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The Australia-based Galileo Movement touts a series of "basic facts" on carbon dioxide that attempt to explain why the greenhouse gas can't contribute to climate change.
John Smeed, the movement's co-founder, says the case against carbon dioxide as a global warming culprit is simply a matter of "junior school physics."
"If you show this to any scientist and say to them, 'Disprove to me any of these points,' they can't," he said in an interview.
And he's right: Many of the facts are perfectly true.
But they are also irrelevant in the climate debate. And many facts about CO2 pertinent to climate science are omitted.
DailyClimate.org took up Smeed's challenge and passed the fact sheet on to a climate scientist – Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science. He also publishes the blog RealClimate.org, one of the more-respected climate science blogs.
"You've got true facts," Schmidt said of the Galileo Movement's pamphlet. "They're just not the relevant facts."
The pamphlet's claims about climate science are not new: They've been well honed over several years' worth of debate, and there's a wealth of information on the web debunking the so-called "denialist" movement's arguments.
Here's a sampling of the Galileo Movement's facts and an assessment of how they stack up against the body of Earth and atmospheric science, based on an investigation by DailyClimate.org of several science sources.
Claim: CO2 is Nature's colorless, odorless, tasteless gas essential for all life on Earth. It's not toxic. It doesn't make land, water or air dirty or unsafe to use. It does not cause disease.
Claim: CO2 comprises less than 0.04 percent of the air.
Assessment: True but irrelevant in the global warming debate.
Nitrogen, oxygen and argon together make up close to 100 percent of the atmosphere. But all three are invisible to incoming "short-wave" radiation from the sun and outgoing "long-wave" radiation from the Earth's surface. They play no role in regulating the planet's atmospheric temperature.
But carbon dioxide and other trace gases in the atmosphere do absorb the outgoing long-wave radiation.
So while their concentrations are miniscule, their effect is anything but: If the atmosphere didn't have those trace amounts of greenhouse gases, New York City would be covered in ice sheets – not sweltering – on a typical summer afternoon. The globe's average temperature would be almost 60 degrees Fahrenheit lower.
Similarly, toxicity is not an issue in the climate change debate. Yes, crops need CO2. Breathing a little more of it while out on the links won't impair your golf game. But earlier findings that suggested higher CO2 levels could increase crop yields have been disproved by recent research showing that other nutrients are more often the limiting factor.
The relevant questions for climate science are how CO2 changes atmospheric temperatures and circulation and alters the oceans' chemistry and heat capacity.
Source: Scott Mandia, State University of New York, Suffolk http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/
Claim: CO2 stays in the air only five to seven years, possibly less than 12 months before Nature cycles it into plants, animals and oceans.
Claim: Of Earth's annual production of CO2, humans produce just 3 percent.
Assessment: True but misleading.
In this case, the claim confuses residence time of individual molecules in the air with the much longer perturbation to the whole system.
Carbon dioxide is continuously cycling among the earth, plants and animals, the atmosphere and the ocean's surface, with the deep ocean serving as a gigantic long-term reservoir.
Up until the last two centuries, this carbon cycle had been in close balance for the last 10,000 years. But society has pushed atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from 278 parts per million at the start of the industrial revolution to 392 parts per million today, a 40 percent increase.
What's more, the bulk – some 57 percent – of carbon emitted from tailpipes and smokestacks is not even in the atmosphere. It has cycled into the ocean, and scientists generally agree that most of our carbon emissions will ultimately come to a rest in its deepest depths. But that will take centuries. In the meantime, those extra CO2 molecules will slosh around from earth to atmosphere to upper ocean and back, absorbing energy, acidifying the seas and changing the planet in profound and potentially unwelcome ways. In other words, CO2 emitted today will still be impacting the planet for hundreds of years.
Source: Fortunat Joos, University of Bern, Switzerland http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~joos/publications_html/joos_eps_96/joos_eps_96.html
Claim: Measurements reveal that CO2 levels are a consequence of temperature, not the cause. Temperature drives CO2 levels.
Assessment: True before 1800. But false today.
Some 800,000 years' worth of ice core records indicate that temperature rises did drive an increase in CO2 levels. But that was before humans started digging up huge quantities fossil fuels and transferring all that sequestered carbon to the atmosphere.
It is worth noting, however, that even in the past CO2 had an impact on temperatures, given its role as a greenhouse gas.
It's also worth noting that ancient temperature and CO2-level changes happened over thousands of years. The Earth needed, for example, 5,000 years to bring atmospheric CO2 concentrations up 80 ppm after the last glacial period.
With the onset of industrialization, the tables turned. Humans have increased atmospheric CO2 levels almost 80 ppm in just 60 years. Now humans are the drivers of CO2 level, not temperature.
And what frightens climate scientists is that temperature hasn't caught up yet.
Source: NOAA Mauna Loa Observatory http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
Source: Scott Mandia, State University of New York, Suffolk http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/global_warming_misinformation_co2_lags_not_leads.html
Source: Eric Steig, University of Washington
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/
Claim: In every 85,000 molecules of air, just 33 are CO2. For every 33 molecules of CO2, 32 are from Nature and known to be essential to all life on Earth. How can one molecule of the same gas produced by humans be blamed for supposed imminent, irreversible, catastrophic global warming? It cannot.
Assessment: False.
Two hundred years ago, only 24 of those molecules would have been CO2. Today, 33 molecules are – a 40 percent rise of a key greenhouse gas.
The reference to "one molecule" is misleading: By talking ratios, the Galileo Movement obscures the staggering amount of carbon dioxide society has pumped into the air. In the last two centuries, society has dumped 220 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. It added another 110 billion tons via deforestation and land-use changes.
The atmosphere weighs about 5 quadrillion tons, and carbon dioxide, despite our emissions, remains a small component of that. But it grows larger every year. The International Energy Agency expects annual global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels alone to top 40 billion tons a year by 2030.
The math gets complicated from here, but there is an enormous quantity of molecules in those 330 billon tons of CO2.
Source: International Energy Agency
http://www.iea.org/publications/free_new_Desc.asp?PUBS_ID=2143
Source: Fortunat Joos, University of Bern, Switzerland http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~joos/publications_html/joos_eps_96/joos_eps_96.html
This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.
» Read more about the Galileo Movement and Climate Change Divide in Australia
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87 Comments
Add CommentMore of the usual from SCIAM.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have yet to hear a warmist explain by how much the Earths temperature will be reduced by the Australian taxpayers billions of dollars in direct costs & wasted investments. The reason is that it will be so small that no instrument available today would be capable of measuring it even over a century. Australia could cease to exist & China's output would result in barely a blip being detectable in the CO2 output. Though time after time the green schemes for alternative energy have been tried, they always fail to meet the hype & billions more will be wasted. Of course this does not matter to those who are ideologically bound to the idea & often benefit from their dogma financially. If the proponents of these schemes were held financially culpable for the schemes they promote, when they do not produce the promised energy results, you would soon see their demise. If the schemes are any good investors would provide them without Government support.
If the warmists were serious they would be promoting nuclear. What they are really on about is social engineering & income redistribution. Not human or planetary welfare.
Carlyle, the world doesn't have to answer for your ignorance. Look at you, you're shameful - you first say "I don't get it, so it can't be real," then you immediately switch to "but China's doing it more," la la la. What the hell is that about?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGo get educated, then come back and maybe you won't have to pretend to having knowledge...you might actually have some.
ttheobald , that is a shameful personal attack.It is petty to make a personal attack when you disagree with something.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCO2 follows temp, it has been proven by 800,000 yrs of ice core samples. Surely its not scientific to turn your back on the data and claim that the cause is now the effect???
Sorry to tell you all, but the facts just dont support your theory. Anthropongenic global warming fails scientific tests over and over and over. The science is settled- AGW is not a serious threat!!!!!!
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-Voltaire
Several ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (200-1000 years) after Antarctic temperatures start to rise during glacial terminations. This lag does not refute anthropogenic global warming (AGW). It just says something else kick-started the glacial warming process before CO2 ramped it up and carried it through the longer term.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe 5°C to 6°C of global warming (or ~10°C of Antarctic warming) that moved the Earth out of a glacial maximum to the following interglacial warm peak takes place over more than 5000 years. (Note: The cooling side of the cycle takes much longer, 70,000 years._
This clearly means the initial 800 years of the warming cycle is not caused by CO2 (it’s actually caused by slight orbital variations). However, the remaining 4200 years of warming could be caused by CO2, or some combination of the two effects working in concert. More precise studies attribute a 50/50 split to the two effects during the first 5000 years.
Ice albedo changes kick in even later at 10,000 years to further warm the climate and sustain the interglacial warm period long afterwards. The ice albedo feedback is double the combined forcing of CO2 and orbital variations over longer time frames or about equal if other greenhouse gases are included with CO2. These other gases are principally methane and nitrous oxide, gases that kick in within decades rather than 800 years.
One reasonable supposition for the 800 year lag is that CO2 is sequestered in the very deep and cold ocean especially around Antarctica during a glacial maximum, and 800 years is about the time for deep ocean currents to cycle around and flush out the sequestered CO2 into a warming atmosphere.
There is no inconsistency between the roles of CO2 during past glacial warming periods and current anthropogenic global warming.
What worries me most is why any time, effort and attention is paid to the lunatic fringe group of ill-informed people who either cannot understand or refuse to accept the enormous, vast and repeatedly and independently validated evidence for climate change. Surely we should be simply ignoring them and getting on with the business of trying to put it right before our very fragile support ecosystem collapses around us. They can thank us later when their children still have food to eat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe lunatic fringe group throws their weight around quite a bit, and desperately wants to portray themselves as the majority. For some reason, media accommodates them time and time again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSciAm is doing the right thing finally simply acknowledging these people have no credibility in the scientific community. Intelligent Design isn't given any credence here, why should anti-environmental conspiracy theorists?
At this point in the game, all the skeptic arguments are just rehashed gimmick arguments that have been disproved over and over again. They keep bringing them up just to keep distracting from forward progress. They're perfectly aware their arguments are false, but as long as they sound good enough for 33% of non-scientists then they've accomplished their goal.
Im pretty sure nobody is anti-environment. There just isn't any evidence that warrants panic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is surprising the lack of attention paid to reports such as recent NASA data. Showing greenhouse effect is much lower than calculated using models and far more radiation is being released.
The frustrating thing is the refusal to acknowledge any data that refutes the accepted theory of AGW.
I am open to any information and theories in regards to this matter. I am studying environment at University. I will always continue to question, its human nature. Some things just don't ring true, so I ask questions. I am at a point where theories just don't cut it and the facts are more compelling.
I want clean air and responsible government, I am old enough to have seen many doomsday theories come and pass. Sounds like a y2K bug to me, problem for some but totally exaggerated risk
Part 1
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is one of the weirdest deaf debate that we are forced to endure. It seems like every one needs some one to blame on this one, because of course we were, and are still, but Innocent victims in this whole affair! So now every one seeks to be right about their own theory of whom, what and where, with fingers pointed forwards and far away from themselves. And the worst is that most of them are completely useless.
There are realities that can't be denied while others can be over inflated. So here's a coupe truths that serve only to confuse the mind:
1) It's an undeniable truth that the co2 content of our atmosphere is completely driven by the heat generated by that big thermonuclear fire ball in the sky.
2) It's an undeniable truth that for the past 40 years our emissions of co2 have increased exponentially.
3) It's also true of methane, which is 21 times more potent as a green house gas that co2 (itself possessing only half of waters ability).
4) Putting an end to pollution will destroy the economies of the world.
And here are a few that are far less irrelevant:
1) That which emanates from smoke stacks does so at very high temperature. Therefor it tends to rise very rapidly into the atmosphere.
2) That which emanates from the tale pipe of your car must do so at a temperature that is safe for passers by. Therefor it can't really reach beyond 50 degree Celsius.
3) For molecules to rise in the atmosphere they must posses more energy than the overall ambient atmosphere. Therefor when the ambient temperatures oscillate around 30 to 50 degrees it becomes very hard for tale pipe co2 to rise up.
4) As these co2 molecules tries to rise; they will encounter water molecules to which they will easily link up (due to the lack of energy of the co2 coupled with the natural likability that they both share).
5) In the process they will clump up with the other dust particles present in the atmosphere (including the likes of methane).
6) This mixture, being to massive to rise up, slowly begins to pile up into a giant dense dome of murky, almost muddy, atmosphere within which the pressure is far greater than outside of it.
7) The end result is no longer call smug but HEAT DOME.
8) This dome is nothing else then a giant green house that absorbs photons of almost all wave length. Therefor making it far more potent than the sum of its parts.
9) This dome of murky, hard to breath, atmosphere is so pressurized that it actually repels rain, all the while absorbing heat and humidity.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/StephVincent
Part 2
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this10) In this day an age we have, at our finger tips, access to a wealth of information on those companies and individuals who supplies us with all the various products that we consume. Therefor when ever we buy anything, what so ever, we can actually choose to buy our products from the companies with the best track record.
11) Very often when people go into business, they quickly become obsessed with profit and immediately start to seek ways to cut cost either by sending jobs to foreign countries in which the laws, regulations and salaries, are more profitable to them. Or by seeking government subsidies and tax breaks. Or by not providing employees with proper social benefits or salaries. Or simply by refusing to clean up after themselves.
12) Everybody everywhere in the world keeps saying that governments are too controlling and yet demand that government create legislatures against polluters, laws that would apply to us as well as to them.
Conclusion, Every time you get in your car YOU ARE DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for the reactions of your tale pipe co2 with the atmosphere. And these include the heat domes and their perverse warming effect on our atmosphere. And when ever you buy a product, any product, it's your responsibility to select the suppliers that is the most responsible towards the environment. And to go the extra mile you should tell that supplier why you chose them, and in the process tell their competitors the same.
It's completely useless to pretend to care about the state of our planet if you are going to complain to government, expecting laws to force industries to clean themselves up, and it's even more useless to expect companies to simply do it out of their own good will, but are not willing to commit to the required sacrifices on your own out of your own freewill.
It’s useless to complain that industries are destroying our environment, if you are going to take your car to work every morning and buy you products without paying any attention to the repercussions of their generation upon our environment.
It, therefor, become our responsibility to enforce these changes upon industrials by becoming responsible ourselves towards the environment, beginning by not driving to work every day, and becoming extremely selective with our purchases to force industries to comply.
Ask yourselves this question! “Which of the following two cause the most pollution?” A) The clock on your blueray player being on for an entire year (24/7/365). B) one gallon of gas!
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/StephVincent
Part 3
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe end result is that by driving your cars less they will last longer. And all the while you will be consuming less gas, saving money in the process. And reducing the demands usually has a direct lowering effect on prices (so you'll save mo money). Car makers wanting to sale more cars will begin making them more environmentally friendly because of the same action.
Complaining is no longer an option! The only hope for a viable future, with tolerable weathers and plenty of water and food for all, is for us to take all the direct and required actions that will ensure that future, even if that means sacrifices that you consider yourselves to important to commit to.
You can choose to wait for government to take action or for companies to clean themselves up. You can even wait for some freaking messiah, if you are childish enough to do so . But i still choose freewill! If you refuse to responsibilize yourselves, you forgo your right to complain.
If you refuse to do these things, without which the temperatures on our planet will keep rising, you truly are childishly irresponsible and selfish. And by that definition, but only by that definition, you are a victim. BUT OF YOURSELVES AND OF YOURSELVES ALONE!
Wishing you peaceful but event filled lives!
Stephane Vincent.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/StephVincent
Note to self tailpipe is not spelled tale pipe!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem is, this lunatic fringe has paralyzed the U.s. government to take any action and are determined to take us all down with them through the real-world implications their ideas have. The fact that senators representing around 10% of the U.S. population (and they really only need 50.001% of the people who come out to vote to vote for them, so it's closer to 3 or 4% of the population actually approving of these people) can stall ANY legislation INDEFINITELY shows how dysfunctional congress has become. Add in the fact that the 435 House Districts have been reshaped so many times for purely political purposes and I'm surprised we get any meaningful legislation out of there at all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's all about the crypto-communist secret world government trying to tell YOU what to do, isn't it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe evidence of humanity's impact on our climate is diverse and widespread and the physical mechanisms by which it is happening are clear regardless of the denials of "bigbadgav", who is simply parroting false talking points.
Why so much noise and so little knowledge?
"1) It's an undeniable truth that the co2 content of our atmosphere is completely driven by the heat generated by that big thermonuclear fire ball in the sky."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYeah...no. This is an undeniable falsehood. The 30 BILLION TONS of CO2 we spew into the atmosphere just magically floats away, right? You'll probably say, "Butbutbut...the earth releases 10x that amount!" You deniers never realize that the earth also absorbs roughly that same amount (a little more, actually), keeping the system in balance. This is backed up by numerous lines of evidence showing CO2 levels roughly constant over the last 8000 years and only being disrupted previously by the large,slow and natural climate swings of the past. It's like a bathtub that is slowly draining out but is also slowly being refilled by the tap. What people are doing is digging up a lot of the water that has already drained away and putting it back into the tub. We've pushed the concentration of CO2 up 40% since the 1800s. That CO2 has the DISTINCT isotopic signature of fossil carbon, i.e. carbon from coal, oil and natural gas. No natural source can account for this speedy disruption of the Earth's atmosphere. This carbon doesn't magically come from nowhere when we just so happen to start dumping billions of tons of it into the atmosphere all while degrading the world's carbon sinks (clogging the drain).
You need to do some actual research instead of just parroting what Faux News, talk radio, or conspiracy theory blogs spoon feed you, my friend!
"4) Putting an end to pollution will destroy the economies of the world."
You deniers NEVER have proof backing up the crud you smear over the internet. Western Europe has MUCH lower per capita carbon emissions and they've weathered the Great Recession MUCH better than the U.S. People live longer there, infant mortality is lower. What's so bad about getting as efficient as the Eurpoeans?
The nonsense about CO2 "sticking" to water molecules gave me a good laugh...Maybe you need to take chemistry again or something too...
Life would never have taken hold on earth without a CO2 rather than O2 atmosphere . Increments in CO2's spectrum at levels sufficient to maintain life have a very minor effect on our equilibrium temperature . However , it is provably "greening" the planet .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd Gavin , I'm still waiting for the equations which show how the interior of a radiantly heated sphere can have a higher equilibrium temperature than that calculated by Stefan-Boltzmann and Kirchhoff for its surface as you claim for Venus .
Finally, taking personal responsability is a great idea. People need to evaluate whether the house, car and products they buy are satisfying a concrete NEED they have, or whether they are buying stuff just to boost their ego. However, dirty energy and unsustainable consumption is MASSIVELY subsidized, from direct government payments to land use and zoning policy and even the geopolitical decisions this country makes. These actions hide the true cost of dirty energy that we all eventually pay for in some form or another, it's just that EVERYBODY pays the tab, not just those who do the most damage. This is all a cap and trade system or a carbon tax was meant to correct. Considering the insanely low price one could pay to emit CO2 in these mechanisms, the market signal would have been way to weak, but it would have been a good start.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Increments in CO2's spectrum at levels sufficient to maintain life have a very minor effect on our equilibrium temperature..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUm...how is a 50C difference between a dry atmosphere with no CO2 vs with CO2 a "very minor effect"? I'm still waiting for the equations that show how the 40% INCREASE we've caused in atmospheric CO2 and the REPEATEDLY OBSERVED forcing that 40% has on Earth's climate WON'T raise the average temperature.
Venus is hotter than Mercury. Despite being much further away from the sun and having a much higher albedo, Venus is hotter than Mercury. This is a testament to how powerful a greenhouse gas CO2 actually is. The reason it has a higher equilibrium temp than an oversimplified model with a 1-layer atmosphere is that the model's assumptions are wrong. Isn't it cherry-picking to mistrust climate models until one comes along that happens to agree with your preconcieved notions? Come on, you have to try harder than that!
@ Sault :
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe : Warming effect of atmospheric CO2 : http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/heating_effect_of_co2.png .
Re : Venus : Show me the EQUATIONS !
What does your comment have to do with the price of rice in China? Stick to the topic please. The article was debunking Smeed's claims and not about the interests of the renewable energy industry. You claim that SciAm are warmists, why don't you back up your claim with facts? I'll save you the trouble, you cannot.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thispart 4?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for no 1 i'm sorry dude but our emissions are but a small percentage of what the earth drops into the atmosphere.
As for no 4 i fully agree that it's one of those bullshit continually spewed at us by industrials suffering from a lack of imagination.
Sorry i should have been clearer when i said irrelevant (but it's an absolute that it will cost a lot to clean up the heavily polluting industries built in the past, without imagination that is).
The problem still sadly remains the deafs debate, as is proven by the comments on this article.
Ya got the anti-warmist on one side yelling that not behaving like a bunch of varmins (over populating, over consuming, over polluting)and being responsible towards the planet, and those of the future who will inherit this earth, is evil socialism and will destroy us all.
Ya got warmist using all kinds of science and pseudo science and a lot of data and pseudo data to pretend that we are all poor little victims of the evil capitalist.
All the will 50% of the oil consumed in the US comes from Canadian sand oil, the dirtiest form of oil know to men. And government are massively allowing the idiotic concept of fracting to proceed to eventually replace oil with natural gas.
During that time pseudo scientist are trying to make us believe that injecting highly pressurized co2 in the emptied out oil well is logical. What happens when you take a pressurized water gun to a porous rock? Hint the rock erodes away very rapidly!
And then we are being blinded by car makers who pretend that we could build and hydrogen economy. Think about the fact that for every 2 electron that passes through the electrical circuit of that vehicle one atom of oxygen is sucked out of our atmosphere which results in a hot water molecule. you do the maths, weight of vehicle times acceleration times the distance rolls equals a hell of a lot of energy, therefor a lot of electrons going in and lot of oxygen sucked in and a lot of hot water being produced in massive quantities all over the earth. From pollution to siphoning the oxygen out of our atmosphere and filling the world with water, great solution. And don't even think about a car equipped with both an oxygen and an hydrogen tank cause that's a bomb and no insurance companies in the world will ever insure that.
Part 5?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn a world were ignorance is bliss and everything is by god's will, what hope do we have.
Governments will remain the same!
Industrials will remain the same!
Ignorants will remain the same!
Those who really care about the future shouldn't depends on them any ways! It's up to each individuals, who understand that there is no reasons to gamble the entire destiny of our species, to do the required. And as far as all the pros and cons they will always end up being used to prove right whosoever is using them for what ever side that one represents in this completely useless deafs debate. If you know that a product or a company is the cause of more pollution than another then take the other. And if you don't know, well figure it out. wishful thinking is no longer enough.
Just like it means nothing to say "I know not to do on to others!" And then hitting someone in the face for accidentally stepping on your foot.
It means nothing to complain but not do these things.
Peace!
Stephane Vincent
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/StephVincent
Assessment: True before 1800. But false today.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes scientific American claim that the laws of physics have changed between 1800 and 2011? The fact that a 'Scientific' journal published such a statement without clear caveats makes it clear that they are not Scientific.
Steph Vincent is spot on. pollution is bad and we should all have a environmental conscious when consuming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWill someone admit that predictions of a 6 degrees temp rise due to AGW are exaggerated?? And the models need to be reworked??
Here you go:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity-advanced.htm
Oh, and Watts has been entirely wrong on the temperature record accuracy, monitoring station quality and several of his temperature / arctic ice volume predictions have been grossly innacurate, just so you know.
Just because their scientific proof doesn't conform to your spoon-fed ideology, doesn't mean it's wrong. You need equally credible evidence to disprove the mountain of scientific evidence you are arguing against, not just some blabbering you heard from a talk radio host or a blogger with zero credentials.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo you mean F or C and by which date will the 6 degree change be reached? 6F by 2100 is more than a remote possibility if the arctic permafrost and ice cap continue to disintegrate and the world's carbon sinks turn into sources (Amazon basin, oceans, etc.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no question that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing since about the time of our industrial revolution. However, the rate of increase is quite low, about 2 ppmv per YEAR ! (that's 2 parts per million per year).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI notice that the usual alarmists here are not arguing that the increase in CO2 is having a significant impact on warming. AGW is an issue for which there is no evidence. The Medieval Warming Period was as warm, likely warmer (and global - not just regional), and CO2 was apparently at it's longer term 280 ppmv for quite some time before and during that era, until about the time of the beginning of our industrial revolution. In fact, the planet's temperature has dropped a couple of times since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the most recent being from the 1940s to the 1970s, (when there was a panic about the next ice age!). Further, according to satellite readings, there has been no increase in the planet's temperature for the past couple of decades, so temperature has once again stalled out, even as CO2 levels are at their highest.
There continue to be claims by some "scientists" that the planet's temperature is continuing to rise. (They fail to mention that their claim is based on faulty surface temperature recording stations, and they invariably avoid even mentioning satellite readings. Why?)
There is plenty of evidence to back up the skeptics position, and no evidence linking the increase in CO2 to the planet's temperature. NONE.
Being a skeptic does NOT imply that better energy sources would not be preferable. However, it would be catastrophic to permit politicians to take advantage of this faux crisis.
There is time. At 2ppmv per year we may be at 600 or 700 ppmv by 2100. We know that life on this planet survived during periods when the CO2 level was 10 to 20X higher. We also know that plants love higher levels of Co2. Submarine crews do quite well in environments where CO2 is at levels between 3000 to 5000 ppmv.
Finally, if Australia, England, and the US moved all of their inhabitants into caves tomorrow, and their industries were all shut down instantly, it would not drop the planet's temperature enough over the next 50 years to even be measurable on any standard thermometer. Industrial buildup in China, India and other 3rd world countries will more than make up the difference.
We need to begin switching to cleaner energy that is already now available, such as natural gas, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear power, and that process is underway.
Non responsive .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLets apply the same yardstick to this article:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll of it true, but irrelevant. The only fact that matters (and conveniently not addressed by this sophomoric article) is that 80% of the heat trapping effect of CO2 occurs in the first 20 ppm in the atmosphere. After that the effect diminishes rapidly and becomes virtually flatlined at our present 380 ppm. This means that doubling to 780 ppm or halving it to 190 ppm would have minimal impact.
The much vaunted "forcing factors" that are conjectured to amplify the effect of CO2 have never been found in nature, but computer models are evidence of their existence, much as computer models were evidence of the existence of "Cold Fusion".
More propaganda by SCIAM.
Oh, yeah... evidence that the climate has changed doesn't prove that CO2 is responsible, much less that man had anything to do with it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPutzes.
And just for your info, new research is showing that the atmosphere's temperature sensitivity to CO2 is massively less than the IPCC has been hyping.
Cue TRENT1492 to spew the latest propaganda.......
Shoshin,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is not really necessary to provide more examples of half-truths and unsubstantiated assertions, but I guess you feel compelled.
Half-truth - correlation is not causation. Half-lie - pretending not everyone knows that.
Here are some reasons we know it is us.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/The-empirical-evidence-that-humans-are-causing-global-warming.html
What is this new research? Love to see it. How well does it jive with the paleaclimate record? If it is a model, how far back does it do a good hindcast?
What makes you think the latest anything is needed to respond to your tired old noise?
akerber,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo, SciAm is noting that the additional carbon is of fossil origin and there has not been ~700 Pinatuba's per year or any major flood basalt events to account for it. At the same time, man has been burning a lot of fossil fuels.
CO2 is cause of warming and warming also tends to cause a release of CO2, just a lot less that we are doing.
Same laws of physics; different circumstances. Think on it a while.
There is no evidence. It' not complicated to communicate evidence, if there is any. Instead of pointing to other websites, put it here, in your words. I've already searched, in vain, for the evidence that CO2 is having an impact. There is NO evidence. In fact, what evidence there is invariably contradicts that claim.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you can't understand all this evidence you think you have by stating it in your own words, you are an empty suit, not necessary to the debate.
You must have your eyes shut pretty tight.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's start ~150 years ago with Tyndall.
http://tyndallconference2011.org/?page_id=130
Might make a giant leap forward 50 years to Arrhenius.
http://www.iva.se/upload/Verksamhet/H%C3%B6gtidssammankomst/Minnesskrift%202008.pdf
Oh heck, crack a book, or here, let me Google that for you.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=climate+change+evidence
Oh look, the very top link
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
What? You want me to explain how the vibrations within a molecule of CO2 make it sensitive to specific frequencies of light, the average composition and density of the atmosphere by altitude, the logarithmic relationship between GHG concentration and the effect it has, what a logarithm is for that matter, Planck's Law, Stefan-Boltzmann, Kirchoff's Law, the planetary carbon cycle, the lapse rate and its relationship to the ideal gas law, the tropopause, Hadley cells and other circulation patterns, the different varieties of photosynthesis and how that creates isotope signatures in carbon deposits, etc., right here and now? In this one little comment entry? You don't ask for much, do you?
Shall I explain calculus while I'm at it? Because, you'll need to know calculus to really understand some of the other topics.
Or, were you just thinking I'd probably decline to repeat what you must have been shown a thousand times and so you'd be able to claim a victory?
GoFigure is half right....and all wrong. Being able to explain something in plain language about science to lay people is something all scientists should aspire to. That said some are more gifted in the matter than others.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut explaining something and providing evidence are two separate things. When Chris or SA cite websites or research papers they follow well established and respected scientific tradition. When Chris or anyone else cites primary literature or web links to explication of primary literature they demonstrate that they have a command of the field....something that lends their arguments credibilty, and allows facts to be checked. Providing web-links to explication sites tied to primary literature is a courtesy that allows access to information that sits behind paywalls in technical literature to people without resources to purchase copies of the papers or libraries subscribing to the journals.
On the other hand saying that
" I've already searched, in vain, for the evidence that CO2 is having an impact. There is NO evidence. In fact, what evidence there is invariably contradicts that claim."
is pointless.
You haven't named one alleged piece of evidence nor one claim, we don't even know what you mean by impact. Your opinion is therefor worthless. It's not even demonstrated that you know what the claims about AGW are...leaving the reader to suspect that either you don't know....or you've got your own versions of things, strawmen, substituting for even knowing what you're arguing against.
Re: GoFigure at 28.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI pointed out that your post @34 failed because you didn't specify anything. In 28 what you do is manage to pack just about every denier stalking point into a small space.
Want to play a game? Let's pick one point at a time...say the relevence of the alleged medieval warm period, the evidence that it was global and so forth. When we're done with one we can move on to the next. Rules of the game- always cite primary literature. You can provide interpretation, but you have to go back to the data.
"Why Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas" is not answered properly in this article. In fact, CO2 blocks all 15-micron photons, and that is why it is called a greenhouse gas. But more CO2 cannot block more photons. This means CO2 cannot cause more warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article has another error. In fact, oxygen in the atmosphere does block short wavelength photons. Therefore, oxygen does play a role in regulating the planet's atmospheric temperature. When oxygen content in the atmosphere increases enough, another ice age will begin, as has happened many times before.
A big thank you to all of those for your ad hominem attacks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm still waiting for some real world evidence of the CO2 amplifier, though. Any of you who understand science know that this is mandatory. Any of you who are in it for dogma.... well... good luck with that one.
R. Blakely at 38. You need to look up the Beer-Lambert law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer%E2%80%93Lambert_law
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe concentration of CO2 determines how much radiation it absorbs at multipe wavelengths.
And Shoshin, what exactly would you count as "real world" evidence? And what exactly is this new research on the multplier? You're very assertive about things without any specific references.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLook, if you're going to argue with your doctor about him telling you your CT scan shows you have something like lung cancer, you'd best have something real to back it up with, as opposed to "Yeah, well there's a study that shows CT scans are unreliable".
Part 12:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese simple little actions will see you saving money all the while reducing your co2 imprint. At the same time they will be good for your local economies.
Encourage business that goes the extra mile and tell them that that is exactly the reasons why you choose them. Tell their competitors i buy from X because X doesn’t pollute as much as you do. But do tell X that if you find that Y is suddenly polluting less you will turn to Y without hesitations!
They won’t change and government won’t change! BUT WE ARE THE FORCE OF THIS WORLD! No industry, no nation can achieve anything without us! If all were to choose to walk out on a work day an demand changes, don’t you think that government and industrials would have a change of heart?
No we have to become true responsible sentient adult and accept that the responsibility lies solely on us. THE 6.66 BILLIONS OF US! So stop listening to all these biased clowns pretending to a truth or another.
START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW! START ACTING NOW!
This was my last participation to this thread because there was never anything else to be said to begin with!
Again i wish you all:
Peaceful but event filled lives! Enjoy it you only have this one to make a difference!
Stephane Vincent
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/StephVincent
Part 11:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTake as example the multitrillion dollars a year oil industry, which employs millions of people around the world. Now lets say we decide to replace every car with an electrical one. What do you think would happen?
Well. Millions would loose their jobs and their ability to consume anything or pay the bills. Governments would loose billions in revenues. Electricity prices would sky rocket like you can’t even begin to imagine. And every imaginable ways to produce electricity would be used, including burning oil to turn turbines.
In other words the world would indeed collapse!
So you see there is only one way out of this idiotic mess we have allowed ourselves to end up in, simply because we were taught never to question authority (“Ask not what your country can do for you!” Said the man! “Ask what you can do for your country!”). But sadly it does come at a price.
And the decision remains in yours and my hands. No one else is to blame! EVERYDAY OF YOUR LIVE YOU HAVE THE CHOICE! And to quote Neil Peart: “If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice!”
You would not accept if i imposed upon you what i perceive has my personal rights and freedom would you? By that, of course, i mean that ones freedoms should never step over the boundaries of another’s freedoms.
So does one’s alleged right to pollute without a care have precedent over our responsibilities not just to ourselves and family, like the children who call themselves adults of this world do, but to each others right to breath and live freely? And should it also be allowed to supersede the legacy of the entire past and present human race; and in the process those of the future.
It has nothing to do with global warming but everything to do with having a clean world to live in, without continually expecting the earth to clean up after us.
Being a sentient entity requires more then to be self aware! It actually requires you to be as aware of others as you are of yourselves!
And this does imply that your right to pollute does not exist!
It’s there for your responsibility, and yours alone, to change your behaviour.
It is up to you to reduce all forms of oil usage that you can. By taking the bus to work a couple times a week. By consuming local products as much as you can. By not falling pray to the new cup holder on the next iwhatever! By taking your vacations locally. And by becoming aware of the repercussions of the generations of any and every product that you consume.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/StephVincent
Part 10:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFourth reality: First three realities oblige these industries will not out of the kindness of their heart and freewill expend vast amounts of resources for some theory that might and might not be true from their points of view.
Fifth reality: In other words it is useless to expect anything from them without legislation.
Sixth reality: Democratically elected leaders all have dues to those who put their massive weight behind them. And this is true of all of them without exeptions!
Seventh reality: In other words governments can’t really act without loosing the financial and influential support that they need.
Heith reality: This means that expecting anything from them is as useless as expecting change from those who back them up!
Ninth reality: A lobbyist’s job is not to represent the truth but the interest of a particular group.
Tenth reality: The un report on global warming was repudiated by all scientist and the long list of alleged people who worked on it includes every body from presidents of comities to secretaries and caterers.
Eleventh reality: Most scientists in this debate are not debating anything at all. They are simply demanding that with admit that they are right! And this is true of all sides! And with the same bloody data to top it of!
Listen you can quote every math developed to explain global warming but that is EXACTLY WHAT THE PROBLEM IS! They were not created to analyze reality without bias. It’s quite the opposite actually. Each and every model that has been presented to this day were not neutral, but created to demonstrate global warming based on their theories. And so is it for all calculations within those theories. They weren’t designed to express themselves freely. No the warmist all have models that proves global warming as a reality. And all the anti-warmist have models that disproves global warming.
All of this is nothing else then dust thrown into your eyes to prevent you from accepting the one and only truth that ever mattered in this whole affair.
You know as well as i that our planet is over populated right? Yet the only way any nation on the face of this planet can hope to be able to have a future is through constant population growth. This simply means that to meet the financial demands of the future nations need to have more people working and consuming. And consuming must never drop! Else our great over lord the god economy will throw another one of it’s mighty world destabilizing fits.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/StephVincent
Part 9:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo the problem is exactly as i have mentioned earlier! Cold tailpipe co2! 20 years ago it only generated smog in dense cities. But the amounts of vehicles rolling around has exponentially grown. And car makers , to compensate for the fuel economy technologies implemented in modern automobile, began making cars bigger and heavier so they would still consume as much (must keep the oil companies happy too you know).
Now i ear some complaining that government sold us to the oil industries! Is that what you claim now?
Let me take you back to that day when you were much younger and for some reasons found yourselves behind a running car. You then accidentally inhaled the exhaust from the cars tailpipe. Remember how it suffocated you instantaneously? Or how long you cough?
Now lets travel to your sixteenth birthday. Remember how happy you were when you finally got your first drivers license? How eager you were to get that first car? So at which of these points did a representative of the government put a gun to your head to force you to do this?
How about when you travel far away for your vacations does any representative of the government put a gun to your head and say something like “while your on vacation you better consume as much gas as humanly imaginable for a single individual or pow”?
How about when you buy all those products imported from this country or that far away country? Anyone put a gun to your head to force you to consume these oil consuming products? Or had you not realized it yet that when you drink a bottle of imported wine you’re consuming oil? Or when you buy an ipad imported from China, as they all are, you are burning oil?
Are you really that arrogant that you do not perceive the futility of this debate?
Lets be clear on a few more realities of our sweet and kind and caring little human race shall we?
First reality: People go into business to make money.
Second reality: Business people don’t have the natural habit of understanding and applying the concepts of causality to anything else then their wealth!
Third reality: Because of the first two realities, businesses have developed a natural ability of living in denial about the repercussions of their industries on the environment. Lets be real here just look at what was necessary for employees to obtain some kinds of rights in this industrial world. THE MAFIA AND THEIR PARTICULAR WAYS OF GETTING WHAT THEY DEMAND.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/StephVincent
Part 8:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe more cosmic rays in, the more clouds we get, the more photons of all wave lengths are reflected back into space.
The fewer cosmic rays in the fewer clouds get seeded the more photons reaches the surface of the earth.
Nothing more then a simple math equation!
More active sun = more sun spots.
More suns spots= more solar wind.
More solar wind=less high energy particles entering our atmosphere.
Less comic rays in=less cloud seeding.
Less clouds= more photons that reaches the surface of our planet.
More active sun= more photons travelling in our direction.
More photon travelling towards our direction + higher ratio of photons passing through the entire atmosphere=a lot more heat for us.
Don’t believe me go get a chart of the recorded sun spots over the past 400 years. Not put it next to the temp fluctuation chart. Notice a correlation?
Now go get a chart of yearly cloud coverage average and put that next to the first two. Notice any correlations?
Now go get a chart of the average recorded cosmic ray radiation chart. Put that next to the first three. Notice any correlations yet?
These four graphics are almost identical to the year.
So you may keep arguing about whose to blame for as long as you want. Hey how about we spend the next twenty years with fingers pointed well forwards. How about we analyze and reanalyze and conjecture and re-conjecture and theorize and re-theorize for another 40? After all blaming every and any body has already changed a lot of things in the concrete reality of the world we live in hasn’t it?
These charts are not theories based in perceptuallity. Nor are they based on perspectivity! NO, no, no! THEY ARE BASED IN THE REALITY OF THE EVENTS OF OUR PLANET! Just in case it’s not clear.
THIS IS NOT A THEORY THIS REALITY!
And it is this same sun spot cycle that has driven the heat cycles of our planet, save for a few particular geologically driven events. And in turn the co2 cycle!
Our emissions are not properly scattered and that is the real problem. It’s not that our emissions are warming the earth, the sun tends to that to such an extreme degree that we are still very far from being able to affect it in any significant ways.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/StephVincent
Part 7:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far has that man whose greatest achievement in life was to have been the shadow of Bill Clinton's shadow for 8 years. Why is it that every time he shows the graphs representing the relation between heat and co2 deposits he never says that it's the co2 the follows by a couple hundred years the temperature fluctuations and not the other way around?
I mean, any one who has ever looked at those graphs can clearly see that the co2 increase follows the increase in heat. you can actually see that when the temps begin falling again the co2 is still rising for a couple hundred years, well until the oceans temperatures catch up (which requires a couple hundred years!!!). So can you see that has the temps start to claim up again the co2 is still plummeting, cause reaction time of the oceans to catch up.
There is absolutely no confusion to be had here! As far as our personal human emissions, if they were actually well distributed, evenly over the entire globe do i mean, our planet would deal with them without any problems.
The problem is still not global warming, not that there are no poofs (has some would claim while living on the world whose climates have completely changed in the last 20 years) that our planet is warming up. But it is even more truthful to say that our sun has actually enter a very active phase (recorded and all) since the beginning of the 70s, (strange! Isn’t that when the last mini ice age ended? Are you saying that they might be related? Shut up! You’r lying! It was co2! Oh no! Now i just heard someone saying “god did it!”), (yes i agree it is also a strange coincidence that it’s also the year i was born. But i swear it ain’t me! Anyways i’m not that hot! Leave me alone!), and it’s most likely estimated that it will have reached it’s apex around the end of 2012. (Yeah! because then the world is gonna end; you know Nostradamus, the Mayas, blah, blah, blah). After which it is expected to wine down slowly.
This means more sun spots, therefor, more heat for us. But also more solar wind!
Solar wind blocks cosmic rays from reaching us.
The quieter our sun is the quitter the solar wind becomes and the more cosmic rays reaches us.
The more active the sun the more active the wind the less cosmic rays reaches us.
As these high energy particles, that makes up this cosmic ray thingy, interacts with the particles of our atmosphere they cause the seeding of clouds.
Clouds are with because they reflect all wave lengths of light.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/StephVincent
part 6:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo may be some of the oh so well learned people on this site might be aware that between 1940 an 1970 the temps on earth actually plummeted to the point that the Thames in England would actually freeze and people would skate on it. And all this occurred during one of our greatest industrial expansion has industries were spewing more and more crap in the water, the soil and the atmosphere of our planet.
Did you know that their was, at the beginning of the 70s a TV show called THE GREEN MACHINE? So one day this man with a great theory come on and starts claiming that "This new industrial expansion might prove beneficial to counteract this new ice age." And his claims were based on is believes that co2 was a mighty powerful green house gas, due to co2's ability to absorb infra, and near, infrared radiations.
On the next day scientist all over the world were chocked at such an irresponsible statement and immediately debunked is theory as being without any foundations to itself.
One might think that this was enough to close the subject. But one would have to forgo geopolitical state of the UK back then.
Because, you see, the UK was heavily reliant on two things: 1) The oil of the Arabic world. 2) Coal.
But the miners were always on strike and Miss Thatcher had absolutely no faith in the Arabs. So she had a comity put together to evaluate the impact of various energy sources on our planet. Well that was the official version. The truth is she wanted to be rid of both problems at once. The real purpose of that comity was quite self revealing.
Their first conclusions was that almost all forms of fossil fuels were detrimental to the environment, and the were the only scientist on the face of the earth to believe it.
Their second conclusion was that only nuclear, pronounced nucular if you are of the Simpson genus, was viable as a long term energy source. Which is only true of third generation power plants, but they would signify the end of the uranium/plutonium market (and therefor enrichment towards weapon grade Plutonium, and we can't have that now can we?).
So of course as soon as they published their results, almost to the day, she ordered the construction of a bunch of reactors. As i said self revealing!
And so was born a new myth for the human race!
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/StephVincent
What, you brain is non-responsive? I figured that out a while ago.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPROOF?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the real reason we even have a debate about climate change is that people like you can be chumped off so easily by fake science generated by hucksters. Remember, there's $100B/year in PROFITS for just Big Oil at stake here. Please tell me, which side has the biggest financial incentive to make stuff up and mislead the public?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt may be 2 ppmv of CO2 per year but it is also 30,000,000,000 metric tons per year. In addition it is 30,000,000,000,000 kilograms per year and furthermore it is really 30,000,000,000,000,000 grams per year.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCO2 weighs about 2 gram per liter at standard pressure and temperature so that's 15 quadrilion liters of CO2.
There are about 510,000,000,000,000 square meters on the earth's surface and the conclusion is that last year we have added 15,000 trillion/510 trillion or 29 liters of CO2 per each and every square meter of surface of the earth.We did it the year before and will almost certainly do it again this year and next year and so forth.
You tell me if that is a little or a lot.
Furthermore the warming effect of CO2 has nothing to do with the abundance of nitrogen, oxygen and argon in the atmosphere. CO2 will reflect certain well defined long wave infrared radiation regardless of how much nitrogen oxygen or anything else there is in the atmosphere.
Therefor the 2 ppmv of CO2 is a meaningless measurement when it comes to the warming effect of CO2.
So the only increases of CO2 in any one year that matter is the increase with respect to the amount of CO2 there was in the atmosphere the year before and with respect to the increase in CO2 emissions from the year before.
That happens to be about 2.5 and 0.5 percent per year in the last few years. In the long run this could become serious and perhaps very serious.
Of course you may argue that in the long run we will all be dead. However CO2 may shorten the long run quite a bit.
Carlyle,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAustralia is a good subject for global warming, given that all of its major cities are on the seacoast and thus would be threatened by rising sea levels, and also that iti is a major supplier of coal to China.
So, from which perspective do you speak? Do you speak from the perspective of the urban dwellers who fear that their property will be inundated by rising seas, or do you speak from the perspective of the coal baron?
Shoshin,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFYI, an ad hominem is something like saying you smell bad; pointing out where you have said something inaccurate is not an ad hominem argument.
R. Blakely,
At what density do you think CO2 stops or starts blocking all 15 micron photons? What altitude does this correspond to? What happens when you add more CO2; does the threshold altitude rise?
Or, another way to show the fallacy of your argument, what happens to the energy absorbed? Does it stay in the CO2 molecule forever, or is there a chance that it will get emitted?
Hint: As the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the mean altitude of emission rises.
“There just isn't any evidence that warrants panic.”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo one is advocating panic. At least not scientists, which is who we should be listening to. The evidence doesn’t support panic. The evidence does support change.
Scientists are pointing to a somewhat distant but not far future outcome that is quite certain if we continue on our present path. They are telling us the prudent thing to do is cut back or quit smoking fossil fuels otherwise we will face many planetary health problems in a few decades.
bigbadgav: There just isn't any evidence that warrants panic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGlaciers are melting, some have completely gone, Arctic ice has receded dramatically, Antarctic ice shelves are breaking up ... the last decade (2000-2009) has been the hottest on record.
Thanks for the input people. And yes PROOF is required; it is not optional.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA real world example would be an experiment that is repeatable, testable and falsifiable. Computer models showing the "desired" outcome are not PROOF or anything remotely like it. As to what the experiment that you propose is, I'll leave that up to you. The onus lies on the experimenter to prove their hypothesis and this has somehow been missed, ignored or perverted by the whole AGW issue. Sad but true.
So, again, instead of nattering about and gnashing your teeth that I won't play nicely with others, Where is your
PROOF????
(and proof isn't photoshopped pictures of polar bears either)
Strange how the rate of sea rise is actually decreasing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStrange how the Australian governments chief climate advisor recently purchased a mansion by the sea, as per many other alarmists who chose to live or invest in areas they claim are in dire peril.
Strange how much abuse & virulent criticism posts such as mine attract without answering my question, none of them answering the question of how much of a temperature difference the Australian action will make for all the billions of dollars it will cost.
Did you know that at least 230 glaciers in the Western Himalayas are growing, many others in India & even in Europe? Seen the MSM coverage of this? Of course not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I've already searched, in vain, for the evidence that CO2 is having an impact."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-----------
Unfortunately, searching on DENIALIST sites like watt's and others like it, will never produce the evidence you don't want to find in the first place!
"new research is showing that the atmosphere's temperature sensitivity to CO2 is massively less than the IPCC has been hyping."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-------------
Are you trying to reference Spencer and Braswell's study that uses an overly simplistic climate model, with conclusions that rely on using one particular data set, and a paper that does not provide enough information to duplicate the study?
It seems as if the hype surrounding this paper, published in a journal called 'Remote Sensing,' which is a fine journal for geographers, but does not deal with atmospheric and climate science, and it is evident that this paper did not get an adequate peer review, is much more impressive by the faux nooz propagandists!
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/07/29/data-cooling-on-global-warming/
Or the completely distorted physics by the likes of faux nooz commentator joe bastardi, which is embarrassing enough by itself, but further reduced to laughable excrement by his 'expert' partner at Weather Bell, Joe D'Aleo - a co-founder of The Weather Channel, who is actually a signatory of "An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming."
The bottom line is that there is no merit whatsoever in this paper, and it should not have been published!
"Did you know that at least 230 glaciers in the Western Himalayas are growing.."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this---------------
WOW! So there is a small silver lining in the cloud of a warming Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. This was from a 2009 study by John Shroder of the University of Nebraska-Omaha, and a team of researchers examining satellite imagery.
"It looks like it's the Westerlies," Shroder said, referring to strong jets of wind that pour from west to east in a belt around the planet. Though he can't say for certain, the winds appear to be carrying more moisture from the warming Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea eastward.
When Shroder and a team of researchers examined satellite imagery of the region's glaciers dating back to 1960, they found that 87 glaciers had surged forward during that time, perched on the soaring Karakoram mountains in the Western Himalayas bucking the global warming trend.
Throughout much of the Tibetan Plateau, high-altitude glaciers are dwindling in the face of rising temperatures.
"We will see regional patterns like this developing as climate change alters precipitation," said Andrew Fountain of Portland State University in Oregon.
But it's not likely to last.
"As temperatures continue increasing, they will overtake additional mass provided by snow," Fountain said. "The freezing level will keep rising, and glaciers will melt."
http://news.discovery.com/earth/himalayas-glaciers-shrink.html
"When oxygen content in the atmosphere increases enough, another ice age will begin, as has happened many times before."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this----------
Hmmmmm......problem with your ASSumption, is that although it is clearly proven that atmospheric CO2 levels are steadily increasing, oxygen levels have been decreasing at the same time. Try sticking to the facts!
Atmospheric Oxygen Levels Fall As Carbon Dioxide Rises
According to a study conducted by scientists from the Scripps Institute there is less oxygen in the atmosphere today than there used to be. The ongoing study, which accumulated and interpreted data from NOAA monitoring stations all over the world, has been running from 1989 to the present. It monitored both the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the decline in oxygen. The conclusion of that 20 year study is that, as carbon dioxide (produced primarily by burning fossil fuels) accumulates in the atmosphere, available oxygen is decreasing.
Read more: http://blogcritics.org/scitech/article/atmospheric-oxygen-levels-fall-as-carbon/#ixzz1VaQufown
---
Dr. Ralph Keeling (one of the lead scientists on the Scripps Institute study) said:
"It is roughly true that the oxygen depletion is equivalent to a displacement by carbon dioxide. But it is not exactly true. First, some of the carbon dioxide produced has been absorbed by the oceans. This process involves inorganic chemical reactions which have no effect on O2. Second, the O2:C combustion ratio of a fossil-fuel depends on the hydrogen content. The ratio varies from about 1.2 for coal, 1.45 for liquid fuels, and 2.0 for natural gas. Taking these factors together, we are losing nearly three O2 molecules for each CO2 molecule that accumulates in the air."
Please, Lakota2012, don't hurt 'em!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this... oh wait, too late!
This comment must be a joke. If not you may have unwittingly solved a long standing problem in science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease explain to me where the first 20 ppm of CO2 are to be found in the atmosphere. Is it in the first millimeter,inch,foot,meter or perhaps just before the infrared radiation disappears into space let's say 100 kilimeters above the surface of the earth.
How is it that the 80% of heat trapping is spread over 20ppm? Is that 4% per ppm or is it logarithmic whatever you may mean by that.
Where exactly is that flatline at 380 ppm? Is it even on this planet?
Why are you doubling ??? and then halving "it".
In short the whole comment is worthless and can only be a joke. There is no way that so much ignorance could be displayed in such a short comment.
"There is no way that so much ignorance could be displayed in such a short comment."
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One would hope that would be the case, but it's the constant persistence of the same repetitious ignorance that gives the DENIALISTS their perceived 'win.'
It's the completely distorted physics by the likes of faux nooz commentator joe bastardi, which is embarrassing enough by itself, but further reduced to laughable excrement by his 'expert' partner at Weather Bell, Joe D'Aleo - a co-founder of The Weather Channel, who is actually a signatory of "An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTaking that a step further, I do get a chuckle out of this one though:
No, global warming has become a religion because Rush and Co. have succeeded in making it one.
He has succeeded in recasting the global-warming debate in the same way he has succeeded in recasting the debate over everything else, from taxes to health care to gay marriage.
He has made an issue that should be amenable only to fact amenable to faith, indeed subservient to it, so that if people don't "believe" in global warming, it's not happening.
The great secret to the success of the Republican party since it became an arm of the American church and the American corporation is that it pretends to abide by "absolutes" while remaining committed to the relativism at the heart of all religion, which is that if you believe in something, it exists, and if you don't, it doesn't.
The result is not simply a recipe for denial, it's a closed loop, in which evidence that global warming is happening is interpreted as evidence that it's not.
Rick Perry, praying to God for relief from drought and praying to Jesus for relief from America's habit of calamity, will never call for lower greenhouse-gas emissions, because it's the people calling for lower greenhouse-gas emissions who have caused the drought and brought on the calamities.
And if the waters should rise, the American faithful will huddle on the roof, waiting for the arrival of an angel blowing his trumpet, when all God ever wanted was for them to get into the damned boat.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/global-warming-religion-5912388
Predictions are not facts. In this debate, only the unpalatable predictions tend to get oxygen. I have been trying to elicit a response to my question. By how much will Australia’s multi billion carbon dioxide reducing programmes reduce the increase in global warming?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe answer based on the figures given by the warmists is measured in thousandths of a degree over centuries if not millennia. No measurable effect with the most sensitive temperature measuring device available today would be discernable for a thousand years.
There is a high correlation between GHG emissions and planetary temperature. There’s an enormous body of underlying physics that supports the theory that the former causes the latter, including the means by which this happens and extent to which they are related. Much of the physics has been laboratory tested and is not in dispute. The physics has been tested against recent climate records, paleoclimate and known conditions on other planets, where it holds up. The rules of the theory have been manually calculated in simple models and combined in complex computer climate models, where they produce results consistent with the theoretical understanding. A number of predictions follow from the theory and measurements of those phenomena show the predictions to be successful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven a court of law doesn’t require proof to hang you, it requires just sufficient evidence. What kind of empirical proof do you want? With one planet we can’t do a double blind placebo controlled trial. The only alternative is a post mortem. The results of that should be available around 2100.
In the mean time we’ll have to work with all the available evidence, which predominantly stacks up in favour of anthropogenic induced warming.
"By how much will Australia's multi billion carbon dioxide reducing programmes reduce the increase in global warming?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, if you assume the global temperature will increase 3 deg C by 2100 (probably a low estimate), and Australia were to entirely eliminate it's 1% contribution to the problem, then 1% of 3 deg is 0.03 deg C. This is over a decade's worth of GW so it's significant, and many orders of magnitude greater than "thousandths of a degree over centuries if not millennia".
Typo: This is over a year's worth ...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Predictions are not facts....I have been trying to elicit a response to my question. By how much..."
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Your post is a conundrum and your question is asked purely for amusement, since after stating "predictions are not facts," you ask for a PREDICTION.
Surely you jest much like all DENIALISTS!
"By how much will Australia's multi-billion carbon dioxide reducing programmes reduce the increase in global warming?"
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Your prediction would be solely dependent on how soon Australia can cutoff China's vital source of mineral resources, which is what is fueling this debate in the first place!
Australia leases out mineral-rich land as China's hunger for resources grows
No longer content with buying iron ore and coal from Australian firms, China is building its own mining operations in the country
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/12/china-australia-mining-iron-coal
I was amused to read the sample points raised by the Galileo Movement. Have these come from a community of scientist? I cannot believe that such untenable arguments would have come from persons with nearly sound scientific background. How meaningless it is to say, "Under normal temperature and pressure water stays in a solid phase at and below 0.0 degree Celsius. It would not start melting, if its temperature is raised by 0.01 or 0.02 degree or by any small amount!" The arguments are of similar category.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell judging by the last decade where temperature increase has stalled, 3deg C is on the high side. On top of that, the billions Australia is spending is not to eliminate all carbon dioxide emissions. The target is to reduce it by 5% by 2020, or do you think it is worthwhile for an entire nation to disappear for your benefit. A few nukes should do it. Twenty three million people in exchange for a fraction of a degree per decade. You need to divide your figure by 20. I.E .015 deg C per decade. However, even if the entire world ceased producing Co2 Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's chief climate change commissioner & government climate adviser, Professor Tim Flannery claims it will take a thousand years before global temperatures would actually start to reduce. By about 1 or 2 deg C. Typically, the projected temperature rises do not discount the average temp increase since the last mini ice age either. Pathetic. Don't let the facts get between you & your religion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat loony left paper would be your favourite right?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVietnam exports five times as much coal to China as Australia. Ask your favourite paper about that. Do you seriously think Australia ceasing to export coal would make any difference to their coal consumption? The vast majority comes from their domestic mines.
A decade is not long enough to say anything for certain about where global temperatures are headed. As I said, 3 degrees is likely low not high for year 2100 (I wanted to avoid arguing about this number but ...).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsider this. You wake up in a small boat out in the surf. Leaving the dry cabin you find there's two inches of water on the floor of the boat. You sit in the stern. Each time you ride up a wave this water rushes to the stern and you are over your ankles in water. As you slide down the other side of the wave the water rushes to the bow and your feet are dry. So, is this just rain water that has collected in the boat while you slept inside, or is there a slow leak in the hull? The only way to know while in the surf is to measure over many waves and see what the numbers tell you (or if you are "skeptical" that a leak exists, you just wait to see if the boat sinks).
This story is about conservation of mass but it's an analogy for conservation of energy. Fluid dynamics on a spinning planet with tilt seasons causes heat to slosh around on the surface and into the oceans and atmosphere. Sometimes the heat is spread out more evenly and sometimes it's very shallow or very deep in different locations depending on synoptic eddies (like me:), Hadley cells, the polar vortex, etc. Radiative heat transfer causes spillage off the planet while a slightly varying sun keeps replacing lost energy with albedo changes affecting the sun's replacement efficacy. Autocorrelation applies over time too. And we mostly measure heat close to the surface where it matters to us. It gets quite complicated with so many factors. The more complicated, the longer you need to measure to see what's really happening.
I get the same political arguments for inactivism in my country. They don't really matter. Mother Nature isn't listening to your arguments.
This posting conflates the issue/problem with the range of possible solutions, which I think is confusing and does a disservice to all concerned about this topic. The SCIAM article debunks some of the common "denialist" claims that climate change is not happening and/or is not a problem. It's unfortunate that these claims are still being widely disseminated, despite the findings of many scientific reports from prestigious scientific bodies in recent years (e.g., U.S. Academies, U.N. International Panel on Climate Change) that have shown clearly that climate change is occurring and that humans are causing it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem is clear, so let's accept it and move the discussion on to the solutions (and weighing their economic/political consequences), some of which were mentioned in the Carlyle post.
"That loony left paper would be your favourite right?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVietnam exports five times as much coal to China as Australia."
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Talk about nice ad hominem attacks on sources, when I said I really liked the one story from the hypocrites!
Looks to me that Vietnam will be IMPORTING COAL starting next year, so maybe you need a more reliable nooz source, since the ones the ridiculous right uses, are only full of preposterous propaganda!
"Vietnam, struggling to meet soaring energy demand at home, plans to slash coal exports this year by more than 32 percent to about 22 million tonnes to save more for new power plants, officials from the Industry and Trade Ministry have said."
"Vietnam is forecast to start importing coal from 2012 with the purchases rising to 34 million tonnes in 2015 and 114 million tonnes by 2020, the Industry and Trade Ministry said in a report to the government in March."
http://vietnamexportnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=39259:vietnam-h1-coal-export-volume-down-on-year&catid=594:vietnam-export&Itemid=1122
"Well judging by the last decade where temperature increase has stalled.."
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And just who whispered that preposterous propaganda in your ear?
Was it lord monckton?
Was it anthony watts?
Was it senator inhoffe?
Was it roy spencer, who I addressed previously?
"But for most self-identified 'conservatives,' it will never matter how high the water rises or how convincingly the evidence mounts, because from the start the debate about global warming has never been a debate in which rules of evidence apply. Rather, it has been a tectonic collision of belief systems.."
"No, global warming has become a religion because Rush and Co. have succeeded in making it one."
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/global-warming-religion-5912388#ixzz1VgvKy9v8
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Globally, the hottest 12-month period ever recorded was from June 2009 to May 2010.
For global records, 2010 was the hottest year on record, tied with 2005,
"By how much will Australia's multi-billion carbon dioxide reducing programmes reduce the increase in global warming?"
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Your prediction would be solely dependent on how soon Australia can cutoff China's vital source of mineral resources, which is what is fueling this debate in the first place!
You totally missed the point, since it was YOU in the first place that was asking for a PREDICTION about reducing Australia's carbon dioxide footprint, and that has everything to do with COAL EXPORTS and fossil fuel use inside Australia, and nothing to do with Chinese imports or use.
"The result is not simply a recipe for denial, it's a closed loop, in which evidence that global warming is happening is interpreted as evidence that it's not. Rick Perry, praying to God for relief from drought and praying to Jesus for relief from America's habit of calamity, will never call for lower greenhouse-gas emissions, because it's the people calling for lower greenhouse-gas emissions who have caused the drought and brought on the calamities."
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/global-warming-religion-5912388#ixzz1VgzpCJjo
There is one point I agree with you on. the utter stupidity of the Australian government in penalising Aussies for burning coal for local use, another steel mill putting off a thousand men today, while exporting coal & jobs, to China. The coal tonnages I was looking at were a few years old. Australia now exports a little more to china than Vietnam. Australia now at 25 MT. You single out a few anti hysteria people. How about we trade one of them for the head of the IPPC who claims mankind is causing Earthquakes. Wow.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry I have been delayed by some mathematical research that I had to do in order to explain how the comment (number 30) attributed to Mr. Shoshin in this blog might have unwittingly solved a long standing problem in science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe amount of ignorance displayed in this comment attributed to Mr. Shoshin is in my opinion beyond any yardstick whatsoever.
You may recall that Albert Einstein reportedly said that there were only 2 things in the real world that could be infinite to wit the universe and ignorance. Furthermore he is claimed to have said that he was not sure about the universe. I think this is just a myth and he said nothing of the sort. In any event he was no expert in the field of infinities that honor goes to Mr. Cantor.
Mr. Cantor showed that there are 3 different infinities. The first is obvious in the set of whole numbers. The set of whole numbers is said to be infinite because given any number however large I can always add one.
Given any other set I can compare it to the set of whole numbers and decide if this other set has the same infinity as the set of whole numbers. For example the set of even numbers, the set of odd numbers, the set of perfect squares, cubes, the infinite sets of any given whole power are all equally infinite. On top of that the set of all rational numbers is equally infinite as the set of whole numbers.
Mr. Cantor went on to show that there were sets of things that were of a different or higher or denser infinity than the set of whole numbers. The best known example is the set of real numbers.
Subsequently it was shown that there is another set of things called the set of all possible curves that is even denser than the set of all real numbers.
These different infinities were called aleph 0, aleph 1, and aleph 2.
No denser infinite set has ever been defined or shown to exist as far as I know.
Now, like climatologists, Mr. Cantor used a trick to decide whether a set of things belonged to one infinity or the other. He said that if you could set up a one to one correspondance between one set and another then these two sets have the same infinity.
This is where the statements attributed to Mr. Shoshin come in. Try as I might I could not set up a one to one correspondance between the set aleph 0, aleph1 or aleph 2 and the amount of ignorance displayed in said comment (30).
Therefor the ignorance is so large as to exceed all 3 of these infinities. Consequently this infinity must belong to aleph 3 or higher.
In that way Mr. Shoshin may have unwittingly greatly attributed to the science of infinities and hence mathematics and therefor all of science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have invoked the help of my very good friend Mr. Mat Ari Methic. He is infinitely more versed in this subject than I am and will determine in which of the many infinte alephs this particular set of ignorance belongs.
I will keep you posted. But please do not hold your breath as this may take one of those alephs of time.
A cheap experiment that is simple and easily reproducible is published at www.galileomovement.com.au/blog - millions of young brain-washed minds can be liberated by the practice of science like this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA most expensive experiment has just been published in 'Nature' where early results from the CERN 'Cloud' experiment confirm Svensmark's theory that the Sun and cosmic rays control the earth temperature and climate.
'Nitrogen, oxygen and argon together make up close to 100 percent of the atmosphere. But all three are invisible to incoming "short-wave" radiation from the sun and outgoing "long-wave" radiation from the Earth's surface. They play no role in regulating the planet's atmospheric temperature.'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe last sentence in this quote from the text reveals a staggering ignorance of basic physics in the one who makes it. Is it Gavin Schmidt?
In fact, these gases determine atmospheric temperature. The greenhouse effect theory by contrast is bunk. It states that back-scattered infra red radiative transfer of heat raises the surface temperature of the earth beyond that from the effects of insolation from the sun alone.
Think beyond the kindergarten 'science' of the 'climate change' alarmists. Think about the Ideal Gas Law - think about the adiabatic lapse rate of the atmosphere. Think about kinetic energy in gas molecules under the pressure caused by gravity of the earth.
No effect - really - what tosh.
If you want, do a simple experiment that shows the greenhouse effect theory is bunk - http://galileomovement.com.au/blog/?p=25
If you want to learn more of the physics - http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/Understanding_the_Atmosphere_Effect.pdf
And there is plenty more.
Yet there is not a scintilla of scientific proof for the greenhouse effect theory that underpins 'climate change' post-normal science. 'Climate change science' - predictions of catastrophic man made global warming - is the pathetic low level rent-seeking apology from so-called scientists used to underpin the greatest international power and money grabbing scam in history.
The scam was developed long before any any so-called science from the IPPC fraudsters - here's a primary document ( newspaper article) from March 1988 to whet your interest - the translation is nearby.
http://www.galileomovement.com.au/docs/BolinLonnrothDN88-03-24.pdf
I guess in today’s terms that I am a denialist. However, let me point out that I am well educated in the sciences holding a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering, MSc in Mechanical Engineering and a BSc in Aerospace. I also have over 25 years experience in electrochemistry, alt energy and environmental sciences. In addition, I have sailed most of the way around the world...so I know first hand the affects of global warming and the true size on the world's oceans. Nonetheless, I hold fast to my knowledge that carbon dioxide is not a green house gas. It has however, become a political tool and is being used to balance the budget of a country suffering from a severe case of Dutch disease.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBesides, I know Gavin and he is only a computational modeler who works a government job and has somehow become an authority on AGW. The world is an amazing place...isn't it Gavin?