by David Ritson
After the Copenhagen meeting and Himalaya-gate the IPCC has been faced with serious credibility problems. Himalayan-gate was largely dismissed by the establishment loyalists as a minor error that slipped through the system and was then corrected. What was so disquieting was not he occurrence of a mistake but the subsequent reaction of the IPCC chairman, Dr. Pachauri. Dr Pachauri, when questioned in an interview (youtube), not only reaffirmed the correctness of the original report but characterized the Indian government report, whose disaster-predictions were measured in centuries not decades, as “voodoo science”. Only after a month’s delay, and under pressure, was the mistake admitted (youtube).
In view of this situation, last May 2010, a highly prestigious committee under the auspices of the IAC was convened under the chairmanship of Harold T Shapiro, an ex-president of Princeton University, to examine and make recommendations relative to the processes and procedures of the IPCC. The committee reported back in October 2010 in a voluminous 103 page report that contained numerous recommendations. The IAC report can be found here.
Unfortunately the IAC did not rate the relative importances of its over twenty recommendations, and the IPCC is dealing with them through bureaucratic processes requiring assent by the totality of member-states. A year later key recommendations are still unresolved. The flavor of the ongoing discussions can be found in a May IPCC report, a “REVIEW OF THE IPCC PROCESSES AND PROCEDURES.”
The IAC recommendations relative to the IPCC chairman’s leadership and to the central secretariat are currently buried in the process. The intent of this post is to put the spotlight back on the office of the chairman and the central secretariat.
Firstly we examine Dr Pachauri in his role as chairman of the IPCC. Dr Pachauri, in addition to his IPCC chairmanship, still retains his position as Director General of TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) a think-tank of about seven hundred employees located in New Delhi). TERI has worldwide, not for profit, subsidiaries, whose mission is to commercialize the patents and discoveries stemming from TERI’s work. TERI, not the IPCC, provides Dr Pachauri’s salary. Dr Pachauri uses TERI, New Delhi as his central base, not the central IPCC secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland. New Delhi is 4,000 miles from the central IPCC Secretariat in Geneva. Pachauri’s residence is also in New Delhi. This is certainly not optimal to provide close oversight and coordination with the central secretariat. In addition to his responsibilities as IPCC Chairman and TERI DG, Pachauri is Chancellor of TERI University, New Delhi, an eleven year old doctoral granting institution. Two years ago Dr Pachauri accepted a half-time appointmment at Yale University to head a new “New Climate and Energy Institute” at Yale. Additional to these commitments Pachauri currently serves as a scientific advisor to fifteen commercial enterprises, included among them is the Deutche Bank. The current list of advisory and board positions held by Dr Pachauri can be found in the Bloommberg’s business weekly http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=9089242
One of the listed companies is Glorioil limited, is a five year old ’start-up’. Glorioil lists Pachauri as “founder and scientific advisor” and board member. Glorioil is marketing a TERI patented bio-process that is claimed to substantially increase output from existing oil and gas wells, hardly the ’greenest’ of projects.
In December 2009,based on his extensive industrial advisory activities, the Telegraph and other British papers accused Pachauri of gross conflicts of interest that had been entered into for personal pecuniary gain. TERI commissioned a major independent management company, KPMG, to investigate the situation. KPMG found that Pachauri had meticulously turned over all payments ensuing from his advisory work to TERI. As a result the papers in question had to sheepishly withdraw their allegations of a monetary conflict of interest.
However Dr Pachauri’s time is so over-committed that conflicts of interests must inevitably arise as to whose interests he chooses to pursue at any given time. Conflicts of interest may assume many forms and the question that should have been asked is whether, if Pachauri had not been IPCC chair, the companies in question would have been so eager to hire his advisory services. Undoubtedly many of them were happy to have his name listed on their letter-headings or descriptive materials to provide an implied endorsement of them by the climate community. For a person in Pachauri’s position, not to have been aware of this, demonstrates poor judgment.
It would have been in the best interests of the IPCC if Dr Pachauri, subsequent to the Copenhagen meeting, had followed the example of the UN representative Yves De Boer, who resigned to make room for new blood and new ideas. The IAC report recommended for these reasons that an IPCC chairperson should serve for only one term. Dr Pachauri, now into his second term, has rejected any idea of resignation and threatened that, if a move was made to oust him, a divisive fight would ensue. LINK??? Thus unfortunately the time has passed to pursue this path. It is not too late, however, for the IPCC member nations to insist that the primary loyalties of its chairmen be to the IPCC, and that should conflicting demands on his time arise, that the pursuit of IPCC goals would be overriding.
The second area of major concern is the IPCC central Geneva secretariat. All direct IPCC support comes from the IPCC Trust Fund that is largely financed by the 194 member states. This money, on approval by the Chairman and the member states, is disbursed by the Geneva central secretariat. Separate from this, the six IPCC co-chairmen, responsible for overseeing the preparation of the three working group assessments, are supported by Technical support groups (TSUs), independently funded by their own governments. Dr Pachauri heads a fourth group responsible for a synthesis report overviewing WG1, WG2, and WG3.
Dr Pachauri’s financial and technical support for both his own work and for the preparation of the synthesis for the 5th Assessment Report (AR5) comes in part from the IPCC Trust fund, in part from TERI in-kind, and in part from the Indian government. After the completion of the assessment term, new co-chairs are appointed, with new TSUs and the old TSU’s are disbanded.
The IAC sums up the unique role that the central secretariat plays in the IPCC organization by “The Secretariat is the only operational unit of the IPCC that remains active between assessment reports, and thus provides important institutional continuity and centralized administrative support. It comprises 10 individuals, including the Secretary; a Deputy Secretary (currently a WMO retiree); a science officer; a communications specialist; an information technology officer; a financial administrator; and office assistants who handle travel, meetings, and outreach.” The report further notes that “the only senior-level management position in the current IPCC structure is the IPCC Secretary” and recommends the addition of a high level executive director. As noted by the IAC, outside of conference and travel management, the real support for central IPCC scientific coordination is carried by five individuals.
By any standards this is a small number when compared to other comparable international projects. Given a largely absentee chairman and a secretariat staffed at the current levels there is a serious potential for disaster. The current annual budget for the IPCC Trust Fund contains two million dollars to cover the secretariat with the bulk of the monies, and roughly ten million dollars assigned to support conference travel expenses for eligible members of the working groups. Certainly 194 world member states should be able provide a further two or so million dollars to qualitatively strengthen the current permanent secretariat. Details of the “IPCC TRUST FUND PROGRAMME AND BUDGET” are provided here.
Not only should the current IPCC secretariat be expanded, but at the same its mission should be substantially increased. One area, in particular, that would have substantial impact is the provision of a central service library. Such a library would contain all publications, reviewed papers, internal lab reports, etc. used in the preparation of the IPCC assessments and make them freely and conveniently accessible through the Web. It further would be desirable to extend its services to climate conference proceedings and video recordings. The climate field has transitioned from small beginnings into big-science and the IPCC mechanisms should be changed accordingly.
Biosketch. David Ritson received a Doctorate from Oxford University in 1947, was a Professor of Physics at Stanford m 1960-1987 and is currently Stanford University Emeritus Professor of Physics. Rsearch Interests include Cosmic rays, Particle Physics, Accelerator Physics, and computer modeling and lately climate-warming. He has worked at many of the large international accelerator-centers including the Stanford Linear Accelerator, CERN at Geneva, LBL, Fermi Lab, BNL, the SSC.
The IPCC’s problem is rampant scientific bias in favor of dangerous AGW. Without real reform, giving them more money and people at the top will only make things worse.
Agree with you, David Woijick.
Pachauri certainly needs to go (as pointed out by David Ritson), but that will not solve the underlying problem.
IPCC’s process has become corrupted, displaying rampant scientific bias in favor of dangerous AGW, as you put it.
But the root cause of this is the charter and raison d’être of IPCC: it has been formed to investigate the negative impact and consequences of human-induced climate change, including recommendations for actions to mitigate against or adapt to these negative consequences.
No negative impact and consequences means no further need for IPCC. It is that simple.
It also would mean the end of a multi-billion dollar big business, from which there are many powerful benefactors.
So it is a matter of self-preservation when IPCC exaggerates negative impacts, skews the data to show greater negative consequences from AGW or simply ignores studies, which do not support its message of potentially alarming AGW.
Get rid of the bad people but also revise the charter of the IPCC to eliminate the skewed emphasis on anthropogenic factors alone and fix the corrupt process.
Max
“No negative impact and consequences means no further need for IPCC. It is that simple.
I will second this. Actually, I would really like an audit on the UN ( a real one ) to find out if we are getting a return on the funds the US spends on programs. I thinks we should just shut it’s doors and see what awful things happen. My guess is we can save a bunch.
I had the good fortune of visiting the old USSR in 1980 to present the plenary lecture at the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry.
Being curious, I also toured the country with Intourist agents.
I listen and learned that:
1. Big Brother controlled essentially everything.
2. The people lived under constant surveillance.
3. Scientists had only limited freedoms.
4. George Orwell’s book on tyrannical government, “1984,” was banned.
5. I was able to see 30 years into the future of the USA.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
IPCC needs to go too!
Albert Einstein encountered similar problems after World War II in his effort to use science in the pursuit of truth, peace, justice:
http://www.hindu.com/fline/fl2210/stories/20050520003702600.htm
There is little difference in well-intentioned government efforts to control ideas in order to protect the public from real or imagined threats of global climate warming, pollution, world tyranny, or mutual nuclear annihilation.
That seems to be the root of the problem.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
The root of the problem is an incompetent scientific community, greedy governments, and a public (worldwide) susceptible to nightmares. The future will be full of movies about the mass delusion that has been built up out of nothing (e.g., “CO2: The Revenge”).
Correspondingly, IPCC is strongly advocating the most ineffective policy of “mitigation” rather than “adaptation”. See:
Is CO2 mitigation cost-effective? Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, Lecture to the Prague School of Economics, May 2011
A brief peek into the IPCC’s “purpose”:
Even U.N. Admits That Going Green Will Cost $76 Trillion
“Just give us the credit card, WE (the UN) know and will decide what is best for you!”
76 trillions on non-happening CO2 warming! Only AGWer nuts will get us into paying them.
Notable is this Ottawa radio interview by a physicist, Dr. Denis Rancourt, of Lindzen; unique to have a competent questioner!
At about the 15 min. mark (of the full hour), Lindzen explains the crucial ice-age-o-genic variable, which I propose could/should be dubbed “PSSI”, for Polar Summer Solar Insolation. That’s what determines if ice persists through the summer, and hence drives ice sheet growth. He points out that the variation in this indicator/driver is ~50W/m^2, about 14X the IPCC claimed maximum CO2 doubling impact of ~3.7W/m^2.
LTTWT; lots of good material, mashed and mutilated rather less than usual for broadcast. Some mention of Pierrehumbert’s calumnies re Lindzen uttered on an earlier broadcast (‘He doesn’t know physics, can’t publish anything’, etc.) .
Don’t skip the music interludes (<2 min each, 2 during and one at the end — especially the last one! It's about the intersection of sex and greenness. "Whatever I can do, To get in bed with you…")
The numerous serious procedural problems identified by the IAC report imply that those in charge of the IPCC should either consider closing it down and replacing its functions with a more credible existing body (perhaps the WMO would be suitable), or seriously restructuring it and rewriting the terms of reference.
You are being too kind. How about just closing your wallet isn’t cutting off the free cheese?
Replace Pachauri?
But…
Who’ll-do the Voodoo, like you-do, Choo Choo? :)
Name a permanent employee of the UN who doesn’t share the abysmal character of Rajendra Pachauri.
It’s an absolute requirement to be employed by the UN and have unfathomably low standards for one’s self and other people, the only such organization in the history of Western civilization
Brian, it’s all too late now, I’m afraid. World government is at the threshold. Totalitarianism is here and there’s not a lot we can do about it.
May I suggest to you, that you read the Bible through. Also, I believe that your observations are correct. You can still make your choice. Very simple, too. See; I Corinthians 15:1-4. All the best… Tom
Interesting tidbit re: Glorioil…perhaps there’s some transubstaintiation involved that transforms the oil and gas to make it “green” on the way out.
Oil depletion is the elephant in the room I am afraid. I work the quantitative analysis of oil depletion and often sense that green policies in combating climate change are a pretty good smokescreen to cover for a rapidly depleting fossil fuel base. The policy is clever because it puts coal on an equal footing with petroleum.
I’m not sure I’d call that clever (assuming that’s the case for the sake of argument). I’d think it much easier to sell oil depletion as a reason for moving towards alternatives.
No one can sell the concept because it is too unsettling, and very real. No one wants to face stark reality.
Web,
You may be in the oil industry, and you maybe doing quant work that involves oil depletion, but you are sounding more like a UFO believer talking about why they think the govt. is not releasing the ‘truth’ about UFO’s.
Oil depletion scares have been around for literally 100 years now.
They are always involving highly educated, serious people. And they have all been wrong.
To claim there is some underlying fear and imply a conspiracy to cover it up with the AGW movement is not very different from a plot from the X Files.
I use simple math, way less complicated than anything here.
If you go to a place like skeptic.com, you will find complete silence on the topic. They are silent only because they can’t debunk it.
Web,
History has already debunked you.
That you use simple math to make your point reminds me that for every problem there is a simple- and wrong- answer.
For you, the simple answers are CO2 = apocalypse and oil is running out.
History cannot debunk him. History doesn’t find new reserves. People working today and tomorrow do that. If you can stop spitting insults left and right, you might actually be able to have a conservation with one of them.
JCH,
I will bet on the historical record being a good predictor on nearly any social phenomenon.
The persistence of Malthusian delusions, of which the end of oil is an example, is one that is as safe to bet against as betting against aliens at Area 51.
I know people who actually go out and find oil. Lots of it.
They laugh at fools like Web.
AGW is another iteration of Malthusian crap,with pseudo-religious overtones.
That’s a very broad brush you’re painting with. As I recognize that we’re talking about a finite resource that must eventually be replaced, then your argument that “no one wants to face stark reality” fails. I doubt I’m alone in that recognition.
This is great topic that I’d love to see covered in more depth, but I’m afraid we’re imposing on Dr. Curry’s good will by discussing it on a post where it’s clearly off topic.
Well the key post did bring up the topic by mentioning Glorioil.
I think the mention of Gloriol was more an observation on its non-green nature.
Web Hub ol’ buddy, that’s what they said about every mineral there is, but the unsettling fact remains, that technology improvements continually outpace putative rates of “depletion” so that, commodity costs remain down even in the face of “scarcity”
Ever notice how the climate skeptics never contend the mathematics of the expert oil depletion analysts? They don’t because the trends are as clear as day and they can’t chase the ghosts of noise obscuring the signal, so they trot out trite old bits of economics conventional wisdom that essentially rely on hope.
So what kind of kind of technology acceleration do you want to see: a power law? an exponential? These are all incorporated in modern oil depletion analyses and the finding is that the law of diminishing returns still applies.
Talk to population bomber Ehrlich about betting his pension on commodity costs over couple of decades.
Now that’s not something I’d do.
Anyway petroleum peak is not an issue for four generations after me, I guarantee it (but won’t be around to prove it, which is going to disappoint very many people!!!)
nighty night
I won’t belabor the point about oil except to say, there are only a few industries that require some form of petroleum for energy (aviation for example). Boeing has pretty much solved the jet-fuel-from-algae issue already. The issue is energy, and always has been. You can today, July 10, 2011, go down and buy an electric car to do 95% of your driving needs (Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, Tesla, etc). Don’t you think any improvements are coming in the near future? There is well over a 200 year supply of coal for electricity. That doesn’t even include the nuclear option. There is enough Thorium alone to power a world of 9 billion people at the same standard as what the average U.S. citizen enjoys, for at least 10,000 years. After that, Uranium and that thing called fusion energy. The greenies are out to stop development of underdeveloped countries, and to de-develop developed countries period. If you disagree with that, you haven’t even read what they openly say about the issue. (see 350.org for ex.). Running out of cheap oil will be a slow, transition process. There will be some hard times in that, but it will not be (should not be) the apocalyptic doomsday many say it will be. Heck, tar sands are already taking up the slack!
Think about the fact that wind power and solar power don’t even address the oil problem!! What does that tell you about the greens energy plans!
There are alternative paths, but how does the dynamics of transition work. Looking at the volume of the use of oil and the rate of deployment of new technologies that are not yet even ready for deployment, there is plenty of reason to be worried.
We have many possible future major energy sources, but most of them have still unsolved problems that have turned out to be very difficult to solve. Some technologies are ready for a small scale utilization, but most have not reached even that stage.
The shortage of oil is present reality. There’s still a lot of oil underground and much of that can be ultimately produced, but the shortage is already here. There will be periods of somewhat better availability, when investments in additional production and changes in consumption happen to have a favorable phase, but those periods are not likely to last long before the shortage is observed again, and it’s getting worse.
Pekka
As you know I am interested in renewables-especially wave/tidal. The unfortunate reality is that most renewable technologies are at a very early stage of development and consequently they are highly inefficient AND expensive. They also sometimes have insuperable problems-such as wind turbines providing no power during the coldest and stillest parts of the UK winter.
It is a great shame that our Govts have sought to scare us by the global warming mantra, by insisting we urgently need renewables in order to to reduce carbon emissions rather than that we need renewables for the sake of security.
By that I mean in both senses of the word-continuity of supply using those resources best suited to a particular country AND freedom from threat of removal of that supply by the current suppliers of fossil fuels-say oil-many of whom don’t like us and what we represent.
The wake up call should hve been in the 70’s when both the US and UK (and others) were threatened by severe oil disruption in the aftermath of the Arab Israeli war and fuel ration vouchers were printed.
We have missed that window and need to get back on track by a giant combined research effort (similar to the Apollo programme) with an aim to produce a range of renewables within 10 years that are effective and CHEAP. Inexpensive energy has been the cornerstone of the Wests prosperity since the Industrial revolution and we ignore that at our peril.
I don’t believe waiting for ten years in order to produce the finished renewable product that will power us for the next century will have any effect on worsening the extremely elsusive global warming concerns.
tonyb
Why, if there is an oil shortage, would anyone in their right mind want to impose a carbon tax that makes coal more expensive than oil? This will reduce the demand for coal which is still relatively plentiful and cheap, while increasing the demand for oil which is becoming more expensive and harder to find. It is a completely wrong headed policy from a supply and demand point of view.
Tony,
My own involvement with energy issues started in 1980 in the aftermath of the oil crises which led to the shortage of gasoline and two sudden rises in the price of oil. One of the first tasks was to learn on an extensive energy systems analysis exercise by IIASA that produced the book “Energy in the Finite World” and to help in getting its conclusions known in Finland.
The message of that analysis and of several other analyses of those years was that energy shortage is very near, and there is hardly enough time to respond to the threat even with the best effort. It turned out that energy consumption almost stopped growing around that time and grew very little over the following 20 years. That was enough to solve the imminent problems and gave time for technology development.
The oil crisis led to the initiation of many national and international research programs and to preferential funding of renewable energy research. One might think that the extra time has produced renewable energy solutions ready to take over in forthcoming years the role of principal source of energy on worldwide basis, but that hasn’t happened. Renewable energy solutions continue to fall seriously short of being able to take over. The progress in energy technology has been pitifully slow. We are still far from being able to tell, what could be a sustainable energy system based on renewable and almost non-exhaustible forms of energy that are also without other severe environmental or societal problems.
The slow pace of past progress tells to me that the problems are much harder to solve than most want to believe. Trying to enforce some specific solutions will either fail in its primary task or cause unforeseeable consequences for the economies, other societal factors, and general well-being in various parts of the world.
I tend to be pessimistic (it increases often by age, and I’m already 66). I can’t see, how either free enterprise or government policies can speed up the transitions enough to make the future development smooth. Of course that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try, but nobody should be surprised, if real results do not show up rapidly, or if they show up only through such out-of-the-proportion costs that Germans have paid to build up their renewable energy production.
I have stated several times that my recipe is something that I formulate now as:
Think on long term, but act on short term.
By that I mean that long term goals should be always in mind, but actual decisions should be such that they are justifiable on much shorter term. They should move us into promising directions, but they should not use large resources on the basis of wishful thinking.
Pekka,
I am sorry but, where is there a shortage of oil??? There is oil everywhere there is cash to purchase it. There is so much oil in the ground it should be an embarrassment for the leftards to even talk about oil shortage. We can CREATE a shrotage by countries like Iran, Venezuela, and others allowing their infrastructure to degrade and not working with those with the technology to upgrade it so they can continue their current levels of production. We can CREATE a shortage by not building refineries, blocking the building of pipelines, and blocking the development of oil fileds off of both US coasts, deep Gulf drilling, deep shale deposits on the continental US and Alaska off and onshore. We will also tighten up the supply with the current Islamic spring with a number of large oil producing countries changing their leaders. In no way is there a shortage of reachable oil right now. Nor will there be in the next 50 years.
ALL our oil shortages, where they exist, are POLITICAL!!!
Pekka,
“The oil crisis led to the initiation of many national and international research programs and to preferential funding of renewable energy research. One might think that the extra time has produced renewable energy solutions ready to take over in forthcoming years the role of principal source of energy on worldwide basis, but that hasn’t happened. ”
Do you never consider that the misdirection of revenue from private institutions to government and bureaucratic institutions may not be part of the problem with non-deliverables??
Even in famous successes such as the Manhattan Project and NASA Moon Landings, the projects were horrendously expensive and eventually collapsed of their inefficiency and lack of direction with little delivered past the initial marginal successes. Remember that every moon shot was a breath away from disaster. That is the real reason we stopped. This is 40 years later an no country on earth could run a high probability moon landing in less than 10 years without spending enormous sums. While we managed to continue developing ever more powerful weapons, again, the cost would seem to be ridiculous compared to the result.
No, the more we depend on government type structures the more we fail.
So far the oil shortage has been in the prices. If maintaining and increasing the production levels had been easy, we would not have had the highly fluctuating oil prices. Some other factors have contributed to the fluctuations, but the basic reason is in the difficulty of meeting the demand.
There’s a lot of information available from various sources, not only from the peak oil proponents, that confirms the growing difficulties in meeting the demand. Thus it’s likely that the price fluctuations are growing and the high prices will continue to burden the economies around the world (except in oil exporting countries, if they can use their money wisely, which isn’t clear at all).
Pekka,
Political and financial manipulation will only increase the period of time that we will have significant amounts of oil available!! The less we can afford the less we use and the poorer we are. Cheap energy has been one of the primary drivers of growth and reduction of poverty. Of course, now we are getting into a parallel argument. 8>)
What forms of energy are not susceptible to manipulation?
“This will reduce the demand for coal which is still relatively plentiful and cheap…. ”
Yes, Ferd, you’ve got it in one! If coal, or any other dirty fossil fuel, isn’t sold, it can’t be burned, and if it isn’t burned then no CO2 is emitted.
Of course, if anyone comes up with a reliable way of collecting and storing the CO2 emitted, rather than allowing it to pollute the atmoshere, they will qualify to be tax exempt. The problem is they will have to guarantee it will be stored for ever. Its going to be even worse than storing radiaoactive waste. At least that does decay naturally after a few hundred years.
Temp,
“Yes, Ferd, you’ve got it in one! If coal, or any other dirty fossil fuel, isn’t sold, it can’t be burned, and if it isn’t burned then no CO2 is emitted.”
Now this is AGWers’ non-sense and most unscientific.
Pekka Pirilä | July 11, 2011 at 10:36 am |
My own involvement with energy issues started in 1980 in the aftermath of the oil crises which led to the shortage of gasoline and two sudden rises in the price of oil.
As I recall the oil crisis was manufactured in 1973 by OPEC. It was called the Arab Oil Embargo. During the 1990’s the price of oil was less than $20 a barrel and led to the boom times during the Clinton presidency.
The boom and bust in oil prices was predicted in an article in Scientific American during the early 70’s. The article argued that prices were in large part driven at the time by OPEC revenue requirements to support their respective populations, and as new supplies came on stream this would depress prices. OPEC would then be forced to increased production to maintain revenues, which would further depress prices. 20 years after the article was written this is what happened.
There are huge non conventional oil supplies in the US which rival the Oil Sands in size. Similar to the problem with shale gas, what is lacking is technology to extract the oil at current market prices. However, if we tax coal out of the market to a significant degree with CO2 taxes, then the resulting rise in oil prices make the non conventional oil supplies more attractive.
The world is not running out of oil. It is running out of cheap oil. There is still plenty of expensive oil left.
Ferd,
You repeat, what I already wrote, but appear to write it as an counterargument.
There is indeed a lot of low quality oil deposits left. For some of that the crude oil quality is good, but fields are small and getting the oil out is difficult, for others the quality of the crude is low, barely reserving to be called oil. Common to all these resources is that developing them takes time and money. High oil price improves the profitability, but even so it seems to become increasingly difficult to keep up with consumption without even further price increases.
The oil will never run completely out, but the production volumes turn to decline and the price will be high most of the time and fluctuating.
The imbalance of international trade will also remain distorted as the largest oil producers are likely to have large surpluses for foreseeable future.
All this is bad for the economy, and there may also be more environmental damage from the use of low quality oil resources.
Fred,
the unconventional sources I think you are referring to are in Wyoming, Colorado and surrounds. Shell developed technology to extract Light/Sweet from the sinks for about $50/bbl. Unfortunately it takes large amounts of water and has been blocked due to environmental concerns. I remember they claim to drill multiple bores around the area to be pumped, pump in and freeze water to create an impermeable dam. They then use a central bore(s) to heat the shale to get the oil to flow. This was over 3 years ago. It is clearly cost effective with prices over $70/bbl and up.
There were several other companies working on methods. Haven’t heard any other successes though.
Temp,
“Of course, if anyone comes up with a reliable way of collecting and storing the CO2 emitted, rather than allowing it to pollute the atmoshere, they will qualify to be tax exempt. ”
You are going just a wee bit overboard aren’t you?? I think you need some greenhouse studies to see how much difference in the growth in plants between 280 and 1200ppm. Lemme suggest that the population of the world will be happier with 1200 feeding them than 280.
Pekka,
Preciously wyou were suggesting oil shortage based on being unaffordable. You really shouldn’t forget politicians and voters destroying economies and causing enormous inflation when you are determining affordability of items. In the early 70’s we paid 38cents per gallon for premium. We now pay 4 Dollars. We also cannot forget politicians, corporations, and enviros banding together to mandate stupid things like ethanol that have added to the price here in the US. All these things make sure we will have oil for a longer period of time and less wealth, at least for the near future!!
Web,
All we skeptics need to do is read the history of how wrong you guys are on everything, and how you always rely on argument by authority.
Please stop wasting your time. Only ignorant people like politicians and journalists and apocalypse kooks are going to believe you, and skeptical sites don’t have enough of those to make your fear pitch work very well.
Replace all the staff, replace all the policies, rescind everything they’ve ever done.
Would it be the same organisation ?
And suppose the new one ends up saying exactly the same thing? Or would that just not be allowed? No writing that climate sensitivities (2x Co2) are above 1.2deg C, no saying the Arctic ice caps are melting, no pointing out that the permafrost , or what used to be permafrost, is an danger of melting and releasing vast quantities of methane and CO2?
If you want an organisation to write just what you want to hear: a report saying all is well and there are no problems to be faced, I’m sure there are plenty out there to choose from. They be much easier to deal with than those awkward climate scientist types.
And how loud would the screams become if the “new one” said you were wrong?
The uncomfortable fact that the vast majority of climate scientists think that AGW to be a serious problem requiring urgent action – just as Judith herself used to up until a few years ago. Even now she talks about the likely range for 2xCO2 being 1 to 6 deg C so I’m not sure if she has really changed deep down.
You can rename, restructure, rebrand the IPCC any way you like but unless the new version doesn’t allow climate scientists free rein in the process then the outcome just won’t be any different. How can it?
Do you think the IPCC as presently constituted would include this is AR5?
http://www.gewex.org/images/G.Stephens_Feb2010GNews.pdf
That’s how it could be different.
Ask me another easy question.
My guess is that if it gets written up as a paper, yes. At this point it is just a hypothesis.
Jim – It’s a news article, not a paper. I went through it and also reviewed earlier published work by Stephens in some detail. Its speculations are interesting, but to the extent they suggest a net increase in cloud albedo as a negative feedback consequence of warming initiated in the atmosphere by CO2 or other forcings, they are not supported by satellite measurements of SW flux. It would be a mistake to include news articles in AR5, and in fact, this was a criticism of some content in AR4, but only to a small extent in WG1 where most of the science was surveyed.
Actually, I’m not sure any of the gray literature problems involved WG1.
yuh, and tell me how scary of a story WG1 was. Can’t have much of a horror story to tell, can you, without the embellishments of a few phone calls to some Greenpeace activists written down (incorrectly) as folklore and called “scientific literature.”
Brian – Which chapter(s) of WG1 are you referring to, and which material outside of the peer-reviewed literature in those chapters as previously published in general science or climate science journals? I’m aware of criticisms of WG2 and WG3 in this regard, but at the moment, I can’t recall the same for WG1 (the scientific underpinnings of climate change rather than impacts and mitigation/adaptation strategies).
(Regardless, I don’t think news article such as the one linked to above should be in AR5).
No, not of the work produced from WG1.
I don’t have any hope from AR/5. I lost hope at TAR. The modeling from GCM in particular, clearly pointed to a null effect of CO2 in the air (to me), I wrote to tell them that, never heard from them.
In particular, the modeling showed rainfall patterns predicted by GCM were not in accordance with observations, particularly in the tropics. That showed that inter-atmospheric heat transfer as predicted by “greenhouse theory” was wrong, and and that was the key.
In AR/5 they claimed how much “better” GCM were than from TAR, they weren’t. The discussion is far afield now, if you write to me, we’ll discuss further
bgvalentine@verizon.net
I mean to say, the work produced in AR/4
Fred
Check Spencer + Braswell for physical observations from CERES satellites confirming net overall negative cloud feedback with warming.
Let’s hope this new study and its conclusions makes it into AR5.
Max
I’m very familiar with Spencer/Braswell. It does not show net negative cloud feedback. I expect it will be mentioned in AR5 as one of a large number of feedback studies, but with reasons why it is actually self-contradictory. This made some press during the time of the Dessler study, and if you review the discussion from that time, the contradictions become clear. Dessler found net positive feedback, but that too can’t be considered definitive because it applied only to short term events and can’t reliably be extrapolated to long term warming from CO2.
Max – It’s fair to say that because of the multitude of studies approaching feedback from different angles, cherry picking is very tempting. That’s why it’s probably not a good idea to cite any particular one or two studies in a non-technical thread, because the danger is that doing so will create false impressions. If you want to survey the many dozens of studies on the topic and address each one, that would be a different matter, but not very practical for this thread.
This article looks like it isn’t in a peer reviewed journal, and so the contents would have to be submitted and reviewed before it could be accepted by any recognised scientific body.
The IPCC’s previous mistakes have been largely due to using non-peer reviewed work, so I would expect that they learned a few lessons themselves and don’t need me to tell them to tighten up on that.
Or are you saying peer review isn’t necessary – providing it meets sceptics’ approval of course ?
is that supposed to be Climategate bait?
Peer review (or some equvalent simple basic QC check) may be necessary. But that doesn’t mean that it is sufficient.
For academic treatises on minor and trivial matters it probably is enough..After all who really cares whether the answer s right or wrong?, But for ‘the most important problem humanity has ever faced’, getting a chum to spend an hour finding typos and obvious errors for the price of a pint doesn’t seem to be a very high hurdle to cross.
I am not at all convinced that just because an article has got published the science is ‘right’. The whole academic/publishing structure is a symbiotic one. Neither can exist without the other.
The true test of a paper is whether others can independently arrive at the same results. But, sadly and disastrously, the reward structures of academia are not structured to achieve that work.
Latimer,
as we have both believer and sceptic papers published, there obviously is something that we don’t understand about peer review. As we have both sceptic and believer papers attacked for valid reasons quite soon after publication, by BLOGGERS (although quite technical and expert bloggers) it would seem that there is something the the publishers and reviewers don’t understand.
The IPCC announced recently that they will not follow the IAC recommendation that they flag non peer reviewed sources.
Clearly the IPCC have not learned a few lessons and have not tightened up.
In the interest of truth in posting … it should be noted that the IAC’s specific recommendation vis a vis non peer reviewed sources was that the then existing rule (i.e. that non peer reviewed sources should be flagged) be enforced.
In its infinite “wisdom”, the IPCC (which had initially “endorsed” the IAC’s recommendation in this regard) subsequently approved the “Task Group”‘s recommendation that the Appendix containing this (rarely observed) rule be rewritten so that all evidence of this rule [which the Task Group declared to be “impractical”] would henceforth be conveniently “disappeared”.
When task group says let’s “disappear” a rule, IPCC agrees
Graeme Stephens is a lead author on Chapter 8 of AR5
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/press-releases/ipcc-wg1-ar5-authors.pdf
will be interesting to see how that plays out. Stephens gets 5 stars by my ranking
Good to hear. He’s one of thirteen though (thanks for the reference – the first time I’ve read such a document), plus two coordinating lead authors and three review editors. Does the presence of one five star player raise the overall effort of the eighteen to that level or does the reverse occur?
Judith Curry
A star-studded cast, if I ever saw one.
Let’s hope they clean up the errors, exaggerations, distortions and omissions in AR4 WG1 (as well as WG2 and 3).
http://sites.google.com/site/globalwarmingquestions/ipcc
As you say, it “will be interesting to see how that plays out”.
Max
I don’t have the technical expertise to make a judgement on any differences in evaporation between irrigation and warming, but the results of studies on the cooling effects of irrigation that show increased evaporation causing more low cloud cover and thus reduced temperatures would seem consistent with his article to me.
Steven – That’s an interesting point. Warming originating in the atmosphere (e.g,, from CO2) tends to dry the atmosphere – i.e., to reduce relative humidity (RH) until evaporation allows RH to return toward baseline. On the other hand, anything that increases the tendency of surface water to evaporate in a climate without previous atmospheric warming (e.g., more surface water, or a warmer ocean surface from an El Nino) will tend to increase RH, at least locally.
As I interpreted the Stephens piece, he wasn’t suggesting that total low cloud cover increased over recent multidecadal intervals (and in fact, most satellite observations indicate it has declined on average or remained unchanged with periodic ups and downs). Rather, he speculated that a given low cloud in a warmer atmosphere might be more reflective and thus exert a cooling feedback. As far as I know, the concept hasn’t been thoroughly explored, but the net effect has probably not made much difference, because multidecadal trends in reflected (short-wave, SW) flux tend to show a warming effect consistent with reduced overall atmospheric reflectivity.
Fred, yes he was suggesting the clouds were wetter which I assume would be a function of moles/liter.
http://faculty.ucmerced.edu/lkueppers/pdf/Lobell%20et%20al%202008%20irrigation%20and%20climate%20extremes.pdf
“Contrary to our expectation that irrigation
would have larger effects on hot days when sensible heat
fluxes are higher, both observations and a regional climate
model indicate that irrigation cools T on the hottest days of
the year by a similar magnitude as on an average summer
day.”
This study contradicts the idea.
Far bigger challenges are how to deal with
1) “peak oil”
2) peak coal”
3) Katla’s next explosion
4) The coming “Eddy” grand solar minimum
Especially when these add together?
3 and 4 are not big problems to deal with. If Katla goes it will affect the climate for at most a couple of years and a Grand Minimum would most likely result in a temporary reversion to conditions which prevailed in the ’70s surface temperature wise.
1 and 2 both really have the same answers as global warming: conservation, shift to renewables and other such measures. The only difference is that if we wait until the crises get bad enough to matter in those cases, the “carbon tax” will be paid to ExxonMobil and other oil companies or Massey and Peabody for coal (although coal is likely 100 years of so in the future. Personally I’d rather my money go to the government than into the pocket of the executives and directors of these companies.
Rattus,
” a Grand Minimum would most likely result in a temporary reversion to conditions which prevailed in the ’70s surface temperature wise.”
Mind if I borrow your crystal ball for some sports tips?
No, go ahead. The Giants will win the NL West.
There is an interesting article from the guys at RC on this question:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/06/what-if-the-sun-went-into-a-new-grand-minimum/
“Personally I’d rather my money go to the government than into the pocket of the executives and directors of these companies.”
Funny, I’d prefer my money go to engineers (coming up with things like fracking) and field workers to actually produce more energy if we are near peak oil. I’m confident a very much larger fraction of my money will do that if it goes to Exxon rather than the government.
In other words, we need to use up energy resources fast to get rich fast so that we can afford to address the problems caused by us using up resources fast. Sounds like a plan.
I don’t think you realize just how much material there is in about six miles of Earth’s crust produced over the course of a couple of billion years.
Humans, who have been in industrial existence anyway for all of some 200 years, seem to have unprecedented (and unwarranted) hubris in regards to their own influence over and within the natural world.
Hubris eh? Defined as “Excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis.” ?
So, if the gods start thinking that we’ve got too uppity by thinking that our annual emissions of 8 billion tonnes of CO2 might need to be curtailed, to prevent our own nemesis, they are going to bloody well make sure we going to get it anyway!
So those Gods of yours are determined to finish us off no matter what! We’re in a tough spot by the sound of it.
So I guess we were pre-ordained to find it, burn it, and thereby do ourselves in – despite the pleas of a few arm-waving fanatics yelling “Don’t do it! Don’t do it! It’s a hoax designed to kill you!”
Good.
Hey, I like the last two contributions a lot so I’m gonna dive in.
First, I’m no fatalist, either about what ‘gods’ are up or the efforts of any man, whether to achieve ‘world government’ or anything else (as discussed earlier, when I felt rather strongly not to join the fray). Fatalism has no place in the Jewish and Christian scriptures but was read back into them by those more influenced by Greek thought. Long story, which I may have slightly simplified – and that would be a first around here, huh :)
Second, I take Jesus as authoritative on what (the true) God is like: both full of mercy and incredibly demanding. Nowhere is this expressed more powerfully than in the Sermon on the Mount:
Tempterrain is right: hubris is a bad idea in the presence of such a creator. We’ll never get the big questions right without humility. But in that spirit I think Jesus’s words – He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous – give us reason to think that our ability to screw up the earth system is limited. Our ability to screw up relationships is a different thing: that can cause destruction at every level. But that’s not fate, that’s pride and stupidity.
Are we talking about weed, crack, meth, opium…
Oh NOES, it’s PEEK OIL!!! One peek and you have to make up how much you think is there!!
Web baby, better keep studying. Maybe you can get Gavin Schmidt to help you improve your model!!
What do you mean “pre-ordained to find it, burn it, ” ?
This the creationist argument that God wouldn’t have left us quite so much fossil fuel to find if it wasn’t safe to burn in one big hit without any thought for the future?
Are you serious about this?
No, but I’m serious about this: Burning it is good, and has benefits all around for people, and everything else, and will never cause a bit of harm to anything, and you have my very personal guarantee of that.
Jim Hansen gave a “95% certainty” that what he says is true.
Well, I’m giving you a 100% guarantee that what he says isn’t true. Beat that!
Not a lot of systems thinkers here I see. Oil depletion is linked inextricably to climate science because it provides the forcing function. I have worked out the response convolution for all fossil fuel emissions and David Rutledge has done the analysis for coal in particular. It’s very basic math but pretty interesting because one can see how the fat-tails of CO2 residence times plays out.
8 billion tons of CO2. Sounds like a big scary number. Until you do the math and realize that humans breathing release about 3 billion tons of CO2 per year. But of course that CO2 doesn’t cause warming. Only the CO2 from fossil fuels cause warming. It is a different type of CO2.
You know Al Gore’s limo idling with A/C on waiting for him for hours whilst he was attending conference did not cause CO2 warning, my Corolla did not have A/C caused global warming. So Al Gore’s CO2 is different from my car’s CO2.
Burning wood or tree for electricity generation does not contribute to global warming – so CO2 produced by burning wood is different from burning coal.
Isn’t AGW theory sick!
OK Fred show us you maths. I wouldn’t put it as high as that.
In any case, CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels is added to the natural cycle and is responsible for a 40% increase in CO2 since pre-industrial times.
That sandwich, you’ve just eaten, contains carbon which a wheat plant itself recently absorbed from the atmosphere, so when you digest that and later breathe out CO2 it will be the completion of a natural cycle.
Temp,
all that hydrocarbon used to be CO2 in the air also. When we dig it up and burn it we are just completing the cycle. Too bad we can probably never burn enough to get back to 6000ppm.
@fred, , @ tempterrain
Best authorities I can find say that an average human produces about 0.9Kg CO2 per day.
There are about 6,500,000,000 people, and 365 days per year.
So I make it 2.2 billion tonnes (metric) from human respiration per year
So I make it 2.2 billion tonnes (metric) from human respiration per year
I used 7 billion people and .4t/year and got 2.8 gt, which rounded to “about 3 billion tons” per year from people breathing. 1.1 tons = 1.0 metric tonnes
compared to 8 billions tons for all the goods and services we produce to provide food shelter and clothing to those 7 billion people.
So, it looks like industrial society is remarkably efficient as compared to the CO2 that would be required for humans alone to duplicate what our machines produce today.
It could well be that a bus load of people resting easily with an efficient diesel engine providing the power, are producing less CO2 than the same number of people riding bicycles trying to keep up.
@tempterrain
Fred’s shown his sums. I’ve shown mine. And they are pretty much in agreement.
But you say you got a different result. Show us yours..and how you got there.
The 8 billion tons per year given above by tempterrain and repeated by others is carbon, not CO2. As CO2 it’s 30 billion tons. The 2 billion tons from respiration is not any more such a large factor (but not insignificant either).
Don’t forget in order to breathe out 2.2t CO2, must produce meat, crops, … it could be many times that of 2.2t to feed that 7 billions of people!
Pekka,
Yes that’s a good point about the weight of carbon which has an atomic weight of 12 and carbon dioxide with an atomic weight of 44. (a factor of 3.7) There is potentially that confusion between various figures. I should have said 8 billion tonnes of carbon not carbon dioxide.
Food, shelter, transportation – these basic forms of consumption are ultimately reasons for most anthropogenic CO2 releases. I have seen the share of food to be given as about 30% of all. In addition food production is the reason of most human related methane releases. This has led some people to say that we should all be vegetarians.
Many estimates tell that the world population would stop growing, but it seems difficult to believe that the total human consumption and the total anthropogenic burden on the environment would stop growing before reaching some limits that cannot be moved on relevant time scales. No policy decisions are likely to prevent that and problems that will result. The policy decisions may affect to some extent the order of meeting the limits and perhaps also, whom they will affect most. Solving one specific issue would then mean only that we’ll meet the limit somewhere else, not that development could proceed smoothly forever.
Are these issues essential in 50 years, in 100 years, or when, that I’m not ready to estimate, but human influence has clearly reached global dimensions both in influence on climate and in other areas.
Pekka Pirilä | July 12, 2011 at 5:46 am |
Food, shelter, transportation – these basic forms of consumption are ultimately reasons for most anthropogenic CO2 releases.
Suely the consumption of oxygen and the exhalation of carbon dioxide is the most basic of all? Carrying on breathing comes before eating, sheltering and travelling.
Look at the Mauna Loa graph. Those fine oscillations you see are the response function to the seasonal outputs and is the equilibrium signal that underlies the physics.
@hubscope
What equilibrium signal? Co2 is not and has never been in equilibrium.
Quasi-equilibrium then. I suppose I can use the engineering word to indicate when a feedback signal has reached a stable level, quiescent, but not everyone would understand that either.
So what do you think the mean residence time of CO2 is?
Fred,
“It could well be that a bus load of people resting easily with an efficient diesel engine providing the power, are producing less CO2 than the same number of people riding bicycles trying to keep up.”
Obie and the Greenies say that we will always be coasting DOWNHILL on the bikes while the diesel will be struggling uphill!! 8>)
I do understand and have studied both the distribution of reservoir sizes, which follows a dispersion aggregation model, and the spatial search of the resources, where I apply a swept volume discovery model with technological acceleration. You have no model to reference and are simply asserting your hopes and desires. Isn’t that subjective attitude just what the climate skeptics are always complaining about?
You forgot the word “bad” in that last sentence.
Yes, sorry, I was being sarcastic.
It is pretty ridiculous how commenters complain about subjectivity leaking into discussions of climate change sensitivities, but they are willing to throw all that out the window when it comes to a related topic that will likely have a more direct personal impact to their lifestyle in the near term.
Web,
If you actually think the governments of the world are going to solve our long term energy needs, you demonstrate a level of ignorance that leaves no doubt as to why you would buy into peak oil and AGW.
Understanding the profile of true believers in the Malthusian – why they consistently buy into proven crap- is an area of research I hope is worked on soon. It is certainly a target rich environment.
I am also interested in the topic of “why people believe weird things”. Click on my link and you can see the stuff I work on. I have no idea what your interests are.
I would suggest that you read the latest “High Country News” for information about frakking in WY. But this is just one example, they seem to be happening wherever frakking is being done. As they say: “more research needs to be done”, and not by EnCana and friends.
Looked it up:
http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.3/unpacking-health-hazards-in-frackings-chemical-cocktail
It appears that table salt is one of the most dangerous frakking chemicals on that list. If it were iodized table salt, it would be the most frakking dangerous, according to hcn anyway.
Oh no!!
Does that mean that the oceans are already so polluted that we should ban anybody from going anywhere near them just in case all that evil Monochloride of Sodium gets split on their skin? Or even worse the DiHydrogen Monoxide used to dissolve it?
Time for a panic I think…….
Rat,
The natural gas industryu is receiving a full court press of lies, misleading articles, phony documentary movies, etc. from the NGO industry.
And schills like you are lapping it up and sending in your money to Greenpeace etc. so they can do to gas what they did to nuclear.
But for you weak minded fools, if it has “green’ in the name and they claim to care about the environment, they are good.
Rattus
“3 & 4 are not big problems”
“Only” shorter growing seasons with consequent massive famines, plagues, and wars. See events during the Little Ice Age.
If those are not “big” enough, compound that with the rapid decline of light peak oil. US DOD and Lloyds are already warning of global shortages in the 2012-2015 time frame. Robert Hirsch has warned that we are already 20 years too late to avoid major economic decline.
Makes me wonder what you consider “big”!
IPCC Glaciergate: 2035 was reported instead of 2305, based on a non-peer reviewed magazine article.
IPCC Himalayagate: prediction of ice loss were basically made up in a WWF pamphlet.
IPCC Greenpeacegate: a Greenpeace official was a lead author on the renewable energy chapter, one who cited his own non-peer reviewed work published with a green energy lobby foundation.a
IPCC Amazongate: up to 40 per cent loss of the Amazon rainforest due to AGW was based on a WWF pamphlet about the effects of logging.
IPCC Seagate: claimed that 55% of the Netherlands is below sea level, versus the real value of 26%.
IPCC Africagate: claim that yields from agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020 were based on a pamphlet a by a Canadian advocacy group, written by an obscure Moroccan academic who specialises in carbon trading.
IPCC Pachaurigate: the IPCC chairman was found to be deeply involved in carbon trading schemes, as a chairman of the board of many green energy companies.
I don’t care how much scientific background and brains a man/woman may have:
“Not only should the current IPCC secretariat be expanded, but at the same its mission should be substantially increased. One area, in particular, that would have substantial impact is the provision of a central service library. Such a library would contain all publications, reviewed papers, internal lab reports, etc. used in the preparation of the IPCC assessments and make them freely and conveniently accessible through the Web. It further would be desirable to extend its services to climate conference proceedings and video recordings. The climate field has transitioned from small beginnings into big-science and the IPCC mechanisms should be changed accordingly.”
A bureaucrat is a bureaucrat is a bureaucrat is a bureaucrat is a…
“I don’t care how much scientific background and brains a man/woman may have:”
Well you’re a denier so you wouldn’t, would you? You’re only care is that they tell you what you want to hear.
Mirror meet Martin…Martin meet mirror.
LA,
Would it surprise you to know that I don’t actually want, and never did want, to hear that GHG build up is likely to be the problem that conventional science claims it will be. I’m pretty sure that goes for everyone else too, regardless of whichever ‘side’ of the argument they may be on.
On the other hand, I don’t believe in denying there is a problem when expert opinion is to the contrary. Its like being told you need a surgical operation or a tooth filling. I don’t like hearing that anymore than I like to hear about AGW and, sure, I’d like to not believe the dentist but I’d be a fool if I didn’t. That’s how the ‘sides’ are defined I’m afraid.
We’re being told that a tooth needs filling, but the tooth doesn’t hurt and is normal on x-ray. You go to your dentist, and I’ll go to mine.
=====================
@tempterrain
‘Would it surprise you to know that I don’t actually want, and never did want, to hear that GHG build up is likely to be the problem that conventional science claims it will be.’
It surprises me greatly! Because your consistent pattern of behaviour here shows the exact opposite, Remarks like
‘Well you’re a denier so you wouldn’t, would you? You’re only care is that they tell you what you want to hear.
show little sign of scientific understanding or argument. Just a blind certainty that your view is right and that anybody who disagrees with you is wrong.
If you really didn’t want to hear that AGW was going to be a problem you would be examining the sceptical argument in detail and trying to pick holes in the warmist’s. But that is exactly the opposite of what you do.
You are a firm believer in the ‘Trust Me I’m a Climate Scientist’ strand of AGW Faith.
Many here however take literally the motto ‘Nullius in Verba’ (Take nobody’s word for it). You should join us.
LA,
You’re saying that you don’t believe anyone about anything ever? No matter what they say it just won’t have any credibility? Interesting.
This remark is also quite telling ” If you really didn’t want to hear that AGW was going to be a problem you would be examining the sceptical argument in detail and trying to pick holes…”
I’d say that was exactly what people like Nic Lewis are doing. They don’t like to hear that AGW is a problem, as I repeat we all don’t, but instead of supporting action to fix the problem they pick holes and try to weaken the efforts of those who are genuinely trying to fix it. All those smokers who didn’t like to hear that cigarettes were a health hazard did their best to pick holes in the arguments of what they would have called the “medical establishment” in the 70’s and 80’s too. They may have made a few holes but the holes still didn’t keep them safe.
I guess it’s just human psychology to do that, but it’s pretty stupid when you think about it.
So temp,
why aren’t you sending me money to support my movement to build starships before the sun goes nova??? What?? You don’t believe it is going to happen very soon?? But, we need to start NOW in case we have problems!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
and it will too late if don’t start now – AGW Alarmist!
Well I guess that’s where we;re going to have to differ.
You see the man coming down the road with a big supply of snake oil and want to be first to believe in its magic powers and cough up lots of dosh for his magic wares. I want to check up on these powers before parting with my hard-earned cash.
And having spent 30 years in the commercial world with people trying to sell me things, I take a lot of convincing that this new scare story so really any different from the last one that didn’t happen…nor the one before that ..or the one before that.
When it comes to climatology I see nothing to change my view summarised in the denizens thread a while back
http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/12/the-denizens-of-climate-etc/#comment-11121
JFI – as you are obviously so convinced about the dangers of AGW, what are your three top reasons for believing it? I guess ‘expert opinion’ is one of them. But what about the other two?
tempterrain,
You are a true believer who has yet to offer any serious defense of your beliefs.
Perhaps you should consider why you believe crap and cling to it so desperately before you indulge in childishness?
That’s right Temp,
I only want them to tell me what I want to hear. And what I want to hear is that they have acutually done the work and have valid results instead of making all this crap up. What do YOU want to hear??
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA
All those organizations in which he is involved!! –And I thought all he did was get excited about the thought of heavy breasts rising and falling as his character Sanjoy Nath watched one of his soon to be many conquests take deep breaths in and out in Dr. Pachauri’s lusty romantic novel ‘Return to Almora’. Wouldn’t you know it, while the character Nath is on his spiritual journey (from bedroom to bedroom) he meets (So I am told) the actress Shirley Maclaine!. Must relate to an unfulfilled fantasy from his youth. The book was published about a year and a half ago.
If I was a diligent contributor to the IPCC, I would not want my name associated with him in any way. He really is an embarrassment to a significant portion of the world of science and I think in decades to come he will have been a main character in the reduction of trust in much of the science community. I also think Dr. Curry’s efforts have been a refreshing step in a good direction.
However, the worst of what I read was this: ‘Dr. Pachauri, now in his second term, has rejected any idea of resignation and threatened that, it a move was made to oust him, a divisive fight would ensure’. What complete self-centered gall.
What he is supposed to be doing is serving all of us. However, he has made it all about him. All of over 190 nations have hired him. I would like to fire him. Like much of politics, he has reduced what he does from serving to self aggrandizement. That he would fight his resignation is emblematic of what is wrong with much of the IPCC leadership. (But not necessarily to those who go about doing their work with as much integrity as possible.
As an example of self interest as opposed to serving to the best of one’s ability:
Consider what a different direction much of the entire study of AGW would have taken had Jones, Mann et al recognized that statistics was not one of their strengths and engaged the help of someone who won a national mathematics contest while in high school. Instead of trying to rebuke him in every way possible, Consider what a difference it would have made if they had asked Steve McIntyre to assist them.
Now that group can take one thing with them. There will many of us with a scientific background that will never respect them or trust their work.
The problem with the IPCC, is that it’s the IPCC, a creature of the UN. Pachauri is a gem compared to the type of leadership often appointed to the organizations of this august body.
North Korea as the chair of the UN’s Conference on Disarmament;
Iraq chaired the same Conference in 2003;
Libya as the chair of the UN Human Rights Council (2003);
Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China members on that Council now;
Somalia, Sudan and Lebanon on the Executive Committee for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
The IPCC is the natural born child of the its sole parent, a dysfunctional, corrupt, delusional international organization. Reforming the IPCC is like reforming the left leg of a man riddled with incurable cancer. If you want an honest, genuinely objective, reasoned approach to the assessment of climate science, you have to start over again.
The IPCC – end it, don’t mend it.
The IPCC – end it, don’t mend it.
How are they going to get a world government with no reason for it?
Come up with a better excuse, and they’ll probably do it. They don’t like fending off “denialists” at this point, but they have nothing better to offer so they expend so much effort doing it
“The problem with the IPCC, is that it’s the IPCC, a creature of the UN.”
No, it was actually a creation of the Reagan Administration.
http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/2007/11/01/ipcc_beginnings/
Michael Oppenheimer wirites:
“I suspect that the Reagan Administration believed that, in contrast to our group, most scientists were not activists, and would take years to reach any conclusion on the magnitude of the threat. Even if they did, they probably would fail to express it in plain English. The US government must have been quite surprised when IPCC issued its first assessment at the end of 1990, stating clearly that human activity was likely to produce an unprecedented warming.”
I’m not sure he’s right in saying that. Maybe old Ron was astute enough to realise that anything to do with the UN would attract hostility from you guys!
Point of order, Tempterrain.
Even the article you cite only says
‘US support was probably critical to IPCC’s establishment’
which is not quite the same as it being
‘a creation of the Reagan Administration’
as you opine.
And, from these shores in UK, it is not easy to imagine Ronnie or George or Jimmy or George W or Barrack or Bill or whoever sitting in Pennsylvania Avenue and decreeing that there will be an INTERGOVERNMENTAL Panel on Climate Change and the other 193 nations just falling meekly in line and agreeing with POTUS.in all respects.
Its not just my opinion. Spencer Weart says the same thing too:
“The most important historical story that people should know is how the concern [on AGW] gave rise to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Reagan administration wanted to forestall pronouncements by self-appointed committees of scientists, fearing they would be “alarmist.” Conservatives promoted the IPCC’s clumsy structure, which consisted of representatives appointed by every government in the world and required to consult all the thousands of experts in repeated rounds of report-drafting in order to reach a consensus. Despite these impediments the IPCC has issued unequivocal statements on the urgent need to act”
So it seems a bit churlish that having got their own way, conservatives now wish to disown the body they once promoted.
Hmmm. It seems that suspicion of alarmism is alive and well. How churlish can you get?
===========================
???
Somewhere you lost me.
It is an INTERGOVERNMENTAL panel. That means that many nations are involved. In such a structure, it is not really possible for one nation to impose its will upon all the others. I don;t dount that Reagan had a string influence. but he could not have unilaterally created such a body.
I know you may think that US politics is all there is, but is still quite a bit of the world that likes to think of itself as having some independence from the doings in Washington.
Its not that hard to follow. The Reagan administration were under pressure to come up with a policy on climate and CO2 emissions. The easiest line at the time was that the science was uncertain and the scientists needed to go away and review the whole process, from top to bottom, before they could be expected to do anything.
That would give them a few years, by which time their administration was likely to be at an end and it would then become someone else’s problem. That’s the way politicians operate the world over.
So they lobbied behind the scenes to get the IPCC set up. It certainly wouldn’t have happened had they not wanted it to.
The IPCC wouldn’t have happened
Temp,
thanks for all the great links and papers you referenced. Oh wait, where are those great links and papers. You aren’t just making this up are you?!?!?!? That would be RUDE!!
Excellent.
Your position has moved from your usual broadbrush flailing about and US-centric
‘it was a creation of the Reagan administration’
to the much more nuanced and subtle
‘So they lobbied behind the scenes to get the IPCC set up. It certainly wouldn’t have happened had they not wanted it to’
which sounds much more likely in the world of realpoliitik. You might alos care to note that it probably wouldn’t have happened, whatever the US’s wishes, if many other countries (including UK) were thinking along the same lines
You must try to apply this subtlety idea to the IPCC’s ‘findings’ too. You will find that things are not as black and white as you are used to.
typo:
if many other countries (including UK) weren’t thinking along the same lines
sorry…I need a better editor…..
Once again, tempterrain, you fail to offer any backup for your stupid claims.
You seem to not be able to read for content, on top of an inability to think critically.
Temp,
in case you hadn’t noticed the Reagan administration and most of its policies are long gone and the UN is still chugging along on its Communist Charter.
This is the UN’s charter. Have you ever bothered to read it? I doubt it somehow.
http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/index.shtml
Maybe you should take a look now. What parts do you object to and why?
Temp,
please try and concentrate now. Exactly where in that piece of rubbish are MY RIGHTS guaranteed. You obviously do not care about yours so you can look on your own for them. Where are MY AND MY FAMILIES RIGHTS GUARANTEED!!!
Now that you have been rude yet again, how much have YOU read of that trash??
You mean you should have had your own personal clause?
Kuhnkat and his family are hereby ……….
If its any consolation, I don’t think I’ve got one either.
Temp,
thanks for showing you don’t even understand the issue.
Me, my family, you, NO ONE has their PERSONAL RIGHTS GUARANTEED by that piece of garbage. You may sneer at the religious overtones of the US Constitution that states our RIGHTS are God Given, but, that is a far better statement than our rights coming from a corrupt man made UN organization which has shown it is for sale to the highest bidder and whose highest goal appears to be to increase its size and authority, like all gubmints and bureaucracies.
The US Constitution makes our RIGHTS something that Government cannot take away because they don’t come from the government. In Socialist, Communist, Fascist… organizations you are wholly dependent on the organization to grant you rights at ITS convenience. If the organization changes your rights can disappear. Our legal basis for our rights is NOT challengeable no matter how many activist Judges, Executives, or Legislatures try to distort the wording.
I post a comment showing the absurdity of the UN forming an “independent” anything, using such examples as appointing North Korea chair of the UN Conference on Disarmament (not even bothering to mention UN “peace keepers” who are more dangerous to the local women and children than they are to actual genocidal aggressors, the oil for food program that helped Saddam reconstitute his military, or the serial anti-semitic denunciations of all things Jewish by the General Assempbly) and the response is “look at the UN charter?”
That’s the difference between conservatives and progressives. Progressive only care about what the world looks like in their pointy elitist heads, while conservatives then have to deal with messes they create in the real world.
Not just the IPCC, but the UN itself was essentially a creation of the US. But conservatives are not wedded to failure. Just more proof that the law of unintended consequences applies to everyone. But that means nothing. Neither the UN nor the IPCC performs anything like the function for which it was intended. Both have been hijacked as means to effect transfers of wealth, and constrain the powers of the democracies of the free world. The IPCC is as good at providing an objective assessment of climate science as the General Assembly and Security Council are at keeping world peace. In other words, it has been an unmitigated failure.
(After we get rid of the IPCC, maybe we can get make 80% of the EPA, Richard Nixon’s evil child run amok, disappear.)
Nothing wrong with Somalia, Sudan and Lebanon being on the Committee for High Commission Refugees. All three of them produce plenty of refugees.
All the result of the “climate change” caused by anger and fear.
It’s really, really hard to make the engineer (RP) and the passengers (virtually every climate scientist in the world) halt and disembark from such a wonderful gravy train. There’s never been one like it. And its destination is the land of permanent global enviro-tax milk and honey!
Someone is going to have to blow up the tracks.
Ill say.
When I was in college, “climatology” was a field that was kind of a cross between physical geology, geography, and meteorology – and based on forecasting principles derived from historical data and periodic trends. People who majored in this were employed by the Government, agriculture and fishery, not much else.
Climatology began to evolve into a more basic science through “modeling” to determine the origins of things like the ENSO; still unknown, but all of a sudden climate modeling took on a different objective altogether. So much of other basic science producing meaningful things took a hit because of this new fad.
NASA shut down space flights involving people. Why? So we can buy some more of this climate stuff.
We note that researchers policed themselves over Reagan’s “star wars” – many university professors advised their colleagues, “I don’t care how poor you are you shouldn’t be looking for or taking any ‘star wars’ money.”
Now university professors can’t get enough of the climate handouts and Universities themselves can’t do enough to cheer people on to go grab some of the handouts. It’s a problem not going to be fixed anytime soon
IPCC vs Sceptics predictions
IPCC=> 2 deg C per century of continued warming.
Sceptics => 0.6 deg C per century of continued warming.
http://bit.ly/rji0Yt
Which prediction is going to be correct?
What do you care? Either way, you’ll be dead before AGW causes you any real harm.
It’s already causing great harm, with every billion blown on mitigation madness.
And you will be dead before the true damage of your stupid policies come true.
IPCC projections are dead wrong!
http://bit.ly/rji0Yt
You cannot use the recent 30-year warming trend into the future.
You must use the last 130-year warming trend for predictions.
No evidence for unprecedented warming.
No evidence for AGW
How about showing a trend line for 1910 to 1940 as well?
Agree.
We all will be, including our grandchildren as well as their grandchildren’s grandchildren.
Glad you see it as well, tempterrain.
Max
I’m less interested with the conflict of interests of Pachauri (unless money’s invloved that is) and more with judgement.
The himalayiangate incident showed me he was unfit for his post (or ironically VERY fit for his post, depending on your viewpoint).
We KNOW that he was informed of the error prior to his ‘vodoo science’ attack- yet he did it anyway. Copenhagen was on the horizon and this provides significant motive for this lie and blatant attack.
It would seem to me therefore, that this reason is more than sufficient to question his judgment and request his resignation. Yet he remains.
This for me is why the IPCC will never hold my trust- I’ll pick AR5 apart looking for the errors and the conflicts. A sad position to be in.
You missed Pacauri’s other job as an author of crap porn novels!
There also seems to be a persistant belief by some, that the IPCC is actually a scientific body, rather than a purely political one.
Pachauri may have been cleared of fraud (In the same way that various enquiries have cleared the CRU & Mann of wrong-doing), but his TERI organisation’s accounts have been shown to be somewhat less than true, probably around EU levels.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/10/before-and-after.html
Here’s a few more of his jobs.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/busy-man.html
No wonder he does all the flying (tempting to omit that f!) that he does.
Mind you, that’s all billed under his “Outreach Activities”
The Medium is the Message. As America prospered Leftists became more hysterical about imagined problems and less concerned about real problems. The IPCC is to solving real problems as a British daytime soap opera about doctors’ wives is to the delivery of medicine.
Web
Unlike you, I do believe that unfettered human ingenuity will find economical solutions to replacing carbon based energy. Certainly, wind turbines and solar are not the answer.
I am a little concerned that the same people that push catastophic anthropogenic global warming also believe in malthusian peak energy. Peak energy theory has been around since oil was originally discovered in large quantities (read “The Prize”). Do global proved reserves of crude oil and natural gas show dramatic decreases over the last decade (2000 to 2010)?
Based on the BP Annual World Energy Review dated June 2011, the world consumed 87.4 million barrels per day of oil in 2010 (31.89 billion barrels total in 2010) and 3,169 billion cubic meters of natural gas total in 2010. In 2000, total global proved reserves of oil was 1,104 billion barrels and total global proved reserves of natural gas was 154 trillion cubic meters. The world consumed about 28 trillion cubic meters of natural gas and 300 billion barrels of oil from 2000 through 2010. The global proved reserves of natural gas at the end of 2010, was 187 trillion cubic meters while oil was 1,383 billion barrels. In other words, although China increased the consumption of oil 80% and gas 300% from 2000 to 2010 and India increased their consumption of oil 50% and gas 100% from 2000 to 2010 and the world consumed a total of 300 billion barrels of oil and 28 trillion cubic meters of natural gas the global proved reserves of oil increased 279 billion barrels and the proved reserves of natural gas increased 33 trillion cubic meters from 2000 to 2010. If you perform the same analysis from 1990 to 2000 you get similar results in that the world consumed significant amounts of oil and natural gas and yet the total global proved reserves of oil and natural increased from 1990 to 2000.
I am not saying by providing the above data that it is not prudent to conserve the natural resources available. I will say that peak oil is over-stated, and that there is ample global energy resources available today to support world wide energy needs for the next 50 to 100 years. Investment should be in technologies that provide sufficient, reliable and cheap energy to improve the standard of living of those people living in the developing world.
anthropegenic
The UN Charter really does need a clause added to require everyone working for that organization to take three vows while serving: poverty, chastity, obedience. Wouldn’t hurt to require them to wear a habit too.
Pascvaks,
“Wouldn’t hurt to require them to wear a habit too.”
Nope, a Burqa.
David Ritson,
From start to finish, your post is degraded by errors of fact.
“What was so disquieting was not he occurrence of a mistake but the subsequent reaction of the IPCC chairman, Dr. Pachauri. Dr Pachauri, when questioned in an interview (youtube), not only reaffirmed the correctness of the original report but characterized the Indian government report, whose disaster-predictions were measured in centuries not decades, as “voodoo science”. Only after a month’s delay, and under pressure, was the mistake admitted”
I think you must be the only person who doesn’t know that the ‘voodoo’ remark was made by Pachauri in relation to a government report outside of the IPCC reports, and not to the error in AR4. One doesn’t have to read the IndiaTimes to get the basics right. It was his response to a discussion paper published by the Indian government (by Raina) claiming the melting of the glaciers was normal and not related to climate change. The government report was released with the openly defensive posture that the Indian government need not work with western scientists who wish to link glacial melt to climate change, resulting in what government spin called a western interest in delaying Indian economic development. Apart from the political spin, and sticking only with the science, there is plenty wrong with the Raina report, and plenty wrong with the glaciers. Pachauri gets it right:
http://web.hwr.arizona.edu/~gleonard/2009Dec-FallAGU-Soot-PressConference-Backgrounder-Kargel.pdf
The current science shows that climate change is a factor in the region. The science will continue to evolve with more benchmark glaciers and high-altitude meteorological stations for long-term study. Pachauri challenged his government’s promotion of spin and identified that the Raina report was not based in data and the most current, objective science. It wasn’t. One would think that would be seen as desirable, by a rational skeptic.
Regarding the error in AR4, again, you must be the only person who doesn’t know that the error is from a regional chapter, produced by regional authorship, and does not reflect the IPCC glacier projections. It involved a working group committee citing an unreliable outside source. You do not identify this, and it is significant not only in terms of an honest discussion of the nature of the error, but also its signficance and steps to correct it. It was a legitimate error, a human error, related to a failure to triple check the grey literature (as distinct from the peer reviewed scientific literature).
The question of attempting to minimize any recurrence of this kind of error is a procedural and organizational question. You do at least get to that, by the end of your post.
Obviously, there is no question of initial communication errors e.g. while Kaiser may have told authors in his own working group, the feedback did not get to someone in authority in the IPCC. Why not? Because the IPCC is thousands of scientists. It has had few procedural mechanisms for communication of errors between report activity (until now). Pachauri criticized his own country’s regional authors for not rigorously checking their use of grey literature before releasing it. Again, I would think a rational skeptic might value this kind of demand for responsibility-taking.
The questions raised are organizational. All good organizations raise questions about themselves. Which leads me to my last point. The IAC review of practices was convened at the joint request of Pachauri and by extension, the UN Secretary General. Feel free to claim it was a face-saving action – but don’t ignore this. Pachauri has alot of responsiblity to ensure implementation of recommendations and should be judged accordingly, rather than re-posting media hype and false statements about the most basic information.
More of the “you aren’t a real skeptic your just a denialist posing as a skeptic you’re not fooling anybody” stuff.
No length of time has elapsed to make any claim of “unnatural” influence on any glacier; given the putative times of influence of Greenhouse gases on average temperatures made by the IPCC itself.
Pachauri has repeatedly demonstrated himself to be self-serving and little more; sorry about that, but painting “Pachauri as public servant” just doesn’t wash.
And Raina’s conclusion that got Pacahauri into such a tizz was simply this
‘It is premature to make a statement that glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating abnormally because of the global warming. A glacier is affected by a range of physical features and a complex interplay of climatic factors.’
Martha somehow claims that ‘the Raina report was not based in data’. And yet when we examine it we see plenty of real data and measurements You can download the report from here
http://moef.nic.in/downloads/public-information MoEF%20Discussion%20Paper%20_him.pdf
By contrast she links to the slides from a press conference (by definition not peer-reviewed) which consists of little more than a few satellite pictures of glaciers with subjective commentary about their changes. And claims from this that ‘Pacahuri gets it right’.
Perhaps she holds herself to different standards of ‘being right’ than is commonly accepted outside Climatology.
‘Regarding the error in AR4, again, you must be the only person who doesn’t know that the error is from a regional chapter, produced by regional authorship, and does not reflect the IPCC glacier projections’
It matters not a jot whether it was written by Pachauri himself, the cleaner who happened to be passing by or the Nawab of Pataudi accompanied by the Six Wives of Henry VIII in alphabetical order.
It was published as part of the IPCC report. I assume that they would like us to treat their report seriously? In which case they must take the rough with the smooth and fess up to their mistakes as well as accept the Nobel Prize when it suits them. They cannot have it both ways.
Martha,
The one thing you succeed in achieving is finding new ways to be stupid.
When a skeptic, like Monckton for instance, pulls a boner, he is called out by many other skeptics.
No matter how obviouis, corrupt, or conflicted an AGW promoter gets, they can always depend on the faithful like yourself to rationalize their problem away.
–> “Pachauri has alot of responsiblity to ensure implementation of recommendations and should be judged accordingly…”
And, for that he received a Nobel.
Correspondingly, IPCC is strongly advocating “mitigation” that will seriously reduce food supply relative to “adaptation”. That is likely to aggravate famine for millions of people. See:
Craig Idso, Will We Produce Enough to Adequately Feed the World? Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
8 June 2011
Somewhat off topic,
but Roger Pileke, Jr. points out an interesting new problem in the quality of data reported on ocean temperatures:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/07/making-stuff-up-at-real-climate.html
And do note that Roger’s post is based on work from the astroturf site, Real Climate.
The IPCC projects for a global warming of 0.2 deg C per decade.
At the beginning of the 21st century, this projection is supported by the “scientific” community, world governments, the media, and environmentalists.
As shown in the following chart, this 0.2 deg C per decade warming projection is based on the last 40 years of data, which is only about 30% of the available data since 1880.
http://bit.ly/nP4DPQ
In contrast, the projection based on the last 130 years of data shows a global warming of only 0.06 deg C per decade. Nearly all 100% of the 130 years long data lie between two-envelope parallel lines 0.5 deg C apart.
It is more rational, i.e scientific, to project a global warming trend based on 100% of the data than only 30% of the data. As a result, the global warming rate is only 0.06 deg C per decade, not 0.2 deg C per decade.
If the 30-year trend from 1910 to 1940 were used for projections, the result would have been wrong as shown in the above graph. This could be the case for projections based on the recent warming.
Yes, er, but, the volume of CO2 emitted in 1880 was very low. It really kicked off somewhat later than that
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Carbon_Emission_by_Type.png
Well temp, since you only mentioned one figure you only have TWO problems.
1) you have no idea how much CO2 there was in 1880.
2) “It really kicked off later” is not a quantitative statement.
3) Then you top it with a WIKI graph that lists the few anthro contributions that are totally dwarfed by natural emissions.
So basically, like most of your other posts it is pointless.
Yes, it is difficult to figure out what the baseline CO2 was in the 1800’s.
I did it though and determined a value of 294 ppm.
That is excellent Web. Would you mind posting the information on the data you gathered and your processes and procedures so we can verify them? I am a denier you know.
It is in the link.
Which one?
You made the chart in the Wikilink?
Oh, wait, you are saying that you LOOKED at the chart in the WikiLink and determined this most excellent information. Well, I am sorry, but, I will raise you the Beck studies.
“A thorough review of existing literature (175 in this study) revealed in contrast to the published opinion based on the
founders of modern greenhouse theory, Callendar and Keeling, that there exists some 90, 000 accurate
measurements by chemical methods before 1957 back to 1857 with an accuracy better than 3%.”
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/EE_18-2_Beck.pdf
A publication on the ice cores:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15035252/CO2-The-Greatest-Scientific-Scandal-Of-Our-Time
@tempterrain
Atomic Carbon all by itself is a problem now is it? (Graphite, diamonds etc)
And there was me thinking it was Carbon Dioxide – y’know where the carbon is sort of like combined with that like oxygen stuff dude – that is supposed to be the root of all evil.
Funny that the IPCC and all the world’s leading ‘climatologists’ seem to agree with me on this one.
Still, iys good to know that you are at last showing some scepticism, even if..in this case your lack of understanding of chemistry (an experimental science) leads you in the wrong direction.
For gases, quoting ‘volumes’ isn’t very meaningful since they vary according to temperature. Mass is a far better metric
Judith,
I’ve seen several suggestions on the net that you should be the next chairman of the IPCC. Mind you they are quite recent – I didn’t see any when you were writing papers on hurricanes a few years ago. But I’m sure there must be something of which I’m not aware which has convinced everyone that your abilities have increased recently. Unless its nothing to do with your undoubted abilities?
Yes, on second thoughts, I think it may not be. They like your message of uncertainty and doubt which they can use against the likes of James Hansen and his pals.
Why stop at the chairmanship of the IPCC? Maybe the entire panel of lead authors could be chosen in a similar way. In would come Lindzen out would go Schmidt etc.
I suppose the IPCC could set up a sort of tendering system to establish things like 2xCO2 climate sensitivity. The IPCC would look at all the peer reviewed papers and whichever one came out with the lowest result would be accepted as official IPCC policy.
I doubt we’d get quite so many complaints about the IPCC from so-called sceptics then!
tt –
I doubt we’d get quite so many complaints about the IPCC from so-called sceptics then!
Don’t be too sure about that.
But what ever the scepticcs didn’t complain about, the alarmists would.
Good and a lot better than the existing chairman of the IPCC but defunct IPCC will be a lot better to save trillions in future and billions of tax.
As outlined above, its it blatantly obvious that the current IPCC is nothing but a hugely biased and self-interested advocacy group, internally wired to find for CAGW no matter what. If it were reformed to have an honest, objective and scientific outlook instead, the outlook could very well be different.
It is probably unreformable though, so the only real option is to scrap it. Or just cut off the bucks and ignore any ‘advice’ it proffers.
Punksta,
Yes cut off their bucks! That’ll learn em to mess with big Capital!
Meanwhile you could just stick your fingers in your ears, or your head in the sand I suppose!
No, that’ll larn em to stop being frauds, presenting political advocacy as if it were science. To believe anything the IPCC says is to put your head in the sand.
And as regards Big Capital – that comes from politics, not private sources. Governments spend thousands of times as much on climate science / propaganda than oil companies and everyone else put together.
And the net conclusion emanting from all this govenment spending ? – governments should glorify and expand themselves by imposing more taxes and bureaucracies on us. Amazing coincidence, that.
Just thousands? Why not millions or billions? You are going to get anywhere if you understate your case!
Governments eh? Who’s want them? Unlike private companies there just no democratic accountability. Proudhon was were right after all “Anarchy is order – Government is Chaos!”
Right, Temp, so you take the point that governments are seizing some of our money, and using it to to ‘prove’ to us that they have a right to take even more of our money. And that that is the major thrust of the CAGW narrative.
And also the further point that what govenments spend on climate science in universities and labs, is close to 100% of the total climate science spend. Hence
(a) the existence of a ‘consensus’, and
(b) that this consensus is hugely favourable to government.
Punksta,
Yes of course I’ve seen the argument that the AGW issue is an excuse to levy yet more taxes but does it make sense?
Governments the world over are good at raising taxes. They’ve been doing it for years. They aren’t usually short of ideas on how to do it. I don’t believe they either need , nor do they want, to have to involve scientific opinion in their taxation agenda. Scientists are notoriously unpredictable and herding cats would be easy by comparison. ‘Hugely favorable’ to government? Ask Julia Gillard in Australia. Carbon taxes are causing her a lot of problems politically. She could raise much more money easily by raising GST and the voters will have forgotten by the next election!
The idea for GHG taxes came from the left? There is no evidence. They’ve pushed for high land taxes, high rates of income tax for high earners, high rates of capital gains tax, high rates of corporation tax etc but until the AGW issue became prominent, GHG taxation just wasn’t on their ‘to do’ list at all. I’d include the Greens in the general description of ‘left’ too. The only new tax I can ever remember being seriously suggested by the parties of the left in the last 40 years or so is a wealth tax, and they never got anywhere with that, at least as far as I know.
As a general proposition leftists think taxes are a Good Thing because they believe that governments spend the people’s money more ‘wisely’ than the people themselves would if left to their own devices. That ‘public spending’ is inherently good and private spending inherently bad and evil.. Those on the right in general take the opposite view.
So it is no surprise that leftists seized upon Carbon taxes. Not only do they seem to have an excuse for further taxation, but they can wrap it up in faux morality as well. Win win for them.
LA,
I would suggest this is a great over-simplification. The right don’t seem to mind public spending if it goes to the military for instance. Incidentally, when the big US defence companies like Lockheed, Northrup and Boeing start to get seriously interested in renewable energy you’ll know that the amount of money spent is more than at “peanuts” level.
Yes, the left have traditionally argued for government investment in education . But so have big corporations like the ones I’ve just mentioned. They can’t function without a highly educated workforce – so its not the simple left right issue as you describe. Both public and private sectors play a part in the make up of a modern technocratic society.
I was very careful to use the words ‘in general’ to mark the point that I realised that a single such paragraph was indeed a simplification. But it remains true *in general*.
You will also find that the implementation of those statist/antistatist ideas varies by country and history. UK attitudes are very different from US ones for instance, even within the same overall framework.
temp,
“Governments the world over are good at raising taxes. They’ve been doing it for years. They aren’t usually short of ideas on how to do it. I don’t believe they either need , nor do they want, to have to involve scientific opinion in their taxation agenda.”
Obie doesn’t seem to be having much luck doing it at the moment. Could this be some kind of exception?? Greece, Spain, Italy, and Ireland also seem to be having issues with raising taxes. Maybe your statement is just a little too generalized.
However many justifications you have for advancing your own interests, having an additional one is always better. Especially if it is an apparently ironclad one – saving the world in the process, no less.
And it doesn’t imply a conspiracy, as knee-jerkers continually suggest. It’s a confluence of interests. Government – like anypone – else – funds the people and projects it calculates will best advance its own interests. Which CAGW thinking certainly does. It wasn’t planned long in advance; it gradually emerged, and was gradually seen as an opportunity worth seizing – it’s the wet dream of totalitarians everywhere (hence popularity on the Left), especially with the spectre of world government it offers.
So, 8 billion tons from industry, 3 billion from humans.
How long before we get IPCC guidelines on individual breathing quotas ? Special permits if you need to run for a bus, etc etc …
(And how much do other animals contribute, btw?)
No you’rw confusing weights of Carbon and Carbon dioxide. Its more like 0.6 billion tonnes of carbon from humans.
(Sorry – also posted elsewhere in error..something wrong with comment nesting right now.
@tempterrain
Atomic Carbon all by itself is a problem now is it? (Graphite, diamonds etc)
And there was me thinking it was Carbon Dioxide – y’know where the carbon is sort of like combined with that like oxygen stuff dude – that is supposed to be the root of all evil.
Funny that the IPCC and all the world’s leading ‘climatologists’ seem to agree with me on this one.
Still, iys good to know that you are at last showing some scepticism, even if..in this case your lack of understanding of chemistry (an experimental science) leads you in the wrong direction.
Punksta, I believe that both ants and termites bury the human contribution easily.
“According to the journal Science (Nov. 5, 1982), termites alone emit ten times more carbon dioxide than all the factories and automobiles in the world. Natural wetlands emit more greenhouse gases than all human activities combined.”
http://ilovecarbondioxide.com/2009/04/termites-emit-ten-times-more-co2-than.html
Methane:
http://www.iitap.iastate.edu/gcp/studentpapers/1996/atmoschem/brockberg.html
http://www.epa.gov/methane/sources.html
Not the best numbers in the world, but, the reality is that the human contributions are SMALL. Even if we stopped breathing (meaning all anthro stops) atmospheric CO2 would still increase!! Yuh see, the more we put into the atmosphere the less comes out of the oceans and other sinks, everything else being equal (which it isn’t). So far I haven’t heard of ANY study that actually tries to quantify how much more would be released naturally if humans were NOT releasing our gigatons and slightly increasing the CO2 partial pressure in the stmosphere. Maybe that is SMALL too!! 8>)
KK
If it’s true that the more CO2 man emits, the less the sinks like the ocean do, why is ppm going up ?
Punksta,
I used a relative term. The more we put out the less the oceans will put out. If the oceans are putting out 1000 GTC/Y and we put out 30GTC/Y that might suppress 10GTC/y from the oceans. If we stopped all output the oceans would then put out 1010GTC/y. The relationship is NOT that we put out 30 so the ocean has 40 suppressed which would be required to have the CO2 go negative. Since I do not know the actual relationship it could be more or a lot less. I am waiting for the smart guys to do a good paper on this relationship!!
Of course, it could be the growth in termites and ants that is really causing the increase!! 8>)
So if we simply cut back on termites and wetlands, we’ll stabilise CO2 ?
Yup,
leave it to the evil enviros to insist on increasing both wildlife and wetlands to cause an increase in CO2 so they can force humans to cut back!! 8>)
LA, Yes, there is a lot of loose talk about ‘carbon’ emissions when it is , as you say, CO2 emissions which really matter.
Furthermore we see graphs like this which show emissions as tonnes of “carbon” :
http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/zFacts-CO2-emissions-1750-2004.gif
In this case 9 billion tonnes of ‘carbon’ per year when it is, in fact, in the form of CO2, and over 30 billion tonnes of that per year.
This causes confusion and I’d like to see the phrase “carbon emissions” dropped as being factually incorrect.
Good that we agree about something.
@tempterrain
Always happy to agree with you when you’re right. Consistency of units (and clear unambiguous definition of terms) is very important to communicate scientific ideas.
And good to see you starting to read things with a more questionning eye. Don’t take it all at face value. There is a much-feared TV interviewer in the UK (Jeremy Paxman), whose starting point when confronting an ‘expert’ or a politician is:
‘What is this lying bastard lying to me about this time?’
I commend his approach.
No, carbon black is very important as well.
Does anyone else here have trouble with disappearing posts? I just came up with an idea of keeping everyone happy with a new procedure for the IPCC and suggested that Judith herself should be the next chairman but its gone.
Maybe I posted it up at Realclimate by mistake. I’ll have to take a look.
If you posted that suggestion at RC you can be assured you are wasting your time looking for it.
Here’s your post
http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/10/ipccs-problems-at-the-top/#comment-85469
But I agree that the software here sometime does strange things. I have already found one instance of a reply being misapplied to the wrong comment earlier this morning.
BTW I think that even mentioning our host’s name at RC will be enough to have your remarks cast into eternal damnation there. Though we are mere sceptics and hence to be vilified, JC is approaching an apostate. And for that crime no punishment is too harsh or painful
LA,
Yes thanks. I’m not sure why I couldn’t find it before.
Not to worry, they’re sure to publish stuff like that.
EVIDENCE FOR AGW
AGW shall be established as a valid theory if global mean temperature anomaly observations in the coming decade lie in the region shaded red in the following graph.
http://bit.ly/oI8dws
Do you agree?
I’m having trouble understanding how adding more CO2 to the atmosphere can change temperature by very much more than it already has Looking at the absorption spectrum, the CO2 bands are already fully saturated. There is only one small low energy point in the spectrum around 2400 nm that is available.
It is all fine and well to suggest that CO2 may play a role in warming, but if the CO2 spectrum is already fully absorbed, that effect cannot increase any more, no matter how much CO2 you add.
ferd,
Have you really failed to learn about that from any of the probably tens of messages on this site (and elsewhere), where that question has been answered and explained in some detail. You are a long time contributor and certainly seen many of those messages.
Fred,
Well if you are really seriously interested in trying to understand it you could take a look at this:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect-advanced.htm
or this:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/
For a bit deeper understanding I would propose the recent Physics Today article of Pierrehumbert and the Figure 2 and related text from that article.
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/PhysTodayRT2011.pdf
Except Pierre Humbert KNOWS that the ice core proxies are very good.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Yeah, drilling something from that deep and then leaving it laying in a bunker to “relax” gives high reliability gas readings!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Raymond Pierrehumbert: There are indeed uncertainties in the magnitude and impact of anthropogenic global warming.
According to the data so far, the impact of anthropogenic global warming is nil.
The evidence for AGW is if global mean temperature lie in the region shaded red in the following graph.
http://bit.ly/oI8dws
I think it is relatively simple to do experiments on columns of gas between a clear polyethylene sheet and a black base. 3.4m of 100% CO2 at sea level has close to the same number of CO2 molecules as 17km of atmosphere. If we can get agreement on an experimental design, then we just need so people to build, test and measure.
This is essentially what Angstrom did early in the 20th century. Unfortunately, and for reasons discussed in the previous links supplied by Pekka and myself, it is not a good indicator of what actually happens in the real atmosphere. The column of Co2 is much longer, and at different temperatures and pressures, and the heat flow process is also strongly influenced by convection currents which cannot be modelled in the way you describe.
What we have at the moment is a real atmosphere that is real and a load of computer models which are fantasy and no demonstrable scientific theory to support the existence of a greenhouse at all. So any experiment that can demonstrate something that is different caused by CO2 molecules is concrete science as opposed to hand waving assertions.
Experimental apparatus can be designed to account for the effect of convection by removing warming gas at the top and replacing it with ambient temperature gas at the bottom.
Considering skeptics don’t think any warming at all is attributable to CO2, then warmists need to prove their assertions with good physics experiments.
Experiments? You ask for experiments already? What are you – some sort of oik like a physicist or a chemist?
This is climatology. Climatologists don’t do experiments. Far too grubby, Climatologists do correlations. And statistics (badly). And anyway experiments might give some definite results, We don;t want any of those…they might cut off profitable lines of research.
–A little additional thought for Latimer and Temp and whomever.
Have your considered the amount of CO2 from the respiration of all other non-human members of the animal kingdom?
Respiration can easily be excluded or perhaps simplified from any considerations of equilibrium CO2 concentrations, since the CO2 that is expired was first photosynthesized within the lifetime of the plants or animal products consumed.
One would need a handle on population growth and increases in primary food production (plant and animal) over time to see how much that contributes to CO2 burden.
Computer models are good for that….hmmm.
I suspect the graphs of population and food production, like the graphs of energy consumption and jet fuel usage will all demonstrate a hockey stick.
I know that there was a suggestion (Monbiot??) that we should all embrace vegetarianism because cows fart the greenhouse gas methane, Therefore all the cattle should be slaughtered
My view was that the same process occurred in CAGWists (especially the vegetarian ones) and that we should try killing them all first to see if the supposed problems were reduced. This helpful and eminently practical suggestion was not well-received by the climatological community :-(
Still, no pressure. :-)
latimer,
Many believers obviously believe we should be the ones to go first.
No pressure indeed.
Remember the Greeks. Nemesis follow Hubris.
They have had their day in the sun in the second half of the noughties. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. And many who have nailed their colours to the mast of the doomed vessel ‘CAGW’ find that they have no place in the lifeboats and are far from a friendly shore.
Where once they were feted as scientific ‘heroes’, they are no longer newsworthy and their fair weather friends in the media have deserted them. Little is left as they view the ruins of their Empire…little credibility, few friends, but worse..no fawning worldwide attention any more…..
eminently practical suggestion was not well-received by the climatological community (or the scatological community)
The problem for the IPCC is not its idiotic structure but the lack of transparency to keep everyone honest. The bias of individual bureaucrats would not matter if everyone had a way to look at what was going on in real time and point out the errors. With the millions of math and science geeks watching it would be difficult for the Lead Authors, reviewers, and managing bureaucracy to pull a fast one and come up with misleading conclusions. And it would be much easier for dissatisfied insiders to leak information that would allow outsiders to focus on any inappropriate misuse of the science.
Transparancy would undermine the fundamental purpose of presenting an apparent consensus in support of political action. Leaks from dissenters and non-pal-review are the very last things they want.
Another concern is that the UN (and the IPCC) created / authorized a subgroup chartered to prove that human emissions of CO2 are dangerous, and to support governmental policies to limit them.
The UN and the IPCC can therefore claim to be unbiased, while their offspring (UNFCCC, SBSTA and COPs) do the work.
UNFCCC. 1992. United Nations Framework Convention On Climate Change. United Nations. http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf
I have not read the above. I am appaled at the circumvention of the fact that all problems relate to the cause not the effect. The cause is the existing system, the rot is at the top.
Many words no action