BPSDB For those who do not know him Vaclav Klaus is the President of Czech Republic, formerly an economist, and a climate change Denier (here and here for eg).
Last spring Klaus started the usual cheap circus of demanding to debate Al Gore. Like herpes, many Denier fables and memes just won’t go away no matter how often you treat them.
Naturally Gore won’t dignify this clown with a debate, so now the narrative has become that Al Gore is afraid of Klaus.
Of course public debates are not about establishing truth or fact. Rather they are popularity contests, episodes of American Idiot Idol, that reward the best performer rather than truth, particularly if one of the participants is willing and able to lie convincingly (more on this here and here).
Klaus’s entire argument (and here) boils down to his opinion that 
taking action on climate change would not be good for the economy and would require international cooperation and coordination, neither of which he likes because they smack of socialism, and therefore climate change is not real.
That’s like concluding that, despite the opinions of teams of Drs, you must not have cancer because you think you cannot afford treatment and you don’t want to support socialized medicine. It’s so mind bogglingly ridiculous that one is at a loss as to where to begin.
Naturally he never makes any reference to the actual science or the fact that the planet is warming.
He also uses all of the standard logical fallacies and distortions, such as focusing on Al Gore as if he were the source of and/or spokesperson for climate science, naturally ignoring the massive volume of evidence for climate change.
He also indulges in the equally absurd ploy of pretending that the IPCC conducts and controls the science it reports on.
Of course the the IPCC merely collates and reports on all of the credible climate science done anywhere and everywhere, so Klaus’s insistence that “It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel.” is de facto saying that it is not “fair” to refer to credible science.
Equally he is careful to always call it “climate change theory”, as if 
there were not an unbelievable volume of scientific evidence supporting it. Never mind that in the sciences ‘accepted theory’ is as strong an endorsement as you can get, science having abandoned the fiction of proofs and laws half a century ago.
To get a sense of the scale of lunacy we are dealing with here, consider this quote “Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so.” To refer to this as stupidity is not being insulting, it is merely being accurate.
Of course the real debate about climate change rages on all of the time, in the scientific literature. The problem for Klaus is that the debate there is informed, intelligent, logical, rational, and requires actual knowledge.
Worse, in the academic literature people analyse what is said, and if it is blithering stupidity they will not only say so, they show how and why. Not surprisingly Klaus is uninterested in participating in the real debate.
If Klaus actually believes public debate is the way to handle academic matters, why did he ever publish in the economics literature? Why didn’t he just publicly debate every idiot who disagreed with him? whether they knew anything about economics or not?
Regardless of the obvious contradiction, Klaus now clearly believes that cheap theatrics and public circuses are the proper way to resolve matters of fact that are of great public importance.
Given that:
I hereby challenge Klaus to a public debate!
Not about climate of course, but about economics.
That’s right Klaus, show us you are sincere by publicly debating every moron who does not like your economic theories. We naturally expect that you will show us that you really believe this is the correct way to resolve these matters by accepting every challenge no matter how inappropriate or ill informed the challenger.
I know nothing about economics, so I am as qualified to debate economics as you are to debate climate science. I confess that I have not yet picked my argument. It may go along the lines that theories of economics always result in poor people, poverty is bad, therefor economics is wrong.
Whatever I pick I assure you it will be as fact free, irrelevant, and idiotic as your own climate arguments are.
Mind you, I do not plan to wing it based on sheer ignorance alone. I 
promise to troll the internet looking for ideas that sound good, no matter that they are factually wrong, discredited, or outright ridiculous. As long as they sound reasonable and hence would have audience appeal is all I need.
In other words I intend to use the Gish Gallop, just as you intend to do with Gore. That is to say I will pump out as much horseshit as fast as I can so that you must use all of your time trying to refute the nonsense rather than making valid, intelligent points.
Of course if you choose to ignore my points it will look like you have no counter argument and I will win anyway. Yup, the Gish Gallop is a sure fire winning strategy for those who intend to mislead, distort and lie, as you have done and undoubtedly intend to continue doing.
Personally I think this is a completely idiotic way to try to deal with scientific or academic matters. Intelligent, rational, fact based dialogue in the academic literature would seem a much better approach, but apparently you do not agree.
Now if I understand this correctly, by your own logic, a refusal to debate by you is a tacit admission on your part that your economic ideas and theories are garbage, in the same way you wish to imply that Gore’s refusal to debate somehow undermines climate science.
Here again this strikes me as absurd since the only legitimate refutation of ideas and facts is actual refutation of the ideas and facts themselves, but apparently it makes sense to you.
It also seems that a refusal on your part also discredits your climate claims even further (if it is actually possible for them to be discredited any more than they already are, which I grant is improbable).
Since you are an economist, and if your economics is garbage, how much more so your climate science where you have no credential? If by refusing to debate your competence in your own field of knowledge is discredited, how much more so your field of ignorance?
Even more telling, much of your “case” against climate science based on economic and political rhetoric; completely irrelevant of course, but here again this seems to make sense to you in some mysterious way.
Given that, having discredited your economics would further show that your climate critique is even more ridiculous (again hard to imagine how it could be worse than it is, but I suppose it is possible).
In sum, it would seem you must debate me to:
1) Demonstrate that you actually believe public debates are a legitimate way to address matters of facts, and that you are not just the disingenuous buffoon that you seem to be, cynically manipulating a gullible public with cheap theatrics;
2) Defend your economic theories, because otherwise they are by default (at least according to your logic) shown to be nonsense, and by extension your climate critique even more so.
I hope many others will issue their own challenge to Klaus as well. After all, he implies that a public figure is required to accept such challenges or it is understood that they are wrong.
Please post our challenge on blogs, on forums, and be sure to send it in to the Prague Daily Monitor
So there you have it Klaus, when can I expect our debate? or are you afraid?
We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.
Denier “Challenge” aka Deathwatch Update: Day 133 … still no evidence.
IMAGE CREDITS
Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth by Juampe López
Working with idiots by tinacris
* Yup, our very own 😉
Greenfyre's 
You probably could get Lubos, but he bites.
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[…] Random Feed wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptBPSDB For those who do not know him Vaclav Klaus is the President of Czech Republic, formerly an economist, and a climate change Denier ( here and here for eg) . Last spring Klaus started the usual cheap circus of demanding to debate Al Gore . Like herpes, many Denier fables and memes just won’t go away no matter how often you treat them. Naturally Gore won’t dignify this clown with a debate, so now the narrative has become that Al Gore is afraid of Klaus . Of course public debate […]
[…] Fish, Blue Fish”. My first “grown up” book was “Alice In Wonderland” in fifth grade, I want to debate Vaclav Klaus – greenfyre.wordpress.com 03/08/2009 BPSDB For those who do not know him Vaclav Klaus is the […]
I think I’ll just throw out my debate flowchart again. 🙂
Now really, how would the Gore vs. Klaus debate be adjudicated? Will the verdict be decided by the number of Rush Limbaugh supporters that each side can whip into a blogspamming frenzy?
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Ok, I am from Czech republic.
And I can’t believe you have just wasted your time writing this article. Every character typed in response to Václav Klaus is a character wasted. My advice would be to completely ignore him and everything he has to say; mentioning him only gives him strenght and conjures an ilusion he is actually in any way relevant.
But – since you came with the quite clever debate challenge, I will spread the word back home and see where it goes.
Good luck to you.
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[…] Random Feed wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptBPSDB For those who do not know him Vaclav Klaus is the President of Czech Republic, formerly an economist, and a climate change Denier ( here and here for eg). Last spring Klaus started the usual cheap circus of demanding to debate Al Gore . Like herpes, many Denier fables and memes just won’t go away no matter how often you treat them. Naturally Gore won’t dignify this clown with a debate, so now the narrative has become that Al Gore is afraid of Klaus . Of course public debates […]
That was a good read, Mike – thanks. 🙂 Let’s hope it gets some traction – anything to expose and shut down these dangerous idiots.
P.S. Can I point you and your readers at my comment over at Joe’s place: http://climateprogress.org/2009/03/07/new-york-times-tom-friedman-indispensable-blog/#comment-31681
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Greenfyre newbie here. I’m glad to see you resume posting.
Klaus probably learned how to write his name in the snow as a child so I suspect he’s just looking for a pissing contest where he can gain some street cred in an area where the Gish Gallup is sure to work.
If you do engage him in a debate, limit it to a written debate where the GG is less effective.
OT, have you seen this particular argument before? http://cjunk.blogspot.com/2009/03/disproving-green-house.html
If so, any idea who may have debunked it?
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I think this is relevant:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/09/climate-change-deniers
I agree with the last bit – “How we deal with climate change: denial”.
I think we are all familiar with the issues mentioned.
Václav Klaus said:
“They probably do not want to reveal their true plans and ambitions to stop economic development and return mankind several centuries back,”
Isn’t that what the use of coal does?
There is the usual tone of paranoia in the Klaus sentence. I always think of deniers as scared frightened people, unsure of the future and the changes that are happening. So they shout a lot.
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Hello Mike!
Thank you for your complete analysis. I fully agree with you.
Me and my friends we adopted another way how to challenge him as no further discussion seems to be possible…
See http://magazin.ceskenoviny.cz/zpravy/aktiviste-vyhodili-oknem-figurinu-klause/363056?id=363073 or the video on http://www.novinky.cz/domaci/162650-video-aktiviste-vyhodili-prezidenta-klause-oknem-byl-z-gumy.html
Martin
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Come on Klaus are you scared to pick up the gauntlet!!
Mike, you might be interested in this on Klaus from the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/09/climate-change-deniers
Plus also these might amuse you:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/mar/06/climate-change-deniers-top-10
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2009/mar/09/climate-change-deniers-monbiot-cards?picture=344343776
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Sorry, just noticed that Paul had posted the same link.
This on the psychology of climate change denial is also interesting I think:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/mar/09/denial-climate-change-psychology
Scientific debate is essential to freedom loving societies. Refusal to debate unproven science is evidence of lack of conviction in the science. I applaud the EU president for wishing to debate and discuss the science. This is not ‘denial’ – this is being open and honest. I have not been convinced by the AGW theory and welcome more debate (which by your definition makes me a denier too, doesn’t it!). Just my 2 cents.
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David,
That would be a valid comment if what Klaus was engaging in was ‘scientific debate’. He and his fellow Deniers are not. They produce nothing other than rhetoric, ignorance, distortion and lies.
There is no credible scientific debate about the reality of anthropogenic climate change, any more than there is about evolution or gravity. There hasn’t been any credible scientific challenge to the scientific theory of ACC for many years, decades perhaps.
Instead of ‘applauding the EU president’, why not point your ‘open and honest’ enquiry towards some science and see if you can understand why the ‘debate’ ended long ago.
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David, scientific debate takes place in the peer-reviewed literature, not on whatever soapbox Klaus and his megaphone are on. He doesn’t want truth, he wants NOISE: a spectacle to draw multitudes, in an attempt to sway their opinion. This isn’t science, and to pretend it is pulls you into Mike’s gambit (as economic theory is advanced the same way science is): you must now call for Mike to debate Klaus over economics, or admit hypocrisy.
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It looks like Klaus will have more time for debates soon….
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7962177.stm
[…] Greenfyre has reported on how global warming ‘skeptics’ Václav Klaus and Bjørn Lomborg are trying to get Al Gore to debate […]
LOL. I would really like to see Gore have the onions to actually debate someone on the issue rather than keep running away claiming that everything is settled and all of the climate change can be explained by a change in one minor gas in the atmosphere even though the historical record shows that the concentration of that gas normally lags temperature changes.
Keep on drinking the Kool-Aid.
Gore’s a public figure, not an expert.
Science is settled through peer-review publications, not through public debates.
The CO2 lag was predicted by the climate scientists a decade before it was observed (Lorius et al 1990; one co-author was James Hansen). If the science predicts an observation, that observation doesn’t contradict the science.
Support your points with citations or go home to your mommy.
Brian D
I read Lorius Et al 1990. I do not think you actually read the paper or you would know that what you said is untrue. You took one part out of context when the whole paper has been disproved. In it they are discussing how the Ice Cores showed that CO2 drove warming. The fact is that that since that paper new technology has allowed greater resolution in the ice cores. The greater resolution showed that warming is a driver for CO2, not the other way around. Quoting this paper proves nothing.
Gee one non-expert debates another non-expert. That sure is something to get excited about. Wait, it must be, we are doing a attack on him.
Vernon, the lag is easily understood at a lay level as a result of a coupled system. (Essentially, a small forcing raises the temperature slightly, which causes CO2 to offgas (much like warm beer goes flat), which increases the strength of the greenhouse effect and thus raises the temperature even further). You’d know this if you HAD read Lorius et al 1990, which says:
Changes in the CO2 and CH4 content have played a significant part in the glacial-interglacial climate changes by amplifying, together with the growth and decay of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets, the relatively weak orbital forcing.
(Emphasis mine. Notice the key word “amplifying” — they weren’t the initial forcing in the glacial/interglacial change, but that change would have been much smaller if they didn’t play a role, since the orbital forcings (i.e. Milankovich cycles) are much smaller than greenhouse ones.)
This was before we were capable of observing a lag in the ice cores, as you say and I admitted in my comment. However, that section clearly shows how the GHGs can *follow* an initial small forcing — or, in colloquial terms, they “lag”. They predicted this, as you say, before it was capable of being observed. This is hardly “disproved” by any definition of the term I’m aware of.
However, since you have shown yourself to be incapable of even basic reading comprehension where science is involved (see any of Frank Bi’s repeated requests for you to cite your ****ing sources, for instance), I’ll resort to analogy. By your argument, since fire causes heat, heat can never cause fire, and all therefore nothing you place in the oven can ever catch fire.
To quote Z at Deltoid, “See also my forthcoming paper, Chickens do not lay eggs, because they have been observed to hatch from them.“
Brian D
Sorry but the world has not warmed for a decade even though CO2 emissions increased and the IPCC models predicted warming. An objective observer has to conclude that the modellers made errors and their models are not credible at this time. Also, the ice core data shows that temperature changes came first and CO2 concentration changes followed. That is not an argument that changes in CO2 levles drives temperature trends but that temperature trends drive changes in CO2 concentrations.
The bottom line is that the science does not support the AGW claims and the idea that small changes in the concentration of one minor gas in the atmosphere explains changes in the complex climate system is ridiculous to anyone with any common sense.
Vangel, what you say is ridiculous (and not even close to scientific reality) therefore I assume you have no common sense.
Sorry Ian but it seems that it is you who has no common sense. I take it that you are unaware that the satellite data shows no warming trend for a decade and the ARGOS buoy data shows that the ocean is now in a cooling trend in the world’s oceans, which make up two thirds of the planet’s surface.
In what has to be terrible news the PDO has gone into its negative phase and solar activity is very low. That means that the danger is not a degree of warming over a century, which would be good news for plants, animals and humans but of a cooling trend that leads to lower crop yields and a greater need for energy to heat homes during the winter.
Even the AGW movement is now coming up with articles that claim that the warming will be ‘masked’ for as long as twenty more years. The much hyped ‘ice crisis’ is now over as global ice cover is at the same level as 1980. I suggest that you read the actual science rather than the snake oil that the AGW movement is trying to sell you.
And while you are doing your research try asking yourself why the AGW movement is running away from challenges to honest debates. You would think that if the science were settled the movement would be eager to make its case. Of course, the Church of Gore was never much into science or truth; its high priests have always been more interested in politics.
Vangel, unfortunately you are reading the wrong science. Places such as climatefraudit, wattswrongwithwatt, icecap, CO2science, junkscience etc do not have honest science in them. Thus it is obvious that you have no common sense if you get all your science information from these sites. Try reading the peer reviewed scientific literature if you want accurate and honest information.
There is no such thing as “an honest debate” if it is organized by the deniers. The real debate takes place in the peer reviewed scientific literature not on stage where it is easy to throw out lies and misinformation and very difficult to respond in the time available.
I find it laughable that you refer to honest scientists as religious zealots. It is the deniers who abrogate truth and honesty and turn to “believing” whatever their political masters tell them.
What a stupid quote:
What, you could not find a quote that mattered less? Why not just try fact, studies, and understanding. If you stayed on top of things, you would know that a recent study has shown that what actually caused the end of the last ice age was a massive melt off of the Antarctic Ice sheet, enough to raise sea level by 20 meters within two centuries. That was well before CO2 had even started to rise.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/03/0317_030317_iceshelf.html
Click to access Stott%20et%20al.,%202007%20Science.pdf
But this was shown to not be the case, rather the CO2 rise did not take place until 1000 years after the Antarctic glacial breakup and melt started the warming that ended the ice age. In other words this is why Lorius Et al 1990 was disproved. There was no initial warming and then CO2 suddenly adding it’s warming. There was warming in the Antarctic that caused a massive freshwater influx that move the warmer waters north which caused the end of the ice age. Then due to simple solubility changes, the warmer water released CO2 and the levels rose. At that point the CO2, as a ghg did add some warming but there is nothing that indicates that Lorius was correct.
Basically, with higher resolution and more studies, it is shown that CO2 does not stop or start warming or cooling. The difference now is man is introducing a state that has never been in nature.
Vernon, you demonstrate your scientific illiteracy again. Your arguments agree with me — I never said CO2 was the sole driver (no one does, except inactivists who deliver straw-man arguments), nor did I or Lorius say it was the cause of changes of the past (I explicitly illustrated the 1990 paper predicting it would act as an AMPLIFIER to an orbital change. You merely identified another feedback — Antarctic melting — with a similar effect. Both require a small initial forcing to trigger them, and both dramatically amplify the effects of that initial small budge. Also, by necessity, both must lag that forcing).
Your last paragraph and I are in complete agreement: The question for you is, what can we deduce about the impacts of this novel state, given what we know about basic physics?
Brian D
You quoted Lorius Et al 1990 as proof that there was thermal lag to CO2 increases.
Now your saying that it would act as an amplifier. Do not change your position just because you were proven wrong.
The temperature increases happened first, your position that Lorius et al (1990) predicted temperature lag after CO2 increases has not be proven. The paper, like many others, has been superseded by new technology and newer studies. What was proven was that there is a lag between temperature increases and CO2 increases.
Oh and quit with redefining lag also. The forcing for an increase in CO2 was global warming. 1000 years after the warming started the CO2 increased. There is no lag in warming following the CO2 increase. Based on Lorius (1990), your wrong.
“Vangel, unfortunately you are reading the wrong science. Places such as climatefraudit, wattswrongwithwatt, icecap, CO2science, junkscience etc do not have honest science in them. Thus it is obvious that you have no common sense if you get all your science information from these sites. Try reading the peer reviewed scientific literature if you want accurate and honest information.”
Sorry Ian but I am actually looking at the data and the data is showing that there has been no warming for more than a decade. I also have to tell you that I am very disappointed by what passes as ‘scientific literature’ these days. The review process is no longer independent so we get scams like the Mann Hockey Stick or Steig/Mann made up Antarctic warming. Fortunately independent reviewers are around to keep the debate honest. And what does it say for your reviewers and your scientists when an outsider like Steve McIntyre can spot errors in their papers after a few hours of reading when they missed them?
“There is no such thing as “an honest debate” if it is organized by the deniers. The real debate takes place in the peer reviewed scientific literature not on stage where it is easy to throw out lies and misinformation and very difficult to respond in the time available.”
The debate doesn’t have to be organized by the sceptics. It can be done by a third party such as NPR, CNN or any group that the AGW side wishes to pick. The only things that the sceptics want is to keep the discussion on the actual science rather than on speculation. Of course, that would mean that we would have to look at the actual observations rather than IPCC model predictions. And when we look at the reported data we would have to discuss how that data gets ‘adjusted’ and what that adjustment actually means and does to the trends.
The AGW side does not wish to debate because it cannot win such a debate. It can’t win because the satellite data is showing no warming for a decade and the ARGOS data is showing that the oceans are now in a cooling trend. For the record, the sceptics did not make up a story that the PDO shifted into its cool phase or that the sun’s activity is quite low. Those came from NASA and other government sources that are rewarded for pushing the AGW side of the story. Of course, no matter how hard they push the cannot hide the instrumental record that is showing no warming to coincide with the increase in CO2 emissions.
And keep in mind that all of the previous ‘proofs’ have gone away. The ice core records show that temperature changes lead changes in CO2 concentrations. (As much as the AGW side may wish to blame temperature change on changes in CO2 levels–or smoking on lung cancer–the relationship goes the other way.) The ‘Hockey Stick’ study, that did away with the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age was exposed as a fraud at worst or the work of incompetents at best. The equatorial mid-troposphere warming that the IPCC models predicted was found to be missing by the radiosonde and satellite measurements. It seems to me that your side is running scared because it has nothing to debate any longer. That is why it resorts to false claims that the science has been settled and to name calling instead of an honest debate.
From what I see the AGW side is running scared. It no longer talks about global warming very much but about climate change. It no longer warns of an imminent danger of warming but of hidden warming that will somehow magically appear some time in the future. (As the next PDO phase shift comes along.) As it continues along its destructive path trying to regulate CO2 emissions there will be dire consequences and the voting public will demand an honest analysis. Somehow I doubt that your side of the argument will be ready for it.
Vangel, you are just ranting which is typical of AGW deniers. You have nothing worth listening to, I will ignore you since I have better things to do with my time than lower myself to your despicable level. You are neither honest nor knowledgeable.
LOL
That’s it Ian. Respond to clear claims backed by science with a dismissive statement claiming that I am ranting and have nothing to say.
The simple fact is that you have nothing much to say because you have no scientific basis for the claim that the warming that we experienced after the end of the Little Ice Age was caused by man’s activities. I have no problem supporting my position because I can point to cooling trends at a time when CO2 emissions were beginning to explode, can point out that the world warming rate from 1975-1998 was no larger than the warming rate from 1860-1880 and from 1910-1940. I can point to the ice core records, which show that temperature trends drive changes in CO2 concentration. I can point to the radiosonde and satellite atmospheric data, which shows that the mitd-tropospheric warming that the IPCC models predict has not been observed.
Given the evidence you have little choice but to respond that I am ranting and irrational and to avoid any scientific discussion.
Yes, I know you can say all these things because truth doesn’t matter to you. Just continue with your lies and dishonesty if you want, everyone with any intelligence at all knows exactly how dishonest you are.
You are confused Ian. I pointed out the science and you are avoiding discussing it. Which one of these statements is false?
1. There was a cooling trend from 1945 to 1970 while CO2 emissions were exploding and CO2 concentrations were rising.
2. The warming rate from 1975-1998 was no larger than the warming rate from 1860-1880 and from 1910-1940.
3. The ice core record analysis show that changes in temperature trends were followed by changes in CO2 concentrations after a lag of 800 to 2800 years.
4. The IPCC models predict that the greatest warming will take place in the equatorial mid-troposphere. The radiosonde and satellite data show that this warming has not taken place.
5. The Hockey Stick graph used by the IPCC in 2001 was discredited.
6. The satellite data shows no warming for more than a decade.
7. GISS adjusts the raw temperature data. It has changed cooling trends into warming and has changed the historical record.
8. The IPCC model predictions are off by a great deal. The assumption of CO2 increase is running significantly below trend and the observed temperatures are below prediction.
9. Total global ocean ice cover now stands above the levels measured thirty years ago and above the average.
Those are all true statements that are supported by the science. But I do not believe that you really care about the truth because you are pushing a predetermined view that does not require facts. If you really care about the truth, I suggest that you begin by looking at the data yourself. And if you have trouble with any of the statements above I am more than willing to discuss and support them.
You are not worth arguing with. You repeat well worn denier talking points which have been disproved or explained many times. Thus explaining how wrong you are once more is a waste of my time.
You deniers never produce papers to back up your wrong conclusions but misinterpret what honest scientists say.
Check out Realclimate and all your points will be explained to you.
Somehow I don’t think you are interested in the facts but merely want to distribute your denier obfuscation. Do you honestly think any intelligent person is taking you seriously?
“the data is showing that there has been no warming for more than a decade”
Exactly what data would that be?
As far as we know, the studies all show that the TREND is upward.
If this guy has some special knowledge as yet unknown to the world’s climate scientists in their hundreds of papers, I hope he will share it with us.
He might wish to consider NASA/GISS 2008 global temp data. The analysis shows that things are rather bad: the warmest years since the instrumental record i.e,. since 1880, are 1997-2008. Last year was the coolest in 8 years, but no one should let single year stats – or even stats for a single decade – fool them. The longer term trend is what we need to look at. It is upward according to the science.
“you have no scientific basis for the claim that the warming that we experienced after the end of the Little Ice Age was caused by man’s activities”.
As we know, at the moment, the Cato Institute is trying to give this one new airplay with enthusiastic cherrypicking from the Swanson article. The article is actually consistent with the known climate science and the facts of human-caused warming.
The scientific evidence for human-caused warming, with CO2 as the main driver for the current trend, is overwhelming.
Perhaps this guy will have the decency to read this site and follow the links to the current information and other credible science sites.
Or not. How much do you want to bet he just gets right back at it? They’re thick-skinned, these deniers. They need to ignore any criticism or challenges to their lies, to maintain their illusions. And most of their illusions are obviously about themselves.
Vangel,
You’ve come to the wrong forum to try and play these games. We’ve all seen your tricks many times before.
You produce no science, just a collection of cherry picks, distortion, idiocy and lies.
When you can demonstrate that world’s climate scientists are all wrong or lying in a massive global conspiracy, then you’ll be listened to.
Until then, you’re going to be considered some combination of dumb, delusional and dishonest.
P.S. If you’re incapable of seeing or admitting to a decadal warming trend in this graph – http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif – you should seek psychiatric help.
DavidCOG,
The GISS chart uses a 5 year running mean that shows that there has been no temperature increase since 2001. The fact that the chart does show a dip until ~2006 is an artifact of the 5 year running mean. You have to know how to read the graph. This was discussed extensively on the Climate change, lies, lies and more lies thread. Warming has stalled since 2001.
Now there is no basis to say it has been cooling. If Ian is using the 1998 high to get a decade, then he is cherry picking. Point that out, but using that chart to show warming past 2001 is not valid.
So let the battle commence.
Vernon,
When you can demonstrate that world’s climate scientists are all wrong or lying in a massive global conspiracy, then you’ll be listened to.
Until then, I consider you a distorting, dishonest weasel.
Vernon, you have absolutely no knowledge of statistics.
Why don’t you read this post on Chris Colose’s web site. It describes a paper by David Easterling and Michael Wehner.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/c766qk
And just exactly where did I use “1998”? Anyone who tries to use short term data series to calculate trends is a fool. The latest decade starts in 1999 and the 10 year trend is +0.024 K per decade. Anything shorter is usually not significant (except to deniers like you).
DavidCOG,
Which climate scientists are claiming that it has warmed since 2001? GISS, CRU, UAH all show the similar trends from 2001 to the present.
Year 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 Linear
GISS .56 .67 .65 .59 .75 .64 .72 .55 +.0037
CRU .41 .46 .47 .48 .42 .41 .32 .36 -.0154
UAH .20 .31 .28 .20 .34 .26 .28 .05 -.0133
As you can see all the trends GISS warming, CRU and UAH cooling do not reach level of being significant. There has been no warming or cooling since 2001. So quit with the stupid name calling and try to learn about what your defending.
If you understood this, the argument you make with Ian is that the only way to get cooling is to use the end point fallacy. There is no significant trend that exceeds the error range of the measurements. Your starting to sound like Martha, all propaganda with no understanding of the science.
So, Vernon understands the science but the world’s climate scientists do not.
I see two options:
1. Vernon is right
2. Vernon is a delusional idiot
I’m putting my money on no. 2
David,
It is not Vernon is right. It is Vernon is not an dunce and can actually read the charts and look at the data. Please, prove me wrong, name a climate scientist that says it has been warming since 2001.
Come on, prove I am delusional. Find someone that will look at the numbers that came from GISS, CRU, and UAH and show where I am wrong.
You must loose your money alot.
““the data is showing that there has been no warming for more than a decade”
Exactly what data would that be?
As far as we know, the studies all show that the TREND is upward.”
That is not true. While the ‘adjusted’ GISS data is capable of showing anything the CRU and UAH data do not show any warming over the past decade. William Happer made that clear in his testimony in front of the U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee. So did Dr. Robert M. Carter. (http://www.epw.senate.gov/109th/Carter_Testimony.pdf) So did Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in his testimony to the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the US House of Representatives. The satellite data clearly shows that the warmest year in the past thirty was 1998 was more than a decade ago and shows a distinct cooling trend since 2003.
Let me point out here that I am not big on making points by cherry picking start and end dates as the AGW crowd does. It is clear that there will be warming if we pick a start point something like the end of the LIA because when you move out of a period that has the words ice age as part of its name one expects warming. But if I pick a start point a year like 2003, 1998, 1934 or the average temperature during the 1200s I will obviously get a cooling trend because those periods were warmer than the temperatures being experienced now.
Bottom line isn’t proving that it got warmer after the LIA or that it cooled after the MWP but that the changes had to do with CO2 emissions as the AGW alarmists first claimed when they trotted out the ice core studies. More on these will be said below.
“If this guy has some special knowledge as yet unknown to the world’s climate scientists in their hundreds of papers, I hope he will share it with us.”
It takes no special knowledge because the studies confirm the claims that I made. For example, let us go to the ice core data. The studies show that temperature changes happened first and that there was a lag of around 800-2,800 years after which CO2 emissions began to rise.
Click to access CaillonTermIII.pdf
Please note that most of the people in the AGW community no longer deny the evidence that the ice core data shows that the temperature changes came first; they simply make up excuses to get rid of the inconvenience. But given the fact that the ice cores were supposed to prove that CO2 changes were driving warming there is a big problem for the alarmists.
“He might wish to consider NASA/GISS 2008 global temp data. The analysis shows that things are rather bad: the warmest years since the instrumental record i.e,. since 1880, are 1997-2008. Last year was the coolest in 8 years, but no one should let single year stats – or even stats for a single decade – fool them. The longer term trend is what we need to look at. It is upward according to the science.”
And you might want to consider the fact that NASA/GISS ‘adjusts’ the raw data and has been sown to turn cooling trends into warming.
You might want to look at Monckton’s testimony to Congress, particularly the example where the 100 years of temperature data from the station at Santa Rosa, which is the headquarters of NOAA, is adjusted to turn a cooling trend into warming as well as the GISS global dataset as it was in 1999 and and what it looked like in 2008. The 1999 data set showed that the 1930s were warmer than the 1990s. Conveniently, the GISS ‘filters’ changed the data to make the 1990s warmer. For the record, the GISS is not transparent and does not disclose why or how it makes the adjustments. It tried to slip the changes quietly but it was caught the first time by Steven McIntyre, who caught the Michael Mann deception when he reviewed MBH98 and MBH99. As with the Mann deception, GISS was forced to change the data set that it attributed to a Y2K error. But the GISS is persistent and will do what it must for the cause because the data set has been revised again. These changes have more in common with Soviet propaganda efforts, not traditional science.
““you have no scientific basis for the claim that the warming that we experienced after the end of the Little Ice Age was caused by man’s activities”.
As we know, at the moment, the Cato Institute is trying to give this one new airplay with enthusiastic cherrypicking from the Swanson article. The article is actually consistent with the known climate science and the facts of human-caused warming.”
You are confused. The MWP was hotter and we cannot blame it on man’s CO2 emissions. And for the record, I am not at all convinced that the published CO2 data for the early 1800s is valid. I have seen many papers that have concentrations higher by 35-50 ppm or more. I do not make a big deal of the assumption of lower CO2 concentrations because it is clear that additional amounts of CO2 will have a negligible effect that is tiny in comparison to solar, ocean and orbital factors.
“The scientific evidence for human-caused warming, with CO2 as the main driver for the current trend, is overwhelming.”
Actually, it isn’t. As I said, we were cooling from 1945 to 1975 when CO2 emissions were exploding. By 1975 people like Hansen were talking about a new ice age. The alarmist rehtoric only stopped when the PDO went into a positive phase and solar activity rose to high levels. Now that the PDO is back into a negative phase and solar activity is low the worry is about cooling.
“Perhaps this guy will have the decency to read this site and follow the links to the current information and other credible science sites.”
I have read the site and looked at the links. The problem is that much of what is written has very little credibility. For example, this site still defends the Mann ‘Hockey Stick’ even after Wegman’s NAS Committee made it very clear that the conclusions were wrong, that the reviews are not independent and that the statistical methods showed a lack of competence. How many times do you have to be told that bristlecone and foxtail pine proxies respond to CO2 fertilization before you figure out that you can’t use them to measure temperatures? And how many times do you need to be reminded that there is plenty of evidence that the LIA and MWP were real before you stop trying to hide them by using methodologies that can turn random red noise into hockey sticks?
“Or not. How much do you want to bet he just gets right back at it? They’re thick-skinned, these deniers. They need to ignore any criticism or challenges to their lies, to maintain their illusions. And most of their illusions are obviously about themselves.”
You need a dictionary. It is the AGW community that is denying that climate changes naturally and is trying to suggest that a minor change in the concentration of one minor gas that has been known to lag temperature trend changes can be used to explain variations in climate? And how many times must you look to history to see that warming periods coincide with prosperity and well being for people and the planet before you realize that a bigger issue is colder temperatures? It is not the sceptics that are deniers but you.
Vangel, glad you told us who you get your “information” from. Carter, the discount Monk and a whole bunch of whackjobs. Why do you list these useless sources of climate science? Surely you can list at least one real and honest scientist?
You are pathetic in the efforts you are going to try and distort climate science to suit your arrogant and greedy self interests.
Here is a reference to a paper which will let you understand what trends are all about:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/c766qk
As for all your other points, they are completely false or are well understood by climate scientists. Are you being dishonest or are you just ignorant of climate science. I think it is the first but you are also being stupid if you think that any intelligent person believes the rubbish you are continuing to pollute this site with.
“DavidCOG
So, Vernon understands the science but the world’s climate scientists do not.
I see two options:
1. Vernon is right
2. Vernon is a delusional idiot
I’m putting my money on no. 2”
Try again. There is no consensus among the world’s climate scientists. The IPCC does no original research. It simply pays scientists to gather scientific papers that show man’s impact on global warming. Most of the scientists do not look at the summary or have any input in what the part of the report that everyone seems to examine looks like. In many cases the lead authors, who are political appointees call the shots and decide what goes in the final version regardless of objections from the experts in the field. (This is why so many of the actual experts have resigned from the IPCC.) Dr Rajendra K. Pachauri, the Chairman of the IPCC is not a climate scientist but a railway engineer who got a PhD in Industrial Engineering. Lead authors have been geologists, economists, physicists, etc. They were not chosen because of their knowledge of climate but because they would do what their political masters wanted them to do.
This issue is all about the actual science and on that front the AGW crowd has a great deal of difficulty. From what I see as the science of climate change moves away from its infancy all of the arguments that the AGW alarmists gave to support their positions have fallen away and now support the sceptics. As I pointed out above, the ice core data supports the logical argument that temperature changes drive CO2 concentrations. (More CO2 can be absorbed in cold water than in warm water so as warming happens the oceans, which store most of the CO2, release it to the atmosphere.) The short term records show a cooling trend from 1945 to 1975 even as CO2 levels were rising and emissions were exploding. Since 2003, both the ARGOS buoys and the satellites have shown a distinct cooling trend. While correlations do not imply causation solar activity and the ocean index show a much grater correlation to temperature than CO2. The geological record shows global glaciation when CO2 levels were more than ten times the current level. The historical record shows that the MWP was warmer than today. (Viking farms are still under permafrost.)
Instead of reading the interpretation that others provide for you I suggest that you look at the data yourself. My ten-year-old son took a digital thermometer and recorded temperatures as we drove around the city in the evening and different times of the day. He created a nice little map showing that the urban heat island effect was real and followed up by looking at the station records in our area to see how the changes in land use might effect the reading. He also got on the internet and looked at the real time data from temperature stations around the world. He looked for differences in readings and used Google Earth to figure out if there were obvious reasons that would explain why stations that were close to each other and at the same altitude would have some major differences in readings. After a few days of work he was able to piece together an explanation of why the GISS data is so screwed up. If a ten year old kid can do that and think on his own why can’t you guys?
Sorry Ian but I can look at the GISS data from 1999 and see that it was modified without having to listen to what anyone else says. And yes, I am quite capable of looking at proxies and figuring out that Mann got the sign wrong. Or figure out that when you look at an algorithm that turns random red noise into hockey sticks you should not be surprised that carefully selected proxies create a hockey stick.
And I do not consider Wegman to be a nutjob. He actually is an AGW believer but is honest enough to point out that Mann and his co-conspirators were not independent, did not use proper methodologies, used an algorithm that made random data show a hockey stick shape and that they were not knowledgeable about statistics.
I have to question your judgement when you consider others not credible but use as your sources the very people who were shown by Wegman to be incompetents.
You are not worth responding to. I am finished with you since I do not believe in having a rational discussion with some one who is obviously irrational.
Vernon maintains his focus on trying to force admission of no warming in global temperature indices from 2001-present. Why would hearing that matter? The temperature trend from 2001-present is not of real concern to scientists dealing with anthropogenic climate change because covering such a short timeframe the trend over that period has little basis in underlying physical mechanisms that would drive long-term trends from any cause.
I do not care if one thinks people would be overhyping a big positive trend since 2001 or people are not talking enough about a meager trend since 2001. The trend since 2001 is statistically consistent with a continuing global trend of about 0.2C/decade, and there is no reason to question the underlying physical mechanism based largely in increasing GHG concentrations driving such a trend.
I seem to recall admitting to Vernon that the last week of March where I live was cooler than the previous week. But for some reason he has not used that to try to chip away at the theory of seasons the way he seems to want to use “no warming since 2001” to chip away at climate theory. When I go up this morning it was not warmer than when I went to bed last night. But that is not a big a deal and certainly no reason to dismiss “spring” or “global warming” with claims warming has stalled so neither of those can be occurring. That is not enough data for such claims.
When you look at short time frames a lot more factors are likely to influence the trend over the period. One can readily say “warming has stalled” since 2001 if “warming” is strictly defined by increases in certain global average temperature metrics. However “warming has stalled” is not true if warming is considering “global warming”, the physical processes by which human activities are generating a radiative imbalance that over the long term is increasing temperatures.
Once more to be clear, the trend since 2001 could be what Vernon posted around nil or it could be more like 0.4C/dec. It is not of interest either way because both of those are fully in line with expectations based on the continuing trend observed over the last few decades.
As for Vangel, he seems like he gets paid by the debunked talking point, accusation of misdeeds by scientists, and mischaracterization of scientific work. It is like he takes the debunked claims listed on a site like grist or skepticalscience and just repeats them with claims of fraud and the like sprinkled about. I wonder if Vangel recognizes irony like in his selectivity of which climate records and periods within records are called into question and which are implicitly accepted.
Vangel is the classic example on the one who loads up at the “AGW is a fraud” buffet. No matter if items do not go together well at all, as long as it seems to poke at the AGW boogeyman a heaping spoonful gets slopped onto the plate. For example, he continually asserts CO2 does not matter to climate, but just to be thorough he is also open to the claims that CO2 was higher than now 200 years ago.
When so many faulty arguments are dumped about at once it is difficult to cut through. I think the only reasonable hope if one wanted to attack it is to try to focus on a single point at a time. E.g., Vangel says, “we were cooling from 1945 to 1975 when CO2 emissions were exploding”. That can be addressed with demonstration of what CO2 and other radiative forcings are estimated to be for the period and comparing to the thus expected and observed temperature changes. I know it would probably go nowhere, but if you are compelled to address it (as I am at times) that is probably the way to go.
gmo,
If your going to have a debate with someone, it is extremely stupid to deny the facts.
You want to show me where there is any warming or cooling happening.
You can win debates by knowing the facts and pointing out where some one is wrong. You do not win by making blanket statements that are not backed up or flatly wrong.
I got the impression that both were just quoting talking points. Since I think the use of fossil fuels should be reduced for pollution reasons, I wondered into here.
So, yeah, I am a stickler for the facts that can be proven. I am polite by not pointing out the ones that are just fabricated, but that is only because I want my outcome, not because I want yours. My outcome is we move from fossil fuels to another sustained energy source. So there you have it, you asked.
Oh GMO,
I almost forgot.
No.
The IPCC projects .22C per decade until 2030 per the 4th TAR. The trend would have to be a minimum of .22C*.4= .088C (IPCC uses -40% as the lower bound). So the minimum trend at this point to be with in the error bounds set by the IPCC is .0704C and none of the readings come close to that.
Now I agree this means nothing except that your statement was wrong. Shall we do this some more?
“You are not worth responding to. I am finished with you since I do not believe in having a rational discussion with some one who is obviously irrational.”
It isn’t a surprise because you haven’t responded to the points that I made. All you guys do is talk about how the science is settled because the UN outfit that is chaired by the railway engineer cherry picked some articles that were not independently reviewed even as it ignored others that don’t agree with the political goals that are being pursued.
Let us get back to the facts.
1. The ice core data shows that the temperature changes lead CO2 concentrations changes by 800 to 2,800 years.
2. On the geological scale we know that the earth has experienced glaciation when CO2 levels were more than 10 times the current levels.
3. There was a strong cooling trend from 1945 to 1975 while CO2 emissions were exploding. The trend did not end until after the PDO went into its positive phase.
4. The satellite and ocean data show that the warming has ended even though CO2 concentrations continued to increase.
5. The MWP happened without man adding to the CO2 concentration. (So did the Roman Warming and the Holocene Optimum.)
6. The predicted signature in Section 9 of the IPCC report has not been observed in the radiosonde and satellite data.
7. GISS ‘adjusts’ the raw data and has been shown to turn a cooling trend into warming for local stations and has changed the global data set to lower the temperatures in the 1930s and 1940s as it increased temperatures after 1980.
8. The NAS committee pointed out that the ‘hockey stick’ studies used improper proxies that responded to CO2 fertilization, algorithms that turned random red noise into hockey stick shapes, were not independently reviewed and used improper statistical techniques.
9. The IPCC is a political body that uses lead authors that are not familiar with climate science and have made claims that do not agree with each other.
I could go on but it is clear that you have already made up your mind and are not interested in the data.
I am not interested in lies, obfuscation, misinformation, misinterpretation and denier nonsense. If you want to have a rational discussion then go read some science first then come back and be more honest. I am not wasting my time on someone as dishonest and stupid as you.
Check out Realclimate and other science blogs and you will find that what you are saying is nonsense.
“E.g., Vangel says, “we were cooling from 1945 to 1975 when CO2 emissions were exploding”. That can be addressed with demonstration of what CO2 and other radiative forcings are estimated to be for the period and comparing to the thus expected and observed temperature changes. I know it would probably go nowhere, but if you are compelled to address it (as I am at times) that is probably the way to go.”
Talk about diversionary gibberish. Under the AGW theory increases in CO2 emissions means warmer temperatures (see the IPCC models) and that means that the period from 1945 to 1975 should have been characterized by rising temperatures. But that is not what happened and that was a period of panic about the next ice age where people like Hansen were calling for a catastrophe if nothing was done. Well, that bit of panic never panned out because right after the PDO went into its positive mode temperatures moved higher and a new panic became popular.
Vangel, why are you quoting papers which you have obviously not read. Or have you read them but will misquote and distort their findings anyway?
The paper by Rasool and Schneider (which is the paper I am sure you are referring to) says “An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 ° K”. Of course shortly after that paper the acid rain treaty came into effect which substantially reduced the emission of sulphate aerosols which are responsible for global dimming or cooling.
You are a nasty piece of work with your dishonest tactics. I don’t why dishonest posters such as you are allowed to continue to pollute honest discussion with your lies and distortions.
Ian,
While that is a nice arm wave, there is no evidence, studies, or proof that aerosols did anything. That is per Hansen’s presentation at Copenhagen.
Now there is an explanation for the mid 20th cooling and the current cooling which does not disprove your position on CO2.
You are as ignorant and dishonest as your pal Vangel.
Ian,
Stupid name calling does not change facts. If you do not understand the facts, that your problem, not mine. Now as to the cooling trend in then and the non-warming trend now.
Click to access 2008GL037022_all.pdf
Goes a long way to explaining it.
Ian,
Thanks for the link to http://chriscolose.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/decadal-scale-coolings-not-all-that-unusual/ – I’d not seen that one – bookmarked. It very clearly shows how stupid / dishonest / irrelevant the Denier’s arguments are.
Sorry Ian but in science narratives do not get good marks because what matters is evidence. That said, I find it interesting that you are relying on excuses made up by Schneider, who is a serial exaggerator and once told Discovery Magazine:
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people, we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that, we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. … Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
I do not mean to single out Schneider because most of the leading voices of the AGW are as bad if not worse. After all, we just saw a debate in which Joe Romm contradicted the IPCC report and said that, “On our current emissions path we are going to warm the United States 10-15 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century and sea level rise will be 5 feet or higher and a third of the planet will be desert.” These statements are no more credible than Hansen’s call for twenty foot sea level increases due to CO2 emissions or Gore’s claim that we only have a decade before crisis hits.
Let me get back to the facts once again because diversions do not matter.
1. Actual observations of a linear increase in CO2 show that the IPCC’s estimates of growth in atmospheric CO2 concentration are excessive, which means that the models have to be adjusted even if all of the other factors were accepted as valid. (They aren’t.)
2. The satellite data shows that 1998 was warmer than all subsequent years and that there is a distinct cooling trend over the past five years.
3. Sea level ice cover is now above the thirty year average, which means that the panic of the summer of 2008 was unwarranted.
4. The Northwest Passage has been navigable in the past and was sailed by a wooden ship at the beginning of the last century. That means that having conditions that promote ice melting is not unprecedented.
5. The ice core data still says that temperature changes came first and were followed by changes in CO2 concentrations around 800 to 2,800 years later.
6. We had a cooling trend from 1945 to 1975 while CO2 emissions were exploding. There was a rapid change in temperatures as the PDO flipped into its positive phase and solar activity increased that has not been linked to aerosols or other AGW excuses.
7. The IPCC, which is the main source of the information that you guys are quoting is a POLITICAL body that does not do original research. Its main function is to review research papers and select those that support the notion that man is driving climate change.
8. Much of the specific attacks on the IPCC conclusions come from experts who are actually supporters of the AGW but, being honest, point out that the conclusions are wrong in their fields. Wegman, who slammed the ‘hockey stick’ authors believes in AGW but as an expert in statistics has to point out that Mann and company were incompetent boobs who used faulty methodologies and inappropriate proxies.
The bottom line is that the AGW side does not want to debate because it has little to bring to the table when the debate is limited to science and is devoid of name calling and diversions. They have trouble because the sceptics can use the IPCC’s own reports to point out that the conclusions reached in the summary section are not supported by the actual evidence. And that is why there will not be a debate on the subject; your side can’t afford to lose all of the funding money that goes to pay myth makers and charlatans.
“You are as ignorant and dishonest as your pal Vangel.”
Sorry Ian but calling people names is not a valid form of debate in non-AGW circles. I suggest that you try to stick to the facts. And no, climate models are not facts; only real world observations are.
Vangel, I am not calling you names, just alerting other readers to your proclivity for telling lies and distorting the scientific facts.
If you don’t like being referred to in such terms there is an obvious answer, stop telling lies and stick with the truth. Very simple but I doubt you will stick to it. Your political masters must have offered you some sort of reward. Well a word of advice, don’t believe them, they are as dishonest as you.
“P.S. If you’re incapable of seeing or admitting to a decadal warming trend in this graph – http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif – you should seek psychiatric help.”
LOL. I have no trouble accepting the fact that the earth goes through warming and cooling cycles that vary in length. My point is that the IPCC models are making assumptions that overestimate the effect of CO2 and as such have not predicted such periods. That means that the models are not very good and that we need to go back to observing the real world. And while most of the people on this forum may be happy with the narratives to explain why the models are not working the average voter has trouble with the idea that s/he has to pay much more in taxes to prevent warming while no warming is taking place.
Don’t you guys know that the voters will find out that the subsidies that you are pushing to wind companies did nothing to reduce CO2 emissions or close down coal plants in EU countries? Denmark uses around 6,000 turbines to produce around 19% of its electricity from wind but is not shutting down fossil-fuel plants. And while the green talk has made Denmark look good reality shows that Danish carbon dioxide emissions have been much greater than emissions in the United States. Experience in Germany has been the same. Der Spiegel has been reporting that Germany’s CO2 emissions have not gone down and that new fossil fuel plants had to be constructed to ensure reliable delivery of electricity.
And don’t you guys know that the voters will figure out that their food costs are much higher than they need to be because the greenies have been pushing the terrible idea that biofuels are a solution?
“And while the green talk has made Denmark look good reality shows that Danish carbon dioxide emissions have been much greater than emissions in the United States.”
Really?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
Really. Wind power generation is not reliable so you have to burn fuel to keep generators spinning as back-up. The EU experiment with wind power is a great failure.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/04/08/wind-power-is-a-complete-disaster.aspx
In brief:
Vangel: #6: It’s cooling.
DavidCOG: No it’s not. See this graph.
Vangel: It’s cooling! But I’m not denying that it’s warming!
— bi
bi,
they are both wrong, while the long term trend is warming, the short term trend, last eight years is neither warming or cooling.
This means nothing right now but it is fun watching them fight over it like it matters.
Vernon, with eight years of data, you cannot determine a “no trend” result with statistical significance. Even the most basic LINEST function returns uncertainties greater than the value of the trend. You’d know this if you reported the uncertainties (the way any scientist would) in this comment.
And yet, despite it meaning nothing (as you say), you still cling to a short interval. Hmm.
We are 1/4 of the way though the IPCC 4th TAR projection for 2030. That is long enough to say that the actual trend is falling outside the confidence interval established by the IPCC.
Oh, how long does the trend have to be to be significant?
The IPCC reports have in fact been remarkably accurate re. C02 and the warming trend.
GreenFyre et al.
Your climate knowledge shows. 🙂
There seems to be something wrong with Vernon and Vangel. I’m sure they not only struggle here, but with all their relationships.
The problem is not intellectual: like many deniers, both appear intelligent and have been educated. Some have even been educated in a scientific field.
With their grandiose displays of knowledge, labile moods, pathological lying, paranoia, repetitiveness (can you imagine living with Vernon?) and complete lack of self-awareness, they are incapable of a mutual conversation.
Furthermore, they are absolutely not interested. The defense of their considerable egos does not allow for this.
If their assertions defy reality or the knowledge of informed others (never mind science experts) it is all the better — it makes them them more special in their own eyes.
A correct understanding of the climate science would make them just one of the crowd.
(Vangel is a mere shadow of Vernon’s narcissism at the moment, but he will come along nicely with more experience. The b.s. skills improve with practice.)
p.s.
Vernon, I see you keep citing information from ‘the 4th TAR’.
There is no such thing.
Try the IPCC’s TAR (Third Assessment Report) or AR4 (Fourth Assessment Report). 😉
“Martha
The IPCC reports have in fact been remarkably accurate re. C02 and the warming trend. ”
This isn’t true. Many of the predictions of the earlier IPCC reports have been changed in subsequent reports. In fact some of the changes have been significant. Let us take a look at some of the errors and changes.
1. The IPCC models predicted an exponential increase in CO2 concentrations. The real world observations show a linear trend.
As Lord Monckton pointed out, in its 2001 report the IPCC admitted that it could not estimate the carbon budget very accurately. (The estimates could not be better than a factor of two of the right amount.) The IPCC’s estimates predicted that atmospheric CO2 concentration would increase by 4.1 parts per million by volume per year, but the actual observations showed an increase of around 2 parts per million by volume per year. This means that the IPCC models are overestimating the future temperature increases due to CO2 concentration changes.
2. The 1995 IPCC report estimated a warming by 3.8 C due to CO2 doubling. The 2001 IPCC report reduced that to 3.5 C. The 2007 IPCC report came up with a 3.26 ± 0.69 C° change. As I pointed out, there are many differences between the reports.
3. One big error in the 2007 report comes in Section 9, where the IPCC models predict a clear fingerprint of anthropogenic greenhouse warming in the equatorial mid-troposphere. But 50 years of radiosonde and drop-sonde measurements and 30 years of satellite observations have failed to observe the predicted signature. That means that the models are not correct and that new CO2 in the atmosphere does not have the effect that the UN says that it does.
4. The IPCC has claimed recently that corals are in danger due to CO2 driven acidification. But we know that calcite corals first appeared on this planet during the Cambrian era, when, according to the IPCC 2001 report, carbon dioxide concentration were around 7000 ppmv. We also know that the aragonite corals first appeared in the Triassic era when, according to the IPCC 2001 report, the CO2 concentration was around 6500 ppmv. It is hard to argue that organisms that first appeared when the world’s CO2 concentrations were nearly twenty times the current level can’t handle a doubling from here.
5. The IPCC was warning of a catastrophic increase in sea levels in its first report only to reduce the amount predicted in every subsequent one. But we know that over the past 10,000 years sea levels have been increasing at around four feet per century about four times more than we are likely to encounter over the next 100 years.
6. I will end this with the much hyped ice melting crisis. Just last summer we were told that the Arctic will be ice free over the next few years. Of course, the media and the IPCC forgot to mention that reports of ice melts are not unusual and that the Northwest Passage was navigable in the 1930s or that it was first navigated in a wooden ship early last century. And no mention is being made of the fact that the latest data shows us to be at a seven year high for ice cover in both the Arctic and Antarctic. Below is the Arctic ice cover data for April 17 for the past seven years. Do you see any problem with melting?
4 17 2004 12,879,531.00
4 17 2007 12,954,063.00
4 17 2006 12,997,813.00
4 17 2005 13,111,563.00
4 17 2008 13,378,906.00
4 17 2003 13,535,313.00
4 17 2009 13,601,094.00
source: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv
The bottom line is that the IPCC has not been consistent between reports or within them. The ice core data turned out to support the anti-AGW side because it showed that temperature was a driver of CO2 levels, not the other way around. The hockey stick fraud was shown (by a NAS committee that was headed by an AGW believer) to be the result of very sloppy and inappropriate work by a closed group of individuals who had little knowledge of statistics. The predicted warming signature failed to be observed. The ice didn’t melt as expected. As I pointed out, the IPCC is a political body and isn’t very good at science. Any careful reading of the reports that it put out is clear on that point to anyone with an open mind. But as I also noted most of the people on this site aren’t interested in the science and have no desire to debate the technical points. For them the AGW support seems to be a matter of faith and it is somewhat pointless to argue against faith because reason will not suffice.
Vangel, rubbish is still rubbish no matter how often you repeat it. You have never, ever said anything which is even remotely connected to scientific facts. You are the one who believes in faith. Scientists deal in empirical facts, something which you obviously know nothing about.
Stop wasting everyone’s’ time here with your nonsense.
But it isn’t rubbish Ian. The ice cover hype is now shown to have been without foundation. So were the initial claims about the ice core data or the hockey stick results. That leaves your side with little left but to make empty claims that there is no need to debate because many of you agree with the UN’s summary chapter even though its conclusions are not even supported by the information inside its own report.
Rubbish, rubbish and even more rubbish from Vangel. You are bordering on slanderous comments here, I hope the administrators are taking not of that.
Keep it up, it just shows how ignorant of the science you are. Good for a laugh but too much of your rubbish is annoying.
Isn’t that dandy. When I point out real data that shows that the hype about ice melting was totally unwarranted and that it joins another in a long list of failed argument by the AGW side all Ian does is say that it is rubbish. For the record Ian, predictions made by models isn’t science; it is speculation. Science requires real world observations and honest reporting that is transparent to independent review.
Vernon,
Since the thread there is on the very topic and you are trying to make your same argument there, I have submitted a comment on Chris Colose’s Climate Change site. With moderation it will presumably take some time for the comment to appear.
Vangel appears an irredeemable case, but again since he says a lot it is worthwhile to point out to any uncertain lurkers that Vangel’s posts are filled with incorrect information, mischaracterization, misrepresentations, and misinterpretations. They are fairly commonly debunked points, so it can be easy to find information that corrects what Vangel says. That they are commonly debunked and so many are spouted makes it difficult to find motivation to answer them. I will do a little deconstructing of the most recent #1-6 from Vangel.
#1 – The models used by the IPCC do not predict CO2 concentrations, they test different scenarios with different prescribed GHG concentration changes over time. The growth rate of CO2 has increased through the period of direct obs. I.e., CO2 is increasing in the 2000s and increasing by an amount more than it was in the 1960s, 1970s, etc.
#2 – Differences among IPCC reports (to say nothing of the accuracy of the claims) are cited as though they are bad. Each report is aiming to synthesize the available scientific information. Just in general when new information is obtained that can change the conclusions one makes using their information.
#3 – The “fingerprint” Vangel cites is not one for strictly anthropogenic greenhouse warming but of any sort of warming from any natural, manmade, or combination cause. Further research (which Vangel seems not to support as his #2 suggests that anything changing an initial viewpoint is a sign of weakness) has shown that this fingerprint is actually there but that the observational data had some flaws. It is indeed possible for theory as demonstrated by models to be correct and observations to be found to have flaws.
#4 – Vangel suggests that since some corals lived in a higher CO2 level world, that any corals can live in a higher CO2 world. The presumption is that modern corals must be adapted to handle double CO2 over pre-industrial levels since corals millions of years ago were adapted to such conditions. By that logic all people could readily shift to a hunter-gatherer society with no modern civilization since past humans lived in such a way. It is however unclear if Vangel thinks no other organisms besides coral are in danger because of ocean acidification or that they will supposedly be fine for the same reason corals will supposedly be fine. Either logic is flawed.
#5 – Sea level has actually been rather steady for the last several thousand years. Prior to that the roughly 10,000 years back to the last glacial maximum did indeed increase on average about 4ft/century. For some reason Vangel seems to conclude that since it has happened naturally before, if it happens again it cannot be bad. If your house caught fire (by manmade arson or by natural causes) it seems Vangel would say there is no reason to try to put it out or flee since in all likelihood at some time in the past fire has probably occurred at that point on earth. Polar and glacial ice melt raised sea levels previously, and we are on track to have it happen again on a scale of meters, enough to inundate the areas where a great many people live. Vangel also only talks about the next century, perhaps because sea level rise that occurs over more than 100 years is just fine because someone else will have to pay the costs for dealing with moving cities and populations.
#6 – Vangel talks only about ice area and not volume as though centimeter-thick ice is the same as meter-thick ice. By Vangel’s logic a long-sleeve cotton T-shirt is the same as a wool and down-lined coat since both cover the same area of the body. To Vangel ice in some area of the Northwest Passage is representative of the entire Arctic. Individual days’ observations from 7 years from are not particularly meaningful, and much ice volume (thickness) can be lost without much change in area. Perhaps worst with regard to the use of those data is that the ice coverage at the end of winter is not very meaningful at this point. It is still cold enough for some layer of ice to form in winter across the Arctic. It is late in summer at the end of the melting season when major declines in sea ice are clearest, even in simple areal coverage. And again, newly formed ice is progressively thinner and less likely to persist many years.
Hopefully no lurkers are misled by Vangel. The very narrow and warped view Vangel presents is not representative of the science. I would recommend that anyone who thinks Vangel is making a strong case anywhere ask about it. Ideally the answer would come right in response here, but again as Vangel’s points are common it is not difficult to find debunking of them.
“I will end this with the much hyped ice melting crisis. Just last summer we were told that the Arctic will be ice free over the next few years. Of course, the media and the IPCC forgot to mention that reports of ice melts are not unusual and that the Northwest Passage was navigable in the 1930s or that it was first navigated in a wooden ship early last century. And no mention is being made of the fact that the latest data shows us to be at a seven year high for ice cover in both the Arctic and Antarctic. Below is the Arctic ice cover data for April 17 for the past seven years. Do you see any problem with melting?
4 17 2004 12,879,531.00
4 17 2007 12,954,063.00
4 17 2006 12,997,813.00
4 17 2005 13,111,563.00
4 17 2008 13,378,906.00
4 17 2003 13,535,313.00
4 17 2009 13,601,094.00
source: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv “
Vangel, apparently you feel you have some authority to completely reinterpret the contents of that site.
You make a completely false summary and you reproduce data protected by copyright.
The signficant losses in total area of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean are well documented on numerous research sites, including that one. And the long-term trend shows every sign of continuing. As gmo explains to you, extent is not volume. There are a number of possible cause-effect scenarios that might explain the sea ice extent graph data you (and Watts, and McIntyre, and Marohasy) are focusing on i.e., post 2007, which was an all-time low — but ‘recovery’ is not one of them, according to the researchers.
You have of course reinterpreted the findings of a site you have never visited.
The data and link you provide is a collaborative project and the partners are the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the International Arctic Research Center, and the Japan Aeorospace Exploration Agency (which owns the climate satellites and the data).
The goal of the site is to monitor the longterm changes in the Arctic and increase the accuracy of predictions. The objective is to contribute to the research on climate change in order to help develop international plans to address the crisis.
You are bound to the site policy when you download or link or refer to any of the data on this research site. I’ll paraphrase the policy for you:
You may not create a link that causes misunderstanding of the data or IJIS activities; you may not link in a manner that damages the credibility of the site; and you may not link in a manner that damages the sites’ reputation or the reputation of specific individuals associated with the research (IARC-JAXA Information System. 01 April 2008. Site Policy Page. 01 April 2008. 19 April 2009. http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/sitepolicy.htm
You have done all three.
Ian is correct, this activity may be verging on slander/libel.
I suggest you stop.
“#1 – The models used by the IPCC do not predict CO2 concentrations, they test different scenarios with different prescribed GHG concentration changes over time. The growth rate of CO2 has increased through the period of direct obs. I.e., CO2 is increasing in the 2000s and increasing by an amount more than it was in the 1960s, 1970s, etc.”
Actually, the IPCC models base the scenarios on certain assumptions of CO2 concentration. The range assumed is higher than what the observations are showing. As such the model inputs need to be adjusted to reflect the reality. So far, they haven’t been.
“#2 – Differences among IPCC reports (to say nothing of the accuracy of the claims) are cited as though they are bad. Each report is aiming to synthesize the available scientific information. Just in general when new information is obtained that can change the conclusions one makes using their information.”
I never said that differences were ‘bad’. I just point out that the people who claim that the debate has been settled because there have been many corrections by the IPCC. And I also point out that the summary chapter often contradicts what is cited in the chapters. It seems that the politically appointed IPCC lead authors seem to try to confuse the public by presenting a hypothesis or a model prediction as scientific fact.
“#3 – The “fingerprint” Vangel cites is not one for strictly anthropogenic greenhouse warming but of any sort of warming from any natural, manmade, or combination cause. Further research (which Vangel seems not to support as his #2 suggests that anything changing an initial viewpoint is a sign of weakness) has shown that this fingerprint is actually there but that the observational data had some flaws. It is indeed possible for theory as demonstrated by models to be correct and observations to be found to have flaws.”
This is not true. I suggest that you read Chapter 9 of the IPCC report. The GHG theory is quite simple and makes a clear prediction that does not show up in the observations. In science if you can’t verify the predictions you don’t get off by making up narratives. But the AGW position has never been about science.
“#5 – Sea level has actually been rather steady for the last several thousand years. Prior to that the roughly 10,000 years back to the last glacial maximum did indeed increase on average about 4ft/century. For some reason Vangel seems to conclude that since it has happened naturally before, if it happens again it cannot be bad. If your house caught fire (by manmade arson or by natural causes) it seems Vangel would say there is no reason to try to put it out or flee since in all likelihood at some time in the past fire has probably occurred at that point on earth. Polar and glacial ice melt raised sea levels previously, and we are on track to have it happen again on a scale of meters, enough to inundate the areas where a great many people live. Vangel also only talks about the next century, perhaps because sea level rise that occurs over more than 100 years is just fine because someone else will have to pay the costs for dealing with moving cities and populations.”
The sea level claims just aren’t true. Professor Nils-Axel Moerner, who has published several hundred papers on the subject of sea rise has said that the sea level increase is not an issue. He actually exposed the IPCC lie that the sea level increase would flood the Maldives by pointing out that there was no increase in the area for more than one thousand years and has predicted that global sea over the next 100 years will be less than a foot.
And yes, the sea level changes have been due to naturally driven temperature changes.
“#4 – Vangel suggests that since some corals lived in a higher CO2 level world, that any corals can live in a higher CO2 world. The presumption is that modern corals must be adapted to handle double CO2 over pre-industrial levels since corals millions of years ago were adapted to such conditions. By that logic all people could readily shift to a hunter-gatherer society with no modern civilization since past humans lived in such a way. It is however unclear if Vangel thinks no other organisms besides coral are in danger because of ocean acidification or that they will supposedly be fine for the same reason corals will supposedly be fine. Either logic is flawed.”
No, Vangel points out that corals first appeared when CO2 levels were much higher than they are now and that they are well adapted to thrive in a higher concentration environment. The same is true of plants and animals. If you and your fern can function in an office environment where CO2 concentrations are five to ten times higher than they are outside without harm there is no reason why corals can’t take a much smaller increase.
“Hopefully no lurkers are misled by Vangel. The very narrow and warped view Vangel presents is not representative of the science. I would recommend that anyone who thinks Vangel is making a strong case anywhere ask about it. Ideally the answer would come right in response here, but again as Vangel’s points are common it is not difficult to find debunking of them.”
Misled? All I do is post facts and data. How is pointing out the fact that the ice core data shows that temperature changes led changes in CO2 concentrations deception? How is pointing out that ice cover now is higher than the level observed when measurements began deception? How is pointing out that the Medieval Warming Period happened in an environment in which man was not emitting much CO2 into the atmosphere deception? How is pointing out that when you come out of a period that is called the Little Ice Age it is normal to expect warming? How is pointing out that we had a thirty year cooling trend from 1945 to 1975 that had people like Hansen warning of an ice age deception?
What is deceiving is making up stories to explain why the predictions made by the IPCC models were not observed. If you want to be credible stick to the science and stay away from the spin.
“Vangel, apparently you feel you have some authority to completely reinterpret the contents of that site.
You make a completely false summary and you reproduce data protected by copyright.”
I do nothing of the kind. I simply looked at the data and sorted it to show that the ice cover is higher now than it was in the past seven years. The site has no data that is older so I make no comment about previous periods.
“The signficant losses in total area of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean are well documented on numerous research sites, including that one. And the long-term trend shows every sign of continuing. As gmo explains to you, extent is not volume. There are a number of possible cause-effect scenarios that might explain the sea ice extent graph data you (and Watts, and McIntyre, and Marohasy) are focusing on i.e., post 2007, which was an all-time low — but ‘recovery’ is not one of them, according to the researchers.”
You are confused. Ice melts and grows for various reasons. It may be melting simply because air temperatures went up. It may melt because of changes in ocean currents that bring warmer water in the area. It may be that the ice is simply pushed out of the area into warmer regions. These are all natural factors that have nothing to do with claims of global temperature change.
But no matter what you and I say the data is clear that there is nothing unusual because global ice cover is greater at this time than it has been since the beginning of the satellite record.
“You have of course reinterpreted the findings of a site you have never visited.”
Actually, I did get the data from the site. And all I did is use Excel to sort it so that I can see what it is showing. I don’t need anyone to reinterpret the data because it is clear that on April 17, 2009 the ice cover was higher than on the same date in the database. The same was true of April 16, 2009 but I wanted to limit the discussion to the most current data point.
But you really do bring up a very good point that needs some discussion. The sceptics use arguments that are supported by people who actually believe in evidence AGW but know that the evidence does not exist in their own fields. For example, Wegman is an AGW supporter but his integrity ensured that he would do a proper evaluation of the ‘hockey stick’ papers. So even though his committee believed in AGW it had little choice but to point out that Mann and his co-authors used inappropriate proxies, an algorithm that turned random red noise into hockey sticks shapes, and improper statistical methods. (He also pointed out the lack of independent reviews.)
Christopher Landsea believed in AGW but resigned from the IPCC when the lead author, Kevin Trenberth, made statements about Atlantic storms that were contradicted by the research as well as the 1995 and 2001 IPCC reports. Like Dr. Landsea, Dr. Richard Lindzen contributed to the IPCC before he realized that the claims about global warming were not supported by the science and deliberately alarmist.
I suggest that you need to start looking at the real data and the science without relying on spin and hype. A good place to start is the actual data that I provided in the link above. You don’t need me to interpret it for you because you can see that ice cover is now the highest it has been in the database. While this does not prove anything in particular it shows that the claims of an ice melting crisis are not supported by the facts. You may want to continue by looking at the actual Wegman report instead of this site’s interpretation of it. Or the ice core data instead of what RealClimate.org’s interpretation. Or read Chapter 9 of the 2007 IPCC report and see how the predictions compare to the actual observations. If you do that, you will find that most of the arguments in favour of AGW are not supported by the facts and will figure out why the AGW supporters are terrified of the idea of an open debate.
Vangel, you say that Wegman has “integrity”. That is not true. He signed a letter stating that temperatures had cooled since 1998. As a statistician he should have known that that was not true since it was not statistically valid. It was cherry picked. This shows that he does not support AGW as you claim. You don’t know what you are talking about.
I suggest you enter the real world of science and forget every piece of rubbish you have collected at denier sites. They just make you look stupid as well as dishonest.
It may be news to you Ian but Wegman is correct and temperatures have cooled since 1998. And by the way, he knows that the GISS manipulation of the data is not statistically valid or very scientific. In science we don’t change the old data sets because they do not agree with the theory and we certainly do not use algorithms to modify data unless they are made available for independent review. But you guys were never much into science or cared much about integrity.
Given all of the deception that Wegman has witnessed and looking at all of the false claims that you guys have come up with I wonder how much longer he will remain in the AGW camp.
Vangel, only in the fantasy world of AGW deniers.
To scientists and statisticians there has been no “cooling”, as you state, over the past few years. Scientists and statisticians do not cherry pick but use credible techniques, obviously unknown to deniers, to arrive at statistically relevant results.
Once again you are spreading slanderous lies and misinformation about respected scientists. You are a patheitic example of a human being.
Why do you claim some one as dishonest as Wegman is in the “AGW camp”? He is either dishonest or a poor statistician, take your pick.
Ian,
Well, if it takes a 10 year trend to matter, then:
UAH CRU
1999 0.041 0.302
2000 0.035 0.277
2001 0.198 0.406
2002 0.312 0.455
2003 0.275 0.465
2004 0.196 0.444
2005 0.339 0.475
2006 0.261 0.421
2007 0.282 0.399
2008 0.048 0.326
UAH is 0.013C/decade
CRU is 0.007C/decade
It has not warmed in the last 10 years, how many years back is needed to matter?
Vangel says that Vangel posts only facts and data. Vangel does post some data and occasionally facts, but Vangel posts an abundance of “interpretations” that do not align with the facts and data (both the few Vangel provides as well as all else according to the science to this point). That is how Vangel will mislead if the inaccurate points are taken seriously. It is the unwarranted and unsupported leaps.
“corals first appeared when CO2 levels were much higher than they are now”, then LEAP, “they are well adapted to thrive in a higher concentration environment”. Assuming the premise is even correct, what makes the latter true? Ancestors of whales lived on land, so are whales well-adapted to thrive on land?
“If you and your fern can function in an office environment where CO2 concentrations are five to ten times higher than they are outside without harm”, then LEAP, “there is no reason why corals can’t take a much smaller increase”. Again even accepting the premise, how does that demonstrate the conclusion? Do coral not live in water where increasing CO2 will be realized as increasing carbonic acid and thus acidfication? The flawed line of logic points toward no organism needing to worry about increasing CO2 concentration and ignores the warming of the enhancement to the greenhouse effect.
“the ice core data shows that temperature changes led changes in CO2 concentrations”, then LEAP, it can supposedly only work in one direction with only warming leading to more CO2. As I believe has been pointed out, by Vangel’s logic chickens cannot lay eggs because they have been seen hatching from eggs. Actually, if you start with either eggs or chickens you can get the other, just like if you start with increasing CO2 or increasing temperature you can the other. It does so happen that during the period ice cores can date the initial trigger of warming is related to orbital variation changing insolation. That can give a little warming, then CO2 starts going up, which leads to more warming, thus more CO2… This positive feedback is limited which keeps any sort of runaway from occurring. Vangel however simply dismisses that chickens can both come from and produce eggs and that increasing CO2 can both come from and produce warming with an accusation that things are just being made up.
“ice cover now is higher than the level observed when measurements”. Well, the one is only the post-leap part. The leap to get there is in finding meaning in data that are so narrow they say nothing of significance. Measurements of NH ice coverage (ignoring thickness) from one calendar day (which is at a climatically uninteresting time) over several years tells you pretty much nothing. All other polar ice data are summarily ignored, which is actually surprising since Antarctic ice has over recent decades not shown a clear trend of either direction and seems like something Vangel would be trumpeting. Of course Arctic ice data shows a significant decline over the same period.
“the Medieval Warming [sic] Period happened in an environment in which man was not emitting much CO2 into the atmosphere”. That is actually not too bad, at least completely in isolation. It does however ignore just how widespread the MWP was and what its magnitude was. But it is certainly true climate has varied a lot before human GHG emissions became a factor. The problem is when Vangel’s logic says that since climate has changed without human GHG emissions, (LEAP) then GHGs cannot change climate and humans cannot change climate, neither of which logically follow from the premise. Actually much past climate change is linked to changes in GHG concentrations, and there is nothing special about human emissions that would keep them from having the same climate effects as natural GHG changes.
“when you come out of a period that is called the Little Ice Age it is normal to expect warming”. This whole thing is a huge LEAP. Again the spatial coverage and intensity of the LIA is ignored. More to the point, climate does not repsond to how we name periods. Why should we not expect that after the “Little Ice Age” there should immediately follow a “Big Ice Age”? I mean, cold winter follows cool autumn, right? There is no a priori reason to expect cooling or warming to follow any period just because we label that period cool or warm. We should only expect climate to responds to forcings.
“How is pointing out that we had a thirty year cooling trend from 1945 to 1975 that had people like Hansen warning of an ice age deception?” This is deception because the people warning of an impending (or even way down the line) were even in the mid-1970s outnumbered by people expressing concern that increasing GHG concentrations would lead to warming. Plus that line of thinking ignores that in the decades since the science has improved and relies on the fallacy that since some people saying something in the past were wrong then people saying something else now must be wrong.
Vangel is the one most dependent on the spin and hype. Vangel provides minimal facts and data (which may or may not even be accurate), ignores/dismisses vast amounts of information, and makes unwarranted leaps to unsupported conclusions. Vangel wants “open debate” like that because it allows for putting on a better show. The real open debate is what goes on in the offices, labs, and scientific literature. It may not be geared toward public consumption, but it is open to any and all. Ideas persist on their merit, not on what kind of sound bytes they can make. For Vangel what matters are exceedingly narrow snapshots (ice data from 7 days across 7 years, what only a few scientists (or non-scientists like Lord Monckton) claim, etc) and accusations of fraud and deception by vast numbers of scientists.
“To scientists and statisticians there has been no “cooling”, as you state, over the past few years. Scientists and statisticians do not cherry pick but use credible techniques, obviously unknown to deniers, to arrive at statistically relevant results.”
Actually, you are only worried about warming precisely because the AGW movement is cherry picking data. I remember in high school reading articles by scientists because they were worried about cooling. The climate is variable so it is not difficult to find a trend by picking beginning and end points. If I begin at the end of the LIA, as the AGW movement does that I can honestly say that we had about 0.7C warming in around 150 years. But if I use the MWP as a start point then I can honestly say that there has been no warming in 800 years.
The debate isn’t about variation in temperature but about its cause and the AGW movement has failed miserably on all counts.
The first was the false claims of the ice core data showing that changes in CO2 levels caused temperatures to change. The data actually showed the opposite. The temperature changes came first and these caused the CO2 levels to change.
The second issue was the ‘hockey stick’ graph, which falsely claimed that the 1990s were the warmest time in a millennium. The NAS review slammed the authors saying that they used inappropriate proxies, an algorithm that turned random data into hockey sticks and improper statistical techniques.
The third issue was the predicted signature that was written up in Section 9 of the IPCC report but was not observed in the radiosonde and satellite data.
The fourth was the alarmist claim that the ice was melting. Well, the latest measurements show greater ice cover now than there was when the measurements first began.
The simple fact is that every time you guys begin to talk science you get the stuffing kicked out of you and you lose the debate. That is exactly why you have no choice but to run away from debating the issues.
“Once again you are spreading slanderous lies and misinformation about respected scientists. You are a patheitic example of a human being.”
It isn’t me who is questioning Wegman’s integrity but you. All I did was report what the NAS committee concluded. It was actually nice to Mann because I would have made it clearer that he and his co-conspirators were either totally incompetent or outright frauds. The committee only said that they were slightly incompetent and that they did not understand statistics.
“Why do you claim some one as dishonest as Wegman is in the “AGW camp”? He is either dishonest or a poor statistician, take your pick.”
Because he has made it clear that he believes in AGW. He only said that he found the MBH98 and MBH99 studies to be wrong because the authors did not understand statistics and did not provide the papers to independent reviewers prior to publication.
No matter how you try to divert the argument to name calling and away from the facts you can’t change reality. The simple fact is that we have not seen warming since 1998 and that the ice cover recovered nicely so there is no melting crisis to worry about.
“Vangel says that Vangel posts only facts and data. Vangel does post some data and occasionally facts, but Vangel posts an abundance of “interpretations” that do not align with the facts and data (both the few Vangel provides as well as all else according to the science to this point). That is how Vangel will mislead if the inaccurate points are taken seriously. It is the unwarranted and unsupported leaps.”
Please grow up and learn to be objective.
I posted RAW DATA that showed ice cover in the Arctic. All you have to do is to look at it and see which is the biggest number. That isn’t hard to do and you don’t need to worry about ‘interpretations’ of others. The simple fact is that the ice cover crisis that this site was hyping does not exist because the measurements show that the ice has recovered nicely. To suggest that anything that we have observed in the past two decades is unusual and caused by man only betrays a knowledge of history. The simple fact is that the Northwest Passage was navigated in a wooden ship early last century and was clear a number of years in the 1930s. You don’t have to look hard to find similar stories about a loss of ice in the Arctic in the 1920s and 1930s.
““corals first appeared when CO2 levels were much higher than they are now”, then LEAP, “they are well adapted to thrive in a higher concentration environment”. Assuming the premise is even correct, what makes the latter true? Ancestors of whales lived on land, so are whales well-adapted to thrive on land?”
The premise is correct. Calcite corals appeared in the Cambrian era, when the CO2 concentration was about 7000 was around ppmv. Aragonite corals appeared in the Triassic era, when the CO2 concentration was around 6000 ppmv. There is no reason to suggest that corals will be harmed by an increase of the current CO2 concentration to 600 ppmv.
“If you and your fern can function in an office environment where CO2 concentrations are five to ten times higher than they are outside without harm”, then LEAP, “there is no reason why corals can’t take a much smaller increase”. Again even accepting the premise, how does that demonstrate the conclusion? Do coral not live in water where increasing CO2 will be realized as increasing carbonic acid and thus acidfication? The flawed line of logic points toward no organism needing to worry about increasing CO2 concentration and ignores the warming of the enhancement to the greenhouse effect.
Like I pointed out, corals lived in the oceans when the CO2 concentration was much higher. All you do is speculate that they will be harmed by rising CO2 levels that would still leave the concentration about ten times lower without offering any proof of that harm.
“ice cover now is higher than the level observed when measurements”. Well, the one is only the post-leap part. The leap to get there is in finding meaning in data that are so narrow they say nothing of significance. Measurements of NH ice coverage (ignoring thickness) from one calendar day (which is at a climatically uninteresting time) over several years tells you pretty much nothing. All other polar ice data are summarily ignored, which is actually surprising since Antarctic ice has over recent decades not shown a clear trend of either direction and seems like something Vangel would be trumpeting. Of course Arctic ice data shows a significant decline over the same period.
I am not hyping an ice crisis, you guys are. I simply point out that ice cover is not very different today than it was when the satellite measurements began. The bottom line is that all you guys have are stories because the science does not support what you are claiming. I gave a link to the raw data and showed that the raw data made it clear that there was no Arctic melting crisis. For the record, the Antarctic ice cover has been growing for about two decades so there clearly isn’t a warming crisis there.
“the Medieval Warming [sic] Period happened in an environment in which man was not emitting much CO2 into the atmosphere”. That is actually not too bad, at least completely in isolation. It does however ignore just how widespread the MWP was and what its magnitude was. But it is certainly true climate has varied a lot before human GHG emissions became a factor. The problem is when Vangel’s logic says that since climate has changed without human GHG emissions, (LEAP) then GHGs cannot change climate and humans cannot change climate, neither of which logically follow from the premise. Actually much past climate change is linked to changes in GHG concentrations, and there is nothing special about human emissions that would keep them from having the same climate effects as natural GHG changes.
Let me see. We have Viking farms that are under permafrost today. Clearly that means that today’s nonsense about a very hot Greenland is not supported by the evidence. We have grape growing areas in England that can’t grow grapes today because it is too cold. That means that England is colder. We have old Chinese orange orchards that can’t grow oranges because it is too cold. We have data from Africa, Australia and North America that all show warmer temperatures. So no, the MWP was not a local event that only effected Europe, no matter how you guys like to spin the stories. The fact is that the MWP was real and was recognized by the IPCC until the political appointees recognized that it undermined their case. But try as they might, the records are clear and the inconvenient fact still exists.
You also miss the ice core studies, which show that GHG concentrations follow temperature changes and as such cannot be a cause.
““when you come out of a period that is called the Little Ice Age it is normal to expect warming”. This whole thing is a huge LEAP. Again the spatial coverage and intensity of the LIA is ignored. More to the point, climate does not repsond to how we name periods. Why should we not expect that after the “Little Ice Age” there should immediately follow a “Big Ice Age”? I mean, cold winter follows cool autumn, right? There is no a priori reason to expect cooling or warming to follow any period just because we label that period cool or warm. We should only expect climate to responds to forcings.”
It isn’t a LEAP. When cool periods end it gets warmer by definition. If it gets colder instead then you have an extension of the cool period or a new ice age. In either case the ice core data is clear that the temperature changes lead and the GHG concentrations follow.
““How is pointing out that we had a thirty year cooling trend from 1945 to 1975 that had people like Hansen warning of an ice age deception?” This is deception because the people warning of an impending (or even way down the line) were even in the mid-1970s outnumbered by people expressing concern that increasing GHG concentrations would lead to warming. Plus that line of thinking ignores that in the decades since the science has improved and relies on the fallacy that since some people saying something in the past were wrong then people saying something else now must be wrong.”
I think the deception is yours. I actually have a copy of Ponte’s book somewhere and read many articles warning about ice ages. Nigel Calder got in trouble for actually giving time to the Swede who was suggesting that we might be saved from cooling by CO2. No matter how you spin it, that was a very unpopular position when we were still in a cooling trend.
And no matter how you spin it the IPCC models that make the predictions are clear about the effect of CO2 increases. They say that when CO2 goes up so does temperature. Well, that did not happen during the cooling trends that we had since the end of the ice age, including the current one.
“Vangel is the one most dependent on the spin and hype. Vangel provides minimal facts and data (which may or may not even be accurate), ignores/dismisses vast amounts of information, and makes unwarranted leaps to unsupported conclusions. Vangel wants “open debate” like that because it allows for putting on a better show. The real open debate is what goes on in the offices, labs, and scientific literature. It may not be geared toward public consumption, but it is open to any and all. Ideas persist on their merit, not on what kind of sound bytes they can make. For Vangel what matters are exceedingly narrow snapshots (ice data from 7 days across 7 years, what only a few scientists (or non-scientists like Lord Monckton) claim, etc) and accusations of fraud and deception by vast numbers of scientists.”
LOL. I provide raw ice cover data and you make up a narrative to dismiss it. You accuse me of spinning. I bring up the real results of the ice core data that show that CO2 concentration changes lag temperature changes and you guys make us a story to explain it. Even though I have the facts on my side and you make up excuses you accuse me of spinning. I point out that we had cooling trends even as CO2 was going up and you make up another excuse. You then accuse me of spinning. I point out the Wegman report on the hockey stick fraud and you accuse me of spinning.
I think that you have proven an inability to look at the evidence and question your hypothesis when it shows that it is not supportable. Because you need to believe you make up stories and excuses and accuse others of spinning. How sad it must be to be so irrational and so incapable of admitting an error.
Every national science academy of every industrialised country on the planet, representing tens of thousands of climate scientists, confirm anthropogenic climate change.
Options:
1. Vernon and Vangel and their interpretations are right. The world’s climate scientists are therefore wrong or are lying in a massive global conspiracy. For some reason Vernon and Vangel choose to communicate this astounding scientific revelation in the comment boxes of a minor (no offence, Mike) blog. Their interpretations and conclusions are, puzzlingly, not found in peer-reviewed scientific papers.
2. Vernon and Vangel are scientifically illiterate, delusional and / or dishonest. They cherry pick and misrepresent data, drawing erroneous or dishonest conclusions. They ignore the *massive* mountain of evidence that demonstrates ACC to be true and focus only on a few scraps of data that they can twist to draw their own conclusions. They will claim that the aforementioned scientific academies are ‘political’ or do not represent the views of their member scientists or that the scientists ‘real’ views are suppressed, but they offer no evidence for any of this.
Only the scientifically illiterate and delusional would consider for a moment choosing option 1.
Vernon and Vangel, you have a small and shrinking market for your bullsh!t and it’s not going to sell to anyone here. Go back to WattsUpIdiots – there’s a willing and credulous audience there who will read and believe your idiocy and lies. Meanwhile, the rest of us will continue listening to the science and not the ExxonMobil-approved propaganda that you peddle.
David,
Nice strawman, ever consider using real facts? Nice change from AGW to ACC, that is one way to cover every option. The fact is that almost everyone agrees that CO2 increases will cause 0.7C warming per doubling to 560ppm. The disagreement is whether there is positive feedback or negative feed back. The IPCC as time has gone on has continually reduced the the reported feed back from the original 5-7C warming with a doubling to 2C.
The facts do not support a positive feed back. If there was a positive feed back, then once CO2 started rising the feed backs would keep it warming. This is not reflected in the past climate record. The past record is that it warmed, CO2 levels increased and added some warming, then it cooled, despite the CO2 level and eventually CO2 levels dropped.
I know you will not bother to read the IPCC report but that body reports that we know little about water vapor, aerosols, or just about anything else except GHG. Warming in the Arctic is significantly due to aerosols, carbon black was found to be responsible for 35% or more of the warming. Aerosols were found control warming in the Atlantic, dust from Africa controls cooling.
There is no warming in the pipe as proposed, the pipe being the oceans. The argos buoy system shows that there has been no change in sea temps at any depth.
It has been cooling for 10 years, even if ignoring 1998 as being an outlier. The fact is that while there is an over all warming trend since the LIA, but about every 30-35 years the cycle switches short term warming to cooling on top of the larger trend. 1910 to 1945 was warming, 1945 to 1978 was cooling, 1978 to 1998 was warming and now we are back in the cooling phase. The fact that the temperature trend is flat from 1999 on would seem to indicate that the long term warming trend has gotten stronger, but to what extent is not known yet.
Vernon wrote:
“The facts do not support a positive feed back. If there was a positive feed back, then once CO2 started rising the feed backs would keep it warming.”
No it wouldn’t. It would warm more than without positive feedback, and the warming might be extended in time, but it wouldn’t keep on warming indefinitely.
In general, whether a positive feedback results in a bounded, converging response or a runaway response depends on how strong the feedback is.
“…1945 to 1978 was cooling…”
More like 1944 to 1950.
Sorry, but I don’t have much respect for or in GISS since they keep changing the historical data.
To get 5-7C warming from a .7C driver is a strong positive feed back. The IPCC has been moving away from that position, but what is scary about a 2C increase and 8 inch sea level rise?
CRU may not adjust for UHI but they don’t revise the past either.
shows clearly warming then cooling as I stated.
> “They will claim that the aforementioned scientific academies are ‘political’ or do not represent the views of their member scientists or that the scientists ‘real’ views are suppressed, but they offer no evidence for any of this.”
Or they will simply ignore this inconvenient issue and go back to distracting with their own ‘unique’ interpretation of the scientific data, hoping that no one has spotted their dishonest tactic.
> “Nice strawman…”
Vernon’s interpretation of the fallacious ‘strawman’ argument is as accurate as his interpretation of scientific data. Suggesting that he is delusional and dishonest because of likely dishonest and delusional output is *not* a strawman argument.
I see that David like several other, who I will not name at this time, is too stupid to keep up on the studies and lacks the facts or logic to actually discuss or debate the issues. Name calling, the last resort of the mentally challenged.
“DavidCOG
Every national science academy of every industrialised country on the planet, representing tens of thousands of climate scientists, confirm anthropogenic climate change.”
No. What isn’t in doubt is the fact that the world warmed by around 0.7C after the end of the Little Ice Age. And national science academies are political organizations that go along with the prevailing opinion of the governments that hand out the research grants. The simple fact is that no matter how you want to spin it, there is no ‘consensus.’
“1. Vernon and Vangel and their interpretations are right. The world’s climate scientists are therefore wrong or are lying in a massive global conspiracy. For some reason Vernon and Vangel choose to communicate this astounding scientific revelation in the comment boxes of a minor (no offence, Mike) blog. Their interpretations and conclusions are, puzzlingly, not found in peer-reviewed scientific papers.”
Here we go again. All I do is point out to specific facts and avoid generalities. For example, it is a fact that there is ice melting crisis showing up in the ice data, which shows cover to be above the average for the satellite measurement era. All that does is make it clear that the hype about all of the ice melting away is not warranted in a rational environment. Let us pick the example of the ice core data. It shows that temperature changes have led changes in CO2 concentrations and as such the AGW argument is not supportable. I point out that the NAS review of MBH98 and MBH99 showed that the authors of the ‘hockey stick’ graph made serious errors that invalidated their conclusions that there was no LIA or MWP. I also point out that there were periods of cooling when CO2 emissions were exploding and glaciation when CO2 concentrations were more than ten times the current levels. I point out that the predicted warming signature that was described by the IPCC has not been observed in the real world. I point out that no year after 1998 has been as warm even though the IPCC models predict that there should have been warming.
Once the specific claims are refuted I point out that the AGW case cannot be supported by the science. It is up for you to provide specific support for the theory but you can’t do that.
“2. Vernon and Vangel are scientifically illiterate, delusional and / or dishonest. They cherry pick and misrepresent data, drawing erroneous or dishonest conclusions. They ignore the *massive* mountain of evidence that demonstrates ACC to be true and focus only on a few scraps of data that they can twist to draw their own conclusions. They will claim that the aforementioned scientific academies are ‘political’ or do not represent the views of their member scientists or that the scientists ‘real’ views are suppressed, but they offer no evidence for any of this.”
First, unlike most of the people who simply accept the interpretations of others I have an engineering degree and am quite capable of looking at the data and figuring out what it says.
Second, it seems to be very dishonest on the part of the AGW movement supporters to accuse others of cherry picking because their entire argument depends on picking the end of the LIA as a starting point for the discussion. (If we chose as a start the Holocene Optimum or the MWP we would now be arguing about the obvious cooling trend.) The problem for the AGW argument is that choosing the start point does not entirely help the case because the data shows decadal cooling periods and makes it obvious that there are other more important factors at play. As one example, we know that the correlation between the ocean index and temperature gives us an r-squared value of 0.86, which is much higher than the r-squared value of 0.29 for the correlation of the USHCN Annual Mean temperatures and CO2 over the past century. And yes, I will accept the fact that correlation is not causation but without that correlation argument the AGW case falls apart because there is nothing to support it.
“Vernon and Vangel, you have a small and shrinking market for your bullsh!t and it’s not going to sell to anyone here. Go back to WattsUpIdiots – there’s a willing and credulous audience there who will read and believe your idiocy and lies. Meanwhile, the rest of us will continue listening to the science and not the ExxonMobil-approved propaganda that you peddle.”
Actually, I am not surprised that you got this wrong as well. If you look at the polls you will find that the number of people who buy the AGW deception is falling sharply. Voters in North America and Europe are starting to ask why we need to hand out subsidies to corporations to make expensive biofuels or build wind plants that don’t reduce carbon output. As they shiver through a long winter many are actually hoping for warmer temperatures and are starting to figure out that warming is actually preferable to cooling. And the more that they look at hypocrites like Gore and Hansen, who have massive carbon footprints even as they encourage others to reduce theirs they are starting to clue in that the issue comes down to a grab for political power and money, and that science does not support the AGW case.
Vangel wrote:
“As one example, we know that the correlation between the ocean index and temperature gives us an r-squared value of 0.86, which is much higher than the r-squared value of 0.29 for the correlation of the USHCN Annual Mean temperatures and CO2 over the past century. ”
I wonder how many times I have heard that one…
USHCN is for mainland United States, excluding Alaska. The correlation against the global temperature would have been more relevant.
“Lars Karlsson
Vangel wrote:
“As one example, we know that the correlation between the ocean index and temperature gives us an r-squared value of 0.86, which is much higher than the r-squared value of 0.29 for the correlation of the USHCN Annual Mean temperatures and CO2 over the past century. ”
I wonder how many times I have heard that one…
USHCN is for mainland United States, excluding Alaska. The correlation against the global temperature would have been more relevant.”
Yes it would but that would be difficult to pull off given the nature of the data. It is hard to make assumptions about ‘global temperatures’ in 1903 when your data sucks. (Although that does not seem to stop the AGW crowd.)
While we are at it, the data quality is the one big issue that nobody seems to be talking about. I remember reading Jaworowski’s paper that questioned the CO2 concentration data. He points out that the ice core data shows the CO2 concentrations in the late 19th century to be around 320 ppmv, which is about the level measured in the late 1950s. The figures that you see in the IPCC reports come from an unsupported assumption that the air at each level is 8 decades younger than the time of the ice formation. There is no reason given for choosing the 80 year figure except that it would fit with the theory. But science is not about fitting data to the theory but about looking at the data as it is. For the record, Jaworowski pointed out that the 19th century was a time when CO2 measurements were regularly taken by scientists around the world. The IPCC modelers ignored the direct measurements from most studies and only selected the results that fit with their theory. This manipulation has continued because the GISS has been changing the global data set to make the 1930s appear cooler and the 1990s warmer than the data showed before. Add to the discussion the effect of the UHI effect, the lack of agreement from the satellite and buoy data and there is a big problem for the alarmists.
Vangel, why do you keep repeating over and over again things which are just not true and have been pointed out to you time and time again? You grate just like a stuck record. You are convincing no-one with your lies and distortions.
And once again you resort to slandering honest scientists. You are pathetic. No wonder you hide your identity, I am sure your family, coworkers and employer would be embarrassed if they knew how dishonest you are.
Vangel: “All I do is point out to specific facts and avoid generalities.” But the problem is Vangel pinpoints specific things that are not representative of the larger picture, and then projects them into broad generalities.
Vangel asserts there is no Arctic “ice cover crisis” because he looked at data from seven days over seven years. Why does Vangel not show at least the results from from a calendar day in September late in the melting season? Why does Vangel continue to ignore ice thickness? Why does Vangel apparently ignore other data sources covering longer time period such as from UIUC (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg)? Why does Vangel use the terms “Northwest Passage” and “Arctic” seemingly interchangeably?
Vangel continually asserts that increasing CO2 cannot have a warming effect because ice cores showed evidence of warming initially preceding increasing CO2 level during interglacial periods. Does this mean Vangel thinks CO2 cannot contribute to the greenhouse effect at all? Does Vangel hold that there is not even a natural “greenhouse effect”? Why does Vangel simply ignore that through positive feedbacks increasing CO2 can also lead to warming? Does Vangel also ignore that chickens can also lay eggs as well as hatch from them?
It is a mystery to me how Vangel would explain glacial and interglacial periods, much less more extreme periods of climate change further back in time. The consensus science holds that recent glacial cycles are initiated by insolation (amount of sunshine received) changes due to earth’s orbital variations. Then positive feedbacks involving CO2 help drive further warming or cooliing than those insolation changes would cause alone. How do Vangel and the like explain the occurrence of glacial cycles if changes in CO2 & other GHGs cannot have an effect on temperature? If Vangel could propose alternative hypotheses that scrutiny showed could better explain the whole of climate science currently understood as involving the effects of changes in GHGs, then the consensus view would get behind those new ideas. But Vangel seems uninterested in the big picture, only latching onto ice cores showing warming preceding increasing CO2 and calling anything beyond that making up stories or excuses.
How do Vangel, Vernon, and the like determine which data and studies are valid and which are to be accused of being “fit to theory”, political, or otherwise too flawed to consider? Vangel readily accepts CO2 measurements from millions of years ago where they may supposedly support certain claims about corals. However later Vangel dismisses virtually the whole of CO2 measurement research (in favor of one contrary assertion from one particular piece of work) to try to make the case that CO2 has not been increasing steadily from a lower pre-industrial level. Vangel accepts that the ice core data is absolutely true when talking about how warming has led CO2 changes, but that same research showing pre-Industrial CO2 was steady at around 280ppm is dismissed when making a different point.
Accusations of improper tweaking are made if the data are indicative of warming. If people in the 1970s were supposedly saying that an ice age was coming because of cooling between the 1940s & 1970s, why are there not criticisms of, e.g., cooler 1960s-1970s temperature data? Why are there not accusations that those data were “doctored” to fit with supposed ice age theory the way there are accusations recent data are doctored supposedly to invent warming?
These seem to be classic cases of cherry-picking the information from which one wants to draw conclusions. What makes it worse in these cases of trying to poke holes in anthropogenic climate change is when the supposed facts are not even true or relevant. Such cherry-picking is not limited – some people take the most extreme possibilities of increased warming and readily accept those. I would not label those as quite as bad considering they are generally based on better science plus the threat from scenarios makes them concerning even if their likelihood is low.
The aim should be to accumulate as much information to synthesize as possible. No matter what ideas people may be pushing, if they rely heavily on a limited number of (or especially single) studies, claims, or anecdotes, then one’s skepticism alarm should go off. This is especially true if the ideas are supposed to overturn general understanding. Yes, that does happen every now and again, but it is almost never true that a claim of a world-changing idea actually does.
Regarding the correlation between temperature and CO2 or “ocean index”.
The norther hemisphere land masses seem to be fairly well covered by meteorological stations around 1900:
Click to access 1987_Hansen_Lebedeff.pdf
So why not use the northern hemisphere, instead of just mainland US (excluding Alaska)?
gmo,
I believe that doubling CO2 will cause a 0.7C increase. What I have not seen is any studies that can state what the feedbacks actually are and how strong they are. Now I also concede that there are models that attempt to show what the future climate is going to be, without knowing the affect of clouds, aerosols, solar, oceans, etc. Now I know they go on and on about how they use first principles for the models, but if you do not know how much and what it does, then how do you model that. The answer is that they have lots of parameters that they put values into as a best guess and then adjust them when it is shown that they do not work.
You point me to the studies that can flatly say x amount of CO2 will cause x amount of warming. Never seen one and that is why the IPCC has scenarios that say if feedback is X, then this is the expected result, if feedback is Y, then this is the expected result. They do that because there is not enough known about the entire climate forcing or feedback aspects.
My doubts come from repeated attempts to rewrite history. There are lots of studies from around the world that all show MWP, LIA, RWP, etc. I would rail on Mann, but why bother when the simple fact is that the proxies that are the basis for saying there was periods warmer than now show have shown cooling since the 1990s. This is addressed with a hand wave by the IPCC 4th AR. Oh well, I am fired up so lets rail a little. The fact that the nifty hockey shape comes from using strip bark proxies and a lake proxy that the original author said was contaminated. This was for his newest 2008 zombie. Lets forget how he likes to cherry pick which proxies are used, which is totally invalidates any statically inference he makes. Go look up sample selection in statistics, which is beyond being a bad thing to do. Then we have CRU and Jones. He ignores the UHI impact and makes a hand wave by saying they increase the confidence interval, which seems never to appear on any graphic. When new studies prove there is a UHI and it has regional impact, Jones does a study that says, “why yes, there is UHI, but it really has no impact.” Then we get to GISS. I will concede that Hansen actually tries to adjust for UHI. The problem is that Hansen and GISS constantly rewrite history.
The only sources that I have much faith in are UAH and RSS. Why, because they compete, because both think they are right and are constantly checking against each other to prove which one is more right.
You say, if not for CO2 how do we explain the ice ages and the warm periods between them. I have to say that CO2 does nothing to end an ice age. The last ice age began to end 19,000 years ago when portions of the Antarctic ice cap collapsed and in a short period, 200-500 years, melted enough to raise sea levels 20 meters. CO2 increases did not start for thousands of years later. Historically, CO2 has always been high when an ice age starts and stays high for several hundred to several thousand years after the warming ended.
Vernon, you are completely inarticulate. That last sentence is complete nonsense.
If you want to understand Ice Ages then I suggest you read up on Milankovitch cycles.
CO2 is low as the Ice Age ends then increases duehat again later and see if we can get togthr next week;-) to warming ocean. The increase in CO2 causes even higher temperatures than solar change alone.
Good grief the Dunning Kruger virus is really active these days.
Ian,
Thanks, I dropped a word.
Historically, CO2 has always been high when an ice age end starts and stays high for several hundred to several thousand years after the warming ended.
Good grief Ian, have you not reviewed the CO2/Temp record from the ice cores. CO2 lags warming and lags cooling.
Stop being sarcastic, of course I am aware of the CO2 temperature curves during the Ice Ages. And your sentence is still incomprehensible. No wonder your science is so poor. Your ability to write and understand English is severely lacking.
“I posted raw data that showed ice cover in the Arctic. All you have to do is to look at it and see which is the biggest number.”
Nobody is suggesting you did not post a few lines of numbers. Yes, there’s the lowest number in 2007 and higher numbers after that. That is not inconsistent with a warming trend, and this has been explained to you above and elsewhere — including the science site from which you took the lines.
What climate science papers have you published, again?
Your interpretation of a few lines of data is absolutely fascinating. It contradicts the knowledge of the researchers who published the data. Not only are you a very smart little man, but you are the smartest because you know more than the scientists responsible for the project. That is VERY exciting! Of course, if your interpretation is correct and they were all hopin’ no one would notice what their data REALLY says, they aren’t very smart at all, are they? Thank God you’re no fool.
“you don’t need to worry about ‘interpretations’ of others”
So true. No need to worry about the researchers’ interpretation of their own data or their delusional ideas about responsibility to address climate change – especially in northern areas where their people and the region’s animals are just pretending they are experiencing the effects. You don’t live there, but you know better.
What are you telling the Australian people these days?
But let me stay on point for you, your Scienceness.
I agree, there is no need to worry about the researchers’ interpretation of the data. It’s a bit like going to the doctor for severe chest pain when I could ask you. You will tell me if I am in fact feeling chest pain. You will tell me why. Then if I am having, say, a heart attack, you will save me. All over the Internet.
My God you’re amazing!
Vernon,
First, I do not know from where you get that 0.7C/doubling. Are you confusing that with a 0.7C per W/m^2 sensitivity value? Do you mean the more commonly cited 1.1C/doubling for a theoretical no-feedback sensitivity? A simple Stefan-Boltzmann feedback parameter give 0.26C per W/m^2 sensitivity, and the widely used Forcing = 5.35*ln[CO2(t)/CO2(pre-Ind)] for doubling gives 3.7 W/m^2, for an estimate of ~1.0C/doubling.
Why do you want to know what effect CO2 alone will have? CO2 (or whatever) cannot have a climate effect all alone. There are feedbacks. It is like you are asking how much would X gallons poured into the Pacific Ocean raise the sea level of just the Pacific Ocean. That would not happen since water would spread across the various ocean basis. Similarly radiative climate forcings will not just operate in isolation. The example above is probably as close as you can estimate it but would never happen on an earth like ours. Perhaps you could read chapter 9 of Global Physical Climatology. Climate sensitivity by its nature (you point out how climate is complicated yet want a set answer for a single facet?) requires estimation, but it is not too complicated to assess nor determined by tuning of models.
You distrust apparently all the surface temperature records based on more direct temperature measurements by thermometer because you feel there is too much trying to “rewrite history”, but you are accepting of satellite temperature data? You are aware of how the satellite temperature data are derived, what the satellites are measuring, how different satellite records are stitched together…? It seems you welcome the adjustments, e.g., made to UAH data over time as striving for the right answer, yet you accuse, e.g., GISS of not trying to get the most accurate record possible but trying to “rewrite history”. In a similar vein, you are clearly yet another who despises the work by Mann, yet you imply acceptance of whatever other proxy studies, especially the “lots” you say indicate supposedly global LIA, MWP, RWP, etc. Questioning the valid of data sources is one thing, but your selection criterion seems to be your perception of peoples motives.
It already seemed pretty clear you did not think CO2 could be a factor in glacial cycles. I would still be interested in what you believe could cause glacial cycles. If you accept that 3.7W/m^2 is reasonable for the radiative forcing, your 0.7C/doubling implies climate sensitivity of about 0.2C per W/m^2. So for the 5C change because glacial and interglacial the radiative forcing difference required would be 25W/m^2, which is about 10% of the effective global average insolation value accounting for geometry and albedo. How is even natural climate change has we understand has occur even possible if you believe climate sensitivity is so low?
“Nobody is suggesting you did not post a few lines of numbers. Yes, there’s the lowest number in 2007 and higher numbers after that. That is not inconsistent with a warming trend, and this has been explained to you above and elsewhere — including the science site from which you took the lines.”
You are confused. The data has shown that the ice melting hype is not warranted because the ice cover changes are not unusual. The point is that there is no way to look at the ice cover data and make a claim about warming one way or another. Yet, you folks seem to not care that the data does not support the case for AGW and keep making up excuses to explain why it does not fit the theory.
“What climate science papers have you published, again?”
I don’t need to publish any. There are plenty of papers that have exposed the AGW case as unscientific fraud and make the case for natural causes of climate change, the main one being the sun.
Your interpretation of a few lines of data is absolutely fascinating. It contradicts the knowledge of the researchers who published the data.
Actually, it does nothing of the kind. The researchers have no knowledge. They have a hypothesis that isn’t supported by the data. And that is what science is about; proving your theories with real world observations, not narratives and scenarios coming from unproven models.
“Not only are you a very smart little man, but you are the smartest because you know more than the scientists responsible for the project.”
There you go again. You take the opinion of one group of scientists that is pushing one agenda and ignore the fact that the data does not support the claim. It doesn’t take much intelligence to see that when you have the biggest amount of ice cover you can’t claim that the ice has melted.
“That is VERY exciting! Of course, if your interpretation is correct and they were all hopin’ no one would notice what their data REALLY says, they aren’t very smart at all, are they? Thank God you’re no fool.”
What part of the most amount of ice cover in the seven year database do you have trouble understanding? When you have more ice cover you don’t need a PhD to realize that there is more ice.
“you don’t need to worry about ‘interpretations’ of others”
So true. No need to worry about the researchers’ interpretation of their own data or their delusional ideas about responsibility to address climate change – especially in northern areas where their people and the region’s animals are just pretending they are experiencing the effects. You don’t live there, but you know better.
If the ice core data shows that temperature changes come first and there is a lag of 800 years before CO2 concentrations follow I don’t care what interpretation the IPCC provides. The simple fact is that the data tells us that temperature changes drive CO2 changes and not the other way around. If the IPCC model predicts a warming signature and the radiosonde data shows that it isn’t there I don’t care which story RealClimate or this site makes up; the data does not support the theory.
And if you were rational you would realize that people in the north prefer their winter nights to be a lot warmer. For that matter so do the animals. It may have escaped your attention but there are a hell of a lot more polar bears now than there were 20 years ago and the polar bears did not go extinct during the MWP when temperatures were warmer. Speaking of the MWP, when Greenland was warm the Vikings were doing well and farming the soil. When the cold came they froze to death. When it was warm, the population of Europe went up, crop yields and life expectancy increased and all of those great Cathedrals got built. When the warming ended the plagues came, crops failed and many people starved to death.
What are you telling the Australian people these days?
I would tell them that Australia has a long history of bush fires. Plants in Australia have have evolved to survive bushfires to the point where some can’t survive without them. Some, like the very common eucalypts contain highly flammable oils and prefer fire to eliminate competition from species that are not as tolerant of fires. I would tell them that the fires are normal and that the colder than normal temperatures over most of Australia did not help Victoria, which was experiencing warm temperatures and strong winds that helped to spread the fires.
I would also tell them that then need to prosecute the eco-terrorists that passed laws that prohibited people from removing dangerous fuel from their properties. Dead brush and plants that use fire to eliminate competition present a danger to human and animal life that should be managed. There were actually reports that pleaded with the governments to allow that land be cleared of the dangerous fuel. They did not listen so people died. That said, I noticed that the family that was fined $50K for clearing its land of brush and flammable trees a few years ago survived and kept its house from burning. You think that it should sue to get its money back?
I think that it is you that need advice more than Australians who have figured out that bush fires are such a normal occurrence that local plants and animals have evolved to survive or even thrive due to such fires. You really need to read a little so that you don’t embarrass yourself by showing just how ignorant you are of the facts. There are plenty of books on Australia and its plants and animals. I suggest you pick one up and read it.
“But let me stay on point for you, your Scienceness.
I agree, there is no need to worry about the researchers’ interpretation of the data. It’s a bit like going to the doctor for severe chest pain when I could ask you. You will tell me if I am in fact feeling chest pain. You will tell me why. Then if I am having, say, a heart attack, you will save me. All over the Internet.”
If I were sick I would make certain to get more than one opinion. And I would make damn sure that any opinion that I got was supported by actual tests.
“My God you’re amazing!”
I am rational just like many people who don’t buy the snake oil that is being sold by the AGW movement. I think that many in the movement are just like those fundamentalist religious nuts who will not listen to reason. And the AGW use of science is a lot like the fundamentalists use of science to push for creationist myths, intelligent design and other such nonsense.
In the real world observations matter more than computer model projections. When you see more ice cover than the average you don’t claim that the ice is melting away. When you see one factor lead another by a thousand years you don’t say that the later one is the cause and the first one the effect. When you measure temperatures and find a flat or cooling trend for nearly a decade you don’t go out and tell everyone that warming is getting out of control. And when you see bushfires in Australia you don’t pretend that they are something new or unusual.
Why is this ignorant and slanderous person allowed to spew his vile comments on this blog. There is hardly one honest word in all of his rantings. I think it is time that he is only allowed to post honest comments. Anyone who has even a slight knowledge of the science understands that he is being dishonest.
He continually posts the same rubbish over and over even though it is pointed out to him that it is nonsense.
I am sure the scientists who are being slandered by his comments would be glad to see the end of his rantings.
It is easy to see why Vangel would want the issue put up for more debate considering the repeated demonstration of discipline in the techniques of hammering repeatedly on the same talking points and not straying away from them.
I will try my own advice and focus to a single point. Vangel, do you believe the consensus view of the natural greenhouse effect?
As Frank Bi said, the three core principles of global warming inactivist PR are:
1) noise
2) noise
3) noise
gmo,
your right, I was thinking of what warming was the from the current on going doubling, .7C vs what the full doubling will be.
My point from that is that coming off the LIA rebound how much of the warming can be attributed to that .7C? When I look at the temperature graphs, the ones that existed before Mann and strip bark proxies, I do not see that much warming. It is disingenuous, cherry picking, to pick the end of the LIA as a starting point to show a warming trend.
The two long term temperature record we have, GISS and CRU, both have issues even if no one here wants to admit it. GISS constantly rewrites history, always with the past getting cooling. CRU does not adjust for UHI even though newer satellite based studies prove and quantify it. All CRU does is use the data, claim that there is no regional impact, though the China study clearly shows that there is a regional impact, and increase the error bars which are never shown.
The models. We do not know what clouds, aerosols, land change, etc are doing. The only thing that even the IPCC says are well known are GHGs. Yet the modelers claim to use first principles to develop climate models and we are going to base policy on this. How do you use first principles when we do not know what the principles are?
Now I want to see the end of fossil fuels, but not for the CO2. I want to see them end for two reasons. First, the pollution. The environment is cleaner now that it was but it could be better. Second is that fossil fuels are a limited resource that would be better used in manufacturing for things we need. For either reason I think we need to move off of fossil fuels.
Lars,
Maybe we could add:
4. seek attention
5. feel clever by sounding sciencey
Looking at Dumber and Dumberer’s output here, it seems apparent that they enjoy the attention they receive – no matter how much it ridicules them and exposes their ignorance. And then there’s the ever-present Dunning Kruger effect amongst Deniers – their ignorance and lack of raw intellect makes them certain that they know more than anyone just because they’ve read a couple of blog posts and now have a small arsenal of sciencey phrases to use in their rambling.
Psychologists are going to have a treasure trove of material to study when analysing the denial psychosis that has gripped a small core of people with regards ACC.
“Why is this ignorant and slanderous person allowed to spew his vile comments on this blog. There is hardly one honest word in all of his rantings. I think it is time that he is only allowed to post honest comments. Anyone who has even a slight knowledge of the science understands that he is being dishonest.
He continually posts the same rubbish over and over even though it is pointed out to him that it is nonsense.
I am sure the scientists who are being slandered by his comments would be glad to see the end of his rantings.”
What is slandarous about pointing out that the facts do not support the AGW claim. It was you said that Wegman was lacked integrity because he says that 1998 was warmer than subsequent years. The data supports his contention buy you slander him.
This line of argument makes it clear just how the AGW movement operates. It doesn’t debate facts but diverts attention to the periphery where they can discuss computer model predictions and tell tall tales that explain how the models must be right even when the data does not support them.
Let me repeat, this is about real science and real facts. Those do not support the argument that CO2 emissions drive temperatures. In fact, the data is clear that it is temperature trends that have driven CO2 concentrations long before there were any human emissions to worry about.
My arguments may offend your faith in AGW but science is not about faith but about facts. Stick to the facts.
“Looking at Dumber and Dumberer’s output here, it seems apparent that they enjoy the attention they receive – no matter how much it ridicules them and exposes their ignorance. And then there’s the ever-present Dunning Kruger effect amongst Deniers – their ignorance and lack of raw intellect makes them certain that they know more than anyone just because they’ve read a couple of blog posts and now have a small arsenal of sciencey phrases to use in their rambling.
Psychologists are going to have a treasure trove of material to study when analysing the denial psychosis that has gripped a small core of people with regards ACC.”
Just how intellectually bankrupt is the argument when you seek to use pop psychology to divert attention from the fact that you are not discussing the facts. And the facts are simple:
1. There is no global ice melting crisis. Total global sea ice cover is above the average.
2. Polar bear populations are doing well.
3. There has been no warming for a decade.
4. The ice core data shows that temperature drives CO2 concentrations, not the other way around.
5. The MWP and Holocene Optimum were much warmer even though we were not driving Hummers.
6. The GISS data is being ‘adjusted’ by the gate keepers. The adjustments made after 1999 lowered the reported temperatures for the 1930s and increased the 1990s. The GISS data diverges from the ARGOS and satellites.
7. The AGW side has been dismissing the solar and ocean index effects unless it wants to spin cooling into a story of ‘hidden’ heat.
Vernon,
Your overall view is unclear to me. I take it as something like this… You think the Mann work is wrong and that the last ~2000 years have seen a lot more variability in global temperature including periods at least comparable to current times. You think temperature change from the LIA is some sort of “rebound” like a spring returning to a rest state. You think modern temperature records on the whole are inconsistent and inaccurate. You think that uncertainties about effects like clouds and aerosols are equivalent to essentially no understanding.
Starting with the modern temperature records, what are the effects of this “rewriting history” GISS supposedly does? How much are the numbers changed? These datasets you trust and distrust – what are the differences in their numbers, and how much of that is due to representing different things (GISS covers more of the polar regions than CRU, satellites measure the free atmosphere and not surface)?
I do not see how uncertainty and greater past variance is your friend if you want to dismiss the warming effect of GHGs. What caused the variations in energy to drive the MWP and LIA that you believe were of such great magnitude and scale? How do ice ages occur? How did “Hot House” climate periods occur? Is it something like Vangel’s vague and unspecified “solar and ocean index effects”? If other radiative forcings such as changes in insolation or ocean heat flux can have amplifying feedbacks, why do you propose radiative forcing from GHGs do not function the same way? Are you one of those who does not even believe the (admittedly inaptly-named) greenhouse effect exists?
The positive feedbacks that result in a median estimate of warming from CO2 doubling of 3C do not apply only to changing CO2 but rather permeate climate science because they are most consistent with our current understanding from data and theory. If you yank out some things (like positive feedbacks from water vapor, albedo, etc) you can “break” a lot. Since science is about explaining things, your statements of what consensus views you disbelieve beg the question of how you think those gaps where our knowledge is wrong would be filled correctly.
Vangel,
Since the data you posted earlier for Apr17 supposedly indicates that there is no “ice melting crisis” (now you say anywhere globally, apparently meaning polar sea ice data also applies to worldwide glaciers), would you please explain the meaning of this Arctic ice coverage data from the same source?
09,24,2002,6047969
09,24,2003,6101719
09,24,2004,6107188
09,24,2005,5377969
09,24,2006,5972188
09,24,2007,4254531
09,24,2008,4878750
gmo,
Please point out where CO2 has led warming other than the present? Point out where CO2 dropped prior to cooling. I do not know what caused the variations outside of the MC, but then no one seems to either.
That is my whole point, the only way to make the CO2 arguement work, once greater resolution of ice cores destroyed the CO2 increase lead to warming was debunked, was to removed the LIA, MWP, RWP, and the other short term changes that were not driven by CO2
As to GISS rewriting history, there is a site that tracks the changes but here are some the changes that GISS tracks internally:
Date…….#….%
13Dec05 205 13.6
17Jan06 137 09.1
09Feb06 098 06.5
21Apr06 497 32.8
10May06 062 04.1
23Jun06 073 04.8
23Aug06 548 36.1
06Oct06 350 23.0
15Jan07 398 26.2
13Feb07 058 03.8
12Mar07 770 50.5
12May07 807 52.9
I could go on but why bother.
Why bother? That is the first honest thing you have had to say. You are not scientifically literate yet you pretend to have great scientific ability when the only ability you (and Vangel ) have is the ability to cut and paste any cherry picked nonsense to support your ridiculous arguments.
Check out what happened during the Cretaceous and Carboniferous epochs. CO2 was high at the start, as more and more carbon was sequestered in what is now oil, gas and coal the temperature dropped. This can be easily confirmed if you went to real science sites.
Read up on the difference between forcing and feedback, hint, CO2 can act as both, feed back during the end of Ice Ages and forcing when it is being added in huge quantities and high rate by man’s hand.
“gmo
Vangel,
Since the data you posted earlier for Apr17 supposedly indicates that there is no “ice melting crisis” (now you say anywhere globally, apparently meaning polar sea ice data also applies to worldwide glaciers), would you please explain the meaning of this Arctic ice coverage data from the same source?
09,24,2002,6047969
09,24,2003,6101719
09,24,2004,6107188
09,24,2005,5377969
09,24,2006,5972188
09,24,2007,4254531
09,24,2008,4878750”
I suggest that you check your facts again. Here is the plot from that source.
And the Southern Hemisphere ice cover remains above the mean.
As I said, there is no evidence of an ice melting crisis if you actually look at the data instead of listening to unsupported narratives. Keep in mind that same type of hype was used early on when the low resolution analysis of the ice core data suggested that the change of concentrations CO2 took place right along with the change in temperatures. As soon as the higher resolution analysis proved that temperature changes happened first and CO2 followed around 800 to 2,800 years later the hype turned to spin. And then there was all of the ‘poor polar bears’ hype which suggested that warming was killing the bears even though the population was growing rapidly.
“an Forrester
Why bother? That is the first honest thing you have had to say. You are not scientifically literate yet you pretend to have great scientific ability when the only ability you (and Vangel ) have is the ability to cut and paste any cherry picked nonsense to support your ridiculous arguments.
Check out what happened during the Cretaceous and Carboniferous epochs. CO2 was high at the start, as more and more carbon was sequestered in what is now oil, gas and coal the temperature dropped. This can be easily confirmed if you went to real science sites.
Read up on the difference between forcing and feedback, hint, CO2 can act as both, feed back during the end of Ice Ages and forcing when it is being added in huge quantities and high rate by man’s hand.”
LOL. He gives you actual examples and talks specifics but you can only respond with dismissive statements and narratives that are not supporting the AGW position with data. And for a guy who brings up the geological scale arguments you seem to be ignorant of research that shows that there are natural drivers that have a much bigger effect than CO2 ever could.
http://www.gsajournals.org/perlserv/?request=res-loc&uri=urn%3Aap%3Apdf%3Adoi%3A10.1130%2F1052-5173%282003%29013%3C0004%3ACDOPC%3E2.0.CO%3B2
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002astro.ph..7637S
If you want to improve your knowledge of the subject I suggest that you look at the summary of the solar link theory in article below.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/117980230/abstract
Vangel gets an A+ for cut and paste 101. Too bad that people who have actually measured cosmic rays over the last few decades can’t find any correlation to global temperature. You are completely clueless and are a poster boy for Dunning and Kruger. I bet they wished they had you and Vernon to study when they were finding out about their effect.
Vangel, just using scientific sounding terms and linking to papers that actually look like good science papers does not make you either a scientist or knowledgeable about science.
Ian, the best resolution I could find in a study for the Cretaceous and Carboniferous epochs was .5 million years. I do not see how that helps when the ice core record shows that CO2 change lagged temperature changes by 800-2500 years. I do not see where that proves anything.
Just for fun, I looked at the production of man made CO2 and the increase in CO2ppm measurements. What I found is record of atmospheric CO2 and man made CO2 from 1980 – 2003. That should cover the period with the greatest warming. I then determined the amount of change per year in both. Then the rate of change based on the amount of change. I found that:
CO2ppm rate of change was +0.00005 per year
Man made CO2 rate of change was +0.0005 per year
Basically, I found that the amount of CO2 being produced by man is increasing 10 times faster rate than the atmospheric CO2 is increasing. Here is my question, if CO2 production is 10 times more than atmospheric increases, what is the relationship between man made CO2 and the atmospheric record of CO2?
Ian,
at least I know how to ask a question and look for answers. Sure beats your adhom attacks. What is the matter, reality not matching up with your beliefs.
Vernon you are so stupid I have given up trying to correct your ignorance. You are an illiterate fool who is unwilling to learn anything. Good bye.
Do you get satisfaction in showing yourself to be an insulting and ignorant fool. Psychologists will have a field day with you.
“Vangel gets an A+ for cut and paste 101. Too bad that people who have actually measured cosmic rays over the last few decades can’t find any correlation to global temperature. You are completely clueless and are a poster boy for Dunning and Kruger. I bet they wished they had you and Vernon to study when they were finding out about their effect.
Vangel, just using scientific sounding terms and linking to papers that actually look like good science papers does not make you either a scientist or knowledgeable about science.”
I think that you are referring to the Stefan Rahmstorf study that was refuted by Shaviv and Veize. While the AGW community has made a valiant try to keep the solar activity papers from being discussed the recent cool temperatures have worked against it and even the mainstream media is starting to notice it.
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20090107_lou_dobbs_blames_global_warming_on_solar_sun_spot_activity_cycle/
http://www.westwoodone.com/pg/jsp/osgood/transcript.jsp?pid=26416
I suggest that you wake up because the public is beginning to. It is one thing to engage in speculative fantasy but when voters are asked to make real sacrifice by paying a lot more for energy and lower one’s standard of living they will ask for some real debate about real science, not tall tales that are not supported by data.
“Basically, I found that the amount of CO2 being produced by man is increasing 10 times faster rate than the atmospheric CO2 is increasing. Here is my question, if CO2 production is 10 times more than atmospheric increases, what is the relationship between man made CO2 and the atmospheric record of CO2?”
There is another problem for the AGW crowd. The studies from the 1950s that looked at atmospheric mixing followed the migration of carbon dioxide between the two hemispheres. Given the fact that the NH emits so much more CO2 than the SH there is an expected lag between the CO2 concentrations measured in Hawaii and those in Antarctica. The lag does not appear in the data. That suggests that the additions are not coming from human additions but from natural factors such as ocean degassing.
“Ian Forrester
Vernon you are so stupid I have given up trying to correct your ignorance. You are an illiterate fool who is unwilling to learn anything. Good bye.
Do you get satisfaction in showing yourself to be an insulting and ignorant fool. Psychologists will have a field day with you.”
LOL. He gives you data and shows that your comments make no sense given the resolution problem and you come back with an ad hominem attack. The observational data falsifies the theories. That does not mean that we need to start making up narratives and ignore the data but that we need to find a better theory.
Ian,
I have reviewed all of our posts on this thread. What I found is that I once said “Good grief, haven’t you read the ice core records” or something to that effect, once, and you got highly offended. However, every post of yours includes some adhom attack. I have shrugged off you constant insults and general lack of knowledge while attempting to answer the questions you pose. I pose questions and ask for your input and get yet more insults. That said I somehow doubt I am illiterate. I do not see where I have been insulting. You keep claiming you’re not going to respond any more, why don’t you do it.
You guys just don’t like being told the truth about yourselves. Most intelligent people understand that you both are stupid, ignorant and arrogant. Do you have any children? Are you not worried how your nonsense could affect the lives of your children and their children? That is why you are selfish and arrogant.
Vangel, try reading more than denier sites.There are numerous papers discussing how there is no correlation between GCR and temperature. Do you actually find these papers and decide to ignore them or do you just troll denier sites for your “information”?
Here is a quote from a recent one: the authors found their results (on GCR effects) to be “far too small to make noticeable changes in cloud properties based on either the decadal (solar cycle) or climatic time-scale changes in cosmic rays.”
Modgil, Kumar, Tripathi and Lovejoy: J. Geophys. Res., 110, D19205, doi:10.1029/2004JD005475.
There are plenty more if you really wanted to find out what is really going on. Deniers are lazy since they can deny scientific facts without even reading the papers, just say there is nothing to support that specific claim or it is all wrong. Pathetic.
Vernon, you are not insulting me you are insulting eminent scientists. You are also insulting everyone who has studied the science when you come along and make preposterous and slanderous comments about them.
Calling you slanderous is neither insulting nor an ad hominem it is simply a statement of fact based on how you behave in your postings. One thing I cannot stand is dishonesty. If you behave in a dishonest manner I will expose it every time. Get used to it.
The fact that you post your dishonest and slanderous comments anonymously says a lot about your character. Are you afraid that you would be embarrassed if your family, co-workers or employer were to find out how dishonest you are?
Ian, you could not expose anything. It takes more than quoting catch phases or calling people names. I see you are also a liar. You said
Yet you have to keep on calling people names. I guess I will add you to my M list. The list of people that make noise but never actually can have a discussion about the facts.
Having yet seen where I have slandered anyone, I must say – “what ever.” Just so you do not remained confused, it is not slander if it is true. What have I said that is not true?
Vernon, produce some honest facts and I will discuss them. Unfortunately, all you produce is rubbish which has been proven to be wrong over and over again. That shows that you are a troll and not some one interested in learning about the subject.
Why do you even think that you are capable of having an iintelligent converstion about science when you continually show that you have no respect for scientists and no knowledge of science?
Your accusations concerning Hansen and GISS data are slanderous.
By the way I am not the only person who is calling you on your honesty and integrity.
“Vernon, you are not insulting me you are insulting eminent scientists. You are also insulting everyone who has studied the science when you come along and make preposterous and slanderous comments about them.
Calling you slanderous is neither insulting nor an ad hominem it is simply a statement of fact based on how you behave in your postings. One thing I cannot stand is dishonesty. If you behave in a dishonest manner I will expose it every time. Get used to it.
The fact that you post your dishonest and slanderous comments anonymously says a lot about your character. Are you afraid that you would be embarrassed if your family, co-workers or employer were to find out how dishonest you are?”
Eminent scientists? You mean like the railway engineer who is in charge of the IPCC report?
What about the eminent scientists who have taken risks to stand up to the political establishment and by doing so have given up chances at all of the money that is thrown around by governments?
We need to stop appealing to authority and look at the actual science involved. That doesn’t mean computer model predictions or data that has been filtered by algorithms not available for independent review. What we need is the actual data and methodology to be transparent for all to review and verify. That is what eminent scientists do. But you seem to have an obsession about defending people who hid their data and methodology from review or people who present model predictions as real world observations.
Vangel, you wouldn’t know science if it blew up in your face. Do you honestly think (I know you can’t) that any intelligent person reading your nonsense believes it for one second?
You are just a troll who repeats the same nonsense over and over again.
What a lie “What about the eminent scientists who have taken risks to stand up to the political establishment and by doing so have given up chances at all of the money that is thrown around by governments?”
Name one. I bet you bring up Lindzen who gets money in his back pocket from Exxon.
Vangel,
Please explain why the _physics_ that says increasing CO2 leads to warming is wrong.
This repeated parroting of the “warming leads CO2 in the ice core data” is not relevant. I readily accept that warming periods shown in the ice cores records were not _initiated_ by CO2 changes (though I do not necessarily adhere to the magnitude of the lead times cited here). I am not saying that CO2 has _started_ glacial/interglacial periods of warming and cooling. You however are dismissing the accepted and long-known science that says increases in greenhouse gases – no matter if the cause for the increases is natural warming or human-caused emissions – cause warming. This is a very specific question: what are you saying is wrong with the physics? You have continually cited the ice cores showing warming begins then CO2 begins increasing (your video of chickens hatching from eggs), but you have not explained why you assert that increased CO2 does not cause continued warming (why chickens cannot lay eggs).
Vernon,
You can have a shot at the above also. You at least seem to recognize that past climatic variations become very difficult to explain when GHGs are removed as a factor, though you immediately pull the cop-out that no one must know anything.
I will try address your CO2 numbers above, but that whole section you posted is nonsensical. If you want to compare apples to apples you should compare simply the amount of human emissions with the increase in atmospheric concentration. Very roughly about half of human emissions have gone into increasing atmospheric concentration with the rest being taken up at least temporarily by the biosphere and oceans.
Global CO2 emissions (from fossil fuel use only and thus ignoring effects like deforestation) were estimated by the EIA to have been 18.3 million metric tons in 1980 and 25.2 million metric tons – about a 1.3% increase per year on average. However, basically all human emissions from fossil fuel use are _outside_ the natural carbon cycle. So atmospheric concentrations are not driven by the _increase_ in human emissions of CO2, it is driven simply because there is a significant amount of human emissions. Even if human emissions had _decreased_ by 1.3% per year from 1980-2003, atmospheric concentrations would have still _increased_ over that time. The difference between human emissions increasing or decreasing is the difference between the _increase_ in atmospheric concentration being a progressively bigger increase or a progressively smaller increase. Interestingly enough, atmospheric CO2 concentration increases have indeed been increasing over recent decades by a rate of close to that same value of 1.3% per year.
Your accusations concerning Hansen and GISS data are slanderous.
They are true. The GISS global data set has been changed a number of times. The changes made the past cooler and the most recent periods warmer. The algorithm that makes the changes to the data is not made available and the old data does not seem to have been archived properly. Monckton gave an example of how GISS turned the Santa Rosa station cooling trend into warming. As I wrote above, science demands transparency. That means access to both the raw data and the programs that adjust that data. So far, Hansen has not provided the transparency and won’t explain how and why the changes were made. He did give an excuse about an Y2K error when the data was first changed but no longer provides any.
It is your inference that he is being dishonest that is slanderous. Scientists review and adjust data all the time which you would know if you knew anything about science.
You are repeating too much of the junk science that comes from climatefraudit. What they are doing there is character assassination not science.
gmo,
Yes, Vernon’s comparison between human emission increases and atmospheric increases was quite a hoot!
gmo & Lars,
Ok, Half goes into the biosphere. Where is a study that explains why the increase in CO2 production from man is accelerating at 5 to 10 times the rate that atmospheric CO2 is increasing? That was the question and amusing as you find it. I am sure I am misunderstanding you when you say that even if man did reduced fossil fuels, the atmospheric CO2 would still increase.
Actually, as I posted the man made CO2 has been increasing at a rate 10 times the rate that atmospheric CO2 has been increasing. You seem to be saying that burning any fossil fuel will cause an increase but that there is no relation between the amount burned and the atmospheric increase. That makes little or no sense to me. Can you point to a study that explains this relationship.
Vernon,
The change in atmospheric CO2 should be proportional to the amount of human emissions, just like the change of money on your bank account should be proportional to how much interest you get (if you don’t insert or withdraw money), or the change of the volume of water in a bucket should be proportional to flow of water into (or out of) the bucket.
The change in atmospheric CO2 doesn’t have to be proportional to the *change of* human emissions. The former is the first derivative of the atmospheric CO2 levels, but the latter is related to the second derivative.
So let’s look at what we have, with some back-of-an-envelope calculations:
From Manua Loa, we can see that during 1960-69, we had an annual increase of CO2 by about 0.8 ppm/year.
For the period 2000-07, we have an increase of about 1.75 ppm/year.
An increase by a factor of 2.2
If we look at global emissions (from CDIAC), we have 3145 for 1965 (i.e. in the middle of the first period), and 7692 for 2004.
An increase by a factor of 2.5.
Not a very big difference, is it?
Oops! I should mention that the human emissions are in million metric tons of carbon.
“Ian Forrester
It is your inference that he is being dishonest that is slanderous. Scientists review and adjust data all the time which you would know if you knew anything about science.
You are repeating too much of the junk science that comes from climatefraudit. What they are doing there is character assassination not science.”
But it is dishonest to change data without explaining why it was changed. I don’t know what you were taught in school but it was made clear in all of my classes that doctoring data was dishonest.
I also think that it is quite dishonest to be warning about a catastrophic sea level increase that is ten times greater than what the IPCC has said to expect and which has been disputed by the sea level experts. It is clearly dishonest to pretend to be a climate expert and to have forecasting skill when you have been so wrong in the past. In 1971 Hansen was saying that we would have a major ice age because of dust emissions that blocked out the sunlight. Well that prediction was dropped as soon as the PDO flipped and temperatures increased. Instead of admitting that he did not know what he was talking about Hansen simply picked another flag to rally behind. In 2006 James Hansen was claiming that the year 2045 will be warmer than any period in the last one million years, which is well beyond even what the IPCC has been claiming. How credible is that?
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=2489179
And I do not know about you but I have yet to see Hansen appologize for being so wrong in his 1988 testimony before congress where he gave predictions based on three scenarios that were designed to bracket actual observations. The real world observations are well below the model predictions. Did you hear Hansen say that because the models were so wrong during the past two decades we need to be sceptical of their future predictions? No, he is arguing that we need to take their predictions as valid even though there is no reason to do so.
I believe Hansen to be an intelligent individual who can honestly evaluate data and see what is going on. But given the real world data there is no way that any intelligent individuals can make the ridiculous statements that Hansen keeps making. That makes him either dishonest or I am wrong and he is not very intelligent.
And before I end this let me remind you that the AGW movement has never been shy about twisting the data to promote a noble goal. As Schnider told Discover Magazine, “To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest.” It seems clear to me that Hansen chose being effective over being honest.
Once again Vangel shows he knows nothing about real events, only those described in climatefraudit, wattswrongwithwatt, icecap and CO2science.
There are plenty of references explaining why what you said about hansen’s 1988 testimony is wrong. But I bet you won’t bother looking them up.
Ian Forrester
Once again Vangel shows he knows nothing about real events, only those described in climatefraudit, wattswrongwithwatt, icecap and CO2science.
There are plenty of references explaining why what you said about hansen’s 1988 testimony is wrong. But I bet you won’t bother looking them up.
The facts are clear Ian and I don’t need anyone else to interpret them for us.
1. The ice core data shows that temperature changes cause CO2 concentration to change.
2. There is no ice melting crisis. Ice cover now is above the mean. (Which is why your side is switching the argument to ice age rather than cover.)
3. The hockey stick study was invalidated because its algorithms turned random red noise into the same hockey stick shape, used improper cherry picked proxies and improper statistical techinques. Once the errors were fixed the LIA and MWP reappeared and the conclusion of the 1990s being the warmest period in 1,000 years was falsified.
4. The predicted CO2 warming signature is not showing up in the measurements.
5. The ARGOS sea buoy data shows that the oceans are not warming.
6. Although CO2 concentrations have continued to increase there has been no warming for more than a decade.
7. Climate studies indicate that solar, ocean index and orbital factors are significantly more important factors than CO2, which responds rather than leads temperature changes.
Stick to facts Ian. The diversions may work for the faithful but you need a lot more to convince objective thinkers.
“Vangel,
Please explain why the _physics_ that says increasing CO2 leads to warming is wrong.
It isn’t ‘wrong.’ The problem for the AGW cause is the logarithmic nature of additional CO2. The existing CO2 is already performing its GHG function quite well. A doubling will have a very small effect.
I like the Lindzen explanation on this. Start with a room that is painted a dark shade of red. If you paint it white you will see a notable change in the colour but there will still see the effects of the previous paint job. You paint the room again and there is improvement but you still see the effects of the red paint job. You repeat the process and each time you see an improvement. The problem for you is that the effect of each additional coat of paint is smaller and smaller. That is exactly what happens with CO2. Each additional molecule has a smaller effect than the previous one.
The IPCC understands this so it isn’t warning about the direct effect of CO2 increases. Instead it assumes a positive feedback effect that amplifies the warming and leads to a greater increase than the small amount that a doubling would cause. The problem for the positive feedback assumption is that it is refuted by nature. Natural systems abhor positive feedback because it leads to out of control reactions that move the systems very far from equilibrium. It is obvious that if 5,000 ppmv concentrations didn’t create an out of control warming getting to 500 ppmv is not the danger the AGW crowd claims it to be.
This repeated parroting of the “warming leads CO2 in the ice core data” is not relevant.
It seemed to be when the AGW crowd didn’t know that the resoulution would show that CO2 concentrations follow temperatures. From what I see the AGW crowd lacks credibility because they keep changing their stories. Haven’t you noticed that ice cover levels are no longer important? Once the data showed that the ice recovered the argument shifted to the age of the ice. Haven’t you noticed that there was a transformation in the language and now we see that the phrase ‘climate change’ is much more frequent than ‘global warming?’
I readily accept that warming periods shown in the ice cores records were not _initiated_ by CO2 changes (though I do not necessarily adhere to the magnitude of the lead times cited here). I am not saying that CO2 has _started_ glacial/interglacial periods of warming and cooling.
That is a good start. The evidence shows that the CO2 levels respond to temperature changes, which means that CO2 is not the cause but the effect of temperature change. But once you accept that the AGW argument melts away into trivia because that is all there is.
You however are dismissing the accepted and long-known science that says increases in greenhouse gases – no matter if the cause for the increases is natural warming or human-caused emissions – cause warming.
As I wrote before, the GHG effect is logarithmic. That means that most of the warming is performed by the first molecules in the atmosphere and additional CO2 has a smaller and smaller effect. The direct effect of a doubling from the end of the Little Ice Age would be around 1.4C, which is not a crisis to anyone who understands how cold the LIA was.
This is a very specific question: what are you saying is wrong with the physics?
Nothing. The theory says a maximum direct effect of CO2 doubling would be a warming of 1.4C from the end of the Little Ice Age. It is the AGW proponents who ignore that and make all kinds of assumption about amplification that is not supportable by actual observations.
You have continually cited the ice cores showing warming begins then CO2 begins increasing (your video of chickens hatching from eggs), but you have not explained why you assert that increased CO2 does not cause continued warming (why chickens cannot lay eggs).
Let us get back to the ice core data. It shows that temperature change causes changes in CO2 concentrations after a lag period. That is like looking at data that shows that smoking causes cancer after a lag period.
The AGW side looks at the data and concludes that the effect (CO2 concentrations and cancer) caused the temperature change and the smoking. That is not science and has no scientific basis. In the real world a cause has to precede the effect.
David,
I have been a little busy but here is what you requested:
UAH CRU
1999 0.041 0.302
2000 0.035 0.277
2001 0.198 0.406
2002 0.312 0.455
2003 0.275 0.465
2004 0.196 0.444
2005 0.339 0.475
2006 0.261 0.421
2007 0.282 0.399
2008 0.048 0.326
UAH is 0.013C/decade +/-0.05C/decade (95%)
CRU is 0.007C/decade +/-0.02C/decade (95%)
The IPCC projected 0.22C/decade +0.132C/decade -0.088C/decade
The IPCC lower bound is .132C:
-CRU’s trend’s upper bound is 0.027C/decade
-UAH’s trend’s upper bound is 0.063C/decade
Both are below the IPCC predicted lower bound over the decade.
Lars,
Your answer makes sense. I will look at it a bit more, I still think that if the rate of change in one accelerates, then they both should. I will get back to you on this.
Vangel,
I must say I am pleasantly surprised that you replied to my points with more than simple repetition of your same wrong, irrelevant, and misrepresented information. I am not surprised though that you do not see how your points contradict themselves.
You finally show you recognize that indeed increasing CO2 does have a warming effect (“direct effect of a doubling from the end of the Little Ice Age would be around 1.4C”). You also have stated ad nausem that warming has caused increased CO2.
Thus you have accepted that positive feedback between temperature and CO2 exists.
You may be saying certain magnitudes are small, but you have said warming causes increasing CO2 and increasing CO2 causes warming. Again, you thus accept positive CO2-temperature feedback.
You have said a cause (it does not matter what previously caused this cause) of warming results in an effect of increasing CO2, and you have said a cause (it does not matter what previously caused this cause) of increasing CO2 results in some amount of warming. This describes a positive feedback.
I have to keep making the point about positive feedback because you seem to have a relatively common misconception about positive feedback (“Natural systems abhor positive feedback because it leads to out of control reactions that move the systems very far from equilibrium.”) Positive feedback does not necessarily equal a runaway condition. Again, since this is important, positive feedback does not mean a runaway. You already have some basis for understanding this with your talk about “logarithmic”.
That positive feedback does not lead to runaway can be easily illustrated by a convergent geometric series. Positive feedback is like continually adding. Because of your confusion you think that continually adding must mean you “runaway” to infinity, but that is not true. Take a series where the first number is 1, and continually add to the series half of the previous last value. You get 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16… The sum of that series will never exceed 2 – there is never a “runaway” to infinity.
The ice-albedo feedback is another example of a positive feedback. I know you do not believe ice is melting now, but you can at least imagine a natural scenario. Ice is highly reflective to solar energy (has a high albedo), thus an area like polar regions with a lot of ice means a lot of reflected solar energy in that area. Suppose that something caused some amount of the ice in the area to melt. Now part of the area that had been covered by more reflective ice is now covered by more absorptive ground or water (the albedo is lower). Thus more solar energy is absorbed and more warming would follow, which would lead to more melting, which would lead to higher albedo and more absorption and warming, which would lead to more melting…
Such positive feedbacks in climate again do not have to lead to a runaway. With ice-albedo positive feedback, for one thing you can run out of ice. With CO2, for realistic earth concentrations doublings of concentration will have about the same effect no matter what the start and end values are. Doubling from 600ppm to 1200ppm (600ppm increase) would only have about the same effect as doubling from 300ppm to 600ppm (300ppm increase).
You would be right that not everything has such positive feedback – the sun heats the earth but the earth does not heat the sun. But positive feedback definitely exists in and out of nature. An overweight person may thus feel depressed, which causes more eating, which causes more weight gain, which causes more depression, which causes more eating… A company may get more money that in had, thus causing it to produce more product, which causes more sales, which gives the company more money, which causes if to produces more product, which causes more sales, which causes the company to get more money… As I have said the ice-albedo and temperature-CO2 positive feedbacks are natural examples. It does not matter with which link you start, the positive feedback chain can grow either way.
gmo,
Either your missing the point in question or you do not understand it. There is no stable system that has overall positive feedbacks that can change state. With positive feed backs,once a driver, either warming or cooling, starts the system will keep going. There is no way for a system with positive feed back to be regulated. Systems with overall negative feed backs are self regulating and while a driver may start to move the system, the negative feed back will bring it back into the “steady” state.
The rest you said about feed backs and the examples you gave were basically worthless. Go read about control systems and feed backs. The overall climate system has to be basically negative feed backs.
Vernon, you don’t what you are talking about. Positive feed backs do not go on to infinity. How do you think the temperature on Venus stabilized? It was in a run-away green house gas situation for a while but eventually stabilized. Way to high for any sort of life to exist but it did stabilize.
It is unlikely that such conditions will occur on Earth. Temperatures will stabilize when carbon (CO2 and methane) have been transferred from deep with in the earth (oil, gas and coal) or shallow deposits (methane clatherates, biologically active compounds) and the dissolved CO2 reaches equilibrium at the new temperature.
Hopefully, sensible people will have been able to intervene before this occurs since the new stable temperature will be too high for an agrarian population. No doubt other life forms will adapt to the new conditions.
Vernon,
Take a bank account with $1000 in it where every week you put in $100 and take out $100. That is like the atmosphere with the strictly natural carbon cycle. The account balance is basically constant – it is the same after every week.
Now add human emissions, which we will take as someone else also putting money in, say starting at $1 per week. Actually they deposit $2, but half of whatever this second person puts in gets taken out by somebody, so it is only $1 net in.
The account balance is now not constant. It increases every week. The extra input though is constant at this point in the example. So the increase in the balance (the atmospheric concentration) constant. The balance goes up $1 per week. But a constant $1 increase actually decreases with time _in_terms_of_percentage_of_the_balance_ – $1 increases $1000 by 0.1%, but $1 increases $2000 by only 0.05%.
Suppose that extra input is increasing – that $1 starting extra in is increased by 2% each week. Obviously the increase just means adding more to what was already being added so the balance keeps going up. But suppose the $1 extra in is _decreased_ by 2% each week. The balance _still_ keeps increasing because even though there is progressively less being added to the balance indeed still the balance is being added to.
You have to be very careful about what you are describing and talking about rates of changes and accelerations. In your example comparing rate of change in atmospheric concentration and rate of change in human emissions you are not comparing similar sort of quantities. Instead of comparing two cars changing velocity (accelerating) you are comparing the change in velocity (acceleration) of one car and the change in distance (speed) of another.
Vernon,
Some issues with that latest temperature table you posted…
First, from where exactly did you get the IPCC projection numbers, and why are you applying them for the period 1999-2008?
Next, could you please explain the process by which you determined the confidence intervals for the observational data trends?
Then, are you sure your observational data numbers are in units of C/decade?
Vernon,
You are the first one to talk about “overall positive feedbacks”. But then you do not keep your terminology consistent because you then say, “There is no way for a system with positive feed back to be regulated.” If you had said “nothing but positive feedback” in that latter quote you would be making sense. But nobody is saying there are not stabilizing factors with negative feedback also at work. I even said as much, noting how a given increase (like 100ppm) in CO2 has less warming effect the greater the initial concentration is. Climate is not dominated by positive feedbacks, but positive feedbacks do occur. Did you even read the description of how ice-albedo positive feedback operates?
In climate there are feedbacks of both signs with different magnitudes and operating on different timescales. Ice-albedo and CO2-warming are positive feedbacks involving temperature. A major negative feedback is due to the Stefan-Boltzmann relation – most generally a body emits energy (which means a cooling effect) proportionally to its temperature raised to the 4th power, which can be thought of like that the hotter an object is the more it works to cool itself by radiation.
I would like to think you are just confused by terminology you picked up from somewhere else like like engineering work. Perhaps since this discussion involves climate you should investigate how the terms positive feedback and negative feedback are used in the field if you are not familiar.
You finally show you recognize that indeed increasing CO2 does have a warming effect (”direct effect of a doubling from the end of the Little Ice Age would be around 1.4C”). You also have stated ad nausem that warming has caused increased CO2.
Thus you have accepted that positive feedback between temperature and CO2 exists.
You are confused. The direct addition of CO2 does have an effect but it is very small in the absence of feedbacks. In nature the feedback is negative because as the world heats up more heat is lost to space, there is more cloud cover to reflect incoming radiation, etc. But the IPCC can’t have that because in a negative feedback or feedback neutral world the warming would not be high enough to justify doing anything. (It would actually have a positive effect as was seen during the MWP.) So what the IPCC does is assume a positive feedback that has varied with each report. The problem is that the feedback assumed cannot be justified by science. (Which is the reason why the discussion is spread out over many of the sections and there isn’t a coherent explanation to justify the assumptions.)
You may be saying certain magnitudes are small, but you have said warming causes increasing CO2 and increasing CO2 causes warming. Again, you thus accept positive CO2-temperature feedback.
I said that there is a small effect that is logarithmic and that is offset by negative feedbacks that are easy to justify. (See Lindzen’s paper on the iris for one such effect.)
The problem for the AGW movement is that the science does not support the positive feedback assumptions made by the IPCC and that it shows other natural factors that have a major effect when compared to CO2. The bottom line is that a doubling of CO2 concentrations, which is hard to do by burning fossil fuels, will not lead to much of an increase in temperature and any increase will be beneficial. (Longer growing seasons and CO2 fertilization will mean better crop yields and more cheap food. Warmer winter nights will mean the need for less energy.)
I have to keep making the point about positive feedback because you seem to have a relatively common misconception about positive feedback (”Natural systems abhor positive feedback because it leads to out of control reactions that move the systems very far from equilibrium.”) Positive feedback does not necessarily equal a runaway condition. Again, since this is important, positive feedback does not mean a runaway. You already have some basis for understanding this with your talk about “logarithmic”.
Actually, that is exactly what a positive feedback means. There is no argument about the direct effect of CO2 additions to the atmosphere on my part or on the part of anyone who understands the science. Let us take this slowly one point at a time.
Almost every process that you you can point to in nature functions by negative feedback. If we roll a ball on a relatively flat plane it will keep rolling until it is slowed by friction. It will tend to find itself in a depression from which it cannot move on its own. Negative feedback is the ball in the bottom of that depression. Positive feedback is a ball that is balanced at the top of a mountain. Positive feedback leads to instability, and any processes that operates by positive feedback is very dangerous and usually ends up in extreme states far from the starting equilibrium. A perfect example of a process dominated by positive feedback is an exothermic chemical reaction or nuclear fission.
The IPCC report claims that our climate is dominated by positive feedback. The IPCC posits that the expected small increase in temperatures due to CO2 increase is amplified by a factor of three or more (depending on which report you read) by positive feedbacks such as increased humidity or changes in albedo
The problem for the IPCC is the lack of evidence. There is no empirical evidence that has ever been presented to show that that positive feedbacks are bigger than negative feedbacks. Obviously, the 20th century temperature observations show no evidence of these positive feedback. Even if we ignore other factors (solar activity, ocean current index being two examples) After all, the IPCC’s own reports claim that during the 20th century the Earth’s surface temperatures increased by around 0.6 C. Even if we ignore the UHI and attribute all of the increase due to CO2 emissions the IPCC runs into a serious math problem. If a 35% of a doubling only caused an increase of 0.6 C a full doubling would mean an increase of around 1.2 C (recall that the effect is logarithmic) so there is no way to justify the IPCC scare scenarios.
The bottom line is that assumptions most favourable to CO2 as a driver of warming still imply a warming over the next 100 years that is equal to what we saw in the last century. But that isn’t harmful to humans, plants or animals and most people who recall the cooling trend from 1945 to 1975 (which had Hansen predicting an ice age by 2020) would certainly prefer a 0.6 C warming to a 0.6C cooling.
Such positive feedbacks in climate again do not have to lead to a runaway. With ice-albedo positive feedback, for one thing you can run out of ice. With CO2, for realistic earth concentrations doublings of concentration will have about the same effect no matter what the start and end values are. Doubling from 600ppm to 1200ppm (600ppm increase) would only have about the same effect as doubling from 300ppm to 600ppm (300ppm increase).
Actually, that is what positive feedback means; an acceleration away from equilibrium. And the effect is logarithmic. Like that extra coat of white paint over your original red paint job subsequent doublings would have a smaller and smaller effect.
You also have to recall the fact that the geological record shows equatorial glaciation at a time when our planet’s atmosphere had CO2 concentrations that were from 3,000 to 7,000 ppmv. The models do not permit or predict that when run backwards.
You would be right that not everything has such positive feedback – the sun heats the earth but the earth does not heat the sun. But positive feedback definitely exists in and out of nature. An overweight person may thus feel depressed, which causes more eating, which causes more weight gain, which causes more depression, which causes more eating… A company may get more money that in had, thus causing it to produce more product, which causes more sales, which gives the company more money, which causes if to produces more product, which causes more sales, which causes the company to get more money… As I have said the ice-albedo and temperature-CO2 positive feedbacks are natural examples. It does not matter with which link you start, the positive feedback chain can grow either way.
I am more than happy to see valid examples of positive feedback systems in nature. While it is clear that exothermic chemical reactions or nuclear fission are examples of processes dominated by positive feedback the ones that you gave are not. An very overweight person soon becomes unable to fend for himself and can no longer get enough food to meet his needs. S/he cannot become extremely obese unless there are other external unnatural factors. (That is why you don’t see obese lions, monkeys or other social animals.)
Your business example also does not work because success and profit attracts competitors that force the company to compete harder. The bigger size also causes it to lose focus and effectiveness and it loses market share. You can see this perfectly by examining different economies. In economies where governments interfere less companies rise and fall rapidly as nimble competitors make it hard to dominate. In economies where companies are protected from competition you get old large companies that are dominant because the environment makes it difficult for competitors to take away market share from the established players. This is why the top spots in the US are made up by companies that are much younger than the top companies in Europe.
You seem to have a problem with the whole notion of what positive feedback is and how it matters in this debate. Like I said, the sceptics have no issue with CO2 having some direct effect. Their problem is with the feedback assumptions that are made by the IPCC. As I have written before, those assumptions cannot be justified.
While there are many writers who have discussed the feedback issue I suggest that you take a look at Spencer.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/04/clouds-cool-the-climate-system%E2%80%A6but-amplify-global-warming/
Click to access Spencer-and-Braswell-08.pdf
You can also look at Forster.
Click to access perlserv
But I think that the most devastating argument was made by Lindzen.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/30/lindzen-on-negative-climate-feedback/#more-6661
I have excerpted text from the link above that makes the point clearly.
Please note that there is independent confirmation for the statement made above. As Lindzen points out.
Chen, J., B.E. Carlson, and A.D. Del Genio, 2002: Evidence for strengthening of the tropical general circulation in the 1990s. Science, 295, 838-841.
Cess, R.D. and P.M. Udelhofen, 2003: Climate change during 1985–1999: Cloud interactions determined from satellite measurements. Geophys. Res. Ltrs., 30, No. 1, 1019, doi:10.1029/2002GL016128.
Hatzidimitriou, D., I. Vardavas, K. G. Pavlakis, N. Hatzianastassiou, C. Matsoukas, and E. Drakakis (2004) On the decadal increase in the tropical mean outgoing longwave radiation for the period 1984–2000. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 4, 1419–1425.
Clement, A.C. and B. Soden (2005) The sensitivity of the tropical-mean radiation budget. J. Clim., 18, 3189-3203.
The preceding authors did not dwell on the profound implications of these results – they had not intended a test of model feedbacks! Rather, they mostly emphasized that the differences had to arise from cloud behavior (a well acknowledged weakness of current models). However, as noted by Chou and Lindzen (2005, Comments on “Examination of the Decadal Tropical Mean ERBS Nonscanner Radiation Data for the Iris Hypothesis”, J. Climate, 18, 2123-2127), the results imply a strong negative feedback regardless of what one attributes this to.
I think that I have made my case. I look forward to an explanation why we should accept the IPCC assumptions when they are not supported by real world observations.
gmo
I just found this short explanation. It may help you understand the debate about feedback.
Vangel,
I have less faith that you are simply unfamiliar with the terminology of climate for feedback. Either way it seems you too need to familiarize yourself with the native tongue so to say.
Please show exactly where “The IPCC report claims that our climate is dominated by positive feedback.” You yourself proved that is not what the IPCC says with your _very_next_sentence_ – “The IPCC posits that the expected small increase in temperatures due to CO2 increase is amplified by a factor of three or more (depending on which report you read) by positive feedbacks such as increased humidity or changes in albedo”. There is absolutely nothing about domination of positive feedbacks so that a small increase in temperature is increased by an infinite factor. There are positive feedbacks to the degree that warming is amplified by a factor of 2-4 times. That may be called “weak negative” feedback in engineering, but it is called positive feedback in climate because it has a limited amplifying effect.
You seem to want to use Spencer and Lindzen as authority figures to show how supported your case is supposed to be. If we are playing the authority game, I will rely on the vast majority of climate scientists, including those who work in and have been cited by the IPCC, that have shown the mix of feedbacks (positive and negative) are likely to have the net effect of multiplying the direct warming from doubling CO2 by a factor of between 2 and 4.
Trying to shovel away some of the other assorted garbage…
Doubling CO2 over pre-Industrial levels is actually quite easy on the current emissions path, which could actually see a disastrous quadrupling in another 100 years.
Warming is not automatically beneficial. More CO2 does not simply equal more crop yield (unless your food is poison ivy maybe) just like flooding crop fields does not simply equal more yield.
Why do you talk about warmer winter nights meaning less energy usage and not even mention warmer temperatures in summer driving up energy usage for cooling?
The warming effect of increasing GHGs is not immediate. Your oven has a timer on it because energy flux does not instantly bring an object to its equilibrium temperature. The full warming effect from the increase in GHGs up to right now will not be realized for some time to come (plus the increase continues so the ultimate equilibrium level keeps going higher).
When you just extrapolate a graph into the future to say next 100 years will equal the previous, you are certainly straying far from the science. You are ignoring the positive feedbacks to prove there are no positive feedbacks and that there will be no positive feedbacks.
You may want to just drop the equatorial glaciation talk because Snowball Earth ideas are perhaps the ideal example demonstrating positive feedbacks with temperature-CO2 and ice-albedo (and also how negative feedbacks with can work too!).
As I have said before, even a purely positive feedback need to cause a run-away response. Assume for instance that a warming of 1 degree C causes a water vapor feedback that leads to an addition increase of 0.5 degrees (just to have a simple figure). This increase in turn causes a water vapor feedback that leads to an increase of 0.5*0.5 = 0.25 degrees, and the next turn it is 0.125, and so on. When repeating this, the sum of feedbacks will converge towards 1 degree (0.5+0.25+0.125+…), giving a total increase of 1+1=2 degrees. So you have a positive feedback with a bounded response. As long as the feedback factor is less than 1 (in my example it is 0.5), you will always have a converging feedback response.
Sorry, the first line should read: “even a purely positive feedback need *not* cause a run-away response.”
gmo,
Confidence intervals:
UAH came from Christy et al. 2000 (PDF)
CRU it is part of the data set.
Feedbacks:
First lets make sure we are using the same definition.
Positive Feedback
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback
Negative Feedback:
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_feedback
The fact that the IPCC says that a small change in CO2 will cause more warming than the CO2 alone can produce is the description of a positive feed back. You pointed out the warming will cause the seas to warm which lowers the solubility and releases more CO2, which will drive more warming, repeat and rinse. This is a positive feed back loop that would lead to climate moving to an extreme, in this case warming. What the climate record shows is that a driver, either warming or cooling presents and the natural negative feedback pushes climate back in to equilibrium.
While there is some warming by doubling CO2, historically, per the ice core record CO2 only increases after the warming driver has been in effect for 800 – 2500 years. This is also true for cooling. What this appears to indicate is that once warming has been active long enough to affect the ocean’s temperature, solubility is reduced and CO2 is out gassed. In reverse, once cooling has lasted long enough, solubility increases and CO2 is absorbed. This is what is killing the CO2 climate driver argument put forward by the IPCC.
As for your warming lag theory, where is this warming being stored that has not happened yet? It is not in the ocean. The argo’s buoy program has shown that there has been no change in deep water, below the mixing level since the program has been in place. Ocean surface temperatures, the mixing layer, have been dropping since the change in ENSO, AMO, and PDO.
Feedbacks:
First lets make sure we are using the same definition.
It should be obvious that gmo is using a different definition,
gmo
Vangel,
I have less faith that you are simply unfamiliar with the terminology of climate for feedback. Either way it seems you too need to familiarize yourself with the native tongue so to say.
I am precise, not unfair. This is a serious topic that deserves clear and serious thought. The bottom line is that you cannot justify an assumption of positive feedback dominating climate and that is what you need to make the IPCC model predictions work. The sceptics have no trouble with the statement that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will have a minor effect because the science is actually very clear. Their argument is that given the actual observations the maximum increase is much smaller than what the IPCC has predicted and that the IPCC needs to overestimate sensitivity in order to make its predictions seem valid.
But that is where the IPCC fails miserably because the high sensitivity assumptions make it impossible for the models to predict actual changes when they are run backwards and wind up overestimating the changes in the future. You need to remember that we already have had a chance to see how the predictions worked out and can see that they failed miserably.
Please show exactly where “The IPCC report claims that our climate is dominated by positive feedback.” You yourself proved that is not what the IPCC says with your _very_next_sentence_ – “The IPCC posits that the expected small increase in temperatures due to CO2 increase is amplified by a factor of three or more (depending on which report you read) by positive feedbacks such as increased humidity or changes in albedo”. There is absolutely nothing about domination of positive feedbacks so that a small increase in temperature is increased by an infinite factor. There are positive feedbacks to the degree that warming is amplified by a factor of 2-4 times. That may be called “weak negative” feedback in engineering, but it is called positive feedback in climate because it has a limited amplifying effect.
How can you discuss this topic without having read what the IPCC has said about feedback?
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=9&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.bbc.co.uk%2F1%2Fshared%2Fbsp%2Fhi%2Fpdfs%2F02_02_07_climatereport.pdf&ei=mqvxSbGNCY_MMN7A6L0P&usg=AFQjCNHjv3CQYhPWYvEVvFSGPcw5KNx7mg&sig2=1WqRsUepU6H7WSOwNp8gBg
You seem to want to use Spencer and Lindzen as authority figures to show how supported your case is supposed to be. If we are playing the authority game, I will rely on the vast majority of climate scientists, including those who work in and have been cited by the IPCC, that have shown the mix of feedbacks (positive and negative) are likely to have the net effect of multiplying the direct warming from doubling CO2 by a factor of between 2 and 4.
I do not appeal to authority but to real world observations. That is the problem that you guys have. You have a political group like the IPCC, which is headed by a railway engineer and is dominated by politically appointed lead authors who may not know anything about climate, and claim consensus. But science has never been about consensus but about real world observations.
The Lindzen commentary pointed to real research done by real scientists using real data that is available for independent review. Because I do not want to repeat what others have said better than I ever could I suggest that you look at an overview of the argument here:
http://climatesci.org/2007/04/04/a-litmus-test-for-global-warming-a-much-overdue-requirement/
The bottom line is that the research shows that the small increase in the heat content of the oceans up to 1998 shows that the IPCC sensitivity assumptions are way too high. Second, the data shows that the oceans have been cooling since 2003.
Trying to shovel away some of the other assorted garbage…
??? I point out that the actual real world observations do not agree with the assumptions made by the IPCC models. Haven’t you noticed that I am the person who is discussing real data and methods that are available for independent review and that you are the one that resorts to talking about unsupported assumptions that have already been falsified by observations. Yet you accuse me of shovelling garbage.
This is science not religion. I suggest that we stick to real world observations.
Doubling CO2 over pre-Industrial levels is actually quite easy on the current emissions path, which could actually see a disastrous quadrupling in another 100 years.
Actually, it isn’t easy at all. When CO2 content goes up it fertilizes plants and they absorb much of it out of the atmosphere. This is one of the reasons why plant cover increased so much in the last century. At the same time a cooling ocean due to reduced solar activity would absorb much more CO2 than humans could ever emit. Keep in mind that the predictions made by the IPCC are not working out because the increase in CO2 content is substantially lower than the models. (Yet, because they need high CO2 to justify the predictions the modellers have not changed the inputs to agree with the reality.)
Warming is not automatically beneficial. More CO2 does not simply equal more crop yield (unless your food is poison ivy maybe) just like flooding crop fields does not simply equal more yield.
I take it that you never took much science in university. Plants evolved in a high CO2 concentration environment and love CO2. The last time I looked greenhouse operators to add supplemental CO2 to increase growth and experiments confirm that more CO2 means more plant growth.
And warming clearly has been beneficial in the past. The Medieval Warm Period was a time of high crop yields, growing populations and prosperity. When the cold came the population collapsed and the prosperity turned to poverty and misery.
Why do you talk about warmer winter nights meaning less energy usage and not even mention warmer temperatures in summer driving up energy usage for cooling?
Because most of the warming that has been measured comes from higher night time temperatures during the cooler seasons. The simple fact is that when it is cold people need to run their furnaces 24/7. That is not the case when it is hot because people usually work during the hottest parts of the day and they can get inside cooled public spaces if they have to. Look at home heating/cooling energy requirements in California or Texas and compare them to New York or Quebec and you see massive differences. Even humid areas in the deep south do not need to use as much energy because the power required to dehumidify air is much lower than to heat a house to 70F when the outside temperatures are 15F.
The warming effect of increasing GHGs is not immediate. Your oven has a timer on it because energy flux does not instantly bring an object to its equilibrium temperature. The full warming effect from the increase in GHGs up to right now will not be realized for some time to come (plus the increase continues so the ultimate equilibrium level keeps going higher).
The GHG theory says that the warming effect is nearly immediate. As much as you want to claim it, there is no lag, delay of hidden energy in the system. As I pointed out, if you ignore the hype and narratives and look at the actual measurements you will find that there has been no ocean warming since 2003. Given the fact that the heat capacity of the top 100 meters of of the oceans is much greater than that of the atmosphere the AGW theory has another major problem that it cannot overcome.
When you just extrapolate a graph into the future to say next 100 years will equal the previous, you are certainly straying far from the science. You are ignoring the positive feedbacks to prove there are no positive feedbacks and that there will be no positive feedbacks.
The climate system is not linear so you cannot extrapolate graphs 100 years into the future. But suppose that you could. Where you wind up depends on the starting point that is chosen. If you picked 1934 as the start point you won’t see much warming at all. If you pick the Holocene Optimum you will have to conclude that temperatures will decline. If you go to a shorter time frame and project the warming since the PDO went positive in 1975 you will get warming but it will be much lower than what the IPCC says that you will see. If you use the past decade you will see cooling.
The problem for this line of argument is that there is nothing in science permits us to project a cherry picked trend into the future. As I said, stop speculating using unsupported assumptions and look at the actual data.
You may want to just drop the equatorial glaciation talk because Snowball Earth ideas are perhaps the ideal example demonstrating positive feedbacks with temperature-CO2 and ice-albedo (and also how negative feedbacks with can work too!).
Actually, the snowball earth is not an example of positive feedback because there wasn’t a runaway reaction. When the cause of glaciation went away so did the glaciation itself. I use the example because it supports the theory that best explains climate change over the decadal, historical and geological time frame.
Since Vangel likes Roy Spencer as an authority, perhaps he will search and find where Dr. Spencer explains that climate scientists use the terms “positive feedback” and “negative feedback” exactly as I have described. I am sorry if the lexicon of climate science is confusing (feedback not being defined the way engineers define it, the greenhouse effect not working like an actual greenhouse structure does, etc). But just because the descriptive words may not be clear to some, that does not mean the physical processes are not at work. One would not argue that the Super Bowl does not exist because the game is not played in a “bowl”. Sorry, if our non-American friends do not get the reference to the American football championship game – using language to convey information is not always perfect!
Hopefully with the clarifications on feedback that have been given Vangel and Vernon will understand better what the science says. They both seem to recognize that the doubling of CO2 would be expected to produce directly (if it could be done with no feedbacks at all) about 1C (~2F) of warming at equilibrium. It is worth noting again that the equilibrium level takes time to reach so that the moment the CO2 hit the level of doubling the warming is still in progress and not yet to that equilibrium 2F increase yet. The positive feedbacks involving melting ice, water vapor, etc. however are what cause the real-life estimate for warming under CO2 doubling of about 3C (~6F). Again, it is exactly because there are negative feedbacks that ultimately constrain the positive feedbacks that keep the warming to 3C instead of it being infinite or runaway.
Going back to my business example, Vangel’s economic negative feedbacks are purely speculative, but that there are negative feedbacks is absolutely reasonable. However, in his response Vangel implicitly accepts that for some period positive feedback was at work in the company growth – more money, thus more product made and sold, thus more money, thus more product made and sold, thus… Sure, at some point we should expect negative feedbacks of some sort to constrain the growth. Maybe the company can only grow through the positive feedbacks to 3 times the initial size before the negative feedbacks halt the growth process, just like positive feedbacks are figured to increase warming by a factor of about 3 before negative feedbacks constrain the warming (assuming the CO2 stopped at doubling, which if not the case means that warming would not stop at that level either).
Getting back to nature I think the positive ice-albedo. No matter what they may call it I doubt even Vangel or Vernon would argue that the process does not work within some limits. It is hard to argue against reflective ice melting leading to more absorption of solar energy by reveal surfaces not as reflective ice, thus warming, thus melting, thus more absorption of solar energy, thus warming, thus melting… Even constrained with limits, this is positive feedback in climate science.
Perhaps with a better understanding of the positive feedbacks and their meaning on which the consensus science is based, Vernon or Vangel will see why the CO2 doubling warming is not projected to be simply the in-isolation ~1C (~2F), but a positive feedback influence ~3C (~6F). If not, they must choose either no feedback effect (doubling CO2 gives only and exactly that ~1C) or overwhelmingly negative effect (doubling CO2 gives once equilibrium is reached warming of _less_than_ 1C). I believe that they both because of confusion on the terminology were assuming the no feedback case. I believe they thought negative feedbacks constrained the system to exactly the direct change while any positive feedbacks would have to equal a runaway warming. Hopefully those misconceptions are clarified.
The zero feedback effect stance seems untenable. Surely no one will argue that there are simply no feedback processes of any kind. The other option would be a net zero feedback, but I think one is going to have a very difficult time explaining how various feedbacks could all add up in the climate system to exactly zero.
The overwhelmingly negative feedback effect case has its own problems. If you want to say that the ~1C warming directly from CO2 will be decreased so the net effect is only say 0.5C warming, you are defining the climate system as highly damped, and it is unclear how such a damped system could produce ice ages (glacial periods with interspersed interglacials), hot house periods, etc. How do you get the supposedly very warm MWP or very cold LIA if negative feedbacks so damp out forcings? The radiative forcing from doubling CO2 is about 3.7 W/m^2. If one says that amount of forcing ultimately only causes 0.5C of warming, how does one explain the 5C warming between the interglacial and glacial periods? By the climate sensitivity factor that says 3.7 W/m^2 gives 0.5C warming it would require 37 W/m^2 change in forcing. Recall that the average solar flux received across the earth’s surface is 240 W/m^2.
The theories that work best to explain the whole of climate science throughout history involve (constrained) positive feedbacks like those making warming from doubling CO2 likely ~3C (~6F) instead of the in-isolation ~1C (~2F). That is why the vast majority of climate scientists use them, and only a few like Lindzen and Spencer hold to ideas like the overwhelmingly negative feedback effect case above which I believe tend to be formulated from intraseasonal variations that are not necessarily apt for using to try to apply to understanding long-term trends.
Vernon and Vangel continue to engage in the most obvious diversionary tactics of endless, repetitive questions and arguments about non-issues that have been addressed in posts and full discussion previously on this site, and any number of other credible science sites.
Responding to them is one choice. Not responding is another. Moving them to their own thread is another.
They clearly enjoy hijacking all discussion. Narcissists have no limits.
It is clear that neither of them is interested in any real or genuine discussion of the science.
Vangel has revealed his racism. His comments about our people in the North go beyond mere ignorance. Our people have a close relationship with the natural environment. I suggest he refrain from the colonial attitude of telling them what is good for them. They report late freeze up, early thaw, the draining of inland lakes and other serious problems that impact livelihood e.g. hunters cannot get across the ice, seals have moved away, fish are gone from the lakes. You see, there’s no McDonalds Restaurant in the High Arctic.
His comments about Australia are about the same. Australians are used to managing bushfires and drought and we all know that. That is not the issue. The issue is that Australia is facing its worst drought on record in 100 years, and are having unprecedented difficulty managing fires due to this drought, and extreme wind and temperatures. Some of the worst effects are being experienced by Australian aborigines, who have the least resources to ‘deal with it’, as he likes to put it.
GreenFyre et al
This idiot’s issues are not related to the science.
His friend, Vernon, has consistently displayed only slightly less contempt for others.
I am struggling to see the value of more conversation with them.
gmo,
Guess why I posted the definitions of positive and negative feed back? So we are using the same terms and guess what, if a 1.1C forcing causes more than 1.1C, and then the feed back is positive. A small perturbation results in big changes which is what the basis of your position is.
Please, the answer is that a climate driver happens that causes the LIA, MWP, RWP, etc. and when the driver stops, the natural negative feedback pushes climate back in to equilibrium state. That is why the climate, though chaotic, is fairly stable over the long term.
Oh, and please quit tossing up straw man arguments. Since did not I read anyone saying that there was a strong negative feedback, only that there was a negative feedback, could please cite where that is stated.
I notice that you ignore the fact that there is no latent warming in the pipe. The physics show that any warming from increased CO2 is going to be immediate. The only place to store this latent warming is in the ocean, which is not showing any warming. The fact is that first 10 meters of the ocean have more thermal energy than the atmosphere. The ocean is not showing any deep warming and the surface is not warming.
Martha,
The only racist I see here is you. Your display xenophobia was eye opening.
You imply that if not of “your people” that he cannot have a close relationship with the natural environment. That is the very definition of racism.
Wow Vernon, …. “Martha, you imply…..” that is a brilliant analyses. In fact so brilliant that it goes beyond anyones logic. Oh wait, if it’s beyond logic… is it fantasy??
:p
VeraH,
Oh Vera, I am so wounded. Why I feel almost as bad as when the self-righteous one calls me a racist without knowing me. I see you belong to the Martha’s school of discussion; you know the one where knowledge is not required. The where all of Martha’s posts eventually devolves into accusing people of racism or some other nasty label. You know the one where are just morally superior because of… In Marths’s case it appears to be “we’re closer to nature.” And don’t forget the victim-hood she has. That too gives here moral superiority, after all if you don’t agree with her, why you must be pushing colonialism, ouch, another bad label, you nasty oppressor.
How about we just stick to the facts and argue about things none of us convince each other of, rather than playing the somewhat nasty game of Ian and Martha.
My two points are there is no lag between change in CO2 and temperature change. The second being that there has been no warming or cooling since 1997, 1998, etc. If you want to discuss those two points, I will be happy to. If you have points you want to discuss, bring them up. If your going spout propaganda but not mean it then I will add you to the list of people I ignore.
Vernon, as VeraH points out your logical skills are non-existent. You are implying by your interpretation of Martha’s comments that if all the roses in your garden are red there is no such thing as a yellow rose. Anyone who has any reasonable thinking skills will see that as rubbish. No wonder you have such a problem in understanding science since science is a very logical endeavour.
The reason that there appears to be a lag in the CO2 concentration after temperature increases because of Milankovich cycles is that back then changes were occurring very slowly as compared to now. The feed back started immediately since physical chemical laws were the same back then as they are now. However, because of the slow rate of change it took about 800 years or so till it was above a threshold that was measurable today. Just because we couldn’t measure the slight change right away does not mean that it was not present, only that it was below detection limits. You find the same thing in analytical measurements. You should never report “zero” as a quantitative measurement, only that it is below detection limits.
Good grief, try and think things through before making your self look even more stupid than you already are.
I agree with Martha, both Vernon and Vangel are well past their “best before date”. Time to pitch their rubbish into the garbage can before it appears here.
Ian,
That is really nice, but where is any study or evidence. Oh, there is none and your making this up.
Where is any study that shows where the “heat in the pipeline” is hiding? The physics show that any temperature increase associated with a GHG happens immediately. Please find a study that shows that there is a lag between GHG increases/decreases and temperature changes.
Ian, just for fun lets consider your insane answer is right. That only leaves one little problem. The warming that ended the last glacial period was hardly gradual. I do not quit see how a warming trend that melted enough Antarctic ice to cause sea levels to rise 20 meters in 200 years. That hardly seems gradual but still, the CO2 did not start rising till thousands of years later.
Martha
Vernon and Vangel continue to engage in the most obvious diversionary tactics of endless, repetitive questions and arguments about non-issues that have been addressed in posts and full discussion previously on this site, and any number of other credible science sites.
Responding to them is one choice. Not responding is another. Moving them to their own thread is another.
They clearly enjoy hijacking all discussion. Narcissists have no limits.
Martha
Vernon and Vangel continue to engage in the most obvious diversionary tactics of endless, repetitive questions and arguments about non-issues that have been addressed in posts and full discussion previously on this site, and any number of other credible science sites.
Responding to them is one choice. Not responding is another. Moving them to their own thread is another.
They clearly enjoy hijacking all discussion. Narcissists have no limits.
Note that you keep using the wrong terms and discussing generalities while Vernon and I keep referring to real world observations and transparent data and methodologies.
Vangel has revealed his racism. His comments about our people in the North go beyond mere ignorance. Our people have a close relationship with the natural environment. I suggest he refrain from the colonial attitude of telling them what is good for them. They report late freeze up, early thaw, the draining of inland lakes and other serious problems that impact livelihood e.g. hunters cannot get across the ice, seals have moved away, fish are gone from the lakes. You see, there’s no McDonalds Restaurant in the High Arctic.
Your people in the North? When have I ever said something bad about your people in the north.
First, it is ‘your people’ who made it known that the number of polar bears has increased substantially over the past few decades, a view that was rejected by the AGW alarmists who were talking up the endangered species angle.
Second, it was your people who pointed out that areas that the satellites were showing as open water were frozen solid. I assume that is how they found the sensor malfunction that failed to measure ice cover last year.
You also seem to have a very short memory. Your people reported warm temperatures in the 1930s as well and saw the Northwest Passage be navigated by a WOODEN ship early last century. Now your people are having a good laugh watching stunt voyages with ice breakers that keep getting stuck in the ice.
His comments about Australia are about the same. Australians are used to managing bushfires and drought and we all know that. That is not the issue.
But that is exactly the issue. Neither droughts nor bushfires are an abnormal occurence in Australia. In fact they are so common that many plant species use them to as part of their competitive strategy.
The issue is that Australia is facing its worst drought on record in 100 years, and are having unprecedented difficulty managing fires due to this drought, and extreme wind and temperatures. Some of the worst effects are being experienced by Australian aborigines, who have the least resources to ‘deal with it’, as he likes to put it.
Saying something does not make it true. Most of Australia was quite wet and cool this year. I take it that like most of the typical AGW faithful you don’t do much research before you post.
GreenFyre et al
This idiot’s issues are not related to the science.
His friend, Vernon, has consistently displayed only slightly less contempt for others.
I am struggling to see the value of more conversation with them.
LOL. We discuss the science and the data and you guys make postings that are obviously wrong and you accuse us of not caring about scientific discussions? I suggest you do a bit more reading and that you stop embarrassing yourself by posting material that shows your ignorance of the terms and facts. No wonder your side keeps running away from debates with the sceptics. It has nothing but empty words and speculation.
Ian Forrester
The reason that there appears to be a lag in the CO2 concentration after temperature increases because of Milankovich cycles is that back then changes were occurring very slowly as compared to now. The feed back started immediately since physical chemical laws were the same back then as they are now. However, because of the slow rate of change it took about 800 years or so till it was above a threshold that was measurable today. Just because we couldn’t measure the slight change right away does not mean that it was not present, only that it was below detection limits. You find the same thing in analytical measurements. You should never report “zero” as a quantitative measurement, only that it is below detection limits.
LOL. The GHG theory is very clear. As Vernon points out, any warming from added CO2 will be immediate and the only place where the heat can be stored, the ocean, shows no warming.
Good grief, try and think things through before making your self look even more stupid than you already are.
I agree with Martha, both Vernon and Vangel are well past their “best before date”. Time to pitch their rubbish into the garbage can before it appears here.
How surprising. The people who can’t debate the science resort to ad hominem attacks yet again.
Vangel and Vernon, please stop being so stupid. My discussion is perfectly correct. You show your ignorance of how science is applied and your hatred of scientists in every post. You are two of the most despicable and dishonest people I have come across.
Please remove their rubbish from this site.
You can’t even understand simple English. In my post I said that there was no lag only that there appeared to be a lag because of the problem with measuring small changes. The feedbacks occur almost immediately in response to the TSI rise induced by the Milankovich cycles.
Vangel, please read up on the meaning of “ad hominem”. Telling people how stupid, arrogant and ignorant you are is not “ad hominem” only a true statement of how you act on this site.
You contribute nothing but lies that you cut and paste from dishonest denier sites where there is no semblance to scientific accuracy or truth. What is even worse is that even after being told by many different people that you are wrong you continue to post the same rubbish over and over again.
Ian,
I notice once your asked to produce facts and studies to back up your “theory” you go back to name calling. The problem is that telling me I am wrong is easy, finding a study or data that proves me wrong seems to be difficult for you.
To put this in your terms, Ian please read up on the science, you contribute nothing but lies, you cannot even cut and paste from any sources.
Ian with name calling vs facts. Yep, facts win again.
Vernon, i have probably read more science in one day than you have read in your entire life. Denier sites such as climatefraudit, wattswrongwithwatt, icecap and CO2science are not science sites, they are anti-science.
And I just checked out your paper on the MWP-1A. Seems that there is more than one side to that. More recent studies still accept that the water came from the Northern Hemisphere. See here:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_09/
Why do you hate science and scientists so much? It seems to be a common affliction with deniers.
“Please remove their rubbish from this site.”
Ian, I completely agree.
Verngel/Vanernon scream ‘Ad hom, Ad hom’ every time their repetitive arguments are exposed as distortions, lies and familiar frauds from climate denial 101. Quite separately from any argumentation that exposes their false science and violations of logic, they are sometimes also told that they are idiots – I mean, it’s only natural that one would find oneself commenting that they are well past their due dates, because they are. Of course, the arguments against their nonsense ‘science’ are completely separate from the fact that they are also also idiots, so there is no ‘Ad hom’. I absolutely refuse to explain the nature of an Ad hominem argument one more time to one more idiot on this site.
Besides what you mention, I think there is no question that Vangel’s cavalier comments completely disregarding the negative impact of climate change on the lives of people in Arctic communities and in Australia right now – and Vernon’s defense of this and ‘humour’ disregarding the devastating impact of colonialism in the North – go beyond mere ignorance and amount to overt racism.
Attitudes of racial and economic entitlement clearly underlie their climate ‘denial’.
It seems to me that no credible site should put up with racism as part of a discussion of science, at any time.
Ian,
wow, one article, not even a documented study. How about some real studies that address the melting that started 19000 years ago in the Antarctic, not what happened 5000 years later in the Northern Hemisphere.
Bassett et al(2007) Modelling Antarctic sea-level data to explore the possibility of a dominant Antarctic contribution to meltwater pulse IA
Clark et al (2004), Rapid Rise of Sea Level 19,000 Years Ago and Its Global Implications
Weaver A.J. et al (2003) Meltwater Pulse 1A from Antarctica as a Trigger of the Bølling-Allerød Warm Interval
Clark P.U. and Mix A.C (2002) Ice sheets and sea level of the Last Glacial Maximum
Vernon, go and read the scientific literature and you will see that those ideas you are talking about have just did not pan out. The report I linked to is one of many over the past few years which are showing that the melt started in the NH not Antarctica. If you stopped and thought about it for a moment you would see that there were ice sheets far further south which would obviously melt first.
There are numerous problems with determining sea level rise in the Pacific. Of course you conveniently ignore any papers which do not agree with your biased ideas.
That is idealism not science.
Tarasov, L., and W.R. Peltier 2005. Arctic freshwater forcing of the Younger Dryas cold reversal. Nature 435, 662-665.
Leventer, A., et al. 2006. Marine sediment record from the East Antarctic margin reveals dynamics of ice sheet recession. GSA Today 16, no. 12, 4-10.
“A more clearly-defined accelerated phase of sea level rise occurred between 14,600 to 13,500 years before present (termed “meltwater pulse 1A” or “MWP-1A” by Fairbanks in 1989), when sea level increased by some 16 to 24 m (see Figure 1). Although the meltwater was previously believed to have come chiefly from Antarctica, a recent reconstruction by Tarasov and Peltier of ice sheet retreat using a glacial model calibrated by a variety of data points instead to a largely North American source”.
Ian:
> Please remove their rubbish from this site.
Vernon was given a final warning by Mike a few weeks ago – https://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/george-will-and-the-swindle-tell-you-all-you-need-to-know/#comment-2020 :
“… you can certainly post long-debunked disinformation on the web, but just not here. It is a calculated effort to confuse some and waste the time of others”
I’ll be surprised if Mike let’s him and his dribbling idiot compatriot continue their campaign any further once he returns – and hopefully their entire output will be deleted.
One the positive side, this thread is now a great example of what happens if you let lying idiots post freely.
~~~
Martha,
> Verngel/Vanernon scream ‘Ad hom, Ad hom’ every time their repetitive arguments are exposed as distortions, lies and familiar fraud…
It’s a strange phenomenon amongst Deniers (and other flavours of idiots) – no matter how many times one explains, they simply don’t understand what ‘ad hominem’ means. Prove them wrong and call them a moron: “ad hominem!”. Demonstrate they knowingly use debunked arguments and call them a liar: “ad hominem!”. I guess part of it is that they think using a bit of Latin gives them the appearance of intellectuals.
And further up Vernon, the weasel, demonstrates he doesn’t understand ‘strawman’ either.
I think it exposes a flaw in their intellect which possibly also explains what’s happening inside their heads with regard ACC: they have an unshakeable conviction that they cannot be wrong, so their original interpretation of ad hominem (i.e. name-calling) must be the correct one. No subsequent explanation or evidence can alter their belief – and so it goes with ACC.
Ian Forrester
Vernon, go and read the scientific literature and you will see that those ideas you are talking about have just did not pan out. The report I linked to is one of many over the past few years which are showing that the melt started in the NH not Antarctica. If you stopped and thought about it for a moment you would see that there were ice sheets far further south which would obviously melt first.
You can’t spin your way out of this. The science makes it clear that ice cover is now higher than the average. That falsifies the claim that the ‘ice is melting away.’ The science makes it clear that there are more polar bears than they used to be when the 1945-1975 cooling trend ended. The science makes it clear that temperature trends drive changes in CO2 concentrations, not the other way around.
It is because of these inconvenient facts that the AGW movement has changed the debate yet again. Because the warming stopped in 1998 the AGW movement no longer just hypes up global warming but has switched the debate to ‘climate change.’ Recently the ‘ice is melting’ claim has been exposed by measurements showing that total ice cover is greater than the average so the AGW movement has shifted the debate to the age of ice cover.
But I am starting to detect desperation at the moment because the public sentiment has turned. I guess all those rallies against global warming being scheduled on days where people were freezing their butts off has woken up the public, particularly when the nutcases in the AGW movement are trying to force consumers to pay much higher taxes on energy. Sadly, this debate is turning out to be very profitable for those of us who are making fortunes betting that the AGW movement will keep pushing the madness. The more that Congress intervenes the richer we are going to get because we positioned ourselves to take advantage of increased demand for some commodities and we can make a nice return when the purchasing power of the USD collapses as the economy tanks.
Martha,
> Verngel/Vanernon scream ‘Ad hom, Ad hom’ every time their repetitive arguments are exposed as distortions, lies and familiar fraud…
It’s a strange phenomenon amongst Deniers (and other flavours of idiots) – no matter how many times one explains, they simply don’t understand what ‘ad hominem’ means. Prove them wrong and call them a moron: “ad hominem!”. Demonstrate they knowingly use debunked arguments and call them a liar: “ad hominem!”. I guess part of it is that they think using a bit of Latin gives them the appearance of intellectuals.
And further up Vernon, the weasel, demonstrates he doesn’t understand ’strawman’ either.
I think it exposes a flaw in their intellect which possibly also explains what’s happening inside their heads with regard ACC: they have an unshakeable conviction that they cannot be wrong, so their original interpretation of ad hominem (i.e. name-calling) must be the correct one. No subsequent explanation or evidence can alter their belief – and so it goes with ACC.
You are confused. Vernon and I bring up the data and provide links to papers supporting our cause. Martha provides no data and keeps exposing her ignorance of the facts. She claims to be from the north but seems to be unaware that the northern communities are reporting a great increase in polar bear populations and prefer -42C to -55C winter temperatures .
It seems that your movement is in denial. Ice cover is not a problem. Polar bears are not a problem. Warming is not a problem. And the more you scream and call people names instead of talking about the actual science and data the more you are going to lose credibility with the general public. That said, the more you push Congress into doing stupid things the more money that those of us who can see reality are going to make. While I feel horrible that you will harm many people when you push for a transfer of wealth from consumers and taxpayers I will get very rich from the process. So as much as I think that the AGW supporters are scientifically illiterate fools who believe that good intentions are all that matters I am thankful for allowing me to make a great living because of the actions that they are forcing.
“Martha provides no data and keeps exposing her ignorance of the facts. She claims to be from the north but seems to be unaware that the northern communities are reporting a great increase in polar bear populations and prefer -42C to -55C winter temperatures.”
I prefer to insist that people do the work of reading research. I’m not Vangel’s secretary. I have, however, made an important suggestion regarding his reading.
It’s true, I’m Canadian. He also lives in Canada – although he seems quite distressed by it and comments all over the Internet about the problems with ‘socialism’ in Canada.
Nothing more dull than a politically illiterate libertarian babbling away in a condo in Toronto.
Vangel cannot read more than one thread at a time, apparently. Therefore, let me repeat the relevant feedback.
He imagines he is a polar bear biologist.
He also imagines he is is in solidarity with Inuit people, despite his previously racist comments.
There is presently no definitive data on population trends
in Canada, or Nunavut, as a whole, but they do have data for two areas: Hudson Bay and the Beaufort Sea.
OBSERVATION: Decline. Population down, hunting has not been sustainable, evidence of starving bears.
INTERPRETATION: These animals are suffering the effects of early thaws and late freeze ups due to climate change. Other bear populations seem to be following the receding ice further north, for the time being. Each population will be affected differently, depending on what is happening with the sea ice. The overall habitat is however at risk.
Vangel likes to say that our people in the North are reporting an exploding polar bear population. That’s not true. People in the communities are seeing more bears, seeing more bears swimming, seeing more female bears making dens on land, and seeing bears scavenging whale carcasses. Canadian bear biologists are working with Inuit leaders to interpret this information. The biologists think the explanation for more bear sightings is that the bears are coming inland to settlements because they are hungry.
Disappearing sea ice equals disappearing bears.
Most deniers cite Lomborg’s 2007 book, which cites a Times reporter. Vangel is a frequent flier at denier sites.
Since he lives in Canada, he might want to access Canadian research sites. We have prominent polar bear experts at the University of Alberta, for example, and he could read the most current research by Andrew Derocher or Seth Cherry.
“I provided the links to support my statements…I need no justification for my view because the data shows that polar bear populations [either specific populations, or the population as a whole] have gone up.”
LIE. He has provided no such link to any published science paper that makes any such statements based on the available data.
It is not the first time I have seen a libertarian apply his simpleton perspective to important issues, with no concern whatsoever for the quality of the resulting analysis. Of course, he thinks he is cutting edge, but what he achieves is a scientifically and ethically bankrupt defense of the current situation.
His ‘defense’ of our Northern people’s role in polar bear population study happens to suit his pre-determined conclusion about climate change. He conveniently ignores the colonialist history of the North, and he ignores all the reports from communities and research that clearly demonstrates the impact of climate change.
He then attempts to confuse all of this evidence with the present dialogue some Inuit leaders are having with the Canadian goernment in relation to sustainable harvests for hunters.
He then posts all of this repeatedly.
His repetitive, unethical b.s. has been exposed as lies and frauds. And he has persisted with racist comments that completely disregard the well-being and lives of our people in the North.
Before Mike boots this idiot’s ass from this site, I have one more thing to say to Vangel.
F*$@#%*ck off. Go away and learn to think about what you are saying.
Vangel, your response shows that you either didn’t read my post in response to Vernon or you are just clutching at strawmen because you didn’t have a knowledgeable response.
You are being completely dishonest when you say “I bring up the data and provide links to papers supporting our cause”.
You just cut and paste junk from denier sites with no reference to the scientific literature. You are the one who is not “talking about the actual science and data”.
Vernon at least posts links, unfortunately he has either not read them or failed to understand what they were saying.
You provide nothing of usefulness to this site.
“Ian Forrester
Vangel, your response shows that you either didn’t read my post in response to Vernon or you are just clutching at strawmen because you didn’t have a knowledgeable response.
You are being completely dishonest when you say “I bring up the data and provide links to papers supporting our cause”.
You just cut and paste junk from denier sites with no reference to the scientific literature. You are the one who is not “talking about the actual science and data”.
Vernon at least posts links, unfortunately he has either not read them or failed to understand what they were saying.
You provide nothing of usefulness to this site”
I provided data that showed the ice cover problem is not real. I provided links that showed that the ice core data shows the opposite of what you claim; it isn’t changes in CO2 concentrations that drive temperature trends but the other way around. I cited the NAS committee findings that concluded that the MBH98/MBH99 hockey stick results were invalid.
That is all I have to do until you can show that ice is actually declining to unusual levels (and no 5% below the average that started the panic is not unusual), that there is evidence that proves CO2 drives temperature change or that you can show that current temperatures are unusually high when compared to the 1930s, MWP, Roman Warming or the Holocene Optimum. And while you are at it, please explain why warming is bad and cooling is good when history shows us that the opposite is true.
I had briefly thought that I was making some progress it getting some understanding at least from Vernon on feedback in climate science. Unfortunately that seems not to be the case. I still have some motivation, so I will try a bit more.
No climate scientist is saying that positive feedbacks dominate climate, just like nobody says that if you are driving down the road pressing harder on the accelerator will make the car speed up forever. However, pressing harder on the accelerator can speed up the car some amount over the previous speed until limiting factors stop the acceleration. Positive feedbacks can produce more warming that would otherwise be the case until limiting factors stop the warming.
I am not sure how to interpret where Vernon says, “a climate driver happens that causes the LIA, MWP, RWP, etc. and when the driver stops, the natural negative feedback pushes climate back in to equilibrium state.” First, what is a “climate driver”, how does it work, and how do you explain glacial-interglacial cycles and very long-term changes like hot house period? Does he think that climate has some absolute equilibrium level to which he thinks it always returns? Does he not understand that a “climate driver” (assuming I interpret the term reasonably) does not necessarily just stop, like the very gradually increasing solar luminosity, or can result in other “drivers”? He seems to not understand that the boundary conditions determine the equilibrium state. Climate is not like a pendulum that is always working its way back to some same exact spot any time it is pushed away from equilibrium.
Suppose you start with a planet with huge polar ice caps that reflect a lot of solar energy, then introduce a “climate driver” (say magically turning up the solar output by some amount) that causes warming which thus causes much of the polar ice caps to melt. If you turn off the “driver” (put the sun back to its previous setting) the ice caps do _not_ just grow back to their previous state. The way to get that ice back would be a cooling “driver” (like turning down the solar output below the original level). That warming “driver” has forced the climate system so that there is a different equilibrium state. With less ice, the planet is less reflective overall, more solar energy is absorbed (evn though solar output is back to the original level) and thus the equilibrium state for the planet will have a higher temperature which is consistent with that lesser quantity of ice. One way to look at it may be that there is a new “driver” (more absorption of solar energy) that was introduced by that original “driver” and persists after that original “driver” is gone.
gmo, I doubt if we can expect any sort of rational discussion with the likes of Vernon and Vangel. They are too irrational to have any sort of rational discussion. They also have shown that they are unable to comprehend any sort of scientific paper since they often say they have read a paper and then claim that what it says is completely opposite to what the authors state in their paper.
They keep repeating the same nonsense which they get from denier sites. I can’t understand how anyone can keep on believing the same nonsense over and over again when they are told and shown scientific papers which shows that their claims are nonsense.
I doubt very much if either of them has ever been exposed to real scientific inquiry at all.
Vernon and Vangel also seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how radiative fluxes even work. They ask questions like ‘where is the warming hiding?’
Let us take an extreme example to illustrate a point. Suppose there is some food that is at room temperature. It is not warming or cooling because it has come to equilibrium with its surroundings as it is gaining the same amount of energy from its surroundings as it is losing to its surroundings. Now we place this food into a preheated oven. This is analogous to (though much more extreme than) the enhanced greenhouse effect. The food in the first moment put into the oven is still giving off the same amount of energy as it was at room temperature, but now the surroundings are providing a much greater amount of energy input to the food. More energy coming in then going out means the food begins warming.
However, by the logic of Vangel & Vernon the food should be up to whatever temperature the oven is set immediately. They would ask ‘where is the warming hiding?’ I think “heat” is really what is mean and not “warming”, but anyway warming is a continual process as long as there is more energy input than energy output. Increasing GHGs are having that very effect putting the earth out of radiative equilibrium. The net outgoing radiation from the earth’s surface currently is about 1 W/m^2 less than the net received radiation. That net energy input causes warming. The outgoing radiation depends on temperature, so increasing temperature increases the outgoing radiation. With enough warming balance and a stop to temperature could be again achieved with higher amounts of both net incoming and net outgoing radiation. Again, remember this balance is achieved because the surface is at a higher temperature. Our problem is that we keep pushing that equilibrium point to higher temperatures as we increase GHG concentrations and thus continuing to induce the net radiation imbalance. We keep turning up the oven so that the food keeps warming to try to achieve radiative balance.
The ARGO buoys are also cited to say the oceans are cooling. Strange though that those data are simply accepted with no criticism. Those data (though they span only a few years) do not show cooling. The data did require a correction because biases were found in the data. It seems the some people assume that any corrections or fixes that get made to something must be based on fraud and that everything must works exactly right from the beginning otherwise one would be trying to “rewrite history”. But it is not hard to find the explanation for why the corrections were required. I take it as odd that some people are so dismissive of some datasets and the researchers who compile them, yet are not critical at all of others. When those same people also draw sweeping conclusions from uncritical use of a single relatively new data source with data from only a very short period it becomes increasingly difficult to take anything they say seriously, assuming that was occurring to begin with.
This ‘debate’ thread is appropriate for the point I want to make. Indeed Vangel especially and Vernon too really want debate. That is where points can be presented to a lay audience not necessarily equipped to judge them. The IPCC can be called a political group like it is a group of know-nothing congressmen (when really its reports are basically a synthesis of the current state of the science, though perhaps with too careful of a tilt). A few scientists names and their research that disagrees with the consensus views can be used to try to imply that “science” says there is no global warming. Very select data can be cited to try to make a point opposite to what the picture from looking at all the data shows.
The point should not be for rational discussion with Vangel and Vernon. If that could happen, great, but it is not likely. The point should be to try to informative to others (especially any lurkers who may be trying to understand the topic) and also try to increase one’s own understanding and ability be correctly informative on the issue.
My goal has not been to convince Vangel and Vernon about how positive feedbacks work in climate. I hope they could come to understand it, but that is not the aim. My goal is to help others who may be reading understand if they had not been familiar with the topic. Along the way I also want to make sure my own understanding is firm and find places where I can learn more. If an explanation of mine helps someone who was already familiar explain it somewhere else, that would be added gravy.
When a whole lot of faulty information gets dumped about it can be difficult to continually try to make sure it is debunked, especially when it is repeated often. When I can I try to use posting of wrong, misrepresented, misinterpreted, etc info as an opportunity to convey the correct information. Unfortunately for reasons I gave above plus others the “faulty” information may be more appealing to some people. That is why it is important to try expand the view for people. Vangel straight out says he only goes to very specific points, and the narrower the view the easier it is do something like say, ‘look at this cold winter – that means no global warming!’ The big picture looks at more data, draws from more sources, incorporates theories, examines how each narrow view fits into the big picture.
gmo,
Your greenhouse example is, at a very basic level, wrong. There are several reasons but the main one is that that the underlining physics do not work that way. What is actually happening is the sun warms the earth. The earth radiate the heat out as long wave radiation. CO2 absorbs some of the LWR and then re-radiates that out. All the CO2 does is slow down the LWR, the more CO2, the longer the LWR takes to get from the ground to space. There are two thing that you do not seem to be considering but I will leave you with one. The LWR that all the LWR the earth produces makes it into space, CO2 does not cause any LWR to be retained by the earth.
Any change in CO2 level has an immediate effect on the LWR time the LWR takes to reach space. There is no lag or latent warming.
CO2 does not explain past warming or cooling. Why because if it had the positive feedback that you require, then once it started warming, it would keep warming. That is what positive feed back does.
gmo,
I only started with one point that was a reply to David when he stated that a paper provided proof of lag between CO2 rise and temperature. That paper was proven wrong when technology allowed greater resolution which shows that CO2 lags warming and cooling. There is no way to prove that CO2 had anything to do with the warming and cooling historically.
The fact that there has been increase in global temperature from any of the four sources since 1990 the trend has been flat. That is the last 18 years. That is 18 years, which you have to admit, is moving from weather to climate shows:
year..CRU….slope to 2008
1990 0.247 0.017
1991 0.203 0.019
1992 0.070 0.020
1993 0.104 0.018
1994 0.169 0.014
1995 0.270 0.011
1996 0.138 0.010
1997 0.347 0.002
1998 0.526 0.000
1999 0.302 0.007
2000 0.277 0.002
2001 0.406 0.011
2002 0.455 -0.019
2003 0.465 -0.025
2004 0.444 -0.031
2005 0.475 -0.047
2006 0.421 -0.048
2007 0.399 -0.073
2008 0.326
This shows that warming at less than .2C/century since 1990. I only used 1990 because some one asked me to but I was too busy to do it. Sure looks like we warmed up from the LIA to a new level and may stay there.
Oh and the mean is 0.318C with a 95% confidence interval of 0.063C. Only twelve more years and we will know for sure.
My God, Vernon is absolutely unteachable.
How many times have we been through this exact same discussion with him?
Vernon, please go to the time-out room.
Crap. We don’t have one. 😦
I am hopeful that his pattern of unrelenting and repetitive b.s. debunked and discussed here already ad nauseum, will soon result in the banning of his pathetic ass from this site.
Martha,
What have we been though? I was asked to do this and I did. Please explain how some one else would debunk this.
The facts, as shown by the CRU, RSS, UAH data sets that in last 18 years warming has been at less than .2C per century. How long does it have to be at this level or less before it means something. For the last 14 it has been at .1C per century. It is fast approaching the point where the excuse of “its too short, it is only weather” is going to be gone.
Vernon how on Earth did you calculate “that warming at less than .2C/century since 1990”? Do you know how to do linear regressions? The rate from 1990 to 2008 is 0.017 degrees C per year or 0.17 degrees per decade or 1.7 degrees per century.
Did you actually run these numbers through a spread sheet or did you just “eye ball” the data and say “warming at less than .2C/century since 1990”.
You are completely illiterate when it comes to science, statistics, English comprehension and logic. Then when someone calls you on this you start screaming “ad hom, ad hom.”
You are pathetic. (and that is not an ad hominem since I have just shown how pathetic your skills are).
Ian,
If you were not an ass, you could have said, “you typed century when it should be decade” I guess that is too much to expect. To bad you’r not right either.
Yep, your right it was was a mistake, the actual tend is 0.94C per century. Sorry, I guess no one else here makes any errors. Of course, I did not just jump to the conclusion that .017 was a decade trend when it was 18 years.
This is not even considering what the mean trend is, which interestingly enough is not positive: -0.007c with a 95% confidence interval of 0.013C. Yes this is over 18 years also.
I don’t know where you got your data but the data I used was HadCrut.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
You are the ass, any one who has any experience in science always checks their work. You obviously did not apply any sort of check since the number you got was the number you were wishing for.
I will never let anyone as dishonest and incompetent as you off. You will get the contempt that you deserve. You should apologize to everyone on this site for wasting their time. How many other “errors” are you guilty of? Typical denier, whenever some one calls you on a dishonest statement you make the excuse, “Ooooh, I made an error” hoping of course that no one will catch it.
And your comment “what the mean trend is, which interestingly enough is not positive: -0.007c” is completely meaningless. I suggest you spend some time reading up on statistics. Tamino’s “Open Mind” would be a good place to start.
And just what data did you plot since your “0.94C per century” does not come from the HadCrut data I linked to?
Ian,
You are truly stupid. Now I will not let you off. The data I used came from:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3vgl.txt
And the global anomaly if you bother to look at what was listed per year, is that years number. Do a least squares trend line from 1990 to 2008 is the number I got.
Do you know what a trend of 0.017 over 18 years is in decades, it is not 0.017, no it happens to be .094C per decade.
I was tempted to do an Ad hom on Ian but though, no that just lowers the level of the discussion. If Ian was not too challenged to do the math, he would see that the trend, based on hadcrut3vgl data is 0.017C per 18 years. May be if he studies statistic, he may some day under stand that a slope is described as delta y/delta x, oh wait, that is not statistics, that is basic math.
Hey, Ian, what answer do you get with your basic math skills when you figure out x=dy/dx (just to be fair, I am going to give you some bonus info, namely that gives the annual trend [one year], not the decade trend.)
Now once you have actually done the basic math, what is the answer?
Crap, I hate when I tell some one off and I am wrong. I would ask for that last post to be deleted but that is not going to happen.
You are so stupid, the number 0.017 is the slope of the regression line which is the change per year. Therefore multiply it by 10 and you get the change per decade. Have you done any maths apart from 2 plus 2 (you do get the right answer for that don’t you?).
You have just shown to everyone that you haven’t a clue about how to calculate linear regressions. Keep it up it is always great to see how absolutely stupid AGW deniers are. Dunning Kruger strikes again.
Ian,
I already posted that I was wrong.
VERNON was wrong!
VERNON was wrong!
VERNON was wrong!
VERNON was wrong!
VERNON was wrong!
VERNON was wrong!
There, that takes care of you next six posts.
You are such an arrogant SOB. Why not grow up, learn some science and be more civil and honest? Then perhaps you will be treated with a bit more respect.
Ian,
Since every post from you begins with a disparaging comment, that is kinda funny to hear you say someone else needs to be more civil and honest. I have ‘fessed up every time I have made a mistake. No, I do not consider disagreeing with you as making a mistake.
If you want civil and honest, try what gmo does, ie no name calling, no put downs, just argues the points mostly. So, if you want me to civilly address your posts, why not try that your self?
Martha
My God, Vernon is absolutely unteachable.
How many times have we been through this exact same discussion with him?
Vernon, please go to the time-out room.
Crap. We don’t have one. 😦
I am hopeful that his pattern of unrelenting and repetitive b.s. debunked and discussed here already ad nauseum, will soon result in the banning of his pathetic ass from this site.
It seems to me that Vernon is not the one who is unteachable. He actually looks at the data and analyses it while all you seem to do is repeat the AGW without any thought.
Vernon, in case you hadn’t noticed I have never name called or used ad hominems. I have merely described as accurately as I can your incompetence, arrogance, stupidity and dishonesty.
You called me names when I merely showed that you didn’t have a clue on what you were doing with linear regressions.
You are pathetic.
Okay, it looks like I have hit a brick wall in trying to explain feedback in climate science terms. As usual, if anyone wanted more on that feel free to ask. But since Vernon still seems stuck unable to accept that in climate positive feedback does not equal runaway, and I do not except Vangel to comment anything beyond that there is nothing additional to build from.
My latest concern is the woefully mistaken view Vernon gives on the greenhouse effect. It is so bizarre I am not even sure I can see what is trying to be described. If Vernon thinks that all GHGs do is delay energy getting out to space, how does Vernon explain the greenhouse effect (not even considering the modern human-enhanced part and looking just at the natural) that makes the earth warmer than it would be without an atmosphere including GHGs?
The starting steps of the earth being warmed by solar energy and emitting IR (LWR in Vernon’s terms) energy are correct. Indeed GHGs (and clouds) absorb some of the energy emitted from the earth’s surface, but then Vernon says the energy “re-radiates…out”. My interpretation from that and the rest of the paragraph is that Vernon incorrectly thinks CO2 only radiates energy toward space. That is so wrong I find it hard to believe Vernon thinks it, but from the context that is how I read it. CO2 and all the other atmospheric constituents emit radiation back out in _all_ directions. That means effectively half is radiated out toward space and half back toward the ground. So besides the sun as a heat source, there is a heat source of the atmosphere emitting energy also downward toward the ground.
I must point out that simplifying the atmosphere to a single layer is not really accurate and done just to be descriptive. To really understand and calculate what is going on the atmosphere has to be treated as many-layered, convection needs to be included, evaporation/condensation needs to be included… With many layers any given layer is getting absorbing energy from and emitting energy that is absorbed by other layers. But I think some of the fundamental concepts can be illustrated with the extreme simplification used above. One way to look at the greenhouse effect (again just for illustrative purposes and not for the actual physical process!) is as similar to a dam on a river or lake. As a dam can “trap” water that would otherwise flow out causing the level of the water in the river/lake to rise, the greenhouse effect sort of acts to “trap” energy that would otherwise flow out from the earth’s surface and raise the “level of the heat” at the earth’s surface.
I can understand confusion of the terminology used in climate for feedback. But this about the greenhouse effect is very basic and fundamental stuff, and again I am finding it hard to believe that Vernon has these ideas wrong.
gmo
Okay, it looks like I have hit a brick wall in trying to explain feedback in climate science terms. As usual, if anyone wanted more on that feel free to ask. But since Vernon still seems stuck unable to accept that in climate positive feedback does not equal runaway, and I do not except Vangel to comment anything beyond that there is nothing additional to build from.
The problem that you have is that you don’t even understand the definition of positive feedback. When scientists talk about positive feedback they are talking about a system response to external stimuli that leads to changes that reinforce the initial response and creating a cause and effect loop. This means that the system moves rapidly away from equilibrium but that is not what we see in real world climate observations. In fact, we see clear evidence of negative feedback as Lindzen and others have demonstrated.
I can understand confusion of the terminology used in climate for feedback. But this about the greenhouse effect is very basic and fundamental stuff, and again I am finding it hard to believe that Vernon has these ideas wrong.
I think that it is you who is having trouble with the concept. You might want to read up on the subject. Lindzen’s commentary might be a good start.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/30/lindzen-on-negative-climate-feedback/
gmo,
That is why I posted the definitions of both positive and negative feed back. I also pointed out why there is no lag in temperature due increases of CO2.
Vernon
gmo,
That is why I posted the definitions of both positive and negative feed back. I also pointed out why there is no lag in temperature due increases of CO2
But there is a huge lag. The ice core studies show temperature trends changing 800 to 2,800 years before CO2 turned up. [1] The studies confirm that the change in CO2 is an effect and not a driver of temperature change. [2]
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