by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
I am in the throes of finishing up my presentation for the APS meeting next week, so this post is brief; linky rather than thinky.
WSJ
WSJ has an article Personal Score Settling is the New Climate Agenda.
Extremes
John Holdren’s recent Congressional testimony attacks Pielke Jr’s views on extreme weather; Pielke Jr responds.
Jim Hansen
Jim Hansens climate science and advocacy project [link]
Via email from MasterResource:
James Hansen is doing some excellent energy analysis and is calling out those who see politically correct renewables as the savior (versus his preferred nuclear). Hansen is right …. Dilute wind and solar can’t do much ….
I summarize his opinion piece, “Renewable Energy, Nuclear Power and Galileo: Do Scientists Have a Duty to Expose Popular Misconceptions?” with these two posts at MasterResource:
“Energy Realism Amid Climate Alarmism: James Hansen Rides Again’ (February 25, 2014)
“Is the Environmental Movement Net CO2 Positive? (James Hansen wants to know)” (February 24, 2014)
Mike Haseler’s survey of skeptics
JoNova reports on Mike Haseler’s recent survey of skeptics; some interesting results
The soap opera
Clippings that relate to Michael Mann’s lawsuits:
http://www.steynonline.com/6135/michael-e-mann-is-a-fabricating-megalomanical
http://www.steynonline.com/6129/any-way-you-slice-it if it is a sin to doubt, then there is no science.
http://www.steynonline.com/6125/mann-about-the-house
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/371956/michael-mann-apologizes-false-attack-charles-c-w-cooke
These papers have generated some interest this week: http://oprj.net/oprj-archive/atmospheric-science/19/oprj-article-atmospheric-science-19.pdf
http://oprj.net/oprj-archive/atmospheric-science/22/oprj-article-atmospheric-science-22.pdf
http://oprj.net/oprj-archive/atmospheric-science/25/oprj-article-atmospheric-science-25.pdf
Holdren was talking about drought?
Some state or another is always in drought or flood conditions. Nothing has changed. Far worse happens than anything recent. Kind of tame. This winter is knocking down a lot of cold records though. Now’s not a good time for northern politicians to be talking about global warming.
Check these babies out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARkStorm
Never heard of them before a couple days ago on NatGeo or some other educational channel on the boob tube. Lived in Cali for 20 years too.
Here’s a fun read.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/2/27/the-mind-boggling-coincidence-hypothesis.html
Springer responds to Andrew, ignoring the fact that Andrew linked to some incredible SkyDragon fantasies masquerading as scientific research.
Springer responded to Andrew in order to get the second comment from the top. I didn’t even read Andrew’s comment which would handily explain why Springer’s comment made no reference to it. Finding causal connections where none exist is a speciality of WHUT’s. ROFL
Webby once again allows his prejudices to make him completely misread someone else’s comment.
I think those Irish guys are pulling your collective legs. It is crankery at its finest. Who is it that is falling for this? Name names.
JD, Yes it is klimate krankery at its finest. The dead giveaway is that the Connolly dudes find fault with EVERYTHING having to do with accepted climate science thinking. Not only is atmospheric physics wrong, but all of the temperature measurements are wrong as they have discovered that the UHI effect is widespread and has infected all the temperature records.
We shouldn’t really be surprised as they sound like just about all the other skeptics that comment on this blog — they just present it in a very slick fashion with professionally technical markup.
Dr Curry, how come you link to Pielke’s response but not the original testimony from Holdren?
Holdren has been an anti-nuke, pro renewables zealot for at least 30 years. he tries to cover it up now that he is a senior presidential adviser, but it’s in his DNA and is revealed in his statements from time to time. You can blame him and those who share his views for blocking real progress for the past 50 years.
We know what he thinks. He’s a problem and like all zealots cannot be persuaded by rational analysis. So, all that can be done with him and his types are to sideline them. I’d give his thoughts as little airing as possible. {sort of like adopting the tactics of the CAGW Alarmists like the IPCC, RS, NAS, James Hansen, The Hockey Team, Real Climate, Skeptical Science – to give a few examples of who set the precedent I am suggesting should be followed with types like Holdren)
Peter Lang | March 1, 2014 at 4:50 pm |
Remind us.. you’ve spent how much time in the same hemisphere of the globe as the USA?
Your foreign opinions about internal US matters matter to US citizens, how?
Your distempered attacks on US public figures are tolerable to Americans, why?
BartR,
Displaying your xenophobia again?
Peter Lang – don’t listen to Bart. Your opinions are welcomed here. I guess Bart doesn’t believe Einstein expanded the horizon of physics because he didn’t originate from Bart’s country :)
Einstein might not have been born in US but he died there. We got some Germnan scientists like Einstein before WWII and afterward we snagged all the surviving “rocket” scientists, relocated them to the US, and called them NASA. No joke.
NASA went downhill fast as the original German scientists died off which explains today.
And to answer your question: about 15 years total including: British Columbia (Revelstoke Project); Alberta; Manitoba; Quebec; Newfoundland, Nevada; UK; Sweden, Switzerland; Guyana, Nigeria, South Korea.
So the question I’d put to you is; how much international experience have you had on relevant energy and policy related projects?
German scientists: The German scientists got their start by stealing ideas and designs from Robert Goddard, the father of modern rockets.
We did not get all the German Rocket Scientists. I do believe Russia did get some.
Father of Rocket Science:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
Operation Paperclip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_rocket_scientists_in_the_United_States
NYT “When the Germans, and Rockets, Came to Town
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/us/31huntsville.html
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/german-scientists-brought-to-united-states-to-work-on-rocket-technology
http://www.ushistoryscene.com/uncategorized/projectpaperclip/
I can’t find a single instance of a German rocket scientist going to Russia. All the Russians found were abandoned facilities with key documents and systems removed or destroyed.
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/rockets_ussr_germany.html
Peter Lang | March 1, 2014 at 6:06 pm |
27.
As an American, I share Peter Lang’s aversion to Holdren and add that the failure to marginalize a figure of such preposterous views is a sign of social decadence.
“Your distempered attacks on US public figures are tolerable to Americans, why?”
Because real Americans believe in freedom of speech. They don’t try to shut down debate the way progressives like Bart R do,
Only a progressive would talk about tolerating speech.
Bart R,
I don’t comment much here, but your screed against Peter Lang is preposterous and offensive. One need not be a US citizen or even spend any time here to analyze the scientific and policy issues in dispute between Holdren and Pielke, Jr. (yes I am a US citizen, and I actually know people in Holdren’s science and policy circles, but so what…..Peter Lang is just as entitled to contribute to this discussion as you, I, or anyone else.)
Certainly the kinds of issues arising are of interest far beyond our borders. Your notion that only US citizens have a right to hold or express opinions about the Holdren/Pielke, Jr. debate is bizarre, obnoxious, and unacceptable.
Just so we’re all in agreement, then, that views from all around the world are valid and equal on this forum.
Do I have that right?
That’s what you’re all claiming, a view you’ll all defend?
huh?? No one said that all views are “valid and equal” in substance — only that it is wrong to dismiss someone’s comment because of where they hail from. Everyone has a right to their opinion does not mean every opinion is as good as any other.
Bart –
Gotta say, I really can’t understand your point related to Peter’s nationality. Leave those kinds of arguments to the “skeptics.”
Joshua and Bart,
The way I look at it, Peter Lang is here to compensate for the existence of one Dr. Helen Caldicott. .
.. ooh, maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned the name, somebody’s neck is turning mighty red about now.
My point was simple.
Peter Lang is a foreigner attacking Americans. I wanted to know if that was okay with people here.
Appears it is.
I’ll note not a lot of Americans waste time attacking Australians. Seems it’s more a sport for the rest of the world to play against the US.
And I’m glad people are coming to the defense of the American value of free speech. It doesn’t even need to be true speech, speech free of malice, speech with an ulterior motive, or even speech that does no harm, for an American to defend it.
Which makes America special.
me
Holdren’s attack on Pielke can be found here:
http://www.occuworld.org/news/581946
I can understand why our hostess did not post this garbage.
Max
O lord!
let us not
return to
the closed
world and
tyranny
of ‘thou –
shalt-not’
limitations
on debate.
Top – down
provisos
based on
pseudo
reform
agenda
con –
straints.
on free
speech
Being American pretty much guarantees inanity combined with smarmy jingoism – or is that just some Americans?
Americans do that instead of whining like little babies on climate blogs about personal problems type 2 diabetes and foot surgery.
Bart R
You just did exactly that.
Yes indeed, Max.
Holdren’s ability to see into the future is truly amazing.
He predicts that droughts will get worse in some areas, it will rain harder in some areas and it will snow less in some areas.
Who would have thunk?
Standards by stevepostrel, links by FOMD.
phatboy | March 2, 2014 at 4:37 am |
Actually, I attacked Australian interference in domestic US politics. That’s entirely different from attacking an Australian.
It’s more like attacking Chinese interference in domestic US politics, or Russian interference in domestic Ukraine politics, or even like attacking US interference in domestic Australian politics.
Except only two of those three are real things.
Bart R,
In answer to your questions to Peter:
I’ve spent my entire life in same hemisphere.
How others view us is often useful to know.
Peter’s observations of John Holdren are spot on. Holdren has been an anti-nuclear activist for a long time and hold opinions in line with Erhlich regarding the supposed “carrying capacity” of the planet. That he is the President’s Science Advisor is evidence of how unimportant the Administration holds science. That you consider them distempered is perhaps a sign you ate something which disagrees with you.
Or are you just being a jerk?
Bart
Remind us.. you’ve spent how much time in the same hemisphere of the globe as the USA?
################
I believe peter answered your question. You thought it relevant enough to ask it, what do you make of his answer? His answer indicated he has spent a fair amount of time here. Does that answer your question and is the irrelevance of your question now apparent to you? Why or why not?
#############################
Your foreign opinions about internal US matters matter to US citizens, how?
How would peter know whether or how his opinions matter to us? You really want to ask American’s this question. His views on our internal matters are as unimportant to this American as your views are. First and foremost I am not going to check your race, nationality, gender, sexual preference, religion, or eye color when evaluating your opinion or his opinion. For the simple reason that I can always find someone with a different race gender etc that holds the same opinion. I’ll look at the quality of the opinion, whether its grounded in fact or pulled out of your ass. I will not consider the color of your ass, how much time your ass has spent in a given location or other features of said ass.
#############################
Your distempered attacks on US public figures are tolerable to Americans, why?
First, peter is not the one to ask. Ask Americans.
Attacks on public officials is a proper well accepted enjoyable sport in the United states. If peter lang were suggesting we play rugby I’d tell him to piss up a rope. But if he wants to play a wonderful american sport of bashing politicians he is welcomed to play. It’s our national past time and he honors our traditions by attempting to play. We play that sport in a universal way. For example, we americans feel free to criticize the leaders of Isreal, North Korea, Iran, various nutjobs in Africa. How, being consistent, could we object to someone else playing our game.?
Bart R, it’s beyond me how you equate an Aussie criticising an American politician in a blog comment with, “Australian interference in domestic US politics”
‘Americans do that instead of whining like little babies on climate blogs about personal problems type 2 diabetes and foot surgery.’
It is difficult to imagine a more trivial and disingenuous complaint. From someone with endless braggadocio about cholesterol, daughters education, lake, boat, diet, wife’s occupation, past IT triumphs, putting bags over women’s heads, juvenile and homophobic jibes about cross dressing, whines about being racially profiled by being called a redneck etc etc.
I am more than a little bored by the opportunistic and hypocritical put downs. I don’t mind personal information – it is quite a tradition at CE. I don’t really expect passing comments to be dredged up out of context in some petty point scoring exercise.
We call yanks – septic tanks – get it? It’s rhyming slang.
LOL.
Are all Australians thin-skinned potty mouthed crybabies with food obsessions or just some of them? ROFLMAO
Are all Americans blustering fools and foul mouthed hypocrites who overshare their trivial opinions or just some of them.
RAOTHFFL
Shackle dragger.
Steven Mosher | March 3, 2014 at 2:26 pm |
Remind us.. you’ve spent how much time in the same hemisphere of the globe as the USA?
################
I believe peter answered your question. You thought it relevant enough to ask it, what do you make of his answer? His answer indicated he has spent a fair amount of time here. Does that answer your question and is the irrelevance of your question now apparent to you? Why or why not?
Intelligent questions, SM. Peter Lang’s total time in the entire hemisphere is the equal to that of a teenager, and most of it spent in Canadastan or Europe, with apparently mere months or weeks in Nevada. He does not know the lot in life of a typical American, how US citizens live and work and what US values are. He’s pretending deep knowledge of a freaking Presidential appointee from the far side of the globe. So, yeah, the degree of relevance of my question is illuminated by how dim Peter Lang’s real knowledge of what he opines about is.
#############################
Your foreign opinions about internal US matters matter to US citizens, how?
How would peter know whether or how his opinions matter to us? You really want to ask American’s this question. His views on our internal matters are as unimportant to this American as your views are. First and foremost I am not going to check your race, nationality, gender, sexual preference, religion, or eye color when evaluating your opinion or his opinion. For the simple reason that I can always find someone with a different race gender etc that holds the same opinion. I’ll look at the quality of the opinion, whether its grounded in fact or pulled out of your ass. I will not consider the color of your ass, how much time your ass has spent in a given location or other features of said ass.
Less intelligent questions, SM.
That Peter is on the far side of the planet, with only a few weeks spent in the USA, and less than the time it takes an American to grow old enough to get a driver’s license spent on the same continent or even in the same half of the world as US citizens, how would Peter know is kinda the relevant point, because Peter’s got next to nothing to go on from his position as far from America as one can get and not tread water. This wasn’t a question about Peter Lang’s RACE, NATIONAL ORIGIN, GENDER, SEXUAL PREFERENCE, RELIGION, or EYE COLOR, but about his qualification to express the opinions he holds as anything more valid than the opinion a kangaroo has about bald eagles. So the opinion’s already at a deficit, which is legitimate to consider about its quality as an opinion.
Is an activist in Australia the same as an activist in the USA? They don’t even share the same political system as the US. Is “real progress” in Australia the same as in the USA? That’s not to do with the color of whatever piece of anatomy you choose to fixate on, that’s about how alien concepts translate across cultures.
#############################
Your distempered attacks on US public figures are tolerable to Americans, why?
First, peter is not the one to ask. Ask Americans.
Attacks on public officials is a proper well accepted enjoyable sport in the United states. If peter lang were suggesting we play rugby I’d tell him to piss up a rope. But if he wants to play a wonderful american sport of bashing politicians he is welcomed to play. It’s our national past time and he honors our traditions by attempting to play. We play that sport in a universal way. For example, we americans feel free to criticize the leaders of Isreal, North Korea, Iran, various nutjobs in Africa. How, being consistent, could we object to someone else playing our game.?
Every US citizen is welcome to express their opinion of every US public official. That’s all cool. But bringing in foreign ringers from outside leagues is legitimate, how? If he wants to bash Australian politicians, that’s entirely cool. If he wants to bash Canadian or French or Russian politicians in the USA, that’s cool. But if you don’t get what’s wrong with, say, a Chinese government-owned corporation funding the campaign of a candidate for the US Presidency, or an Australian leveraging media footprint to skew an election or bill or other matter before Congress, then you’ve been out of touch with some of the biggest controversies in US politics.
I call disingenuous on you, Mosher, and the cadre of people pretending not to get what the issue with foreign intereference is..
Like: phatboy | March 3, 2014 at 3:08 pm | it’s beyond me how you equate an Aussie criticising an American politician in a blog comment with, “Australian interference in domestic US politics”
Here’s how this works, so you can follow: Peter Lang’s livelihood and business interests depend on the outcome of what the US Congress does, but he’s not a citizen, so he, like George III or any other foreigner, does not get a vote or a say in what the US Congress deems in the interest of the USA, as much as Peter Lang would long for it to be otherwise. That’s the very foundation of the Declaration of Independence. No foreign power has such sway. That’s why when an Aussie seeks to influence what Americans in Congress do, it equates to interference in domestic US politics, no less than if, for example, Putin landed tanks and gunships within the borders of a sovereign territory.
To remind you, a blast from Civics class:
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
Got it now?
Let’s see if I have got this right. Insulting one or other id_ot American is the same as invading Crimea?
Well don barty – you have outdone yourself.
Really, Bart?
When Peter Lang (or anyone else) opines on the scientific smarts (or lack thereof) of John Holdren, this is NOT an attack on America by a non-American – it is simply stating that Holdren’s views (which have been published) are wacky. This statement would be true if Holdren were an Australian or a Zimbabwean, so has nothing to do with his nationality (and they certainly aren’t the views of most Americans).
Remember that he and another doomsayer, Paul Ehrlich, once warned that there would be mass starvation and environmental upheaval as a result of overpopulation (it didn’t happen as predicted).
He also (believe it or not!) seriously suggested shooting massive amounts of sulfuric acid into the stratosphere to save the planet from global warming.
And now he is the scientific advisor to President Obama.
Max
manacker | March 4, 2014 at 3:02 am |
See, I’m not going to point out that your arguments are made while sitting in George III’s homeland, as that’s irrelevant to this; however, your arguments entirely misunderstand the foundation of the US political system.. which is the point. Foreigners do not understand the US political system, and do not understand that it is a basic and founding tenet of US history to reject foreign adventure upon our shores as an anti-democratic exercise.
The Republic wasn’t founded by people who wanted absentee landlords overseas to tax us and tell us what to do.
Why do you think it’s tolerable in 2014 any more than in 1776?
Do schools in Foreignland teach so little of US History?
Heh, it was founded by people who didn’t want to pay the national security bills.
=========
kim | March 4, 2014 at 10:10 am |
It was founded, for the benefit of those who came after them, by patriots who would rather spill their own blood in defense of the national security than pay foreign landlords or put their necks under the boots of foreign opinion.
Is there no limit to the things kim knows nothing about and has absolutely backwards?
Frame of reference, point of view, perspective, fella. That had been a costly war with the beginning to boil frogs.
==================
Bart R, from one frame of reference I’m completely in agreement with you. The patriots who founded the American Experiment did find that shedding their own blood in defense of national security was both cheaper and more honorable than depending upon foreigners. Americans still find it so.
Well, until someone hopes to change that.
==========================
The England et al paper analyzing how energy in trade winds is compensating the temperature rise and contributing to the pause. Other papers by Sander and by Schmidt claim that volcanic aerosols could do the same but this effect appears much smaller. See the CSALT model for the contribution of free energy factors.
The Cause of the Pause is due to Thermodynamic Laws.
England cherrypicks data to inflate a narrative.
Why pick 1992-2011 for a data series intended to throw light on the hiatus? Nothing to do with a big fat 4 year El Nino at the start and 2 year La Nina at the end?
It’s actually standard thermodynamic physics. The free energy of the system is the standard measure of a system’s retained energy. In terms of components, the free energy consists of a thermal part represented by temperature and a heat capacity, kinetic forms of energy represented by velocity (in this case wind) and pressure, latent energy, and potential energy terms.
As the trade winds pick up, the temperature can be lower while the free energy maintains a stable value. That is exactly what is happening. The earth is one of those systems that absolutely requires an accounting of its energy terms and this is possible because of the relatively few ways that energy can leave the system (radiative loss and that’s it).
So as CO2 builds up, the retained free energy of the system builds up, expressed as rising temperature, increased wind velocity, fluctuating pressure, and melting of ice and other terms. To not take all these into account makes the skeptics bad bookkeepers.
Another odd idea from the webster. Does he specialize in missing the point of studies?
England et al did indeed talk about trade winds – all in terms of increased mixing in the oceans in the current cool Pacific mode. .
It is indeed all thermodynamic. The change in planetary heat content is the difference between incoming and outgoing energy at TOA.
d(W&H)/dt = energy in (J/s) – energy out (J/s)
Where W&H is work and heat – and includes enthalpy, internal, kinetic and potential energy. There are a few other minor terms on the right hand side. Heat from radioactive decay and core cooling especially – but including momentum losses to friction as the Earth’s spin slows.
What really matters is ocean heat and we are really not sure how this is changing despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
All it takes is to do the modeling correctly. Then one can map out the global temperature with this kind of fidelity:
http://imageshack.com/a/img842/2517/r2f8.gif
Every one of these peaks and valleys has a specific origin related to the forcing being applied to the earth’s atmosphere.
What do you think powers the wind?
It is an energy differential, the difference between warm and cool locations.
Doc,
Wind contains energy, heat contains energy. Free energy is partitioned AND conserved. Get it?
@whut
Note: Pressure is potential energy not kinetic.
Changes in LOD included kinetic energy changes of wind & ocean currents.
Pressure is a force per area. It takes an EE to school a UMN MechE PhD, typical.
Pielke’s response gutted and flayed Holdren, and justifiably so …
w.
Agree. Holdren was way out of bounds in what he said and Pielke thoroughly destroyed any credible basis for Holdren’s comments about him. .
The alarmists’ new focus is on weather extremes, the most effectively persuasive for invoking intuited guilt. The globes warms, hey, it’s a good. Climate changes, as it always has. But weather extremes? Hide the virgins, we’re praying to primitive gods and sacrificing senselessly in this endeavour, and it will be played to the max for the rubes, who will suffer.
But that’s the theme, and it will have its blow. Nevermind the data isn’t there; that’s never mattered before.
=============
Heh, over at Watts Up, I called Pielke Fils a three percenter, by Executive Order.
============
Yes, but Holdren doesn’t give a rat’s a…e
Politicians, anywhere and anytime. are repulsive people
ian18888: “Politicians, anywhere and anytime. are repulsive people.” Ian. I’ve dealt with many politicians in the UK and Australia and some from other countries, I’ve known a number with high standards of morality and integrity who are genuinely concerned with people’s welfare. Yes, they are a minority, and in Australia and, I think, the UK the proportion has definitely dropped in the last few decades. But your sweeping condemnation is incorrect.
@Faustino
I’ve dealt with them too, at all levels, in many countries, over a very considerable period
The few who may have some integrity at the start are either corrupted to the abuse of power within a term or two, or are kicked out of the tent by their peers
Obviously, on this topic I regard you as a Pollyanna. So be it
Faustino,
I agree 97% with that comment. I disagree that those with “high standards of morality and integrity who are genuinely concerned with people’s welfare […] are a minority,” I think they are the majority.
But the politicians have to play by the rules of politics. And that means they have to try to cover their backside every time they open their mouth or write something. That means they have to try to incorporate all the caveats into virtually every sentence [exaggeration to emphasise the point]. And we make the rules by the way we support the unethical and immoral behaviour of the media and now the social media.
We get the politicians we elect, and they can only be elected, be effective, and remain in a position of influence if they play by the rules of politics.
Pielke Jr is a footnote.
What does that make you?
“Pielke Jr is a footnote.”
Which is why the science advisor to the president of the United States of America felt it necessary to say anything at all about his senate testimony. Yeah, that’s the ticket… He’s a footnote.
Of course you didn’t understand the sarcasm. Pielke Junior had supplied an escape clause qualification in a FOOTNOTE to his congressional testimony that the senator had neglected to read.
See Footnote 21.
WHT,
Ha ha, of course. I should have seen that. Good one.
My bias got in the way ;~)
I’m curious. Can anyone point to any basis for the credibility of John Holdren? However much one may disagree with James Hansen, he at least has the integrity to resign his position in order to actively pursue his agenda. Holdren has no problems with pursuing his while on the government payroll. And why is a guy who has rarely, if ever, been on the side of a debate that has proven to be correct being paid to advise the President?
James Hansen (creator of the consensus that attacks skeptics as equivalent to holocaust deniers) invoking Galileo on behalf of the consensus is ab-so-freakin’-lutely hilarious.
The roles are exactly the reverse of what Hansen and his many acolytes suggest. The marriage between post-modern “science” and the state in CAGW makes the assault by the consensus and the powers that were on Galileo look like child’s play. The scientific consensus only tried to silence one man in its attacks on Galileo. The CAGW government/scientific complex seeks to control the lives of billions of people.
The CAGW consensus isn’t speaking truth to power, it is power telling those who dissent to shut the hell up.
It’s as if Germany likened itself to the Spartan 300 in justifying its invasion of Poland.
The church did Galileo for for using the Bible to support his views, not for his views, the Theocracy was a ‘closed shop’, rather like being on the ‘Team’.
Regardin’ information gettin’ out.
http://beththeserf.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/what-are-blogs-good-for-anyway-fer-serfs/
Doc Martyn,
Yes, and the consensus among the scientists was heliocentrism, in concordance with their sponsors. Because their sponsors believed heliocentrism to be required by scripture, the consensus scientists conformed their scientific views accordingly.
Some tried to hold both views, that Galileo’s observations were accurate, but that they were never the less untrue. Kinda like the CAGW reaction to the pause.
Actually, my yes was not accurate. The Church convicted Galileo because he maintained his views despite the belief by the Church that his conclusions were contrary to scripture. Galileo did not get in trouble for claiming the Bible supported his views, but for claiming that if the Bible was contrary to his views, it should not be viewed as authoritative, ie. contrary provisions were allegorical..
I’m not sure it matters whether you’re the maverick or the mainstream just that your right. But if your want to be the lone cowboy then don’t let me stop you.
GaryM, have a read of these:-
http://catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0033.html
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/galileoaccount.html
as you will note, the case was rather complicated, but his major problem was his ‘Letter to Castelli’;
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/lettercastelli.html
” As therefore the Bible, although dictated by the Holy Spirit, admits, from the reasons given above, in many passages of an interpretation other than the literal one; and as, moreover, we cannot maintain with certainty that all interpreters are inspired by God, I think it would be the part of wisdom not to allow any one to apply passages of Scripture in such a way as to force them to support, as true, conclusions concerning nature the contrary of which may afterwards be revealed by the evidence of our senses or by necessary demonstration.
Who will set bounds to man’s understanding? ”
The answer to that question was the Inquisition, under the command of the Pope.
Doc Martyn,
Yes, the Letter to Casteli is one of the sources for what I wrote.
He did not say the Bible supported his claim, but that to the extent it contradicted it, the Bible was not to be taken literally.
“Linky rather than thinky.”
Cute :-)
ECS is indistinguishable from 7C, which would be extinction level catastrophic. A strong argument on the side of reducing emissions ASAP.
lolwot
Naw. It’s not really a “strong argument” for anything.
It’s simply a silly gross exaggeration that no one in his right mind will take seriously.
Do you?
Max
If it’s indistinguishable from 7C then it’s indistinguishable from extinction level catastrophic.
Anything of that nature has to be taken very seriously.
7C ECS would be an extinction level catastrophe, and we cannot rule that out. Current data is indistinguishable from 7C ECS.
There are few other threats on Earth with such magnitude as this. The few others on the list include:
-Nuclear war
-Global pandemic
Having trouble even coming up with more than that…That’s how serious this is and why the world is so driven to coming up with a solution.
come on lolwot if you’re trying to spread fear and panic you’ll have to do better than that.
hows about
* asteroid strike
* megavolcanos
* solar flares (for modern human society)
* sentient computers
* and of course the IRS and Obamacare
there you go. add those to your sandwich board.
oops! forgot population growth, all those scary brown babies to feed!
As I pointed out below megavolcanoes and asteroids are so infrequent that the odds of either occurring in the next 300 years is less than 0.1%
A disaster caused by climate change is one of the very few mega scale disasters that hits us squarely on that timeframe.
If you find that scary, perhaps you should hold that thought rather than trying to suppress it.
Do I need to explain I’m parodying your hollywood nonsense
I hear tonight you’re up for highest ECS in a blog or forum
Lets work out the frequency of CAGW.
So that’s never divided by 4.5 billion years which equals 0
Inaccuracy != parody
CAGW can only happen in the timeframe when humans are releasing huge amounts of GHG. Which is now.
Some thoughts on AGW and CAGW mitigation and policies:
CAGW is a risk, but not as much of a risk as the policies that are proposed to mitigate it.
We do need to manage the CAGW risk, but we need to manage it in balance with all other risks.
I support GHG mitigation policies, but I want to be persuaded they have high probability that the benefits will exceed the costs, and do so in all time periods from now. I believe that is achievable, but not with the policies that have been advocated over the past 20 years.
There are four main inputs needed for policy analysis (IMO):
1. Climate sensitivity
2. Damage function (net cost/benefit per degree of average global temperature change – i.e. for both warming and cooling)
3. The rate of global decarbonisation that can be achieved with ‘no regrets’ policies – i.e. at no net cost irrespective of the estimated benefits of reduced GHG emissions
4. The probability that the chosen policy will deliver the expected benefits
These are expanded below:
1. ‘Climate sensitivity’ (2xCO2): the central estimate of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) has been around 3 C for about three decades, although some recent estimates are lower. The actual value of ECS is highly uncertain. However, since the central estimate and uncertainty has changed little in three decades, it seems unlikely the uncertainty will be reduced by much in the near future. Therefore, we need to work with the best estimates of ECS we have available.
2. The ‘damage function’ is much more uncertain than climate sensitivity. I suspect AGW may be more positive and net benefits will extend to higher temperature increases than current estimates suggest. Why do I suspect this? Life thrived during warming events and struggled during cooling events; life thrived when the planet was warmer than now and struggled when colder. According to the chart “500 miooin years of climate change” here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record , we are in one of only three coldhouse phases since multi-cell life began, about 600 million years ago. Only once in the past 600 million years has the planet been as cold as it has been for the past 4 million years. Since life thrived when warmer than now, it strains credulity to assert the planet is at the optimum temperature for life just because we are here now.
3. The rate of decarbonisation of the global economy that will be achieved without global policies: I suspect the world can achieve decarbonisation rates that will be faster if market driven than if attempted by international legally binding agreements. Nordhaus (2008) “A Question of Balance” (Table 5-7, p103) estimates an ‘Optimal Carbon Tax’ policy would reduce CO2 concentrations in 2100 by 100 ppmv (from 686 to 586 ppmv). Just nuclear replacing coal in electricity generation by 2045 could achieve a reduction of 66 ppmv – i.e. this action alone could achieved 2/3 of what an optimum global tax policy (an unrealistic, academic idea) is claimed would achieve. But that’s not all. Nuclear power would also replace gas generation and nuclear-generated electricity would replace some gas for heating and some oil for land transport. And nuclear power could produce effectively unlimited transport fuels. So, without having to worry about controlling population growth or implementing and maintaining global agreements to force energy efficiency improvements, cheap nuclear energy could achieve the same emissions reductions as the ‘Optimal Carbon Tax’ but without the bureaucracy, the politics, the international disputes, etc. To achieve this, we need policies to remove the impediments that are preventing the world from having low cost nuclear power.
4. The probability that the chosen policy will deliver the expected benefits: As far as I know, virtually no research has been done to estimate the probability that global carbon pricing and other such schemes could be implemented and maintained for the period needed – e.g. all this century. Richard Tol wrote this short article about a year ago: http://www.voxeu.org/article/global-climate-talks-if-17th-you-don-t-succeed .
Probability that mitigation policies would succeed
Are there any authoritative analyses that evaluate the probability that the mitigation policies proposed by their advocates would succeed in delivering the claimed benefits?
The question is about the probability of success in the real world given the real world constraints such as international diplomacy, trade, conflict, international and domestic economics and politics, etc.
The expected benefits must be clearly specified in terms of climate damages avoided. They must be measurable benefits (of climate damages avoided) and the dates by which those benefits would be realised.
Some examples of subordinate questions that may help to understand what is involved in answering the primary question above are added below (I’ve used Australia’s ETS as an example but the questions can be applied to all the advocated mitigation policies):
1. How much would Australia’s ETS change sea levels by 2050 and by 2100? Provide the answer in units of length, with mean, standard deviation
2. How much would Australia’s ETS, if it lasted, change global average surface temperature? Answer in units of temperature with mean, standard deviation.
3. How much would it change the productivity of the land? Answer in $ of change to GDP, with mean, standard deviation and probability distribution.
4. What is the probability distribution of climate damages avoided if the ETS lasted to 2100? Answer in real 2013 dollars, with mean, standard deviation.
5. What is the probability that the ETS would last to 2100?
6. What is the probability that the world will implement Australia’s ETS?
7. What is the probability that the world will implement any global ETS?
8. What is the probability that a global ETS will survive for 100 years?
9. What is the probability a global ETS, if implemented, would be maintained for 100 years with high participation rate (e.g. at least 80% of all GHG emissions from all man caused sources from all sectors of all economies in all countries of the world)?
My submission to the Australian Senate hearings on Repeal of the Carbon Tax Legislation may be of interest (Submission No.2 here: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Clean_Energy_Legislation/Submissions )
Peter, you write ” Therefore, we need to work with the best estimates of ECS we have available.”
Who decides what the best estimate is? Why is my estimate of 0.0 C to 1 place of decimals or 2 significant figures any less reliable than any other figure?
Peter,
You had these two links in an old comment here that I found very interesting:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/01/16/zero-emission-synfuel-from-seawater/
http://defensetech.org/2012/10/02/converting-sea-water-to-navy-jet-fuel/
I wonder if jet fuel from sea water could be the ultimate storage for renewables. I understand that modern gas power plants use turbines that are similar to jet engines. Maybe they could also use jet fuel. Maybe we could get additional storage from capturing the pressure from the greenies head’s exploding.
US Navy has conducted research that suggest jet fuel (and petrol/gasolene, diesel and all other fuels) can be produced from sea water for about $3-$6 a gallon using prices fro currently available technologies for all, parts of the processing. This is at sea, I expect it would be cheaper to do it on land and using high temperature nuclear reactors to provide the hydrogen rather than by hydrolysis which is the process the cost estimate is based on.
However, I don’t see using renewables as viable. I see the least cost way to generate most of the world’s electricity will be nuclear power (once we remove the impediments that are blocking it from being cheap). Renewables are very expensive, and have many physical constraints that I suspect means they are unlikely to ever provide a significant contribution to the worlds electricity generation. You may find this interesting. Look first at Figure 6 to see a comparison of costs of a complete electricity system to produce low emissions electricity. Cost comparisons are provided for total capital cost for the whole system including the additional transmission lines needed, for cost of electricity from the whole system and CO2 abatement cost for the whole system. Four renewables and one nuclear scenario are compared.
Importantly, in reference to your question about using jet fuel for gas turbines, the first of the four renewables scenarios is for a 100% renewables electricity system using biofuel to power the gas turbines. So the costing is relevant to your question, although the cost of biofuel is estimated to be very high (because of the logistical issues invloved swith providing a biofuel supply that has the security of supply required for a back up system throughout all seasons, long droughts, etc – 98% availability is required (like our gas generators).
Sorry, forgot the link: See Figure 6 here: http://oznucforum.customer.netspace.net.au/TP4PLang.pdf
Policy analysist will use a range of estimates and probabilities of them being correct. I expect they are most likely to use the IPCC’s pdfs. To do otherwise would make it too difficult to get the important, relevant conclusion of their work accepted.
The intent of my comment is to suggest we need to move away from the focus on climate sensitivity and move to the other more important (IMO) inputs needed for climate mitigation policy analysis: 2) damage function; 3) likely ‘no regrets’ rate of decarbonisation of the global economy; and 4) probability the chosen policy will deliver the claimed climate damages avoided.
Peter, you write “The intent of my comment is to suggest we need to move away from the focus on climate sensitivity and move to the other more important (IMO) inputs needed for climate mitigation policy analysis:”
Fair enough. But if the climate sensitivity is indistinguishable from zero, then all those efforts are a complete waste of time and money. So it seems to me that unless there is a way of deciding what the ECS is, then there is no point in doing anything. This would save a lot of money.
Jim Cripwell,
The same argument applies to the ‘damage function’ and the ‘rate of decarbonisation of the global economy’. If the ‘damage function’ is small then it doesn’t matter what climate sensitivity is, because there would be negligible damage from projected AGW. In fact, AGW may deliver net benefits.
Similarly, if we can decarbonise the global economy with net economic benefits irrespective of any claimed climate damages avoided, then it doesn’t matter what climate sensitivity is because we’ll decarbonise anyway – if we can get over the hurdles (created by bad policies in the past) that are blocking progress.
But the important difference between climate sensitivity and the other two factors is that we’ve had 30+ years of massive amounts of research into climate sensitivity. But despite all the focus on it the central estimate and uncertainty has hardly changed in that time. So, it is unlikely there will be a sudden shift.
On the other had, there has been negligible research into the damage function, the rate that decarbonisation of the global economy could take place at net economic benefits irrespective of any claimed climate benefits and the probability that the advocated international global mitigation policies would deliver the claimed climate damages avoided.
Therefore, it seems obvious to me we are wasting an enormous amount of money on trying to reduce the uncertainty in climate sensitivity instead of addressing the other three inputs needed for proper policy analysis.
The warmists are always whining about how CO2 is acidifying the oceans and destroying coral reefs. Jet fuel from sea water looks like something that might actually be able to be targeted at this alleged problem.
” I suspect AGW may be more positive and net benefits will extend to higher temperature increases than current estimates suggest. Why do I suspect this? Life thrived during warming events and struggled during cooling events; life thrived when the planet was warmer than now and struggled when colder. According to the chart “500 miooin years of climate change” here:”
This doesn’t take into account rate of change and the complex web of interaction between species in the wild.
To change global climate – and regional with it – means a large scale reconfiguration of the habitat ranges of various species, not only forcing species out of ranges they currently inhabit, but allowing them to enter ranges they never previously did. Problems that will arise include:
-Where species have nowhere to go (barrier preventing poleward movement)
-Where species cannot move fast enough (warming too rapid)
-Where species lose contact with other species they depend on (other species fails to shift with them)
-Where species come into contact with other competitive species they never had to live alongside before.
There is a rate of warming that will cause enough upheaval to result in a mass extinction event across the board. That rate of warming will have to be something not experienced in the past (or else the extinction event would have already happened and what we have today would be species which could survive it).
There is no known past parallel to 2C warming above current levels occurring in a matter of centuries.
Note that CO2 plant fertilization also presents a similar threat in terms of an upheaval of natural habitats – with some plants and insects able to take advantage of this to the detriment of others.
How this will look is similar to the mass honeybee die-off around the world but on a massive scale covering hundreds or thousands of species as food chains break down.
Rapid warming has happened before, lolwot. And life thrived – e.g. from glacial to near present temps in 7 years (14,500 years ago) and in 9 years (11,500 years ago) in Ireland, Iceland and Greenland. Life loves warming, but struggles in cooling and dies out. It’s all happened before. So, no persuasive evidence to support your doomsday beliefs, lolwot.
One point rarely mentioned is that policies to mitigate CAGW have a fast feedback and so can be easily throttled, rapidly scaled back or pushed forward depending on the observed outcome. Even rapidly reversed if they cause problems.
Changes to climate on the other-hand have huge inertia and are effectively irreversible on timescales of at least decades. Meaning that even once you decide to apply the breaks you are looking at decades more climate change before those breaks have effect.
Deepening Energy Crisis: Britain Has Become ‘Uninvestable’, Analyst Warns Danny Fortson, The Sunday Times
lolwot,
RE: There is no known past parallel to 2C warming above current levels occurring in a matter of centuries.
As I understand it, the paleo record shows that climatic shifts occured more rapidily and with bigger swings in the past than anything recent.
“John Holdren’s recent Congressional testimony attacks Pielke Jr’s views on extreme weather.”
Pielke as he patiently demonstrates in his reply to Holdren, is in fact not outside the mainstream in this area as Holdren claims, but smack in the middle of the stream. Holdren is making false statements that are clearly damaging to dr. Pielke’s reputation.
What would Mikey do?
I’m sure he can rely on the climate science defence fund (giggle).
I post with respect to the validation of climate models. I refer to Smith et al Science August 2007 pp 796 to 799. This paper takes the HAD/CRU temperature data up to 2004, and predicts what the average temperature should be in 2014. It details the calibration process, and gives data that can be falsified. This forecast is that the temperature anomaly in 2014 should be 0.30 +/- 0.21 C above the average anomaly in 2004.
Now the average anomaly in 2004, according to the HAD/CRU 4 data was 0.44 C. So the forecast is that 2014 should have an average of 0.74 C, and the lower limit should be 0.53 C.
We know that the UK Met. Office quietly removed this forecast from it’s web site on 24 Dec 2012. However, so far as I am aware, no statement was made as to why this forecast was wrong, nor why we should believe that new one is any more accurate than the old one.
We now have the first data point for 2014, namely the January figure. This wa 0.51 C. So if the valure of 0.74 is the be true by the end of this year, the average for the rest of the year needs to be 0.77 C. If the actual temperature is to be above 0.53 C, then the rest of the year must average 0.53 C. I will update this data on a monthly basis.
There are very few predictions based on climate models, that are as clear as Smith et al, and easily falsifiable. If anyone knows of any others, I would be grateful for references. In the meanwhile, the fact that the 2014 could be close to the lower limit of the forecast, gives a strong indication that, to date, no climate model has the capability of forecasting the future.
“…gives a strong indication that, to date, no climate model has the capability of forecasting the future.”
____
And expecting any climate model to do such, misses the value of climate models.
R. Gates you write “And expecting any climate model to do such, misses the value of climate models.”
If climate models have no value in predicting the future, on what basis do we conclude that CAGW is a problem?
It’s must understanding they are best used for multi-decadal projections where natural variability cancels out.
Jim,
You must mean, “on what basis do we conclude that AGW is a problem?” for certainly, if CAGW exists at all, it would, by definition be a problem. But back to the overall point related to models and their ability to forecast the future. If you want specifics over short-term time horizons, then forget it– the models won’t get you that. Too much natural variability in the system. If you want general trends over the longer term, then great, the models can help you with that, and even tell you the most important thing– why the trends are happening. Specifically the models are telling us, that over the long-term (multi-decadal to century scale), in the climate system we’ll see:
1) General accumulation of energy in the climate system
2) General decline of glacial ice mass
3) Decline of seasonal Arctic Sea ice (and Antarctic sea ice later in the 21st century)
4) Decline in Permafrost
5) Enhances Brewer-Dobson curculation
6) Expansion of the tropical tropopause
7) Cooling of the stratosphere
8) Increased ocean heat content
9) Rising sea levels
10) Increasingly acidic ocean
11) Enhanced hydrological cycle
12) Increased tropospheric temperatures (remember, over multi-decadal time frames!)
All 12 of these have been observed. Strong evidence that the general dynamical role of increased anthropogenic GHG’s in altering the energy balance of the climate system is well represented in the models. The uncertainty monster always exists of course in honest scientific inquiry, but it is s very tiny monster in regards to anthropogenic forcing of the climate and a high degree of confidence can therefore be given to the role of humans in altering the energy balance of the climate system.
R Gates, you write “All 12 of these have been observed.”
And if future observations show that these trends have been reversed, then it is of no consequence what the models say. The whole issue, is can we rely on the forecasts of the models over the long term? We know they are useless in the short and medium terms. There is no practical way of proving that they are any good over the long term. I can think of no good reason why we should believe they are any good in the long term.
“And if future observations show that these trends have been reversed, then it is of no consequence what the models say.”
____
Reversal of some of these trends (but not all) would be catastrophic to the general AGW theory. For example, if ocean heat content decline, Arctic sea ice had sustained seasonal increases, and sea level all declined over a period of ten years, that would be major problem for the theory as that would represent a huge decline in energy content of the climate system.
The model used by Smith et al is not a climate model. It’s a decadal forecast model.
RG your list is good
but there are so many more that substantiate consensus climate science
A) Temporarily increased wind energy helping to sustain the pause
B) Temporarily La Nina conditions helping to sustain the pause
C) Eventually these will resort to neutral, restoring the increase
There are dozens and dozens of substantiating observations, of which skeptics refuse to consider,
Jim Cripwell
You ask for other predictions that went sour.
There is the now infamous Hansen 1988 prediction, which projected warming at twice the rate actually observed, even though GHG emissions were slightly higher than the (business as usual) Case A.
There is the IPCC TAR projection of 0.15 to 0.3C per decade followed by the AR4 projection of 0.2C per decade for the first decades of this century (it has actually cooled since 2001).
Then there is Lean and Rind 2009, which predicted warming of 0.15C over the 5 years from 2009 to 2014 (= a rate of 0.3C per decade or twice the decadal rate predicted by IPCC of 0.2C per decade.):
As we know, it actually cooled slightly over these five years.
Three strikes, yer OUT!
Max
“even though GHG emissions were slightly higher than the (business as usual) Case A.”
No they weren’t, they were lower than case B.
Max, I note that lolwot writes “No they weren’t, they were lower than case B.” This is one of my points. Most of the other predictions are so weasel worded that then can be made to mean almost anything. Smith et al is so clearly stated that there is no way to claim that it says something that it does not say.
JCH writes “The model used by Smith et al is not a climate model. It’s a decadal forecast model.”
It struck me when I read this, that the comment was irrelevant. I could not understand why. Now I think I understand. First I cannot see why a decadal forecast model cannot be classified as a climate model, but let us assume JCH is correct.
The procedure used to calibrate the Smith et al decadal forecast model is PRECISELY the same as the procedure used to calibrate all climate models. The procedures are identical. So if the procedure fails miserably to give a decadal forecast model predictive capabilities, then I can see no reason to believe this same procedure will be any better with climate models.
From Jenkin’s WSJ piece, the most eloquent indictment of climate change alarmism I’ve ever heard:
“Surely, some kind of ending is upon us. Last week climate protesters demanded the silencing of Charles Krauthammer for a Washington Post column that notices uncertainties in the global warming hypothesis. In coming weeks a libel trial gets under way brought by Penn State’s Michael Mann, author of the famed hockey stick, against National Review, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, writer Rand Simberg and roving commentator Mark Steyn for making wisecracks about his climate work. The New York Times runs a cartoon of a climate “denier” being stabbed with an icicle.
These are indications of a political movement turned to defending its self-image as its cause goes down the drain. That’s how thoroughly defunct, dead, expired is the idea that humanity might take charge of earth’s atmosphere through some supreme triumph of the global regulatory state over democracy, sovereignty, nationalism and political self-interest, the very facts of political human nature.”
Can’t help repeating myself. The man’s caught the absurdity of the warmist cause in language that’s almost Jeffersonian in its sweep.
“These are indications of a political movement turned to defending its self-image as its cause goes down the drain. That’s how thoroughly defunct, dead, expired is the idea that humanity might take charge of earth’s atmosphere through some supreme triumph of the global regulatory state over democracy, sovereignty, nationalism and political self-interest, the very facts of political human nature.”
Only if he misrepresents a libel lawsuit and mangles a cartoon.
Correcting Steyn’s broken link to Robert Tracinski’s excellent The Original Sin of Global Warming The Federalist.
Restore the scientific method and rational political policy making.
Thanks for the Lomborg piece. I find his thinking/methodolog quite persuasive even if I question all of his figures – he was also the guy who inspired me to read WG1 for TAR, AR4, AR5. A hero in this debate.
I think it’s humorous that these people are offended by the icicle cartoon penned by David Rees.
I have been using Rees’ motto MNFTIU over the years as a kind of trash talk in-joke. Nothing he says can ever be taken seriously, no matter how much it resembles the real world.
Those that can’t take the joke and have to lash back are the actual “moral bullies” that Holman Jenkins refers to.
Here’s just some of what the government funded consensus Gallileos of the CAGW movement are doing:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304026804579411021545493020?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304026804579411021545493020.html
Headline: Jenkins: Personal Score-Settling Is the New Climate Agenda
‘Surely some kind of ending is upon us…’
‘Surely some revelation is at hand …
And what rough beast, its hour come at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.’
H/t WS Journal and WB Yeats.
Southern Sea Ice Area Minimum 2nd Highest on Record. http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Real world data. It’s what’s for dinner.
:-)
Holdren says “Roger Pielke Jr. is not an expert” aha ! I believe this was about extreme events and climate change (“not”) cause and effect. I ask, just who is the amateur here? Typical of Holdren – personalize and discredit. However, Pielke Jr IS QUOTING experts, namely the IPCC. See http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2013/10/coverage-of-extreme-events-in-ipcc-ar5.html where he says he did “compile some key statements from the IPCC AR5 WGI Chapter 2 on extremes.
• “There is limited evidence of changes in extremes associated with other climate variables since the mid-20th century”
• “Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin”
• “In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale”
• “… low confidence in observed trends in small-scale severe weather phenomena such as hail and thunderstorms because of historical data inhomogeneities and inadequacies in monitoring systems”
• “… there is not enough evidence at present to suggest more than low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the middle of the 20th century due to lack of direct observations, geographical inconsistencies in the trends, and dependencies of inferred trends on the index choice.
Based on updated studies, AR4 conclusions regarding global increasing trends in drought since the 1970s were probably overstated. However, it is likely that the frequency and intensity of drought has increased in the Mediterranean and West Africa and decreased in central North America and north-west Australia since 1950”
• “confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones since 1900 is low”
“… not much more to be said — the data says what it says… , and (the data) says that the IPCC says there is no science basis to say extreme events are caused by climate change.
From the article:
The Energy Information Agency (EIA) has predicted that natural gas production in the US will continue to grow at an impressive pace. Right now output is close to 70 billion cubic feet a day and is expected to reach over 100 billion cubic feet per day by 2040. The trend is likely to continue without hitting a geologic “peak”, and along with this trend will come new marketing opportunities for America.
In an exclusive interview with Oilprice.com, EIA Administrator Adam Sieminski discusses:
What’s at stake in lifting the US crude export ban;
Whether lifting the ban is inevitable;
Why energy-related CO2 emissions will likely climb this year;
What we can expect from US coal output through 2014;
Why US natural gas production will continue to grow strongly;
Where we can expect (unexpectedly) new production to come from;
Why Alaska just might surprise us;
Where the biggest new shale opportunities lie;
How production increases might come from ‘non-shale’ formations;
The potential for Colombian shale;
What to expect from Mexico’s reforms;
What the Panama Canal expansion really means;
Why we will see new marketing opportunities for the US.
Interview by James Stafford of Oilprice.com
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2044313-the-boundless-u-s-natural-gas-boom-exclusive-interview-with-eia-chief
Because coal, petroleum, and natural gas are often targeted for reduced production by CAGW proponents, I feel it is important to keep front and center the effect of this business on communities and the nation. The oil industry provides jobs for people in all socio-economic strata. From rough necks with little education to BS chemists, electronics technicians, engineers of various stripe, PhDs, to executives. It is one of the best businesses a community can have. Any government policy has to take this into account.
From the article:
No offense to North Dakotans, but their state doesn’t exactly rush to mind when one thinks of the “happiest states” in America. According to the Gallop-Healthway Well-Being Index, however, the Peace Garden State deserves some recognition.
North Dakota made the jump from No. 19 in 2012 to the No. 1 spot in 2013. It unseated the far more predictable happy state of 2012, Hawaii.
The Gallop-Healthways Well-Being Index is based on a set of metrics that take into consideration residents’ personal relationships, economic stability, community, life outlook and physical health. Gallop polled more than 178,000 people across the U.S. for their data.
With all due praise for North Dakota state, the Gallop index shows that happiness may be a Midwest thing. Three of the top ten happiest states in the country border North Dakota: South Dakota, Nebraska and Minnesota. Three others in the top ten: Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado, are nearby as well.
North Dakota ranked first in two of Gallop’s sub-indexes: work environment and physical health.
Dakota’s recent oil boom has provided residents with well-paying jobs. The state has created 56,600 private-sector jobs since 2011, and it has the lowest unemployment rate in the country (3.1 percent).
…
http://www.ibtimes.com/gallup-poll-north-dakota-happiest-state-us-1557287
Both states are made up of very similar populations. North Dakota has an oil boom. South Dakota does not; so far anyway.
When I was a kid they used to study capital punishment in the Dakotas. North Dakota did not have capital punishment; South Dakota did. So one year ND would have 1 murder and SD would have 2.
I think the economic outlook makes the petroleum industry even more critical to the wellbeing of the US.
El Erian writes:
The good news is that each of these constraints on investment can – and should – be addressed; and recent US business investment data suggest some progress. The bad news is that it will take a lot more time, effort, and global coordination. In the meantime, the corporate sector will only gradually take on more of the heavy lifting. That will be enough to keep the advanced economies growing this year; unfortunately, it will not be enough to attain the faster growth that their citizens’ wellbeing – and that of the global economy – urgently requires.
Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/mohamed-a–el-erian-offers-six-reasons-why-business-investment-has-stalled–despite-firms–bulging-cash-reserves#hcMgX0EtdsuSGZi0.99
WSJ piece is excellent.
This bit stuck out:
“In coming weeks a libel trial gets under way brought by Penn State’s Michael Mann, author of the famed hockey stick, against National Review, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, writer Rand Simberg and roving commentator Mark Steyn for making wisecracks about his climate work”
Wisecracks? That’s an interesting way to describe fraud allegations.
I wonder if that counts as the WSJ misleading their readers? Or perhaps protecting them?
I keep seeing this. Supporters cannot bring themselves to actually admit what the defendants did. Interesting support.
The outcome of these trials is irrelevant to the arguments put forth in the article.
The trials are about free speech, which is important of course, but not relevant to the science of climate……or adaptation vs mitigation.
lolly,
I think you actually have a point. He’s clearly understating the case. I had the same reaction when I first read it. Overall however, I think it’s a splendid piece.
I think all of you should appreciate the whimsical writing, including reference to the Mann case. Wisecracks, I like it. Mann seems to like wisecracks too. I just hope the judge likes his representation of the “exonerating” inquiries. The judge might have a few wisecracks of his own.
‘Wisecrack’ is a perfectly good description for Steyn’s remark about Mann’s hockey stick when you consider how much baggage it carries. Here is my list of …
Top Ten Wisecracks about the Baggage Carried by Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick.
10. It takes the whole hockey team to carry it.
9. It needs its own sky cart.
8. If you cut the hockey stick into 1 foot sections, it would still not fit in the overhead compartment and would have to be checked.
7. William Connolley needed help to edit it all on Wikipedia.
6. Tamino does not have room for it all on his Open Mind blog.
5. The NAS Panel had to rent an extra storage room for it all.
4. The peer review process had to be redefined to handle it all.
3. If you hung it on the tip of the blade, it would turn it into a decline.
2. Andrew Montford had to write another book.
And finally, the number one wisecrack about the baggage carried by Michael Mann’s hockey stick:
1. Congress would have to legalize hemp in order to make a biodegradable bag robust enough to carry it all.
With respect to Santers silent but deadly volcano farts;
Estimates of human releases of SO2, 1850–2005
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/1101/2011/acp-11-1101-2011.pdf
Annual emissions from volcanoes
http://volcanoes.ca/Masaya/articulos/Halmer_JVGR'02.pdf
volcanoes about 18*10^12 grams per year
In 1975 mankind put 140*10^12 grams per year
At present it is about 100*10^12 grams per year
Unfortunately for your analysis Doc, all aerosols are not created equally (i.e. they don’t affect the climate the same). Human aerosols rarely penetrate to the heights in the stratosphere that volcanic aerosol can, and even between volcanoes, some launch aerosols higher up, even when the overall net aerosol output might be relatively low. The contrary is also true, some pretty large eruptions might not launch aerosols into the stratosphere to the same degree and it is these stratospheric aerosols that really make the difference in terms of affecting climate.
Both bacteria and fungi are present in the stratosphere and up to the mesosphere, these are injected during dust storms.eg Imshenetsky 1978.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/623455
Gates
” Human aerosols rarely penetrate to the heights in the stratosphere that volcanic aerosol can, and even between volcanoes, some launch aerosols higher up, even when the overall net aerosol output might be relatively low.”
However, Santer is arguing that the little volcanoes, who do no discharge much SO2 into the stratosphere, are causing an effect in tropospheric temperature.
Santer’s research team was really only concerned with stratospheric optical depth changes since the early 21st century and specifically the correlation of these changes with tropospheric temperatures:
“We identify statistically significant correlations between observations of stratospheric aerosol optical depth and satellite-based estimates of both tropospheric temperature and short-wave fluxes at the top of the atmosphere.”
There were about 3 moderate volcanoes that did the bulk of the cooling since 2000, and they were just large enough to lift enough aerosols into the stratosphere to affect global temperatures. Even in total, the volcanic aerosol effect only is responsible for a minor portion of the hiatus. Here’s a nice summary of the overall study from the Livermore web site:
https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2014/Feb/NR-14-02-13.html#.UxKhuM6sqdw
The effects of the volcanic aerosols are likely a fraction of the temperature compensation the last 15 years.
This doesn’t prevent Wondering Willis from claiming that volcanoes have never had an influence on global temperatures:
That nuttiness alone catapults w into the stratosphere.
The problem is that there is no sense of balance in the contributing factors among the skeptics.
The border between the troposphere and stratosphere,is at about 8 km at the poles and 18 km at the equator.
As it happens we know how high up matter is ejected from volcanoes, with respect to the volcanic eruption scale:-
A VEI of 2 ejects a million cubic meters of matter up to 5 km and occur, on average, weekly.
A VEI of 3 ejects a 10 million cubic meters of matter up to 15 km and occur, on average, yearly.
A VEI of 4 ejects a 100 million cubic meters of matter up to 25 km and occur, on average, once a decade.
http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/scales/VEI.html
Now I am sorry if you and Santer want to claim that the standard Volcanic Explosivity Index does not apply to modern volcanoes as you now believe that modern, small, volcanoes now eject more SO2 into the stratosphere, compared to those in the past.
Now I am quite prepared to accept that the CALIPSO satellite has better resolution than the earlier SAGE II, and we can detect levels of SO2, with greater accuracy, than was the case.
I will not accept this modern volcanoes are magic, unlike the ones before the year 2000, and that the reduction in man-made SO2 into the stratosphere since the early 70’s, did not have he same effect as postulated by you and Santer.
You cannot make his stuff up and home no one will notice. There are geologists on this board who will affirm that modern volcanoes are just like the ones of the past millennium, and have not been visited by the SO2 fairy.
Wow these “week in review”s are becoming quite the partisan rightwing link clearing exercises aren’t they.
Links this week:
– 3 links to steynonline.com (three! desperate marketing?)
– nationalreview.com
– heartland.org
– Andrew Bolt
– an email from MasterResource (perhaps the medium being a little hint of more of the same in the back office)
But at least for balance we have John Holdren’s recent Congressional testimony…oh no wait that’s only mentioned in order to lead into pielke.
Well then it must be for Hansen to provide the balance. But oh wait, only specific Hansen communications are promoted, coincidentally the ones we agree with!
:D
Where else is a dogmatic not-IPCC’er to get any comfort??
maybe climateetc is short for climatedepot
Or maybe WUWT light..
I guess those on the other side of the aisle are not publishing on the issue. Perhaps hoping that the issue would go away.
The exception, Holdren, probably wishes he had kept silent as well.
Yeah. Right. That must be it. Brilliant logic.
Too funny.
Err start ur own blog. Win the internet and retire
Holdren has executive power behind him
Roger is a relative nobody
If roger picked on you , a complete nobody,and was foolishly wrong
And you rebutted him id link to you. Not him
1. Because you taking him apart is news.
2. He has the power to respond
Now since rogers piece has links to holdren
You get to do this thing called
Following the link.
Its the internet dont expect us to wipe ur butt.
And since youve elected urself as the god of fairness
Ill expect you to go correct other bloggers
Who exercise their editorial judgment
lolwot – tune into MSNBC. You’ll love it. If you tweet them, they’ll probably invite you to a show.
MasterResource is Son of Enron, Enron Part 2, Enron Juniior, Enron Recycled, The Return of Enron, etc,
So Hansen sells nuclear power?
Hansen has always been an advocate of nuclear power to mitigate the impacts of climate change. He believes that renewables are not a practical solution……he’s right.
Even a blind pig can find an acorn every once in a while.
After the incident in Fukushima one ought to consider what happens when nuclear goes awry.
Yes, which is why we now have the know-how to build reactors which can’t fail like Fukushima and Chernobyl.
That’s what they said about the Fukushima reactors.
Check out “molten salt” reactors
“That’s what they said about the Fukushima reactors.”
No they didn’t. Those reactors required active cooling systems.
Fernando,
Could you please provide us with the number of fatalities resulting from Fukashima?
A natural event which results in more than 10,000 dead and missing and destroys large swaths of two Japanese provences occurs and you focus on the “incident” at Fukashima. The facility withstood the earthquake and tsunami far better than the region around it. It was because of that immense destruction that events at the plant eventually unfolded. The impact of those events are minor in comparison to those of the earthquake / tsunami.
Here’s another link from the realist (as opposed to alarmist) world:
http://www.skepticink.com/prussian/2014/02/28/mann-overboard/
sample tidbit:
“No scientists do what David Appell finds entirely acceptable, do “data
adjustments … [to] get the right answer”.
[http://davidappell.blogspot.co……]. Nor would scientists write ad hominem abuse of Judith Curry, try to get journal editors fired, suppress contradictory evidence, censor people posting on their web pages, and other things that Mann and his defenders (including Appell) do frequently.”
$BP
Jenkins: Personal Score-Settling Is the New Climate Agenda
The cause of global carbon regulation may be lost, but enemies still can be punished.
“These are indications of a political movement turned to defending its self-image as its cause goes down the drain. That’s how thoroughly defunct, dead, expired is the idea that humanity might take charge of earth’s atmosphere through some supreme triumph of the global regulatory state over democracy, sovereignty, nationalism and political self-interest, the very facts of political human nature.”
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304026804579411021545493020?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline
Holdren – the Politico-Science Simplex.
Hmmm.
From RPJr.:
Looks like Roger didn’t get Judith’s memo to put on his “big boy pants.”
Did you check to see how often national science advisors use their soapbox to label a very accomplished scientist as being outside the mainstream?
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/publications/searchResults.php?field=author&pub_keyword=Pielke
I won’t be surprised if an IRS audit is on the way. Hopefully, he has big boy pants for that should it happen.
Springer –
I’m not in favor of people denigrating scientists no matter what their stripe. I think that Holden should have stuck to the science and not resort to an ad hom.
However:
(1) Although it isn’t an excuse, saying that someone is outside the mainstream is far less denigrating than what often see in the climate ward – and from no less than RPJr. himself.
(2) I don’t think that whether someone holds a position in government is particularly material. The fact that Inhofe regularly accuses climate scientists as frauds (paraphrasing) is reprehensible not because he is a member of the government, but because it reflects tribalism.
(3) I see a whole lot of drama-queening on both sides of the debate. I actually agree that putting on big boy pants is a good recommendation. I just think that the recommendation should apply to folks on both sides. I think that all of these folks who are combining big boy pants advising on one side and drama-queening on the other side would benefit from researching motiv@ted re@soning.
Heh. “Holden.”
It just kills me when I do that.
Once again joshua chooses to ignore power when it doesnt fit his world view.
You don’t get it Joshua, he is supposed to be the science advisor to the president, not a political hack. This is how Lysenkoism happened.
“Joshua | March 1, 2014 at 8:02 pm |
I’m not in favor of people denigrating scientists no matter what their stripe.”
(Joshua on Rabett Run)
“I think that you’re missing a key point. The Professor Curry who wrote that paper is not an activist – in fact she thinks that scientists being activists is undermines science. The Professor Curry who testified before Congress is an activist, who appeared at the behest of Republican politicians so as to boost the viability of the policies they support. And don’t forget that the Professor Curry who blogs strongly opposes any appeal to authority, whereas the Professor Curry who is making highly public statements about climate change feels that it is important for Professor Curry to lend her qualifications and professional recognition to the cause of climate “skepticism.”
I hope that clears things up a bit”
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2014/01/curry-vs-curry.html?showComment=1390256927571#c7832740816143571716
(Joshua on ourchaingclimate)
“She {Professor Judith Curry} draws longitudinal conclusions from cross-sectional data. Dhe {sic} draws conclusions about causality without any attempt to control for variables.
I am in no position to question the qualify of Judith’s science w/r/t technical analysis of climate change. But she routinely displays advocacy not science when she ventures into debating about the climate debate. That is not science, it is just, advocacy. There is no other way to describe the selectivity or her reasoning.”
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/gavin-schmidt-and-judith-curry-on-science-advocacy/
(Joshua on bigwhopper)
“And to add an extra dash of irony, she {Professor Judith Curry} is suddenly not the least bit in opposition to the mixture of political advocacy and scientific research.”
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2013/12/is-judith-curry-arguing-for-political.html
Right. 2014, U.S. and 1920s, Stalinst Russia = same. same, but different.
And for his next brilliant argument, Tom will object to someone calling someone else a “denier.”
You boyz are hilarious.
I just love the LYSENKO!!!!1!!1 arguments.
Joshua
Saying he is outside the mainstream is less denigrating that what other folks do.
Mommy mommy but done in a cute way
Joshua
Getting attacked (or challenged) on a blog site is different from having someone give false testimony about you to a Senate committee. And when that “someone” is a political member of the administration in power, it makes such an attack even worse.
Pielke would have been a fool (and a coward) not to respond vehemently with the facts to clear his name, as he did.
Time for you to put on your “think smart” hat.
Max
I was hoping you wouldn’t catch that.
I was hoping you wouldn’t catch that.
Josh,
You shouldn’t talk about the pants someone else might be wearing, big boy or other wise, when you spend most of your time at this blog wearing none at all.
Or do you have another explanation for why your rearend is always showing?
More evidence that climate changed has not stopped. I am surprised Dr. Curry missed this one..
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-change-is-increasing-extreme-heat-globally-17120
Wrong story.
Judith is more interested in the views of opinion writers and fringe think-tanks.
It’s good you have people denying what’s happening, and what will happen. You know what kind of panic would ensue if people actually knew just how dire things will be? It’s already too late to do anything about it, it’s baked in.
Joseph,
Thanks for the link. The paper by Seneviratne et al looks like it is worth a careful reading. For a free registration at Nature, one is able to download it.
Ohh wow, all the way back to 1979. Gee, how impressive. When you can go back to 1679 and find the same thing, you might have a study worth raising an eyebrow about.
Roman Warm Period, Medieval Warm Period, Modern Warm Period. Everything that is happening was expected by those of us who looked at data from the previous warm periods.
It is all a shock by those who only look at Consensus Climate Hockey Stick Reconstructions of past temperature. These Hockey stick reconstructions miss on the lack of modern warming and they miss on the warm and cold cycles of the past.
The only things they really get wrong are the past and the present and the future.
“The Sandman | March 1, 2014 at 7:33 pm |
It’s good you have people denying what’s happening, and what will happen. You know what kind of panic would ensue if people actually knew just how dire things will be? It’s already too late to do anything about it, it’s baked in.”
——
I had a long debate with a friend about this very topic the other night. There is a whole group out there who think an NTE (near term extinction) event for humans is very close by. Giving them hope (so she argued) was compassionate. My position: if such an event were already “baked in” then giving hope to people is a bit like telling a turkey that “all is well” on the day before Thanksgiving.
Joseph
Duh!
Of course our climate has not stopped changing. It has always changed, long before humans were emitting CO2, and it will always continue to do so.
Max
From the link:
That would class “extreme heat” as anything much above zero in many parts of the world.
It’s anthropowarmists who ‘think’ that climate change has stopped and AGW took over around the mid 20th century. Skeptics are here to call BS.
One of the major tenets of climate change due to increased CO2 emission is that we will see an increased frequency of extreme weather such as heat waves.
“That would class “extreme heat” as anything much above zero in many parts of the world.”
I don’t see your point.
Joseph, my point is that “temperatures in the top 10 percent for a given area”, in many areas of the world cannot be called “extreme heat” by any stretch of the imagination – and attempts to conflate the two is nothing short of chicanery.
Awesome link Judith.
Andrew Bolt.
Haven’t laughed so hard in weeks.
Andrew taking the moral high horse on being called dishonest!!! If that doesn’t make your irony-meter explode nothing will.
Here’s a recent finding on Bolt;
“… That statement is factually inaccurate …That statement is factually incorrect…Mr Bolt disingenuously explained the omission as due to a lack of space….The facts given by Mr Bolt and the comment made upon them are grossly incorrect.”
That’s typical of Bolt.
So, was Michael Mann on firm ground to call bolt a liar – oh, yes, yes,yes. Bolt is a confirmed liar.
But is he paid to lie? – hmmm. In effect, no doubt, he’s a rabid hard-right attack dog tasked to argue a particularr perspective, no matter the facts……but does his contract tell him to lie. Unlikey (and certainly not necesary).
Yes Michael, here is the evil attack dog being interviewed on TV. Evil.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-21/one-plus-one-andrew-bolt/5282174
While Bolt does engage in rhetoric ( he’s a columnist, isn’t rhetoric their trade?), in my experience he is in fact truthful as far as it goes and does retract items subsequently found to be false. This would be a step up from the team. I don’t believe that he has said anything about Mann or anything else that was unsupportable by the facts available at the time. Sometimes new facts do come to light, and integrity is established by how we deal with those new facts. The climate change team do seem to be the “sweep it under the carpet and drill on regardless” sort. Mann “the hockey stick is still valid science ” would be on this team, Bolt probably not.
Yes for the social regressives Bolt is uncomfortable, but he is more often right than wrong, oh and unlike most warmists, he can do math.
Compare the man in that video with Mikey and our even littler mikey.
I expect joshua to come along and ask you for evidence fir your claims
“oh and unlike most warmists, he [Bolt] can do math.” – bobl
Really?
Like the time he approvingly linked to this in his
“75 out of 77 should be ……not 97% but just 2.38%.”
A liar, dumb – a natural pin-up boy for ageing conservative males everywhere!!
Michael
Being called a liar by Mann is a compliment.
Got it?
Max
Max,
I wasn’t referring to Mann;s tweet – Bolt was called a liar by a Australian Federal Court.
Mann was just pointing out the obvious.
I fixed what Holdren said about Pielke Jr.’s view on extreme weather and climate change. It’s outside the “scientific
mainstreambandwagon”.Easy fix.
Is that related to Judith’s Mann-Wagon?
Integral.
Thanks, David. Simple as a pimple.
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2014/02/25/setting-the-record-straight-on-misleading-claims-against-michael-mann/
I think the author missed the point that Mann made a false assertion in a libel suit (Mann claimed to have been exonerated by the Muir Russell report, despite the clear language in the report that it focused on the CRU scientists); the author draws a “fair inference” that is incidental to the claim in the suit. The author misses the point about Steyn’s motion to dismiss; the denial of that motion did not adjudicate any of the claims or counter-claims; besides that, the denial was made before either party pointed out the falsity of claims in the documents. The author is wrong or sloppy to defend Mann’s original “hockey stick” finding; even the IPCC no longer defends it; subsequent research has defended the notion that the earth was warmer at earlier times, such as the Medieval Warm Period.
From Haseler’s survey of skeptical climate blog readers:
..around half of respondents had worked in engineering and a quarter in science
…around 80% had degrees of which about 40% were “post graduate” qualified.
…Respondents were asked which areas they had formal “post-school qualification”. A third said “physics/chemistry. One third said maths. Just under 40% said engineering. 40% said they had post school training in computer programming.
Pretty good for a bunch of flat earth, anti-science (I still have no idea what that means), anti-climate (ditto), troglodytes.
I’m sure this will be picked right up by the MSM in order to correct their mistake.
Don’t debate CO2-induced climate change on a university campus:
http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2014/02/forman-not-up-for-debate
Once you get to the point in the causal analysis where increased atmospheric CO2 will absorb an increased amount of radiation from the Earth surface and warm the troposphere, the rest of the causal change relating anthropogenic CO2 to global climate changes is full of holes. If that advice of Forman were to be taken literally, a grant application by the faculty would be prevented from mentioning any of the lacunae that should be investigated.
Many grant proposals to the federal government that are funded are posted online for citizens to review. They are a treasure of resources for people who want to know what the limits of knowledge are. The physicist John Ziman made the point that grant proposals are the dominant form of research synthesis and review in academic science today, with many more hours devoted and pages printed than textbooks and research publications. (I cite him as source, not authority for that idea, but lots of senior researchers have written that they spend more time writing/revising their research proposals than doing the work once they get the contracts. iirc, it is in his book “Real Science”)
Washington Post
“Rain Continues to Lash California, Creating Flooding Headaches”
Won’t be long before some professional climate zombie goes on TV claiming the floods are caused by climate change. The drought of course was caused by climate change as well. Just a different kind.
pg, California is just having a negative drought experience.
pokwrguy
Hey, everybody knows that President Obama’s visit to California caused the rain.
He promised help to the drought-stricken farmers, and viola!
Whaddaguy!
Max
Pingback: AGW cause, “down the drain” … | pindanpost
Judith, you don’t have to thinky when you can just linky to Dr. Peilke’s evisceration of Holdren’s pathetic tantrum. Many thanks. This administration has no shame.
Nick Stokes takes a beating over at climateaudit, trying to defend Mann’s crapola by putting out a childish analysis – followed by copious whinging on the beat-down.
So.. did everyone here miss the fact that Pielke’s claims are founded on a string of deception?
Last week in a Congressional hearing, John Holdren, the president’s science advisor, characterized me as being outside the “scientific mainstream” with respect to my views on extreme events and climate change. Specifically, Holdren was responding directly to views that I provided in Senate testimony that I gave last July (and here in PDF).
If for example you actually listen to Dr. Holdren, he did not specifically speak of Dr. Pielke alone, but as one of a group outside the scientific mainstream. Dr. Holdren did not speak specifically to Dr. Pielke’s views from his Senate testimony of last July, but of all of that group’s climate views.
Pish-tosh, I hear you murmur. What is the difference between singling out a single man as outside a mainstream in one statement, and saying a group is outside the mainstream on an entire topic?
While it’s true it’s easier to dismantle Pielke’s umbrage by dismantling just the one piece of testimony, and the entire group’s deceptions by dismantling Pielke’s, it’s inaccurate to make it all about just one man, a sort of self-imposed ad hominem fallacy.
By the way, you can read the original source document Dr. Pielke further objects to, cited at http://climatecrocks.com/2014/03/01/head-meet-platter-holdren-does-not-hold-back-on-anti-science-poser-pielke/ which I found mentioned at
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/03/a-skilful-counterstrike-john-holdren.html
It’s getting harder and harder to find unfiltered source documents on the interwebs.
Bart R
Huh?
Read Holdren’s statement (bold type by me).
http://www.occuworld.org/news/581946
Max
Bart R
Further down, Holdren states (again bold face by me)
Sounds like a broadside to me, Bart.
But, as I wrote, I think it’s just good ol’ “Chicago style politics”.
Max
manacker | March 2, 2014 at 3:52 am |
Sounds to me like Dr. Pielke’s nose is out of joint because he’s been lumped in with Dr. Spencer.
Holdren’s facts check out, as in, are factually supported by the evidence.
Pielke’s claims fall short, repeatedly, on accuracy and clarity.
Senator Sessions, in effect, relied on Pielke’s testimony to prove droughts were nonexistent in the USA, not an issue at all, because on average the global climate is wetter; that Pielke’s testimony proves Americans can ignore the most severe droughts in the nation’s history because they average out with floods elsewhere.
Why you choose to lap up Sessions’ nonsense .. oh, wait. Did you vote for Sessions? Could you? Or for any member of the US Congress?
No?
Then explain to me why I should care about your foreign opinions?
And from what I have read, Sessions missed Pieke’s qualification which he had placed in a footnote.
The lazy skeptics will have to find it for themselves, to equal the laziness of the senator.
Bart,
You are free to interpret what you read any way you like.
The rest of us are free to recognize and debate whether your interpretation is the result of profound bias or simple lack of comprehension.
That you can claim Holdren did not specifically attack Pielke shows you have a problem with one of the two conditions above.
timg56 | March 3, 2014 at 2:07 pm |
Ah, yes. The “Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife, Senator” fallacy.
Sessions constructed an absurd argument based on the absurd testimony of absurdists.
Clearly, this suggests perjury before Congress may have been committed, either by Holdren and remarkably many other scientists, or by Dr.’s Pielke Jr., Spencer, Christy, Curry, Lomborg, Lord Monckton, Dr. Patrick Moore and a remarkably few others. The two sets of testimony are obviously describing two vastly different claims asserted to be true.
I’d say it’s long past time to put them all on trial, and let SCOTUS settle who’s been lying to Congress and the American people.
If you think Holdren’s perjured, you can’t help but back this proposal.
Looks like Holdren is playing “Chicago style politics” with Pielke.
But Pielke’s response is brilliant.
Max
BREAKING NEWS
Slogan-Shouting Astroturfing
Enclaves of Denialism
Receive Billions in Secret Funding
This explains why cherry-picking slogan-shouting enclaves of denialist irrationality — like WUWT / Heartland / National Review / PJMedia / Competitive Enterprise Institute / RedState / FreedomWorks, etc. — deservedly receive little or no respect from the scientific community.
Conclusion The honorable centuries-old cause of rational conservatism and conservationism is being grievously harmed by a toxic blend of bad science, irrational slogan-shouting, cherry-picked quibbles, and special-interest astro-turfing.
That’s rational, science-respecting, common-sense conservatism, eh Climate Etc readers?
You know they’re fools when they can’t even come up with an accurate label.
CCCM? The climate has changed every day of earth’s existence.
Sorry if respecting science and applying common sense destroys your cute little irrational commercial.
Fixed yer typo, harkin!
Yep, the weather changes but as for climate:
(1) the oceans keep heating, and
(2) the seas keep rising, and
(3) ice-caps keep melting.
As Climate Etc citizens have verified for themselves, “there is no ‘pause’.”
Ain’t that the plain, simple citizen-verifiable scientific truth, harkin?
You mean someone is discredited merely because they received funding? I guess that means frauds like Michael Mann are also discredited, right?
And if you try to change the subject, I’m just curious, why make that the headline of your post in the first place? o_O?
Of course Fan has no problem seeing Professor Robert Brulle as a leading light in the climate debate.
Professor Brulle has a point and generates “research” to prove his point. Homeboys like Fan would never think to look at Professor Brulle’s “research” in a careful and critical manner. That would be impolite.
You link to 1 comment where someone disputes how much the polar ice caps have increased… and yet you refer to this as somehow being proof that oceans are heating and ice caps are melting?
You live in a fantasy world. Is it even possible in principle for any measurable events to occur that would convince you that you are wrong? Even in principle.
“Having trouble even coming up with more than that…”
I can think of three right away:
Major asteroid/comet impact
Major igneous event
Severe glaciation
All three of these have caused major extinctions:
End Ordovician event (glaciation)
Frasnian-Famennian event (glaciation)
P/Tr event (volcanism)
Tr/J event (volcanism)
K/Pg event (impact)
Unfortunately I can’t think of any extinction event caused by increasing CO2. PETM, beloved by alarmists, was very minor in this respect, though it apparently did cause a major proliferation of many organism groups, including mammals.
-Major asteroid/comet impact
We know the % chance of this happening, and it’s very low.
-Major igneous event
Same
-Severe glaciation
Too slow, won’t happen in just 300 years.
“PETM, beloved by alarmists, was very minor in this respect”
Current changes in ocean acidification and CO2 level are much faster than the PETM. Unprecedented I should say.
As to a “major igneous event”, I had one of those this morning.
No more ventures to El Pollo Royo!
Surely the Nat Geo channel has some sort of forum for this sort of stuff.
lolwot,
What makes you think a mega volcanic eruption – say Iceland or Yellowstone – is of an extremely low probability?
JC: “John Holdren’s recent Congressional testimony attacks Pielke Jr’s views on extreme weather; Pielke Jr responds.”
A more accurate sentence would be : John Holdren, with his biased views, attacks Pielke Jr’s science supported testimony.
Any fun to be had giving out climate Oscars???
Best Fantasy:
Most Opaque Comment:
Most Persistent Use of “Big Boys Pants” in a Blog Comment:
Most Unchangeable Mind in the Face of Reality.
Best Cherrypicker
the options are endless.
They def need a variation of the Jean Hersholt humanitarian award but for “displaying the thinnest skin while simultaneously mounting unreasoned, disingenuous and vitriolic attacks”
Named the Mann Award of course.
SIDC Sunspot Number count for February 2014 is 102.8 (non-smoothed) , the highest of the SC24 cycle. Graphs show that the SC24 max is some months ahead.
There is a strong likelihood that the SSN for the SC24 max may exceed 80 as it was indicated by my projection of more than 10 years ago. This would also mean that the Dr. Svalgaards’s (Stanford University) prediction (made around the same time) of about 70 may be left well behind, and the ‘consensus’ of the Sunspot Prediction Board for the SSN around 90 may prove to be the nearest.
If so, the Sun – Global Warming pause question may keep climate bloggers busy for some time to come.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN.htm
Heh. Peak renewables!
From the article:
Spending on renewables is in decline. From a record $318 billion in 2011, world renewable energy spending fell to $280 billion in 2012 and then fell again to $254 billion in 2013, according to Bloomberg. The biggest drop occurred in Europe, where investment plummeted 41 percent last year. The 2013 expiration of the US Production Tax Credit for wind energy will continue the downward momentum.
Today, wind and solar provide less than one percent of global energy. While these sources will continue to grow, it’s likely they will deliver only a tiny amount of the world’s energy for decades to come. Renewable energy output may have peaked, at least as a percentage of global energy production.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/01/renewable-energy-in-decline/
‘Complexity is not the same as chaos.’ Elinor Ostrom
There have been a few uniformed comments about this. It is about listening and broadening control within a common framework of institutional analysis. It asked the question of what is the most efficient way of organizing between interests and managing resources. It contrasts with the top down technocratic approach where that relies on so-called objective analysis of a problem and a so-called rational solution that is then handed to politicians to implement. The latter approach consistently meets an immovable force if it fails to meet competing community objectives – it fails at least one segment of the community inevitably – and tends to be comprised to death. Failing both the community and the environmental resource.
There are better approaches. It is all about decentralized management and informed communication.
http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1223
Yes.
“To save the world from nuclear annihilation . . . “
Society was deceived worldwide after WWII by frightened world leaders who:
1. Formed the UN on 24 Oct 1945
2. Hid knowledge of “powers beyond the dreams of scientific fiction” [1] in cores of
_ a.) Heavy atoms like U & Pu
_ b.) Some planets like Jupiter
_ c.) Ordinary stars like the Sun
_ d.) Galaxies like the Milky Way
To understand how deceit put the survival of mankind at risk, study the last paragraph of F. W. Aston’s 1922 Nobel Prize lecture [1], the 1982 book by P. K. Kuroda, The Origin of the Chemical Elements and the Oklo Phenomenon [2], and Chapter 2 of my biography [3].
References:
1. F. W. Aston, “Mass spectra and isotopes,” Nobel Lecture (12 Dec 1922):
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1922/astonlecture.pdf
2. P. K. Kuroda, The Origin of the Chemical Elements and the Oklo Phenomenon (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1982) 165 pages: http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Chemical-Elements-Oklo-Phenomenon/dp/3642686699
3. O. K. Manuel, A Journey to the Core of the Sun – Chapter 2: Acceptance of Reality
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Chapter_2.pdf
If you “google” Aston’s 1922 Nobel Lecture or “powers beyond the dreams of scientific fiction” you may be allowed access to the above PDF file, but the hyper-link may not work if you send or post it.
From the article:
Could the booming U.S. energy sector assume the mantle that Detroit’s big automakers once held in the economy?
Although it’s still too early to tell, recent trends suggest soaring energy production may replace automobile manufacturing as an economic powerhouse. Even as the U.S. recovery falters, manufacturing and energy are in the midst of a broad expansion that is helping to generate growth.
Analysts say both sectors are increasingly intertwined. Yet as Detroit’s economic influence has waned, soaring shale production—and the cheap energy it provides—is making its presence felt in multiple ways. On Thursday, the Energy Information Administration reported oil production in 2013 surged by nearly a million barrels per day (bpd), its fastest growth rate ever.
…
One way the energy resurgence is helping is by providing industries as well as consumers, with inexpensive fuel that acts as a tax cut. According to BCG’s research, wholesale nat gas prices have fallen by around 50 percent since 2005. By 2015, natural gas will account for a slim 2 percent of U.S. manufacturing costs, the study added.
“This is why our economy is starting to wake up,” Sirkin said. “We are looking like a growth country compared to developed countries and emerging markets.”
…
“Absolutely, the energy sector can be a basis for the U.S. becoming an industrial powerhouse,” said Ken Ditzel, a principal at Charles River Associates who performed the data analysis for the America’s Energy. “It’s clear that the developments in the energy sector are feeding the manufacturing renaissance.”
Meanwhile, the Obama administration has quietly embraced natural gas production as a linchpin of its energy policy, while encouraging the manufacturing revival. Simultaneously, the federal government is planning to create two industrial hubs geared toward boosting high-tech manufacturing and replace jobs that were shipped overseas.
…
Would everyone please note that the ambient temperature just above the ocean is, in calm conditions, very close to the temperature of the first 1cm of the water below. This is primarily because of sensible heat transfer back and forth across the water-air boundary as molecules collide and conduction and diffusion occur. The proximity of temperatures has very little to do with radiation, because most radiation (and latent heat transfer also) goes directly to somewhat higher altitudes than the 1.5 to 2 metres where we measure temperature records.
Now, that 1cm layer of water is clearly very transparent to Solar radiation, most of which passes down into the thermocline extending many metres down below the surface. If, for example, the first 1cm absorbs only 0.1% of that insolation, then its absorptivity is at most 0.001. Yet that is what controls the temperature of the air by molecular collisions with molecules that obviously come from, in fact, only the very top of that layer. You need only consider the mean free path of water molecules to confirm this fact.
There is simply no way that a mere 0.1% of the Sun’s radiation could raise and support the mean ocean surface temperature which is observed. Thus you have herein obvious proof here on Earth that the actual temperatures we measure for climate records are in fact nothing like what Stefan-Boltzmann calculations give us if we were to use the real absorptivity of perhaps only 0.001. Even with the solid surface, much of the Sun’s energy is conducted well below the first 1cm, so the same argument applies.
And of course, apart from here on Earth, we see on Venus, Uranus and other planets, ample evidence that planetary atmospheric and surface temperatures are not primarily determined by incident radiative flux. Instead they are determined by the gravitationally-induced thermal gradient and a process I describe in my book “Why it’s not carbon dioxide after all” available late April.
So, leaving aside the habits of complex minds as an exercise in irony, and recognizing Patrick Moore’s congressional testimony as the height of parody (the man was booted from Greenpeace, not the other way around as he claimed to congress, and his fact pattern looks like he went to SkepticalScience and just read down their list of debunked climate myths in order), on to the next insoluble question of the moment.
How long will the Nonexistent Pause last?
As much as defining the length of imaginary timespans may sound absurd, it might be a thought-provoking exercise.
How long will the record string of volcanic eruptions breaching the stratosphere near the equator continue? Is this string itself an ill-understood trend reflecting some underlying recent common cause, or just coincidence? As the estimate is that only 15% of the difference between model and actual could be accounted for by these volcano incidents, and measuring global climate effects is a matter of years at best, even BEST would likely take years to detect the change once the volcanic eruptions stop. And there was a new one just in the past two weeks.
Volcano prediction is an utter mystery, so there’s no help on that sixth to be had.
How about the oceans. Heat is traveling into the ocean depths faster than normal, and there’s been a decided trend of NOT EL NINO since 1998. These two effects themselves account for the bulk of the difference between models minus volcano effects, and actual global temperature, on the Imaginary thirty year trend we’ll know in thirteen years to a high degree of certainty. The last time CO2 levels were this high, El Padre dominated the globe more or less continuously. So will the start of the next El Nino signal the start of a more-or-less permanent El Padre? That would certainly end the Nonexistent Pause, and if it starts in the next thirteen years, that Nonexistent Pause will never have, y’know.. existed.. paused.. whatever.
And then there’s overturning in tendency to absorb heat. It is of course bizarre to believe in the flow of heat from colder to hotter; however, we know the AMO and PDO do affect global temperature on bizarrely convoluted and variable timespans that change as the speed and course of the circulation changes, by some mechanism to do with how fast the ocean works as a heat sink from the surface to the depths.
With the Arctic losing ice and freshening northern waters while the Antarctic continent’s skirt of sea ice grows, we can take for granted that the circulation is definitely changing in some way. Maybe it will take longer in the northern hemisphere and less time in the southern. Maybe the other way around. Takes real data to even begin to process the models for that. Anyone have any of those?
So, anyone claiming the Pause has a guessable end date, or even a guessable existence, is practicing irrationality. We can guess at a start date of 2006 +/- one year at 95% confidence, and hit sigma six at +/- 8 years, _if_ there happens to be a Pause, depending on its depth.. we simply can’t know if it’s so for over a decade, barring nuclear winter or some other special circumstance. If that happens, we’ll even know where the Pause started (likely Crimea) too. If it comes to pass. Which no one can predict.
On present knowledge, the Nonexistent Pause would be over in 4 years time, and global temperatures skyrocket thereafter, obliterating any trace of pause in the climate timespan.
Well Bart_R in Ausgust 2011 I wrote …
From 2003 the effect of El Niño had passed and a slightly declining trend has been observed. This is the net effect of the 60-year cycle starting to decline whilst the 934 year cycle is still rising. By 2014 the decline should be steeper and continue until at least 2027. (This statement was archived 22 August 2011 here)
D o u g C o t t o n | March 3, 2014 at 4:34 am | Reply
And your predictions have already been proven false, numerically. Which isn’t surprising, as they were false numerically at the time.
Environmental tyranny
Obama/Jarret sacrifice people to worship nature.
A Bridge to No Hope.
=================
February 2014 SSNs and co. The most active month of the cycle 24 so far. The cycle is weak and long, as already observed. The next minimum likely not before ~2021/22, assuming the frequency remains low. The ‘postmodern’ minimum?
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/sunspot.gif
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/Ap.gif
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/monitor.gif
Interesting times.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/
Loschmidt was the brilliant 19th century physicist who was the first in the world to successfully estimate the size of air molecules – within a factor of 2 or so anyway. We can assume Loschmidt thought about what those molecules did, and, with the knowledge of the fact that gas molecules were far smaller than the space between them, the world saw the beginning of Kinetic Theory being applied to “ideal” gases with documented assumptions that I encourage you all to read, because Kinetic Theory was successfully used by Einstein and others, and from it we can derive the well known ideal gas laws. We can also derive (in just two lines) the magnitude of the so-called dry adiabatic lapse rate without using those gas laws or any pressure data.
It’s not hard to visualise what Loschmidt did, namely molecules moving around at random and colliding with others rather like billiard balls. When they collide they share their kinetic energy, and as a result, we see diffusion of kinetic energy which results in a tendency towards equal temperatures in a horizontal plane. We have all observed such diffusion in our homes when warmth from a heater spreads across the room.
But, when those molecules move in free frictionless flight between collisions the assumptions of kinetic theory include the “classical treatment” of their dynamics, noting that “because they have mass the gas molecules will be affected by gravity.” And so Newtonian mechanics tell us that the sum of kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy remains constant.
But, as a gas spontaneously approaches thermodynamic equilibrium it is approaching a state in which there are no unbalanced energy potentials. That state is isentropic, having (PE+KE)=constant at all heights, and this means that KE varies and, as Kinetic Theory tells us, temperature also varies in proportion to the mean kinetic energy of the molecules.
It does not matter that the final state is never completely materialised, and so entropy will still be increasing. We are considering what happens as we approach a limit, just as in calculus. Entropy will keep increasing until that limit is achieved, but it never is because, with a new day dawning more solar energy is added causing a significant disturbance to the process and moving it further away from equilibrium. Never-the-less, by the following night if there are calm conditions, the state of thermodynamic equilibrium will again be approached.
Over the life of the planet the temperature gradient has obviously evolved on all planets with significant atmospheres, and it also occurs in sub-surface regions such as Earth’s outer crust and inside the Moon.
The empirical evidence is that Loschmidt was right and that Maxwell erred on just this particular issue wherein molecular studies were perhaps not his specialty. The huge significance of this is that there is no need for any greenhouse radiative forcing to explain planetary atmospheric and surface temperatures. These cannot be explained at all by radiation calculations – only by the gravity gradient. The trillion dollar question is thus, was Loschmidt right?
That’s a bunch of crap Doug. Loschmidt spins in his grave every time you mention his name.
So, here we have the ever-so-bright environmentalists, bright when compared to say, a slug, trying to kill of the use of the most minimal CO2 emitting fuel, natural gas. They are just so smart and we are so lucky to have the devoid-of-brain group looking after us. I guess they aren’t happy with ruining nuclear power. They probably can’t figure out the difference.
From the article:
LUSBY, Md., March 2 (Reuters) – Maps of Indian and Japanese ports paper the walls of a Dominion Resources Inc conference room in a small Maryland town, population 1,835, known more for crabbing and bird watching than global trade and the U.S. natural gas revolution.
Dominion, an American energy company long focused on U.S. markets, hopes to begin an expansion worth billions of dollars at its Cove Point complex on Chesapeake Bay later this year. As part of the plan, compressors fired by a new power plant would cool gas to -260 degrees F (-162 C) until it becomes the hot global commodity known as liquefied natural gas, or LNG.
But if environmentalists, including a group that has led the charge against TransCanada Corp’s long-delayed Keystone XL oil pipeline, get their way, Dominion won’t soon be shipping anything anywhere.
…
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101458533
Or, I guess it possible some of the environmental groups are funded by the Middle East and Russia?
Note the many benefits of plentiful natural gas.
From the article:
Executive summary:
Fracking is dramatically altering the chances of the US becoming energy independent.
With surging energy production comes many investment opportunities.
An increasingly threatening Russia may be catalyst needed to unit America and focus her efforts on greater energy production.
The trend in atmospheric CO2 levels is unchanged over the past 5, 10, 15 and even 50 years. No policy has altered that trend, and yet many have lost their jobs as a result of those policies. That too may be a catalyst for greater energy production in the US.
_______________________________________
What I find amazing about the emerging shale oil and gas industry is just how little we seem to know about it. It seems like every other day I read a headline about a new shale discovery. This week was no different. The headlines this time are about the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale.
the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale, a geologic formation that stretches in boomerang shape across Louisiana’s midsection and into southern Mississippi. Drillers have known about the formation north of the Gulf of Mexico for years, but affordable technology to remove the oil from the shale’s tight pores was slow to develop.
The technology changes so fast in this industry that fields that were once considered unrecoverable suddenly become recoverable. The following graphic shows how over just a 2 year time frame estimates can increase dramatically. Note how the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale isn’t even included on the graph from 2009.
…
It is no wonder that Saudi Prince Alwaleed is highly concerned.
PRINCE ALWALEED: Fracking Is Going To Crush The Saudi Economy If Nothing Is Done
Abu Dhabi is concerned enough to bankroll an anti-fracking propaganda movie that played throughout the US. It appears some Hollywood types would rather help fund undemocratic oil rich Nation’s Kings and Princes than create jobs and wealth for the unemployed US worker.
Matt Damon’s new film on fracking, “Promised Land”, is generating some buzz — though probably not the kind studio execs were hoping for.
Last week, the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation pointed out that in the trailer for film, one of the financial backers listed is Image Nation Abu Dhabi.
Image Nation Abu Dhabi is, in turn, owned by Abu Dhabi Media – a state media company for the United Arab Emirates. The UAE, an OPEC member, is the world’s third-largest oil exporter.
Russia also sees it power grip slipping. A few years back Russia could simply cut off a Nation’s gas supply to get them to bow to its wishes.
…
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2062773-another-day-another-major-shale-discovery
Another bit from the article:
If Russia continues to push around the US, it is very very likely that the mood of the voters will change dramatically. Fighting “climate change” and other divisive issues that are currently consuming America’s attention are luxury issues, issues that a rich distracted Nation can focus on to tear itself apart as the politicians jockey for power and control. Simply read the headlines from Washington and then look at what is important to the American people. The concerns of the American people are a distant afterthought to those in Washington. Climate change by the way registers dead last on the poll.
It is wrong to assume Loschmidt’s gravitationally induced thermal gradient does not evolve spontaneously in a gravitational field. It is the isentropic state of maximum entropy with no further unbalanced energy potentials. You cannot explain why the Venus surface temperature rises by 5 degrees spread over the course of its 4-month-long day with any radiative forcing conjecture or greenhouse philosophy. The Venus surface receives barely 10% of the direct Solar radiation that Earth’s surface receives. It would need over 16200 W/m^2 if radiation were heating the surface. Then, during sunlit hours it would need an extra 450W/m^2 to raise the temperature from about 732K to 737K. On Earth, if isothermal conditions were supposedly existing without water vapor and other greenhouse gases, then the sensitivity to water vapor would be about 10 degrees per 1% atmospheric content. But there is no evidence that a region with 1% above it is 30 degrees colder than another region at similar altitude and latitude with 4% above it. The effective surface layer of Earth’s oceans may be considered to be only 1cm thick, or even if 10cm thick it is still very transparent to insolation. But a black or grey body does not transmit radiation, and the surface layer absorbs less than 1% of that incident solar radiation. So the S-B calculations are totally incorrect and planetary surface temperatures cannot be calculated using such.
This is where the error crept in in 1985 …
“Coombes and Laue concluded that answer (1) is the correct one and answer (2) is wrong. They reached this conclusion after finding that statement (2a) is wrong, i.e., the average kinetic energy of all molecules does not decrease with the height even though the kinetic energy of each individual molecule does decrease with height.
These authors give at first a qualitative explanation of this fact by noting that since both the kinetic energy of the molecules and the number density of molecules decrease with height, the average molecular kinetic energy does not necessarily decrease with height.”
This is absurd. They had the mean kinetic energy decreasing in each molecule, but then they divided again by the number. Try calculating a mean by dividing twice by the number of elements. A glaring error. The Loschmidt effect has NOT been debunked by this nonsense.
Velasco, S., Román, F.L., White, J.A. (1996). On a paradox concerning the temperature distribution of an ideal gas in a gravitational field, Eur. J. Phys., 17: 43–44.
Can you explain your comment that SS has taken out of context?
“All we can do is be as objective as we can about the evidence and help the politicians evaluate proposed solutions,” she says. If that means doing nothing, “I can’t say myself that that isn’t the best solution.”
Are you saying the evidence points to doing nothing, or that the politicians might conclude that with an honest presentation of the evidence?