Home/BlogAn old mantra of the news business is, “if it bleeds, it leads”. If someone was murdered, it is news. That virtually no one gets murdered is not news. That, by itself, should tell you that the mainstream media cannot be relied upon as an unbiased source of climate change information.
There are lots of self-proclaimed climate experts now. They don’t need a degree in physics or atmospheric science. For credentials, they only need to care and tell others they care. They believe the Earth is being murdered by humans and want the media to spread the word.
Most people do not have the time or educational background to understand the global warming debate, and so defer to the consensus of experts on the subject. The trouble is that no one ever says exactly what the experts agree upon.
When you dig into the details, what the experts agree upon in their official pronouncements is rather unremarkable. The Earth has warmed a little since the 1950s, a date chosen because before that humans had not produced enough CO2 to really matter. Not enough warming for most people to actually feel, but enough for thermometers to pick up the signal buried in the noise of natural weather swings of many tens of degrees and spurious warming from urbanization effects. The UN consensus is that most of that warming is probably due to increasing atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuel use (but we really don’t know for sure).
For now, I tend to agree with this consensus.
And still I am widely considered a climate denier.
Why? Because I am not willing to exaggerate and make claims that cannot be supported by data.
Take researcher Roger Pielke, Jr. as another example. Roger considers himself an environmentalist. He generally agrees with the predictions of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) regarding future warming. But as an expert in severe weather damages, he isn’t willing to support the lie that severe weather has gotten worse. Yes, storm damages have increased, but that’s because we keep building more infrastructure to get damaged.
So, he, too is considered a climate denier.
What gets reported by the media about global warming (aka climate change, the climate crisis, and now the climate emergency) is usually greatly exaggerated, half-truths, or just plain nonsense. Just like the economy and economists, it is not difficult to find an expert willing to provide a prediction of gloom and doom. That makes interesting news. But it distorts the public perception of the dangers of climate change. And because it is reported as “science”, it is equated with truth.
In the case of climate change news, the predicted effects are almost universally biased toward Armageddon-like outcomes. Severe weather events that have always occurred (tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, droughts) are now reported with at least some blame placed on your SUV.
The major media outlets have so convinced themselves of the justness, righteousness, and truthfulness of their cause that they have banded together to make sure the climate emergency is not ignored. As reported by The Guardian, “More than 60 news outlets worldwide have signed on to Covering Climate Now, a project to improve coverage of the emergency”.
The exaggerations are not limited to just science. The reporting on engineering related to proposed alternative sources of energy (e.g. wind and solar) is also biased. The reported economics are biased. Unlimited “free” energy is claimed to be all around us, just waiting to be plucked from the unicorn tree.
And for most of America (and the world), the reporting is not making us smarter, but dumber.
Why does it matter? Who cares if the science (or engineering or economics) is exaggerated, if the result is that we stop polluting?
Besides the fact that there is no such thing as a non-polluting energy source, it matters because humanity depends upon abundant, affordable energy to prosper. Just Google life expectancy and per capita energy use. Prosperous societies are healthier and enjoy longer lives. Expensive sources of energy forced upon the masses by governmental fiat kill poor people simply because expensive energy exacerbates poverty, and poverty leads to premature death. As philosopher Alex Epstein writes in his book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, if you believe humans have a right to thrive, then you should be supportive of fossil fuels.
We don’t use wind and solar energy because it is economically competitive. We use it because governments have decided to force taxpayers to pay the extra costs involved and allowed utilities to pass on the higher costs to consumers. Wind and solar use continue to grow, but global energy demand grows even faster. Barring some new energy technology (or a renewed embrace of nuclear power), wind and solar are unlikely to supply more than 10% of global energy demand in the coming decades. And as some European countries have learned, mandated use of solar and wind comes at a high cost to society.
Not only the media, but the public education system is complicit in this era of sloppy science reporting. I suppose most teachers and journalists believe what they are teaching and reporting on. But they still bear some responsibility for making sure what they report is relatively unbiased and factual.
I would much rather have teachers spending more time teaching students how to think and less time teaching them what to think.
Climate scientists are not without blame. They, like everyone else, are biased. Virtually all Earth scientists I know view the Earth as “fragile”. Their biases affect their analysis of uncertain data that can be interpreted in multiple ways. Most are relatively clueless about engineering and economics. I’ve had discussions with climate scientists who tell me, “Well, we need to get away from fossil fuels, anyway”.
And maybe we do, eventually. But exaggerating the threat can do more harm than good. The late Stephen Schneider infamously admitted to biased reporting by scientists. You can read his entire quote and decide for yourself whether scientists like Dr. Schneider let their worldview, politics, etc., color how they present their science to the public. The unauthorized release of the ‘ClimateGate’ emails between IPCC scientists showed how the alarmist narrative was maintained by undermining alternative views and even pressuring the editors of scientific journals. Even The Guardian seemed shocked by the misbehavior.
It’s fine to present the possibility that human-caused global warming could be very damaging, which is indeed theoretically possible. But to claim that large and damaging changes have already occurred due to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is shoddy journalism. Some reporters get around the problem by saying that the latest hurricane might not be blamed on global warming directly, but it represents what we can expect more of in a warming world. Except that, even the UN IPCC is equivocal on the subject.
Sea level rise stories in the media, as far as I can tell, never mention that sea level has been rising naturally for as long as we have had global tide gauge measurements (since the 1850s). Maybe humans are responsible for a portion of the recent rise, but as is the case for essentially all climate reporting, the role of nature is seldom mentioned, and the size of the problem is almost always exaggerated. That worsening periodic tidal flooding in Miami Beach is about 50% due to sinking of reclaimed swampland is never mentioned.
There are no human fingerprints of global warming. None. Climate change is simply assumed to be mostly human-caused (which is indeed possible), while our knowledge of natural climate change is almost non-existent.
Computerized climate models are programmed based upon the assumption of human causation. The models produce human-caused climate change because they are forced to produce no warming (be in a state of ‘energy balance’) unless CO2 is added to them.
As far as we know, no one has ever been killed by human-caused climate change. Weather-related deaths have fallen dramatically — by over 90% — in the last 100 years.
Whose child has been taught that in school? What journalist has been brave enough to report that good news?
In recent years I’ve had more and more people tell me that their children, grandchildren, or young acquaintances are now thoroughly convinced we are destroying the planet with our carbon dioxide emissions from burning of fossil fuels. They’ve had this message drilled into their brains through news reporting, movies, their teachers and professors, their favorite celebrities, and a handful of outspoken scientists and politicians whose knowledge of the subject is a mile wide but only inches deep.
In contrast, few people are aware of the science papers showing satellite observations that reveal a global greening phenomenon is occurring as a result of more atmospheric CO2.
Again I ask, whose child has been taught this in school? What journalist dares to report any positive benefits of CO2, without which life on Earth would not exist?
No, if it’s climate news, it’s all bad news, all the time.
More Examples of Media Bias
Here are just a few recent (and not-so-recent) examples of media reporting which only make matters worse and degrade the public debate on the subject of climate change. Very often what is reported is actually weather-related events that have always occurred with no good evidence that they have worsened or become more frequent in the last 60+ years that humans could be at least partly blamed.
The Amazon is burning
A few days ago, The Guardian announced Large swathes of the Amazon rainforest are burning. I don’t know how this has suddenly entered the public’s consciousness, but for those of us who keep track of such things, farmland and some rainforest in Amazonia and adjacent lands has been burned by farmers for many decades during this time of year so they can plant crops. This year is not exceptional in this regard, yet someone decided to make an issue of it this year. In fact, it looks like 2019 might be one of the lowest years for biomass burning. Deforestation there has gone down dramatically in the last 20 years.
The rainforest itself does not burn in response to global warming, and in fact warming in the tropics has been so slow that it is unlikely that any tropical resident would perceive it in their lifetime. This is not a climate change issue; it’s a farming and land use issue.
Greenland Is rapidly melting
The Greenland ice sheet gains new snow every year, and gravity causes the sheet to slowly flow to the sea where ice is lost by calving of icebergs. How much ice resides in the sheet at any given time is based upon the balance between gains and losses.
During the summer months of June, July, and August there is more melting of the surface than snow accumulation. The recent (weather-related) episode of a Saharan air mass traveling through western Europe and reaching Greenland led to a few days of exceptional melt. This was widely reported as having grave consequences.
Forbes decided to push the limits of responsible journalism with a story title, Greenland’s Massive Ice Melt Wasn’t Supposed to Happen Until 2070. But the actual data show that after this very brief period (a few days) of strong melt, conditions then returned to normal.
Of course, only the brief period of melt was reported by the media, further feeding the steady diet of biased climate information we have all become accustomed to.
Furthermore, after all of the reports of record warmth at the summit of the ice cap, it was found that the temperature sensor readings were biased too warm, and the temperature never actually went above freezing.
Was this reported with the same fanfare as the original story? Of course not. The damage has been done, and the thousands of alarmist news stories will live on in perpetuity.
This isn’t to say that Greenland isn’t losing more ice than it is gaining, but most of that loss is due to calving of icebergs around the edge of the sheet being fed by ice flowing downhill. Not from blast-furnace heating of the surface. It could be the loss in recent decades is a delayed response to excess snow accumulation tens or hundreds of years ago (I took glaciology as a minor while working on my Ph.D. in meteorology). No one really knows because ice sheet dynamics is complicated with much uncertainty.
My point is that the public only hears about these brief weather events which are almost always used to promote an alarmist narrative.
July 2019 was the hottest month on record
The yearly, area-averaged surface temperature of the Earth is about 60 deg. F. It has been slowly and irregularly rising in recent decades at a rate of about 0.3 or 0.4 deg. F per decade.
So, let’s say the average temperature reaches 60.4 deg. F rather than a more normal 60 deg. F. Is “hottest” really the best adjective to use to inform the public about what is going on?
Here’s a geographic plot of the July 2019 departures from normal from NOAA’s Climate Forecast System model.
Some areas were above normal, some below, yet the headlines of “hottest month ever” would make you think the whole Earth had become an oven of unbearable heat.
Of course, the temperature changes involved in new record warm months is so small it is usually less than the uncertainty level of the measurements. And, different global datasets give different results. Monitoring global warming is like searching for a climate needle in a haystack of weather variability.
Bait and Switch: Models replacing observations
There is an increasing trend toward passing off climate model projections as actual observations in news reports. This came up just a few days ago when I was alerted to a news story that claimed Tuscaloosa, Alabama is experiencing twice as many 100+ deg. F days as it used to. To his credit, the reporter corrected the story when it was pointed out to him that no such thing has happened, and it was a climate model projection that (erroneously) made such a “prediction”.
Another example happened last year with a news report that the 100th Meridian climate boundary in the U.S. was moving east, with gradual drying starting to invade the U.S. Midwest agricultural belt. But, once again, the truth is that no such thing has happened. It was a climate model projection, being passed off as reality. Having worked with grain-growing interests for nearly 10 years, I addressed this bit of fake climate news with actual precipitation measurements here.
Al Gore and Bill Nye’s global warming in a jar experiment
This is one of my favorites.
As part of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, Bill Nye produced a Climate 101 video of an experiment where two glass jars with thermometers in them were illuminated by lamps. One jar had air in it, the other had pure CO2. The video allegedly shows the jar with CO2 in it experiencing a larger temperature rise than the jar with just air in it.
Of course, this was meant to demonstrate how easy it is to show more CO2 causes warming. I’m sure it has inspired many school science experiments. The video has had over 500,000 views.
The problem is that this experiment cannot show such an effect. Any expert in atmospheric radiative transfer can tell you this. The jars are totally opaque to infrared radiation anyway, the amount of CO2 involved is far too small, the thermometers were cheap and inaccurate, the lamps cannot be exactly identical, the jars are not identical, and the “cold” of outer space was not included the experiment. TV meteorologist Anthony Watts demonstrated that Bill Nye had to fake the results through post-production video editing.
The warming effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 is surprisingly difficult to demonstrate. The demonstration is largely a theoretical exercise involving radiative absorption calculations and a radiative transfer model. I believe the effect exists; I’m just saying that there is no easy way to demonstrate it.
The trouble is that this fraudulent video still exists, and many thousands of people are being misled into believing that the experiment is evidence of how obvious it is to
Greta Thunberg’s sailboat trip
The new spokesperson for the world’s youth regarding concerns over global warming is 16-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg. Greta is travelling across the Atlantic on what CNN describes as a “zero-emissions yacht” to attend the UN Climate Action Summit on September 23 in New York City.
To begin with, there is no such thing as a zero-emissions yacht. A huge amount of energy was required to manufacture the yacht, and it transports so few people so few miles over its lifetime the yacht is a wonderful example of the energy waste typical of the lifestyles of the wealthy elite. Four (!) people will need to fly from Europe to the U.S. to support the return of the yacht to Europe after Greta is delivered there.
The trip is nothing more than a publicity stunt, and it leads to further disinformation regarding global energy use. In fact, it works much better as satire. Imagine if everyone who traveled across the ocean used yachts rather than jet airplanes. More energy would be required, not less, due to the manufacture of tens of thousands of extra yachts which inefficiently carry few passengers on relatively few, very slow trips. In contrast, the average jet aircraft will travel 50 million miles in its lifetime. Most people don’t realize that travel by jet is now more fuel efficient than travel by car.
The Greta boat trip story is in so many ways the absolute worst way to raise awareness of climate issues, unless you know knothing of science, engineering, or economics. It’s like someone who is against eating meat consuming three McDonalds cheeseburgers to show how we should change our diets. It makes zero sense.
I could give many more examples of the media helping to destroy the public’s ability to have a rational discussion about climate change, how much is caused by humans, and what can or should be done about it.
Instead, the media chooses to publish only the most headline-grabbing stories, and the climate change issue is then cast as two extremes: either you believe the “real scientists” who all agree we are destroying the planet, or you are a knuckle-dragging 8th-grade educated climate denier with guns and racist tendencies.
Fist Balls
Spot on.
I do wonder why and where people think they are going with.this. The only consolation I have is the world has had and endless supply of doomsters (end of the world) and they are always wrong but you have to admire there lack of self doubt
Hope the backs ok
Regards Harry
Sorry ……their
Regards
Your article articulates the nearly undetectable sanity signal amidst the climate change noise. Good S/N ratio. Thank you.
You state
“The UN consensus is that most of that warming is probably due to increasing atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuel use (but we really dont know for sure).
For now, I tend to agree with this consensus.”
Why do you “tend to agree with this consensus”?
It has the best evidence supporting the theory in terms of measurements of quantitative radiative effects of CO2. But that’s partly just an accident of history since the theory was needed for satellite temperature sounding to support numerical weather prediction.
Do you think there is anything to the idea that the ozone and thermosphere response to solar cycle could lead the jet stream to more states of meridional flow when the sun is in low activity – thus causing more heat from the tropics to get dumped into the arctic and antarctic – and radiate away? When the solar cycle is in high activity the zonal flow of the jet stream and lower frequency of Rossby waves tend to keep warm air in the lower latitudes – allowing for greater landmass heating?
It always seemed to me that the change in jetstream flow would have a wide ranging impact that is not demonstrated in the global circulation models.
It also always concerned me that GCMs assume a very low amount of geological heating of the deep ocean. We are on a red hot nickel and iron ball – all that energy has to pass through the atmosphere before it is dumped into space. Is it possible that deep water warming periodically wells up and causes atmospheric warming?
I dunno. I just don’t trust the institutions because of the amount of exaggeration and dissembling by people that are ostensibly charged with public communication about science. I certainly accept that CO2 responds to IR by heating up – but I have a hard time accepting the claims being made about catastrophe given the history of the planet and its very high CO2 in the past.
Dr. Spencer agrees with the climate consensus belief for no logical reason.
Saying “but we don’t really know for sure” does NOT change that.
Therefore, Dr. Spencer is WRONG.
.
.
HE WROTE:
“The UN consensus is that most of that warming is probably due to increasing atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuel use (but we really dont know for sure).
For now, I tend to agree with this consensus.
And still I am widely considered a climate denier.
Why? Because I am not willing to exaggerate
and make claims that cannot be supported by data.”
.
.
.
BUT … YOU … JUST … DID !
“Most” commonly means “over 50%”:.
You have no idea what the actual percentage is.
No one else does.
Therefore, you have a belief NOT supported by data.
That’s NOT real science.
The right answer is “we don’t know”
— and that’s why we need scientists.
If you look at the statistics in a little more detail you find that the lower 95% confidence bound for the warming estimate is that 50% of the warming is anthropogenic. The upper bound is 160%.
The mid range figure is 108%.ie we have converted a cooling rate of 0.016C/decade into a warming rate of 0.2C/decade.
Em,
Does that mean that somebody is guessing that there is 1 chance in 20 that the even money guess might or might not be wrong?
Complete pseudoscientific GHE true believer fantasy, certainly not science.
No GHE. CO2 heats nothing.
Cheers.
richard greene…”Dr. Spencer agrees with the climate consensus belief for no logical reason.
Saying but we dont really know for sure does NOT change that.
Therefore, Dr. Spencer is WRONG”.
No, Richard, you are wrong. Roy stated the facts, we don’t really know.
Mr. Robertson:
Mr. Spencer wrote:
“The UN consensus is that most of that warming is probably due to increasing atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuel use … For now, I tend to agree with this consensus.”
The consensus is a popular guess.
The correct answer is between 0% and 100%.
“Over 50%” is a middle of the road compromise.
No one knows the correct percentage.
If Mr. Spencer agrees with this popular vote consensus, then he is WRONG, even though it is obvious that his agreement is not very strong.
I typed this slow, Mr. Robertson, so even YOU could understand.
In my opinion, Mr. Spencer’s UAH numbers keep the climate alarmists from doing even more “adjusting” … and claiming even more surface global warming. (RSS used to be another “check and balance” … until their arbitrary warming “adjustments” in 2016)
Have a Nice Day
‘Climate change’ and the end of reason.
How can 4% of annual CO2 emissions be responsible for most of the temperature change? Isn’t today’s temperature range within the historical range of the last several interglacials according to the best data? Aren’t the planet’s current CO2 levels closer to the bottom of the range historically (at least over the last billion years)? What’s the temperature of the planet supposed to be?
So many questions…
1) Because 4% of annual emissions are probably responsible for close to 100% of the atmospheric CO2 increase. We produce twice what is necessary to explain that increase….nature takes out the extra. A simple model matches that assumption very well: http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/Simple-CO2-model-fit-Mauna-Loa-Period.jpg
2) Today’s temperatures might well be in the range of very long-term natural variability. Not sure how that is relevant, since the orbital parameters are not changing on the time scale of 100 years or so.
3) Yes, I suppose CO2 levels are currently low compared to many millions of years ago. Not sure how that is relevant to what is causing warming today.
4) I have no idea what the temperature of the planet is “supposed to be”.
Re: 1), Physicist Ed Berry published a paper indicating that most of the CO2 rise is natural and only 5% contributed by humanity. Dr. Berry argues that your “model has many variables available to adjust so a fit to the Mauna Loa data is guaranteed,” whereas “the significance of the fit by [his] Physics Model is that it comes with physical constraints that the other models do not have. The Physics Model [residence time] must be 4 years and natural CO2 must be 95 percent of atmospheric CO2.”
https://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/human-co2-emissions-have-little-effect-on-atmospheric-co2/
Dr. Spencer,
I’ll only ask questions about your first point. On what basis can you say “4% of annual emissions are probably responsible for close to 100% of the atmospheric CO2 increase”? If nature takes out 50% now did it also take out 50% in 1950? How does it know to only take out 50%? Will it continue to take out 50% in the future? If it can take out 96ppm of natural CO2 why can it only take out 2ppm more? If it could take out approximately 75ppm 70 years ago why could it only take out about 1 ppm more then? How does it differentiate between a man made CO2 molecule and a natural CO2 molecule? How does it differentiate so precisely at 50% to fit your model? What is the scientific basis for your assertion that natural CO2 lasts for only 4 years in the atmosphere but man made CO2 lasts for decades or centuries?
“Physicist Ed Berry published a paper indicating that most of the CO2 rise is natural and only 5% contributed by humanity”
Ed Berry never mentions some rather important facts that detract from his ‘analogies’
The 95% of CO2 input to the atmosphere that is natural is equal to the 95% natural output. It is seasonal and Oscillatory.
The Anthro CO2 is NOT. Therefore a large percentage of it accumulates.
‘Berry argues that your “model has many variables available to adjust so a fit to the Mauna Loa data is guaranteed’
FALSE. The model Roy showed was very simple with a minimal number of physically motivated parameters.
‘
Wrong. You need to read more and pay attention this time. He addresses it and so does Murray Salby.
Also, I do agree with Dr. Spencer’s assertion that media help destroy rational climate debate. It is because they are the PROFESSIONAL propagandist wing of the leftist Democrat Party (now finally revealing themselves for what they are). It is about furthering the leftist agenda. Hey media, why don’t you ask your brethren in Cuba or China how much fun it is to be a journalist in those leftist states?
‘Wrong. You need to read more and pay attention this time. ‘
Which parts deal with the oscillatory nature of natural CO2?
Nate,
Also, Salby talks about how CO2 lags temperature on both short and long time scales. It lags on short time scales as the time integral of temperature so that it is 90 degrees out of phase with temperature. If you look at temperature as it oscillates seasonally then CO2 oscillates 90 degrees out of phase with temperature. As temperature oscillates as a sine wave CO2 oscillates as a cosine wave. Salby also talks about the order of magnitudes of anthropogenic emission versus natural emission how it is an order of magnitude smaller so it isn’t really seen on the measurements. CO2 follows temperature, not the other way around. CO2 level progresses as the time integral of temperature. Salby demonstrates this in his series of lectures.
Nate,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1cGqL9y548&t=860s
Nate,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGZqWMEpyUM&t=447s
I have seen the Salby lectures before. There are several distortions of the facts that he makes, with axes, the fact that short term correlations to CO2 and temperature are well-known ENSO effects, and but do not explain the long term rise in CO2.
He has no plausible mechanism for a 1 degree rise in temperature to increase CO2 by 100 ppm.
And this is WAY larger than the 10 ppm/degree rise observed during the last glacial transition.
Then there are the isotopic signatures that he cannot explain.
Much much more.
The problem with CO2 alarmism is that now for a hundred and fifty to 200 years of the industrial age mankind’s progress has far outpaced any negative effects of CO2. In fact, its difficult to see any at all. Lifeforms have adapted and seem none the worse for the wear, but mankinds progress is off the charts.
There are lots of things we could spend money on to fix. Priorities for that have been all twisted up for over a generation.
The more usual process of first identifying the adverse effect, prioritizing it, then getting around to fix it has worked amazingly well for perhaps mankinds longest ever increase in prosperity, health, and longevity.
All have not shared in that but hardly has there been any population going backwards either. People really are continuing to die early from diseases, some places still need programs that actually work to clean up water and air quality rather than continuing to throw useless money at the problem and get nothing done because the recipients of the money have more political connections than track records of success.
Here we are spending many billions just in search of a problem. Climate monitoring is essential. The British Empire and the US built what we have on a combination of understanding the natural environment and science. But its crazy to be throwing money at solutions in search of problems.
Nate,
He doesn’t really address the mechanism. He discusses or alludes to it in his text. He just demonstrates that most of the CO2 increase has been due to natural emission. The cause of the natural emission increase he correlates to temperature. Also, as far as isotopic discussion of carbon he discusses the decay of Carbon 14 in the atmosphere after the ban on atmospheric nuclear bomb testing which supported his view of a very short residence time for CO2 in the atmosphere and not a long one assumed by the IPCC.
Also, he does have a lecture where he talks about Carbon 12 and Carbon 13 ratios in one of his graphs. I’ll try to find it.
Nate,
Do you have his text? He talks about the isotopic composition of carbon in the atmosphere and elsewhere in sections 1.2.4 and 17.3. He says that the ratio of carbon 13 to carbon 12 in the atmosphere could support the view that the increase is due to fossil fuel emissions. But, he also states that this view has ignored other possible sources of C13 such as natural sources like vegetation decay. He also says the isotopic composition in the oceans would essentially be the same as in the atmosphere. He essentially states there isn’t enough information in this area.
Stephen,
‘He doesnt really address the mechanism. He discusses or alludes to it in his text. He just demonstrates that most of the CO2 increase has been due to natural emission. The cause of the natural emission increase he correlates to temperature.’
As every scientist knows or should know, correlation is not causation.
When you have a correlation between 3 variables, in this case, emissions, concentration, and temperature, there could be several possible causal relationships.
To establish what causes what, you need to find a causal mechanism that is credible, and preferably makes a quantitative prediction.
We do have a well established mechanism for emissions to CAUSE concentration to increase, and it is simple. And it is in quantitative agreement: the emissions match approximately the accumulations when one looks at atmosphere, ocean, and land concentrations, decade by decade.
We also have an established mechanism for CO2 concentration to increase temperature. We can debate whether all or only part of the temp rise has been caused by this.
Whereas any causal relationship between temperature and concentration is pure speculation, with no quantitative prediction to test. The known effect of outgassing from a warming ocean leads to way too small a rise in concentration.
And that would leave unexplained the mechanism for temperature to rise in the first place.
Nate,
In the comments after Dr. Spencer posted his simple model, you and Bart debated the implications: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/04/a-simple-model-of-the-atmospheric-co2-budget/#comment-349006
You objected to Bart’s phraseology, you can fit any set of signals to any series you want. It isnt meaningful. calling it “a ridiculous assertion.” In fact, to Dr. Spencer’s model, I added a simple one term exponential input from natural sources to the same human emissions data, modified the removal rate constant, and fit the data nearly as well as Dr. Spencer. If you want to claim otherwise, show the proof that it can’t be done.
Your last comment before the conclusion of your discussion with Bart was “No additional natural inputs are needed to obtain an excellent fit, except for volcanic activity (which he could have tried to model and include).”
Natural inputs are sufficient to show that a similar fit can be made using realistic estimates of natural emissions that are around 20 times that of human emissions. IOW, Dr. Spencer’s fit is insufficient to prove that humans have caused all the rise in atmospheric CO2.
Chic,
I made a number of points in that discussion, for example:
“Well, the accumulation rate has tracked the human emission rate, as Roy shows, decade by decade, for 6 decades, and with larger error for 12 decades.
Carbon has been accumulating in the ocean and biosphere, also tracking the rate of emissions.
And as noted, the total accumulation matches quantitatively (within uncertainty) to the total emitted.
The alternative model suggests that these are a streak of coincidences.
And it suggests that while all the anthro carbon has been gobbled up by nature and hidden somewhere, nature has kindly replaced it, decade by decade, with an identical amount of natural CO2.
I call this the ‘Body Snatchers’ scenario. IOW it is science fiction, and not even realistic science fiction.”
I made the point that Dr Roys model is physically motivated, and fits extremely well over many decades. Its not the only model that could work, but it is probably the simplest, with very few parameters.
You’ll have to show us what you did in some detail.
The natural sources of CO2 are large, but seasonal, oscillatory, and average to approx zero every year.
For example the large deciduous forests of the NH land gobble up huge amounts of carbon in NH spring/summer as they leaf out. Then in Fall-Winter they stop gobbling it up, and drop the leaves which decay and emit some carbon, producing a 2-3 ppm oscillation.
If you have added a large non-oscillatory natural input, then what is the physical motivation for that? What is the source of this new influx?
Nate,
“The alternative model suggests that these are a streak of coincidences.”
No, the alternative model shows that the Mauna Loa data can be reasonably explained by a scenario other than human emissions contribute all of the rise.
“The natural sources of CO2 are large, but seasonal, oscillatory, and average to approx zero every year.”
I think you wrote that in April without support.
“If you have added a large non-oscillatory natural input, then what is the physical motivation for that? What is the source of this new influx?”
If you review what Bart wrote, you will find his explanation that increasing CO2 follows from increasing temperature.
Here’s my modification of Spencer’s model:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7tqog25c4ofxnu9/Spencer%20CO2%20model.xls?dl=0
Chic,
‘The alternative model suggests that these are a streak of coincidences.’
“No, the alternative model shows that the Mauna Loa data can be reasonably explained by a scenario other than human emissions contribute all of the rise.”
You have not explained the coincidental and excellent match to human emissions with no arbitrary additional mystery sources.
It seems what you have done is add a new preindustrial source of 80. Then this grows to 111 today.
What is the rationale for this new source and how it changes over time?
How is that physically motivated? It seems completely arbitrary.
In contrast, in Dr Roys model, there are only KNOWN sources.
The physical motivation is that there are sinks, that respond to any imbalance with a time constant.
‘The natural sources of CO2 are large, but seasonal, oscillatory, and average to approx zero every year.’
“I think you wrote that in April without support”
The support comes from decades of observations and successful modeling of of Earths carbon cycle which has seasonal oscillations from various sources.
AND the highly stable ppm in preindustrial ice cores for 15000 years. If you look at Law Dome data which has ~ 20 y time resolution, the change in ppm from MWP to LIA is 6 ppm.
SIX PPM. IOW nowhere near large enough given the estimated drop in temperature of 0.5C
This data cannot be simply dismissed.
“If you have added a large non-oscillatory natural input, then what is the physical motivation for that? What is the source of this new influx?”
“If you review what Bart wrote, you will find his explanation that increasing CO2 follows from increasing temperature.”
There is no plausible physical/chemical model that anyone has put forward that will give a 40% rise in concentration from a 1 Kelvin, (0.3 %) rise in temperature.
Feel free to propose one.
Nate,
“You have not explained the coincidental and excellent match to human emissions with no arbitrary additional mystery sources.”
I did, but you are too stuck in your confirmationally biased mindset to see another point of view.
“What is the rationale for this new source and how it changes over time? How is that physically motivated? It seems completely arbitrary.”
The natural sources of CO2 are not new sources. As temperature rises and CO2 becomes less soluble in water, it is likely that the ocean sink backs up and the atmospheric source increases in CO2. Perhaps a similar phenomenon occurs with land-based exchange favoring a gain over a loss of naturally produced CO2.
“In contrast, in Dr Roys model, there are only KNOWN sources.”
Yes, one, because all other sources are assumed cancelled by an unproven assumption that they have an equal and constant sink.
“The support comes from decades of observations and successful modeling of of Earths carbon cycle which has seasonal oscillations from various sources.”
I didn’t realize they did that before 1950, let alone 1750.
“This data cannot be simply dismissed.”
No, but it can be explained to some degree. The antarctic ice cores generally have lower resolution than Greenland’s and the variability of the latter is much greater. Do you know how much mixing occurs during the 60 years or so that it takes for CO2 to be trapped in ice bubbles, if in fact they can be? I don’t.
We already have an oscillatory natural input that is 20 times greater than the human emissions input. Why do I need a non-oscillatory one?
I agree that a small temperature increase is inadequate to explain all the rise in natural emissions. However, land use changes due to population increase may compensate for the difference.
What I would like you to explain is how a sink knows the difference between a human produced CO2 molecule and a natural one?
Uggh,
“Nate,
‘You have not explained the coincidental and excellent match to human emissions with no arbitrary additional mystery sources.’
I did, but you are too stuck in your confirmationally biased mindset to see another point of view.”
What you have done is similar to what a defense attorney at a murder trial does. All of the available evidence points to his client’s guilt.
Cameras show he was at the scene at the right time (historical matching of emissions and concentration). No one else was there for the whole week.
His DNA was found on the victim. (Isotope analysis of atm CO2).
He owned the gun used and had motive (emissions lead to accumulation, quantitative agreement).
What to do? In the closing argument the attny declares all of this simply coincidental, and speculates about other people who may have had means, motives, and opportunity.
That should not convince a jury. They are told to look only at the evidence, not speculation.
‘What is the rationale for this new source and how it changes over time? How is that physically motivated? It seems completely arbitrary.’
“The natural sources of CO2 are not new sources. As temperature rises and CO2 becomes less soluble in water, it is likely that the ocean sink backs up and the atmospheric source increases in CO2.”
Nope this is known to be WAY too small an effect. Your change over time is still arbitrary.
In contrast, in Dr Roys model, there are only KNOWN sources.
“Yes, one, because all other sources are assumed cancelled by an unproven assumption that they have an equal and constant sink.”
No not really. Other natural sources and sinks are contributing, such as ENSO producing fast variation in CO2, but not ENOUGH to accumulate very much.
The support comes from decades of observations and successful modeling of of Earths carbon cycle which has seasonal oscillations from various sources.
I didnt realize they did that before 1950, let alone 1750.’
The working out of models to explain data has been since the 1950s.
This data cannot be simply dismissed.
“No, but it can be explained to some degree. The antarctic ice cores generally have lower resolution than Greenlands and the variability of the latter is much greater. Do you know how much mixing occurs during the 60 years or so that it takes for CO2 to be trapped in ice bubbles, if in fact they can be? I dont.”
YOU are unsure about how this stuff is figured out, so therefore YOU feel comfortable dismissing it.
“We already have an oscillatory natural input that is 20 times greater than the human emissions input. Why do I need a non-oscillatory one?”
Yes. The oscillation is due mostly to the large (20C) seasonal oscillation of temperature in the hemispheres.
There is nothing comparable happening to Global annual averages.
“I agree that a small temperature increase is inadequate to explain all the rise in natural emissions.”
Yes.
“However, land use changes due to population increase may compensate for the difference.”
Speculation.
“What I would like you to explain is how a sink knows the difference between a human produced CO2 molecule and a natural one?”
An imbalance however it happens produces the same response.
Nate,
I’m trying not to be put off by your improper quoting that leads to confusion over who wrote what. One thing I’ve noticed is that certain font quotes are lost copying and pasting. I would suggest using notepad, but it even happens there sometimes.
There are two things you seem not to understand and/or admit.
1) Natural sources of CO2 are 20 times greater than human sources at the current annual rates. Yearly fluctuations make no difference to that fact.
2) “An imbalance however it happens produces the same response.” But you are claiming, essentially and summarily, that human produced CO2 stays in the atmosphere longer than naturally produced CO2. How do you reconcile that discrepancy, if you even realize there is one?
‘1) Natural sources of CO2 are 20 times greater than human sources at the current annual rates. Yearly fluctuations make no difference to that fact.’
Here’s a cool video of Co2 vs latitude vs time.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/iadv/ccgg/latgrad/latgrad_co2.mp4
You can clearly see the Earth breathing and also the incremental rise every year.
Apparently the NH breathes much more deeply. The amplitude of the oscillation is certainly bigger than the annual increment.
In the SH there is hardly any breathing, amplitude maybe comparable to the annual rise.
Just because the breathing is larger (in NH) than the annual rise, I don’t think that means it MUST be the cause of the rise.
They may be two different things.
Also interesting, seasonal oscillation in temperature might be max-min of 20 C in each hemisphere, but the CO2 oscillation was at most 10 ppm in the far North, and like 1 ppm in the deep South. So at most 0.5 ppm/C.
The global rise in temperature during this period of time was like 0.7 C, but the total rise in CO2 was like 70 ppm, so ~ 100 ppm/C
So that mismatch suggests, IMO, different mechanisms are at work.
What do you think?
2) ‘An imbalance however it happens produces the same response.’ But you are claiming, essentially and summarily, that human produced CO2 stays in the atmosphere longer than naturally produced CO2. How do you reconcile that discrepancy, if you even realize there is one?”
Hmm. Well the natural oscillation is probably caused by temperature and sunlight. So that is a driven oscillation with time scale forced to be 1 year.
While the relaxation-time for a steady input or a pulse of CO2 added to the system could be, should be, much longer.
Lots of systems behave that way.
Nate,
I think I should start over. You seem to be responding to something that has no bearing on how much of the CO2 in the current atmosphere is due to humans. The IPCC attributes most of the increase in CO2 to humans. Ed Berry, Hermann Harde, Murray Salby, and others have published papers claiming the human contribution couldn’t be much more than its share of all the sources of CO2. The CO2 from natural sources is about 20 times that of the human emissions. Therefore the fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere due to humans can’t be more than 5%. The fit that Dr. Spencer got can be just as easily found using a model with those realistic inputs, as I demonstrated. There is no reason to apply unreal constraints such as the sinks preferentially remove human emissions over natural ones.
“The CO2 from natural sources is about 20 times that of the human emissions.”
” There is no reason to apply unreal constraints such as the sinks preferentially remove human emissions over natural ones.”
Seems like my posts above, which thoughtfully answered your questions, addressed these specific issues, just went into a black hole.
Now it looks like you are just sort of mindlessly repeating the same talking points over again.
Before I take the time and effort to discuss further, I’d like to know that my posts are going to be read, digested, and properly responded to.
What specifically, in my posts, do you disagree with and why? What do you not understand? How do you interpret the video differently than I do?
I repeated my points, because (like you) I don’t think you are getting what I’m saying. Have you even read Dr. Berry’s paper? He shows that the ratio of CO2 from human emissions over that from natural emissions in the atmosphere can’t be more than the ratio of those same sources. That means at most 5%/95%. This has nothing to do with seasonal oscillations (which is why I didn’t comment on your video link). Do you get it so far?
Chic,
You brought this up. We don’t agree. But if you really want to discuss, fine.
I played nice. I looked at your fit (much worse fit than Roys BTW).
I took your posts seriously. Answered your questions best I could.
But you refuse to respond to or address my answers. Not clear you bothered to read or think about them.
So what’s the point of answering?
You simply repeat the questions, and the talking points of Berry and Salby, as if I didnt answer!
That’s not really a discussion, is it?
You leave me no choice but to “assume” you really don’t get it. Berry’s paper is not a “talking point.” How does the planet remove all of the natural sources of CO2 (20 times more than the human contribution) and leave 50% of the human sources?
‘How does the planet remove all of the natural sources of CO2 (20 times more than the human contribution) and leave 50% of the human sources?’
The factor of 20 is a talking point, since it is not clear why this natural flow amplitude matters to the rise. It reflects the natural exchanges (much of it seasonal, but not all) between the ocean mixed-layer, atmosphere, and biosphere.
The ocean mixed layer and the atmosphere apparently equilibrate to roughly the same ppm (Henrys law) relatively quickly. Ocean conc do closely track atm concentrations.
The main point is the ocean mixed layer and atm contain roughly the same amount of carbon (1000 Gt). And the fast responding biosphere ~ comparable. Slow biosphere is like wood in long live trees, soils, etc.
The natural flows simply are the exchanges between the fast equilbrating reservoirs. There is no real difference in how the natural and human emissions are ‘removed’.
If a pulse of carbon is ADDED to the atmosphere, then it will quickly divide between atm, ocean and biosphere. It will continue to be exchanged, but will NOT GO AWAY.
Only after a longer time will it penetrate into middle ocean, into new forest growth, and after a very long time the deep ocean.
This is why the bomb C14 is now being detected in middle ocean layers, but only a little in the deep ocean.
And the video gives us an idea of what the response of CO2 to temperature would be, quite low, 0.5 ppm/deg.
This is prob lower than it would be on longer time scale, and for the whole Earth, but still, I don’t see how we will ever get 100 pm/deg.
Henrys law for water and CO2 gives outgassing ~ 2.5%/C, ~ 10 ppm/C of warming.
But the NH biosphere is a SINK for CO2 during summer, so the two effects tend to cancel.
Now we’re getting somewhere. The factor of 20 is not a talking point. It is known to anyone familiar with the carbon cycle. It’s in the IPCC AR5 WGI. For every GtC we emit, nature kicks in 20 GtC. That matters because the natural reverse process can’t distinguish a human emission CO2 from a natural one. Apparently we agree, since you write “There is no real difference in how the natural and human emissions are ‘removed.’” Nature doesn’t make human emission CO2 molecules wait until all the natural ones have already been sinked.
Then you go off the rails. A pulse of CO2 added to the atmosphere will go away at the same first order rate as what is already there. That is why my spreadsheet handles both human and natural emissions well (I did not take time to get a best fit and that is why you said it wasn’t that good). There is no data relevant to this discussion to support your “longer time” “new forest growth” “deep ocean” mumbo jumbo. If you are not familiar with rate constants, this will be a hard concept for you to grasp.
Why there is so much increase in CO2 due to natural causes is a separate question which we can speculate on after you are comfortable with the impossibility of nature treating two identical molecules differently as if she new where they came from in a well mixed atmosphere.
” There is no data relevant to this discussion to support your “longer time” “new forest growth” “deep ocean” mumbo jumbo. If you are not familiar with rate constants, this will be a hard concept for you to grasp.”
Continuing to ignoring the main points that I make and facts I mentioned.
If you want anthro co2 to ‘go away’, there must be a place accessible for it to go,
It is an established fact that the ocean mixed layer ML has 1000 GT of carbon ~ the same amount as the atmosphere.
It is also an established fact that only the ML can equilibrate with the atmosphere quickly. Tracers etc show the deep ocean is simply not accessible.
Thus, the ocean sink for added co2 is simply not big enough to make it ‘go away’ any time soon.
If you can quantitatively dispute these facts, pls do so.
“after you are comfortable with the impossibility of nature treating two identical molecules differently”
Strawman, we are done with that one!
You’ve taken a step back. Previously you stated There is no real difference in how the natural and human emissions are removed. Are you reneging on that now?
“If you want anthro co2 to go away, there must be a place accessible for it to go.”
The solubility of CO2 in seawater is at least 10 times more than current ocean concentrations. Dissolved CO2 reacts with water and forms bicarbonate which is several orders of magnitude more soluble than CO2. Any major shifts in the equilibrium equations due to increased CO2 from the atmosphere will form carbonates which precipitate out and represent a virtually infinite sink. These reactions are essentially instantaneous relative to climate time frames. To say “the ocean sink for added co2 is simply not big enough to make it go away any time soon” is ludicrous.
Chic,
‘ Previously you stated There is no real difference in how the natural and human emissions are removed. Are you reneging on that now?’
No. Nowhere did I say anything like that, or anything consistent with that.
Again you ignore what I write, and substitute your own erroneous thoughts.
“The solubility of CO2 in seawater is at least 10 times more than current ocean concentrations. Dissolved CO2 reacts with water and forms bicarbonate which is several orders of magnitude more soluble than CO2. Any major shifts in the equilibrium equations due to increased CO2 from the atmosphere will form carbonates which precipitate out and represent a virtually infinite sink.”
FALSE. NOT virtually infinite. You are not being QUANTITATIVE here in estimating the SIZE of the accessible carbon reservoirs, as I did, and as standard science does.
The ocean mixed layer has a depth and VOLUME. At 100 m depth it is about 100 x smaller in volume than the volume of the atmosphere. So although you are right that, “bicarbonate which is several orders of magnitude more soluble than CO2”. But the relative volumes also matter.
Thus, as the numbers show, when the atm and ocean ML reach equilibrium, quickly, the amount of carbon stored in each is roughly the same, 1000 Gt.
And you have not disputed this.
And thus new carbon added, divides almost equally between these reservoirs.
Yes, the WHOLE OCEAN is a virtually infinite carbon sink, with 40 x as much as the atmosphere. But the whole ocean will not equilibrate with the atmosphere any time soon.
Nate,
“No. Nowhere did I say anything like that, or anything consistent with that.”
It’s in the fifth paragraph here: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/08/how-the-media-help-to-destroy-rational-climate-debate/#comment-381323
You can change your mind, but don’t accuse me of ignoring what you write or substituting thoughts. Some of what you write is irrelevant and I sympathize with you for feeling ignored.
The average concentration of C (total inorganic carbon) in seawater from two sources both agree at about 2.2 mmol/L or 0.0264 gC/L. Based roughly on the surface area of the oceans times 100m deep, gives me 3.6 x 10^19 L of seawater containing 950 PgC or 912 GtC. Close enough to the 1000 GtC you claim. As I said this is irrelevant, because the ocean is far from saturated with either CO2 or total inorganic carbon. A doubling of atmospheric CO2 will not double the ML concentration of total inorganic carbon. This is because equilibrium rate constants drive the balance not the amounts of CO2 in the reservoirs. Use your chemistry.
Let’s try to get back on the same page. This is not just about how fast things equilibrate. It’s actually about what you think is a strawman: the ocean doesn’t treat human and natural emissions of CO2 differently.
Ugggh, you are being dense, Chic.
The description of ‘when a pulse is added’ in no way claims that natural and anthro co2 are treated differently!
Just stop misreading things to match your narrative.
The description is simply agreeing with the main point, that you keep missing, that the sinks are finite.
So you agree that the ocean ML has ~ the same amount of carbon as the atmosphere, 1000 Gt. But still claim, based on no real evidence, that it is still an effectively ‘infinite sink’.
As you can see, the more you read up on this, the more you can see that the real carbon cycle of the Earth is complicated. Neither you nor I understand it deeply. But other people who have made their career working it out, DO understand it deeply.
Berry and Salby are not among those people. They barely mention the complicated features of ocean chemistry, Revelle factor, the sizes of the reservoirs, etc.
Berry, with no worries about these carbon cycle details, simply assumes that reservoirs are infinite enough. He is then able to claim that mainstream science has it all wrong, and that his much much simpler model has it right. Riiight.
Look into the Revelle factor. If you do, you find that it says that for any increase in atm cO2 of x %, that the concentration of free CO2 in the ocean will increase ~ x% , but the concentration of all the types of carbon molecules in the ocean, will only go up by ~ x/10 %.
That means, when you consider relative volumes of atm and ML, that whenever NEW carbon is added to the atmosphere from any source, that the ocean ML will only absorb a fraction of it.
This is not my claim, this is just what science has found.
‘Revelle factor’
I see that you were already talking about this ‘A doubling of atmospheric CO2 will not double the ML concentration of total inorganic carbon.’
Good, we are on the same page. Then do you understand why the ML will absorb a smaller fraction of any added carbon, than is left behind in the atm?
Are you carrying on a conversation with an imaginary friend? Where did ‘when a pulse is added’ enter in?
So I repeat: Do you or do you not agree that natural and anthro CO2 are treated similarly. If they are treated the same, then the proportion of the CO2 in the atmosphere must be the same as the ratio of the inflows. How can it be otherwise?
The rates do matter, but what’s the use in discussing that if you can’t even understand chemical equilibrium, let alone your misconception that sinks are anywhere close to saturated or finite. Precipitation products are infinite as long as you continually supply more reactants.
Yes, I still claim that 1000 GtC in the ML is essentially an infinite sink, based on standard chemical equilibria. As Le Chatelier’s principle implies, increasing the concentration of reactants will drive the reaction to the right. In this case, the right means bicarbonate and carbonate ions. Most carbonates are insoluble and that provides the infinite sink, because there is nothing left in solution to drive the reaction back to the left.
News flash! I’m not reading up on the carbon cycle that you seem to be. So provide the deep understanding that I seem to be missing. If your argument was convincing, we’d be done by now. You have provided no evidence of finite sinks. I am interested in this and will be happy for you to explain how Berry, Salby, and I are wrong. But please, no more appeals to what mainstream science has found that you don’t understand.
“Then do you understand why the ML will absorb a smaller fraction of any added carbon, than is left behind in the atm?”
Yes. When the partial pressure of CO2 increases, atmospheric CO2 dissolves as H2CO3 in solution. That forces the reaction to the right, but the right side pushes back. When a new equilibrium is reached, the newly added CO2 does not distribute equally between the atmosphere and solution. This is no reason to believe that the 5% of human emissions are preferentially retained in the atmosphere compared to 95% of the natural emissions.
‘The natural flows simply are the exchanges between the fast equilbrating reservoirs. There is no real difference in how the natural and human emissions are removed.’
“So I repeat: Do you or do you not agree that natural and anthro CO2 are treated similarly.”
So I repeat: read what fucking write, not what’s in your head.
What is the pointed of talking to you if you cannot read?
“Im not reading up on the carbon cycle that you seem to be.”
Then you need to start, just as Berry needs to.
“So provide the deep understanding that I seem to be missing.”
No thats not my job, as I said neither you Nor I have that.
“Then do you understand why the ML will absorb a smaller fraction of any added carbon, than is left behind in the atm?”
“Yes.”
Then your prior claims that this cannot happen, and the ML is “a virtually infinite sink” make absolutely no sense.
“let alone your misconception that sinks are anywhere close to saturated or finite.”
I never said saturated.
What I am saying (see if you can read this without spinning it in some weird way) is, simply this:
If we had only a swimming pool of ocean water, its going to come to chemical equilibrium with the atmospheric carbon concentration.
But because the pool is small in volume, if I add new CO2 to the atmosphere, the pool will remove didily squat of it, and thus 99.999% of the added CO2 will stay in the atmosphere.
Size matters, as my wife keeps insisting to me.
The ocean ML is bigger than a swimming pool, but still FINITE in SIZE, and thus will only be able to remove a Fraction of any NEW carbon added to the SYSTEM, before it reaches equilibrium with a new CO2 and carbonate concentration (not saturation!).
Consistent with what mainstream science is saying actually happens.
How are they wrong?
“Then your prior claims that [the ML absorbing a smaller fraction of any added carbon than is left behind in the atm] cannot happen, and the ML is ‘a virtually infinite sink’ make absolutely no sense.”
Firstly, I don’t recall claiming the former and I think part of the reason it makes no sense to you is you don’t understand the chemistry.
Our disagreement is partly semantic and partly misunderstanding equilibration constants. The semantic part is how you define the fraction of added CO2 that is removed or remains. You attribute the CO2 in the atmosphere before human intervention as constant. Nevermind that it has always been umpteen times greater than our current human contribution. So you attribute all of the increase in total CO2 in the atmosphere to human emissions while at the same time agreeing that nature treats both type emissions the same. I can live with that. What you or I can’t do, however, is know exactly how much added CO2 is human or natural. The natural sources may have been adding more as well.
The other part you don’t seem to get is that a finite volume is not a factor, only saturation would put a finite constraint on the processes involved providing sufficient cations present capable of removing carbonate.
How are [mainstream scientists] wrong? By phrasing like you in ways that make it sound like all additional CO2 in the air is human caused, leading to the possibly false conclusion that stopping human emissions will prevent further increase in CO2.
“Any major shifts in the equilibrium equations due to increased CO2 from the atmosphere will form carbonates which precipitate out and represent a virtually infinite sink. ”
I’d like to see some evidence or a reference for this claim.
“How are [mainstream scientists] wrong? By phrasing like you in ways that make it sound like all additional CO2 in the air is human caused”
You are not really pointing out what they have done wrong. Is it that they have misunderstood the ocean chemistry? No probably not, since you refer to Revelle’s work. Have they misunderstood the carbon cycle? How?
” the partial pressure of CO2 increases, atmospheric CO2 dissolves as H2CO3 in solution. That forces the reaction to the right, but the right side pushes back. When a new equilibrium is reached, the newly added CO2 does not distribute equally between the atmosphere and solution.”
Yes.
“This is no reason to believe that the 5% of human emissions are preferentially retained in the atmosphere compared to 95% of the natural emissions.”
How does that follow? Again there is NO PREFERENCE. There is simply new carbon added to the system, and that carbon ‘does not distribute equally between the atmosphere and solution.’
Study this page: http://www.luckysci.com/2015/09/chemistry-lesson-calcium-carbonate-solubility/
The seawater concentration of Ca++ is 0.01 M and carbonate is around 0.0001 M. Their product is greater than the Ks for calcium carbonate meaning it is close to or over saturated depending on depth. CaCO3 solubility actually increases as temperature drops, but the ML will always be saturated. Same for magnesium carbonate.
I can’t keep going around and around saying the same thing over again, Nate. I tried to explain the semantic problem. I’m going to have to give up unless you can try to understand my view. I understand you and the IPCC and I disagree with your phraseology. It leads a novice to believe that human emissions accumulate and natural emissions don’t, which is FALSE. It’s as simple as that.
“The seawater concentration of Ca++ is 0.01 M and carbonate is around 0.0001 M. Their product is greater than the Ks for calcium carbonate meaning it is close to or over saturated depending on depth.”
Ok.
What do you make of this?
“Surface waters are generally supersaturated with respect to
CaCO3. However it is rare for CaCO3 to precipitate inorganically because of complex ion-ion interactions, which inhibit
the Ca2+ ion. Magnesium (Mg2+) is one of the “competing” ions that depresses a spontaneous inorganic formation
of CaCO3 as expected from thermodynamics (e.g. Rushdi
et al., 1992). Thus it is through biological processes that
CaCO3(s) is formed in the ocean.”
from this paper:
https://www.biogeosciences.net/6/2421/2009/bg-6-2421-2009.pdf
Not a semantic issue, IMO. It is either true or not true that the ocean is able to gobble up all of the anthro CO2 quickly and make it ‘go away’
From your source:
“Modern Sea Surface Ω ≈ 2-5
Sea surface is supersaturated with respect to CaCO3,
but calcium carbonates are not constantly precipitating.”
Does not agree with your earlier statement:
“carbonates which precipitate out and represent a virtually infinite sink. These reactions are essentially instantaneous relative to climate time frames.”
If not constantly precipitating to maintain equilibrium, then the ocean ML cannot be acting as an infinite sink.
Yes?
I don’t think it is a coincidence that the seawater concentrations of Ca++, Mg++ and carbonate ions are near the limits of the solubility of their salts. Precipitation and dissolution is an equilibrium process driven only by the ions. The amount of precipitated carbonate has no effect on the equilibrium. If there are under-saturated ions, precipitates dissolve. If they are saturated, precipitation occurs. It amounts to an infinite sink for CO2. The distribution of CO2 between air and ocean has to do with equilibrium constants, not a finite sink.
“gobble up all of the anthro CO2 quickly and make it go away.”
Boom. That is the semantic issue right there. You say “all of the anthro CO2” and I say “all of the added CO2.” They are not the same thing.
Do you really want to quibble over instantaneous relative to fast enough for precipitation to keep the ions at their usual levels? I thought you would appreciate a warmist source to help you with the equilibrium processes involved. It’s up to you to decide if it is a credible enough source to believe the “not constantly precipitating” interpretation.
Chic, the description of the Revelle factor, as
“a measure of the resistance to atmospheric CO2 being absorbed by the ocean surface layer.[1] The buffer factor is used to examine the distribution of CO2 between the atmosphere and the ocean, and measures the amount of CO2 that can be dissolved in the mixed surface layer. It is named after the oceanographer Roger Revelle. The importance of his work was that he found human produced CO2 would not be easily absorbed by the oceans.[2]’
is just not consistent with your assertion that the ML “amounts to an infinite sink for CO2”
How is this standard interpretation of the Revelle factor wrong?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelle_factor
‘Boom. That is the semantic issue right there. You say ‘all of the anthro CO2′ and I say all of the added CO2. They are not the same thing.’
No, it is you guys that have made the claim that anthro CO2 is too small to produce the rise in atm concentrations, because it should NOT accumulate in the atmosphere, it should be gobbled up.
We guys did not bring up gobbling up, you did. I’m going to explain your semantic pigheadedness one last time. You interpret the added CO2 to be all human sourced. I interpret it to be some human and some natural. You don’t seem to care how much more natural emissions could be or, more likely, don’t even realize there could be more now than in previous years. Regardless which, you attribute the rise in atmospheric CO2 to human emissions.
Your other problem is not understanding the equilibration equations involved in the Revelle factor. It could be you’re being duped by the same misleading semantic wording of the person who wrote the Wiki article: “human produced CO2 would not be easily absorbed by the oceans.” Why would human-produced CO2 be any harder to absorb than other CO2 emission?
I’ll see if I can put up some numbers to illustrate the Revelle factor as it applies to all CO2, not just human-produced.
Chic,
‘I’m going to explain your semantic pigheadedness one last time.’
‘Apparently we agree, since you write ‘There is no real difference in how the natural and human emissions are ‘removed.’
Just stop with your OCD!
You guys-ie You, Berry, Salby, have consistently stated that anthro emissions are too small to account for the rise in concentrations.
‘Ed Berry, Hermann Harde, Murray Salby, and others have published papers claiming the human contribution couldn’t be much more than its share of all the sources of CO2. The CO2 from natural sources is about 20 times that of the human emissions. Therefore the fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere due to humans can’t be more than 5%.
If the human portion is only 5% of the rise, 120 ppm, then it is no more than 6 ppm.
But in the past century humans have added ~ 300 ppm to the system. But only 6 ppm remains in the atmosphere, 3%
Clearly YOU GUYS claim that the natural sinks have gobbled up 97% of it.
Mainstrean science has argued that the ocean ML has gobbled up only 30 % of the ADDED carbon. Meanwhile both natural and anthro carbon in the atmosphere-ocean ML-biosphere continues to be rapidly EXCHANGED.
Mainstream science and I are simply arguing that the ocean is NOT an infinite sink for any new ADDED carbon. That is the issue we are discussing.
Revelle factor is clearly consistent with this.
Can you make the case why 30% is not possible.
5% of what is in the air is 0.05 x 400 ppm or 20 ppm. You really should read at least Berry’s article.
In the past century nature has added at least 20 times your 300 ppm (I have no idea where you came up with that figure). What happens is that nature then “gobbles it back up” in proportion to what the sources were, because she can’t differentiate a human CO2 emission from a natural one.
It’s no use, Nate. You don’t get it, and I can’t keep on trying to explain your blind spot. If you were getting it, you would be able to acknowledge my position. You don’t have to agree, just a simple description of my argument would suffice.
“5% of what is in the air is 0.05 x 400 ppm or 20 ppm. You really should read at least Berrys article.”
Ok fine, 20 ppm. The 300 ppm was an estimate.
From AR5
“Anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions since the pre-industrial era have driven large increases in the atmospheric
concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) (Figure SPM.1c). Between 1750 and 2011,
cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions to the atmosphere were 2040 310 GtCO2. About 40% of these emissions have
remained in the atmosphere (880 35 GtCO2); the rest was removed from the atmosphere and stored on land (in plants and
soils) and in the ocean. The ocean has absorbed about 30% of the emitted anthropogenic CO2, causing ocean acidification.
About half of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions between 1750 and 2011 have occurred in the last 40 years (high confidence)
(Figure SPM.1d). {1.2.1, 1.2.2}’
0.129 ppm/Gt Co2 x 2000 Gt = 260 ppm. circa 2010.
You guys claim that 20 ppm of this has remained in the atmosphere, so ~ 8 %. Thus you guys claim that 92 % has been gobbled up, mostly by the nearly infinite sink of the ocean.
While the scientific literature shows that the ocean has absorbed only 30 %. Both modeling and measurements show this.
“{What happens is that nature then ‘gobbles it back up’ in proportion to what the sources were, because she cant differentiate a human CO2 emission from a natural one.”
I get that this is YOUR claim, but clearly it is WAY oversimplified, and depends on the ocean sink being effectively infinite.
The actual ocean chemistry, the ocean carbon cycle, according to the vast literature, is not as simple as you claim it to be, and therefore the ocean sink is not as large as you would like it to be.
As I said, I do not have a deep understanding of the ocean carbon cycle. I asked you to explain the discrepancy between 30% and 92%. Given your chemistry knowledge, YOU ought to be able to easily find this information.
But you seem uninterested in finding out what you are missing, and prefer to stick with the over-simplified cartoon version.
Chic,
“Have you even read Dr. Berrys paper? He shows that the ratio of CO2 from human emissions over that from natural emissions in the atmosphere cant be more than the ratio of those same sources. That means at most 5%/95%.”
I reread it. Here’s what I think is wrong with his argument.
He is claiming that natural sink flux that we currently have is driven by partial pressure of Co2 in atmosphere.
He makes analogies, eg to a tire with a leak, the leak rate is proportional to pressure.
This leads him to his conclusions that the anthro CO2 can only give 5% of the rise and 95% must be natural.
But this is wrong because most of the natural sink fluxes are naturally balanced by built-in DRIVEN sources, and NOT primarily driven by partial pressure.
So he says 56 ppm is the natural sink to land, and much of this is due to plant photosynthesis. But it is BALANCED by plant respiration and decay. Photosynthesis is like myriad little pumps for CO2 driven by energy from the sun.
These are ACTIVE sinks NOT driven primarily by partial pressure of CO2. There’s evidence of a small increase in imbalance of photosynthesis vs respiration with partial pressure, but clearly that is a second-order effect.
The other big natural sink Flux is to the ocean which he says is ~ 42 ppm. Again this is BALANCED by ocean emissions. Much of this arguably is driven by temperature. The cold parts of the ocean are sinks and the warm parts are sources. And this varies throughout the year.
There is no evidence that the balance of this source-sink activity would change very much with atm partial pressure, not to first order, because its temperature driven.
So his analogy to a leak proportional to atm pressure to describe these natural sinks is poor, IMO.
In contrast, the anthro emissions are a source with no built-in balancing sink. It is like an external source in that sense.
Therefore its ONLY sink flux IS driven by partial pressure difference with the ocean and the soil, biosphere, etc.
Therefore the rise in atm pressure due to anthro is not limited to 5%.
And BTW, the FF carbon, stored over millions of years, would be a natural ultra-slow source only through volcanic activity, which is balanced by other ultra slow carbon-cycle sinks.
It has been of course converted to a fast source through emissions, and not balanced.
“This leads him to his conclusions that the anthro CO2 can only give 5% of the rise and 95% must be natural.”
That is not his conclusion. He quotes IPCC saying nature emits 120 GtC (56 ppm) from land and 90 GtC (42 ppm) from ocean compared to only 9.7 GtC (4.6 ppm) for human emissions or about 5% of the total emissions [9.7/(120 + 90) = 4.4%]. Never mind that the natural emissions are fluid and could be more or less from year to year. His conclusion is the proportion of CO2 left in the air attributable to humans cannot be greater than 5% of 410 or 20.5 ppm. Given a nominal value of 280 for pre-industrial CO2, Berry would argue the increase due to humans is at most is 15.8% (20.5/130).
Your counter arguments to whatever conclusions you thought Berry made are so convoluted I don’t know where to start a rebuttal. Sources and sinks are not always balanced, balance does change with partial pressure (that is explicitly what the Revelle factor means), and slow vs. fast sources is irrelevant.
You just can’t rectify nature treating all sources the same with your desire to pin all the increase in CO2 on humans. Try reading the article again with an open mind and use actual data to refute him, not your preconceived notions.
I have reread and thought about his logic (which is not based on data), and came up with a logical counterargument, which you have no rebuttal to.
Try reading my post(s) again with an open mind.
‘ and slow vs. fast sources is irrelevant.’
Assertion, not a rebuttal.
When the SLOW is geologic time, and that changes to 1 century, that is quite relevant.
‘You just cant rectify nature treating all sources the same with your desire to pin all the increase in CO2 on humans. ‘
Not a desire, it is simply most logical explanation for the data. Often a cigar is just a cigar.
While the alternative requires a series of highly improbable events, requires our hard-won understanding of the ocean carbon cycle and lots of empirical evidence to be extremely flawed.
I don’t want to keep going around in circles with you, Nate. My rebuttal to your counter argument is that its an assertion without a coherent presentation of data supporting it. Ed Berry’s paper is replete with data, but you are too blind to see it, let alone present a logical counter argument.
“When the SLOW is geologic time, and that changes to 1 century, that is quite relevant.”
That is an assertion, not a logical argument.
“Not a desire, it is simply most logical explanation for the data.”
It’s only your opinion and potentially a naive one unless you can debunk the alternative rationally. Nothing is hard-won in climate science. There is no closed book on the ocean carbon cycle as it relates to global warming. Berry’s and other’s papers are out there and hand-waving arguments aren’t going to make them go away.
Chic,
I had not appreciated this before, but here is a pretty obvious demonstration of the flaw in Berry’s model, that gets at the heart of issue.
He says:
“dL/dt = Inflow Outflow
Where L = carbon dioxide leve dL/dt = the rate of change of L
t = time”
No problem with that.
“The partial pressure of carbon dioxide sets the rate that carbon dioxide flows out of the atmosphere.
outflow to be proportional to the level,
Outflow = L / Te
where Te is a constant that has the dimension of time.”
Nope, here he loses reality. He assumes external pressure is 0, when clearly pressure in ocean and land sinks is not 0.
Much that follows depends on this wrong assumption.
Ultimately, he says
“There is no ‘permanent’ remainder of human or natural carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If inflow is turned off, the corresponding equilibrium level will go to zero. The level will approach zero according to the 1/e residence time of 4 years.
If the inflow was turned off, the atmospheric pressure would not go to 0. The ocean CO2 has nowhere to drain to.
You have to admit, Chic, this is an absurd conclusion.
And it shows that his model is wrong for the actual atmosphere.
Nate,
Are we reading the same article?
He does not assume external pressure is 0. Where did you get that? Here is the pertinent excerp.t regarding pressure:
“The Physics Model does not need to describe the details of
the external processes. Inflow, outflow, and e-time include all
the effects of outside processes.”
Nowhere do I find the words “permanent remainder” or “inflow is turned off” or “the level will approach zero.” You are making up a scenario that doesn’t occur. You are correct that it would become an inappropriate model if human and natural inflows stopped altogether. Of course, long before that life will cease to exist. Nice try though.
I think the main weakness in the model is the assump.tion that the rate of absorp.tion into the biomass or oceans is proportional to atm CO2 concentration. It neglects a return process. I am working on a model that doesn’t.
Another issue that you should try to find support for is the IPCC assump.tion that natural sources have remained steady. As I demonstrated with the modified Spencer model, the data is equally well fit by an expanding natural source.
“Nowhere do I find the words ‘permanent remainder’ or ‘inflow is turned off’ or ‘the level will approach zero.’ You are making up a scenario that doesn’t occur.”
Im quoting him directly. And you assume Im making it up? This is how your mind works?
This article: https://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/human-co2-not-change-climate/
“I think the main weakness in the model is the assump.tion that the rate of absorp.tion into the biomass or oceans is proportional to atm CO2 concentration. It neglects a return process. I am working on a model that doesnt.”
Glad to see you now get the ‘convoluted’ point that I have been making.
“He is claiming that natural sink flux that we currently have is driven by partial pressure of Co2 in atmosphere.
He makes analogies, eg to a tire with a leak, the leak rate is proportional to pressure.
This leads him to his conclusions that the anthro CO2 can only give 5% of the rise and 95% must be natural.
But this is wrong because most of the natural sink fluxes are naturally balanced by built-in DRIVEN sources, and NOT primarily driven by partial pressure.”
Chic,
Continued, down below
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/08/how-the-media-help-to-destroy-rational-climate-debate/#comment-385418
Roy…”1) Because 4% of annual emissions are probably responsible for close to 100% of the atmospheric CO2 increase.”
I presume Stephen was referring to the 4% that ACO2 makes up of all CO2, 96% being natural.
That naturally raises the question as to why the natural CO2, which must have been about 0.03% of atmospheric, gases did not warm the atmosphere long before ACO2 was supposed to have done it.
There is far too much of a coincidence since 1850, when the Little Ice Age ended. A mini ice age that lasted for 400 years ends and temperatures start rising. The Industrial Revolution is in the middle of the last 200 years of the LIA. Why did the IPCC not look at re-warming from the LIA?
They couldn’t, it’s not in their mandate, to find evidence of warming from anthropogenic sources.
Stephen P Anderson
“How can 4% of annual CO2 emissions be responsible for most of the temperature change?”
96 % of annual CO2 emissions are released by living organisms and then reabsorbed by living organisms. Since natural emission and abso*rbt*ion are equal over a year, there is no long term change in CO2 concentration. The other 2% comes from burning fossil fuels and releasing CO2which has been trapped for 400 million years. This is where the extra CO2 comes from, and it accumulates in the atmosphere over time.
“Isnt todays temperature range within the historical range of the last several interglacials according to the best data?”
Yes, though 1C warmer than anything seen in this interglacial. The significance of this is that our civilization developed during the present interglacial and is mostly optimised for pre-AGW conditions.
“Arent the planets current CO2 levels closer to the bottom of the range historically (at least over the last billion years)?”
Not quite. The last snowball earth event some 600mya occured when CO2 was well below 200ppm. The last glacial period had 200ppm. Typical Holocene levels were around 280ppm until we started adding our 4%.
Our present 400ppm+ is typical of pre-Ice Age conditions some 4C warmer than the present, and +10C temperatures came with CO2 up to 1000ppm.
” Whats the temperature of the planet supposed to be?”;
The planet probably has no optimum temperature. It has experienced averages from 5C up to 24C over the last billion years and is still here. Our civilization, however, is optimised for 14C and we are now passing 15C. We do not cope well with such changes. Read Jared Diamond’s book “Collapse”.
“Since natural emission and abso*rbt*ion are equal over a year, there is no long term change in CO2 concentration.”
Where is your data to back this up? Dr. Berry’s paper cited above has a detailed model that contradicts you and explains how the IPCC-based models fail. Can you explain where he is wrong?
Eman,
You pick your points well. In the Jurassic, Triassic and Cretaceous periods CO2 levels were well above 1000ppm. Since the Cretaceous levels have decayed below 1000ppm. I think most experts agree we need above 180 ppm to support plant life and as CO2 levels increase above 180 ppm plants flourish proportionately. In my opinion 400 ppm level is much better than a 250 ppm level which is way too close to 180ppm and 600 ppm would be even better.
Mostly good points, but “Yes, though 1C warmer than anything seen in this interglacial.? Thats simply not true. Maybe were above MWP temperature level by now, but you have to have a firm belief in rotten hockey sticks to claim that the climate during the Holocene Optimum was cooler than now.
Has Mann released his data yet?
Stephen P Anderson
Yes. The data has been in the public domain for decades. You can find it here
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02478#Sec1
or here
ftp://holocene.evsc.virginia.edu/pub/sdr/temp/nature/MANNETAL98/
Eman,
You’re either a liar or you’re clueless. Which is it?
You are either intentionally lying or clueless as to what I’m asking? I want your answer. I don’t believe you’re ignorant.
Stephen P Anderson
What a curious reaction.
Let me remind you what this is about. In 1998 Mann,Bradley and Hughes published a paper in Nature describing 1000 years of European temperatures derived from proxy data. This was the first serious attempt to use tree ring data to deduce a temperature sequence.
The data and code used was published with the paper as supplementary information, as is the custom.
This was the basis for a long debate between the authors, other scientists and several sceptics.
Over the 20 years since, the science of using proxies as temperature indicators has progressed considerably and the same basic hockey stick pattern has been demonstrated repeatedly by other workers using other data.
Now to Mann v Ball. Ball wrote that the MBH98 paper, as it has become known, was fraudulent and was sued by Mann.
Various denier websites have claimed that Ball asked for Mann’s data and was refused. This strikes me as silly, since the data has been in the public domain since 1998.
I haven’t seen the judgement yet, but I suspect that the judge made a decision similar to the Mann v Wheeler case.
So you’re feigning ignorance really well. You seem to know so much about the case but you fail to mention the crux of the case. This implies disinformation and dishonesty. Typical leftist propagandist.
Stephen P Anderson
The crux of the case was whether Ball’s written comments constituted defamation. The judge has presumably decided not, though we will need to see the published judgement to be sure.
If the judge in this case thinks in the same way as the judge in the Wheeler case, he will have rejected it because Ball’s comments were so absurd that nobody would take them seriously.
If you think the crux of the case was the scientific validity of MBH98, you are mistaken.
That was not in question.
So you are nothing more than a lying propagandist?
Huge presumption to say our civilisation is optimised for 14c. Why then do most people with home heating run their home temperatures above 20c? We have coped with 14c but may do far better with 18c. For one thing we’d not need to burn so much fossil fuel to stay alive.
Ave annual temp of Minneapolis ~ 7 C
Ave annual temp of New Orleans or Houston ~ 20 C
Midpoint of these 14 C.
Av annual temp of Paris: 14 C.
Other central European cities similar.
It seems first-world populations have gravitated to moderate temps (and humidities!)
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/optimal-temperature-economic-growth-13-c
Not sure how the “reply” system works as I don’t see “reply” after many messages, but I’m trying to reply to Entropic man who mentions tree ring data as a temperature proxie. I seriously doubt you can tell much about the temperature from tree ring data. I have been a forester for 47 years and have looked at many tree rings. The size of the rings have more to do with precipitation than temperature. I’m not an expert on the subject so I asked a professor about this and he recommended a text book, “Fundamentals of Tree-Ring Research” by James H. Speer. But, I see little in there about how tree rings indicate temperature- other than how in select areas of the world, there is some correlation between temperature and the rings. Not convincing. If that’s a pillar of climate science, that science is weak. Perhaps somebody here can tell me precisely how tree rings give temperature.
Amazon burning … I suspect that it is actually a substitute for “Bolsonaro must burn”. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is hated by Progressives, and he should be removed by any means necessary (he survived an assassination attempt during election campaign). Down with Trump of the tropics!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/19/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-presidential-candidate-trump-parallels
I like this summary:
” either you believe the real scientists who all agree we are destroying the planet, or you are a knuckle-dragging 8th-grade educated climate denier with guns and racist tendencies.”
cd,
That rather demonstrates the stupidity of pseudoscientific GHE true believers, doesn’t it?
I prefer fact to fantasy. You are free to believe any nonsense you wish. Don’t expect me to pay for your fantasy, however.
Cheers.
You again!
What a surprise!
How are the knuckles today?
Begone, stupid troll!
Can you put some context to the “lowest years for biomass burning” chart?
Nongqause and Thunberg both advocate National Suicide.
In 1856, 16 year old Nongquase had a vision in which her ancestors promised her people, the Xhosa, a millennium of freedom from European intruders in exchange for the sacrifice of their material wealth. To fulfill Nongqause’s vision, the Xhosa leader, Sarili ordered over 150,000 cattle killed and crops and grain reserves destroyed. Tens of thousands of Xhosa perished in the ensuing famine.
Thunberg is doing the same: take away fossil fuels and our civilization ends.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/nongqause-c-1840-c-1900
The real problem is that there are two completely independent theories which have been packaged into one.
1/ increases in the level of Atmospheric CO2 will cause some warming.
2/ any warming of the planet will have catastrophic effects.
The first has some scientific basis, the second has none. By packaging them together, they can falsely claim that the ‘science’ supports the predictions they are making.
The media love to run scare stories and will keep running this nonsense well into the next ice age… and with just about all the media onboard, there’s no voice of reason to challenge it.
School children are being systematically brainwashed and are becoming easy recruitment targets for activist groups. Everybody wants to be Bruce Willis and save the world… and these children are being offered that opportunity.
A big part of the problem is that we are becoming a victim of our own affluence. About a hundred years ago, people worked from sun-up to sun-down, seven days a week. They simply didn’t have time to save the world. Today people have much more free-time on their hands and use that time doing things which make them feel important. Back in the 1970’s we had hippies trying to save some trees. Today we have people, largely influenced by the media, believing that they need to use their free-time to save the whole planet. It reminds me of this quote from Thomas Sowell…
“Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.”
These people are blissfully unaware that they are just foot soldiers for the parasites who profit from this scare campaign. Wind farms and solar farms are in fact nothing more than subsidy farms… uneconomic enterprises mandated by governments, paid for by all but only benefiting the select few. And let’s not forget the carbon traders who take the term “money for nothing” to a whole new level.
The climate crisis is a multi-billion dollar global industry and anyone who gets in its way ends up getting crushed.
“1/ increases in the level of Atmospheric CO2 will cause some warming.
2/ any warming of the planet will have catastrophic effects.
The first has some scientific basis, the second has none.”
There are numerous studies indicating the potential impacts of warming. For example, in the US alone increased heat, drought and insect outbreaks, all linked to climate change, have increased wildfires. Declining water supplies, reduced agricultural yields, health impacts in cities due to heat, and flooding and erosion in coastal areas are additional concerns.
To say there is no scientific basis for these claims is remarkably stupid.
Denialists always see things as black and white.
They cannot bring themselves to acknowledge even a 1% chance that the scientists are correct.
This attitude s based on:
(a) a religious conservative fervour
(b) a poor understanding of probability and risk
Dr. Myki, horse podiatrist, is back, with more misinformation !
If an area is hot and dry with fuel available for wildfires, most of which are started by humans, not lightning strikes, then being a few tenths of a degree warmer from climate change is not going to have any effect.
Dr. Myki non-logic:
If the average temperature in Californian was 90 degrees, there will be few wildfires, but if it reaches 90.2 degrees, from global warming, the whole state of will be burning !
Since the future climate is unknown, and unknowable, no scientist today could possibly “know” the future climate — he or she might make a lucky guess, but that’s not knowing
something.
There is 0% chance that scientists today are correct about the future climate, based on thorough knowledge of exactly what causes climate change, because such knowledge does not yet exist.
The climate in 100 years may be warmer, or cooler — no one knows the right answer.
The Holocene inter-glacial may still be in progress, or it may have ended in 100 years.
Government policies should not be based on wild guesses of the future climate.
CO2 is not a pollutant — it is the staff of life, and thousands of scientific experiments prove more CO2 in the air it is valuable airborne plant food … that also reduces plant water requirements, even as they are growing larger than they did with lower levels of CO2.
If politicians cared about REAL pollution, the target should be fossil fuels burned WITHOUT modern pollution controls, which cause a lot of air pollution in Asian cities.
Regarding your example: “…in the US alone increased heat, drought and insect outbreaks, all linked to climate change, have increased wildfires.”
1. The U.S. is not getting hotter. An honest assessment of the temperature record since 1900 actually shows a cooling trend. See: https://realclimatescience.com/corruption-of-the-us-temperature-record/
2. There has not been a long-term increase in wildfires. Compared to the first half of the 20th century–when CO2 in the atmosphere was lower–there has been a striking decline in acreage burned in wildfires. See: https://realclimatescience.com/extreme-wildfire-fraud-in-the-national-climate-assessment/
Even if there had been an increase in measured U.S. temperatures and wildfires, claims linking them to “climate change” would be purely speculative. There is no evidence to support such an assertion.
Dr Myki … As R.A. shows, the data doesn’t support your assertions.
Dr. Myki
I would have to really disagree with your unsupported statement.
YOU: “There are numerous studies indicating the potential impacts of warming. For example, in the US alone increased heat, drought and insect outbreaks, all linked to climate change, have increased wildfires. Declining water supplies, reduced agricultural yields, health impacts in cities due to heat, and flooding and erosion in coastal areas are additional concerns.”
Here is an EPA study on droughts and wet times.
Where is your evidence of increased drought in the US? I think you just are making up unsupported statements with this illusion of authority.
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-drought
Insects?
Here is one that shows years of different insect infestations of forest areas. Up and down and some years bad others not bad. You make another made up statement based upon zero scientific evidence.
https://www.fs.fed.us/sites/default/files/fs_media/fs_document/15627-usda-forest-service-insects-508.pdf
Reduced agricultural yields? Say what? Where does this come from?
http://agron-www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/Agron541/classes/541/lesson01a/1a.1.html
So far I do not see any evidence at all to support your claims. I think you should get some data and show us your sources. Maybe you go to alarmists blogs where they produce all the data you want.
Dr. Myki
I found this one on long term trends in flooding. Read the conclusion. Not quite so certain at all. Lots of things come into play. If flooding is increasing in some area it may have nothing to do with climate change but more to do with some long term established climate system like the NAO.
https://iahs.info/uploads/dms/13512.04-001-018-305-1-Svensson-et-al.pdf
Here:
Some places increased in flooding others decreased. What is the trend for the US?
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-river-flooding
Heat waves in the US? Are you serious?
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-high-and-low-temperatures
Not sure what scientific papers you are using to form such conclusions but at least you should be able to see that other sources in no way remotely form your claims.
I think maybe you should read again Dr. Spencer’s post on media manipulation. It seems as if you have really fallen for it and an not willing to research the reality at all. Posting a nonsense mantra and acting like it is some established fact.
I would say prove your statements.
Wow – all of your responses are really ignorant and partisan. As an atheist and a skeptic about the politicization of this mostly academic issue – I am appalled by the behavior of people that pretend to defend science. You are not on the side of science here. You are functioning as a tribal clod.
Models will tell you ANYTHING you program them to tell you. They are not some magic crystal ball. You can see the various CMIP models all varying widely in what they predict and gather some that will tell you about drought in point A and exclude those that don’t – and lo and behold you have projections of drought. Cherry picking is rife in climate science. Its the least falsifiable “science” that exists. Its damn near Lysenkoism.
But of course true believers like you are always around to play social enforcement games for your tribe. You should be embarrassed about such disturbing behavior. But of course — you probably don’t have the honesty or self awareness to pull back and be a human again.
Stop with the tribal bullshit.
xenomoly,
Why so aggressive? I don’t think I mentioned models anywhere in my post.
If you want to have an argument, start here, the source for my comment:
https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/
Quit playing games. You are a dishonest person. Have a good night.
I get that you think that material put out for public advocacy is a primary source. I have been watching this whole industry develop over the past 40 years around this garbage and the exaggeration and lies make it clear people like NASA are willing to pass of low likelihood worst case scenarios as likely events.
But keep your faith. I am sure the carbon fairies will bless you.
Running away?
DM,
Ooooooh! Such a challenge.
He can’t fail to be provoked by that, surely?
Cheers.
Dr. Myki
Did you actually read the points? They are mostly projected effects not actual effects. The actual effects show none of what you claim. It is impossible to determine if the projected effects will take place since they have not happened yet.
And, if you refuse to believe the scientists:
“Its no secret that climate change comes at a cost so much so that even the insurance industry has flagged it as a priority. According to a new industry survey, actuaries (the people who calculate insurance risks and premiums based on available data) ranked climate change as the top risk for 2019, beating out concerns over cyber damages, financial instability, and terrorism.”
https://grist.org/article/insurance-experts-rank-climate-change-as-top-risk-for-2019/
Don’t tell me that the bean counters are swayed by the media. They are hard heads.
DM,
Which scientists? Name one who is not a fraud, fool, faker, or phony?
If you manage to provide a name, refer to the motto of the Royal Society – roughly translated as “take no ones word for it.
Bean counters can predict the future no better than I can. Insurance companies can make staggering losses, only exceeded by hedge funds, because they believed they could foretell the future.
Keep relying on experts if you wish. Feynman said that science was belief in the ignorance of experts, and I agree.
Cheers.
Link me to a published denialist paper that has been published in a reputable journal lately.
No-can-do? Then who is a fraud, fool, faker, or phony?
DM,
You can’t actually name even one scientist who can actually describe the GHE, can you?
As one actual Nobel Laureate physicist said “Another thing I must point out is that you cannot prove a vague theory wrong.” Unfortunately, pseudoscientific GHE true believers can’t provide a vague theory or even a vague hypothesis, because not one of them can even describe the mythical GHE in any scientific way.
You ask who is a fraud, fool, faker or phony? You refuse to provide the name of any scientist who can describe the GHE in any useful way. The reason is simple – no scientist wants to expose themselves to well founded accusations of being a fraud, fool, faker or phony.
Come on, give me name – how hard can it be?
Cheers.
Still waiting.
DM,
You cant even name one scientist who has actually described the mythical GHE, can you?
What a pity!
Cheers.
I am still waiting.
Could you try holding your breath while you wait for an answer to a pointless demand?
Reduce CO2.
Cheers.
Dr. Myki, horse podiatrist
Dr. Appeal to Authority Myki.
If goobermint bureaucrats with science degrees say something, then it has to be right.
Meanwhile, their computer game climate models predict triple the warming that actually happens.
That’s YOUR team, Myki — Their 100% wrong predictions are based on 1970’s-era theories about CO2 that are repeatedly falsified — the obviously wrong theories about a CO2 doubling causing +3 degrees C. of global warming just live on like climate zombies !
Here are a few, well 85, papers showing CO2 has a miniscule effect on climate. just for starters but the link leads to hundreds more papers showing AGW is a hoax.
https://notrickszone.com/2018/12/10/the-list-grows-now-85-scientific-papers-assert-co2-has-a-minuscule-effect-on-the-climate/
I am curious the role that science literature itself fuels this media fire by accepting climate model outputs as primary data and then building on the model outputs with another layer of modeling or interpretation? This logical structure creates all sorts of potential fallacies (Irrelevant Conclusion, Slippery slope) for the media to build on. In science it typically deals with this with careful wording, but media often does no such thing.
I grabbed one recent example paper from a quick Google search because it reviewed recent examples of this “if, then” structure in its introduction. It is not an extreme example just a normal climate model based paper that has become very common.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-48310-1
Then like the telephone game where this core scientific structure of: “If, Then” is worded in a valid way but when it is passed on to media it changes. The problem appears to be the additional error is added in the translation to popular media whereby it ends up with false logical statements. If u destroy the structure of “If earth warms 3 degC (uncertainty explained), then salamanders range shift North and risk extinction” and just jump to the headline “climate change will cause salamanders to shift north” the authors are not on valid logical footing.
The only solution to this potential problem I can see is for media to have accountability where false logic is fined. I imagine AI would have no issue determining these incidents. Even the statement “climate crisis” assumes models are not over estimating global warming, which is why the models have uncertainty in the first place. The media loses the structure required to communicate the message in a valid way. I am not sure why it is legal? For me it is the equivalent of publishing a photoshop image with negative impact as real.
Your proposed “solution” would also have to apply to denialist propaganda.
I am sure the warmist message would win hands down.
Fakenews (i.e. Foxnews) would be put out of business.
DM,
What is “denialist propaganda”?
This would be where pseudoscientific GHE true believers deny that climate is the average of weather, and has been changing since an atmosphere existed, would it?
These same deniers refuse to accept that slow cooling is not heating, that the surface cools every night, and the no-one at all has ever managed to make a thermometer hotter by the cunning use of CO2, I suppose?
The various IPCC reports, and much of NASA’s climate nonsense seem to be “denialist propaganda”.
Go forth – proclaim your “message”. What sort of prize do you imagine you will win? You won’t even get a free dinner from the Warmist community. Dream on.
Cheers.
“What is denialist propaganda?”
Have a look in the mirror.
Begone, troll!
“What is denialist propaganda?”
Have a look in the mirror.
I have found that most leftists use projection to attack others.
You seem a typical example.
Do you have the ability to be an honest participant in any interaction or do you just do this partisan masturbatory nonsense everywhere?
I take it you don’t believe in the proposal that
“media to have accountability where false logic is f(ound)”
or that it should only apply to one side?
If so say so, and be prepared to debate the issue.
Aaron didn’t make that statement to start with. You assumed it, then went from there with your religious bs.
I note that there is a cool spot in the UAH data for July, not a hot spot (that NOAA had), over central Africa. How do they justify that, especially since they apparently have no surface temperature data for that place?
They parameterize models then use the models to infill the missing data. Climate “science” is damn near Lysenkoism.
another question, please:
Tony Heller points out that NOAA did not actually have any data for some regions, like central Africa, where they said it was very hot this past July (he explains this at https://youtu.be/uMldKLR0Vwc?t=317). So, would the way they generated data for these areas be what Roy explains (at http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/08/july-2019-was-not-the-warmest-on-record/) as follows:
one can get a better estimate of global average surface temperature if you have satellite measurements of upper air temperatures on a global basis and in regions where no surface data exist. Knowing whether there is a warm or cold airmass there from satellite data is better than knowing nothing at all.
Part of this process is making forecasts to get data where no data exists. Because weather systems continuously move around the world, the equations of motion, thermodynamics, and moisture can be used to estimate temperatures where no data exists by doing a physics extrapolation using data observed on one day in one area, then watching how those atmospheric characteristics are carried into an area with no data on the next day.
This kind of physics-based extrapolation (which is what weather forecasting is) is much more realistic than (for example) using land surface temperatures in July around the Arctic Ocean to simply guess temperatures out over the cold ocean water and ice where summer temperatures seldom rise much above freezing. This is actually one of the questionable techniques used (by NASA GISS) to get temperature estimates where no data exists.
What do you think of this approach to generate temperature estimates where no data exists, Roy?
Hope to hear from you soon!
Heller is showing you two anomaly maps that have different baselines and comparing them as if they have the same baselines. He is a BS artist who has spent years honing his BS. Anthony Watts, to his credit, no longer permits Heller from posting articles at WUWT (happened some years ago).
Why does no skeptic spend as much thought questioning Heller’s work as they do the IPCC? His crap is easier to debunk, though it still takes more effort than mindlessly swallowing it.
Plain commonsense often trumps pseudo scientific clap trap.
A timely article. Thank you.
You meant:
“Plain common sense beats Trump’s pseudo-scientific claptrap.”
Do you have the ability to function as a human or do you just spit out a Trump Derangement Quote whenever you see the word “trump”?
X,
your spite seems to identify you as another denialist thug. You’ve been here before no doubt.
Begone, denialist troll!
TRUMP 2020
KEEP AMERICA GREAT
Welcome back. I hope you’re feeling better. I was starting to think we had lost you.
Is there a way we can share your articles on social media? I don’t see any sharing links to FB, IG, or the like. Or do you prefer that we don’t do that? Anyway, thanks for the concise commentary.
I hope Dr. S doesn’t mind, I already posted this one on my FB timeline. Where it says “what’s on your mind,” type an intro phrase, and/or just paste the url. This post will appear with some photos on the page. Delete the ones that go with the ads. Click post.
You can erase the url before you post, if you want.
Welcome back. I hope you’re feeling better. I was starting to think we had lost you.
Is there a way we can share your articles on social media? I don’t see any sharing links to FB, IG, or the like. Or do you prefer that we don’t do that? Anyway, thanks for the concise commentary.
Dr Spencer,I hope you are well and truly on the mend. I certainly missed your comments while you were dealing with you health issues.
Thank you for such an informative summation of what is happening with regard to the world’s climate.
I cringe every time I hear a news report or comments on the news by someone who has been “affected” by climate change. With a temperature increase of around less than .5 of a degree I fail to see how there can be any change happening now. Maybe in another 100 years or so if it keeps warming, but we are really not sure that is going to happen anyway.
“With a temperature increase of around less than .5 of a degree I fail to see how there can be any change happening now.”
This is frog (in a beaker) talk.
This is pseudoscientific GHE true believer diversionary nonsense.
Frogs? Beakers?
What next? Are you going to pretend that Michael Mann is a Nobel Laureate, and appeal to his authority? Why not pretend that Gavin Schmidt is a world renowned climate scientist?
Maybe you should stick to being incomprehensible. It suits you.
Cheers.
Don’t tell me you are so stupid you haven’t heard of the frog in a boiling beaker of water analogy?
You have heard of it? Then you are obviously too stupid to understand it.
Another typical pseudoscientific GHE true believer analogy, pointless and irrelevant!
Try describing the GHE. Without knowing what you are talking about, your supposed analogies are completely worthless. You can’t describe the GHE? How hard can it be?
Too hard for you, or any of the other GHE cultists, obviously.
Oh, well.
Cheers.
Warning. MF repetition alert!
Begone, witless troll!
“And still I am widely considered a climate denier.
Why? Because I am not willing to exaggerate and make claims that cannot be supported by data.”
Roy, I think your problem (and that of Roger Pielke,) is that the climate debate is very hot (no pun) and there is little room for intermediate opinions. If you wish to take an intermediate point of view, you need to demonstrate a willingness to slap down poor arguments on both sides of the issue. If you are seen to only criticise warmist messages, don’t be surprised if they automatically label you as a denier.
Agreed. There appear to be no supporters of the alternative “science” of Paul Beckwith and co on this blog. The greatest deviations from Spencer’s views on climate in this blog occur on the denier side. Yet he never attacks that side. You have to wonder then about a motivating agenda.
That’s obviously false. Dr. S has complained and dedicated posts to make it known he disagrees with no greenhouse effect views like mine.
I said he never ATTACKS that side. Have you ever felt personally attacked as a result of these posts? I am saying that, on one side he challenges the science apparently devoid of emotion, while on the other he also vehemently attacks the messenger.
I’ve never seen him attack a messenger.
No, I haven’t felt attacked. Nor would I characterize his challenges to anyone as an attack, warranted or not. Dr. Spencer has too much integrity for that.
Would this be seen as attack?
“But some of the alternative explanations I’m seeing border on the ludicrous.
So, here’s my Top 10 list of stupid skeptic arguments. I’m sure there are more, and maybe I missed a couple important ones. Oh well…”
[Roy covers the basic nonsense, rebutting 10 stupid skeptic arguments…]
“So why am I trying to stir up a hornets nest (again)? Because when skeptics embrace “science” that is worse that the IPCC’s science, we hurt our credibility.”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/04/skeptical-arguments-that-dont-hold-water/
If this is not strong enough, I’m not sure that the statement “he doesn’t ‘attack’ ” is more meaningful than a bit of rhetoric.
Re the OP here, of course the media exaggerates. That’s life 101, although there are plenty of ignorant people who didn’t pass that course. But Roy also bends the facts with rhetoric in his article. No – the IPCC does not simply “assume” that most of the warming since 1950 is anthropogenic. That’s patently false, whether or not you agree with the conclusion.
“the IPCC does not simply assume that most of the warming since 1950 is anthropogenic.”
How is that patently false? To a first approximation, models have a sensitivity to CO2 that makes warming largely anthropogenic. If you throw in the IPCC assumption that all increase in CO2 is anthropogenic, case closed.
1) Sensitivity is not derived from CO2 forcing. It is the response (feedback) to that forcing. In large-scale models climate sensitivity is an emergent property, not a set parameter. It can be a set parameter in energy balance models. Climate sensitivity is estimated from paleoclimate investigation as well as from the modern instrumental record.
2) It is not remotely an assumption that the recent rise in CO2 is mostly (>95%) anthropogenic. Where on Earth did you get this idea?
https://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/papers-on-anthropogenic-carbon-dioxide-observations/
https://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/papers-on-anthropogenic-co2-emissions/
https://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/papers-on-co2-emissions-from-volcanoes/
https://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/papers-on-the-ocean-carbon-sink/
https://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/papers-on-co2-records-from-ice-cores/
1) Are you denying that CO2 is largely responsible for how much warming models predict? Never mind how much they overshoot.
2) From IPCC AR5 WGI: “The main contributors to increasing
atmospheric CO2 abundance are fossil fuel combustion and land use change (Section 6.3). Multiple lines of observational evidence indicate that during the past few decades, most of the increasing atmospheric burden of CO2 is from fossil fuel combustion (Tans, 2009).”
You have a lot of papers represented in the links you provide. Any idea which ones contradict my opinion, Dr. Spencer’s, and almost anyone paying attention, that the IPCC assumes (maybe you prefer alleges?) most of the recent warming is anthropogenic?
1) Sensitivity is not derived from CO2 forcing. This is what you said, and you are wrong. Sensitivity is the system response to forcing, not the forcing itself. When you address what you wrote and my reply to it I’ll move on to where you shifted the goal post.
2) In reply to my rebutting you saying that the IUPCC “assumes” the CO2 rise is anthropogenic, you quote the IPCC:
“Multiple lines of observational evidence indicate that during the past few decades, most of the increasing atmospheric burden of CO2 is from fossil fuel combustion (Tans, 2009)”
What is it about “multiple lines of evidence” that makes you think the conclusion is an assumption?
All the papers I listed are the multiple lines of evidence that the CO2 rise in anthropogenic. It’s not just the amount of papers, it’s that independent lines of evidence (accounting of the global carbon cycle, sources and sinks / isotopic ratios in CO2 over time etc) converge on the same conclusion. This is the complete opposite of “assuming.”
Work like the above, which are hardly “assumptions” build toward attribution studies, which is the core of the IPCC reckoning on anthropogenic climate change. These are hardly “assumptive” either.
Roy would have us imagine that the IPCC conclusion (expressed as “extremely likely” – AR5 SPM) is arrived at thrloigh either no scientific process or an arbitrary one. It’s a ridiculous pro[position in light of the huge amount of research behind it. One can take issue with the conclusion, but one cannot rationally argue that it is an “assumption.”
Assumption: “a thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof.” You make the call.
These conclusions are assessed with varying degrees of probability based on evidence. “Proof” is for alcohol and maths. There is no “proof” the cigarettes cause heart disease and lung cancer. If you don’t know why the surgeon general is right to recommend smoking is a serious health risk, then you do not understand science.
The inability to prove cigarettes cause lung cancer wouldn’t encourage me to keep smoking based on the data and its consequences. But I wouldn’t ban driving and flying based on that much less certain data and its consequences.
Did you just suggest that anyone serious is trying to ban driving and flying, or are we having a joke of a conversation?
The joke is on me. I got sucked into a stupid conversation over your quibbling about the meaning of assumes.
There is no quibble over the meaning.
assumption: 1. something that you accept as true without question or proof
The fact is that Roy’s usage is complete BS. A lot of study goes into these provisional conclusions. As evidenced by the lists of papers I supplied, which is a tiny fraction of all the research behind them.
studentb…”If you are seen to only criticise warmist messages, dont be surprised if they automatically label you as a denier”.
You are not talking about a scientist (Royu) merely offering an opinion, you are talking about a guy who has the data to prove what he says.
The rest are wannabees…climate modelers, theoreticians, political bumboys, and downright pseudo-scientists.
From John Tyndall’s work, where he writes about some initial enquiries he made –
“With a delicate apparatus of the same kind, Dr. Franz, of Berlin, found that the air contained in a tube 3 feet long absorbed 3.54 per cent. of the heat sent through it form an Argand lamp; that is to say, calling the number of rays which passed through the exhausted tube 100, the number which passed when the tube was filled with air was only 96.46.”
The point here is that the heat passing though the atmosphere from the Sun is reduced – not enhanced or amplified. No GHE, no CO2 heating. Rather the complete opposite – Tyndall found that some gases reduce the amount of radiation to the point where even inserting a brass plate in the path resulted in no additional fall in the number of rays passed.
In other words, reducing the amount of infrared transmitted does not make a thermometer hotter. No experiment has ever shown this to be the case. Every experiment shows the opposite.
Pseudoscientific GHE true believers reject theory and experiment, preferring to retreat into their fantasy world where CO2 has magical heating properties, so mysterious that no ordinary scientist is capable of understanding them, and certainly too complicated for members of the public to even be exposed to!
Just look at NASA –
“The greenhouse effect is the way in which heat is trapped close to the surface of the Earth by “greenhouse gases.” These heat-trapping gases can be thought of as a blanket wrapped around the Earth, which keeps it toastier than it would be without them.”
Toastier blankets? Maybe NASA feel the general public is too dumb to understand “climate science”. Newtons Law of Universal Gravitation, or Newton’s Laws of Motion must be really simple – they are expressed in scientific terms for the public to read- no need for toasty blankets, even.
Actually, the fumbling bumblers at NASA and the IPCC don’t actually know what they are talking about. Heres’s a lovely piece of nonsense from NASA – “Certain gases in the atmosphere block heat from escaping.” Here’s some news for NASA – the surface cools at night. Slow cooling is not heating. In the absence of an external heat source, the Earth would eventually reach equilibrium with its surrounding – about 4 K. CO2 changes this not one jot. Gavin Schmidt is a deluded mathematician – not a scientist. Even his knowledge of mathematics is suspect – claiming a 38% probability meant far more likely than not!
Still no GHE – for all the money spent, not one person has managed to describe the GHE. Not one testable hypothesis has been proposed. Some “science”!
Cheers.
Repetitious nonsense alert!
Begone troll!
Mike,
If Gavin Schmidt claims a 38% probability for something, what, please tell us, does he claim his probability numbers are based on?
My guess is that is his basing them on a model and one can extrapolate his bs from there.
Keep after the proselytizers.
Lewis
What does it mean that readers have to guess what you’re talking about? Does it mean you are as dodgy as Gavin Schmidt?
b,
There is this wonderful facility called Google.
Rather than fully explain the Gavin Schmidt 38% reference, if you insert the search term “Gavin Schmidt 38%” into Google, this should give you the information you require.
Gavin does not adequately explain the derivation of this particular piece of stupidity, claiming that a 62% probability against something occurring meant that the occurrence was “almost certain”.
Gavin seems to have put his foot in his mouth on this occasion, and then shot himself in the foot, to mix metaphors. If you call such behaviour dodgy, that is your opinion. Mine is that it is more stupid and ignorant – stupid for saying it, ignorant for thinking nobody would point out his stupidity and ignorance.
Cheers.
Oh I know the reference. It was just ironic that the critic committed the sin he was complaining about.
The GISS probability analysis is covered in Hansen et al (2010). The one for NOAA is covered in Arguez et al (2013).
Now, if I was a ‘skeptic’, I wouldn’t bother providing links for these papers. Because that’s how you guys operate.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010RG000345
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2013GL057999
Here’s one for you to figure out, Mike.
I have 5 values, all with an uncertainty parameter overlapping each other.
Each of the 5 values has a probability of being the actual highest value. Ranked in order of highest value (A) to lowest (E), here are the probabilities:
A – 45%
B – 22%
C – 18%
D – 9%
E – 6%
Which is the likeliest highest value?
What does it mean that the highest value (A) has more than twice the chance of being the highest value than the value with the next highest chance (B)?
Lewis…”If Gavin Schmidt claims a 38% probability for something, what, please tell us, does he claim his probability numbers are based on?”
Based on the probability that he’s not lying. Obviously he likely was because 2014 was nowhere near the warmest year.
Well you don’t know what you’re talking about. 2014 was the then highest ranked year for NOAA and GISS (and JMA). But because the uncertainty errors overlap with previous years, this made 2014 only the likeliest warmest year.
Gordon,
“Based on the probability that hes not lying. Obviously he likely was because 2014 was nowhere near the warmest year.”
You realize Gor, that in 2014, Gavin didnt have the forsight to know that 2016-18 would be higher!
Gordon Robertson says:
“2014 was nowhere near the warmest year.”
That’s right Gordon, it isn’t any more, but it might have been warmer than 2010, see:
https://tinyurl.com/y2awyhbs
Svante – that is BEST data, which has different results to NOAA and GISS now, though they concurred in 2015.
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/memos/Global-Warming-2014-Berkeley-Earth-Newsletter.pdf
Presumably, additional data acquired in the last few years for 2010 and 2014 has them swap ranking places. Both are ranked cooler than the years from 2015 onwards.
Mike…from Tyndall…”With a delicate apparatus of the same kind, Dr. Franz, of Berlin, found that the air contained in a tube 3 feet long absorbed 3.54 per cent. of the heat sent through it form an Argand lamp; that is to say, calling the number of rays which passed through the exhausted tube 100, the number which passed when the tube was filled with air was only 96.46.”
Interesting stuff. However, the science back then mistook electromagnetic radiation for heat. It was EM from the Argand lamp that was absorbed, not heat.
Sadly, there are major scientific institutions like NASA GISS who still cannot tell the difference between EM and heat. They openly talk about CO2 trapping heat, which is nonsense.
Furthermore, solar energy is far more intense with a far broader EM bandwidth than an Argand lamp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argand_lamp
“The Argand lamp is a type of oil lamp invented in 1780 by Aim Argand. Its output is 6 to 10 candelas…”
Not to cast a slur on Tyndall’s fine name, but 6 to 10 candelas….oooooohhh!!!
Even furthermore, Gavin Schmidt, now head of NASA GISS, has claimed CO2 can warm the atmosphere between 9% and 25%. Those numbers were obviously drawn from a hat.
Why must Gordon spew the most arrant nonsense so continuously?
“Even furthermore, Gavin Schmidt, now head of NASA GISS, has claimed CO2 can warm the atmosphere between 9% and 25%. Those numbers were obviously drawn from a hat.”
The figures are the CO2 contribution to the overall ‘greenhouse’ effect. The numbers are not pulled out of a hat, but derived from line by line calculation of radiative transfer of various constituent gases (water vapour gets higher percentages, of course) and a simple energy balance model (eg, not a GCM, just a series of equations to account for a radiative/convective atmosphere).
This work predates Schmidt’s contribution, and very similar numbers were derived from pure physical calculations by Ramanathan and Coakley 1978.
Gordon mentions Gavin Schmidt because he’s a popular name to use as a hex in the climate wars. Work done by others corroborating these figures are not mentioned by Gordon and other propagandists, because they are completely ignorant of the existence of other researchers and their estimates on these values.
And that’s why useful idiots like Gordon use catchy phrases like “obviously drawn from a hat.” That’s the kind of flair that the ignorant regularly employ, not knowing what garbage they pile on to the discussion.
They care nothing for the truth.
It is time you take your stand and declare yourself a genuine denier, it will secure your credibility in the long run.
It will also secure you a bed here at the asylum.
Begone psychobabbling troll!
Did you read anything he said? What is wrong with you folks? Its like you folks are cult members that REQUIRE everyone to accept your prophesy about impending doom – yet you do not seem to understand the paucity of evidence to support your claim. Your entire ideology relies on you having faith in pronouncements from virtual high priests.
As an atheist – I can see religious thinking in a lot of people and you folks are religious thinkers.
You might as well just demand Spencer declare himself a heretic in league with satan.
Calm down. You are sounding ridiculous.
Begone, demanding troll!
Dr. M,
I believe he is accurate in his accusations.
xen,
There is plenty of religious thinking from your tribe on this blog. You’ve got deniers of climate change, who are also deniers of Evolution, and the Big Bang apparently for religious reasons.
Even from Dr Spencer, who is a member of the Cornwall Alliance, who argue (more or less) that the creator would not allow humans to mess up the Earth.
Nate,
There is plenty of religious thinking from your tribe on this blog. You’ve got believers in AGW/GHE, who are also believers in Evolution, and the Big Bang apparently for religious reasons.
And get this, some of them also believe racehorses rotate on their axes!
Weird false religion, huh?
Case in point.
JD is quite mixed up about what is science, what is religion, what is pseudoscience, what is physics, and what is made-up physics.
He is just generally confused.
You keep talking about people talking outside their field of expertise and then in the next sentence you move your conversation to Economics (not your field). I am an economist and really don’t like hearing scientists talking about a field they have little knowledge in. Maybe just like you don’t like the media talking climate..
“We don’t use wind and solar energy because it is economically competitive …”.
Are you disputing that statement?
???
Why do so many people install solar on their roof tops?
and only pay a few dollars each billing cycle?
Don’t tell me they have not worked out the economic benefits.
Where in the developed world is solar PV panel installation and operation economically competitive without government mandate and subsidies?
Solar PV is the utterly uncompetitive and the road to ruin if adopted other than in ’boutique’ applications:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/02/11/eroi-a-tool-to-predict-the-best-energy-mix/#307cb26ba027
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-near-impossible
“says the cost of generating power from onshore wind has fallen by around 23% since 2010 while the cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity has fallen by 73% in that time. With further price falls expected for these and other green energy options, IRENA says all renewable energy technologies should be competitive on price with fossil fuels by 2020.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2018/01/13/renewable-energy-cost-effective-fossil-fuels-2020/#228be0ef4ff2
i.e. next year will see the changeover point reached. Any subsidies must therefore have been successful at stimulating such a transformation.
I wouldn’t want to build a coal fired power plant at the moment – even with a government subsidy.
That article based on a report by the International Renewable Energy Agency contains a lot of wishful thinking but doesn’t address the fundamental problem with solar and wind viz. they need fossil fueled, nuclear or hydro backup.
The article doesn’t mention storage and that is their Achilles heel.
The energy return on energy invested ratio, as outlined in the article above, is the critical factor.
Chris, thanks for those links.
To be honest, this topic is somewhat complex and I am the first to admit I am not on top of it.
However, I am aware that some of the issues involve:
cost of developing and maintaining coal mines (e.g. transport costs etc.)
health costs associated with coal miners
ditto with coal fired power plants
reluctance of banks to provide loans
reluctance of insurers
costs of decommissioning
etc.
Then the intangibles:
costs associated with changes in the climate due to increased greenhouse gases (unknown)
I am willing to be persuaded that renewables are not the answer. But, at the moment, coal appears to be on the way out.
Chris,
Response to Forbes article
http://rameznaam.com/2015/06/04/whats-the-eroi-of-solar/
Best to look at more than one source for this information.
Nate, thanks for that link
Long answer and not the point. The point was the article keeps talking about people sticking to their field yet this author has no problems moving from science to economics all the time. He should stick to the science as I think his economics is quite bad.
G,
Seriously, economics is not science, is it?
Economic fads and fancies come and go. What is the use of economists? They produce nothing, and bring out new forecasts (based on what has already happened) weekly or even daily.
When was the last time anybody “needed” something which emanated from an economist?
I wouldn’t be surprised if 97% of economists agree they are important to the economy.
To each his own, I suppose.
Cheers.
Economics would best be described as the sociology of money. Go from there.
Another example of people that think they are experts in things they no nothing about. Thanks for that Mike. You don’t like your science to come from the media but you are happy to believe your understating of economics from the media is correct. This was exactly my point, people with strong opinions on things outside their knowledge.
G,
Your mindreading skills are as scientific as economic theory, which is to say, of no practical use whatsoever.
I appreciate that you appeal to your own authority, but astrological predictions are as useful as forecasts from economists.
Economists cannot even agree on reasons for past occurrences of financial upheavals. Fortune sellers have no demonstrated skill compared with a reasonably bright 12 year old. Because economic “science” possesses no testable hypotheses, its practitioners can make any mad claims they fancy, without any doubt that nobody can prove them wrong!
Rather like pseudoscientific GHE true believers.
As Feynman said “Science is belief in the ignorance of experts.”
Throw me some facts. Opinions are valueless, unless supported by fact.
Cheers.
THAT is what you took from that?
TURN OFF THE FAITH AND THINK WITH YOUR MIND FOR A BIT.
Goodness. The climate doom true believers are cult members. Rational thought is tossed aside and you infer evil intent in every heretic that does not accept your ideology.
You claim to be an economist – but at the same time you seem to think economics is an entirely predictable field? You know its not. You know at best you can state that there is a probability distribution for any outcome. Spencer is talking about exactly that – and decrying the media’s choice to boil down probability distributions to their most dire and least likely outcome.
It’s like seeing a small decrease in consumer confidence and pumping out headlines that a worldwide multi-year depression will happen within the quarter.
That is the level of bullshit being peddled by the alarmist community. You appear to support that. Why?
‘ I am an economist and really dont like hearing scientists talking about a field they have little knowledge in. ‘
Maybe that’s why economists who have dabbled in climate science, like Ross Mccitrick and Steve McIntyre have gotten things so wrong.
I’m just guessing that McKitrick and McIntyre’s expertise was in statistics and Michael Mann’s was not.
Where is your expertise, Nate? Better than Mc&Mc?
About that Greenland surface mass balance graph with a purple oval labeled in part “recovery”: That can sound like Greenland recovered an amount of ice about equal to what it lost during the brief melting, especially since the kind of graph of Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance that I most often see is cumulative gain/loss for a season. I had to pay attention to this graph saying Gt/day, which merely bounced up to about zero after the melting. So Greenland did not recover lost ice (yet); merely the melting was a brief event that stopped.
That graph is the annual cumulative gain. Since 2016 Greenland has gained 1.2 trillion tons of ice. Most of that will obviously flow out to the sea eventually.
If every day was a melt day like the warmest melt day this year – it would still take Greenland 12000 years to melt. We would probably be well into the next glaciation before any significant melt of Greenland happened.
Calm down!
The answer to your question is:
Cost/benefit analyses
If you don’t understand the principles, I am afraid I can’t help you.
That was a response to previous comment by x.
Xenomoly,
Your math is bad
If the Greenland Ice sheet melts at the annual rate it is melting now, it would take 13000 years to melt, not the daily maximum rate that it experienced in one day this year.
At that max one day rate, if it was continuous, it would take 700 years.
But as they say don’t bet that current rates will continue, they are not guaranteed.
Fact:
Data from NASAs GRACE satellites and GPS stations scattered around Greenland’s coast showed that between 2002 and 2016, Greenland lost approximately 280 billion tons of ice per year. This average annual ice melt is enough to cover the entire states of Florida and New York hip deep in meltwater, as well as drowning Washington, D.C. and one or two other small states.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/01/greeland-ice-melting-four-times-faster-than-thought-raising-sea-level/
Fact.
And yet it didn’t!
How amazing is that?
Cheers.
And what has happened over the last 3 years of cooling since 2016?
What has happened? I dunno.
Look it up your self and enlighten us all.
DM,
Maybe you don’t understand – 3 years of cooling means the temperature has dropped.
Only pseudoscientific GHE true believers think that cooling means getting hotter.
Does that help?
Cheers.
If you were being even-handed in your assessment, you would also have noted that the conservative media, and those that watch it, push an equal amount of rubbish science, as seen in this blog of yours.
M,
You seem to have noted it. Well done. More meaningless drivel, trying to bend others to your will, (all in their best interest, of course), and completely failing to address the post.
Carry on.
Cheers.
What conservative media?!?!?!
You mean Fox News? 1 channel – that SOMETIMES presents actual science instead of the exaggerated nonsense pumped out by EVERYTHING in western world media?
CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, Buzzfeed, Washington Post, New York Times, Scientific American ( the fall of this magazine has really hurt ), all of Hollywood, all schools, all colleges, all corporate America ( with the exception of a few industries ) — ALL bang the drum to the same beat. All of them pump the sam propaganda using the same exaggeration and the same bullshit claims. These same institutions incidentally also pump the same Overton window bound narrative for every other subject under the sun.
The far left drives the mainstream media in all things.
And you seriously think FoxNews, this blog, and some youtube channels can compete with that?
You are living in a propaganda bubble and you don’t seem to understand how all encompassing and pervasive it is.
I was a lifelong Democrat until I saw how corrupting this system was. As an atheist – it looks to me like a cult. And I can have no more part of it than I can any other religion. Its sad that the left has become so warped.
Ah-ha!, the last refuge of the political scoundrel – “the media is against us!”
How about, “we were wrong all along”.
Begone, misrepresenting troll!
As an atheist, how does it feel to be on the same side of politics as those who believe the earth is 6000 years old?
Begone, trouble-making troll!
Thug? Can you be honest in any interaction?
You are a partisan buffoon.
To be honest, you are a f…w..
Begone, dishonest troll!
You are a dog who pisses on every tree to mark his territory.
Midas
Being rude to Mike Flynn is wasted effort. His stereotyped and limited responses suggest that he is a bot.
If he is human, his limited repertoire, strong territorial instincts and inability to debate suggest a low intelligence and lack of sensitivity to insults.
I picture him as a pale, obese man who was bullied at school and is incapable of normal human interaction. His only means of communication is anonymously hurling insults at faceless strangers on the internet.
Chaps,
Why do either of you bother attempting to be rude? As Em points out, it is a waste of time. Why should I waste my time feeling insulted?
By the same token, if either of you choose to waste your time feeling insulted, offended, annoyed or any other pointless emotion showing your lack of self control, why blame me?
I don’t care, so why should you?
Maybe you could waste your time trying to come up with a useful GHE description. If you can’t, I really don’t understand why you waste your time trying to be annoying or gratuitously insulting. It won’t bother me unless you can provide me a good reason to care what you think.
Carry on.
Cheers.
That’s a woof! from MF.
MF
No denial then …
Troll, begone!
There are still no hurricanes in the Atlantic.
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/sat/satlooper.php?region=atl&product=wv-mid
A tropical storm is approaching the Caribbean.
Test: El Niño.
😃
La Nina is very likely in November.
http://www.bom.gov.au/archive/oceanography/ocean_anals/IDYOC007/IDYOC007.201908.gif
https://i.imgur.com/fN7bqEF.png
How does that map show what will happen in November?
Talk with NASA.
Your map was from BOM, not NASA.
There is a deep solar minimum.
https://www.spaceweather.gc.ca/auto_generated_products/solradmon_eng.png
Yeah, exactly as deep as the last one, according to your graph.
Begone, troll!
Dr Spencer, what a great post! It really captures the main problems in the AGW nonsense. Thanks!
The media, and most of the public, are not educated in the relevant sciences. They tend to gravitate to both sensationalism and “The Establishment”. I’m convinced that about half the population is only interested in fast food and entertaiment (“bread and circuses”). They are quite content to let someone else do the thinking. Therein lies the problem.
Bread and circuses
The Emperor Augustus was well aware of this risk and was keen to keep the poorest plebeians happy enough and reasonably well fed so that they would not riot. He began the system of state bribery that the writer Juvenal described as ‘bread and circuses’.
Free grain and controlled food prices meant that plebeians could not starve, while free entertainment — such as chariot races and gladiators in amphitheaters and the Circus Maximus — meant that they would not get bored and restless. Bribery it may have been, but it often worked.
https://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/plebians.html
“Pseudoscience” is characterized by guesses, opinions, assumptions, and a quest for funding. The “research” is nothing more than paper after paper adding more guesses, opinions, assumptions and a quest for funding, to earlier papers. As we’ve seen, “Pseudoscience” relies heavily on intimidation, censorship, and shenanigans. The “coveted” Nobel Prize is almost completely corrupted by pseudoscience. Great scientists like Claude Shannon are slighted in favor of clowns.
“Science” does NOT violate the established laws of physics. “Science” is observable, demonstrable, repeatable, verifiable, and falsifiable. “Science” is a quest for truth. There is no place for despicable tactics.
Keep moving science forward, Dr Spencer.
Good to see you support the science of Roy Spencer and hence also support the science of the greenhouse effect.
I didn’t forget you, Midas.
Such tactics as “misrepresentation” are covered under “shenanigans”.
Who am I misrepresenting?
You’re unable to understand your own comment?
Or are you denying it?
My comment involved two people – Roy Spencer and you.
Are you claiming I am misrepresenting both?
Eleven minutes after my initial comment, Midas jumps in, attempting to misrepresent me: “…and hence [you] also support the science of the greenhouse effect.”
22 minutes later, I catch him with his attempted misrepresentation.
Two minutes later, knowing he got caught, he starts backing away from his comment.
An hour and 5 minutes later, since I have other things to do today, I pin Midas down as to why he appears to be denying his own comment.
Now Midas returns, attempting more misrepresentation.
And, he’ll likely be trolling here all day.
Nothing new.
Roy Spencer fully supports the science of the greenhouse effect.
You asked him to “keep moving science forward”, thereby agreeing with his science.
Which of those statements is incorrect? And as I only asked questions, one has to wonder what “logic” you used to claim I was “backing away from my comment”.
Gone for over 7 hours, Midas now returns, attempting more misrepresentation.
And, he’ll likely be trolling here all day.
Nothing new.
What purpose do you believe noting my sleep time serves? Are you going to act as my daily diary as a diversion from addressing my issue?
Midas got caught misrepresenting.
Now he resorts to the distracting questions.
All trolls must attend the same classes.
Dr Spencer, JDHuffman claims I misrepresented you when I said you support the science of the greenhouse effect.
Sly tattletale.
Cheers.
Just more of the same.
Trolls like Midas have nothing else. They can’t help themselves.
Nothing new.
IN Norfolk Va, it is oft reported that simply sea level is the main driver of the rise, but it’s scientific that subsidence accounts for more than half of the relative sea level. Local political efforts curiously revolve around emissions reductions
Roy,
Your article has only one minor flaw…
IT WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA.
Is there a closed physical/chemical model that can describe the earth atmosphere and where can I find it ( not a CO2 radio with a knob) ?
Since the science has settled not a strange question I think.
Thank you, Dr Spencer, for this article. It’s a breath of fresh air in the current flood of b.s. climate ‘news’. Too bad that we all know that the mainstream media will gleefully ignore it…
Dr Spencer nice rant! Careful… google might start blocking your website. lol
Please consider the following:
1. El Nino ocean temperatures lead global ocean temperature which lead global air temperatures. Air never leads water short of a major volcanic eruption.
2. Most of the global warming since 1980 occurred at night. (day time highs are not increasing, night time lows are increasing)
3. If the reason for the increase is CO2, it must therefore be due to the ocean heat content, because air doesn’t lead water.
4. Sea level has been completely linear for 170 years, which shows no signal from CO2 due to permanent ice melt or thermal expansion.
5. There have been multiple periods of time where sea level increased while ocean temperatures decreased:
1878 -> 1917
Ocean dropped by 1.07 deg c
Sea level rose by .046 meters
1942 -> 1976
Ocean dropped by .64 deg c
Sea level rose by .025 meters.
Note sea level in New York Battery was taken as proxy.
6. North Atlantic temperatures topped in 2012, same time ice cover was at a min in the arctic. Sea level in New York also topped in 2010, near this ice min.
7. Since 1850, we have been recording ocean temperature data and have therefore only captured part of the 400 year solar cycle.
8. Conclusion: Sea level linear rise is a function of isostatic rebound. Short term fluctuations along the linear trend are likely caused by fluctuation in the north Atlantic temperature / arctic ice cover and are not permanent.
9. Please consider the following papers:
Relationship between El Nino and the 11 year solar cycle
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2008GL034831
The 400 year cycle (Zharkova)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45584-3
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=Bl2gg7lT7OM
Bottom line: the sun is the #1 climate change forcer when talking about sea level rise, the most important consequence of climate change. Isostatic rebound is due to the changes in TSI over tens of thousands of years and the end of an ice age. That was caused by the earth’s orbit and tilt. That has nothing to do with us.
“Most of the global warming since 1980 occurred at night.”
I’ve already pointed out that this is a US phenomenon. In Australia and the UK, most of the warming has occurred during the day.
“Sea level has been completely linear for 170 years”
Absolutely no true. Try actually calculating changes in level for different levels instead of relying on your eyesight to determine changes in the slope of graphs.
“Note sea level in New York Battery was taken as proxy.”
So you think one station is representative of global sea level changes?
“the 400 year solar cycle”
How many ‘cycles’ do you think you need to prove that there is indeed a cycle?
“Sea level linear rise is a function of isostatic rebound”
When the land rises, apparent sea level as measured by tide gauges FALLS.
Midas,
I’m pretty sure Roy studied this day night split for the globe since 1980. Perhaps he’d like to comment on the global results. It’s not critical to my position, but it is a funny side note that days are cooling in the USA.
Anyways…
If CO2 was the main forcer, the rate of change of sea level should be increasing. It has not. This linear trend is different depending on location around the world, but the data points are easily represented by a line. Even if there is a SLIGHT change that is not visible by eyeballing, most of the sea level change is natural. Have you checked to see if the data points are falling above 1 standard deviation of the linear trend more often now? I haven’t. Where is your proof that the slope is increasing?
New York makes good proxy because it is 1/2 way between Northern Canada (rising) and Louisiana (sinking) and we have good historical data points to confirm. If you want to argue for another location as proxy for the globe, please by all means tell me which location to study, I’ll take a look.
We have SO many cycles to consider. Not only do you have the main cycle, but harmonics present. This requires many filters to get the down beat cycle. Maybe I’m not sure what you are asking there.
By isostatic rebound you do realize locations are also sinking right? Rising land displaces water, so other areas around the world can see a sea level increase if there is an isostatic rebound for instance in Northern Canada. Places like Louisiana are really screwed.
Scott,
A lot of your assertions are either FALSE or have no evidence.
‘1. El Nino ocean temperatures lead global ocean temperature which lead global air temperatures. Air never leads water short of a major volcanic eruption.’
Only true for ENSO.
‘3. If the reason for the increase is CO2, it must therefore be due to the ocean heat content, because air doesnt lead water.’
Nope, only demonstrated for ENSO, not for CO2.
“4. Sea level has been completely linear for 170 years, which shows no signal from CO2 due to permanent ice melt or thermal expansion.”
FALSE! you must not have looked at real papers.
“5. There have been multiple periods of time where sea level increased while ocean temperatures decreased:”
1878 -> 1917
Ocean dropped by 1.07 deg c
Sea level rose by .046 meters”
Huh? 1.07 C drop??!! Nonsense. Show us a source.
“1942 -> 1976
Ocean dropped by .64 deg c
Sea level rose by .025 meters.”
Again doubtful, show us a source.
“Note sea level in New York Battery was taken as proxy.”
Bad proxy. Various places land is rising or falling. Need global average.
“6. North Atlantic temperatures topped in 2012, same time ice cover was at a min in the arctic. Sea level in New York also topped in 2010, near this ice min.”
Bad proxy
“7. Since 1850, we have been recording ocean temperature data and have therefore only captured part of the 400 year solar cycle.”
Assumed. Source?
“8. Conclusion: Sea level linear rise is a function of isostatic rebound. Short term fluctuations along the linear trend are likely caused by fluctuation in the north Atlantic temperature / arctic ice cover and are not permanent.”
Unproven speculation.
Nate I’m having trouble posting… perhaps there is a limit to how many links I can share. I’ll try again.
El Nino is the #1 forcer on the planet and it is caused by the sun.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1REud2hTHZiRYsNw_3O6dTPR4BJurHJe2/view?usp=sharing
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2008GL034831
Nate,
Find me a location that sea level has not been linear. Use the NOAA tides and currents database. (link won’t post)
The source of the global ocean temperature data Im using is HADSTT3.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QJS_EZyyBH9vqm3lFlMtGDyLCSOA7azY/view?usp=sharing
I used New York as proxy for the globe because it is way between northern Canada (rising) and Louisiana (falling), and it has a good period of data collection. If you have another proxy location that youd like me to look at, Id be happy to consider it.
Ive already posted the links to the information on the 400 year cycle. Please take a look.
Scott, why are you measuring in one place, when we have plenty of data on the whole globe? Not sensible.
Church and White is a good example spaper.
Church J, White N.. A 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise. Geophys Res Lett 33: L01602
Article in Geophysical Research Letters 33(1):L01602 January 2006 with 418 Reads
DOI: 10.1029/2005GL024826
Cite this publication
John~A. Church
Neil~J. White
Abstract
[1] Multi-century sea-level records and climate models indicate an acceleration of sea-level rise, but no 20th century acceleration has previously been detected. A reconstruction of global sea level using tide-gauge data from 1950 to 2000 indicates a larger rate of rise after 1993 and other periods of rapid sea-level rise but no significant acceleration over this period. Here, we extend the reconstruction of global mean sea level back to 1870 and find a sea-level rise from January 1870 to December 2004 of 195 mm, a 20th century rate of sea-level rise of 1.7 0.3 mm yr−1 and a significant acceleration of sea-level rise of 0.013 0.006 mm yr−2. This acceleration is an important confirmation of climate change simulations which show an acceleration not previously observed. If this acceleration remained constant then the 1990 to 2100 rise would range from 280 to 340 mm, consistent with projections in the IPCC TAR.
Are you saying the rise in SL has been constant? For how long?
By satellite measurements, that all agree is pretty reliable, the current rate of rise (last 26y) is 3.3 mm/y = .33 m/century.
How long has that been going on do you think?
If since Roman times, then SL would have been 6 m lower back then, 20 centuries ago.
We know from Roman sites in Italy and elsewhere that that was not possible, given archaelogical sites, like fish tanks, on the coastline.
Nate,
I’m looking at individual locations for validation of the work the experts have done and I’m not finding any evidence that the sea level rise is anything but a linear trend since the 1800s when CO2 levels increased exponentially. That is the bottom line issue here. IF CO2 was the main factor of sea level rise, you would see the rate of change increasing for all locations around the globe. That signal should be found everywhere. Instead we see widely different trends, all linear though. Also, we know sea level was not at constant equilibrium prior to the introduction of man made gasses. It went up and down… most recently UP as the last ice age ended, and at a much, much faster rate I might add then we are seeing now. I’ve concluded most of the sea level changes we see are from isostatic rebound, other geological processes. We therefore need to sort the changes we record between man made and natural. I do not see this being done in the main stream. They are trying to put it all on us when sea level would continue to rise regardless of what we do. This is misleading the public and is very dangerous. We could cut CO2 100% and live in huts with no power and sea level would still go up. We simply need to embrace these changes, and regulate new construction on the coast. It does not make sense to deny sea level rise, but we need to understand the trend as measured on the coast. What the satellites say is interesting, but is of no practical value to actual people living there. Issues with programing / software / orbital decay could lead to misunderstandings with that type of data. Interestingly, I’ve been able to validate Dr. Spencer’s work using local data, but not the sat data for sea level. Why is that? It makes you wonder.
‘Im not finding any evidence that the sea level rise is anything but a linear trend since the 1800s when CO2 levels increased exponentially. That is the bottom line issue here.’
Sorry Scott, AFAIK your findings are cherry-picked and anecdotal.
A choice between that and published, peer-reviewed, comprehensive data and analysis, with uncertainties, I’ll have to go with the latter.
Excellent post (-:
The points about Greenland were right on the mark.
Some further questions:
Whats the ratio between surface melt changes in ice balance and snow accumulation and calving of ice bergs in that same regard?
What about the theory that water flowing into moulins lubricates and speeds up the flow of ice and the calving process?
Historically are those rivers of blue water flowing into the moulins a new thing or has that always been the case and how do we know that?
Whats the average temperature of Greenland, above or below freezing?
Is Greenland losing or gaining ice and whats the predominant process involved with that?
Well, the crux is that the surface mass balance is measured daily – but the calving of ice bergs is not, because it can’t. DMI publishes satellite photos of the Greenland glaciers from time to time, during summer time. You can see them here http://polarportal.dk/groenland/position-af-gletsjerfronter/ and it is difficult to say if a glacier grows or retreats, certainly not on a daily basis. Therefore, in order to calculate the total ice balance of a specific year, they use the (decadal?) average value for the calving and the annual accumulated surface balance. In other words, a long-term value and a rather accurate short-term value. The two values are of the same magnitude, if you are interested in the report of 2018, you find it here (in English) http://polarportal.dk/forsiden/saesonrapport-2018/
If you know the SMB daily, and the total yearly by satellite the the average third grader could figure out the annual loss or gain from glacier calving.
Steve Case,
The average temperature of Greenland is most definitely below freezing at all times of the year. You can watch it’s temperature here:
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=gfs®ion=namer&pkg=T2m&runtime=2019082612&fh=6
Curiously, even though the majority of Greenland never get’s above freezing even during the middle of summer, we are supposed to believe that the ice sheet is in trouble. Here is a plot of temperatures on the ice sheet:
http://promice.org/WeatherArchive.html?promiceStationStationid=211&stationid=211
The coast is where the majority of the weather stations are… also the location of all the TV cameras recording “global warming melt”. It gets above freezing there all the time. If it didn’t, the ocean would freeze and we would quickly go into an ice age.
But if you are interested in average, it is definitely a VERY cold place year round.
“Many scientists who have spent their careers on the ice sheet have witnessed these changes firsthand. Konrad Steffen, who has built up a record of meteorological readings around Greenland over the course of the past 30 years, has calculated that between 1990 and 2018 average temperatures on the ice sheet have increased by about 2.8 degrees Celsius, or 5 degrees Fahrenheit. While the highest points on the ice sheet are still mostly resistant to melting, over the same 30-year time period the total area of the ice sheet that has become vulnerable to surface melting has increased by around 65 percent. And what seems clear now is that Greenland is no longer changing in geological time. It is changing in human time.”
https://e360.yale.edu/features/in-greenlands-melting-ice-a-warning-on-hard-climate-choices
DM,
As it has done before, in the opposite direction. If you don’t know about the Younger Dryas event, maybe you could look it up. Enormous changes in less than 5 years or so, repeated.
Look at the rate of change of temperature – much greater in the past. No point panicking until things get a lot, lot, worse.
Cheers.
Woof!
Begone, troll!
Dr Myki,
Even during the warmest year 2011-2012, (which was also the peak temperature for the North Atlantic which has since plummeted) there was a mass gain on Greenland.
http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/
Note, the map shows departure from average, not mass loss. Every year is a gain. How much of a gain varies. There has been absolutely no interruption of the onset of the next ice age even though the sun was at a 400 year high for activity in the last 70 years, and we pumped 400 ppm co2 into the air. Despite this, Greenland gained mass. Maybe we should all start to think about what can be done to head off the next ice age and the GSM. Perhaps we should start government programs to incentivize people to burn more gas.
OK I’m being a little facetious. lol
I just want the government OUT of the business of propping up types of energy. They can focus on keeping the air and water free of actual pollution which CO2 is not.
This is what your cite actually says
“Until recently, the mass was roughly in at state of balance. That is, the amount of snow falling on the surface was the same as the mass leaving the ice sheet as melt water runoff or discharge of icebergs. The Greenland Ice Sheet now loses more mass than it receives.”
bobdroege,
That seems to be a consistent divergence across various governmental agencies researching climate change. The base data says one thing, the conclusion says another. Perhaps that has more to do with funding than anything.
1. It is NOT possible for snow to be pushed down a hill by the weight of snow unless there is more SNOW there to push it and take it’s place.
2. The temperature does not go above freezing on the majority of the Greenland ice sheet at any time of year to start any other process for mass removal.
It is a self correcting system. The faster the snow fall, the more snow melts when it hits the ocean. The slower the snow fall, the less snow melts at the ocean. There isn’t enough change in air temperature to be making any difference to this system. The only change is the amount of precipitation falling, and the temperature of the ocean. That may change the balance of this system, but will not stop it from happening or melt the Greenland ice sheet, create run away global warming.
Some things to think about:
Icicles form on your roof in winter. The air is below freezing but the sun melts some snow anyway and when the melt water drops over the eve and out of the sunlight, it freezes in the cold air to form the icicle. Now think about melt water on the surface of Greenland in the summer sun and disappearing down a moulin. Think about the claim that the meltwater finds its way to the bottom to lubricate the flowing glacier and make it flow faster. While you are considering that thought think about how ice skates work. The pressure between the blade and the ice causes the ice to liquefy and skater slides on a film of water. Now apply that to how a glacier moves with or without moulin water.
Think about how much surface melt water there is compared to how much ice calves into the sea every year in Greenland. Think about the dynamics of the flowing Greenland ice cap the falling snow and the time interval before it calves into the sea as an iceberg.
Think about sea level rise and where the water comes from to make it rise. Think about other scenarios besides melt water from ice caps and glaciers that could cause sea level rise.
Think about the claim that Greenland is melting and is on the way to cause catastrophic sea level rise.
Steve Case,
Greenland is gaining mass currently. Every winter, which lasts for 9 months, it adds 600 gt of new ice. Every summer, which lasts 3 months, it loses a fraction of that that varies from year to year.
http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/
The reason you see more and more ice melt at the coast isn’t that it is getting warmer, the reason is that the snow is falling faster on the ice sheet then it is currently melting. So the yearly losses are increasing trying to reach equilibrium with the winter gains.
The fact that we have mass gains means that we are slowly headed into an ice age uninterrupted by human activity.
As far as the sun melting snow… I agree the sun could melt some snow with temperatures below freezing, but that is not a new phenomenon and is just part of the overall mass balance equation. The water still moves down hill, most likely refreezing along the way as this process takes thousands of years and includes many winter / summer cycles. Even hitting shade in the middle of summer will likely freeze the water again, at a lower elevation where it is more protected. As mentioned, summer temps on the ice sheet rarely go above freezing and when they do it is only for a matter of hours.
By the way, sea level rise is linear and is from isostatic rebound most likely… or other geological processes. There is no co2 signature in sea level rise.
Scott R says:
August 28, 2019 at 2:03 PM
August 27, 2019 at 11:21 AM
My point is:
The Greenland ice mass balance has everything to do with snow fall and calving of icebergs and nothing to do with temperature.
Water for sea level rise has to come from somewhere. The Greenland and Antarctic ice caps are a good bet for that.
Telling people that they have to stop using fire isn’t going to change anything climate-wise. World economy is a different story on that point which seems to be the goal.
‘What about the theory that water flowing into moulins lubricates and speeds up the flow of ice and the calving process?
Historically are those rivers of blue water flowing into the moulins a new thing or has that always been the case and how do we know that?’
Good questions! I would like to know that as well.
My impression is moulins have always been there, but may be larger or more of them now. Must be if Mass balance is decreasing.
Nate says:
August 27, 2019 at 8:33 AM
Do you think the melt water gets all the way to the bottom? If it does do you think that it makes the ice sheet flow faster? If so how do you know that?
You don’t have to search very far to find the theory that melt water from the surface lubricates ice flow at the bottom of the glacier.
The best recipe for anyone to start a new global religion:
1. Postulate enormous collective guilt.
2. Predict that we all go to hell unless we follow your holy command.
3. Declare yourself infallible.
4. Build an awesome cathedral.
Croak!
Begone, troll!
Sounds like the Trump religion.
Dr. Spencer-
That is an excellent essay.
The English, art history, poetry, sociology, political science and anthropology majors who end up in journalism are singularly unqualified to evaluate the wild exaggerations made by pseudoscience.
Many go into journalism because they are misanthropes and crypto-dictators who are convinced they are destined to “save the world.”
They have confused a closed, static, single variable, controlled benchtop laboratory experiment (Arrhenius) with an open, immensely complex (possibly chaotic), multivariate, dynamic (climate) system.
Spoken like a true ageing conservative!
I assume your reference to the “wild exaggerations made by pseudoscience” refers to published science. You obviously have no idea how the publication and review system filters out b.s. That is why there is so very little material published which disputes GHG -related global warming. I would love to read such material rather than listen to the lame claims of amateurs and malcontents who offer up their personal beliefs and long-discredited talking points. Can you point me to anything?
DM,
Maybe you could point out a publication which contains a useful description of the mythical GHE?
Journals have a record of publishing absolute nonsense, and being forced to retract it, albeit unwillingly, when defects are pointed out.
Nobody has ever demonstrated that CO2 can make thermometers hotter.
You are deluded, just like Schmidt, Mann, and all teh rest.
Cheers.
Woof woof!
Troll, begone!
Dr Myki: Here are some examples for you:
-R. Revelle, H. Suess, “CO2 exchange between atmosphere and ocean and the question of an increase of atmospheric CO2 during past decades”. Tellus. 9: 18-27; 1957
– H. Harde, “Scrutinizing the carbon cycle and CO2 residence time in the atmosphere”. Global and Planetary Change. 152, 19-26; 2017. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818116304787.
– H. Harde, “What Humans Contribute to Atmospheric CO2: Comparison of Carbon Cycle Models with Observations”. International Journal of Earth Sciences Vol. 8, No. 3, 2019, pp. x=x. doi: 10.11648/j.earth.20190803.xx
– E. X Berry, “A fatal flaw in global warming science”. Basic Science of a Changing Climate. Porto University, Portugal. Sep 7; 2018.
– E. X Berry, “Contradictions to IPCC’s climate change theory”. Annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society, Phoenix; 2019.
– J. Munshi, “Responsiveness of atmospheric CO2 to fossil fuel
emissions: Updated”. SSRN; 2017.
– O. Humlum, K. Stordahl, J.E. Solheim, “The phase relation between atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures”. Global and Planetary Change, 100, pp 51-69, 2013.
– M. L. Salby, “Atmosphere Carbon”. Video Presentation, July 18, 2016. University College London.
-M. L. Salby, “What is really behind the increase in atmospheric CO2?” Video Presentation, October 10, 2018. Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg, Germany.
John…I think you have summed it well.
Dear Dr. Spencer,
Thank you for the essay.
I learned of another media bias today, which had been the subject of public “trouble and worry” in Denmark for the past 2 weeks. It regarded the final meltdown and vanishing of the “Ok” glacier in Iceland, which the media attributed to anthropogenic global warming. The thing is, the glacier only formed 700 years ago. That the glacier would disappear was a fact that was so publicly acknowledged that school text books would 50 years ago announce its vanishing! But nevertheless, the former glacier reached fame and received a kind of funeral:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUBW_gbOATo
Dr. Spencer
A fine exposition of the state of the art. I hope you will continue to focus on a three-step process, as follows:
1. Has the earth’s surface warmed in the past 200 years?
2. Have weather events gotten worse in that time, either in the world or in North America? (I believe the clear answer is “no”)
3. Do we know enough about “global warming” to qualify an economic program that will “fundamentally transform” the economy of the USA? The World?
I have in addition a specific question. When it comes to “climate sensitivity”, the way it’s usually described is “that amount of GMT increase that you will get by doubling CO2”. But I believe that’s a moving target because CO2’s impact on the atmosphere is asymptotic, so the value decreases. As we proceed from 400ppm to (the unimagninable) 800 ppm, the rate of the impact on the environment will be smaller (do we know how much smaller?) than it was from ~300 ppm to 400ppm, as I understand it.
Last, can you comment on the prediction that the earth is entering a Grand Solar Minimum likely to last 30-40 years? If that’s the case, is that not likely to offset, largely or even possibly completely, whatever impact humans have on the climate through CO2?
Thanks for your untiring efforts to clarify the arguments. I do wish we could have 3 or 4 televised debates on these (top 3) topics, I think it would really help the public understand what’s going on, which is, to listen to many in the Warmer community, “not about the science, but about empowering socialism”.
God help us!
Another amateur who has come late to the topic armed with a list of denialist talking points that have been debunked umpteen times over the past couple of decades.
DM,
You certainly need God’s help.
Neither physics nor Nature support your pseudoscientific GHE true believer dogma.
Cheers.
Woof.
Begone, troll!
ron…”As we proceed from 400ppm to (the unimagninable) 800 ppm, the rate of the impact on the environment will be smaller (do we know how much smaller?) than it was from ~300 ppm to 400ppm, as I understand it”.
What impact came from the so-called change from ~300 ppmv and 400 ppmv. I mean, where’s the scientific evidence that can meet the requirements of the scientific method?
Yes the Media gets science wrong quite often. They exaggerate current events over historical events quite often. They distort science by failing to mention uncertainties and failing to put a recent paper in context of all others.
But is the answer to distort and exaggerate in the opposite direction?
I don’t think so.
“for those of us who keep track of such things, farmland and some rainforest in Amazonia and adjacent lands has been burned by farmers for many decades during this time of year so they can plant crops. This year is not exceptional in this regard, yet someone decided to make an issue of it this year. In fact, it looks like 2019 might be one of the lowest years for biomass burning. ”
No, not true. This year is a genuine record for number of fires by this time, according to statistics from satellite monitoring:
http://queimadas.dgi.inpe.br/queimadas/portal-static/situacao-atual/
“July 2019 was the hottest month on record”
Yes this is actually true according to MOST available surface temperature records.
“Expensive sources of energy forced upon the masses by governmental fiat kill poor people simply because expensive energy exacerbates poverty, and poverty leads to premature death. ”
This is simply an unproven assertion. Please show any data on deaths caused by renewable energy. There is no such data.
In contrast, there are, demonstrably, tens of thousands of early deaths every year caused by air pollution from coal burning.
“And still I am widely considered a climate denier.”
I don’t know if you are a climate denier, but the climate deniers certainly believe you are a climate denier. And as a result, flock to this blog.
Nate, thanks for demonstrating how people have been rendered braindead by all the media propaganda.
You probably spent all morning putting that together without even realizing AGW was a hoax, huh?
‘You probably spent all morning putting that together’
Not really, but JD, as usual you put no thought into your post, and thus it is content-free.
Par for the course.
Another example of how braindead the media can make people like Nate.
Thanks Nate.
See if you can offer more examples, please.
Just more from JDs monkey assistants typing on keyboards.
Another good example, Nate. Thanks.
Keep them coming.
Nate,
I suspect you need to re-calibrate your mental scientific bias equipment. Dr Spencer has stayed pretty middle-of-the road and has dedicated numerous articles and blog responses trying to un-distort those on both sides of the issue…
Regarding the Amazon… ‘number of fires’ doesn’t equate to ‘biomass burning’.
Regarding deaths… I think you’re capable of understanding the implication; it doesn’t have anything to do with the energy source, it has to do with money. If poor people (or people in general) have less money, more of them will die prematurely. ‘air pollution’ doesn’t equate to CO2 levels and we now have ‘clean coal’ and so pollution in the US has improved dramatically even while using lots of coal, etc. Bottom line renewable energy costs more in dollars.
People need to use another term than ‘climate denier’. It really is a foolish made-up term that has no sense. Who denies climate?
Cheers!
Barry
Nate,
Most of what you’ve said is simply B.S., but rather than refute each statement, let’s cut to the chase. The whole idea that the earth has warmed over the last 120 years is questionable. If it has, the reality is that any warming is almost certainly lower than what the supposed experts claim. Actual surface temperature data says that there has been virtually no warming.
The surface temperature records from all over the globe have been manipulated to produce warming since the beginning of the last century. All you have to do is look at the raw data and you’ll see that the 1930’s were warmer than today. You’ll see that the trend is virtually flat all over the globe. Today’s “adjusted” data is polluted by the urban heat island effects that are actually used as a justification for modifying uncorrupted rural records upward so that they are more “in line” with the supposed warming. Furthermore, they adjust pre-1960 data downward, for no good reason.
Also, much of the surface temperature data from the oceans in the southern hemisphere, Africa, and parts of Asia is sparse or missing altogether. But that hasn’t stopped NOAA from making up the data, using their flawed “adjusted” data as a basis.
Dr. Spencer’s UAH data on atmospheric temperature shows warming from 1979 to 1998, a flat temperature profile from 1998 to 2016, and a blip up in 2016-17 due to the strong El Nino, and close to a return to the 1998-2016 norms afterward. But this record only goes back to 1979. There are likely other influences, such as several climate influencing stratospheric volcanic eruptions that biased temperatures downward in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, creating an appearance of rising temperatures since 1979.
Any scientist worth his salt would have to say, given the state of the temperature data, that there is no concrete proof of global warming, much less proof that it is human caused.
If we really want answers regarding climate, we need to take an honest and unbiased look at the data that we do have, eliminate corrupt data, and look at all possible causes for variations – from the urban heat island, to volcanoes to ocean currents. But right now, the “official” surface data is garbage, adjusted using a myriad of questionable assumptions by people with confirmation bias who are determined to find warming, wherever it may be hiding.
‘Actual surface temperature data says that there has been virtually no warming.’
Just a bunch of flimsy denier-blogosphere talking points.
The data we don’t like is no good, or fraudulent.
The data we do like is handed down direct from God.
Heard it all before, Dan.
As I said, “the climate deniers certainly believe you are a climate denier. And as a result, flock to this blog.”
You made my point.
Nate,
Let’s see, I provide legit information about the surface temperature record and evidence for possible causes for the lower atmospheric temperatures of the 1980’s and early 1990’s, and you provide … ad hominems. Typical of the climate alarmist crowd. When you don’t like the message, attack the messenger.
Dan – your garbled post is a joke surely?
It is a typical denialist rant that gives you guys such a bad name.
“we need to take an honest and unbiased look at the data”
LOL – just a one word answer : BEST
“LOL just a one word answer : BEST …”.
If you mean Berkeley Earth here are just two longterm stations unaffected by UHIE, one an isolated lighthouse the other a rural station far from any large city, that illustrate how falling longterm T trends are adjusted to show warming:
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/151786
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/151841
DM,
BEST? You jest!
What you call a person who claims that increasing numbers in a collection does not increase the average of that collection? Fool, fraud, incompetent, stupid?
Your choice.
Cheers,
Huh? Are you deranged doggy?
Begone, impotently yapping troll!
dan…”The whole idea that the earth has warmed over the last 120 years is questionable”.
Do you mean warming due to anthropogenic sources or just warming? There is little doubt there has been warming, however, there was a mini ice age before the warming. Global temps were 1C to 2C below normal for 400 years before 1850, so we’d expect it to warm when that mini ice age ended.
‘Bottom line renewable energy costs more in dollars.’
Quickly becoming cost-competitive.
Wind: already beats alternatives in great plains.
Solar beats Nuclear, Clean Coal (expensive) already.
Clean coal-not being implimented in developing nations.
It is simply hyperbole, and fear-mongering, to claim a technology causes deaths, when their is no evidence that it does or will with so many other variables.
If a developing country doesnt yet have a grid, then wind or solar could be an alternative
Paris accords: developing countries still will use energy to develop. Assistance from 1st world to develop MORE renewably.
Nate
The major problem with wind is NOT the cost of production. It is the reliability of this resource. It is like a useless friend. They come when you don’t really need them to help and leave when you really need them. Wind blows the strongest in the plains in the Spring and Fall. Both these seasons are also the lowest power demand seasons. The Summer and Winter are when the power demand rises and wind is not where to be found.
Currently in the MISO energy region the wind is blowing okay. You should monitor this link on a regular basis. You will see how unreliable wind really is. You could not hope to sustain any type of advanced Civilization if you relied on wind as your primary energy source. It is okay as a back up resource. It is always good to have multiple sources of power available. But wind is not the answer for the future of mankind. I am disappointed that the Green Movement embraces this boondoggle as some form of salvation. We could have invested this money in a resource that would actually light up the future like Bussard type fusion (fusing abundant boron nuclei with hydrogen)…only alpa particles as outcome of reaction and energy. No neutrons.
Here is a link to MISO. Try to figure out who will go without power. On really hot summer days the wind can be as low as 1000 MW for the entire MISO region but the demand is 120,000 MW. It can be like this for weeks. Good luck keeping the people happy when they can’t pump gas for their cars, use air-conditioning, refrigerate food, cook with an oven, etc…
https://www.misoenergy.org/markets-and-operations/real-time–market-data/real-time-displays/
Nate,
We’ve had these discussions before…
With wind/solar in particular ‘becoming cost-competitive’ may be true for the generators, but not even close when factoring in everything (smart grid/storage/back-up sources to handle dis-continuous nature and transmission lines to account for optimal locations to place generators). I agree wind in the great plains where there is a current need for more electricity is a great idea; it’s an optimal location. As far as Solar as a primary energy source, I once heard a professor researching Solar say something to the effect even if the panels were free it would be too expensive.
I didn’t claim renewable energy technology causes deaths. However, a society that forces expensive technology on itself will create more poverty. More poverty means lower life expectancy. That seems a pretty straightforward logical argument.
Developing world and first world are just different worlds. In the developing world they may be just fine without having electricity at night or when the wind doesn’t blow. The Paris accord is just another opportunity for political animals to pat themselves on the back and look good to their voting constituents. It’s just a piece of paper and signing it doesn’t require writing any checks. The proof is in the pudding and we’ll see how much money first world countries are willing to dedicate to developing countries. I’m doubtful because we’re not talking millions, we’re talking trillions. Energy is an expensive business.
Barry
“There are no human fingerprints of global warming. None. Climate change is simply assumed to be mostly human-caused (which is indeed possible), while our knowledge of natural climate change is almost non-existent.”
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C44&q=anthropogenic+fingerprint+global+warming&btnG=
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C44&q=global+warming+attribution&btnG=
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C44&q=natural+forcing+climate+change&btnG=
Mark B, you must be really smart to know how to do searches like that. And, being so smart, you’ve probably read everyone of those “papers”.
How about linking to the very best one, that is not behind a paywall, so we can have fun tearing it apart?
You know the old saying: “If they can’t take the heat, they should get out of the AGW hoax”.
mark b…from your 3rd link…”extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past fifty years can be explained without xternal forcing, and very likely that it is not due to known natural causes ”
Since when is ‘likely’ part of the scientific method? Your links are to climate model crap which is nothing more than eco-weenies and their pseudo-scientific consensus.
Not an ounce of proof.
Regardless of whether or not you accept the particulars of attribution studies, the statement that “Climate change is simply assumed to be mostly human-caused” is not true.
The statement that all attribution studies are based on “climate model crap” is also objectively not true.
The bigger point is that distorting the facts in an essay blaming “media” for doing the same hardly makes it look like “rational debate” is the objective.
Since when is “likely” part of the scientific method?
Probability estimates have been part of the scientific method for decades, in many different fields, increasing in use as statistical analysis became more sophisticated.
Put “probability estimate” as a complete phrase into google scholar, and set the time period between 1950 and 2000. Thousands of hits.
Put the same complete phrase into google scholar for 2000 to present and you get 17,000 hits.
But how about the word “likely”? Let’s check for the period 1950 to 2000.
1.7 million papers use the word.
But many of those might not be used in the way we’re assessing here. So let’s pick the phrase “very likely,” which is a term of probability, and see how many hits we get.
1950 to 2000 : 400 thousand hits.
2000 to present : 580 thousand hits.
Yep, “likely” as a term of probability has been standard in science since at least the 1950s. Did your education in science cease before this time, perhaps?
I think a correction to your first sentence is needed. It used to be that the media held to the saying “If it bleeds, it leads”. That’s not so true anymore. The media is no longer capable of taking a neutral stance and so the saying should be changed to: “If we can make it bleed, it leads”.
Humanity added to natural warming, but from increased water vapor, not increased CO2. NASA/RSS have been measuring water vapor by satellite and reporting it since 1988 at http://www.remss.com/measurements/atmospheric-water-vapor/tpw-1-deg-product. Fig 3 in my blog/analysis (click my name) is a graph of the NASA/RSS numerical data. When normalized by dividing by the mean, the NASA/RSS data are corroborated by NCEP R1 and NCEP R2.
Blinded by a misguided focus on the increase in CO2, climate science has apparently failed to notice that in the period 1988-2002 about 5 water vapor molecules were added for each CO2 molecule. Since 1900, on average, about 3.6 WV molecules were added for each CO2 molecule. The WV increased about twice as fast as calculated from the average global temperature increase (calculation in Section 8).
According to Spectracalc/Hitran, at zero altitude there are about 24 H2O molecules for each CO2 molecule and each H2O molecule is about 5 times as effective at absorb/emit of thermal (LWIR) radiation emitted from earth surface as a CO2 molecule. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECWhyyDUYAA1P89?format=jpg&name=medium
A brief explanation of how CO2, in spite of being a ghg has no significant effect on climate is in the last paragraph of Section 2 in my b/a. A more detailed explanation is provided in http://diyclimateanalysis.blogspot.com as follows: (2nd paragraph after Figure 1): ,,Well above the tropopause, radiation [emitted there] to space is primarily from CO2 molecules. If you ignore the increase in water vapor near the surface vs time (big mistake), WV averages about 10,000 ppmv. The increase since 1900 in absorbers at ground level is then about 10,410/10,295 = ~ 1%. WV above the tropopause is limited to about 32 ppmv because of the low temperature (~ -50 C) while the CO2 fraction remains essentially constant with altitude at 410 ppmv; up from about 295 ppmv in 1900. The increase in emitters to space at high altitude (~> 30 km, 0.012 atm), and accounting for the lower atmospheric pressure, is (410 + 32)/(295 + 32) * 0.012 = ~ 1.6%. This easily explains why CO2 increase does not cause significant warming (except at the poles) and might even cause cooling. The exception at the poles (about 13% of earth area) is because its cold there at ground level so WV is already very low.,,
Consequences:
1. WV increase is self-limiting so no catastrophe from warming.
2. The increasing water vapor is delaying the average global temperature decline expected by many as a result of the quiet sun and eventual decline of net of ocean surface temperature cycles.
3. CO2 increase has increased plant growth (i.e. food) by at least 15%.
Increased CO2
-> increased warming
-> increased evaporation
-> increased water vapor
-> increased warming
M,
Increased CO2 – reduced radiation reaching thermometers, leading to cooling. H2O is the most important GHG (according to Wikipedia), and the hottest places on Earth are that way because of the lack of the GHG, H2O, in the atmosphere. More sunlight reaches the surface, you see. Basic physics.
Increased evaporation is generally due to heat – the hottest places on Earth have very high evaporation rates – but also due to wind, depending on speed and humidity.
Increased water vapour is due in part to burning hydrocarbons, which generate CO2 and H2O. The more burning, the greater the amount of water vapour.
increased warming has precisely nothing to do with CO2. Nobody has ever managed to make a thermometer hotter by increasing the amount of CO2 between the Sun and the thermometer.
Keep dreaming. Keep drivelling. Throw in a fact or two, rather than a motley collection of silly unsupported assertions, and others might pay attention. On the other hand, why tell people what you have just discovered?
Leave it to me. I do it better. I discovered facts a long time ago.
Cheers.
I only bothered reading the last two lines. I assume you were talking about trolling.
M,
Obviously, you a free to assume whatever you want. You may assume Gavin Schmidt is a role famous climate scientist. You may assume CO2 makes thermometers hotter.
You may even assume you are not stupid and ignorant. It won’t make any difference to facts.
Assume away – I don’t mind at all.
Cheers,
I choose to assume that you are incapable of writing ten comments without repeating each of your stock phrases at least 5 times.
M,
I leave it to others to decide whether your assumption is of value.
Cheers.
That’s one! Can you resist four more times? Let’s make it a challenge for you …. Gavin Schmidt is a real scientist …. I see you twitching!
Begone, foolish troll!
One for two – you still have some work to go.
Begone, troll!
Michael Mann deserves a nobel prize!
Global warming is a fact!
DM,
Who says thermometers do not react to increased heat? You cannot name a single person making this claim, can you?
Can you define “global warming” in any rigorous way? No? What has any of your diversionary nonsense got to do with the mythical GHE? Nothing at all?
Carry on making stupid comments. Are you a pseudoscientific GHE true believer, perchance?
Cheers.
Put the more carbonic acid betwixt the sun and a thermometer makes the thermometer more better hotter, even at night.
Hush, child.
midas…”Increased CO2
-> increased warming
-> increased evaporation
-> increased water vapor
-> increased warming”
Have you heard of the scientific method? If so, using it, prove any one of your claims above.
GR
Have you heard of the scientific literature? If so, try researching it.
Begone, deluded troll!
Given that I was duplicating your F-buddy’s language, you are also calling him a troll, dear troll.
Begone, witless troll!
Midas, Scientific literature on climate is largely corrupt. Peer review of climate related papers has substantially morphed into an academic cult approving each others papers which elicit government grants. Biased peer review is de facto censoring. Papers contrary to perceptions of the editors are immediately rejected without review.
Midas – Good luck in inspiring GR to undertake anything outside of his comfort zone, however useful your suggestions might be. It seems evident he has no background in rigorous analysis or actual scientific education. He is an autodidact with just enough intelligence to be dangerous, rather than useful or even interesting. He is certainly not open to researching things that are a “done deal” in his mind. You will notice how he perseverates and repeats himself on topics where he is a self-proclaimed expert. Hence his presence on this site…millions of postings from a prisoner.
Midas: Modeling a hypothesis doesn’t validate it. That’s why catastrophic AGW is pseudoscience. When the hypothesis doesn’t match the data, it’s wrong. There is exactly “zero” data to support catastrophic AGW. It only exists in models and imaginations!
midas…”GR
Have you heard of the scientific literature? If so, try researching it”.
Scientific literature has to be based on the scientific method. Did they not teach you that in cooking classes?
plastic…”Good luck in inspiring GR to undertake anything outside of his comfort zone, however useful your suggestions might be. It seems evident he has no background in rigorous analysis or actual scientific education”.
And you’re still a jackass.
Midas, You have been deceived. CO2 has no effect on average global temperature. Temperature increase of the oceans has caused them to emit CO2. Section 2 of http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com now lists 9 compelling observations demonstrating that CO2 does not control climate.
The initial warming, since the depths of the LIA, coincides with restarting sunspots in 1700 combined with increasing water vapor, mostly from increased irrigation. Warming continued, primarily from slowly increasing water vapor resulting from slowly increasing irrigation. The rate of warming and the rate of irrigation both increased substantially around 1960. The temperature cyclic action (about +/- 1/7 K) which had a 64 year period in the twentieth century is from natural ocean surface temperature cycles.
Dan,
I don’t really see any holes in your hypothesis. It doesn’t seem to collide with laws of science and seems to fit with what we actually see. This is real science.
Dan’s mistake was in his first sentence: “Humanity added to natural warming, but from increased water vapor…”
Water vapor is NOT a thermodynamic heat source. It can NOT raise the temperature of the system. In fact, condensation is one of the processes that moves thermal energy to space, cooling the planet.
But it does have a higher heat capacity than Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon, carbon dioxide, etc.
stephen…”But it [water vapour] does have a higher heat capacity than Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon, carbon dioxide, etc.”
N2/O2 makes up 99% of the atmosphere, WV makes up about 0.31% of the entire atmosphere. According to the Ideal Gas Law, N2/O2 accounts for nearly 99% of the heat in the atmosphere.
SPA,
Thanks for challenging my stuff.
It is disturbing the number of people who post here who apparently have very limited engineering/science skill. Some, who apparently lack skill in heat transfer analysis, seem totally incapable of grasping that the GHE (which is produced by ghg) slows the radiation of energy from the planet to the 2.7 K cosmic background resulting in the surface being warmer than it would be without the GHE.
Dan, the “effect” you describe is the atmospheric effect. It’s completely different from the bogus GHE.
The Creator designed this amazing molecule. Water is the universal solvent. It has three different phases within a fairly narrow temperature range. It has a high heat capacity. It is easily transported. It exhibits hydrogen bonding. It absorbs IR across a broad spectrum-it has many rotational, vibrational and translational modes of vibration. God is great!
stephen…”Water is the universal solvent. It has three different phases within a fairly narrow temperature range. It has a high heat capacity. It is easily transported. It exhibits hydrogen bonding. It absorbs IR across a broad spectrum-it has many rotational, vibrational and translational modes of vibration”.
Yes, and over the entire atmosphere, WV makes up only 0.31% of the gases. Pray tell how it accomplishes anything other than absorbing a tiny fraction of the overall IR emitted by the surface? And of that tiny fraction, how does the heat produced by conversion in the WV molecule raise the temperature of the entire atmosphere?
Yes, I’d like to know that too. I think it mostly accounts for surface cooling. It is a big reservoir of thermal energy in the oceans, lakes and rivers.
dan…”Some, who apparently lack skill in heat transfer analysis, seem totally incapable of grasping that the GHE (which is produced by ghg) slows the radiation of energy from the planet to the 2.7 K cosmic background resulting in the surface being warmer than it would be without the GHE”.
If you study the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, it is not concerned about CO2, it is concerned with the heat of the atmosphere next to the surface. That atmosphere is 99% nitrogen/oxygen and it slows the rate of surface cooling.
Heat transfer by conduction to the atmosphere has to involve mainly N2/O2. If you want to talk heat transfer analysis, then check out what happens to a gas parcel in a relatively constant volume that rises and expands to a much lower pressure. It’s temperature drops, does it not?
As far as radiation is concerned, an expert in the field, R.W.Wood, felt that CO2 could not trap heat as heat is trapped in a greenhouse. In a GH, atoms of N2/O2 are trapped, hence the heat.
The GHE is based on a false assumption that trapped IR can somehow increase the heat content of an enclosure like a GH. Makes no sense, how does trapped IR raise temperature? It would have to be recycled, which is perpetual motion.
Wood gave a better explanation. He discovered that heat increases in a GH due to a lack of convection. There is no lack of convection in the atmosphere, the place is rife with it.
Wood also suggested that N2/O2 absorbs heat at the surface but gases are poor radiators of heat, therefore those gases cannot get rid of the heat easily. They become heat storage mediums like the ocean.
GR,
If you had any skill in heat transfer analysis you would know that any graduate Mechanical Engineer especially one like me with an MSME who specialized in heat power is fully aware of the application and limitations of the SB equation.
The word trapped, as often used in climate discussions, is misleading. It is more accurate to say that the energy flux from the surface to the cosmic background is slowed. The slowing results from the summation of relaxation times of the ghgs involved. This is thoroughly explained in Section 4 of http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com
You got two things right:
1. If a gas expands without energy loss, it gets cooler.
2. The GHE has nothing to do with how/why greenhouses work.
If you really want to understand climate, you have some unlearning to do as well as some learning. Start with thermalization which explains how a ghg heats a non-ghg and reverse thermalization which explains how a ghg cools a non ghg.
Dan, if you had any skill in heat transfer analysis you would know that the green plate can NOT raise the temperature of the blue plate, beyond its equilibrium temperature.
In engineering it is important to obey the laws of physics.
Oh, talking about the plates, it’s Day 175 today. 175 days of denial from the GHE Defense Team since that old fraud was debunked. God knows how long it’s been since the moon issue was settled in our favor, as well. Some might say 100 years…
Let’s celebrate 175 days of Junk Science by our local crew.
Well done boys have a cigar and a whiskey.
Hush, child.
Why the hush child?
I just wanted to complement you guys on a fine job.
#2
Hush, child.
Well then,
Let’s celebrate with cake and ice cream if you don’t want whiskey and cigars.
#3
Hush, child.
No. As pointed out before in this thread, the glacier calving is not a part of the SMB that you see in the graphs.
Regarding media myths suggested by Roy, here’s a good one.
The leading killer of all humans in the mosquito. There is one chemical deadly to the mosquito…DDT.
We have banned DDT. Why??? Because some ninny eco-weenie named Rachel Carson published a book in which she claimed DDT was destroying the eggs of birds like raptors. She was wrong, years after DDT was banned the raptor eggs still suffered the same fate.
The media ran with Carson’s wild claims which were scientifically unfounded. We damned millions of people to deaths by malaria and other mosquito borne ailments to save the eggs of some bird.
What absolute crap! You’ve been reading fake news from the rabid right.
“The reality is that the American ban on DDT did not extend to other nations, although some later enacted their own prohibitions. For that matter, the pesticide was not completely banished in the United States or elsewhere; the E.P.A. declared it acceptable if public health was at risk. And despite a decline in its effectiveness because of overuse, it remains a valued anti-malaria tool in many countries, principally for spraying indoors, where its potency is enhanced and its impact on nature is kept low.
Then, too, the notion that Carson advocated a ban on pest-killing chemicals is a fiction. It was not her contention, she said, that chemical insecticides must never be used.
No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored, she wrote in Silent Spring. The trouble, in her view, was that DDT and other chemicals were employed so liberally that the insect enemy developed resistance to them in fairly short order and was thus made actually stronger by our efforts.
Careful! Calling Gordon out on his myopic, obsessive views just provokes another half dozen diatribes from him. Are you prepared to follow the rants and justifications that are about to commence because you challenged him about a 60 year old book he never even read?
So you get all uptight about malaria (which prominently affects African countries) but discredit HIV (which prominently affects African countries). Pretending to give a damn! Whatever serves your purpose, GR, hey wot?
plastic…”So you get all uptight about malaria (which prominently affects African countries) but discredit HIV (which prominently affects African countries). Pretending to give a damn! Whatever serves your purpose, GR, hey wot?”
Not another jackass who is hiding behind a new nym.
Malaria kills many, many more people than AIDS, a mysterious collection of opportunistic infections that no one can explain. What they call AIDS in Africa was once known as Slim’s Disease…cause known…malnutrition, polluted drinking water, and parasitic infections.
The scientist who discovered HIV, Luc Montagnier, came out in the past couple of years and revealed that HIV will harm no one with a healthy immune system. Guess what Africans suffer from….weak immune systems from…malnutrition, polluted drinking water, and parasitic infections from, guess what…mosquitoes and their ilk.
The stats back Montagnier. Here in Canada, where we generally have healthy immune systems, AIDS is relatively unknown. The death rate from AIDS in Canada is a fraction of 1%. Same in the US, same in Europe.
Is it beyond your limited brain, as an uber-jackass, to think this out for yourself? Africans suffer from malnutrition, polluted drinking water, and parasitic infections. What causes AIDS…a faulty immune system. What causes a faulty immune system…malnutrition, polluted drinking water, and parasitic infections.
Montagnier calls it oxidative stress. The solution is antioxidants, food, clean drinking water (emphasized by Montagnier), and a means of controlling parasitic infections.
What does the Bill Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization suggest? Potent antivirals that are known to defeat the immune system, cause liver, kidney and blood infections, and produce AIDS.
In Africa, it was once called Slim’s Disease, till the idiots in control lumped Slim’s Disease under the AIDS umbrella.
Yeah, I didn’t ask you to spill the same malarkey that you’ve held dear and spouted off incessantly over the ages. You’ve purged at length here, we can recite it by heart GR. But I know you can’t help yourself.
You cling so tightly to your illusions, which is why I have poked at you somewhat. And your information (such as it is) is hopelessly out of date.
I feel sorry for you. It’s like your helpless to open your mind to proper scientific inquiry, as you are so invested in the underdog, or having “specialized knowledge” that everyone else is too stupid to see (note how everyone outside of your narrow purview is an “idiot” or “jackass”).
Luc Montaignier published a paper in 2002 where he writes:
“Over the past 20 years, the scientific and legal controversies between our team and Gallo’s group have faded. We are left with the salient fact that HIV was identified and shown to be the cause of AIDS less than 2 1/2 years after this disease was first identified.”
http://www.aidscience.org/science/298(5599)1727.html
He co-authored another paper in the same year, which begins:
“With close to 70 million people already infected with HIV and more than 20 million dead, AIDS is one of the greatest pandemics in medical history…
One of the main objectives of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS is to make anti-HIV drugs accessible to all of the developing world. The problem of cost can be partly solved by reducing drug prices…”
http://fire.biol.wwu.edu/trent/trent/prospectsforfuture.pdf
Gordon’s views are as trippy as ever. The co-discoverer of HIV acknowledges that it causes AIDS, and calls for treatment of HIV to prevent AIDS.
Barry, it is a losing battle with GR. “Trippy” is a very kind assessment. He does not answer any direct questions posed of him, but will rant at length on his hobbyhorse subjects, despite being crudely uninformed. Ignorant of his own ignorance: if it wasn’t so sad, it must be a nice way to live.
“Eco Weenie”? Oh come off it. Carson was an engaged and well-informed marine biologist and ecologist. But it seems you are not actually familiar with her many works…
Sorry, what are your own credentials again, so we can assess your commentary on scientists you happen to dislike or disagree with?
plastic…mickey…”Carson was an engaged and well-informed marine biologist and ecologist”.
Carson was a propagandist who did the world a great disservice. Her ilk today are the climate alarmists.
Yes, having “a point of view” IS technically propoganda, if you want to be like that. Scientists often can’t help themselves. They develop outlooks and points of view that follow from research and experience. It is literally their job to present such information.
The reason why I asked about your credentials was not for a snobby reason, not implying that only people in certain fields or with a certain background are able to make assessments. But you’re a strange combination…superficially well-spoken, but saying some REALLY weird, out of date things. It implies you are no longer current in whatever it is you claim knowledge of and expound upon. Your ideas are frozen in amber. Yet you attempt to present as as some sort of informed authority. It’s …interesting.
Carson is the go-to gal for conservatives who hate environmentalism. DDT sometimes gets dragged out when discussing any environmental issue. Carson didn’t propose a complete ban on DDT, and recognized the need to combat disease, although the useful idiots would have you believe that was what she promoted. She is loved to be hated by anti-government/anti-environmentalist folk because her book was a seminal work in forming the environmental movement (and the American EPA, for that matter). Gordon is just regurgitating mindlessly.
I’m old enough to remember the campaign against DDT. The campaign was ruthless and determined in it’s effort to eliminate DDT usage. And it worked. Outright lies were used. DDT was banned completely. Where did the idea come from to eliminate DDT? Rachael Carsons book. The lies used to eliminate DDT were extensions of Rachael Carsons book.
Years later, when deaths due to malaria were growing, DDT got a reprieve. But who was going to produce DDT? The campaign to eliminate its usage had been very effective. No company wanted to produce DDT because of how the public viewed the product.
So people died.
Absolute crap.
Actually, SMS gives a fairly good summary in only three paragraphs. What do you know that’s wrong or missing?
Resistance to DDT in the anopheles mosquito.
DDT was never banned completely, only agricultural use was banned.
From Wikipedia:
“By 1991 total bans, including for disease control, were in place in at least 26 countries; for example Cuba in 1970, the US in the 1980s, Singapore in 1984, Chile in 1985 and the Republic of Korea in 1986.[54] “
So not a complete ban, just banned in a few countries, then.
Roughly 13% of countries banned DDT.
I think the eagle, peregrine falcons, and ospreys are happy.
I would rather have a few birds around than an ineffectual chemical that doesn’t work that well on malaria.
Those would be the countries that have the capability to produce DDT. People died because they did not have access to DDT. That is well known.
What about the adverse health effects of DDT?
“breast & other cancers
male infertility
miscarriages & low birth weight
developmental delay
nervous system & liver damage”
from https://www.panna.org/resources/ddt-story
Mosquitoes rapidly develop resistance to DDT anyway.
It’s not the life saving silver bullet you are portraying it as.
Issues that are non-issues. As I said before, the campaign against DDT was ruthless. Lies upon lies were used to demonize this chemical in an effort to stop its usage. Money flowed to those who could dispel any good found in DDT. Issues from cancer to egg shell thinning based on the writings of Rachael Carson have been found to be untrue. I found this: http://junkscience.com/100-things-you-should-know-about-ddt/ It does a pretty good job of telling the history and the current truths based on the current science.
The effect on birds was noted before Carlson’s book.
https://web.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/DDT_and_Birds.html
If DDT was only used to control mosquitoes you guys might have a point, but its use was so widespread every human in the US had been exposed to it. They put that shit on everything.
It is nice to see that the bald eagle has recovered and the ban on the use of DDT in the US was the major reason for that.
And Milloy is junk
Your site lacks references to claims, unlike junkscience article. Like I’ve been saying, there were so many lies during the campaign to demonize DDT that many of them persist today. The subsequent studies do not bear out claims made by the Stanford site.
sms…hope this link works for you.
https://web.archive.org/web/20020124084336/http://www.altgreen.com.au/Chemicals/ddt.html
Roy wrote:
The Earth has warmed a little since the 1950s, a date chosen because before that humans had not produced enough CO2 to really matter.
Roy, why do you keep writing this when it’s untrue. I’ve pointed this out many times.
In 1950 atmospheric CO2 was 311 ppmv. It’s forcing was 24% of today’s value, relative to 1850.
CO2 in the atmosphere is not causing temperatures or anything else related to climate such as the incidence of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods etc. to change.
How do I know that? Causation requires correlation which does not exist except for the false correlation between [CO2] and temperature from 1850 to 1998.
Ice core data shows that temperature leads [CO2]. That poses a causality problem. It’s like having a body hit the floor and then two minutes later, the suspect fires his gun. It’s hard to call the suspect a murderer when his gunshot occurred after the victim died. Even in “Climate Science”, cause precedes effect.
The theory that underlies the IPCC’s models fails because it is based on only two factors, namely radiation and the concentration of trace gases.
Theories that include the effect of bulk gases, convection, conduction and oceans are much better at explaining reality. For example, the Robinson & Catling model is stunningly accurate for the seven bodies in our solar system that have significant atmospheres.
Currently that theory is being used to model the temperature on Proxima b:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1608.08620.pdf
Roy wrote:
The Earth has warmed a little since the 1950s
N.O.A.A.’s surface data shows the GMST has increased by about 0.95 C since 1950. Other data sets show the same, +/- 0.1 C.
That’s 1/5th of an inverse ice age. That’s “a little?”
And the rate of change of ~ 0.2 C/decade is not slowing down. That’s what has people worried, more so than anything today.
DA…”N.O.A.A.s surface data shows the GMST has increased by about 0.95 C ”
NOAA fudges data and lies about record temperatures. They cannot be trusted.
Yep they had to adjust that decade down and adjust recent decades up by extending the record to the arctic and ignoring that in 1950 the ice at the pole was thin then too bringing up submarines through the ice. They claim they got smarter but the scientists back in the 80’s didn’t include the arctic because they determined the data was way to thin.
DA claims: “That’s what has people worried, more so than anything today.”
DA, if you didn’t have some imaginary fears to worry about, you wouldn’t have anything to do.
JMA, Berkeley Earth, Had.CRU and reanalysis products from Europe and elsewhere generally support the warming rate of NOAA, GISS etc, for the period 1950 to present. Had.CRU has the lowest trend, with 0.84C of warming since 1950, but the uncertainty overlaps with all the others.
Nearly a degree of warming since 1950 is one 6th of the way to an ice age/interglacial, which normally takes thousands of years.
barry believes: “…one 6th of the way to an ice age/interglacial, which normally takes thousands of years.”
Now barry, you don’t know the actual temperatures from the “last” interglacial anymore than you know how many “thousands” of years were involved. You’re just relying on piles and piles of pseudoscience. That’s NOT science, it’s just a belief system.
Which means you’re just practicing a false religion.
barry…”JMA, Berkeley Earth, Had.CRU and reanalysis products from Europe and elsewhere generally support the warming rate of NOAA, GISS etc,”
Duh!!! They all get their fudged data from NOAA then fudge it more. Both Had-cruit and GISS get their data from NOAA.
No, Gordon, the reanalysis products are derived from multiple sources, and not just temperature data.
Berkeley Earth has data from 39,000 weather stations. NOAA has 7,280 (GHCN monthly). Removing NOAA data from Berkeley Earth does not change the result.
Had.CRU is mainly made of weather station data it gathered itself from various countries, and WMO climate data.
JMA uses GHCN monthly up to 2000, and thereafter constructs its own data set from CLIMAT data received at JMA (CLIMAT) is the data sent by weather stations to various repositories.
As usual, you just talk BS. The facts are too various to support your broad criticisms, so you shut your mind to the facts.
You’re right. Don’t know why he keeps saying it either. CO2 has virtually no effect on atmospheric temperature. We need much more than 311ppm of atmospheric CO2 to help plants grow. And yes the temperature increase from the little ice age has appeared to have paused for now but let’s hope temperature continues higher because CO2 follows temperature and not the other way around.
reposting here…another super-myth perpetuated by the media.
plastic…”So you get all uptight about malaria (which prominently affects African countries) but discredit HIV (which prominently affects African countries). Pretending to give a damn! Whatever serves your purpose, GR, hey wot?”
Not another jackass who is hiding behind a new nym.
Malaria kills many, many more people than AIDS, a mysterious collection of opportunistic infections that no one can explain. What they call AIDS in Africa was once known as Slim’s Disease…cause known…malnutrition, polluted drinking water, and parasitic infections.
The scientist who discovered HIV, Luc Montagnier, came out in the past couple of years and revealed that HIV will harm no one with a healthy immune system. Guess what Africans suffer from….weak immune systems from…malnutrition, polluted drinking water, and parasitic infections from, guess what…mosquitoes and their ilk.
The stats back Montagnier. Here in Canada, where we generally have healthy immune systems, AIDS is relatively unknown. The death rate from AIDS in Canada is a fraction of 1%. Same in the US, same in Europe.
Is it beyond your limited brain, as an uber-jackass, to think this out for yourself? Africans suffer from malnutrition, polluted drinking water, and parasitic infections. What causes AIDS…a faulty immune system. What causes a faulty immune system…malnutrition, polluted drinking water, and parasitic infections.
Montagnier calls it oxidative stress. The solution is antioxidants, food, clean drinking water (emphasized by Montagnier), and a means of controlling parasitic infections.
What does the Bill Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization suggest? Potent antivirals that are known to defeat the immune system, cause liver, kidney and blood infections, and produce AIDS (admitted by the drug companies that produce the antivirals…they call it IRS because it is a drug-induced form of AIDS and they don’t want to increase the death rate for the other AIDS).
In Africa, it was once called Slim’s Disease, till the idiots in control lumped Slim’s Disease under the AIDS umbrella.
I don’t understand why you feel you’re so important that you must re-post windy misinformation twice. I think it’s typical of how clods want to have the last word – to feel safe.
My answer is above in the original thread.
plastic…”I dont understand why you feel youre so important that you must re-post windy misinformation twice”.
I don’t understand why you have to post under a different nym. You obviously have a long-running dislike of my posts suggesting you have been around here for a while.
I am guessing you might be ‘stupid’, who changed his nym to include JD’s name, Huffman, and your sore because me, JD, and dremt have regularly kicked your butt about science.
re Rachel Carson critiques…
https://www.safechemicalpolicy.org/critiques-of-silent-spring/
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-truth-about-ddt-and-silent-spring
First link is to a libertarian policy think tank. Second link is to a “science” journal created by an advocacy group.
Unbiased reviews, particularly those rooted in science, and not that filtered by a political lens, would be more persuasive.
DA…”In 1950 atmospheric CO2 was 311 ppmv. Its forcing was 24% of todays value, relative to 1850″.
It’s ironic that the IPCC selected 1850 as the beginning of the warming, the year claimed as the end of the Little Ice Age.
When Mann et al produced their hockey stick nonsense, the IPCC were all over the notion that the 1990s represented unprecedented warming over the previous 1000 years.
After McIntyre and McKitrick exposed Mann’s hockey stick as crap statistical methods, and NAS essentially agreed, the IPCC rushed out a newer version of the hockey stick that had so many error bars that the graph was referred to as the spaghetti graph. It re-introduced the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age that Mann et al had suppressed to get a nice straight shaft on the stick.
The IPCC also changed Mann’s claim of 1000 AD as the beginning point of the ‘unprecedented’ warming to 1850. But why 1850 when the focus of the AGW range is the pre-Industrial Era?
It appears the IPCC are acknowledging the Little Ice Age ending data of 1850 yet ignoring the import of the LIA. It had been much cooler over the entire planet for the previous 400 years of the LIA, yet the IPCC stuck with their anthropogenic cause for the warming.
Seems the IPCC have painted themselves into a corner.
Propagandistic claptrap. The truth is far more interesting and informative than this potted BS.
But why 1850…?
Because that was the the first year in longest of the global instrumental records (Had.CRU). IPCC does not say warming began from 1850. That’s your ignorance conflating two different ideas. Again. How can you remain so dense after so many years talking about this stuff?
Dr. Spencer ==> A marvelous piece — really terrific. Perhaps it can be leaked to a friendly press outlet with a wide readership.
I would have thought that Dr Spencer would know that the Greenland SMB does not include the mass that is lost when glaciers calve off icebergs and melt as they come into contact with warm seawater.
Well – he did know it and sloughed it off.
Lukewarmers like Roy Spencer score “own goals” by acknowledging implicitly that the “science” of climatology claiming carbon dioxide, water vapor etc warm us is correct. The AGW “science” implies rain forests should be 50 to 80 degrees hotter than deserts because these alarmists claim water vapor does most of their “33 degrees” of warming at average concentrations just over 1%. So how much warming should it do where it is 4% ? Lukes can’t say it just doesn’t do as much because then their 33 degrees would not be achieved in the first place. Water vapor is about 98% of all “greenhouse” gases that are supposedly causing about twice as much heat from the cold atmosphere to the already-warmer surface as the Sun is doing with its direct radiation that reaches the surface. Why do some PSI authors implicitly endorse such junk science? Why does John O’Sullivan even publish it? Water vapor COOLS us by several degrees. It is gravity which makes the base of the troposphere warmer, not back radiation. Water vapor reduces that gradient and so the temperature does not rise as much between the effective radiating altitude and the surface. Studies confirm this: click and watch for 15 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BEN3iJzlrI&feature=youtu.be
What do you think about the recent studies done by teams in Finland and Japan regarding human contribution to global warming?
I have enjoyed reading your blog tonight. You put into words what is obvious in my mind. Climate will always be changing and people will always be trying to make people believe whatever brings the author more attention so he can sell more of whatever snake oil he is selling.
“Another issue that you should try to find support for is the IPCC assump.tion that natural sources have remained steady.”
Not steady, as we see, the source/sink rate changes on ENSO time scales.
“As I demonstrated with the modified Spencer model, the data is equally well fit by an expanding natural source.”
But if Berry type models are wrong about the anthro sources being too small to account for the rise we observe, then there is no NEED to seek an additional source. An unobserved, large, unbalanced natural source, that has no precedent (in recent millenia) is simply not needed.
Earlier I mentioned the 30% ab*sor*ption in the ocean has been modeled and observed.
Here are some data:
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/LDEO+Surface+Ocean+CO2+Climatology
As you can see, measurements show, on average, that the ocean has been a NET SINK for carbon at the rate of 1.6 B tons carbon per year, circa 2000, when emissions were 6.5 B tons.
I suppose that the ocean could be a source in one part and a sink in another part.
If you look at the map at left, the largest source is the Tropical Pacific, @ about 0.65 BT/year and the rest of the ocean has been a sink.
There is no evidence for any (non-seasonal) large, (20x = 130 BT) carbon/year SOURCE or SINK in the ocean (the largest carbon reservoir).
If you look on page 471 of IPCC AR5 WGI Chapter 6(https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter06_FINAL.pdf), you will find a graph estimating the sources and sinks of land (about 120 PgC) and sea about (78 PgC). Let me guess. You are interpreting the Takahashi data to mean that 200.00 GtC of total sources of C minus 200.13 of total sinks of C gives a net maximum sink of 130 BtC? Therefore there is no sources of the magnitude that the IPCC claims? I don’t interpret the Takahashi data that way. I do confirm your suspicion that the ocean could be a source in one part and a sink in another part. I would go farther to say that some places are a source in one season and a sink in another.
Please refresh my memory on the modeled and observed 30% absorp.tion in the ocean. I don’t know what you are getting at.
A puzzle for you. How does a thirsty person in the desert know there is no water in the oasis over the next sand dune?
‘Let me guess. You are interpreting the Takahashi data to mean that 200.00 GtC of total sources of C minus 200.13 of total sinks of C gives a net maximum sink of 130 BtC?
No. No need to guess. Just READ my post.
“There is no evidence for any (non-seasonal) large, (20x = 130 BT) carbon/year SOURCE or SINK in the ocean (the largest carbon reservoir).
The PMEL map shows the flux over a year, and THEY state it sums to 1.6 BT carbon.
I also looked at the map and calculated the tropical pacific part.
What you and IPCC are talking about must be seasonal, certainly averages to ~ 0 over a year.
Yes, that’s correct. It is the large different between the combined sources of CO2 from all over the globe minus the combined sinked CO2 from all over the globe that results in a relatively small net locally and globally.
So is it yet clear to you how a relatively small (5%) contribution from humans can at most result in 5% of the CO2 in the air? Otherwise you must still think nature has a way of sorting out which CO2 molecules are natural and which are human. Then she makes the human CO2 molecules wait in line. Not possible.
Con’t from http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/08/how-the-media-help-to-destroy-rational-climate-debate/#comment-385373
Nate, the version you are referencing comes from his blog pre-print published online in April, 2018 for public review before being submitted to peer review prior ti publication. The open-access copy of the final version is here: http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/paperinfo?journalid=298&doi=10.11648/j.ijaos.20190301.13
Apparently someone(s) had the same objection as you and that paragraph was eliminated in the published version. You can still make the same objection, but why? It is an impossible scenario which is probably what prior reviewers have pointed out. Sorry I wasn’t able to read your mind to know which version of the paper you’ve been reading.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/08/how-the-media-help-to-destroy-rational-climate-debate/#comment-385376
He is claiming that natural sink flux that we currently have is driven by partial pressure of Co2 in atmosphere.”
Yes, he does. Do you object to this? If so, what alternative mechanism do you claim?
“He makes analogies, eg to a tire with a leak, the leak rate is proportional to pressure.”
Yes and to a reasonable approximation, that is correct. Atmospheric pressure is negligible compared to tire pressure.
“This leads him to his conclusions that the anthro CO2 can only give 5% of the rise and 95% must be natural.”
5% of the total CO2 in the air, not a percentage of the rise. You continue to get this wrong.
“But this is wrong because most of the natural sink fluxes are naturally balanced by built-in DRIVEN sources, and NOT primarily driven by partial pressure.
An assertion without any explanation. But I’m anxious to be informed. I can explain the reverse drive, but to the extent that it “balances,” nature treats human emissions as well as its own. How could it be otherwise?
‘He is claiming that natural sink flux that we currently have is driven by partial pressure of Co2 in atmosphere.
Yes, he does. Do you object to this? If so, what alternative mechanism do you claim?”
Yes I object, and so do you:
“I think the main weakness in the model is the assump.tion that the rate of absorp.tion into the biomass or oceans is proportional to atm CO2 concentration. It neglects a return process. I am working on a model that doesnt.
You are not making much sense.
The sense I’m making is in coming up with an alternative model to see if it shows Berry’s model wrong. OTOH, you have no model to back up your empty assertions.
‘You can still make the same objection, but why?’
The paragraph was a conclusion from his model. So the model, if he still makes the assumption of 0 external pressure, is still wrong.
Clearly the overall pressure difference between atm and ocean is quite small and near equilibrium. Yet we have massive natural fluxes between the two.
BECAUSE the ocean has big temperature variation, 4 C changes solubility by ~ 10%, or 40 ppm, comparable to the natural flux amplitude.
This is ongoing in the background, and averages to near 0. So why is its amplitude relevant at all to whether a continuously NET positive anthro flux can increase atm concentration?
“So the model, if he still makes the assumption of 0 external pressure, is still wrong.”
He may now assume insignificant “back pressure” (for lack of a better expression). That doesn’t mean the model is wrong. You would have to show in your nonexistent model that the back pressure does make his model wrong.
Massive fluxes are a result of the size of the planet. You don’t know how far from equilibrium the pressure differences are. You only assume that because it fits your narrative. That’s another name for assertions without evidence.
A small change in the total dissolved C in the ocean causes a large change in the concentration of CO2 in air. I’ll assume your numbers resulting in the observed flux amplitudes are correct. They are irrelevant, because we aren’t discussing the magnitudes of the yearly fluctuations. We are discussing the 70 year increase in CO2 and the proportion due to human emissions.
“This is ongoing in the background, and averages to near 0. So why is its amplitude relevant at all to whether a continuously NET positive anthro flux can increase atm concentration?”
Like I explained, it isn’t.
” OTOH, you have no model to back up your empty assertions.’
That is not my job. That is the job of carbon cycle experts, who have done it. I have outlined the main features way up above.
The point of this entire discussion was to show that Berry’s model is not valid, and both of us ‘seem’ to agree now.
The ‘zero back pressure’ is completely illogical. That total CO2 pressure is the driving force for natural fluxes is not logical.
The second main point of this discussion, IMO, was that Berry’s model, being invalid, does nothing to support the notion that anthro emissions cannot be responsible for more than a small fraction, 5%, of the total atm concentration.
‘A small change in the total dissolved C in the ocean causes a large change in the concentration of CO2 in air. Ill assume your numbers resulting in the observed flux amplitudes are correct. They are irrelevant, because we arent discussing the magnitudes of the yearly fluctuations. We are discussing the 70 year increase in CO2 and the proportion due to human emissions.
This is ongoing in the background, and averages to near 0. So why is its amplitude relevant at all to whether a continuously NET positive anthro flux can increase atm concentration?
‘Like I explained, it isnt.’
Well, then it seems we agree that the amplitude of the natural fluxes is irrelevant to the “the 70 year increase in CO2 and the proportion due to human emissions.”
But that does not agree with your claim throughout this discussion, that the magnitude of the natural fluxes are VERY RELEVANT, EG:
“Ed Berry, Hermann Harde, Murray Salby, and others have published papers claiming the human contribution couldnt be much more than its share of all the sources of CO2. The CO2 from natural sources is about 20 times that of the human emissions. Therefore the fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere due to humans cant be more than 5%.”
so please explain your CURRENT position.
Why do I torture myself by continuing to go around in circles with you? Because the point of Berry’s article is crucial to interpreting just how significant human emissions contribute to the rise in CO2 that supposedly raises global temperature.
“That is not my job.”
If you and the IPCC had a “done it” model that definitively showed Berry wrong, we wouldn’t be discussing this now. If your outline was convincing I would have acknowledged it. Instead I’ve patiently answered your objections. It’s up to you now to illustrate why Berry is wrong. If you don’t understand how the carbon cycle experts refute Berry, then lets examine it piece by piece. Otherwise we are spitting into the wind.
“The point of this entire discussion was to show that Berrys model is not valid, and both of us seem to agree now.”
I wrote that his model has what I perceive as a weakness. I may be wrong. Until I have a model that convinces me otherwise, I accept his model as valid.
I can’t make you understand how rate processes establish an equilibrium. Get a chemistry text and study it.
“Well, then it seems we agree that the amplitude of the natural fluxes is irrelevant to the ‘the 70 year increase in CO2 and the proportion due to human emissions.'”
No, we still don’t agree and it is crucial that you get this. I misspoke when I said, “I’ll assume your numbers resulting in the observed flux amplitudes are correct.” The NET flux amplitudes are irrelevant. It’s the full magnitude of the natural fluxes that are not only relevant, but essential to my whole argument.
You have quoted my current position correctly and it hasn’t changed since the beginning of this conversation.
‘I cant make you understand how rate processes establish an equilibrium. Get a chemistry text and study it.’
Thanks, not an issue. Complex dynamical system with multiple reservoirs and rate constants.
I can’t make you understand that you need to investigate what it is about the ocean carbon cycle that you are missing.
‘I wrote that his model has what I perceive as a weakness. I may be wrong. Until I have a model that convinces me otherwise, I accept his model as valid.’
It seems you simply prefer contrarian models, whether they are objectively better or not.
I don’t know why you would accept a model that, even you agree, has such a glaring flaw in it. But so readily reject, without really even considering in detail, the mainstream sciences model.
There is lots of data out there, PMEL is some of it, that isnt able to find any evidence of your large, unbalanced, natural flux source.
There is lots of data on ocean carbon content, showing that its partial pressure is close to and tracking the atmospheric pressure.
The ocean is a NET sink for carbon in an amount ~ 30 % of the anthro emissions.
In the Berry model, there is large natural source emitting into the atmosphere ~ 100 ppm/year, and there is a large sink draining the CO2 to somewhere with effectively zero pressure.
He asserts that this natural flux of 100 ppm/y will be maintained in equilibrium by a pressure difference of 400 ppm, between the atm and some nonexistent place with 0 pressure.
Therefore, he can claim that an anthro flux of 4.5 ppm/y can be maintained by an 18 ppm atmospheric pressure difference at most.
This is obviously wrong, way oversimplified, and not relevant to Earth.
So, if this model is wrong, why do you still think the relationship: 18/4.5 = 400/100 should still is valid?
A rough sketch of the real situation has several carbon reservoirs, atmosphere, ocean ML, and land/biosphere that are nearly at the same CO2 partial pressure, but still have natural flows between them of 100 ppm/year driven by solar-powered pumps.
An imbalance of pressure of 120 ppm, between these reservoirs and the deep ocean can be maintained and even increased by a small external flux, because the leak rate to the deep ocean is SMALL, apparently < 4 ppm/y.
Please don’t use your ignorance of the carbon cycle to bash mine. Apparently my chemistry trumps yours. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Then read this: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/05/18/co2-and-ocean-chemistry/
Where is this mainstream model that you refer to and why is it only now being brought up in this conversation? Is it an alternative to the ones Berry cites in his article?
If PMEL is some alternative data to the IPCC’s, where is it and why are you only now referencing it?
The ocean is a NET sink for carbon regardless of the source. Your 30% is yours and the IPCC’s imaginary figure. No undisputed data to support it.
You don’t understand the actual pressure/concentration equilibria so why are you torturing Berry’s model by spouting your “18 ppm atmospheric pressure difference” gobbledygook? It just shows you are grasping at straws.
“So, if this model is wrong, why do you still think the relationship: 18/4.5 = 400/100 should still is valid?”
Your premise is wrong, your equation is wrong. Then you start bringing up solar-powered pumps and small deep ocean links with no supporting evidence. Total obfuscation and very frustrating to me.
“If PMEL is some alternative data to the IPCCs, where is it and why are you only now referencing it?”
Here: https://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/08/how-the-media-help-to-destroy-rational-climate-debate/#comment-385418
And we discussed it several times already!
You seem to be losing it!
“The ocean is a NET sink for carbon regardless of the source. Your 30% is yours and the IPCCs imaginary figure. No undisputed data to support it.’
No, as we discussed, the PMEL data that you have forgotten
shows that the ocean is a NET SINK and the amount that it sinks annually is ~ 30% of the anthro emission, CONSISTENT with the IPCC models.
Not theory. Not a model. DATA. You think its wrong, prove it!
“You dont understand the actual pressure/concentration equilibria so why are you torturing Berrys model by spouting your 18 ppm atmospheric pressure difference gobbledygook?
18 ppm atmospheric pressure difference gobbledygook? ‘
Not my gobbledegook, Berry’s. This is HIS argument.
And you already agreed that his 0 pressure sink is bogus. Now you are backtracking?
So, if this model is wrong, why do you still think the relationship: 18/4.5 = 400/100 should still is valid?
“Your premise is wrong, your equation is wrong. Then you start bringing up solar-powered pumps and small deep ocean links with no supporting evidence. Total obfuscation and very frustrating to me.”
More Ad homs and baseless assertions. No countering facts or logic.
You tried this tactic before, with what you called my ‘convoluted’ argument, that you could not even begin to rebut.
“He is claiming that natural sink flux that we currently have is driven by partial pressure of Co2 in atmosphere.
He makes analogies, eg to a tire with a leak, the leak rate is proportional to pressure.
But this is wrong”
Then you somehow adopted the very point I made!
“I think the main weakness in the model is the assump.tion that the rate of absorp.tion into the biomass or oceans is proportional to atm CO2 concentration. It neglects a return process. I am working on a model that doesnt.”
Just stop with the ‘you dont understand chemistry rate constants yada yada’ bullshit, that gets you out of a proper rebuttal.
As I tried to explain, we have a ‘Complex dynamical system with multiple reservoirs and rate constants.’
Yet you insist that it’s much simpler.
“No, as we discussed, the PMEL data that you have forgotten
shows that the ocean is a NET SINK and the amount that it sinks annually is ~ 30% of the anthro emission, CONSISTENT with the IPCC models.”
Based on Berry’s model, I could just as easily claim the amount the oceans sink annually is 4.5% of the anthro emission and 95.5% of natural emissions. To what IPCC models are you referring? Are they different than the ones Berry cites?
“Not my gobbledegook, Berrys. This is HIS argument.”
Nowhere does Berry refer to 18 ppm as a pressure difference. The unit ppm is a concentration, not a partial pressure difference. 18 ppm is the difference between the 410 ppm total CO2 in air and the 392 attributable to natural emissions according to his model. You either don’t understand the model or you are purposefully playing games hoping to exhaust my patience. Stop with the obfuscations, please.
“And you already agreed that his 0 pressure sink is bogus. Now you are backtracking?”
No, you asked this already, I explained a “perceived” weakness in a model doesn’t mean it’s wrong or not the best one available.
“So, if this model is wrong, …” is a wrong premise. See the preceding paragraph.
“…why do you still think the relationship: 18/4.5 = 400/100 should still is valid?”
Actually that equation is not that wrong, only you aren’t using the correct numbers and are not expressing it in the way Berry does in his paper. The ratio of the contribution of human emissions, 18.4 ppm, to natural emissions, 392 ppm, is 0.047 which is equal to the ratio of the human inflow, 4.6 ppm/year, to the natural emissions inflow, 98 ppm/year.
“You tried this tactic before, with what you called my convoluted argument, that you could not even begin to rebut.”
I have just now reviewed your argument here: https://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/08/how-the-media-help-to-destroy-rational-climate-debate/#comment-383717 and I apologize for calling it convoluted. I am frustrated because you seem dead set on trashing Berry’s model without actually finding any serious fault with it other than it doesn’t agree with what you think you know. The tire pressure analogy is not a failure of the model. It obviously didn’t help you to understand his model and in that way you could say it was a failure in communication. So we agree, the analogy is poor.
Next comes the question of what drives the processes. You object to them being exclusively driven by partial pressure. I’ll accept that. The source and sink processes are affected by other things, not the least of which is temperature as you noted.
What I won’t accept is your insistence on balanced fluxes. If they were balanced, CO2 wouldn’t vary. So let’s jettison that portion of your argument. Berry’s proposes that a relationship between inflows, outflows, and residence time determines the balance and predicts how much of the CO2 in the air is attributable to human emissions. OK, continuing on with your argument, next you say this:
“In contrast, the anthro emissions are a source with no built-in balancing sink.”
Again, if there is no balance, there’s no shortage of sources and sinks.
“Therefore its ONLY sink flux IS driven by partial pressure difference with the ocean and the soil, biosphere, etc.”
Huh? Previously you stated that temperature and other factors you mention also drive sinks. And won’t all the processes driving the sources and sinks treat human emissions the same as natural ones?
“Therefore the rise in atm pressure due to anthro is not limited to 5%.”
No, it is (18.4 ppm)/(130 ppm) = 14% of the rise in CO2 which is proportional to the rise in partial pressure, all other driving factors being the same.
“And BTW, the FF carbon, stored over millions of years, would be a natural ultra-slow source only through volcanic activity, which is balanced by other ultra slow carbon-cycle sinks. It has been of course converted to a fast source through emissions, and not balanced.”
Yes, and the speed of the source is simply another name for the magnitude of the inflow. So in terms of an argument against Berry’s model, it is irrelevant.
“As I tried to explain, we have a Complex dynamical system with multiple reservoirs and rate constants. Yet you insist that its much simpler.”
I never said the carbon cycle was simple. You and Dr. Spencer are the ones claiming simplicity:
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/08/how-the-media-help-to-destroy-rational-climate-debate/#comment-380222
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/08/how-the-media-help-to-destroy-rational-climate-debate/#comment-380933
“Nowhere does Berry refer to 18 ppm as a pressure difference. The unit ppm is a concentration, not a partial pressure difference. 18 ppm is the difference between the 410 ppm total CO2 in air and the 392 attributable to natural emissions according to his model. You either dont understand the model or you are purposefully playing games hoping to exhaust my patience. Stop with the obfuscations, please.”
Partial pressure and concentration are directly proportional, my friend.
P(co2) = mole-fraction(CO2)*P(air).
Berry’s equation is the same with partial pressure or mole fraction.
And 400 ppm equivalent to 400 micro-atmospheres. His anlaogy to pressure in a tire is apt.
‘the 392 attributable to natural emissions according to his model.’
No he said natural emissions are 98 ppm/year. ‘nature emits into the atmosphere about 120 GtC from land and 90 GtC from ocean for a total of 210 GtC per year. This is equivalent to about 98 ppm per year.’
“why do you still think the relationship: 18/4.5 = 400/100 should still is valid?”
“Actually that equation is not that wrong, only you arent using the correct numbers and are not expressing it in the way Berry does in his paper. The ratio of the contribution of human emissions, 18.4 ppm, to natural emissions, 392 ppm, is 0.047 which is equal to the ratio of the human inflow, 4.6 ppm/year, to the natural emissions inflow, 98 ppm/year.”
He has calculated a residence time, via 400 ppm/(98 ppm/y) = 4 y .
He then finds an equilibrium levels Lbh for anthro and natural:
“Lbh = 4.6 (ppm/year) * 4 (years) = 18 ppm (9)
Lbn = 98 (ppm/year) * 4 (years) = 392 ppm (10)”
The way I described this is:
‘He asserts that this natural flux of 98 ppm/y will be maintained in equilibrium by a pressure difference of 400 ppm, between the atm and some nonexistent place with 0 pressure.
Therefore, he can claim that an anthro flux of 4.5 ppm/y can be maintained by an 18 ppm atmospheric pressure difference at most.’
“I apologize for calling it convoluted.” Thank you.
“I am frustrated because you seem dead set on trashing Berrys model without actually finding any serious fault with it other than it doesnt agree with what you think you know. The tire pressure analogy is not a failure of the model. It obviously didnt help you to understand his model and in that way you could say it was a failure in communication. So we agree, the analogy is poor.”
I think his model and the tire analogy are consistent, just not relevant to the Earth.
Again, the model suggests a pressure difference of 400 micro-atm, or equivalently a concentration difference of 400 ppm is found on Earth between the atmosphere and some imaginary sink. But no such sink exists!
“Next comes the question of what drives the processes. You object to them being exclusively driven by partial pressure. Ill accept that. The source and sink processes are affected by other things, not the least of which is temperature as you noted.”
OK.
“What I wont accept is your insistence on balanced fluxes. If they were balanced, CO2 wouldnt vary. So lets jettison that portion of your argument.”
The observations show they are NEARLY balanced every year, but for small changes due to ENSO.
And again the Law Dome ice core data and other evidence, that you guys are praying is wrong, shows only a little variation away from 275 ppm for millenia.
“Berrys proposes that a relationship between inflows, outflows, and residence time determines the balance and predicts how much of the CO2 in the air is attributable to human emissions.”
His model is JUST NOT CORRECT for the reasons discussed.
Therefore the relationships in his eqn 9 and 10 above do not hold.
In contrast, the anthro emissions are a source with no built-in balancing sink.
Again, if there is no balance, theres no shortage of sources and sinks.
Yes but they average annually to near 0, because the carbon cycle is well balanced on century time scales.
Now we have ADDED a new source, that ONLY ADDS to the partial pressure. An imbalance is now present.
‘Therefore its ONLY sink flux IS driven by partial pressure difference with the ocean and the soil, biosphere, etc.’
“Huh? Previously you stated that temperature and other factors you mention also drive sinks. And wont all the processes driving the sources and sinks treat human emissions the same as natural ones?”
Well, OK. Im saying that the now accumulating partial-pressure imbalance will try to equilibrate by flowing to the ocean and the biosphere. This adds a flow on top of the natural but oscillatory flows already ongoing.
This is no different than the large daily (15 C), and seasonal (25 C) oscillations in temperature that are going on in the background as the globe warms by a tiny increment 0.18 C each decade.
There is no reason for the two effects to interfere.
Therefore the rise in atm pressure due to anthro is not limited to 5%.
“No, it is (18.4 ppm)/(130 ppm) = 14% of the rise in CO2 which is proportional to the rise in partial pressure, all other driving factors being the same.”
Proportionality doesnt hold because model doesnt hold.
And BTW, the FF carbon, stored over millions of years, would be a natural ultra-slow source only through volcanic activity, which is balanced by other ultra slow carbon-cycle sinks. It has been of course converted to a fast source through emissions, and not balanced.
‘Yes, and the speed of the source is simply another name for the magnitude of the inflow. So in terms of an argument against Berrys model, it is irrelevant.’
Yes, a new external inflow, year by year, for a century or so.
‘As I tried to explain, we have a Complex dynamical system with multiple reservoirs and rate constants. Yet you insist that its much simpler.
“I never said the carbon cycle was simple.”
Spencers model is indeed oversimplified.
But will you consider that the reservoirs sizes, and coupling must be important.
A better analogy than he tire, IMO, is 3 jars connected by pairs of hoses. Then one of these, connected by much narrower hoses to a much larger jar. The 3 small jars are periodically heated and cooled, causing exchange of gas between them with some short time constant. Now a small external source of gas is added to one of the small jars. All 3 jars reach a higher equilibrium pressure. This takes a long time to leak into the large jar.
Your ocean chemistry blog post (why no actual publications?).
“The seawater is oversaturated in respect of calcite, due to Ca++ ion concentration of 10.6 mmol/L . However this reaction require nucleation and growth of crystals and is usually sluggish (may speed up in the cell of invertebrates).”
This agrees with a paper discussing this very issue in my long ago post.
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/08/how-the-media-help-to-destroy-rational-climate-debate/#comment-382498
“CO2 is at 410 ppm far above the equilibrium value (315) , provided a standard seawater composition and an average ocean”
Measured sea surface concentration fig 12.
https://tinyurl.com/y4funone
Clearly average in 2005 was between 375-400
“Your ocean chemistry blog post (why no actual publications?).”
More work is in progress. If you don’t want to discuss unpublished work, that’s your choice.
“This agrees with a paper discussing this very issue in my long ago post.”
Good, we have two sources that agree on supersaturation. This doesn’t mean there is no further ocean sink for CO2. Dr. Mazza concludes, “Ocean water are therefore a huge reservoir for CO2 that waits to be filled.” She means that the excess CO2 in the atmosphere will continue to force more precipitation of carbonate indefinitely as long as the CO2 remains above the equilibrium value.
“Clearly average in 2005 was between 375-400”
Those units are in partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2), micro-atmospheres, not ppm.
I’m happy to continue to learn from you about how the ocean processes CO2. However, I doubt you can prove that nature treats human emissions differently than natural emissions. Unless you can provide some data that refutes Berry’s model or a model that better explains the data, I’m done here.
‘However, I doubt you can prove that nature treats human emissions differently than natural emissions.’
That means you have been missing the point, over and over again. Willful ignorance.
What part of there are multiple reservoirs involved, and they are finite in size, can you not comprehend?
What part of the available DATA agree with this, do you not comprehend?
You can disagree, then do that, and prove it.
Instead of reading and responding to what we actually say, you prefer to respond to a strawman version that we have never said.
IOW you prefer to be an asshole.
“Good, we have two sources that agree on supersaturation. This doesnt mean there is no further ocean sink for CO2. Dr. Mazza concludes, Ocean water are therefore a huge reservoir for CO2 that waits to be filled. She means that the excess CO2 in the atmosphere will continue to force more precipitation of carbonate indefinitely as long as the CO2 remains above the equilibrium value.”
I think Dr. Mazza is a he. I’ll assume he is correct, but again, the question is how long does this take? He doesnt really know.
According to your IPPC link, it takes a very very long time for this to happen.
There is lots of detail and literature that they cite.
On p 472 Box 6.1 | Multiple Residence Times for an Excess of Carbon Dioxide Emitted in the Atmosphere, they show that multiple times are involved.
They say:
“Phase 1. Within several decades of CO2 emissions, about a third to half of an initial pulse of anthropogenic CO2 goes into the land and
ocean, while the rest stays in the atmosphere (Box 6.1, Figure 1a). Within a few centuries, most of the anthropogenic CO2 will be in the
form of additional dissolved inorganic carbon in the ocean, thereby decreasing ocean pH (Box 6.1, Figure 1b). Within a thousand years,
the remaining atmospheric fraction of the CO2 emissions (see Section 6.3.2.4) is between 15 and 40%, depending on the amount of
carbon released (Archer et al., 2009b). The carbonate buffer capacity of the ocean decreases with higher CO2, so the larger the cumulative emissions, the higher the remaining atmospheric fraction (Eby et al., 2009; Joos et al., 2013).
Phase 2. In the second stage, within a few thousands of years, the pH of the ocean that has decreased in Phase 1 will be restored by
reaction of ocean dissolved CO2 and calcium carbonate (CaCO3) of sea floor sediments, partly replenishing the buffer capacity of the
ocean and further drawing down atmospheric CO2 as a new balance is re-established between CaCO3 sedimentation in the ocean and
terrestrial weathering (Box 6.1, Figure 1c right). This second phase will pull the remaining atmospheric CO2 fraction down to 10 to 25%
of the original CO2 pulse after about 10 kyr (Lenton and Britton, 2006; Montenegro et al., 2007; Ridgwell and Hargreaves, 2007; Tyrrell
et al., 2007; Archer and Brovkin, 2008).
Phase 3. In the third stage, within several hundred thousand years, the rest of the CO2 emitted during the initial pulse will be removed
from the atmosphere by silicate weathering, a very slow process of CO2 reaction with calcium silicate (CaSiO3) and other minerals of
igneous rocks (e.g., Sundquist, 1990; Walker and Kasting, 1992).”
Are they wrong? How are they wrong?
I wasn’t planning any more comments due to utter frustration with your obfuscations. But I couldn’t pass this up. A comment by Dr. Spencer from his 9-11 post:
“In my experience, ‘climate consensus’ reviewers sometimes give the most inane and irrelevant objections to a paper if they see that the papers conclusion in any way might diminish the Climate Crisis.”
Precisely the way I would describe your review of Dr. Berry’s paper.
“most inane and irrelevant objections to a paper if they see that the papers conclusion in any way might diminish the Climate Crisis.
“Precisely the way I would describe your review of Dr. Berrys paper.”
That’s you labeling something that you have been unable to rebut, as ‘inane and irrelevant’.
Please tell me where is the ‘zero pressure’ or ‘zero CO2 concentration’ sink for all the natural CO2 that his model assumes?
There is no such place on Earth. How can that be irrelevant?
Meanwhile you reject the IPCC model and evidence for it, but will not answer the question I posed:
“Are they wrong? How are they wrong?’
Do we really know what the ocean temperatures were in the year 844AD? 1123? 1601? 3307 BC? Which ocean? At what depth taking into account what currents, outgassing from joints in tectonic plates? Really? I don’t trust 1905AD nevermind 1905BC. How about this: kill the carbon industry kills donors of conservative politics. Alt energy entrepreneurs are progressives.