Seems obvious to me that a new factor will have a new effect, that a constant doesn’t.

Most of what science “knows” about “global warming” at this point is only speculation and theory, but at least it is based on real science… not computer generated climate scenarios as parroted by the IPCC policymakers. The majority of the worlds scientists are “heretics” Endler, as evidenced by the Oregon Project, the 62% of Canadian scientists polled, the Polish Academy of Sciences, and on and on. In fact, isn’t the newly recycled problem looming on the horizon… “Global Cooling?” (something Hansen championed in the mid 1970′s)

Until James Hansen can correctly interpret the temperature data from satellite and weather balloon readings, and stop altering the historical data to fit his paradigm, (what is it now, at least 3 times he has been caught publishing erroneous data?) He, and you, will continue to be perceived as religious nuts. Do you not realize that 3 of the 4 weather reporting centers show global cooling… only Hansen’s NASA center (thanks to his manipulations) show warming? His excuse?… “NASA doesn’t have the ability to verify temperature readings submitted.”

Plimer stands in a group of outstanding scientists, including Professors John Christy, Paul Ricard, Ian Wilson, Stephen Schwartz, etc. that have pretty much destroyed the so called logic you seem to support. Canadian climatologist Tim Patterson says the sun drives the earth’s climate changes—and Earth’s current global warming is a direct result of a long, moderate 1,500-year cycle in the sun’s irradiance. CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet’s climate on long, medium and even short time scales.

Gene

A scientist of his stature? I thought David Evans was a computer programmer. When did he ever work as a scientist?

Does building spreadsheets for the Australian Greenhouse Office count? (The AGO did no research into the causes of global warning, it just added up the emissions, right?)

Maybe there are two David Evanses and I’m gettting them mixed up.

This is so confusing.

“Using state-of-the-art observational datasets and results from a large archive of computer mode simulations, a consortium of scientists from 12 different institutions has resolved a long-standing conundrum in climate science”

“We know pretty well when the 1999 eruption took place; it will be easy to check for effects on the sea ice. I doubt there will be such effects:…”

These two quotes are quite telling — the fact that you don’t pick up on the biases exhibited by these “scientists” show how biased you are. Their arguments are based on an appeal to authority and replacement of reality with model-generated outputs.

Also, regarding subsea volacanic eruptions — a volcanic eruption involves release of magma at several thousand degrees C plus superheated gases — when that hits cold sea water you are going to have a very violent and explosive change of form from lquid water to steam combined with the release of dissolved gases (mostly CO2) — I am not sure what laws of Chemistry and Physics you are looking at, but I would suggest that that those bubbles and heated gases and water will rise to to the surface very quickly and have a major local effect on any nearby ice. Dismissing undersea volcanic eruptions out of hand and claiming that heat will be dissipated with minimal effects clearly shows the intelellectual arrogance of this person.

These so-called refutations of Ian Plimers claims are based on propaganda techniques which are commonly used by fundamentalists and true-believers, not by real scientists.

My opinion is that you are wrong on CO2 — producing CO2 is a benefit to all life on Earth — we are after all carbon based life and all that carbon (directly or indiectly)comes from CO2 via photosynthesis. The idea that laws can be passed which will determine the climate is ludicrous. I think we should be lowering the costs of energy production to improve the wealth of all peoples. There are lots of economic natural gas and oil reserves waiting to be developed and nuclear power plants which could be built if artificial restraints and overbearing regulations were reduced.

PS: So, how many years of ‘global cooling’ before you rethink CO2 as the driver of climate?

Given the large uncertainties in the model input parameters as documented in Chapter 8 of the IPCC FAR 2007, the fall in the effective global temperature as published by the Hadley Centre and GSS for 2007/2008, which was not predicted by the models, why are there no definitive studies being made of other model predictions to verify their accuracy? Is it true that the Norwegian explorer Nansen kayaked to within 560 km of the North Pole in 1893 while the recent attempt by Lewis Pugh from England saw him complete his journey while still 900 km away from his destination? These reports including that by Santer et al, highlight the need for more scientific measurements to be made to support the findings of the computer models.

TARA BROWN: They may not be as well known but there are many scientists – in fact thousands around the world – who don’t think carbon dioxide is the climate-change culprit. Scientist and mathematician, David Evans, says man is not to blame and so to cut carbon emissions is misguided.

DAVID EVANS: I think it’s an utter waste of time and that’s why I’m speaking out. The picture that our decision makers have is wrong. It’s going to cost us a lot of time, effort and money and it’s gonna make a lot of us a bit poorer and there’s no evidence that carbon emissions cause any significant warming at all.

————–

TARA BROWN: No doubt the ice is melting, but the big question is – are we to blame? The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change reports it is 90% certain we are. But other equally eminent scientists believe what were seeing is just part of Nature’s great cycle.

DAVID EVANS: Now since 1990, western governments have spent about $50 billion looking for evidence that carbon causes global warming and they haven’t found any.

—————-

TARA BROWN: Dr David Evans has six university degrees and once worked for the Australian Government’s Greenhouse Office. But he no longer thinks global warming is caused by our carbon dioxide and so isn’t concerned about his or any one else’s carbon footprint. So does that mean don’t give up your V8 cars? Does that mean continue flying, don’t worry about changing light bulbs, don’t worry about trying to capture carbon or shutting down coal-fired power stations? Is that what that means?

DAVID EVANS: Well, I’m just here to report on modern science and where it’s up to, personally I don’t worry about those things too much, no.

—————

TARA BROWN: And what we should know, according to David Evans, is since 2001 temperatures around the world have stopped rising. And that’s despite increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the air. So statistically, in the last seven years, the flattening and perhaps even slight cooling of temperatures – is that significant?

DAVID EVANS: Yes, yes it is significant. Once it gets up to five years or so it’s really quite significant. Whatever was driving the temperatures up has taken a break for a while and meanwhile carbon emissions have continued and the level of carbon in the atmosphere has gone up about 5% since 2001, yet we see no more warming.

————–

TARA BROWN: Global Warming certainly attracts lots of argy-bargy. But one thing climate scientists agree on – if global warming is caused by CO-2 emissions then the CO-2 will leave a distinct signature their computer models predict a big red hotspot above the equator. The problem is thousands of weather balloons equipped with some very sophisticated thermometers have measured the temperatures in the atmosphere to test the theory, and guess what, no hotspots.

DAVID EVANS: There’s no hotspot, there’s no hotspot at all. It’s not even a little hotspot and it’s missing. We couldn’t find it.

TARA BROWN: So, this is the crux for you, this is evidence?

DAVID EVANS: Yes. If this had come out the other way, if we’d measured it and we’d found a hotspot I’d be saying, “Cut back carbon emissions.”

TARA BROWN: A very simple question, is there any chance you’re looking in the wrong spot?

DAVID EVANS: No.

—————

See the full transcript here: http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id …

Lots of denier arguments coming to the fore in David’s justification and positioning. For a scientist of his stature I find it more than a little disconcerting. I’m both glad and sad to see there is evidence to refute mavericks like David.

Basically contrarians rely on the still widespread ignorance of many in the public (the swinging voter?) who would swallow such nonsense as “global warming is due to heating of the Earth core” or “warming of the planets” … Some contrarians who have argued for years tobacco smoking is safe … perhaps they should be asked whether they still believe there is not connection between smoking and cancer?

http://www.adelaide.edu.au/climatechange/seminars/climateqanda/#two

So regarding Ian’s argument on rocks absorbing CO2 – it’s correct, and yet not relevant to the current crisis, since the time scale for uptake of the current pulse of CO2 is on the order of 100,000 years to reach equilibrium. Between then and now, we have acidic oceans as the geochemistry slowly works its wonder. A good example of mixing geological and human/species time scales.

One time in the deep past when we had rapid change in CO2, it did turn into sludge (at least partly), 55 million years ago during the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum. It is not concentration of CO2 that does it, it is the rate of change from one state (low CO2) to another (high CO2) – takes time to balance the chemical reactions via ocean mixing rates. The CaCO3 in slide 41 is the calcite concentration – you can see the drop (acidification) and recovery. It takes about 100,000 years (1 increment on that graph) to recover (mostly done in about 50,000 years – fast geologically, but still hideously slow for humanity…).

Not while people over at Jen’s blog still are denying the greenhouse effect. I dropped in for a look after 3 months or so and the Douglass paper is still the benchmark for deniers.

See Techniques – Fire+Ice: Exploring for Volcanoes Beneath the Arctic for a nice 1-page description of ways they look for plumes, and actually, that they are hard to find, because they just aren’t that hot!

Plimers argument is flawed in that the buffering reactions may be fast, but the ocean mixing is very slow. Ocean buffering does occur but only on a time scale of 1000s of years.