Our future is at risk. The science is settled, in the main, though there are many details to continue to work out and there are unknowns. But no one doubts that business as usual release of fossil carbon into the atmosphere mainly as the greenhouse gas Carbon Dioxide spells big trouble for humanity and the planet Earth, including eventual massive sea level rise and highly disruptive changes in the Earth’s climatology that will make a mess of many things including our food supply. Think failed state. Think Syria. Now, think failed planet, Syria over half the globe, the other half merely a mess. That’s what we are heading for.
We know less than we need to about the timing and severity of various impending disasters, but we already see the beginning. Sea level rise and warmer seas has made for some of the most severe tropical storm systems ever seen. That’s a genie we can not put into the bottle. And these storms don’t seem to always confine themselves to the tropics. Extreme cold and extreme heat, extreme precipitation and extreme dryness, floods, and other catastrophic weather related events are happening with increased frequency. Central Europe, Colorado, Calgary, Great Britain. Some of these weather and climate problems are clearly connected to climate change such as those related to extreme heat, increased drying through evaporation, and increase water vapor. Others, such as those caused by changes in the jet stream, are also probably connected to global warming but the climate scientists are still arguing about the details and extent of this, a normal part of the consensus building scientific process. For the most part, though, almost no one is saying “no connection.”
And we can fix this or at least, ameliorate the effects on behalf of those who shall inherit whatever is left of this one Earth we’ve got, when we are done messing with it.
Unless…
Unless organized climate science denialists, right wing “morans” from the Tea Party, self interested paid-off politicians, and the likes of David and Charles Koch, get their way. Unless they get what they want, which is to interfere with the translation of climate science into science policy. Unless they also get their way by interfering with changes to how we approach and build for clean energy and updated infrastructure.
I once said, and a lot of people (well, bad people, not any good people) got mad at me, that taking away the future of our children and grandchildren was a criminal act. Of course, you know it is. But in saying that, unfortunately, I can only be referring to “criminal act” as a metaphor, or perhaps as wishful thinking. There actually isn’t a law against ruining the planet and ending civilization as we know it, against taking part in the death and misery of countless humans, against carrying out acts of such utterly despicable selfishness and general terror that you will be placed among the ranks of the genocidal once all is said and done, if you get your way. Nope. That’s totally legal.
Or is it? Or, at least, should it be?
What if someone other than me came along with the opinion that “There oughta be a law” or at least, a serious proposal that organized climate science denialism and obstruction against implementation of planet-saving policies and technologies should be considered an act against humanity?
What would happen is this. The very denialists who work so hard to ensure the misery of our grandchildren, for whatever mercenary, psychopathic, demented, or just very badly misguided reason they may have, will instantly spring to life and attack that person. Anthony Watts will sneer and kvetch, and call his minion of eleven or twelve climate science denying winged monkeys (and their myriad sock puppets) to arms. Christopher Monkton will pretend he is someone, pretend he has a functioning brain, pretend to sound smart and legal, and pretend to say pretend threatening things.
Well, that happened.
Lawrence Torcello of Rochester Institute of Technology stepped in it. He called them crooks.
…critics of the case in L’Aquila are mistaken if they conclude that criminal negligence should never be linked to science misinformation. Consider cases in which science communication is intentionally undermined for political and financial gain. Imagine if in L’Aquila, scientists themselves had made every effort to communicate the risks of living in an earthquake zone. Imagine that they even advocated for a scientifically informed but costly earthquake readiness plan.
If those with a financial or political interest in inaction had funded an organised campaign to discredit the consensus findings of seismology, and for that reason no preparations were made, then many of us would agree that the financiers of the denialist campaign were criminally responsible for the consequences of that campaign. I submit that this is just what is happening with the current, well documented funding of global warming denialism.
More deaths can already be attributed to climate change than the L’Aquila earthquake and we can be certain that deaths from climate change will continue to rise with global warming. Nonetheless, climate denial remains a serious deterrent against meaningful political action in the very countries most responsible for the crisis.
At first I was not sure if I agreed with Professor Torcello about L’Aquila. I think the scientists got thrown under the bus, as it wasn’t mainly them who messed up, it morel likely that it was the administrative officials and politicians. But he’s indicated to me that he saw L’Aquila as an example of the importance of science communication, not as a specific precedent. To be clear, Torcello is asking if the funding of science, in this case, climate science misinformation criminally negligent.
But for the present, that is not an important detail; the point is, yes, you can lie to every one and then they fucking die because of your lies. That is for real. That is your fault if you do that. That makes you some kind of crook, even if at the moment there is not a law against your utterly misanthropic behavior. and that is how I see the hard core climate science denialists.
And, of course, Anthony Watts is whining and Christopher Monkton is Mocking, and the Winged Monkeys are aloft.
They are attacking Professor Torcello by demanding redress from his employers at Rochester. I sent a note to them supporting the good professor. If you are friend and not foe send me the secret handshake and I’ll send you the list of individuals I sent the letter to with their emails, and you can do the same if you want.
Image is from The Lorax, which gives a message some people apparently missed.
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
The problem with people like Bill Laden who believe Climate Change Mitigation as a moral goal is that it is they who are the ones who are inherently immoral and yes maybe even criminal. Immoral for denying people access to cheap and reliable energy from fossil fuel when so called “renewables” do more harm to “Gaia” than fossil fuel does, not to mention kill millions of poor people due to fuel poverty. *
The real harm to the environment is not Fossil Fuel it is Wind and Solar which should be stopped immediately. Just look at the land use issues involved in current wind and solar energy initiatives in the US for example. They are so horrific that they might be accurately described as a war on nature. If one does the math the US would have to dedicate 500,000+ square miles or approx. 15% of her entire land mass to solar to provide all of the US energy needs. Wind is no better. Wind energy providers in the US provide between 25 and 50 acre buffer zones for each wind mill and many of these wind farms are gobbling up prime farmland in the process; reducing America’s ability to produce food. Bottom line wind and solar are not ready for primetime; How can Climate Change Alarmists like Bill Gates ignore the devastation Solar panels and wind turbines do to the thousands of bats and eagles that are killed on the blades of wind turbines and the small birds that are literally burned alive in flight of solar panels http:* over the vast array of solar panels that scar the planes. Anti fossil fuel activists like Bill Laden and his ilk need to stop their war on fossil fuel and the devastation to Nature and Humanity their Wind and Solar policies are causing in the name of “saving the planet from climate change”.
The destruction to the environment and humanity that wind,solar and biofuel crops cause are well documented:
*
*
*
But to add insult to injury, The Climate change mitigation efforts Bill Laden and his ilk wants to impose by government force on people are all pain for no gain. Billions of dollars have been dumped down the toilet in a futile effort to regulate the climate. The only thing climate change mitigation efforts have accomplished is to destroy Nature, enrich elite crony green capitalists, and Impoverish poor people.
Green Climate Crimes
All Pain For No Gain:*
Rich Get Richer *
Poor Get Shafted *
*
The men who put man on the moon say the humanity should have no fear of Catastrophic Climate Change. *
How the Global Warming Scare Began *
Frankly, I don’t know how elite Climate Alarmists like Bill Laden sleep well at night. Sleep well at night knowing their anti fossil fuel policies are behind a man made Green Holocaust using the lie they are “saving the planet” from the trace gas CO2 that grows plants.
*
* A Holocaust that will do nothing to mitigate Change. *All it will do is to line the pockets of crony green capitalists with tax payer money for failed green energy like Solyndra.*
Who is Bill Laden? Oh, by the way, no links to denialist blogs or sites allowed.
*=deleted
To: CJ Orach
You’re missing the real issue here. The global warming crowd believe that there is too many humans on the planet. Ergo, some must be removed, i.e. killed, murdered, whatever the acceptable term is nowadays.
Reflecting a little about it, there not a whole lot different than the Aztecs who sacrificed 20,000 bodies per year to their gods because it wasn’t raining enough. Methinks the Aztecs were the first “climate scientists” in the world. Their counterparts nowadays are no different. Letting people freeze to death because CO2 is too prevalent is no different than cutting their hearts out on an alter (with a high priest in attendance, of course) in order to assuage the god’s anger.
Make no mistake. These bozos are CRAZY. No different than the pagan Aztecs.
Bill Laden is a combination of Bill Gates and Greg Laden. Just thought it was a cute way of highlighting that the majority of Climate Alarmists are white and rich folks and don’t give a damn about the fact their anti fossil fuel agenda is killing millions of poor people (mainly minority people) , via fuel poverty, not to mentions small birds, bats and eagles.By the way * “Climate Crimes” are not “denialists” they are greens who, like Greg Laden, believe in the false prophets of climate change. They just are not delusional enough to believe that so called “renewable energy” is any better than fossil fuel and in fact may be even more destructive to Mother Nature than fossil fuel is.
Green Climate Crimes
All Pain For No Gain:
*
Poor Get Shafted *
*
Gaia Weeps:
*
**
*
How the Global Warming Scare Began *
I’m sorry CJ, but you are the one who has been brainwashed. It is the fossil fuels that are killing thousands of people world wide every year. Thousands of coal miners die in mining accidents every year particularly in China. The toxic effluent from coal mines pollutes the environment and kills or sickens thousands more. Look at the massive smog problems in so many cities around the world generated by the use of fossil fuels. Thousands of people suffer and die as a result. Look at the devastation caused by the oil sands project in Alberta Canada. Yes, there are problems associated with wind farms and many birds are killed but the ecological devastation caused by the oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico especially the BP oil spill is overwhelming. The livelihood of fishermen and oyster and lobster harvesters has been destroyed. Solar energy is not very cost efficient now but that is changing fast. Green energy is a new field but it is advancing and improving fast. It is all more expensive than fossil energy right now but that does not mean that it should be abandoned. Visit any fossil fuel extraction facility in person and you will see for yourself, the devastation that results. If you won’t do that, at least look at aerial photos of the oil sands in Alberta and tell me that no wildlife is being harmed. Fossil fuels are killing us. And that is a fact!
Computer models say warming is happening
Real data says it is not.
Heretics believe in the models not the data and must be purged, their books burned.
Too funny
THE GIST
– Wind farms can warm up the surface of the land underneath them during the night.
– Satellite data of surface temperatures from western Texas show a direct correlation between night-time temperature increases and wind farm location.
New research finds that wind farms actually warm up the surface of the land underneath them during the night, a phenomena that could put a damper on efforts to expand wind energy as a green energy solution.
Researchers used satellite data from 2003 to 2011 to examine surface temperatures across as wide swath of west Texas, which has built four of the world’s largest wind farms. The data showed a direct correlation between night-time temperatures increases of 0.72 degrees C (1.3 degrees F) and the placement of the farms.
“Given the present installed capacity and the projected growth in installation of wind farms across the world, I feel that wind farms, if spatially large enough, might have noticeable impacts on local to regional meteorology,” Liming Zhou, associate professor at the State University of New York, Albany and author of the paper published April 29 in Nature Climate Change said in an e-mail to Discovery News.
PHOTOS: Wind Power Without the Blades
Analysts say wind power is a good complement to solar power, because winds often blow more strongly at night while solar power is only available during daytime hours. But Zhou and his colleagues found that turbulence behind the wind turbine blades stirs up a layer of cooler air that usually settles on the ground at night, and mixes in warm air that is on top.
That layering effect is usually reversed during the daytime, with warm air on the surface and cooler air higher up.”The year-to-year land surface temperature over wind farms shows a persistent upward trend from 2003 to 2011, consistent with the increasing number of operational wind turbines with time,” Zhou said.
FAA data shows that the number of wind turbines over the study region has risen from 111 in 2003 to 2358 in 2011, according to the study.The warming could hurt local farmers, who have already suffered through a killer drought over the past few years. Texas agriculture contributes $80 billion to the state’s economy, second only to petrochemicals, according to the Texas Department of Agriculture.
West Texas is a dry area that uses irrigation to grow wheat, cotton and other crops, as well as raise cattle. But increased warming can play havoc with plant growth, as well as change local rainfall patterns.
Texas wind farms produce more than 10,000 megawatts of electricity, more than double the capacity of the nearest state, Iowa, and enough to power three million average American homes, according to the American Wine Energy Association.
NEWS: Wind Farms Float Among the Clouds
One solution could be to change the shape of the turbine blades, according to John Dabiri, director of the Center for Bioinspired Wind Energy at the California Institute of Technology who is an expert on wind power design.
“Smaller turbines can avoid this problem,” Dabiri said. “However, this presents a tradeoff, because wind speed decreases as you move closer to the ground; so the smaller turbines would experience lower incoming wind speeds on average.”
That means a smaller turbine makes less power.
Dabiri said Zhou’s findings may mean taking a second look at the trade-offs with renewable energy. “It shows that we need to think carefully about the unintended environmental consequences of any large-scale energy development,” Dabiri said, “including green technologies.”
On CO2 climate sensitivity:
The scientific findings that the climate impact by CO2 is wildly exaggerated are accumulating. There has not been any significant global warming in 16 years even though one third of the historical emissions took place in the period and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has climbed year after year. The climate models, all whose prognoses have turned out to be wrong, are not able to compute the natural fluctuations of the climate. […]
Yes CO2 is a gas that has an impact on climate, but it will not cause the global mean temperature of the earth to rise more than 1 to 1.5°C by the year 2100.”
Obsolete model. Will other countries follow Germany’s once highly ballyhooed lead?
No nation on earth is going to follow us when they see that Germany’s own industrial basis is being destroyed and citizens are being financially overwhelmed. […]
The renewable energy act in it’s current form is simply supporting the old power plants of the last decades and is not leading to any CO2 reduction and is eroding the industrial base of Germany. It is not an export hit. Rather it is an obsolete model whose consequences can hardly be managed any longer.”
You need to seek professional help. You may be paranoid. Whatever your condition is you may be able to avoid detection and treatment if you just contain yourself and quit making your delusional ideas in a public venue. If you are just stupid the same applies. Cheers.
Fossil fuels revolve around centralised production & control with extensive distribution. Renewals are decentralised and of low or zero profit margin as the energy source be it sun or wind is free to one and all. The argument that you must have fossil fuels for equity in society is simply wrong, a line pushed by the centralised production & control lobby as a means to maintain profit. The law in general is that where a person knows of dangerous situations or work practices they have a direct duty of care to their staff and a broader indirect duty of care to society to take action to remove or prevent this danger to people. Now that co2 is clearly linked with climate change and extreme weather events it is only a matter of time before a class action is started against governments that deny climate change and then against those organisations that promulgate climate denial.
Oliver K. Manuel
March 16, 2014 at 9:02 am ·
IMHO, there is little doubt the Sun exerts dominant control over Earth’s climate. Information posted on ResearchGate suggests this reason for the Climategate scandal:
[SNIP. Please Oliver, please do not post the same info. Please find a new way to make a point. – Jo].
The truth is more scary than Orwell’s fiction, but truth will also free us. [snip repeat]
*
Wow! CJ Orach’s delusional rant raises an important question: Can we ethically hold demented crackpots criminally responsible for the harm they do? Unless Orach is being paid to post such lunatic screeds, I don’t believe it would be ethical to treat him or her as a criminal.
The earths atmosphere is overheating, and that’s what’s causing all of this snow. And if you question this notion, you hate science.
“Oh, by the way, no links to denialist blogs or sites allowed.”
What more needs to be said ?
An admission of closed minded nonscience .
What about the site of ex-NASA personnel and astronauts who resent being called “flat-earthers” ?
That climate “science” belongs in quotes was revealed only so clearly in 2013 by Michael Mann’s promotion of a fabricated vindication of his life’s work, one anybody can fully comprehend in but a single glance, knowing that bizarre data re-dating can indeed afford a hockey stick blade by data drop off at the end where no blade exists in the input data:
http://s6.postimg.org/jb6qe15rl/Marcott_2013_Eye_Candy.jpg
Well, Greg, that is brilliant! You certainly found a way to flush out the bad – or delusional – guys. I wonder if, like me and you, and Andrew, they actually dare reveal their true names? This is truly an eye opener.
Fact: we are now witnessing the sixth great species extinction event in the history of life on this planet.
Fact: 90% of the big fish in the sea are gone, North Atlantic Cod and Blue Fin Tuna are on the brink of extinction.
Fact: Most crude light oil fields in the world are in decline. The remaining petroleum, coal and gas still in the ground is going to be more and more expensive and dirty to get out. It is not Green Crony Capitalists who are making the big money right now, it is Big OIl and its pet mouthpieces, including the co-colloboratiors in Agri-Business.
Fact: the farmland feeding the world right now using the industrial system of agriculture is being poisoned, blown away, and washed away, so fast, that most of it will be useless within the next three decades.
Fact: the human population is undergoing exponential increase and is already well beyond the carrying capacity of this planet.
Fact: if we are really concerned with saving birds and bees, we would be banning loose house cats and petroleum based chemicals in agriculture.
Ms. Orach is right about only one thing – biofuels are mostly a boondoggle. As for the rest – it is a rant. That is all.
No matter what kind of energy humans use, they damage other living things. Fact. So let us try to do the least damage while still saving what we can of the planet’s living systems so everyone’s grand children have a life support system when they grow up. We need to power down our industrial civilization, not find ways of continuing to do the most harm.
Meanwhile… we can call those who oppose everything, that climate scientists, soil scientists, petroleum scientists, oceanographers, evolutionary scientists, anthropologists, geologists, and wildlife scientists, are saying many things.. we can call them liars, or criminals, or just plain crazy, but we do need to call them as we see them. Shields up, indeed.
“The real harm to the environment is not Fossil Fuel it is Wind and Solar which should be stopped immediately.”
Stopped reading right there. When you start off with a self-evident outright lie like that, nothing else you say is worth considering. CJ Orach is a pathological liar. While one may question if global warming is really as bad as Al Gore has been warning us it will be for many years, one is not entitled to completely replace reality with dogmatic bullcrap.
I’m afraid folks like Greg have a huge blind spot when it comes to the Climate… Tornado’s, Acres burned, and Temperatures are way down … While Ice at the Poles is at record highs… Sea Level as measured by Tide Gage’s across the Globe is NOT rising!! Only after adjustments to measured data can Temps and Sea Level be seen to rise… That’s cheating…
Science iS a discussion… NOT a Consensus… By associating Skeptics with Criminals all Mr Laden does is stifle Free Speech along with hindering a Science he claims to promote…
Earlier in the year we heard AGW proponents harp about California Fires and Colorado Floods… Well a simple Internet search showed that fires are at record lows for acres burned… According to the Forest Service itself… Meanwhile that 1000 year flood in CO apparently happens every 15-30 years…
Humans have a short life Geologically Speaking… That plus the injection of Politics, a natural FEAR we all have and total lack of interest in Climate History results in all these Alarmists with such a strong view yet very little knowledge about our planet..
Instead of Real Science … All we get is Hysteria… Every normal Weather Event is now Climate Change…
This is the most willfully ignorant alarmist blog I have seen in quite a while .
Anybody willing to admit that the greater than 30% increase in CO2 , the sole source of carbon to organic life , is visibly greening the planet as seen from satellites , while being associated with less than a 0.3% increase in temperature ?
That’s an irrefutable bit of quantitative science .
The science is settlehahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Secret handshake
i do not know which is more terrifying
climate change and what it will bring
or the endless stupidity of humans over-educated enough to give their opinions on a public blog
doh
p
The problem with articles like this is that upon completion, I’m then compelled by the same mysterious impulse that makes one pick at scabs to read the comments from politically brain-washed, scientifically-illiterate zealots who tend to respond to them, so I can be told to “think for myself” by someone who parrots talking points I’ve read a thousand times before.
If these comments are the height of American intellect you are all lost. What is the point of science and universities if the population consists of ignorant rednecks.
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/16/the_ultimate_guide_to_debunking_right_wingers_insane_persecution_fantasies/
#Helga 17 – Bluefin Tuna are not on the brink of extinction. ICAAT decreased the quota 4 years ago to 12k tons and they are coming back in big numbers. I have witnessed this with my own eyes.
I also believe that the human involvement in global warming – or should I say in global warming at the end of the last century is still under discussion by a lot of scientists.
It is not a done deal.
Names calling, calling climate deniers “criminals” is a no-win strategy.
smo11: Failing to comprehend the argument is a no win strategy. Doing good science and developing good science policy is a win-win strategy.
You blame those on the denial side for keeping good science from developing into good science policy. Nothing wrong there. But the emphasis is misplaced. While the big money influences are a problem, the larger issue is a broader social failure to educate and inform the broader electorate about the issue.
In my mind, the failure of climate change policy is not a consequence of those who advocate denial. It certainly isn’t the result of Wattsupwiththat. No, its a failure of our institutions, and the greater public, to really understand what’s going on. You can’t change the actions of the organized, bought and paid for, denial group, but you can advocate for the media, churches, schools, community leaders to do a better job in helping people understand the seriousness of the problem.
“Bluefin Tuna (…) are coming back in big numbers. I have witnessed this with my own eyes.”
You have WATCHED the global population recover? Why you people always say such stupid thing? It’s like you don’t want to be taken seriously.
Stephan #30. I work in the north east Atlantic – specifically for BFT in Sept & Oct. Numbers were collapsing from around 2002 until there were almost no stocks left there from 2007 onwards. 2012 saw some stocks return to this area after reports of smaller sized BFT stocks recovering in the Med. 2013 and stocks are better than they have been since the nineties – although almost all the fish are around the 300 pound mark. When you consider that they need to be around 250 pounds or so before they naturally make the journey to the NE Atlantic that would be consistent with the ICAAT quotas which had stood at 26k tons and were cut to 12k tons in 2010.
Added to that the more rigorous policing of especially ranching of BFT and voila – everything adds up.
I have submitted data in past years to ICAAT in order to influence their quotas to conserve BFT,.
To somehow correlate BFT stocks to Global Warming is at the least stupid and scare mongering at worse.
Below is a little bit of an encounter I had with a septic on another blog:
Septic:
“LOL, you must think we are stupid.”
Me:
“Stupid, ignorant, destructive, and contemptible.”
Having indicated where I stand, I must admit that I’m of two minds regarding a policy that prevents septics from showing where their misinformation comes from. If the justification is that the septics corrupt and subvert an important conversation, then I think it would be fair to reject all comments that predictably parrot the litany of septic talking points. On the other hand, if they’re allowed to showcase their insistent ignorance, then they should be permitted to show how gullible and misinformed they are.
CJ Orach is a good example of a septic using predictable talking points. We hear (again) of millions dying from fuel poverty as a result of non-fossil energy sources. We hear (again) that wind and solar occupy huge swathes of land that then can’t be used for anything else. We hear (again) that wind turbines are responsible for the wholesale slaughter of birds. And we hear (not for the first time) of a scientific study that shows that wind turbines are a cause of global warming. Regarding the study, the lead author himself has disavowed the septics’ misuse:
“As Zhou himself explained in an accompanying Q&A (pdf) about his paper: “the warming effect reported in this study is local and is small compared to the strong background year-to-year land surface temperature changes. Very likely, the wind turbines do not create a net warming of the air and instead only re-distribute the air’s heat near the surface, which is fundamentally different from the large-scale warming effect caused by increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.””
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/no-wind-farms-are-not-causing-global-warming/2012/04/30/gIQAMl2GsT_blog.html
An article in The Christian Science Monitor underlines that warming caused by the spinning blades would be a violation of well-established physical laws:
“If it were true that the spinning blades of wind turbines increased the overall temperature of the planet, as opposed to simply redistributing thermal energy, we would have to rewrite some basic laws of physics, particularly the 1st law of thermodynamics. This is an important distinction from the burning of fossil fuels, which produces gas that increases how much of the sun’s energy the Earth retains. In this respect, this process contributes to a globally warming climate because the source of energy (the sun) is apart from the system that is warmed (the Earth.)”
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0430/Don-t-believe-the-headlines.-Wind-farms-do-not-cause-global-warming
As for the the land use issue:
“One wind turbine consumes about 20 square meters of land at its base. There are usually gravel roads that lead to them from the nearest road, 3 meters wide and 10 meters to a couple of kilometers long, to allow maintenance trucks to get to them. When they are in farm fields or livestock grazing areas, the land use continues right up to the shaft of the turbine. When they are on forested ridges, openings are cut around them for construction and maintained for servicing and fire setbacks. That’s a minimum of about 120 square meters per wind turbine or about 0.01% in farming and grazing areas and a maximum of 2% in wooded hill areas…
“The land around the wind turbine is suitable for grazing cattle, growing crops, growing Christmas trees, riding ATVs, etc. In other words, just about anything it could have been used for before. Where wind farm companies have private land with no other access allowed, the land is usually green, providing a carbon sink.”
http://barnardonwind.com/2013/03/11/wind-farms-co-exist-with-other-land-uses-debunking-the-myth-of-energy-density/
The following, from the Union of Concerned Scientists, confirms the above assertions and provides additional information about the effect of turbines on birds:
“A survey by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of large wind facilities in the United States found that they use between 30 and 141 acres per megawatt of power output capacity (a typical new utility-scale wind turbine is about 2 megawatts). However, less than 1 acre per megawatt is disturbed permanently and less than 3.5 acres per megawatt are disturbed temporarily during construction [1]. The remainder of the land can be used for a variety of other productive purposes, including livestock grazing, agriculture, highways, and hiking trails [2]. Alternatively, wind facilities can be sited on brownfields (abandoned or underused industrial land) or other commercial and industrial locations, which significantly reduces concerns about land use [3]…
“The land use impact of wind power facilities varies substantially depending on the site: wind turbines placed in flat areas typically use more land than those located in hilly areas. However, wind turbines do not occupy all of this land; they must be spaced approximately 5 to 10 rotor diameters apart (a rotor diameter is the diameter of the wind turbine blades). Thus, the turbines themselves and the surrounding infrastructure (including roads and transmission lines) occupy a small portion of the total area of a wind facility.
“Wildlife and Habitat
“The impact of wind turbines on wildlife, most notably on birds and bats, has been widely document and studied. A recent National Wind Coordinating Committee (NWCC) review of peer-reviewed research found evidence of bird and bat deaths from collisions with wind turbines and due to changes in air pressure caused by the spinning turbines, as well as from habitat disruption. The NWCC concluded that these impacts are relatively low and do not pose a threat to species populations [5].
“Additionally, research into wildlife behavior and advances in wind turbine technology have helped to reduce bird and bat deaths.”
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/renewable-energy/environmental-impacts-wind-power.html
Coal and oil are considerably more dangerous than wind:
“Major risks by source are as follows:
• Coal has risks that range from Lowest to Highest Potential, including unique risks during the resource extraction stage (e.g., Highest Potential risks associated with the effects of strip and mountain top mining). The combustion of coal during the power generation stage contributes disproportionately compared to other energy sources to acidification and mercury bioaccumulation, causing Highest Potential risks to wildlife.
• Oil risks range from Lowest to Highest Potential, with unique risks during the resource extraction and fuel transportation stages, owing to the potential for oil spills. Oil also contributes to acidification risks during the power generation stage.
• Wind has Lowest to Moderate Potential risks but has high risks of bird and bat collisions with wind turbines during operation. No population-level risks to birds have been noted. Population level risks to bats are uncertain at this time.”
COMPARISON OF REPORTED EFFECTS AND RISKS TO VERTEBRATE WILDLIFE FROM SIX ELECTRICITY GENERATION TYPES IN THE NEW YORK / NEW ENGLAND REGION
(The report is from 2009. The Union of Concerned Scientists article is from 2013.)
See also:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2198024
http://www.stateofthebirds.org/2010/pdf_files/State%20of%20the%20Birds_FINAL.pdf
Whenever you examine the septics’ arguments you invariably find they’re full of shit.
Climate septics aren’t only hopelessly ignorant about climate science. They’re also helplessly illiterate. Some examples:
CJ Orach:
The problem with people like Bill Laden who believe [sic] Climate Change Mitigation as a moral goal
the vast array of solar panels that scar the planes [sic].
The Climate change mitigation efforts Bill Laden and his ilk wants [sic] to impose
The men who put man on the moon say the [sic] humanity should have no fear
All it will do is to [sic] line the pockets of crony green capitalists
By the way * “Climate Crimes” [sic] are not “denialists”
They just are not delusional enough to believe that so called “renewable energy” is any better than fossil fuel and in fact may be even more destructive to Mother Nature than fossil fuel is.[sic]
Jim Schultz:
Reflecting a little about [sic] it, there [sic] not a whole lot different
Phil Jones:
blind spot when it comes to the Climate… Tornado’s [sic], Acres burned
Sea Level as measured by Tide Gage’s [quadruple sic] across the Globe
Science iS [sic] a discussion…
smo11:
Names [double sic] calling
This is by no means a complete list. And note, I’ve hardly called attention to the septics’ ridiculous use of capital letters.
The public didn’t have to “really understand” ozone depletion, acid rain or vaccines for policy to move forward and save lives/money. Without the organized denial movement serious climate legislation would be decades-old news by this point.
Bob Armstrong, if it’s an irrefutable bit of “quantitative” science, maybe you can provide some actual evidence to support your claim?
http://cosy.com/Science/AGW.ppt
To me , labeling Harrison Schmitt , PhD geology , the last astronaut to walk on the Moon , a “criminal” deserves Dr Roy Spencer’s categorization as climate nazi behavior . I’m more inclined to call it Leninist .
Hey, NikFromNYC! What’s your PhD in again? I say it’s in Nonsense.
Hmmm…
The “science is settled”, is it?
That must be why all the climate McScientists are running round like headless chickens trying to work out why – entirely against the expectations of the so-called “science”, particularly the computer games climate models – the warming stopped over a decade and a half ago, and there are a number of conflicting theories why, none of the particularly convincing.
the warming stopped over a decade and a half ago
It didn’t. The only thing scientists are trying to figure out relating to that is why people like you repeat the lie.
Correction:
CJ Orach’s sentence: “They just are not delusional enough to believe that so called “renewable energy” is any better than fossil fuel and in fact may be even more destructive to Mother Nature than fossil fuel is,” should have been deleted. It doesn’t belong with the mistakes.
I am totally amazed at the abject lack of adult logic here. I think Dr. Spencer’s use of “Climate Nazi” is completely appropriate. You, Mr. Laden, are obviously an adult, body wise, yet an adolescent mentally. The Kindergarden Of Eden is alive and well, thankyouverymuch.
Here we are, headed into another Little Ice Age, and we are discussing criminal behaviour for being skeptical of global warming hysteria? You’ve got to be kidding here?
Bob Armstrong: No Bob, I said, EVIDENCE. Not a homemade powerpoint about your theories.
I don’t know if he’s a criminal, but Dr. Schmitt is a good example of the kind of fake science that has been is used to mislead Americans.
Is Dr. Schmitt a practicing climate scientist? No.
Has he used his platform as an astronaut as an excuse to peddle misinformation from the Heartland Institute? Yes.
Is he a conspiracy theorist? According to Wikipedia, Yes.
So why does Harrison Schmitt deserve any more credibility than anyone else? Is it because he’s been to the moon? Did he go all that way to find out there’s a vast conspiracy of all Earth’s climate scientists to deceive the public? Bob, I admire your conservatism! At least you had the good sense to stay home and work out your science denial in your own basement. You’ve single-handedly saved NASA millions of dollars!
Learn some damn PHYSICS .
Talk about creationist flat-earther bananas in the ears monkeys
The criminally willful ignorance is on display at Greg Laden’s .
If you are inclined to learn what true scientists have to say about climate change, read the following. If not then delete this message and I’ll know what kind of person you really are.
http://linktodenialistsitedeleted/
Thank @Dale Husband and @Helga Vierich you said what needed to be said.
Greg as you know I have been calling these deniers criminals for years. At this point I feel the situation has become so dire (my inner pessimist has risen to new heights) that those funding and promulgating climate science denialism should be charged with 1st degree murder – and frankly it would be best if held in a state with the death penalty. It is the very least they deserve.
Thanks for taking your nazi behavior to its logical extreme .
Let’s not have any ambiguity about who is so in denial of reality that they threaten murder to suppress speech .
You know Bob, it’s your pal Dr. Roy Spencer who has been calling people “Nazis” lately. Credit where credit is due!
Are you able to differentiate between “holding someone responsible for misleading the public” and “threaten murder to suppress speech”?
But maybe you’re right – it’s the damn physics that’s been the problem all along!
Lately .
And I join him . A lot of us have had it with being disparaged for years by this criminal willful , destructive to both humanity and the environment it claims to venerate , ignorance and outright dishonesty .
We don’t give a damn about prosecuting youall for your fortified delusions ; we are just absolutely determined to stop your damage to our and our planet’s welfare on the basis of such tyrannic fortified determined denial of reality including the experimental analytical quantitative methods of science rather than worship of labels and titles .
Yes Bob, you demonstrate that quite well.
I’m not sure I’d consider them criminals. Bob, for instance, seems simply to be not very bright, and that seems to be a common theme for many of the denialists. Other base their disagreement on purely political positions – “it’s all those libs’ telling a load of crap”, although there is likely some overlap the first group. I can’t see thinking of either of those groups as being, technically, criminal. Sad, and monumentally on the wrong side of reality, but not criminal.
Even the big guns, like the Koch brothers, throwing around wads of cash to push lies and misleading ads, don’t seem to me to be acting criminally, even in the way you describe, as abhorrent as their activities are.
Deserving of ridicule? Yes. Lacking fundamental senses of integrity and honesty? For many, yes and yes – no argument there. I think our opinions on them agree, but we use different terms.
” Bob, for instance, seems simply to be not very bright,”
My logo alone shows that to be false . A good example of determined bananas-in-the-ears denial .
#46 GregH – I think he was referring to me 🙂 Of course speech that is designed to harm people is already illegal in many countries and global warming is a worldwide problem. People like Bob are going to be very surprised when the rest of the planet decides to start shooting people like him in self-defense.
Either Greg Laden is trying for world’s busiest science blog or whatever religion he does or does not subscribe to has gone to his head.
His headline is pure incitement to blogging. The attempt at appearing learned underneath is so void of anything to do with the cool and detached scientific method, it does not qualify as science.
Climate obviously changes and humans by definition are contributing. So, THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, the jackboot and the jailhouse! Science was given to us to head off this behaviour.
I am a geologist and at any time in the past 4 thou mill. yrs, a geologist, looking at the record, could only say, on the basis of observation, “the planet is doomed!” Only it didn’t die. Yet every law of reason and geochemistry etc. said it should.
Only if one acknowledges an overriding, guiding Providence, does anything about the history or future of the planet make sense. This is a deeply religious post — the religion of uncalled for fear and domination of humanity on the basis of misguided personal fear.
But as a minor technicality, did it ever strike you that air cannot be surgically and hermetically sealed by ice? Statistics are being toted about goodness knows why goodness knows for what purpose, and the sole reason seems to be to win funding for the supposed expert research? This has nix to do with science and climate, and everything to do with science losing itself. I give but one sample — the stupidity of assuming CO2 levels from ice-core are necessarily exact. No self-respecting geologist would give forecasts based on this unconfirmed guessing. And this is merely the tip of a lunatic iceberg. Borrowed from the ‘Net.
Statement of Prof. Zbigniew Jaworowski
Chairman, Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection
Warsaw, Poland (2004).
I am a Professor at the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection (CLOR) in Warsaw, Poland, a governmental institution, involved in environmental studies. CLOR has a “Special Liaison” relationship with the US National Council on Radiological Protection and Measurements (NCRP). In the past, for about ten years, CLOR closely cooperated with the US Environmental Protection Agency, in research on the influence of industry and nuclear explosions on pollution of the global environment and population. I published about 280 scientific papers, among them about 20 on climatic problems. I am the representative of Poland in the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), and in 1980-1982 I was the chairman of this Committee.
For the past 40 years I was involved in glacier studies, using snow and ice as a matrix for reconstruction of history of man-made pollution of the global atmosphere. A part of these studies was related to the climatic issues. Ice core records of CO2 have been widely used as a proof that, due to man’s activity the current atmospheric level of CO2 is about 25% higher than in the pre-industrial period. These records became the basic input parameters in the models of the global carbon cycle and a cornerstone of the man-made climatic warming hypothesis. These records do not represent the atmospheric reality, as I will try to demonstrate in my statement.
Relevant Background
In order to study the history of industrial pollution of the global atmosphere, between 1972 and 1980, I organized 11 glacier expeditions, which measured natural and man-made pollutants in contemporary and ancient precipitation, preserved in 17 glaciers in Arctic, Antarctic, Alaska, Norway, the Alps, the Himalayas, the Ruwenzori Mountains in Uganda, the Peruvian Andes and in Tatra Mountains in Poland. I also measured long-term changes of dust in the troposphere and stratosphere, and the lead content in humans living in Europe and elsewhere during the past 5000 years. In 1968 I published the first paper on lead content in glacier ice[1]. Later I demonstrated that in pre-industrial period the total flux of lead into the global atmosphere was higher than in the 20th century, that the atmospheric content of lead is dominated by natural sources, and that the lead level in humans in Medieval Ages was 10 to 100 times higher than in the 20th century. In the 1990s I was working in the Norwegian Polar Research Institute in Oslo, and in the Japanese National Institute of Polar Research in Tokyo. In this period I studied the effects of climatic change on polar regions, and the reliability of glacier studies for estimation of CO2 concentration in the ancient atmosphere.
False Low Pre-industrial CO2 in the Atmosphere
Determinations of CO2 in polar ice cores are commonly used for estimations of the pre-industrial CO2 atmospheric levels. Perusal of these determinations convinced me that glaciological studies are not able to provide a reliable reconstruction of CO2 concentrations in the ancient atmosphere. This is because the ice cores do not fulfill the essential closed system criteria. One of them is a lack of liquid water in ice, which could dramatically change the chemical composition the air bubbles trapped between the ice crystals. This criterion, is not met, as even the coldest Antarctic ice (down to -73°C) contains liquid water[2]. More than 20 physico-chemical processes, mostly related to the presence of liquid water, contribute to the alteration of the original chemical composition of the air inclusions in polar ice[3].
One of these processes is formation of gas hydrates or clathrates. In the highly compressed deep ice all air bubbles disappear, as under the influence of pressure the gases change into the solid clathrates, which are tiny crystals formed by interaction of gas with water molecules. Drilling decompresses cores excavated from deep ice, and contaminates them with the drilling fluid filling the borehole. Decompression leads to dense horizontal cracking of cores, by a well known sheeting process. After decompression of the ice cores, the solid clathrates decompose into a gas form, exploding in the process as if they were microscopic grenades. In the bubble-free ice the explosions form a new gas cavities and new cracks[4]. Through these cracks, and cracks formed by sheeting, a part of gas escapes first into the drilling liquid which fills the borehole, and then at the surface to the atmospheric air. Particular gases, CO2, O2 and N2 trapped in the deep cold ice start to form clathrates, and leave the air bubbles, at different pressures and depth. At the ice temperature of -15°C dissociation pressure for N2 is about 100 bars, for O2 75 bars, and for CO2 5 bars. Formation of CO2 clathrates starts in the ice sheets at about 200 meter depth, and that of O2 and N2 at 600 to 1000 meters. This leads to depletion of CO2 in the gas trapped in the ice sheets. This is why the records of CO2 concentration in the gas inclusions from deep polar ice show the values lower than in the contemporary atmosphere, even for the epochs when the global surface temperature was higher than now.
The data from shallow ice cores, such as those from Siple, Antarctica[5, 6], are widely used as a proof of man-made increase of CO2 content in the global atmosphere, notably by IPCC[7]. These data show a clear inverse correlation between the decreasing CO2 concentrations, and the load-pressure increasing with depth (Figure 1 A) . The problem with Siple data (and with other shallow cores) is that the CO2 concentration found in pre-industrial ice from a depth of 68 meters (i.e. above the depth of clathrate formation) was “too high”. This ice was deposited in 1890 AD, and the CO2 concentration was 328 ppmv, not about 290 ppmv, as needed by man-made warming hypothesis. The CO2 atmospheric concentration of about 328 ppmv was measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii as later as in 1973[8], i.e. 83 years after the ice was deposited at Siple.
An ad hoc assumption, not supported by any factual evidence[3, 9], solved the problem: the average age of air was arbitrary decreed to be exactly 83 years younger than the ice in which it was trapped. The “corrected” ice data were then smoothly aligned with the Mauna Loa record (Figure 1 B) , and reproduced in countless publications as a famous “Siple curve”. Only thirteen years later, in 1993, glaciologists attempted to prove experimentally the “age assumption”[10], but they failed[9].
Philip,
Thanks for that. I am not a scientist, but have for a number of years now watched as the Global Warming lobby have appeared more as an ideological cult than as scientists. A huge industry of politically correctness with massive government grants has flourished.
The GM lobbyists seem to be turning into scare-mongering alarmists. One person on this blog is very close to inciting someone to shoot Bob. It just seems crazy.
Anthropology LMAO- AHole go into Anthropology cause they CANNOT CUT IT LMAO
Philip,
Thanks for that. It’s wonderful to learn you are a geologist! On the other hand, your pronouncements would be more credible if they didn’t begin with shouting about the Communist Manifesto and jackboots. Oh well.
Now that you’ve got the Communist Manifesto out of your system, you want us to believe that Professor Jaworowski is correct, and we should throw out 100s of years of ice core data just because he doesn’t believe that current methods are valid. Interesting. If he’s right, why doesn’t he publish his criticisms? It’s hard to believe that we’ve gone on learning about ice core CO2 data for all this time without correcting the methodology or indexing the method to other data sets. It’s also hard to believe that Professor Jaworowski is right and everyone else in the field is wrong. Unless there’s a conspiracy of some kind? And they must”ve gotten to the radio-isotope dating people as well! Where will it stop?
It’s also pretty convenient that you’ve found the one guy who supports your belief that “Only if one acknowledges an overriding, guiding Providence…” Well, that makes sense too. Let’s just skip all this science stuff and throw ourselves on the mercy of Providence to solve a problem we’ve clearly created ourselves.
By the way, I’m against shooting Bob. But I’m ok with holding some of the organizations who spew lies about climate science accountable for their damage to this public discussion.
I am getting some popcorn and a ringside seat.
If anyone thinks Greg Laden’s blog is rough — man, this is a gentleman’s blog.! But if I might mention some items. Prof. Jaworowski is published. I happened upon him high up on GOOGLE whilst trying to discover what every thinking person automatically tries to discover: what are the procedures and safeguards re. ice cores? He cites standard peer reviewed papers and he is not a climate change denier. This is the queer aspect of all this. No-one denies climate change. The question science can assist with, is, ‘What is practical here and now?” And the first item of practicality is to point the collective thinking in the right direction. Absolutely the right direction is to be transparent for one and get real for two! Is anyone here going to go out and re-bury all that Irish Peat?
Cut carbon? That’s exactly what most people are attempting to do, because the stuff is so expensive. Do we have to have people freezing to death to save the planet? Governments have to be realistic. But we do not need shoddy ‘science’.
Here is an illustration of what I take to be shoddy “science”. I may be wrong. I would prefer to be wrong. It would be most reassuring to discover experts openly discussing items such as this. It’s layman’s territory. Water vapor (a gas) condenses to form snow clouds which ultimately lead to the ice deposits of glaciers. There are different weight water molecules — made different by an extra neutron or whatever is implied by isotopy. Heavy molecules condense more readily than lighter. The proportion of heavier to lighter in the condensate increases as temperature drops. So by measuring the ratio of heavier to lighter water molecules in the ice, we can measure palaeotemperature of ancient snow clouds. Make sense? That is how the palaeo temperature graphs are drawn up. See any problems? Perhaps there are none. I have tried to find an open evaluation, by the climate people themselves. Perhaps my search was inadequate. Laymen can answer this. What has the inverse effect on a gas to temperature? Pressure. Go up a high mountain and water boils more easily. So the weight ratio of the water molecules now making up the ice could have been influenced by barometric pressure at the place of snow formation in the cloud. I don’t know anything about clouds but I suspect some snow clouds could form at different heights and therefore at different barometric pressures to others. This is the sort of question I would expect to see addressed alongside every ice core graph — along with an account of the matters raised by Jaworowski.
But these are relatively minor items. Here is the item you will not find with the alarmist camp. Well, I probably shouldn’t generalize. We need alarmists and we need active people. But the standard geology texts tell us that atmospheric carbon about 50 yrs ago was about 0.0003 atmospheres (it is now more like 0.0004) and that was very low in geologic terms. Yes, I could be corrected by the lower ice-core results but whether those CO2 readings are exact, or no, there is a bigger picture. The total amount of carbon buried in the earth/oceans means that our atmosphere handled of the order of 12 atmospheres of the equivalent of nothing but pure CO2, to get us here.
I don’t know about you, but that makes me think there is a temperature moderating mechanism, or thermostat.
Which implies a guiding Providence. Who happens to have given us permission to mine minerals — “out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass”. And who also happens to have given a pointer to the mechanism of thermo-control involved.
I do publish all this and even receive thanks and acknowledgement from government ministers.
So if anyone wishes really to get alarmed, check carbon greenhouse gas against certain properties of our magnetic field. Carbon is rocketing and the field is doing something almost the opposite.
It all ties in but I am not about to copy and paste rheems of ‘paper’.
A climate moderating mechanism is against some people’s religion. It certainly isn’t against the geologic record, or he latest geophysics.
The link I posted above, regarding the Climate Change Reconsidered II report, is full of such comments like the one Philip Bruce Heywood posted. The scientists represented therein have performed their own global warming experiments and analysis of the IPCC’s report. They all find the IPCCs approach as falling short either by way of not following through with the scientific process, an over estimation of nonlinear variables (using educated guesses), ignoring important forcings, and/or using faulty models. Or as Prof. Freeman Dyson, professor of physics at the
Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton
University and one of the world’s most eminent
physicists, said the models used to justify global
warming alarmism are “full of fudge factors” and
“do not begin to describe the real world.” He is also quoted as saying “I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid
motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a
very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the
chemistry, and the biology of fields and farms and
forests. They do not begin to describe the real world
that we live in” (Dyson, 2007).”
No, global warming, climate change, or what ever new term they may come up with is NOT a done science regardless of what Neil DeGrasse Tyson or others might say.
Many of the reports I’ve read that promote global warming have lacked in scientific references. They make statements as if they’re factual and expect you to just believe them (because they are the experts?). Instead of giving references for their statements they hope you follow along with their assumptions.
Interestingly, I left the religions of christiandom because of their using emotion triggering language to get people to follow instead of reason. I find the language structure of global warming advocates to be very similar to a cult’s.
I have no respect for a people who shout an assumed truth from the rooftops while hiding a real truth in the basement. Where are the screamers about the trash piles in the oceans (google pacific gyre)? Piles that are added to daily by the very ones who scream global warming (if not specifically, then by proxy).
The truth is, we are screwing up the planet. Lets deal with the real issues and not some power/money hungry person’s wet dream.
Keynesian economics be damned.
I wonder if the the American Association for the Advancement of Science knows something that some of the negative commentators on this blog do not?
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/18/climate-change-world-risk-irreversible-changes-scientists-aaas
And, I quote: ““As scientists, it is not our role to tell people what they should do,” the AAAS said in a new report, “What we know”.
“But we consider it our responsibility as professionals to ensure, to the best of our ability, that people understand what we know: human-caused climate change is happening, we face risks of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes, and responding now will lower the risks and costs of taking action.””
And here is a cute pie chart that might clear up some of the finer points of Philip Bruce Heywood’s commentary: http://www.popsci.com/article/science/infographic-scientists-who-doubt-human-caused-climate-change?src=related&con=outbrain&obref=obinsite
Philip Bruce Heywood,
I’m not sure that saying things like, “…what every thinking person automatically tries to discover”, clearly implying that anyone who isn’t you isn’t a thinking person, is the best way to get your point across. But hey, for the sake of argument, let’s just assume that the entire field of paleoclimatology is wrong, and you and Prof. Jaworowski are right.
Laymen can answer this.
No, that’s the problem. People with little or no knowledge of the field under discussion need to a) do their homework, and b) listen to the experts. Just because you’ve got a Geology degree doesn’t automagically make you (or me) an expert in climate science. Fate can be cruel sometimes.
…that makes me think there is a temperature moderating mechanism, or thermostat. Which implies a guiding Providence.
And after all that typing, you want us to believe in a supernatural force that’s going to make everything right. Where have we heard that before? Honestly, I think calling on God for help to fix a problem we’ve clearly brought on ourselves is not a helpful policy direction. For example, has it ever worked before?
Do we have to have people freezing to death to save the planet?
Apart from the fact that this is a canard created by UK politicians to excuse several decades of incompetent energy policy, WHO is actually freezing to death because of CO2 emissions reductions? Seriously, please provide one example.
Carbon is rocketing and the [magnetic] field is doing something almost the opposite.
Aha! Here’s where you provide an explanation for your “temperature moderating mechanism, or thermostat”. There’s more about the magnetic fields, right?
A climate moderating mechanism is against some people’s religion.
So you’re allowed to say “God did it”, but have no compunction about dismissing whole fields of science, the fruit of hundreds of years of work, as “religion”. There’s a word for that kind of behaviour.
Bob, it isn’t your logo that shows you are an idiot, it is your rants.
Philip, are you the creationist and noted science denier (no theory of gravity, etc., etc.,)
behind “creationtheoryblog” ?
The guy who pushes
If so, why should anything you say be taken seriously here when you have such a tremendous track record of saying incredibly stupid and false things elsewhere?
Dean , my “rants” are in response to terrible-twos worthy , ears and eyes clenched closed , insults not just of me but of such accomplished individuals as Dr Schmitt . Indeed believe some really would guillotine us if they had the power . There is a great deal of historical precident .
The classical fundamental computations of radiative balance on my website are not even looked at , but ruled out of bounds on totally ad hominem grounds tho most of the mass of mediocre “climate scientists’ are simply not capable of the programming that I and my peers create . “Climate science” is just a branch of applied physics which has been taken over by lots of people who’ve never even gotten thru an undergraduate quantitative science cirriculum .
I only created the exposition of the basic physics on my website because I know of no other place on the web where these computations , at the core of any model of planetary temperature , are presented . The are in a rather arcane array programming language born in the global financial industry , but should be easily understandable and translatable in to any more accessible APL or even MatLab . And they are experimentally testable so any pedigree or calumny macht nichts .
If somebody has any problems understanding any portion of my computations or has any comments , corrections , or disproofs , I welcome them on the relevant pages .
And I wish to hell all the cash flows supposedly fueling us skeptics were not a just another silly watermelon fantasy . I welcome any donations on the PayPal buttons on my site . This battle for a return to the analytical.experimental methods of classical physics has cost me a lot .
Curse the lack of preview. Phillip, if you are not that person, my apologies.
Bob Armstrong:
my “rants” are in response to terrible-twos worthy , ears and eyes clenched closed , insults
Pot. Kettle. Black. If you didn’t start every comment by foaming at the mouth and insulting everyone in sight, people might respond more nicely.
“Climate science” is just a branch of applied physics which has been taken over by lots of people who’ve never even gotten thru an undergraduate quantitative science
This doesn’t even make any sense. Nevertheless, you want us to take yours and Harrison Schmitt’s claims at face value because you’re not climate scientists either?
…but should be easily understandable and translatable in to any more accessible APL or even MatLab
Is English an option? I went through your powerpoint, and some of it seems straightforward, but many of the slides just have a graph and an equation. I can read equations, but I’m not a physicist, so some explanations would be helpful. I got the idea that you don’t believe in the greenhouse effect.
And thanks for the link to Dr. Myneni’s Remote Sensing papers at Boston University. There’s some interesting stuff there.
This entire thread is in response to an article calling me and John Coleman , and Harrison Schmitt , and thousands of others “criminals” .
What doesn’t make sense ?
That ‘“Climate science” is just a branch of applied physics’ ?
Or
that it’s ” been taken over by lots of people who’ve never even gotten thru an undergraduate quantitative science” . ?
The latter , I’ll admit is my conclusion observing that very very few participants in these blog wars appear to know the undergraduate math requisite in any other branch of applied physics or engineering .
Nether I nor Schmitt , or I could add Lindzen , or Dyson , or Rutan or any of thousands of quantitatively educated individuals want you to take any claims at face value . We are just presenting and building on the work of giants , many in the 19th century , who gained incredible quantitative insights into the laws of heat transfer .
No , unfortunately English or another natural language is not an option any more than it is in any quantitative field . There is no way , for instance , to express Planck’s thermal radiation function in a computable form other than an equation . There is no way to compute ( explain ) the temperature of a radiantly heated object like our earth without it .
I have tried to explain each step beginning with the calculation of the portion of the celestial sphere the disk of the sun covers on a number of the pages on CoSy.com . But I really need to upload a video of one of my presentations of the PowerPoint asap ( within the next couple of months , when I can steal time from other priorities ) .
CO2 plays an essential role in transferring heat from the sun heated surface to all the molecules of the atmosphere within a couple of hundred meters of the ground , reversing the process at night . It’s overwhelming effect is to reduce our diurnal temperature variance . If it weren’t for it and water vapor our day-night temperature swings ( and equatorial-polar variance ) would be much greater . But this hardly ever gets discussed .
The most straight forward reason it has so little effect on our mean temperature at even these molecules per ten thousand levels is Beer’s law which says adding more drops of ink to a glass of water will make less and less difference in its color . As I said , even with just a few molecules per 10k , IR radiation from the surface in its absorption bands is almost certain to bump one of them within a couple of hundred meters . It’s already “black” in those bands .
But , by the century and a half old understanding ( Kirchhoff’s law ) that a body emits with exactly the same spectrum as it absorbs , it emits to space exactly as efficiently as it absorbs from the ground and oceans . So you see a change of more that 30% being eaten up by plant life , but having at most a 0.3% effect on our mean temperature .
I welcome anyone who has any contacts among the anointed professional “climate science” community to review what I have said here or on my website .
I take exception to being labeled a criminal deserving the death penalty for having diverted a painfully expensive amount of my time and energy understanding all this even far enough to be able implement the calculations for a uniformly colored ball .
” Indeed believe some really would guillotine us if they had the power ”
You throw that out, even in jest, and yet wonder why nobody takes you seriously?
Smarter Than Your Average Bear
March 17, 2014
“… At this point I feel the situation has become so dire… that those funding and promulgating climate science denialism should be charged with 1st degree murder – and frankly it would be best if held in a state with the death penalty. ”
The previous most egregious Statist perversion of science was the enforcement of Lysenkoism by Stalin . Non believers were subject to death .
I’m not going to go on wasting my time posting to people who obviously hate science and who just haven’t got a clue.
A human being can get to the point of fixation that denies him his powers of reason and comprehension. The complete ignorance of science, the history of science, scientific method, facts, logic, and above all the complete inability to read with comprehension, says it all. The totalitarian mindset! Seig heil! I made the heavens and the earth — worship me! (But don’t, whatever you do, read or think.)
“DEAN
March 18, 2014
Bob, it isn’t your logo that shows you are an idiot, it is your rants.
Philip, are you the creationist and noted science denier (no theory of gravity, etc., etc.,)
Correct me if I’m wrong: there is no theory of gravity, is there? Isn’t it an enigma? Has anyone ever done the maths of why objects attract each other?
This is off-topic, but I personally come from a biblical perspective. The Bible doesn’t ignore gravity.” End Dean quote.
O.K., Dean,
“Has anyone ever done the maths of why objects attract each other?” Looks like I have my answer. Dean has. He has out einsteined Einstein and at last come up with the mathematical formula of Everything. Only I suspect I’m wasting my time even writing to you. You don’t comprehend, do you? A great modern conundrum of science is why matter is attracted to matter. There is no known property of matter which can be mathematically formulated which explains why it happens. In other words, science does not understand gravity. It can not capture the Creation with a formula. You, of course, can. Show us your maths.
The Bible explains gravity and solves the conundrum but if you can’t get the most elementary science correct, who would trust you to get anything correct. Science, my friend is mathematical and only is solved when a mathematical formula can be proved in relation to the matter. Science is not Al Gore and Mickey Mouse on a stump, stirring the Irish.
GregH
‘And after all that typing, you want us to believe in a supernatural force that’s going to make everything right. Where have we heard that before? Honestly, I think calling on God for help to fix a problem we’ve clearly brought on ourselves is not a helpful policy direction. For example, has it ever worked before?”
Has what ever worked before? Are you going to stop people from being greedy materialists by passing a law re. climate?
That certainly won’t work. Your and my difficulties do not boil down to technicalities. Laws have a place but of themselves do not solve much.
Whether God, himself, has ever “worked” — well, try consulting almost every respected foundational scientist, from Bacon through to Einstein. Almost every one was creationist in the dictionary meaning. Some specifically said that they were given Higher guidance. But if you need to see supernatural Providence at work, merely study the geochemical record. No way should we be here and no way should the oceans and atmosphere have remained sweet. But technicalities are a second rate substitute for personal introductions! God is the ultimate Person. Science merely establishes a rational First Cause. It can give glimpses but it can not ‘prove’ God to the individual. That is left to you and me. The scientific fact that a First Cause exists, however, does have long-standing ramifications in Science. It enables rationality!
a) I was correct, you are the creationist with no information relevant to science
b) You apparently can’t read for comprehension – I never claimed to have a theory of gravity – I’m a statistician by training
c) “Science is not Al Gore…” – I see one person here who mentioned him, and it isn’t any of the people promoting science
Surely even you aren’t so naive as to claim Einstein was a creationist?
I go back to the first part of my point ‘a’: I was right – there is no reason at all to take your comments seriously.
Phillip, you just described what you do for a living – point:
Really? In which one of the conflicting genesis stories did the goat herders who authored it get it right? More importantly, how have so many scientists, whom you claim to be creationists, miss that point?
And shouldn’t you be able to demonstrate evidence for your version of god first, then go from there? Assuming a creator and simply saying “hey, he did it” is nothing but a shell game.
But that’s all you have, as you’ve demonstrated in your posts.
HELGA
raised some good points. Takes a female to be flexible and practical.
Strangely enough, the advent of the Internet saved free speech! There is this animal known as ‘peer review”. It has served well in its place but has an obvious potential flaw — a serious one. ‘ Peer review’, quite obviously,
has the potential to become the exclusivist club of the illuminati. The history of human thought is littered with these most distressing illuminati clubs. Anaxagoras was run out of Athens for saying the heavenly bodies were physical, not divine. Pare, the French pioneering surgeon, was all but tarred and feathered — by the ‘doctors”! Isaac Newton refused to publish his stuff because the first time he did so, he was publicly ridiculed. The topic? Light, which had the light shed on it by Newton. Halley dug Newton’s papers out of Newton’s bottom drawer and published them.
AAAS has some good operators. If they were better operators they would not be overseeing the politicization of science. Science is by definition apolitical.
As an anecdote: They are involved with the publication, SCIENCEDAILY. This publisher is tops, but it was at times publishing human evolution papers (peer reviewed) which obviously but unintentionally followed in the footprints of one Herr Hitler. Some members of the species are more fully human than others. Technically and morally, nonsense. It was also giving out headlines such as, ‘How Life Evolved”. Only, when you read it, it meant that if you leave dead molecules about for long enough, there is a process by which they mysteriously come to life. I wrote in and advized them to look up Pasteur and it may be they got correct and got correct. But scientists are like the balance of us– they have to earn a dollar. They regularly find they are flatly contradicting yesterday’s ‘good oil’.
sits back. puts up his feet and asks Helga his neighbour one province over to share the popcorn. 🙂
It never ceases to amaze me that those who deny the reality of human caused global warming never seem to stop and wonder what the consequences, both personal and global, will be if they are wrong. Bob seems to think that there will be no consequences, that his “creator” will step in and solve it for us if it turns out to be real (hint Bob – Greg, and likely most of those posting here are atheists – believing in some imaginary sky fairy isn’t exactly going to enhance your position especially as how you don’t have over 97% of climate scientists (which you are not), and this science, on your side.
Bob, consider if you are wrong – I know you don’t believe that but do consider it for a moment. Now consider what will happen 20 years or so from now when things really start getting bad, people starving from massive crop failures, 1 in a thousand year drought or floods every year, that sort of “end times”stuff, because the politicians listened to the money coming from carbon based energy companies, and people like you spouted their nonsense, Do you for a moment think that when the sleeping masses wake up to the fact that you and people like you have condemned the planet to ruin and condemned their children, grandchildren etc to early deaths, are going to engage you in polite conversation, slap you on the wrist and say oh dear you were wrong and now we are doomed, bad boy? What is going to happen when those masses wake up to your treachery is going to make Stalin look like an angel.
Personally I have no stake in this – no children or descendants to be concerned about and I’m old enough that by the time things get that bad (I hope) I’ll be long gone. So no, I’m not going to pick up a snipers rifle and start killing off the 1% and their ignorant sheeple minions – but I can absolutely guarantee you that others will, regardless of your outrage at the thought of it.
@ GregH . Quibbles . The thrust , based on the stupidity that the realist community is well funded , is that we who are fighting this politicized nonscience are prostitutes . Cheap ones at that because as Gleick’s theft from Heartland , one of the most effective realist organizations , revealed , their total budget is under 7 million . GreenPeace , WWF and Sierra are in the hundreds of millions . And governments in the 10s of billions . Do you think all that cash does not seduce its share of prostitutes ?
@Average Bear : you have me confused with somebody else . I think the greatest ancient theologian was Pythagoras , and I describe my religion as math and physics older than I am .
And what matters is getting things right . Already enormous damage has been done to economies ( ie , human welfare ) and the environment ( thousands of square kilometers despoiled by uneconomic windmills which have to be exempted from endangered species acts ) .
And its based on continually more thoroughly disproved nonscience .
The original “precautionary principle” was “first do no harm” . Most of the watermelon agenda is to intentionally inflict harm , particularly on those who can barely afford their gas and electric bills already .
What I see here is arrogant willful close mindedness , not a drive to deeply understand reality . As my friend Cork Hayden would say , alarmists are willing to do anything — except take a physics class .
“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists ……..” A. Einstein.
Creationism: “……the theory of special creation…” CHAMBERS’S 20TH CENTURY.
Maybe Spinoza’s God didn’t create anything? (Who was Spinoza, anyway?)
Eh, Dean, you could actually contribute something if you tried. Start maybe with Spinoza. Is it a fizzy drink .
Bob Armstrong:
I take exception to being labeled a criminal deserving the death penalty
Bob, the only person labeling you anything is… you.
If you go back and read the quote from the original Torcello article above, he says:
Or are you admitting to being part of an organized campaign? Perhaps with your known associate Harrison Schmitt?
Wow.
I dunno about criminal penalties, but we have a definite need for increased production and widespread distribution of Winged Monkey tranquilizer darts.
Okay, I need to go out for more popcorn.
I’m not sure if this will be welcome news for EVERYONE here, but Goldman Sachs just announced this…. Now why do you suppose they would be interested in the alternative energy market? http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-on-solar-and-elon-musk-2014-3?utm_source=news360&utm_medium=referral&utm_term=referral&utm_content=referral&utm_campaign=referral
Re : solar power , etc . , off topic , but correlated .
The libertarian view is , of course , let market economics decide . Just get government subsidies and mandates out of all markets . A subset of the market , even if elected , is not smarter than the total market .
I have great respect for Elon Musk . I wouldn’t bet against him , but I would require him to compete on a “level playing field” with no favors or subsidies .
But solar will never heat the northeast in the winter .
Gas is by far the most rational for that .
For those whose link did not work, here is the news:
GOLDMAN: Solar Is On The Way To Dominating The Electricity Market – Goldman Sachs has set an estimated date for when they believe residential solar power becomes competitive with existing electric across the U.S.
It’s relatively soon.
And it’s mostly thanks to Elon Musk.
Here’s the timeline from Cleantech analysts Brian Lee and Thomas Daniels, included in Goldman’s latest note on Tesla:
First, assuming the Gigafactory — the giant manufacturing facility that will soon begin pumping out lithium ion batteries to be used in both Tesla vehicles and renewable energy storage units — reaches its potential, the cost of said batteries should drop to $125/KWh by 2020, from a current price of more than $200/KWh, and dropping 3% each year thereafter.
The cost of solar panels continues to fall. Goldman says we can expect an average reduction of 3% annually here as well. That is extremely ambitious — cost reductions have stalled a bit of late — but it does jibe with this famous chart.
Finally, if electricity prices continue to climb in-line with historical increases — something that assumes a steadier economic recovery — prices for existing forms of electricity will increase 3% annually
“This puts LCOE at $0.20 by 2033 which would be at parity with the US grid price,” Goldman says.
And this could happen even sooner in New York, California, and Hawaii, where electricity is more expensive and especially in places like Hawaii where costs are $0.36 per KWh, the note.
What’s more, Goldman says this will all go down even without credits:
While the ITC runs only through 2016, our Clean Energy team believes the number of households hitting grid parity will continue to grow as the cost of the systems comes down…SolarCity has seen a 40% decline in the per watt cost of PV panels since the second quarter of 2013 driven by improved scale which is expected to continue. This has been true for Tesla’s battery costs as well, which have declined from of $500/KWh in 2008 to $250/KWh for the Model S to potentially $125/KWh at the gigafactory. As a result we should note that the quantitative grid parity and return calculations we show above are arrived at without any Federal or state credits.
They go on to invoke the two scariest words in the world for utilities: grid defection (people leaving the grid). And they lay out three reasons why, though nothing is imminent, we are heading in that direction.
Ultimately the holy grail of solar is to move to a situation where the customer is no longer tied to the grid at all. This may be far off, aside from entailing a much more expensive solar/battery system, this is also potentially out of people’s comfort zone entailing a 100% reliance on a new system for their electricity needs. That said, decreased reliability from an aging distribution infrastructure, a broadening desire to reduce the carbon footprint, and perhaps most importantly, the reduction of solar panel and battery costs could also work together to make grid independence a reality for many customers one day.
They conclude: “As this is a very high-level exercise, we do not quantify the addressable market in this report, but to us the conclusion is very clear – the potential for this application could be very large.”
I find this interesting. I mean, Goldman Sachs is pretty canny.
Oh, and I saw this Monday and was hunting for it. I think this is perfect time to be having this discussion.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-17/global-warming-melts-greenland-ice-sheet/5324848
Phillip, the point is that you have outed yourself as being completely unbelievable in any scientific issue by falsely referring to your creationistself as a scientist. I told some time to look at your site, and read some of your comments at other places. My opinion of you is rather kind compared to what you’ve received elsewhere.
Good -oh, Helga. Sorry, it won’t stop Asia going more intense with industrialization and it won’t stop you or me turning on the warmer or the cooler. I am a geologist but also a farmer. I thought about going back to horses but horses produce methane in quantity. I bought an expensive solar pump to extract water from a 15m well, decades ago. Paid considerable money and the technology was so new I then spent lots more getting it to actually start the pump. (Inertia problem. Needed a simple computer to automatically reduce voltage.increase amperage so the D.C. motor would overcome initial water inertia.). Taking economic reality into account it was worse for the environment than a petrol motor. I never connected myself to the power grid for years and only did so because sizable refrigerators not wired for the grid are too expensive. Now they are paying us all to install solar plates and it makes you feel wanted and part of something but I have experienced the economic facts of (currently available) Alternative. Our state governments and our citizens are all laboring under the Green agenda with debt, price hikes. etc..
Relax. The planet cannot be saved. It isn’t designed to be saved. It is not our responsibility to save it. We are in an information hologram — the Cosmos — which is due to be switched off at the appropriate moment. What remains after it is switched of is the Source of the hologram — and us — the real us, the ‘hidden man of the heart” The physical world is an aside in the great drama of existence.
The planet cannot be saved? Are you completely insane? Of course it can be saved. We are not some hologram figment of your delusion, we are real, and a hundred million other liv=fe forms are real with us. We had better save this planet. There is not maybe. YOU may feel that way, Fine . Give and leave the conversation. As far as I am concerned , this is my planet, I was born here and so was everyone, human and other, I have ever loved. I ail move heaven and earth to save this planet. All those who feel as I do will do the same. This is our home.
Evolution is not progress, but it a heck of a lot more sensible than talking with a complete fool.
Dean:
I wrote what is on my site and the only thing I recall ever calling myself is, quote: ‘The most consummate of all fools”
The site may have decided to write its own description of its author. Evolution in progress? Internet sites, creating novel information of their own power? You could be onto something. Submit it to Bob and see if it’s physics.
Ed, thanks for the blogging over the years. A couple of things stand out for me:
1. The venom and rapidity with which the sceptics jumped on. Almost all of it data free with the exception of one poster who, at least, brought some debate about how ice cores could be giving us a bum read.
2 FWTW I don’t think the Koch Bros et al are that fussed about global warming as such. I think they’re more worried about the precedent set if legislation were to appear which had as its primary goal caring for the planet and requiring corporations to do the same. With that precedent set where would it all end? That’s what frightens them. Consequently they’re determined to stop it. Even if they cannot deny the science even to themselves
Well Phillip, the fool description fits you perfectly. The problem with your proclamations is that you have nothing to support them, and when what you believe (note, not shown, demonstrated) to be the correct description runs counter to the researched, reviewed, and published science, well, that paints you as dishonest crackpot. When you add the mythology of your religion as support, it destroys your already rotten foundation.
And again, as long as you repeat complete crap like
Almost every respected foundational scientist, from Sir Francis Bacon, through Galileo, Newton, etc., including Einstein, was creationist – in the standard dictionary meaning.
there is no reason to believe you have any grasp on reality, or even that you have a grasp of the basics topics you speak on.
There really is no difference between you and Ken Ham: equally oily and dishonest.
This Tortello guy is a philosopher so I’m trying to reproduce his bizarre logic.
For example: ‘Misinformation about climate is criminally negligent.
There are those who fund climate misinformation. Therefore those who
fund climate misinformation are criminally negligent.’ ….No that’s not
valid.
How about: ‘Misinformation about climate is criminally negligent.
Everyone provides climate misinformation from time to time. Therefore
everyone is criminally negligent from time to time.’ …No that’s not valid
either.
Can someone help me out here?
Bob Armstrong: This entire thread is in response to an article calling me and John Coleman, and Harrison Schmitt, and thousands of others “criminals.”
Really? Greg Laden never mentioned Harrison Schmitt or John Coleman in this post. And “thousands of others”? I would put it at several hundred tops. These are the people who actively promote science denial, whether as elected officials or by virtue of having oodles of bucks to throw into misleading adverts.
As I explain in my Web pages devoted to the subject, there are climate science deniers (possibly as many as one-third of adult Americans) and there are Denialists: the few hundred I mention above. Here’s how I describe their actions on my Web site:
Promoting the denial of science is not criminal in a legal, prosecutable sense. It is, however, dangerous and unethical, therefore deserving of condemnation.
I and John and Schmitt are lumped , along with the 9000 PhDs and 10s of thousands of others in the Oregon petition ( which is derogated for very small fraction of questionable signatories ) , and thousands more quantitatively educated , highly accomplished individuals , including actual hard science Nobel winners .
It is the fanatics , invariably Statists , who promote such Orwellian oxymorons as “carbon pollution” who are the power thirsty , to hell with reality , criminals .
Arghh. Forgot to close the italics.
As you say, there is no law against ignoring the welfare of future generations of mankind and destroying species at a rate that qualifies as “The Sixth Extinction”. There is a natural reluctance to agree to considering the carbon dioxide blanket miasma we are building for ourselves as a problem that could force us to alter our lifestyle in uncomfortable ways to accommodate our children’s welfare. No one wants to think of themselves as selfish or greedy to the detriment of our grandchildren. The truth hurts so finding ways to avoid facing it works for slow thinking people. Speaking of which the satelite data analysis from Australia shows greening from carbon dioxide in regions that are so dry that crops can no longer be grown and that are becoming dust bowls. The fine print of the study shows that the data were “adjusted for changes in precipitation” and that “only deserts were considered”, not areas where crops are vital to human welfare. Whoops! More importantly, satelite data and other direct observations also show a reduction in cloud formation worldwide of a significant percentage. Clouds are the primary driver of climate. This reduction of cloud formation with increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is responsible for extreme weather and droughts. So carbon dioxide may be greening desert plants but also it is killing our food sources! Basically carbon monoxide is an invisible toxic chemical miasma eminating from populated high energy consumption areas and the sooner we recognize that it is creating acid rain and acidifying our oceans and causing widespread species extinction, the better.
Engineers, doctors, agriculture specialists, computer scientists and mathematicians, and (be still my heart) 39
people in climatology out of 30 some thousand? And you expect to be taken seriously? What a maroon.
“Climate Scientists” act as if “Climate Science” was something more than just a uniquely stagnate branch of applied physics .
I guess that’s why they feel like they are , as my friend professor emeritus Cork Hayden says , willing to do anything other than take a course in physics .
& btw , agricultural specialists are absolutely on point in debunking what I call the 0th stupidity , trumping even the physics : the attempt to deny that an extra molecule of CO2 , the very building block of organic life , per 10,000 of air is greening the planet and increasing agricultural yields world wide .
Jim Schultz: You’re missing the real issue here. The global warming crowd believe that there is too many humans on the planet. Ergo, some must be removed, i.e. killed, murdered, whatever the acceptable term is nowadays.
Reflecting a little about it, there not a whole lot different than the Aztecs who sacrificed 20,000 bodies per year to their gods because it wasn’t raining enough. Methinks the Aztecs were the first “climate scientists” in the world. Their counterparts nowadays are no different. Letting people freeze to death because CO2 is too prevalent is no different than cutting their hearts out on an alter (with a high priest in attendance, of course) in order to assuage the god’s anger.
Make no mistake. These bozos are CRAZY. No different than the pagan Aztecs.
So, we’re crazy just like those pagan Aztecs, eh?
Sure is a good thing climate-science deniers never stoop to name-calling. /sarc At least you didn’t compare us to that other group…
We need to think more strategically about how to deal with those who are instrumental in threatening the lives and well-being of future generations.
It seems to me that one such route is to make a long overdue linkage in international and national law between ecocide and human rights. The basic concept is not difficult to comprehend: You can violate human rights by harming or destroying ecosystems on which human well-being and life is based.
If the non-denialist crowd is serious about addressing climate change in a way that will matter, it has to start building momentum to craft new law to hold those accountable who are preventing a rational public policy response to protect current and futures lives.
The concept of ecocide has been around since the 70s:
http://eradicatingecocide.com/overview/what-is-ecocide/
But only recently does it seem that momentum is picking up to take the concept seriously again.
We can argue with right-wing and libertarians until our brains fall out. What’s needed is a legal regime that will enable the full apparatus of the state to take action against those who are deliberately thwarting rational action to reduce risk to human and ecosystem life and well-being.
bob, how many of the “scientists” on the petition have a background relevant to the physics of climate science or the statistics of analyzing it, AND have worked doing it?
I don’t care about engineers, doctors, or apl programmers with no relevant education or understanding.
Dean , you ever hear the phrase attributed to Lenin : “Useful Idiot” ?
CO2 as plant food argument.
Let’s think about this a little more deeply. It’s possible in theory and before looking at any evidence to lay out various likelihoods of adding more CO2:
-Plants more grow more quickly.
-Adding CO2 beyond a certain point diminishes growth.
-Adding CO2 x percent increases growth but after that growth is stunted.
-Adding CO2 may benefit some plants and not others, or even no plants at all.
-Adding CO2 may in theory benefit plants or not, but CO2’s alteration of soil quality and moisture may help or impede plant growth.
-Adding CO2 may increase or decrease the number of pests.
These seem to me to be all perfectly legitimate considerations in the abstract. The above questions call into question any simplistic statement like “Plants use CO2 to grow, therefore more CO2 must be good.”
If anyone would like to know more about the relationship between CO2 and plants, here are two sources from the same website:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm
https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
CO2 is the anabolic half of the respiratory cycle of life .
http://cosy.com/Science/BuildingBlockOfLifeSlide.jpg
http://cosy.com/Science/DesertGreening.png
Are there contributors yet, trying to decide whether they wish to be accurate or not? I can save some googling.
Lord Monckton actually started the ball rolling re. global warming under Margaret Thatcher, investigated it, and formed his own conclusions based on existing understanding. Well, that’s my understanding. He pre-emptively found no purpose in AlGoreithms. And, going on the thermometer, so far, he hasn’t been far wrong.
I am not a physicist but I suspect you will find that Bob is talking about something along the lines of the ‘black body’, which may have been Monckton’s angle (I don’t know) and which certainly comes into any equation here. The difficulty being that Earth only approximates in ‘black body’ terms. So both sides, if employing ‘black body’ physics, encounter the difficulty that they are relying on unsubstantiated assumptions. Which means, science does not know. God, however, does know. Climate science insomuch as it makes God to be a fool, makes a public fool of itself. By definition it becomes a religio-political movement, opposed to Christianity, science, and democracy.
Science has always been controversial. So if there are those who need to overthrow everything with ‘science’ as an excuse – ho hum.
T.R. Morus 2004, Michael Faraday and the Electrical Century. pp. 69-72.
“Two of Faraday’s 19th-Century biographers — H.B. Jones and J.H. Gladstone — mention how, at the peak of his career, he found himself outed as an apparent supporter of dangerously radical and heterodox theories about the relationship between electricity and life. Gladstone revealed that he himself had heard the slander propagated by ‘an infidel lecturer on Paddington Green’. H.B. Jones, the author of Faraday’s Life and Letters, made a similar reference, also to a lecturer, on Paddington Green. The lecturer, a Mr. Wild, had been disputing the Old Testament account of creation and had cited experiments by Faraday as evidence for his claims. The experiments, carried out before audiences at Oxford, Cambridge and London, had demonstrated the electrical nature of life by producing animalcules and maggots by electrical agency. Faraday had underlined his experiments with the remark to his audience that: ‘Gentlemen, there is life, and, for aught I can tell, man was so created.’ He inferred from his experiments that man could be created, and in all probability was created, in the same way as by his experiments. According to the ‘infidel lecturer’ Mr. Wild, ‘so unpalatable were [Faraday’s] views, and contrary to what was received as orthodox, that the authorities under whose auspices the lectures were given…had them discontinued’.
Both biographers mentioned this scurrilous rumor only to dismiss it. The man who was by then widely recognized as the doyen of British, if not European, electricians would never have made such an outrageous suggestion. The episode is very revealing, nevertheless, of some of the sensitivities surrounding the science in which Faraday was to make his reputation. From the late 18th century onwards, electricity was, in many ways, a politically suspect science. It was the science of atheists, materialists, political radicals and revolutionaries. According to some of its critics, electricity was even to blame for the French Revolution. It was relatively common in 18th century electrical circles to argue for some connection between electricity and the vis nervosa- the stuff of life. In some posh salons, a good dose of electricity was widely recognized as the perfect antidote to infertility and impotence. Taking this argument to its extreme, materialists argued that the connection between electricity and the vis nervosa showed that life was just matter in motion after all– and human beings just machines. This was a dangerous argument. It meant no God, no Church, no divinely ordained social hierarchy. In short, it meant the Rights of Man. When the English radical Joseph Priestley trumpeted that ‘the English hierarchy, if there be anything unsound in its constitution, has reason to tremble even at an air-pump or an electrical machine’, this is the sort of thing he had in mind.
By the beginning of the 19th century there certainly seemed to be plenty of evidence to support this view. The galvanic, or voltaic, battery — one of this period’s experimenters’ main tools of philosophical investigation — was the product of the dispute between Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta over the existence of animal electricity. Volta — the battery’s inventor — was convinced his instrument showed that animal electricity was nonsense. Not everyone agreed. Giovanni Aldini, Galvani’s nephew, visited London in 1803 to defend his uncle’s reputation and the doctrine of animal electricity. On 17 January he was given the opportunity of experimenting on a human subject — Foster — a murderer executed at Newgate. Aldini connected his subject to the poles of a large galvanic battery. Electricity was passed between the dead man’s ears, between his mouth and his ears and between his anus and his ears. The result was a startling exhibition of contractions and convulsions. ‘On the first application of the process to the face, the jaw of the deceased criminal began to quiver, the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye was actually opened. In the subsequent part of the process the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion. It appeared to the uninformed part of the by-standers as if the wretched man were on the eve of being restored to life.’ Aldini’s experiments were at the time a minor sensation…… .”
My addend: A man of Faraday’s qualities could be unwillingly dragged into controversy over an everyday, natural phenomenon — electricity! He certainly wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last.
Extracts from a lucid account of black body radiation by W.H. Cropper, Great Physicists, Oxford Uni. Press, 2001
Blackbody Radiation (p. 232)
Max Planck’s story as an unenthusiastic revolutionary began in about 1895 in Berlin, with Planck established as a theoretical physicist and concerned with the theory of the light and heat radiation emitted by special high-temperature ovens known in physical parlance as “blackbodies.” Formally, a blackbody is an object that emits its own radiation when heated, but does not reflect incident radiation. These simplifying features can be built into an oven enclosure by completely surrounding it with thick walls except for a small hole through which radiation escapes and is observed.
The colour of radiation emitted by blackbody (and other) ovens depends in a familiar way on how hot the oven is: at 550°C it appears dark red, at 750°C bright red, at 900°C orange, at 1000°C yellow, and at 1200°C and beyond, white. This radiation has a remarkably universal character: in a blackbody oven whose walls are equilibrated with the radiation they contain, the spectrum of the colour depends exclusively on the oven’s temperature. No matter what is in the oven, a uniform colour is emitted that changes only if the oven’s temperature is changed. A theory that partly accounted for these fundamental observations had been derived by Kirchoff in 1859.
To Planck there were unmistakable signs here of “something absolute,” that sublime presence he had pursued in his thermodynamic studies. The blackbody oven embodied an idealised, yet experimentally accessible, instance of radiation interacting with matter. Blackbody theoretical work had been advancing rapidly because the experimental methods for analysing blackbody spectra–that is, the rainbow of emitted colours–had been improving rapidly. The theory visualised a balanced process of energy conversions between the thermal energy of the blackbody oven’s walls and radiation energy contained in the oven’s interior. By the time Planck started his research, the blackbody radiation problem had developed into a theoretical tree with some obviously ripening plums.
Planck first did what theoreticians usually do when they are handed accurate experimental data: he derived an empirical equation to fit the data. His guide in this effort was a thermodynamic connection between the entropy and the energy of the blackbody radiation field. He defined two limiting and extreme versions of the energy–entropy relation, and then guessed that the general connection was a certain linear combination of the two extremes. In this remarkably simple way, Planck arrived at a radiation formula that did everything he wanted. The formula so accurately reproduced the blackbody data gathered by his friends Heinrich Rubens and Ferdinand Kurlbaum that it was more accurate then the spectral data themselves: “The finer the methods of measurements used,” Planck tells us, “the more accurate the formula was found to be.”
The Unfortunate h
Max Born, one of the generation of theoretical physicists that followed Planck and helped build the modern edifice of quantum theory on Planck’s foundations, looked on the deceptively simple manoeuvres that led Planck to his radiation formula as “one of the most fateful and significant interpolations ever made in the history of physics; it reveals an almost uncanny physical intuition.” Not only was the formula a simple and accurate empirical one, useful for checking and correlating spectral data; it was the radiation formula, the final authoritative law governing blackbody radiation. And as such it could be used as the basis for a theory–even, as it turned out, a revolutionary one. Without hesitation, Planck set out in pursuit of that theory: “On the very day when I formulated the (radiation law),” he writes, “I began to devote myself to the task of investing it with true physical meaning.”
As he approached this problem, Planck was once again inspired by “the muse entropy,” as the science historian Martin Klein puts it. “If there is a single concept that unifies the long and fruitful scientific career of Max Planck,” Klein continues, “it is the concept of entropy.” Planck had devoted years to studies of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, and a fundamental entropy-energy relationship had been crucial in the derivation of his radiation law. His more ambitious aim now was to find a theoretical entropy-energy connection applicable to the blackbody problem.
As mentioned in chapter 13, Ludwig Boltzmann interpreted the second law of thermodynamics as “probability law.” If the relative probability or disorder for the state of a system was W, he concluded, then the entropy S of the system in that state was proportional to the logarithm of W,
S lnW……………
In a deft mathematical stroke, Planck applied this relationship to the blackbody problem by writing
S = klnW …………..(1)
For the total entropy of the vibrating molecules – Planck called them “resonators”–in the blackbody oven’s walls; k is a universal constant and W measures disorder. Although Boltzmann is often credited with inventing the entropy equation (1), and k is now called “Boltzmann’s constant,” Planck was first to recognise the fundamental importance of both the equation and the constant.
Planck came to this equation with reluctance. It treated entropy in the statistical manner that had been developed by Boltzmann. Boltzmann’s theory taught the lesson that conceivably–but against astronomically unfavourable odds–any macroscopic process can reverse and run in the unnatural, entropy-decreasing direction, contradicting the second law of thermodynamics. Boltzmann’s quantitative techniques even showed how to calculate the incredibly unfavourable odds. Boltzmann’s conclusions seemed fantastic to Planck, but by 1900 he was becoming increasingly desperate, even reckless, in his search for an acceptable way to calculate the entropy of the blackbody resonators. He had taken several wrong directions, made a fundamental error in interpretation, and exhausted his theoretical repertoire. No theoretical path of his previous acquaintance led where he was certain he had to arrive eventually–at a derivation of his empirical radiation law. As a last resort, he now sided with Boltzmann and accepted the probabilistic version of entropy and the second law.
For Planck, this was an “act of desperation,” as he wrote later to a colleague. “By nature I am peacefully inclined and reject all doubtful adventures,” he wrote, “but by then I had been wrestling unsuccessfully for six years (since 1894) with this problem of equilibrium between radiation and matter and I knew that this problem was of fundamental importance to physics; I also knew the formula that expresses the energy distribution in normal spectra [his empirical radiation law]. A theoretical interpretation had to be found at any cost, no matter how high.”
The counting procedure Planck used to calculate the disorder W in equation (1) was borrowed from another one of Boltzmann’s theoretical techniques. He considered–at least as a temporary measure–that the total energy of the resonators was made up of small indivisible “elements,” each one of magnitude . It was then possible to evaluate W as a count of the number of ways a certain number of energy elements could be distributed to a certain number of resonators, a simple combinatorial calculation long familiar to mathematicians.
The entropy equation (1), the counting procedure based on the device of the energy elements, and a standard entropy-energy equation from thermodynamics, brought Planck almost–but not quite-to his goal, a theoretical derivation of his radiation law. One more step had to be taken. His argument would not succeed unless he assumed that the energy of the elements was proportional to the frequency with which the resonators vibrated, v, or
= hv………….. (2)
with h a proportionality constant. If he expressed the sizes of the energy elements this way, Planck could at last derive his radiation law and use the blackbody data to calculate numerical values for his two theoretical constants h and k.
This was Planck’s theoretical route to his radiation law, summarised in a brief report to the German Physical Society in late 1900. Planck hoped that he had in hand at last the theoretical plum he had been struggling for, a general theory of the interaction of radiation with matter. But he was painfully aware that to reach the plum he had ventured far out on a none-too-sturdy theoretical limb. He had made use of Boltzmann’s statistical entropy calculation–an approach that was still being questioned. And he had modified the Boltzmann technique in ways that modern commentators have found questionable. Abraham Pais, one of the best of the recent chroniclers of the history of quantum theory, says that Planck’s adaption of the Boltzmann method “was wild”.
Even wilder was Planck’s use of the energy elements in his development of the statistical argument. His procedure required the assumption that energy, at least the thermal energy possessed by the material resonators, had an inherent and irreducible graininess embodied in the quantities. Nothing in the universally accepted literature of classical physics gave the slightest credence to this idea. The established doctrine — to which Planck had previously adhered as faithfully as anyone–was that energy of all kinds existed in a continuum. If a resonator or anything else changed its energy, it did so through continuous values, not in discontinuous packets, as Planck’s picture suggested.
In Boltzmann’s hands, the technique of allocating energy in small particle-like elements was simply a calculational trick for finding probabilities. In the end, Boltzmann managed to restore the continuum by assuming that the energy elements were very small. Naturally, Planck hoped to avoid conflict with the classical continuum doctrine by taking advantage of the same strategy. But to his amazement, his theory would not allow the assumption that the elements were arbitrarily small; the constant h in equation (2) could not be given a zero value.
Planck hoped that the unfortunate h, and the energy structure it implied, were unnecessary artefacts of his mathematical argument, and that further theoretical work would lead to the result he wanted with less drastic assumptions. For about eight years, Planck persisted in the belief that the classical viewpoint would eventually triumph. He tried to “weld the (constant) h somehow into the framework of the classical theory. But in the face of all such attempts this constant showed itself to be obdurate.” Finally Planck realised that his struggles to derive the new physics from the old had, after all, failed. But to Planck this failure was “thorough enlightenment… I now knew for a fact that (the energy elements) … played a far more significant part in physics than I had originally been inclined to suspect, and this recognition made me see clearly the need for introduction of totally new methods of analysis and reasoning in the treatment of atomic problems.”
The physical meaning of the constant h was concealed, but Planck did not have much trouble extracting important physical results from the companion constant k. By appealing to Boltzmann’s statistical calculation of the entropy of an ideal gas, he found a way to use his value of k to calculate Avogradro’s number, the number of molecules in a standard or molar quantity of any pure substance. The calculation was a far better evaluation of Avogadro’s number than any other available at the time, but that superiority was not recognised until much later. Planck’s value of Avogradro’s number also permitted him to calculate the electrical charge on an electron, and this result, too, was superior to those derived through contemporary measurements.
These results were as important to Planck as the derivation of his radiation law. They were evidence of the broader significance of his theory, beyond the application to his blackbody radiation. “If the theory is at all correct,” he wrote at the end of his 1900 paper, “all of these relations should be not approximately, but absolutely, valid.” In the calculation of Avogadro’s number and the electronic charge, Planck could feel that his theory had finally penetrated “to something absolute.”
In part because of Planck’s own sometimes ambivalent efforts, and in part because of the efforts of a new, less inhibited scientific generation, Planck’s theory stood firm, energy discontinuities included. But the road to full acceptance was long and tortuous. Even the terminology was slow to develop. Planck’s energy “elements” eventually became energy “quanta,” although the Latin word “quantum,” meaning quantity, had been used earlier by Planck in another context. Not until about 1910 did Planck’s theory, substantially broadened by the work of others, have the distinction of its formal name, “quantum theory.”
MY ADDEND. Anyone who claims to have the mathematical fix re. the mechanism of Earth and climate is claiming to understand not only quantum theory but rheems of other stuff so advanced it isn’t even being dreamed of. In short, he is deluded. You are talking through the venerable hat. However, geology clearly gives certain indications which in combination with the Scriptures head off the need for the jackboot and the jail house.
PBH , Some interesting history . tho I don’t have time to read it all .
I’m not claiming anything beyond 19th century physics . It was Planck’s equation for thermal radiation which I use but don’t even attempt to derive , which ushered in the quantum age .
I just finished uploading to my YouTube channel of video of the first part of my “How to calculate the temperature of a radiantly heated colored ball ( like our earth )” presentation the Pikes Peak Economics Club last November .
One of the most essential facts , first experimentally demonstrated 180 years ago is that a radiantly heated gray ball , however light or dark , will come to the same temperature as a black ball .
Yes Bob, but enough about you. Since you can’t, or won’t answer the question, there is no need to respond again.
I was just listening to a podcast about the extinction of carrier pigeons, and found it ironically hilarious to learn that back before the end there were “extinction denialists” who claimed there wasn’t a problem; then when it was clear to everyone there was a problem, they switched to, “…but we don’t know what’s causing it!”
Monckton had nothing to do with Margaret Thatcher’s understanding of climate science way back then. She had a science policy adviser for that as well as scientific qualifications of her own which Monckton certainly lacks. She didn’t even mention Monckton in her autobiography at all, let alone for special advice.
She gave her famous speech at the UN in 1988. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg Monckton had only worked for the British government between 82 and 86. So he certainly had nothing to do with that speech. She established the Hadley Centre in 1990 – 4 years after Monckton had anything been anywhere near her, let alone “advised” on climate policy or research. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Monckton,_3rd_Viscount_Monckton_of_Brenchley#Political_advisor_for_Thatcher_Conservative_Party
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/thatcher-saw-climate-threat/story-e6frg7ax-1111119033099
If you want to admire Monckton, it would be better to do it on the basis of what he has really done, not on things he’s never done.
Bob. Significance of gray vs. black? Significance of spherical shape? Do you think the carbon greenhouse gases do act as greenhouse gases in Earth’s case?
And what’s your take on Alfven waves, if you have one?
I’ve finished uploading the second part of my video to YouTube containing the meat of the computations .
The significance of the fact that a radiantly heated gray , flat spectrum , body will come to the same temperature , no matter how dark or light seems to be counter intuitive and generally poorly appreciated even in the “climate science” community . Most importantly , CO2 radiates to space as efficiently as it absorbs from the surface , so , while it helps bring the atmosphere up to the temperature of the surface , it does not , cannot , cause it to go any higher than that determined by the spectrum of the Earth as seen from outside . And with respect to that , it acts as black within its spectral bands .
OT : I read a book by Alfven years ago pushing the idea that different galaxies or galactic clusters may be antimatter kept apart by the Leidenfrost effect , but know nothing about Alfven waves . I’m only just now reading my niece’s undergrad quantum text by Griffiths to get a more detailed , but still dilettante’s knowledge of the basics .
DEAN, You wrote, “I don’t care about engineers, doctors, or apl programmers with no relevant education or understanding.”
If you read all that screed about Planck in my entry, and understand it without a hitch — which I don’t — you are among a select few thousand or perhaps million on the planet. Multiply the complexity by ten, and if anyone can understand something ten times as top storey, they are a select few, a mere handful. Yet in this crazy world today, thousands of proposed experts suddenly have leapt into existence, not understanding a fraction of what governs climate. Quantum behaviour of ‘particles’, interacting turbulent flow, and heat transfer, and above all, chaos theory — which in the case of our planet, no mere mortal by definition can or ever will solve. Only omnipotence can solve it because only omnipotence can measure all the feed-in information and factor everything in. This isn’t religion, it’s basic mathematics. Climate is a ‘chaos’ style phenomenon.
Anyone claiming to have the low-down on climate immediately classes himself a total science illiterate.
This whole scenario is breathtakingly beyond description, yet another laughingstock of history.
2 comments :
Assume just 1 tenth of 1 percent of humanity has even the rigorous quantitative education to be even any sort of a hard science engineer , say 3 years of undergraduate math . That’s more than 6 million .
Mean planetary temperature is much simpler than “climate” or weather , just as the gas laws can tell you about the mean temperature of a volume of gas thru quite simple equations without getting into the details of the eddies within it .
’nuff said
DELETED
Ken, no, I’m not putting a link to the fake IPCC report written by denialists on this blog. And no, enough has not been said about climate change. I would like to ask you though, what is your motivation for actively opposing the development of real science and its translation into sensible policy? What are you up to? What do you get out of this?
Phillip, I’m not surprised you’re back with your dishonest and misleading comments.
Noone says the scientists have every detail worked out – no one except you as part of your fake assertions about why they can’t be trusted.
The point is that the people who work and study those issues have a better understanding of the physics and other issues than you (or Bob) or the charlatans like Watts, More importantly, the researchers in those areas have a sense of integrity, again unlike you, Bob, Watts, and others of your ilk. That is why their opinions and (reviewed) work is important and your comments are fit only for ridicule.
Bob, I have read (hopefully) unbiased people with credentials mentioning satellite data which document a reduction in heat (light) being radiated into space from our atmosphere in exactly the same wavelength band as that absorbed by CO2. What’s your intelligence on that?
Completely different topic: Aflven waves, according to the latest, are largely responsible for the heating of the solar corona. Alfven waves are not light waves as such. The energy they carry depends in some measure upon the properties of the magnetic field lines along which they propagate. Hence, feeding back some sort of effect into the sun’s magnetic field theoretically might influence the heat received by objects which are heated by the sun?
PBH ,
I’d like to see the data . In fact I’m really just an APL programmer . I only claim to understand that which I can compute . And at this point that’s simple classical electromagnetic energy transfer .
Adelady.
Regarding Lord Monckton. I can only go on what is published on the ‘net. One can argue until the cows come home that everything published is biased and we still won’t get any milk.
Everyone should search for truth, themselves.
Personally I attempted to contact Lord Monckton by e-mail but got no reply.
Of one thing we may be assured: re-burying all that carbon whilst stopping further use of fossil fuels is more than I could handle. I suspect Lord Monckton is saying that some things are practical and it’s no use exhausting ourselves to stop us exhausting ourselves. He also rightly took exception to people fudging the figures. It’s confoundedly hot and dry here in Queensland but at least with people like Monckton about, I’m less likely to burn witches to alleviate my fears and discomfort.
Increased greenhouse effect, involving CO2, is confirmed by NASA’s IRIS satellite and the Japanese Space Agency’s IMG satellite — less longwave leaving the Earth’s atmosphere. These data of course are readily available. There are grounds for suggesting enhanced greenhouse effect.
The total meaning of these data??.
This in my opinion is where geology and geophysics step in.
Atmospheric carbon gases are essential to life. If they fall too low, everything dies. But consider: if they are necessary not only to everyday life but to everyday climate as well, here we have a most remarkably fine balance. If they get too low, plants strangle and we starve. Is it also the case that if they get too high, a chain reaction like a bank run melts all ice, etc, and makes the planet an exceeding difficult environment. Such a theoretical feedback loop would quickly drown major cities and bring on significant disaster.
As you will know, total heating disaster would theoretically be headed off through the laws which govern these things, especially, that as the temperature of a body rises, the heat it gives off increases at much higher rate than the rate of temperature rise. I have forgotten the ratio.
The remarkable witness of the geologic record is that the wild temperature fluctuations suggested under this scenario (theoretical blackbody) did occur in some measure, but were the exception rather than the rule. This despite every ‘rule in the book’ suggesting that they should have been regular and hideously destructive. Theoretical standard blackbody, no inbuilt governing mechanism other than the bludgeon of re-emission increase as temperature rises. This theoretical blackbody does not answer the questions. The sun at first was only about two thirds full capacity (faint early sun problem) yet the Earth did not freeze, and volcanoes and comets dumped the order of 12 atmospheres CO2 into our atmosphere over time — and we didn’t boil.
But that’s only the tip of the iceberg — the iceberg of fact.
While all this was happening, the Earth’s magnetic field constantly played about, fully reversing probably hundreds of times and undoubtedly doing much more besides. Reversal frequency is statistically described as a stochastic process, in the same field as chaos theory — and therefore in the same field as — climate! And who doesn’t know that weather cycles are linked in some mysterious way to sunspots? Sunspots are a magnetic phenomenon.
We come to a fact published for decades. There is a mysterious yet obvious link between the two best documented periods of reversal ‘jamming’ (muted reversal activity) and climate change/difficulty. And both these ‘jamming’ events are likewise associated with times when vast quantities of carbon were processed through the atmosphere and locked into the ground.
Now the carbon is coming back out in quantity and the field is acting in an unprecedented manner in terms of human experience. Forget the earth baking through greenhouse — look at it broiling through impairment of our magnet field. Electrical engineers etc. are startled and concerned. The ‘climate scientists’ are somewhere on a different planet?
Guess what is an active (electro) magnet? The atmosphere. The oceans. They circulate conductive streams in the presence of a magnetic field, thereby creating magnetic fields. I think it was in 2009 geophysicist Professor G. Ryskin published statistical links between secular (day to day) variation of our magnetic field, and strength of the major ocean currents.
Guess what interacts with the oceans and atmosphere?
Climate.
So our climate feeds back information into our magnetic field. Which constantly couples and uncouples with the sun’s field.
Which it is now discerned (late 2013) can transfer heat energy in ways other than straightforward electromagnetic radiation such as light. And that mechanism of heat transfer — Alfven waves — depends upon the magnetic field itself.
Which, theoretically, might just be adjustable. The Earth’s field constantly couples and uncouples with the sun’s field and the Earth’s field is influenced and indeed partly driven by climate-sensitive mechanisms.
Which would explain why magnetic field excursion/reversal here on Earth was not destructive to life in the geologic record. The Earth’s needs were sensed by the sun. The geologic record suddenly makes a great deal more sense. And the real worry for the planet — radiation damage during magnetic excursion — might not be a worry at all, because our reduced field slackens the solar energy reaching us. Which is but one re-assuring aspect of the whole, now obvious thermostat mechanism.
It was given to me to deduce this years ago from the Bible and practical common sense and everything subsequently fell into place. Wait for the prospective data from the recently launched satellites to fall into place!
This is the Quantum Era. The Bible’s main science thread is written for this age.
Details, try my full name or ‘Climate Moderation through Magnetic Interaction.’
This I hope explains my interest in satellite measurements, blackbody radiation, and Alfven waves. Also my amusement re. ‘climate science”.
The Bible and common sense. I see.
In the meantime, for those of us who prefer science and reality:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mann-why-global-warming-will-cross-a-dangerous-threshold-in-2036/
I am not a climate scientist. I am a social scientist. If anything, the kind of science I do is even harder than Michael Mann’s – because of people who do not want to admit that human beings are so often easily deluded, bamboozled and conned. The Bible is a fine old collection of stories and fables and occasional nuggets of wisdom, like the collective stories of any human culture.
And common sense is something we must strive for, as it is much rarer and much harder to achieve than most of us would have believed possible in an earlier, more innocent age.
Those who quote ancient religious writings and assume common sense is a common commodity are sadly deluded – I might even say, they are permitting themselves to be conned. If this were merely a matter of opposing opinions, it not be upsetting. But it is not, these days, a matter of opinions anymore. It is a matter of survival, perhaps of more than merely the civilization we are currently in, but of the whole life support system on this planet.
We might find that our greatest danger is in not understanding the fallible nature of the human mind and the cultural systems that run our systems of perception.
“Not only will men of science have to grapple with the sciences that deal with man, but — and this is a far more difficult matter — they will have to persuade the world to listen to what they have discovered. If they cannot succeed in this difficult enterprise, man will destroy himself by his halfway cleverness.”
~ Bertrand Russell, 1951
Helga, PBH is simply a another creationist troll who, for some reason, believes there is a link between the bible and science. His posts were silly at first, now they are just sad.
>Thanks for taking your nazi behavior to its logical extreme .
Someone who wishes to be taken seriously posted this? Um, the Nazis already took their behavior to its logical extreme and to invoke it as a rhetorical device in a climate change discussion is … well… I’ll just say, “unseemly.”
I’ve been puzzled by the below issue, and need a CAGW fanboy to answer my question:
– Circa 1990, the IPCC estimated ECS at 1.5 – 4.5 °C (likely range)
– Fast forward 25yrs where we invested BILLIONS $$$ in climate research
– Now in 2014, the IPCC still estimates ECS at 1.5 – 4.5 °C (likely range)
Question: Wouldn’t actual scientific progress dictate the new knowledge would narrow the probably range, especially if they were convinced the situation was dire?
Yep . I’ve commented that in the couple of decades that other branches of applied physics , which is after all just what the study of planetary temperature is , have changed prefixes from mega- to giga- and even tera- , “climate science” has accomplished zilch . Here’s a great graph illustrating the point : http://cosy.com/Science/AGWppt_UtterStagnationShavivGraph.jpg .
@Theo,
I’m not a fanboy, but I can answer your question:
Actual scientific progress may dictate that a better, i.e., more accurate or more certain, answer become available, but it does NOT mean that the probability range of a climate estimate will narrow.
We might be fortunate that this occurs, but scientific progress does not mean that it will. What this does tell us is that current estimates agree with past estimates, which strengthens the likelihood that these estimates are correct.
It also suggests that we presently cannot narrow the estimates’ probability range — which may be due to physical limitations (read up on chaos theory) or due to limitations of current technology.
Bottom line is: We need to pay attention to these consistent numbers, the situation is dire, and we need to take action on implementing policies to respond to this in a responsible manner — even if it costs some people & corporations money and inconvenience to do so.
Theo, good question. actually, funding and amount of time in research does not dictate results. Also, I’m not so sure about the Billions.
In any event, it is a good question as to why we don’t have a narrower range for climate sensitivity. One possible answer is that given the overall bigness of the climate systems, it was a narrow range to begin with, but from the point of view of policy requirements, it isn’t good enough, but maybe can’t be good enough.
But another part of the answer is that we are currently seeing a narrowing in the range. Your summary of information is over-simplistic. Things have improved and actually, lately, may be improving at a higher rate.
I think the real reason for lack of any convergence over literally decades is the political requirement for a result at the upper end when the reality is very low . The simplest hypothesis , given an observed increase of approaching 40% in CO2 over somewhat more than a century associated with just a 0.3% increase in temperature , with no evidence of acceleration , is that a doubling would cause a change of just a little over 1 degree — if the greening molecule is the total driver .
That’s not good enough to scare people back to the 18th century .
But if half a doubling produces 0.9 degrees of warming, or 0.3% as you put it, then a doubling would produce 1.8 degrees of warming.
So where do you get just a little over 1 degree from?
I’ve never seen anybody claim over a 0.8 degree warming over the century + . But none of these numbers have the precision frequently touted . There seems to be uncertainty whether our mean temperature is nearer 287 than 288 .
But in any case , there is no evidence at all for anything towards the higher end of the range , and certainly no accelerating non-linearity .
Maybe you should look at the data instead of listening to whoever it is you’re listening to: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1900/to:1920/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2002/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1900
You never know, they might be biassed.
Why are we arguing with a dismissive who measures changes in the earth’s surface temperature in % absolute temperature?
Science is done with 0 based , and therefore ratio , scales wherever possible . The lack of appreciation for that fundamental view is symptomatic of the determined nonscience pervasive in “climate science” discussions . [LINK TO SCIENCE DENIALIST SITE DELETED AS PER BLOG POLICY DON’T TRY THAT AGAIN] instantly shows that the greening molecule’s effect on temperature at these concentrations is damn small .
My favorite graph showing what a molehill this whole politically useful silliness is all about is [LINK TO SCIENCE DENIALIST SITE DELETED AS PER BLOG POLICY DON’T TRY THAT AGAIN] . Richard Lindzen makes the same point with Boston spring temps : [LINK TO SCIENCE DENIALIST SITE DELETED AS PER BLOG POLICY DON’T TRY THAT AGAIN]
The maximum range of annual temp anomaly measured in the GISS database from 1880 to the present is 1.12 degrees C.
Monthly the range is 1.76 degrees C.
That gives an idea of the overall range of variation since several decades after the start of meaningful industrial release of fossil C.
Right, Bob, and the incredibly small changes in temperature you’re talking about, applied to pure water ice at 273K, is THEREFORE OBVIOUSLY too small to have any effect on said ice, let alone do something like MELT IT. Damn small indeed, hence can be dismissed with a wave of the hand. Nice.
And since you’ve enlightened us all to the irrelevancy of such small, insignificant temperature changes, suppose we raise your body temperature from 310K to 314K — that’s only 1.3%, so according to you, it’s insignificant and will have no effect. (I’ll let you Google what the consequences would actually be, sans your political revisionism…)
Nice thing about science is that it’s orthogonal to political agendas. You can obfuscate the issues to the uninformed, but you can’t stop the consequences, Bob. No matter how you label them.
Bob, science is not done with 0 based and therefore ratio scales whenever possible. It is done with whatever appropriate scale is needed. The relationship between 0K and planetary physics is pretty much irrelevant. K is not used in meteorology or climatology. That is not a fundamental view. It is just you.
Between your graphs and your reference to K, you’ve clearly demonstrated an abysmal lack of understanding of the science involved here. You are making the claim that the heat imbalance we are seeing because of added GHG is too small to matter, or simply, that it is very small. There is absolutely no basis for that assertion. Making the number appear smaller by changing the scale to something inappropriate is a way of telling lies. That, Bob, is what you are doing.
So now that you know that you have it all wrong, you can adjust, and move on to the next thing.
I have rarely read such utter nonscience . Given linearity , the 2 views are a simple affine transformation of each other . ALL equations of planetary temperature are based on Kelvin . This failure to appreciate even grade school math is why for instance so few even know what a planet’s temperature — in KELVIN — is as a function of distance from the Sun .
@ Brainstorms : 1.3 is 4.33 times the 0.3 we’ve seen .
And even tho the blog may be named after “science” , that doesn’t mean the word is well understood here .
Bob, your contributions to this discussion have been wonderful, sorry to see you go.
Greg, you are aware that sarcasm on the internet isn’t always understood?
Marco, no, how would I know that?
@ 137. Bob Armstrong :
Not quite sure if Bob Armstrong now banned or has flounced; but just in case he’s reading and because think this needs noting :
Temperature of Mercury = 100 to 800+ K / 350 C* / 700 F
Temperature of Venus = 750 K / 465 C* / 900 F
Hmm … it seems that something other than just distance from the Sun is involved here! Now, what could that be I wonder? Ah, yes, atmospheric presence, density and composition!
Incidentally, Ouranos is also almost as cool as Neptune – practically the same temperature despite Neptune being nearly twice as distant from our Sun as well!
Sources :
Degrees Kelvin = ‘Philip’s Astronomy Dictionary’‘, Ian Ridpath & John Woodruff (editors), Reed international Books, 1995.
Degrees Celsisus = ‘The Planets’, Nigel Henbest, Viking, 1992. Note average and for day side Mercury, C = Celsius, left our degrees symbol & full spelling out for spacing and computer skills reasons. (Can’t get the superscript symbols here. Feel free to alter accordingly if desired please Greg Laden.)
Degrees Fahrenheit (F as above.) = ‘The New Challenge of the Stars’ Patrick Moore and David Hardy, Hutchinson group, 1977.
+ At perihelion or closets point to Sun in orbit and hot pole -usually & mostly cooler than Venus.
***
Without our atmosphere the Earth’s average temperature would be minus eighteen degrees Celsius.
– Dr Alan Longstaff, ‘Astronomy Now’ magazine July 2007.
Expect Bob Armstrong to show you somewhere in the near future.
I don’t believe Venus is that warm. There is only a thin layer of gas on the surface! Just a trace! Now could that matter!
There is no science going on here!
Bob is a rather die-hard lunatarian who has “refuted” Mann’s work. He is beyond the reach of any reasonable discussions.
I don’t care that people who don’t even know or consider important to know that the temperature of a planet , holding it’s spectrum constant , i attributable to the energy it receives from the sun s proportional to the inverse square root of its distance from the sun ( http://cosy.com/Science/AGWpptSBplanetTemps.jpg ) ban me from their discussion of whether I and the many many great courageous scientists who are more interested in truly understanding planetary temperature than parroting a party line are criminals .
However , Dean’s assertion is simply false . I have never made any comment on Mann’s work because I have never examined it in detail . I will say I think he’s shown himself to be a litigious clown tho .
My interest is restoring the essential quantitative analytical method of classical physics to this globally consequential discussion , but no one in this echo chamber appears to have either the hard science background nor the motivation to understand that physics rather than sop their politicized “science” .
Global warming is only partly about the energy a planet receives from the sun. A simple stony planet with no atmosphere would lose most of its solar input pretty much at the same rate it receives it, minus a small amount that ends up in the mass of the planet, and what happens to that depends on the planet’s rotation. An atmosphere with any kind of GHG changes that enormously. Add an ocean and you also get really large changes.
You’ve never examined Mann’s work in detail. Mann’s work over the last two and a half decades has been prolific and key to many areas of climate change science. If you’ve not examined Mann’s work in any detail, then you know nothing about climate science. Nothing.
Sorry, but your undergraduate degree in physics if failing you here. Badly.
How is it that being courageous makes utterly incorrect statements that belie a level of understanding that, if it was temperature, would be 0K (absolute zero), good science?
Thank you for your comments, Bob.
Sorry, I typed Mann, meant Hansen. And, if you are not the same Rob Armstrong who has
posted on it – then by an amazing coincidence there is another man with your name in your town, and I apologize for my error.
That in no way lends support for the bizarre comments you’ve posted here.
@144. Greg laden : Well for a certain value of “thin”, I guess, I mean compared with Jupiter its virtually nothing! 😉
@146. Bob Armstrong : Was my post invisible to you or something? No comment on how Venus planetary average temp is hotter than Mercury despite their relative distances in any unit you care to name? Plus Neptune almost as warm as Ouranos despite being much, much more distant from our daytime star?
@ 148. Dean : A real life Heartland institute speaker? Well aren’t we “honoured” – for a certain value of the word again.
Reminds me of this good clip :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKBIP_dogMg
Bring back any memories Bob Armstrong?
@149. Bob Armstrong :
I have immense respect for Harrison Schmitt and the other astronauts – but that does NOT oblige me or anyone else to accept every word they say as gospel truth or refrain from pointing out when he is badly wrong. I find it very unfortunate and sad for him that Schmitt has adopted such, yes, “flat earth” beliefs.
Oh well, sad indeed but even Isaac Newton had many crank beliefs we now find ridiculous. Science is based on evidence – not authority.
Meanwhile the ice keeps melting at both poles – scientifically observed fact :
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/12/03/global_warming_antarctica_is_losing_more_than_6_billion_tons_of_ice_annually.html
I’d say undeniable but well, there are some sad sacks out there that would try to deny exactly that reality so ..
“you have to keep making excuses for D science students like Al Gore ”
The only people who keep referencing Gore are deniers like you, in some type of shoddy attempt to, well, it isn’t clear what.
“I’ve been “Bob” all my life . It bugs me that someone at Heartland must have thought that just too informal to permit .”
Heartland doing something they shouldn’t? Shocking.
“Freeman Dyson, Harrison Schmitt, Walt Cunningham…”
What climate science background do they have? None. Then (as with yours) their opinions are worthless.
“A real life Heartland institute speaker? Well aren’t we “honoured” – for a certain value of the word again.”
Glancing around his web site and looking at the crap he says, being a science denier is one of the least kooky.