Global Warming Movement Turns Cool
Let me warn you, this is a little longer than my usual posts here, but it was prompted by a big op-ed article in the Birmingham News this morning. Take the time to read it, if you dare. Seems like our local paper has settled on one side of the climate change debate, which is certainly their right. But, I have the right to publish this article as well….
Two years ago, it seemed like nothing could stop the global warming train. Most of the media, those in Hollywood, politicians (many on both sides of the cultural divide), and “enlightened environmentalists” were all telling us that man was causing runaway warming of the earth’s atmosphere, meaning global catastrophe only decades ahead for all of us.
Scary stuff.
The problem is that a majority of those in this almost religious movement have little training in atmospheric science, and little understanding of the issue. They jumped on the bandwagon because it matches their worldview, or pads their pocket. This issue has generated great wealth on both sides of the argument, and I need to say up front I have absolutely no financial interest in climate. I am paid the same regardless of whether man is involved in climate change or not, and I have never taken a dime for a speech on the subject.
The simple truth is that the anthropogenic global warming train has slowed to a crawl, and the riders are jumping off as the facts are discovered.
What is the truth? Lets begin with something we all can agree on. The climate IS changing. It has always changed, it is changing now, and it will always change.
Beyond that, here are some simple facts that make those left on the global warming train very uncomfortable:
*The earth is no warmer now than it was in 1998.
*Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but a gas indispensable to plant life. Plants, in turn, release oxygen, which sustains animal and human life.
*The primary greenhouse gas is water vapor, not carbon dioxide.
*The lack of solar activity in recent months suggests global cooling might be our biggest potential climate change problem in coming years.
*The planet has had weather disasters, extremes, and anomalies since it has been here. We just didn’t have 24 hour news channels and the Internet in prior decades to spread the news.
I have been doing the weather on local television for 30 years, and EVERY YEAR I have had people come up to me and tell me that they can “never remember the weather being this strange”.
Most of those that you see and hear speaking on the subject have little scientific knowledge. Here is a quote from Dr. Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, from an article he penned recently:
“Alarmists like Al Gore will use pseudo-scientific justifications and comparisons in their attempt to make a connection between carbon dioxide and global warming. Even though CO2 is necessary for life on Earth, the alarmists insist on calling it a pollutant, referring to our atmosphere as an “open sewer.” For instance, Gore likes to point out that Venus has far more CO2 in its atmosphere than the Earth does, and its surface is hot enough to melt lead. Therefore, more CO2 causes warming. But we also know that the Martian atmosphere has 15 times as much CO2 as our own atmosphere, and its surface temperature averages about 70 deg. F below zero. So you see, in science a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
Dr. James McClintock (marine biologist at UAB) today, in an op-ed piece published by the Birmingham News, claims that Antarctica is “warming quickly”. Dr. McClintock, I am sure, is an excellent marine biologist, and I would not even make an effort to challenge his knowledge of that science. But, what is his background in atmospheric science? And, where does that claim come from?
Here is what Certified Consulting Meteorologist (CCM) Joe D’Aleo says about this:
“The shattered part of the Wilkins ice sheet was 160 square miles in area, which is just 0.01% of the total current Antarctic ice cover, like an icicle falling from a snow and ice covered roof,” D’Aleo wrote on March 25. “We are very likely going to exceed last year’s record [for Southern Hemisphere ice extent]. Yet the world is left with the false impression Antarctica’s ice sheet is also starting to disappear,” D’Aleo added.
And, from climate scientist Ben Herman, past director of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and former Head of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Arizona: “It is interesting that all of the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) stories concerning Antarctica are always about what’s happening around the [western] peninsula, which seems to be the only place on Antarctica that has shown warming. How about the net ‘no change’ or ‘cooling’ over the rest of the continent, which is probably about 95% of the land mass, not to mention the record sea ice coverage recently.”
I also should note that the mythical UN IPCC “consensus” continues to crumble… Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist who specializes in optical waveguide spectroscopy from the University of Tokyo, and a top UN IPCC Scientist, calls global warming fears: the “worst scientific scandal in history” in the weblog of former Colorado State Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke.
Here is what Canadian climatologist Tim Ball says about the IPCC: “The IPCC is a political organization and yet it is the sole basis of the claim of a scientific consensus on climate change. Consensus is neither a scientific fact nor important in science, but it is very important in politics. There are 2500 members in the IPCC divided between 600 in Working Group I (WGI), who examine the actual climate science, and 1900 in working Groups II and III (WG II and III), who study “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” and “Mitigation of Climate Change” respectively. Of the 600 in WGI, 308 were independent reviewers, but only 32 reviewers commented on more than three chapters and only five reviewers commented on all 11 chapters of the report. They accept without question the findings of WGI and assume warming due to humans is a certainty. In a circular argument typical of so much climate politics the work of the 1900 (less than one percent of the scientific population) is listed as ‘proof’ of human caused global warming. Through this they established the IPCC as the only credible authority thus further isolating those who raised questions.”
I find it interesting that most of the predictions coming from the IPCC are based on computer model output. Those of us in the trench, who deal with the Earth’s atmosphere every day, know that computer model data is often horrible 24 hours in advance… how bad can it be out to 50 or 100 years?
The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine this month announced that 31,072 U.S. scientists (9,021 with PhDs) signed a petition stating that “… There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will cause in the future, catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate…”
I encourage all of you to read material on BOTH sides of the issue and make up your own mind. Mr Gore, the science is “not settled”, and the invitation for a debate remains wide open.
Heaven help us this fall when ABC television tells us that the world, as we know it, is about to end because of “global warming”. Never let facts get in the way of a good story, especially one that scares you to death.
I consider myself an environmentalist. There are some serious environmental issues out there. “Global warming” is not one of them. One of the best ways to become a truly environmentally concerned person is to walk the banks of an Alabama river or stream for a half day and pick up trash and garbage. Anyone want to join me?
June 22nd, 2008 at 3:54 pm
You’re spot on, James! It’s good to see some rational thinking from a prominent person who is qualified to speak on this subject.
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Been there ,done that-Right on James-at least once a year my brother and I clean the mile and a half of Little River between Desoto Falls and Hwy 117 in Mentone.We also cleaned up 1 mile of Hwy 117 in Mentone and picked up 22 large bags of garbage there( others with The Lookout Mountain Heritage Association worked that day).Makes me feel good to see it all clean while it lasts,
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:26 pm
It IS a scam, James. And I agree with you wholeheartedly. The problem is the extent to which the average person on the street believes this as “gospel” truth. Then, our nations’ policies and use of tax dollars are based on it. What can be done to discredit this? “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing….”
June 22nd, 2008 at 6:28 pm
MR. J.B. ELLIOT has pointed out numerous times in the blog the temperature
in Vladivostock in Antarctica this year lower than -100 F. and Winter cold
is at its’ lowest in July. This is not an anomaly but has happened many
times.Ice can last quite a while after a Winter like that!!!
June 22nd, 2008 at 6:50 pm
What’s the difference in a politician and an actor? I think we should be more worried about Skynet than global warming.
June 22nd, 2008 at 8:09 pm
James,
Shhh. . . I’m making A LOT of money perpetuating this myth.
June 22nd, 2008 at 8:59 pm
I, too, was somewhat perplexed by the article in this morning’s paper. Truth is you can sell far more newspapers, books, movies and speaking engagements with a crisis than you ever could with naturally occuring phenomena.
People see things in our own limited little area of time and space. It is a pet peeve of mine that weathercasters–and even the Arnold Swartzenegger voice on NWS’s weather radio–perpetuate things when they say, “The high today will be 90, and that’s ten degrees above average for this date.” “Average” is based on temperatures from all the way back to when recordkeeping began. Not only does that ignore millions of years of history, but it is a math exercise that smooths out a lot of temperature extremes!
People want simple answers to complex problems. Just like they expect murders to be solved in sixty minutes–less commercials–and wars to be won in three reels at the movie theater, they want to be able to solve any perceived crisis in a simplistic way. If we stop driving cars and using electricity, the polar bears will survive and New Yorkers won’t be paddling rowboats down Broadway.
It would be comical if it didn’t also mean the hysteria may have far more negative impact on society than the “crisis” we are supposed to be hysterical about.
Don Keith
http://www.donkeith.com
http://www.n4kc.com
http://www.n4kc.blogspot.com
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Perfectly put, James.
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:41 pm
“You’re spot on, James! It’s good to see some rational thinking from a prominent person who is qualified to speak on this subject.”
I wouldn’t quite call a “weatherman” without a college degree someone who is qualified to speak on this subject.
It is people like Mr. Spann and Mr. Al Gore who poison the scientific forum which should be used by people who have earned the right to debate the validity of global warming…and I tell both of them it’s not to late to go back to school and get their PhD. and then they can spout off whenever they want to…
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:52 pm
I’m glad to see that someone in the public shares my view on global warming and can see the money and power behind all the hysteria. I do think there are people within the movement that are trying to be conservative (resource-wise) and do things because they believe what they are doing is actually helping. The rest usually want control or money. It just smells to me like we’re losing freedom in some way, shape, or form because a bunch of people are on a bandwagon.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:03 pm
How does getting a PhD force an individual to tell the truth about scientific events? If for some reason Al Gore decided to go get a PhD, he probably will still tell things how he brainstorms them in his head to preach to the public, and would make him look even more credible since he has a title at the end of his name. Someone who is a master of his craft and has dedicated his lifetime into such a thing I would say is more credible in my eyes whether it be a NASA scientist or a TV weatherman. Would you believe your doctor that if he said drinking water causes cancer because a component of cancer is H2O? Oh yea, he must be credible because he has an M.D. on his name and all others with common sense on the subject are as wrong as ever.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Chris,
You certainly must agree that the opinion of 9,021 PhD’s does carry some weight… I’m sure that James and Algore appreciate your advice and we all can see that you must have a PhD — as evidenced by your own “spouting off”, as you so eloquently put it. I’m sure many PhD’s are insulted by your implication that their many years of school work are nothing more than a license to “spout off”.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Unfortunately, earning a PhD does not force an individual to tell the truth, and there are scientists on both sides of the argument that use that accomplish to push their agenda.
Using your logic, you would be comfortable letting a 30-year veteran operating room nurse perform open heart surgery on you because she watched a doctor do it for thirty years and she’s a master of her craft. Unfortunately for you, that doesn’t qualify her to perform the surgery, and you’d be a world of trouble if she did.
Hopefully you see the flaw in your logic, forecasting weather for Alabama for thirty years, albeit well, shouldn’t be a valid replacement for an advanced scientific research degree, and I’m sure Mr. Spann would agree.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:19 pm
There is no Global Warming – way too hot as it is.
I’m not going to H2#$LL because 1) No A/C – gotta have my A/C; 2) No Red Diamond or Milo’s Sweet Tea – ‘Nuff said; 3) No Ice Cream ; and 4) ALL Dogs go to Heaven.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Thanks for you comments Lawrence.
Yes they do carry some weight, as do the many scientists that support global warming, to clarify I was not “spouting off” about either side of the debate, I think one side is as ridiculous as the other.
As you requested, I do hold an advanced degree (M.S.) in Atmospheric Science, and I’m currently a PhD. Candidate in Atmospheric Science. So I am more than aware of the many years of school work required to earn a PhD.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Chris,
Oh, your lack of understanding makes me laugh. Seriously, it’s made for a great chuckle.
James does not need me to defend him, but I gladly will. He does have a college degree, in Engineering, plus he’s graduated Mississippi State’s meteorology program. He holds the seal of approval for his on-air forecasts from the National Weather Association and he is also an American Meteorological Society Certified Broadcast Meteorologist (CBM). What certifications do you hold?
Speaking from personal knowledge, I know people with Master’s Degrees who know little to nothing in their field. And I also know people with a doctorate who know even less. It’s one thing to know theory. It’s another to know reality.
Speaking of reality, do you care to retort anything which Mr. Spann has said? All I see from your posts is an attempt to elicit an emotional response from people (which is typical when the facts don’t support one’s argument.) Please, enlighten us to something we don’t already know. And as someone who’s a Ph.D. candidate, surely you know there are two periods in that title. Even someone without a Master’s Degree knows that.
June 22nd, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Well said
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:22 am
It’s amazing how uninformed and illogical beliefs such as those AGAINST global warming can spread and flourish amongst those of lower intelligence.
It’s science. It’s been proven. Get over yourselves – including you, James.
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:28 am
I would be happy to join you, James (and made that anouncement on the air tonight). Just let me know when you want to go. JB has my cell number or during the week, you can e-mail me at rgosnell@uab.edu.
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:21 am
Check out this Interactive US Energy Footprint Chart, an interactive United States Energy Consumption Footprint chart, illustrating Greenest States and more. This site has all sorts of stats on individual State energy consumptions, demographics and State energy offices – drill down to your local city.
http://www.eredux.com/states/
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:22 am
…..Here, here, shep! Now, if we could only get rid of the oily, noisy pontoon boats on Little River in Mentone! Hurricane Opal cleaned ‘em all out and washed ‘em over the dam/falls in 1995, but they’ve repopulated since then.
…..I enjoy reading these posts, Mr. Spann! I’m not educated enough in climatology to make my own decision regarding validity, but you certainly have earn a high level of trust with your years of service to this community! What disturbs me most about the global-warming camp is that vitriol seems to often be used, in place of facts…
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:54 am
Kurt W.
Anyone who does not share your viewpoint is of lower intelligence.
What a great argument. I am sure you must be a pro in the field of
debate.
Lawrence Weedov
June 23rd, 2008 at 5:34 am
Shouldn’t this discourse be on the global warning page?
FWIW-my brother-in-law, the astrophysicist, says we’re already too far along to save the life as we know it on this planet. Hence the current interest in
NASA. So I says, so be it, I’m quitting my job, fishing everyday, growing long hair
& contemplating my naval. His sister says “you do that Buster & you’ll be
contemplating your naval from the inside.” I go back to work this morning.
June 23rd, 2008 at 7:32 am
Readers please note that the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine’s petition is directly related to the 1997 Kyoto, Japan global warming agreement.
A lot scientific research has taken place since then.
Also note that the vast majority of Broadcast Meteorologists do not have any formal training or education in climate physics:
“The expertise of scientists actively researching climate
change is well beyond that of most professional meteorologists,
some of whom may only have basic training in weather
analysis and forecasting.”
http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/88/8/pdf/i1520-0477-88-8-1164.pdf
This same article points out what we see here on this blog:
“Alarmingly, many weathercasters
and certified broadcast meteorologists dismiss, in most
cases without any solid scientific arguments, the conclusions
of the National Research Council (NRC), Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and other
peer-reviewed research.”
A lot of the ‘anti anthropocentric climate change rants’ take on the tenor and tone of evangelistic preaching, not detailed analysis of peer reviewed scientific research. Leave the preaching to church, the bring the science out into the public.
Best regards,
Rod Scott
June 23rd, 2008 at 7:39 am
Ooops, I used the wrong word in my previous post. I used anthropocentric, instead of the correct term: anthropogenic. My apologies. Please mentally insert the correct term
Best regards,
Rod Scott
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:23 am
EXCELLENT post Rod! Thank you very much for posting it. Nice to see a departure from the string of juvenile insults that invariably invades this blog whenever a controversial topic is discussed.
Thank you again.
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:13 am
Rod:
What about James’ inclusion of . . .
The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine this month announced that 31,072 U.S. scientists (9,021 with PhDs) signed a petition stating that “… There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will cause in the future, catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate…”
They’re all scientists. They agree with James. And by the way, Al gore has what degree in science?
It basically boils down to this:
You can theorize damn near anything this day in age and find a group of qualified people to back you up. BUT TIME ALWAYS TELLS THE TRUTH. If you go back far enough, you’ll find global warming, and global cooling, and the process repeats itself. We DO need to take care of the environment. Even the Indians knew that. How about this? Don’t cut down a tree unless you can replant it. Don’t put out a harmful chemical into our water or air unless you can nutrilize it first (and the WORLD should enforce that–not just the US). Recycle what you can and don’t litter.
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:17 am
whenever someone starts off with a huge lie that can easily be exposed, anything they say after becomes suspect.
the huge lie is calling co2 pollution, as james said co2 is NOT pollution by any definition of the word.
this stuff was taught in 8th grade science, that the earth goes through warming and cooling in cycles = 8th grade science class in the 60’s.
that co2 is a minor gas in our atmosphere the plants use and afterwards release oxygen = 8th grade science.
to those suggesting a phd is required to undertstand this, i respond you should have paid attention in 8th grade science class.
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:15 am
All I ask is that everyone read the other side before blindly taking sides with whoever your hero weatherman, politician or scientist is. James challenges us to consider both sides and I think it would be best to accept that challenge before forming an opinion.
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:20 am
i would suggest that since this issue has been around a few decades that MANY people indeed have studied both sides and some of the opinions here are based on accurate information dervied from looking at both sides.
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:28 am
Here is a great article that introduces you to the facts about the climate and global warming, etc.
It would be a good place to start. It is from NOAA and is very honest and fair in its analysis.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html#INTRO
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:30 am
No climate scientist worth his salt will describe CO2 as pollution. For those who do want to “read more about it” check out:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1126.pdf
…where the dangers of rising CO2 levels are discussed, but the word pollution never appears in print. Beware this article on atmospheric physics is not for the faint of heart….it made my eyes glaze over a couple of times. However, it is at this level of science where any “debate” needs to be held.
Thanks Rebecca for saying this so well:
>>> We DO need to take care of the environment. Even the Indians knew that. How >>> about this? Don’t cut down a tree unless you can replant it. Don’t put out >>> a harmful chemical into our water or air unless you can nutrilize it first >>>(and the WORLD should enforce that–not just the US). Recycle what you can >>> and don’t litter.
Best regards,
Rod Scott
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:55 am
James Spann,
Maybe we can start a petition here on the blog and have it delivered to our government explaining why we spending so much money on a scam while at the same time people are starving and without shelter in are own country. What do you think?
It’s all politically motivated for you guessed it “money” along with the rest of the special interest groups in Washington trying to get your tax paying dollars. The top 1 percent of this country are worth about 23 trillion dollars and they are the ones who run the country. I like to call it corporate greed. Global Warming is indeed a money making scam just like many others that are funded by the government. Why don’t we focus on the things in this country like poverty,education and healthcare for the needy. The politicians will tell you this is their focus but really their focus is making sure the special interest groups remain satisfied which means the top 1 percent remain rich.
Nobody should be hungry in this country and nobody should be paying $4 a gallon for gas. The supply and demand explanation is nothing but an excuse or lie. Have a good day everyone.
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Average Atmospheric Scientist Salary ~ 100K / year
Average Oil Executive Salary ~ MILLIONS….
If those damn scientists just gave back a little and stopped pushing their agenda the world would be a better place….
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Rod…
Seems like you are a follower of James Hansen. In recent days, Hansen has suggested that the chief executives of large fossil fuel be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature. It is rhetoric at its worst, and even if one wishes to stand on a pro-AGW soapbox, when you start calling out opponents as criminals and openly suggest you will campaign against people in Congress and essentially are saying that those who disagree with you need to be shut up, even to the point of imprisonment, then you have moved beyond the pale.
See how the climate has changed since Hansen first appeared before Congress in 1988 with the initial “global warming” scare message:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HANSEN_AND_CONGRESS.jpg
I continue to read papers on both side of the issue, and welcome opposing opinion here. Thanks for the input, but be wary of Hansen. He is considered a total outlier by most in the atmospheric science discipline.
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:37 pm
The average position of a pendulum is straight down, but it doesn’t spend much time there.
The science is in no way settled nor has it proven anything. There are way too many holes in the AGW theory, but somehow these are just ignored. We’re going to get taxed to oblivion before this thing really becomes a joke…and then we won’t have enough money to pay our heating bills.
Every time we have a heat wave it’s blamed on global warming, but nothing is said when we have a cold spell. Just an anomoly, I guess.
The truly informed AGW believers are not being honest. I do believe there are many AGW believers who are honest but don’t have the facts as they exist today…they are misled by others.
Al Gore’s recent “green” renovations to his Tennessee estate have INCREASED his energy consumption by 10%! It was already way higher than average anyway. What a hypocrite! If he was honest, he would be living differently.
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:53 pm
or gore really knows his agw hypothesis is pure BS and understands his use of electricity isnt causing any problems.
simple common sense, IF co2 was trapping heat and causing warming it would be obvious because each DAY there would be more heat energy retained and it would multiply in effect and each day MORE heat would be retained than the day before and more heat total would be in our atmosphere.
even in the recent warming and cooling cycles of the last 200 years it is OBVIOUS that co2 rises AFTER the warming and that continued rise in co2 does NOT in any way stop the natural cooling cycles(we are in one now).
some of you trying to make folks presenting truth as being uninformed are either uninformed yourselves or trying to post FALSE info for some other reason.
the cause cant come before the effect and clearly the co2 rises AFTER the warming.
back to 8th grade science, warmer air CAN hold more greenhouse gas than cooler air.
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:59 pm
There is clearly global warning in the cooler areas of the planet and that has been clearly proven with the shrinkage of the ice surface in both poles. As far as elsewhere is concern, it is debatable but I can tell you there seems to be more and more frequent and/or intense heatwaves across some areas such as Europe and also in North America. Obviously, when the climate is already hot, the argument against global warning seems stronger.
What I have noticed though especially over the past years is that the variations of the weather are getting wilder and wilder during the past few winters – for example this year with the very early active start of the tornado season.
In my area in Ottawa, this wild fluctuation in conditions in short order is especially true albeit it seems winters are generally trending to be warmer with more and more thaws in January and February and more ice episodes. Also, with the more warmer seas waters from the Golf and the Atlantic, we’re seem to be getting the impression we’re getting more stronger storms then in the past. We’re also trending of having a lot less hard cold snaps (for our standards) of cooler then 10 below zero at nights and sub-zero (F) daytime highs.
Although, contrary to some, warmer winters does not necessarily mean less snow although there is greater threat for ice storms, thaws, heavy rains and damaging wind during the winter months.
In my area, 6 of the 12 snowiest winters have occurred since 1993 (1992-1993, 1993-1994, 1995-1996, 1996-1997, 2000-2001, 2007-2008) including this past near-all-time snowfall record of 172 inches (record is 175 inches in 1971). However, we’ve had at least 3 or 4 Green Christmas over the past 12 years, while usually 90% to 95% of the time we have a White Christmas, thus means at least 1 inch on the ground – here in Canada it is at least 2 centimeters of snow or 8/10 of an inch. Also, almost every single year in the past 15 years have been above seasonal particularly in the winter. Generally over that period about 8 or 9 months each year ends above seasonal with sometimes as much as by 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
We were used to high snowbanks, but this is getting less common now with snow depth usually at around 1 foot or even less as opposed to the times it was like over 2 feet. Also skating season at the world largest’s skating rink are getting much more shorter over the years – although this year it was greatly influenced by the snow pack in December where we set the all-time record for that month as well as in March.
Nevertheless, in most of Canada, more people believes in global warming compared to the southern US.
June 23rd, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Rod Scott previously made this quote:
“A lot of the ‘anti anthropocentric climate change rants’ take on the tenor and tone of evangelistic preaching, not detailed analysis of peer reviewed scientific research. Leave the preaching to church, the bring the science out into the public.”
It is funny, but in discussions I have had with friends, I have made the comment that Mr. Gore has raised the AGW to a level of religion. I have heard quotes on the radio where he refers to any disagreement with him as “heresy.” He refers to his opinion as a matter of “faith.”
And this quote I did find in writing in a few minutes,
“This is not a political issue. This is a moral issue.”
When you listen to the man, he has all the fervor of an evangelical preacher and the tolerance of the Spanish Inquisition.
I agree, take the preaching out of it. (By the way, this pertains to both sides.) Don’t make this a religious war, let’s look at the facts, all of them.
Ed Brown
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:24 pm
I agree with Ed’s point, both sides can benefit from staying with the science and straying from the preaching. There are too many ad hominem attacks going on in the “blogosphere” on both sides, everyone needs to drop the attacks on the people, and dig into the science.
And yes (to respond to an earlier post), I do read more than Hansen, he is on a list of about a dozen or two writers I try to keep up with. Hopefully Hansen’s comments alluded to earlier were mere hyperbole and not an actual heartfelt plan.
But I prefer to deal with Hansen’s scientific assertions on this issue. The same goes for Bill Gray…. the scientific claims and agruements and dissertations are a target for logical discussion, not the man.
Best regards,
Rod Scott
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:29 pm
The first asterisked point that James Spann made at the top of his post is “*The earth is no warmer now than it was in 1998.”
That statement is incorrect, though it is very commonly repeated. The graphs on this page reveal warming in two different surface temperature sets since 1998: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/08/31/garbage-is-forever/
The satellite temperature measurements likewise show warming: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/08/12/before-and-after/
But even if it were true that warming stopped “in 1998,” that would not counteract the evidence that warming continues. Why? Because warming still would be occurring at an even-more-rapid-than-usual pace since 1997, and ditto since 1999. In other words, if you “arbitrarily” pick 1998 as your starting point for looking at the trend, you see less warming than if you pick 1997 or 1999. That’s because 1998 was a very unusually warm year due to El Nino. It was an “outlier”–a bit of short-term, isolated noise overlaid on the overall, long term, trend of warming. It’s not reasonable to focus in on 1998 as the start of your trend measurement. But it’s also not reasonable to focus in on 1997 or 1999, or any other single year.
What is reasonable? To look at the overall, long-term trend, starting long before 1998. Notice that there are many short-term flat spots and dips, just as there are many short-term bumps such as the one in 1998. But those all happen on top of–in addition to–the continuing trend up.
Here’s an analogy: I’ve been gaining 1/2 pound of fat every month, *on average over three years*. The graph of my weight shows an upward trend across the three years. But I don’t gain 1/2 pound every month. Some months I gain less, some months none, some months more. Those show up as dips, flat spots, and bumps in the graph, but on top of–in addition to–the continuing trend up.
On Thanksgiving I ate a huge amount of food, and my weight at the end of that day was seven pounds more than I’ve _ever_ weighed! But over the next three days my weight dropped back down to about what it was on the day before Thanksgiving. If I graphed my weight starting at the end of Thanksgiving Day, I would feel quite proud of my dramatic weight loss, because for months I never weighed that much again! Unfortunately, 14 months later I discovered that the ever-creeping trend of 1/2 pound per month finally had made up that seven pound difference.
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Take a look at the Arctic ice cap, because it’s nearly gone. We’ve lost over half of the North Pole in less than a decade, and you’re telling me global warming is a scam? You are morally responsible for the inaction of less-studied people who believe the garbage you’re pedaling–pretending as if the scientific consensus isn’t rock solid.
Thirteen national science academies (including America’s) just released a joint statement ahead of the G8 meeting stating that we need to make a “fundamental social change” to meet what’s coming. You think that’s politically motivated? Listen, I know the difference between climate and the weather, but when 500-year floods start coming every 15, you have a problem on your hands.
Believe your own eyes, your common sense, and the overwhelming evidence. The climate is change, and seas are rising, fast. Major ice shelves are disintegrating left and right off Antartica–now in the polar winter! That’s never happened until this year, when a piece of Wilkins broke off in the midst of the coldest months.
The Incredible Disappearing North Pole
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/10/01/science/20071002_ARCTIC_GRAPHIC.html
So, how long are you planning on keeping this up, James? Will you believe when there’s no North Pole left and Santa’s workshop is on a barge?
Yours,
J. Sager
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Hello J…
Your information is old; the Arctic region has just gone though one of the coldest winters on record, and ice is expanding.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/02/15/arctic-ice.html
Sure looks like the North Pole is safe to me. it was brutal this winter over the Arctic. Brutally cold.
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Regarding my earlier comment that the long term trends are what matter, not short term noise: Here is a nice explanation with some moving averages in a graph: http://www.newstatesman.com/environment/2008/01/global-warming-lynas-climate
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:19 pm
James, you are failing to distinguish between thin and thick ice. The expansion of Arctic sea ice is a thin crust. What has not been replaced is the thick, multiyear accumulated (“perennial”) ice. Here is a map showing the extents of thin (young) versus thick (old) ice: http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?s=environment&c=&l=on&pic=080318-winter-ice-02.jpg&cap=Left%3A+February+ice+age+distribution+in+the+Arctic+during+normal+conditions+%281985-2000+average%29.+Right%3A+February+2008+Arctic+ice+age+distribution.+The+ice+in+the+Arctic+is+much+younger+than+normal%2C+with+vast+regions+now+covered+by+first-year+ice+%28ice+that+has+formed+since+last+summer%92s+melt%29+and+much+less+area+covered+by+multiyear+ice+%28ice+that+has+survived+at+least+one+melt+season%29.+Ice+that+is+6+years+old+or+older+shows+an+even+more+dramatic+decrease+in+2008+compared+to+average+conditions.+Credit%3A+NSIDC%2C+Courtesy+S.+Drobot%2C+University+of+Colorado%2C+Boulder&title=
Ice thickness is important, because thin ice melts away completely in the Summer, but thick ice loses only its surface skin and continues to reflect sunlight (preventing further warming).
An analogy: When you put an ice cube tray in your freezer, quickly there forms a thin skin of ice. Those “cubes” melt really quickly in your sweet tea.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:58 am
James Spann’s second italicized bullet point at the top of this post is “*Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but a gas indispensable to plant life. Plants, in turn, release oxygen, which sustains animal and human life.”
That does not contradict CO2 causing the Earth to warm. At all.
But I’m going to assume that what James intended was to claim that increasing CO2 has benefits that outweigh the costs of increasing planetary warmth. Unfortunately, plants don’t operate as simply as growing better when given more CO2. Other factors limit their growth, some plants such as weeds benefit more than other plants such as crops, and the compositions of many plants change–such as putting the extra growth into woody stalks instead of into leaves and fruit.
A comprehensive and up to date report on the effect of climate change on agriculture was published this May, by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. Just a few highlights:
- Grain and oilseed crops will mature more rapidly, but increasing temperatures will increase the risk of crop failures, particularly if precipitation decreases or becomes more variable.
- Weeds grow more rapidly under elevated atmospheric CO2. Under projections reported in the assessment, weeds migrate northward and are less sensitive to herbicide applications.
A summary is here: http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/feds-release-massive-climate-change-report-16553.html
The full report is available here: http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-3/final-report/default.htm
June 24th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
[...] Global Warming Movement Turns Cool [...]
June 25th, 2008 at 9:44 am
RE: #43 & #45:
More explanation of the _long_term_trend_ in Arctic sea ice loss and why it is important, including soon-to-be-published research on its effects on permafrost, is here: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/06/12/the-big-thaw/
June 25th, 2008 at 10:15 am
James Spann’s third asterisked bullet point at the top of this post is “*The primary greenhouse gas is water vapor, not carbon dioxide.”
That fact is not in dispute. But James is incorrect in contending that it makes “those left on the global warming train very uncomfortable.”
I’m going to guess that what James _meant_ to write is that water vapor’s effect on warming is independent of carbon dioxide’s effect, and overwhelms any effect that carbon dioxide has. Those claims are incorrect. Water vapor’s effect on warming is _dependent_ on carbon dioxide’s effects on warming. Water vapor _amplifies_ the effects of carbon dioxide.
In brief: The amount of water vapor in the air at a given temperature (“relative” humidity) is pretty constant. (Remember that we’re talking about large geographic scales. Of course locally the amount of water vapor varies even at a given temperature.) That’s because there’s plenty of liquid water available to go into the air if the air has room, and there are plenty of particles on which water vapor can condense to precipitate out of the air if the air no longer has room.
But the warmer the air is, the more room it has to hold water vapor. So the “specific” humidity increases as the air’s temperature increases.
Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases cause the air to warm. That warmer air retains more water vapor. That extra water vapor retains even more heat. That causes the air to hold more water vapor, and the cycle continues but quickly peters out (because the amplifying factor is less than 1). After that feedback cycle peters out, in the end it doubles the temperature increase that would have been due to carbon dioxide. If carbon dioxide alone would have increased the temperature by 1 degree, the amplifying feedback from water vapor ends up increasing the temperature by an additional 1 degree.
A slightly longer explanation, with links to more details, is here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm
An even longer and more technical explanation is here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/
June 25th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
As a federal government employee I can say without a doubt that we will produce information, ‘facts’, and management plans according to which way the wind blows politically. The popular thought in the United States is that climate change is human caused, therefore more information will be leaning to that side of the fence. This is another version of ‘follow the dollar’ except in this case it is ‘follow the votes’.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Tornado Tracker (Post #31) Says:
“Here is a great article that introduces you to the facts about the climate and global warming, etc.
It would be a good place to start. It is from NOAA and is very honest and fair in its analysis.”
Yep, it is about as unbiased as James Hansen. It is only honest, if you define evasion of inconvenient facts as honest. (Sort of the way you should write a letter to the IRS pleading for leniency: Always tell the absolute truth, but only the part of the truth that makes you look good.) It isn’t fair by any reasonable definition of the word.
One example: They feature the “hockey stick” graph and claim that today’s temperatures are greater than any in the last 1000 years; while neglecting to mention that this temperature reconstruction has been shown to contain so many flaws (if not outright fraud) as to be completely meaningless. The data processing algorithms, for example, have been shown to create “hockey stick” graphs from random inputs.
Another example is that they ignore the incontestable evidence that Solar activity is highly correllated with global temperature; then dismiss any connection with the Sun by saying that direct Solar output varability is too small to have much of an effect and we don’t know very much about other mechanisms where the Sun could effect weather. This leaves the impression that the Sun doesn’t have much to do with climate. In fact, Solar activity correllates with global temperatures MUCH better than CO2 concentration does. That you don’t have a theory to explain it doesn’t make the FACT go away. (And before someone mentions that correllation doesn’t mean causation: suggest a mechanism whereby the Earth’s global average temperature can effect Solar activity.)
The entire article is propaganda for AG
June 25th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
RE: #41
Tom,
Thank you so much for your explanation for global warming. I now understand by way of your Thanksgiving analogy that the reason for much of these variations is due to your being ‘full of sh*%’. Thank you so much for clearing that up.
June 25th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Tom,
CO2 absorbs IR energy in 3 wave lengths. Two of which are not in the right frequency to absorb energy from the suns warming of the earth. Leaving only the 15 micron wavelength. This energy is emitted into the air from the earth, and is also absorbed by water vapor. Since there is far more water vapor in the air, incremental increases in CO2 have less effect, than previously existing CO2 did.
If the CO2 – H2O positive feedback worked the way you say, we would have an unstable temperature system, with much larger temp swings. Any increase in temp, would cause both increased water vapor, and increased CO2 in the air, as the oceans out-gas CO2 with higher temps, which would be a self-perpetuating system. This does not happen.
There may have been some man-made warming, but with all the noise in the system, it will be dificult to ever detect it. It has run it’s course, and will always be far less than naturally occuring features of our climate system.
The satellites are telling us the climate is fine. Jim Hanson has lost his mind, and thinks the government should investigate people who think he is crazy. This house of cards is falling, faster than the temperature.
June 25th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
RE: #53
Thank you, Russ, for engaging in a civil conversation (compared to, say, #52).
Your concern that incremental increases have less effect than previously existing CO2, is a well-grounded concern. In fact, from 1900 to the 1940s that was generally accepted by scientists–so much so, that few people even tried to examine to what extent it was true.
Fortunately, part of the way science works is to take nothing for granted. So when in the 1940s the military researched how well airplanes’ infrared emissions could be detected by the enemy at various altitudes, scientists discovered that the infrared absorption characteristics change drastically as the altitude increases, because the pressure drops as you go higher. Here’s a brief explanation by Spencer Weart, from http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/langswitch_lang/en:
“(a) You’d still get an increase in greenhouse warming even if the atmosphere were saturated, because it’s the absorption in the thin upper atmosphere (which is unsaturated) that counts (b) It’s not even true that the atmosphere is actually saturated with respect to absorption by CO2, (c) Water vapor doesn’t overwhelm the effects of CO2 because there’s little water vapor in the high, cold regions from which infrared escapes, and at the low pressures there water vapor absorption is like a leaky sieve, which would let a lot more radiation through were it not for CO2, and (d) These issues were satisfactorily addressed by physicists 50 years ago, and the necessary physics is included in all climate models.”
There are more details, quite well written by Spencer, on the page from which I took that quote.
June 25th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
RE: #54
Russ, in the page I linked in my previous post, be sure to click on Spencer’s link to “Part II.” Given your apparent interest in things technical, I think you’ll enjoy that more technical explanation. Actually, I should just give you the link here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument-part-ii
June 25th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
RE: #53
Russ, regarding your concern that a positive feedback between CO2 levels and water vapor levels “would be a self-perpetuating system,” and that “This does not happen”:
Positive feedback does not mean runaway. If the amplification of the feedback is between 0 and 1, the feedback gets smaller in each iteration until it peters out. The increase in temperature due to CO2 causes the air to hold more water vapor, but not _much_ more water vapor. The increase in water vapor is enough to further raise the temperature by less than the original CO2-caused increase. Now that second (water-vapor-caused) temperature increase raises the temperature even less than the prior water vapor increase did, so the third round of temperature increase is even less than the last one. The cycle goes round and round, with smaller and smaller increases each time, until the cycle peters out because the next increase becomes zero. The closer the amplifying factor is to 0, the fewer feedback cycles happen before it peters out. The sum of all those rounds of increases is the “limit” of that “time series.”
In the case of CO2 and water vapor feedback, the limit is reached when the temperature increase from CO2 has been matched by the sum of the subsequent multiple feedback loops from the increasing water vapor.
You need to use methods from calculus to calculate the exact value that is the limit from any given positive feedback cycle. But you can approximate it by creating a spreadsheet in which each cell is, say, 10% more than the cell above it. (For example, the formula in cell B1 is A1*1.1, the formula in cell C1 is B1*1.1, and so on down the page.) The smaller the percentage increase, the faster the cells’ values converge on the limit.
June 25th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
#42 J Sager
You should be more careful when referring to “less-studied people.” I guess that group includes anyone who doesn’t agree with your opinion.
Please explain, even if we stipulate the melting you claim (which isn’t at all accurate)why you immediately jump to that as proof that human activity is the cause of it? How in the world has the earth gone into and out of ice ages for eons before humans were even here. Any introductory student to a Philosophy Logic class learns that confusing correlation with causation is a basic logical fallacy. Your “leap of faith” to your chosen conclusion is much more a product of grass-skirted religion then anything to do with empirical science.
How do you make the claims that the Wilkins Ice Sheet never broke off before. When ice moves from land out over water it will eventually break due to lack of support and tidal action – it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with temperature. When the AGWers show us the clips of the tidal glaciers collapsing as proof of God knows what, don’t they know that whether a glacier is advancing or retreating it will behave exactly the same once it is over open water? Anyone who does a little research can find this out for themselves.
Please sir, you are evidently the “less-studied” one so you should be very careful about playing the morality card. In fact, from everything I’ve read on the issue, I am convinced that we are at critically LOW levels of CO2 atmospheric volumes and if we are indeed entering a cooling period, we will need more CO2 to offset the negative impacts on agriculture and growing seasons.
If my sense of the situation is correct, it is actually YOU who is pushing the position that is immoral. Reducing CO2 at a time when it is needed to try and support plant life stressed from cooling is not only dumb, it is immoral due to how much misery it will cause.
If you do like James is suggesting and read the various points of view and studies from both sides of this issue, maybe you would find yourself “more-studied” and capable of coming to far different conclusions.
June 25th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
RE: #56
Sorry! The proper example formula for your spreadsheet should be:
In cell A1: =1
In cell A2: =1
In cell A3: =A2+0.1*(A2-A1)
In cell A4: =A3+0.1*(A3-A2)
and continue the pattern from A3 and A4, down the page.
June 25th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
RE: #58
I can’t type today. Sorry again. In the example formulas for the spreadsheet, cell A2 should have the value 1.1, so it is bigger than the value in cell A1.
June 25th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
The biggest thing of all that shoots the global warming alarmist down is their own 100% certainty that they know exactly what everything means, can predict the future with the same absolute certainty and can therefore, as Hansen has done, claim the right to tell us all what to do. Scuse me, but science ain’t like that!
It was this very thing that started me looking into both sides of the issue about 5 years ago. What an eye opener it has been.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:09 am
you don’t need to be a “climate scientist” to have a grasp of simple thermodynamics.
CO2 is not heat. it is at best “insulation” that prevents heat loss.
a good example is a cup of coffee. even if you insulate it I just don’t see how one can argue that it will get hotter. That will only happen by putting more energy into it (in the form of heat).
the heat comes from the sun. and the sun’s output varies. we do not control it.
June 26th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Stephen Schwartz of Brookhaven: climate sensitivity is 1.1 Kelvin
Discussed by Lubos Motl
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/08/stephen-schwartz-brookhaven-climate.html
And a nicely put together pdf on “The climatic effects of water vapour” by Ahilleas Maurellis and Jonathan Tennyson.
http://www.sron.nl/www/code/eos/atmos/h2o/PWMAY03.pdf
There is more than one way to skin a cat. The vapour came from the oceans mainly because they were warmed by the Sun, seems they have cooled slightly the past year or two. Here’s to palm trees in Scotland and an open passage due to natural causes, and some distance in terms of T between us and the next ice age. Co2 is helping the forests recover. Forests are more important than political shenanigans comparable to picking a horse in the grand national. The assumptions have many hurdles before they become FACT and something we should act on, the fact that politicians have been bullied into expensive action that may prove futile and is already costly in terms of cash – living standards and life is a sad testament to the lunacy of the left of centre environmental ne’er do wells.
Express an opinion according to your faith here:
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/reader-poll-james-hansen-calls-for-trials-of-energy-executives-what-next/
June 26th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
RE: #61:
aaron, your question is an excellent one, because discussions of the causes of global warming usually assume that the reader already knows that the role of the Sun is being accounted for. If you didn’t already know that, there is no way for you to figure it out from the way the discussions are phrased.
You are correct that it doesn’t make sense if the analogy is a cup of coffee.
But in fact, the theories, models, and observations all do include the Sun’s radiation onto the Earth, so a better example is an insulated mug under a heat lamp.
What CO2 and other greenhouse gases do is increase the insulation of the Earth, so more of the energy from the Sun that is absorbed by the Earth and re-radiated, is trapped next to the Earth.
At various times in the past, the amount of energy from the Sun hitting the Earth has increased, and the result has been warming of the Earth. But those increases in energy from the Sun have been due mostly (by far) not from increases in the Sun’s output, but from shortening of the distance from the Sun to the northern hemisphere of the Earth. That distance changes as a result of several cycles of Earth’s orbit and tilt, altogether called “Milankovitch cycles.” Those probably are the cause of the Earth’s past few ice ages. But those cycles cannot possibly have caused the warming in the past 150 years, because those cycles are way too slow. The next ice age can’t happen until at least 20,000 years from now.
Aside from those orbital distances, the Sun does brighten and dim. But only slightly–really, really slightly. Over the course of every 11 years the Sun goes through a regular cycle of brightening and dimming, but the bright half of that cycle counteracts the dim half, so the net result is no change of the Sun’s radiation hitting the Earth. In addition to all that, the Sun’s average brightness does change slightly, but sporadically. The climate models acknowledge that the changes in the Sun caused some of the changes in the Earth’s temperature up until about 1950. But from about 1950 until now, and certainly from the 1970s until now, the Sun’s brightness (averaged across its 11-year cycles) has been unchanged or has even fallen!
So changes in the Sun’s radiation hitting the Earth cannot explain at least the last 58 years of the Earth’s warming, and can explain only a tiny portion of the prior 70 years of Earth’s warming.
More info is available here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm
June 26th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
RE: #61 & #63:
aaron, more information is available here, on a page titled “Is the sun getting hotter?”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/acrim-pmod-sun-getting-hotter.htm
June 28th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
[...] To read more of this article by a veteran U.S. weather broadcaster, click here. [...]
June 29th, 2008 at 11:20 am
WHEN GORE LIED, PEOPLE DIED. “CHANGE”, IS THE RESULT OF “FEEL GOOD” POLITICAL POLICIES BASED ON AGW MANTRA. THE END PRODUCTS ARE LESS FREEDOM,MORE TAXES AND LESS JOBS, COLD DARK HOMES, LESS AFFORDABLE FOOD, AND SKY HIGH PRICES FOR CONSUMER GOODS. THE REAL ECONOMIC TSUNAMI WILL ARRIVE WHEN WINTER RETURNS THIS FALL. THERE WILL BE LESS EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE CHILDREN, AS SCHOOLS MAKE HARD BUDGET CHOICES BECAUSE OF HIGH ENERGY COSTS.
June 29th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
[...] I sure don’t have anything against them. They just seem to have a habit of op-ed pieces that hype anthropogenic global warming, or bash TV weather [...]
June 29th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Wow, it’s really disturbing not only to see our respected meteorologists throwing such a serious issue to the curb but to see so many in support of their views as well. Have any of you (inlcuding you, James) actually READ the entire IPCC report??? I highly doubt it. If you do, you learn that the issue at hand isn’t about more powerful hurricanes or the fact that weather in Bobsville, Alabama hasn’t changed in the past ten years (“it’s not warmer at MY house!!”). Instead it’s the results of long-term data from HUNDREDS of studies from across the globe over thousands of years—not over the course of one hundred years of climate data from a few stations in Alabama.
Is the hype a bit overplayed? Yes. But in the end, it’s about facts, not made-up data. I know several climate scientists personally, and trust me, if there are secret backroom meetings about perpetuating climate myths, they certainly haven’t been invited. Maybe we should all stop fighting over causes and follow James’s example: do what we can to be environmentally minded, both locally AND globally.
June 29th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Here’s a well-written introduction to the global warming debate. It’s in a nice narrative format, it’s got both text and video versions, and it’s not the least bit confrontational: “The Global Warming Debate: A Layman’s Guide to the Science and Controversy.” http://cce.890m.com/
For point-by-point addressing of arguments (rather than the above narrative coverage of many points), here is a great indexed site: Skeptical Science: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
Along the same lines, here is another indexed site, though I believe it’s not updated as often as the Skeptical Science site: http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics
June 30th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Anecdotes go both ways and prove nothing
While someone from Ottawa was saying — “We were used to high snowbanks, but this is getting less common now with snow depth usually at around 1 foot or even less as opposed to the times it was like over 2 feet….”
Just a few hundred miles south Concord NH had the second most snow in an entire winter going back to 1873 — incidentally the winter with the most snow in Concord NH — it was 1872 — the first year of their official records
Other observations from scanning the previous 69 posts:
When they say average — it’s just the last 30 years that are included – after all the original interest in climate for to know when to plant and when to harvest
Several very interesting comments about CO2 — But hey all missed one inconvenient observation:
Annually the CO2 level (as measured at the top of Mona Loa in Hawaii since the 1950’s — and presumably free from local sources) fluctuates while continuing to increase at a roughly continuous rate. Meanwhile, temperatures (based on the average over the available local surface temperature measurements) decreased for the first 20 years of CO2 record (until the mid 1970’s) and then began to and continued to increase for the next 20 years (until 1998) and now seem to have stabilized or begun to decrease again.
This doesn’t easily fit either the simple model that it’s the CO2 that makes us warm — or else why did the temperature first decease then increase and now stabilize, slowly decrease or certainly at the very least not increase as rapidly as the mid 1990s
This also doesn’t easily fit the model of the CO2 being released from warming seawater (think warming up a coke bottle) with some other source for the process warming of the seawater (volcanoes?)
So the simple answer is this:
1) it has been dramatically colder in North America in the past (as recently as the early 1800’s when we had the “Year without a summer”
2) it has been dramatically warmer in North America when the Vikings called Novo Scotia — Vineland for its extensive amount of grapes (also harvested in Scotland back then)
3) Human activity had nothing to do with either of those states of the climate
4) If you want a good guess — take a look up at the big yellow thing in the sky — without which it would be very very very cold (try the former planet of Pluto as a model)
Moral of the story — there is a lot that we don’t know about nature, life, climate, solar system, etc., etc — even if we have a Ph.D. — but especially if we are a politician or a politically connected scientist such as Hansen
Westy
PS: I have a quite decent Ph.D. in experimental physics from a quite decent and well respected university and I will be one of the first to admit that we just don’t know — but if I was going to listen to anyone it would be someone with real experience with weather and climate such as James or Joe D’Aleo — if you think otherwise take a couple of Hadley Cells and call me in the morning!
June 30th, 2008 at 9:26 am
RE: #70
WestHighlander wrote “This doesn’t easily fit either the simple model that it’s the CO2 that makes us warm.”
But climatologists do not propose a simple model that it’s CO2 that makes us warm. Simple explanations of the complex models that actually are proposed, and which deal with dates even before the 1950s, can be had in the sites I linked in #69.
June 30th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Thank you for coming out with this. Im not a Phd or anything, but its about time FACTS started trumping emotional unsupported garbage. Has anyone considered the impact of the earths wobble on on its axis relative our weather variability ESPECIALLY when its combined with other forces, live sun spot cycles, el nino, etc. This information needs to get out there, the snake oil salesmen need to be debunked. I have always said the 24 hour news has highlighted disasters and negative news and changed our perceptions. Someone belches in Noplace, USA and its on the news within the hour. Thanks.
June 30th, 2008 at 11:46 am
I saw Al Gore’s documentary. I have read a fair amount of information on global warming. I have a master’s in engineering and consider myself fairly intelligent.
From what I have read, the computer models for global warming can’t accurately model the sun. The sun is a key element to our climate.
Looking at temperature data over the last 100 years can be misleading. Addition of concrete and asphalt and buildings will raise the temperature of an urban area compared to an area undeveloped 100 years ago.
What percentage of scientists that support the current global warming theories are funded by government programs that would go away if current global warming theories were proved wrong?
The same scientists and media supporting global warming stated we were headed into an ice age in the 70’s.
No computer model can accurately model the climate. Looking at temperature data, ice thickness, etc. can give us an idea how things fluctuate over time but can this really be modeled accurately.
I agree that we should do everything we can to minimize our impact on the earth but we can’t control the climate anymore than we can control nature.
June 30th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Interesting article from David Deming, a geophysicist, an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis and an associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jun/29/getting-sensible-on-energy/
“Global warming is a fraud and a hysterical scare tactic. Recent warming trends are very modest, and well within the range of natural variation. Predictions of future warming are based on speculative computer models whose accuracy cannot be evaluated or even tested. Sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere is at the highest level since satellite monitoring began in 1979. Last summer there was record low snowmelt in Antarctica. During April this year, 1,185 new all-time record low temperatures were recorded at U.S. weather stations.
Given these facts, it is difficult to see how global warming can be real, or how we can be in the middle of a “climate crisis.” But when these data are related to environmentalists, there is no sense of relief. Instead, it makes them angry that they might be deprived of their primary excuse to make war on civilization.”
June 30th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
RE: #72
Mike C. wrote “Has anyone considered the impact of the earths wobble on on its axis relative our weather variability ESPECIALLY when its combined with other forces, live sun spot cycles, el nino, etc.”
Mike, that is an insightful question. The answer is “yes,” hundreds of scientists have spent decades examining all those issues, and that is the background with which those scientists have resoundingly concluded that humans are accelerating long-term, global, climate warming. You can find introductory explanations of all the factors you mentioned, at the sites I linked in my comment #69 above.
(A point of clarification: “Weather” and “weather variability” are different from “climate.” Climate is, by definition, long term, whereas weather is, by definition, short term variation on top of climate.)
June 30th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
James Spann, thanks for keeping Alabama in the middle ages. Not even the most amateur skeptic would use the arguments you made.
*The earth is no warmer now than it was in 1998.
You can’t just pick an arbitrary year. Climate is a 30 year period. 17 of the 20 hottest years on record have occurred since 1970. 1998 and 2005 tied for the hottest.
*The primary greenhouse gas is water vapor, not carbon dioxide.
First some basics. Long-wave (or thermal) radiation is emitted from the surface of the planet and is largely absorbed in the atmosphere. Water vapour is the principle absorber of this radiation (and acknowledged as such by everybody). But exactly how important is it? In terms of mass, water vapour is much more prevalent (about 0.3% of atmospheric mass, compared to about 0.06% for CO2), and so is ~80% of all greenhouse gases by mass (~90% by volume). However, the radiative importance is less (since all molecules are not created equal).
While water vapor is indeed the most important greenhouse gas, the issue that makes it a feedback (rather than a forcing) is the relatively short residence time for water in the atmosphere (around 10 days).
Only the stratosphere is dry enough and with a long enough residence time (a few years) for the small anthropogenic inputs to be important. In this case (and in this case only) those additions can be considered a forcing.
*The lack of solar activity in recent months suggests global cooling might be our biggest potential climate change problem in coming years.
There has been no trend in solar activity in the past 50 years.
Every major scientific organization on the planet has issued statements on the urgency to combat human caused climate change. Name me one that doesn’t. And not that ridiculous OISM. It has one employee who isn’t a climate scientist. The petition you cite has such luminaries as ‘Hawkeye’ pierce Dr. Frank Burns, (MASH), Geri Hallwell (Spice Girl). What a sham.
the following institutions specializing in climate, atmosphere, ocean, and/or earth sciences have issued statements stating that AGW is an urgent problem.
NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
State of the Canadian Cryosphere (SOCC)
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Royal Society of the United Kingdom (RS)
American Geophysical Union (AGU) (around 50,000 members)
American Institute of Physics (AIP)
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
American Meteorological Society (AMS)
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)
Max Planck Institute
American Association of State Climatologists (AASC)
British Antarctic Survey
And these from related fields
National Research Council
Stratigraphy Commission Geological society of London
American Association of Petroleum Geologists
American Chemical Society
National Academy of Sciences (US),
Royal Society (United Kingdom),
Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Science Council of Japan,
Russian Academy of Sciences,
Academia Brasiliera de Ciências (Brazil),
Royal Society of Canada,
Académie des Sciences (France),
Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany),
Indian National Science Academy,
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy),
Australian Academy of Sciences,
Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts,
Caribbean Academy of Sciences,
Indonesian Academy of Sciences,
Royal Irish Academy,
Academy of Sciences Malaysia,
Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand,
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Geological society of America
June 30th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Hello H.H…
Many points to make here… since you don’t trust anyone from Alabama… here are other notes in recent days from people that don’t live here…
Concerning solar activity, this was published over the weekend by the Astronomical Society of Australia:
“Based on our claim that changes in the Sun’s equatorial rotation rate are synchronized with changes in the Sun’s orbital motion about the barycentre, we propose that the mean period for the Sun’s meridional flow is set by a Synodic resonance between the flow period (~22.3 yr), the overall 178.7-yr repetition period for the solar orbital motion, and the 19.86-yr synodic period of Jupiter and Saturn. It supports the contention that the level of activity on the Sun will significantly diminish sometime in the next decade and remain low for about 20 – 30 years. On each occasion that the Sun has done this in the past the World’s mean temperature has dropped by ~ 1 – 2 C. ”
http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/138/paper/AS06018.htm
*The hottest years on record were in the 1930s; the 1998 spike by NASA was corrected due to bad data.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=8383
*And, forget 1998… lets go back to Hansen’s first “global warming” message before congress in 1988. The globe is now cooler:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HANSEN_AND_CONGRESS.jpg
As I have said before, there is great corruption on BOTH sides of this issue due to the tremendous wealth potential. I have no financial interest in either side; I am simply seeking the truth.
June 30th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
i think you*ve hit the nail on the head!! these global warmers think they know it all!! truth is i*ve kept up with the weather for chattanooga tn. since 1879 looks to me that the 1930^s saw some of the hottest weather across the usa. many all-time record highs were set then that have not been touched! of course we have warm weather at times. i remember the 60^s and 70*s had some of the coldest winters across this country. they were hollering the ice age is coming!!!! it all runs in cycles and we have computers now that seems to make it all sound worse!! i believe some of the heat records being set is because the number of high rises , concrete buildings and all these paved roads causes the heat to rise in the large city, like here its usually 5-7 degrees warmer than other areas out side of town.
June 30th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
RE: #77
James, your claim that “The hottest years on record were in the 1930s” simply is untrue, unless you are, irrelevantly, talking about only the lower 48 states of the USA, which are less than 2% of the _globe’s_ surface.
“Global” warming is about the entire _globe_. Climate models do not and never have claimed that the globe will warm uniformly, nor that every single spot on Earth will get warmer. Here is just one of dozens of places where you can see the actually relevant data for the _globe_: http://cce.890m.com/?page_id=17. See also the other links I provided in my comment #69.
June 30th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
RE: #77
James, your statement that the globe is now cooler than it was in 1988 is technically correct only if you include weather, so your statement is at best incorrect in regard to climate, and at worst disingenuous.
“Global climate warming” is not about weather. It is not about climate plus weather. It is not about long-term trends plus short-term variations. It is not about a carefully chosen starting month versus a carefully chosen ending month. It is not about signal plus noise.
In the graph you linked to, draw a trend line–a least-squares regression line that best fits all the data. It goes up. Because it better reflects climate, than does _any_ line drawn between _any_ two months, or _any_ two years. Look at the graphs here, for legitimate information about _climate_: http://cce.890m.com/?page_id=17
June 30th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
All the references that you are pointing to really don’t prove your point Tom. All they do is prove my point that you can’t model global warming. Anyone that says they can is fooling themself. You can present all the statistics that you want but the scientists are running away from the actual ability to model what will happen in the future. All this data that you are referencing really can’t predict what will happen in the future.
July 1st, 2008 at 7:08 am
[...] Beyond that, here are some simple facts that make those left on the global warming train very uncomfortable: [...] Read more from the Weather Blog [...]
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:26 am
As a general rule for such articles, the people and organizations that are professionaly dealing with climate will never be cited.
The main organization is the IPCC. This is what it concluded by the end of last year:
—
Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures
since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the
observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.
7 It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic
warming over the past 50 years averaged over
each continent (except Antarctica) (Figure SPM.4). {2.4}
During the past 50 years, the sum of solar and volcanic
forcings would likely have produced cooling. Observed patterns
of warming and their changes are simulated only by
models that include anthropogenic forcings. Difficulties remain
in simulating and attributing observed temperature
changes at smaller than continental scales.
—
Basically this very scientific assessment says there is no mathematical proof for anthropogenic causes of recent warming, but aside from this impossible requirement the case for anthropogenic causes is well established. The case also gets stronger every year, as a cursory look at IPCC-reports over the past years will show.
Therefore, the statement “The simple truth is that the anthropogenic global warming train has slowed to a crawl, and the riders are jumping off as the facts are discovered.” is nonsensical.
Worse still: “What is the truth? Lets begin with something we all can agree on. The climate IS changing. It has always changed, it is changing now, and it will always change.” – Who cares what happened sixty million years ago? We’re dealing with rapid change NOW. Will the author of this piece sit back and relax as a huge comet approaches earth just because such objects have sometimes hit the planet in the past? I don’t think so.
Another item that will always be neglected wholesale by the skepticists is het phenomenon of La Niña. Let it be mentioned here, then.
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:30 pm
RE: 77
Concerning solar activity, this was published over the weekend by the Astronomical Society of Australia:
There is a vague numerological connection between the orbit of Jupiter (roughly 10 years) around the sun and the length of an average solar cycle. Ever since this was noted (decades ago) people have hypothesized that the latter is connected to the former. This paper is just an extension on that theme. The complete absence of any force, mechanism or physics that could – even theoretically – make a link has not apparently been a deterrent. Why this has any implication for climate is .. mysterious.. to say the least
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:02 pm
RE: 77 & 84
In addition to the vanishingly small chance of that prediction of lowered solar radiation output coming true (as hh Bounty quoted Gavin Schmidt in #84), any resultant cooling would be offset by the Earth’s warming from greenhouse gases.
At best, that would give us only a scant few years of slower pace of warming before the solar output increased again, at which time we still would have all that greenhouse gas insulation, and therefore we would still be in huge thermal trouble.
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:09 am
RE: #85
I’m not saying, nor are any climate scientists, that we know the Sun’s average output (averaged across its 11-year cycles) will remain as constant or negative as it has over the last 50 years.
Predictive models of the Sun’s output (aside from the 11-year cycles) are highly speculative. Folks who complain about uncertainties in Earth climate models shouldn’t dare predict the Sun’s output. Any time, the Sun’s output could increase or decrease or remain the same. We just don’t know.
What we do know is that human-caused increases in the amount of greenhouse gas are, and will continue to, increase the global temperature. That will happen no matter what the Sun does, on top of any effects from changes in the Sun. That’s a problem while the Sun’s output stays constant. That’s a problem if the Sun’s output increases. It’s still a problem even if the Sun’s output decreases, because the most likely sizes of the Sun’s decreases would cause quite small decreases in the Earth’s temperature, not nearly enough to offset the increases in temperature from greenhouse gases and the attendant feedbacks.
July 3rd, 2008 at 6:50 am
What is missing in atmospheric science is humility. I don’t know what you do for a living, but for one that has been in the trenches for 30 years forecasting weather on a daily basis, the older you get, the more we understand how much we don’t know. You sound like you have unlocked the mystery of forecasting the state of a chaotic fluid that surrounds a planet out to 100 years. Good luck with that.
Gridded global models can be horribly wrong only 24 hours out; how in the world can you know what the state of the climate will be in 100 years from models?
The best way of climate prediction is simply looking at the past.
Climatologist Roger Pielke, Sr. has used IPCC’s estimates of climate forcing to calculate the contribution of CO2 to recent climate change. Pielke makes very conservative (worst-case) assumptions in considering the impacts of greenhouse gases, black carbon, tropospheric ozone, and solar radiation. This analysis ignores land use changes, which have been demonstrated to affect climate in a significant way, and cosmic rays, which affect cloud cover and thus can lead to significant climate changes.
Pielke’s estimate is that CO2 is responsible for 28% (at most) of the human-caused changes. If natural variations do occur (and it’s very hard to argue that they do not) then this value decreases. But even if one assumes that the entire 0.6 deg C increase since 1900 is due to human effects, Pielke’s estimate would suggest a CO2 contribution of only 0.17 deg C.
Modern temperatures remain lower than other periods within the Holocene (since the last Ice Age). Geologists and paleoclimatologists believe that the warmest conditions in the Holocene occurred several thousand years before Christ, and that several such episodes occurred.
It is a good thing we are all searching for the truth, but anyone, including you and me, that will tell you the state of the global climate in 50 or 100 years is dealing with wild speculation.
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:57 am
Tom — Stop sucking Algore’s coolaid through a crack-pipe
Computer Models (with which I’ve some intimate relationships) have one fundamental feature that is unarguable — You can not accurately depict aspects of nature that is not explicitly included in the model — this is a somewhat more precise was of saying
GIGO — translation — Garbage In Garbage Out
For example I throw a ball through the air with an initial velocity (speed and angle) and then observe that it landed somewhere down range — the equation of motion of a baseball appears to be quite simple — F=MA
For a computer model this translates into repeating endlessly the simple computation of V = old V + Delta V
where Delta V = F/M Delta T
Once you have all the V’s then the position in each dimension is given by
X or Y or Z = X0 (the initial position) + V Delta T
And repeat the above procedure until the ball comes to rest or you decide to stop
However — I have to put All of the Relevant Physics (I can usually exclude Quantum and Relativistic Effect for most baseball tosses) into the definition of F
if the only force that I include is gravity as in g = constant (neglecting how g varies from one place on the surface of the earth to another and ignoring the decrease of g with altitude) — my computer model can be made to fit the landing site by jiggling the available parameters of M and g — the trajectory will be completely wrong because I haven’t included the obvious effect of air resistance
So to make my model better — I can include a simple drag force that is proportional to the size of the ball (actually projected area) and the square of the speed of motion — It’s a better model but still not even close to the basis of what is going on
So I decide to improve the model further by taking into account the average roughness of the surface of the ball (this involves a parameter known as Reynolds Number) — this is still a better model
However, If I want to accurately enough predict the motion of the ball for a major league outfielder to catch it — i’d better include the effect of the rotation of the ball and something known as the Magnus effect
Climate Models are vastly more complicated than the above because the climate is a very very complex system — To produce any kind of agreement with the past — they must fiddle with free parameters
Unfortunately, due to the limitations of the worlds fastest super computers — No existing climate model has a sufficiently fine scale to include individual thunderstorms (over even mountains smaller than the Rockies (think surface roughness of the baseball) — yet we know that Tropical Thunderstorms are one of the major mechanisms involved in transport of heat from the Tropics toward the Poles and Mountain Ranges have a profound impact on local climate (think rain-shadow)
In point of fact – Nowhere in the current models are there any clouds at all — despite the fact that clouds both enhance the greenhouse effect (if they are low and thick) and reduce the greenhouse effect (if they are high and thin by reflecting incoming solar radiation back into space)
Moral of the story — Garbage IN — Garbage OUT — definitely applies to climate models
Finally — the Late Ed Lorentz of MIT — known for the infamous “Butterfly Effect” — showed in the early 1960’s that there are fundamental limits to the mathematical predictability of complex systems
Given that Climate involves the complex interaction of Solar Photospheric brightness – so-called solar constant – although of course it varies (not modeled), Solar Atmosphere / Solar Wind / Solar Magnetic Field (none modeled), Earth’s Magnetosphere (not modeled), Upper Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (neither modeled), Clouds and Thunderstorms (neither modeled), Trace gas exchanges (not modeled), natural sources of CO2 (incompletely modeled), snow cover reflectivity (not modeled), ocean reflectivity (not modeled), ocean wave / air interface (not modeled), natural and human modified land surfaces (not modeled), ice transport (not modeled), volcanoes (not modeled) as well as undoubtedly others that we don’t even know about as well as the hundreds of things that are already included
This is essentially an exercise in futility — since we can’t even predict the path and evolution of thunderstorms on the timescale of ten of minutes
Take two Hadley Cells and Call Me in the Morning
Westy
PS did I mention that Galactic Cosmic Rays influence the incidence of cloudiness and that the strength of the Sun’s Magnetic Field influences the penetration of Galactic Cosmic Rays into the vicinity of the Earth and that the Solar Magnetic Field changes in a complex way with time (proxy is the number of Sun Spots) and that we can’t even know in advance how many Sun Spots that we’ll see in the next 5 years — well…
Take two more Hadley Cells and Call Me on Monday (I’m on holiday)
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:03 am
Tom
Computer Models (with which I’ve some intimate relationships) have one fundamental feature that is unarguable — You can not accurately depict aspects of nature that is not explicitly included in the model — this is a somewhat more precise was of saying
GIGO — translation — Garbage In Garbage Out
For example I throw a ball through the air with an initial velocity (speed and angle) and then observe that it landed somewhere down range — the equation of motion of a baseball appears to be quite simple — F=MA
For a computer model this translates into repeating endlessly the simple computation of V = old V + Delta V
where Delta V = F/M Delta T
Once you have all the V’s then the position in each dimension is given by
X or Y or Z = X0 (the initial position) + V Delta T
And repeat the above procedure until the ball comes to rest or you decide to stop
However — I have to put All of the Relevant Physics (I can usually exclude Quantum and Relativistic Effect for most baseball tosses) into the definition of F
if the only force that I include is gravity as in g = constant (neglecting how g varies from one place on the surface of the earth to another and ignoring the decrease of g with altitude) — my computer model can be made to fit the landing site by jiggling the available parameters of M and g — the trajectory will be completely wrong because I haven’t included the obvious effect of air resistance
So to make my model better — I can include a simple drag force that is proportional to the size of the ball (actually projected area) and the square of the speed of motion — It’s a better model but still not even close to the basis of what is going on
So I decide to improve the model further by taking into account the average roughness of the surface of the ball (this involves a parameter known as Reynolds Number) — this is still a better model
However, If I want to accurately enough predict the motion of the ball for a major league outfielder to catch it — i’d better include the effect of the rotation of the ball and something known as the Magnus effect
Climate Models are vastly more complicated than the above because the climate is a very very complex system — To produce any kind of agreement with the past — they must fiddle with free parameters
Unfortunately, due to the limitations of the worlds fastest super computers — No existing climate model has a sufficiently fine scale to include individual thunderstorms (over even mountains smaller than the Rockies (think surface roughness of the baseball) — yet we know that Tropical Thunderstorms are one of the major mechanisms involved in transport of heat from the Tropics toward the Poles and Mountain Ranges have a profound impact on local climate (think rain-shadow)
In point of fact – Nowhere in the current models are there any clouds at all — despite the fact that clouds both enhance the greenhouse effect (if they are low and thick) and reduce the greenhouse effect (if they are high and thin by reflecting incoming solar radiation back into space)
Moral of the story — Garbage IN — Garbage OUT — definitely applies to climate models
Finally — the Late Ed Lorentz of MIT — known for the infamous “Butterfly Effect” — showed in the early 1960’s that there are fundamental limits to the mathematical predictability of complex systems
Given that Climate involves the complex interaction of Solar Photospheric brightness – so-called solar constant – although of course it varies (not modeled), Solar Atmosphere / Solar Wind / Solar Magnetic Field (none modeled), Earth’s Magnetosphere (not modeled), Upper Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (neither modeled), Clouds and Thunderstorms (neither modeled), Trace gas exchanges (not modeled), natural sources of CO2 (incompletely modeled), snow cover reflectivity (not modeled), ocean reflectivity (not modeled), ocean wave / air interface (not modeled), natural and human modified land surfaces (not modeled), ice transport (not modeled), volcanoes (not modeled) as well as undoubtedly others that we don’t even know about as well as the hundreds of things that are already included
This is essentially an exercise in futility — since we can’t even predict the path and evolution of thunderstorms on the timescale of ten of minutes
Take two Hadley Cells and Call Me in the Morning
Westy
PS did I mention that Galactic Cosmic Rays influence the incidence of cloudiness and that the strength of the Sun’s Magnetic Field influences the penetration of Galactic Cosmic Rays into the vicinity of the Earth and that the Solar Magnetic Field changes in a complex way with time (proxy is the number of Sun Spots) and that we can’t even know in advance how many Sun Spots that we’ll see in the next 5 years — well…
Take two more Hadley Cells and Call Me on Monday (I’m on holiday)
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:35 am
“You sound like you have unlocked the mystery of forecasting the state of a chaotic fluid that surrounds a planet out to 100 years.”
If you put a pan of water on the fire and stir it, you will have the mystery of forecasting the state of that chaotic fluid in the pan. But there is one parameter you can make absolutely certain predictions for. It is temperature and it will rise.
The increasing greenhouse effect is kind of the same thing.
Using the pan of water metaphor again: the first seconds it will be hard to find any statistically significant temperature change in that water. Still, the temperature evolution remains easy to predict.
Now look at the 1000-years graphs of global temperature. The first few ’seconds’ have obviously passed.
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:07 am
Janine… where are you getting your “global temperature” data prior to 1880?
http://www.longrangeweather.com/images/gtemps.gif
We should be just as concerned over the potential for global cooling in coming decades. Again, nobody knows where the climate is going; it is going to do what it is going to do.
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:35 pm
RE:87
Climatologist Roger Pielke, Sr. has used IPCC’s estimates of climate forcing to calculate the contribution of CO2 to recent climate change.
from Realclimate:
how can we define the attribution when we have multiple different forcings – some with warming effects, some with cooling effects that togther might cancel out? Imagine 3 forcings, A, B and C, with forcings of +1, +1 and -1 W/m2 respecitively. Given the net forcing of +1, you could simplistically assign 100% of the effect to A or B. That is pretty arbitrary, and so a better procedure would be to stack up all the warming terms on one side (A+B) and assign the atribution based on the contribution to the warming terms i.e. A/(A+B). That gives an attribution to A and B of 50% each, which seems more reasonable. But even this is ambiguous in some circumstances. Imagine that B is actually a net effect of two separate sources (I’ll give an example of this later on), and so B can alternately be written as two forcings, B1 and B2, one of which is 1.5 and the other that is -0.5. Now by our same definition as before, A is responsible for only 40% of the warming despite nothing having changed about understanding of A nor in the totality of the net forcing (which is still +1).
A real world example of this relates to methane and ozone. If you calculate the forcings (see Shindell et al, 2005) of these two gases using their current concentrations, you get about 0.5 W/m2 and 0.4 W/m2 respectively. However, methane and ozone amounts are related through atmospheric chemistry and can be thought of alternatively as being the consquences of emissions of methane and other reactive gases (in particular, NOx and CO). NOx has a net negative effect since it reduces CH4, and thus the direct impact of methane emissions can be thought of as greater (around 0.8 W/m2, with 0.2 from CO, and -0.1 from NOx) . Nothing has actually changed – it is simply an accounting exercise, but the attribution to methane has increased.
Is there any way to calculate an attribution of the warming factors robustly so that the attributions don’t depend on arbitrary redefinitions? Unfortunately no. So we are stuck with an attribution based on the total forcings that can exceed 100%, or an attribution based on warming factors that is not robust to definitional changes. This is the prime reason why this simple-minded calculation is not discussed in the literature very often. In contrast, there is a rich literature of more sophisticated attribution studies that look at patterns of response to various forcings.
Estimated time series of forcings can be found on the GISS website. As estimated by Hansen et al, 2005 (see figure), the total forcing from 1750 to 2000 is about 1.7 W/m2 (it is slightly smaller for 1850 to 2000, but that difference is a minor issue). The biggest warming factors are CO2 (1.5 W/m2), CH4 (0.6 W/m2, including indirect effects), CFCs (0.3), N2O (0.15), O3 (0.3), black carbon (0.8), and solar (0.3), and the important cooling factors are sulphate and nitrate aerosols (~-2.1, including direct and indriect effects), and land use (-0.15). Each of these terms has uncertainty associated with it (a lot for aerosol effects, less for the GHGs). So CO2’s role compared to the net forcing is about 85% of the effect, but 37% compared to all warming effects. All well-mixed greenhouse gases are 64% of warming effects, and all anthropogenic forcings (everything except solar, volcanic effects have very small trends) are ~80% of the forcings (and are strongly positive). Even if solar trends were doubled, it would still only be less than half of the effect of CO2, and barely a fifth of the total greenhouse gas forcing. If we take account of the uncertainties, the CO2 attribution compared to all warming effects could vary from 30 to 40% perhaps. The headline number therefore depends very much on what you assume.
Recently, Roger Pielke Sr. came up with a (rather improbably precise) value of 26.5% for the CO2 contribution. This was predicated on the enhanced methane forcing mentioned above (though he didn’t remove the ozone effect, which was inconsistent), an unjustified downgrading of the CO2 forcing (from 1.4 to 1.1 W/m2), the addition of an estimated albedo change from remote sensing (but there is no way to assess whether that was either already included (due to aerosol effects), or is a feedback rather than a forcing). A more appropriate re-calculation would give numbers more like those discussed above (i.e. around 30 to 40%).
But this is game anyone can play. If you’re clever (and dishonest) you can take advantage of the fact that many people are unaware that there are cooling factors at all. By showing that B explains all of the net forcing, you can imply that the effect of A is zero since there is nothing apparently left to explain. Crichton has used this in his presentations to imply that because land use and solar have warming impacts (though he’s simply wrong on the land use case), CO2 just can’t have any significant effect (slide 18). Sneaky, eh?
But does the specific percentage attribution really imply much for the future? (i.e. does it matter that CO2 forced 40% or 80% of 20th Century change?). The focus of the debate on CO2 is not wholly predicated on its attribution to past forcing (since concern about CO2 emissions was raised long before human-caused climate change had been clearly detected, let alone attributed), but on its potential for causing large future growth in forcings. CO2 trends are forecast to dominate trends in other components (due in part to the long timescales needed to draw the excess CO2 down into the deep ocean). Indeed, for the last decade, by far the major growth in forcings has come from CO2, and that is unlikely to change in decades to come. The understanding of the physics of greenhouse gases and the accumulation of evidence for GHG-driven climate change is now overwhelming – and much of that information has not yet made it into formal attribution studies – thus scientists on the whole are more sure of the attribution than is reflected in those papers. This is not to say that formal attribution per se is not relevant – it is, especially for dealing with the issue of natural variability, and assessing our ability to correctly explain recent changes as part of an evaluation of future projections. It’s just that precisely knowing the percentage is less important than knowing that that the observed climate change was highly unlikely to be natural.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/10/attribution-of-20th-century-climate-change-to-cosub2sub/#more-355
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:48 pm
RE:89
PS did I mention that Galactic Cosmic Rays influence the incidence of cloudiness and that the strength of the Sun’s Magnetic Field influences the penetration of Galactic Cosmic Rays into the vicinity of the Earth and that the Solar Magnetic Field changes in a complex way with time (proxy is the number of Sun Spots) and that we can’t even know in advance how many Sun Spots that we’ll see in the next 5 years
Can you demonstrate a proof of concept to show that this is an important mechanism of aerosol formation (of which there are many), and show that it effects cloud cover significantly, and that it gives a non-negligible radiative forcing over the 20th Century. Over the last fifty years there has been no trend in cosmic rays anyway, and so for the temperature rises in recent decades it is highly unlikely to play a role. As has been stated often, the long term component associated with solar changes is pretty uncertain, but as the numbers above show, you would need to have the long term trend in solar-related forcings increase by a factor of five to even match CO2, let alone the total from GHGs. Potenital mechanisms for solar impacts on climate are a fascinating subject and may well help explain observed changes in the paleo-climate record, however, hoping that they will somehow magically reduce the effect of GHG increases today is foolish
July 4th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Re #91 James,
global temperature data from before say 1900 usually depend on proxy data, things like pollen in sediments, concentration of certain isotopes in air and snow/ice et cetera. By comparing such data with the same sort of data of more recent years AND comparing them with measured temperatures, a very reasonable estimate of global temperature going back many years can be made. This can be done in principal for any place in the world, though for land areas the estimate will be sharpest.
It is found that ‘the medieval warm period’ virtually does not exist, while ‘the little ice age’ was no global phenomenon – on the global temperature graph, there is just a broad, shallow dip below the 1000 yr average. For certain the cool of the ‘little ice age’ dissapears to nothing compared to the temperature change of the past twenty years in absolute numbers. In fact, the recent temperature change is by far the largest in at least a thousand years, maybe even since coming out of the last real ice age.
July 4th, 2008 at 11:53 am
RE: #91 by James,
Janine’s reply #94 is entirely correct.
James, the graph to which you linked in #91 is beyond incorrect. It is wildly, bizarrely, distorted. The most charitable interpretation I can make is that the vertical axis scale changes throughout the graph! It is so wrong that it must have been intentionally constructed to lie.
For any other readers of this blog who are in the least bit interested in the truth, please start with the sites I linked in #69. Here is a link directly to just one of the thousands of places where you can see truthful graphs: http://cce.890m.com/?page_id=18
I’m giving up on your blog, James. And next time I’m in your TV station’s area, I’m certainly not going to watch it. I expect the same standards that apply to the station’s weatherman apply to the rest of the staff. Which means the staff just reports whatever it wants to believe, regardless of evidence staring them in the face.
July 4th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Glad you stopped by for a while Tom. I am open to all ideas on climate change, and am seeking the truth. Unfortunately, the debate has boiled down to those on your side posting links to web sites supporting catastrophic, man made global warming, and quite frankly, many that agree with me do the same thing. A total stalemate.
I am looking for those who have a good solid background in atmospheric science, CBM, CCM, etc, who have no financial interest in the issue and don’t consider it like a religion. I tend to throw out all on the extremes of the argument; lots of fringe lunatics out there on both sides of the issue.
I welcome all opinions, and explore them all except for the extremists. I also don’t listen to those who tell me they have it all figured out and know the state of the climate in 50 to 100 years. Nobody knows; we are all simply making educated guesses. That includes you and me. You should sit in our chair for 10 years and do our jobs; you will understand now much we don’t know. The lack of humility again baffles me.
After reading material (including dozens of peer reviewed research papers) on both sides of this issue for many years, I am come to a clear conclusion that the warming the planet experienced from 1980 to 1998 was mostly natural. I have yet to see credible evidence otherwise.
And, you will probably have to turn off TV weather completely, most broadcast meteorologists, including CBMs, agree with me on this issue.
Thanks again for stopping by.
July 6th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Hi James,
Thank you for your interesting article.
I’m not convinced with Al Gore’s lie(you know a judge in UK found 9 inconvenient truths in his movie) but I’m still cautious to believe others cause I think there are weirdos among some who are after the truth. Anyhow, I found the link you indicated in #77 didn’t have the last bit you copied&pasted. It ends with saying up to ” the overall 178.7-yr repetition period for the solar orbital motion, and the 19.86-yr synodic period of Jupiter and Saturn” and doesn’t have that “It supports the contention that the level of activity on the Sun will significantly diminish sometime in the next decade and remain low for about 20 – 30 years. On each occasion that the Sun has done this in the past the World’s mean temperature has dropped by ~ 1 – 2 C.” I hope you didn’t just make it up…
July 6th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
I’m not convinced with Al Gore’s lie(you know a judge in UK found 9 inconvenient truths in his movie)
Al Gore has never written any scientific paper that was debated among climate scientist. Climate science is over 100 years old. Al gore wasn’t even born yet.
The judge, Justice Burton found that “Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate”
For a review from NASA climate scientists about how good a job Mr. Gore did explaining the current climate change in his movie. Check this out.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/al-gores-movie/
EXCERPT :”How well does the film handle the science? Admirably, I thought. It is remarkably up to date, with reference to some of the very latest research”
On each occasion that the Sun has done this in the past the World’s mean temperature has dropped by ~ 1 – 2 C.” I hope you didn’t just make it up…
It appears to pop up on a bunch of blogs but not any peer-reviewed paper and not this paper either.
July 6th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Comments about the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change?
July 7th, 2008 at 3:42 am
“Resolving that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method;”
A Declaration is no scientific method.
–
“Affirming that global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans,”
… and submitting that this fact is not relevant; what is relevant is that climate change is taking place NOW,
“…and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life;”
… so is water, but too much of it?
–
“Recognising that the causes and extent of recently observed climatic change are the subject of intense debates in the climate science community and that oft-repeated assertions of a supposed ‘consensus’ among climate experts are false;”
—————————————————————
Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures
since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the
observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.
_It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic
warming over the past 50 years averaged over
each continent (except Antarctica).
During the past 50 years, the sum of solar and volcanic
forcings would likely have produced cooling. Observed patterns
of warming and their changes are simulated only by
models that include anthropogenic forcings. Difficulties remain
in simulating and attributing observed temperature
changes at smaller than continental scales._
IPCC, Nov 2007.
————————————————————–
This is as close a statement of consensus as is possible in the scientific community. It reflects the de facto consensus of climate experts.
There is some discussion on extent of warming and on which fraction of that exactly is caused by different factors like sun activity and GHG concentrations. But there is consensus on the statement that at least 70% of recent climate change is directly linked to increased GHG concentrations. In fact, this part of the Declaration amounts to a misrepresentation of the reality.
–
“Affirming that attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing, human suffering;”
So burning the oil like there is no tomorrow would be okay?
–
“Noting that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth than colder:”
Wild speculation! Should note that ANY climate change means stress to life: it has to readapt.
July 7th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Those who support IPCC theory don’t know about what John Christy claims? His research result contradicts with their “CO2/GHG” theory.
July 7th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Re #101, ‘IPCC theory’ does not exist: it is a scientist’s panel or forum containing contributors of all persuasions. This is one reason why IPCC does not do definite conclusions on global warming but uses phrases like ‘very likely’. The other reason has to do with plain scientific carefulness.
Some statements by Christy:
“It is scientifically inconceivable that after changing forests into cities, turning millions of acres into irrigated farmland, putting massive quantities of soot and dust into the air, and putting extra greenhouse gases into the air, that the natural course of climate has not changed in some way.”(2004)
Christy is “…still a strong critic of scientists who make catastrophic predictions of huge increases in global temperatures and tremendous rises in sea levels.”(2006).
Very correct criticism the IPCC would absolutely endorse. IPCC do not do apocalyptic forecasts but some of their readers would.
Dr Christy has been a busy contributor to IPCC publications, including the 2007 report. His work on satellite observation of air temperature is of great value, especially because there are still many questions as to which layer of the atmospere is most affected by global warming.
I have one particular problem with some of Christy’s argumentation. E.g.:
“While “global warming” due to extra greenhouse gases seems to be consistent with Arctic melting it is at odds with Antarctic sea ice expansion. A more reasonable explanation for at least part of the Arctic ice reduction is offered by a NASA team (Nghiem, et al. 2007) suggesting that an anomalous circulation pattern of the atmosphere over the Arctic in 2007 pushed a large part of the sea ice to lower latitudes where it melted.”[http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/atmos/christy/ChristyJR_CST_071114_written.pdf]
While Christy correctly concludes “However, more research, and more bservations are necessary to understand why such events occur. The complexity of this climate system can not be overstated” he copies the special atmosperic circulation theory about the melt of Arctic ice last year a) without checking whether the great melt of 2005 might be attributable to similar causes and b) what it actually means that virtually all the old (>8 yrs) Arctic Ice has dissapeared.
In fact, the melt of 2005 might have been an even greater phenomenon than last year’s, because the big sweep of multiseasonal thick ice happened
The record extent of circum-Antarctic sea ice could be attributed to global warming as follows: more precipitation -> more snow cover on sea ice around Antarctica, resulting in (much) lower melting rates… There is research by NASA scientists suggesting this – I mean snowcover inhibiting melting – might be indeed be the case.
July 8th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
[...] As the G-8 leaders talk up their half-hearted promises to slash greenhouse gas emissions (just wait and see how little they actually will accomplish), we take the opportunity to bring you today’s Global Warming Quotes of the Day: “The simple truth is that the anthropogenic global warming train has slowed to a crawl, and the riders are jumping off as the facts are discovered . . . here are some simple facts that make those left on the global warming train very uncomfortable: *The earth is no warmer now than it was in 1998. *Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but a gas indispensable to plant life. Plants, in turn, release oxygen, which sustains animal and human life. *The primary greenhouse gas is water vapor, not carbon dioxide. *The lack of solar activity in recent months suggests global cooling might be our biggest potential climate change problem in coming years. *The planet has had weather disasters, extremes, and anomalies since it has been here. We just didn’t have 24 hour news channels and the Internet in prior decades to spread the news.” – meteorologist James Spann. [...]
July 10th, 2008 at 2:31 am
You have to laugh at the ’solution’ if global warming was a true threat – ‘taxation’ lol. We shall tax you and you see because we taxed you the earth will snap it’s invisible fingers and presto fixed!
Seriously does ANYONE buy this nonsense? Anyone? – Every year something is out to get us apparently – killer bees, global cooling/warming, sars, bird flu, blah blah blah.
And everytime the solution is more bureaucracy and more taxation… Bah
Don’t be led by the nose – think, for ‘yourself’ not as in take this or that ‘experts’ side – that’s not thinking at all.
July 10th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
It is the greatest scam ever pulled off, let´s stop. Go to your neighbours and educate them or we might get taxed to death.
Investigate Clube of Rome and more.
Alan Watt talked about this on his radio show. (www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com)
July 11th, 2008 at 3:19 am
I think the sun is far too polluted causing the warming….I vote we send ally gore and his buddies up to the sun and clean it up…asap…..he he….(sunglasses optional)
July 12th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Janine, which side are you on?
July 20th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
[...] past year – June 17, 2008 – (By Award winning Chief Meteorologist James Spann of Alabama ABC TV) (LINK) & (LINK) NASA Aerospace Engineer Rejects Man-Made Climate fears (By Dirck T. Hartmann, who [...]
July 20th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
[...] past year – June 17, 2008 – (By Award winning Chief Meteorologist James Spann of Alabama ABC TV) (LINK) & (LINK) NASA Aerospace Engineer Rejects Man-Made Climate fears (By Dirck T. Hartmann, who [...]
July 25th, 2008 at 12:03 am
Global warming is all about politics and money.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:16 am
@passerby re #107: I have the hardest answer for you to understand: I am on no side. This does not mean you can fill me in for any side – although you probably will. It also does not mean you can fill me in against any side – although you probably will. Such is most of the human mind (which, I find, functions pathologically in that it cannot understand the neutral, the real or the word ‘not’: do NOT think of pink elephants!).
I just do not believe the angels are melting glaciers and arctic ice. Being a physicist and climatologist, I cannot find any other reasons for present global warming than changed chemical composition of the atmosphere.
Unfortunately ecospinners have cried Wolf! far to many times. But a realist is not sensitive to cries, just to facts.
August 2nd, 2008 at 5:57 pm
so you have examined and ruled out recovery from the little ice age? you have looked at every known natural process and have proof they arent at play? and you know ALL the processes involved?
this change in our atmosphere what %age is that change please?
please explain a process where an insulator can ADD more heat to any system?
insulators slow heat movement but do NOT in any way cause a permanent build up of heat, remove the source of heat and the insulator cools very quickly.
August 4th, 2008 at 5:27 am
“please explain a process where an insulator can ADD more heat to any system?”
Insulators don’t and that is not the issue. The issue is that insulators TRAP heat, until a new balance with environment is reached. Bill, have you ever tried blankets to sleep under?
Another question, Bill – do you need to know all processes in a pan of water – e.g. turbulent movement – to predict a temperature change when it is put on a fire?
Given answer to this question – no – then of course we can look at ‘known natural processes’ re climate change. Correct: none of them are at play today. Milankovitch cycles don’t put us in a new Ice Age for at least another 5.000 years (10.000 is more probable). Continental shifting won’t do nothing to climate on a time scale of just a century. Solar activity has been virtually constant over the past three centuries (while the Maunder Minimum correlates to a slight global temperature dip about 1/3 of amplitude of recent warming). Volcanic activity is nothing special (no less, no more than average). Global temperature proves no considerable sensitivity to the ozone layer situation. What else do we have?
The ‘little ice age’ is a myth. It was no global phenomenon. Global temperature change past 25 years is more than three times as big as the largest ‘little ice age’-anomalies in Europe.
August 4th, 2008 at 7:20 am
indeed the blanket analogy works perfectly to make my point, does the blanket “trap” heat? does the bed stay warm once you have used a blanket? the next night when you get into bed it is already warm because the blanket trapped heat from last night?
does the bed get hotter each night because the blanket is trapping heat?
because that is the claim YOU are making, that more insulation will make the entire globe warmer on a permanent basis….that the extra insulation is trapping heat, and as shown above insulators do NOT trap heat.
as to the pan of boiling water indeed IF there is an unknown factor at work that removes the heat as fast as it can be applied then the water will not boil, and that is our climate there are factors we dont know about and until we discover and understand EVERY factor at play, we CANT single out any one factor and say it has taken control, and again THAT is the claim YOU are making that co2 and human co2 in particular have taken control over every other factor at play(some unknown) and is causing any warming we may have.
i even will state with certainty that there is NO way to arrive at a single number and call that the glonal temperature for any given day, at best you can get an average from observations but unless you observe every square inch of the planet you have huge gaps that are UNknown in your equation and the single numbers given today have such a wide margin of error that they are meaningless.
as example on a day when it rains someplaces and doesnt in others the temps will be cooler where it rained so how does one arrive at a single temp reading for the state given that any given location can vary by as much as 30 degrees based on raining or not?
yester day where it rained it was cooler than in culman county what was the average temp for where it rained and cullman county and what would that numbner be good for in either location? meaning that average could well be a number that wasnt found anywhere in the area.
point = it is like taking an average of phone numbers in the book sure it can be done but what does it tell you that has any meaning?
August 4th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
I agree with James Spann; what’s missing is humility. We get so wrapped up in our own little world and think that what we believe is right that we miss the big picture…God is in control. He said he’s coming back and I’m going to believe him. He cares for us…and he will take care of us, whether global warming is right or not.
God is in control….Let it stay that way.
August 5th, 2008 at 5:20 am
“that more insulation will make the entire globe warmer on a permanent basis”
Thas is entirely correct. Increase insulation -> more heat gets trapped -> globe warmer. Exactly the (somewhat metaphorical) case with INCREASING concentrations of CO2.
As for all the ‘unknowns’, will you wait until average global temperature is at +30° C? At 100° C? before arriving at more sensible theories than those ‘theories of the unknown factors’? Because that is what your argument amounts to. Or are you disputing the fact of global warming itself? In that case: who’s melting all that ice…
August 5th, 2008 at 6:34 am
basic science, human caused global arming is NOT i repeat is NOT a”theory” it is a rather silly hypothesis…in science a theory is something that has been confirmed by experiement/observation.
hcgw has NOT been supported by the actual observations and in fact has been falsified by them.
NOT knowing the difference between a hypothesis and a theory speaks to the basic understanding of science.
who’s melting the ice, well mother nature is the answer along with the reality that the ice is growing in many places around the globe and common sense says during periods between ice ages the ice melts and we have been in such a period for around 18,000 years, an informed person would expect to find ice melting in summer during these climatic periods.
August 5th, 2008 at 7:39 am
“hcgw has NOT been supported by the actual observations and in fact has been falsified by them.”
You must know something the scientific community does not. Will you come with some facts or will you have to withhold them?
—————————————————————
Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures
since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the
observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.
It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic
warming over the past 50 years averaged over
each continent (except Antarctica).
During the past 50 years, the sum of solar and volcanic
forcings would likely have produced cooling. Observed patterns
of warming and their changes are simulated only by
models that include anthropogenic forcings. Difficulties remain
in simulating and attributing observed temperature
changes at smaller than continental scales.
IPCC, Nov 2007.
————————————————————–
So maybe end of this year IPCC will come with a total refutation of all research done hitherto? I, for one, would love two weeks of skating on the canals, like we could almost every year until 1988, after which year we have had just two, maybe three winters worthy of the name…
August 5th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
the ipcc summary is NOT i repeat NOT science, science doesnt include things like, we think gravity is MOST LIKELY a real natural effect.
and it doesnt say according to our computer models the only thing to cause things to stay on the earth is humans having sticky feet.
computer models are NOT SCIENCE.
and as we ALL know watching weather, computer models CANT say with any certainty what tommorrows high will be for some small area of the earth, much less include every factor involved in the global climate.
note the word FORCINGS, what that means is we can FORCE the computer to blame humans by assigning too much power to co2….or there has been warming and IF we claim and input that co2 is super powerful more powerful than any other factor then our model will say human co2 is to blame.
and the actual observations have shown that co2 is NOT in control simply because as co2 rises the temperatures have gone both up and done during the entire rise…IF co2 was trapping heat on a permanent basis then each DAY there would be more heat than the day before and each day even MORE heat would be retained, it would be so obvious because IF co2 was trapping heat as claimed the earth would have been a cinder long ago and those last few people would have known why….it aint happening!
August 6th, 2008 at 3:08 am
Bill, you have a peculiar view on what is science and what it is not. But it is beside the subject.
You make some interesting mistakes.
First, you mix weather and climate forecasting. But these are totally different matters. Whereas prediction of next week’s highs is hard, it is not hard to predict that a century from now the equator will be warmer than the arctic and that winter will be colder than summer.
Second, you suddenly think that CO2 would be the ONLY driver for climate, which leads you to think global warming should be a smooth process. You suddenly omit other factors like El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), sun and volcanic activity et cetera. Well: know then that the reason this year will not become record warm is called La Niña. Find out about it.
Third, you have forgotten about radiation balance re insulators. You seem to think that I believe that insulators would keep trapping more and more heat. Please correct this view.
August 6th, 2008 at 9:06 am
i would rather just bow out of this discussion at this time, i havent made any personal comments but you cant help but try to insult me.
YOU are making the claim that co2 has taken control and is the CAUSE of recent warming not me, and i have repeatedly pointed out there are many other factors at play some of them even unknown at this time, YET you falsely claim i am NOT considering other factors.
and indeed YOU are claiming that adding more co2 causes more heating and that is what you again falsely claimed i am thinking, the opposite is true i am pointing out insulators dont trap heat and now it seems you must agree they DONT!
so you agree insulators do NOT trap more and more heat, BUT you dont seem to grasp that would falsify the hcgw hypothesis, because that IS the entire base of the claim about co2, that humans releasing co2 is causing more and more heat to be trapped.
i have presented the real science in laymans terms.
August 6th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Bill, if you add more insulation more heat will be trapped (try this by adding a blanket over your bed every hour tonight, so in the morning you wake up with nine blankets or so). If you add more CO2 we may expect a higher air temperature.
The concentration of CO2 is rising at close to 2 ppm/year (it is now over 380 ppm) and the rise has been shown to slowly accelerate.
That is the current situation and climate apparently lives up to expectation by getting warmer.
August 20th, 2008 at 11:43 am
HH Bounty
Before you start to lecture about molecular absorption of H2O versus CO2 — you need to be a bit more educated in such matters yourself
Actually, H2O is far more prevalent than CO2 (a “trace gas”) and further H2O is quite as good on a per molecule basis (the details depends somewhat on what part of what emissions and where in the atmosphere as pressure and temperature effects the absorption)
No credible scientist claims CO2 is the dominant absorber of thermal IR in the temperature range of interest (e.g. 250 to 310 K) – rather, the claim is that H2O amplifies the effects of the CO2 and CH4 (incidentally, methane is significantly better than CO2 on a per molecule basis though somewhat less prevalent)
So why is CO2 the “target” for the Global Warming Hysteria Campaign?
!) it is always a gas at temperatures and pressures found on the earth and in its atmosphere
2) it is reasonably credibly claimed to be directly associated with fossil fuel use — this is even questionable
3) it has been directly and continuously measured for the past 50 years
So its basically the ol’ if I’m a hammer everything looks like a nail effect
The much more important species of H2O vapor is far to hard to work with
1) its too variable in time and space to be easily predicted by the Global Circulation Models
2) while CO2 is fairly hard to demonize (it being involved in our second by second breathing) – water is so well known even those unaware of CO2 – telling people not to water their lawns to reduce global warming is a hard sell
3) water has the nasty habit of changing state from liquid to vapor and hence further complicating the process of tracking the average molecule
4) and then there is the whole issue of what happens when the H2O condenses and forms CLOUDS — no one honestly knows even if the net contribution of clouds is a warm or a cool
To claim otherwise is something worse than ignorance — it smacks of intellectual dishonesty
If you want a real simple other factor to consider – look at the big glowing object called the SUN
Westy
August 23rd, 2008 at 10:09 am
Where are the remnants of the industrial civilisation that must have caused the glaciers, that once covered most of North America, to recede? What happened to them? This civilisation had to have existed since we now know that only the actions of humans can cause the earth to warm. Since we know that the sun and the internal heat of the earth has no effect whatsoever there can be no other explanation.
Can I get consensus? (The new and sole criteria for scientific proof)
August 25th, 2008 at 3:52 am
“we now know that only the actions of humans can cause the earth to warm.”
What a laugh. What prompts a person to believe this given that historic causes of climate change happen not to be operative now?
August 25th, 2008 at 3:54 am
#123 “If you want a real simple other factor to consider – look at the big glowing object called the SUN”
No climatologist or member of the IPCC in his right mind would ever consider the sun as a factor in climate change… Just kidding!
Fact 1: the sun’s activity has remained virtually unchanged over the past couple of centuries (by the way, the existence of the ‘Maunder minimum’ is disputed today, while it is known that the ‘little ice age’ is a myth: globally there was no such epoch).
Fact 2: the energy per square metre received on top of the atmosphere has remained unchanged since 1975 – but nitpickers will actually see a tiny decline!
E.g. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation
Therefore, the sun has no role in the sudden global warming we’re experiencing over the past couple of decades.
So we have to look at the hateful CO2 again…
August 28th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Wow . . . very nice, taking the unpopular stance and giving good reasons to back it up. I was taken aback by the essay by the founder of the Weather Channel. Interesting that the Weather Channel now takes the opposite view. I actually came to this from Dan Satterfield’s page on Climate Change and . . . wow . . . it’s a heated debate (pun intended). Until I’ve studied some meteorology and climatology in college I’m not going to take a stand on the issue . . . but I think extremism is probably the worst thing.
I found it VERY amusing that you said people came to you every single year and said, “I never remember the weather being so strange.” My grandparents say that ALL THE TIME and use it as a pretext for “Armageddon is coming”. Anyway, I’m really glad you published this, because obviously a lot of science gets dealt under the table, through politics, and I think the opinions of these expert meteorologists need to be given a voice equal to the stuff you’ll hear in the mass media.
September 14th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Janine Nose — HuH?
“Fact 2: the energy per square metre received on top of the atmosphere has remained unchanged since 1975 – but nitpickers will actually see a tiny decline!
E.g. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation”
GOOGLE something called ACRIM — (Active Cavity Radiometer) that has actually been measuring the radiative output of the sun from an overlapping series of satellites
Not only can you see the sunspot cycle in the ACRIM data — you can even see the effect of individual very large sunspots
By the way — as the sun gets more active — with more dark spots — the brightness (the misnamed “solar constant”) increases!
Unfortunately, for the Climate Catastrophists — we can now track the level of solar activity in radioactive isotopes of Carbon and Beryllium that are deposited in glacial ice and tree rings
The Maunder Minimum is as real as is the well known approximately 11 year duration solar cycle that we are familiar with (by the way the recent Cycle 24 seems to be a bit slow in getting started). Not only do we have Maunder, Dalton and Sporer Mimima — but on an average over the recent few thousands of years the sun seems to be fairly regularly in such a minimum condition.
OK correlation is not necessarily causality — but it is also very obvious in ice cores, stalagmite cores, coral cores, boreholes in rocks, etc that the planet has been warming and cooling fairly regularly over the recent past since the last peak in glaciation.
Now since no sentient being believes that human activity caused any of the previous warmings or coolings and we see the same sort of variations in the soalr cycle — well you draw your own conclusion
As for me — if Cycle 24 keeps failing to show any spots for another year of so — well I’m going to start buying stock in companies selling designer “Long Johns”
Westy
September 16th, 2008 at 6:22 am
[...] 6, 2008) 2008 – Global Temperature Also Cooler in May (Anthony Watts, Meteorologist, June 6, 2008) 2008 – Global Warming Movement Turns Cool (James Spann, AMS Certified Meteorologist, June 22, 2008) 2008 – Australian Researchers Warn of [...]
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:21 pm
The IPCC will not release the raw data to back up their preordained conclusions designed to scare everyone into a one world fascist state. Neiter will Al Gore and all of the “scientist” suporting the self serving UN debate their self declared consensus. Bottom line– man induced global warming is a lie.
March 27th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
One thing is certain… if the deniers of global warming are correct the alarmists are fools… if the alarmists are correct we’re all dead
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