Some parts of the blogosphere, headed up by CEI (“CO2: They call it pollution, we call it life!“), are all a-twitter over an apparently “suppressed” document that supposedly undermines the EPA Endangerment finding about human emissions of carbon dioxide and a basket of other greenhouse gases. Well a draft of this “suppressed” document has been released and we can now all read this allegedly devastating critique of the EPA science. Let’s take a look…
First off the authors of the submission; Alan Carlin is an economist and John Davidson is an ex-member of the Carter administration Council of Environmental Quality. Neither are climate scientists. That’s not necessarily a problem – perhaps they have mastered multiple fields? – but it is likely an indication that the analysis is not going to be very technical (and so it will prove). Curiously, while the authors work for the NCEE (National Center for Environmental Economics), part of the EPA, they appear to have rather closely collaborated with one Ken Gregory (his inline comments appear at multiple points in the draft). Ken Gregory if you don’t know is a leading light of the Friends of Science – a astroturf anti-climate science lobbying group based in Alberta. Indeed, parts of the Carlin and Davidson report appear to be lifted directly from Ken’s rambling magnum opus on the FoS site. However, despite this odd pedigree, the scientific points could still be valid.
Their main points are nicely summarised thus: a) the science is so rapidly evolving that IPCC (2007) and CCSP (2009) reports are already out of date, b) the globe is cooling!, c) the consensus on hurricane/global warming connections has moved from uncertain to ambiguous, d) Greenland is not losing mass, no sirree…, e) the recession will save us!, f) water vapour feedback is negative!, and g) Scafetta and West’s statistical fit of temperature to an obsolete solar forcing curve means that all other detection and attribution work is wrong. From this “evidence”, they then claim that all variations in climate are internal variability, except for the warming trend which is caused by the sun, oh and by the way the globe is cooling.
Devastating eh?
One can see a number of basic flaws here; the complete lack of appreciation of the importance of natural variability on short time scales, the common but erroneous belief that any attribution of past climate change to solar or other forcing means that CO2 has no radiative effect, and a hopeless lack of familiarity of the basic science of detection and attribution.
But it gets worse, what solid peer reviewed science do they cite for support? A heavily-criticised blog posting showing that there are bi-decadal periods in climate data and that this proves it was the sun wot done it. The work of an award-winning astrologer (one Theodor Landscheidt, who also thought that the rise of Hitler and Stalin were due to cosmic cycles), a classic Courtillot paper we’ve discussed before, the aforementioned FoS web page, another web page run by Doug Hoyt, a paper by Garth Paltridge reporting on artifacts in the NCEP reanalysis of water vapour that are in contradiction to every other reanalysis, direct observations and satellite data, a complete reprint of another un-peer reviewed paper by William Gray, a nonsense paper by Miskolczi etc. etc. I’m not quite sure how this is supposed to compete with the four rounds of international scientific and governmental review of the IPCC or the rounds of review of the CCSP reports….
They don’t even notice the contradictions in their own cites. For instance, they show a figure that demonstrates that galactic cosmic ray and solar trends are non-existent from 1957 on, and yet cheerfully quote Scafetta and West who claim that almost all of the recent trend is solar driven! They claim that climate sensitivity is very small while failing to realise that this implies that solar variability can’t have any effect either. They claim that GCM simulations produced trends over the twentieth century of 1.6 to 3.74ºC – which is simply (and bizarrely) wrong (though with all due respect, that one seems to come directly from Mr. Gregory). Even more curious, Carlin appears to be a big fan of geo-engineering, but how this squares with his apparent belief that we know nothing about what drives climate, is puzzling. A sine qua non of geo-engineering is that we need models to be able to predict what is likely to happen, and if you think they are all wrong, how could you have any faith that you could effectively manage a geo-engineering approach?
Finally, they end up with the oddest claim in the submission: That because human welfare has increased over the twentieth century at a time when CO2 was increasing, this somehow implies that no amount of CO2 increases can ever cause a danger to human society. This is just boneheadly stupid.
So in summary, what we have is a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at. Seriously, if that’s the best they can do, the EPA’s ruling is on pretty safe ground.
If I were the authors, I’d suppress this myself, and then go for a long hike on the Appalachian Trail….
#477 L. David Cooke:
“In essence, rather then argue the issue, why not fund the experiment, it would go a lot further to proving a point as opposed to debating the possible outcome…”
This highlights one of the revealing gaps in the general chumposphere babble. If these folks were so concerned about getting the science right and if they had the wits to consider the costs of research versus the costs they’ve attributed to climate repair, they’d be screaming for more funding for climate research. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t hear that. I hear a lot of “let’s study it more”, but I don’t hear any corresponding “and let’s make sure scientists are given all the tools they need”.
Elsewhere, Gavin has mentioned the rather tragic fact of petabytes of unprocessed and unexamined raw weather and climate related data product from satellites. Compared to mitigation costs, tackling that with an eye to revealing more empirical measurements as well as refining models would cost an invisibly small amount of money. Where is the outrage from the chumposphere that we’re ignoring this information? Where are the claims of suppression? Where are the letters and phone calls to Washington demanding this oversight be fixed?
No, instead we’ve had the sole satellite specifically intended to help advance climate science sitting on a shelf for a decade, thanks to dullard politicians sniffing the wind from their constituents and donors and deciding they’d rather not know about reality, for good or ill. It costs millions of dollars to –not– use the satellite, while in storage it’s been dropped and broken by Lockheed, who are now charging us to fix it, but by gosh that’s better than being confronted with more data.
Yet another feature of the incoherence of the chumposphere.
Michael Says (1 July 2009 at 2:28):
“Lets say anthropogenic CO2 and human life expectancy have risen together to levels unprecedented in history – just for argument’s sake. Someone comes along and wishes to decrease CO2. If this person were actually concerned with human welfare, wouldn’t he want to provide strong evidence that his actions would not decrease human life expectancy?”
Certainly, and that strong evidence has been provided, by e.g. showing lack of any causal mechanism for CO2 to have produced an increase in life expectancy, and by linking the observed increases to actual causes that have no relation to CO2. So now what would you say to a person who simply ignores all that evidence? And indeed, ignores strong evidence that CO2 emissions-related factors decrease longevity & quality of life (e.g. respiratory problems from fossil fuel emissions, obesity from driving everywhere…), and are likely to have a much more drastic impact in the near future?
“So sorry Ray, expertise matters, but maybe it will take more than just climate scientists to get things fixed. Machines will not be built without engineers. Projects will not get funded without businessmen. Sensible economic policy needs economists. And laws will not get passed without lawyers.” Jim Bullis, Miastrada Co. 30 June 2009 at 9:49 PM
And as long as businessmen with a vested interest(Exxon/Mobil, Peabody Coal, power companies), and economists with a political bias(CEI, Heartland, Cato, Wall Street), and lawyers( Bachmann, Cornyn, Cantor) believe that they know more about global warming than climate scientists, nothing will get done to combat global warming. As long as they believe that their livelihood depends on believing that global warming isn’t real, they will continue Business As Usual. Engineers will agnostically build tar sand refineries, or solar power plants, or arctic drilling rigs, or windmills, or lead cooled liquid metal fast breeder reactors.
If the deniers ever come to realize that their life depends on having done something about global warming, that the scientists were right, it will likely be too late (Better models may show in a few years that the Arctic methane/permafrost carbon tipping point was passed in 2007). Given the level of denialism in the face of glacial mass loss, plummeting Arctic summer ice cover, progressive collapse of ice shelves that have been stable for 6000 to 10000 years, northward, upward, and seasonally earlier movements of ecosystems and other phenological changes, increasing Greenland ice melt, and all the other direct observations of global warming, I think denialists will go to their graves believing it can’t be happening. Unfortunately, given the catastrophe facing us, many people, scientists and sinners both, will be going to their graves sooner rather than later.
#467 CM
I am with you all the way on your last. Thanks.
My extrapolation of lower frequency (RF) reflection coefficient to optical wavelengths was way off. While much energy is reflected at very low grazing angles for either wavelength band, this drops much faster for light than RF.
I also checked a number of angles and conditions at the albedo calculator site and this cleared up my question about the definition of albedo, as used in this climate modeling world. Yes, the specular part is included as well as the diffuse part. Anne van der Bom’s point about the effect of wind is also demonstrated by the calculator.
Rod B #288,289
Just for fun I’ll bite, althouugh Tamino’s response says it all. It is both rising and falling, many times over. How many times cannot be decided from the data given.
After you explained how to map rising/falling to yes/no, I might consider. For fun.
I agree with Tamino, the mere nature of your question shows that you’ve crossed the line honest people don’t cross… I’m ashamed of ever having considered you worthy of attempts at teaching. But that’s a small shame by comparison, and easy to bear.
Mark – “It’s what you get OUT of energy that’s important. Not the energy”
Are you actually serious?
If you do not have the energy to get out of bed, you are not going to accomplish anything regardless of your intentions. Why would you even attempt to argue for such nonsense? I think it’s quite clear energy is an important part of human life.
Marion Delgado – Since the reputation of Al Gore has been damaged by political spins, he may not be the best face for climate science. Although he did not say he invented the internet, many people believe that he did because of the republicans’ spin. People continue to claim it even though computer scientist have stood up for him, and the person who did the interview (wolf on cnn) stood up as well. If republicans say something, many people believe it as gospel regardless of facts. It’s a shame really.
James 502, definitly not a fan of ignoring evidence. I do, however, love to examine evidence.
Your “lack of any causal mechanism” doesn’t pass the smell test.
Take a look at worldwide poverty statistics. What would it take to give every one of these people healthcare for example? Hospitals, hospital supplies, roads, emergency services, pharmecuticals, Doctors, are a few pieces of industry that come to mind.
Given a very optimistic energy mix of renewables vs fossil fuels available today, CO2 emissions would go up. I find it very counterintuitive to suggest CO2 emissions would go down. Certainly there are cases where emissions could go down, but the overall tendancy would be up. Agreed?
Doug Bostrom
“Elsewhere, Gavin has mentioned the rather tragic fact of petabytes of unprocessed and unexamined raw weather and climate related data product from satellites. Compared to mitigation costs, tackling that with an eye to revealing more empirical measurements as well as refining models would cost an invisibly small amount of money”
Is the information not accessible or what?
[Response: It’s technically accessible, but practically not. That is, if you wanted to look through it for interesting events, you could download everything (if you had enough disk space and many years of time) and you’d have to go through it all yourself. Smarter filters at the server sites would require a more active database structure and that would allow much more science to be done. People are working on it, but progress is slow. – gavin]
#503 Brian Dodge:
“And as long as businessmen with a vested interest(Exxon/Mobil, Peabody Coal, power companies), and economists with a political bias(CEI, Heartland, Cato, Wall Street), and lawyers( Bachmann, Cornyn, Cantor) believe that they know more about global warming than climate scientists, nothing will get done to combat global warming. As long as they believe that their livelihood depends on believing that global warming isn’t real, they will continue Business As Usual. Engineers will agnostically build tar sand refineries, or solar power plants, or arctic drilling rigs, or windmills, or lead cooled liquid metal fast breeder reactors.”
And of course they -don’t- believe they know more. What they absolutely do know is that they’re in serious danger of a substantial redirection of cash flow, a plain fact only made more real by their stubborn intransigence.
This is long past being a discussion about science. It’s purely a struggle over where money is going, lots of it, enough cash to dissolve the ethical underpinnings of all but the most rigidly scrupulous persons.
Fear mongering over costs to consumers and economic dislocation ignores that while we may end up sequestering some carbon, we won’t be sequestering money, only changing its vector. That’s the remaining nub of the “debate”.
It’s not unreasonable to speculate that the compelling requirement to unleash capital to fix our climate dilemma will likely benefit of the general public’s wallet. The people trying to keep cash steered as it is today have the megaphone and are shouting as loud as they can to make sure we don’t think about that. They want to keep the market static so they’re tampering with it to those ends.
Redistribution, but not communism, far from it. In 50 years’ time the commercial beneficiaries of climate change will be calling the shots.
Jim Galasyn wrote: “Tom Fuller recently invoked Carl Sagan against climate science: ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.'”
You know, that is a very unfortunate aphorism from Carl Sagan, that has been invoked in many horrible ways over the years.
Why? Because the judgment as to what constitutes an “extraordinary” claim is wholly subjective, as is the judgment as to what constitutes sufficiently “extraordinary” evidence to support whatever someone subjectively feels is an “extraordinary” claim.
In fields as diverse as parapsychology and climate science, that aphorism has been invoked to say that “your claim is extraordinary (because it conflicts with my a priori beliefs about ‘how things are’) so it requires extraordinary evidence (and no evidence is sufficiently extraordinary to overturn my a priori beliefs)”.
Subjectively, I find nothing remotely “extraordinary” about the basic science of anthropogenic global warming. Indeed it is sufficiently ordinary that even a non-scientist like myself can understand it pretty well.
#431 J. Bob: “The basic rule we used in evaluating a statistical analysis was “The more complex the analysis, the more suspicious the results”. That’s why “How to Lie with Statistics” is still being sold.”
Would this be the same J. Bob who used FFT (seriously complex stats) to “prove” that long-term cycles in the temperature record are more significant than the linear trend revealed by linear regression (one of the simplest stats there is)?
[Response: It’s technically accessible, but practically not. That is, if you wanted to look through it for interesting events, you could download everything (if you had enough disk space and many years of time) and you’d have to go through it all yourself. Smarter filters at the server sites would require a more active database structure and that would allow much more science to be done. People are working on it, but progress is slow. – gavin]
Wouldn’t a network such as the one being used by http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ be of benefit?
Could be a ghetto solution to your problem =P
Re 10 year trend.
Yes it is positive. But the 12 year trend is negative for all datasets but GISS.
[Response: Ah. But it’s positive again for 13 years and longer…. do you begin to see what cherry picking means? – gavin]
#511 CTG
Its a good thing you were not around when they decided to put ears on creatures of the world. Otherwise, you would have told them they were too complex.
Seriously, you can’t be coming out against harmonic analysis. The FFT is extremely useful in detecting harmonic content in a sequence of data samples. Once accomplished, sometimes, a harmonic component can be removed and then linear regression is greatly enhanced.
I have no idea what J.Bob did. My comment is only related to your disparaging of the FFT.
re: #468 Todd
I’m doing a little “social science research”, so maybe you can kindly help me.
You write:
“I am not a scientist [a]
I have looked at both sides of the AGW issue [b]
I am of the opinion that the “science is not settled” and that more verification of the climate models is necessary [c]
I am concerned that, in our rush to reduce CO2, we may pass a climate bill that devastates our country’s economy” [d]
I accept [a] as likely to be a fact.
I accept that it is a fact that [c] and [d] are indeed your opinions, although of course, opinions are not themselves facts.
I don’t understand what [b] actually means:
What *are* your sources for “I’ve looked at both sides”, and what is the extent of “looking”?
a) Read a a few blogs?
b) Read articles in lay science magazines like Scientific American or
New Scientist?
c) Read at least one general book by a real climate scientist,
~ David Archer’s “The Long Thaw”, or Michael Mann & Lee Kump’s “Dire Predictions”?
d) Read a textbook for college non-science majors, by a real climate scientist, ~ Archer’s “Global warming – Understanding the Forecast”?
If you haven’t at least gotten to c), are you willing to?
[Some people are willing, others will not read a basic book by any climate scientist.
Put another way, can you rate your various sources for credibility? Clearly, RC is low on your scale, as well as the IPCC, AAAS, National Academy of Sciences, etc. What’s high?
Thanks for any response.
Nice roundup on ice at New Scientist:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327151.300-sea-level-rise-its-worse-than-we-thought.html?page=1
Of course it’s Euro-influenced, so if they say “up” is “up”, you need to believe “up” is “down” because they have their culture, we have ours. Not that I’m prejudiced; some of my best friends are European. Come to think of it, I’m an EU citizen. But I’m an American citizen too. What to believe???
#512 Jim:
He’s not trashing the FFT, just pointing out how in another thread J.Bob wasted a lot of glucose concocting a contorted application of the FFT to identify a what J.Bob believes is a fundamental error that overturns the field of paleoclimatology. J.Bob imagined he teased this out using a single data set covering central England, macerated by the FFT.
Jim Bullis (#504), that’s cleared up then. The polar bears and I were really rooting for you to be right, hoping there might be one less feedback to worry about. Anyway, it’s been an education.
Dave Cooke (#477), sounds like you might be interested in a thesis I stumbled across on Optical properties of snow and sea ice (Pedersen 2007, PDF, 2.7MB). From the summary:
Re: #512 (Jim Bullis)
I’m quite confident that CTG was not, in any way, disparaging the FFT. He was merely pointing out the hypocrisy of J. Bob’s using complicated analysis when it suits his purpose, but disparaging it when it fails to do so. I’m a great admirer of many Fourier methods; my complaint with J. Bob’s analysis is that he bungled the job.
It’s not the tool (simple or complex) that’s problematic; it’s the ape behind it.
#434 GD
What’s a climatist?
Your incredible grasp of the english language, not to mention climate science, is truly mind-numbing.
As to your depopulating comment I have an idea. Let’s say worst case scenario does happen and people eventually start contemplating what color to make the soylent cookies.
If you are wrong, how about you and all the folks delaying meaningful action due to ignorance, or fraud, be placed first in line for cookie dough?
And if you are right and all that extra CO2 has no negative effects, and life in the future is wonderful, and life on earth becomes even more diverse and many species are added rather than become extinct, and the the fiat economy is booming based on the Keyensian model, and the long purported idea of a free market as promulgated on MSNBC by Larry Kudlow makes the economy safer and more productive than ever (and we get rid of all those silly regulations regarding safety and pollution that limit the profit potential of corporations), you can eat me (though in the world you imagine, you probably would prefer a nice ribeye).
BTW, you made such a strong statement, why would you be scared to post your real name?
Petro (495), so, you can not give a yes or no answer (of which “explanation” is neither) either. Still O.K. I’m just curious.
tamino (496), not simple enough. Sounds like it could be a “no”, but doesn’t quite get there. Still O.K.
Re #513 (John Mashey): I’m all for social science research (with or without quotation marks), but it seems very likely to me that some of these posters are bright 12 year olds playing games, some are paid provocateurs, and some wouldn’t tell you the truth to save their lives (and maybe a couple are sincere and don’t know how to use an index or search engine). I can’t believe the results you get could possibly be useful except for an abnormal psychology project. Hmmm, I think I just figured out why you used quotation marks.
In fairness I should add that J.Bob unlike so many other gullible folks is at least not a mindless parrot. He attempted to verify by independent means the retail misdirection being doled out by publicists. Bad entry angle, burned up, but at least tried something independent. I should have considered that earlier, my bad, makes me feel a bit ashamed for being so sarcastic on the earlier thread.
Michael Says (1 July 2009 at 14:13):
“Take a look at worldwide poverty statistics. What would it take to give every one of these people healthcare for example?”
First question: how much has all of that health care actually contributed to increased life expectancy? Not a lot, at least according to the CDC, because 5/6th of the increased life expectancy in the US was due to public health improvements: http://cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00056796.htm (Note that’s just for the 20th century. There was a lot of basic work in the 19th century, such as asepsis, sanitation, vaccination, even the basic germ theory of disease.) Those use very little energy, and could at need be done with even less.
For that remaining 1/6th, we might ask how much of what you list is actually required to provide an adequate level of health care, how much energy is needed, and how much has to come from fossil fuels. Rather than bore everyone with a recitation, I’d suggest reading up on China’s “Barefoot Doctor” program.
“I find it very counterintuitive to suggest CO2 emissions would go down. Certainly there are cases where emissions could go down, but the overall tendancy would be up. Agreed?”
Not at all. Consider for example that the leading cause of premature death in the US is heart disease, while automobile accidents also cause a significant number of deaths. Medicine can treat these, sometimes successfully, at great expense. So if a large fraction of the population walked or biked instead of driving, CO2 emissions would go down while life expectancy went up.
Doug B. (501), even as a skeptic I fully agree with you that tons of resources out to be put into climate research (and other related efforts), including launching those helpful satellites. But if you think you can process the peta (and peta) bytes of information with petty cash and a free afternoon, you’re grossly mistaken.
Rod B, have you stopped beating your wife?
A yes or no answer, please.
Martin V (505), can’t do it either. So far it’s unanimous. All is still O.K.
517 John asks, “#434 GD, why would you be scared to post your real name?”
Because he’s an ignorant cage-rattler doing a drive-by insult for fun. My guess is that he was drunk. On a positive note, he was on topic – his post was bubkes.
Carl (513), I don’t know if you’re referring to this little snit going on over my question, but your “yes” answer is interesting, although the question did not explicitly ask about “trends”.
I’m finding it difficult to wade through the comments here in order to find any meaningful information…
How about a simple climate lesson for the neophytes?
100% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the sun, right? If the sun were to stop emitting heat there would be no heat on Earth. Is this true or false? If false, what would the temperature of the Earth be without the sun? (I realize no one really knows, but I’m sure there is a calculation that would give a hypothetical answer)
Though mankind’s existence on the face of the earth is certainly a variable for generated heat, such heat is insignificant in comparison to the changes in heat from the sun, specifically compared to the changes in Earth’s temperature due to the sun’s 11 year sunspot cycle. Is this true or false? If false, can you calculate what comparative significance heat generated by mankind has. I have read a bit about greenhouse gases, reflection of heat from Earth’s surface, etc. but can’t imagine man having any real significant ability to change Earth’s temperature at all. I heard that all the humans in the world would fit in a 1 mile by 1 mile by 1 mile cube…if that is true mankind’s affect on climate should be effectively nothing.
Though CO2 may reflect heat back down to the earth, isn’t CO2 the gas plant life needs to live? Isn’t it a dichotomy then to call CO2 a pollutant…restricting what plants need to live can’t be a long-term good thing. Is this true or false. If false, meaning calling CO2 a pollutant is a good thing, then please explain how the heck plants will fare if man is successful in eliminating CO2 from the atmosphere.
Man-made climate change proponents indicate something like a 1-2 degree rise in Earth’s temperature over the course of many years. Wouldn’t that make longer growing seasons in latitudes north of 39º? Wouldn’t that be a good thing? True or false? If false, please explain why.
Since proponents of man-made climate change insist that man’s actions here can affect global weather, especially and specifically temperature, why did they waffle on the original term “global warming”? Why did they change that to “climate change”? I understand it is because in the last few years the temperature of the Earth has actually cooled so, rather than lose the momentum they had gained to make political inroads to underwrite global measures to control societies’ behaviors when it comes to things like use of fossil fuels, proponents decided to cut their losses and change the term so they wouldn’t be obviously wrong to the masses as it snowed on various global warming rallies. True or false? If false, please explain why the term did change.
I heard that if the climate was going to change, 1-2º higher would be a lot less devastating than 1-2º cooler because of growing seasons. I heard the Potato famine of the 1800s was due to a cooler than normal period. True or false? If false, please explain.
I am not very impressed by statistics and studies by scientists who are backing the science that mankind is responsible for climate change, though admittedly I probably have read an insignificant fraction compared with what all of you have read. Yet when I see data that 150% of Earth’s heat is radiated up from Earth I become very skeptical. 150%? How I reason is, “if even I can think of basic information that casts doubt on the idea of man-made climate change, then either the data for the idea is not very strong, or the scientists reporting it are not making a very articulate argument.”
If I’m going to pay for any measure to control the weather, I need a lot more proof than what I’m seeing reported.
I would appreciate your answers.
[Response: Most of your questions (and some misconceptions) would be answered by reading the IPCC FAQ pages. Try there first and then come back if you still have questions. -gavin]
#525 Rod B:
…if you think you can process the peta (and peta) bytes of information with petty cash and a free afternoon…”
Gee, I just read my post and I can’t see where I said that. Are you hallucinating?
Paraphrasing myself, I said that compared to the costs of mitigation we see thrown around by hired publicists, the price of processing the data is very low, “invisible” perhaps being a touch hyperbolic. I’ll go further and say that compared to the price of building, launching and operating the constellation of satellites in question, finishing the job would be relatively cheap. Gavin implies that to make the data useful it’s a matter of incorporating it into an interactive database, with all that entails. At bottom we’re talking about a pretty significant disk array and several FTE dweebs working for a few months, I suspect. Money and time, in short supply because we all like low taxes. Really insurmountable, uh-huh.
It’s all about “no, we can’t do that, we’re so helpless, we give up, somebody tell us what to do” in the chumposphere, apparently.
Back to the topic of journalists and news articles by author, this from Google’s updates:
“Search by Author on Google News
… new Search by Author feature on Google News. If you spot an article with a reporter’s byline, click the name to bring up other articles by that person. You can also find a specific journalist’s articles by typing “author:” followed by their name in the Google News search box.”
ooo, ooo can i play too ?
the temperature in my basement was 68F last week but is 66F today. I propose the theory of Universal Basement Cooling.
But then it is revealed that the temperature was 69F yesterday. I retract my theory and propose Recent Basement Cooling.
Next, I find that just one hour ago my basement was at 70F. I now propose a theory of Even More Recent Basement Cooling.
This is what passes for argument among denialist howler monkeys.
On a more serious note, when someone asks me to compare two numbers, my first question is: what is the scatter in the data ?
Michael @507, isn’t it amazing how all we need to do is mention climate change and conservatives discover third world poverty.
Everybody, sing it: “Kumbaya, my lord, Kumbaya…”
# Rod B
> rising or falling?
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/08/mcintyre_has_another_go_at_han.php
The Pielkian reality behind global warming … http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/upload/2009/07/Gisstemp-Fig.A2pielke.png
Solved! Thanks, Tim
RE: 518
Hey CM,
Thanks, great catch, I am very interested in this subject recently…
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
re: #534 Ray
Yes, the Viscount Monckton has discovered the poor of the world, as has Bjorn Lomborg, who generally does it better.
It’s a misdirection argument, i.e., a particular form of false dilemma, and related to the arguments *for* geoengineering in the Carlin paper, of which Gavin said:
“Even more curious, Carlin appears to be a big fan of geo-engineering…”
I don’t think that’s curious at all :-)
a) Someone who is seriously concerned about climate might well argue that that we need to research geoengineering techniques, especially when we can do it cheap, just in case. Some people even spend their own time and money doing it, and even know something about R&D management where you do research before you start wanting to build big.
People might look at Ice 911, a shoestring, very targeted effort to slow down polar icemelt by increasing albedo.
Leslie Field, who runs this is a sharp person and gives a good talk on this, including showing samples of the materials under investigation, pictures of experiments, discussions of experiments scheduled in Canadian lakes, etc.
She has some pretty good advisors, some of whose names people might recognize.
b) But, in other cases, geoengineering = “anything but CO2 reductions”, masquerading as promoting geoengineering, just as “CO2 reductions will hurt the poor” often does.
Bupkes, AKA goat droppings, is contagious.
Seems like all the stooges are picking up goat droppings.
YAHOO epa hannity
Michael @498, OK, now that we’ve established that you are not in immediate danger of a judgment of non compos mentis, why are you assuming that human welfare is dependent particularly on fossil fuels rather than on energy resources in general? What do you suppose will happen when we run out of fossil fuels, as we are likely to do in the near future(decades for oil and perhaps a century for coal)?
Ultimately, if human civilization is to survive, it must be sustainable–and that means it has to get by on renewable energy resources. I’m afraid I don’t see a way around that. Climate change merely adds urgency.
To any skeptic who believes Carlin’s views should be taken seriously, care to back up this assertion of his with a scientific reference:
“global temperatures are roughly where they were in the mid-20th century. ”
Say what?
Garbage material should be treated as garbage. It’s not the obligation of the EPA to incorporate into its report easily-falsifiable material from every fringe individual. If someone wrote a report and said global warming was caused by cupcakes, it’s hardly “supression” to see it considered and dismissed.
Re: #109
RodB writes:
“I would say a 50% increase in my electric bill”
Before caving in to such alarmism, have a look at the non-partisan CBO study on this:
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/103xx/doc10327/06-19-CapAndTradeCosts.pdf
You’ll note that the average household cost is quite low. Low-income individuals actually come out a little ahead. This analysis misses a whole variety of benefits, however – job creation, energy efficiency, environmental, and national security.
When one examines all the gloom and doom economic forecasts from those of certain political persuasion, it becomes clear who the “alarmists” are.
John Mashey says, “Yes, the Viscount Monckton has discovered the poor of the world, as has Bjorn Lomborg, who generally does it better.
It’s a misdirection argument,…”
Ahh, I was hopin’ for a little reeeligious conversion, a come to Jesus moment. You know, there’s got to be a way we can spin this for laughs. Think we could get Monckton to visit the Howrah across the river from Calcutta–world’s largest slum. Or maybe we could get Lomborg on a reality show trying to help the “poor, benighted savages” of Kinshasa. Now I would even buy a frigging converter box to watch that. Hell, I’d even get cable.
I remain underwhelmed by Fuller. Clearly trying to stoke controversy. This is no better than posting an article on why Macs are better than Windows or vice-versa (actually, worse: the Macs vs. Windows thing does no one any harm, and you need no scientific literacy to enter the fray).
For the true skeptics: follow the thread started by Jim Bullis on ice vs. water albedo (#259). He stated a position that was argued through by various people with varying degrees of knowledge. All very polite, disagreements gradually worn away by factual argument. That’s what this site is about. Approach your doubts this way and you can learn a lot (and who knows? Maybe even teach the rest of us something).
The impatience of regulars about repeated stating of inaccurate talking points that are trivially debunked is understandable. A couple of days ago I managed to get a letter of similar impatience into The Austalian, with some responses to online comments at my blog (further comments welcome). In my case my excuse is that attempting to answer the scientific misdirection in that paper politely is simply ignored.
The Murdoch media, even attempts at “quality” journalism, only cares about controversy. Maybe we need to consider that in how we attempt to put our case – even if it makes us seem unreasonable. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
#543 MarkB:
It’s hopeless, we’ve already been through that with him. He sees things that are not visible to the rest of us. He’s on some sort of private mission he’s determined to fulfill regardless of how much he publicly humiliates himself. Should we laugh, or cry?
Doug B, maybe I overstated it but your phrase “…would cost an invisibly small amount of money” implies you didn’t think it a big deal when in fact processing and analyzing all of that data is a massive undertaking. Though, as you say, compared to the cost of 50 years of global mitigation, maybe not so much. I’m not being critical but instead of a big disk array you’re talking acres of dasd farms, and instead of a few dweebs working a few months your talking hundreds of computer scientists, architects and developers, and thousands of coders and programmers working for many years if not decades on big iron capable of a jillion of gigaflops/sec. Now I may be exaggerating a tad to make a point, but not much. Gavin (see his response) certainly knows better than I do.
Your main point is still well-taken: tons more resources ought to be applied to the assessment.
#547 Rod B:
“…you’re talking acres of dasd farms… hundreds of computer scientists, architects and developers, and thousands of coders and programmers working for many years if not decades on big iron capable of a jillion of gigaflops/sec.”
NCAR already has a 30 petabyte storage system in place. It was obtained from Sun and is an upscaled version of standard Sun hardware and software. It lives in a room. A large room, but just a room. HP offers a smaller multi-petabyte system more suitable for interactive processing that is also available as a standard configuration. There are other vendors of such gear. A few years ago it would have been special, no more.
As to processing, it depends. There are scads of vendors offering COTS cluster systems capable of dealing with datasets of this magnitude in terms of producing lightly seasoned extracts at the very least. Teraflop performance is sort of old hat these days. I can imagine that climate modeling requires work that is not going to be “press Return, see the answer before you can lift your finger” even with a nicely amped-up cluster system, but presumably that work is done on better equipment.
The point is systems of this scale are in routine use these days and neither astronomically expensive nor very large for that matter.
(Ironically, the cost to obtain this equipment is lower than otherwise because development has in part been amortized thanks to the petroleum industry and their seismo processing requirements.)
So–sadly– no full employment program for hundreds of CS PhDs and systems architects, nor for those hungry thousands of programmers, not even big real estate deals in the offing.
I’ll amend my earlier statement to say -initially- a handful of FTE dweebs, followed probably by a slightly smaller number on a continuing basis to handle extraction and processing requests from the scientific community.
Like I said earlier, it’s “impossible” because we choose to make it so, even though the hurdle is pretty small. Low taxes, no free lunch. Sorry.
Your hyperbolic trajectory points you for parts unknown. Good luck out there.
Liz Bockelman (531), I’ll try a couple of your questions, though they might get corrected. Truth in Advertising: I’m a skeptic.
The second after the Sun went out, the temperature of the Earth would not change. It would continue emitting infrared radiation which would still be affected by GH gases and all of the other energy exchanges. The radiation leaving the top of the atmosphere would be the same, but it would start its move toward equilibrium with the sun, which is now zero. So the earth would cool over time (I have no idea how fast or slow) and probably get very cold at the surface with a totally frozen atmosphere while the core remains hot. Over a long cosmological period the little radiation still leaving the surface would eventually cool the entire solid earth. BTW, all of those temperatures and times can be calculated within some degree of accuracy. My wild guess is the entire earth at, say, 10 degrees Kelvin in a couple of billion years or so; the surface and atmosphere at, say, 100-150 degrees K in, say, a few million years, maybe less.
I would agree that your second point has some validity, but be careful with the “how can just a teensy amount cause all that damage?” argument. It might have a supporting role, but as a stand-alone it’s not credible. A teensy-weensy amount of some poisons can wipe out populations.
I don’t think CO2 is a pollutant, but this is more of a semantic issue than a science issue. CO2 is required for flora life; it’s also a GH gas and can cause damage. It’s like one of those too much of a good thing deals. BTW, this is one of my areas of skepticism, namely how much more CO2 will cause how much more “damage”. But it is in fact a GH gas and the basic physics of GH gases is correct. But even the most zealous proponent of AGW is not talking about eliminating CO2 or anything close.
I would agree that using “climate change” instead of “global warming” is a PR thing. And though us skeptics would be tarred and feathered for doing such, it’s really not a big deal IMO. Most of the proponents believe what they think, and trying to get a message out in a form that people might better accept and understand is neither pernicious nor devious.
I don’t understand your question on the 150% heat radiated up.
Re #402
Jim Bullis, Miastrada Co. Says:
30 June 2009 at 1:32 PM
(1) Brewsters angle for sea water seems to be more like about 7 degrees, according to mike-willis.com/Tutorial/PF8.htm. I do not know if he did it right, but it roughly agrees with my lower frequency data from Radar Reflectivity of Land and Sea, Long, Artech House.
I looked at that site and he has made an error.
The angle he defines on that page as the angle of incidence is in fact its complement (on a previous page when discussing Snell’s Law he gets it right). His definition of Brewster’s angle is correct, from the result he gets and the context it appears as if he’s using refractive index values appropriate to microwaves, which is why he doesn’t get the appropriate value for visible light and seawater (~56º).