by Judith Curry
Talk about perverse incentives! It appears that Chinese coolant manufacturers have been producing an excess of a harmful greenhouse chemical in order to dispose of it responsibly under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). – Walter Mead
Walter Mead at the American Thinker has a post entitled Chinese Spring ‘Climate Bomb’ on Greens. It’s a short piece, I reproduce it in its entirety below:
By using incinerators to cleanly burn off the chemical, HFC-23, these manufacturers were earning emission credits that they would in turn sell to developed world companies in order to help them hit their targets under the Kyoto protocol.
This chicanery didn’t go unnoticed, however: the European Emissions Trading Scheme banned trade in those credits in May, and other working climate exchanges have said they’re going to follow suit. A very lucrative business for Chinese manufacturers is drying up very quickly, and they’re not taking it sitting down. As the FT reports, this has set up a stand-off that would be delicious to behold if the stakes were not quite so high:
The EIA said an undercover investigation had shown that most of China’s non-CDM facilities were emitting HFC-23 already. “If all of these facilities [under the CDM] join China’s non-CDM and vent their HFC-23, they will set off a climate bomb emitting more than 2bn tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions by 2020,” it said. […]
An executive at China Fluoro Technology, one of the largest Chinese CDM plants, told the Financial Times: “Our company is still incinerating the HFC-23 now. If the money is used up, we can stop incineration. We can’t go on doing this, we can’t afford it and we have no duty to do it.”
The language used by the Chinese manufacturers is classic gangster talk—pure extortion. But the ultimate responsibility for this scandal lies with the doe-eyed greens who came up with the utopian global carbon trading system in the first place. Emissions trading was supposed to harness the profit motive and the efficiencies of markets to get greenhouse gas reduction to work on a global scale. But the scheme also assumed an effective global enforcement mechanism and a level of public-spiritedness among everyone involved that obviously never was there.
This will be one stand-off to watch closely. Some kind of pay-off is likely, as the Chinese manufacturers don’t appear to be bluffing. Will the ransom come from Beijing, with President Xi making good on the pledge he made to President Obama to phase out HFC’s at their recent “shirtsleeves summit”? Or will this end up being another lever for getting further concessions out of the West on any number of other issues?
And finally, keep this mess in the back of your mind as you watch President Obama announce a number of ‘bold’ new green initiatives early next week. The intellectual and policy foundations of the green worldview are buckling just as the President is about to set America down that very path.
Unfortunately, the Financial Times article is behind paywall (this happens to me alot, I wonder if I should subscribe).
IPCC on CFC’s
The IPCC AR4 covers CFCs in section 2.3.4 [link] and section 2.3.3 [link]. Section 2.9.1 claims ‘high confidence’ on the radiative forcing of long-lived greenhouse gases (which includes CFC’s).
Can someone check the leaked AR5 doc to see if the IPCC has anything new to say on the subject?
Qing-Bin Lu
Qing-Bin Lu is a Professor of Physics at the University of Waterloo [link]. Several weeks ago, he sent me an email attaching his recent papers on the topic of CFCs. In the meantime I have been communicating with a journalist over the past week, and the journalist brought up the issue of Lu’s papers and asked me to comment. Here are the relevant papers, all of which are available online:
What is the major culprit for global warming: CFC’s or CO2?
Qing-Bin Lu
Abstract. A recent observation strikingly showed that global warming from 1950 to 2000 was most likely caused by the significant increase of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the Earth atmosphere (Lu, 2010). Here, three key questions are addressed: (1) How could CO2 play a negligible role in recent global warming in view of its extremely high concentrations of >300 ppm? Is there other evidence from satellite or ground measurements for the saturation in warming effect of CO2 and other non-CFC gases? And could the greenhouse effect of CFCs alone account for the rise of 0.5~0.6 K in global temperature since 1950? First, the essential feature of the Earth blackbody radiation is elucidated. Then re-analyses of observed data about global temperature change with variations of halocarbons and CO2, the atmospheric transmittance of the infrared radiation and the 1970-1997 change in outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth are presented. It follows by new theoretical calculations of the greenhouse effect of halocarbons. The results strengthen the conclusion that humans were responsible for global warming in late 20th century, but CFCs, rather than CO2, were the major culprit; a long-term global cooling starting around 2002 is expected to continue for next five to seven decades.
published in Journal of Cosmology, 2010, Vol 8, 1846-1862. [link] to full article.
Dr. Lu’s newest paper “Cosmic-Ray-Driven Reaction and Greenhouse Effect of Halogenated Molecules: Culprits for Atmospheric Ozone Depletion and Global Climate Change” was published in International Journal of Modern Physics B Vol. 27 (2013) 1350073 (38 pages), available online at: www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217979213500732 ; an earlier version was published at http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.6844 .
Abstract. This study is focused on the effects of cosmic rays (solar activity) and halogenated molecules (mainly chlorofluorocarbons-CFCs) on atmospheric O3 depletion and global climate change. Brief reviews are first given on the cosmic-ray-driven electron-induced-reaction (CRE) theory for O3 depletion and the warming theory of CFCs for climate change. Then natural and anthropogenic contributions are examined in detail and separated well through in-depth statistical analyses of comprehensive measured datasets. For O3 loss, new statistical analyses of the CRE equation with observed data of total O3 and stratospheric temperature give high linear correlation coefficients >=0.92. After removal of the CR effect, a pronounced recovery by 20~25% of the Antarctic O3 hole is found, while no recovery of O3 loss in mid-latitudes has been observed. These results show both the dominance of the CRE mechanism and the success of the Montreal Protocol. For global climate change, in-depth analyses of observed data clearly show that the solar effect and human-made halogenated gases played the dominant role in Earth climate change prior to and after 1970, respectively. Remarkably, a statistical analysis gives a nearly zero correlation coefficient (R=-0.05) between global surface temperature and CO2 concentration in 1850-1970. In contrast, a nearly perfect linear correlation with R=0.96-0.97 is found between global surface temperature and total amount of stratospheric halogenated gases in 1970-2012. Further, a new theoretical calculation on the greenhouse effect of halogenated gases shows that they (mainly CFCs) could alone lead to the global surface temperature rise of ~0.6 deg C in 1970-2002. These results provide solid evidence that recent global warming was indeed caused by anthropogenic halogenated gases. Thus, a slow reversal of global temperature to the 1950 value is predicted for coming 5~7 decades.
Critiques of Lu’s work
Grob and Muller published a critique of Lu’s 2010 paper (behind paywall), and this is discussed in a post at RealClimate:
Undaunted, Lu continued to publish his ideas, though without really dealing with the criticisms, and indeed extending his scope to the issue of climate change as well as ozone depletion. He made a new claim that since CFC concentrations correlate better with temperature change, and that implies that CO2 can’t have an impact on climate. Very odd logic indeed. Unsurprisingly, his newest contributions have ended up in less and less mainstream publications. His last paper (Lu, 2010) was in the “Journal” of Cosmology – a recent online production that has been associated with a number of ‘fringe’ ideas (to be polite).
The paper before that Lu (2010, Phys. Rep.) has now come in for a real spanking from Grooß and Müller (2011) in “Do cosmic-ray-driven electron-induced reactions impact stratospheric ozone depletion and global climate change?”. From the abstract:
… Here we show that these arguments based on the CRE mechanism are inconclusive. First, correlations of satellite data of CFC-12, N2O and CH4 from ACE-FTS show no evidence of significant loss of CFC-12 as predicted by the CRE mechanism. Second, conclusions drawn about a possible CRE impact on the atmosphere, based on correlations of different observed atmospheric parameters, do not have a physical basis. Finally, predictions … based on these correlations are not reliable for either the ozone hole or global surface temperatures.
In my opinion the term ‘inconclusive’ is very polite indeed. The paper shows very clearly that there is no loss of CFCs through interactions with cosmic rays since if there was you’d see a change in the ratio of CFCs to CH4 or N2O (relatively long-lived gases) in the stratosphere. And you don’t. This was exactly the same (and completely valid) point made by the same authors in their rebuttal of Lu’s earlier paper (Müller and Grooß, 2009). However, since Lu obviously took no notice of that earlier criticism, it is impressive that Grooß and Müller took the trouble to rebut his claims even more thoroughly.
ClimateScienceWatch posts a review by Climate Nexus [link]. Excerpt:
The claim:
Lu argues that CFCs are responsible for causing global warming. He uses a complicated chain of logic starting with the premise that it is cosmic rays, not UV rays as most scientists think, that break down CFCs, and ending with the finding that after his calculations, the estimated warming impact of CFCs matches up closely with actual measured surface temperatures. He concludes that it must be CFCs, not CO2, that are causing surface temperatures to rise.
The facts:
– This theory has been considered and dismissed before. A 2010 reportby the National Academies of Science was commissioned by Congress to examine all the evidence surrounding global warming including the theory that cosmic rays might influence Earth’s climate. It concluded that “a plausible physical mechanism… has not been demonstrated” and “cosmic rays are not regarded as an important climate forcing.”
– In 2011, a peer-reviewed paper found that Lu’s conclusions “are based solely on correlation… do not have a physical basis… and the findings of the IPCC… remain unchallenged.”
– In response to Lu’s most recent publication, several different scientists interviewed by the Vancouver Sun each said that Lu’s conclusions “[go] against 150 years of very fundamental physics.”
– Critics point out that Lu’s paper fails to make the leap from correlation to causation, one of the most basic and most common scientific failings. This error is simply illustrated in the classic fable of the rooster who believes the sun rises because he crows. Two things may happen at the same time, but this does not mean one causes the other. A “physical mechanism” by which the two events are connected must be known, in order to fully understand causation.
– In contrast, there is strong experimental evidence of the physical mechanism by which CO2 warms the planet, evidence that (as scientists have mentioned already in response to Lu) dates back 150 years.
Lu responds in post at Climate Science Watch, excerpts:
1) “This theory has been considered and dismissed before. A 2010 report by the National Academies of Science was commissioned by Congress to examine all the evidence surrounding global warming including the theory that cosmic rays might influence Earth’s climate. It concluded that “a plausible physical mechanism… has not been demonstrated” and “cosmic rays are not regarded as an important climate forcing.”
Response: This criticism is irrelevant because it does not disagree with one of the conclusions in my paper: “the natural factors have played a negligible effect on Earth’s climate since 1970”.
2) “In 2011, a peer-reviewed paper [namely the 2011 Atmos Environ (AE)paper by Grooß and Müller] found that Lu’s conclusions “are based solely on correlation… do not have a physical basis… and the findings of the IPCC… remain unchallenged.”
Response: Prior to the submission of my manuscript to IJMPB, I had already given a detailed response to the AE paper by publishing a preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1498, in which I showed that the “data” reported in the Grooß and Müller AE paper as well as their 2009 PRL paper could not be found in the given data source. And one can find the following paragraph in the introduction (pages 6-7) of my published IJMPB paper:
“It should also be noted that Müller and Grooß87,88 recently criticized the CRE and CFC-warming theories by presenting the so-called “ACE-FTS satellite data”. However, Lu89 has pointed out that there exist serious problems with their presented data because the Canadian satellite carrying the ACE-FTS instrument has essentially not covered the Antarctic vortex in the presented months (especially the winter months when the CRE reactions are supposed to be most effective) and that their criticisms cannot stand from the scientific facts in the literature. Most recently, the pair has published a Corrigendum in one of the journals,90 in which they state “The months for which the data were shown were not correctly indicated. … the data do not cover this complete latitude range especially they do not extend to the South Pole”. Since they now agree that their presented ACE-FTS data for the winter Antarctica cannot be correct, it is surprizing to read their statement that “We note, however, that all conclusions of the paper remain unchanged”. To discern the more data and arguments presented in the papers by Müller and Grooß87,88, the readers should refer to the recent publication by Lu89.”
4. “Critics point out that Lu’s paper fails to make the leap from correlation to causation, one of the most basic and most common scientific failings. This error is simply illustrated in the classic fable of the rooster who believes the sun rises because he crows. Two things may happen at the same time, but this does not mean one causes the other. A “physical mechanism” by which the two events are connected must be known, in order to fully understand causation.”
Response: The physical mechanisms for the CRE theory of the ozone hole and the CFC warming theory have been given in detail not only in my newIJMPB paper but in my 2010 Physics Reports and J of Cosmology papers [see the main content of my paper in the above].
A journalist throws down the gauntlet
I sent these links to the journalist I have been interacted, who was not impressed by the Climate Nexus critique, excerpt from the journalist’s email:
JC comments: This is not an issue that I am prepared to dig deeply into myself (and I definitely wouldn’t touch the ozone chemistry issue), but I’ve read enough to agree with the journalist that Lu’s ideas with respect to global warming haven’t been adequately ‘debunked.’ I told the journalist that I would would open this topic up for discussion in a blog post.
Moderation note: This is a technical thread, please keep your comments relevant.
I am shocked by the fact that a theory based on some observation can be rejected simply because there is no causation mechanism identified.
This remind me another tragedy of science that I won’t name here, but the lack of mechanism identified is not an evidence or in-existence.
this is reverse science, ie dogmatism (theory rules reality).
Clearly I support the rule that any scientist that dismiss a fact because the is no mechanism identified, should be fired immediately.
However there is a point that is not clear, and raise doubt to me.
when correlation is too good it is often that it is a reverse.
CFC dose is maybe a consequence of temperature, not the cause. Maybe I did not understand well the paper, and clearly if you have argument to justify it is not reverse causation, I won’t moan more.
What is sure is that absence of know mechanism in a so complex system, stinks scientism, and stinky pseudo-science like what Thomas Kuhn describe. as “normal science”.
http://fr.slideshare.net/sandhyajohnson/the-structure-of-scientific-revolutions-thomas-kuhn-book-summary#
“CFC dose is maybe a consequence of temperature, not the cause”
Seriously? Was that just misworded, or am I just misreading that?
Seriously, this possibility needs to be considered. If you have evidence that rules it out, please present the evidence.
CFCs are artificial molecules. They were invented by man.
Once again this is an example of a “theory” based on correlation without mechanism.
Id love to know how temperature could prompt humans to emit CFCs.
Well, indirectly at least, rising temperatures could stimulate the production and use of CFC’s… but that’s really, really thin.
Rising heat equal more refrigerants? I was going to say that but thought better of it.
There is a lot of atmospherc chemistry going on with these molecules, including ozone production of course. That some of it might be temperature sensitive is certainly plausible.
I am shocked by the fact that a theory based on some observation can be rejected simply because there is no causation mechanism identified.
Me too! They say this on why Lu is wrong:
It concluded that “a plausible physical mechanism… has not been demonstrated” ….
Interesting that they would say this, considering that the “missing heat” Trenberth thinks he’s found is 2000 meters under the ocean, and many climate scientist are embracing this hypothesis, they also have no plausible physical mechanism to explain why and how this is happened yet gone noticed. Also, why is it happening NOW, and not, say, 30 years ago.
There are more questions than answers on this, yet the climate science community seems to be rushing as fast as they can to yet another consensus that the deep ocean warming IS indeed the missing heat.
PS. Just so everyone is clear…. I do absolutely agree that great caution must be taken with this new CFC hypothesis. Unless others independent of Lu can duplicate this and, yes, show a strong physical connection, this is, in the end, a very interesting correlation. And it should be pursued, both trying to prove it, and trying to knock it down.
Interestingly, I wonder if this would have even been publishable pre-climategate? It does seem the alarmist faction that tried desperately to shut out anything that didn’t tow the party line doesn’t have the grip on things that they did up to 2009.
“Clearly I support the rule that any scientist that dismiss a fact because the is no mechanism identified, should be fired immediately.”
Agree!
“Our company is still incinerating the HFC-23 now. If the money is used up, we can stop incineration. We can’t go on doing this, we can’t afford it and we have no duty to do it.”
Nice climate ya got there. Be a shame anything happened to it. – Chinese style.
Messa witha my climate ah breaka you face.
Sorry.
Messa witha ma racket ah breaka you climate.
This is really no different than Italian mafia playing games with wind turbines and later solar panels, Germans shining arc lamps on solar panels to generate profitable electricity at night,etc., etc.
Everybody will game the system as much as they can. So those who set the rules have to start with the assumption that clever business men and women will do so.
I think rather than “clever business men and women” I would call them greedy crony capitalists feeding at the government trough. You find these parasites in every form of government, but “state run capitalist” economies are their natural habitat.
To show a new mechanism for warming, Lu also has to show why CO2 doesn’t account for it. His explanation is that the CO2 lines are saturated to the extent that additional CO2 doesn’t do anything (I believe he said this occurs at 350 ppm). This is the part the flies in the face of radiative transfer. A whole branch of physics and lab experiments show exactly how CO2 bands behave as the concentration increases over a wide range. He essentially disputes the part where doubling CO2 adds a significant amount of forcing (3.7 W/m2). This hasn’t normally been disputed and the effect can be measured in a lab, so I think Lu is on shaky ground with that one.
Jimd
I asked exactly that question as to whether the effect of adding co2 has about reached its limit in this article here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/08/the-curious-case-of-rising-co2-and-falling-temperatures/
Saturation point or Is the current sharp down turn in temperatures in the CET record merely a blip in the upward path we can trace from 1660?
Your comments welcome
Tonyb
You can counter your graphic with Vaughan Pratt’s millikelvin fit, where an upward curve gives a remarkably good representation to the long-term part of the trend. That upward curve relied on the usual log forcing for the temperature variation. Anyway the 5.35*ln(C/C0) is pretty well established even among skeptics. You can also check online radiative transfer codes like MODTRAN that give you how the spectral lines and fluxes change with varying concentration in an atmospheric column. Lu has a long way to go to disprove MODTRAN.
Tont it hasn’t reached saturation. This is engineering. day in day out working useful science.
Jimd
The difference is that my graphic reflects the actual observed record whereas vaughans very interesting paper is highly theoretical.
I see mosh’s reply as well just below. The saturation point is theoretical and not necessarily what happens in the real world.
I don’t claim to know, just that observationally the 350 year upwards rise in temperature has reached a point where it is turning down again despite the considerable increase in temperature. It may resume its upwards rise soon, I merely make the observation and invite a response
Tonyb
Vaughan’s paper was on fitting the observed record filtered of variations below 22 years frequency. It brought out two long-term trends, the upward curve of magnitude near a degree and a ~60-year oscillation of 0.1 degrees around it.
It’s always been a curiosity to me that people wounder about saturation of the CO2 GHG effect, but seem to accept discussions about the varying GHG effect of water vapor.
Tcflood
So what is the saturation point of water vapour in the atmosphere?
Tonyb
tcflood,
“It’s always been a curiosity to me that people wonder about saturation of the CO2 GHG effect, but seem to accept discussions about the varying GHG effect of water vapor.”
It shouldn’t be. CO2 is a WMGHG and H2O is not. Where moisture is present, H2O tends to dominate the IR spectrum. You can use the MODTRAN model and check the impact of CO2 in dry air with a surface temperature at or below -18 C where most of the water vapor has condensed out. A doubling of CO2 produces about 2 Wm-2 reduction in OLR which would require ~0.74 C of additional “surface” temperature to restore the original OLR flux.
So wondering about the degree of saturation at certain temperatures and pressures would be normal considering that the tropical troposphere hot spot ain’t hot.
Jim D – Vaughan Pratt’s millikelvin fit was tosh, as I pointed out at the time. It had no real-world foundation.
Mike Jonad
Real world foundation? Now that’s a phrase you don’t hear very often
Tonyb
Vaughn Pratt’s curve fitting blog science is hardly comparable to Lu’s work published in Journal of Modern Physics B. Blog rebuttals of Lu aren’t going to cut it either. Maybe the usual suspects need to force another journal editor to resign. That seems to be the modus operandi of choice in these kinds of situations.
Mike Jonad?
Sorry mike Jonas my iPad changed your name at the last moment. Second time tonight as ‘System Wilde’ can testify. It has just tried to change your name again five times.
Tonyb
Judith
Several years ago I had an exchange of emails with Dr Lu concerning ozone depletion and the ozone ‘hole’.
It subsequently led me to Correspond with Cambridge university and the max Planck institute. I asked both of them as to how we knew whether the ozone hole was new or if it might have always been there. They confirmed that instruments to measure the hole only came into existence in the 1950’s and they didn’t know if one existed before then. They were however about to carry out some research to find out if they could hind cast the size of the hole in the past. The hole seems stubborn in its persistence.
I wonder if anyone knew the current situation? Dr Lu came over as a highly credible person who I have followed ever since with interest and his current paper merits serious discussion.
Tonyb
See the critique of Q-B Lu at Skeptical Science:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/lu-2013-cfcs.html
Has he attempted to rebut this?
Also see the responses to Q-B Lu’s post by Tamblyn and Rabett here:
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/06/05/response-by-qing-bin-lu/
He has not submitted a response to these.
Hi Rick, I’ve emailed Lu so he is aware of my blog post, will see if he shows up to interact.
Wake me when there’s a rebuttal to an International Journal of Modern Physics B paper in a comparable journal. Blogs aren’t comparable especially a lowlife snake pit like skeptikul science.
Springer, no-one buys Lu’s nonsense. You’ve lost. Give up already.
At least the data matches the temperature pause.
http://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/cdiac-cfc-data.png
Little Miss Sunshine is 9 steps behind.
http://imageshack.us/a/img713/2830/17272572.gif
QB Lu from U of Waterloo had to create an artificial lag of 9 years to get his data to fit. If he doesn’t do this, the R^2 goes to pot as well.
That is all shown in the figures.
Can’t find a 9 year lag. I think you might have fantasized it like everything else. By all means – show it by reference to a paper.
The Chef is wrong about everything and it is intentional on his part.
So you cant actually prove what you say about a 9 year lag and resort to your usual nonsense? I’ve looked at a couple of papers – I am not overly impressed with the CO2 saturation argument and if this isn’t true the whole thing falls over – but I still can’t find a 9 year lag. Please satisfy my curiosity about where you dredged this up from or I will have to assume – from past experience – that it is all lies and fraud.
Actually International Journal of Modern Physics B peer reviewers bought it. So your assertion is wrong on the face of it. Of course no one buys that you have a brain in your head so just give it up.
Are you that grossly incompetent, Chef?
This is from the ARXIV paper:
The tool QB Lu from U of Waterloo did not show the equivalent graphs without and with the lag that I took the time to chart up.
http://imageshack.us/a/img713/2830/17272572.gif
Chef, you are such an idiot in complaining that I “dredged” this up. This is what needs to be done to debunk the junk that keeps on coming from YOU and YOUR ilk.
‘For halocarbon concentrations in the stratosphere, a 9-year delay from surface-based measurements was applied…’
This is what you are complaining about? The delay from halocarbons at the surface to halocarbons in the stratosphere? Is that the best you can come up with?
‘ …an artificial lag of 9 years to get his data to fit…
…QB Lu from U of Waterloo applies a strange 9-year lag from halocarbon increase to match the global temperature increase…’
You have to really show – by reference to rational argument one would hope – oh forget it. It is such weak nonsense on your part – simply doesn’t address the core of the thesis at all. You are an utter idiot
Chef, You lose again. Surface temperature alone does not capture the uptake of heat by the oceans.
QB Lu from U of Waterloo is randomly looking for correlations.
If he is right, why isn’t the OHC rise leveling off?
Why does he throw in all this extraneous stuff on solar effects when it doesn’t improve his correlation?
Lu is either delusional or he is playing the system. Much like Chef is an Aussie larrikin mocking science, Lu is a Canadian hoser.
Q-B Lu suggests that solar variation wasn’t the cause. You disagreeing?
The rest is just changing the grounds of your argument. To an equally invalid argument I might add.
A contemptible behavior I cant be bothered dealing with further at this time.
QB Lu from U of Waterloo applies a strange 9-year lag from halocarbon increase to match the global temperature increase. In the link below is my attempt at reconstructing what Lu attempted to do via the 9-year lag.
http://imageshack.us/a/img713/2830/17272572.gif
top:no lag, middle:lagged fit, bottom:lagged regression
Note that he also uses R instead of R^2 to make the correlation look better. The lag is not there in the OHC data.
Lu claims he did an analysis where he removed the effects of the solar component. What is interesting is I used his correlation recipe but only by applying the 9-year lag and got the same R^2 as he got. This has important implications because his correlation coefficient didn’t improve by removing the solar component. This could only happen if it was just a random effect in the first place. IOW, he didn’t do a null test, but simply claimed that the solar improved the fit.
Don’t get taken in by QB Lu from Waterloo. He has some solid credentials in other areas, but in this area of halocarbon warming he has a weird agenda that has been going on for years.
Wouldn’t the thing to do be to publish a rebuttal in the same or another peer reviewed journal? I’m not sure if I need to be telling you this but publishing blog comments with an anonymous handle isn’t considered good practice.
I wrote this up as comments on the Skeptical Science blog.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?p=1&t=67&&n=2057#95178
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?p=2&t=67&&n=2057#95364
SkS is probably the best place for keeping track of bad science and debunking claims.
I read Lu’s paper, and was unpersuaded. His argument boils down to pure correlation. Temperatures rose from about 1970 with the rise in CFC s and the growth of the asssociated polar ozone hole (AR4 treats stratospheric ozone as a slight negative forcing, so a reduction is a slight ‘positive’ ; temperature rise paused after the CFC treaty and the slow reduction in atmospheric CFC. No plausible causal mechanism is offered although there are speculations.
The scientific causality problem is that the radiative forcing attributed to CFCs by AR4 ( see figure TS5 for the summary) is about 1/5 that of CO2, and therefore insufficient to account for the observed warming in any model of radiative physics without vastly larger feedbacks than attributed incorrectly to the vastly larger CO2 forcing. Even adding tropospheric ozone (which AR4 I think correctly treats separately since mostly tropospheric ozone is mostly smog rather than CFC induced) the total forcing is still 1/3 of CO2.
“If it doesn’t fit you must acquit.” And the forcing is too small to fit. More likely that the rise and fall of CFCs is merely coincident to one or more natural variabilities like the PDO.
Rud,
I have a question for you about LENR. The moderator doesn’t want off-topic discussion on this thread, so I’ll leave the question at the bottom of Week in Review.
Gave a reply there. The book has much more detail, with illustrations and reference footnotes.
I’ve little faith left to spare for IPCC prognostications nor in general of the ability of the climate science community to explain changes in GAT. The diminishment in confidence is primarily due to failure of their GAT predictions to match what actual GAT is doing. It lines up hideously poorly with CO2 production. There should have been significant and continuous background warming as atmospheric CO2 increased over the past 200 years but in fact nothing like that happened. In the satellite era where we have a true reliable measure of GAT for the first time beginning in 1979 there are two plateaus of approximately 17 years each with a stair-step warming separating them. This is absolutely not copacetic with a steadily increasing non-condensing greenhouse gas. The CO2 boogey-man appears to be a political creation where the observational support ends at the same point the comparison of the earth to an ideal black body ends.
The scientific causality problem is that the radiative forcing attributed to CFCs by AR4 ( see figure TS5 for the summary) is about 1/5 that of CO2, and therefore insufficient to account for the observed warming in any model of radiative physics without vastly larger feedbacks than attributed incorrectly to the vastly larger CO2 forcing. Even adding tropospheric ozone (which AR4 I think correctly treats separately since mostly tropospheric ozone is mostly smog rather than CFC induced) the total forcing is still 1/3 of CO2.
Lets put it another way shall we.The 2010 assessment says
The Montreal Protocol and its Amendments and Adjustments have made large contributions toward reducing global greenhouse gas emissions (Figure ES-1). In 2010, the decrease of annual ODS emissions under the Montreal Protocol is estimated to be about 10 gigatonnes of avoided CO2-equivalent1 emissions per year, which is about five times larger than the annual emissions reduction target for the first commitment period (2008–2012) of the Kyoto Protocol
Wu et al 2012 suggests
The successful implementation of the 1987 Montreal Protocol has had a marked effect on ODSs and the stratospheric ozone layer. The concentrations of most ODSs have been declining after reaching a peak in the 1990s (Montzka et al. 1999; MÄader et al. 2010), and there are perhaps signs of the onset of ozone layer recovery in the past decade (Eyring et al. 2006). Furthermore, since the ODSs are also greenhouse gases (GHGs), their elimination has helped reduce radiative forcing of the Earth’s climate by approximately 0:8-1:6 W/m2 by 2010 (Velders et al. 2007). This compares to the radiative forcing due to anthropogenic CO2 increase under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4) A1B scenario of about 1:8 W/m2 in 2010 (Solomon et al. 2007)
The CFC/O3 forcing also has significant effects on the carbon cycle of the SO due to wind stress,the perturbed effect is around .16 gt C per annum or around a third of the Full commitments under the KP.
In addition the increased efficiency of the SO carbon cycle observed in the last decade has increased the lag of atmospheric CO2 in the SH to around 4 years against Mauna loa
How is the last 17 years of no warming explained?
It’s been a while since I read his paper, but I don’t recall that he did address the “pause.” In any event, it would be addressed the same way it would be for any GHG.
re; How is the pause explained?
Very nicely.
http://phys.org/news/2013-05-global-chlorofluorocarbons-carbon-dioxide.html
the only problem being that graph shows a rise in CFCs in the last 17 years. Trace the green line from 1996 onwards. It goes up.
Which ones rose?
CFC-11, CFC-12, CFC-113, carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) or sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/new_atmCFC.html
I believe all are dropping, depending on type and hemisphere except for sf6.
Some started dropping late.
QB Lu from U of Waterloo had to shift his curve by nine years to get it to match with temperature. Check the first figure in the PhysOrg article.
He also admits this in his ARXIV article. He says something to the effect that it takes this long for the changes to propagate to the stratosphere.
I’ll make three points.
1) A lag would not be a surprise.
2) CO2 has risen a huge amount since 1998 and nothing has happened.
3) CFC’s stopped rising before and after 1998 (depending on compound)
http://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/cdiac-cfc-data.png
4) Older data is estimated. CDIA says:
“The initiation of global atmospheric monitoring programs for CFC-11, CFC-12, CFC-113 and CCl4 began in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.
Atmospheric concentrations of these compounds prior to this period are derived from estimates of annual industrial production and release of these compounds, with corrections applied based on the atmospheric lifetimes of each compound. ”
Now quit whining about the lag from surface to stratosphere. The measurement of these compounds
Judith,
Many paywalled news articles can be fully read by copying the title or phrase from the article into google/bing and retrieving the article through the search engine link. That is what I do for sites I only occasionally read.
I have looked at many sets of data, all result of solid observation, and found strong correlations from solar activity, tectonic records, geomagnetic fields etc, etc; but none can be unquestionably supported by the known laws of physics, hence often labeled pseudoscience.
Either nature is far more complex that the known science is prepared to give it credit for, or there is a god up there who likes to play games with the universe. I happen to think reality is the first rather than the second.
Vuk
I don’t know if you have just been watching the BBC programme about the sun. It’s obvious that our knowledge of it is still in its infancy and it’s impact on such things as our climate is one of the least understood aspects of all.
I am sure the same can be said for many of the things you research. The simple answer to many scientific questions is ‘ we don’t know’ a phrase not recognised by dr Iain Stewart currently on BBC who speaks with great certainty about everything as he did on climate when I saw him speak at Southampton university a few years ago.
I feel the same with Dr lu’s paper. Skeptical science immediately took sides. The other blog referenced above was much more interesting and balanced with some good questions which need answers. unproven but not disproved. Looking forward to the international sceptics conference in France in November.
Tonyb
Lovely, a whole conference devoted to the folks who dogmatically believe that.
A) the climate is too complex to understand, but
B) whatever it is, its anything but C02
Vukcevic and Tony. Tony, you write “The simple answer to many scientific questions is ‘ we don’t know’”
All I can add is Amen. Why cannot our hostess just agree that when it comes to CAGW, we just dont know?
JIm C,
But hasn’t she conceded that, implicitly anyway?
Mosh
So you have seen the preprint of one of the papers then?
Tonyb
Yep, saw both progs. Nothing new in the first, I think it is a repeat, but there was a statement near the end: “the sun is moving towards grand minimum status and last time this happened the Thames froze over”!! Implication is clear.
Re: Sceptics Symposium:
‘La Grande Salle’ is full of archive cabinets, so I booked both side wings of the main staircase .
Mosher with few selected ardent AGWs are welcome of course, they can sit in the lower section, with their backs to the organizing committee, seated on the first landing.
This video loop will be played projected at the dome above, as the guests arrive. .
pokerguy, youi write “But hasn’t she conceded that, implicitly anyway?”
Maybe. That is not what I am hoping for. I would like our hostess to say it explicitly.
Steven, you write “A) the climate is too complex to understand, but
B) whatever it is, its anything but C02”
As usual, putting words inot other people’s mouths, and getting it wrong.
B) should read “whatever it is, it has not been proved that CO2 has anything to do with it.”
Vuk
I think we are already up to 170 delegates. Not sure we need any more although it’s good to have dissenting views.
Securing that guest speaker was a real coup. I never thought he would agree to speak at a sceptics conference. I think three days is too long for a conference Hugh, two would do
Tonyb
170 skeptics means 170 different views. They are not going to believe each other either. Could get some fun questions that are really out there.
“All I can add is Amen. Why cannot our hostess just agree that when it comes to CAGW, we just dont know?”
I think Dr. Curry has been quite clear that in her opinion AGW is not sufficiently certain to be C to justify the policies being argued for by the consensus – decarbionization. That may not be a fully skeptical position, but it is pretty far from the consensus. And is why the warmists get their panties in a bunch at her testimony, papers and posts, because to them that is the only question that matters.
The “hide the “skeptic” under the thimble” game continues.
According to Judith, “skeptics” are those who accept the GHE, but just doubt the extent to which ACO2 affects the climate.
According to her own rhetoric, Judith is a full-on “skeptic”: and indistinguishable from any other “skeptic” with the exception of “sky dragons.”
@Joshua,
Jeeez dude, are you in love with Judith or something? Always pulling her ponytail on the playground…
“Tonyb | June 23, 2013 at 5:46 pm |
Mosh
So you have seen the preprint of one of the papers then?
Tonyb
############
The storyline does not change. That should be a clue to you
Thanks. Very good idea posting it.
If I have read the post properly, Climate Nexus claims “In contrast, there is strong experimental evidence of the physical mechanism by which CO2 warms the planet, evidence that (as scientists have mentioned already in response to Lu) dates back 150 years.”
It was Adolph Hitler who said “If you tell a big enough lie, and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed”
There is no experimental evidence, or empirical data, or measured numbers, or whatever anyone wants to call it, that supports the hypothesis of CAGW. Zero, nada, zilch. Absolutely nothing. All there is, are guesses based on hypothetical meaningless estimations.
But, unfortunatley people like Presoident Obama believe the lie that this experimental evidence exists.
Jim
You are quite right with your attribution
http://bytwerk.com/gpa/falsenaziquotations.htm
But number 3 on the list is equally interesting and applies to many fields including the environmental and climate change issues. I wonder if people generally are just becoming more credulous and follow the line that they most agree with. That is tribalism which we saw exhibited on the skeptical science critique of the Dr Lu paper being referenced
Tonyb
Tonyb
Jim C,
Do you also think this is true of AGW?
teflood, you write “Do you also think this is true of AGW?”
Definitely not. There is ample experimental evidence that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. AGW is real; CAGW is an unproven hypothesis
Pretty typical of a socialist scheme’s unintended consequences. Too bad socialists now rule the world. Expect tons more waste, graft, political favoritism, the use of the government apparatus against political rivals, crime, fraud, and other unintended consequences of the greenie, PC idiots’ “progressive” agenda. Yep, it’s really progressive, eh?
Both you and Walter Mead are basically blaming the beaten wife.
You don’t appear concerned with preventing domestic abuse, only on trying to blame it on the socialist wife.
Oh sure Walter Mead appears concerned when he highlights the injuries:
“it appears that Chinese coolant manufacturers have been producing an excess of a harmful greenhouse chemical”
“a stand-off that would be delicious to behold if the stakes were not quite so high”
But he doesn’t go on to blame the husband or call for an end to the abuse. Instead he seems to have highlighted the injuries as if to say “and THIS is what happens when wives misbehave”
Neither of you appear to give a damn if HFC-23 is emitted in huge quantities. I bet if enormous HFC-23 emissions were coming online because the Chinese could make legitimate profit off it you wouldn’t utter a peep of complaint.
You only complain if the HFC-23 emissions are a result of the Chinese gaming regulations. Blaming the regulations.
Typical tendentious nonsense from numbnut. This has been known since 2009 at least. Manufacture in one facility and take it across the road to the incinerator to be burnt for payments under the CDM.
Very profitable – billions of dollars – and is a perverse incentive to continue manufacturing HFC-22 – of which HCF-23 seems to be a by-product.
The Europeans belatedly banned payments in May. Who else are you going to blame but the UN – skeptics? Please.
OK, lolwot – I admit I haven’t looked into this much lately and currently don’t have a bunch of time on my hands to kill with it. But I do remember reading something about the ozone hole hasn’t gone away, hasn’t shrunk to the extent expected, or some such. What do you say about that? Is the hole now the size expected given the CFC bans?
lolwot said:
You only complain if the HFC-23 emissions are a result of the Chinese gaming regulations. Blaming the regulations.
I don’t know… Sometimes stupid policy by regulators, either through enforcement, non-enforcement, or simply poorly thought out policy, can have long lasting unintended consequences and do tremendous damage. The Great Recession is a perfect example.
OK. I do blame the carbon regulations for giving the Chinese an opening to game the system. Carbon regs are government regulations … right? That doesn’t mean I think the Chinese are right for taking advantage of it … OTOH …
Yeah. Democracy’s a bitch, ain’t it?
And another thing – you know that huge recidivist crime problem we have? If those criminals hadn’t been put in jail in the first place the crime committed by recidivists would drop immediately.
Bet those soshlists never thought of that, huh?
Nope, looks like the socialist didn’t think of that, Joshua. Drugs are still illegal and too many people get thrown in jail for being addicted. A libertarian would make drugs legal.
The rulers are neither socialist nor progressive. They’re simply ignorant scoundrells.
The ozone holes have always existed and grow larger when the sun is active with the reduction in ozone cooling the stratosphere.
Neither CFCs nor CO2 have a significant role.
Now that the sun is less active ozone is increasing above 45km and the stratosphere has stopped cooling.
In the meantime we have the man made climate change groupies fighting between themselves like ferrets in a sack.
Why do you feel the need to insult ferrets by comparing them to the usual suspects in the climate change charade?
Agree.
Just finished watching the BBC programme.
In the final segment they had a nice summary of the so called Livingston Penn effect whereby sunspots become invisible due to declining magnetic strength.
They firmly linked that with the Maunder Minimum and the colder climates of that time.
Having gone that far they impliedly accept the possibility that recent warmth was solar induced.
Also a recognition of solar variations over and above the 11 year cycle.
Now they just need to incorporate the voluminous evidence that such variations are global not regional and add my proposals about latitudinally shifting climate zones and jets in response to solar effects in the stratosphere which alter the gradient of tropopause height between equator and poles so as to regulate energy flow through the Earth system and change the amount of solar energy entering the oceans.
Then we will have the real reason for natural climate changes against which our emissions count for nought.
Atmospheric CO2 follows temperature along the longer term solar cycles rather than the 11 year cycle and furthermore natural (and large) atmospheric variations in CO2 amounts are woefully under represented in the ice cores.
That would pretty much close the circle and destroy AGW theory.
System
Glad you watched it as well, I thought it pretty objective and followed the evidence, unlike dr Stewart’s effort currently on. He brings speculation to a new height.
I am inclined to think the ozone hole has always been present. If no one here has the answer to my question up thread I guess I will have to ask it myself
Tonyb
System?
Sorry Stephen that was the iPad. It changed BBC to BBD three times as well
Tonyb
Stephen, Do you have a link to a podcast, or a title I can look up? Here in Canada we don’t get the full BBC service.
This is not an issue that I am prepared to dig deeply into myself (and I definitely wouldn’t touch the ozone chemistry issue), but I’ve read enough to agree with the journalist that Lu’s ideas with respect to global warming haven’t been adequately ‘debunked.
Indeed,this is a very complex area and the so called critiques at SS RC are evidence of how very little understanding of atmospheric mechanisms and process’s (the physics) is imparted by those authors (hence one should be very skeptical).
The causative instrument, energetic particle precipitation ( EPP) is well described in the literature eg Sakharov,Zel’dovich,Tamm Crutzen.it exists,and its effects on upper atmospheric chemistry ,temperature and meridional transport are also, it is just that they have been ‘overlooked” in the GCM’s,and the reviews,limiting the understanding of natural variability.
Questioning whether CFCs caused the Antarctic ozone hole to grow is a lot like questioning the mainstream 9/11 story.
Sure you CAN. No-one can 100% prove either. But come on lets stop pandering to incredible alternative “theories”.
Iolwot
The analogy you make is very strained. See my earlier post in which I noted that neither Cambridge university nor the max Planck institute could answer whether the zone hole could have been present prior to the mid 1950’s when it could first be measured by instruments. That was three years ago and perhaps they now know. That is scientific curiosity, not a conspiracy theory, and surely a very basic question to ask
Tonyb
whether or not the ozone hole existed before has nothing to do with the strong evidence that the recent increase in size and depth of the ozone hole was due to CFCs
Not really, there is a difference between “caused” and “contributed to”. The Arctic ozone hole and the additional tropical stratospheric ozone depletion since Montreal seems to indicate that other causes or combinations of causes need to be considered. Ozone complicates all the atmospheric physics.
Captain
Just out of interest here is a good history of the ozone hole
http://www.theozonehole.com/ozoneholehistory.htm
It seems pretty stubborn. All I want to know is if it existed prior to the invention of the instruments that told us it did.
That sort of information could help people like dr Lu to refine his theories
Tonyb
tonyb, Since deep convection storms can contribute to ozone depletion and cause enough turmoil to create terrestrial gamma ray bursts via antimatter/matter collisions, I doubt Montreal changed much of what happens up there.
the increased halogen loading has increased the chance of antarctic O3 depletion reoccurring (persistence) whereas in the historical past it would have operated in secular regimes such as solar minimum.
tony-
Just out of curiosity:
You say this:
Your buds at WUWT posted this:
So, what’s the upshot? How’d Dr. Lu’s prediction work out? Might that be relevant to the veracity of his theories? If his prediction didn’t work out, how did he use that information to refine his theory? Seems to me that might be an obvious place for you to start in your research.
Joshua
I have too many other things to research to want to go down that road
My interest was to find out if the ozone hole has been around for longer than the 1950’s
It’s a basic question and one that still hasn’t been answered, but why research the ozone hole in detail when there is so much low hanging fruit in the climate field
Good night, it’s midnight here
Tonyb
tony –
It seemed to me that you were interested in assessing the veracity of Lu’s theories. Perhaps I read you wrong?
Well, anyway, in case I didn’t – from RC:
I wonder how he modified his theories after his prediction failed….
Heh. Like the rest of the world I don’t follow ozone-hole theoretics. So you boys are saying the science isn’t settled there either. I promise to be shocked later.
‘More remarkably, the largest (smallest) Antarctic O3 holes were actually observed when solar activity was weakest (strongest), e.g., in 1987, 1998 and 2008 (1991, 2002 and 2012), as shown in Image 1. In fact, there has been no ozone loss observed over the Equator in the past four decades. These observations are inconsistent with the above predictions,
indicating that the current photochemical theory of ozone loss is incomplete or incorrect. The ability of current atmospheric chemistry-climate models to predict the future polar ozone loss is very limited, and improving the predictive capabilities is one of the greatest challenges in polar ozone research.’ Q-B Lu
The chemistry is far too complex for me.
Is this irony Joshua? Appealing to authority – in the correct sense that they are just pulling it out of their arses? Or are you just an idiot.
lolwot | June 23, 2013 at 5:52 pm said: ”Questioning whether CFCs caused the Antarctic ozone hole to grow is a lot like questioning the mainstream 9/11 story”
WRONG!! I believe that the Arabs did it on 9/11, BUT, ozone hole was there for letting more sunlight on the coldest place on the planet, and should stay there – CFC was a good little white lie; because CFC is the worse fume for the lungs and the instigators should be applauded – CO2 is different story, CO2 is essential gas, the more of it, the better for everything and everybody!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
it wasn’t CFCs it was arabs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
No causation mechanism? Cloud “feedback” comes to mind. That’s 40% of AGW gone, for a start.
Interesting:
Any particular reason to make it a point to not name the journalist, Judith? I mean you didn’t have to mention your interactions with this person, so why did you mention him/her but not attach a name?
If someone sends me an email, it is confidential. I do not want to leak what this journalist is writing about.
Thanks.
That’s a relief. ;-)
Chinese coolant scam is getting replicated on the west thousand fold.
It’s called: ”farmers sequestrating CO2”
1] CO2 in concentrated form is fumigating the essential bacteria.in the soil
2] CO2 in the ground ”sequestrated = bigger biomass crops -> in 8-9 months fungi release from that biomass same CO2 back into the atmosphere
“Sequestrating?” Really?
I was about to write a rant about how the word hurts my eyes, but I figured I would google it first before putting my pompous hat on. So if you are a middle english barrister talking about the legal seizure of goods, then I’m with you. Otherwise, please use “sequestered” as a verb. And “sequestration” only as a noun. (And no fair pointing out the reams of typos I have been posting in comments of late in rebuttal.)
GaryM | June 23, 2013 at 7:52 pm | said: “Sequestrating?” Really?”
Gary, English is not my first, or second language; you have to read the ”intention” what I’m trying to say. Finding grammatical error, I finds it as a compliment; which means: must be only few errors… cheers!
stefanthedenier,
Oh don’t take what I wrote seriously. Just having a bit of fun with word play. Your comment was quite understandable.
babblefish produces fewer errors…
That is interesting. So if someone accepts that Lu’s theory may be correct, then they also accept the possibility that ACO2 did not contribute in any way whatsoever to the temperature rise from 1970-2002?
This is really getting complicated. Time for a scorecard. If I got this right, it is quite possible that a given “skeptic” can believe all of:
1) ACO2 definitely warms the climate
2) The climate has definitely warmed.
3) It is impossible to know if the climate has warmed.
4) ACO2 has contributed to recent warming of the climate
5) There has been no ACO2 added to the climate (Salby)
6) All recent rise in temps is all due to natural variably and cycles
7) All recent rise in temps is due to the sun
8) All recent rise in temps is due to CFCs
9) “Skeptical” scientists are right when they say that the GHE is real
10) The GHE is a soshulist plot
11) The “consensus” prevents any “skeptical” articles from getting published.via the rigged peer review system.
12) Articles that published after peer review are of value only if they question the IPCC’s findings.
Technically relevant or trivial twaddle? From Joshua – we can be assured that it is the latter.
1) Very unlikely, the Null is still not rejected
2) Not even wrong (climate has definitely warmed AND cooled, depending on timescale)
3) Not even wrong
4) No evidence for this, the Null is still not rejected
5) Not even wrong (ACO2 is added to the atmosphere and Salby agrees)
6) Very likely
7) Very likely
8) Very unlikely
9) ?
10) ?
11) Sure thing
12) Yes, you gotta question
Mosher’s position: STOP DISCUSSING THIS. I DON’T WANT YOU TO DISCUSS IT!
No he wants to discuss what his hero-figure Richard Muller wants to discuss. Furthermore he wants to discuss the great many ways Muller is perfectly correct. Without actually mentioning Muller very often. I mean it’s not like Mosher considers him the “Prophet Mohammed” or anything but climate science is like a priesthood nonetheless and Mosher wants to be a member in good standing.
David
Mosh recommended that Kim get up to speed on climate change by reading Mullers book.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/22/the-coming-arctic-boom/#comment-335855
After being pressed by me Mosh admitted the book was out of date. Out of date presumably meant incorrect, as his own work (preceded by others) had falsified the notion that global warming only started in 1900. Hope kim didn’t waste time reading it.
Having said that Muller was very helpful three years ago when i asked him to confirm our work that showed around one third of stations are cooling. We are awaiting with interest Moshs peer reviewed paper on this as he says its somewhat lower
tonyb.
tony
‘Mosh recommended that Kim get up to speed on climate change by reading Mullers book.”
Nope. the object wasnt for him to get up to speed on climate change.
The object was for him to get up to speed on mullers work in paleo.
read what I wrote. he has to start somewhere. of all people tony you should know that you have to read everything to come to an understanding. Its pretty simple. I told kim he should read mullers paleo work. he asked for a link. I gave him a link to one piece. I think there are about 10 years of stuuf he did on paleo.. Only starting to scratch the surface. As a good historian you understand the important of reading everything
“No he wants to discuss what his hero-figure Richard Muller wants to discuss”
Huh? Rich is focused on China and fracking.
1. he’s not interested in paleo. I am
2. he’s not interested in UHI. I am
Hmm, other things, I work on extreme events, he’s skeptical about connections between extreme weather and climate change. I’m working with Rohde on GCMs, Muller doesnt regard GCMs as highly as I do.
So, basically you’re 180 degree wrong. not unusual.
Mosh
Is there a particular GCM that you find useful? Why?
Mosh
If the first few lines are out of date it gives less confidence the rest will be good. I like muller, I don’t disagree with much of BEST. There are perhaps better introductions to the book that could have been used. First impressions count as you know.
Incidentally was something missing, the link only gave access as far as chapter seven I think. Perhaps it didn’t download properly or perhaps there is a problem within the book itself. I will try again as I didn’t ge to the paleo stuff itself
Tonyb
I wasn’t aware Mosher recommended Kim read Muller’s book. Can’t say I’m surprised. When it comes to Mosher you can just say to him “If I want your opinion I’ll get it from Richard Muller.” Mosher makes a conscious effort to not play the toady but it doesn’t quite work.
P.S. Test my Mosher the Muller Toady hypothesis by taking random Muller climate-related beliefs and asking Mosher pointed questions about them. Good luck finding somewhere he disagrees.
Looks like Mosher lives so deep inside Springer’s head he should consider ordering cable and Internet service.
Joshua
That is the funniest thing you have ever said here by an order of magnitude. Almost as good as max ok’s anecdotal style joke
Tonyb
Mosh
Is there a particular GCM that you find useful? Why?
##################
Depends on what you want to do. For example,
Did a nice little pilot study using this
http://www.narccap.ucar.edu/
Settled on this
http://www.narccap.ucar.edu/results/seas-delta-maps/mm5i-ccsm-results.html
The combination of CCSM and MM51 gave us a pretty good reconstruction of the variable we were looking at.
basic outline
For the definition of a heatwave we used the system employed by 40 cities around the world. working with Kalkstein and sheridan
http://sheridan.geog.kent.edu/pubs/1998-WRR.pdf.
The nice thing about this system is
A) it used more than temperature to define a heat wave
B) it works. people use it around the world.
C) it stresses the GCM because you have to get actual temps right
not just anomalies
The clasification system takes temperature, dewpoint, winds, clouds, relative humidty and SLP to determine a synoptic air mass type
and then creates a watch/warning system based on mortality statistics that is location specific.
We then take the past data for one city ( synoptic data ) and generate the warnings, watches for the actual weather.
Then we do the same for the hindcast
The nice thing about this is I know the GCM guys did not tune for this metric. Also they have to get about 6 variables correct, not just temperature.. and the weather has to be correct for days in a row.
Anyway, the model is selected which gave the best hindcast..
Now the first model I looked at was a pile of doo doo. people with an agenda would toss the whole lot. When you are trying to solve a problem you have to work a little harder.
Hmm.
“P.S. Test my Mosher the Muller Toady hypothesis by taking random Muller climate-related beliefs and asking Mosher pointed questions about them. Good luck finding somewhere he disagrees.”
1. the C02 volcano fit we did in the temperature paper. I disagree with that.
2. The belief that our UHI paper settled the matter. He thinks yes, I think no
in fact, our areas of agreement are probably smaller than our areas of disagreement. go figure, you are 180 out again.
Now on policy and politics we are more in agreement.
Well, intentionally funny anyway, right tony?
Joshua
‘Looks like Mosher lives so deep inside Springer’s head he should consider ordering cable and Internet service.”
dave invented cable.
huh, you can discuss anything you want. Well actually, you can try.
Mosh
Here is the link again
http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/history_of_climate.html
So how do you proceed through the various chapters?
There is a link at the bottom to ice age theories but after that page there is no further navigation. Perhaps its my iPad?
Tonyb
its a teaser for the book
http://www.amazon.com/Astronomical-Causes-Springer-Environmental-Sciences/dp/3540437797
Mosh
Teaser? That is not at all clear from the introduction.
Had to laugh, the first word on the first.page is ‘SRINGER’
Perhaps that gentleman would like to buy a few copies for his friends, at 212 US dollars each they are a snip. Good reviews though
Tonyb
“Had to laugh, the first word on the first.page is ‘SRINGER’”
you should know by now that springer is the first and last word on everything.
Mosh
Ha!
Tonyb
CDIAC’s data on the various CFC concentrations from 1910 to 2011.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/new_atmCFC.html
I’ll
http://junksciencearchive.com/Ozone/ozone_seasonal.html
“So there we have it. The conceptual “ozone layer” is not some delicate, static and fragile wrapping about the outer atmosphere but rather a dynamic and highly volatile component, both created and destroyed by solar radiation. Ozone creation is a continuous process, so we can not “run out” of stratospheric ozone. The more ozone (O3) is destroyed, the more free oxygen radicals (O1) are available to bind with free oxygen (O2) to create ozone (O3), the same applies with free oxygen (O2).
Regardless, life flourishes in the tropics, where stratospheric ozone levels are never high and where solar radiation bombardment is roughly 1,000 times higher than that received in the region of the Antarctic Ozone Anomaly.
…
“Atmospheric ozone is measured in Dobson Units, named for the Oxford academic Gordon Miller Bourne Dobson (1889-1976), one of the pioneers of atmospheric ozone research and inventor of the Dobson Spectrophotometer, used to measure atmospheric ozone from the ground. During the International Geophysical Year of 1956 there was a significant increase in the number of these devices in use around the globe and the Halley Bay (Antarctica) anomaly was discovered. Yes, that’s 1956, three decades prior to the allegedly alarming “discovery.” There was a significantly different perspective then because interest was focused on the November increase – now called a “recovery” – in stratospheric ozone levels over Antarctica with the collapse of the South Polar Vortex.
“In a paper titled “Forty Years’ Research on Atmospheric Ozone at Oxford: A History” (Applied Optics, March 1968), Dobson described an ozone monitoring program that began at Halley Bay in 1956.
“When the data began to arrive, “the values in September and October 1956 were about 150 [Dobson] units lower than expected. … In November the ozone values suddenly jumped up to those expected. … It was not until a year later, when the same type of annual variation was repeated, that we realized that the early results were indeed correct and that Halley Bay showed a most interesting difference from other parts of the world.” [em added]”
“Returning to “the hole”, is the resultant surface UV irradiation high compared with the rest of the world? Nope, the tropics are much more heavily irradiated every single day (it’s part of the “tropical paradise” thing). In fact, the bulk of the temperate zones are more heavily irradiated than the region “under the hole” every clear day of the year.
“Monthly average ozone graphics downloaded from toms.gsfc.nasa.gov April 2004”
===================================
The toms.gsfc.nasa.gov comes up blank.
Because of the perceived/claimed by some danger of CFC’s, the ban on its use included deodorant sprays, hairsprays and asthma inhalers, bear this in mind when reading this supposed rebuttal of natural v manmade:
http://mol.redbarn.org/objectivism/Writing/RobertBidinotto/OzoneDepletion.html
“Skeptics are simply barking up the wrong tree when they insist that “natural sources” are the cause of stratospheric chlorine, and are revealing their failure to do their homework. For example, it is true that volcanoes can pump chlorinated compounds directly into the stratosphere — but only if the eruptions are explosive enough to propel the gases to extremely high altitudes, and even then, only if those volcanoes contain and expel chlorine. However, most volcanoes are neither explosive nor highly chlorinated: one that is both, is a rare geological event. Most, such as Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, just steadily emit gases that are washed out in the lower atmosphere long before they ever reach the stratosphere.”
But your can of hairspray and asthma inhaler was more powerful than volcanoes..
What CFC’s were: Freon, http://www.c-f-c.com/supportdocs/cfcs.htm
Here’s another typical of the ozone hole is a disaster and it is all manmade fault, which ends on this:
“While the damage caused by CFC’s is reversible it will take approximately 50-100 years before all CFCs in the upper atmosphere are destroyed and then even longer for the Ozone Layer to repair itself. The peak of Ozone destruction is occurring now and will continue until around the year 2010 (See Figure 2) then CFC content in the stratosphere should start to reduce.
…
“Due to the co-operation and world wide support to stop using CFCs and Halons the detrimental effects of these should undo themselves with time. Constant monitoring of the stratosphere to make sure release of CFCs and Halons has completely stop insures that the Ozone Layer will eventually build and repair itself back to its original state.”
Gives the name of the men who first decided CFC’s were destroying the ozone layer creating a big hole:
“The detrimental effects caused by CFCs where first discovered in 1974, by University of California chemists, Professor F. Sherwood Rowland and Dr. Mario Molina. They showed that the CFCs are a major source of inorganic chlorine in the stratosphere following their photolytic decomposition by U.V. radiation, which would lead to the destruction of Ozone in the stratosphere.”
Didn’t they have access to any of the history and data from the 50’s?
Oh gosh, this link came from a yahoo question which was answered by saying it would take 80 years to mend the hole: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/assessments/ozone/1998/chapters/contentsprefaceexecutivesummary.pdf
This is full of the same nonsense produced by climate ‘scientists’, a couple of examples:
“The combined abundance of stratospheric chlorine and bromine is expected to peak before the year 2000.
The delay in this peak in the stratosphere compared with the lower atmosphere reflects the average time required for surface emissions to reach the lower stratosphere. The observations of key chlorine compounds in the stratosphere up through the present show the expected slower rate of increase and show that the peak had not occurred at the time of the most recent observations that were analyzed for this Assessment.”
Did they find the missing peak?
Odd how the AGW ‘carbon dioxide’ spontaneously diffuses at hundreds and thousands of miles an hour speeding through empty space bouncing off other misnamed gas molecules, they’re all one size fits all massless ideal gas, to thoroughly mix and can’t be unmixed, but it takes time for manmade CFCs to make it to the stratosphere, so what about the volcanic?
“The role of methyl bromide as an ozone-depleting compound is now considered to be less than was estimated in the 1994 Assessment, although significant uncertainties remain. The current best estimate of the Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP) for methyl bromide (CH3Br) is 0.4, compared with an ODP of 0. 6 estimated in the previous Assessment. The change is due primarily to both an increase in the estimate of ocean removal processes and the identification of an uptake by soils, with a smaller contribution from the change in our estimate of the atmospheric removal rate. Recent research has shown that the science of atmospheric methyl bromide is complex and still not well understood. The current understanding of the sources and sinks of atmospheric methyl bromide is incomplete.”
And so on ad nauseum.
Here’s some on the patent background:
“The excuse used by the EPA for the ban on Freon was it somehow seeps into the atmosphere and depletes the Ozone in our air. There is no scientific data available, in or out of government, to describe this “claimed” process. Freon is one of the most useful substances ever created by man; and it has many uses. In refrigeration, its prime usage is as the substance inside the sealed refrigeration systems that allows cooling to take place during the evaporator operation, and heating during the high temperature condensing part of the refrigeration cycles. Without Freon or some similar substance, refrigeration cannot occur, and the best known alternate would be to return to ice boxes.
“Freon was developed and patented by the DuPont Company. Ironically, the DuPont patents on Freon ran out at about the same time the government decrees to ban the use of Freon were issued. The leading replacement substances for Freon were also developed by DuPont. The Freon (HCFC) substances are far more costly and far more complex, to the extent that DuPont stands to make untold billions of dollars on the change out of this substance, and consumers will have an inferior product. Further, the DuPont substitutes have no supporting data to prove they meet environmental needs.
“Freon, the “villain”, is an odorless, tasteless, chemically neutral substance, which is HEAVIER THAN AIR, and by the laws of physics cannot rise into the atmosphere. If is spilled on the ground, it will settle in the soil and become plant food.”
Note the heavier than air… The mighty freon wears its knickers on the outside too, just like carbon dioxide defying gravity.
How much longer do we have to put up with these shanigans by such companies? They were so successful demonising hemp by giving it a name change to make it appear something other than the Americans had been growing and using for all kinds of products, like making rope and sails and jeans and running cars and tractors, and associating it with young white girls gone to bad in the company of doped up blacks, they saw how easy it was to control the political process and public perception and so, next step the world, they got it banned world wide.
Can anyone access this page?: http://suva.faithweb.com/Freon%20Hoax%201.pdf
Hmm, from: http://www.nc4x4.com/forum/index.php?threads/price-of-freon.97938/
“Blaze said: ↑
It is all bullshit, as soon as the patent starts to run out on R-1234 Dupont will come up with some data that says it is bad for the environment and they will come out with R-2345 or something. It will be a neverending cycle for this bullshit.”
catfishblues: “I used to have a case of R-12, but we got bored and drunk one night and shot them with pellet guns in the tall grass. Then we shattered it because it was all frozen.
They already have. We all know the elimination of CFCs has reversed the depletion of the Ozone layer. Yay. However, they’re saying now that the HFCs used in 134 are a “Super Greenhouse Gas,” on an order of magnitude WORSE than CO2! Just goes to show that changing your environment, no matter how small a scale, has larger consequences. Price we pay, I guess. ”
http://www.ghgonline.org/othershfcs.htm
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_23419404/u-s-china-agree-joint-climate-change-effort
from the first link:
“Other Direct Greenhouse Gases – HFCs
“Hydrofluorocarbons or ‘HFCs’ have been increasingly used in the last decade or so as an alternative to ozone damaging CFCs in refrigeration systems. Unfortunately, though they provide an effective alternative to CFCs, they can also be powerful greenhouse gases with long atmospheric lifetimes.
“The three main HFCs are HFC-23, HFC-134a and HFC152a, with HFC-134a being the most widely used refrigerant. Since 1990, when it was almost undetectable, concentrations of HFC-134a have risen massively.
“HFC-134a has an atmospheric lifetime of about 14 years and its abundance is expected to continue to rise in line with its increasing use as a refrigerant around the world.
“Human Impact
The widespread use of HFCs as refrigerants will inevitably lead to increases in their atmospheric concentrations. HFCs have provided an efficient and cost effective alternative to the use of the ozone destroying CFCs, now banned under the Montreal Protocol. However, with HFC-134a and, in particular, HFC-23 having such long atmospheric lifespans (14 and 260 years respectively) HFCs do pose a significant greenhouse gas problem.
“Potential for control
Alternative refrigerants to HFCs, such as hydrocarbon based coolants, are already commercially available. However, HFCs are now used in huge numbers of fridges and the like around the world. Phasing out of HFC use, and careful collection and disposal of existing HFC refrigerants, seems the best option now available in the context of limiting their greenhouse gas impact.”
from the second link:
By AFP
Posted: 06/08/2013 01:23:18 PM PDT
Updated: 06/08/2013 01:28:52 PM PDT
“U.S., China agree to joint climate change effort
RANCHO MIRAGE — The United States and China agreed to mount a joint effort to combat climate change Saturday, committing to work to cut hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), or “super greenhouse” gases.
In a statement issued after a summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping here, the two sides committed to phase down production and usage of the gases, which are highly potent contributors to climate change.
“Today, President Obama and President Xi agreed on an important new step to confront global climate change,” the White House said in a statement.
“The deal will see Washington and Beijing work together for the first time, along with other countries to phase down the consumption and production of HFCs,” the statement said.
“A global phase down of HFCs could potentially reduce some 90 gigatons of CO2 equivalent by 2050, equal to roughly two years worth of current global greenhouse gas emissions,” the statement said.
“The effort will use the institutions of the Montreal Protocol, which is sometimes referred to as the most successful global climate treaty, which was first set up to tackle depletions in the ozone layer.”
“hydrocarbon based coolants”? Gosh, how many years before hydro and carbon get put on the banned list?
They’ve been milking the cow for too many decades.., time we banned them for their contribution to global warming – producing too much hot air.
Wow –
Impressive post. And a good example of why I love Climate Etc.
Well thank you Joshua, JC said she didn’t want to go there..
As with carbon dioxide, the chemistry is bogus and anything that could be of interest to real science is in both a deliberately and unconsciously jumbled mess.
This is a clear example of what happens when technocrats and bureaucrats try to intervene in natural markets, without taking sufficient notice of what they are told by the people who operate in real markets.
It is inevitable that humans will game the system if bureaucrats establish schemes they call ‘market solutions’ (such as Australia’s ETS). What is happening with the CFC’s inc China was inevitable.
A great example of the consequence of naive interventions is the solar power subsidies. Many home ownere\s in Australia are installing PV systems on their roofs. They do this for rational reasons – it reduces their electricity bill. The people elected governments who promise to implement policies to subsidise renewable energy. Installing a subsidised PV system is rational for the individual but is not for the country. The people have been persuaded by technocrats and eco-warriors that PV is good for the country. The people have been persuaded that there is a ‘market failure’ because the free market has not caused PV to be built without government intervention. So the technocrats convince policy advisers, media and government to intervene to fix the ‘market failure’.
The same sort of thing is going on all the time with the UN climate conferences, carbon pricing, renewable energy subsidies, excessively regulating and penalising nuclear power, and a host of other interventions in the pretext of fixing market failures.
China is gaming the interventionist policies the ‘Progressive’ governments in the western world are implementing. It is obvious this would happen. But the ‘Progressives’ don’t want to know. They just plough on making one dumb intervention after another. They seem incapable of learning.
You’d think just about anyone with a three digit IQ could have learnt that the policies the ‘Progressives’ have been advocating for over twenty years at the UN climate conferences won’t work. But still the ‘Progressives’ push for the same old failed policies.
+ 13.5
Thank you. But I am very hurt. Why didn’t I get awarded +14?
Faustino,
I am wondering if you could add anything to these two comments (correct them and expand as you see fit):
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/21/week-in-review-62213/#comment-336034
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/21/week-in-review-62213/#comment-336077
Peter @ June 23 9.15: taken on notice: I’ve been away and have returned more in get-physical-and-fitter than blogging mode.
Go the whole hog and giv’ him +14 Faustino …
not like u ter be churlish, that’s fer churls and
serfs.
A serf.
Beth, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be infringing any franchises with 13.5.
There’s also a hint of a dig at spurious precision in there somewhere.
I wonder what the subsidy would be for putting a solar panel on the roof of a Tesla… a Nobel?
I’ve suggested sails for awhile. Not just Teslas.
==========
By compounding subsidies there is the possibility we can return the globe to the optimum average temperature that according to the ‘hockey stick’ is anytime before now.
There are several models that have either solar panels or slots for them.
kim, would you please write a poem in praise of the modern tankers and container ships that save 5% of their fuel bill by using sails?
And I’m tired of limericks and haiku–time for a sonnet!
Little Willie with a taste for Gore,
Nailed the country on the Senate Floor,
The productive said in queer voices,
Are tacking tacking our only choices?
Peter Lang,
“You’d think just about anyone with a three digit IQ could have learnt that the policies the ‘Progressives’ have been advocating for over twenty years at the UN climate conferences won’t work. But still the ‘Progressives’ push for the same old failed policies.”
Not to quibble, but those progressive policies are working just fine. Progressive policies have one universal goal, the increasing and centralization of power – in the hands of progressives. All those companies that make the PV, the hybrid autos, the alternative energy boon doggles, they are part of the progressive constituency.
Those polices increase the size and scope of government. There are new bureaucrats hired to implement the policies, who are permanent progressive voters and campaign workers. Those crony “capitalists” who feed at the government trough are reliable progressive campaign donors, and engage in the revolving door of government and “industry.”
Progressive education policies don’t teach children to read, write, add or subtract. Progressive poverty policies increase rather than reduce poverty. Progressive healthcare policies make health care more expensive and more scarce. Progressive alternative energy policies are a massive financial sink hole. And progressive climate policies have zero chance of actually reducing atmospheric CO2, because they are not even attempting to influence the China, Russia and India.
But all are huge successes in increasing the size and scope of government. And just as important, increasing the number of people dependent on government for their livelihood.
Well, yes. When you look at it that way, they ‘Progressive’ policies are working. They are also causing people to stay in poverty longer that they should, slowing the rate of rollout of electricity to people who don’t have it, reducing employment growth, reducing health and education compared with what would be if not for their policies … and causing shorter lives and fatalities. But I guess that serves the ‘Progressive’ agenda to depopulate the world.
Those “progressive” policies have certainly been an absolute gift for China. They must not be able to believe their luck, and the gullibility of their many benefactors in the West.
They have cashed in coming and going. They get aid money and compensation (because they are poor) for various mitigation scams; until recently they were making a motza exporting solar panels to deluded Western countries; they are dramatically increasing CO2 emissions and building coal-fired power plants as fast as they can and without penalty.
Meanwhile, we hobble our industries in a hundred different ways “to save the planet” and watch passively as they eat us alive.
Back on topic – I am not qualified to comment on the science of this proposal, but remain suspicious of any single-factor explanation of something as complex as global climate over a long period. Complex systems just don’t work like that in any other field I am aware of – whether physical, biological or economic. True, a massive, traumatic hit can wipe things out partially or completely, but that is not applicable to either CO2 or CFCs in this context.
Like Tony b, my reading of the history of the CFC issue raises a lot of questions. I am unconvinced that the Montreal Protocol was driven so much by science as by radical environmentalism. It reads like a dry run for the CAGW movement, and there is a good bit of overlapping and/or segueing of personnel. The ‘hole in the ozone layer’ is still with us, and may well have been there for a long time before greedy, evil people started using CFCs to keep their food and themselves cool.
+100 jo
CDIAC Data Graphed
http://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/cdiac-cfc-data.png
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/new_atmCFC.html
Here’s an interesting sounding patent: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4330998.html
“Liquefied natural gas-freon electricity generation system United States Patent 4330998 Abstract:The present invention relates to an electricity generation system, using freon as an agent to circulate between a warm heat source and a cold heat sink, recapturing electrical energy on one side and alleviating thermal pollution in the environment on the other side.
“Inventors:Nozawa, Reikichi (2-10-38 Ohokayama, Meguroku, Tokyo, JP)
Application Number:05/973735 Publication Date:05/25/1982 Filing Date:12/28/1978 “
The Eurocommies plan was to stab America in the back and then harness the profit motive by helping China make money eliminating a non-problem? Genius. Anyone miss Kyoto-fighter, George Bush Yet?
Wagathon | June 23, 2013 at 9:12 pm said: ”The Eurocommies plan was to stab America in the back and then harness the profit motive by helping China make money eliminating a non-problem?”
they only intend to show that: China is communism and prospering; if anybody wants to prosper – just become communist…?
Aren’t the Democrats on course to becoming Communists, what with carbon taxes and agenda 21 etc.
J Martin,
The Democrats are headed toward one version or another of socialism, not communism. Only a very few would endorse communism. Communism is a broader political system, encompassing the concept of revolution, out right (rather than symbolic) class war, and one party rule. Socialism is just one component of a communist system.
So no, it is not fair to say that the Democrats are on course to becoming communists.
Whether the socialism they seek will in fact lead to totalitarian, one party rule, regardless of their intent, is another matter entirely.
Alls I can cay is thank god for Climate Etc and sober non-alarmist commenters like Gary; otherwise all we’d see are those alarmists. And then, clearly, we’d find ourselves in a totalitarian, one-party state lickety-split.
I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve got my bomb shelter almost finished and mostly stocked. Once our denizens are no longer around to protect us, all bets are off. Just ask Ron Paul.
More disingenuous twaddle from Joshua endlessly repeated. Yes we have heard it all before many times before, there is nothing in term of serious or rational comment – there is nothing that does anything but attempt to disguise real and evident ideologies of the modern pissant left.
What a problem it is for you Joshua. You don’t admit to sharing any belief of the remarkably idiotic – but are moved to defend them all with shallow distraction and tendentious twaddle. Why would that be?
Disingenuous? Moi?
I just hooked up the circuit breaker panel to the generator earlier today.
Not true, Chief. Many of my posts are specifically directed at criticizing the “remarkably idiotic.” Just look at any of my comments directed at you (well, at least when you aren’t discussing the science) if you want some examples.
Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating: “an ambitious, disingenuous, philistine, and hypocritical operator, who … exemplified … the most disagreeable traits of his time”
No – seems to fit you to a T. That problem is that there is an asymmetry – between your pointless and empty headed twaddle and sincere and honest discussion.
I am sure you mean only to defend your tribe – it’s just that it is less of a tribe and more of a conclave of intellectual gnomes.
Chief –
Do you expect me to be ingenous? when discussing the alarmist rants of folks like Gary, disparing of the eminent “totalitarian state” they think Democrats seek? Do you expect me to be ingenuous? about your unhinged and demeaning characterizations of people because they don’t share your political orientation? How about when you describe the social trends you envision without any evidence of supporting data – should I be ingenuous? about that? Or when you fantasize about what I do or don’t believe, where I do or don’t live, what I do or don’t eat? Does that deserve ingenuity? Should I be ingenuous? in response to your constant stream of invective even as you hand-wring about other people being “disingenuous?”
Right. Sincere and honest discussions about just how many people you dismiss as “pissant progressives.”
Dude, you are in the unintentional irony hall of fame.
er… imminent. Good thing
the grammar nannyGary refuses to respond to me, or he would have nailed me on that one.The only irony is that you imagine that I take your scientifically illiterate and intellectually superficial twaddle seriously.
There is quite a lot of hypocrisy as well. Denial of the ideologies of the pissant left while defending them all. Complaining of invective while indulging in crude attempts at mockery, insults and a line in psychobabble purporting to analyze the deficiencies of all and sundry other than your conclave of intellectually deficient gnomes.
It all seems ultimately pathetic – Joshua. Why don’t you engage in good faith rather than with your practice of immense dishonesty. Actually – I think the latter is a typical groupthink trait – so it all fits. Can’t possibly be wrong because the groupthink can’t be wrong and anyone who disagrees is obviously intellectually and morally inferior and obviously fails at least in self awareness.
What is tedious is that you keep repeating the same nonsense over and over again and nothing but in some sort of pissant leftist OCD.
Chief Hydrologist | June 24, 2013 at 8:35 pm said: ”There is quite a lot of hypocrisy as well. Denial of the ideologies of the pissant left while defending them all”
Chief is lower on the moral ground than the ”pissant lefties” therefore reason they are pissing on him….
GaryM | June 24, 2013 at 4:22 pm said: ”The Democrats are headed toward one version or another of socialism, not communism”
Gary my friend; communism comes in many different colours red, pink, green, take your pick; they are the chameleons; especially when money and power is concerned; if it stinks like communism, if it talks like communism; that’s what it is
J Martin | June 24, 2013 at 3:43 pm said: ”Aren’t the Democrats on course to becoming Communists”
The Democrats ARE communist WITH opposition; communism is not fully functional, when is a strong opposition.
green energy / carbon taxes are their October Revolution
Trenberth’s deep-ocean hot water should also be enriched with fluorocarbons.
There is a discussion of CO2 saturation by Qing-Bin Lu here – http://journalofcosmology.com/QingBinLu.pdf – it is not all that convincing and if this is not so then the entire thesis collapses.
I’m not sure either that we can entirely discount natural variability.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=6
‘Clouds are a critical component of Earth’s climate system. Although satellite-based irradiance measurements are available over approximately the past 30 years, difficulties in measuring clouds means it is unclear how global cloud properties have changed over this period. From the international Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) datasets we have examined the validity of long-term cloud changes. We find that for both datasets, low-level (>680mb) cloud changes are largely a reflection of higher-level (≤680mb) variations. Linear trends from ISCCP also suggest that the dataset contains considerable features of an artificial origin. Despite this, an examination of ISCCP in relation to the MODIS dataset shows that over the past ten years of overlapping measurements between 60°N–60°S both datasets have been in close agreement (r = 0.63, p = 7×10-4). Over this time total cloud cover has been relatively stable. Both ISCCP and MODIS datasets show a close correspondence to Sea Surface Temperatures (SST) over the Pacific region, providing a further independent validation of the datasets.’ http://www.benlaken.com/documents/AIP_PL_13.pdf
Chief Hydrologist | June 23, 2013 at 10:18 pm said: ”There is a discussion of CO2 saturation”
there isn’t saturation, just better amount for prosperous crops and trees.
Discussion of too much CO2 comes from criminals like the chief – to sequestrate CO2 on farms for rip-off. Every normal person should know that: CO2 in concentrated form is fumigating the good / essential bacteria in the soil. Killing those bacteria is crime by itself + the rip-off
sequestrating cow-dung is burying carbon with other essentials for those bacteria to prosper / sequestrating Chief’s bull-dung is same as what Chinese example is / same as farmers .burying CO2 = RIP-OFF
In the past there was bounty per rat on Lord Hove island – ladies were breeding rats to collect bounty = same as chief’s sequestrating of CO2 on the farms – which is back in the air after 7-8 months…!!!!
The abstracts from some of Lu’s medicinal chemistry papers seem curiously short on data for the larger claims made. I would expect to see a bit more detail, even in an abstract.
Someone is channeling Carl Sagan but now it’s nuclear summer.
Those of you complaining about scams with respect to market-like mechanisms in environmental policy ought to think about the extreme losses caused by the older technological mandate methods. Cutting back on CO2 emissions right now strikes me as a bad idea, but if we’re going to do it I would hope it would not be by simply requiring everybody to do sequestration or whatever other “best available technology” some committee of experts and lawyers comes up with.
I stopped reading after this sentence:
“extremely high concentrations of >300 ppm…”
What is so extrememe about it?
it was enough to stop you reading
“When I clicked on the “experimental” link, it took me to a video of Bill Nye doing a simple experiment with 2 glass jars”
Hilarious!
All attempts to replicate that experiment without video editing and extra heating have failed.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/
Against Environmental Panic
http://chronicle.com/article/Against-Environmental-Panic/139733/
Mother Earth…
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/13445#.UcdCxdjV3FI
another false idol.
The critique paper mentioned at RealClimate was by Groos (not Grob) and Muller. It can be found here:
http://www.ace.uwaterloo.ca/publications/2011/Grooss-ElectronReactions.pdf
To set the scene, the null hypothesis: http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/canadian-arctic-ice-retreats-and-exposes-plant-life-from-before-1550/
“sunshine hours June 7, 2013
Canadian Arctic Ice Retreats and Exposes Plant Life From Before 1550.
Filed under: Canada — sunshinehours1 @ 5:37 AM
Tags: Arctic
Doesn’t this sound ominous! “ice” retreat” has “sharply accelerated since 2004″.
“Across the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, widespread ice retreat during the 20th century has sharply accelerated since 2004.
In Sverdrup Pass, central Ellesmere Island, rapid glacier retreat is exposing intact plant communities
whose radiocarbon dates demonstrate entombment during the Little Ice Age (1550–1850 AD).”
Except …. doesn’t that mean the plant communities were thriving before 1550?
And that means the Medieval Warm Period existed. And that current ice melt is just a return to normal?
(h/t The Climate Scam)
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/22/1304199110.abstract”
========================================================
– Critics point out that Lu’s paper fails to make the leap from correlation to causation, one of the most basic and most common scientific failings. This error is simply illustrated in the classic fable of the rooster who believes the sun rises because he crows. Two things may happen at the same time, but this does not mean one causes the other. A “physical mechanism” by which the two events are connected must be known, in order to fully understand causation.
Right… then why do we continue to not get any cause and effect proof for the claims that carbon dioxide from manmade sources is the cause of global warming and this will run into catastrophic?:
IPCC italics, http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/spms2.html
“There is very high confidence that the net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming.[6] {2.2}
“Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.[7] It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except Antarctica) (Figure SPM.4). {2.4}”
You what? Is that the best from the AGW scientists? Well, um, very likely. Billions, trillions even, have been wasted on this scam to the detriment of ordinary oiks world wide, and the best that those pushing for these insane bans and changes to industry and our life styles have to offer from their wealth of “consensus scientists agree”, is “um, likely, or very likely”.
http://www.nolanchart.com/article805-anthropogenic-global-warming-is-nonsense.html
“There is an erroneous assumption flying around these days that CO2 is some how an important forcing factor on the global climate, when every last piece of empirical evidence shows otherwise. Al Gore, and I’m positive he’s not the only one, has a graph with 500,000 years of ice core samples showing their chronological temperature and respective CO2 levels. There is a nice correlation, and the two are definitely linked, but he lies and pretends the relationship is the other way around. In every single time period it is clear that CO2 levels always trail temperature changes by 500-800 years. Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia had the following to say about this; [8] “Al Gore’s circumstantial arguments are so weak, that they are pathetic. The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science.” The historical evidence consistently shows temperature is independent of CO2. In fact, 450 million years ago when we were in the depths of the coldest period the Earth has had in half a billion years, CO2 levels were 10 times above today’s! Even using the last century as evidence for a dependent relationship is meaningless. 65% of the warming this century occurred in the first three decades, and then, while CO2 levels continued to rise, temperatures fell for four decades in a row.”
There is not even maybe.
That was by Edward Townes Sunday, December 30, 2007
This from by Professor Robert (Bob) Carter, geologist & environmental scientist
http://www.aitse.org/global-warming-anthropogenic-or-not/
“Which brings us to the matter of Occam’s Razor and the null hypothesis. William of Occam (1285-1347) was an English Franciscan monk and philosopher to whom is attributed the saying ‘Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate’, which translates as ‘Plurality should not be posited without necessity.’ This is a succinct statement of the principle of simplicity, or parsimony, that was first developed by Aristotle and which has today come to underlie all scientific endeavour.
“The phrase ‘Occam’s Razor’ is now generally used as shorthand to represent the fundamental scientific assumption of simplicity. To explain any given set of observations of the natural world, scientific method proceeds by erecting, first, the simplest possible explanation (hypothesis) that can explain the known facts. This simple explanation, termed the null hypothesis, then becomes the assumed interpretation until additional facts emerge that require modification of the initial hypothesis, or perhaps even invalidate it altogether.
“Given the great natural variability exhibited by climate records, and the failure to date to compartmentalize or identify a human signal within them, the proper null hypothesis – because it is the simplest consistent with the known facts – is that global climate changes are presumed to be natural, unless and until specific evidence is forthcoming for human causation.
“It is one of the more extraordinary facts about the IPCC that the research studies it favours mostly proceed using an (unjustified) inversion of the null hypothesis – namely that global climate changes are presumed to be due to human-related carbon dioxide emissions, unless and until specific evidence indicates otherwise.”
The IPCC was set up to produce faked science for the benefit of the few to further their own agendas – it has nothing to do with real science, it’s a travesty, the physics is missing.
Instead of real physics we get this pathetically ludicrous nonsense offered, as the Journalist notes:
I looked through the critique as well as Lu’s response and I have to be honest, I still don’t see any strong scientific criticism of his work. I feel that, from the perspective of a careful and serious scientist, the criticisms of Lu’s ideas are not sufficiently convincing at all.
.
For example, the last criticism states:
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In contrast, there is strong experimental evidence of the physical mechanism by which CO2 warms the planet, evidence that (as scientists have mentioned already in response to Lu) dates back 150 years.
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When I clicked on the “experimental” link, it took me to a video of Bill Nye doing a simple experiment with 2 glass jars, one is filled with CO2 and the other is filled with just air. But, I’m certain, based on findings published by Ramanathan in Science in 1975, that if he did the experiment again and included CFCs, that CFCs would significantly increase the temperature.
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When I clicked on the “150 years”, it took me to a biography of John Tyndall. But CFCs were synthesized after his death so he couldn’t have experimented with them.”
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Also, I’m not confused about CO2 as a greenhouse gas or its significant role in global warming. I know both are true and Lu’s conclusions do not contest these facts.
What the journalist appears to have missed is that neither of these show proof of carbon dioxide’s significance, at all. The Bill Nye experiment is a bad joke, and my point again, is this the best the “consensus of climate scientists” can come up with to show cause and effect, after decades of pushing that carbon dioxide “is proved” to be what they say it is?
Where are the real experiment? Show us.
Damn well show us something that isn’t on this infantile level of response as “science proof”.
And further, all we get besides the non-reponse for empirical proof, is the general handwaving to the past to such as Tyndall, when we know now in real physics as traditionally still taught by some that these scientists, great as they were, had barely scratched the surface and their assumptions by leaps of imagination are now seen to be that, still in ignorance of how the world works.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Tyndall/
“In January 1859, Tyndall began studying the radiative properties of various gases. Part of his experimentation included the construction of the first ratio spectrophotometer, which he used to measure the absorptive powers of gases such as water vapor, “carbonic acid” (now known as carbon dioxide), ozone, and hydrocarbons. Among his most important discoveries were the vast differences in the abilities of “perfectly colorless and invisible gases and vapors” to absorb and transmit radiant heat. He noted that oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen are almost transparent to radiant heat while other gases are quite opaque.
“Tyndall’s experiments also showed that molecules of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and ozone are the best absorbers of heat radiation, and that even in small quantities, these gases absorb much more strongly than the atmosphere itself. He concluded that among the constituents of the atmosphere, water vapor is the strongest absorber of radiant heat and is therefore the most important gas controlling Earth’s surface temperature. He said, without water vapor, the Earth’s surface would be “held fast in the iron grip of frost.”
This is from a NASA page. Is there no one left at NASA who can see this is a propaganda quote from Tyndall taken out of context of what we now know?
We now know that without water the Earth would not be in the iron grip of frost, but 67°C.
Because that very great heat absorption of water which Tyndall noted would be taking away heat from the Thermal Blanket of Nitrogen and Oxygen, which in their own heat transfer by convection reduce the extremes of heat as of the Moon without an atmosphere, but also reduce the swings into the extremes of cold the world would be without them.
It is without the whole atmosphere of mainly nitrogen and oxygen that the Earth would plunge into -18°C – without the great thermal blanket of nitrogen and oxygen, not without the AGW fictional fisics of their version of “greenhouse gases”.
Tyndall was wrong…
The Earth temp: 15°C
The Earth without any atmosphere at all, which is mainly nitrogen and oxygen: -18°C
The Moon without any atmosphere: -23°C
The Earth with atmosphere in place, but without water: 67°C
The real greenhouse gases which both warm and cool the Earth from the extremes reached by the Moon without them, are nitrogen and oxygen.
Water through the Water Cycle cools that 67°C down further, to 15°C. The residence time of water in the atmosphere is 8-10 days, and, all natural pure rain has a pH of 5.6-8 because it forms carbonic acid with any and all the carbon dioxide around. The Water Cycle removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in its 8-10 day residence time.
The journalist has no reason to have no doubts.. The AGWScienceFiction fantasy fisics has excised the Water Cycle, does not have rain its Carbon Cycle, and has given the great thermal blanket properties of the practically 98% real gas nitrogen and oxygen which is our real atmosphere, to a trace gas which is practically all hole in this blanket..
I do wonder however, how much monitoring of the Chinese companies claiming to be incinerating CFCs is actually carried out. Do their fuel bills match the expected usage ? How many of them claim to incinerate but simply release the gas to the atmosphere ?
On the other hand, perhaps we should be paying them to store the gas. If that about due glaciation were to decide to arrive, or even a Maunder minimum repeat, then those CFCs might prove useful, assuming they do indeed live up to their billing as a so called greenhouse gas.
By creating an artificial system that essentially pays for increased production of CFCs results in a lower cost of production for the Chinese due to increased economy of scale. With a production cost advantage the Eurcommies actually thwart the ability of honest people to freely compete against the Chinese in an open market. That is what happens when the liberal fascists are involved in socioeconomic planning: government contaminates good; government subsidizes evil.
Government funding for concern about CO2 has become the Leftist Relief Act.
Judith, if you want to understand why Lu is full of it, read Rabett Run here here , here , here and most recently here .
It ain’t even spinach.
This may get held up in moderation for all the links. Elevator speeches below:
Elevator speech 1: CFC + HFC forcing is constant since ~1990. Therefore the mechanism that Lu claims for global warming is still spinach, and Eli hates it.
Elevator speech 2: Heavily smoothed correlations without considering confounding factors is not causation. Lu has a fondness for showing graphs with very thick lines and no statistical analysis