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Update: Prof Ian Enting from University of Melbourne has provided a detailed, point-by-point critique of Heaven and Earth. You can download the 46-page PDF here (version 2.0).
Edit: The Australian newspaper has published an article on Brook vs Plimer (see here).
Today I attended the formal launch of Professor Ian Plimer’s new book “Heaven and Earth” (held in the historic balcony room of South Australia’s Parliament House). Ian had kindly sent me an invitation and I thought it a good opportunity to get a summary of his recent opinion, straight from the horse’s mouth. The book went on sale a few days before, and having been lent a copy, I’d read through it on-and-off over the last few days. Here is what the blurb suggests the book achieves:
The Earth is an evolving dynamic system. Current changes in climate, sea level and ice are within variability. Atmospheric CO2 is the lowest for 500 million years. Climate has always been driven by the Sun, the Earth’s orbit and plate tectonics and the oceans, atmosphere and life respond. Humans have made their mark on the planet, thrived in warm times and struggled in cool times. The hypothesis tha humans can actually change climate is unsupported by evidence from geology, archaeology, history and astronomy. The hypothesis is rejected. A new ignorance fills the yawning spiritual gap in Western society. Climate change politics is religious fundamentalism masquerading as science. Its triumph is computer models unrelated to observations in nature. There has been no critical due diligence of the science of climate change, dogma dominates, sceptics are pilloried and 17th Century thinking promotes prophets of doom, guilt and penance. When plate tectonics ceases and the world runs out of new rocks, there will be a tipping point and irreversible climate change. Don’t wait up.
I’ve been critical of Ian’s views before (see here and here). In short, my view was that Ian’s assertions about man’s role in climate change were naive, reflected a poor understanding of climate science, and relied on recycled and distorted arguments that had been repeatedly refuted. Ian and I have regularly ‘debated‘ on this issue, so I’m probably more familiar than most with his lines of argument. (I actually think it’s rather silly to debate the science, because this the role of the scientific community as a whole, and in doing so they’ve reached a view that this is a serious problem — but one-on-one debate is what the media demands.) Anyway, after reading the 500+ page tome that is H+E, I find that nothing has fundamentally changed.
Plimer tackles literally hundreds of lines of argument in his book. He claims that mainstream science – including the ‘experts’ in each area (those that focus on particular focused questions within narrow discipline areas) are ALL wrong – every argument, every one of those scientists. I quote (from a recent Adelaide Advertiser article on the book): Professor Plimer said his book would “knock out every single argument we hear about climate change”, to prove that global warming is a cycle of the Earth. “It’s got nothing to do with the atmosphere, it’s about what happens in the galaxy. You’ve got to look at the whole solar system and, most importantly, we look back in time.”
There are a lot of uncertainties in science, and it is indeed likely that the current consensus on some points of climate science is wrong, or at least sufficiently uncertain that we don’t know anything much useful about processes or drivers. But EVERYTHING? Or even most things? Take 100 lines of evidence, discard 5 of them, and you’re still left with 95 and large risk management problem. It’s an unscientific and disingenuous claim. As is his oft repeated assertion that a single apparently contradictory piece of information axiomatically overturns all other lines of evidence. Plimer apparently thinks Popperian falsification is the dominant deductive modus operandi in the natural sciences. I’ve got other news for him (I’m happy to email people my full article from BioScience if they email me a request).
Ian Plimer’s book is a case study in how not to be objective. Decide on your position from the outset, and then seek out all the facts that apparently support your case, and discard or ignore all of those that contravene it. He quotes a couple of thousand peer-reviewed scientific papers when mounting specific arguments. What Ian doesn’t say is that the vast majority of these authors have considered the totality of evidence on the topic of human-induced global warming and conclude that it is real and a problem. Some researchers have show that the Earth has been hotter before, and that more CO2 has been present in the atmosphere in past ages. Yes, quite — this is an entirely uncontroversial viewpoint. What is relevant now is the rate of climate change, the specific causes, and its impact on modern civilisation that is dependent, for agricultural and societal security, on a relatively stable climate. Ian pushes mainstream science far out of context, again and again.
Ian also claims that a huge body of scientific evidence — indeed, whole disciplines such as geology and astronomy — have been ignored. This is an extraordinary proposition and quite at odds with the published literature, as reviewed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I wonder if Ian has ever read their reports to find out what they actually do say. Terms like ‘solar’ and ‘volcano’ get frequent mentions, and there is a whole chapter on ‘paleoclimate’. Ian’s stated view of climate science is that a vast number of extremely well respected scientists and a whole range of specialist disciplines have fallen prey to delusional self interest and become nothing more than unthinking ideologues. Plausible to conspiracy theorists, perhaps, but hardly a sane world view — and insulting to all those genuinely committed to real science.
There is another important general point about the book. In the final chapter (pg 473), Ian quotes Charles Babbage; this quote is relevant to the thrust of his book, and underscores to me why it is so distorted. Babbage outlined three criteria for detecting non-science: trimming, cooking and forgery. Here is a useful description of what Babbage said:
“Trimming “consists of clipping off little bits here and there from those observations which differ most in excess from the mean, and in sticking them on to those which are too small.” Babbage believed trimming was not a serious threat to the search for truth because it merely reinforced the average results and eliminated some odd outlying data. In contemporary clinical research, however, rare adverse effects can be literally a matter of life and death. Thus, clinical investigators today are not so complacent on this point.
Cooking is the selective reporting of a group of results, picking out the data from among several measurements that most supports the desired conclusion. Babbage had in mind the actions of a single investigator, but selective reporting might also draw concern as a cause of publication bias. Is an investigator who does not report the results of a study with a negative finding committing fraud? This is a question that has not yet been answered by the research community.
Blatant forgery, as in reporting measurements on imaginary patients, was for Babbage the most nefarious type of fraud. Yet as medical research and its relationship to the pharmaceutical industry and to consumers has grown more complex, it has become more difficult to clearly define investigator fraud. Medical professor and ethicist Robert Levine defines “fraud” as “the deliberate reporting in the scientific literature or at scientific meetings of ‘facts’ that the reporter knows are unsubstantiated.” But the scientific community, Levine says, has not yet agreed on how to distinguish between “felonies and misdemeanors” in the context of research misconduct.”
Trimming might include surreptitiously deleting outliers that do not fit with models or theory. Cooking is good old cherry-picking, a la the “1998 was the hottest year on record and so the Earth has cooled since” meme. Forgery is typified by Fig 3 in the Introduction of Plimer’s book. Guess where that came from?
Here (first edition of the Great Global Warming Swindle). This is the original version of his Fig 3:
The above figure contains fabricated data, as can be seen in this comparison (Ian used the purple version):
I wonder what happened to the last 20-odd years of warming in Ian’s plot, and where did all that smoothing and flattening come from? There are numerous other examples of Babbage’s misdemeanours in the book. (A bunch more are listed below).
Ian says that creationists use all three tricks — I’d agree. But he then says that the IPCC uses at least two of them, and rants on for a few pages as to why. But of course herein is the great irony of Plimer’s position: a rogue accuses others of what he is most guilty. The pseudo-sceptics of climate science, like the tobacco lobby, liberally undertake all three malpractices to convince their audience of their position. Their twisted logic goes something like this: We know we do it, so surely the ‘other side’ (climate scientists, IPCC etc.) must do it too! Of course, the other side deny that they do it, so we must deny as well. And so it goes on.
The irony of the distortion of Babbage seems to be lost on Ian. Or perhaps it’s all part of the illusionist’s box of magic.
Ian’s book contains over 2,000 references to the scientific literature, although the most cited journal by far is Energy and Environment. What the unsuspecting reader might not realise, however, is that a large number of the scientists he cites in footnotes would agree with the mainstream consensus — just a casual look turns up names like Broeker, Alley, Barnosky, Rampino, Lambeck, Royer, Berner, etc. (even Brook, heh, heh). It’s all about the context, and Ian is not averse to implicit extrapolation…
Here are some notes on the numerous figures contained in the book (see comments above on Fig 3):
Fig 1 — Contrasts actual yearly temperatures to mean model projections (not individual, variable, simulation runs) — and doesn’t include the data beyond the low point in January 2008. This is comparing apples and orange (illustrating a complete lack of understanding of stochastic modelling) and it’s trimming to boot (elsewhere in the book, data up to early 2009 is included, so why not here?). Edit: Apparently this figure, originally created by John Christy, is scooting around the net.
Fig 8 — No citation, I have no idea where this weird temperature reconstruction of the last few thousand years comes from (it puports to show a systematic decline in temperature), but it isn’t from the science literature.
Fig 11 — The lower figure is not Europe, as claimed, it is central England (see section “Central England is not the world!” in link).
Fig 15 — Sunspots and temp correlation — this is the UNCORRECTED version of the Friis-Christensen and Lassen study with mathematical errors retained (for that link, see section entitled “Temperature matches solar activity exactly!”). See also this BoM rebuttal. Was the corrected version rather too inconvenient?
He makes an argument at one point that volcanoes could be the cause of rising CO2 (rather strangely, after trying to convince the audience that CO2 doesn’t change climate — one wonders why he then bothers about volcanoes, since this trace gas is apparently unimportant anyway). He’s claimed this before, but doesn’t seem to want to listen to the facts.
Fig 23 — A cartoon diagram of glacial-interglacial temperatures with no citation — why not use the real data, and why hide the fact that these are polar, not global, temperatures?
Fig 24 — That notorious cartoon plot of CO2 vs temperature throughout the Phanerozoic, purporting to show no relationship. Hmmm — that’s a rather strange source for a geological reference…
Fig 40 — A sea surface temperature plot with no citation, so I have no idea where this data come from. Yet it is flat and the one from Fig 38 is rising. Why the difference? Never explained.
Fig 42 and 49 — UAH satellite temperature PRIOR to the bias adjustment for satellite drift that caused it to erroneously show no trend! Was this incorrect series more convenient to his argument that there as been almost no warming over the past 25 years?
Fig 44 — Says 98% of greenhouse effect comes from water vapour — errr, no.
Fig 52 — Plots chemical measures of CO2, fluctuating between 300 to 450 ppm over two centuries and as much as 120 ppm over 10 years — did he bother to work out implications of this? (literally hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon released and sequestered again, within a few years, without anyone ever noticing where it came from or where it went)
Fig 54 — This seems to be the original Mann et al. 1999 hockey stick (not updated 2008 version or 2007 IPCC mutli-proxy version) — but with the uncertainty bounds deleted. Plimer then (and throughout the book, in fact), claims that climate scientists ignore uncertainty. Yes, well…
Pg 491 he says: “Even if the IPCC’s high “climate sensitivity” to CO2 were correct, disaster would not be likely to follow. The peer-reviewed literature is near-unanimous in not predicting climate catastrophe. 2304” Ref 2304 is Schulte, K.-M. 2008: Scientific consensus on climate change? E&E 19:281-286. Ahh, you’ve got to chuckle.
Pg 492, says DDT ban killed 40 million children before the UN ended it. Is that really the best he can do to discredit environmentalism?
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Update: Tim Lambert continues the page-by-page debunking here: The science is missing from Ian Plimer’s “Heaven and Earth“
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The launch ended with a statement of conviction from the master of ceremonies that this book will become a classic, alongside the other great works of modern science. Well, it may well be held up as an example for the future. An example of just how deluded and misrepresentative the psuedo-sceptical war against science really was in the first decade of the 21st century.
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Fig 52. Good old EG Beck.
A favourite of the NZ denialists also.
The best they came up with in defense in an email exchange was “Well no peer reviewed study has disproved it so it must be true”.
Though I see R. Keeling had a response in E&E about Beck’s “paper”.
Oh wait, I take the point (all respect to Ralph) about not being peer reviewed.
(In fact we purchased a copy of the full paper to write a detailed rebuttal but decided if E&E could flick off R.Keeling then we would be wasting our time though it is on the list of things to do one day).
I actually had a wee popular article (in response to one by a local denier in a business newspaper) where I criticised the use of Beck. The denier wrote to my vice-chancellor (a real still publishing scientist) demanding that I provide references to prove Beck was rubbish or retract. Funnily enough, I had discussed the article with the Dean (a glaciologist) and they were greatly amused.
A set of slides from a presentation by Naomi Oreskes on the scientific consensus on climate change provides a good, simple exploration of the topic for non-scientists at http://www.ametsoc.org/atmospolicy/Presentations/Oreskes%20Presentation%20for%20Web.pdf
She concludes: “There is a scientific consensus over the reality of anthropogenic global warming.[It is based on] multiple, independent lines of evidence converging on a single coherent account.”
To me, her statement that there are “multiple, independent lines of evidence converging on a single coherent account” is an excellent summary of why there is a scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. Ian Plimer’s work fails to provide a coherent account that is consistent with the evidence and that is why it will not be accepted by the scientific community.
I am shocked. Having read some of Plimers articles on global warming, I knew that it would be bad – but I didn’t expect the cherry picking of flawed data and some obvious pseudoscientific work.
I would love to see a review of this book in The Australian Sceptics.
Barry this fair critique would embarrass Plimer if there were much of science left about him. Full of contempt though for the majority of working scientists today – as you say “a rogue accuses others of what he is most guilty” – he won’t be listening. Plimer’s become a very poor example to students of what a scientist should be, he wrestles in the mud and is happy to be there. Thanks for doing the dirty work of looking through his stuff for us (somebody has to do it!)
I was going to write something meaningful, but I’ve change my mind. I wait for the time when climate change deniers will be persecuted, and perhaps jailed. Seems to me that everybody who happens to have a different opinion, is ridiculed. Just like the middle ages.
I have also heard Ian claim that many scientist are trying to cash in on climate change when many that I know provide their time and information for free (take this site for instance). If this such is a bad thing as Ian claims then why is he selling his views in a book instead of providing it for free? Who is trying to cash in on the climate change debate now?
It might be a useful service to name the “master of ceremonies” who stated this would be a classic.
“Nullius in Verba” – don’t take anyone’s word for it. This is a fundamental part of any scientists training. When I first investigated global warming some 18 years ago it was news that the sea temperatures were measured in the past by slinging a canvas bucket over the side and hauling it in and leaving it to stand on the windy deck – the result was cooler than actual temperatures.
Techniques have imporoved in all areas – but to say that the scince is settled and there is no room for evidence and new ideas is contradictory to the ways of science. Ian Plimer’s book brings scholarship and evidence to the fore. It is a timely work.
Um…. and I thought the official launch was in Melbourne – http://www.ipa.org.au/events/information/event/ian-plimer%27s-%27heaven-and-earth-global-warming—the-missing-science%27-book-launch .
BTW funny that it was 29C in Adelaide yesterday which is darn hot for late April. Perhaps future launches should be held in Canberra in July for greater impact.
Why do you think he does it? It is incomprehensible to me. Could he genuinely think that all those scientists are wrong and that Andrew Bolt is right? (Which is basically what his position boils down to.)
This just arrived in my mailbox today from Labor:
Coal-to-liquids demonstration plant opens
New technologies that convert coal and gas to ultra-clean diesel and jet fuel have the potential to replace Australia’s declining oil reserves and make the nation self-sufficient in liquid transport fuels.
Read more: http://www.alp.org.au/media/0409/msrese220.php
Ultra-clean? Absolutely staggering…
Ken @ 5, I hope you weren’t expecting “Australian Sceptics” to say anything sensible about the book. I recently got a coupl of emails from the local branch inviting me to the launch, and expressing approval of the book itself.
I don’t think the Sceptics are any where near as sceptical as they should be of the denialist position. (This is the main reason I haven’t renewed my membership, in fact.)
“I don’t think the Sceptics are any where near as sceptical as they should be of the DENIALIST position.” (emphasis added)
Do you assume that the burden of proof lies on the “skeptics” to DISPROVE your theory of Man-made Global Warming?
Or is it not the other way around?
Do you ever consider the reason these so-called “denialists” exist is because your “theory” is not yet well-defined (I would suggest it is even less than that…)
But I digress… I quoted your use of the word “Denialist” to basically prove my point… There are no “denialists” in the field of science, only those not convinced by the prevailing body of evidence…
Once you start veering towards the absolutes, you begin to teeter on the edge of religious fanaticism…
Stop trying to make yourself sound right by attacking the individual and perhaps redirect that enthusiasm towards trying to come up with better evidence… please…
David, I suspect that you’re correct, but I’d love to be proved wrong. If I get around to reading the book and it really is that bad, I’d consider nominating it for a bent spoon.
Definitely in Perth the local Sceptics organisation are of the belief that AGW is crock.
Dave – the point is that many so called “sceptics” lap up anti-AGW propaganda without discretion – when they should in fact apply equal levels of scepticism to any science theory. Of course there are warmists who lap it up without discretion too, but actual “sceptic” associations need to be sceptical.. not just cranks.
Even better is what I’d call honorary solar, a compressed air based water heater that apparently uses so little grid energy (even hidden in a cupboard) it is about as efficient as solar water heating. If it truly is efficient then why not call it that?
In The Sydney Morning Herald on April 13, Plimer was quoted by Paul Sheehan as saying this:
“To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable – human-induced CO2 – is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science.”
This gross misrepresentation, in each of the three sentences, of the mainstream position, is reason enoungh to avoid wasting money on Plimer’s book.
In The Australian on April 18 he’s quoted as saying:
“Global warming and a high CO2 content bring prosperity and lengthen your life … without CO2 there would be no complex life on Earth.”
Another gross misrepresentation, a standard straw man argument – of course no-one advocates getting rid of all CO2 from the atmosphere, or that CO2 is bad per se, as he is implying.
From the same spoon-fed story:
“He reviewed five computer predictions of climate made in 2000, underpinning IPCC findings, and found there was no relationship between predicted future temperature and actual measured temperature even during a short period.”
Here he implies short term temperature measurements can be used to test the merit of predictive climate models. What baloney.
Then there’s the lack of logic. He dismisses climate models as being unable to explain climate change, then blithely asserts his belief in what he claims “astronomers” say drives the climate. (Again, as if the role of the sun is somehow ignored by atmospheric scientists.)
It’s the same old line – you don’t know what’s happening because your models are no good but I do know, even though I don’t even have a model.
I really wish a sceptic would come along and argue the facts on their merits, rather than resorting to misrepresentation, straw man arguments, and illogical use of cherry picked data.
Plimer argues about the climate they way drunks argue about football matches.
This gross misrepresentation of climate asceince is reason enough to
Gak! Sorry about that garbled last line.
“Every one is entitled to his opinion but not to his own facts” (Senator Daniel Moynihan).
A technological civilization whose members find it increasingly difficult to distinguish between science fiction and science fact are as amenable to COLLAPSE, in the sense of Jerad Dimaond’s book, as past civilizations which, in the name of their Gods, cut their forests in order to erect statues … or spent $billions shooting rockets into space, or $trillions to construct global war machines.
And when the consequences can no longer be ignored, people will find comfort in faith healers and Messiahs who tell them what they want to hear.
I have no problem at all with spending billions to shoot rockets into space — provided their payloads are scientists/engineers, satellites, interplanetary probes etc. All part of the great scientific endeavour.
I guess there are multiple ‘official launches’ in different capital cities.
Plimer isn’t being persecuted, just being criticised. Some of Barry’s criticisms show that the book is at the very least, astonishingly sloppy … nevertheless he’s been getting non-stop media and applause. Is that how the witches in the middle ages were persecuted? I could lap up a little of this Plimer persecution.
If you want to see persecution, go to Afghanistan … as a woman.
There are some sceptics who are plain evil (or more precisely have no empathy for others) IMHO but the majority actually believe they are right and on the side of “good” (coal keeps us warm, oils gives us mobility and medicine). The frames through which they view all new information prevents them from ever changing their minds. This is particularly the case for older males.
As Plimer’s book is likely to be influential (at a popular level; from the description, it does not seem capable of being the basis of rational science or policy, unless the policy is simply denial and delay regardless of the facts), it would be useful to have a definitive rebuttal. (Compare this rebuttal to Gerlich & Tscheuschner. It sounds like the book’s essential proposition about climate is (quoting the blurb) “Climate has always been driven by the Sun, the Earth’s orbit and plate tectonics and the oceans, atmosphere and life respond.” So the essence of a rebuttal would have to tackle that proposition directly, perhaps particularly making the case for carbon dioxide’s causal role in the formation of the Antarctic ice sheets and in the amplification of Milankovitch effects, in a way that engages with Plimer’s take on those issues.
Perhaps it can be a community effort — all the material is out there, it’s just a matter of someone (or a group) taking the time to compile it in an ordered way that steps through Plimer’s claims. I remember thinking, as I read the book, that just about each and every page I could provide answers to Plimer’s so called ‘unexplained’ data, or rebuttals, or arguments in proper context. I was imagining a face-to-face conversation with a reader, who refers to a given page and asks for my response on that point. But trying to do this in a systematic way would be painful to say the least — hence I didn’t try it in this review, other than providing a critique of some of the most glaringly deficient display items. I just didn’t have the energy for more.
Dave
Your completely right, which is why I still defend my right to beleive the world is flat. I defy anyone to come and stand in my back paddock with me and tell me that I’m not standing on flat earth.
I’m with Andrew on this one. Some knowledge is valuable, very much so, but some isn’t worth its cost of production.
In an ideal situation space exploration is definitely a very wonderful thing, but on a fast-warming planet with acidifying oceans, its a bit of a luxury as resources are needed for miitigation and adaptation.
Yet space exploration is not the point, since it still costs at least 3 orders of magnitude less than the industrial/military complex and its destructive consequences.
I am in the process of preparing a detailed paleoclimate-based critique. However, the point is, the “skeptics” have the media platforms both in the broadsheets and numerous blogs.
One thing the “skeptics” know they need to avoid is finding themselves on on platform/stage jointly with climate scientists, who can just display the data they are trying to deny. I can’t remember where and when such open debates took place?
At that stage they just resort to ad-hominem and conspiracy theories.
Having just received the “badge of honor” from Andrew Bolt …
… http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/sceptics_are_parasites_to_an_anu_scientist/
The focus of activity is on the US, where the EPA declared CO2 a polluting substance, and to an extent the UK where Brown is talking about near-40% emission reduction by 2020 relative to 2000).
Australia seems to have now taken a backstage (backwater) stage so far as climate mitigation is concerned.
It is likely nature will have the last say …
It’s deeply disappoing that this merry go round won’t stop. I’d like to think our elected members will take their science advice from Australia’s and the world’s leading science institutions but I suspect rather a lot of them still cling (if only in private) to the old unscientific orthodoxy that what people do can’t change the climate. It’s not an automatic default truth anymore, not after a couple of decades of serious efforts to understand climate.
If Plimer had real contributions to make to real science he would submit to real science journals like a real scientist and influence the real scientific debate about real science. Instead he is reduced to attempts to skew the political debate against science based public policy. He hasn’t even stepped up to the wicket, just yelled abuse at players and umpires from the stands. Why should he have any kind of equal time with the real players?
And with this distraction the lack of real action on shifting to clean energy goes on with barely a mention.
I really doubt it will be influential.
Denialists probably won’t buy the book because they agree with it so don’t need to read it (and in any event it seems all the arguments have been used before).
For this reason it is probably better to categorise the arguments and add any new ones to something like Coby Beck’s “How to talk…” at ill considered and help fill in the gaps to comprehensively address the old lies.
Then go through the book (preferably while browsing in a shop instead of buying it) and just make notes like: “Page 123: misleading point 24, lie 17″.
One wonders if Ian Plimer has some sort of revenge/hate against his grandchildren(does he have any) where he wants them to suffer from the future temp rises. Isn’t it better to be safe and do something even if it proves not necessary rather than sit back and do nothing and say ‘sorry’ later?
Ian Plimers contention that the sky would be filled with specks of carbon if climate change was true just shows that he seems not to understand that there is a difference between carbon and carbon dioxide, one a solid and one a gas. Also that the gas is absorbed to some extent by trees, oceans etc
[…] Ian Plimer – Heaven and Earth 24 04 2009 Though the book has only just hit the book shelves, mainstream science is debunking Plimer’s “Heaven and Earth“. Check out Barry Brook’s early impressions. […]
I’ve just listened to Ian Plimer vs a marine scientist from Townsville on Radio National talking about cc and the book. I have to say that Ian won, not because he was right, but because he put enough out there to an interested lay audience to pique their interest and appeal to any prejudices. The marine scientist, on the other hand, thought that he was talking to a bunch of dry scientists and argued from authority, i.e. who Ian cited and didn’t cite. Epic fail, and this supported Ian’s assertion about elitist, irrelevant scientists.
Not a blow was struck, whereas it could have been a smack down!
“Scientists don’t consider the whole climate system, including over geological time?” That’s funny, why is this explicitly referred to in the IPCC reports. Or, why does Chris Turney explain it all in easily readable terms in Ice, Mud and Blood?
“If carbon was pollution then we wouldn’t be able to see because it would be all black.” Carbon takes many forms, including graphite and diamonds. Perhaps Ian would be happy to breathe carbon monoxide; it’s not black?!
“CO2 is always a follower not a causal factor.” Ian is showing his ignorance of the dynamics of the complex system that he claims to understand. He seems ignorant of the shifting dominance of feedback loops. The climate system has many different balancing and reinforcing feedback loops operating simultaneously and at multiple scales. The feedback loops that dominate will determine system behaviour. However dominance can shift, e.g. by changing the budget of geologically stored vs available carbon in the climate system.
etc, etc.
Ian has jumped the shark. Unfortunately he is reinforcing the prejudices of the type of people that he once derided, i.e. the creationists.
Yes indeed.
It all happened in Easter Island during the first half of the 2nd Millenium, except they were different kind of gods the islanders cut all the trees to trasport and erect their statues for …
MOST PEOPLE ON THIS SITE ALREADY KNOW THE ARGUMENTS, HERE IS A RESPONSE I MADE TO A “SKEPTIC” IN ANOTHER PLACE:
Having debated “climate change skeptics” for some years now, my experience is that:
(1) First they attempt to make technical comments, some valid but mostly mistaken
(2) I try and respond to their technical comments (based on 40 years of studies of the Earth/atmosphere system)
(3) Next they raise further technical comments
(4) I try further to explain
(5) Next, truth is out – they resort to derogatory terms such as “alarmists”, “warmists”, AGW theorists”, and worse, which reveals they are not really interested to learn either the science facts or the physics/chemistry explanation, but have a prior conviction, i.e. the atmosphere is not warming, or if it does its not of anthropogenic origin.
Where they can not argue with scientists on technical/scientific points, they resort to personal denigrating comments. Just about every climate scientist has been subject to such references, including Wallace Broecker, James Hansen, Steffen Rahmstorf,.Pep Canadell, David Karoly, Barry Brook, myself …
I already indicated earlier climate change is a far from a smooth process, representing interaction between GHG, solar, ENSO, aerosol, ice melt, ocean currents and other factors.
While decade- scale increase in temprature resulted in 0.8C since the early 20th century (1.3C when albedo effects are taken into account), annual or biannual variability is increasing, a result from the increased energy level of the atmosphere/ocean system and enhanced turbulence/storminess.
I tried to explain that GMC models are not used as substitute to direct measurements from ground stations or satellites, but are tools (extending the brains’s calculation speed) aimed at testing the extent to which combination of various forcings match the measured data as well as projecting into the future.
Whereas climate “skeptics” repatedly question computer calculations as means of climate research, but probably don’t worry too much about the use of computers in hospitals, enginering, communciations, aviation and so on.
Virtually all climate scientists regard Hansen and his group as leaders in the field. The difference is that he has taken an ethical stand to warn humanity of the dangers of using the atmosphere as an open sewer for carbon gases, just as Crutzen and Lovelock warned the world about depletion of the ozone, and medicals warned regarding tobaccoo smoking.
Holocene climate proxies have error margins, but mostly are in agreement in sub-concordant trends, lending confidence to paleo-T variations. Paleo-climate papers provide explanaions for “background noise”, namely periods of high sun-spot activity and of low sun-spot activity and periods affected by volcanic activity.
Thus the Medieval Warm Period (1150 – 1300 AD) is marked by high sun spot (40 – 55), the Little Ice Age (~1700 AD) by almost no sun spot activity, and the first half of the 20th century very high sun spots (60-80). However, even the latter maximum is responsible for no more than 0.4 Watt/m2 (~0.3C) T rise.
The oceans are still sequestering CO2, albeit at a reduced rate due to increase T, by about 0.2 – 0.3C in some regions. Ocean pH has decreased by ~0.1-0.3 points due to increased CO2 saturation and decreased calcification of organisms and thus of sequestration.
Further atmospheric CO2 rise lead to a “greenhouse Earth” state where only small burrowing mammals can survive. The beathing mechanism of larger exposed mammals developed mainly after 34 million years ago, are not atuned to such temperatures. The Antarctic sheet formed 34 million years ago when CO2 levels fell below 500 ppm and the atmosphere cooled abruptly by about 4 – 5 degrees.
I posted on Bolt’s Blog (about East Antarctica ice mass) 2 days ago words to the effect: If you put energy into a system, the system heats up, if there is water around it evaporates and condenses out somewhere, as rain or snow.
It must have slipped through the censors but in reply to a question (repeating what I said), I was informed by Bolt’s moderator my IP address has been banned and I can no longer post there.
Work that one out.
Hi Andrew,
I’ve heard a 3 on 3 debate which included Richard Lizden verus Gavin Schmit. The audience majority went in believing the proposition that global warming is a critical problem. At the conclusion the majority of the audience voted against the orignal proposition.
The tactical error make by the ‘for’ side was they argued the facts of science. While the against side had been (I assume) well prept by strategists, and argued about the urgency of other “more immeidate problems”- using the Borjn Lombourge tactic. I assume the scince lost people’s attention compared to the emotional imediacy of sick children in poor nations.
The other structural problem of a one on one debate is that it can lose the scale of weight of evidence. If you have 4 minutes to say your point and they have 4 minutes, then this hardly represents the balace of argument.
That said, I think a documented rebuttle is a necessary and vital response.
Listening to that debate, for me the strongest point made was by Charlie Veron, who pointed out the Plimer had avoided the peer reviewed process.
Though, the majority may not be as convinced by such points.
Interesting that Craig though Plimer won, I thought he sounded unsettled and quickly reverted to attacking self scientist seeking grants.
My guess would be he really believes it. Consider what how keen Plimer is to assert links between Creationists and “Warmists” or “Alarmists”. For Plimer its about religon.
Then consider the apt quote above “a rogue accuses others of what he is most guilty”. It’s my understanding Plimer intimately linked with the IPA, a free market fundamentalist lobby group.
I think it is about religion. My experience is that many from this group experience cultural emmersion, and end up beleving that anything (like AGW) that contradicts their fundamental ideology (about “free markets” maxising befits for all) must be wrong.
Those with a more nuanced understanding of markets, their uses and limits to “free markets” seem to be more open to scientific nuance.
I think from a media sense Plimer ‘beat’ Charlie Veron. But what a desperately unfair thing to do – I don’t know Mr/Dr/Pr Veron, he’s probably an excellent marine scientist, but he doesn’t appear to be a media-trained climatologist, hasn’t got a voice for radio or an ability to communicate in soundbites, unlike Plimer. He’d had an hour to read the book, observed that it wasn’t science, what was he supposed to do?
Andrew – I have been doing the same thing for many years however without your credentials. I can engage the sceptics on my layperson level as most of them are equivalent to this. I have had exactly the same response as you and the same lack of progress as the same skeptic arguments do not stay debunked.
I think that one of the problems is that we WANT it not be our fault and will grip onto anyone who says anything to support that world view. We in the First World have very comfortable lives based on fossil fuels and we desperately want that to continue. Some of us accept the danger posed by fossil fuels and want to switch to alternatives however a much easier position is just to deny that it is happening and cling to any evidence that shows that it is not us. This is what I call the “Its cold today therefore global warming is wrong” brigade headed by Andrew Bolt. Any small piece of evidence that somewhere on the globe is it colder is held up as evidence that the whole theory of AGW is wrong and we are OK.
I really do not thing rational argument will sway any of the skeptics as they will recycle the same talking points over and over.
My belief is that the only thing that will really shift the emphasis of the world from comfortable lives to real action on climate change is a catastrophe that is categorically attributable to global warming. If this does not happen, and I fervently hope that something like this does not happen, then I think we will just be slowly cooked like the proverbial frog.
Pilmer is simple confirming what people want to hear.
(the term ‘we’ is meant to be the general public)
Charlie Veron, Former Chief Scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
Author of Reef in Time; The Great Barrier Reef from Beginning to End (Harvard Uni Press 2008)
I would think that “scholarship” and “evidence” in the sciences is best left to the world of academic publications rather than trying to argue through the popular press or through paperbacks.
I went to the publisher’s website, and my god! Prof Plimer is in very strange company, especially for an atheist who tried to sue some creationists under the Trade Practices Act.
Some of their other publications look like they’d be a real hoot.
It’s interesting (if slightly ad hominem) to compare the publishers of the two books: Plimer has been published by a small company that seems to specialise in fundamentalist Catholic books, and Veron was published by a press associated with one of the world’s great universities.
This may seem a bit optimistic but frankly I’m not too worried about this book or climate change denialists in general. There are always going to be shysters and Quacks out there, who won’t accept the evidence, for what ever reason. Hence my post above, there really is a flat earth society! Still fighting the “evidence”.
The Quacks always have their followers but their followers are not reasoning human beings, they are people with an axe to grind, usually against science itself. They see it as the debunker of all dearly held beliefs and the shysters cash in on that. But these people are in the minority most people are either just plain disinterested and so happy to leave it to the “experts” or interested enough to follow the science and go with the weight of evidence.In the Plimer/Veron debate the former don’t care who won and are mostly bewildered about the whole thing. The latter know who won because they already know the basic facts.
I see evidence of a popular swing toward an acceptance that climate change is a real problem everywhere. My library has a whole shelf groaning under the weight of popular books on climate change and how to reduce your carbon footprint etc. Then there’s reality style T.V. programs such as Carbon Cops, popular science shows like Quantum regulary addressing in issue in various contexts, even mainstream gardening shows and magazines are being to drop words like ‘drought’ and refer instead to ‘climate change’. None of this would be happening (that is none of this would be commercially viable)if there was not a mainstream consensus out there that climate change is real.
As with all the denialist types the best way to deal with them is to laugh at them, make a joke out of them, cause really thats all they are.
Am I being too optimistic?
Sorry, that should read “…addressing the issue…” and “…beginning to drop…”
“Am I being too optimistic?”
Depends on your opinion as to whether the people need to get politcal to change targets proposed by government.
Without democratic outrage I fear the established power balance (industry funded lobbysts, think tanks, advertising, political dontions, media consolidation, path depenancy- intertia- and the amplyfying power feedbacks that result) will holdon too long.
Brian Davy has an relevent slide show on the “economy of attention”.
http://www.ncrm.ac.uk/research/other/docs/Humanity.ppt
I am increasingly thinking that Plimmer is simply a contrarian to most things, and sees himself as a persecuted fighter for truth. Through this lens no objectivity is possible, as any criticisim is seen as a personal attack. When he first wrote “Lying for God” i had some sympathy, but this book does him no credit.
Does Plimmer repeat any of these views to students? I hope not. As a private person we can think and publish what we like within the limits of the law, but when operating in a professional capacity we must act within professional norms. As a geologist, he is operating outside his field of expertise on climate science.
Remember that Doubt is the product.
Awell troden strategy to protect revenue and diswade public from action is to give people the slightest excuse to doubt the need for action.
http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/doubt-is-our-product-pr-versus-science/
And for all those half interested or disintereted punters out ther, Plimer’s argument all over the media givem them an excuse to keep their head down and weather the buffeting from the daily rat race. (morgage, morgage, morgage, job security, health insurence, got to keep going, puff puff puff!)
http://www.powerlinefacts.com/Sciam_article_on_lobbying.htm
Plimer’s book seems to have led to a new spike in attacks on climate science in The Australian. See today’s op-ed by another retired geologist, Jan Veizer: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25376454-7583,00.html
Plimer and Veizer’s recent statements reminded me of a post on RealClimate last year, “Are geologists different?”: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/08/are-geologists-different/
Having vented my pessimistic thoughts, there is a bright side. Many “skeptics” with a strong media platform have nailed their colours to Plimer’s book. Given that Plimer has used such misleading, distortionary (are we allowed to say fraudulent) graphs as those removed from the Great Swindle, then these media supports should be tared with Plimers errors (are we allowed to say fraud).
John, I didn’t know at the time, but I see here that it was journalist Christopher Pearson from The Australian:
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,27574,25376348-2682,00.html
Yes, as a scientist myself, that was a telling point. But it is a largely irrelevant issue to most non scientists, and to the conspiracy theorists it just says that we want to suck him into the black hole of our AGW dogma through this process, and suppress him! 🙂
I didn’t get the same impression that Ian was rattled. To me, he just appeared to stick to his mantra of disingenuous factoids. And they were delivered in a comfortable reassuring manner. Charlie on the other hand may have been more comfortable in the bear pit of a scientific debate, but wasn’t prepared to deliver sound bites to a lay audience. Just my opinion.
From Deltoid: “Plimer doesn’t tell you the source of this graph, but it comes from Durkin’s Great Global Warming Swindle and omits the last 25 years of warming. Even Durkin admitted it was wrong and changed it, but it lives on in Plimer’s book….
…The problems with the Swindle graph were given wide publicity. It was one of seven major misrepresentations that 37 scientists asked Durkin to correct. On page 467 Plimer addresses their request claiming they did so because that deemed Swindle to present an “incorrect moral outlook”, so he was well aware of what was wrong with the Swindle graph but used it anyway.”
What is the level of diseminatin of falsehood is necessary before it is namable as fraud? What are the limits distruction misreprsention that one can make without being fraudulent?
Is there a laywer in the house?
Appologies, the last bit outside the quotes is mine, (got the cite tags wrong)
From Deltoid: “Plimer doesn’t tell you the source of this graph, but it comes from Durkin’s Great Global Warming Swindle and omits the last 25 years of warming. Even Durkin admitted it was wrong and changed it, but it lives on in Plimer’s book….
…The problems with the Swindle graph were given wide publicity. It was one of seven major misrepresentations that 37 scientists asked Durkin to correct. On page 467 Plimer addresses their request claiming they did so because that deemed Swindle to present an “incorrect moral outlook”, so he was well aware of what was wrong with the Swindle graph but used it anyway.”
What is the level of diseminatin of falsehood is necessary before it is namable as fraud? What are the limits distruction misreprsention that one can make without being fraudulent?
Is there a laywer in the house?
[…] Robert refers to a review of Plimer’s book which is also linked here. Deltoid also analyses the science in his […]
BTW have you seen the disclaimer when you comment at the Australian?
“Please note that we are not able to publish all the comments that we receive, and that we may edit some comments to ensure their suitability for publishing.
Feedback will be rejected if it does not add to a debate, or is a purely personal attack, or is offensive, repetitious, illegal or meaningless, or contains clear errors of fact.
Although we try to run feedback just as it is received, we reserve the right to edit or delete any and all material”
If only they rejected articles that contained clear errors of fact as well.
I’ve listened to Prof Brook debate Plimer at the SA Sceptics Society. He demolished Plimer who looked very uncomfortable throughout. Barry convinced many AGW sceptics (with the possible exception of the conspiracy theorist and pseudo-sceptics) on that day and I would say he is the one to confront Plimer in the media. He seems to have the knack of pitching his responses to a lay audience by directly refuting Plimer’s poor science in an easily followed, yet scientific, rebuttal.
I think this debate may still be available to download at the SA Sceptics website.
I’m waiting for Plimer to sue climatologists – I wonder if he’d have the courage…
It was a shame though that his suit of the Creationists failed: he had a much more reasonable point there.
True.
And if and when, perish the thought, sea level rises on the scale of meters, I can imagine people like Bolt and their followers claiming its all the fault of greenies and climate scientists, just as Miranda Devine published environmentalists should be hanged from lamp posts in view of their (alleged but not true) objection to back-burning!
Sorry to spoil the fun, but perhaps “tragi/comic” is a more suitable term, given these flat Earth society people provided conservative governments with the excuse they needed to avoid carbon reduction and climate change mitigation for almost 20 years, despite overwhelming scientific evidence.
cf. the influence the Lavosie Society had over Howard ministers and Michael Crighton had over Bush.
Mark Byrne
“Facile Optimism”. Ouch!
Slide 5 –
“Elements necessary for a comprehensive climate solution.”
1. A society wide agreement on how bad thing are.”
My point was that I think we are reaching the point of (as I awkwardly put it)”…a mainstream consensus… that climate change is real”.
Therefore we don’t really need to be sucked in to debating about whether or not climate change is happening etc right now ’cause thats just getting in the way of talking about the important stuff, like what are we going to do about it. I think the attitude I have towards denialists now is; look the debate is over, if you still want to rant on about it, go and join the other rank a file denialists because I’ve got more important things to do… like save the world from iminent catastrophy.
We need to be moving quickly to slide 5′s second element ” 2. A social consensus on matching targets and timescales.”
I think slide 22 sets out an important point, “climate denial and avoidance cannot be dealt with by more information alone.”
If people understand the problem but can see no way out then it does just lead to a head in the sand type situation. The only way we are going to get to element 2. is by giving the denialists a contemptuous flick and talking up action, big action not just the change your light bulbs, half fill your kettle type stuff, not just personal action, national/global action.
Needless to say that is what I like about this site, lots of ideas and debate about how we can solve this thing.
At a grass roots level I’m trying hard to communicate what I read at this site to everyone around me. What gives me optimism is that when I talk solutions, even radical solutions like IFR (in fact especially IFR) the disinterested get interested.
Besides a little bit of optimism is all that keeps me going.
Here is my response to Ian Veizer, including an invitation for a debate in the peer-reviewed science literature. In my expeirence the Copnservative broadsheets are almost impervious to articles by climate scientists concerned about global warming.
I will be pleasantly surprised if The Australian publishes anything I propose to submit to them.
Andrew
24-4-09
———————————————————————————-
Dear Ian Veizer,
You are sadly mistaken.
The level of water vapor over the poles in very low, yet it is in these regions where warming is fastest, X2 to X4 times the mean global rate (up to 4 – 5 degrees C in some parts of northern Siberia).
The melting of the cryosphere ice, a feedback process (where melt water re-melts ice, with consequent loss of the ice albedo and gain of infrared absorption by water), is as important as the feedback warming process due to the carbon cycle. Both factors drive global warming.
Likewise the level of transient water vapor over dry desert latitudes is very low, yet these zones are warming fast, including in the Australian outback.
The main zones where the role of water vapor factor is highly significant are the tropics, while elsewhere it constitutes a transient response, as contrasted with the long residence time of CO2.
Nor do you account for the cumulative effect of CO2 levels, now reaching 387 ppm (or CO2 + Methane equivalent of 440 ppm), a level DANGEROUSLY CLOSE close to that of the mid-Pliocene (3 million years ago)(when T rose by 2 – 3 degrees C and sea level rose by 25 meters), and even to the late Eocene threshold of the large ice sheets, as established by numerous studies (Berner, Beerling, Royer, Zachos).
The lag of CO2 behind rising temperatures during the glacial terminations represents the critical role of the ice melt/feedback, triggered by orbital forcings of the Milankovic cycles, followed by a lag effect of CO2 release from the oceans and biosphere.
The conservative media will almost always publish views such as yours, i.e. which support the open-ended use of the atmosphere as an open sewer for carbon gases, but will rarely publish the views of climate scientists concerned about dangerous global warming.
I invite you to a debate of these issues in the peer-reviewed science literature.
(Dr) Andrew Glikson
Earth and paleoclimate research
Australian National University
24.4.09
I thought Charlie Veron was fine when he talked about marine science, but for the first part of the interview he just used ad hominem, saying Plimer didn’t have the right acknowledgments, peer review, etc, etc, just an “argument from authority”. Such nonsense shouldn’t persuade anybody that Plimer is wrong … and probably don’t.
In my experience the conservative broadsheets, far from being “balanced”, are almost impervious to articles by scientists and environmentalists concerned about global warming.
[…] science is missing from Ian Plimer’s "Heaven and Earth" & a related Science blog:- Ian Plimer – Heaven and Earth BraveNewClimate.com Couldn’t have made a greater fool of himself if he had shown his **** on the town-hall steps […]
“Fig 44 — Says 98% of greenhouse effect comes from water vapour — errr, no.” – What is the correct % of greenhouse warming due to water vapor?
p.s.
25.4.09: So far my comment in The Australian following Veizer’s article, which were posted last night (24.4), has not been published , although other comments have …
I just sent this to the Australian:
“I understand Andrew Glikson has submitted a comment on
this story. It hasn’t appeared. Do you have a deliberate
policy of only publishing comments by people who
agree with the author?”
Off topic, I know, but deserves to be known…
NZ NIWA chief climate scientist Jim Salinger was fired on Friday for speaking to the media.
There’s been a new censorship regime imposed on NIWA by the management, and he’s fallen foul of it. A very ugly business indeed.
http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/system/member_details/default.aspx?ID=19883
Excellent post MLB – you get to the nitty-gritty – forget the pseudo-sceptics- action is what we need and we need to convey this to a wider audience through the media.
Barry- is Tom Blees coming out to Australia? How can we get the heartening news about IFR technology to the media, the general public and of course the politicians.
My daughter’s husband, a former member of a rock group, came up with the idea of a “media kit” of the type which publicists use to promote new groups on the airwaves and in the popular newspapers and magazines.
Has to grab the attention of journalists looking for the a great “good news” story on climate change. Anyone on the blog who can give advice on the best way to proceed with this idea?
Another rather strange article on Plimer — and apparently my office is ‘salubrious’ (as far as I’m aware, the journalist who wrote this piece has never been in there):
http://www.independentweekly.com.au/news/local/news/general/ian-plimer-a-question-of-faith/1495699.aspx?storypage=0
Steve, click on the “err,no” link. Water vapour is a feedback, not a forcing. If you have an engineering/maths background, then the reason your question doesn’t quite make sense will be instantly clear.
If you don’t have this background, then think of it this way. Everybody gets a little depressed from time to time. Now suppose you overeat and get fat, being fat makes you extra depressed, so you overeat some more. “depression” is a feedback, it is both a result of overeating and a cause of still more. Being fat makes you prone to some diseases. What do you say when someone asks how much of this extra disease is due to this (extra) depression?
The question doesn’t make sense. But if we were actively pumping water vapour into the air, then it would make sense.
Steve,
The polar regions, where temperature rise rates are at the maximum, in some regions up to 3 or 4 degrees C relative to the 1951-1980 NASA/GISS baseline (look at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/) have very low transient concentrations of water vapor.
The desert and arid regions, also warming fast (over 1 degrees C over the last 50 years or so) also have low to very low transient atmospheric water vapor.
It is in the tropics that water vapor are important, but the heavy cloud cover also acts as reflector to solar radiation, with a compensating effect. Temperature rises in low latitudes are relatively less than than at very high latitudes.
The distinction between primary forcings (external to the atmosphere/ocean/biosphere system) and secondary responses (feedbacks) is essential.
Primary forcings includ greenhouse gases derived from buried/fossil carbon deposits (i.e. which have been removed from the biosphere for hundreds of millions of years), the sun, volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts.
Feedbacks include CO2 released from the oceans and drying biosphere, ice melt/water interactions, water vapor, clouds and dust, triggered by primary forcings.
apparently my office is ’salubrious’
He obviously meant to type “salacious and lugubrious”, and had a mishap with his word processor.
There are a lot of sheep in NZ. The ‘shepherds’ are playing politics, it has nothing to do with science.
Thanks Geoff,
I also tried the “Independent Weekly”, entering the comment below. Though not holding my breath to see whether they will publish it.
“Based on my 40 years experience in the study of the Earth system, I am available to provide a review indicating the ideas in “Heaven and Earth” are:
(1) inconsistent with the observational and experimental evidence on the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere.
(2) inconsistent with the evidence derived from in-depth studies of the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and from Phanerozoic sediments.
(3) The evidence presented by CSIRO, BOM, NASAm Hadley, Potsdam Oceanographic, and thousands of peer-reviewed papers in science journals, and as presented by the IPCC, Granut and Stern reports, points to an anthropogenic origin of global warming beyond reasonable doubt.
(4) The (mostly conservative) media appears to be almost impervious to articles and letters by mainstream climat scientists.”
Not having read Plimer’s opus, I don’t think he would have even considered this rationale – such the way of people living in the past.
Chris,
Some geologists are “different” in the following respects:
1. Some/many are professionally and commercially closely related to the mining and fossil fuel industry.
2. Other tend to think in terms of millions of years, tending to overlook the current danger to the biosphere.
3. Otherwise they are not bad fellows …
Alas no. You’ve obviously not been there either.
Thanks Geoff, that explains it nicely. Also thanks to Andrew Glickson to my query on Crickey.
Thanks again Andrew, but I have one further question for you.
I now understand from your replies and from others that water vapor in the atmosphere is a feedback mechanism and not a forcing;but with warming temperatures there will be more water vapor in the atmosphere than in the recent past, which will presumably exacerbate global warming.
It would also follow that global atmospheric circulation will change markedly. How confident can you be that the computer models are sophisticated enough to model these changes accurately? Today’s desert maybe tomorrow’s granary.
Geoff, I don’t understand your statement that “Water vapour is a feedback, not a forcing.” Indeed, the “err, no” link says:
“The radiative forcing for water is around 75 W/m2 while carbon dioxide contributes 32 W/m2 (Kiehl 1997). ”
Surely a gas can only be a feedback if it is also a forcing. The extent to which it is a forcing depends on the current concentration (which, in the case of a feedback, depends on the current temperature), whereas the extent to which it is a feedback depends on both its forcing/concentration relationship and the concentration/temperature relationship (again, at the current temperature).
As a result, I feel comparisons like Kiehl’s result do not help laity (e.g. me) to understand the significance of anthropogenic GHGs. More to the point is the end result: what will the temperature be with Xppm of the GHG, all other external inputs (other GHGs, solar irradiation, ..) remaining constant?
I sent IW a letter … along the lines that Plimer’s logic seems to be like that of a doctor when confronted by a man thinking he has been poisoned. “No sir, your temperature and vomiting are within the range of natural diseases, so poisoning is impossible … and we don’t need to waste money on those silly diagnostic tests.” Then I threw in Lockwood and Frohlich as relevant data that the sun wasn’t to blame.
Surely “salubrious” relates to healthy or health giving and therefore cannot be a description of an office. How about “luxurious”? Knowing a little about academic offices, I guess its not that either, eh Barry?
Why are so many journalists so lacking in knowledge of grammar, and depth of vocabulary? Obviously he/she hasn’t heard of a dictionary, let alone a thesaurus!!
Presumably, Ian Plimer can look forward to receiving a well deserved Nobel prize in the near future – for fiction!
See also: Sound of silence.
Jim’s getting some great support, he tells me.
Well Dr. Glikson, you sure sound smart. I considered your points with great interest. But why did you bring into question your motivations and the validity of your arguments in your second to last sentence? I listen to both Liberal and Conservative media on shortwave and medium wave, in addition to reading from 2 dozen liberal, libertarian and conservative news/blog type websites and another dozen research and policy websites (I do not watch television). I also own a business in which I personally convey technical data about work our company performs to about 2000 customers per year. Very often these conversations deviate to current events and issues. I can tell you that no Liberal, Conservative or Libertarian I have ever talked to since climate change became an issue has ever voiced support for “open-ended use of the atmosphere as an open sewer for carbon gases.” You contrived that generalization to try to strengthen your argument and it is childish and unbefitting a man of your position. If your arguments are valid, no such generalizations will enhance them. You can ask (and I mean you personally ask them, not read an article about someone else who asked them) any man or woman of any political pursuasion if they agree we should pursue smokeless energy sources and you will find overwhelming affirmative agreement. The chief disagreement I find among folks is the pace at which we should be pursuing these alternatives.
Simply, if I mandate that my home be fully converted to solar by this Friday, then I will miss several mortgage payments, ruin my credit standing, be unable to buy food for my wife and children for several months, etc. I can stretch it out over 7 or 8 years however without the dire consequences I described ever taking place. When I discuss this pace issue, some of my associates accuse me and point their finger at me the way you do at conservatives, making wild generalizations about my reasons for pursuing the transition at a sustainable cash pace, rather than going into massive debt to do it. I contend that if we bankrupt our economies by mandating expensive accelerated timetables for such a transition, the benefits will not seem so sweet. Your intelligence and arguments would be more convincing if you would refrain from these generalizations and present your arguments and supporting data alone.
Hmm. Well I have read every comment on this blog and it appears that a great many of you invest much thought and consideration into all of this. I admire that. However, since there are so many on and off this blog making predictions based on science, I have a prediction based on history. The epidemic number of men addicted to internet pornography (temple-based idolatry via computer) is having a far more verifiable degenerating effect on our race than climate change. I hope that none of you are enslaved by this stuff. Good Day.
Scott, please stick to the climate/energy topic of this blog
Scott, I am not entirely clear what point you are making. However, in so far as you question my reference to the “use of the atmosphere as open sewer for carbon gases”, this reference questions the special raison d’etre of “climate skeptics”, since people do not generally go to so much trouble as these people do in order to, for example:
1. Question surgeons regarding open heart procedures.
2. Jet pilots for actions they take in mid-air during a storm.
3. Nuclear physicists while they handle enriched uranium rods.
In the main people give specialists the respect they deserve. Only rarely do they have either the expertise or the motivation to try and probe into a field about which they know little.
So why the huge media campaign against climate science and climate scientists?
Could there be a motivation here, other than pure science (such as, for example, the profit motivation of coal and oil companies)?
Is it not just a bit reminiscent of the well funded campaign by the tobacco industry against lung desease specialists?
I wouldn’t regard myself as a sceptic, just one who is willing to be convinced if I see some honesty. What i see in the proponents is a very strong connection with the green movement. If the proponents want to convince the lay public, they need to:
(a) distance themselves from the greens, who regularly demonstrate their dishonesty and lack of integrity; and
(b) explain – don’t just keep repeating this mantra that there is broad consensus. One way to explain is to write a book, confronting Plimer’s assertions in plain English.
Lay people can’t read scientific papers. Plenty of people (eg Jared Diamond, John Gribbin) have written books that lay people cna understand. If scientists can’t write plain anguage themselves they can hire somebody to do it.
Some would call this site climate porn:)
[…] on Ian Plimer – Heaven […]
Tony, please see my new post. I understand what you are saying, and this provides one such useful guide:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/27/more-ice-flat-temperatures-what-does-it-all-mean/
There are other books on the topic which you may find useful. A recent one (published last month), written by a climate scientist in terms that most people should find understandable, is this:
http://www.csiro.au/resources/Climate-change-the-science-impacts-solutions.html
Mine didn’t get published either. I also had a go at Kinninmonth – did you see his comment?
And if they can’t model these changes accurately then…? Will we then be like a punter rolling a dice at the casino with his life savings?
[…] his book “Heaven & Earth, Global Warming: the Missing Science”, Ian Plimer has been very careful to keep facts from spoiling a good story. No upsetting […]
[…] now infamous skeptic Professor Ian Plimer launched his seventh book last week, titled “Heaven and Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science“. Apparently Plimer, a Professor of Mining and Geology from the University of Adelaide is […]
I’m going to buy a V8. Should I get a HSV or an FPV? It’s a real relief because the idea of a Prius was making my skin crawl. Thanks Plimer for clearing my conscience.
The pseudo-skeptics propagate a misconception as if computer calculations are uncontrolled, coming up with crazy models etc.
Nothing is further than the truth. Copmputers basically extend, but not replace, the human thinking process in terms of the speed of calculations, as applied in just about every other science and technology.
So basically the skeptics message is computers are “unreliable” – therefore “stop thinking”.
Most scientists feed computer programs with hard (measured) data, testing General Circulation Model trajectories produced by assumptions consistent with known physical and chemical processes. Future projections are tested with time. To date CO2, T and Sea level trends occur at the top of IPCC model scenarios (Rahmstorf, 2007), showing just how careful/conservative the scientists are.
Regarding your question about the hydrological cycle:
(1) There is no “confidence” in “precise” climate scenarios: the “sapiens” experiment is a novel one, and at the extreme rates of CO2 rise (2 orders of magnitude faster than during the last glacial termination) and T rise, tipping points of little-defined nature may occur;
(2) The IPCC-2007 report contains regional projections which, in the case of Australia include (A) southward migration of climate zones, i.e. further drying of southern Australia; (B) migration of cyclons south along the Qld-NSW coast, as is already occurring; (C) migration of cyclons from the NW to the SE, rsulting in heavier precipitation over the Canning-Officer basin but also NW warm air flow such as have caused the Victorian drought/fires; (D)strengthening of the El-Nino would result in much of the evaporation re-precipitating over the Pacific Ocean.
Worry is the rate of these changes may be faster than that to which civilization and species may be able to adapt (look at http://www.pnas.org/content/105/6/1786.full)
A consistent method used by those who deny the reality of climate change is to avoid discussing the data and instead discard just about every active climate scientist, environmentalists and greens : hardly a substitute to evidence-based discussion.
Would be interesting to know, if man made climate change turns out to be a furphy, are we going get our money back spent on ETS and the rest of it, or not?
Yes, water vapour is a forcing. But it gets generated by increased temperature, so it can’t be used to let us off the hook as a driver of the problem. Feedbacks also make predicting climate sensitivity inherently tough. Small errors in measuring the drivers are amplified by the feedbacks.
Again thank you Andrew for taking the trouble to answer my question, although I am not sure that your remark about cyclones at (B) has a long enough recent record to be definitive.
The reason that I asked the question about the accuracy of computer simulations was the following passage that I read by Fred Pearce in May 1 2008 New Scientist viz:
“On top of this, some climate scientists believe that even the IPCC’s global forecasts leave much to be desired. In particular, they say that because the IPCC cannot take the most recent research into account, its predictions are too conservative.
Next week, climate modellers from around the world will meet in Reading at the World Modelling Summit for Climate Prediction, held under the auspices of the UN, to try to improve our forecasting abilities. Its declared aim is to “prepare a blueprint to launch a revolution in climate prediction”, including measures that will allow us to predict how the climate will be affected locally as well as globally.
The organisers say that this will require the computing power brought to bear on the problem to be increased “by a factor of 1000″. One option likely to be discussed is the creation of a global climate modelling centre – a climatological equivalent of international collaborations like the CERN particle physics centre in Europe.”
Hi,
One of the most misleading statements to me from Ian Plimers material is his statements on sea level rise. He made them again last night on Lateline. For actual facts on sea level rise and land subsidence the Bureau of Mets National Tidal Centre do annual sea level rise monitoring reports for both Australia and the South Pacific: http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/tides.shtml and this is linked in with Geosciences Australias analysis of land movements using CGPS systems http://www.ga.gov.au/image_cache/GA6732.pdf which show for example Tuvalu is ‘sinking’ at the grand rate of 0.2mm/yr while measured sea level rise there is ~5.3mm/yr, with similar figures at many other locations. Once again the real facts go missing from Ians material, in an area where scientists have been devoting a lot of resources to increase our understanding of exactly what is happening!!
DR
Yes, I was also attracted by the point that “climate denial and avoidance cannot be dealt with by more information alone.”
I guess I must share some of your optimism, as I’ve just had a baby.
However if you’ve seen most posts in the IFR debate you know that I don’t quite share Barry’s optimism on that technology.
If the answer is mass mobilization of the public, I can’t see millions comming out for the promise of IFR while renewables are yet to be funded properly (on a scale that we fund wars and bank bailout combined).
This is a graph of global temperatures that Bolty and others like to present as proof that the world is cooling:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
“The graph above represents the latest update; updates are usually made within the first week of every month. The smooth curve in the graph is a fourth-order polynomial fit to the data, which smooths out the large amount of monthly variability in the data and helps reveal the underlying ‘trends’. (There is no claim that this curve has any predictive power for the coming months or years.)”
Can anyone explain why a fourth order polynomial would be applied to this? Is this the same as the 6th order polynomial rubbish that Tim Lambert was talking about?
Because it comes as a basic function on excel. It something you can apply without understanding why you would use it.
The took the data from here- http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html
The authors use a liner trend of 0.155 degrees K per decade.
I’ve seen the IPA’s Jennifer Marohassy trying to fit the excel polynomials in a similar way, and she can make the chart go way down!
Correction, Roy Spencer says he is the source of the data With John Christy?
Thank you Barry. This damaging book and the broad and supportive media coverage it has received will further feed public complacency. Your posting needs to be communicated far and wide!
Kind Regards
Lorraine
Professor Plimer seems to be getting a hard time. Since you cannot buy his book in Sydney today (28-4-09) I can only go by the reviews, all antipathetic. I presume he is writing for a general audience, not a scientific journal. He wants to move cubic, (dollar volumes in sales, I mean) and some of you guys are helping him by your approach. Controversy is good for business! I think anyone who professes to be a climatologist should be able to predict the weather from day to day. Not a lot of that around. That is how you will be judged by members of the public. Anyone with an interest in these matters can get the basic esential facts from Wikipedia, and form their own opinion. I believe Ian Plimer has a right to express his considered opinion, he appears to be qualified in at least one earth science, and can easily extrapolate that experience to climate change/global warming. I don’t think he is arguing against the observed facts, but that he is disputing the alleged causes. I am inclined to agree with him, which is ridiculous without reading his considered arguments. If people make political decisions to harvest fossil fuels for a prolifigate lifestyle in the full knowledge that they are depleting an irreplaceable resource,should they not think about generating energy from another source as happens already overseas, dare I mention nuclear energy? The geological climatic record and abandoned civilisations show that there is nothing new about climate change, perhaps we should factor in more variables. Politicians who control our destinies have attention spans of three to six years at most, so they cannot be expected to make long term decisions. I think his blurb is directed against “Climate change politics is religious fundamentalism masquerading as science. A new ignorance fills the yawning spiritual gap in Western Society”. If he is wrong reason will prevail, no harm done by going over all the relevant factors (and obviously many that are irrelevant). There are a lot of “rabid environmentalists” destroying logical and factual arguments. Charles Darwin got a hard time with his hypothesis, and died believing there was a good chance his soul would attract eternal damnation.
Salvarsan,
How do you accout for or accept Plimers use his own temperature data? Do you know the source of his temperature data?
It sounds quite hopeful that your at least recognise that you are inclined to agree with Plimer before your read his work. Who’s work has helped you develop that inclination?
Your reference to climate change not being new, indicates you may have you come to the conclusion that established climate science ignores the causes of past climate change. If this is your assumption how would you test if the assuption is correct?
The IPCC is a UN political body. It’s charter only allows it to consider human causes of climate change . Garnaut and Stern are economists not scientists
On the lateline program (27/4/09) Ian Plimer claims the Arctic Sea Ice extent in the 1930s was less than it is now. – Really?
I would like to know where Ian P. got his information from?
The paper by Norbert Untersteiner ’20th Century Changes of the Arctic Sea Ice Cover’ [http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_untersteiner.html] clarly shows that the 1930s Sea Ice Extent was significantly greater than for the present decade. See also Walsh, J.E and W.L.Chapman, 2001, “Twentieth-century sea ice variations from observational data”, Annals of Glaciology, 33, Number 1, January 2001 , pp. 444-448.
“Decide on your position from the outset, and then seek out all the facts that apparently support your case, and discard or ignore all of those that contravene it.”
Interesting that you point this out about his book, I find that climate change believers do that all the time…
So what is being disregarded or ignored, AlisonT?
Plimer’s book and his media appearances are directed to lay people, not scientists. If he convinces the lay population, the politicians will go his way. Plimer needs to be countered by scientists capable of addressing a lay audience. Plimer is a friend of mine, but what he is doing could have a disastrous effect on my children and grandchildren.
Mark Byrne reply:-Thanks Mark:- I am a mid 20th Century pharmacist, not a climatologist, meteorologist or even a geologist. I was going to give Geology a go but couldn’t cop the idea of spending my life in Mount Isa or similar environments. (I was born in Mt Isa) I subscribe to National Geographic, the April edition had two articles about climate change (1)Australia goes Dry” and (2)Changing Rains. This is not my total resume, put me down as an intelligent follower of rational debate. Coincidentally I heard recently on radio several references to Professor Plimers recent book, so I Googled “Heaven and Earth, Climate Change” and here I am. This seems to be a rational scientific evidence based site free of “rabid environmentalists”, “tree huggers” and “climate change politicians who are religious fundamentalists masquerading as scientists”. I realise like any other site you need to let “a thousand fields of thought contend”. I am not a creationist or unbeliever in any way. To answer your questions (1) I have no idea where Plimer gets his temperature data. Looking at his previous book “a short history of planet earth” which I got from the local library yesterday afternoon he quotes references from Aberham to Zielenski which looks impressive but might be totally irrelevant, as some if not many learned articles are.
(2) I agree with the proposition put forward by Plimer that it is difficult to prove that one factor (man made CO2 emissions) can be singled out at the sole cause of climate change, but that will have to wait till I read the book, and or see convincing arguments to the contrary. I will continue looking here, at least you seem to recognise nuclear energy could substitute for fossil fuels.(3)Unfortunately many articles on climate change give the impression it only commenced recently, which is patently incorrect, and a deceit on the readers of those articles. Fear and fright are great persuaders. You may be arguing from the point of view of an informed and intelligent member of the established climate change community, but this is not how some articles come across to an intelligent lay reader. Now I know where to look for rational discussion I will continue upgrading my climate change knowledge base. I would hope that examination of the historical an geological record of past climate changes would be the starting point for analysing the current situation, as well as taking into account all the other variables that are not preserved or cannot be found in records from the past.
Hi Salvarsan, Sounds like you’ve got the most important tool of open mined inquiry. Though be prepared for several iterations of surprise with what you will read on various sites.
Its helpful to know from your perspective about how some of the articles come across. A pity, that is the perception they leave, as the established science has rich detail on past causes of climate change as well as current influences such as solar radiation.
I asked about Plimer’s source for temperature data because it is a clear example of data that doesn’t come from the peer reviewed literature. I believe that he doesn’t cite the source. The instrumental temperature record is pretty fundamental to this discussion. Hence I’d suggest that if you can source the temperature data he uses and compare it to the peer reviewed scientific data you’d get a sense of why so many scientists have been so critical of the arguments in his book.
salvarsan, palaeoclimate is often discussed here, with regards to how it contextualises modern impacts of global warming. Some examples:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/03/14/did-climate-change-kill-off-woolly-mammoths-and-giant-wombats/
http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/09/03/a-warning-from-the-ghost-of-climate-past/
http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/08/14/will-global-warming-cause-a-mass-extinction-event/
No rational climate scientist would claim CO2 is the sole cause of climate change. There is strong evidence that it is the primary cause modern warming, however. Browse the site more and you’ll see plenty of discussions of the multiple drivers of climate change, or check out lecture 2 of my series:
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/climatechange/seminars/climateqanda/#two
Salvarsan – “I agree with the proposition put forward by Plimer that it is difficult to prove that one factor (man made CO2 emissions) can be singled out at the sole cause of climate change..”
And good on you, because no-one’s trying to prove that at all.
My earnest advice to you would be to read the IPCC report.
You can find it at
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm
Of course you don’t have to read all of it, but there are FAQ sections and summaries and so on.
Once you’ve dipped into that report you’ll realise Plimers claim’s about the IPCC position are truly gross misrepresentations. What he says is really only plausible to people who are not familiar with the IPCC position.
You say: “I would hope that examination of the historical an geological record of past climate changes would be the starting point for analysing the current situation, as well as taking into account all the other variables that are not preserved or cannot be found in records from the past.”
Anyone who’s looked reasonably closely at the IPCC report would realise they are doing that already, contrary to what Plimer claims.
Essentially what he’s saying is that hordes of well-qualified scienctists with years and years of experience in their fields are so incompetent they’ve ignored the obvious. It’s totally absurd.
Plimer is directing his book and his radio/TV patter to an audience with absolutely no knowledge of climate science than what they read in the newspaper or see on TV, because anyone else could work out easily that he’s completely misrepesented the scientific consensus and has nothing to offer in its place.
Hi there Salvarsan,
My earnest advice is to have a look at the latest IPCC report at
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm
You don’t have to read the whole lot – there are summaries and FAQs, and you can dip into the various parts of it to satisfy your curiosity.
There are also other sources of solid information, eg from NASA and the CSIRO on their web sites.
Once you’ve got an idea of the breadth and depth of the work that supports the IPCC’s conclusions, you’ll realise Plimer’s claim about the scientific consensus are grossly misleading.
As you say, you hope that “examination of the historical an geological record of past climate changes would be the starting point for analysing the current situation, as well as taking into account all the other variables that are not preserved or cannot be found in records from the past”.
Rest assured, these things are the basis of the science, despite Plimer’s outrageous claims to the contrary.
Barry and Mark:-Thanks, I will check it out. One page 213 of A Short History of Planet Earth Prof.Plimer discusses temperature readings and greenhouse gases etc. He says inter alia the weather stations in fixed locations in cities etc are giving higher readings due to changes in the microclimate. This then “makes analysis of data misleading for the computer models that are the basis for many weather and global climate predictions”. I presume NASA and others have more sources of readings than the old existing city based weather stations,but this book was written in 2001. I presume his latest book has been upgraded. Something we are all stuck with, revision as more facts come to light. I will keep in touch. Salvarsan.
I believe NASA still use ground measuring stations (providing continuum from earliest temperature records. In addition there are also satellite records starting from 1978. The systematic error that Plimer refers to is sometimes called the Urban Heat Island (UHI) Effect. Andrew Watson of the Bureau of Met gave a presentation relevant to how these measurements are made and how this error is limited. http://www.adelaide.edu.au/climatechange/seminars/climateqanda/#one
From memory I believe that the BOM remove stations that suffer from this bias.
Hi,
The list of stations that the Bureau of Met contribute to the global record as Climate Reference Stations is available here:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/reference.shtml
A couple of years ago there was a concerted effort by climate sceptics to discredit the global surface temperature record. There were a few problem sites in the US but the Australian sites and record stood up well under the scrutiny. Metadata and pics are available when you click on any particular site.
As you can see they are all non urban locations. A particularly telling one is the record from Cape Borda on the western end of Kangaroo Island which is part of a lighthouse station that is extremely isolated and surrounded by a great deal of bush.
The records can be seen in more detail here:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/hqsites/site_data.cgi?variable=meanT&area=sa&station=022801&dtype=anom&period=annual
As with sea level rise, there is a lot of work going on to make sure the best quality information is available, and this work is ignored by sceptics as their arguments fall apart when faced with the real data!!
DR
Cancel last signal. Ta.
Barry,
Good humour in this would help, pejorative words and phrases perhaps do not. And as you say, claiming surety in the natural sciences is a sure way to shoot yourself in the foot.
Just under Babbage on “trimming,” most unfortunately, at least on Mozilla Firefox, your preferred graph stops its headline with the word “Compara” and the effect below is that the critical data for your argument, 1998 on, or even 1980 on, is just not there.
I would not dream of accusing you of trimming, but some less careful folk might. Glass houses and unintended virtual stones?
Do see my own set of ghastly errors on an alternative geomagnetic shift model for climate change, at
http://www.freewebs.com/psravenscroft/ (link needed, I blew it), if you have the time.
I have been at geology for four decades now, getting ever more confused about the fiendish sense of humour of so many geological processes, so I absolutely guarantee it is full of errors.
Regards, all the best and keep going. This lot is important.
Peter.
Cheers Darren.
Peter, click on the plot if your browser window is not showing it all.
You’d be best to ask a geophysicist or two about your geomagnetic shift model and whether this can provide a plausible driver for change, how it would interact with the climate system, and how this would offset CO2 effects.
Someone above said the se level rise was over 5 mm. Yup, but just once – that was the peak year, where the sentence tendered implies more years. Babbage again?
A quick one, on ground stations measuring surface temperatures. The urban heat island effect has long been debated, with Warwick Hughes, among others, putting in huge effort.
What is almost always overlooked is the rural heat island effect. Most ground recorders are in or near farmland, some of it new, and tractorland is generally a bit warmer than the forest or whatever was there before. Also, overgrazing reduces humus and then the soil dries and gets warmer.
My vote is for the satellite data. That has problems too, but satellites do not need to go along (warmish) roads usually while burning fossil fuel in internal explosion engines, to get their readings.
Sure the climate is very warm at present. But why? The laws of thermodynamics say you cannot transmit heat from a cold body (the sky) to a warm one (the surface of the earth), I think. So the basic physics of the CO2-driven greenhouse model may be a bit shaky. Heat going through from the sun is fine, no conflict.
Sea levels are up in the last few decades, perhaps largely because groundwater tables are down in many places, thank 50 million centrifugal pumps. Plus clay and silt from enhanced activity in tractorland and all those lovely chainsaws exposing soil to drying and then blowing or washing to the sea. And the goats, my personal pet unfavorite animals. Me, I will defend donkeys to the death, but the goats! The Church of the Holy Molecule needs a new devil? Use the old one and stop both global warming and sea level rise dead in their tracks.
Barry et al,
Re figure 23 of Ian Plimer’s work and your (Barry’s) referral of readers to Petit et al, 1999.
First, that link does not give the real data, it gives an abstract and a dead end, unless you have money or back issues handy. When you do get there, from memory I think they merely give their derived graphs and not the real data.
Petit et al (1999) did their level best, hats off to them. That graph has hd a huge impact.
But the existence of icebergs off Antarctica proves that the icecap there is subject to flat faulting. It is so virtually by definition anyway. That gaps the record, if the fault is a reverse. Who on earth anyway said ice, up to 420,000 years old for Vostok and 740,000 for Dome C(we think) is a leakproof container for CO2? Ice is a brittle rock and will, in an icecap fracture at all levels from the molecular up to the big flat faults. Which last will be undetectable, uness the ice core experts are a lot better than all other core-loggers with more differentiated rocks to play with. And if that ice has ever leaked that gas, even internally and thereby merely trimming the CO2 peaks, and the decay of the CO2 peaks back in time suggests it may well have, then we have no reason whatever to conclude that this one is not a perfectly normal interglacial. As I think emailed, lifting ice cores to 3km long, in the case of Dome C, takes you through two phase shifts for CO2, perhaps explosively, I am not sure. Anyway, you simply cannot model past climates on just two narrow and highly experimental ice cores from the same stratigraphy, when on this planet you only have those two.
We have no deep ice core experts, at least on this planet and using the’more poplar arrow of time that most folk use.
When we have ten thousand deep ice cores, we will have some folk who will be informed enough to be usefully confused. All the credit in the world to Petit et al, but do not rush out to build nuclear power stations on the basis of their best guesses, just this week.
Hooroo,
Peter.
All the credit in the world to Petit et al, but do not rush out to build nuclear power stations on the basis of their best guesses, just this week.
There are many good reasons to hasten the construction of nuclear reactors. Just one for now is to save the huge swaths of pristine land currently slated to be torn to bits to feed the coal furnaces.
We don’t question pilots/ nuclear physicists because they don’t challenge our lifestyle. We may well seek a second opinion from another surgeon as our life may be under threat. Ender (24th) is right – many want to question the IPCC recommendations since they threaten lifestyle. The pollies know there is consensus on reducing CO2 emissions, as long as lifestyles aren’t challenged. Our PM’s artifice is working wonders. It was the same mindset in the 80′s with exporting uranium as long as we didn’t have to collect the reactor waste – I witnessed this response then conducting a doorknock survey.
Well if someone called Mark can have a baby, we all have to be optimistic about the amazing things that can be acheived with modern science! (Congrats, BTW)
Cheers Gaz!
Though I think people called Mark have had babies for thousands of years.
😉
But I think I get the point you want to make- We can be hopeful about technology?
The point I raise is that consolidated power can trump technology. Many disruptive technologies have surpressed through patent acquasition and other tactical surpressive methods (take lobbist like the “Greenhouse Mafia”). Combine this with political process becomeing increasingly influenced by concentrated wealth.
Tom Blees says this has been used to derail IFR, I point out that this has been used to shelve reneawables.
Peter,
“So the basic physics of the CO2-driven greenhouse model may be a bit shaky.”
Don’t be such a tease. If you reckon you’ve overturned basic principles of physics, let’s have the details. There should be Nobel Prize for you if you can pull it off.
Gaz,
Not playing games, just under the weather. No Nobel for me, mate, though ta for the offer. For these lads, maybe. Their paper is
Falsifi cation Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse E ffects
Within The Frame Of Physics
Version 4.0 (January 6, 2009)
replaces Version 1.0 (July 7, 2007) and later
Gerhard Gerlich
Institut fur Mathematische Physik
Technische Universitat Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig
Mendelssohnstrae 3
D-38106 Braunschweig
Federal Republic of Germany
[email protected]
Ralf D. Tscheuschner
Postfach 60 27 62
D-22237 Hamburg
Federal Republic of Germany
[email protected]
Google will find it. And, you can ask them themselves, as they were game enough to put their emails on the front page. There are 115 pages, with many of equations that are way beyond me.
But, the main point is, the Second Law of Thermodynamics seems to be violated by AGW.
I would tentatively chuck in the First Law also, as it says you cannot keep pumping heat into the system with no discernible result, which is what the temperature decline since 1998, while CO2 has risen, seems to me to imply if you go with AGW. Where has the heat gone? Not into the oceans, as they are warmer than the atmosphere.
I think there is a real problem here.
What we are all after is a closer approach to reality. Ja?
Hooroo,
Peter.
Gaz, reply the second:
You know me, would I ever stoop so low as to tease?
So:
I will start right at the basics. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is this:
It is impossible for a process to have as its sole result the transfer of heat from a cooler body to a hotter one. So I suspect you cannot, with that as its sole result, transfer heat from the atmosphere (the cold body) to the earth’s surface (the hot body) Going through the atmosphere from he sun is fine, as most folk suspect the sun is warmish.
I do not expect you to accept this on third hand, airy-fairy theoretical evidence. I have checked.
I had an old uncle who flew open-cockpit fighters in World War One, in dawn patrols over the Western Front. Uncle Viv told me himself it is cold up there. That is why they used to wear warm coats. Not being a trusting sort, I later went up a little way in hang-gliders to check. I got cold. Then I went a bit higher in my brother’s open cockpit ultralight. I got colder. Not being entirely satisfied, since what is in question here is relative temperatures, I spend almost a year checking ground temperatures in the Namib Desert. Then in some other parts of Africa, then in most of Australia, and then in Fiji, Same result. It does seem to be warmer down here. I did check in Scotland and in the Alps, and that got chilly alright, but I still think I was colder in the ultralight. So I think Uncle Viv had it right. He was a professor of physics afterwards, and probably did that just to check his own opinion in this matter carefully. Apart from the flying about, he was a careful man. I don’t think that him crashing his Bristol fighter makes the case invalid by way of it being a second result.
Hence the entire greenhouse gas theory of climate warming is perhaps complete nonsense. Game, set and match. All over, all quiet on the Western Front. I wish.
Thermodynamics has a parting kick for the notion that carbon dioxide is causing climate warming, This comes from the First Law of Thermodynamics, which can be stated
“The change in a system’s internal energy is equal to the difference between heat added to the system from its surroundings and work done by the system on its surroundings.
Though this may sound complex, it’s really a very simple idea. If you add heat to a system, there are only two things that can be done — change the internal energy of the system or cause the system to do work (or, of course, some combination of the two). All of the heat energy must go into doing these things.”
I am indebted to Andrew Zimmerman Jones for those two definitions. See his excellent summary of thermodynamics on the Internet at About.com:Physics
(http://physics.about.com/od/thermodynamics)
Apologies Barry, at this senile stage, just have no self- discipline left
Regards all,
Peter.
I am forever mystified by the way various arcane arguments arise about the issue of anthropogenic global warming.
Sadly I don’t have a graph to share – but imagine a straight line (historical and future human population size) with a vertical blip in it – that represents our discovery and rapid utilisation of fossil fuels and the resultant rapid growth of the human population, which forms a second blip, slightly lagging in phase with the first. A third trace, with a fast onset (paralleling the human growth curve) and with a far far slower decay – is the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gasses (stated as CO2 equivalents).
In this sense we are like any other organism, with sudden access to an accessible energy source (in this case fossil fuels) – we make full utility of it. This is inevitably followed by a crash – there is no other possible outcome.
To deny that humans are not the agent of the present global warming is disengenious at best – look at the land-use changes that are occuring in places such as the Amazon – to say nothing of Europe, N America and Australia. We developed and eject massive amounts of greenhouse gasses other than CO2, or even methane – think of flurocarbon refrigerants and foaming agents (with CO2 equivalents in the thousands or tens of thousands..). We have burned (and are still burning) millios of hectares of forest per year. All stored carbon… released as CO2.
I am reminded of the cartoon of Willy E Coyote – who has overshot the cliff – and finds himself in mid-air without any means of support.
We are Willy Coyote – en route to the edge of the cliff….
Hugh
It’s interesting to note how many of the posters are so concerned about every minute detail of Plimer’s claims (granted it is a thread about Plimer’s book), yet I have never seen the same examination of the audacious claims from the climate lobby. Where are all the howls of criticism of that moron Garret and his “sea levels will rise by six metres)? Fair dinkum, if there was honesty from the climate lobby, especially from zealots like Karoly, that the science is not settled and that there is still a lot to understand about climate, then I’m sure people would be more accepting of the theory. My personal observations of who takes what side indicate that tree hugging lefties and the well-meaning, but mindless tend to believe the propaganda from the climate lobby. The critics tend to be very smart, politically savvy and able to easily spot a con job.
I’m sure there is a lot of truth in Plimer’s argument. The ferociousness of the attacks against him indicate a degree of self doubt from the climate camp. He has exposed a weakness in the “warmies” and they don’t like it.
All the debate is probably pointless anyway. It is highly improbable that there will be any international agreement on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, so if it is going to cause global warming then I suggest we should be worrying about how to live in a warmer world.
Barry et al,
I clicked on the graph and all trimming vanished, ta for that. Except that the graph still stops at the year 2000 AD. And I suspect that some changes have happened since, that may just be relevant.
You are absolutely right that my guesswork re deep geomagnetic shifts controlling climate change needs comment from geofinks. I am clean out of tame ones. Here in Closeburn, they are very scarce.
Any volunteers?
I tried Jeremy Bloxham. Dean of Physical Sciences at Harvard, on whose models I have based my wild guesses re the geomag theory, but no reply at all. Monckton of Brenchley was going to run it past a friend of his, but deadly silence has followed.
This lot is popular with no-one, be they carbon-storm troopers or devout sceptics and so, no comments are forthcoming, so far. Ditto re the 50 million centrifugal pumps and sea level rise. ditto re the CO2 phase shifting etc when you pull up deep ice cores without holding the pressure constant. Also on the stratigraphy lost from icecap slippage over time.
My guessing on the deep geomag and magnetosphere waltz is based on the observable fact that there is this most extraordinary coincidence of the geomag z (radial field) shift maxima, the enhanced southern aurora just there, and the very persistent temperature trend high from the GISS data and interactive maps, just around and west of the Antarctic Peninsula. The northern hemisphere is more messy and not my campsite, so I tend to leave explaining the dance of the Siberian magnetic bear to others. t dashes all over the place, but aways seems to go home to the middle reaches of the Lean River, where the big mag z or radial trend hift for the northern hemisphere lives. There is no fit at all withe th northern aurora. Why the difference, other than the weak excuse that the field is reversed, I do not begin to understand.
I have the NASA IMAGE satellite southern auroral image enhancement and a light article on this lot up on ABC Pool, under my surname and in their science section. Also on Digital Journal under science.
So far, those voting for AGW have had a go at this geomag guessing on every peripheral issue, but never a word on the key concept, except, “young man, you should go read your textbooks,” which is what I have heard every time I have either blown it entirely or been ahead of the herd, since undergrad days.
The energy in the geomagnetic field is very large. It creates the magnetosphere. Vary the geomag field and you vary the effectiveness of the magnetosphere, and then the incoming radiation changes.
Also, the temperature at the cmb is about 4,000 degrees C or something. On a small football-sized model of the earth, the crust is a moderate pencil line thick. Heat flows through the ocean floor are largely unknown, mantle pluming causes huge magnetic shifts, and then we are aghast that surface temperatures on this football in space dare to vary over a couple of dozen degrees, when it all gets frisky?
The real question perhaps is, how does the planetary surface remain so amazingly temperature-stable?
Must be all the hot air we blow off in these debates.
Gar et al,
Here are Gerlich and Tscheuschner’s link and their abstract
re why AGW, in their view, offends the laws of thermodynamics.
That’s the link for the full paper, 115 pages.
Abstract:
“The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea the authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861 and Arrhenius 1896, but which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism by which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system.
According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist.
Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such a mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles clarified.
By showing that
(a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects,
(b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet,
(c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 °C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly,
(d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately,
(e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical,
(f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero,
the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.”
Peter Ravenscroft said:
I wonder – what would the temperatures of the surface and the atmosphere of the earth be, assuming that there were no atmospheric greenhouse gases? Similarly, what would the temperatures of the surface and the atmosphere of the earth be, assuming that there were half the concentrations of each of the atmospheric greenhouse gases?
What is the implication of the magnitudes of these temperatures, under these scenarios, for the current changings of concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases?
What exactly do you believe the “parting kick” to be? And as an aside, can heat not leave the system again without “doing work”?
Peter, Gerlich and Tscheuschner’s paper is garbage as physicist Arthur P. Smith proves in this paper, abstract here. Please check references on the internet regarding material you want to post here. At the very least you will be better informed.
Chris,
Ta for that. I will try to be perfectly informed in future.
I will give it my best shot, but I last did physics forty years ago, so if I drivel, you are not winning in the A league. I will email Gerlich and Tscheuschner and Smith next, so maybe we can get the horses mouths to the table here and get it straight.
Just for openers, however, Arthur Smith wrote:
“The fundamental characteristic of a planet in space is that of no material interchanges with its surroundings. The only substantive way energy can come in is through electromagnetic radiation, and the only way energy can leave is similarly through the planet’s own electromagnetic emissions.”
What does this chap think the solar wind consists of? Or that protons and helium nuclei (alpha particles) actually are? Not to mention all the dust that descends daily as micro-meteorites. I accept the last are probably energetically trivial in this case, but the first two are not. They bring in huge anounts of energy. So I an suspicious of his case from square one.
Bernardm
Ta also. No idea what the temperatures would be in the cases you propose, seems that could be tricky to establish with numbers, in the real universe.
No-one is arguing that we do not have an infra-red absorbing atmosphere that lowers temperatures, of course we do, and that atmosphere ofcours re-radiates heat back into space. What is being challenged is the ability of a cold atmosphere to heat a warm planetary surface. That is what seems to Gerlich and Tscheuschner (and to their tentative acolyte here) to offend the Second Law.
The parting kick guess of mine, re the First Law, is where has all the CO2-trapped solar energy gone since 1998? Atmospheric CO2 rises steadily, greenhouse radiation trapping is assumed by AGW to be still switched on, temperatures wobble down and the heat is not going into the oceans. So where is it? Or what work has it done. I know the IPCC report is thick, but …. Is the heat hiding in the the extra hurricanes that we seem not to be having, by the stats? In the thickening Antarctic icecap? Where?
Peter
P.S. My email, for one and all to use, is [email protected] I will try to reply to all emails, if I can.
What you call fine detial is basic fact checking. How would you determine the veracity of his claim?
The “fine detial” shows he has used a bogus temperature chart to makes his argument. That is not a good basis.
The reason there is interest in looking at the detail in Ian Plimers book is because the information to which he refers to back his arguments is demonstratably rubbish!! Little ‘details’ like Tuvalu is sinking so global sea level rise is not happening. Yes actual sea level rise measurements show Tuvalu is sinking…at 0.2mm per year while sea level rise measurements record rises of 5.6mm per year!! Little ‘details’ like this are obviously important!!
In regards to Peter Garretts 6m sea level rise comment, there is every reason to be concerned about multi metre sea level rise. Sea level rates of rise are accelerating and estimates revised upwards recently to be around 1m by 2100 with 1 to 2m a very real possibility, and with 7m of global sea level rise in the Greenland ice sheets which are starting to melt, and another 5m at least in the rapidly warming West Antartic Peninsula, well over 6m is a very real possibility over extended time frames of several centuries. And these processes are irreversible short of another deep ice age, so once initiated in a big way will play out over several hundred years.
Hundreds of millions of Euros are already being spent in European cities like Hamburg, London and the Netherlands to ‘adapt’ to sea level rise in measures that will likely not be enough. It is going to cost trillions to deal with this issue alone around the world by 2100 let alone after that!!
Bernard,
When you link a spoof paragraph to a conclusion and leave out all the serious plodding, fair enough, but see Babbage on trimming, above.
The link to Gerlich and Tscheuschner (2009) keeps escaping me. It is here:
I hope.
Donza,
With you all the way, except that we do not have any idea if the world will get warmer or colder next. This is the peak of an interglacial with a slightly lower plateau than usual on its tail, in which we are camping. The peaks are usully sharpish But in a few millennia, we will fall off this pleasant (for rainforest apes gone walkabout) plateau, so sprint now for your winter woolies.
But in the interim? No AGW, no certainty. Life gets exciting again.
Peter, re: “The parting kick guess of mine, re the First Law, is where has all the CO2-trapped solar energy gone since 1998?”
You do realise that the global temperature series showing the blip up in 1998 refer to surface temperatures and the oceans are on average about 4 km deep, right? I mean, you do know this, don’t you?
Yes?
Gaz, global temperatures over the last ten years, with the degree of cooling influence from volcanic activity and aerosols and slightly declining solar activity, leaving greenhouse gases aside, should be back down near where they at the start of the 20th C when we had a similar levels of solar, and volcanic activity. What is keeping temperatures about 0.7 degrees higher than that?? The warming from greenhouse gases. Explain that and you might have something.
It is a also a very poor argument to take the really strong El nino in 1998 as your starting point and then try to argue global warming is over because global temperatures are slightly less than that natural event. El Nino’s leave the globe warmer than otherwise for the year or so they play out and this was a humdinger. You are going to have to do better than this!!
We are at least 5000 years from another ice age from Milankovitch cycles and recent work indicates the extra warming we have created may have delayed that out to 20,000 years. The Sun is pretty inactive at present. We may go into another Maunder Minimum if this continues but the extra warming from CO2 is far greater than the cooling effect from this influence. So I wouldn’t go for the woolies just yet!!
DR I think you may have misconstrued my comment.
I was simply pointing out to Mr Ravenscroft that the system in which heat is building up, thanks to increased greenhouse gas concentrations, includes more than just the surface of the ocean and the lower troposphere.
Hence the answer to his rhetorical question “where has all the CO2-trapped solar energy gone since 1998..?” is “Nowhere. It’s still there, just not in the small part of the system we happened to be measuring.”
Presumably, next time an El Nino comes along and shuts all the 98ers up, he will ask where all the heat came from. The answer will be much the same – it was already there, but now it is in the small part of the system we happen to be measuring.
I assure you I am not arguing global warming is over.
“— change the internal energy of the system or cause the system to do work” – Well isn’t that the wind does,from the Jet Stream to the lower level winds?
Peter Ravenscroft
That’s OK. Just try not to be so badly misinformed.
As in ….. how much compared with electromagnetic radiation?
That’s pretty amazing compared with your lack of suspicion of Gerlich and Tscheuschner. Ever thought of trying to be consistent?
Peter,
Did you really think all those scientists worked for years – over 150 years in fact – on a theory that turned out to be a basic and obvious contravention of a fundamental principle of phyics? And all those guys with PhDs in Physics and other disciplines, with all their supercomputers and so on, and all their publications in peer-reviewed journals, they all just happened to not notice?
Really?
There’s plenty of expert commentary about G&T if you’re interested – you can start at the Wikipedia entry. Eli Rabett and some others are working on a comprehenisive rebuttal you can get to via his blog, if you want to follow it up.
As a general rule, if someone with little or no track record in a scientific field pops up and claims to have proven everyone else wrong, it’s a pretty safe bet they’re either deluded or lying.
[…] Professor Barry Brook, Director of Climate Science at The Environment Institute, University of Adelaide, rebuts Plimer’s arguments on his site Brave New Climate. […]
WHAT??
So how do you explain the surface temprature of Venus?
Ummm, er … Peter, where did you do ‘climate science 101′ again? Or is what you are saying your own words?
Gaz:
The next time an El Nino comes along all the 98ers will suddenly becomes experts on El Nino, i.e. they will constantly assert that the new record warmest year is only warm because of El Nino. At the moment if you ask them what El Nino is, you will get a response along the lines of “duh, what’s that?”
Chris,
1) Have you read everything relevant to climate change in, say, glaciology, sport? Or maybe in crystallography? You would be the first, if you have.
2) Compared to EM radiation, don’t know. Good question, will pursue.
3) Yup. I was sceptical of G and T, still am, it’s my trade. Just did not see any such an apparent glaring error in the Germans’ paper as in Arthur Smith’s abstract. I have now emailed Gerhard Gerlich and asked for his comments. Will then try find Arthur Smith.
Gaz,
First, ta for the links. Will follow.
Re this planet having deep oceans. Yes, I have noticed. I did study physical oceanography, once way back.and have worked at it also, tracking currents. The problem for CO2 driven-warming is, if you wish to transfer heat to the deep oceans, how do you get it down there without the ocean surface showing any trace of its passage? We do after all measure sea surface temperatures fairly steadily with satellites. Does it suddenly, like the malgas, dive into the sea when and just where the El Ninos surface? And why does it only go down deep during and after major El Ninos? And re El Ninos, Antarctic Bottom Water seems to take of the order of a hundred years to reach just South Africa, probably similar or more time to Peru. And, the oceans are very thermally stratified. You may perhaps be able to store the missing heat in kinetic energy in the seas, but that has not been demonstrated to be happening. If it is, as the CMB temp is about 4,000 degrees C, and heat flows through the sea floor are pretty much unknown, we then get into a whole new game. If you can find the lost heat, I will be delighted.
We may have a whole new Hollywood genre here. Gaz and the Search for the Lost Heat. A thrilling (and romantic, you can have any pretty co-star you like, of course) adventure, set in the deep abyssal plains, in which the intrepid adventurer single-handedly (even-handedly?)saves AGW.
Next. Not sure yet if I think “they” have all missed the thermodynmics show stopper, but I have seen some astounding oversights in science since I started. Plate tectonics had just surfaced, to everyone’s amazement. Pretty big things to overlook, continental and oceanic crustal plates. In my first year, blokes were rushing about grinning from ear to ear, asking, how did we miss that lot? Alex Du Toit’s manuscript notes on Mesosaurus tenuidens were in the department’s museum cupboard, but. Who ever heard of him? And so on.
I am never shocked at what the science population has missed. If you run through the list of 34 people that Charlie Darwin himself gave as having tackled evolution, (often by natural selection), before him, in the later editions of the forewords of the “Origin”, you will see quite a few folk you probably do not know of. And nor did anyone else. Aristotle sure, but Wells and Matthew? I do not know which of the Frenchmen and Germans were then unknowns, but it is still difficult to find several of them.
Geology at least does not depend particularly on the pronouncements of the famous – just on the solid guesswork of the myriads. Collecting medals and accolades is a separate department. And we are as a trade forever overturning hallowed dogmas and hypotheses. Bacon suggested continental drift in about 1629, but it took a while to catch on, and it is most likely that some total unknown suggested it to him. But eventually we bought it.
The Pope just bought evolution. Now how did the tens of thousands of learned Jesuit doctors miss that lot? Given that Aristotle had explained it clearly, before there were Jesuits? The Church of the Holy Molecule may also in time, have to give up some hallowed ground.
I am not yet solidly through Gerlich and Tscheuschner (2009) and as said, I am not up to understanding the equations, let alone commenting intelligently on them. There is a lot of close argument there. Have you read it all, and would you care to comment on their work in detail?
Re how hot would it be here without an atmosphere? See the moon. Same distance from the furnace, basalt as we have much of here. Max 120 degrees C near midday, minus 150 C at the end of the night.No-one is saying the atmosphere does not moderate the planet’s temperatures.
P.S. Ta for the title, by the way. Mister? I won’t know myself! It would be nice to know who I am debating, here.
Peter,
1) Making a cursory internet search on something doesn’t mean you will be perfectly informed, just better informed than you were about Gerlich and Tscheuschner. I don’t know why you are trying to make a strawman.
2) Solar wind particles do not reach the Earth’s surface and very few get through the magnetosphere and reach the upper atmosphere. Your objection is insignificant nitpicking.
3) If you are sceptical of Gerlich and Tscheuschner, why do you bring it up here as some sort of authority? If you want glaring errors in G&T, here’s a few:
Yes, “greenhouse effect” doesn’t really describe how a greenhouse works. Scientists have known that for longer than G&T have been alive.
Take the temperature in representative areas and take the average. They had the figure approximately right as far back as the late 19th century.
It’s the difference between the Earth’s mean global annual surface temperature of 288 K and its radiative equilibrium temperature of 255 K (I get 254 K myself). Yes, if Earth didn’t have an atmosphere, its albedo would probably be different and Te would be a little different, but so what? What possible relevance does that have?
The formulas of cavity radiation aren’t generally used at all in atmosphere physics unless one is discussing blackbodies. The Stefan-Boltzmann law:
I = s T^4
is the basic “cavity radiation law.” For a greybody one adds an emissivity term, and for a real body one adds a wavelength or frequency subscript to the emissivity term and accounts for the fraction of radiation output in the range of interest. Usually you can use the Planck law for the blackbody fraction, then multiply by the appropriate fractional constants.
Very true. The Earth’s atmosphere is in radiative-convective balance, not radiative balance. G&T apparently think climatologists don’t know this.
Thermal conductivity and friction are covered in the expressions for surface cooling by sensible heat loss, which is part of what makes up the “convective” part of “radiative-convective equilibrium.” They are only set to zero for theoretical simplifications usually shown to students.
If you want to avoid trashing your credibility further, it would help a lot if you didn’t mention G&T again.
BTW, if you’re wondering where all the CO2-trapped solar energy has gone since 1998, perhaps you should also wonder where all the heat suddenly came from between 1997 and 1998.
Peter Ravenscroft said:
“Spoof”? You were making an inference, no matter your example, and I simply tried to elicit some deeper thinking on your part. Which, by the way, you seem to have avoided.
And as to “trimming”, I used a typical internet convention to omit extraneous (and in this case, irrelevant) padding. I would note too that any reader could easily find the post I quoted from, if they were so inclined, and understand the complete context of your comment.
Anyway, whilst you are grappling with the laws of thermodynamics and the questions I posed earlier, perhaps you could also explain to us why the atmosphere, which is exposed to the same radiation from the sun that heats the planet’s surface (as well as to the reflected and reradiated ER from the same planetary surface), is so much colder for much of its thickness than is the surface. Most especially, how does this factor into the thermodynamics of the greenhouse effect? And as another aside, and as somewhat of a hint, why is it that you assume that scientists say that it is the “cold atmosphere [that is] heat[ing] a warm planetary surface”, and not the sun?
I know that the greenhouse metaphor sticks in the craw of many denialists, but perhaps you could also explain the significance of the fact that I often have condensation on the inside of my own greenhouse, and that the interior is able to increase in temperature in spite of the mechanism that leads to this condensation.
Seems desent is not flavour of the month, as is Swine flu, wonder what it will be next month.
I know the media will tell us and we can all relax or get ready for more doom and gloom.
what a bunch of sheep people are when their little certainties are challenged.
Ah the inquisition is alive and well in the minds of the people who should know better.
Dear Steve,
Do you have anything of substance rather than just rhetorical slurs.
When some people’s certainties are challenged, they re-evaluate and (sometimes)
change their mind … this was the point of my post.
A nice little piece on realclimate.com today shows
what other people do … Lord Monckton just makes stuff up and tells lies.
Swine flu? The sequence of WHO daily updates on the
number of people officially infected for the past 4 updates has been 615, 331, 257, 148 — starting from the most recent. Not quite doubling every update
but close. The good news is that the case-fatality rate looks to be
relatively low … just like the first wave of flu in 1918. Anybody not
concerned doesn’t understand viruses, anybody panicking also doesn’t understand
viruses.
Having read several comments above, but having spent my career as an environmental scientist at *ground zero* – ie, Boulder, Colorado, USA, home of UCAR, NCAR, one NOAA lab, and two influential university atmospheric science departments at ground zero – and having been moved to embrace BOTH sides of the AGW issue over time, I must enter a few comments on critiques of a book I have not yet read (and, it seems, no one commenting above has either).
First, invoking Oreskes as authoritative, when roughly half a dozen social science pieces have been done on the “majority” question, is ridiculous. To my mind, all of them have flaws. Second, it amazes me is how few knowledgeable earth scientists (eg, last summer’s world Geological Congress in Oslo – the session on global warming is available online), outside of the confines of that odd neologism “climate scientists,” embrace AGW. Third, there seem to be no debates between AGW alarmists and critics where the “consensus” side wins. How is this possible? Too much ducking? Or is there something fundamentally wrong in doing “science” based on “weight of the evidence” instead of according to traditional standards like replication and falsifiabilty?
Certainly, appeals to “majority” such as Brooke and Frankis ought to be ruled out of court! While boards of institutions composed of scientists might do so, science itself does not and has never functioned according to democratic rules. If atmospheric science is to be saved from the path of Lysenkoism, such appeals must be rejected by everyone concerned with the truth-finding function of honest science.
Liberal science, as Jonathan Rauch explains in “Kindly Inquisitors,” is at stake as much as AGW-alarmists claim civilization is threatened. When will we realize this? On the account of the above critique, not soon.
Glickson states:
“(5) Next, truth is out – they resort to derogatory terms such as “alarmists”, “warmists”, AGW theorists”, and worse, which reveals they are not really interested to learn either the science facts or the physics/chemistry explanation, but have a prior conviction, i.e. the atmosphere is not warming, or if it does its not of anthropogenic origin.
Where they can not argue with scientists on technical/scientific points, they resort to personal denigrating comments.”
No-neither. Never in the dozen (or so) debates in the US and Canada I have been privy to. Instead, the shoe is on the other foot: alarmists commit these errors, sullying their stance.
Orson, have a look at realclimate.com’s post today on Lord Monkton. It
seems pretty clear to me that the man is not just mistaken but fraudulent. When
I see Ian Plimer, as in
http://www.independentweekly.com.au/news/local/news/general/environment-the-new-religion/1254171.aspx
seriously assert that climate scientists ignore new facts, I think the man
is either wrong and knows he’s wrong or wrong and doesn’t, which makes
him lazy or stupid. Did, for example, climate scientists ignore the
criticisms of Mann’s famous hockey graph? Not a bit, they used different
statistics and different proxies to redo the work. By
2007, there were 11 replications. And Plimer comes along and
says climate scientists ignore criticisms. Does this sound like
a valid criticism to you?
Orson.
I note that you did not address Geoff Russell’s points. I would be interested to hear what you have to say about them.
Also, geology is even not remotely the same as meteorology; nor is it climatology. However, many geologists have ‘mining interests’ associated with fossil fuel production, and it is not a long bow to draw to imagine why they might have inherent biases in their interpretations with respect to climate change. Perhaps you could detail a procedure to convincingly exclude this obvious risk from the colouring of opinions of many geologists.
Finally, some of the most intelligent and scientifically sceptical geologists and geophysicists I know (and I know a few) have no difficulty at all with the AGW premise. How would you explain this?
Chris,
Ta for your time again.
I will mention Gerlich and Tsheuschner as an when it suits me, ta also for the sage advice, but I am not particularly interested in my personal credibility, that went west decades ago. As ever, I am just interested in finding out, as best I can, what the reality is. I have no medals to hunt or career to advance and do not give a stuff who gets the accolades and who the brickbats. Just in nudging the debate along.
Why did I dare mention the work of G and T if I am sceptical o it? Because,as I said, I am not in a position to determine for myself if their physics is correct. They say AGW is nonsense and infinges the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Folk like you say it is not and does not. Fine, as with geologists, we have a debate, this one with the usual Internet bad manners.
I have some reason to believe, on geological criticisms, see my website if you have nothing better to do,at
http://www.freewebs.com/psravenscroft/
that there are serious holes in the AGW case. So, when I see physicists or others who are also sceptical, I am interested to throw it into the ring, to see what others such as yourself say.
In essence, we are all, paid or not,working for an understanding of this issue, as it has some importance for what humanity ought or ought not do next. .
I think, correct me if I am wrong, that all your criticism of G and T’s work so far is derived from their abstract. Have you read the whole paper? Care to comment further?
I have to some extent avoided criticism of Ian Plimer’s book because I have not read it, so I started by commenting on some of Barry’ remarks.
There seems to be an edge of desperation in some of the criticism of CO2 sceptics. I find it everywhere. Why else all the abuse, scorn and invective? This is simply a debate in science, which has got through a few hundred year mostly with good manners. Attempts at mild humour seem to invoke frenzies. All very odd.
Re the old one below as to why geologists are so sceptical, and are we all in the pay of or biased by some wish to see mining proceed unhindered by reality. I much doubt that. After you have worked for a few dozen exploration companies, mostly run by desk jockeys from dreamland, the usual attitude is one of amused contempt. with some remarkable exceptions. it is jut that we put up marvellous theory after marvellous theory, then shoot them to pieces ourselves with the next line of drill holes. The fantasies built up around the only two deep ice cores we have to date, Vostok and Dome C, about pt atmospheric CO2 levels, are astounding. So we are sceptical as a group. Of course some geologists accept AGW – some also accept an earth that is 6,000 years old. Some hve complex arguments as to why AGW is real, but most probably take the opposite view. And yes, there are some company men and women who push the company line as part of their work, and they make lot of noise, having large trumpets. But that does not sway most of us. we are just very sceptical of the science. It looks far too simplistic to be true.
Re the heat that appeared in 97-98. I have wondered. Antarctic Bottom Water, at least the branch that surfaces off Peru, crosses the warmest path of sea floor in the world,by seismic velocity work, at least in part. It moves moves very slowly and along very active (and warm) plate boundaries, where the heat flows are largely unknown, but keep in mind that basalt melts at fairly high temperatures, and what sea floor preading is. I hve had a go at tying to calulate the heat involved withthe actual melting over the time availble an it i way insufficient, but if there is substantial warming on the flanks of the spreading areas, it may be significant. We are a couple of orders of magnitude out (too low) given the heat flow guesses currently popular for averages, but then, we just found water at depth and at, I think it was 400 degrees C, in the Atlantic. And had no idea it was there. There may be large areas that are a few degrees warmer than we have estimated, an that erratically. Mantle pluming is real and moves vast amounts of heat. So, maybe internal heat adds kinetic energy to the deep water, and when an energetic pulse surfaces, we get El Ninos. I think there is too much heat in those sudden pulses for it to have an atmospheric origin. All that is wild guesswork, and I am aware that the met folk will not like it at all. so if you can trash it, very good. Just without the hectoring tone would be good.
Re the solar wind. If the magnetosphere weakens, and it is weakening now, if the atmosphere does not stop the extra protons and alpha particles that then get past the magnetosphere, then what does? And if the atmosphere does stop them, it will heat. I suggest this is or may be a far from trivial heat source.
You did not answer my enquiry as to whether you have read everything relevant to this topic, in glaciology and crystallography. If you have not, are you sure you are competent to give opinions and advice in this field? By precisely the arguments whereby you suggest I am not and should not?
Bernard,
Sure there are geos on both sides in this debate, and I know of no polls about what the “intelligent” ones think. I have found it diplomatic to assume that all are about equally sensible or daft, though I do accept some are sober more often than others.
The past record of climates is mostly contained in rocks. Ice is formally a rock. Sedimentology is very largely about past surface climates. This entire debate depends largely on whether the CO2 peak at present is abnormally high, compared to past interglacial CO2 peaks. If this is a normal peak, what is the fuss about? There are serious grounds for questioning whether we either do or can know that simple point, from the data to hand.
That is about why many geologists, like Ian Plimer, get involved, not because we all want bigger pay packets. I have looked for and found coal but would be happier if we mined and wasted far less. I personally do not give a rats what the coal and oil companies think about my views. Or the uranium miners either. Being folk who work a bit away from offices and bosses, we are a reasonably independent and ill-disciplined bunch.The notion that we are a group of company sycophants crawling for gold watches or something is faintly amusing.
We are simply folk who have seen endless strings of fine hypotheses shot down by drill holes and surface sampling and remote sensing and mining. And by logic, occasionally. .
So how do you account for the surface temperature of Venus? Any ideas there?
Plutocrat, your comment that the IPCC’s charter “only allows it to consider human causes of climate change” implies it is not allowed to consider any other causes of climate change.
This implication, whether or not you intended it, is clearly false.
In order to understand “the risk of human-induced climate change, its observed and projected impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation” the IPCC has to consider all influences on the climate.
Anyone with even a passing familarity with the IPCC reports will know the IPCC does this at great length and in great detail.
Do you genuinely believe the IPCC does not consider any other causes of climate change?
Have you actually read anything published by the IPCC?
Orson, You did relise you contradicted your self in this post?
“they resort to derogatory terms such as “alarmists””
Orson, can you refute Oreskes’s findings?
Re. debate- I think you’ll find the debate in pages of peer reviewed literature. Would you like to suggest a more appropriate media for scientific exactness?
Peter Ravenscroft,
You think “This entire debate depends largely on whether the CO2 peak at present is abnormally high, compared to past interglacial CO2 peaks” but this more to it that that.
No, the significant question is whether it would be as high as it is now in the absence of human activity and the well-established answer is “NO”.
Do you really think the current level of atmospheric CO2 is in any way “normal”?
Peter Ravenscroft:
Didn’t say you couldn’t. You’re just another person with no credibility.
How is that a reason FOR mentioning it?
There is no debate in the scientific literature which is hardly surprising considering the glaring errors in it.
So you think the main weakness of AGW is that past warmings were very much greater than “now”. In other words if what would now be considered a catastrophic change has happened in the past, your argument is that change that is a substantial fraction of those past changes is nothing to worry about simply because it’s happened in the past. What a bizarre argument. Not only that, it isn’t actually an argument against AGW, it’s just arguing that the consequences are insignificant.
I think the serious holes are in your argument, as I’ve pointed out above.
This has already been done which is why I suggested you should have searched the internet. There’s plenty out there already if you really want it.
What? So you think if a paper’s abstract is garbage that that is of no real significance? The abstract is supposed to be a summary and contain the main conclusions of the paper. If the abstract is garbage then the paper’s conclusions are garbage.
You may not have noticed but this debate is not being done by scientists. It is being done by many non-scientists some of whom are blatantly dishonest (e.g. Monckton) or offensive nutcases (e.g. Curtin. These people usually start the offense, as well as being dishonest.
Yes in the upper atmosphere. Not really significant at the surface where AGW is happening.
You haven’t yet tested Arthur Smith’s hypothesis (i.e. with actual values). I can’t see any evidence that your objection is anything other than insignificant nitpicking.
G’day all,
Here is some comment on Professor Gerlich and Professor Tscheuschner’s (peer-reviewed, by jingo)work, that may prove interesting. (Yeah, I know all Germans are professors, but it does seem these two are included in that club. They have not got back yet, by the way)
It seems the physicists do not all have the same opinions either. Three cheers for them.
See also where one more physics prof and a geofizz one chip in their two bobs worth.
Some of them, who do not think Gerlich is right, do not think that carbon dioxide is making any significant contribution to warming anyway.
And, stuck in my personal groove, I still keep thinking that a cmb of 4,000 degrees C, a pencil-thin crust on a hot football, and a rapidly shifting internal magnetic field, with a fierce solar wind just offshore, are a better bet as drivers of planetary climate change than the trace tailpipe gas of one large primate. Is CO2 supposed to have triggered the ice ages? The IPCC itself (may its name be ever hallowed) says it does not think so.
So, why are we now, just this last century, in a totally different mode of climate change? If you claim that the proof is that sea level rise is abnormal, a major point used against Ian Plimer, you need to explain away the quite abnormal groundwater pumping and depletion since the invention of the centrifugal and force pumps and the motors that drive them. Where are you going to store all that water? This is, by the way, Ian Plimers main argument – that we are well within the bounds of natural variability here. The notion that recent CO2 levels are abnormal for an interglacial peak cannot yet be proven from the data to hand.
Meanwhile, there is this extraordinary match on the maps, taking the simpler southern hemisphere case, between the region of maximum geomagnetic shift, the region of greatest incoming radiation from the Van Allen belts (the auroral enhancement on NASA’s IMAGE satellite image, see ABC Pool etc)and where the planet is warming most.
Why, on AGW grounds, is the maximum heating for the southern hemisphere consistently at and west of the Antarctic Peninsula?. What concentrates CO2 radiation-trapping abilities just there? Right where we have developed the greatest weakening in the geomagnetic field on this planet, in the last few hundred years? No-one has yet explained that to me.
An aside. One more reason why geologists, particularly those from the exploration industry, are so sceptical as a mob about AGW, has just occurred to me. We cook up fine hypotheses, about where the ore is. Then we drill, and everyone from the camp cook to the company chairman knows you just blew it, because one project in 3,000 finds a mine, at present. And they know it a couple of weeks, on average, after you dreamed up your masterpiece. And see their jobs going down the drain in onsequence, often enough. So we are used to a) being wary of our own or other’ bullshit theories b)seeing them going down accompanied by the quiet laughter of Murphy, and c) being very publicly wrong. In academia, in contrast you can often put up nonsense and get away with it for years, or even forever, because very little of obvious consequence or cost hangs on the result. Go read a few zoology or botany PhDs.
And in climatology?
Cheers,
Peter
PS Not “scio,” I know or I understand, but “cogito,” from the dictionary, the intellectual processes of the self or ego, i.e. I think? Science has a bad name? Any volunteers to be cognitists?
Dear Chris,
Again, ta for your time and your charming comments. Am just back from paddling my old kayak round a beautiful and deserted lake, try it some time, it may change your views both on science and on being light and airy.
As a nitpicker with no credibility, as we have now established beyond question, I would like to ask again, have you read the whole of Professors Gerlich and Tscheuschner’s (peer-reviewed, I suspect)paper? And would you care to comment on the content therein,rather than just on the abstract? It is free on the net, you know.
If you do, I will look forward to sending it on to them.
I am sorry to be a complete idiot, but if all the solar wind is stopped in the upper atmosphere, what are the auroras? As they are visible from the ground you cannot claim that nothing whatsoever gets through. Photons may not be in quite the same class as CO2 in the planet-warming department, and I will in fact cheerfully accept they are useless at it. But they are not sweet nothing. And they may be accompanied by ore energetic distant relatives
Here is a snippet from the net
from :
“The Van Allen belts are most intense over the Equator and are effectively absent above the poles. No real gap exists between the two zones; they actually merge gradually, with the flux of charged particles showing two regions of maximum density. The inner region is centred approximately 3,000 km (1,860 miles) above the terrestrial surface. The outer region of maximum density is centred at an altitude of about 15,000 to 20,000 km (9,300 to 12,400 miles), though some estimates place it as far above the surface as six Earth radii (about 38,000 km [23,700 miles]).
The inner Van Allen belt consists largely of highly energetic protons, with energy exceeding 30,000,000 electron volts. The peak intensity of these protons is approximately 20,000 particles per second crossing a spherical area of one square cm in all directions. It is believed that the protons of the inner belt originate from the decay of neutrons produced when high-energy cosmic rays from outside the solar system collide with atoms and molecules of the Earth’s atmosphere. Some of the neutrons are ejected back from the atmosphere; as they travel through the region of the belt, a small percentage of them decay into protons and electrons. These particles move in spiral paths along the lines of force of the Earth’s magnetic field. As the particles approach either of the magnetic poles, the increase in the strength of the field causes them to be reflected. Because of this so-called magnetic mirror effect, the particles bounce back and forth between the magnetic poles. Over time, they collide with atoms in the thin atmosphere, resulting in their removal from the belt.
The outer Van Allen belt contains charged particles of both atmospheric and solar origin, the latter consisting largely of helium ions from the solar wind (steady stream of particles emanating from the Sun). The protons of the outer belt have much lower energies than those of the inner belt, and their fluxes are much higher. The most energetic particles of the outer belt are electrons, whose energies reach up to several hundred million electron volts.
Studies show that intense solar activity causes disruptions of the Van Allen belts, which in turn are linked with such phenomena as auroras and magnetic storms. See also aurora; magnetic storm.”‘
But, and this i the discredited nitpicker here again. given those very high altitudes, we still have the auroras coming down to between 70km and 400 kms. There are some very energetic particles up there, 30 million EV is not nothing, and I suspect some of that lot gets down further, maybe explaining the temperature peak at 50 kms. And maybe, where the magnetosphere is locally weakened, also a fair bit of the temperature change in the troposphere and close to and at the surface. We do have magnetic storms that knock out power grids, when the sun plays up. I think those power grids are mostly parked close to the ground, anyway, I have seen few in orbit. Permanently reduce the magnetosphere, as is happening now, and the ability of such solar storms to transmit heat to the surface will be increased, AGW experts will doubtless claim the energy is trivial, as they already know what is warming the surface etc., but I do not think we know, as yet.
What I do know is the CO2-increase graph parted company with the temperature graph a decade back, after being in step for only a few decades. All the IPCC predictions were for steady warming, and it simply has not happened. I would neither buy on the stock market on such a poor correlation nor site a drill rig on any theory that claimed that such a thing was not a serious mismatch. Not when the empirical evidence, the map overlaps in this case, suggests that entirely another game is in play.
Chris, if you would like to joust with a solar man who will match your style, Leif Svalgaard has put a whole lot of effort (and invective, aimed at others, I hasten to add) into a thread I inadvertently started with a dud Ap Index-SOI graph, a week or two back, on Wattsupwiththat, Anthony Watt’s (very sceptical) blog. I can ask him if he would like to get into this debate, if you like.
Curtin I do not know, Monckton I do, having interchanged several emails with his lordship. For what it is worth, I never found M of B dishonest, just a touch formal. Algy declines to debate him still, I think?
Regards,
Peter.
Peter Ravenscroft:
“We cook up fine hypotheses, about where the ore is. Then we drill, and everyone from the camp cook to the company chairman knows you just blew it, because one project in 3,000 finds a mine, at present.”
I get it now. The prospect of only having a one in 3,000 chance of being right is just business as usual. Thanks for putting it into perspective.
Hi Peter,
With all due respect, the Gerlich and Tscheuschner paper has been soundly discredited. If you would like to see the discussion on this go to:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/02/all-you-never-wanted-to-know-about.html
http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=G._Gerlich_and_R._D._Tscheuschner#Rebuttals
regards,
DR
Thanks for the tip. I’ll put on the sunscreen next time I see them.
By the way, I shan’t be responding further to those who have some sort of reading difficulty. It’s like talking to a post.
Plimer on Lateline
I’ve just caught up with Ian Plimer’s interview on Lateline and wish to share a few ideas with Barry and his bloggers.
Plimer performs well, he is like a politician with is favoured lines he just has to get out – but they work, they stick in listener/viewers’ minds, so very clever.
But I think he muffed badly by attacking, so relentlessly, Jones, toward the end of the interview. This revealed a side of the ‘scientist’ as overtly a man driven by political agendas – what sort of political agendas? How far to the right wing of the political spectrum? If too far, one starts to look a little loopy and that just crept out toward the end of the interview – it won’t help
him.
What the public want, I figure, is politics out of the debate, they want to know what the counter arguments are, no doubt, but want it delivered without the type of passions Plimer evokes – same goes for the other side. That’s why I think Flannery is losing it as a convincing advocate for more action. And while he does convey these well, he ends up drawing suspicion that he his motivated by something else apart from the study of the facts as they are contended.
Barry’s political advantage in all this, as I see it, lies with him being environmentalist who wants practical and, s I see it realistic even hopeful,answers to how emissionsmay be reduced. And certainly supporting nuclear energy confounds those who would like to box him into the typical greenie crowd. Lots of street cred in that position, I figure.
Back to Plimer’s book, I’ve read the first and last chapter, I thought it most curious the paragraph in the final chapter on Garnaut. I attended his book launch and recall his complaining about his critics who tend too often to ‘play the man’ but this is just what he does with arather nasty cheap shot at a fellow mining company director! The attack had nothing to do with Garnaut’s report – all very odd.
So that adds to the picture that Plimer may well struggle with being ‘objective’, – the very thing he champions. He comes across, the more I watch him as little dogmatic and driven to crush his opponents. Yes he is funny with amusing turns of phrase, but they a also a little hackneyed as well. But in the end, his claim that all the ‘warmist’ science is ‘wrong’ strikes me as just so extreme and at least Lateline used Barry’s point on this matter, namely that that is ‘absurd’.
In the end I want to be convinced by Plimer, but so far I’m still for ‘buying an insurance policy’ against the future. Our governments, State and Federal and international agreements on emission reductions remain important, but more importantly, government investment support for low carbon emitting technologies is required as means for encouraging private sector investment.
Regards,
HayMan
Figure 24. on p. 242 is sourced according to the caption on my web site (if anyone actually bothers to read anything they discuss these days) from:
“Carbon dioxide after Berner (2001) & temperature after Scotese (2001; see also Boucot et al., 2004) sourced from http://www.geocraft.com showing the degree of variation in carbon dioxide throughout geological history.”
Although out of date, more up to date studies such as Royer et. al. 2004) that go beyond projections into real hard data, nonetheless fail to support the correlation of CO2 and temperature: see http://climate.geologist-1011.net
Prove you’ve actually read the book by addressing the two key questions instead of playing rhetorical chairs.
Anybody who thinks Plimer’s pretence at objectivity is anything other
than pretence, then have a look at the Independent Weekly story
http://www.independentweekly.com.au/news/local/news/general/environment-the-new-religion/1254171.aspx
When Plimer took on the creationists (at great personal cost), I thought
he was wonderful. But his first Independent Weekly article (before they
were online) convinced me that he just plain didn’t know much about
climate science.
BTW, there is a great (and free) on-line resource that people with a spare
year or two to invest in solid study should consider. Its an
online book (text book actually, complete with questions and workbook
if you want to get your hands dirty), soon to be published, from one of the realclimate.com garcons
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/ClimateBook/ClimateBook.html
In my limited experience the Australian is very selective about what it puts – it’s not keen on the other side. About a year or more ago, they ran high profile articles alleging a Sierra Leonean author had fabricated dates of his autobiography, about child soldiering. I knew the book fairly well. I pointed out to the Aus, the author had in general been very vague on dates, had said he had no means of recording dates, and one could not expect any dates given, to be other than rough estimates. The Aus didnt publish that either .
The book makes a lot of sense, if you take the author as a company director, with the legal duties to shareholders and investors that entails.
This is not ad hominem, and it is relevant – heres why. Most of the comments above assume on Plimer, the duties of a professor, but in writing the book he may not be acting wholly in that role. Law imposes on directors, strict duties to provide good returns for shareholders and investors, and that constrains what they say in public, and how they act. It’s part of the legal duties of directors. A director cant be totally honest or forthright in public about his/her opinions of the corporation or products, if that would damage earnings. He has to remain silent, or spin. If that seems odd – imagine Richard Bransen authoring a book . Then imagine all airlines have freqeunt problems with losing baggage – not just Virgin Blue but all of them. Then imagine how much Bransen will put into the book, about this problem.
This may sound paranoid, but it’s worth reading “The Corporation” by Canadian legal academic Joel Bakan, who spells it out, gives the case law behind it, and explains the consequences in terms of what directors are oblilged to do, may do if they wish, and cannot do.
Plimer says in the book he is director of 3 corporations. Is he writing this book as Prof Ian Plimer scientist and public academmic? Or as Ian Plimer, Director of CBH resources?
It is important to know which role he thinks he is in, in this book. As it makes a great deal of difference to what he can legally put in print, and how thorough and balanced it has to be.
Here is an interview (downloadable MP3 file) on ‘Backstory’ Radio Adelaide 101.5, in which I talk for about 40 minutes on Ian Plimer and the book Heaven & Earth:
http://www.backstory.org.au/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Barry%20Brook.mp3
More ad homenim nonsense. May I point out that it doesn’t matter how many famous scientists agree on an idea if the idea is not supported by all the pertinent facts.
Let’s for argument’s sake, suppose that Ian R. Plimer is actually ‘Satan Incarnate’, come for any obviously nefarious end you care to imagine;
How exactly does this change a fact presented by Plimer; for example as observed by Andren et al (2000), that there were tropical organisms thriving in the Baltic Sea (53-66 degrees north of the equator) during the Medieval period – but not during the twentieth century?
Does anyone here care to comment on the obvious implications of this fact and its independence from the various character assessments on an author that presented it?
I’m still waiting for Brook to address the key questions of Heaven & Earth. Does Brook not know what these are?
I’d also like to know how someone who regularly discusses climate with Plimer knows less about Plimer’s sources than I do when I haven’t spoken with Plimer for ten years now…?
Doubt is the arbiter of science and sole guardian of intellect.
Discard doubt at your peril.
–
Timothy Casey B.Sc.(Hons.)
Who am I? More importantly, how does this bear on facts which stand on their verifiability alone?
http://www.aussmc.org/IanPlimerclimatebook.php
There are more opinions on Plimer’s book here, and elsewhere on the Net including Deltoid and Real Climate.
Timothy – you obviously haven’t read this post fully or listened to the interview Barry gave or you would have to agree that the “shonky” science had been rebutted.
I am not a scientist so I cannot answer your question, however I am a librarian, and as such, am able to comment on the criteria used to judge a book’s scientific worth for purchase.
1. All quotes, graphs, citations of other scientists must be referenced – not just those which suit the author to acknowledge. We are not mind readers or clairvoyants which is why many of Plimers sources are unknown.
2.The work has been comprehensively peer reviewed. If not, why not?
3. It has, therefore, been accepted for publication by a well-known scientific publisher and not a little known family publisher characterised by right wing, capitalist agendas.
Plimers book fails all three!
Of course, a work of fiction has different criteria – enough said!
http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/09/01/spot-the-recycled-denial-iii-–-prof-ian-plimer/
http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/10/14/two-denialist-talking-points-quashed/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/08/are-geologists-different/
More reading for you Timothy! As a geologist you should know the answer to the last post!
Plimer is my friend, so I’d hardly be referring to him as ‘Satan Incarnate’. He’s just wrong. You are waiting for me to box with shadows, Timothy.
For an excellent review of Plimer’s book, published today in The Australian, by astronomer Prof Mike Ashely, read on here:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25433059-5003900,00.html
To conclude: Plimer has done an enormous disservice to science, and the dedicated scientists who are trying to understand climate and the influence of humans, by publishing this book. It is not “merely” atmospheric scientists that would have to be wrong for Plimer to be right. It would require a rewriting of biology, geology, physics, oceanography, astronomy and statistics. Plimer’s book deserves to languish on the shelves along with similar pseudo-science such as the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky and Erich von Daniken.
Brilliant review Mike! I am ASTONISHED, but delighted,that The Australian printed such a sane, logical review. Thankyou!
Yes, the article by Mile Ashely on Plimer’s book is indeed excellent. He writes “If Plimer can do what he claims, and can prove that human emissions of CO2 have no effect on the climate, then he owes it to the scientific community and, in fact, humanity, to publish his arguments in a refereed journal.” I wonder if the same criteria can be applied to those who would have us believe that carbon dioxide is really responsible for climate change. Let them “prove” it too. What has been put forward by the climate lobby is merely a collection of computer models. The link between carbon dioxide and climate change is about the same as eating carrots and having a car accident (90%+ of those involved in car accidents have eaten carrots within 30 days of the accident). [snip]
[Ed: Slurs deleted. Go away you insulting idiot]
So far I am still struggling through the second chapter of “Heaven and Earth”, titled “History”. What amazes me here is how Plimer jumps about from one millennium or century to another and back again, endlessly adducing and repeating fragments of information in a most disturbingly kaleidoscopic fashion. It’s as though he’s a quasi-bright school kid who needs to show EVERY piece of research he’s done so as to impress the teacher, when a tenth as much, thoughtfully assembled, would actually show more understanding. The concepts proposed in this sixty nine pages could easily have been set out clearly and well in perhaps five pages.
This may be ad hominem, and having just shelled out $50 for his book I wish I was wrong, but these first sixty nine pages really flash the red light to me that I’ve probably been sold a pup by a guy who, on the surface, appeared to be a respectable – if not respected – academic.
Can you people not read? Do you not recognise a hypothetical when you see one? Yet you dodge my point that ad homenim conspiracy theories are invalid and evade the question of Plimer’s key questions.
I don’t believe you have read the book you are attempting to criticise because you fail to address the key questions put to you by the book. Unless you address these questions, your criticisms are irrelevant because they simply don’t address that main point and you haven’t shown your readers that you understand what the book says, much less are capable of making a valid criticism.
Stop evading my challenge. Prove you have actually read Plimer’s book by posting a comment that actually addresses his key questions – or do you not know what they are?
Doubt is the arbiter of science and sole guardian of intellect.
Discard doubt at your peril.
–
Timothy Casey B.Sc.(Hons.)
Who am I? More importantly, how does this bear on facts which stand on their verifiability alone?
What you describe is a particular style of writing that threads its way through different aspects of the same theme repeatedly. It is a writing and discussion style that is typically favoured by polymaths. This style of writing stimulates debate and discussion because it presents a variety of assertions+possibilities in each argument. If Plimer wanted to prove a point, the style would have limited each argument to a single assertion and drowned the argument in examples and citations for that assertion – instead of being so kaleidoscopic.
If you are worried about being sold a pup, try reading the source material and considering the facts presented for yourself. However, given the Plimer’s stance (as shown by the book’s key questions), this thought+debate provoking writing style seems most appropriate.
Doubt is the arbiter of science and sole guardian of intellect.
Discard doubt at your peril.
–
Timothy Casey B.Sc.(Hons.)
Who am I? More importantly, how does this bear on facts which stand on their verifiability alone?
You are already boxing with shadows by failing to address Plimer’s key questions.
Tim, go away and foment your silly conspiracy theories in your own cyberspace dungeon. This website is for serious intellectual discussion — something you seem incapable of dealing with.
Firstly, you conduct a scientific experiment when you look both ways before crossing the road. Your conclusion that the road is either clear or not clear is a scientific conclusion because, like science, that conclusion is based on evidence, not on consensus, public opinion, nor any form of status or authority. That makes you as much a scientist as the rest of us. In science, a fact you present stands on it’s own validity and not on your validity.
Nevertheless, you don’t have to be a expert to answer my question. All it takes is that you read Plimer’s book and thus know what his key questions are. I’m not asking people to answer Plimer’s key questions. I’m asking people to address Plimer’s key question. Even if you don’t know the answer (which nobody does yet) connecting your argument to these questions would actually make your argument relevant to the book – if it is Plimer’s book we are discussing here. That is what I am asking for.
May I point out that Plimer’s book is not a peer-reviewed compilation. Neither is it a text book. It is a book discussing facts and lack thereof, both from the past and the present in the context of a modern political issue. Does that sound like a science text book to you?
–
Timothy Casey B.Sc.(Hons.)
Who am I? More importantly, how does this bear on facts which stand on their verifiability alone?
Some reading for perps outlined by the bibliography at:
http://climate.geologist-1011.net
Why exactly are you evading my questions? I’ll ask again.
How exactly does Plimer’s reputation change a fact presented by Plimer; for example as observed by Andren et al (2000), that there were tropical organisms thriving in the Baltic Sea (53-66 degrees north of the equator) during the Medieval period – but not during the twentieth century?
Does anyone here care to comment on the obvious implications of this fact and its independence from the various character assessments on an author that presented it?
Are these questions so threatening that nobody is game to answer them? Is it possible that the real reason you are unwilling to discuss them is because they demolish some cherished notion?
–
Timothy Casey B.Sc.(Hons.)
Who am I? More importantly, how does this bear on facts which stand on their verifiability alone?
Timothy Casey,
Amonsts the many strawmen you threw up, I noted one question; “How exactly does this change a fact presented by Plimer; for example as observed by Andren et al (2000), that there were tropical organisms thriving in the Baltic Sea (53-66 degrees north of the equator) during the Medieval period – but not during the twentieth century?”
Without incorporating anymore information I would conclude that this provides evidence to argue that the Baltic sea could support some tropical organisms in which ever part of Medieval period was specified. Depending on other factors, a logical argument could be made that this could be evidence of warmer temperatures in the Baltic Sea in that period.
What does it say about global temperatures? We know that local or regional temperatues can vary dramatically due to changes in currents without changing global temperatures. With little effort Plimer could have found these findings to incorporate into his analysis
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/302/5644/404
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Bradley.pdf
http://geology.er.usgs.gov/eespteam/Atlantic/GPCabs.htm
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/070.htm
One wonders why Plimer would leave this out?
What a “serious intellectual answer”!
I wonder how it is relevant?
In the spirit of “serious intellectual discussion”, would the esteemed Barry Brooks care to tell us exactly what conspiracy theory am I supposed to be fomenting on this site? Please, illuminate us by quoting me…
Why are people here so very evasive about questions that really are seriously intellectual? Are the key questions of Plimer’s book neither serious nor intellectual? How is it silly to question the validity of the ad homenim argument or raise the implications of tropical organisms in the Medieval Baltic?
How is this website to be taken seriously if
1. It hosts book reviews that fail to address or otherwise identify the main point of the book.
2. Evades questions about the main point of books reviewed when this issue is raised.
3. Accuses those who ask such questions of “fomenting silly conspiracy theories” in order to end the discussion of the key theme.
May I remind you that it was not I, who insinuated that Plimer’s role as a company director may have tarnished his book’s objectivity.
–
Timothy Casey B.Sc.(Hons.)
Who am I? More importantly, how does this bear on facts which stand on their verifiability alone?
Timothy Casey,
I’ll look past the strawmen and non-sequiturs I see in this post and address the single question of science in this post. You ask: “How exactly does this change a fact presented by Plimer; for example as observed by Andren et al (2000), that there were tropical organisms thriving in the Baltic Sea (53-66 degrees north of the equator) during the Medieval period – but not during the twentieth century?”
I’d suggest that tropical organisms are possible evidence of warmer sea temperature in the Baltic Sea for the period in question. A curios mind might ask, what does that say about global temperatures? We understand that local/regional temperature can change without a change in global temperatures. Eg. as currents change.
So a curios mind might like to see what all the proxies for temperature tell us about that period. Without too much work Plimer could have found this data to incorporate into the analysis:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/302/5644/404
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676
Timothy Casey,
The strawman you seem to be challenging everyone to defend is that CO2 correlates directly with global temperature regardless of what other factors are doing.
If Plimer or someone else has given you this impression, then you’ve been misled.
I noticed your chart of CO2 and temperature for 500 M years was lacking data of solar irradiation. Other factors you might include are land (continental) distribution and its effects on albedo and circulation (ocean and atmospheric).
May I point out that Professor Mike Ashley also failed to address Plimer’s key questions. Failing to acknowledge what the author explicitly identifies as key themes, key questions or key statements invalidates a review and raises the question of whether the critic actually read the book in the first place or just browsed their favourite points of contention.
Professor Mike Ashley shouldn’t be so ready to point fingers, when he as a putative head of a university science department speaks in absolutes; the language of religion, not science. Ashley claims with the title of his review that there is “No Science in Plimer’s Primer” – an absolute statement and a generalisation of such astonishing fragility that even a child could refute him with a single quotation. For example, Plimer says:
“A study of 6000 boreholes on all continents has shown that temperature in the Medieval Warming was warmer than today and that the temperature fell 0.2 to 0.7 degrees Celcius during the Little Ice Age”.
Is this not science? The peer reviewers at Geophysical Research Letters certainly thought so when they published the original research of Huang et al (1997) in their science journal. Therefore Ashley’s principle assertion is factually incorrect, no matter how many errors might be discovered in Plimer’s book. If Ashley even bothered to read Plimer’s book he’d know that however much he disagrees with Plimer’s point of view, there is indeed science in this book.
I think it a disservice to science when people entrusted with the leadership of our most prestigious education institutions resort to unsubstantiated generalisation. May I point out that the peer-reviewed literature is most certainly not a platform for anyone’s opinions whether they are Plimer’s, Oreskes’, Ashley’s or even yours. People who forget that estimates (guesses) are not facts will just as easily forget that opinions are not facts either.
Doubt is the arbiter of science and sole guardian of intellect.
Discard doubt at your peril.
–
Timothy Casey B.Sc.(Hons.)
Who am I? More importantly, how does this bear on facts which stand on their verifiability alone?
May I point out that the energy necessary to induce power surges in excess of 25 volts per kilometre of grid is not trivial. Magnetic flux on the order of more than 2000nT/min is 400 times higher than anything we’d expect to observe from a magnetic reversal – unless the magnetic poles wandered over the grid you are plugged into. We are currently overdue for such an exciting natural event.
This is perhaps the strongest argument against centralised power systems, aside from their vulnerability to lack of maintenance and other symptoms of executive accounting practices.
–
Timothy Casey B.Sc.(Hons.)
Who am I? More importantly, how does this bear on facts which stand on their verifiability alone?
Your science questions were answered by Mark Byrne. I do know enough to realise that localised temperatures, as in MWP and LIA, in Europe, make no statement about global temperatures at the time. Plimer conveniently omits this fact in his book. All of Plimer’s pseudo-science has been rebutted at sites such as this, Real Climate, Deltoid etc many times over – what is the point of repeating them here just for you? I advise you, and any others reading this, who are confused, to click on the links to these and other excellent science sites, in the left-hand margin.
Exactly my point – the book is not peer reviewed science – why not? What is Plimer afraid of? The book does not discuss facts or lack thereof – it suggests that these facts have been not been debated and discussed many times by numerous scientists from a multitude of disciplines. Plimer knows that is not correct. Climate Change is not a political issue – the Earth cares nothing for the politics of man – you cannot bargain and obfuscate with the climate. However, this very statement from you illuminates what is guiding your and presumably Plimer’s agenda.
You obviously did not bother to check Mark Byrne’s web links. I did (any genuine sceptic reading this blog would have done the same) – the answers as I pointed out before are there – you refuse to accept them – that is your right – but don’t try to pretend that people on this site are incapable of or unwilling to answer. Who you are ,obviously, seems to bear greatly on supposed facts whose verifiability have been shown to be suspect.
Perhaps Perps. Put another way:
Climate Science is not a political issue. This is why all member states and signatories to the UNFCCC take the IPCC reports so seriously – they accept the science.
However, there is great debate on how they (collectively and individually) are going to address the problems of Climate Change leading up to Copenhagen in December for a post 2012 action plan.
In this sense, it is no longer about science, it is about political and economic ideology. This is what most people are arguing and are fearful about (not the science), they just don’t realise it.
“The CO2 as a primary driver of climate” claim has been made before. It is the title of the paper by Royer et al (2004).
Thank you for the constructive suggestion of adding solar radiation, land dissemination degree, and albedo curves to my comparison chart. Do you have any additional sources to suggest?
Thanks in Advance
Plimer is not publishing original research, and if it’s not original research it’s not even appropriate to submit for peer review.
It’s not a matter of Plimer being afraid of anything, it’s a matter of the fact that the research he cites has been published already.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/302/5644/404
Doesn’t specify “the data” – it seems there are a great many conclusions drawn depending on whether it is a tree ring study on a species more heavily representative of CO2 availability or an isotope study that is somewhat less influenced by so many unmeasured factors.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html
Defers to the IPCC plot, mostly of tree-ring studies, on p. 467 of AR4. Turn to p. 468 and an alternative selection of tree ring studies “proves” that there is no globality to climate, putatively for the sake of attempting to refute the Medieval Warming period. I am particularly partial to what this “proves”, but alas more consistent data from other proxies demonstrates that this apparent lack of climate globality is little more than an indication that tree rings do not reliably correlate with temperature. The data of Graybill & Idso (1993), which confirmed some correlation of growth with local carbon dioxide concentration (amongst a great many other parameters) was nonetheless used by Mann et al (1998) to estimate temperature!? The relationship between plant growth and carbon dioxide availability has not been refuted, and although it has been demonstrated that this relationship stops at the limit of growth, it hardly applies to the vast majority of trees and plants that have not reached this limit. A reading of Graybill & Idso (1993) is in fact reminiscent of Plimer’s key questions.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html
This is based on combined proxies. This method of demonstrating temperature trends is suspect because scaling and methodological errors between proxy interpretations introduce trend features that don’t exist.
For example, remote tree ring studies will reliably flatline due to differences in response to highly localised factors such as nutrient availability, humidity, and topography. So when averages are combined with recent instrumental rises known to be caused by urban heat contamination such that the most recent and still flatlined tree ring averages are replaced by mostly rising urban temperature measurements, you get the illusion of a runaway process.
Real science occurs when people like Huang et al (1997) conduct worldwide studies without mixing their proxies to cook up a convenient outcome. Royer et al (2004) also avoid mixing their proxies and managed to produce a Phanerozoic temperature curve so robust, that independent climate indicators such as glaciation (see Boucot et al., 2004) and extinction rates correlate with identical features of the curve. For example, when extinction rates of Futuyma (1998) top nine families per million years, the temperature is always falling through 19 degrees Celcius – no exceptions and very little variation. I posted the comparison chart at:
http://climate.geologist-1011.net
The chart is on page four of the printout
You cannot achieve this precision of correlation with real data unless the data is both globally representative and reliable – which is more than I can say for the kind of sources favoured by the IPCC in their latest assessment report.
–
Timothy Casey B.Sc.(Hons.)
Who am I? More importantly, how does this bear on facts which stand on their verifiability alone?
The first article on your list of links doesn’t specify “the data” – it seems there are a great many conclusions drawn depending on whether it is a tree ring study on a species more heavily representative of CO2 availability or an isotope study that is somewhat less influenced by so many unmeasured factors.
The second article on your list of links defers to the IPCC plot, mostly of tree-ring studies, on p. 467 of AR4. Turn to p. 468 and an alternative selection of tree ring studies “proves” that there is no globality to climate, putatively for the sake of attempting to refute the Medieval Warming period. I am particularly partial to what this “proves”, but alas more consistent data from other proxies demonstrates that this apparent lack of climate globality is little more than an indication that tree rings do not reliably correlate with temperature. The data of Graybill & Idso (1993), which confirmed some correlation of growth with local carbon dioxide concentration (amongst a great many other parameters) was nonetheless used by Mann et al (1998) to estimate temperature!? The relationship between plant growth and carbon dioxide availability has not been refuted, and although it has been demonstrated that this relationship stops at the limit of growth, it hardly applies to the vast majority of trees and plants that have not reached this limit. A reading of Graybill & Idso (1993) is in fact reminiscent of Plimer’s key questions.
The third article on your list of links is based on combined proxies. This method of demonstrating temperature trends is suspect because scaling and methodological errors between proxy interpretations introduce trend features that don’t exist.
For example, remote tree ring studies will reliably flatline due to differences in response to highly localised factors such as nutrient availability, humidity, and topography. So when averages are combined with recent instrumental rises known to be caused by urban heat contamination such that the most recent and still flatlined tree ring averages are replaced by mostly rising urban temperature measurements, you get the illusion of a runaway process.
Real science occurs when people like Huang et al (1997) conduct worldwide studies without mixing their proxies to cook up a convenient outcome. Royer et al (2004) also avoid mixing their proxies and managed to produce a Phanerozoic temperature curve so robust, that independent climate indicators such as glaciation (see Boucot et al., 2004) and extinction rates correlate with identical features of the curve. For example, when extinction rates of Futuyma (1998) top nine families per million years, the temperature is always falling through 19 degrees Celcius – no exceptions and very little variation. I posted the comparison chart at:
http://climate.geologist-1011.net/
The chart is on page four of the printout
You cannot achieve this precision of correlation with real data unless the data is both globally representative and reliable – which is more than I can say for the kind of sources favoured by the IPCC in their latest assessment report.
–
Timothy Casey B.Sc.(Hons.)
Who am I? More importantly, how does this bear on facts which stand on their verifiability alone?
People can say anything they like as long as they are guessing. However, Plimer refers to the 6000 boreholes of Huang et al (1997) whose results clearly show the Medieval Optimum and Little Ice Age were global events recorded globally in the geological record.
There are no real observed factual examples of tropical hotspots above 50 degrees north at times when global temperatures were less than in the Medieval Optimum. In fact, there are no tropical hotspots north of 50 degrees north or south of 50 degrees south and the geography hasn’t changed since Medieval times. Thus there is no reason to believe anything more complex than what Huang and apparently many others (including Daansgard, Keigwin, Shonwiese, etc.) have documented; that it was as warm or warmer then than now.
Because none of it adequately explains tropical hotspots north of 53 degrees north or south of 53 degrees south. None of it explains how, if the Twentieth Century is indeed the hottest century of the Millennium we see no examples of high latitude tropical hotspots in this century.
You can’t scientifically use disagreement with tree ring studies (which don’t agree with other tree ring studies much less any other temperature proxies) as an evidence for a theoretical process that is as yet unobserved in nature or the geological record. Especially when global studies such as Huang et al (1997) still stand.
Where is the sedmimentalogical evidence for the process that could theoretically create high latitude tropical hotspots, and where is the sedimentological evidence of such a process in direct connection with the thriving of tropical organisms in the Medieval Baltic?
–
Timothy Casey B.Sc.(Hons.)
Who am I? More importantly, how does this bear on facts which stand on their verifiability alone?
Doubly sorry Jim,
I only had to pay $30 (hope your $50 was a typo). But you (and a reported 15000 other people) have been sold a pup. Plimer took a religious group to court for making a business out of telling lies. he lost — maybe it’s a case of of you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. For me the most striking example of outright lies is the claim that New Orleans subsided 1 metre in 3 years. If you go to the paper that he cites, you find that the actual amount was 15 to 18 mm. His discussions of climate sensitivity through up 3 different numbers: 0.35, 0.5 and 1.5 to 1.6. When you check out his complaints about stuff in the IPCC reports, you find it isn’t actually there. Claiming 2007 was the coldest year since 1995 9see p 405) is inconsistent with his figure 1 data (where only the 2008 numbers seem to be fabricated — cited reference is Washington Times -see Tim Lambert’s blog). Lots more stuff like this.
Perhaps you missed my reply. The repetition of my reply would seem to indicate that even I missed my own reply. Fancy that!
Byrne’s links, while most informative, do not address Plimer’s key questions nor do they offer sufficient evidence of the extraordinary processes necessary to drive high latitude hotspots replete with tropical temperatures outside of times that would have to be substantially warmer than the Twentieth Century. For sufficient evidence of such processes you need two things:
1. An example of the process as directly observed by researchers in order to document what the sedimentological and/or other markers of the process are.
Simplified example: asymmetric bifurcating ripples on a modern shoreline attached to a waterway such as the Lower Amazon River or the Gulf of St Vincent.
2. The actual sedimentological markers in situ at the correct stratigraphic level with respect to the specific location where the process is supposed to have operated. Simplified example: Asymmetric bifurcating ripples in some of the horizons of the Grindstone Range Sandstone in the Northern Flinders Ranges indicate a Cambrian shoreline environment attached to a waterway at this location back in the Cambrian.
None of Byrne’s links provide this minimal requirement for chain of evidence as it stands in sedimentology and other fields of geology such as palaeoclimatology.
–
Timothy Casey B.Sc.(Hons.)
Who am I? More importantly, how does this bear on facts which stand on their verifiability alone?
G’day Chris et al,
I had a look at Rabett Run and at Arthur Smith’s paper, as advised, for their objections to G&T.
First, on Rabett Run, there is a detailed argument raging between
Eli Rabett and Fred Staples, about the basics of thermodynamics. It is a close call, but being exceptionally blinkered, I would give the laurels to Fred, so far. Try the latest comments on Rabett Run, if the thermodynamics intrigues you. It is a hot debate.
I have a reply from Gerhard Gerlich, to my email. It is the text of a lecture and is in English. Their is more in German, very decent of Gerhard, but I read it not. They stand by their work, and are doing an English version of their formal reply to Arthur Smith now. Watch this space.
I have had a look at Arthur Smiths case. On that, for the comfort zone temperature, those 33 extra degrees, Staples notes all you need is the lapse rate with altitude, not a greenhouse.
Next, Smith considers only incoming radiation. But the temp at the core-mantle boundary is about 4,000 degrees, and who in hell said the mantle and the crust have some sort of greenhouse re-radiator built into them, that works perfectly? And even if so, how then does basalt then reach the surface, molten, rather often? Basalt melts at about 984° to 1260° (old data, 1929, check for new estimates) depending on the mineralogy. This i a thermally active planet, not the moon.
My next nitpicking heresy and uninformed guessing comes from the total or near-total lack of ice left in Antarctica now, from the early Pleistocene, and the fact that the oldest ice we have from there is from extraordnarily close to the last magnetic reversal date. The Japanese Dome Fuji data strongly reinforces that of Dome Concordia. They found no ice older than 720,000 years. Someone put a hot pitchfork to the icecap, back then.
I suspect it is not that he breathes out CO2 like the rest of us. Old Nick’s fork is magnetised.
See the new waffle re the million years of missing Early Pleistocene Antarctic ice on my website, or at ABC Pool, if interested.
We now have two independent lines of evidence that geomagnetic field shits are diving climate change and that CO2 is probably rather irrelevant. The present-day maps for the short term (the last 400 years0 , and the Antarctic deep drilling program, for the million year term. That drilling is coming along nicely. So far.
I stick with Ian Plimer, and hang the minor errors in his book. Jut by the way, no peer review pper publishing house will go wih you on a book on the broad outlines of a scientific issue. Not since Darwin, anyway. You have to do a book. Folk then peer at it.
The geology says we are well within the limits of normal variability. It is just that that variability is rather startling.
It is important, this debate. The field costs are a bit steep, when you wish to scrap an entire planetary power system, nevr mind how awful. Me,I parked my last tractor a decade back, and nowuse a wheelbarrow. But the lights are still steam-powered, I regret to report. And the vegemite comes by semi-trailer, as my donkeys do not deliver to the supermarkets.
Regards all, and keep at it.
Peter
I thought people got fired by News Ltd titles for fact checking. In the last Quedensland state election I set up a tinyurl to point to my (Greens) campaign site: http://tinyurl.com/TheAustralianLies
Peter, scientific books are routinely peer-reviewed by specialist science publishers. If his book was scientifically sound, why did he not get it published by a university press? A book as bad as Lomborg’s original book made it through such a process so it’s not perfect but I would hope that any reasonable review process would pick up problems like his use of obviously incorrect data, such as Durkin’s graph. This kind of thing is not a minor error. Either he knows the data is wrong in which case he is dishonest, or he is astonishingly incompetent for a person of his track record. If the mainstream is wrong, there must be data out there that makes the case and cannot easily be shot down as bogus. I’m still waiting to see that data.
As to your contention that the earth is geothermally heated (if I understand you correctly; you shouldn’t type at 11pm but I liked some of your typos), you may have something there. Write a paper. All those folks who’ve been publishing science based on very different models to yours (e.g. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008GL036078.shtml) will be thrilled to be corrected.
Prof. Plimer’s interview with Tony Jones on ABC TV’s Lateline on 27/04/2009 (http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2554129.htm) makes a telling point, when he states “climatology is really just modern geology in action”. To my mind, this rather oddly implies that neither the atmosphere nor the oceans have an more central role in climatology than does geology.
In the same interview he also states repeatedly that the main point of his book, the “..key thing I talk about is the earth, is the earth is dynamic. It’s always changing..”. That the earth is always changing may well be true, especially over geological time scales, but that simple & obvious fact doesn’t preclude the possiblity of anthropogenic pollution causing changes to the current global climate at a much greater rate than the biosphere can cope with. In other words, it’s not our planet that’s at risk, what’s at risk is most of life as we know it.
Philip,
Ta for that, sorry about the typos, eyes are a bit shot and you were right about the time. The link you gave unfortunately does not work.
Yes, in theory, you can get a major publisher who will peer-review your book. In reality though, if you’re a climate sceptic, or just someone trying to publish a kid’s book on horses, as a relative is doing, archaeopteryx teeth are easier to find. They have huge anti-manuscript defensive walls – if you put up “Origin of Species” now, no-one would even dain to read the manuscript. Ian Plimer found a publisher in the back blocks of Victoria and they must be delighted with the sales. But to expect them to have arranged peer-reviewing by some anonymous set of well-informed philosophical proponents or opponents, is wishing for the moon. And sure, all books on such fraught topics have data errors. Correcting them is what blogs like this ecellent one are for. It is far better and faster and more efficient review system than that of the copyright pinching publishing houses, and is far more savage and hence more fun for, and of use to, one and all. This is the new science publishing world. It is a bit scratchy, but it works very well. A friend flew to London to see Elsevier, on Saturday. She is a physio and her book is a superb one on aging gracefully.(Yeah, I know, but resist that one) That is the future for such august science publishing houses.
Kimball,
Humans may well do in large chunks of the biosphere, almost a certainty, with ourselves being high on the list for extinction. The rest of the crew of this spaceship will breathe a heartfelt sigh of relief if we do the latter, no doubt. But as AGW cannot even begin to explain the ice ages, the really big recent shifts in the climate, fiddling with a trace gas to the exclusion of solving all the other poblems we generate, may very rapidly fossilize us.
We are living very dangerously, when half our number are in huge refugee camps called cities, as people only provide each other with food out of self interest and the city folk will do everything they possibly can to avoid doing anything useful in that department. The present global economic fuss is, in my view, all about China not having enough water to feed its people, and their Plan B, the indutrilisation of what water there is there,having failed and taken global mnufacturing down with it. I just, to be utterly trivial, sold the core of my crop this year, organic pumpkins, for the equivalent value of a halfpenny a pound when I was a kid. Does anyone think aging and flat broke farmers will feed the urban mobs for much longer? The system may be in terminal decline, if we are not lucky. Then, add that we want to spend a hundred billion, just here in this particular tinpot nation,on killer submarines? We do need to straighten out our collective thinking.
So, we have to get the science of climate change right before we agree to trash the old steam generators taht still drive, say, this laptop, along with the odd other half-useful gadget. Kick your power supply to bits and then see where you are, ask the folk in Somaliland, Zimbabwe, Iraq, the Swat Valley, etc.
You do not, in a sane world, drill two deep drillholes, write one guess-based interpretive paper and then collectively ignore all the other relevant data, including the rest of the drillholes from the program from same region, Antartica, and all the limitations on the original data and its attendant guesswork. And then, with that as your main argument, go out and trash the global power system. Not unless you want civil wars from horizon to horizon. Of course we must switch to renewables, that is blindingly obvious and I have been yelling myself hoarse on that for three decades now,like a million other more articulate folk.
But living in dreamland as we do so, about the role of CO2 and hence of ourselves in climate change, is a recipe for species failure. We have no relaible evidence whatever that this is not a perfectly normal interglacial peak, which is a key part of Ian Plimer’s case. And if it is normal, all the CO2 in the oceans, never mind the one fortieth of that (itself trivial amount when the reservoir in the rocks is considered) that we kick in, is utterly trivial. It will be buffered as it always has been, by the marine sedimentary rocks.
Bloody geology again, why do those arrogant overpaid and dihonest bastards have the audacity to assume they have anything to add about climate change that could possibly be relevant?
AGW is in my humble opinion underpinned by the sort of geological drivel we see popular in boardrooms filled with corporate suits. They want to believe a particular interpretation of the field data, because it is good for the shares. Such companies and in this case such species, are soon history.
There is no match in reality between the CO2 time graph and the rising global temperature, except over a few short decades, which is essentially meaningless, as we only have one arrow of time to play with. You can correlate anything in the universe that varies consistently, either directly or inversely, with anything ele doing the same.
We do have far better fits to orbital cycles, though there are puzzling discrepancies, We also have all the geomagnetic data, that the AGW folk, with religious dedication refuse to contemplate. This is hence a crusade with a lot of sinecures and a lot of genuine effort also, riding on it. The science appears to now be considered trivial. Every school kid knows more about it than those antique idiots called geologists.
Hooroo,
Peter.
“I stick with Ian Plimer, and hang the minor errors in his book.”
Peter we peered at it and found the errors were not minor. Do you think its minor that he can’t get right the hottest global temperature in the instrumental record? Or minor that he uses a bogus temperature chart then cannot cite its source?
Glad you threw your lot it with Plimer’s errors though, gives us a clearer picture.
CO2 can be a forcing or a feedback so why would anybody expect
a good correlation over geological timescales? And what would
it prove? Multiple things can drive a rise in temperature, CO2 being
just one of them. Carrying a cigarette lighter correlates well
with death from lung cancer but it doesn’t cause it.
Most people seem to understand that correlation doesn’t
prove causation, but it is also true that causation doesn’t
imply correlation. Cancer will kill you, but does that mean a there
will be a good correlation between death rates and cancer incidence
rates? I’ve never looked but I’m pretty sure that nobody would
argue that the lack of such a correlation can be used to
show that cancer doesn’t kill.
Interesting comments about publishing, but I really disagree. Ian Plimer has at least 2 books, Telling Lies for God and A short history of planet Earth, which won a Eureka prize. I had far less of a track record when I successfully “cold-called” CUP with Inverse Problems in Atmospheric Constituent Transport. “Getting in the door” can be hard, but not that hard.
I have tried both ends of the spectrum: first CUP and then for Twisted: The Distorted Mathematics of Greenhouse Denial an essentially in-house publication organised by the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute. There are trade-offs. With CUP you get the prestige. Doing it “in house”, you get cost-containment to keep down the cover price for a small print run, control of the computer systems so you can use automation for all the stuff that can be done automatically and speed, since my time-lines were running up against scheduled long-service leave overseas. However, whether you are working with what is arguably the world’s finest science publisher or “mates down the road”, an author who wants quality control has to organise it for themself and my two books gratefully acknowledge the colleagues who read the drafts. If Ian Plimer had cared about quality, there are plenty of like-minded people with enough scientific literacy to have cleaned up what is a poorly written and edited book.
G’day again all,
Since I owe this campsite here to gold prospecting, I am always ready to yell “Eureka!” over trivia. But I do think I have it this time.
I just found the Potsdam Institute’s vertical magnetic shift maps for 1980, 1990 and 2000. I have been struggling with 1960′s maps till now.
This lot shows a perfect or near perfect match between the new temperature hotspot in Africa, mostly in the Congo, which had me very puzzled, and the also “new” magnetic field vertical component shifts at the same location.
See for the maps and an explanation.
AGW enthusiasts, all present company of course honourably excluded, may be able to ignore the Antarctic Peninsula and Siberian map matches, but I cannot for the life of me see how this lot, with the greatest patch of entirely new heating on the planet matching the mag shifts perfectly, can be similarly ignored, if science has anything to do with this debate.
There is a link to this up on ABC Pool also.
Thanks to GISS NASA and the Potsdam Institute for the data.
Hooroo,
Peter.
Rats. Delete the above, please.
http://www.freewebs.com/psravenscroft/bingo.htm
Given your praise of the lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature
over whatever time scale as proof that AGW is false, I have trouble taking
seriously a map with 3 significant brown
blobs, with just 1 corresponding well with the smallest of the red/dark red
regions of increased temperatures. If this is a good correlation, I’d
hate to see a bad one. And the mechanism? There are at least 2 parts
to infering causality, suitable correlation and plausible mechanism.
Peter, the link is trivially fixed. Delete the closing “)” (the perils of automatic link generators).
Sequestering CO2 in rocks of any form is an extremely slow process. The carbon cycle in pre-industrial times was in balance. Anything we add is in excess and only around half is quickly absorbed by the environment. About 20% will still be with us in 1,000 years. It is this cumulative effect that is the problem.
No one says geologists have nothing to contribute to climate studies. Look at the paleoclimate sections of the IPCC reports. Where do you think those came from?
One of the most useful indicators of possible climate change is studies of the (rare e.g. Permian-Triassic, Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) events in the distant past where massive greenhouse events swung the climate. Here’s a search you could try:
http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=greenhouse%20gas%20paleoclimate
And here is a geology site (I hope this doesn’t disappoint you) that explains the biggest of the mass extinction events including the possibility of global warming; the bit about “The Volcanic Scenario” is scarily similar to what our industries are doing today:
http://geology.about.com/od/extinction/a/aa_permotrias.htm
Geoff, notice how magnetic hotspots appear stable over the period of 0.15 K/decade warming?
But I guess that’s enough for some people to yell “Bingo!”, “Eureka”, “QED”, “I do think I have it this time”.
Peter, I can’t reproduce your map on the NASA GISS site. What settings did you use? As Geoff points out, even if there is a correlation you need causation. How do you know magnetic field is not influenced by surface temperature? In any case, you would need to show this correlation was significant by demonstrating it on multiple data points and showing it was statistically significant. Otherwise even if your temperature map is correct, all you have is one data point that could be a coincidence.
Prof Ian Enting from University of Melbourne has provided a detailed, point-by-point critique of Heaven and Earth. You can download the 9-page PDF here:
http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/plimer1a1.pdf
http://www.complex.org.au/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=91This link doesn’t download for me … just opens a “browse” window.
Wait and try again later — it was working before but not for me now either — I think Ian is uploading a revised version.
Sorry Geoff (and others).
this is a problem at our end. I do not have the permissions that are required
to fix it. I have spent the last 2 hours (since the problem arose about 16:30)
sending increasingly unhappy phone messages and emails.
A possible temporary fix is that the URL ends in fileID=91,
replacing the 91 by 94 may work (but hopefully not in the long-term).
One problem is that, having been off for a total of 35 days sick leave
earlier this year, a combination of computer upgrades, and somewhat arbitrary
password migrations mean that I cannot even update my own home page.
sorry, forget the 94 idea
I’ve mirrored the PDF here:
http://bravenewclimate.wordpress.com/files/2009/04/entingplimer12.pdf
http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/plimer1a1.pdf
G’day all,
For light relief:
http://www.pool.org.au/text/peter_ravenscroft/climate_change_for_preschool_kids
The point for here is really the map.
Phillip,
You are quite right and I can’t replicate it either. Being a bad lad, I got it from Google Images, and assumed it was the annual trend for 2005. Slack work. I had played with them before, many times. But as you found, it isn’t that one. I had got that far, yesterday, and my only weak excuse is, I was out farming and had not got to it, apologies all.
The other GISS plots give a far more subdued 2005 Angola-Congo-Zambia anomaly trend, maybe NASA changed the inputs, they have in the past. I will do all the months and so on and see if I can reproduce that image. It does look a bit odd though, I must admit. My bullshit detector has flat batteries.
But the Helmholtz data remains and its coincidence with the AntPen warming and the Van Allen belt touchdown or auroral thickening just there, still needs an explanation. I think. The mag anomaly drifts west and then goes awol, comes back decades later, at the eastern end again. The hole in the GISS temp data west of the AntPen is a curse. If we could see the temperature also drifting west, we would be far better off.
My guess is that, if it is patly deep heat surfacing, we get long mag build-ups and very short heat bursts, soon over. The reruns do not hppn at the samplces exatly, as though maybe a mantle plum had run dead an the next lot comes up to the side. Wild guessing, this. But the big ones, at the AntPen and the Lena River, keep recurring. The former was there in the 1930′s, went awol, then came back. I do not understand this lot at all. Maybe surface heating does screw the magnetometers, it used to drive us nuts when using them in the field, interference peaks just before midday, telluric currents then run all over the place, and a base station to check on the moving instrument is almost useless. But how would that have affected sixteenth century ships’ magnetic compasses?
I simply suspect that this lot is linked to the solar flares and the magnetosphere – I do not have the resources to prove it. The map with the spoof article, at the url above, shows something is seriously wrong with AGW, though.
I will now check that map out as best I can. In case it was fabricated for ome odd reason.
Peter.
NASA has the errant map up at
http://veimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/17438/temperature_gis_2005.gif
Curiouser and curiouser.
Ian Enting’s detailed critique of “Heaven and Earth” is now up to version 1.3 and has expanded from 9 to 14 pages. You can get the latest version here:
http://bravenewclimate.wordpress.com/files/2009/04/plimer1a3.pdf
New version, 1.4, now 17 pages, is here:
http://bravenewclimate.wordpress.com/files/2009/04/plimer1a4.pdf
[…] Read Prof Barry Brook’s blog review: http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/23/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/ […]
The funniest movie of the year; An Inconvenient Truth. Comedy? Drama? Thriller?. Why I’m not here to insult you’re views and research. You’re a Hybrid (Pardon the Pun) of Sound Intelligence and Academics. My question is why isn’t there allowed to be a Rebuttal against you’re arguments, Human-Induced Anthropogenic Warming?
Yours Faithfully
Josh
I am not a scientist but having sent a sheet of statistics to several scientists including, Barry Brook, and interested non scientists. And so far these figures have not been challenged. They have been confirmed by Professor Bob Carter JCU.
If maximum annual anthropogenic emissions of CO2 total 7 gigatonnes (gt) per year as Ross Garnaut agrees and the natural emissions of CO2 are about 210gt, plus or minus 50 to 80 gt in any given year. Precisely what difference will it make whether anthropogenic CO2 is reduced to zero or doubles in the near or distant future.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-bathtub-effect/
http://atmoz.org/blog/2008/08/04/trends-in-atmospheric-co2-trends/
About 95% of peer-reviewed science is shown to be false within five years of publication. Within 50 years of publication the figure approaches almost 100% falsification. Simply looking at any scientific journal from 50 years ago shows that the vast majority of published science is nothing more than semi-informed conjecture with no strong supporting evidence. History will almost certainly show AGW to be nothing more than another worthless hypothesis.
You can be partly right, and that’s enough to build on. “All models are wrong, some are useful”. A scientific hypothesis is a model. All are wrong, some are useful. It’s about bounding uncertainty and narrowing those bounds over time. If the scientific process didn’t work, you’d not be typing your complaint on a digital computer. You’d be sitting in a cold hut.
Are the studies that show the 95% falsehood rate also shown to be 95% false in five years?
And could you cite a source for these claims? I’m just interested in seeing the date of publication.
Being from the old school (and what is wrong with that?) I was taught that an hypothesis was an untested theory. I am prepared to accept that an hypothesis is a model but in either case an hypothesis does not become a fact until it has met with with all conceivable tests. The most tragic example of an incompletely tested hypothesis is the thalidmide disaster were the drug was tested on patients and other normally healthy women and men but not on pregnant women. The fact fails if and/or when it fails a previously unidentified test. Back to the case in point, Dr David Evans worked for the Australian Greenhouse Office for six years and, during that time the scientists were unable to find a causal link between any CO2 emissions and global warming (as it was then) let alone man-made emissions. As Lord Acton was reported to have said: “When the facts change I change my mind. What do you do sir?”
Hey John, I’ve filled in the mmissing bits in CAPS:
“Back to the case in point, Dr David Evans worked for the Australian Greenhouse Office for six years AS A COMPUTER PROGRAMMER, NOT A CLIMATE SCIENTIST and, during that time the scientists were unable to find a causal link between any CO2 emissions and global warming (as it was then) let alone man-made emissions, NOT SURPRISINGLY BECAUSE NEITHER DAVID EVANS NOR THE SCIENTISTS AT THE AUSTRALIAN GREENHOUSE OFFICE CONDUCTED RESEARCH INTO THE LINK BETWEEN CO2 EMMISSION AND CLOBAL WARMING – THEIR JOB WAS JUST TO QUANTIFY THE EMISSIONS.”
http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/08/10/dr-david-evans-born-again-alarmist/
Anyone who wants to know about David Evans – read the above post.
I’m with John.
If the reference is more than 5 years old, it has more than a 95% chance of being wrong.
Apparently.
Barry’s contextualisation of this is about the most succimct I’ve seen.
I’m not sure this is the orginal source but this paper makes similar arguemnts http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050201
I not that while the article in not yet 5 years old, it cites many references that are far older.
Publicaion happen on intertesting topics, interesting topics get investigated, investigation increases undertanding, hence previus work gets contextualised or part is disproved.
In otherwords, we don’t tend to nail the full depth and breadth of an issue in one publication.
I realy should work on my typing.
:0
To paraphrase Kipling: ‘left is left and right is right and never the twain shall meet’. While the right provide the truth and facts the left indulge in denigration and character assassination and continue to shift the goalposts. I am wasting my time
“While the right provide the truth and facts….”
Showing up your bias there John G. How many times do we have to say this problem IS NOT A POLITICAL ARGUMENT! Earth’s systems don’t give a hoot about our petty political affiliations. We will all be adversely affected by the dire consequences of unstoppable climate change.
Oh, and just exactly when did the “right” have the monopoly on truth and facts? There are good and bad, genuine and disingenuous people on both sides of the political divide.
If you are going to paraphrase Kipling at least get the context right:
“Oh East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgement Seat
But there is neither East nor West, Border nor Breed, nor Birth
When two strong men stand face to face though they come from the ends of the Earth”
THE BALLAD OF EAST AND WEST
A pertinent quote, now that all people on Earth need to join together to prevent this environmental disaster which will an enormous loss of human life and biological diversity.
New version of Enting’s rebuttal, now 27 pages, v1.6, is here:
http://bravenewclimate.wordpress.com/files/2009/04/plimer1a6.pdf
The line: “When the facts change I change my mind. What do you do sir?” is from John Maynard Keynes, since in economics, the relevant facts (about the situation) do change and basing
economic decisions on a fixed ideology from either the left or right will sooner or later get you into trouble.
For global warming, the central fact is the one identified in 1896 by Arrhenius, based on
real measurements of the real atmosphere by Langley. CO2 absorbs infra-red with
a roughly logarithmic dependence on the amount of CO2 (determined by looking at the moon
at different angles of elevation). This leads to a vertical temperature gradient in the
atmosphere — i.e. stratospheric cooling means less energy lost to space.
When the observed fact of stratospheric cooling goes away is when I’ll change my mind.
Sounds like a non-scientific and ideological refuge from rational logic.
I am pretty sure that Pearson gave advanced “warning” is his column the previous weekend in the Australian. My question is”how many state-based launches were there and who did them?” I know it was senator Boswell in Brisbane.
There are two rates of cooling relating to this planet (1)The dry adiabatic lapse rate of one degree per thousand feet and (2) the saturated adiabatic lapse rate of two degrees per thousand feet. There are only two ways to restrict that cooling (1) water vapour in the form of clouds and (2) a temperature inversion, the stratoshpere does not cool in isolation your 19th century scientist has been overtaken by new facts. Which is colder? a clear cloudess night or an overcast sky at night? Perhaps you should change your mind.
Thanks Barry and Ian for your steadfastness.
would all readers of this go to
http://home.btconnect.com/tipiglen/landethic.html
and read Aldo Leopold’s ‘Land Ethic’.
What does this have to do with the CO2 debate?? – lots – as the atmosphere is an extension of the land. We have totally lost (it appears) the awareness that if we destroy the land, we destroy ourselves (to say nothing .
So far – this whole discussion seems to have the air of whether there are 10 or 11 angels dancing on a pin-head.
Basic physics – Arrhenius determined that increasing the concentration of a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere (doesn’t have to be CO2) – will result in a net gain in global atmospheric temperature …
so, we are increasing the greenhouse gas concentrations – CO2. Methane, HFC’s. HCFC’s, SF6, CCL4 etc etc…
the temperature is rising
QED
So the temperature is rising eh! 2008 has so far been the coldest year for two decades. 2009 is promising to be colder.
Average global temperature (AGT) was 15 degrees C in 1850 and was 16 degrees in 2007. If the rise in temp is linear with the rise in CO2 the AGT would be 21 degrees C by now. Global warming? I don’t think so.
2008 was coldest since 2001, not for two decades. 2009 is the 6th hottest on record through to April. Go spin your lies elsewhere. You’re not fooling anyone with your idiotic nonsense here.
Why didn’t you answer the important point Barry. Why has the AGT not risen to 21 degrees C. None of the criticisms of my posts have added anything to your basic argument that man-made emissions of CO2 influence climate change. Since annual anthropogenic emissions of CO2 represent only 0.0000327% of the total mass of the planet’s atmosphere it is a ridiculous argument. And you talk about spinning lies. The dishonesty of the alarmists in showing images of power station cooling towers and smoke pouring from chimneys and misrepresenting it as CO2 ‘pollution’ is greater nonsense.
There is such a shortage of atmospheric CO2 currently that agriculturists are having to supplement it with additional CO2 in hot houses to get adequate growth. There are also reports from farmers that lack of CO2 is limiting growth in crops and that more CO2 will be needed to meet the food needs of a future increasing population.
As to the temperature for 2009 only time will tell. Certainly the Northern hemisphere has reported the coldest winter for thirty years. More fact and less obfuscation is what is required.
“Why didn’t you answer the important point Barry. Why has the AGT not risen to 21 degrees C”
Because the world doesn’t exist in the fantasy land that you do. No one predicts more than 1C warming for the 1850 to 2010 period due to anthropogenic forcing, i.e. 14 to 15C global average. If you believe otherwise, you’re delusional. Oh, and re: your CO2 %, go back to remedial maths.
“There is such a shortage of atmospheric CO2 currently that agriculturists are having to supplement it with additional CO2 in hot houses to get adequate growth”
I’ve also heard that geese have such deficient digestive systems that french farmers are forced to force feed them through pipes down their throats to get adequate livers!
[…] http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/ 23/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/ ; […]
Now you are losing it Barry. It is your mob that has said that CO2 has risen by 38% since 1850 (280 to 380 PPM is actually 40%) and that the rise in temp is linear with the rise in CO2. 40% of 15 degrees is 6 degrees which equals 21 degrees C. If this is not true as you seem to think then there is no correlation between the increase in atmospheric CO2 and temperature. Likewise it follows that, if that is the case, reducing anthropogenic emissions of CO2 will have NO effect on climate change. I did not say that the AGT should be 21 degrees C, I said that it was 16 degrees. Who needs remedial maths? The global warmers have no case to support anthropogenic CO2 as the cause of climate change. I would like to know who is really in fantasy land. I do not appreciate personal attack in lieu of logical argument. The more your alarmists try to manipulate the facts the further you put yourselve in the mire. Just admit that you are wrong!
+15C is 288K. So simply changing the scale of temperature to an absolute one changes your ‘calculation’ as follows:
40% of 288K = 115K.
So do you imagine temperature should have risen to 403K, i.e. +130C? What are you saying? Further, why do you imagine that there is a linear, rather than logarithmic, relationship between CO2 and temperature? Who says this?
I have been following this dialogue for some time. I admire the patience and application of people like Barry Brook and Ian Enting in responding to the assaults by deniers. I’m now quite convinced that Plimer either doesn’t know enough or is being disingenuous, to say the least.
I think it‘s worth noting that there is a vast difference between deniers and sceptics. In any realm of science (or life) scepticism is a rational attitude. But denial, when you are actually incapable (through insufficient scientific expertise or whatever) of understanding the science, is irrational and/or perverse.
It’s a mistake to assume (as no doubt some would) that somebody like Plimer who is entitled to call himself a scientist actually knows enough about another area of science to have an informed viewpoint.
Deniers need to take a dose of humility. I can’t begin to understand the science;Plimer could have fooled me and I suspect, the majority of non-scientists.
Unfortunately, of course there are other forces driving denial. Apart from vested interests, there is the natural tendency to which we are all prone, to deny unpleasant facts (or if you like, unpleasant possibilities).
Is it my imagination or are deniers more
likely to use pseudonyms than those who
believe in AGW? If I had my ‘drathers,
I’d rather not have any anonymous
bloggers.
Do get your facts and your math right if you are going to contribute to the blog – otherwise you just make a fool of yourself!
Geoff,
Clive Hamilton wrote of a similar impression to yours about pseudonyms and poor behaviour on blogs. But John Quiggin commented in reply that on his block some of the worst claims and anti-rational, comments come from people who he knows to be or believes to be giving their real names.
Plimer for example, and his figure 3 is a clear example of unbelievable practice, that he is happy to put his name to.
If I had time on my hands and thought it was
important, I’d collect some data, but pending
that, all I have is an impression… anybody know a psychology major looking for a little
project? “An investigation into the correlation between blog anonymity and idiocy”.
Not quite true MattB. The reason french farmers do this is because
some in France have inadequate cholesterol levels and need those
livers to achieve adequate levels prior to bypass surgery.
I must admit I got flamed heavily the other day over a Jo Novas site for being an anonymous blogger by the non anonymous Brian G Valentine. Ok I was being a stirrer but when a blog entry on a site that claims to be rational and science based claims that “Undoubtedly the best summary of the current state of affairs is the SPPI monthly CO2 report.” (with this being Monckton’s monthly) I can’t help myself.
I think you will find that A LOT of people use a lot of blogs on all sorts of topics, and use a common name. For example I use BigFooty for my sins… now I’m not going to use my real name there just as I don’t give my business card to every bloke I chat to in the queue for a beer at the footy.
So I’m MattB where I use blogs… and it is only when I discovered the climate type blogs that I ever saw anyone use their own name… it has just never occured to me to do so. But this discussion on that site has made me reconsider… but I have to admit the thought makes me a tad nervous:)
But to answer your question… no, if anything I think the division is that people with a genuine background in a field use their real names, and others do not… I’m a total nothing in the field so it is not like I’d be outing myself with some great fanfare “Holy Moly Matt B is Ian Pilmer” or anything;)
Further to my other response… yes I’m sure that one of my concerns was if someone ever went back and wrote to my mum with a collection of everything MattB has ever typed in a blog anywhere:)
The flipside is that a real or non real name does not change your opinion on whether a contribution is valid. anonymous bloggers could be like the wise of man who emerges form the mist to pass on his wisdom then vanishes:)
At least *I* know your real name Matt, thanks to the email address that shows to me (only) via my WordPress console 😉
Well I’ve outed myself! quite liberating;) I’m not sure it will cause any major increase in my influence in the world of global climate change science and policy. lol.
The usual rationale for 1998 being the warmest year (on the instrumental record) is El Nino. This just shows that some atmospheric warming emerged from the Pacific Ocean. What if the 1976/1977 Pacific Climate Shift was a natural cycle and we have since moved into a cool phase simlar to the mid 1940′s to 1970′s? Please, don’t even think sulphur dioxide.
http://www.earthandocean.robertellison.com.au/An%20Alternative%20Physical%20Mechanism%20for%20Global%20Warming.pdf
There is only one reality – the global temperature. Oceanographic considerations suggest cooling over 20 to 30 years from 1998 – and there is a wealth of neglected (by very nearly everyone)science here. There is already a decade of cooling and this year will make it a decade +1. How long beofre reality bites?
Checked your CV – your pseudo-scepticism wouldn’t be related to some of your jobs would it?
Project Manager on
Abel Point Marina
Whitsunday Shores Estate
to name just two (there are more!)
You must be aware that the trend in warming continues and that the past decade has included most of the hottest years on record.
Some minor housekeeping suggestions.
It is a pity this blog does not take graphs or maps. Many do, and that would, I think, raise the standard of this debate considerably, as it is clear few follow the links, and some, like me, fail to even master getting them to work. Barry, can that be fixed?
Another suggestion: How about asking Ian Plimer if we can put the whole of his book up here? His publisher should be rapt, as it will greatly enhance its sales. Then we will all know what we are talking about, at least in part. The resulting hoo-ha could, as a fair swap, go into an appendix to the next edition, edited as Ian chooses.
Next. When you post up bits of someone else’s cv, as relevant in a public scientific debate, unless you are being complimentary it is usually to imply that person is biased, i.e. is lying for concealed reasons. That is not the tradition in science, please note, all you new men. We have no new women here so far, I think? It smacks of unveiling the lone Catholic or Protestant or Jew in the room. Verbal insult has ever been covert threat. In a free society, folk have a right to feel secure, and given the level of insult in debates such as this, folk clearly do not and hence use aliases. That is of course their right, but it is another new thing and not a good one. People did not, back before the virtual world suddenly expanded, get up to speak in the meetings of learned societies and refuse to say who they were. If we hope for a free and frank exchange of views, this should be addressed. The start point is better manners,which is simply consideration for the next person. I am a guilty as any of sarcasm, same thing, so the pot here is merely explaining we are almost all a bit smudged, to our cost as a group.
You are wrong about no new women so far! There are several that I know of who have posted once or more. How you came to that conclusion I don’t know but it seems you have your own biases.
As to revealing the background of some of the posters – that is far from unusual and totally justifiable, if it demonstrates an obvious conflict of interest. It is “de rigeur” at all the pseudo sceptic sites I have visited. How often do we hear “they are only in it for the grant money” etc – so “Tit for Tat” as far as I can see. If you think the bloggers on this site are excessively given to insulting others you obviously haven’t visited Bolt’s, Graeme Bird’s or Mahorasy’s where the level of insulting retorts and personal attacks are abominable. This is mild by comparison although not perfect I agree.
Incidentally, I hardly think Plimer’s publisher would be “rapt” to see the book posted here in full as you suggest. Why would the visiting pseudo sceptics then need to buy it? Rather than enhancing sales it surely would have the opposite effect.
It is possible to inform yourself about multiple areas of science, at least well enough to write about it. And doing so is an important task. But it takes a lot of work, and an vital part is getting other competent people to read it.
As I said, om some thread in the distant past, for my book on Inverse Problems, the scientific vetting didn’t come from Cambridge university Press, it came from colleagues, gratefully acknowledged in the preface. People who have made the effort to get across a broad field are really valuable to work with. My friend Barrie Pittock does it well. (His book, Climate Change from CSIRO publishing is just out in second edition). I get the broad coverage well enough to be able to identify lots of suspect bits in Plimer’s book. The public version of my document lists the half of these that I have had time to check.
Perps you can’t really include Bird’s blog. It is fundamentally based around abuse and aggression, it is not like you could possibly go there expecting anything else. I sometimes smack myself around the head a few times just to prepare myself before having a look there.
I agree Matt – I dipped the toe in the Bird blog once and that was enough for me – just thought I would mention it to get Peter Ravenscroft to realise how mild this blog is. Actually, Marohasy and Bolt are almost as bad in the abuse stakes. I don’t go to either anymore after having been subjected to vitriol and venom just for having an opinion contrary to the deniers who, in the main, populate those blogs.
Who is the Pope and whos is Galileo Galilei in this debate? Who is going to be forced to recant?
What a waste of time! Forget about the biggest con regarding the cooling or warming of the earth.
It’s just another way for the Wall Street boys to make a fast buck and you got sucked in.
CO2 should have been classified as a pollutant in the Clean Air Act. The simple fact is that you clean up your mess (pollutant). That means that you remove CO2 from your stacks just like you are now required to remove particulates, Nitro Oxides, SO2 etc. All this WITHOUT any TRADING scheme!!!
By the way we reduced Pb pollution by 98% without any trading. We got rid of CFC without any trading.
And don’t be childish arguing who should clean up first. Just do it.
Do the right thing! Remember?
Unfortunately “Scholarship” and “Evidence” are all too frequently missing from the world of academic publishing.
Dispassionate editorial committees are not the rule
Re: “short term temperature measurements can be used to test the merit of predictive climate models. What baloney” What is the test? None of the models predicted any near term cooling.
Maybe – but they are even less apparent in “populist” works. Ditto for dispassionate editorial.
I wouldn’t dream of saying “fraud”. It’s much nicer to say “misrepresents cited sources”
and it has the advantage of bring all the different types of “misrepresents ***’
together in my index. So far I have concentrated my efforts on Plimer misrepresenting actual scientific papers (with more leads to check). Lots to do on the graphs.
But what Mark says about Plimer’s supporters is really important — but not just the
media — we know about them. Wasn’t Janet Albrechtsen on the ABC board that forced management to buy the “GGW Swindle”?. Similarly Christopher Pearson was fabricating quotes from the Pope on AGW almost 18 months ago.
Beyond the media, Senator Boswell did the QLD launch, and Kininmonth (who is usually more careful) came our pro-Plimer). I haven’t been tracking who else.
You are a bunch of left wing nuts. You would not know the truth if it hit you fair on the head. Plimer has the answer but you can’t handle it. How many of you have actually read the book?
As I said once before: I am wasting my time.
PLease take me off the blog.
I am wasting my time
Yeah, I think we can all agree on that point…
Yes I have read the book. cover to cover, including Nigel Lawson’s blurb on the back cover describing it is a “scrupulous and scholarly analysis”. Heaven + Earth is full of fabrications. Each time I talk to someone else who has read it, I learn of a whole new lot of things that I missed. Apart from typos that I found myself, the nearest thing that I have had sent to me as a correction is from a school friend telling me that one item that I got from Steven Sherwood used the US spelling of metres.
Obviously these people either have not heard of overfitting or don’t care about scientific accuracy.
However it may only take one skeptic to matter:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/04/2589123.htm?section=justin
“A spokesman for Steve Fielding says the Family First senator is still making his mind up whether climate change is caused by human activity.
The Government is relying on support from Senator Fielding, the Greens, and Independent Senator Nick Xenophon to get its carbon trading laws through the Senate before the end of June.”
Which is of course the object of skeptics. Play wedge science to convince people with the balance of power and they win – simple. Mind you the entire earth loses however what do they care.
I am making my way through Plimer’s book and am indeed clear on one thing. That is that humans and all other life fare better in warm times than in cold. If CO2 is a cause in global warming we should welcome it.
However, we should not be jumping for joy too quickly with respect to its warming effects at all. Because we all know it isn’t true and the warming effect of CO2 is logarithmic. When will the AGW crusaders acknowledge that other than for an initial warming effect, subsequent CO2 hardly contributes at all.
When will they also acknowledge that the world has been warmer than now during recent human history (Roman times and medieval warming)and the world flourished? And not an aluminium smelter in site?
When will they acknowledge that the world has just emerged from a little ice age, and that since emerging from it in 1850 one would expect, and hope, that the world would warm? Please don’t respond with Mann and other’s fraudulent hockey stick!
When will they acknowledge that they really don’t know exactly how the climate system operates or at least not with any confidence of predicting next week’s weather let alone next century’s climate?
Why don’t they accord the sun, the centre of our solar system something other than a peripheral role in determining climate?
Why don’t they acknowledge that they do not understand clouds, and the effect that they have in both warming and cooling the world, sufficiently to reflect their effect in their models?
When will they acknowledge that their true goal is political and not environmental?
I’ve read it – and I have also read the rebuttals by Barry here and by Ian Enting on his blog, plus the critique in “The Australian” by Mike Ashley and those on several other blogs. I think you are the one who needs to expand their reading! As to “left wing nuts” even if everyone on this blog was left-wing – and I doubt it- what has AGW and CC got to do with politics? You are gravely mistaken if you think is a political debate that can be won or lost with rhetoric (and yours is sadly lacking anyway). Tell that to the Earth’s systems. I suggest you won’t get a response!GOODBYE!
Ender said
24 April 2009 at 10.24
‘We in the First World have very comfortable lives based on fossil fuels and we desperately want that to continue. …. a much easier position is just to deny that it is happening and cling to any evidence that shows that it is not us.’
I wholeheartedly agree – rational argument will not sway people who can’t bear the thought of their comfortable lives being threatened. However, there are many out their who just want to know the truth, but don’t understand the arguments and have no idea what the scientific method and peer review is all about.
I don’t think Senator Fielding is a denialist. He’s trying to get to the truth so that he can make responsibLe decisions. People like Barry Brook and Ian Enting may influence such genuine sceptics. Denialists are NOT sceptics.
John G, don’t give up. That’s what the environmentalists hope will happen. I won’t give up until I am convinced that the hypothesis that humans cause significant global climate change is proven to my satisfaction. This will only be achieved when the believers in this hypothesis such as Professor Barry Brook, Professor Andy Pitman, Professor Michael Ashley, Professor Keith Shine, etc. have provided detailed scientific anaylises directly and clearly identifying the flaws in the papers of Dr. John Nicol, Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. Anastasios Tsonis that I summarise in my paper “Politicization of Climate Change & CO2″ (on the Climate Science Coalition Web-site at:- http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=374&Itemid=1).
Since October 2008 I have repeatedly challenged staunch environmentalists to do this, with no response. Dr. Nicol tried unsuccessfully to get responses from Professors Pitman and Ashley and I have recently repeated my challenge to Professor Brook (see http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/06/03/sa-sets-a-33-renewables-by-2020-target/) and to Professor Keith Shine. I doubt if I’ll get a response, which means that I’ll have to assume that Dr. Nicol’s analysis is without flaw and his conclusion correct, i.e. that greenhouse gas concentrations are well over the level at which further increases cause significant increases in global temperatures. In other words, our use of fossil fuels cannot cause any significant increase in global temperatures, hence cannot have significant impact upon global climates.
So come on you professors, prove with detailed and direct counter analysis that Dr. Nicol’s paper is flawed.
Regards, Pete Ridley, Hman-made Global Climate Change Agnostic.
When will so called skeptics educate themselves about what the scientist are actually saying rather than taking Plimer’s implicit assertions at face value?
When will H read the rest of the posts on this blog to learn if these points have been addressed ad-nauseum?
Pete,
Does CO2 concentrations have an altitude profile? That is,
are concentrations differnet at sealevel as apposed to 10 thousdand metere? Or 20 thousdand meteres?
As well as reading Plimer’s book, I have read a lot of Plimer’s references (or in some cases re-read them). This is the good bit of this exercise — I get to read a lot of good science –
it’s just that Plimer misrepresents (or in some cases totally fabricates) what is actually said in the papers that he cites.
Pete Ridley – “I doubt if I’ll get a response, which means that I’ll have to assume that Dr. Nicol’s analysis is without flaw and his conclusion correct, i.e. that greenhouse gas concentrations are well over the level at which further increases cause significant increases in global temperatures.”
So if Barry Brook et all are so sick to death of responding to the same debunked claims from people such as yourself you will consider the paper to be without flaw!
Now that’s good logic and really sums up the denier case very neatly. Wear some scientist down to the point they cannot bear to reply to the same recycled garbage and then claim victory.
To understand why Barry and the others may not respond is there is a very good summary of how CO2 works in the atmosphere written by an physicist Spencer Weart.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/
As sick as you must be of being redirected to this link everytime you repeat the claim that CO2 is saturated you really should take on board what Spencer says as it clearly lays out the currently understood science of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It also references peer reviewed science.
If the paper that you claim disproves this then the normal process of science will bring it to the fore through peer review and scientific discussion.
“Physics for Future Presidents” by Richard Muller is a much more balanced book than Plimer’s. He admits maybe CO2 is not changing climate, but advocates we should act as if it is. (This is the IPCC position, actually.) He looks at it as a study of risks, not a question where we pretend we know the answers. The approach, widely expressed above, that ideas must be proven or disproven before action occurs, is a poor one in this circumstance, and Muller avoids it. My 2c – neither side of this argument know how climate works, but they agree that CO2 has some effect. As an engineer, I know you don’t stuff with complex things you don’t understand, especially when something as important as the ecosystem of the planet may be affected. To blithely let CO2 double, triple whatever, without knowing the effect would be very foolish.
Perhaps you should read Leigh Sales new book on doubt and consider that the questions I have put have not been addressed at all.
The AGW bandwagon is looking a little rattled.
That’s “jaded”, not rattled.
Peter
The so called precautionary principle, based on des Cartes suggestion that it is better to believe in God than not becasue at least belief will get you into heaven, is a deeply flawed proposition. What if God is not the beneficient god of the new testament but rather an evil being? Similarly, what if the response to the perceived problem actually makes things worse for humankind?
The suggestd approach of the ETS is to penalise users of carbon based fuels but not make the so-called renewables cheaper. In this sense it rewards inefficiency and does not encourage renewable use. It doesn’t even discourage use of carbon based fuels!
Additionally, the burden on the economy will drive unemployment sky high, deplete our wealth and ultimately make us less able to deal with the problems at hand.
The AGW crusaders may be well intentioned, but that doesn’t mean that heartfelt emotional responses are necessarily the best.
It is about time that rationality was allowed to come through and time to completely and utterly avoid the emotive response. If we are in a crisis (and I don’t think we are) then a coldly rational plan for dealing with the matter is the only way forward.
H,
The potential for some really disastrous consequences from coninuing with business as usual is exactly why the precautionary principle should be applied and large scale reductions in emissions made, leaving the overwhelming scientific work indicating AGW is real, and that it would be much cheaper to reduce emissions than not to, aside!!
D
“Please, don’t even think sulphur dioxide.”
While would you ignore SO2 when such aerosols are currently masking approx 40% of warming?
When we standardise to account for ENSO the relationship between CO2 and temp becomes even clearer. http://www.aussmc.org/documents/waiting-for-global-cooling.pdf
Ohh Ender.
If Fielding opposes, with the Liberals, the Govt will go to a double dissolution election. The whole senate will be dissolved and everyone re-elected. Fielding will lose his seat (it was a quirk of democracy he was ever elected), and the Liberals will lose big time. Australia will be left with a large Labor majority and at the least with the Greens as the balance of power in the Senate. Australia will have an emissions trading scheme.
Please give full references to Dr Nicol’s paper. Title, date of publication, source e.g which scientific journal, so we can properly study it.
H writes:
Except that the most competent and comprehensive analysis to date shows that addressing global warming in a meaningful way will cost a fraction of the damage it will cause.
http://www.occ.gov.uk/activities/stern.htm
http://www.garnautreview.org.au/domino/Web_Notes/Garnaut/garnautweb.nsf
And that there is massive employment opportunities in low carbon technologies, we can be addressing the business as usual financial collapse at the same time as limiting business as usual climate crisis.
http://www.climateinstitute.org.au/images/maps/cleanenergyjobs.pdf
But if H prefers hyperbole and assertions without evidence than that is fine, quite typical even.
Just found the source of Nicol’s essay “Climate Change (A fundamental analysis of the Greenhouse Effect)
“Feedlot” Jondas Rural Investments Pty (well they would love CO2 and methane wouldn’t they!)
http://www.ruralsoft.com.au//Ltd
Not quite “Nature” or “Science” not even a scientific journal, not even a journal!!!!!
You say he tried to get it peer reviewed. Where and who did he try?
Thanks Ender for the excellent reference. Got that PR? Pass it on to Dr Nicol!
(Anyone wondering where the original polite perps has gone? I’m sick to the back teeth with pseudo-sceptics and their deliberate obfuscation and delaying tactics.) I WANT SOME ACTION ON AGW BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE TO SAVE THE PLANET FOR MY KIDS AND GRANDKIDS AND YES EVEN FOR OLDIES LIKE ME)
Perhaps, as Mark suggests, you should read the posts on this blog (and other opinions on Barry’s “Blogroll” on the left side of the page) and listen to the series of lectures by Barry, thus educating yourself before asking questions that have been answered time and time again, and proving yourself to be a fool.How do I know that you are a fool? For starters
WEATHER is not CLIMATE! and planetary systems do not recognise political affiliations!
H,
You don’t seem to be practicing much doubt, nor skepticism in regards to testing if Plimer has faithfully represented the science that he says hes in debunking.
Perhaps you should do a risk assessment then talk to us about your doubts.
http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/climate/coastal-hazards-climate-change-guidance-manual/html/images/figure-5-6.jpg
DISEMVOWELLED
ndr (whvr y r) hv rd wht Spncr Wrt sys nd wll b skng Dr. Ncl fr hs rctn. Prfssr Brk hs sd n rspns t m chllng tht “Mr Ncl nl nd sbmt hs ppr t scntfc jrnl nd hll gt hs pr rvw. wndr wh h hsnt dn s, f h blvs hs md srs cntrbtn t th scnc. r prhps ( m nl spcltng hr), h hs, nd hs hd th ppr rjctd n whch cs h wld hv th rvws. thr w, th vn fr prpr vltn f Mr Ncls wrk s qt clr” s jst nt gd ngh. Fr ppl lk Prfssr Brk t rfs t pr rvw Dr. Ncl’s ppr, whch s rdl vlbl n th ntrnt fr sch rvw, s sn b l gnstcs lk myslf s bng mrl cp t bcs th cn’t dntf n flws n wht Dr. Ncl sys. Whthr th rsn s s w s t r s y s t mks n dffrnc nd ds nthng t prsd scptc t chng thr vw. Whn sss vr Dr. Ncl’s ppr hv bn rslvd, thn w cn tk lk t th wrk f tht thr Spncr (R). S cm n y prfssrs, mk th tm t prv wth dtld nd drct cntr nlyss tht Dr. Ncl’s ppr s flwd. Rgrds, Pt Rdl, Hmn-md Glbl Clmt Chng gnstc.
Pete,
Don’t forget Ray Pierre in part 2.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument-part-ii
DISEMVOWELLED
Dr Rdrs, ‘ll sk Dr. Ncl t cnsdr gttng nvlvd n th dbt hr. Mnwhl, h sd cpl f dys g QT: Th str b Jhn Clmn, wh strtd th Wthr Chnnl n th ntd Stts, shws hw th whl thng dvlpd n n ssmptn nd, mr t th pnt, mthd f ttrctng rsrch fndng fr vrs prjcts rltd t rgnll “crst” drvn msrmnts f tmsphrc crbn dxd. Nt n rfrnc ws md, n dvlpng ths mdnss, t n nlyss f th bsc nd ncssr mlclr scnc. Plnt f mr rcnt rfrncs t Hnsn’s ppr, whch gn strts wth n ssmptn f snglr htng b crbn dxd, n mntn f th % f ht pt nt th tmsphr b vprtv prcsss vr th cn nd frthr % b cntct wth th grnd s th wnd blws vr t , lk n r cld ngn. % s rsnbl wll stblshd s bng bsrbd nd rdstrbtd s ht b crbn dxd, lthgh dd nt llw fr tht n m ppr, smpl ssmng s vryn ls dd, tht C bsrbd t ll – bt stll n dmnstrbl ffct f glbl wrmng frm ll f t. NQT Mrk, dn’t wrr, ‘ll b rdng bth prts f “strtd gss .. ” gn t tr t fnd th flws n t. Jnthn Prrtt, wll knwn nthsstc spprtr f nythng rltng t nvrnmntl prsrvtn, sstnblt nd ppltn cntrl, rfrrd (n hs scr-mngrng prpgnd bklt “Plyng Sf: Scnc nd th nvrnmnt”) t scntsts s bng rrgnt. rftd ths n th bss f m xprnc wrkng lngsd nmrs scntsts frm mn cntrs. Myb ws mstkn, tkng nt cnsdrtn rfrncs n http://brvnwclmt.cm////s-sts—rnwbls-b-trgt/ t Dr. Ncl s Mr. Ncl. Hpfll ths ws jst n vrsght n Prfssr Brk’s prt. n tht sm blg (‘v skd ths wh wnt t cntn wth ths dbt t jn n hr) Mrk Byrn sd td QT: Pt, y r syng tht ddrssng clmt chng s, gmblng wth th cnmc wll-bng f dprvd ppl rnd th glb. Frstl, nt ddrssng clmt chng s rskr gmbl (n bth fctrs f prpblt nd mpct). Scndl, wht fctrs hv lft vlnrbl ppl dprvd? Hw r y prpsng ncrsng th wll bng f th vlnrbl. v sm d f wht s rqrd, d y? NQT. Mrk, n yr Pnt , pls wld y pnt m t th sttstcs spprtng wht y s. n yr scnd, tryng t dscrg thr cnms frm sng fssl fls, whch r mch chpr thn thr nrg srcs, wll crtl th grwth f thr cnms, hnc rstrct thr pprtnts fr cnmc dvlpmnt. ‘d lv t knw mr bt yr d bt wht s rqrd. pls lcdt. Rgrds, Pt Rdl, Hmn-md Glbl Wrmng gnstc. PS: r y bl t ndrtk pr rvw f Dr. Ncl’s ppr?
Pete,
The references you requested are >90% probability in AR4 Wg1
And the projections of AR4 wg2. You can lay this out in a risk matrix of your choice.
On your response to increasing the wellbeing of the most vulnerable your solution is to use fossil fuels and grow economies. Firstly, the price of coal represent market failure due to massive externalised/uncounted costs. Secondly, why have these strategies been insufficient upto now for the bottom billion?
Here is some background on Pete’s publisher:
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=146
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=New_Zealand_Climate_Science_Coalition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Climate_Science_Coalition
http://frankbi.wordpress.com/category/climate-cranks-and-climate-inactivists/international-climate-science-coalition/nz-climate-science-coalition/
http://www.desmogblog.com/tags/new-zealand-climate-science-coalition
So we can guess Pete’s angle in writing about “Politicization of Climate Change & CO2″
Pete Ridley – “Professor Brook has said in response to my challenge that “Mr Nicol only need submit his paper to a scientific journal and he’ll get his peer review.”
Because this is exactly what he should for his paper to to be considered amongst what he is hoping are his peers. His peers with approx equal qualifications will evaluate the work and decide if it is worthy of publication.
It is not a perfect system however all the scientific advances of the past 200 years or so have used it. All the huge scientific revolutions of the past years have managed to get published and accepted.
If Dr Nichols work is kosher then it will be accepted in the same way if it has scientific merit.
Why don’t you show some heart and debate Plimer on radio, instead of throwing rocks – put your money where your mouth is and debate him
I’ve debated Plimer multiple times, on radio and to a live audience. Strangely, he’s pulled out of the last couple that were on offer.
DISEMVOWELLED
Ths wh d nt ndrstnd hstr r cndmnd t rpt t. Yr prblm s y hv cmpltl gnrd th rl th crbn bsd fls hv plyd n hmnt’s prgrss. Th hv bn bsltl fndmntl nd rmn ntgrl t r w f lf. Th r chp nd plntfl. T trn thm ff wll thrw s bck t th th cntr whn lf xpctnc ws hlf wht t s nw. Yr flr t drstnd tht mns tht y wld rthr thrw th bb t wth th bth wtr thn tr nd wrk t rtnl sltn t prblm. n d rnwbls wll b bl t cmpt wth crbn bsd fls, bt tht d s nt nw nr wll t b fr th frsbl (- yrs) ftr. Gvrnmnts shld ncrg rsrch, dvlpmnt nd cmmrclstn f rnwbl pwr srcs, nt hndcp th nl src w hv nw! Nthr Strn nr Grnt ctll blv tht n rdctn n s f crbn bsd fls wll hv nythng thr thn nmnl ffct n clmt b th nd f ths cntr bt th d cknwldg thr wll b hg cst. t’s jst tht th msr th cst f dng smthng nw gnst th cst f dng mr xtrm vrsn f th sm thng ltr nd cncld t s bttr t d t nw. D y s th prblm wth th rgmnt? Th fllc f thr pstns s tht w rll dn’t hv t d wht th sggst. s Lmbrg shws, th cst f dptng t clmt chng wll b hgl lss xpnsv thn wht Strn dn Grnt sggst nd lv s wth th rsrcs t dl wth thr mr prssng prblms, lk cln wtr n th dvlpng wrld, s wll s dptng t “glbl wrmng” … nd tht’s bsd n ccptng th ctstrph y “blv” s cmng vntts. Th GW crsdrs r jst lk th pddlrs f rlgn tht nn s n wknds. t s bst nt t rg wth thm. Rtnlt plys n prt nd b rgng th drw dwn dpr n thr blfs fr sstnnc.
Perps
Perhaps you just saw RED. I suggest you calm down and re-read what I said before calling me a fool.
I have noticed that the moderators of this blog don’t enforce any level of decorum or is name calling simply part of the ‘science’ behind this blog?
You haven’t read this blog properly have you H? If you had you would know that the solution to continuing to advance our civilisation as normal and allowing the Third World to enjoy the benefits of a comfortable life, while still halting climate change and preventing the dreadful catastrophy we are facing, lies in new nuclear technology – IFR. Read the posts about this and then go out and promote the technology to all. Scientists like Barry are not the deep green fundamentalists you portray – they are pragmatically trying to provide solutions to AGW.
I say again – read the posts in full before making comments that have been thoroughly debunked. I notice in your post at 125 in answer to Mark Byrne, that you cannot have read any of the articles about IFR nuclear technology or you would not have written such rubbish which seems to indicate that you think this blog and Prof Brook are advocating a return to the Dark Ages. The solution to the problem of climate change is given here as well as the convincing science of AGW.If you think my language immoderate you should try the major pseudo-sceptic sites like Andrew Bolt’s and Jennifer Marohasy’s – not that I believe you haven’t already visited them. I repeat WEATHER is not CLIMATE and the ENVIRONMENT is not POLITICAL.
To what particular name calling do you protest, “H”?
[…] scientist Barry Brook has a page of notes on Heaven and Earth, including links to other commentaries. (Short link: http://tinyurl.com/plimer […]
Perps,
You make a sensible point here about growing support for nuclear component of the solution. But there will need to also be significant geo-economic and geo-political changes to address the structural pressures that force such deep inequality and exploitation.
The weakness of the Lomborg styled argument that we should spend money on things other than carbon mitigation is used by many who are arguing for more of the business-as-usual geo-economics that have so disadvantaged the most vulnerable.
Agreed Mark – I would hope to see great changes to inequality and exploitation (as a woman born in the 1940′s I know all about that 🙂 albeit in a much milder form than the vast majority of the World’s people suffer). However, unless we solve the energy problem , I don’t think there is any hope of convincing those in the First World, to change their ways. Indeed, unless AGW is addressed we will all end up being disadvantaged – and how!
Oh dear…
*I stick my nose in this discussion occasionally – and am flabbergasted by the lack of basic understanding of biological dynamics – especially those of population, by the responders to this discussion.
The degree of general obfuscation and special pleading by respondents to this group, is very distressing to read.
1) humans are part of the natural environment – and have evolutionary histories that pre-dispose them to a variety of behavioural patterns – that made lots of sense when we were a small population dependent on unreliable resources – but that’s changed – and we (mostly) are in a position of relative plenty.
2) Like any organism – if resources are available, then population growth happens – until the resources run out – and then there is a crash – the so called “population J-curve” – the human population is showing all the classic characteristics of such a trajectory, with a 10-fold (roughly) increase in population over the last 100 or so years.
3) As our population rise has been fuelled by the discovery of fossil fuels (that made the Inductrial revolution, the burgeoning of science and medicine, and a (somewhat) socialist state possible) – the inevitable impact of this fossil fuel useage – has been increased greenhouse gasses emitted into an atmospheric system which turns out to be far smaller than we fondly suspected.
4) All else (noise, perturbations and uncertainties), not-withstanding, the effect of the totally demonstrable rise in CO2 (and synthetic greenhouse gas) concentrations in the atmosphere, will result in shifts in atmospheric weather patterns – and a net increase in average temperatures. To suggest that such rises are ‘natural’ beggars belief.
5) Further rise in population – will drive the emission of green house gasses even higher – despite limitations of peak oil. So we are in a positive feedback system – until the fossil fuels run out. By which time the global atmospheric system is pushed so far into warming – that we really don’t know what the end situation will be.
6) So what, exactly, is wrong with embracing the principle of the precautionary principle?? (tho it is hardly precautionary now – just a definite ‘will happen’). I suspect that those who feel that it is inappropriate to act, until ALL the hard data is in, are urban types who are now totally disconnected from the realities of a living (and sadly non-voting) world that provides us with our (invisible to most) “ecosystem services”.
Hugh Spencer
I very strongly suggest folks shoud read
“The tragedy of the Commons” (by Garret Harding)
and
Aldo Leopold’s “A Land Ethic”
Dear Readers, My last post on 6th was for some reason “DISEMVOWELLED” although Mark Byrne seems to have been able to read at least that part which I addressed to him. I’ll repeat my post now and see what happens to it.
START OF REPOST: [Ed:No, you don’t seem to get it].
Pete, As a white man in Australia I’m doing quite well, as you’d expect. However, unlike you I’m am not as willing to conflate correlation with causation on the issue of economic growth and wellbeing.
Economic growth is measured in GDP which is quite a problematic indicator. It is possible to have a large GDP (for a defined period) by liquidating natural and social capital. This is possible because GDP has no negative side ledger. All activity is measured as positive.
It is not a simple matter to approximate population “welbeing”. We have some firm measures such as infant mortality, life expectancy, and various indicators of disease burden. The biggest leaps in these firm measure of wellbeing have been gained with preventative public health and sanitation measures.
There is little doubt that humans (in many firm and subjective measures of wellbeing) have made significant gains, and gains upon gains. Due to the combination of the scientific method, resource abundance, socio-political-economic freedom, social cohesion-solidarity and public health infrastructure and similar common good infrastructure.
However, as women, or colonized indigenous peoples, or those born into low income households could tell us, access to the opportunities (and power) than enable wellbeing have not been uniform.
There is no certainty that promoting business-as-usual economic growth will deliver to the oppressed, the opportunities we (rich) have taken. In fact business-as-usual economic-power relations is oppressing the most vulnerable.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47378&catid=220&Itemid=1057
http://www1.american.edu/TED/oauwaste.htm
The above provides examples of cross-border exploitation and oppression. The trend towards growing inequality, would suggest that some of the gains of the few have been achieved by taking advantage of the vulnerable and exploitable. A few visible examples in the rich nations are pokies, predatory lending, and junk-food advertising to children.
You make a valid point about greed; however you seem to locate the driver for this greed back to the politicians. I would suggest there is a feedback in play where those in power are the product of greater system of forces towards short term profit.
Consolidated media ownership, increasing concentration of wealth, increasing expenditure on lobbying decision makers, increasing expenditure on political campaigns, increasing expenditure on political donations, and sophisticated strategic targeting (attack or support) of political candidates, is affecting the balance of power between democracy and plutocracy.
For example, insiders to the machinations of the ALP’s development of the CPRS are aware of a pressure that is not discussed in public sound-bites. One of the forces driving the ALP’s position on the CPRS is the pressure from a group with particularly concentrated power. Large investors in coal interest (power generation and mining), threaten to take their grievances to the BIS and attack Australia’s credit rating. If successful, this would increase the cost off investment/capital in Australia. Hence , similar to the TARP and TARP2 bailouts, the greed (and power) of the small but most powerful minority dominates over the interest of the whole.
(The other Mark Byrne is involved in a similar field, but I am not he).
http://bravenewclimate.com/about/
Check out the opening page and you will discover that TROLLS are warned that they will be DISEMVOWELLED! Don’t worry – you make more sense that way!
See also:
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/info/links.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/sotp/commons.dtl
“The Tragedy of the Commons,” and Beyond
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/280/5364/682
Extensions of “The Tragedy of the Commons”
http://www.google.com/search?q=catton+overshoot+dieoff
Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change by William J. Catton, Jr.
Dear Ed, I appologise for not reading Professor Brook’s “Comments Policy” before submitting comments. I’m new to this site so please excuse my ignorance of your blog protocol. The sites that I have been subscribing to elsewhere around the globe have never seen reason to reject any of my submissions, no matter how critical of the hypothesis about human-made global climate change. The worst that has happened to me was to have two of my posts removed from the UK’s Forum for thr Future because they didn’t like open debate. Jonathan Porritt and Mark Lynas, both staunch environmentalists (but not scientists) encourage it. I’ve reviewed my original post of 6th in the hope that you find it satisfactory. I do not recognise any personal attack, insults, vulgarity or repetitious/false tirades, but if you think there are any then please be selective in your disemvowelling, rather than taking a blanket approach so that I (and others?) can be absolutely clear about what you are intollerant of. We wouldn’t want anyone to get the mistaken impresion that you were trying to disembowell the sceptics’ side of the argument just because you don’t agree with it.
START OF RE-RE-POST: [Ed: {Deleted re-post — again}
Most sites make no attempt at reasonable moderation. This is not one of those.
In my judgement, you are trolling, and you continue to do so. For instance, you asked for a ‘review’ of Dr Nicol’s internet-only non-published piece, you got your answer about what he should so (submit to a peer reviewed journal), and so you ignored this and simply repeated that demand, at least twice more. Moreover, you laced these demands with a number of illogical implications, such as thatif you don’t make the effort to review it then you must accept it.
Overall, your posts are exactly what I would classify as a repetitious tirade — and your thrice posting of the disemvowelled comment simply reinforces this view.
If you try to repost the disemvowelled piece one more time, you’ll be banned from posting henceforth. You are already on moderation. However, it is already patently clear that this is not the forum for you, and I strongly suggest you look elsewhere for whatever you are seeking.]
Pete Ridley – “We wouldn’t want anyone to get the mistaken impresion that you were trying to disembowell the sceptics’ side of the argument just because you don’t agree with it.”
The point I think Barry is trying to make is that this is not the forum for this sort of argument. What you and other skeptics don’t seem to get is that this a BLOG. Its sole purpose is an education outreach from scientists to the general public like myself. Other sites like Real Climate are an attempt by scientists to communicate to science of climate change as best they can.
Now if Barry was to provide a detailed critique of Dr Nichol’s paper would you understand it? Also assuming that he did who would read it? The point is that the people that would read it are the general public who also would not understand the mathematics and physics involved either.
For a working scientist, again I am assuming here and would be open to correction, to read the paper it would have to be published in a peer reviewed journal. They receive regular updates of abstracts published in their field so they can stay abreast of current research. Most scientists don’t read blogs – and why would they? Again most scientist have never heard of McIntyre. They would know Christie as they have both published.
If Dr Nichols wants the paper read it needs to be published. Posting it on a blog will do nothing as the people that read blogs usually do not understand the science. Spencer Weart’s work is a dumbed down version for the general public to read as his excellent series on the discovery of the greenhouse effect that you can find here.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
Basically no-one is trying to stifle anything just attempting to put in the proper forum.
I notice that Heaven and Earth has been released in the US in hardcover. The Amazon page (for the hardcover edition) has a few reviews, mostly of the “fearless defier of the scientific conspiracy” variety. I’ve submitted a review including some links to assorted scientific commentaries (including this).
Also, I’ve put together a collection of links to scientific responses to Heaven and Earth here: Debunking Ian Plimer’s “Heaven and Earth”.
Ender, thanks for the clarification on the purpose of Professor Brook’s blogs. I came across them while trying to find a posted critism of Dr. Nicol’s paper. I find the Internet to be the simplest way for a layman like myself to get the information that I need to help me form a reasoned opinion about the human-made global climate change hypothesis. I obviously had the wrong impression about what these blogs are all about and will pursue elsewhere my search on that matter.
Meanwhile, this is still a useful source of climate change advice from an expert, so I hope that Ed. will permitted me to continue trying to learn more on the subject by posting questions and relevant comments on the blogs.
H, I too have been impressed by the points that Bjorn Lomborg makes in his booklet “Cool It” so go along with much of what you said on 6th. I disagree with Perps’s response and presently cannot see how she believes that humans have any control over global climates, so how can we hope to stop climate change.
Professor Brook says above, ” .. the Earth has been hotter before, and .. more CO2 has been present in the atmosphere in past ages. .. this is an entirely uncontroversial viewpoint. What is relevant now is the rate of climate change, the specific causes, and its impact on modern civilisation that is dependent, for agricultural and societal security, on a relatively stable climate”. I’ve been around for 72 years and don’t recognise any significant change in climate, only the usual unpredictable weather.
In the seminar presentation referenced by Professor Brook in his 29th April response to “salvarsan” Professor Bob Hill explains how climates have changed drastically in the past without the help of humans and he ends in the Q&A session talking of concerns about the rapidity of change, but it’s not clear to me whether he is talking about change of climate, change of CO2 or change of temperature. (Are there full transcripts of the questions missing from the audio? The seminar itself is very interesting but the full questions would also be useful). Is it the rate of change of mean global temperature (which appears not to be following the rate of change of atmospheric CO2 concentration) that is being used as an indicator of global climate change. If so, simply “eyeballing” the graphs of global temperature change presented by the Hadley Centre (http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/) and NOAA (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/images/last2000-large.jpg), over a reasonable period (lets say over the last 50 years) suggests a rate of change of less that 1 degree C. This is nothing like the 8 degree C rise at the end of the Younger Dryas in a period of decades which climate researcher Carrie Morrill of NOAA Paleoclimatology Program is reported to have found. Is it because the AOGCM’s are projecting high rates of temperature change on the basis of high rates of CO2 change? If so I can’t understand why such projections could be causing concern for any of us who accept Professor Brook’s opinion that “we don’t know anything much useful about processes or drivers”. Surely without knowing anything much useful about those it is impossible to know how to exert any control over climate change or to model climates reliably on any GCM. The IPCC’s AR4 WG1 admits that climate models “.. continue to have significant limitations” and “The possibility of developing model capability measures … has yet to be established.. ” yet the supporters of the significant human-made global climate hypothesis persist in claiming that the models are sound.
Perhaps someone can enlighten me.
Regards, Pete Ridley
I just listened to your interview Barry. Very well done!
And then Steve Fielding goes and pops his head up. Will it never end?
Will you be starting a new thread so we can go over it all again?
“Perhaps someone can enlighten me”
I doubt it.
“There are none so blind as those who WILL NOT (often misquoted as CANNOT) see”
PROVERBS (1546)
John Heywood records this rhyme which expresses the age-old frustration felt towards someone who refuses to face facts.
Originally, in Olde English:
“Who is so deafe or so blinde as hee, that wilfully will nother hear nor see”
Would anyone care to explain this map, by using the AGW model?
Google “A bridge too far for thought”
Or the ones showing the huge magnetic z trend shifts, at the same place, shown on the maps on my website?
Are maps illegal in this debate? Or immoral, or what?
Ian Plimer has accused critics like me of nit-picking.
As almost anyone who has had children in primary school knows, a nit is the
egg of the head louse. So I am quite comfortable with Plimer’s description of
my “de-lousing” activity.
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Head_lice_treatment_and_control
Hi Peter,
maps not illegal in debate. No doubt hard to accommodate on a blog, but there should
be nothing to stop you posting a link to your own site.
But one obvious question: are your ideas tied to stuff in Plimer’s book, (which is where this thread started) or is this just the closest blog you can find? (if it is in Plimer’s book, could you say where — I have read it, but certainly not memorised it.)
It can be different however I have just used the name Ender since I started writing on the internet more years ago now than I care to remember.
I always use my name in my email and my blog, when it was active, used my real name.
Ian Plimer contends AGW is geological nonsense. This supports that view. If it does not, will someone please explain why not?
In the spirit of the “outreach” role of this blog let me give my view — working scientists read all sorts of stuff. Different scientists do things differently, which is why it is really good to have a wide network of colleagues who scan different classes of stuff. For example Mike Ashley’s review of Heaven and Earth noted that he recognised some of the stuff about the sun as from a crank paper that was doing the rounds (while all I could do was flag it in my working notes as highly suspect).
However, for actually getting a paper taken seriously, publication in a peer reviewed journal is important, but even that isn’t sufficient. Maureen Christie did a PhD at Melbourne, published by CUP as The Ozone layer: A philosophy of science perspective that tracked through the history of the real scientific debates,
especially over the ozone hole: solar or dynamics or chemistry. And then how, after the science was settled (i.e. the main proponents of other ideas accepted the evidence of chemistry) a political debate was continued using old discredited arguments. One thing she pointed out was that poor stuff that got through the peer review process often just got ignored, rather than anyone taking the time to refute it. Putting this another way, the most important form of peer review is not the bit that is done at the time of publication, but the ongoing review by the scientific community.
Ian Plimer seems to be putting forward a lot of contradictory suggestions and the issue of solar vs geological forcing of climate change (given that he denies AGW) is one of them. Given that Plimer is so self-contradictory, you haven’t clarified what if anything of his you are picking up on. More specifically, i have emailed you my view that the time series relations in your online document look unconvincing. I think that without more detail, i would say the same about the spatial pattern in “bridge too far for thought”.
The Wegman committee that investigated the hockey stick recommended that people involved in this sort of study should involve a statistician. That is a “big ask”, but at least reading a book on the relevant statistics would be a good start.
Perps, quotes like that do nothing to help me develop a better understanding of the significance of our use of fossil fuels on changes in global climates. A reasoned response to the questions I ask in my second paragraph should enlighten me one way or the other. I am not prepared to accept very much on faith alone.
Please would someone make an attempt to respond constructively to the points that I raise in my post.
Regards, Pete R
Use new, cheaper, Anhropogenic Groundwater Depletion in the fliptop box, instead of Anthropogenic Greenhouse Warming, if you have seas to raise. 50 million centrifugal pumps cannot be idle!
Hi Ian Enting et all,
If this forum is a debate in science, rather than lit. crit, then I think anything that supports Ian Plimer’s case is relevant. If this is merely lit crit, and things not on the pages of “Heaven and Earth” are invalid here, will those who mentioned anything in science that Ian did not expressly describe, please withdraw their comments now?
If this is lit crit for some, you can have salagubrious as a freebie to play with, while the rest of us do the boring stuff.
I will be delighted if competent people would read this. Any incompetents out there, it’s OK, I am one of you, so you can read it also. Right, lads and lassies, lets get to it.
Those pumps are estimated to be shifting somewhere between 600 and 1,000 cubic kilometres of groundwater a year and an unknown but large proportion of that is not going back. A whole lot gets to the sea. Do the sums, a guess at the proportion, surface area of the oceans, etc. Publish a peer-reviewed paper and get famous. Public domain, I will cheer and not complain. Compaction makes a lot of groundwater extraction a one-way street. The water tables are dropping below most major irrigated croplands. Go do your own homework on Google, that way I am not steering you towards pet papers and reports.
Add the water lost from soils, courtesy of more millions of tractors, dozers and chainsaws, exposing the soil to the sun annually, where before there were standing plants year round. Carbon is also lost from the soil and that used to trap moisture. The soil carbon incidentally oxidises and then goes where? You get fifteen guesses.
Then take the uncomfortable fact, for AGW that overall, the ice caps are growing, not shrinking. West Antarctica and Greenland and low latitude snow losses nowhere near compensate for East Antarctic increases, as some 1.3 million satellite observations have shown. Go talk to ESA, not NASA, the latter screwed up their alogorithms and have now tardily admitted it.
The sea level increase is partly isostatic rebound, about 1 mm per year. The rest is most likely groundwater. If the oceans are warming overall, likely but uncertain, suits me, that will raise sea levels also. If the atmosphere is warming, that will take up a lot of water, ditto for Ian and me et al.
Would someone like to explain, with as little invective as possible, why I am drivelling? I have this fragile sense of self, see, and I do so tend to sulk, if people are unkind.
Keep it sensitive, sweethearts?
Love you all dearly,
Peter
P.S: Science is scepticism. Certainty is the campsite of the other mob.
Hi Peter,
Sea level rise measurements from around Australia and the south Pacific as seen in these reports below show consistent rise. If it was a little bit of rise here and there the pumping argument may be valid but such consistent rise across large areas cannot be explained away but this type of argument.
http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/projects/abslmp/abslmp.shtml
http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/projects/spslcmp/spslcmp.shtml
http://www.ga.gov.au/geodesy/slm/spslcmp/timeseries.jsp
Ian Plimer cites Tuvalu and other Pacific sites in his book. The GPS measurements from the stations in those locations do not bear out his or your argument that the substantial measured sea level rise is due to land subsidence.
Sorry that the scientific data flies in this face of the time you spent on this line of argument, and that Ian spent writing and publishing his book!!
DR
Hi Ian Enting,
Sincere congrats on your 31-page criticism of “Heaven and Earth”
No ifs or buts, that is a solid piece of work and a much-needed contribution. I have not yet read “the book,” just numerous reviews, bad boy me, as said before. Will buy one shortly, none available in library here, much in demand. Which is why I have tackled this forum as a debate in its own right, so far. Like you, I think there seem to be many real errors in the book. No doubt the second edition will benefit hugely.
I am not even remotely convinced that AGW now makes sense, however, as my own criticism of it, also based on geology, comes not from the case IP is reported to be making and does on the radio, but mainly from the maps, see those on my website, just for starters. They make absolutely no sense, under AGW.
And then there are the technical problems with the ice drilling and sampling, only having half a dozen holes where we would be a bit better off with ten thousand, and those 50 million centrifugal pumps, etc.
When floundering about lost in darkest Africa (been there, done a touch of that), it is a good idea to first consider the maps. The speeches and blame can usually wait. We are all a bit lost in a data jungle here, and the first exit strategy dreamt up may just lead to the Mountains of the Moon, and not to the pub.
I will spend delighted ages working through your list of Ian Plimer’s errors to see if I am on his side or yours, in each case. Soon as I have the book. Tomorrow, with luck.
You do have the odd typo yourself, happens to most of us and, a trivial point, ice is technically a rock for geos, when lying down and staying sort-of-still, in bulk. A sediment, actually. By long usage.
Hooroo,
Peter.
I’d like to hear what reaction you all have to the following?
Emeritus Professor Nils-Axel Mörner Head of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics, Stockholm University, Sweden President, (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, Leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project claims to know more than most when it comes to sea level changes. He is reported as saying “I am a sea-level specialist. There are many good sea-level people in the world, but let’s put it this way: There’s no one who’s beaten me. I took my thesis in 1969, devoted to a large extent to the sea-level problem. From then on I have launched most of the new theories, in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. I was the one who understood the problem of the gravitational potential surface, the theory that it changes with time. I’m the one who studied the rotation of the Earth, how it affected the redistribution of the oceans’ masses. And so on”.
In 2005 he submitted a memorandum to the UK’s Select Committee on Economic Affairs which is well worth a read. It includes the following statements:
QUOTE It is true that sea level rose in the order of 10-11 cm from 1850 to 1940 as a function of Solar variability and related changes in global temperature and glacial volume. From 1940 to 1970, it stopped rising, maybe even fell a little. In the last 10-15 years, we see no true signs of any rise or, especially, accelerating rise (as claimed by IPCC), only a variability around zero. .. From 2000 to the present, we have run a special international sea level project in the Maldives including six field sessions and numerous radiocarbon dates. Our record for the last 1,200 years is given in Fig 6. There are no signs of any on-going sea level rise. It seems all to be a myth. .. Tuvalu in the Pacific is often said already to be in the flooding mode. The tide-gauge record (Fig 7) for the last 25 years does not show any rise, however. The truth seems to be that a Japanese pineapple industry had subtracted too much freshwater by that forcing saltwater to invade the subsurface. Most remarkable in the record of climatic changes during the last 600 years are the cold periods around 1450, 1690 and 1815 and their correlation with periods of Solar Minima (the Spörer, Maunder and Dalton Solar Minima). The driving cyclic solar forces can easily be extrapolated into the future. This would call for a new cold period or “Little Ice Age” to occur at around 2040-50. Still, we hear nothing about this. It is as if IPCC and the Kyoto Protocol enthusiasts want to “switch off the Sun itself”. UNQUOTE
Regards, Pete Ridley
Dear all,
I was (we were) graciously favoured with this English summary of his and Professor Ralf Tscheuschner’s views on AGW and the laws of thermodynamics, by return email from Professor Gerhard Gerlich. There was more in Germn, on other documents, which someone may care to translate. My email address is [email protected].
I think that if these men are correct, it is all over for AGW, never mind the rest of the science debate. So, their views need some close attention, these are not the words and opinions of politicians. As this lecture, given in Prague, may not be easy to find in English, and as I said I would, I am posting it here for the consideration of one and all. Regrettably, the paragraphs in Czech were beyond my keyboard, but they merely repeated those in English. My apologies to Czech readers. The original was of 18 pages Here it is in full – PSR.
“Prof. Dr. Gerhard Gerlich
Institut für Mathematische Physik der Technischen Universität Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig
Mendelssohnstr. 3
38106 Braunschweig
[email protected]
The fraud with the global climate:
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth
Prague conference 15. 11. 2007, lecture of 15 (20) minutes.
The contents of four transparencies were omitted in the 15 minutes lecture. Printed: 28.11.2007 23:15 Uhr
1) Introduction 2
2) Climates and global climate 5
3) Greenhouse effects 7
4) Explanations of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects 9
5) The experimental disproof of the carbon dioxide greenhouse effects 12
6) The nonsense of the mean radiation budget 17
7) The politicised and socially relevant sciences 18
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth 2
1) Introduction
My co-author of the below cited English preprint, Dr. Ralf D. Tscheuschner, and I set up a high value on the fact that we are not climatologists, but completely independent theoretical or mathematical physicists, who did not and do not get additional public or private financial support. In any case we know more about the physical foundations of the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects than all global climatologists together. This cannot be very difficult, because they are no physicists.
G. Gerlich:
“Die physikalischen Grundlagen des Treibhauseffekts und fiktiver Treibhauseffekte”, in: “Treibhaus-Kontroverse und Ozon-Problem”, Europäische Akademie für Umweltfragen (1996), S. 115-147.
G. Gerlich, Ralf D. Tscheuschner:
“Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics”, submitted for publication, July 2007, 113 pages, 32 figures, 13 tables,
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161.
(The preprints could be ordered by email as PDF-files. Email address [email protected])
My main fields of scientific interests are the statistical and stochastic description of nature and the statistical and mathematical foundations of quantum theory. To illustrate this, I’ll give some dates and a part of my publications, which have some connections to the here required fields of physics and mathematics.
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth 3
geb. 6. 4. 1942 in Prag (Böhmen), 14. 2. 1962: Abitur in Neumünster, 24. 7. 1967: Diplom Physik (Kiel, sehr gut), 19. 2. 1970: Promotion Dr. rer. nat. (Physik, mit Auszeichnung, Braunschweig),12. 5. 1975: venia legendi für “Theoretische Physik”, TU Braunschweig, seit 14. 12. 1978 Universitätsprofessor im Fach “Theoretische Physik” an der TU Braunschweig.
G. Gerlich: Vektor- und Tensorrechnung für die Physik, Vieweg-Verlag, Braunschweig, 1977.
G. Gerlich: Eine neue Einführung in die statistischen und mathematischen Grundlagen der Quantentheorie, Vieweg-Verlag, Braunschweig, 1977.
G. Gerlich: Axioms for Quantum Theory, International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 31, No. 7, 1992, 1103-1129.
G. Gerlich, L. Weiss: Concrete Hilbert spaces for Quantum Systems with Infinitely Many Degrees of Freedom, International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 35, No. 7, 1996, 1341-1351.
G. Gerlich: Eine Verallgemeinerung des Stratonovich-Verfahrens für Anwendungen in der statistischen Mechanik, Physica 82A, 1976, 477-499.
G. Gerlich, H. Kagermann: Herleitung kinetischer Gleichungen mit dem verallgemeinerten Stratonovich-Verfahren, Physica 88A, 1977, 283-304.
G. Gerlich, W. Wulbrand: Kinetische Gleichungen für Systeme mit unendlich vielen Freiheitsgraden, Abhandlungen der Braunschweigischen Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft, XXIX, 1978, 97-105
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth 4
A. Emmerich, G. Gerlich, H. Kagermann: Particle motion in stochastic force fields, Physica 92A, 1978, 262-378.
G. Gerlich, H. Kagermann, E. W. Richter: Anomalous plasma diffusion across a strong magnetic field, Physica 96C, 1979, 347-366.
The Stratonovich method, which was generalized by me, gives approximated kinetic equations and time evolution equations for the moments of stochastic processes with starting points and differential paths. These approximations are good for short time intervals and asymptotically long time intervals in the transition functions of the stochastic processes. With this method we could give an explanation of the anomalous plasma diffusion (Bohm diffusion) without turbulence. Then one could not remove the anomalous diffusion in the experiments for nuclear fusion, if one only suppresses turbulence. Therefore we had problems with the publication of this paper. If the names Kagermann and Emmerich produce associations as SAP or VW this is not an accident.
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth 5
2) Climates and global climate
Neigung, Himmelsgegend, Gegend, Landstrich, climate
The science of the climates formerly was a part of geography and was called “Klimakunde” or climatology.
Die Klimazonen (Seydlitz, 1958)
A Tropische Klimate
B Warme und gemäßigte Trockenklimate
C Warmgemäßigte Regenklimate
D Kalte Waldklimate
E Schneeklimate
Jahresklimate der Erde (C. Troll, K. H. Paffen, 1969)
I1-I4 Polare und subpolare Zonen
II1-II3 Kaltgemäßigte Zone
III Kühlgemäßigte Zone
III1-III8 Waldklimate
III9-III12 Steppen- und Wüstenklimate
IV1-IV7 Warmgemäßigte Subtropenzonen
V1-V6 Tropenzone
The climate zones (Seydlitz): (A) tropical climates, (B) warm and temperate dry climates, (C) warm temperate rain climates, (D) cold forest climates, (E) snow climates.
The year climates of the earth: Polar and sub-polar zones, cold temperate climate zones, forest climates, steppe and desert climates, warm temperate subtropical zones, tropical zones.
I learned the climate zones in grammar school. My wife learned the year climates of the earth when she studied geography.
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth 6
Climate is the dependence of local weather parameters with respect to the position of the sun or the latitude of the region. There are a lot of climates, which describe the local means of parameters of the weather. For the whole earth there does not exist a climate in the singular, especially, there does not exist a global climate for the earth. Global climatology is a contradiction within itself, thus the void or empty set, a nothing. Therefore there are no global climate changes, only possible temporal changes of calculated global numbers, for which a science does not exist. In no case it can be climatology. Perhaps it is a branch of astrology, in which more physical laws are used than in the global computer climatology.
In the times of the migration of the peoples, there was a clear trend to the regions of the earth, where the average temperatures of the year were higher than in the countries of their origin. One could not frighten these folks with higher mean temperatures, it was exactly the opposite: the peoples set out to live in a more pleasant climate. Higher local mean temperatures are not a catastrophe, but the opposite: a more pleasant climate where for instance you have less costs for heating and together with water and carbon dioxide a better growing of the plants. Without complicated calculations, everybody can try it out, if he moves his home in the direction of the equator.
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth 7
3) Greenhouse effects
(I) The ordinary greenhouse or glasshouse effect. Inside a car, which stands in the sun for some hours, it is warmer than outside the car, though much
more radiation intensity of the sun hits the ground outside. It is generally accepted that this is not the atmospheric greenhouse effect. The closed windows of the car trap the hot air, not the thermal radiation (suppressed air cooling or convection).
(II) Arrhenius
If one removes the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere of the earth, the mean temperature of the ground of the earth would be 0.5 °C.
Line of arguments: He estimates that the carbon dioxide absorbs 18.7 percent of the radiation from the ground and he applies the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law in an inadmissible way for gases.
(III) The computer greenhouse effect
If one raises or doubles the concentration of carbon dioxide in the model atmosphere, with computer simulations one gets an increase of the mean temperatures near the ground of 0,7°C – 9,6 °C or 2°C – 12 °C.
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth 8
(IV) Modern primitively calculated global greenhouse effects
If one imagines:
that there is no carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,
that there are no carbon dioxide and no water vapour in the atmosphere,
that there are no trace gases in the atmosphere,
that there is no atmosphere on the earth,
that there is no water on the earth,
that there are no atmosphere and no water on the earth,
then the mean air temperature near the ground or the mean temperature of the ground would be -18 °C.
One uses the radiation intensity of the sun at the orbit of the earth and that the mean incoming radiation equals the mean outgoing radiation and that the Albedo of the earth (for the visible light) is 0.3 and that the mean temperature equals the fourth square root of the average of the forth power of the temperature. It is clear that all these statements together are a complete physical nonsense.
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth 9
4) Explanations of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects
Variante I: Prof. Dr. Hartmut Graßl, Hamburg, damals Leiter des Weltklima-Forschungsprogramms, Genf (Handelsblatt, 3. 1. 1996):
“Sofern die Gashülle das Vordringen von Sonnenenergie zur Planetenoberfläche weniger behindert als die direkte Abstrahlung der Wärme von der Oberfläche in den Weltraum, müssen die Oberfläche und die untere Atmosphäre, um wieder im Mittel genau so viel Energie abzustrahlen wie von der Sonne aufgenommen wurde, wärmer werden als ohne diese Atmosphäre.”
Variant I: Prof. Dr. Hartmut Graßl, Hamburg, the former director of the climate research program of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO): In so far as the gaseous hull [of the earth] obstructs the propagation of the solar energy down to the planet’s surface less than the direct radiation of heat from the surface into space, the ground and the lower atmosphere must become warmer than without this atmosphere, in order to radiate as much energy as received from the sun.
There is no total radiation budget, since there are no individual conservation laws for the different forms of energy, especially for the radiation intensities.
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth 10
Variante II: Prof. Dr. Peter C. Stichel, damaliger stellv. Vorsitzender des Arbeitskreises Energie der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft (1995), Theoretische Physik, Universität Bielefeld :
“Es ist inzwischen anerkanntes Lehrbuchwissen, daß langwellige Infrarotstrahlung, emittiert von der erwärmten Erdoberfläche, teilweise von CO2 und anderen Spurengasen in der Atmosphäre absorbiert und reemittiert wird. Dieser Effekt führt zu einer Erwärmung der unteren Atmosphäre und aus Gründen des Gesamtstrahlungshaushaltes gleichzeitig zu einer Abkühlung der Stratosphäre.”
Variant II: Prof. Dr. Peter C. Stichel, former deputy president of the working group “energy” of the German physical society (1995), theoretical physics, university of Bielefeld:
Now it is generally accepted textbook knowledge that the long-wave infrared radiation, emitted by the warmed up surface of the earth, is partially absorbed and re-emitted by CO2 and other trace gases in the atmosphere. This effect leads to a warming of the lower atmosphere and, for reasons of the total radiation budget, to a cooling of the stratosphere at the same time.
Prof. Stichel describes a perpetuum mobile of the second kind, which cannot exist.
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth 11
Variant III:
The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lets the radiation of the sun, whose maximum lies in the visible light, go through completely, while on the other hand it absorbs a part of the heat radiation emitted by the earth into space because of its larger wavelength. This leads to higher near-surface air temperatures.
Variant IV:
If one raises the concentration of carbon dioxide, which absorbs the infrared light and lets visible light go through, in the earth’s atmosphere, the ground heated by the solar radiation and the near-surface air will become warmer, because the cooling of the ground is slowed down.
Variant V:
If one adds to the earth’s atmosphere a gas, which absorbs parts of the radiation of the ground into the atmosphere, the surface temperatures and near surface air temperatures will become larger.
In our preprint we discuss 14 fictitious greenhouse effects of the atmosphere of the earth. If one ignores all apparently wrong statements, one gets the following statement of a general physical law:
If one increases the absorption of the infrared radiation in the layer above the warmed ground, which is practically transparent to the visible light, the ground will be less cooled, thus will be warmer.
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth 12
5) The experimental disproof of the carbon dioxide greenhouse effects
Counterexample 1 (housewife experiment):
A pot with and without water on a hot plate. Without water, the bottom of the pot will be red-hot; with water it will not be red-hot. Water absorbs infrared radiation excellently and much better than the air, which was displaced by the water. And water is nearly transparent for the visible light. With water the ground of the pot will not be red-hot, thus with water and with the same heating power, the bottom will be much colder.
Compare this with the “general law”:
If one increases the absorption of the infrared radiation in the layer above the warmed ground, which
is practically transparent to the visible light, the ground will be less cooled, thus will be warmer.
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth 14
A physical effect is a course of events, which is difficult to understand and which can be explained with generally accepted physical laws. If one has not such an explanation then this is not a physical effect.
The heat transition from a wall to the air (gas) or water (fluid) cannot be explained with the radiation excess of the participating different materials, because changes of the relative velocities change the heat transition in orders of magnitude. If one tries to guess the water or air-cooling, the radiation properties on the bottom (of the pot or ground) can be neglected.
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth 15
Therefore the explanations of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects are wrong. Thus we have proved that the carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the atmosphere of the earth do not exist. In addition one cannot find explanations of this “effect” in textbooks of theoretical physics.
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth 16
I can only sum up:
The physical foundations of the computer simulations should be a system of partial differential equations, which cannot be solved for the situation of the whole earth. The boundary conditions determine the solutions more than the differential equations themselves. There are radiation, heat, momentum, mass, energy transitions through moving and not moving boundary surfaces between different solid materials, fluids, gases, plasmas. Especially for moving boundary surfaces there do not exist theoretical concepts. For the earth it is impossible to write them down. In the global models the grids are too huge to allow the calculations of second order derivatives. Therefore, in the numerical models, you cannot take into account the dissipation through friction and heat conduction, because these terms need second order derivatives. Of course everybody, who makes computer simulations, knows this. Nevertheless, the simulators lead the politicians to believe that they could model the influence of the concentration of carbon dioxide on the weather of the earth, though they could solve nothing.
Only in the entropy production equation (generalized heat conduction equation) you can add artificial heat production densities, which you can artificially connect with the carbon dioxide concentration.
If you have nonlinear evolution equations, you do not get simple differential equations for the averaged values, where the time derivatives of the averages of the important parameters are determined by the averaged values of these parameters.
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth 17
6) The nonsense of the mean radiation budget
The fundamental mistake calculating temperatures with postulated radiation intensities lies in the fact that the cause and the effect are interchanged. The momentary local temperatures determine the radiated heat currents and not the heat currents the temperature. If the radiation of the sun warms the ground, the ground and the near ground air become warmer and the heat is transmitted by convection and radiation, corresponding to the local movement of the air, rain, evaporation, ground haze, temperature and the local ground conditions, as are water, ice, stones, sand, forests, meadows.
A global radiation balance cannot dictate the ground temperature and the loss of the heat. A certain square meter of a meadow “does not know” something from the rest of the earth’s surface, which determines the mean values. This mathematical nonsense is produced in each text, in which the atmospheric greenhouse effect is treated and the Arrhenius nonsense is repeated, especially in the IPCC papers.
In my opinion, the changes of the mean temperatures near the ground are essentially determined by the changes of the cloud cover. For this, I let other persons find a cause. I am sure that the 0.05 weight percent of carbon dioxide are not the cause for the variations.
Disproof of the atmospheric carbon dioxide greenhouse effects of the earth 18
7) The politicised and socially relevant sciences
It is unquestionable that the modern global “climate scientists” know all difficulties with the relevance of the global climate models. When they accepted the job from the politicians to calculate with models the climate changes, which were produced by the change of the concentration of carbon dioxide, these persons have consciously told lies to the public, because they knew very well that they never could make numerical calculations, which have something to do with reality. Therefore their results were proclaimed like the Delphic Oracle. It is difficult to distinguish between modern global “climate scientists” and astrologers. The foundations of expensive political actions should be real measured numbers but should not be guessed numbers or with bad models calculated numbers (scenarios).
Then there is the practice with the modern commission politics of experts, which undermine the democratic decisions, because laymen or voters cannot criticize experts. Such commissions (Hartz, PISA, IPCC) only produce expenses and they always proof at the end of a period that they were important and necessary. Nobody is personally responsible for the nonsense they are producing. They always find causes for their eternal existence and the commissions of the United Nations and European Union produce the necessity of a totalitarian dictatorship over the whole world.
Its the data, not the individual that counts: http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/
Mainstream view is that movement of watermasses (mainly El Nino, I think), changes the earth’s rotation, not the other way around. The reason that this is a “mainstream” view is that it is consistent with conservation of angular momentum. This issue is on my things to write about in my analysis of Plimer when I track down more detail.
“I will spend delighted ages working through your list of Ian Plimer’s errors to see if I am on his side or yours, in each case. Soon as I have the book. Tomorrow, with luck.”
Great — one often gets a more useful level of analysis from people who start off from a position of disagreement.
“No doubt the second edition will benefit hugely.”
If you stip off all the errors in Heaven+ Earth, I think it would end up looking a lot like A short history of planet earth.
Peter R,
I am doing lit crit right now, but nothing says that you have to. (as I said in email, it’s Barry’s blog not mine). I’ve given you little bits of feedback, but mainly advised you to contact someone who knows more about magnetism than me (my last involvement was writing fortran for auroral calculations for the antarctic division as a vac job at the end of 1969). My suggestion that you look for another blog was as an addition, not a suggestion to leave here ( it’s Barry’s blog not mine).
where I really disagree with your post, is that I think the lit crit stuff is the boring part, compared to looking at the real world.
Wonderful news! When does he get his Nobel Prize? I am sure “Nature” and “Science” are falling over themselves to publish his work and his peers are lauding him for alleviating all their worries about CC/AGW!
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Gerhard_Gerlich Check him out folks!
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=European_Academy_for_Environmental_Affairs All the usual pseudo-sceptics are here
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Science_and_Environmental_Policy_Project Headed by Singer and receiving funding from Exxon and Mobil!
Note the categories that these fall in to (at the bottom of the page)
Global warming sceptics/Junk science/ Co-sponser of the Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change 2009 – you know the one Steve Fielding just got back from!
Really PR you will have to do better than this.
Brilliant. Someone obviously had a lot of fun putting this together. Wonderful spoof of the gibberish produced by assorted fruit-loops out there.
Notice at the top of the page “Keep SourceWatch alive. User contributions make this website possible. Donate now!”
Hmmm!
For a bit of perspective take a look at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/06/sea-level-graphs-from-uc-and-some-perspectives/
I have not yet had a worthwhile response to my comment of 8th June. I refer you again to it and repeat:
– I can’t understand why such projections could be causing concern for any of us who accept Professor Brook’s opinion that “we don’t know anything much useful about processes or drivers”. Surely without knowing anything much useful about those it is impossible to know how to exert any control over climate change or to model climates reliably on any GCM.
Anyone able to clarify?
Peter Ravenscroft.
If you are going to do some hydrological accounting in the context of sea level rise, you might usefully investigate how much water is impounded annually by dams around the world.
The figure is quite amazing, really, but I’ll leave it for you to find, and to dwell upon in the context of your current point…
Peter Ravenscroft said:
“But as AGW cannot even begin to explain the ice ages…”
Erm, is it just me, or is this a non sequitur of impressive proportions?
For light relief:
“Valiant warmists, don’t be nervous
Valiant warmists, north and south
often froffin’ at the mouth
at sceptics who’ll not peer review,
we promise not to peer at you.
Gentle creatures, be not alarmed
we’ve come to visit, quite unarmed
we only wear white overalls
because we paint the whiter walls.”
See, I cherish you all,
Peter.
This is the kind of thing that’s turned me from being something of a fence-sitter on AGW to someone who takes it much more seriously. The extremely poor quality of scientific argument from the denialist side of the debate is telling. There is a cadre of people who obviously want to do in AGW in the public mind, and this is the best they can come up with. Their case is obviously highly dubious.
Indeed.
Our friend Peter here, posing as a seeker after truth while grasping at the silliest of straws to get the “truth” he wants, is a fine example.
Ian’s got one thing right, man-made climate change supporters attack with the gusto of religeous fanatics.
I find fanatacisim in all it’s forms both offensive and dangerous. (Sceptical AND supporters of this theory)
Just wondering, IF:
PV=nRT,(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_gas_law)
then surely an increasing oceanic temperature would result in less Co2 being disolved in the ocean
and therefore higher concenrations in the atmosphere….
Why are people so sure that the effect isn’t being confused with the cause?
Ian is far from alone when it comes to being a Geologist who doubts the theory of man-made global warming…Oh and most of us aren’t involved in the Oil industry either.
People using fake names a worry? Hmm, in todays environment with identity fraud and kooks who hunt you down on any and every webpage you post, it’s probably good thinking.
Did a unit at Uni called “communications in science” hated it at the time, but it was quite probably one of the best units I did.
In it they taught, “attack the argument, not the person presenting it.”
The Bureau of Meteorology do analysis of australian and south pacific sea level rise measurements and the reports are available here:
http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/projects/abslmp/abslmp.shtml
http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/projects/spslcmp/spslcmp.shtml
and here:
http://www.ga.gov.au/geodesy/slm/spslcmp/timeseries.jsp
http://www.ga.gov.au/geodesy/slm/
showing the continuous gps measurements taken in places like Tuvalu. As an example Tuvalu is measured at sinking at 0.2mm per year with measures sea level rise of ~5mm per year inline with measurements around the region.
As Mark has stated… look at the data.
they show se4a level rise adjusted for the effects of natural variability like mean sea level pressure and El Nino events, and show consistent rises around australia and the south pacific.
I.e. source watch does not rely on government funding nor funding from commercial advertising.
Pete: “then surely an increasing oceanic temperature would result in less Co2 being disolved in the ocean and therefore higher concenrations in the atmosphere….
Why are people so sure that the effect isn’t being confused with the cause?”
Pete, why do you think the temperature of the ocean is increasing? Any ideas? Maybe a transdimensional heat pump funnelling excess energy through a wormhole from the planet Zningorg X? The urban heat island effect from the Lost City of Atlantis? Massive, albeit invisible, undersea mega-volcanoes?
Or maybe… perhaps ..perhaps you might have accidentally stumbled onto the concept of positive feedbacks?
no mate, I’ll leave the fanciful theorys to the AGW supporters, I try and stick to observable facts.
Temps have been going up and down since before our distant ancestors hit one rock against another one
and quite possibly, Co2 has been following this trend. Have a good look at the ocean temp data and the atmospheric Co2 data. Why does the Co2 lag behind the temp climb?
The future cannot cause the past.
I look forward to your next exceedingly witty and insightful response.(see, I can make jokes too)
“Why does the Co2 lag behind the temp climb?”
You know, it really doesn’t take a lot of effort to find the answer. Try here for starters:
http://skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
Guys, he’s just trolling (and close to a disemvowell). I suggest you ignore.
Thanks Matt, Mea Culpa, I appreciate your resopnse and I’ll read through it, (I’ve had too much beer tonight to make any sense of it…lol)
Barry,
All I can say is, pity you didn’t heed your own advice…lol
“then surely an increasing oceanic temperature would result in less Co2 being disolved in the ocean and therefore higher concenrations in the atmosphere….”
yep, you can work how much effect from lab measurements of solubility and chemical equilibria.
We had the effect in the CSIRO model around 1983, it was used in some of the models in the 1994 IPCC CO2 calculations, and it’s in some modelling reporting in the IPCC 2001 report.
Also investigated as possible cause for CO2 singnal in Vostok. In all these cases, the effect turns out to be too small to make much difference.
More for Salvarsan:
I suggest you look at the technical summaries. You bypass the whole issue of so-called “political” oversight of the summaries for policymakers.
(apart from blandness, the whole “politicisation” of SPM is a beat-up:
(a) too many pulls in opposing directions (b) risk that scientists would spit the dummy)
Hi all,
I see I’ve joined this discussion fairly late, but I’m hoping the combined wisdom of the readers of this blog might be able to steer me in the right direction.
I’ve just struggled through reading Heaven and Earth, and once you look past the rambling and horribly unstructured writing, it’s fair to say Ian Plimer raises some interesting points, and builds a picture that makes me sceptical of a lot of aspects of the AGW debate.
But as I am a scientist, I feel I have to get both sides of the story. When I was in the bookshop buying H+E I asked the guy in the store what might be a good book to counter H+E. He looked at me strangely (what sort of idiot would want to read both sides of such a supposedly clear cut debate?!), and eventually I walked out with The Vanishing Face of Gaia by James Lovelock which I’m going to start reading tonight. I’ve also downloaded Ian Enting’s rebuttal to Heaven and Earth.
So my question to the readers of this blog is – what should I read next?
And call me fussy, but I don’t want denier bashing, or nicely packaged summaries for politicians. I want science. I want to read about how someone has taken knowledge from the same breadth of scientific disciplines that Ian Plimer has, and built that into a convincing argument for AGW.
Thank you in advance for your help. I hope this isn’t too much to ask.
Regards,
Joel Newman
Joel,
Although published in 2006 by the Lowy Institute for International Policy, Dupont and Pearman’s Heating Up the Planet is also a good read.
The way I see it is that main stream don’t like it so they go into damage control and try and point out bits they believe can discredit this information. Any one with half a brain will look and do their own research and come up with their own oppinion, and question it for them selves like why hasn’t global warming continued since 1998, why does the bureau of metorology use ocean sea tempurature that dates back 20 years to predict weather if ocean temps are hot now than back then. Why did the Northen hemisphere are having their coldest winters in 15years when it suposidly is getting hotter. Lets face it we have to look at everything co2 isn’t the big picture.
The problem is GLOBAL WARMING doesn’t have anything to do with us at all. What happens if the sun becomes lazzy again we will see a fall in temps and they will blame it on the conveyor belt of ocean currents. Thats right we have melted so much ice we have created a global cooling, when in fact it’ll be the sun has gotten lazzy or with the earth wobble we are further from the sun.
Think about it, if climate change is as bad as they say we have technology there to have zerro addmissions but thats no good as we can’t make substantial moneis from that.
Look at geo thermal power Most countries can make their own electrictiy from this and power nations, this won’t happen anytime soon as it is free to run. Japan has made an water powered engineabout one to two years ago. It’s a running prototype that actually drives around Japan only running on water.
So think about it, if climate change is so drastic and we have these technologies in place why aren’t we using them.
I believe that Carbon Tax is so we can pay big buisness to clean up it’s act. In reality they should be paying for this themselves as most of these technologies have been around for decades and big buisnes hasn’t wanted to change as they won’t be making as much money “Sorry Bush”.
So why should we the people of this beutiful world of ours have to pay for the monopalization of big buisnes that have forced us to use Oil based products ie, Plastic, Gasoline, Petrol, Coal, etc. when we could have started using alternitve energies instead of poluting our planet.
Geo thermal power is the way of our future and water powered cars “ZERRO ADDMISSIONS” as well as no TOXIC fuems which is the real reason for smog not co2 admission as this is invisable to the naked eye.
I ask you this in the forrest can you see oxygen. Lets put it another way in the forrest can you see co2! the answer is NO! It’s there has been for millions of years. Why because it’s invisable. In cities the smog is not made from co2 it’s all the other crap that goes up with it! This is our problem, this is what is killing us and our planet NOT CO2!!!
Ross Strachan
Joel, agnostics like myself who are sceptical of the “significant human-made global climate change” hypothesis feel very frustrated about the gullibility of those who accept without question the climate forecasts from computer models that have never been subjected to proper and independent professional Verification, Validation & Test. Procedures. These models from all around the world (including those used by the Met. Office/Hadley Centre to generate their latest forecasts) produce such incredible forecasts because they are based upon “guesstimated” climate processes and drivers. That is why they have to be “tweeked” with prompts in order to arrive at results matching experience of past climates. The Met. Office’s forecasters can’t even get next week’s forecast right, never mind for decades ahead.
As I keep stating on Internet blogs, it has just recently been acknowledged by Professor Barry Brook, a leading Australian climate scientist supporting the hypothesis, that scientists “know nothing much useful about” climate processes and drivers. Useful computerised climate models cannot be designed without knowing much useful about those climate processes and drivers. The DEFRA/ Met. Office/Hadley Centre forecasts that you report on as “gospel” have no more validity than a fortune-teller’s report of what is seen in a crystal ball.
Professor Brook is only one (albeit leading) climate scientist. What about others?
The aqua-sphere (water in all of its forms – solid, liquid, gas) has by far the most significant impact on climate processes and drivers. Professor Keith Shine, Director of Research in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading and Fellow of the Royal Society said only this month that the paper “The role of ocean-atmospheric interactions in the CO2 climate problem is still key in this debate over CO2. So what does author Professor V Ramathan, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, CA. have to say about “the processes which contribute to the surface warming”?
“the analysis also reveals the deficiencies of current schemes of coupling ocean and atmosphere in complex climate models”! “A global increase of CO2 may not necessarily lead to significant warming of the continents first .. their equilibrium response will depend on the ocean thermal inertia which is still poorly understood”!
The important points made by Prof. Ramanathan are that: 1) CO2 is not a significant climate driver, 2) the aqua-sphere is far more significant, 3) the response of the continents to global temperature changes depends significantly upon ocean thermal inertia, 4) climate scientists have a poor understanding of ocean thermal inertia.
So why all this concern about our use of fossil fuels and atmospheric CO2 concentrations suggesting that these are the most significant factors affecting climate processes and drivers? It is summed up perfectly by another staunch supporter of the “significant human-made global climate change” hypothesis, astrophysicist Dr. Michael Ashley, Professor in the School of Physics at the University of New South Wales. In response to a challenge to his criticism of the excellent book “Heaven and Earth. Global Warming: the missing science” by Professor Ian Plimer, Professor Ashley said “To put it simply, the reason that climate scientists are focusing on CO2 as the climate driver with most influence over the next 100 years, is that CO2 is the one variable that is changing rapidly.” As Dr. John Nicol (sceptic) commented a few days ago about this “profound explanation for blaming carbon dioxide .. Another pearl of wisdom .. from Michael Ashley .. ”.
Fair comment, I would say! Let’s stop this hysteria over Carbon Dioxide and climate change (I’ve seen none of significance during the 70+ years I’ve been on earth). Humans cope with climate change, over which we have no control whatsoever, having done so since stepping on to this wonderful globe. Climate change is not human-mde, is not new and we’re not going to change stop it. We just have to live with it and get on with life as normal.
Regards, Pete Ridley
OK,
Read it and the comments posted below, It seems there is quite some doubt over the validitiy of the ice cores for estimating atmopheric C0.
Every time the data does not fit with AGW, “factors” and “adjustments” are made to get back to the “right” answer. In my opinion, AGW appears to be a theory looking for the evidence.
I think Occam’s razor is of use here, Temperatures have fluctuated in the past, temperatures will continue to fluctuate into the future…and when they do, C02 will exsolve from the ocean.
Why do you persist in trolling – same old arguments meticulousy and persistently refuted here and at many other respected climate change blogs. If you can’t spell try using you spell-checker – that works for most mistakes, and certainly for all yours, including “zerro addmissions”, “fuems”, “monopalization” etc, etc. The fact that you are too lazy even to use the computer tools, demonstrates the laziness of your research and, inevitably, your laughable arguments.
Barry – please disemvowel him!
Well – As a sceptic/fence sitter I have waited for about 10 years for the arguement to become clear to the average person like me and it still isnt so.
I have read about a 1/3rd of the way through the replies and read the original and there have been many emotional arguements on both sides and both accuse the other of emotional arguement. The bit that really pissed me off is arrogant drop kicks picking sp mistakes and making a fire with them. How pathetic.
Nowhere in the 100 or so replies I read was there one statement about how to reduce the worlds population as a means to control anything. Maybe this is too hard.
Having worked in the computer industry for 25 years and spent 4 years working with super computers I am naturally sceptical about the output and also about the quality and relevance of the inputs.
This debate has all the hallmarks of religious zeal on both sides. Humans have a tendency to follow a herd instinct which I think is on the side of the ‘warmers’ right now and the majority dont always have it right. Unfortunately once we start on this path, the western worlds financial situation changes forever and in unknown ways and this doesn’t seem to be discussed too much.
My view is there is too little money being spent on the opponents of global warming and too much being spent on researching what should be axiomatic.
Maybe there are just too many of us and we need to lose at least 30% of the worlds population.
Pete Ridley,
You quote Ramathan: “the analysis also reveals the deficiencies of current schemes of coupling ocean and atmosphere in complex climate models” but a google search reveals no such quote, at least not in those exact words.
Can you provide a source please? I tihnk you mean Prof. V. Ramanathan, but that exact quote does not appear to exist anywhere on the internet.
By the way, you descirbe Plimer’s book as “excellent”. I’ve read it and found it to be deeply flawed. I find it hard to believe anyone could have been impressed with it, frankly, but what was it that so impressed you? What argument was most influential for you, may I ask?
Pete: Back before the atmosphere had any appreciable
oxygen, the planet was a very different place. If a bunch of tiny
organisms (cyanobacteria) could manage to change the climate dramatically, what makes you think we can’t?
Joel,
A good place to start with the “other side” to Plimer is the technical summaries of the IPCC reports. These have the advantage
of being free and represent the combined efforts of a bunch of leading scientists who have put their names of it (unlike the policymakers summaries, where the named scientists are listed as “drafting” a document that gets made more bland through line by line approval). In essence, the IPCC accounts are what Plimer is arguing against.
If you want a book that is less technical, then there a lots around, eg. Climate Change: The Science, Impacts and Solutions (CSIRO Publishing, 2nd edn 2009) [disclaimer: The author, A. Barrie Pittock is a friend of mine].
Lovelock is not really mainstream climate science, but I think he is one of those authors who is interesting to read even if you don’t agree with him. I found Vanishing Face of Gaia
easier to follow than Revenge of Gaia, but in either case, I think Lovelock shifts around a bit and so it is hard to tie down what he is really saying.
I gave a public lecture on Lovelock
that is at http://www.themonthly.com.au/tm/node/1594
http://www.themonthly.com.au/tm/node/1593
i.e. IPCC summaries (and chapters) are a free download from IPCC website. (for bot the 2001 and 2007 assessments).
Gaz, If you look at the final sentence of the paper’s abstract you’ll see something very similar to my quotation. This abstract is readily available on the Internet, but not the full paper, for which a charge is usually imposed. I wasn’t even able to get a copy from the local library without coughing up. I quote direct from Professor Ramanathan’s paper as indicated in my comment. See the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, Vol 38, Page 930. I try very hard not to misquote people, or to misrepresent what they say, merely omitting those items that I consider irrelevant to the point I’m making.
I usually make reference to the source of my quotation, just as I did in this instance, so that others can check up on the context for themselves. In fact I recommend that they do so (see “Politicization of Climate Change and CO2” at http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=374&Itemid=1
I know that Perps will find this hard to accept (see her comment today at http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/06/ashden_awards_1.html) regarding my accurate quoting of Professor Brook’s statement in his starting post to this blog. I’m still waiting patiently for his clarification of this statement and continue using it in my comments on numerous blogs. After all, it does appear to totally undermine the reliance that is placed upon the forecasts from climate models.
If you look hard enough you’ll find that a free copy of Professor Ramanathan’s paper is available on the Internet, unfortunately it is a scanned copy so cannot be searched in the normal way. You’ll have heard the saying “Seek and ye shall find”. I expect that Perps can provide the scripture reference that one also – see her comment above on 8th June @ 15.29. If you are unable to locate it yourself just ask and I’ll provide a link for you.
Regards, Pete Ridley, Human-made Global Climate Change Agnostic.
Pete Ridley: Here is the quote, in full, in context:
“There are a lot of uncertainties in science, and it is indeed likely that the current consensus on some points of climate science is wrong, or at least sufficiently uncertain that we don’t know anything much useful about processes or drivers. But EVERYTHING? Or even most things? Take 100 lines of evidence, discard 5 of them, and you’re still left with 95 and large risk management problem. It’s an unscientific and disingenuous claim. As is his oft repeated assertion that a single apparently contradictory piece of information axiomatically overturns all other lines of evidence. Plimer apparently thinks Popperian falsification is the dominant deductive modus operandi in the natural sciences. I’ve got other news for him (I’m happy to email people my full article from BioScience if they email me a request).”
Your deliberate use of highly selective, out of context quotations of me, is underhand, deceptive and illegal. I’ll ask you nicely to cease and desist at once, or action will be taken.
Barry, i would like a copy of your full article from BioScience, please. I don’t know your email address.
I think you’ve done a great service with this blogsite, but I’m not used to blogs and find it very hard to locate items.
Having read the dialogue on this site I have no time for Plimer’s stuff or other so-called “skeptics” (really deniers – true sceptics/sceptics would have an open mind, these people don’t, they have an agenda and/or conspiracy theiries).
Thanks Barry for clearing that up for PR.I posted your blog on the Jonathon Porrit site so anyone wanting to check your position would be able to follow it up.
Peter Ridley I suggest you apologise to me and to Barry for your deception – you should be ashamed but of course you are not. Anyone with scruples would not be deliberately spreading mis-information – says much about the veracity of your posts.Please go elsewhere – you don’t belong on an honest blog.
Oh, yes, Pete Ridley, thanks for that refernce to Prof. Ramanathan’s paper.
I’m sure readers of that paper working in the field of climate science will have taken the professor’s comments into consideration over the ensuing 28 years after it was published.
Prof. Ramanathan – still at the University of San Diego – wrote this 25 years later, in 2006:
http://www.amacad.org/publications/bulletin/spring2006/12globalwarming.pdf
In it, he says:
“My work with climatologist Roland Madden some twenty-½ve
years ago revealed that the impact of global warming would become discernible by the year 2000. Meeting in 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, consisting
of a group of over a thousand scientists, con½rmed our prediction.”
..and..
“The extent of global warming is not fully reflected in the Earth’s surface temperatures. The additional heat trapped
by the increase in greenhouse gases from the late nineteenth century to the present time has committed the planet to a global warming in the range of 1°C to 3°C. We have realized only a fraction (25–50 percent) of this warming.”
Sure, Ramanathan is interested in the uncertainty surrounding the thermal inertia of the oceans. But he’s not talking about the oceans as an independent source of heat energy. He’s talking about how long it takes the heat absorbed by the ocean due to the greenhouse effect to become evident in the ocean surface layer and the lower atmosphere:
“Whether this stored heat will warm the atmosphere in a few decades
or a few centuries is unknown. The delay of the warming by decades to centuries by the flywheel effect of ocean mixing, when combined
with the century or more lifetime of co2 (and molecules of other greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere, presents policymakers
with the central moral dilemma of the global-warming problem. Every decade we delay in taking action, we are committing the planet to additional warming that future generations have to deal with.”
Pete, when he says “every decade we delay”, he’s talking about the delay caused by people like you.
My suggestion to those incorrigibly in denial: if you can’t face reality, get an Xbox and let the rest of us get on with it.
Gz, rfrncd Prfssr Rmnthns ppr f yrs g bcs hd bn drctd t t nl ths mnth b wll rspctd scntst whm ndrstnd t b nvlvd n mprtnt crrnt rsrch nt spcts f th mpct f th q-sphr n glbl clmts. Tht Prfssr dvsd m tht Prfssr Rmnthns ppr ws stll k n ths dbt vr C. Snc m nt scntst nvlvd n clmt rsrch dpnd pn xprt pnn, frm bth sds f th dbt, t hlp m frm m wn cnsdrd (nd hpfll rsnbl nfrmd) pnn. Thnks fr th ddtnl nfrmtn tht y hv prvdd, bt t nl cvrs prt f th ss. Yr qts frm mr rcnt sttmnts b Prfssr Rmnthn rlt ntrl t glbl wrmng frcsts bsd pn wht ndrstnd t b nsnd scnc. Th brdr nd mr mprtnt bt vn lss ndrstd ss s whthr r nt r s f fssl fls hs sgnfcnt mpct pn glbl clmts. Prfssr Brk, fllwng yr pnng ntr t ths blg thr s n nvttn fr ppl t rspnd nd thr hv bn vr s fr. n yr pnng ntr nd drctl hd f th sgnfcnt xtrct tht hv qtd svrl tms y yrslf qt n xtrct frm wht Prfssr Plmr sd bt hs bk Hvn nd rth. bvsl y cnsdrs t prfctl ccptbl t qt xtrcts frm wht thrs wrt, jst s hv dn whn qtng y. pnt t tht qtd tht xtrct frm yr pnng ntr rght hr n ths vr blg n th Jn @ . (Nt tht tms gvn r strln, nt K) whn cncldd Prhps smbd cld nlghtn m! Thr ws nl n rctn t tht, srcstc n frm dr ld Prps. rptd m rqst fr clrfctn f tht sm xtrct n th Jn @ . ndng wth nyn bl t clrf?. nc gn n wrthwhl ttmpt t clrf fr m. n st Jn @ . rptd nc gn prt f tht rgnl xtrct. gn thr ws n wrthwhl clrfctn. Fnll, n rd Jn @ ., fllwng m clrfctn f hw s qttns frm n src, y rspndd n m s f tht qttn. t s ntd y nd wth thrt f ctn f sm srt. t s sttd n yr bt th thr blg:- Cmmnts Plc wlcm cmmnts, psts, sggstns nd nfrmd dbt, frm wd rng f prspctvs. ws cnsqntl mst srprsd t th rctn t svrl f m sbmttd cmmnts. M psts n th Jn @ . nd th Jn @ . wr dsmvwlld. f th mn blgs t whch sbmt cmmnts hv ncntrd dsmvwlmnt nl n ths n. M rsbmttd cmmnt n th Jn @ . nd gn @ . ws rfsd pblctn bt n th lst ccsn, ftr mplyng tht ths st ttmpts rsnbl mdrtn, th thrts strtd. Frst th thrt f bng bnnd, thn th mst rcnt n f rd Jn @ .. S mch fr wlcmng cmmnts nd nfrmd dbt frm wd rng f prspctvs. n th svrl ccsns whn hv cnsdrd tht smthng tht hv sd n blg wrrntd n plg hv md n. f hv md sm mstk b qtng N xtrcts frm wht NYN sys r wrts bt smthng m dbtng thn plgs sncrl t th njrd prt, bt d rsrv th rght tht w nj n ths cntr (nd blv ls n strl) t frdm f spch nd xprssn f r pnns. Ths shld b pssbl wtht bng sbjctd t thrts r nslts. Prps, v jst sn yr cmmnt f st Jn @ .. sggst tht y w Rss Strchn n plg. Childish submissions like that should be disemvowelled. ls, rflct pn whthr r nt y w m n fr yr cmmnt n th Jn @ .. Bst rgrds, Pt Rdl, Hmn-md Glbl Clmt Chng gnstc.
[Ed: Well, since I agree with just one sentence in the above rant, I’ve decided to take a leaf out of your book and selectively misquote you. It makes a final point well enough. And now I say, goodbye and go elsewhere. You have nothing to add here, and, like a select few before you, are not longer welcome. Banned for trolling.]
Probably the most concerning thing about Pilmer is his influence over up and coming geologists at the University of Adelaide. If you talk to any one of his students about climate change, they will invariably reproduce the whole gamete of Pilmer’s arguments. Disturbingly they often disregard any kind criticism without providing answers to the criticisms (it’s like they’re in a cult). I put it down to Pilmer’s aggressive style of lecturing, it seems like a bit of a misuse of power really.
Are people that are afraid of AGW against Nuclear Power?
If so, that would seem unscientific.
Knowing the smallest amount of Human Nature you have to realise that we will want power, and wind and solar power are not productive. Can any Scientist worth his salt claim wind and solar will work in the real world. If this is more than a Scientific hissy fit how do you produce power without nukes.
Poor old Ian. What he needs to learn is that you cannot credibly break down the whole of the great global warming edifice at once. You have to chip away at it for a long time beforw the penny will drop.
Look at the way Anthony Watts on “Watts up with That” has progressively demolished the credibility of NASA’s ground station data or how Climate Audit has destoyed any shred of professional respect one can have for Mann, Steig or even Gavin.
[…] book that sets out to discredit the science behind Anthropogenic Global Warming through the use of disproven theories and twisted statistics. I don’t think he discussed Mr Plimer’s other book “Telling lies for God” […]
[…] Barry Brook and Tim Lambert have posts which go into the details of what’s in Ian Plimer’s new book […]
Ian MacDougall from Noah’s Rainbow Serpent blog, demolishes Ian Plimer’s book ‘Heaven & Earth’ in 6 parts. Start here:
http://noahsarc.wordpress.com/plimers-climatology-101/
Anyone interested in this topic should read the excellent wikipedia page on the book: Heaven and Earth — Ian Plimer
[…] if we forgive his mangling of singular and plural in that sentence, his claim just might be ever so slightly wrong. Related PostsNo reason(ing) requiredBehind the scenes of Bolt's […]
If in 50 years time the overwhelming majority of scientists are proven to be right, and we have not acted in time to prevent catastrophic climate change (because we spent so much time having to argue with people like Ian Plimer), I can imagine that the youth of the day would like nothing more than to travel back in time and put climate change deniers in jail…but then it will be too late.
G’day all,
There is some debate above regarding ocean temperatures and CO2. You may care to go to ABC Pool Climate Change Debating Group (of me and a friend, but all comers welcome) for some relevant maps and a few more sarcastic words about AGW. See the website given above.
I contend that NASA’s AIRS instrument on the Aqua satellite has given us a actually now a grand total of three) map(s) that is/are difficult to explain away with tailpipes. Please do have a go, though.
Virtually all the high-CO2 regions at 8 km altitude, at least in July 2003, correlated closely with oceanic regions where the annual surface seawater temperature range is 5 degrees C or more, or are downwind of those regions.
Checkmate?
Course not. Jesus is still walking on water.
Some time after some bears thought about it, saw it could not be done, got serious about learning to operate at sea and turned into seals. I don’t think, as a species, we are very bright. Starting with me of course, not you, no need to mention it.
And, of course, real-world-data maps are not fashionable with the stats and computer-gaming crowd. The maths to properly correlate two contour maps gets a bit tricky.
Just read Ian Plimer’s book right through, slowly. I have had bad up-bringing, been covertly reading the geological literature for 40 years, looks like pretty good geology to me. Such major reviews are always riddled with minor errors, see that chap Darwin’s howlers. And Mantell’s. And Lyle’s. “Heaven and Earth” is bound to become a geological classic, but then, geos are all as thick as two short drill cores, as everyone knows.
I do think though, that everyone debating here should actually read it. I read the reviews here first and then the book, and had trouble remembering I was on the same planet. It, the book, was a very pleasant surprise and, in my obviously worthless professional opinion (ee Wiki), is a work of considerable scholarship. As is the work of the the several hundred folk whose 2,311 references are quoted. To be able to fairly rubbish the book, you would have to read the references also. Anyone done that? Of course not, can’t be done, Plimer must have set up some AI program to do it for him.
I am not uncritical, as I have a very different pet main driver, geomag, and no faith at all in sky fairies. But I think I can recognise fine scholarship in my own field when I run into it. I suspect some of the critics here were brought up on proper superman comics, and were not allowed to read such intellectual rubbish as complex geological monographs written for non-geologists.
Best regards,
Peter.
PS. I have been cheating slightly. Just been looking at Fredrik Ljungqvist’s 71 temperature-proxy data sets and their graphs, for the last 2,000 years, for Fenno-Scandinavia and the rest of the world, that he graciously sent along. Michael Mann is not going to like those, and nor is the IPCC. Or Kevin, or Penny. Or his book, due soon.
Here comes the MWP again, in spades, at least for camp sites close to the Baltic Sea. But, big surprise for me, not everywhere. We do not have global climate change. It varies all over the place and all over time. We did see that from ice cores, but that is just geology, which naturally cannot be trusted. Fredrik is an historian, so this is serious. Which is a bit of a problem when you are proposing that a trace gas or two can change the whole planetary climate, in one direction, at one time. Only in the real world, of course. Not in superman comics.
Plimer’s 2311 references. I thought I heard Plimer on 2GB (as parting shot to Matt England) saying 2311 peer-reviewed papers. This is not so. Some of the 2311 footnotes are just definitions, a few are newspapers, some are denialist websites, a few are books, where peer review is less certain. Among the genuine peer-reviewed papers a lot are repeats. This still leaves a lot, but one doesn’t have to read them all, just the ones that are cited in support of contraversial claims. In my document, commenting on how Plimer misrepresents cited papers usually means that I have read the entire paper (or re-read it — the Bischof papers I first read in 1980 or 81, other stuff I read as it came out, one or two I may have helped write). (This is why most of my examples are from short papers in Nature or Science, and biased towards stuff that I though might be interesting to read. It is also why 38 pages covers only about half the notes that I made while reading H+E). For books, I mainly relied on the index, but Grove and Lamb seem to have indexed thoroughly and index things of even minor relevance to MWP and Roman warming.
There is a lot of good and interesting stuff in H+E, but is any of it stuff that isn’t done better in Plimer’s Short History of Planet Earth? So if Peter thinks, that H+E is on a different planet from the reviews, does he have any examples of substantive errors in my document? Quite a few typos (so does Plimer, but I haven’t bothered listing them, editorial quality is not the point).
I’m probably at least a week away from putting out version 2.0, so this is the chance for Peter, or anyone else, to note errors and I will fix them.
my real name, by the way….
As ever – I am baffled by the denialists persistance and intent. With a human population that has grown from about 1 billion in 1900 to virtually 7 billion today (with half that growth since 1970) – with the well documented impacts on the biosphere – logging, burning, deforestation for settlement, massive soil loss, urbanisation etc… how the hell can we,with a straight face, claim that humanity has had NO effect on the atmosphere?? I seem to remember HCFC’s and ozone holes, massive air pollution, acid rain etc etc – but of course there is NO WAY that this could in any way impact on the earth’s thermal balance – oh yeah??
Surely the simple physics of mass action should be adequate..
“Mankind cannot stand very much reality” TS Eliot, The Wasteland.
G’day again,Ian E, et al
Ian, I am not having a go at your scholarship – you do a fine job of findng the minute errors and Ian P should be grateful and use your work to clean up the second edition. Saves hiring an editor.
In the crit above I had in mind whoever it was that said that H&E was not science, just the personal view of a scientist. Barry I think somewhere said he felt sorry for his friend. Yup, all the way to fame and the bank.
Fine, but opinion is what all science regarding the past actually is – you cannot go recreate or even visit the Permian,for instance, nor the invasion of Australia by either kangaroos or Poms. You have to interpret the past or leave it alone. Lab experiments are fairly meaningless in geology, so the dictum of “it has to be falsifiable to be science” as per Popper, says geology is not science. I don’t particularly care, we use it to find the stuff to build your car and keep it going, seems to work, sort of. And the IPCC tries to use it also, with their curious interpretation of what the Vostok core was trying to say.
But when you get deeply into the shaman-and-crystal-ball-prediction business, as the IPCC has done, you best learn how to look back over your shoulder a bit more carefully. Because the geological “data,” as Ian points out, says CO2 is utterly irrelevant to temperature changes and follows those after a hefty time lag. And then oceanography explains that right now, the maps show the CO2 in the air, or at least the real stuff that we can detect from satellites, is not of our making. And is of the making of warming seawater. (Not Plimer’s observation, that last bit of trivia, mine, I admit. And fully un-peer-reviewed, how dare one think independently in this day and age and without a safety certificate}
In Plimer has supported the hypothesis that geothermal heat from the crustal boundaries, specifically the East Pacific Rise, is driving El Nino, or rather La Nina, which is a respectable alternative model to the wind-shift one. I am in favour of that also, would just add more warm seabed area. But we cannot yet know if that is the case, as the data is not in. And it will never be in if the conceptual kite is not test-flown first. As with the notion of the deep geomagnetic driver being coupled to the solar magnetic field, we do not have the data. And again, no-one will collect the relevant data without someone asking the speculative questions first. First someone contends the moon is of green cheese. Eventually someone goes to look. Green cheese is an advance on a thought in the mind of a sky fairy. You can land on it, sort of. No idea who said it may just be made of basalt, maybe it was a cheese-maker. Anthropogenic CO2 is the green cheese, here. We hope to shortly think of the basalt. Just stop rushing us. We are not very bright and we think slowly. All of us. Except carbonists, of course.
So, we run on opinions.
Hugh,
If you read Ian Plimer’s (or my) stuff, you will see that “denialist” is a rather inaccurate term. We are both, as are most of those who oppose the carbonist viewpoint in this old debate, huge enthusiasts for the idea that climates change all the time, and never more so than at the peak of an interglacial. What we are in denial about, ids that there is much common sense, given the vast amount of geological data to the contrary, in saying that humans are causing the perfectly natural changes we are now seeing and have seen many times in the past, and operating at far faster rates then also. When there were either no or precious few humans to cause them. So, who turned off all the natural engines of change? What caused the Medieval Warm Period? The Viking’s outboard motors? Fredik Ljundquist (2009) has documented 71 sets of temperature proxy records covering the last 2,000 years, and most of them show the MWP and the Little Ice Age very clearly. He did not cherry pick data sets to fit a model, just for compatible data, and he aimed to get everything suitable in the sacred literature, I mean, that was peer-reviewed.
At least, those in the north show the MWP. It seems we may have climate change going in different directions at the same time, in different regions. If so, what price AGW stocks and carbon caps made of donkey fur?
I had no idea Plimer had written a better book on this issue, and I am not overly amused that he is being asked to leave stuff unsaid because he said it better elsewhere. I and 30,000 others want our money’s worth in this one.
Plimer’s work basically shows that we are well within the limits of natural variability with the temperature changes we are all so fussed about, in the past century or so. It also shows that there is only temporary correlation between temperature and the steady (though somewhat suspect) rise in CO2 record as per the Hawaii record. It discuses the politics involved, and the man has a perfect right to have a view. it 300,00 others have bought this one and we want our money’s worth. I think we got it. seems to make a plug for some ort of a god, to me just some tribal hangover about a homicidal sky fairy, but he may have been taking the mickey, he has a fine sense of humour, and that again is his right. I do not think it is a valid rgument to cherry pick only the papers tat support arguments you find comtentious, because you do not know what else is in the papers you skip. They will be quoted in support of some point, but you have the problem that they may have said much else and if we are lucky, your opponent has read them through. And you have not, as you say. It is more your game than mine, so perhaps you would like to count how many peer reviewed, i.e. sacred literature papers he actually quotes. When you have subtracted all the https and the definitions and so on. I would like to quote the correct number, but am far too idle to bother and anyway, my count would be deeply suspect and would doubtless spark a debate with statisticians that will rage till Doomsday. .
Hugh, what we deny is the possibility that “all is already known, and now we must act.” New men are screaming at us for answers, but we have been at this ice age debate as said since 1840 in the sacred literature, and this is not some trivial problem, like how to build an atomic bomb or go to the moon. We are trying to get the science right here, in a very complex field. That is the motive.
The hysterical classes can go play with themselves.
If the world public wants to let some folk trash their power supply system and replace it with another that extracts the power from rustling leaves, that’s fine by us. Just stop trying to censor and stifle our very long-running debate. Arrhenius proposed this CO2 driver in 1896 and it was generally rejected then. Sure, we are having another look at it, see for a trivial instance my posts on ABC Pool. But it looks no better than last time.
The science of AGW has been accepted by the vast majority of thinking people worldwide. I suggest you turn your considerable effort and scholarship to joing the rest of us on this blog in trying to further debate on a sustainable, carbon-free economy for the future. Most of the commentators here seem to agree that, although the idea of renewable energy, like wind and solar, is appealing, new nuclear power is the future for the First World and for the expanding economies who also want a comfortable lifestyle for their citizens.
Coal, oil and gas will run out but using IFR technology, nuclear power would probabaly outlast humanity.Win win situation really.
What a load of bollocks Peter…a bunch of fatuous halfbaked theories in fanciful language!!
The crustal warming idea driving El Nino events is such a load of bollocks it is beyond belief that you could even consider this as a vald idea let alone Ian Plimer. How much water with its high heat capacity sits over the top of the crustal margins?? It would take an enormous amount of energy transfer into the bottom of the ocean to do what you are suggesting, ansd this would clearly show in observations in the ocean. But the TAO array for instance http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/sub_surf_tao.gif
shows wamer water at the surface and water cooling with depth, as you might expect from the surface being warmed by the sun.
Your fanciful pontificating is all very amusing… but meanwhile CO2 goes up and we get closer to, or likely further past setting off possibly disastrous consequences for our society!!! Wake up and do something useful.
DR
And yes I forgot to take my anti-grumpy pills this morning!!!!!!
“Virtually all the high-CO2 regions at 8 km altitude, at least in July 2003, correlated closely with oceanic regions where the annual surface seawater temperature range is 5 degrees C or more, or are downwind of those regions.
Checkmate?”
Peter, this pattern is what is expected from the natural cycling of CO2 from tropical oceans to tropical atmosphere, to high latitude atmosphere via Hadley circulation, into cold oceans and back to tropical oceans via deep oceans.
This has been part of the “mainstream” intepretation of the carbon cycle, at least since the 1963 paper by Bolin and Keeling (J. Geophys Res, 68, 3899-3920 (and dozens, maybe hundreds, of papers since). This natural cycling makes it hard (but not impossible) to extract the signal of human input from CO2 observations (which is why I wrote my book Inverse Problems in Atmospheric Constituent Transport). I think that you should apply the same approach that you recommend with regard to Plimer — don’t criticise what you haven’t read. A good place to start on carbon cycle stuff is The global carbon cycle edited by Field and Raupach and distributed locally by CSIRO Publishing at a reasonable price — I think I paid $35, but that may have included a “conference discount”.
“In the crit above I had in mind whoever it was that said that H&E was not science, just the personal view of a scientist. ”
The “whoever” was Kurt Lambeck, president of the Australian Academy of Science. This doesn’t mean that he is more likely to be right than any other equally eminent scientist. However it probably means that he chose his words more carefully than someone not in his position.
Anyway, I am part of the “H+E is not science” view. Making up numbers is not science, Claiming support from references that say the opposite is not science. These things are not minor errors — not when there are so many of them. Plimer’s minimal response seems to indicate that he has not used my analysis (e.g my original 55 in version 1) to correct the later (US and UK) editions of H+E and has no plans to take it on board for any other editions.
there was a time people did believe the earth was flat, then a scientist discovered it wasn’t and he had skeptics and then he proved the theory and now the world knows it to be fact.
now, i tell you show me the facts without interpretations, show me the truth without bias and then and only then will i support steps to combat AGW.
i am not a follower of ether sides of this coin and feel we should not do anything about greenhouse gases till the Fact’s come in without bias. <-(which i see on both sides)
Bias- is a term used to describe a tendency or preference towards a particular perspective, ideology or result, especially when the tendency interferes with the ability to be impartial, unprejudiced, or objective.[1]. In other words, bias is generally seen as ‘one-sided’. The term biased is used to describe an action, judgment, or other outcome influenced by a prejudged perspective. It is also used to refer to a person or body of people whose actions or judgments exhibit bias. The term "biased" is often used as a pejorative, because bias is inherently unjust, lacking merit.
“Ian Plimer’s book is a case study in how not to be objective.”
Actually the whole AGW movement is. You are so quick to dismiss any theory or opinion other than your own. I will believe, when you explain to me what caused the warming trend since the last ice age and more specifically the one from 1880 to 1940. What you call “fabricated Data” still trends just like the “real stuff”. How about the myth that CO2 levels lead temperature rises? You tout that knowing it is false.
I also find it interesting that you fail to list your Educational background on your Bio, and that you claim to be unbiased when your job depends on perpetrating the Myth.
Re the warming since the last ice age: initial orbital variation triggering positive feedbacks (including increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gases).
Re the warming 1880-1940: a combination of an increase in solar output, increasing greenhouse gases, and other factors.
Re “fabricated data”: Huh? Who, exactly, is claiming that what data, exactly, is fabricated?
Re CO2 levels leading temperature rises: contrary to what you’ll hear in the denialosphere, CO2 is both a cause and an effect of warming. For instance, in post-ice-age events in the past, initial warming due to orbital variation caused CO2 release, which caused further warming, which released more CO2, which caused more warming, etc. What we’re seeing now is CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) as the main cause of warming since around 1970.
You really will need to learn more about climate science to enter into the debate in any credible way. Ignorance is one thing; arrogant denunciation based on ignorance is another. Fare ye well.
Persuasive stuff ‘Greg’. Didn’t bother to click on the link to my University website in the ‘About the Author’ button, eh? Too much effort, I suspect.
where dose Ian have it right and have it wrong? what percent of his book is correct? if some or all his data is false then how do we know that you the AWG crowed aren’t doing the same bs that you accuse him of?
here is the point, its really getting confusing what data we the voters of America can trust. one scientist data is another scientist bird cage liner.
all i am saying if you want change for the good of mankind then work slowly and be exact in your findings. forcing change too fast is a sure way to lose your political power you now have. the world is listing, you have there ear. your job now is to keep their attention and consider a time table that we can all agree with.
Look at the book called “48 laws of power” by Robert Green in it he enplanes the political fate of all those who force change without regard to the people. so preach change, but go slow. that’s the best advice i can give you. i want clean energy and i want it cheap all the people who work for a living cant afford the radical changes, but we can afford these changes if you go slow with the AGW agenda.
A good starting point, when evaluating the scientific credibility of “Heaven and Earth”, is Ian Enting’s detailed coverage of the issues with the book. There are plenty of other places to find assessments by climate scientists and others with a knowledge of the science: try my list or the list at RealClimate.
As for what percentage is correct: in terms of actual word volume in the book, I doubt anyone’s done an actual calculation of the proportion that’s sound vs the proportion that’s misleading or downright false. This isn’t a good measure of soundness, though; the main problem is that Plimer has failed to understand (or has very poorly represented) current climate science, and yet from this position of apparent ignorance, he presents a string of empty arguments against it.
The bottom line is that, as far as I’ve seen, every argument he makes in the book is either:
* already well understood, uncontroversial and incorporated into climate science; or
* misleading and/or just flat wrong.
Nothing in this book represents a credible scientific argument against AGW (or, to be more precise, that human activities are responsible for the recent/current climate change, including significant warming).
Changing slowly is good – if you have time. But there are many indications that this is getting urgent. It appears that major action is needed within years, not decades. Would we wait for years debating, if an asteroid was going to hit the Earth in a decade?
Despite what you’ll read in Plimer’s book and in what can broadly be called the “denialosphere”, there is genuine consensus among climate scientists. There are a handful of deniers around; but they haven’t presented any scientifically credible argument against AGW.
i don’t belong to this blog, i am a machinist no collage education, skeptical of government because when they are in charge of something it usually goes to hell, example the bailouts for all the banks. i don’t get help when i need bailing out, i am told work more hours. the AGM agenda will stress my already short cash flow that is why i want this agenda to move slowly, but i do want to see this planet protected and it can be done, but on a longer time table. radical change will harm your plans to clean up the planet.
voters will vote in new leaders that may not care about what you say the planet needs. that’s why change if it comes at all must go slow, while educating the public on why these small changes are needed. you will be surprised that even your naysayers will agree then, just on the biases on cleaning up our world.
mechanical engineers rule! heat transfer and the laws of physics must be understood completely. i bet if you contracted mechanical engineers to study thermodynamic, fluid dynamics of this planet they would even be able to tell you when its going to rain a year from now and at what time the first bolt of lighting hits the ground.
Three comments:
1. What percentage of Heaven – Earth is any good? My view is, very roughly, the OK stuff
is what is in Plimer’s earlier book A Short History of Planet Earth, the new stuff is mostly dodgy.
2. How do you know which side is telling the truth? — what I have started doing
from version 1.9 onwards, is adding a guide to help people who are not working scientists check out my claims about Plimer for themselves.
3. If John is from America, maybe he should check out what the US dept of Energy “State of the Art” reports on climate change said in the mid 1980s. A delay in action for more than 20 years is not “forcing change too fast”. Back then there was sufficient uncertainty to justify delay. Now there isn’t.
“Changing slowly is good – if you have time. But there are many indications that this is getting urgent. It appears that major action is needed within years, not decades. Would we wait for years debating, if an asteroid was going to hit the Earth in a decade?”
what do you mean we don’t have time? i haven’t seen anything that says we have a limit and once we go past that point there is no return. what you said was interesting, but i am still not convinced that speed is an correct option. can you give any details on why you think otherwise?
something to think about: those who can upgrade and adapt to new environmental technology the fastest are the ones who want the new environmental laws now. the poor and the lower middle class wont be able to adapt as well as the more wealthy. without a way to circumvent their voting power i cant see the USA staying committed to the AGW agenda. so at least in the USA you may see total dedication at first, but when the poor and middle class feel the pain, that’s it, game over.
thanks for taking the time to comment, i do think you are concerned about our home, earth.
I completely agree that it would be much better all round, and a much easier economic and political transition, if could delay for some decades before needing to take action. That would be great. The difficulty we face – and the reason that climate scientists are speaking out in such an unusually direct and forceful way – is that we simply don’t have decades to waste.
My comment about an asteroid hitting the earth is obviously an exaggeration, but the point is that the speed of action has to be commensurate with the urgency of the threat; sometimes we just don’t have as much time as we’d like.
The overall picture with CO2 and other long lived greenhouse gases (like methane) is that, once emitted into the atmosphere, they are very hard to remove in a short timeframe. Given that climate science predicts that several major “tipping points” (albedo reduction, permafrost melting, clathrates) may become active within the timeframe of the coming decades, and that such changes will lag behind actual emissions considerably, there’s a broad consensus that the smart strategy, the precautionary approach, is to minimise emissions ASAP. There’s increasing evidence now (though by no means a consensus yet) that we might need to be under 350 parts per million of CO2 to avoid dangerous climate disruption; since we’re already at around 390ppm, if we’re to target 350 we’d need to cut emissions beyond 100% to move to an economy which produces a net reduction in CO2 levels. At present without strong and rapid action we’re unlikely to stay under 450ppm. There are several disturbing signs, evident since the last IPCC report, that things are tracking at the top end of projections or beyond.
You’re quite right that currently weathier individuals (and countries) are more able to make technological changes like switching to green electricity. However, it’s not a black-and-white picture; many new technologies may well soon be rivalling fossil fuels in price, and there are major financial benefits over the medium term with things like building insulation, recycling, and maximising energy efficiency.
Politically, it might be worth noting that the US appears to be the one major economy where support for climate action is lowest; see this recent survey for an overview of how levels of support are much higher in most other countries. And even in the US, a majority said that the US government should place a higher priority on addressing climate change than it currently does.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week. Who is behind the climate change deniers – the video that they wanted banned.
Too many respondents don’t seem to wear a parachute, let alone have it out. Plimer is very interesting about the possible uniqueness of Planet Earth and the creation of the Black Sea. I wonder how many of these guys have a decent degree in the sciences anyway. Even a Cantab science graduate needs to read this book twice.
Good for Plimer; he has at last raised some issues to an international audience; and who says he is unqualified to do this?
[…] Ian Plimer – Heaven and Earth Barry Brook, Brave New Climate, Apr 23, 2009 […]
Hello everyone at bravenewclimate!
would it be wrong to consider CO2 from natural sources like animals and bacteria as helpful for plants and CO2 from coal and oil as being harmful to the planet? with that said then CO2 from anamals is safe to the planet would be my next thought.
Also i was looking at the many opinions as to why Venus is hot, one scientist says that CO2 has a low effect on greenhouse effect and states in his opinion that other contributing factors account for the excessive temperature of Venus. There is a whole science on terrafarming this planet so they have come up with many theory and after reading some of these theorys i come away with that CO2 isn’t that much of a big deal. however there are other scientist that say its a very dig deal. even in this (pseudo-)field we cant get a consensus. what is the opinion of anyone here who’s ever looked into these two questions.
I bring Venus into this because it’s a greenhouse planet.
thanks in advanced to anyone who has an opinion they would like to share.
The climate has been changing since the earth was born and has gone from ice age to warm and back again. I don’t recall humans being around for the extinction of the dinosaurs, the climate is changing and you had better get used to it, Man contributes way less than 10% of the harmful pollutants and for instance an average Volcanic eruption generates more harmful pollutants than mans combined efforts can do in ten years. Now all of you pro climate change fools listen to Al Gore, one of the biggest miss-handlers of the truth on this planet. He would have you and I driving a match box on wheels or preferably a push bike while he flies around the world in a private Jet. Too lowly for the BIG MAN to take a commercial flight, and just ONE of his MANSIONS uses 30 times the national average in Electricity. The Nobel people have fallen right off of their pedestal since giving that lier the prize. If you A H think that you can control the weather by TAXING the hell out of everyone you are certifiable. Yes big Al made millions out of his lies, and you poor fools believe it. Hey there is a new Island out in the Pacific this year, and the son of Krackatower is growing by 5 meters a day at the moment, but hell that doesn’t pollute EH.
You recent commenters on this thread really do underscore the loopy fringe of the denialist brigade. Thanks for the effort at illustrating the extreme extent of this conspiracy-laden position.
In the wake of his utter failure to respond to George Monbiot’s questions, Plimer now has a piece at ABC Unleashed. It’s choc-a-bloc full of misleading statements, as you’d expect.
I wonder what Ian Plimer would make of yet another biological sign that something is amiss?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/14/2656194.htm?site=news
What has happened to cause the disappearance of nearly 10 million red sock-eye salmon from Canandian rivers?
It’s a disturbing story – would be interesting to hear more about the record of water temperatures and other changes in the region.
Re what Plimer would make of it: who cares? This is a man who claims the sun is similar in composition to a meteorite; who ducks and weaves when asked some simple questions about the sources for claims made in his book; who repeatedly makes blatantly false statements about a crucially important issue. How he continues to be employed as a “scientist” after this exhibition of incredibly anti-scientific behaviour is beyond me.
And yet another strand in the web of life unravels…
100% agree Matt – it was a rhetorical question really!
will earth become like Venus if CO2 isn’t stopped? here is a site that explores that thought:
i also copied and pasted a sample for your review:
titled: Why Earth Can Never Get As Hot As Venus.
The key to terraforming Venus would be to find a way to get rid of its banks of atmospheric clouds so as to let a lot of the heat out. This is the opposite of what you would have been lead to believe elsewhere.
Clearly we would have to design a fast replicating species of critter who could use the suns energy, to be able to eat sulfuric acid and crap useful compounds that would then fall to the surface in heat-resistant poo-packets.
Now this sounds overly optimistic even for the most Utopian of genetic engineering and nano-technology boosters.
The key thing to understand, is that to cool down Venus some we need to have clear skys. Exactly the opposite of what we have been taught.
here is the site for the above
http://graemebird.wordpress.com/2008/07/11/terraforming-venus-and-the-myth-of-runaway-greenhouse/
Graeme Bird’s blog for scientific information- you are joking – right?
John
I can only assume you don’t know of Graeme Bird (a not so infrequent poster at Jenifer Marohasy’s ‘denialist’ blog site) and therefore are somewhat naive.
If you do know of him from that ‘denialist’ blog site, you are playing games.
Either way, welcome here … you might learn something, we don’t play games.
The clouds have a cooling effect on Venus’ surface temperature. If Venus did not have its massive CO2 atmosphere, but still had its current cloud cover, the surface temperature would not be much higher than that of Mars.
“Man contributes way less than 10% of the harmful pollutants and for instance an average Volcanic eruption generates more harmful pollutants than mans combined efforts can do in ten years.”
That’s just another lie… where do all these untruths come from? It’s so infuriating when rubbish like this is taken up as gospel.
i just Googled Venus and was looking for theories as to why and how it can be done (cooling Venus down), i am no scientist, and such have no idea if Graeme Bird has any real science behind him. so i assume he is wrong and Earth could end up like Venus due to mans inability to clean his act up. sorry i had to read between the lines and assume this is the case.
Graeme theory must be incorrect. Finrod simple, but to the point.
how do laymen understand Co2 and other gases mechanical properties that allow I.F. radiation to work its magic?
thanks for your input
“I can only assume you don’t know of Graeme Bird (a not so infrequent poster at Jenifer Marohasy’s ‘denialist’ blog site) and therefore are somewhat naive.”
I’ve just visited Graeme’s site, where he has posted a comment on one of his own threads identical to the one he left anonymously on a thread on my blog. He also left a couple of more foul-mouthed comments on my blog which I’ve deleted.
“how do laymen understand Co2 and other gases mechanical properties that allow I.F. radiation to work its magic?”
In the case of CO2, it’s a linear molecule a carbon with two oxygens, one on either side. Certain frequencies of IR are able to set the oxygens oscillating back and forth, and this mechanical energy can be transferred to other molecules by impact. This, at least, is my modest understanding of the matter. For greater detail, consult a real scientist.
Amazing. Look at all the words typed on this blog. Can’t you good people work out that humanity is a good thing? Must there always be a lunatic fringe wanting to control every aspect of our business? Why can’t you put some of your zeal into real problems like Malaria, Cancer, Dengue Fever, or better stopping socialist nutcases from killing more people. Wait, I know, those are problems real people face right now. Let us dwell in the ethereal and make up problems: like CO2 emissions by humans. Some of you people espouse to be Engineers! Obviously the desk jockey type. Remember that engineers apply science practically and economically, that is not this mindless drivel I’m reading.
Truly, Amazed
Ever wonder why governments (and oppositions) all over the world are having a bun fight about climate change? They’re not arguing about the science; they are arguing about how and when to deal with this global problem (including how to curtail or limit the impacts of increased vector borne diseases as a consequence of a warmer and wetter world). You are implying they (and all the collective brains of their advisers) have got it wrong, I beg to differ. Humanity can be a good thing, we just have to find a better way of doing things. In this respect, we all should be working together and while this may seem strange to you, real engineers and scientists are, regardless of their political, economic or socio-cultural differences.
Yes, and humanity has found a deep problem that is an existential threat to many. Hence humanity is striving to do something about it. And humanity is striving to maintain itself; and sustain the envirionment; and shift our dependence from the deminisiong resources that sustain us.
A new dimensional comparison of what they are talking about.
Here’s a way to understand Mr. Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
Imagine 1 km of atmosphere that we want to rid of human carbon pollution.
We’ll have a walk along it.
The first 770 meters are Nitrogen.
The next 210 meters are Oxygen.
That’s 980 meters of the 1 kilometer. 20 meters to go.
The next 10 meters are water vapour. 10 meters left.
9 meters are argon. Just 1 more meter.
A few gases make up the first bit of that last meter.
The last 38 centimeters of the kilometer – that’s carbon dioxide.
A bit over one foot.
97% of that is produced by Mother Nature. It’s natural.
Out of our journey of one kilometer, there are just 12 millimeters left. About half an inch. Just over a centimeter.
That’s the amount of carbon dioxide that global human activity puts into the atmosphere.
And of those 12 millimeters Australia puts in .18 of a millimeter.
Less than the thickness of a hair. Out of a kilometer.
As a hair is to a kilometer – so is Australia’s contribution to what Mr. Rudd calls Carbon Pollution.
Imagine Brisbane’s new Gateway Bridge, ready to be officially opened by Mr. Rudd. It’s been polished, painted and scrubbed by an army of wor kers till its 1 kilometer length is surgically clean. Except that Mr. Rudd says we have a huge problem, the bridge is polluted – there’s a human hair on the roadway. We’d laugh ourselves silly.
There are plenty of real pollution problems to worry about. It’s hard to imagine that Australia’s contribution to carbon dioxide in the world’s atmosphere is one of the more pressing ones. And I can’t believe that a new tax on everything is the only way to blow that pesky hair away.
Perhaps we all need to just take a few deep breaths.
What a relief – Thankyou “amazed” for clearing that up. Perhaps you could put all those scientists, worldwide scientific institutions, universities, research institutions etc at ease by letting them know you have the answer. PLease direct me to your peer-reviewed paper on the matter.
Or perhaps, based on that analogy, he’d be happy if 1mm of this multi-gas layer cake (not 38 cm, say just 1 mm) was sarin gas?
Mate, I think even the UN can get the average composition of the earth’s atmosphere right, but I don’t know if their reports are peer reviewed. However you can review http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth’s_atmosphere and do the sums yourself to check. Most arm chair scientists don’t trust any individuals words unless it is open source so the wikipedia ought to get you started. Hopefully you’ll be comfortable with that.
what I continue to be “amazed” about is the way that the greenhouse deniers can’t resist sexing up their irrelevant comparisons with fabricated numbers. The whole post is irrelevant, because, as Barry is pointing out, it is the behaviour of the gases that matters. The O2 N2 and Ar don’t affect the infra-red — infra-red absorption is from bending angles between bonds — can’t happen unless there is more than one bond, i.e. more than 2 atoms.
The fabrication comes from starting talking about amounts in atmosphere, where the natural
contribution is less than 75% not 97%. The scam is the switch to talking about rates,
and then comparing the human emissions to natural emissions (97% is still a bit
of an exageration), and totally neglecting the natural CO2 uptake.
Ian, it is obvious this Amazed character would not have graduated high school chemistry or physics – it is pointless trying to teach him the basics (law of diminishing returns).
By lifting stuff off wiki and pretending to know what he’s talking about just shows how delusional he is.
What I do find amazing is that there are some genuine ‘sceptics’ (in non-scientific parlance) that see this type of twaddle and don’t say anything about it. Surely they must realise that if they don’t challenge this nonsense then they themselves lose any credibility they may have had, real or imagined.
I think from the post that any practical person could work out that taxing a clear odourless carbon dioxide gas emission in these TINY concentrations is absolute nonsense. Further, taking the actual scale into account and it becomes truly a right laughing gas. What is not laughable is the terminology “denier”. This relates one to a holocaust denier. This is a very serious accusation and not one any person will take lightly. You denigrate yourself by trying to compare this light hearted discussion with the murder of millions. Sir, or madam a caring person would retract that comment.
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant. CO2 is a clear, odourless gas that is
necessary to life. The essential fact to remember is that carbon dioxide is at the
most 385 parts per 1,000,000 of the atmosphere, which is 0.0385 percent. Small
quantity though it is, no life could exist on earth without it. All life on earth is built
from Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen and Nitrogen. CO2 provides two of these
fundamental building blocks.
The vast oceans which cover 71% of the planet, plus plants, absorb 98.5% of the
CO2 that is emitted by nature and man. As CO2 increases in the atmosphere,
nature’s controlling mechanism causes plant growth to increase via
photosynthesis; CO2 is absorbed, and oxygen is freed. Photosynthesis is an
endothermic, (cooling), reaction.
Ask your primary school aged children about the carbon cycle.
The alleged greenhouse effect is a non-existent effect. No greenhouse, whether
made from glass, plastic, cardboard or steel will reach a higher inside
temperature due to the ‘magic’ of re-radiated energy. If it did, engineers would
have been able to design power stations made from air, mirrors and glass,
extracting more energy out of it than was put into it.
The taxation of carbon emissions is another socialist control on the private
sector. That is all it is.
Restricting the production of CO2, this essential non pollutant is absolute
nonsense.
i was just thinking after reading you post how small Co2 is compared to our atmospheric composition and how you relate Australia contribution to the overall accounting, very good description, as a laymen, not a scientist, you make it simple for the none scientist.
now the question from a laymen would be just how much Co2 will raise energy levels per unit volume of air, sense i have had a decent education in mathematics (machinist study advanced math for 4 years) this type of stuff i do understand, so if there are any scientist here pro or con please post this info and if you can in unit that will tell the laymen this: energy absorption per unit volume of Co2 in cubic meters of air. if not then i will figure it out.
for example from a heating lamp as an energy source in IR, 1 BTU of energy will raise 1 pound of water 1 degree Fahrenheit add say black die to this water, say 1 percent, now how fast will the water adsorb, add 2 percent and now what will the time be and so on. then using algebra a linear equation can be developed to model the properties of this situation. units in this case are unit time per percent of black dye, i think.
this is the way scientist should present this information to the public so they can get a grasp of how important and serious this issue is. of course we know not all of the suns energy is adsorbed some is turned into mechanical energy and some is reflected back in to space.
maybe someone has already conducted an experiment and has this up on the internet for public viewing?
thank you gentlemen, i look forward to real discussions about this instead of harsh criticism. this is an important subject that deserve all of our best effort to understand and prove or disprove.
PS: please disregard my grammar or spelling its never been my strong point.
Baz are you suggesting that a nerve toxin like Sarin is an acceptable gas to have in our atmosphere? Your comment sir, is odd and rather disturbing. I strongly suggest you go to sleep with a mirror and wake up to yourself.
Sir, I was not lifting anything off of wiki. All I was doing was demonstrating to ‘Perps’ where he could do some of his own calculations in order to confirm my results. I figured that he would be comfortable with this source as a starting point as he was demanding peer review and such.
Ad hominem attacks do nothing to further your argument or this discussion.
Sir, it seems you would like to discuss the greenhouse effect or more aptly termed affect. The alleged greenhouse effect is a non-existent effect. No greenhouse, whether made from glass, plastic, cardboard or steel will reach a higher inside temperature due to the ‘magic’ of re-radiated energy. If it did, engineers would have been able to design power stations made from air, mirrors and glass, extracting more energy out of it than was put into it.
If you truly believe in this concept you should go into construction now and you’ll have a perpetual motion machine, an infinite source of energy. Of coursse there is the 2nd law of thermodynamics to contend with. That sir is a law. You may need some help with that one and duct tape will not do it.
i don’t like the carbon tax because it will not solve the issue. instead if we must regulate Co2 emissions force the company to use this money to improve their operation to produce less instead of giving the cash to some government that will mismanage this money. we KNOW government will mismanage money from a carbon tax, they have a proven track record of this and yes, past performance is indicative to future results when we talk about government spending.
No sir, the way I see it you are working together to plunder my wallet. Well – Hands off mate. Of course sir they are arguing about the science, it is a LONG way from being a sure anything. As soon as I read about the hockey stick fabrication it was over. What is being put in front of us here is nonsense, absolute nonsense. You should know better.
Turn it up a little louder mate I can’t hear you. The only limit to resources is the human imagination and the application of our ingenuity. Carbon dioxide gas is a clear, odourless non-pollutant that is necesary to life on earth. FIND A REAL PROBLEM. LIKE I’LL BET YOUR BED IS NOT MADE.
Sir, no corporation or company will accept a tax without passing it on to the consumer. So you tax the consumer. You increase the burden on us all with any form of taxation on the private sector. The best thing you can do is read a good book and forget all about this hysteria. Remember CO2 is essential to life on earth. In fact one could call it an oxygen tax. If you look at CO2 there are more O’s then C’s. The perfect tax, a tax on life. Taxing every breath I take. A quote for you sir:
“Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievments must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person. If we are not capable of this examination, we may yet become one of the most distinguished and monumental failures in the history of nations.”
James Baldwin (1924–87), U.S. author. “Nobody Knows My Name,” in Partisan Review (New Brunswick, N.J., Winter 1959; repr. in Nobody Knows My Name, 1961).
indeed…but, you do know the carbon tax is going to happen we cant stop them (government) they seem to get what they want, regardless to what “we the people want” i used to laugh at the demonstrators who would protest the Tri-lateralist, but now i am not so sure. it seems something powerful is always moving against us, a power that we cant stop, our politicians we elect seem to always vote in things that work against us and they keep getting reelected. i would like to see the democratic and the republican party removed from public service and see a grass roots party replace them.
but, the system in place will not tolerate a grass roots movement and grass roots party will forever be sabotaged.
sorry guys from Australia, i don’t know mush about your system of government to comment and besides, its not for me to judge your system. i only speak for the American system.
i think if governments would scrap the carbon tax and help companies be more efficient with the energy they do use their might be less opposition to the AGW movement. the carbon tax is just plain robbery.
but i do think burning coal and oil fuels introduce a small amount of radiation into our environment, never mind the Co2, radioactive particles i assume are bad for our health. so maybe a 75 year time table should be used to find alternatives reduce this type of pollution. if those in power would just be reasonable we could get a better world without the pain of sudden change.
Thanks for demonstrating your insincerity clearly for all.
Sometimes it hard recognised time wasting trolling at first blush.
Don’t lose your sense of humour Mark, it is unbecoming. My sincerity is clear. The time wasting you refer to is indeed coming from the global warming alarmists who are intent upon plundering us all with their misguided thoughts and actions.
Sir you are perceptive. Not many know of the Uranium and Thorium generated by burning coal. You are right, burning coal generates radioactive airborne radioactive elements. It also generates much more SO2 than should be warranted. These can be controlled with simple limestone or lime type scrubbing. So there is a known simple and arguably economic solution.
Further Mark, be very sure there are elements of this discussion who seek via this discussion to establish a foundation and framework that will control humanities actions over the coming century(s). If you cannot handle a good Aussie spray over our desire to not have our actions controlled by this worthless prattle then by all means have a good dummy spit and pack up you bat and ball and go home. What is at stake here is not for the idle pleasure of yourself.
Amazed – I am a she not a he (your blinkered biases showing again?) and my point was exactly that made by others – reading a simplistic article from Wiki does not make you an expert on the causes (or not) of climate change. Incidentally, what qualifications do you have to back up your (non) scientific analyses? A doctorate in climatology, physics, chemistry? Only if you have any of these and have done rigourous research, which is then peer-reviewed and published in a major scientific journal, would you be worth listening to. Otherwise, your arrogance in believing that you have the answer, which others, working for years in science, have obviously missed, is – to put it mildly – breathtaking!
Perps, I don’t think that someone who denies that any such thing as the greenhouse effect can possibly exist is worth responding to. Apparently he doesn’t even think that greenhouses produce a greenhouse effect.
You’re right Finrod – why do I bite every time? My head is already black and blue from banging against the denialist brick wall of my local newspaper’s “Letters Page”! However, I must keep trying to persuade them for the sake of my grandchildren -so thanks to you all on this blog for giving a non-scientist the information she needs.
That’s OK Perps… he’s presenting the topic in an extremely strange way. he seems to think that the greenhouse effect violates the second law of thermodynamics, and just can’t get his head around the idea that greenhouses don’t produce higher internal temperatures magically from nothing, but actually tap part of the enegy flow of sunlight shining in and reflecting out to raise their internal temperature. There’s no violation of thermodynamics going on at all.
He is also presumably not aware that greenhouses existed, constructed on the basis of emperical observation, before the laws of thermodynamics were formulated.
Thanks Finrod – Great explanation for us laywomen! Amazed – be amazed!
Yep. Apparently Eighteenth century English country gentry gardeners were early agents of the great AGW conspiracy.
You highly educated people need to read not skim read. I said re-radiated energy. Do your homework before posting.
“Sir, it seems you would like to discuss the greenhouse effect or more aptly termed affect. The alleged greenhouse effect is a non-existent effect. No greenhouse, whether made from glass, plastic, cardboard or steel will reach a higher inside temperature due to the ‘magic’ of re-radiated energy. If it did, engineers would have been able to design power stations made from air, mirrors and glass, extracting more energy out of it than was put into it.
If you truly believe in this concept you should go into construction now and you’ll have a perpetual motion machine, an infinite source of energy. Of course there is the 2nd law of thermodynamics to contend with. That sir is a law. You may need some help with that one and duct tape will not do it.”
My apologies ‘Perps’ I am not good at typing (Sir and madam gets me every time) and reading what has been posted makes my lips hurt.
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant. CO2 is a clear, odourless gas that is necessary to life. The essential fact to remember is that carbon dioxide is at the most 0.0385 percent of the atmosphere.
Ask your primary school aged children about the carbon cycle.
The Turnbull plan aims to reduce 2020 CO2 emissions to 90% of the 2000 level.
Going back to 90% of 2000 would require approx. 20% cut on today’s activities. Further, the population by 2020 will be at least 30% above that in 2000. So the Turnbull carbon cuts will need to be more than 33% per person.
There is zero chance within a decade that wind, solar, geothermal or carbon burial will overcome their technical, engineering, infrastructure, environmental, transmission, economic and stability problems quickly enough to generate significant quantities of emissions-free base load electricity.
That leaves Australia just three options;
1. The beloved ‘good old days’ GREEN option where we use sailing vessels, horses, camels, candles etc.
2. The DETERMINED option of simply reducing the Australian population by whatever means necessary and
3. The FINAL option of building the shortfall in electricity via nuclear power stations across Australia.
The Rudd and Turnbull plans for controlling CO2 emissions, this essential non pollutant are both absolute nonsense.
Gidday John Berns and others,
Per your post of August 20:
“indeed…but, you do know the carbon tax is going to happen we cant stop them (government) they seem to get what they want, regardless to what “we the people want” i used to laugh at the demonstrators who would protest the Tri-lateralist, but now i am not so sure. it seems something powerful is always moving against us, a power that we cant stop, our politicians we elect seem to always vote in things that work against us and they keep getting reelected. i would like to see the democratic and the republican party removed from public service and see a grass roots party replace them.”
Sir I disagree, and herer is why:
As you well know the USA is built upon the actions of the individual.
Please understand that the CO2 alarmists have worked so hard in the theoretical side of things to make this a political issue they amaze themselves. It seems they still want to argue the science partly as perhaps they feel guilty about the validity of the arguments. The fact is the scientific support is not there, however, this is relatively immaterial now as this problem has moved into the realm of politics. The master science. Please understand that now we are in this realm the stakes are much higher and the truth will eventually win, though it may be longer and be more challenging than you or others can anticipate.
This is now about your freedom and the legalised plunder of your wealth.
Work hard. Voice your concerns openly. You will make and lose friendships with this approach.
Remember:
“History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969), U.S. general, Republican politician, president. Inaugural address, 20 Jan. 1953.
As that slinky French woman in that famous ad once secil;y intoned …
Ah sink zis gors az borrss
CO2 is indeed a clear, odourless, colourless gas that is necessary to life and which in certain concentrations, is a pollutant.
Your mistake, oft repeated in the denialosphere, was in implying that the two claims were mutually exclusive.
In fact this is true of oxygen as well as any number of other elements that are beneficial in one quantity, of no marginal value in another quantity, and toxic in still others.
Gidday Fran,
So is chocolate.
0.0385% is actually near the point where we begin to lose life due to the concentration being too low.
you can refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide if you want an open source location.
Define “near” in this context. For most of the last 2 million years or so hominids, CO2 was in a range from about 180-220ppmv … Silly …
In any event, nobody has the capacity to drive down concentrations of CO2 anytime soon and even by 2150 it’s unlikely to have returned to the 280ppmv it was in 1880 or so.
Accordingly your point is moot.
Ok you silly sausages with your phony science. Amazed has got you right in her sights like a deer in the headlights.
Admit surrender before it’s too late. All these years you’ve been wrestling with your equations and models and she cuts the Gordian Knot with a bit of good ol’ fashioned common sense and brilliant non-sequiturs.
Gidday Fran,
Seems to me we are talking about life and the concentration of CO2 required to support it. Most life on earth is plant life so we’ll work with that, eh?
Organic chemistry and elements of basic chemistry and certainly geochemistry will explain that the concentration of products and requirements in a given simple chemical reaction when plotted against time are rarely linear. This is the case for photosynthesis. It is a relatively simple reaction but it should be stated that the precise details of it encompass variables from fields of thought including physics, chemistry, biology, quantum physics, and fluid mechanics.
Here is what you can get from theoretical models: <200 ppm plants die, less than 340 ppm ineffecient reaction, 600 ppm – pretty good, 1000 ppm and above close to saturation and 1400ppm or so saturation is achieved.
This is theoretical. I figured that the best person to query on this was a peer observed gardener as they do this for a living, not a hobby as some of us do who pontificate on such matters.
So get on a phone and call your florist. find out their supplier details. Call him/her. Ask how much CO2 they pump into their plant house (I’m allergic to the term greenhouse, makes my eyes water terribly). You’ll find they like to keep it around 700 ppm and they are not economic if they drop below 340 or so ppm, any more than 7 or 800 ppm and it costs too much. You’ll also find their source of CO2 is a propane, natural gas or liquid hydrocarbon burner. Actually if you live near the equator where it is lush, warm and green, well, surprise! they still use a plant house. The reason being so they can increase the CO2 concentration.
Cost of research – 60 cents or so.
It is ironic to note that plant houses will boom if ETS, CPRS or other cap n tax schemes come in. They’ll get their CO2 for free or perhaps even paid to take it!!
So in answer to your valid query ‘near’ would be about 40 ppm or therabouts. 385 ppm (0.0385%) is a bit low.
Moot is an expressive word, did you know that in the USA in 1788, the Bill of Rights was mooted during the period of ratification? Sounds painful.
“In any event, nobody has the capacity to drive down concentrations of CO2 anytime soon and even by 2150 it’s unlikely to have returned to the 280ppmv it was in 1880 or so.”
This is not exactly true. And its not relevant. Since we would want CO2 to be higher than lower in any realistic range that we could possibly reach. We cannot hope to get to 1500ppm. But thats what we’d want.
But its also not true since the CO2 record shows that CO2 can surge and then drop. Whereas its been going up about 0.4% per year for a while now, we would soon expect it to surge and then drop through the floor. So CO2 levels falling to the low 300′s and lower ought to be a very serious concern. And in fact we want CO2 levels just as high as we can possibly get them.
We want no such thing … You Mr Peabody, can speak for yourself …
No you are wrong Fran. We do in fact want CO2 levels as high as we can get them. Unless you have some sort of personal interest in people starving, species going extinct, food prices being higher than otherwise, and nature being less robust than it otherwise would be. I say “we” advisedly. I’m don’t just mean self-important rich white people who have no interest in science or human well-being.
Alfred, you obviously don’t know about (or don’t believe in) the enhanced greenhouse effect.
If you do understand radiative properties, then you would also know that CO2 concentrations of 1500 ppm is cook’n.
Put it this way: Any short-term benefits you imagine pale into insignificance when stretched out over decades as the full impact of global warming (even to 700 ppm CO2) kicks in – adversely effecting food, water and energy supply; disrupting biodiversity/ecosystems; destabilizing national/international security and threatening world peace.
Ergo: You have it round the wrong way.
No we wouldn’t cook. There is no way that the extra CO2 would over-ride our natural tendency towards glacial conditions.
Alfred, the alarm bell for the next glacial on the geologic time clock will go off in about 40,000 years (+/- a bit).
In the space of a mere 200 years, humanity has had a severe impact on the Earth-system.
It would be prudent for humanity (if it desires) to smooth out the bumps and wiggles along the way to the next glacial.
David K
Alfred Nock is plainly no more than another ignorant troll, or possibly Amazed under a new nym.
He/she advances no expreess claim that CO2 is the limiting factor in the growth of all plants of value to humans because then he/she would have to model it.
He/she simply wants to extrapolate in a purely linear fashion from one simple idea (CO2 is part of the metabolic processes leading to the production of sugars) to a more general one without any modelling.
If this nonsense were not part of a witting but deluded attempt to deal with their own cultural angst while using a scientistic figleaf as cover, one might laugh.
My response is one of sadness at the pathetic condition into which those doing no more than special pleading in the hope of protecting the value of their fossil assets for a little while longer have driven whole swathes of the semi-educated public.
These people have much to answer for, and personally I hope to live long enough for the key architects of this agnotology to be the subject of official pillory for their malfeasance.
Gidday Fran,
If you read my post I’m saying it is non linear.
I’m saying it is modellable. Model away. No worries there.
In fact what are you trying to say?? Spit it out dear lady.
Gidday DavidK,
I think you are saying that humanity is a bad thing. Something to be despised. Of course this is everyone but yoursef right? We are not gods yet I assure you and we are not aliens. All of our science to date indicates that we evolved here. Ergo we are natural, we are part of the Earth system.
Perhaps some Sartre will spur you a wee tad:
I am responsible for everything … except for my very responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being. Therefore everything takes place as if I were compelled to be responsible. I am abandoned in the world … in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80), French philosopher, author. Being and Nothingness,“Being and Doing: Freedom,” sct. 3 (1943; tr. 1965).
DavidK. I’m afraid that none of what you say is true. The idea of a 54000+ year interglacial is a fantasy and not borne out by the science or the paleo record.
Modelling Fran? Why one earth would you want to plug something we already know into a computer model? We already know that CO2 increases net primary production. We don’t need people mucking about with computer models to show this.
Amazed @ 514
No, I am not.
Alfred @ 515
You have just exposed your own ignorance. Even the author of Heaven & Earth (Plimer) can get this right – you are calling him a liar.
Wrong on both counts again DavidK. Glacial periods are very long. They have to be considered our default climate. Interglacials are very short. They are abnormal in that sense. The ignorance is all your own.
Alfred @ 519
Read your own posts again.
And you follow up by this guff:
What has that got to do with your first two gems?
Wait, there’s more – you follow that twaddle with:
Well … duh!
Your attempt at obfuscation preceded you. You were talking about interglacial periods, remember?
You could of course prove it by linking to a primary source.
A bit of advice Alfred: If you want to play science with real scientists, at least do some homework.
Better still, just cite some scientist (Plimer will do, he is after all the subject of this thread) that lays any credence to your junk.
You are not a real scientist. You are manifestly ignorant. All my statements stand. And if you want to disprove them you might think about doing a bit of linking yourself. Again. This idea of a 54,000 year interglacial is nothing but a fantasy on your part. Glacial periods are the norm. The Holocene has been longer than most already.
Making a fool of yourself by insults showing your own ignorance is not getting you anywhere DavidK. How about your link showing me to be wrong about glacial and interglacial periods. If you cannot nail this reality down you won’t be getting anything right in a year of Sundays.
DavidK. You should read more and comment less. Your ignorance is quite astonishing.
I think you are saying that humanity is a bad thing. Something to be despised. Of course this is everyone but yoursef right? We are not gods yet I assure you and we are not aliens. All of our science to date indicates that we evolved here. Ergo we are natural, we are part of the Earth system.
You keep repeating that mantra. If it were true, why are the people here who are genuinely concerned about climate change advocating a wholesale shift to nuclear power as the primary solution?
Of course, the CO2 problem was formulated long ago by some very far-seeing brilliant scientists.
http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/03/edward-teller-listens-as-eugene-weigner.html
Alfred @ 521 & 522
Look at the pretty picture (graph 3 to be precise) here
Take a close look at the Y axis resolution and tell everybody here again that:
Now, your citations or links?
“Of course, the CO2 problem was formulated long ago by some very far-seeing brilliant scientists.”
CO2 is only a problem if we don’t have enough of it. But yes the nuclear business is a solution to many problems. Just not any CO2 problem. Arrhenius thought that extra CO2 could be used to avoid another glacial period.
Wishful thinking as it turns out but at least sane wishful thinking. Your far-seeing brilliant scientist wanted more and not less CO2 in the atmosphere. He came to the right conclusion and would be totally astonished by what is going on today.
From your own link DavidK:
“Although many Ivory Tower Intellectuals don’t recognize the Vail Method as valid, petroleum geologists do, and for good reasons. It works. Haq’s published curves depend solely on public domain data.
Various letters in Science (the journal) make it clear that the curves would be more accurate and more detailed if the authors incorporated all the data held confidential by the various large petroleum companies.”
You do realise then that you are dealing with highly controversial science that goes against the mainstream with this link?
I suppose you just pick and choose what you want to believe. Nonetheless I will take this controversial business seriously. Do you have any more links in this same vein?
It looks like you’ve just cherry-picked a fringe theory that you know little about in support of your wider tendentiousness. For me “fringe” isn’t a derogatory term but “tendentiousness” most definitely is.
So we can sort out where you are coming from DavidK, perhaps you’d like to give us your deeper thoughts on how it is that you side with this minority interpretation of the paleo record rather than the conventional one.
I cannot absorb the case for and against this fringe theory on the basis of this one link. But if this fellow is to be believed then the Malinkovitch cycles aren’t playing much of a part. So thats a big turnaround. And you wouldn’t be expecting me to leap to this side of the argument without some sort of case for and against.
I didn’t pick you as a fringe theory booster. So I rather think your tendentiousness is manifest.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m most interested in this new interpretation. I don’t know where to go to try and make a judgement of this anti-consensus point of view.
If this theory has wings its a matter of real importance.
Your links to your science?
Don’t try and squirm out of it DavidK. If you have picked up this anti-consensus view of glacial-interglacial periods then you must know what the mainstream view is. That the cycle tends to be of about 100,000 years with maybe 90% of the time in frigid conditions. That the cycle used to be about 40,000 years but seems to have been altered by the development of the Isthmus of Panama. Or at least that the cycle changed some 3+ millions of years ago.
All thats not important right now. I just need more information to find out more about your anti-consensus point of view on this specific topic. It may alter everything if Malinkovitch is shown to be less important.
You have presented an alternative paleo history. You have not yet made a case for this alternative. Hence I assume ignorance and cherry-picking.
So go ahead. Make your case.
Ok, I’m off to watch a movie. Goodnight.
Tendentious cherry-picking the presumed thesis then.
Gidday Finrod,
Excerpt: “You keep repeating that mantra. If it were true, why are the people here who are genuinely concerned about climate change advocating a wholesale shift to nuclear power as the primary solution?
Of course, the CO2 problem was formulated long ago by some very far-seeing brilliant scientists.”
Mate, lets get this straight.
1. There is no CO2 problem, if there is, it is that we don’t have enough.
2. Nuclear power. I love it. Wished we had it 40 years ago. Wished we had it 20 years ago. Too late now mate. You cannot shift horses in midstream.
Here is the problem: We would like nuclear power now, we have decided after 40 years that it is OK to use.
Mate do you know how much capital it takes to build one? you are looking at 1.5 Billion AUD approx. Per station.
Do we have any contractors in Australia with the skills?
Keep in mind this is a highly regulated business. The govt(s) will want to know who what where when and why 24/7.
We’ll need about 25 reactors to make any real change in Australia.
Who do you think in their wildest fantasy is going to give us the capital to get started? Remember that pesky GFC caused by the warm fuzzy LEFT in the US? Of course I hear you say, Australians can pay for it. No mate we cannot. The average middle class Australian family saves less than 2 % of disposable income. DISPOSABLE. Thank you Labour, we have been taxed to our knees for the last 60 years and thanks to Mr. Sheen we now have the largest debt we have ever had to pay off as well. Forget it, you won’t get your capital in Australia.
Now how long do you think it takes to build a nuclear power plant? They do not grow on trees mate. Your first 5 will be ordinary and will take 5 years each, yes you can begin them concurrently if you have the skilled workforce and you can budget on a 40% over budget blowout. That is how construction works, the first ones are hard yakka.
Now lets look at the politics. The Simpsons have been on TV for > 20 years now. They have done a pretty damn good job of making Nuclear look like a farce. Do you want a Nuclear power plant witin 5 Km of your house?
So we’ll have some significant transmission loss in order to distribute this power.
Here is the UGLY fact. You like Nuclear, great, too little too late mate. You can have it functioning at great cost in a minimum of 10 years. Lord help you on raising the capital. You’ll need a cogent business plan to present to New York, London, Brussels, Antwerp and they will want to see an 12% or better rate of return. Do you think our Labour govt will not put some incredible mind numbing regulation on this industry as well?? Bet on it. The Capital lenders will 12 just became 15% rate of return.
Hang on, I am hearing your gears going over…. the guvment gotta do sumding aboud dat. Mate toothless tiger, we’ve shot our bolt on the GFC.
Here is the final clanger. Due to the LARGE body of regulations and RIDICULOUS preventative maintenance schedules FORCED on them by VARIOUS INTERNATIONAL regulatory agencies what was once cheap power is now the most expensive. $ per kilowatt you’d be better off on an exercycle with a dynamo.
Here is what will work.
a. Tax free investment on any Nuclear power facility.
b. Use US, Japanese or Israeli contractors only for the first (few). ie get someone who can do the job right. It seems that the Swedes know their stuff as well.
c. Don’t setup some daft Labour comittee to oversee and create more regulation.
d. Find a partner, Sweden, China, Japan, USA and copy and paste their regulations.
e. Dispose of the spent fuel rods practically, ie SynRoc or other.
Don;t give the Nucelar power any mandatory % of power supply, one must compete against that blasted COAL power. There is NO reason to further beat your peoples past their knees to their ankles.
remember Australia is already TAXED to the MAX.
Personally; waste of time.
Natural Gas into a Gas turbine. Simple, easy to build, and maintain, huge power capacity and we have VAST amounts of Natural gas. Gradually build up Nuclear power until it is cost effective. We also have VAST Uranium reserves.
Australia shoud have the cheapest electricity on the PLANET. period.
We have shown NO ingenuity, forethought or any ability to achieve this. In fact we have only shown an INCREDIBLE inability to even get out of bed in the morning let alone think ahead.
In short, we are dunces awaiting invasion.
Remember, as Marcus Aurelies said: if Resources don’t cross borders Armies do.
@Amazed.
About half of what you say actually makes some sense, but your continued loony claim that the greenhouse effect does not exist reveals you as the ideologically driven automaton you are.
If the greenhouse effect did not exist, the average surface temperature of this planet would be below 0 deg C.
Yes, it’s true that plant growth is enhanced if the concentration of CO2 rises, but that matters little if the weather patterns shift and the plants cannot grow becuase they no longer enjoy the climate they evolved in. Evolution will sort that out down the road, but we need a solution on historical timescales, not evolutionaty ones.
Yes, It is true that the concentration of CO2 was far higher in the extremely distant past, but it is also the case (if our stellar evolution models are correct) that the sun was corespondingly fainter in the past.
Nuclear is the cheapest energy option in the long term, and there are plenty of good reasons to transition from the fossil fuel economy as quickly as practicable, even if AGW is ignored completely.
Cut-and-paste regulation from a sensible country? That is actually my preferred option. I’d hate to see the regulations drawn up by Garrett and Wong. Excess regulatory burden is the main factor which has driven the cost of nuclear so high in the US.
“If the greenhouse effect did not exist, the average surface temperature of this planet would be below 0 deg C.”
Thats pretty silly Finrod. Since what you seem to be saying is that the whole difference that people believe needs explaining comes from greenhouse and greenhouse alone. This is presumptuous to say the least. It assumes no effect of insulative properties of air, no effect of heat transport from warmer to colder areas, nothing coming from overturning and stratification. No conveyance of warmth with the water vapour coming off the oceans.
You particularly Finrod need to find out what the greenhouse effect is. Your combination of near total ignorance and enthusiastic advocacy is an embarrassment to your side of the argument.
Take for example your contention above that greenhouses are an example of the greenhouse effect. They are no such thing and you will have people on your side cringing with embarrassment at your youthful enthusiasm.
Take for example your contention above that greenhouses are an example of the greenhouse effect. They are no such thing and you will have people on your side cringing with embarrassment at your youthful enthusiasm.
I said no such thing. Try reading for comprehension for once in your life.
“If the greenhouse effect did not exist, the average surface temperature of this planet would be below 0 deg C.”
I just scrolled up above and it appears that Peter Ravenscroft gave you a whole lot of reasons to be skeptical of (at the very least) the magnitude of the effect usually ascribed to “the greenhouse effect” (that is to say backradiation).It seems it just all sailed over your head.
When we are talking about backradiation we are talking about light. Since we don’t even know what light is, it was pretty critical that we took an approach strong on empirical evidence with regards to this problem. Instead we have a manic devotion to a paradigm that at its core excludes all that is important about weather and climate, squeezes out everything through hyper-aggregation and then makes a few wild and speculative claims.
“I said no such thing. Try reading for comprehension for once in your life.”
No I’m afraid you made this ignorant contention and there is really no getting out of it.
“In the case of CO2, it’s a linear molecule a carbon with two oxygens, one on either side. Certain frequencies of IR are able to set the oxygens oscillating back and forth, and this mechanical energy can be transferred to other molecules by impact. This, at least, is my modest understanding of the matter. For greater detail, consult a real scientist.”
Sounds pretty right to me. But you should take the analysis further Finrod. You see the core greenhouse model admits of no conduction. Hence the temperature increase people generally ascribe to greenhouse, by this omission alone, must be gravely overstated.
This is but one omission and there are many more. So its not hard to see why,that when we go to the empirical record, we don’t get the predicted effect.
Gidday Finrod,
per the comment:
“your continued loony claim that the greenhouse effect does not exist reveals you as the ideologically driven automaton you are.”
Ods bods!
The Greehouse affect is a theory Sir. You’ll note I use the word affect and not effect and I use it in the definition of to atttack or infect as in disease.
This is not a law. Like some of those pesky thermodynamic laws. I am simply stating that I question the theory on many fronts, not the least of which is that it does not hold up empirically.
Here are some other theories: General theory of relativity, Special theory of relativity, The theory of wave particle duality, the theorem of plate tectonics.
The clear fact is that these theories are a good guess and it is up to others to improve upon them.
In the case of the greenhouse affect, it is a poor theory and I’m now embarassed to have actually typed it in the same post as Einsteins work.
Come on mate, Automoton?
“A self-operating machine or mechanism, especially a robot.”
How about weird and wacky or delightfully dingleberried, demonstrably deficient. I’m trying to make it work with ‘driven’ so I’m sticking with d’s.
Hey Fran,
I can use big words too, check this out:
Floxymoxysinhilafapilification. Actual medical term.
Finrod
As you have previously advised – don’t feed the wanabees.
They obviously have an agenda (distortion, misrepresentation and complete denial of the science) to generate as much ‘white-noise’ as they can. Their rants have nothing to do with the topic of the thread, no matter the attempts by me and others to draw it back.
It is their own unqualified pseudoscience guff that they opine.
No one can help them, nice try anyway.
Gidday DavidK,
This is just the holier than thou attitude I’d expect from an academic. The Universities in Australia are indeed an embarassment. Too much state funding I suspect.
Here are some little rippers for you and yours:
1. Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT has published a paper which proves that IPCC models are overstating by 6 times, the relevance of CO2 in Earth’s Atmosphere. You find it and read it if you care.
2. The Earth, the Sun, and indeed the Cosmos, comprise an inter-acting, dynamic, and evolving system. It is all in a state of continuing change. In comparison, the UN’s IPCC determines that the Earth was in a steady state until 200 to 250 years ago, which was upset by Mankind through increasing use of carbon fuels, and that led to atmospheric changes and consequential global warming.
3. The Sun is the dominating influence on the climate of the Earth. That simple fact is not recognised by the UN IPCC report(s). Our Sun is a churning, quivering body of hot plasma, generating intense electromagnetic fields in space that envelop the Earth. The electromagnetic behaviour of the Sun dominates and determines the electromagnetic and geotectonic response of the Earth, and thereby climate.
Moreover Sir, we don’t need your help. Your help will be to limit out actions, our thoughts and our freedoms.
Further, the only rants I see here are from the Promethean Environmentalists posting here.
I will remind you what Promethian means Wir. It means boldly creative and defiantly original.
From the posts on this page I would say that the position being advocated by the ‘deniers’, those of the ‘denilosphere’, ‘skeptics’ and ‘wanabees’ is actually the promethean view here.
Good day to you sir and a big thanks to our forefathers for free speach.
Seriously DavidR. I was hoping you could help me sort out if this fringe idea about glacial periods and interglacials had wings. This is an important matter and if Malinkovitch isn’t driving matters as the 40,000 year cycle, then later the 100,000 year cycle that we thought we had seemed to imply.
So admit you were cherry-picking. Or inform me better so I can assess this fringe interpretation.
As to the backradiation theory clearly it isn’t all its cracked out to be. Clearly air pressure is the more important consideration. Were this not the case highly elevated areas would have begun to converge with those areas down at sea level, in terms of the rate of heat loss in the early evening.
My apologies Alfred if you feel I am trivialising things. It seems to me that you have DavidK well in hand re: Malinkovitch and I’ve had to defend myself on other fronts.
Alfred and Amazed – that would be Milankovitch Cycles! As you have everything else wrong why shouldn’t you get the scientist’s name wrong too!
Carry on – enjoy your love-in- the rest of us have more important things to do like finding a workable solution for an industrialised future without fossil fuels. I suggest you expend your energies on doing the same.
I’m sure that Ian Plimer must be grinning from ear-to-ear
The loonies have taken over the asylum. Just, I expect, what he wanted.
I’m sorry that more rational voices have not posted – I guess there is the feeling of diminishing returns – so why waste effort.
I think that is a wrong attitude – although I confess that I really resent wasting what little precious spare time that I have on trying to inject sense to this discussion.
a few basic facts and opinions –
1) the greenhouse effect is real – get over it. It’s actually worse for a pile of chemicals such as fluorinated hydrocarbons (mostly refrigerants) – probably up to 20,000x worse, but it is real. Go look at any basic text on energy.
2) all plants do NOT have a linear response to increasing CO2 levels – some increase growth rates, others don’t and some even slow down.
3) Who give’s a rat’s ass about interglacials – the issue is NOW – and the change is all happening far faster than at any time in the past, so is outstripping the capability of species (including our own) to cope..we won’t be around to argue the toss about the interglacials.
4) Humans have so vastly damaged and degraded the landscape (and the atmosphere) – so the normal ways of animal and plant populations to adapt quickly, by moving, is blocked by human infrastructure – roads, agriculture and settlements/cities.
5) no environment….no economy
6) Humans are great….. but our numbers are not – go read any basic text on population biology. (oops -oh shit, it’s written by scientists – fergit it – get Genesis).
7) Our parents and grandparents (and great grandparents) did fine on energy levels 1/10th or less than our present ones and did fine (hey – you are here!)
– with our current vast respository of technical solutions – we can do far better than they did, with less… think about it!
8) We have a strange attitude – it we find it – grab it – use it – lose it NOW! Consider – that our actions are depriving future generations of the freedoms of actions that we are currently enjoying. Ethical?? I think not.
No (easily extracted) petroleum, no (easily extracted) gas, no (easily extracted) minerals, and no (easily repaired) land and so on…
tough shit for the future generations…
H
DavidK: Quite correct. my foray into this swamp is over. I’ve learned what I need to know concerning these individuals (if there are more than one) and their tactics. There’s no need to engage them any further.
If anything, their posts are causing major damage to their cause. I was actually a fence-sitter on the issue of AGW until I read some of the ludicrous things written by denialists… and that was the intelligent, educated variety. This stuff by the latest mob is so obviously, embarressingly absurd it’s almost painful.
Finrod, that’s just why I’m happy to let them off the leash for a while. The hole’s deep and they continue to dig hard.
Gidday Hugh,
1. “the greenhouse effect is real – get over it. It’s actually worse for a pile of chemicals such as fluorinated hydrocarbons (mostly refrigerants) – probably up to 20,000x worse, but it is real. Go look at any basic text on energy”
Sir the greehouse affect is very much open to debate. See the definition of a theory in any basic science text.
2. “all plants do NOT have a linear response to increasing CO2 levels – some increase growth rates, others don’t and some even slow down.”
You mis-read my post, I am saying it is non linear.
3. “Humans have so vastly damaged and degraded the landscape (and the atmosphere) – so the normal ways of animal and plant populations to adapt quickly, by moving, is blocked by human infrastructure – roads, agriculture and settlements/cities.”
Surprise sir, these are useful things they hold real value for us all. We are changing our environment in order to suit it the way we want it. Sir I grew up in PNG and know first hand what it is like to live the life of romance you aspire us all to. I grew up in a situation Rosseau would have loved. Believe me sir there is nothing noble about the life of the Savage you espouse so breathlessly.
It is easy to speak of such things on 3 square meals a day.
My definition would be IMPROVED the landscape.
4. “Who give’s a rat’s *** about interglacials – the issue is NOW – and the change is all happening far faster than at any time in the past, so is outstripping the capability of species (including our own) to cope..we won’t be around to argue the toss about the interglacials”
Your alarmist views are making up this problem. There is no issue now at all except the large volumes of invented tripe being pedalled at us from all sides now. All of this thanks to the theoretical greenhouse affect propoganda.
I think what you are really saying is who cares about scientific evidence, I have a perceived problem and would love you to all fix it for me at your cost and while you are at it would you cut your throat on the way out.
Sir, that is Fascism. You show yourself as an environmental fascist.
I think you are proposing a third way, just as Mussolini did. Yours is just another flavour of the same thing.
5. “No environment no economy.” You insuate that through our hard caring work in order to feed ourselves and our families we are somehow disembowelling the earth. I can assure you that you could not be further from the truth. The people you seek to punish with carbon dioxide ‘life’ taxes are real people just like you.
6. “Humans are great….. but our numbers are not – go read any basic text on population biology. (oops -oh ***, it’s written by scientists – fergit it – get Genesis).”
I love this one. You are insinuating the death of real people sir. You would kill for this mindless blather on this page? Is that it?
You are right, your terrible actions in this manner of a clear, odourless gas that is necessary to life calls much of your science into question.
I myself am a trained engineer and I love the dispassion of science. What I am reading here is amazing in the extreme.
7. “Our parents and grandparents (and great grandparents) did fine on energy levels 1/10th or less than our present ones and did fine (hey – you are here!)
– with our current vast respository of technical solutions – we can do far better than they did, with less… think about it!”
So too are you sir, and I’ll not be going back to the romantic good old days. I’ll stay right here with our fantastic ways of communicating, travelling, working, studying, dare I say living?
Why don’t you elect to shoulder a carbon tax and put yourself in the poor house so you can live like that? Please don’t force it upon me.
It is easy to do. Stop using power. Remove your flush toilet. Running water is a hard one to do without but you can. And to make yourself poor start paying excessive amounts for your foodstuffs and consumables.
You should do it for the good of the environment around you.
After all your environment defines you, right?
I think not sir, I define my environment and you sure are not going to define mine for me.
Finally:
“We have a strange attitude – it we find it – grab it – use it – lose it NOW! Consider – that our actions are depriving future generations of the freedoms of actions that we are currently enjoying. Ethical?? I think not.
No (easily extracted) petroleum, no (easily extracted) gas, no (easily extracted) minerals, and no (easily repaired) land and so on…
”
Sir you assume that our resources are going to disappear. We are limited only by our own ingenuity. If you are right the cost of resources should increase every year as the demand increases and the supply diminishes.
You sir are wrong. This is not the case.
As much as you advocate an environmental soci-fascism all that this will achieve is the complete destruction of our livlihoods, assets and ultimately Australia.
Per the comment “find it – grab it – use it – lose it NOW!” Maybe that is how you live, but not I. I don’t know what else to say except that you are not only saying things that are very dangerous to us all and I hope for all of our sake that there are not many like yourself.
In summary:
Hugh you demand population control, a return to horse drawn carriages and no electricity, hard work and endeavour is a bad thing.
The list goes on. However what I find most disconcerning is the concept of environmental fascism.
Hugh you are an amazement. I am amazed.
Finally I thank you Hugh, for I now know my enemy even better.
Gidday Perps – “enjoy your love-in.”
I’m not feeling the love Perps! All I am feeling here is esoteric cold grey walls. I am feeling very east german right now.
Gidday Baz,
Per the comment:
“that’s just why I’m happy to let them off the leash for a while. The hole’s deep and they continue to dig hard.”
Sir your comment about Sarin disqualifies you from this discussion in my limited view.
I thank you for setting up this blog and your hard work to date, it is a commendable undertaking.
“…in my limited view”
N’er a truer word typed.
Finrod,
The term denialists is highly offensive and draws a parallel between a clear odourless gas necessary to life on earth and the holocaust.
Sir, a caring person would take that back.
The Fourier Effect and CO2 Neurosis.
In his book titled “Liberalism – In the Classical Tradition”, Ludwig von Mises wrote:
“The root of the opposition to liberalism cannot be reached by resort to the method of reason. This opposition does not stem from the reason, but from a pathological mental attitude – from resentment and from a neurasthenic condition that one might call a Fourier complex, after the French socialist of that name.
“The Fourier complex is difficult to combat. What is involved in this case is a serious disease of the nervous system, a neurosis, which is more properly the concern of the psychologist than of the legislator…
“A normal man can accept disappoints, he simply multiplies his exertions. He can look disaster in the eye without despairing.
“The neurotic cannot endure life in its real form. It is too raw for him, too coarse, too common. To render it bearable he does not, like the healthy man, have the heart to ‘carry on in spite of everything’. Instead, he takes refuge in delusion. A delusion, according to Freud, ‘is something desired, a kind of consolation; it is characterised by its resistance to attack by logic and reality’.
“The patient, impervious to reason, must himself overcome his problem. He must learn to understand why he does not want to face the truth and why he takes refuge in delusions. Only the theory of neurosis can explain the success enjoyed by Fourierism – the sad product of a seriously deranged brain.”
Many posters on this blog appear to be suffering from this neurosis with regard to CO2.
“Finrod, that’s just why I’m happy to let them off the leash for a while. The hole’s deep and they continue to dig hard.”
Well Barry you and your devoted followers are just going to have to come up with evidence for a warming problem when so far no such evidence has surfaced.
Let us see what passes for evidence amongst your minions:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
“1. “the greenhouse effect is real – get over it.”
Magnificent hey Barry? Believe it. You must believe. I myself would think that backradiation has some effect. Clearly overstated. Some evidence from yourself or your followers would be nice. Being able to quantify it would be a good thing. Suggesting an experiment to quantify it would be a reasonable suggestion. And explanation as to why the elevated areas have seen no real change at how quickly they lose heat in the evenings could be helpful.
Sir the greehouse affect is very much open to debate. See the definition of a theory in any basic science text.
“2. “all plants do NOT have a linear response to increasing CO2 levels – some increase growth rates, others don’t and some even slow down.””
Hows that for terrific hey Barry. No-one here claimed a strictly linear relationship. The relationship is real and its strong but like most things it begins to taper off. As it turns out we and nature are better off with more CO2 right up until 1500 ppm or so. Verified and scientific evidence with thousands of plant growth experiments in all parts of the plant life-cycle.
“3. “Humans have so vastly damaged and degraded the landscape (and the atmosphere) – so the normal ways of animal and plant populations to adapt quickly, by moving, is blocked by human infrastructure – roads, agriculture and settlements/cities.”
Thats pretty right. And extra CO2 could be part of the healing process.
So Barry you might invite your devotees to come up with real evidence and reason. The Sarin gas comparison isn’t going to cut it in the real world.
In actual fact the only concern anyone ought to have is if and when CO2 levels dive.
“3) Who give’s a rat’s ass about interglacials – the issue is NOW – and the change is all happening far faster than at any time in the past, so is outstripping the capability of species (including our own) to cope..we won’t be around to argue the toss about the interglacials.”
You mean of course that we are getting colder. No? Well yes we are getting colder. And the change isn’t happening far faster. Science tells us that this process of getting colder is only too familiar.
The glacial/interglacial matter is important. Since the consensus view would imply that we are near the end of an interglacial. And nothing could be more idiotic then worrying about alleged human-induced warming at the end of an interglacial. This movement, this substitute religion, is therefore the most idiotic movement ever conceived by public servants. It amounts to looking a gift-horse in the mouth… or it would do if the public servants could find the evidence that biosphere-enhancing CO2 has warmed anything.
Wishful thinking were it true. But the public servants have gone against Arrenhius and now believe the ultimate idiocy: That human-induced warming would be anything but a great blessing.
No movement could be more idiotic than this one. Stick with the nuclear promotion. That way people won’t rightly be making fun of you.
My apologies in the above post I typed:
“Rosseau would have loved”
I meant:
“Rousseau would have loved”
fiddle fingers.
In February 1997, Dr. Terence Kealey published his book titled “The Economic Laws of Scientific Research. He was then lecturing at Cambridge University as a Clinical biochemist.
He points out that nearly all of the great leaps of classical science – astronomy, newtonian physics, the massive development of alternating electricity, relativity, atomic theory and practice we made by individuals or privately funded research efforts.
The purpose of the book assesses the myth that government-funded science works economically. Terence Kealey argues that the free market approach rather than that of state funding is what produces results which benefit humanity.
The European edition of the Wall Street Journal wrote: “It is the first book by a practising scientist to challenge the orthodoxy for decades, and should be read by those who are involved in science or merely wish to promote it.”
Today Dr. Terence Kealey is Vice – Chancellor at the University of Buckingham.
The University of Buckingham is the only degree-awarding independent university in the United Kingdom. The university has the highest ranking in the UK for student satisfaction. The university’s five main faculties are Law, Humanities, Business, Science, and Medicine. Each of these is presided over by a Dean of Studies, an academic leader in their field.
The book shows the fatal flaws of the states indulgence in research through its own agencies such as the CSIRO
Hufg Spencer wrote:
“8) We have a strange attitude – it we find it – grab it – use it – lose it NOW! Consider – that our actions are depriving future generations of the freedoms of actions that we are currently enjoying. Ethical?? I think not.”
that is so true! if anything the AGW movement has made us as a people realize is our responsibility to conserve our resources for future generations. there are some good point presented by the AGM movement so given that i think you best approach to stem Co2, So2, radioactive particles released into our environment is to conserve. make thing more efficient, squeeze every last bit of energy per pound of fuel used.
whether or not Co2 is harmful is inmaterial we need to use less fuel to do the same jobs.
there are only two ways right now to reduce Co2 and that would be nuclear power plants or reduce world populations. this brings to mind a monument built in the USA that feels sinister and propses the idea of population control by actions that are yet undetermined and give a glimpse into the AGW thought.
R. C. Christian:
http://www.radioliberty.com/stones.htm
1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature. (Agreed but, do it ethically!)
2. Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity. (well, how dose he want this implemented?)
3. Unite humanity with a living new language. (one language and one God?)
4. Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason. (good, i like tolerance)
5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts. (we have that now)
6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court. (a world government, how about that)
7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials. (Good one! imposable to do)
8. Balance personal rights with social duties. (from each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs?)
9. Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite. (infinite?)
10.Be not a cancer on the earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.
i still have an open mind and have not decided ether-way, so in my country i will oppose the carbon tax with my one vote, unless new facts come to light.
take care all!
Until DavidK and others make good on their idea that glacial periods are tens of thousands of years away it remains a fact that it is only cooling that we have to worry about. Yet the well-financed Barry Brook worries about warming. Can the well-financed Barry Brook tell us why the rest of us ought to worry about warming also? Given that worrying about warming does not pay for us the way it pays for him?
Sometimes it pays for people to be Wrong-Way Corrigan. But since it doesn’t pay for me to be Wrong-Way Corrigan I think I’ll have to stick with the science and therefore stick with the notion that only cooling and CO2-levels that are too low are worth worrying about.
Not warming and CO2 levels that are too high. Which is something no-one ought to have worried about in 55 million odd years.
Gidday John,
Per the comment:
“make thing more efficient, squeeze every last bit of energy per pound of fuel used.
whether or not Co2 is harmful is inmaterial we need to use less fuel to do the same jobs.
”
Sir you are right. The best way to achieve this is to elect to use the pricing mechanism and for you and yours to purchase goods that are cheaper than others and offer the same quality. Guess what you can vote every day many times in this selection process.
If others ask you why you made such and such a selection then edify them as per your selection process.
The wonders of human competition and ingenuity will seek to right any imbalance. Harness them to your ends.
By all means work out your carbon footprint and map out ways to minimise it. Your actions will have an impact.
Only in this manner will profitable industries streamline their operations in the manner that you require.
Invoking a higher good or inordinate government regulation in order to achieve what is demanded will result, oddly, in the opposite of what is demanded.
http://bp3.blogger.com/_cs-Bym6c2zU/RgbCXyTYkeI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/_3Z7hIGJo8s/s1600-h/beckgraph.gif
Here is the smooth graph of the CO2 record. The raw data makes this clearer perhaps. But notice the great good fortune of CO2 levels much higher than today after the Napoleonic Wars and World War II. Whereas the post WWI levels were a disaster.
Since CO2 levels have been a great deal higher than they are now, just what is this panic about?
Perhaps those who are gaining most from the continuation of this hoax would like to explain.
Hi John, (post 559)
thanks for that link – a very idealistic collection of aims – with #1 I agree heartily – but what is never addressed, is the need to let ourselves down (population that is) slowly, and as painlessly as possible (otherwise, all hellwill break loose).
Pre-European spread and colonisation – lots of societies practiced pretty intense population control – think of the blood feuds and inter-village warfare in New Guinea – simple, effective (but I suspect not efficient and definitely unpleasant – think head-hunting). We now have easy ways and means to disconnect sex very effectively from reproduction (and there’s no way that sex will go away – we are as a result very efficient procreators).
We have to abandon the idea of “my child” – and follow the example of many “primitive” populations, and have shared child rearing .. couple that with enforced breeding rights – 1/2 child per person – and those rights can be traded or sold, with the proviso, that reproduction doesn’t start until the woman is 30+ (which has a major demographic impact).
Haven’t done the sums, but you’d find that we could start a fairly steep population decline..which could be relatively painless (compared to the alternatives! – war, famine etc). – and maybe our vaunted intelligence will actually produce the goods!
However – we have organised religions to contend with (Fundamentalist Catholics and Islamics) who will fight strongly against such measures – as will the neo-cons and other growth obsessed power blocs. So I’m not optimistic.
# I don’t think World government is the answer – as with a small population there will be all sorts of innovative changes possible .. but an overarching ‘population control body’ with teeth, might be an idea
all very pie in the sky … but we must start seriously looking at measures..because if we don’t, the measures will catch up with us…
Hugh
This now brings me back to my first posting which should be firmly underlined by now:
Amazing. Look at all the words typed on this blog. Can’t you good people all work out that humanity is a good thing? Must there always be a lunatic fringe wanting to control every aspect of our business? Why can’t you put some of your zeal into real problems like Malaria, Cancer, Dengue Fever?
Instead let us dwell in the ethereal and make up problems: like CO2 emissions by humans. Some of you people espouse to be Engineers! Obviously the desk jockey type. Remember that engineers apply science practically and economically, that is not this mindless drivel I’m reading.
Sensible people need to realise that the dark green movement is a combination of the destructive philosophies of Rousseau, Hegel, Marx and Engels, which are anti-development, anti-the market oriented system, and thus, they are intent on destroying the social fabric of a free and prosperous society.
I remain amazed.
“We have to abandon the idea of “my child” – and follow the example of many “primitive” populations, and have shared child rearing .. ”
Here we have one of the strands of loony-toons ideas that are shoring up this transparent hoax. A gargantuan fraud like this would pull in a utopian child-thief wannabe to its orbit. At the size it has reached the movement becomes a nutballs of the world united.
Thankyou Amazed@ 564 and Alfred @565
AT LAST you have exposed your motives, agendas, politics and conspiracy theories.
Nutballs of the world unite indeed.
Gidday Perps,
You of the fossil fuel re-engineering strain should know about Monash well. In case you don’t here is an Australian who had a go:
On 10th January 1921, Sir John Monash, WW1’s most successful General, started his new job as Chairman of Commissioners of the Victorian State Electricity Commission. (SEC).
Monash was not only a pioneering Civil Engineer, but a competent lawyer too.
It was Monash who planned and built the great Latrobe Valley Power houses. His Civil Engineering experience before WW1 and his dealings with a hostile British and Australian heirachy during WW1, stood him in good stead, as he battled the Victorian bureaucracy, politicians and Melbourne Councillors, to get the job done.
He produced Australia’s first planned village for the SEC’s Power Plant workers, overcame difficulties with the high moisture of the Yallourn coal, built the power house and produced the cheapest power in Australia for Melbourne and Victoria.
It is a particularly low emissions power, virtually no sulphur emissions, but has large emissions of moisture, which is harmless to the environment; as is the carbon dioxide it produces.
It is this industry, which industrialised Victoria and produces Australia’s cheapest power today.
It has been declared a blight on Australia’s ecology and environment, and there are determined plans for it to be closed down.
Some real vision being shown here Perps. Mostly due to phony science sir. Your science sir.
If you are sure of yourself answer some of the powerful question being raised here instead of typing oddball words and phrases which have limited meaning to any reader.