energy usage was reduced or jobs grew unplanned, through the free operation of the self interest of others, then who could take credit for it? And what is the use of a world for the great men can take no credit? What counts is the power to direct people hither and yon. Where they go is inconsequential beside the fact of who calls the tune.
But not the links between master and slave. The most concentrated form of pleasure isn’t sex, it isn’t scientific knowledge. It power. I think CS Lewis had it right when he observed that in the end there will only be two kinds of people. Those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done’; and those to whom God says, ‘thy will be done’. And since there’s no God, or ought not to be if power is to be untrammeled, then there is only one kind of real man. The one whose will be done.
Over the years I’ve come to believe that Orwell was only half right. He was right that Utopias have nothing to do with the ultimate issues. Tyrants and resisters do not dispute the shape of some Earthly Paradise in some future. What they dispute is the here and now.
A man can never attain to paradise on earth. But he might, if he tries hard enough, come into himself. All a man can realistically aspire to is to live and die free. It seems little enough to ask until one sees how many chains are prepared by those who would impose their will upon others.
Eggplant @ 24: “How did we allow ourselves to get into this situation?”
It was us, all right. We allowed the educational system to be corrupted. Andrew Carnegie knew from personal experience that a person who knew how to read could learn anything, and used the wealth he earned to build libraries. But we stood aside and let activists turn schools from a place where children learned basics into a place where children instead spend their time learning that Heather has two mommies and no banana is complete without a condom on it.
Why did we stand aside? Probably because just a few decades ago we thought we were untouchably wealthy. We were building nuclear power plants and sending men to the moon. Just a few more regulations and one or two more lawyers to enforce them and life would be perfect.
Interesting that our self-declared superiors in the Political Class are now so concerned about “sustainability”, meaning global warming or climate change. They ignore the much closer unsustainability of governments subsisting on newly-printed money, or of the demographic collapse about which Mark Steyn has written so persuasively.
Yet too many of us still kow-tow to the Political Class. We have got the dysfunctional government we deserve. Fortunately, this situation is unsustainable and will self-correct. Unfortunately, the self-correction will be hard on most of us.
stevesmith @ 25,
Actually, I wasn’t being sarcastic. I’m genuinely shocked. The first time I saw that video was 40 minutes ago when I linked it from Belmont Club. I’m still utterly amazed that the people behind that video could be so stupid. I checked their website and apparently most of their mainstream corporate sponsors have jumped ship. Looks like 1010Global.org successfully committed suicide. However, I’m still staggered by the raw hate behind that video.
Years ago, I removed the television antenna from the roof of my house and disconnected from cable. I closely control the family’s access to the media. I do this mainly because I have young children in the home. For the most part this has proven to be a wise decision but once in a while I get blind sided by something that was common knowledge a couple years ago.
19. Kaz
One of my pet peeves about the whole AGW mess is just what a scientist is. I looked it up and discovered that ‘scientist’ has two distinct meanings.
In the first world a scientist is anybody that uses the scientific method to earn their pay check.
In the 3rd world a scientist is anyone with an advanced degree (Masters or better).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientist
If one takes one of the famous lists of ‘scientists’ the AGW crowds bandies about and Googles a random sample of the names on that list, one does not find scientists in the 1st world meaning. One finds administrators, bureaucrats, professors, etc.
IE: those feeding at the trough of global warming.
The guys in the lab with their test tubes were not on any list.
That is why I think the EPA needs to be changed from a regulatory body to a research group, sorta the DARPA of the environment.
Climategate I & II proved that the leaders of the AGW movement are conspiring to manipulate the data to produce the results they want. That isn’t science, it’s fraud. They need to be in jail with real scientists in the 1st world sense of the word taking over data collection and analysis.
W @ 27,
More from George Orwell on the subject of obedience to Big Brother – strike that – more on the subject of the requisite love for Big Brother:
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others… We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we’re doing… Power is not a means, it is an end… The object of power is power… Always there will be the intoxication of power… We are the Priests of Power… Power is power over human beings, over the body; but above all over the mind… The real power; the power we have to fight for night and day is not power over things but over men. How does one man assert his power over another… by making him suffer… Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing… We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back… Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling; everything will be dead inside you… You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves… We’ll cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman… In the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth as one takes eggs from a hen… Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card… There will be no loyalty except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love except the love of Big Brother… There will be no heart, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science… Do you begin to see then what kind of world we are creating… a world of fear and treachery and torment… ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement; everything else we shall destroy…it will be a world of terror… The more the party is powerful the less it will be tolerant; the weaker the opposition the tighter the despotism… Always we shall have the heretic at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible; and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord. That is the world that we are preparing.” George Orwell – 1984
And if you don’t love and go along with Big Brother, and man-made global warming, and 10-10, then they will just have to “take care of you.”
“You will be lifted clean out from the stream of history. We shall turn you into gas and pour you into the stratosphere… You will be annihilated in the past as well as in the future. You will never have existed.” George Orwell – 1984
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”
It’s a lot of work stamping all day, I hope it’s not very common, as I doubt it’s very efficient.
Dystopias can be a bit more subtle, along the lines of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”. If there’s a boot, you can’t even see it.
Mini ice ages happen every 500-550 years. The last one was from 1500-1800. The warm period was from 1250-1500. Before that 950-1200 was the mini-ice age following a warm period from 700-950.
There was a mini-ice age from 400-700 following the warm period from 150-400. Another mini-ice age from 150bc to 150 AD. There are no temperature records from these times. Just the Nileometer records, references to the Tiber freezing, crop failures and bumper crops in Sicily. Also, tree ring data from very old trees, migrations caused by crop failures, and flooding from the river Jordan. This type of data goed back to the founding of Ur.
A mini-ice age is upon us and soon snow will fall in Texas, California and Arizona (once again). And the Mexicans will go home looking for warmer weather.
This is another fiendishly clever plan by Rupert Murdoch to extract more money from poor innocent nature lovers by prepping for a re-release of the 20th Century Fox property “The Day After Tomorrow.”
Shit! You mean man has lost his place as the center of the Universe?? Well thank you *very* much Copernicus!
33. sol
Well, you should know.
#16 Joe Hill – Where is the data coming from that leads to the conclusion of CO2 being a trailing indicator for climate?
It is probably true that up to perhaps 1830 that was the case for the simple reason that up until about then (and perhaps a few decades later) respiration of life-forms was the only source of CO2 (with a minor contribution from seasonal fires). Fossil carbon was a vanishingly small source – though not zero; the volatiles from suface seeps of oil had to go somewhere!
That is no longer the case.
Of Red-Green’s Fall.
…-
“Harper’s smarter
On green energy, the PM was right. His critics were wrong”
“If Canada’s “green” media — especially in the Parliamentary Press Gallery — demanded the same standards of accountability of themselves as they do of politicians, they would be killing entire forests right now apologizing to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Why? Because in sidestepping the economically suicidal stampede onto the green energy bandwagon which they relentlessly shilled for, Harper was right and they — along with the Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Greens — were wrong.
Today, so-called “green” energy is in retreat all over the developed world, as taxpayers and consumers in countries that blindly raced into it are in open revolt against paying exorbitant, ever-rising prices for unreliable, inefficient power sources that don’t lower carbon dioxide emissions.
Germany is poised to slash public subsidies for solar energy — which sent shares in solar companies crashing world-wide — because it can’t afford the grossly inflated, 20-year feed-in-tariffs it has been paying for energy that’s so unreliable. It has had to import nuclear power from France and the Czech Republic this winter to avoid blackouts, plus restart an old, oil-fired electricity plant in Austria.
As Germany’s Spiegel Online reported: “Solar energy has gone from being the great white hope to an impediment to a reliable energy supply.””
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/01/25/harpers-smarter
…-
“Spain cuts subsidies for clean energy
by Staff Writers
Madrid (AFP) Jan 27, 2012
“Spain is cutting subsidies for clean energy production, a sector in which it has become a leader in Europe, as part of a wave of crisis spending cuts, the government said on Friday.
The government decided to “temporarily suspend economic incentives for new installations for electricity production from renewable energy sources”, it said in a statement after a cabinet meeting.
“The complex economic and financial situation makes it advisable to remove temporarily the incentives for building these installations,” since the system was costing too much, it said.”
http://www.solardaily.com/reports/Spain_cuts_subsidies_for_clean_energy_999.html
@37 Fletcher Christian
#16 Joe Hill – Where is the data coming from that leads to the conclusion of CO2 being a trailing indicator for climate?
Both/all sides agree on it, so there wouldn’t be much point in looking it up.
It is probably true that up to perhaps 1830 that was the case for the simple reason that up until about then (and perhaps a few decades later) respiration of life-forms was the only source of CO2 (with a minor contribution from seasonal fires). Fossil carbon was a vanishingly small source – though not zero; the volatiles from suface seeps of oil had to go somewhere!
That is no longer the case.
You’re missing the fact that if CO2 had been either a leading or “real-time” indicator in “paleo” times, this would make it far easier to show that anthropogenic CO2 could cause a non-trivial temperature increase in the real world, and how big. The physics of the matter do not suffice to show it because the climate is complex and chaotic. That’s one big reason why climate scientists are interested in paleo-climates.
#37
Long before AGW became a political issue and opposition to it a state heresey I recall a scientific article explaining how the oceans hold the overwhelming concentration of CO2. Warmer temperatures release CO2 into the atmosphere, making it a lagging indicator. That means that we can see steady or falling temperatures and rising levels of CO2 at the same time. That seems to be what we are currently experiencing.
It is easy enough to believe that industrialization, which is new to the planet, is capable of changing the atmosphere because people have no natural capacity to understand the scope and scale of things. The surface area of the planet and the volume of the atmosphere are nearly infinitely larger than the pimple of human activity.
Ocean alge clusters grow to the size of continents every summer sucking in CO2 and spewing O. All the cars and trucks on earth that ever were would not be enough to make a faint ripple in the most obscure eddy of these massive swarms.
Yet we are supposed to believe that a flea can carry an elephant?
The universal “you” who spends 10 minutes outdoors at noon has to be idiot to think that the sun does not affect the earth’s climate.
Enough is enough. Who can ever believe again that Science has answers to anything?
@40 Peter Boston
Yet we are supposed to believe that a flea can carry an elephant?
No one is asking us to believe that a flea can carry an elephant. The temperature increase attributed to anthropogenic CO2 by itself is only 3/10 of 1% of the distance from absolute zero. Even if the claimed feedbacks are both positive and great enough to raise the temperature to the top-end IPCC projection, that’s still only 2% of the distance.
The physics that says that, with all other things equal, an increase of the CO2 level causes an increase of temperature at the earth’s surface seems to be pretty much incontrovertible. The problem is in “with all other things equal,” and it is a problem.
The universal “you” who spends 10 minutes outdoors at noon has to be idiot to think that the sun does not affect the earth’s climate.
The question isn’t whether the sun heats the earth. It’s whether variation in the sun can or cannot explain the temperature increase of the 20th century, and how much of the increase.
I’m an AGW skeptic, but I’m always finding myself having to say things like the above, and sounding like a warmist.
22 Blert:
Actually the marijuana growers have been all over the CO2 angle for several decades. It’s all these socially “sophisticated” folks who have never heard of photosynthesis.
I’ve been predicting this for years. Back circa 2004 Space News had an article that said that the currents on the Sun had been observed scientifically for over 100 years and that they were at the Lowest Level Ever Recorded. An astronomer I worked with said, “That means lower Solar output.”
Of course lower output was not mentioned in the Space News article; it was just talking about sunspots.
The good news is thave we have lots of empty houses in Florida. The even better news is that the work camps in the northern tier where we will send all the AGW pimps and whores will be even more miserable.
#41
AGW was never about the science. It has always been about power and money. The credibility of science and scientists is the victim.
37. Fletcher Christian
#16 Joe Hill – Where is the data coming from that leads to the conclusion of CO2 being a trailing indicator for climate?
Ice cores. Glaciers store atmosphere. The ice core allows scientists to ‘sample’ the ice in that core and determine the composition of the atmosphere going back about 1.2 million years. Man didn’t exist 1.2 million years ago, yet the climate it was a’changing.
The CO2 and temperature readings change within the sensitivity of the measuring instruments, which are accurate within a century. That means when the CO2 content and the temperature change within a century of one another, you can’t tell which one was first.
Google “ice core dating”.
*Ahem*… “Climate Quiescence” is caused by man’s interference with the earth’s natural temperature cycles. We are currently entering a dangerous period of Climate Quiescence.
Cute huh? Funny thing is, I take seriously that earth has been warned about climate change “from above”…. and that we are back-engineering the evidence for it. It’s not how science should work, but it would explain a lot.
Smoking Frog @ 41: “The physics that says that, with all other things equal, an increase of the CO2 level causes an increase of temperature at the earth’s surface seems to be pretty much incontrovertible.”
Same way the physics that says a raindrop will cause the level of the oceans to rise is also pretty much incontrovertible. Except that most of us don’t run around looking for Noah every time it rains.
Treat this as a compliment or a criticism as you see fit — those kind of statements do make you seem like a warm-monger rather than a person interested in understanding this 4.5 Billion year old survivor we call Planet Earth.
‘Climate Quiescence’
I have sympathy with this desperate ploy. Poor sod stuck with data that just will not resolve into something he can put into his paper.
Peter Boston #40:
Back in 1986 we launched some sensors on TIROS NOAA spacecraft as part of an experiment called “Earth Radiation Budget” or ERBE to answer the question, “How much comes into the Earth from outside versus what is radiated back out into space?”
Last year I asked around about the results of ERBE and was told that ERBE data shows that tropical oceans radiate more energy back into space as their temperature goes up. And the GW models assumed the oceans did no such thing, that they just got hotter and hotter. Note that we launched that payload first in 1986. The data was there if anyone had chose to consider it.
I guess that in the not distant future we will look at movies such as “The Day After Tomorrow” in the same way we now consider movies about Roughcoat’s giant ants and other monsters caused by nuclear testing. Except that no one ever tried to hang the guys who made the giant ant movies.
How much energy would OWS and the Greens provide us if we burned them instead of working them to death in labor camps on the frozen tundra?
Regarding cycle 25:
“The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.”
“The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century. The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century. According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C”.
http://floppingaces.net/most_wanted/forget-global-warming-its-cycle-25-we-need-to-worry-about/
It is probably true that up to perhaps 1830 that was the case for the simple reason that up until about then (and perhaps a few decades later) respiration of life-forms was the only source of CO2 (with a minor contribution from seasonal fires). Fossil carbon was a vanishingly small source – though not zero; the volatiles from suface seeps of oil had to go somewhere!
Fletch: as I’ve pointed out in previous threads, human industrial activity as far back as 1830 would have had no discernible effect on atmospheric greenhouse gas content because of insufficient quantity of man-made greenhouse output. Again: for most of the 19th century the industrial revolution was largely confined to the temperate band of one quadrant of the northern hemisphere straddling the N. Atlantic. The ocean comprises half the surface area of that quadrant, and is a large carbon and heat sink. Even the crudest quantitative analysis will show you that the “greenhouse” output of human activity would have been below any threshold for a “critical mass” or “tipping point” beyond which greenhouse emmissions would have affected atmospheric temperature.
How much energy would OWS and the Greens provide us if we burned them instead of working them to death in labor camps on the frozen tundra?
The #OWS people not so much, because their numbers are pathetically tiny. The Greens might better serve as fertilizer, or as a source of methane because of their probably greater flatulence due to acute vegetarianism.
Of course this is very mean-spirited of me, unlike the 10-10-10 video.
I see that the “Met Office” that released this report still insists that AGW will counter any cooling that may happen in the coming Solar cycle. They stubbornly pit their trace gas (CO2) against the huge ball of fire that is the Sun. What is happening, because of their entrenched position, is that the “deniers” this time are a “new breed” who are credentialed and respected scientists themselves, and are having none of it. But the bigger problem is that the entrenched and corrupt AGW forces will fight like the IJA on Okinawa, and not give in for years.
Power, sex, and money drives the ruling class and would be ruling class. A crumb which is thrown out for the masses is relevance, the idea that they are part of a great movement in overcoming dangerous obstacles though shared sacrifice–which also happens to profit the rulers. Global warming is, was, such a challenge. They will invent a new challenge. People demand it.
By the way, it seems that every year we hear that “more sea ice has melted than ever before.”
Anyone hear about how much trouble Nome, AK just had trying to get a tanker in to supply them with fuel? The sea ice was So Bad that it took a major effort.
41. smoking frog
You are right about CO2 being a greenhouse gas. Greenhouses stay warm inside by allowing short wave solar radiation to pass through their glass and then the same glass traps some of the long wave radiation that beams back from the interior of the green house. The heat trapped inside the greenhouse raises and stabilizes the temperature inside the green house.
In general the Earth absorbs short wave radiation from the sun – without which Earth would be a dead planet – and then re-radiates the energy as long wave radiation. The Earth’s atmosphere acts just like the glass in a greenhouse. Long wave radiation beamed out from the earth is partially trapped by the Earth’s atmosphere. This greenhouse effect is a good thing because it stabilizes temperature fluctations on our planet and generally makes the whole place a more hospitable environment for carbon-based life forms. Even so the planet goes through long warming and cooling phases that have nothing to do with humans.
Water vapour is responsible for most of the trapping of re-radiated long wave radiation. Other gases, methane and CO2 for example also trap long wave radiation. The contribution of CO2 to the green house effect is tiny because the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is tiny at .04%. Even if doubled, the amount of CO2 in the air would remain tiny and it’s contribution to the greenhouse would remain tiny. I don’t think that CO2 is a “first responder” in trapping long wave radiation so there may be doubt that doubling the CO2 concentration would double even it’s tiny contribution to the green house effect exerted by the atmosphere. In any case, it is not sensible to say that additions to a trace greenhouse gas will dominate the entire green house effect of the earth’s total atmosphere. Yet that is the AGW argument in its entirety.
Extra CO2 is pumped into commercial green houses not to warm them up but because plants grow faster if there is more CO2 than is present in the outside air.
But you know all this. The first question to ask about recent global warming or cooling from any cause is
“Is the warming/cooling greater than it has ever been before in the history of the human race?”
The second question is “will the recent warming/cooling threaten human society?”
In spite of the warmist propaganda and scaremongering the answer to the first question is clearly “no”. The answer to the second question is also “no”. In the past only cooling that produced ice ages has threatened human society. But ice ages don’t appear suddenly, like unannounced visitors and surely we are better equipped to prepare for and withstand them now than ever before.
I’m generally in favour of climate, particularly the parts that go with a cold beer. FWIW I don’t think that you are a warmist.
RWE @ 49 asked:
“How much energy would OWS and the Greens provide us if we burned them instead of working them to death in labor camps on the frozen tundra?”
dork lungfish @ 52 answered:
“The #OWS people not so much, because their numbers are pathetically tiny. The Greens might better serve as fertilizer, or as a source of methane because of their probably greater flatulence due to acute vegetarianism.”
I think Dork has the answer. First show the prospective Green the 10-10 video. If he expresses approval then put him on a treadmill with a hose up his behind and feed him a beans only diet.
It is probably true that up to perhaps 1830 that was the case for the simple reason that up until about then (and perhaps a few decades later) respiration of life-forms was the only source of CO2
Another thing: “respiration of life forms” is still the major source of greenhouse gasses outside of water vapor, not human industrial activity. The largest producers of methane, by far, are bacteria, for instance.
Stevesmith @ 56: “Greenhouses stay warm inside by allowing short wave solar radiation to pass through their glass and then the same glass traps some of the long wave radiation that beams back from the interior of the green house.”
Not quite. Yes, the glass allows solar radiation into the greenhouse. But the major way in which a greenhouse achieves warming is by interrupting convection — the warm air is prevented from escaping by the physical barrier of the glass. This contrasts with the role of certain atmospheric gases, where the effect is due to the absorption & re-emission of radiation. Even the name “greenhouse gas” is a misnomer.
The scientfic term for atmospheric components like water vapor (or the very much less prevalent CO2) is radiatively active gas. Since warmists tend to be scientifically illiterate, they avoid words like “radiation”.
59. Kinuachdrach
Don’t tell my microclimatology professor that. According to my training, green houses work the way I described. Have you ever used a spectrometer on light passing through green house glass? I have. Much of the short wave radiation goes through glass; passage of long wave is impeded. The earth absorbs short wave radiation from the sun during the day. Much of that is used in evaporation of water. The earth re-radiates long wave . The Earth’s radiation economy is more complicated than because of things like counter radiation. The green house effect refers to trapping of re-radiated long wave radiation; just like a green house does. My reference on microclimatology is “The Climate Near the Ground” by Rudolf Geiger.
Without this natural greenhouse effect, the earth would be much colder than it is now – I have seen estimated about 33 degrees Celsius colder – making the average temperature on the planet a freezing -18 degrees Celsius rather than the balmy 15 degrees Celsius it is. The warmth of our climate is crucial because on earth and in the atmosphere, water can exist in all three of its phases – frozen as snow or ice, liquid as water, and gaseous as water vapour. The cycling of water from one phase to another is critical to sustaining life since it is this cycling of water through the land-ocean-atmosphere system that replenishes the water available to life on earth.
I’m going to disagree with you on that one.
Don Rodrigo @ 58 said:
“Another thing: “respiration of life forms” is still the major source of greenhouse gasses outside of water vapor, not human industrial activity. The largest producers of methane, by far, are bacteria, for instance.”
An AGW proponent would counter-argue that power levels coming in from the Sun versus what is being radiated out into space are so huge that any imbalance in the atmosphere’s transparency results in a huge amount of energy accumulated in the atmosphere. It so happens this is a spurious counter argument because water vapor is by far the most significant greenhouse gas and the amount of water vapor in the form of transparent gas versus cloud cover can change almost immediately. Our atmosphere has what is effectively a closed loop feedback system for temperature regulation through water vapor and cloud cover. Of course, the AGW proponent can at this point counter-counter argue that water vapor vs. cloud cover are all based upon chemical rate equations and those rate equations can be perturbed if there is too much carbon dioxide. The AGW skeptic now says “Prove it!” and the AGW proponent replies that he has computer models. The skeptic responds that computer models are highly tweekable and can be made to produce any result that the programmer wants.
Thus it boils down to a religious debate.
There’s nothing wrong with religious debates if all you’re really doing is wagging your chin over a glass of beer. However there is everything imaginable wrong with a religious debate if it means hammering the world’s economy with unnecessary trillion dollar expenses and establishing a world government run by socialists.
That’s what it boils down to: Is AGW so terrible that we allow a single world government to be established that is run by socialists? I should add that the real reason why the people behind the 10-10 video are playing hardball is because it boils down to establishing a single world government, i.e. the sort of thing that we would normally fight a world war over with millions of people getting killed in the process.
@ 59 & 60-Look to the moon for an illustration of the significance of the role of the atmosphere as well as surface water. Very hot on the sunny-side. Very chilly on the dark-side.
If you leave the “side walls” off of the greenhouse enclosure, then convection carries away all of your gains. Of course, on our nearly spherical planet, convection can carry away significant heat from the sunny-side.
Generally, the effects of radiated energy loss are much smaller than convective losses in isolated surface based applications, are they not?
epignosis @ 62 — “If you leave the “side walls” off of the greenhouse enclosure, then convection carries away all of your gains.”
Thanks for that thought experiment, which helps clarify things. I have never used a spectrometer on a greenhouse, so I won’t disagree with stevesmith @ 60 on radiation temperature gains. However, I have visited a reasonable number of greenhouses in chilly Northern European climes; the proprietors always made a point of closing the doors “to keep the heat in”.
Setting aside the predominance of convective heat transfer in the open atmosphere, those radiatively active gases still don’t behave like glass in a greenhouse, ie, transparent to short wavelength radiation, opaque to longer wavelengths. The radiation re-emitted by the radiatively active gas is the same wavelength as that which excited it in the first place. The issue is rather that half the re-emitted radiation goes back downwards towards the planet’s surface.
“Greenhouse gas” really is a very misleading name. But maybe that is no surprise; we are talking about Anthropogenic Global Warming.
62. epignosis
Not sure what you are getting at. There are no side walls in the atmosphere – it completely encircles the earth as a wraparound greenhouse. Heat can be transferred in the atmosphere in four different ways: physical heat conduction, apparent heat conduction, evaporation of water, thermal radiation. Heat arrives at the earth’s surface from the sun, the sky and the atmosphere (insolation). Heat is sent back out into space (terrestrial radiation).
Heat also flows from the ground to the surface or in the reverse direction. On a cold winter’s night heat flows upward through the ground. On a hot summer’s afternoon heat is transported in the opposite direction – downwards from the surface.
Also – and this may be your point – mass exchange in the air, also called eddy diffusion, brings about an exchange of heat.
Finally, there is the effect of evaporation of ice and water in transferring heat.
Flows of warmer, drier, moister or dryer air – called advection – can affect things locally. Maybe this is also your point.
Earth is a fascinating place and I’m really pleased to be here. Unfortunately the AGW crowd don’t seem to be fascinated by Earth at all. They only want to use half baked misinformation to further their half baked political ideolgy.
@44 Peter Boston
#41
AGW was never about the science. It has always been about power and money. The credibility of science and scientists is the victim.
That has nothing to do with your remarks which I criticized.
There’s a very heavy dose of power and money in it, but that doesn’t mean that none of it is about the science.
It’s about the power and the money and the ego.
AGW alarmists are correct to point out the scientists do not become scientists to get rich. In that respect, they were never in it “for the money”.
Of course, the same logic can be used to defend the scientists who worked for Big Tobacco. The fact is, the scientists at the operational level are not in it for the money, and never will be, but there are people who are, and these people are often in a position to determine which operational level scientists will actually get to operate, and on whose dime.
There is also a touch- a strong touch- of Ego. How many scientists get to jump up and down in the spot light, saying “Look at me, look at MY work, heed my warnings or you will all PERISH!”. This can be, to certain personalities, (Hansen!) just as fulfilling as payout. (Though Hansen also rakes in a six to seven figure “outside” income, a rarity among scientists).
The issue is, the Alarmist community took the high ground, and then, controlling the access, and denouncing skeptics as evil, wicked “deniers” and not simply scientists with alternative views, controls who becomes a climate scientist and who does not. And the Alarmist community has some moneyed interests in its corner.
The more something is a crisis, the less likely people are to worry about checking the books. If enough people are yelling “carbon emergency!” all kinds of things slip by- Al Gore’s mansion, Solyndra, the Chevy Volt (much more than just a useless car, it was the mechanism that allowed GM to pay off its bailout loan, with a far bigger loan slipped past the public eye), Ener1, and all the other billions tucked away here and there. Sooner or later, those billions add to real money.
The ones with the hands in the pockets needed the OMIGOD CRISIS! mentality promoted by the “right” scientists, and so they secured the careers of those scientists, and those scientists obediently McCarthyized the opposition to a level not seen in any other controversy in science, (Can you imagine the proponents of Quantum Loop Gravity being derided as “String Theory Denialists”?) and that’s the money trail. It never was about the science being right or wrong, it was always about using the science to drive policy, and allowing certain people to cash in big.
Do not discount AGW as a manisfestation of anti-conservative, anti-werstern civilization, anti-Christian thought. Everything you know is wrong, everything that is your heritage, your race, the founders of the country (who were old whote men and racists!) is baseless. AGW=decontructionism in practical terms.
60,64
Build a greenhouse with the panels offset by, say four inches, in alternating directions, so that sunlight is still filtered but air can circulate inside and outside. Then compare temperatures with a conventional greenhouse next door. Or find a pair of greenhouse side-by-side that have crank windows, and open the windows on one so air can circulate.
You’ll find greenhouses don’t work like you think.
Swamai #66:
All very true. But there is another factor at work as well. Back in the late 60′s I recall my high school physics teacher telling us that some things had become “unknowable.” Not because it was too hard to find out the truth but rather because it was too expensive for anyone but the Fed Govt to fund such efforts.
And Sen Proxmire had pushed through legislation that said that such research had to have a practical application before the Fed Govt would pay.
So, the scientists who wanted jobs, and especially big jobs and big money and lots of people working for them had to come up with reasons why obscure studies were vitally important. And not being engineers they very rarely can say “This will lead to the price of gasoline falling to 15 cents a gallon.” or “We will be able to intercept ballistic missiles in flight.”
At the Pentagon I recall seeing cases where scientists would try to tie the study of, say, the aurora borealis, or the nature of rocket exhaust plumes to vitally important issues related to missile defense.
Barring that, they are reduced to the equivalent of bearded men in filthy robes standing on streetcorners holding signs that say “Repent! The End is Near!”
Great quote:
“There is no such thing as science. There is only that which quickly becomes practical engineering and there is unfounded speculation.”
RWE @ 69 quote:
“There is no such thing as science. There is only that which quickly becomes practical engineering and there is unfounded speculation.”
I was about to ask “What about astronomy?”. Then I thought to myself that most of the theories about Mars and Venus stood until we actually had spacecraft take a close look or actually land on those planets. It’s amazing how wrong we were before actually gaining in-situ data. My favorite example is the Martian atmosphere. For years we thought the Martian atmosphere was mostly nitrogen with a dab of carbon dioxide. NASA actually developed thermodynamic tables and Mollier diagrams based upon this incorrect model (those old reports are all waste paper now). It wasn’t until we actually had spacecraft in close to Mars that we realized that the atmosphere was mostly carbon dioxide.
That video reminds me that those who cherish freedom and the responsibility that accompanies need an online index backed by a repository (if the urge to censor ever succeeds) of “the best of the left” propaganda. I’d contribute to electioneering that rebroadcast these alongside, say, pictures of the horrors done in the name of utopia, as well as pictures that show the worst outrages (that the left claim) that free people and their free enterprise have created.
Ending with a rolling tally of the good and the bad ideas (claimed) by both sides along with the costs in lives lost and wasted.
47. Kinuachdrach
Smoking Frog @ 41: “The physics that says that, with all other things equal, an increase of the CO2 level causes an increase of temperature at the earth’s surface seems to be pretty much incontrovertible.”
Same way the physics that says a raindrop will cause the level of the oceans to rise is also pretty much incontrovertible. Except that most of us don’t run around looking for Noah every time it rains.
Treat this as a compliment or a criticism as you see fit — those kind of statements do make you seem like a warm-monger rather than a person interested in understanding this 4.5 Billion year old survivor we call Planet Earth.
I don’t think any physics says that a raindrop will cause the level of the oceans to rise. First of all, the water in the raindrop has to come from somewhere. Secondly, even if it didn’t come from the oceans, the surface area of the oceans is somewhere in the neighborhood of 140-170 million square miles, and I seem to recall figuring out years ago that the rise would be a great deal smaller than the diameter of an atom, which is impossible.
You’re idea about me is far wrong. I just don’t like to see skeptics making stupid arguments, since it makes us (skeptics) look bad.